Game 74, Mariners at Padres
Hector Noesi vs. Edinson Volquez, 1:05pm
Hector Noesi will again attempt to avoid 0-2 meatballs, and Petco Park should probably help him if he slips up and grooves a slider or two in pitcher’s counts. He faced this line-up in Seattle and turned in one of his better performances of the year, so hopefully he’ll have some confidence heading into today’s game. John Jaso gets a rare start at catcher with the righthander Volquez on the mound for San Diego. Volquez pitched well enough to win in Seattle on the 14th, going 6 2/3IP and giving up just one run on four walks and 6 strikeouts. Volquez pitched away to the lefty-dominated M’s line-up; his command isn’t good enough to hit the outside edge, so he gave up some walks, but he also avoided mistakes. It’s something that Noesi could learn from. He could also learn from Volquez’s great change-up which he uses nearly 30% of the time against lefties, getting whiffs on over a quarter of them this season. It can be a real weapon, and it explains Volquez’s lack of platoon splits (technically, he’s been better against lefties in his career).
The line-up includes Figgins. I’m not going to beat around the bush here. He’s playing today, and Kyle Seager’s sitting. Let’s just move on:
1: Ichiro (RF)
2: Jaso (C)
3: Wells (LF)
4: Smoak (1B)
5: Saunders (CF)
6: Ackley (2B)
7: Figgins (3B)
8: Ryan (SS)
9/SP: Noesi
So Danny Hultzen’s AAA debut was a mess, with 5 walks and 5 runs in 3 IP. Sure, he got blooped to death in the first inning when he gave up three runs, but he also had a three-run HR overturned by the umpires. He pitched in probably the worst park in AAA to start off, not only because the ball flies, but because breaking pitches often don’t have the same movement. Anywa, Danny: it gets easier.
The stunning debut of the day was actually turned in by Anthony Fernandez who threw a complete game shutout for the Jackson Generals in his AA debut. That was the first CG shutout for the M’s AA affiliate since 2009.
Go M’s!
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“Justin Smoak-like strength”?
Is that really the best we could do, Sims? From what we have seen so far, Smoak’s not particularly strong.
The red soz “dumped” next seasons salary for Youkilis. He is under contract for one more season.
Miguel Olivo – THAT dude is strong. Jesus Montero is strong. Michael Saunders… not sure if he’s particularly strong or just has a really fast bat nowadays.
Justin Smoak-like strength = warning track power
Sox
Solid move having Miggy hit against a right hander, don’t you think?
I think salary dump is probably the correct term, they now have $7M off the payroll. In reality they didn’t dump anything other than about $1M with the 2 sub par guys coming over in the deal.
Olivo is, without a doubt, much faster than Montero.
But yeah – it was a weird move, Mike.
Seager!
Welcome to the game Kyle!
Oh, the guy who should have been in the lineup. Yea.
Come on Smoak, PLEASE.
I thought I read Youk has a $1M option next year but not under contract but I could be wrong.
Just wondering about that Mike. Olivo’s .530 OPS versus rightys indicated things would play out exactly as they did.
CRAP.
And yeah – COTs has Youk with a $1 mill buyout in 2013.
Stinkin shift got us
I was going to say, at least Skoak can’t hit into a DP (with Seager on 2B).
Wrong again … Although that one is on Seager.
Smoak has put a couple of good swings on the ball today, actually
Mike – maybe Wedge was facing the wrong way and saw the pitcher in a mirror?
Olivo… pinch-hit for JASO.
Against a righty.
Somehow I blanked on just who Wedge put Olivo in for. What an idiot.
No excuse for not looking over the defense. Mariners have been horrible running the bases this season. 3B coach shares the blame, but it’s Seager’s job and Seager’s career.
The buyout is paid if the option isn’t executed, correct.
I did not know that the contract was an “option” year. My bad.
More of a headache dump than a salary dump, trade – from Bostons perspective. Things were getting dicey and Youk is not exactly a quiet, timid dude – so they paid most of his salary to leave and saves a couple bucks
Furbush is another name that might be dangled before the deadline, Westy. I’d rather see him stick around, though, and get a crack at the rotation. I think Paxton and Walker are further away than I had hoped.
Some of these moves by Wedge, really makes me think he has money on this game. Just doesn’t make any sense.
Dear Dave Valle,
Please don’t try and justify base running mistakes as not noticing where the defense is or as trying to get a good jump on a base hit. These guys are bad enough on the bases already, there is no excuse for that.
That is not what Ack needed in trying to learn the strike zone, that one is not on him.
Well, at least Noesi didn’t look bad today. He did his part.
It seems like a strange concept that a pitcher’s biggest problem is throwing strikes on an 0-2 count. He is definitely capable of getting people out. It is encouraging, unlike Beavan I don’t think Noesi needs AAA to learn how to get guys to chase pitches out of the zone.
Just throwing this out there, Zach Stewart was a top prospect right about a year ago. Perhaps the bosox think they’re taking a shot on a post-hype (barely post-hype btw) to dump a guy that they wanted gone anyway. Plus a utility player. They saved themselves a headache and got a pitcher who could be a useful piece. That’s far from nothing.
Marcus, I don’t disagree with you – but we’ve seen a number of those trades or free agent signings here in Seattle where they bring in a “potentially high upside” guy. More often than not, they don’t pan out.
So yeah, it’s always possible one of the two may produce eventually for the BoSox… but it’s not a given.
Ugh, if there is any one else out there like me who is too lazy to get to the remote after the game you are watching the Root sports Justin Smoak switch hitting tutorial. I can’t believe they are airing this.
^haha, I was thinking the same thing
Fetching the remote – that’s what kids are for. 😀
While I know it wouldn’t be marketable, it would probably make more sense to have Figgins give the tutorial. He was quite good at it for a number of years.
Haha, I’m not sure what they consider marketable but I might have actually watched the Figgins piece for its pure comedic value. The Smoak thing was just kind of sad. No kids, but I’ve tried teaching the dog to fetch the remote but I can’t seem to get him to do it unless I throw it first (regular occurrence during games). How did people in the old days get the dog to bring in the newspaper, that would be a better tutorial for root to air.
Is it just me, or are we exhibiting TERRIBLE baserunning this year?
This isn’t Mariners related – but the Times headline writers had some fun with the Yankees-Mets game:
Cano, Yankees touch up Dickey
Follow-up: It appears that didn’t get past their supervisor – it’s been slightly modified (they’ve now appended “in 6-5 win over Mets”).
Great catch, Westie!
That’s hilarious.
And considering that Dickey used to be a Mariner, we can see that the M’s have had more than their fair share of pitchers with slightly provocative names; Dickey, Furbush, Fister, (Travis) Chick, French, etc.
Completely offtopic: Let’s bring Jamie Moyer home! He can’t be any worse than some of our other starting pitchers!
I hear Gaylord Perry’s available too, if we’re going to be signing veterans based on them being former Mariners. It would really be back to the 80’s if we did that.
I’m not advocating the M’s bringing Moyer back simply because he’s an ex-Mariner, he would cost us nothing and it would be more fun to watch him pitch than most of our starters lately not named Hernandez or Bernandez. Plus he should retire a Mariner.