Now that’s something
Despite entering the game with a 2.84 ERA, Jarrod Washburn has spent the first part of 2007 doing exactly what he’s done the last three years. He faced some lousy opponents who couldn’t hit a baseball, and it made casual fans think he was pitching far better than he actually was.
Last night’s performance was totally different, however. He wasn’t facing a bad line-up. He wasn’t throwing the ball over the plate and watching the hitters put fly balls in the outfield. He threw strikes, but not contact strikes. He kept the Yankees off balance with his breaking ball and made a conscious effort to induce swings and misses. Last night, Jarrod Washburn pitched a tremendous game. No caveats included. It was the best game he’s ever pitched as a Mariner.
If you want to get excited about Jarrod Washburn’s early season performance, get excited about last night. If he does that all year, then we have something.
Kaboooom
That was fun.
I have to admit I don’t know exactly happened: between tweaking the database settings and the web server settings, something went horribly, horribly wrong, and I got to watch the box spin out of control over and over… and then I’d restart it, it would take ages to shutdown and then reboot, it’d look good, then go horribly horribly wrong… oh, it was great. I feel like I’ve wrestled a bear for a couple of hours.
Anyway. Apologies.
Game 31, Yankees at Mariners
Darrell Rasner v Jarrod Washburn! 7:05, FSN.
Heyyyy, it’s Josh Phelps again! What’s up, Josh?
M’s offer their new standard lineup:
CF-L Ichiro
DH-B Turbo
LF-L Ibanez
1B-R Sexson
RF-R Guillen
3B-R Beltre
C-R Johjima
SS-R Betancourt
2B-R Lopez
Weaver to DL for acute sucktasticitis
I mean, uh, shoulder issues. From the M’s:
the Mariners placed right-handed pitcher Jeff Weaver on the 15-day disabled list with right shoulder tendinitis. Left-handed pitcher Ryan Rowland-Smith has been recalled from Triple-A Tacoma to take Weaver’s roster spot.
Ehhhh yeaaaaaaaaaah. Shoulder tendinitis. Whatever, he disappears for a while.
Patches. Patches welcome.
Known issues I’m working on are in that box on the upper-right. If you have a complaint, right know we’re offering two choices:
– Patches welcome
– Say nothing until the to-do list is complete
A patch is a fix. Anything that doesn’t include a fix is not, right now, welcome.
Here’s what that means: let’s say you hate, hate, hate the new template, and you send me an email that says “I hate the fact that the titles are blue, they should be military grey, or ocean grey, or some grey.” At some point, if I have a chance between reading the other 90 emails on this stuff, this will cause me to stop and grind my teeth a little. Or you comment in a thread that you don’t like thing x, which may well be on that to-do list. Equally annoying. We’re trying to get things fixed, and that is not at all helpful in any way.
Actual assistance, though, is quite valuable. We need patches, actual ways to fix things. We do not need suggestions at this point, no matter what your background or what degrees you have or self-assessed opinion value may be, and if that sounds like I’m a little snippy because I’ve gotten a lot of these, it’s because this gets really old really fast. If you send an email that says “Hey, to get the banner right, set attribute whatever to value whatever” it’ll get fixed, and probably pretty fast. If you want it changed to ocean grey or military grey or back to ocean grey, and someone else sends me an actual fix that turns it orange, they win.
Also, see the previous post on this.
But really: patches are welcome. If you’re not coming to us with a problem and a solution, you’re contributing to the problem and actively keeping us from solutions. Stop.
Roster moves a coming
There’s at least one roster move coming today. I’m pretty sure you can all guess who is going away.
Template upgrade tonight
Hey all, it’s going to be a weeee bit wonky as I get this thing up and chugging along. Please be patient, we’re working hard at USSM Labs to get this righted as soon as possible.
If you’d like to see a better color scheme, layout, or whatever, patches are welcome. Please don’t just complain – I need help a lot more than I need to hear that we suck or whatever.
Also, and I can’t stress this enough: this is not my strong point. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to. So help, or leave me and the people who are helping alone.
11pm update: well, that’s a night’s work. The to-do list is on the upper right-hand corner.
Game 30, Mariners at Tigers
Jeff Weaver gets a chance to start in a flyball-friendly park against Justin Verlander. 10:05 am. No TV.
The Mariners are a half-game out of first place. They’ve been outscored by opponents by some amount of runs, yet there they are. The margins for the others? A’s +13, the Angels +5, Rangers -36. So it’s not as if the competition’s been particularly fierce.
Part of the reason it feels weird is that the team’s played, well, check this out.
Number of times the offense scored that many runs as “.”
Number of times the pitching allowed that many runs as “+”
0 - ..+++
1 - ..+
2 - ...+++++
3 - .....+
4 - ....+++
5 - ....+++
6 - .+++
7 - ...+
8 - ..++++
9 - .++
10
11 ++
12
13
14 .+
15 .
A Nice Surprise
Cha Baek throwing a complete game, his first since he was pitching for low-A Wisconsin 108 years ago, was about as unexpected a gift as the M’s could have asked for. He’s never been known for his ability to work deep in games, and unlike some of the offenses the Mariners have faced lately, the Tigers can actually hit the ball.
Of course, with Jeff Weaver taking on Justin Verlander in about two hours, the M’s could really use another nice surprise. With Baek’s performance last night, it shouldn’t be a stretch to say that, once again, Jeff Weaver is pitching for his job. If he doesn’t show a better fastball today and some sustainable improvement, this should be his last start in the rotation.
Game 29, Mariners at Tigers
Baek v Robertson.
Yup.