Game 29, Mariners at Red Sox
LHP Moyer v RHP Clement , 4:05 on FSN.
This is going to be a reaaaaal interesting couple of weeks for this team. Can Don Baylor get Beltre to lay off that pitch? Will the Mariners be the tonic the Yankees need, or will the boys in blue take advantage of New York’s woes to rebound? Or, for even more interesting flavor, will the both offenses feast? Will Jeff Nelson get in trouble in Fenway again, and will he come home from NY or be traded to the Yankees while we’re there?
Also, if you have the chance, again I highly recommend heading down to Tacoma to go see King Felix pitch at 6:05 (as detailed in this fine post). See him and Doyle and a host of others (but not Leone, who I hear is injured again).
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125 Responses to “Game 29, Mariners at Red Sox”
Valle doesn’t realize the Sox extensively rennovated the home clubhouse this year.
NO FAIRLY IS DOING PBP NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Here I was, minding my own business tinkering with my broken Xbox listening to the radio, which is good because a game’s a nice stress reliever while working with frustrating electronics. Now I’m supposed to install a TV in my office so I can listen to Rizzs?
Wait — I’m switching over to the Rainiers game.
Looks like Olivo’s given up the Beltre stance experiment.
Doyle has the night off tonight.
Mateo has the nastiest stuff on the pitching staff…How come we never see him?
Felix just gave up another dinger. The wind’s supposedly crazy, blowing out and picking balls up and carrying them way out.
The commercials on the KHHO feed for the Rainiers game is easily twice as loud as the game itself. Ow.
This is one of the most uninspiring exhibitions of Mariner baseball that we have had to endure since Wednesday. This is awful.
Greg Dobbs must have the longest swing that I’ve seen in recent times.
Rusty, that just gives us more time to admire it’s beauty. Well, that and its ineffectiveness. But mostly it’s beauty.
God, did they just have to rub that in? Wasn’t that loss painful enough?
well, the Yankees had it worse 🙂
“After they tied the game 3-3 in the eighth, Mariano Rivera tossed a perfect ninth, but he wasn’t so lucky in the 10th. The closer walked the leadoff hitter, then hit another with one out. An infield single by Chavez loaded the bases, then Tino Martinez made a pair of errors on one play. Martinez fielded a grounder by Scott Hatteberg and tried to start a double play, but he failed to touch first base for the first error, then threw wildly to the plate for the second. Two runs scored, and after an error by third baseman Alex Rodriguez later in the frame, allowing two runs to score, snapping the tie. Rivera walked in another run to make it a three-run game, and Kiko Calero closed out the win for the A’s. “
Wow, Choo just hit a home run over the 30′ fence in dead center at Cheney. He’s the second to ever do so, if the lore is to be believed.
If Choo can do it, I’m wondering if the lore has any substance. He’s no Bucky. Either that or the wind is REALLY out of control today.
Well, apparently Ramon Santiago hit one out today, so I guess the wind is the likely culprit.
I was there, but wimped out and left before the Choo homerun.
Felix was awesome. Yeah, there was some wind, enough to put your coat on and aid a baseball in flight. But not wind like somewhere like The Gorge or E. Washington where wind is an everyday occurence. Nobody was holding onto their hats and hot dog wrappers weren’t blowing all over the place.
Gotta give credit to the persons involved. This wasn’t a once a decade meteorological occurence.
Smart guess hitting on the second HR off of Felix on the first pitch of the 3rd inning.
Anybody have any info on Rifkin? He seems to be swinging well, yet he’s not considered a top prospect.
I was there for the Choo shot…it was pretty amazing. As hight as it was it seemed more like a line shot than fly ball. My brain couldn’t believe it had a chance to go so I was focused on the wall…but it just dissapeared. It was funny because Choo looked horrible his first two at bats.
Other tidbits:
Ryan Christianson looked ok behind the plate, but then left with some sort of injury.
Felix was throwing hard, but didn’t have his best control. The first home run (Mathis) was set up by him overthrowing and losing the strike zone. He didn’t seem to really get into a groove with curve until the 4th or 5th.
Doyle didn’t play (this made me sad).
