Game 122, Mariners at Tigers
marc w · August 17, 2014 at 10:04 am · Filed Under Mariners
Chris Young Vs. Robbie Ray, 10:05am
It’s our magical giant versus the prospect that only Dave Dombrowski thought was worth Doug Fister. Guess I’m glad he did, though, as Fister’s arrival in Washington made Young expendable.
Ray, a lefty, has been terrible thus far, though not awful by FIP.
1: Jackson, CF
2: Ackley, LF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Morales, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Denorfia, RF
7: Morrison, 1B
8: Taylor, SS
9: Sucre, C
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40 Responses to “Game 122, Mariners at Tigers”
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Nice work in the top of the 1st! Ray seems like someone they should keep hitting. Pile it on guys! Need to give Young plenty of runs today.
Robinson Cano in 2013: 142 wRC+
Robinson Cano in 2014: 145 wRC+
There’s been the dip in power going from Yankee Stadium to Safeco, but Cano’s been as good as advertised. On pace for +6.2 WAR at this point.
And Seager is almost matching Cano!
Marc, this is game #123
Wait, so if the Angels win tonight and the A’s lose, the Angels take over first. Had no clue.
Great point. I’m still waiting for that dive in production we’ve seen towards the last month in the past two seasons, but to date he’s been awesome.
McClendon on Saunders: “Will it upset your apple cart [when Saunders comes back]?” McClendon wondered. “I don’t know. I don’t have that answer.”
“Don’t waste games here,” McClendon said. “It’s too important. We’ve got to win them here. We ain’t here to get timing down. We’re here to win.”
Why does this team constantly disrespect the ability of Michael Saunders? The guy has a 122 wRC+ this year. Seager, Cano, and Taylor (very small sample obviously) are the only others over 100. Saunders has clearly been one of the top 3 hitters on the team all season (as well as the last couple seasons). Yet, it’s like he has to prove himself over and over again. Seems to start every season as a platoon option or at the bottom of the lineup. Then he is relegated to that once again when he comes back off an injury.
I’ll admit I wasn’t buying the fear that this team would keep Saunders down in favor of Chavez/Denorfia, but with quotes like these it is becoming more of a reality. If I was Michael Saunders, I would probably leave this organization the first chance I get.
And that ends my Michael Saunders rant.
We are of the same mind, CM.
Sheesh, yes adding a well-above-average guy both offensively and defensively might somehow screw up the magical voodoo Lloyd must be crediting for them winning. I suppose if somehow a 120 wRC+ first baseman dropped out of the sky Lloyd would ask Jack to option him to Tacoma because it might upset the apple cart.
I see … guys are using your reverse mojo powers. Saunders will now be called up and leading off tomorrow.
With Romero hitting second
I imagine at some point Jack Z will trade Saunders for another aging 1B/DH type. Then he’ll sign Endy Chavez to a three year extension.
Actually, Romero has been hot as hell over the past 15ish days. His AAA numbers look great – for whatever that actually means these days. For some guys it translates and for other guys, it doesn’t.
Denorfia having a very nice game, but he can keep playing everyday against lefties! Give Ackley or Saunders some days off, hell give Morrison or Morales days off. But Saunders can come up and we don’t need anymore Endy Chavez! Shoot, who am I kidding? Lloyd freaking loves Endy.
Why didn’t Seager take the force out at 3B? They weren’t going to turn two with Davis running.
The entire team loves Endy … Maybe more than they loved John Buck. Endy has filled a role – and filled it pretty well, but his PT should drop significantly when Saunders returns, no question. Jones will probably go down when Saunders is called up.
The real question is the 8 man bullpen for the remainder of the month. I would rather have a stronger bench bench and go with a 7 man pen, but the team has been doing a good job maximizing their roster all season – without my help.
Endy stays healthy and available , something Saunders struggles with. The team is on a roll, why would you mess with it? Look how well the A’s big move has worked out!
Keep adding-on, boys! Another run or two will be perfect.
