Game 66, Mariners at Padres
Morrow vs Geer, 12:35 pm.
The Brandon Morrow Experience continues today with a start against the hapless Padres in a park perfectly suited for his skills. Seriously, if he can’t throw strikes today – in Petco, against a bad offense, with no designated hitter – then he’s just physically incapable of throwing strikes.
Wak didn’t do him the favor of sticking Endy Chavez in left field, though. Third straight game Junior is out in LF. Can’t say I’m a fan of that. Yes, the offense is a bit better with Griffey in there, but the defensive dropoff is larger. Especially on games when the flyball oriented pitchers are on the mound (which is basically everyone but Felix at this point), Griffey in LF is not a good choice.
Ichiro, RF
Carp, 1B
Beltre, 3B
Griffey, LF
Gutierrez, CF
Betancourt, SS
Cedeno, 2B
Burke, C
Morrow, P
Comments
100 Responses to “Game 66, Mariners at Padres”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Wow. Just, wow. I like this version of Franklin Gutierrez, and would love to see more of him.
What is Cedeno’s problem? Did he just forget how to hit?
DEATH TO…. D’OH!
OK, making that catch would have been ridiculous.
Way to go, Guti!
Dave and DMZ, can you guys please make more posts about how players should be doing better? Maybe tonight blog about how Washburn should really be throwing more no-hitters, or something?
Did they just use zone ratings?? Did Bill James take over FSN??
Morse is a better option than Cedeno, at least offensively. Cedeno sucks.
RZR and OOZ, yep. They were showing how good Gutierrez’s defense is. If only they also showed the Betancourt’s ranking as well.
Life to flying things, Indeed!
So by my calculations that puts him on pace for 15 bombs this year… which was is on the low range of Dave’s “Life to Flying Things” post… and if he can hit 3 bombs in 3 days at Petco, then there’s really no reason he can’t hit 20+ bombs a year…
The Putz deal is starting to look like a poor man’s Bavasi Bedard Trade… except in our favor this time! Both deals landed one team a DL pitcher and returned a handful of useful younger players with upside.
I think we can all agree that Adam Jones has surpassed “useful”. Tillman likely will as well.
emphasis on “poor man’s”
Well, if ‘useful’ means ‘awesome’ than yes, Adam Jones has become pretty useful.
Mark Lowe: suddenly a pitcher?
My favorite part of seemingly every game for the M’s… The part where the relief pitchers try to see how many hairs they can turn gray on Wakamatsu’s head.
“The part where the relief pitchers try to see how many hairs they can turn gray on Wakamatsu’s head.”
And me. It’s astounding how often the pen can seem to walk the world and get away with it. Advantage of having a bunch of guys with blazing fastballs I suppose. Still though, makes for much more stressful late innings than you’d think from looking out our bullpen’s non-walk numbers.
Well, that was exciting.
[Niehaus]
Given who was batting behind him, Yuni kind of had to swing for the fences here … No point in taking a walk and being stranded at first.
Listening at work, and suddenly having a horrid time staying awake… Awfully late for more coffee though…
Sims brought this up a couple nights ago… I’ve also heard him discussing +/- ratings.
Is it a baseball telecast law that after a bat shatters, a still shot must be shown of said bat?
It’s astounding to me that more than anyone else in our pen (other than injured Kelley), I feel most comfortable and confident in the M’s chances when Shawn White is on the mound. He’s really turned his career around this year.
C’mon Endy, just get on… Yes!
Carp definitely has a good eye.
Mmmmm… walkalicious!
Huge test of Carp’s mettle here… Let’s see how his nerves go. Just need a good single or double here, not a homer…
A walk works too 🙂 Love his patience and eye at the plate.
Yes, but why does he look like the best hitter on our team?
No, he’s much taller than Ichiro!
And that was NOT what we needed from you, Adrian. Now we’re relying on Griffey… Eek…
Crap
Between the Padres and the Mariners offense, this game could last a very long time.
No kidding…
FSN has resorted to showing “classic M’s” commercials? I suppose it was bound to happen.
Miggy’s coming in? Nevermind, this’ll be over shortly
Crap…
Why is it BADtista always gets in trouble after two quick outs?
Wow.
Wow.
Why in the name of all that is right with the universe did the pitchers let Adrian Gonzales, the only guy on that team that can hit, beat us pretty much single-handedly?
The streak is over! Boooo!
But Carp looks good! Yay!!!
Here’s a fun* number: going by B-R’s tOPS+ values (which rank a player’s park-adjusted OPS relative to the leagues as whole, where 100 is exactly average), today’s 6-7-8 hitters are:
Betancourt 54
Cedeno 22
Burke 0
So, for the M’s to have a league-average offense, the rest of the team would have to average 137. And 137 happens to be exactly Griffey’s career average. Put another way, the other six guys (including your pitcher, or pinch hitter) in the lime-up would basically have to be honest-to-god all-stars just for you to have an average offense with those three guys anchoring the bottom of the lineup.
*ie useless and yet depressing, which is what “fun” often means in M’sville
San Diego sun
lovely women in the stands
Batista still sucks
Ever since Sosa’s revealed cork, and the time the superballs popped out, it’s a camera shot I always eagerly anticipate. You never know what you might see.
Bummer, another loss to our hated rivals. . .
Oh well, not a bad road trip, 4-5 with 2/3 of the games played under NL rules is admirable.
Time to feast on the D-Backs this weekend.
Cedeno is really REALLY horrible. He’s out before he even gets to the on-deck circle.
Just returned from game. Impressions..Carp looks like a hitter and has a great eye, very refreshing to see. I’m a fan of his already. Was in left field and watched Jr. get a good jump on that pop fly, but it was hard to watch when the kid ran like an old man. Kept hopeing he would be pulled for defense purposes…that bad. Oh, i started packing up my stuff when Batista entered the game…can’t win them all.
I was a bit puzzled by the Bullpen management. Why did Jakubauskas get pulled after only nine batters when the game was tied and heading into extra innings? Other than the homerun, he hadn’t allowed a baserunner and could’ve gone longer, he hadn’t pitched for five days. Instead, we used Corcoran, Lowe and White for 0.2 innings each, that could’ve been pitched by Jakubauskas before being lifted for a pinch hitter.
Hey, did anyone ever ask Wakamatsu why the M’s pitched to Kouzmanoff with 1st base open and the pitcher (Heath Bell) on deck? Why would you do that?
One of Bill James’ sabermetric 10 Commandments is pretty much, ‘Thou shalt never give a free pass’.
<blockquoteOne of Bill James’ sabermetric 10 Commandments is pretty much, ‘Thou shalt never give a free pass’.
Yes, but the probability of a successful outcome increases if you walk Kouzmanoff, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t that be the determining factor?