There’s no need to be insulting, I acknowledged the small sample size, and will note that after his first 28 games, McLaren was also 13-15. But if- big if- the Mariners play ~.500 ball for the rest of the season, they’ll be a crappy 70-win team and not a horrific 60 win team.

And I’d completely agree that a new manager along with a new GM would be fantastic for the Mariners.

Wow, that’s just a classic quote. The numbers are reality, and he’s denying it, which in most other fields of work would be considered incompetence at best and mental illness at worst, with fraud sitting somewhere in between.

You have to be insane to drive in Boston, period. I think they require a test for that when they give you the license.

Well, if you’re a city resident, you have to be able to prove that you have a place to park a vehicle you’re purchasing before you can get it registered there — unless they’ve rescinded that law, that is.

Yes, yes, small sample size, but give the guy his due: he’s not the greatest manager around, but he’s good enough that for whatever reason the team is basically mediocre with him at the helm.

There are three types of managers:

1) Managers that are seriously excellent and substantially improve their team’s chances to win. This is the smallest group.

Tony LaRussa is the guy that seems to be most often mentioned as part of this group, but there are a few others.

2) Managers that seriously suck and are actively detrimental to their team’s chances to win. This group is slightly larger than #1, but still pretty small.

I’d put McLaren in that group despite him having a terrible team to work with; he could have gotten more wins if he hadn’t made some utterly inexplicable choices.

3) The very, very large pool of guys in the middle who just don’t matter, but sometimes APPEAR to matter depending on the talent available to them.

Bob Melvin is the poster boy for this; he’s a mediocre manager who has had really good talent to work with the last couple of years, so people are talking about him as if he suddenly got amazing after he left Seattle.

Riggleman is solidly in group #3, and McLaren was solidly in group #2, so yes we’ve made an (incremental) improvement; that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to find someone who’d be part of group #1, and those guys are around in the minor leagues.

I’m still mad about Dan Rohn.

Riggleman continuing to bat Vidro cleanup tell me he is not making enough of a difference to improve the team by several wins in a short time. I see no reason to give him any credit for the recent “success.”

Very true. I don’t know if anyone’s seen the article up on the M’s site about their “Different Approach at DH” – It’s mindblowing. Seriously, they put an article on their own page attempting to justify Vidro in the middle of the lineup, and it reads like a damning testament to their own ineptitude.

Vidro is about as far away from Ortiz as you can get. He has just five homers this season and is hitting .223 with a .267 OBP and 41 RBIs. Even when Vidro hit .314 with a .381 OBP as Seattle’s main designated hitter in 2007, he only had six homers and 59 RBIs.

And for now, while many teams would prefer some additional pop in the lineup, the Mariners are content to stay with their different breed of designated hitter.

And it has some insightful quotes from Riggleman:

I’m astonished to tell you the truth when I look up and I see Vidro’s average is what it is, because I feel like every time he goes up there I’m very confident that he’s going to give us a good at-bat….It’s not a classic DH situation, but I feel good every time he walks up to the plate….The numbers may say otherwise, but I think he’s going to give us good at-bats.

Sounds like classic McLaren right there. “Numbers, analysis, and common sense be damned – I’ve got warm fuzzies!”

Nothing’s changed. And it’s not like it’s a surprise, or disappointing on Riggleman’s part – I really expected as much. But it’s sad that the entire organization is willing to go along with such insanity.

You have to be insane to drive in Boston, period. I think they require a test for that when they give you the license.

And that’s a valid comparison because they played exactly the same teams under one manager as they did under the other. Oh, wait, they didn’t? And the sample size is really small? In other words, that comparison has exactly as much analytical value as the southward-moving methane from a northward-moving cow.

Seattle rookie C Jeff Clement left the game in the third inning after a foul ball clipped his right hand and ripped the finger nail off his thumb.

that would explain why he looked like it really really really hurt.

For what it’s worth, according to Google maps (and using the satellite feature), there is nothing between US Cellular and the Dan Ryan expressway (I-90), while there is one street between Fenway and the Mass Pike and the Jake and I-90. It’s a bit more complicated with regard to the Safe, of course, depending on which of the various lines coming off I-90 you count, and whether you count the technical piece of 3rd Ave. So. behind the stadium.

I live in Boston, lived in Chicago, and went to the Jake last year for the ALCS. The Cell sits right on the freeway, only a feeder road in between the stadium and the interstate. The Jake also sits nestled right on the freeway, and is ridiculously easy to get into and out of. Fenway is another matter- like James T said, it looks like it’s just a block from the Pike, but in reality, you have to wind your way through several random city streets after exiting the Pike before you reach the Park.

But no one drives to Fenway, anyway. No one sane, that is.

For what it’s worth, according to Google maps (and using the satellite feature), there is nothing between US Cellular and the Dan Ryan expressway (I-90), while there is one street between Fenway and the Mass Pike and the Jake and I-90. It’s a bit more complicated with regard to the Safe, of course, depending on which of the various lines coming off I-90 you count, and whether you count the technical piece of 3rd Ave. So. behind the stadium.

Well, Fenway is just a block or so from the Mass. Turnpike (also I-90) but there’s no easy way to get to it from the Pike. The nearest exit’s another half mile east so you have to drive through some city streets to get to Fenway. But don’t park too close if you ever visit. There’s no such thing as jaywalking in Boston (see, the Sox fan is letting Manny off the hook again!) and pedestrians will block any movement within a hundred yards of the park if your car is that close.