Game 63, Mariners at Angels
DMZ · June 9, 2006 at 6:19 pm · Filed Under Game Threads
LHP Washburn v RHP Escobar.
Remeber, Washburn pitches well against his old team. They keep telling me that.
The now standard lineup for the M’s.
The Angels, though…
CF-B Figgins
SS-R Cabrera
LF-L Anderson
RF-R Guerrero
DH-R Salmon
1B-B Morales
C-R Napoli
3B-R Quinlan
2B-L Kennedy
Huh. Tim Salmon’s resurgence is a little astonishing. The guy’s hitting .271/.374/.475, and he’s 37, coming off a missed year preceded by a year where he only played in 60 games. He’s a lock for Comeback Player if he keeps this up, or even if he tails off significantly.
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Wow. Quick game. Thought I’d have time to weigh in after finishing my work for the night, but no go. Gotta love quick wins.
Holy crap. Marquise Liverpool, last year’s 33rd-round draft pick, is pinch-hitting for Adam Jones.
Good lord… they just showed Spiezio on sportscenter, and not only did he smash an extra-base hit into the right field corner (I don’t recall him ever doing that for us. Did he? Ever?) but if I’m not mistaken, he has dyed his hideous Apolo Ohno chin hair bright red.
yah, it’s been red to match his uni all season [shudder]
and another walk for the Garciaparra kid
Garciaparra draws walk #3 of the game off Giovanni Carrara.
Carrara, who is driving Curto mad
although he makes ME happy, one granny later.
Quiroz grand salami!!!!! SHIP OUT RIVERA, GRANDMA!!!!
Dave Cameron favorite James Loney chokes … tying run at the plate!
J. J. Putz has become Tom Henke-esqe. When he came up, he was a big lug who threw 95 without particularly good control, and had an utterly mediocre slider he mostly threw for HRs. Now, he’s a tall treetop on the mound throwing the four-seamer on a good plane sitting at 95-96 with good location to all parts of the zone, and has that splitter at 86-88 with a big break—which he throws for strikes! *eeek* Fergit it, he’s gotcha. The team’s having him throw about 4:1 fastball:split, and I think he’d be even better at 2.5:1, but maybe they’re holding down the stress on his arm, I don’t know.
All this goes to show it’s folly to sign free agent closers at big $$$. You can ‘build your own.’ And the Ms system is loaded with guys who are going to do the same thing as J. J. when they come up. One part of the re-build strategy that’s working at least. Oh, and Putz was here before Bavasi/Fontaine, one more refutation of ‘the M’s system was _barren_’ line of chat.
Quiroz has finally started to hit again with regular PT. I’m hoping to see him up in Seattle in the later summer.
catchers reminds me, this morning on KJR Bob Fontaine (who, big surprise, wouldn’t talk about anybody who wasn’t Mariner property) said that Clement was due to begin working in 2 weeks, a bit ahead of schedule
JMB, the word earlier this year was that Soriano’s added a split. It’s slower and lower than his slider, has looked really good when I saw it, and could function as a change if he used it more. At this point, the slider is his third best pitch.
oh, man, this is sad. tonight was the first win in the opening game of a road series this year.
The Ms broadcast outfit all stay on message, and yes, they take a long time to warm up to a new(er) guy because they’re sooooo bought-and-sold on the media program. So we hear endlessly about “Isn’t Eddie special, and what a gamer” landfill, when starting the year Guapo Guardado was the 4th best reliever in the Ms pen, and has stunk all year long. It’s the same thing with Lopez, he’s miles and miles ahead of any other young hitter with the team, but because the org was talking “stubborn and lazy” on him, the announcers were very slow to catch onto the fact that he can outhit Betancourt, Reed, Morse, Dobbs, and Rivera combined. The media strategy just wasn’t built around Lopez at the start of the year, and our booth guys just aren’t original enough to come up with their own insights, except for Fairly just a little bit who’s been around enough players that occasionally he’ll tell you what he really thinks.
Somebody mentioned Spiezio last night…
So far this year with the Cards, 42 games, 95 at bats, 295/393/495 with 3 homeruns and 19 rbis. It’s enough to make you believe we ought to be doing live animal sacrfices in the dark of the moon just to lift the Safeco curse.
or wish the Mariners could face NL pitching all the time
Oh, c’mon. Let’s just do one cat.
Yeah, I’m seriously starting to believe NL pitching is not as good as AL pitching. Is there any data surrounding this? Could we even know since they’re facing an entirely different set of hitters?
