Game 8, A’s at Mariners
Rowland-Smith vs Duchscherer, 3:40 pm.
The M’s open at home today, looking to put a bad road trip behind them. Randy Johnson throws out the first pitch, and I expect he’ll get a tremendous ovation. He deserves it. And, just so I can be the four millionth person to make this joke, perhaps the M’s can tell him to just stay on the mound afterwards, because this team could use him.
Hyphen takes the hill for the M’s. Back in the friendly confines of Safeco Field, he should pound the strike zone and make the A’s earn their way on base. This team is built to prevent hits on balls in play, so RRS just needs to throw strikes and let the park and defense do the rest.
Wak shifts the line-up again, moving Bradley down to the six spot to take some pressure off of him. Also, Kotchman ends up hitting 7th even with an RHP on the mound, as apparently his appeal to Wak that he can handle the third spot only got him a few days at the top of the order – Gutierrez is in the three hole tonight, and will probably remain near the top of the order until he cools off. Long term, this line-up doesn’t really work, as you don’t really want Gutierrez, Lopez, and Griffey trying to be your RBI guys against a right-handed pitcher, but as long as its just a short-term thing until Milton gets going, it’s not the end of the world.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 2B
Griffey, DH
Bradley, LF
Kotchman, 1B
Johnson, C
Wilson, SS
Put Langerhans and Byrnes in LF. Bradley goes to full-time DH, cut Sweeney and plead with Jr. to go quietly.
Honestly:
If a bad streak of games is enough to make some of you this borderline suicidal, you might want to put your psychiatrist on speed-dial.
Despite what we’ve seen so far, this is a talented roster; but it also is a roster that is going to have its ups and downs. Get used to it.
The 2010 Mariners: a case study to if a run saved really equals a run scored.
That hanging cutter should have been put in to the bleachers by…..eh…. Rob Johnson.
Did anyone watch enough Bradley in the OF last year to know if he was this bad then?
Man these M’s look good. Oh and Rob Johnson is up… Wonderful.
Pathetic! Way to hit with RISP.
PANIC!!!!!!!
I’ll start believing in pitching and defense again the moment our #2 starter is no longer Ian Snell.
Don’t count me within the guys who are freaking out over 6-7 games — that’s not me — but I definitely am already tired of Bradley making it a circus out in LF and having two other mediocre hitters clogging the DH spot.
The Padres have put up 2/3’s as many runs in 6 innings as the M’s have put up all season 🙁
I have not lost hope for the season, but this is sure a challenge to watch.
Rob Johnson. He’s just a turd out there. He can’t catch, he can’t hit, he can’t throw, he’s just a turd.
That Bradley/Silva swap is not looking like such a good transaction now.
There was nothing magical about anything Z did over the off season, but this fan base seems to be so eager for a winner that he was lauded as the 2nd coming. Even the crackpot idea of building a team with good defense and no offense was trotted out as some kinda “mad scientist” genius move.
The season is playing out as I expected – pitchers trying to be perfect because they have no run support, and guys trying to do to much because they know the guy who hits behind them suck as badly as they do, so getting on base really doesn’t help much.
There are over a hundred years of baseball history to draw some wisdom on how to build a contending/winning team. This team seams to have been built either for reasons other than winning, or in some kinda crazy reverse psychology attempt to fake out the rest of the league.
I am thinking that we might look back fondly on the Bavasi days when this particular mess is over.
Okay, that last comment is ridicoulous. Nothing could be as bad as the Bavasi days…could they.
Could they? Well, at least they aren’t spending as much money now. I am glad to see they are likely to continue to be profitable, even in the cellar.
No. They couldnt. Calm down.
Mister Baseball, you are an idiot.
There are so many things wrong with that comment that I literally don’t know where to start.
Let’s, however, please refrain from calling each other (or anyone else) “idiots”.
I am not sure why Milton’s defensive shortcomings are surprising to anyone? Just as I wouldnt expect Sweeney or Griffey to be an effective LF at Safeco, I am in no way shocked by Milton’s struggles. Don’t send your DH to do a left fielder’s job.