I get the sense Lloyd views Saunders as being unreliable because he can’t stay healthy (which, frankly, is warranted). I know people on this site were upset because Saunders wasn’t playing every day early in the season, but the organization, not just Lloyd, is obviously gunshy due to his injury history and was trying to ease him into the swing things. And yet he’s still missed close to half the season with injuries anyway.
I agree with you that Saunders should be playing over the RF options they have now, but I think with him you have to have a backup plan for if/when he gets injured again. I hope for his sake, and the sake of the team, he comes back and kills it and never gets injured again. But at this point I’m not holding my breath.
We’ll take that!
Romine had plenty of time to get out of the way, that’s hard to blame on Davis there. But good for the M’s.
Chris Young is a big reason for the success of the Mariners. Thank you Washington Nationals!
Doug Fister is having a very good season too – I don’t think the Nationals are missing Chris Young.
I remember when Chris Young was signed right before the season, he said something along the lines of this team being able to surprise some people. And he said that every team like that needs somebody like him to come out of nowhere and be a contributor. He’s sure lived up to that. He’s now sporting a 3.07 ERA and should be picking up his 12th win.
Denorfia has his Mariners OPS up over .600 now! Woo!
Whoops – that’s his overall 2014 OPS. His Mariners OPS is still below that.
Did Lloyd just get kicked out again?
Quietest ejection in history.
Randazzo is going to be getting a phone call from Joe Torre. He is ridiculous.
Bench coach to Lloyd…..”what did you do?”
And, the batter went around. Randazzo missed another call. It wouldn’t shock me if he missed it on purpose so someone would complain and then he could run Lloyd.
He’s got a woody for Lloyd.
I can’t remember a season in quite awhile that has been worse than this year for home plate umpires. Simply unacceptable. On second thought, maybe I just care more for some reason 😉
The guy behind the plate today has done a good job today. I think he’s a rookie ump, too. Anybody would look good in comparison to Randazzo – so maybe Tony R has just been doing his part to help out the rookie member on his crew by making him look really good in comparison.
It does seem like the umps have been more problematic this season – and not just for the Mariners. They need to be careful, though… if the league really wanted to, they could break that union without too much effort. It’s not like the players union would get behind them.
The union basically broke itself in the recent past, so making an attempt at doing that again – isn’t going to accomplish much. Most of the umpires are very, very good – and some of them are great. The thing that’s hard to know for certain is whether they are the best umpires available or whether they are simply the best available from the small pool of guys who were willing to endure that type of lifestyle. The nature of the profession itself – weeds out a lot of people from even considering it.
My Dad was a pro umpire in the early 60’s. Low minors. Got to AA – then I was born, so he re-evaluated things. Umpiring is a rough lifestyle to endure. Especially in what was then known as “D” ball in Florida. A “bad game” in the eyes of the hometown fans could lead to a local town ritual of tar and feathering the ump. That’s probably sufficient motivation to weed out some candidates.
A friend of mine started down the road to being an umpire too. He didn’t get very far, though – he decided quite early that financially it just wasn’t going to be feasible.
wtf medina?
I haven’t been playing close attention – why is Jones in for Jackson?
I think Jones was only in because it was a blowout. He’s becoming the 2014 version of Charles Gipson (i.e., The Human Victory Cigar).
That’s good – I was worried for a moment that Jackson got hurt.
Maybe you’re reading in a bit much on McClendon’s comments. He’s just saying no rush bringing Saunders back. We’re playing well. We want him healthy and ready. I read it as “he might take a few games to get back to himself and maybe rushing him back prolongs that.” He was playing everyday there for a while. We’ll see though.
Back to #2 in all of baseball for run differential, 1 run away from 100 runs more scored than allowed… And don’t look now, but we’re only 5 1/2 games behind the A’s and Angels…
I said it a couple days ago– this is a scary team if we can score 3.5 – 4 runs a game… We’re 51-10 in games where we score over 3 runs…
Man, I didn’t realize Morse was doing so well in SF this year (OBP of .341 and OPS of .828). I’m sure he’s still a butcher in the OF, but he’s clearly been a productive player for them. Good for him. He finally managed to have a year where he didn’t miss a bunch of time due to injury.