I believe there’s definitely some data showing, on average, AL pitchers who go to the NL improve their stats, and NL pitchers who move the AL have their stats decline. I’m sure there’s a more comprehensive summary out there, but Tom Verducci looked at pitchers changing leagues between 2003 and 2004 and the effect looked real at least for those years — there was almost a full run difference in ERA for pitchers going either way between the leagues. That may just be the DH effect (not just pitchers having to hit, but also all the PH that come off the bench for one or two ABs). But considering how weak some AL DHs are, it feels like there’s more to it than that. It would sort of make sense that there may be a sort of survival of the fittest going on, with selection pressure pushing slightly weaker pitchers to the NL while the stronger pitchers stick (or move to) the AL.
That can’t be the only reason for the collapse of Spiezio, Aurilla, and Cirillo while at Seattle and their revival since, but it couldn’t hurt. It would seem to argue for some kind of “NL correction” factor when evaluating free agent hitter from the NL. Switching leagues didn’t hurt Vlad any, but then he’s an Ichiro-like freak with an elastic strikezone who seems to quickly adapt to any kind of pitching, so he’s exactly the kind of hitter who wouldn’t be bothered by that (and probably the only kind of hitter you’d want to pick up from the NL — if only there were more of him).
It’s fantasy-oriented, but here’s another comparison of some AL vs NL pitching stats.
speaking of player pub, KOMO (seemingly ahead of the official team) debuts a new segment on the weekend pre-game show, JJ’s Bullpen Chatter…
And what’s the theme/content?
well, that I can’t tell you, because I ended up missing it– it was described in the 2nd hour as having been ‘lighthearted’, though 🙂
He was also a guest in the 2nd hour, but talking about both his pitching this year, how Joh’s relationship with the pitchers is evolving, and how apparently Carl & Jarrod really do speak up and call guys on stuff in the clubhouse.
I think we’re being punished for low post production last night.
Hello? Anybody home? How’s a guy supposed to get a game thread around this joint?
Nice to see agressive running work against the other team. Figgins would have scored on that double by Vlad……but no.
Yeah, although I was disappointed to see Vlad not boot Sexson’s deep flyball.
I think we’re in line to hear the Morales-escape-from-Cuba story another 15 times tonight.
Man, you can pretty much pencil in Gil Meche for 60 pitches through 3 innings every single time he takes the mound. Sure enough, 45 pitches in two innings here…
True. And they’re quoting him as saying he’s ready to go 120-130 pitches now. [shudder] How many runs would that allow the Angels to put up anyway?
Derek must be doing yeoman codechopping to get us back up. Have another beer on me, D-man.
I’m not much of a Gil Meche fan but he takes more crap around here than anyone, especially considering he’s been pitching pretty well lately.
I’m not expecting him to keep it up, because I think Gil’s success is tied to how healhty his arm is, and I think it’s rarely full strength….but let’s give him a break if he gives us 2-3 runs in 5-6 innings. Even if he is awful to watch when he suddenly loses the strike zone completely at random.
If somebody said Betancourt was hitting nearly 70 points higher than Reed I would have been floored. Hopefully a combination of Beltre, Sexson, and Reed waking up will make this a decent team.
Johjima, Betancourt, Lopez are all coming through. And of course Ichiro and Ibanez are doing thier jobs.
Now if only Hargrove would give his catcher a day off every once in awhile, and Bloomquist would get cut…
If Felix steps up, I may be able to stomach watching this team if Hargrove ever gets fired.
131– pitch counts reminds me; last night I flicked past the college games on ESPN as Stanford junior Greg Reynolds was coming out of the game, and the announcer reminded us that Colorado had taken Greg with the 2nd pick in the draft, and then (a thrill for the Rockies I’m sure) told us that Greg was leaving in the ninth after 130 pitches…
considering he’s been pitching pretty well lately
Milage varies on how well Meche has been pitching. Meche’ record may be 6-4 but how he got there with an ERA of 4.46 and a WHIP approaching 1.5 behind an offense that until quite recently needed whole-blood tranfusions just to make it onto the field is, in my mind anyway, proof that (a) there’s a God and (b) He loves Gil Meche way more than most pitchers.
…”behind an offense that until quite recently needed whole-blood transfusions just to make it onto the field…”
Gloom-and-Doom: Just remember which teams and which pitchers the M’s have been facing recently, guys… 🙂
Just kidding. I’m as happy as anybody that at least the M’s are making hay while the sun shines.
Oops. Forgot to close my HTML.