Game 23, Rangers at Mariners
Lee vs Lewis, 7:10 pm.
Cliff Lee makes his much anticipated debut tonight against a somewhat depleted Rangers team. Nelson Cruz is on the DL, and due to the struggles of their two young catchers, they are going with career backup Matt Treanor behind the plate. They do get Ian Kinsler back tonight though, and he’s hitting clean-up in his first game of the season.
As for the Mariners line-up, well, you already know what it looks like. Can’t wait to see Lopez and Griffey try to drive in the top of the order, only followed by the excitement of Adam Moore and Jack Wilson trying to drive in the other two guys on the team that can get on base. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess as to when Wak pulls the plug on Lopez hitting clean-up – three weeks of him hitting like a pitcher haven’t done it, yet five games of Milton Bradley struggling were enough to get him moved down in the order. It’s almost like a dare – how long can the team keep winning with no bench and a line-up that makes no sense?
I guess we’ll find out. It doesn’t look like we’ll see the obvious changes until the team starts losing. Which, with Tampa Bay rolling into town on Tuesday, may happen sooner than we’d like to see.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 3B
Griffey, DH
Bradley, LF
Kotchman, 1B
Moore, C
Wilson, SS
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409 Responses to “Game 23, Rangers at Mariners”
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So true.
That was pathetic.
With the pitching and run prevention we have, it wouldn’t even be all that hard to improve… Find a reason to DL Sweeney, call up Langerhans and platoon him in LF with Byrnes, Stick Bradley at DH and send Griffey to the bench, and the instant Hannahan is ready to return, DFA Colome and call him up. And stop batting Lopez in the freaking 4 hole. That’s not that drastic, but even those things would help.
JerBear,
That only moves around the problems. Doesn’t fix the offense.
Josh Wilson up, Tui down, now.
Langerhans up, byrnes gone, now.
Sweeney gone, Jermaine Dye in, now.
This. This right here. Perfectly said.
Jermaine Dye is not going to fix one single problem this team has.
Dye is better than Sweeney, which is an improvement. Sweeney needs to go, he doesn’t have it anymore. Getting players that are better than the current ones, even if only a little bit, is a start.
Stop. Please Stop with the Langerhans talk. He is not the answer. It is like taking our current DHs’ bats and putting them in the field.
Yes! More run prevention! We will start winning games -1 to 0!
The problem isn’t just “the offense,” it’s roster construction. Nobody expected the M’s to have a good offense, and the truth is they don’t necessarily need a good offense. But they could get at least a better offense through better roster construction.
Would I like to see them make some major changes and bring in some big bats? Sure, but on a team like this, even minor changes go a long way to preventing losses like last night.
Langerhans may not have much of a bat (though for comparison, Langerhans put up a .299 wOBA last year, so far this year Griffey’s at .252 and Sweeney’s at .231), but unlike our DH combo he’s also above average in the field and can run the bases. If Langerhans had gotten a base hit last night instead of Griffey, they wouldn’t have had to pinch run for him, thereby losing their only backup outfielder and forcing Byrnes to face a righty with the bases loaded later in the game. Having Langerhans in the field would mean some better defense than Bradley, but mostly it would help by keeping Bradley healthy. When you only have a few guys that can hit, you’ve got to keep them in the lineup – you saw how ugly it gets when Bradley’s out. Also, Bradley > Lopez. If you put him in the 4 spot instead of Lopez (esp. against a righty) you’ve got a much better chance of driving in some runs. If you have a backup infielder who can actually field, you don’t have Tui throwing the ball away and putting the winning run on third with no outs in extra innings.
Yeah, none of those things make this a “good offense,” but any one of them probably would have led to a win last night instead of a loss. This team is going to play a lot of games like this, and they need every win they can get. I’d rather see incremental change than no change at all.