Game 11, Mariners at White Sox
Franklin v. Buehrle
11:05, FSN for TV
Sexson probably won’t start today, which means we might get additional Spiezio (“Player most frequently misspelled in USSM comments”) dosages.
Things in the Seattle press notes:
– random numbers on Mariner-White Sox past matchups
– 3 itmes (including two tables) on Hargrove reaching 1,000 wins
– six players have appeared in every game
– nine hitters are hitting over .300 with “Runners in Scoring Position” (table, Bloomquist leads with 1-1)
– “Consistency” item on Mariner hitters who’ve had having hits in x of y games
– notes on the M’s in day/night games, the sweep, the road trip
– stats on good pitching
– the eighth inning is where M’s do their damage so far
– last year, the team sucked on the road
– the first three innings is where the M’s have outscored opponents
– in the seventh inning on, the Mariners have hit well
– the Mariners hitting better with batters on (Item title: “Clutch up”)
– Ichiro has multi-hit games
– random facts from SABR’s Baseball Encyclopedia
I predict many of these same things will be mentioned in tonight’s broadcast.
Rainiers play Fresno in Tacoma (weather permitting), 6:05, radio, also on the internets for all you crazy kids with your computers.
Comments
97 Responses to “Game 11, Mariners at White Sox”
The next time the Mariners field today’s punchless line-up, and you live in Nevada, run–do not walk–to the local sports book and bet the “under” in the run-total line. Then, you can at least make some money on an otherwise losing proposition.
Good question on Franklin. If he can get to July with an ERA around 3.5, and can be league average in HR’s allowed, then I will officially get my hopes up.
AAAAHHHH!!!!! Franklin was at the bottom of the league last year with run support of, what was it, 3.16 runs per game or something? And today we give him, what, TWO RUNS? AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!
They owe spiezio 9 million..when is someone gonna call bavasai out on this contract ???????for that matter giving franklin a 2 year deal are signing the oft injured reece for a million?are for that matter putting the worst bench in the history of the franscise on the field with a 95 million dollar payrole????Lets call Slick Willie out here the problem is judgement of players skills and who is making the calls on who to sign.I dont want to hear about beltre any one knows he is a stud big richie the jury is out for me 30 hrs 150 ks 10 million??????you do the math bavasai and his crew arent good evaluaters period any one else think this?
I for one am tired of hearing about Snelling and his so called potential. Lots of folks said the same about Bloomquist years ago and now we’re all over (as in done) with him. Is what he “flashed” two years ago that good that some of us pine for him as much as we do? Time to move on.
Small sample size, yes, but to me the Franklin sinker looks like it has more bite on it. Actually, I don’t really recall, did he ever throw it that much before this year? I think he can be successful, meaning a slightly better than major league average starter, if he keeps getting movement like that on the sinker.
Oh and by the way, speaking of Bob Melvin, isn’t Hargrove’s reluctance to pinch hit somewhat reminiscent? You’d think somebody on the bench, whether left-handed or right-handed, would have had a better chance of getting on than Valdez or Bloomquist or Wilson during the bottom of the eighth.
Anybody know if the flu bug has hit anybody else? That might explain Hargrove’s reluctance.
I stand corrected. We gave Franklin ONE RUN! ONE STINKING RUN! (The White Sox gave their pitcher two runs.) But we did get THREE HITS! Woo! Hoo!
I was at the game today. First, U.S. Cellular is not bad. Much better than I thought it would be. Second, Ichiro is the man. Third, man, that was such a disapointing loss.
Are you telling me no one got a hit but Ichiro!? 🙁
I think playing the entire bench today was a not-so-subtle plea for help to Bavasi. It kinda reminds me of 2002 when Lou sent the big bat Gillick picked up for us that year, Jose Offerman, to PH for Dan Wilson late in the season against Texas with our fading postseason hopes on the line.
#57.I feel your pain. And I know you are using the corporate we but the truth is we (being the Ms) didn’t get three hits, Ichiro got three hits, the rest of the team was 0 for. What a day.
The explanation for the fast game is simple: The umpiring crew had a 4:00PM tee time. Lots of high strikes, low strikes, inside strikes, well, all kinds of strikes. The only balls the umpire wanted to see were golf balls.
The Mariners should attempt to trade Scott Spiezio away for a guy who has got an enormous contract that is coming off of the books this season — (e.g.: Bobby Higginson [Detroit Tigers] {$11,850,000}; Joe Mays [Minnesota Twins] {$7,250,000}; Preston Wilson [Colorado Rockies] {$12,000,000}.) — since the M’s do have the ability to take on some more salary this season; as it is, such a trade would allow the team more spending room come next season.
Anyhow, which would be a better accomplishment for Ichiro Suzuki: 57-Game Hitting Streak or .400 Batting Average?
Yes, tis true. Only the one to get a hit today (two singles, advanced to second both times, and a triple to score our lone run)was Da Man, aka Ichiro. Time to crank up the Tacoma shuttle, and heck, San Antonio too!
