Game 145, Royals at Mariners
This game could hope to be half as interesting as last night’s game.
Paulino vs. Pineda, 7:10 pm
Pitch face aside, Paulino doesn’t interest me much, but he may manage to give up a home run or two.
Pineda’s second start in August was the point at which he broke his previous season high in innings pitched and he’s getting a full month of starts on top of that. Last year, towards the end there were reports of his mechanics starting to fall apart a little and he lost some command as a result, so if I were around for this game (hint: I won’t be) I would be checking to see how he looked physically. Any evaluation should also take into account that recently he’s been warming up while he’s out there instead of prior to the game. I would throw in some kind of remark about Pineda’s past elbow problems, but that was in an era when the org was shutting down pitchers left and right at the slightest sign of trouble, which makes it difficult to judge the severity of said elbow issues.
This is all an avoidance of talking about the lineup which will spur its own comments.
RF Ichiro!
SS Ryan
2B Ackley
LF Carp
1B Smoak
DH Kennedy
C Olivo
3B Seager
CF Saunders
Comments
23 Responses to “Game 145, Royals at Mariners”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Yeah, I’d already impatiently posted my comment regarding tonight’s lineup in the “Aggressiveness” thread. Sorry about that…
Back from vacation for this one… Felipe Paulino is fascinating, in that he’s got a Morrow-esque split between his FIP/xFIP and his ERA. Where Morrow’s been hurt by sequencing, Paulino’s yielding an almost impossible BABIP. That would normally scream bad luck, and you’d think Paulino could ride his 95mph fastball to league average or better. But he’s done this for over 320 innings now, in both leagues, for three teams. At some point, you’ve got to say it’s not luck, it’s just Paulino.
Eno Sarris had a good piece on the mystifying Paulino at Fangraphs here, which laid a lot of the blame on his fastball, particularly to lefties, who’ve eaten him alive this year. His slider’s a legitimate weapon, and he doesn’t use it as much against lefties (though it gets whiffs against both).
Paulino’s platoon splits help explain Kennedy’s presence in the line-up, though it doesn’t excuse it. I’d rather see Trayvon Robinson.
Well, we have been rather erratic in posting our threads lately, what with marc on vacation, me rarely in house, and our mods having their own lives to attend to.
See? marc has interesting things to say about Paulino. Me, I devote probably 1% of my total baseball attention to things that are happening on other major league teams.
Hey Jay… if my comment came across as a criticism in any way, I apologize – that was honestly not my intent. I really appreciate (and enjoy) all the work you guys put into this site.
It doesn’t. Ideally, we’d be putting up game threads daily and in a timely manner, being good bloggers and never leaving our basements.
marc has a killer basement by the way, from what I hear. It’s part of why he’s so good at this. I, however, do not.
Well I’m hoping Paulino’s ERA heads north again tonight. SSS and all that, but after Marc’s comments I went over to FanGraphs – his ERA’s been much closer to expectations since he went to the Royals.
May our lefties continue the trend and eat him alive tonight! Okay, not literally… that’d be disgusting (and probably against the rules – perhaps this one).
Nooootttt doing well far…
Pineda looked the same way at the end of last season too. He just needs a little seasoning so that he doesn’t falter with 3 weeks left in the season.
Only need 2 wins to avoid another 100 loss season.
And other than that and Ichiro, not much I care about other than the draft prospects for next June.
Well, that and seeing what we do with our 47,000 outfielders.
I think it is time for someone to explain to Olivo that a 1-5 with 3Ks is generally not as good as a 1-4 with a BB.
Perhaps Olivo believes that pitchers are always going to throw strikes, because they’re all good guys.
Hope we get something of value in return for the outfielders, but i doubt it , they aren´t major leaguers yet… (Peguero,Halman,Chavez)
Oh, and Adam Kennedy DHing…
I hate you so much, Wedge.
Seriously. I would rather watch Pineda hit than Adam Kennedy. And I have more faith in Pineda’s bat, too.
Just stick your glove out there, Miguel. Don’t even bother moving at all. I’m sure everything will be fine.
Smoak!!!!!! Love the swing
Really? Rookies go to Adam Kennedy and talk to him about ‘going about their business’? Because he happened to have the luck to get on a WS team?
Saunders is infuriating , he did the same thing in april, 6 months later, nothing have changed…
I think I hate Jeff Francouer.
I’m just excited to hear Rick Rizz on TV, rather than Simms. A welcomed relief!
Wow, Carp! Nice to see him get even for the shot he was robbed of.
Damn, hope I didn’t jinx the team!
Well now I’m just sure of it.
I note, with regret, that Paulino (and his bullpen support) replied to Marc’s 4:51 PM post by posting a .000 BABIP for the game. (Making it worse, this is the second time in four games the M’s bats have put up the same exact BABIP….)
Well that was frustrating.