Michael Morse looks awkward just standing at short…but since not a single ball was hit to him I can’t really say more than that.
Anyway, it was a fun game.
I’m in Boston and just got back from the game. When I got to the park and heard that Sexson wasn’t here I was kind of pissed. His wife gave birth at 12:30 PM on Thursday so I figured he should have been able to join the team in the middle of a five game losing streak.
Then I learned that there were complications with the birth; Sexson’s wife is OK now but obviously knowing that information it’s clear that he had a legitimate reason not to be there tonight.
Awful, awful game tonight. The less said the better but here’s a few thoughts:
1) Until Olivo (of all people) walked in the 7th inning tonight the M’s as a team had gone something like 19 or 20 innings without taking a walk. That’s pathetic and Hargrove, Baylor, etc. have to take some responsibility for the team’s approach at the plate. The manager can’t just sit back and do nothing. We had a manager that did that last year and he got fired…
2) That pixie dust that got sprinkled on Jamie Moyer in April has all but worn off. That’s two really bad starts in a row where he looked like the mid-2004 Moyer. The big reason this team was hovering at or above .500 until the last week was Moyer’s great start. If he continues to suck this team is going to end up well under .500.
3) Why was Dobbs starting tonight at DH instead of Dave Hansen? Makes no sense at all. A righty was on the hill for the Sox. In fact, what the hell is Greg Dobbs even doing on a major league roster????
Because of my concerns about Olivo (who has looked awful behind the plate the last few days), I talked to a couple of people in the press box tonight about Christiansen and learned that he supposedly has an issue with throwing the ball back to the pitcher (ala Mackey Sasser).
I was at the Rainiers game tonight, and the Choo shot was an absolute blast. Sure it was wind aided, but he still crapped all over that pitch. That’s one thing I probably will never see again.
The Santiago HR (okay make that two things I will probably never see again) actually hit the top of the wall and then bounced over.
And Felix had a wierd start. Was wild but only allowed two hits, both homers oddly enough. Walked four (only struck out three) but only threw an estimated 87 pitches through seven innings. It’s good to see that even when he’s wild people still can’t hit him.
I was there as well, Jon, and noticed a double hitch in his throw to the pitcher. Unfortunately, I only noticed it the one time, and this was right before he got hit on the hand by Bootcheck.
If the game the Stingers played tonight is indicative of how they’ve played all their games, I’d like to know just how in the hell that Keystone Kop ballclub is in first.
Yeah, I was really surprised when I was reading the Rainiers’ program later that they had an article (by Mike Curto, no less) about A. J. Zapp supposedly being the first guy to hit a homer over the center field wall, when I’d just seen Choo do it, and is he really a power hitter at all? Still cool to behold.
Felix was cool to behold too. Only giving up two hits, both for home runs, reminded me a lot of a particular Gil Meche outing last year…
Doyle didn’t play, and I was very sad about that as well.
Hunter Brown looked pretty good at third base, seriously — he made some good defensive stops, fielded bunts cleanly, in general played very well (except in the ninth, let’s not go there. Do minor league scorers EVER call errors? If not, it’d sure explain the high ERAs and high batting averages) — and he even went 3-for-4 at the plate. I actually thought he was Justin Leone at first because he was playing third and wearing number 26, not knowing Leone wears 24 and is on the DL. Anyway, I said something like “Hey, this third baseman is awesome! Why did I never hear of him before?” We look at his numbers on the stat sheet and he’s been hitting .148/.246/.185, and it’s like “Oh… uh, hmm.”
Oh, and uh, did you guys realize there are two major leaguers named Abraham Nunez? Somehow I thought you guys were talking about the former Pirates player all along, which didn’t make any sense. Whoops.
#59
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-curse-of-big-papi/
“As a Twins fan, I have seen Ortiz play hundreds of times and I had mixed feelings when he left the Twins earlier this offseason. On one hand he is oft-injured and has never really been a great hitter, even when healthy. On the other hand, he shows so many flashes of potential and he is still fairly young. However, the Twins have way too many 1B/DH-types in the organization to lose much sleep over not having David Ortiz anymore. That said, he can definitely be a very productive player.”
Overall, it’s a good article, I’d suggest a read