Re #59: Correct.
Re #60: I hope you’re right. If you aren’t, this could be a long year.
Re #55: Comparing Bloomquist to Snelling is comparing apples to bicycles. Unlike Bloomquist, Snelling showed tremendous potential at the plate–he made consistent contact, he controlled the strike zone, he drove the ball hard, and he was a remarkably intelligent hitter for such a young player. In the field, though he didn’t have pure CF speed, he was a good CF because of his instincts, anticipation and routes. Were it not for his injuries, he’d be an established starter by now, and easily our second-best outfielder.
To be sure, his injury history isn’t a fluke–it’s largely the result of the fact that Snelling hasn’t had a clue when to round off the aggressiveness–but if he can manage to stay healthy, he should still be a pretty good player. I don’t know how much he’s lost in the field from his injuries, or how much they’ve affected his hitting, but he still deserves a real shot to prove he can still play.
I guess bavasai gets a walk from the people???No body but me is critical of the long faced mans move?W hy is this people i think the guy hasnt done very good someone point out to me diffrent please???
We’re now being called out for not criticizing Bavasi enough? Seriously?
Sigh.
Actually, I’ll bet Pineiro’s name is misspelled here more frequently than Spiezio’s.
Well geez, Dave. You should know 3-4 posts a month criticizing Bavasi’s moves aren’t enough! And we should trade Moyer, too!
Seriously. I thought I was the village idiot. Some of you have been intruding on my territory lately and it’s making me mad.
—
Anyway…
So Hargrove doesn’t use his bench all year and suddenly we have Spiezio, Bloomquist, and Wilson all playing at once? I thought we wanted to win games? Props to Franklin though. Didn’t see the game but it looks like he pitched pretty well, although giving up 2 Home Runs to a team that theoretically isn’t supposed to want to hit them anymore is a bad sign.
Valdez will make a decent enough reserve when Reese comes back. Spiezio needs to be released. My grandma can watch strike three go by. Call up Greg Jacobs, Chris Snelling or Justin Leone to take his place. We need Bucky bad.
Hey, Dave, I don’t think y’all are being called out for not criticizing Bill Bavasi enough. There are a few other blogs, however, that base most of their attacks solely on Bavasi—which is neither good nor bad.
Anyways, it is ostensibly obvious — even though only a week has gone by in the season — that the M’s are a roughly a 75-win ballclub, which is ’bout what most realistic fans expected at the very start of the season. Yet, the fear most of us have looming in the back of our minds is that this team may not crawl out of the abyss that was 2004 as quickly as 2006, for management has done very little — sans signing Adrian Beltre — to make us [the fans] believe otherwise.
well dave go back on all his moves since he took over very questionable at very best…show me diffrent…
Re. #68:
Ironically, Jim, even you misspelled Joel’s surname; it’s Piñeiro.
Two very impressive outings by Franklin in a row. Is there any chance that he has in fact changed, and that he is not same pitcher he has previously been?
Watching Sandfrog take a called third strike last night was painful….I was hoping Justin Leone was still on the bench and could be sent out to hit.
I usually spell it Crapezio, Spaz, or TWPOAT (after lastnight’s performance I decided to pass the moniker on to Spaz. It used to be held by Al Martin, but I guess I’ll have to rename him “The Player Formerly Known As TWPOAT) LOL
So… TPFKATWPOAT?
And TWPOAT=?
The worst player on any team?
Does anyone believe Boone’s off season eye surgery has helped his batting or fielding?
Sheets signs extension (Tribune Sports 4/16). Are there any Ace pitchers available next year?
jc… are you being serious?
Re 76:
Schmidt, Matsuzaka if he is posted.
As a heartattack…what good moves other then beltre and you and me couldve liked him…Sexson??????franklin 2 years,speizio 3 years ,reece a million a hurt player year in year out,If you say sexson i would choke a injured player that you gambled on and if he stays healthy you get 30-35 hr and 140-165 punchouts..that aint 10 million in any era.The guy has bad evaluaters are he is a bad evalater of his people one are the other he is getting way more play.then he should.He spent 110 million and forgot pitching wins championships.Yes are pitching is great right now but come august we will talk.Also he allowed price and melvin to allow MADS to throw 138,135 pitches so they wouldnt lose a 100 well you didnt lose a 100 but you lost one of your best pitchers ..Oh yeah i forgot to mention picking up melvins 500 k when we were 3-11 oh i guess thats just another wash of the hands…so now you know where im coming from tell me your side.ty jc
I didn’t get to actually see the game today, but might not Buehrle have pitched a game good enough to shut down the Ms? why is it all on the hitters?
I would say “if you haven’t been around, it’s understandable that you might think we haven’t criticized Bavasi much for last year’s signings.”
We’ve hammered on Franklin’s signing since it was announced.
We’ve argued about Winn’s contract but basically shrugged.
