Game 2, Athletics at Mariners
Joe Blanton versus Jarrod “The Leader” Washburn. 7:05, KSTW.
Our first Felix Day a rousing success, this is where the season’s long slog starts: the rest of the rotation. I was listening to a spring training report where Peter Gammons talked about the Mariners and could not name a pitcher past Washburn. When Gammons can’t remember who your 3-5 guys are off the top of his head, that’s trouble.
This is why we play the games, though. The Mariners hope that they’re going to get great performances that most reasonable analyst think aren’t going to happen, but we don’t know if Horacio Ramirez will win 20 games pitching in Safeco until he does, or doesn’t. Washburn could be this season’s surprise ace — more unlikely candidates have done better in baseball’s history.
I love Opening Day in part because of that feeling, being able to pull the wool over my own eyes a little and not think at all about what the standings will be like after the last game ends. Knowing that the season is long, and winding, and even if I could nail the win total, there’s no way any prediction about how the experience will be could approach accuracy.
More than anything, I want the Mariners to get into and win in the playoffs. I want to see a championship baseball team. Right now, they’re in first place. They could go wire to wire, it’s happened before.
A’s field
C Kendall
LF Stewart
CF Bradley
DH Piazza
3B Chavez
1B Swisher
RF Kielty
SS Crosby
2B Ellis
M’s go
CF Ichiro!
3B Beltre
DH Vidro
LF Ibanez
1B Sexson
RF Guillen
C Johjima
SS Betancourt
2B Lopez
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272 Responses to “Game 2, Athletics at Mariners”
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Hargrove with his goatee is a dead ringer for Dennis Hopper in one of his recent movies. I can’t remember the name because it looked horrifically bad, I just remember seeing the previews and Dennis Hopper had a beard. Anyone know?
scary relievers other than Mateo and legendary Bobby Ayala (off the top of my head)
Jose Mesa; Paul Spoljaric; Heathcliff Slocumb; or best of all, John Mabry.
Hmm, I appear to have tapped out in the year 2000; someone help me here.
He may have a major league arm, but does he have a major leauge head? Does he know what to do when the lineup turns over and the same batters see him for a second and third time? Does he even have the arm strength for that? Throwing one inning in relief is a very different proposition than 6 innings in a start. You don’t want to squander his talent.
Saw this over at AN:
And we thought Bloomquist could do it all. Swisherific.
Here’s why watching baseball on TiVo is cool. Not only do you have pause, rewind, and slo-mo, but my favorite trick is pausing for about 20 minutes. This lets you fast-forward through 20 minutes of commercials, or something unpleasant, like say Julio Mateo pitching. And fast-forward has 3 settings: Annoyed, “Mateo’s pitching. meh.”; Angry, “He threw it where, now?!”; or Apoplectic, “MY EYES! MY EYES!”
Paniagua was pretty scary too. I just have bad memories of saying “oh no!” whenever he came into games. Kind of like Mateo.
Marrow clearly was not ready, we should have him in the minors, with a possible send up later this season.
bah. it’s his first major league appearance. it’s called nerves. nonetheless, 1H, no runs, is a solid major league debut.
I would rather see him in Tacoma to develop him into a starter.
well, Turbo does bring us a whole new Rizzs Drinking Game– how many times will Rick call Vidro ‘professional’?
on KOMO, Glasgow just broached the notion that the official scorer be given the power to assign the win to the starting pitcher, rather than give it to a vulture like Mateo …
And it’s BrAndon MOrrow, not BrEndan (thank you Dave frickin’ Sims) MArrow ( thank you other DZ)
Honestly, Sims has all the potential to be just another Rizzs-esque cheerleader. If Blowers says ANYTHING at all, he’s there with a “yes, that’s right” or some other sycophantic reinforcement.
vulch (verb)
Applicable only to baseball pitchers. To enter a baseball game, surrender the lead by pitching poorly, then have your team score enough runs to take the lead, after which your team does not surrender the lead, thereby making you the winning pitcher in the game.
Example: Julio Mateo totally vulched the win from Jarrod Washburn on Tuesday.
#250: Sims has the potential to be Seattle’s own “Hawk” Harrelson, minus the major leage experience and Nehru jacket.
“He gone!”
HE HAS NEVER STARTED A GAME AS A PROFESSIONAL AT ANY LEVEL.
Seriously. Do you think that doesn’t mean anything?
If you watch minor league games, you’ll see plenty of kids with major league arms. There are usually good reasons they’re still in the minors.
It’s possible that the Mariners know something about bringing along pitching talent that no other organization knows. Yeah.
250: I will spell it right when he earns it.
I’ll stop kicking your ass about it when YOU’VE earned it.
OFair enough, but we were a bad pitch away from Putz having to bail the kid out.
The kid has great potential, but I would rather see him as a starter in a year, then as a middle reliever now. And pitching an inning once or twice a week is not the way to do it.
249: Nice use of “Turbo”…maybe we could tweak it a bit to “Turdro.” Altough, wait…that has a completely different connotation. I guess we’ll stick with Turbo.
#239 @ Dylan: Land Of The Dead.
Hey!! Extra Innings is coming back to digital cable.