Do you even know what you’re saying? This team is built to win. The only problem is that they don’t have all the parts working as they should right now.
2-5 isn’t that bad when Cliff Lee is on the disabled list. I’ll take it. The record could’ve easily been 3-4 with him healthy, and 4-3 with Bedard. I’m not worried. You guys need to be patient and take a look at the big picture.
Can we get Beltre and Branyon back?
Mr. Pine Tar –
So I am an idiot because I can look at this team and see what they are – if they overachieve again they will be in 3rd place – if they play at potential they will be in the cellar.
This is a not a sinking ship, it is a sunk ship. You simply cannot win many ball games with such anemic offense.
Other teams can sit back and relax into their offense because they know that this team will not score many runs, even on a good day. Against such feebleness, it is easy to be confident.
Get the grocery bags ready, Grandma, it’s Mariner’s baseball this next October!!!
Oh, but I am an idiot.
It’s too early to panic, but if the M’s continue to run out a lineup with 4 poor hitters they are going to struggle all year. You can’t hope to have much of an offense with Kotchman, Griffey/Sweeney, Johnson and Wilson making up 4/9th of the lineup.
Now, Wilson may make up for it with defense, and maybe Moore can do better, and it’s hard to find decent hitting catchers. But, getting poor production at 1B and DH is inexcusable, and should be easy to upgrade.
If they want to seriously compete this year, they need to get 2 bats, the sooner the better. I’d call and see if Jermaine Dye is willing to play 1B for a couple of weeks in AAA on a look see split deal(assuming he refuses to DH). Say $500K in AAA and $2.5M if he’s promoted, and he has the right to demand his release if he’s not in the bigs by June 1.
Ummm…what wouldn’t you have taken?
Be thankful that we’re not watching the Astros, ok?
We already addressed the “idiot”, thing, but you (and a large number of people in this comment thread) need to repeat the following phrase to yourself about 382,485 times:
“THIS IS THE 8TH GAME OF THE SEASON.”
I’m just glad that nobody’s freaking out about our 5, (well probably 6) loses.
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Players that have more than or an equal amount of homeruns (3) as our entire team: Nelson Cruz, Alex Gonzalez, Vernon Wells, Jose Guillen, Paul Konerko, Dustin Pedroia, Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday, Ryan Howard, Jason Heyward, Kelly Johnson, Chris Young, and Garrett Jones.
Caught Geoff Baker’s chat this morning. He seems to like the idea of having Mike Sweeney on the roster in place of Langerhans. Well, Jeff, judging from Milton and Juniors play so far, I’d rather give Ryan some time to save a run or two.
Mister Baseball:
You’re making a judgement based on 8 games of a 162 game season. Ichiro, Figgins, Bradley, Lopez, Kotchman, RRS are starting the season slow. There is no reason to think they will not bounce back and finish at their career norms. If that happens the team will be fine.
Luckyscrubs we don’t need homeruns to win. We just need hits, and unfortunantly that’s something we can’t do either…
Right after Daric Barton.
You’re right, but you can’t seriously believe that it will be this bad all season. 2.625 runs per game would be among the worst of all time.
Marinersmanjk, I agree 100%, but it was a stat I wanted to look up so I figured I may as well post my findings on here.
Oops typing too quickly, don’t know why I wrote Jeff. Sorry, I wasn’t referring to you, Mr. Nye.
Anyway, I’ve never been in on one of his chats but I wasn’t all that impressed. Maybe next time.
Jr. needs to stop posing for HR’s when he’s hitting foul balls.
Yes, it’s the 8th game of the season, but the problem is the team is living up to the specific worst fears than many of us have had: weak offense, and not enough strong starting pitching. Right now my optimism rests on two pitchers currently on the DL, and that’s scary.
Yeah, well looking to the bright side. After the 2011 season, we can possibly pick up a good first baseman (possibly Fielder, A-Gonzalez,Ryan Howard, or Pujols), and a good SS like Jason Bartlett.
