When the season started I was thinking “man, i don’t think this team is ever gonna lose a game” now it’s more like “wow I wonder who is gonna blow the game tonight” or “I don’t think i should watch the game, I’ll just get pissed off”

Some of you need to get a grip on baseball reality. If you really were THAT jacked up about the M’s at the beginning of the year then…oof.

First off, Ryan Anderson never “made it at THE SHOW!!!!1111″ because he was injured. EOF and Lowe are good pitchers. It’s baseball, man, not the NFL. These guys play 162 games. 162. There are going to be peaks and valleys. Mark Lowe is not going play terrible all year (barring an injury), just like Ichiro isn’t going to bat .260.

Start to uncomfortable finish, manager Lou Piniella’s postgame news conference Thursday lasted all of one minute — depending on whether you count the string of profanities he uttered marching down the dreary hallway to the Cubs’ clubhouse.
…
A question focusing on whether Piniella thought about shifting slick-fielding center fielder Reed Johnson to left — in place of fresh-off-the-disabled-list Alfonso Soriano — when he inserted defensive sub Felix Pie in center during the eighth inning lit Piniella’s short fuse.

”You’re damn right I thought about it,” Piniella said, his voice rising. ”You think I’m stupid or something? God … darn it. Thought. All right. Thanks.”

End of news conference.

As Piniella stormed away, the profanities he contained while in front of the cameras came spilling out.

Sorry, just don’t buy into the belief that playing a good pitcher more that one inning is OVERWORKING him just because he’s struggled.

However, I can certainly belive playing a good pitcher more than one inning is overworking him because he’s coming back from injury.

William Bloomquist, Pinch Runner Extraordinaire…!

Weren’t you folks listening when McLaren said that we’re going to run ourselves out of more innings than we did last
year ?
(Something like that.)

BTW, according to MB, Willie’s CS was the mother of “productive outs.”

Y’know, JJ kind of came out of nowhere

He didn’t come out of nowhere. He learned to throw a really good splitter.

Why would you think that the best way to handle someone looking a bit shaky off an injury is to REALLY overwork him?

You’re rignt , they should have put in Mark Lowe. He’s so much more proven. Sorry, just don’t buy into the belief that playing a good pitcher more that one inning is OVERWORKING him just because he’s struggled. Yeah, he looked shakey, and then he buckled down and got results.

Regardless, I’m sure we both them to win, I just get frustrated with managers using the revolving door of the bullpen so much.

Also– outfield assist leaderboard, all players since 2001: Vlad 74, Beltran 73, Ichiro 70.