Game 159, Angels at Mariners
Moseley v Jimenez. This’ll be fun.
Lineups:
Mariners
RF-L Ichiro!
Assorted jerks and one person who apparently stuck up for him.
Game 137, Mariners at Rangers
Carlos Silva is back! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
Game 135, Mariners at Indians
Take the Bus to Cleveland! 12:55 our time! Not on television!
Anthony Reyes takes the mound for Cleveland.
From MLB.com:
Jarrod Washburn has consistently given the Mariners a chance to win in most of his starts this season, but the run support is generally lacking when he’s on the mound.
Or… “They’ve done studies, you know. 60% of the time it works, every time. ”
I could flog that write-up for a while, but I’ll let it go. It’s too easy.
Game 134, Mariners at Indians
FELIX DAY
4:05
That is all.
Game 131, Twins at Mariners
Oh man, Liriano v Batista? This is going to be so awesome!
It could, of course, be a fine pitching matchup. But I can’t be the only one who looks at tonight’s game with some degree of dread. Batista facing a good-hitting Twins team? Ugh.
Mark Lowe was optioned to Tacoma, and Randy Messenger is up in his stead. Lowe’s foot is injured after taking that liner off it Saturday, and he was reportedly on crutches yesterday, so there you are.
Game 128, Athletics at Mariners
7:10. Gonzalez v Feierabend
Wlad to center!
LaHair to DH!
Cairo to first!
Now that… that’s excitement.
Game 126, Mariners at White Sox
11:05 AM our time. Dickey v Floyd.
Game 125, Mariners at White Sox
Felix! Woooooooooooooooo! 5:11.
Try not to get whiplash, but check this out.
| IP | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | GB% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pitcher A | 140 | 5.01 | 2.76 | 1.16 | 36% |
| Pitcher B | 151 | 8.34 | 2.41 | .6 | 52% |
I’ll leave it at that.
Game 124, Mariners at White Sox
Washburn v Buehrle, 5:11
I’m tired of everyone hating on Jarrod Washburn just because he’s bad.
Did you know that if you drop starts where he didn’t go six innings pitched while giving up three or fewer earned runs, he has a 100% quality start percentage? Like the win and the save, the quality start should be your arbitrary statistical measure of choice in evaluating pitchers.
Speaking of arbitrary measures, you may have not noticed that Washburn’s been doing quite nicely lately. Despite not doing anything at all differently — his pitches are the same, he’s slinging them right over the plate as usual (see that great Lookout Landing coverage) and yet the results have changed. The answer is obvious: Jarrod’s doing better in a way we just can’t see in the way he throws, the way the pitches move, or in any other way — so he must be doing something different that we can’t quantify, and that non-quantifiable difference is resulting in quantifiable results. Sometimes analysis has to bow down to analysis, and this is one of those cases.
Furthermore, did you know he’s now throwing a splitter? Yup. Just like Silva was and then wasn’t, it’s a key reason why Jarrod’s success is sustainable, a fact now recognized by others).
How good is his splitter? It’s that good. Look through the pitch logs and check it out. It’s crazy. It’s seemingly logged as a changeup, a cutter, and a slider! It’s so deceptive that it has essentially the same characteristics as other pitches. That’s what’s putting the fear into batters. How can they know if a pitch that looks the same has one of two different names? That’s messing with their heads.
9″ of break on that splitter — that’s more than a fastball!
And what about keeping hitters off balance? Since June, they’ve put up a .271/.332/412 line, where before they were hitting .318/.363/.528. That’s crazy improvement! Sure, you’re going to hear from some people who want to tell you that pitchers don’t have that much control over what happens when opposing hitters make contact, and point you to studies by some Voros guy, or Woolner, or whoever, but I’m going to point you to this:
.318/.363/.528
versus
.271/.332/.412
The results don’t lie: when you look at the season in which the first ten starts are weighed against the second part, Washburn has obviously learned how to control the game. You can make up a theory to explain away whatever, but given two theories: Jarrod’s better since a selected date and now because of reasons, and Jarrod’s better for no reason at all, the view brokered by all those people who hate Jarrod for personal or statistical reasons, well, it’s pretty obvious that the first one’s the right one.
Game 120, Mariners at Angels
King Felix v Santana. 7:05.
Here’s how ancient I am: Growing up, I used to like MTV’s 120 Minutes but we didn’t (and couldn’t) get cable in my bit of unincorporated King County, so I used to bug friends in other states to mail me video tapes. If you grew up here with me, listening to the big Puget Sound radio stations, you must understand.
Today marks an unimportant milestone: Riggleman has now managed as many games as McLaren lost before being fired.
McLaren: 25-47, .347
Riggleman: 20-27, .426