We’ve hammered on Spiezio’s deal, saying it was too expensive for a modest upgrade on The Unmentionable One’s terrible performance
In fact… looking back, we pretty much disagreed with every individual decision Bavasi/Gillick made that off-season, though even in doing so we didn’t think it would turn out as bad as it did. Though in fairness, no one else did either.
We agreed with you that given the risk, Sexson’s contract was too expensive (and you were around for this one)
We hammered the team over and over on pitching Madritsch late in the year, and have hit that again this season.
In general, I have to believe this criticism is ill-founded, as we’re regularly criticized for being far too negative about many of those same decisions. I’m not a believer that the way to the right answer is to steer for being attacked equally by both sides, but this is way off base.
If you’d like to read historical posts on these subjects, I’d recommend using google to search the site or there’s a search box in the upper right that has some limited capabilities.
DMZ
Re: (# 4) FRANKLIN’S INEPTITUDE.
“Buerhle ..what does this spell?????A LOSS…Franklin will come back to earth today book it….”
Absolutely right. His ERA shot up from 2.13 to 2.18 today. I knew he couldn’t keep it up.
🙂
BTW (# 26) THE BENCH STARTERS – I used to get upset on days that LOU would give two of his regulars the day off. But three !
jc: the reason no one is spending a lot of time criticizing Bavasi now is because, as DMZ says, this site spent most of the offseason doing that. Everything you mentioned, and more, has been done to death. At this point, you have to play the cards you have, which essentially means the bus from Tacoma. Nobody is doing trades right now, so there’s not a lot of point in spending time on the GM. The focus will switch back to Bavasi as the trading deadline approaches. And there’s the next offseason, too, of course.
To be fair, the most obvious problem at the end of 2004 was offense, and the ownership said that was going to be what they fixed. Given those marching orders, that’s what Bavasi did (though for too much $ or too much risk in every case except Beltre, at least according to the conventional wisdom on this site). He also did the Garcia for Olivo/Reed deal with that in mind, and even though it would be nice to have Freddy available with so many arms on the DL, that wasn’t a bad deal.
The realistic among us have always considered this a two-year rebuilding project, with 2006 being the year to plan on contention. With that in mind, and with Moyer, Boone, and Wilson (not to mention lingerers like Crillo etc) presumably off the books, the focus in the coming offseason hopefully will be pitching. So: offense last offseason, pitching this offseason (we hope). That proved to be an unfortunte prioritization because the pitching staff this year is more injured than anyone feared or expected (and it isn’t exactly Bavasi’s job to make sure the staff isn’t abused — that’s clearly a organizational issue that needs to be addressed from top to bottom).
I don’t want to come off as a Bavasi defender: he’s middling at best, from what I’ve seen so far. But we (or at least I) have done our FO complaining for a while, and we’ll start complaining about it again in July; in the meantime there are other things to complain about. Like Hargrove’s decisions.
And as far as that goes, I heard or read yesterday that “5 or 6” of the M’s were suffering varying effects of the flu. So it could well be everybody was in the game who could play, and Hargrove had little choice about the lineup.
Oops, my bad.
TWPOAT= The Worst Player of All-Time
Close DC
Why must sites use such lines like
“Beuhrle 3 hits Mariners”
Sure 3 hits but its still not a perfect game or a shutout even, :/
You’re right, the headlines should read:
“Franklin 4 hits ChiSox”
TPFKATWPOAT = The Player Formerly Known As The Worst Player Of All Time
Only a Prince fan would know that one… haha.
Not-mentioning the Unmentionable One, SI’s Power Rankings just pointed out
that he doubled and homered for the Brewers on opening day. Huh. Kooky.
Why and what proof do we have that gillick had anyting to do with what bavasai is doing?Was woody helping gillick make moves when he took over for woodward?I think we are way offbase on this subject..Im sorry i havent kept up enough but im starting to lose a little respect for the org as a whole…good night all
We’ve discussed that topic at length here. If you don’t want to go look for it, that’s your choice, but we’re not going to rehash everything for you for every thing you missed.
ive never seen any answers to this question just speculation the gillick was calling the shots and bavasai was the front man????well tell me about it are link me there
Don’t know if this was mentioned earlier, but todays game was 99 minutes, the shortest MLB game so far this decade.
JC,
http://www.google.com. Knock yourself out. Really. We’ve written more about these subjects than you can possibly imagine.
What is the average MLB game time at these days?
2.5 hours or so.
msb said:”but might not Buehrle have pitched a game good enough to shut down the Ms? why is it all on the hitters?”
well, thank goodness for Baseball Tonight; they explained it all for me. Apparently, only Buehrle pitched in the game, and that is why it came in at 1.39. I’m still not sure how Konerko got his home runs without someone pitching for the other team, but then, somehow Ichiro got 3 hits without Buehrle giving them up in his CG…
Thanks dave im a rookie at that stuff .This helps again ty