I don’t even think the 1962 NY Mets had that lame of an offense.
Can we petition Selig to allow the M’s to use cricket sized bats?
Well I know how a Pirates fan feels, Bugger.
Or at least Aluminum bats…
I wish I could be optimistic, but it is difficult to be optimistic with this team.
The starting pitching is not worth worrying about at this point – the addition of Lee was brilliant, and should Bedard look anything like Bedard in his Baltimore days, we will have a very nice staff – not the stuff of legends, mind you – not Palmer/McNally/Cuellar/Dobson, but a good presentable staff equal to any in the game today. RRS actually pitched just fine today. Snell pitched fine his first game.
But that offense?? Two words – PEE YOU. I was trying to come up with the “heart of the order” – there is no heart of the order. There are the impressively credentialed leadoff guys, and the quickly developing Franklin, followed with squat!!! One third of a lineup and garbage behind.
Now, I am a Jose Lopez fan – the guy actually, from time to time, give a quality AB – when he puts his mind to it. But on this team he is the cleanup hitter. I don’t second guess Wak on that decision – currently Lopez is the closest thing you have to a cleanup hitter.
We all know, Lopez is not a cleanup hitter. But when he looks around – who else is it gonna be?? Lopez should be a nice No. 7 or maybe No. 6 hitter who surprises you from time to time – not as the premier offensive weapon of the ballclub.
Of course, the guys are pressing now. You would be pressing too if you were looking at this collection of “sticks” trying to figure out where the runs are going to come from. Baseball is a collective activity – when you look at it strictly as a series of individual contributions you are going to be wrong.
This is a deep problem with this current team and is not fixable by waiving Junior and activating Langerhans.
It is not that they have bad players on the team – they don’t. Collectively, they don’t raise to the level you need to be compete.
Case in point – Casey Kotchman is an okay stick and looks like a really slick fielder – great guy to have on the bench to PH against rights and send out for defense in late innings after your regular 1st baseman has given you a lead. Kotchman would also be great on a team that could hide a weak hitting first baseman – this Mariner’s team is NOT that.
There are way too many role players and no leading men in this cast. I am afraid we are looking at the first reels of a flop.
I’m sorry to say this, but according to your logic last year’s team did not happen. This team is a better group of players as a whole then they were last year, with the only position which is a likely downgrade is 3B and 1B. Other than that the pitching staff has been improved and the catcher is likely to be a more productive position this year.
This team is missing 2/3rd of the top of it’s rotation, and has had a bad week. Yeah, they might finish 3rd, but they could potentially do it with 85 wins again. It is possible that all 4 teams in the AL west could finish with 81 wins or better. This is a good division, with good pitching and very smart GMs. Wait until the M’s go to see the Royals, Tigers, and Orioles of the world.
Oh, and don’t tell me Russel Branyan or Jarrod Washburn would have made this all better. No one wanted them all off season, no one… Not even the Royals.
I agree with others that Bradley should be playing in the outfield as little as possible, but it’s not like he’s hopeless out there. On the sacrifice fly in the fourth, he took as good a route to the ball as anyone could have, and he made a perfect one-hop throw that Davis just outran. I don’t know that Langerhans or Byrnes could have done that any better.
Sean White threw one strike that broke straight down like a 12-6 curve. It did NOT look like his usual sinker. Did anyone else see that? Am I imagining things yet again?
It’s not the roster you start with that determines how well you do during the season. It’s the roster that you play the games with.
What are the odds that we’ll finish the season without significant changes to the starting rotation and lineup? Pretty low, seems to me.
Dr. Z and Wak see the same things out there that we do. If Bradley continues to field like this, he won’t be playing LF very much longer. If he continues to hit like this, he probably won’t stay on the club past June.
Same with Griffey. Wak made it clear that Griffey’s playing time would depend on his performance, even with all the Griffey marketing nights this season (5!).
Dr. Z’s done the best he can with the cards he was dealt, but if he doesn’t have a winning hand, he’ll get another one and another one until he does.