Game 93, Rangers at Mariners
Fister vs. Lewis, 7:10pm
Well, Lewis’ has regressed this year and he’s righthanded, so hopefully the M’s won’t be quite so hopeless as they were last night. Of course, their offense is still pathetic and somehow getting worse, but I’ll grasp to any and all hopeful indicators.
One negative indicator has been Justin Smoak’s performance against right-handers this year. Coming into the year, the risk with Smoak was that he’d continue to struggle against lefties, but in fact he’s blown his projections against southpaws out of the water. Unfortunately, his wOBA’s below average against righties. Now, much of this is BABIP driven; his ISO is the same against lefties and righties, but fewer balls in play are dropping in for hits. Still, the fact that Colby Lewis is a righty was probably a factor in the M’s deciding to give Smoak the night off tonight. Kennedy will handle 1B duties while Jack Cust gets a start at DH.
The line-up:
1: Ichiro
2: Ryan
3: Ackley
4: Olivo
5: Kennedy
6: Cust
7: Guti
8: Seager
9: Peguero
The righty starter also Peguero’s back in the line-up in left field. Ryan Langerhans hit 2 HRs last night in Tacoma and probably commiserates with Mike Carp nightly. I realize that there’s not a lot of value in trotting out a minor league vet on the wrong side of 30 now that the M’s are essentially out of it, but there’s not a lot of value in watching your offense challenge…last year’s offense in the race to be the worst offense in a generation.
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54 Responses to “Game 93, Rangers at Mariners”
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Lest we forget, Langerhans was hitting .173, was released, cleared waivers, and is already 31. He also has a career .372 SLG/.705 OPS.
At this point, we are out of the AL West race, and there is little reason to take AB’s away from younger players, and give them to a AAAA player like Langerhans…who has most likely has no future with the Mariners.
Meanwhile, Mike Morse carries a career .480 SLG/.829 OPS, and has an SLG of .529 this year, with 15 HR’s. It would be nice to have him at DH.
Actually, they are this bad. A few players (Ackley, Smoak, Ichiro) have the skills to compete as major-league hitters. Everyone else just aren’t major-league caliber hitters, simple as that.
A healthy Gutierrez still qualifies as “having the skills”, IMHO. Olivo,too. If he weren’t a catcher, though…
Ichiro HAD the skills. And may still have them. But he’s not showing them in 2011, if he still has them, and 2012 is his walk year.
They aren’t this bad, but let’s see- probably nothing major in deadline deals, they have holes at 3 OF positions, 3B and DH, Figgins is probably 9 million in dead salary, Ichiro is looking like 20 million in dead salary these days, Guti is about to become a bunch of dead salary… and we’re running out of plausible ways to blame Bill Bavasi for this team’s inability to score, several years after the overwhelming majority of the roster’s been turned over.
One of the goals for this year was to have a team that wasn’t a complete trainwreck, so that the kids aren’t playing in a terrible environment. If this goes on, I’d have to say Jack’s failed at this one- and “wait until we have salary space next year” is getting VERY old.