Game 102, Orioles at Mariners
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Wei-Yin Chen, 7:10pm
Iwakuma’s a soft-tossing righty who’s whittled his walk rate down each year, and has fashioned himself into an elite MLB starter. Chen’s a soft-tossing lefty who’s *also* cut his walk rate each year, but his progress has stalled, as he’s been unable to crack the 4.0 mark either in ERA or FIP (though he came really close in 2013).
Both have slightly inflated HR totals. Chen’s come because he’s a fairly extreme fly-baller. Iwakuma’s a ground-ball guy who occasionally pitches up in the zone and because he’s got an 89mph fastball. Iwakuma’s superior command and a true wipe-out pitch in his splitter separate him from just about everyone, of course, but the contrast with Chen’s kind of interesting.
I just wrote about the new M’s, so, uh, scroll down.
Line-up:
1: Jones, CF
2: Romero, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, 1B
5: Seager, 3B
6: Montero, DH
7: Ackley, LF
8: Zunino, C
9: Taylor, SS
SP: Iwakuma
This is about as right-handed as the M’s can get – if lefties are going to beat them for the second straight year, the M’s aren’t going to leave any right-handed bats in AAA untested.
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48 Responses to “Game 102, Orioles at Mariners”
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Kendrys Morales — why not earlier?
Why at all? Cost a few million and Pryor.
Pierzynski would have been far cheaper, can catch, is more mobile, not overweight like Kendrys, and, his hitting skills arent much different. Instead, just adds to the logjam of 1B/DH types on this team
logjam? If they aren’t good enough to play in the majors, they don’t really constitute a barrier to any better (or even potentially better) 1b/dh types the Mariners would like to try.
Hart/Smoak/Morrison/Romero isn’t a problem, it’s an opportunity! Replace any one with a legitimate major league bat, and viola! better team.
I assume they think he’s a better RH DH than Hart. But yeah, it seems de minimus.
It seems like the prototypical Jack Z move.
AJ is a left-handed hitter; they have too many left-handers as it is.
Morrison/Morales/Smoak/Montero/Hart/Smoak (in Tacoma, but still)are 5 guys that can’t play anything other than 1st base (semi-competently).
What a logjam of crap that is.
OK, they’ll play both Hart and Morales against a lefty. I guess that’s something.
I don’t think Hart or Morrison is going away. So with Morales, they have to keep Romero until or if Saunders comes back.
Well, that was a crappy play at home.
we have the worst luck when it comes to plays being reviewed..
Really long review, and then they decided it is ok after all for a catcher to block the plate.
Also, catcher made the tag with his glove still letting Jones’ upper arm run into the tag AFTER he had his left hand on the plate. It was clear to me in several views. The umpires may have been concentrating to hard on the plate positioning issue and blew the call.
and that’s probably all she wrote.
Off this one went. Time to get involved with something less frustrating for today.
Toronto and NY both won tonight so it looks like they will be passing us up for the 2nd wildcard after this one is over. If we don’t get our sh*t together soon one or both of those teams could pull away from us pretty quickly.
Horrible AB Romero.
Swing at shit breaking ball. Check swing at another. Watch a fastball on the outer half for strike 3. So glad he may have more opportunity to hit today than Cano and Seager.
Baffling.
another game where the Ms appear to mail it in early. This team, while it is an accomplishment to play meaningful games in July, for once, needs to make a move, to show the fans, but most of all, THE TEAM, that they are in it to win it.
Jack Z, where are you? Oh yeah, Morales……………..eck………..
I’m not sure why so many folks are ready to write off the center fielder, Jones. He’s hitting .296/.323/.491 and has been worth 4.1 WAR already.
Wow this must be Bizarro Mariners. Corey Hart got a hit.
You’re just Jonesing with us, aren’t you Westy?
Can’t wait till Morales joins the team and they get really good.
Yay Taylor!
Did Morales get the M’s bug? His OBP is horrendous compared to his average.
Glad to see our guys are making the Orioles pitcher work.
You all make it sound like having 6 DH/1B types on the 40 is an overkill.
I really can’t see keeping Morales and Hart both on the roster, but then a lot of things happen that I can’t see. Of all the moves they could have made, picking up a guy who doesn’t help the team at all is less than the least consequential move I would have imagined.
Morrison has had a pretty ugly July. I can’t remember if he still has an option, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to go away before Hart.
The whole Morrison/Hart/Smoak triumvirate has been a failure, and I doubt that Morales or Montero will be the cure. Montero might be the best hope of them all, which is a sorry state.
This game is so bad the most exciting thing that has happened is a near catch by the ball girl.
“Chen ties a career-high with 8 scoreless innings.” What a f***ing mess
Rizz got pretty worked up by that ball girl, for sure.
Wow…this game has been so …..what is the word I’m grasping at here…..
Eastside-
“Mariners”?
Judging by the Mariners the past few nights, Chen and Colon must be the leading Cy Young candidates in the AL and NL?
That’s it MrZ…perfect…”Mariners”!!!!
Pinch-hitting Endy Chavez for your clean-up hitter.
3 hours of nothing that I will never in my life recover again. Yes, I usually watch the pre-game. I’m a sick individual!
So what do we do now that we’re looking like the team we THOUGHT we were gonna be for the whole season?
2-5 since the break… With lots more upper division teams on the schedule all thru August…
Truth be known, Lloyd has kept his composure even though he has been given a bucket to fight a forest fire.
“though he has been given a bucket OF GAS to fight a forest fire”…
I fixed it Eastside…
I’m gonna go bang my head on the wall for a few hours…
I mentioned Lou in a previous post, and suddenly had a chilling sense of deja vu run down my spine, but worse. Because Lou would find himself in this situation lat July, needing an arm or bats, and was given squat.
But worse, Lou had better teams than Lloyd. In other words, the Mariners have a deep history of very often not really doing anything, or standing pat on the status quo, even in much closer situations and with much higher attendance figures.
Z, I’m thinking Eastside got it right. Lloyd’s got the empty bucket he started out with, which got him this far. But nothing else usefull will be put in it, only some sticker tweaks pasted on the outside.
Would love, absolutely, to be soooooooo wrong.
Morales? We got Morales. I thought we’d get an outfielder, not some chubby has-been who wouldn’t stick with us in the first place. We have plenty of washed up 1B DH. What is going on here?
Maybe a good entry from you guys will help me see the light. My bad. Just disappointed with this team’s offense.
So…Morales. Obviously an upgrade for our “offense.” Obviously not the solution to all our problems. So yay?
Most likely Morales wont make much of a difference, but if they were going to acquire him why didn’t they just sign him earlier instead of giving up a solid bullpen arm? Why not an OF?
(sigh…)
Sometimes I just hate this front office. This is a .500 team and I think they are finally snapping back to reality.
Slew-
We made 3 offers, at 3 different times, to Morales when he was still a free agent, and he didn’t want to come here. Can’t force a guy (well, unless you wave $240 million at him)…
As for the plethora of DH/1B options, Morales is the best of the bunch so far, so I don’t see the problem… I believe the saying is “cut bait”… Which is what we should do on Smoak, Hart AND LoMo…
As someone else pointed out, our DH (collectively) has put up a .192 batting avg and .290 slugging %… Morales can beat that in his sleep. If he hits .240 and slugs .390 that’s still a HUGE upgrade. And he cost us something we have WAY MORE OF than DH/1B options– a hard throwing reliever. The guy makes contact, he hits for power, and according to everyone he ever played with he’s a great teammate and hard worker. We’re not trading for Giancarlo Stanton or Miguel Cabrera, so I’ll take it.
yeah, basically gotta cut bait for this to measure up… you’re right