Game 8, Rangers at Mariners
McCarthy vs Ramirez, 1:05 pm.
Standard line-up 1 to 7, but Lopez is batting eighth because Willie Ballgame is getting the start at shortstop. According to Geoff Baker, “Manager Mike Hargrove said Bloomquist is starting in place of Yuniesky Betancourt because Bloomquist needs playing time.”
So, on a day when the M’s are starting hopeful groundball pitcher Horacio Ramirez, they’re benching their elite defensive shortstop and replacing him with a utility infielder who lacks the range to play the position on a regular basis. As a bonus, flyball pitcher Jeff Weaver is scheduled to start on Tuesday. If you want to give Willie a start at shortstop, don’t you think you might want to do it when you don’t have a guy on the mound whose goal is to get as many groundballs as possible?
The M’s acquired Ramirez in large part because of his groundball tendencies. So now, when he takes the hill, they make his infield defense significantly worse “because Willie needs to play.”
Argh.
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Awesome game this afternoon; lucky enough to catch most of it on the radio as I went about Sunday’s business. If Vidro can just do that a couple times a week the M’s are going places!
Last night during the Sonics/Blazers game Kevin Calabro noted that he hoped the M’s would do well this week for the sake of Chuck Armstrong. He said Armstrong “worked so hard” and that he “lived and died” on how the M’s are/were performing. I can’t see it. If true, after the past two seasons he’d be decomposed by now.
M’s are looking good against the West so far. Woot!
I think “The West is looking poor against the Ms so far” would be more accurate.
Another classic Ichiro quote:
Dude, whatever ice cream that is, hand out two scoops to everyone.
High-scoring games tend to take longer than low-scoring games.
That’s certainly true. Detroit and Toronto played a 2 hour 14 minute game the other day. It was 10 innings (Halladay threw a complete game).
#299:
Glass half full/half empty… Both outlooks may be true; while I choose to look on the bright side, some dwell in the gutter.
There’s a fair anmount of sabremetric simulations that say that the AL West is unlikely to have a world-beating team in it this year (think the 2005 NL West). The Rangers won the 1996 AL West with 88 wins, and this might be another year where 85-90 wins takes it all.
So far, I haven’t seen anything that makes me disagree with that assessment. A Mariners team that’s .500 (or even a bit below) when it’s everyone but Felix on the mound and wins 75-80% of the Felix starts has got a DEFINITE shot in that environment- if you figure the M’s go 24-8 when Felix is on the mound, that becomes 89-73 when wedded to a .500 record in the other games.
Did anyone else see spit flying of one of Chen’s pitches? I think he was facing Bloomy. He threw some kind of breaking pitch, and I could of swore gobs of spit were spiraling off of it. Does anyone know where to get yesterday’s game footage? I guess, either way it didn’t really ‘help’ him. He got shelled shortly after that, but I thought, in light of Zumsteg’s breaking news on K-Rod-‘less’, we might as a Mariner fan base, keep our collective eyes open for this stuff. Especially, if it is happening against us…
If Feliz himself goes 18-6, the rest of the team just has to go two games over .500 to get to 88 wins. Can’t see that as impossible (maybe not likely, but it’s doable…).