Category Archives: M's Game Recaps

by | April 13, 2010 · 6:04 pm

Game Recap — 4/12/2010

Since we were all at the Mariners home opener today we’ll give you all our own perspective.  Enjoy!

Andrew’s Perspective:  This was the first home opener that Ive ever been to and the excitement leading up to the game was something I’ve never experienced at a Mariner game.  I went over to Ivar’s on the waterfront with my parents and then walked over to Safeco from there.  The atmosphere at 1:30 was great and it only went up from there.  Excitement built and built all the way to Randy Johnson throwing out the first pitch.  Wow, what a moment.  When I get really excited my knees start to shake and while the Big Unit was walking in from center field my knees shook as much as I can remember.  Seeing Buhner, Wilson, Edgar, Johnson, and Griffey all together on the field before the game was a great move by the organization.  Those are the guys who made me a Mariner fan and to see them standing side by side gave me goosebumps.

As for the game… Well, yeah.  In the early innings I thought for sure we were going to win.  Hyphen looked very good and I thought the Mariners were going to get some runs off Duscherer.  I kept waiting for something good to happen; I think the entire crowd was thinking something good would happen but it didn’t.  The big turning point of the game was when Guti got a double to start the inning and got to third with one out and then the middle of the order couldn’t drive him in.  That would have tied the game but it just wasn’t meant to be.  The game was the same story as the past week:  bad offense, mediocre pitching, and some spectacular defensive plays but you can’t score runs on defense. 

The game was something to be forgotten but the event wasn’t.

Matthew’s Perspective:  I’d probably go to opening day even if there was no game.  The whole experience is just special for a baseball fan.  My wife’s a school teacher in Bellevue, so I picked her up about an hour before game time and we took off for the bus stop, hoping to make it in time for most of the festivities.  There’s always something fun about riding a bus where you know you’re all going to the same thing, even if you don’t talk to anyone.  We got off the bus east of the stadium, and after navigating the newly constructed and surprisingly long new walkway down Royal Brougham (it seriously adds 10 minutes to the walk), we made it into the stadium during the line-up introductions.  After stopping at an overlook to watch, we joined some family and friends (and fellow Good Guys Andrew and Dan) at our seats just before the national anthem.

In my opinion, there were two special moments before the game.  Randy Johnson’s First Pitch has been well-covered and was every bit as great as everyone has said.  Seeing him throw one last time and the great ovation he received was wonderful.  But just before that they had the annual first run around the bases, which is a tradition I hadn’t known about.  A kid chosen by the Make-A-Wish people gets to be the first one around the bases each year, and this year was a 12-year-old boy who is recovering from kidney failure after a transplant.  I’m kind of a sucker for moments like these, especially involving kids, but seeing this little guy running to home with Ichiro, Griffey and Felix waving for him to slide, and then popping up to high fives from three of his heroes was probably the highlight of the day for me.  Those kinds of dreams and realizations are what make baseball special.  Each player out there is every one of us sitting in the stands, if only we had a little stronger arm or quicker bat.

Unfortunately, the pregame stuff was the highlight of the day, as the Mariners’ offensive woes continue.  RRS looked good all day, except for a few losses of his control.  I thought they should have pulled him after the sixth, but it didn’t really matter much then and ended up not mattering at all later.  I still think an offensive breakout is imminent, but it certainly wasn’t last night.  Any other game, this performance would have been tough to take, and it still was.  But the beauty of opening day is that we’re just happy to be back in the ballpark, and there’s still a whole season ahead to worry about wins.

Dan’s Perspective: I’ve had the joy of being at a few recent opening days in Seattle sports. Last year I welcomed the MLS to Seattle and was overwhelmed by how fun and the Sounders inaugural game was. It felt just like how I imagine being at a champion’s league game in Europe is. A couple weeks later I welcomed Griffey back on an amazing opening day. The M’s won and I got a sun burn in April. Yesterday was another special day because of the pre-game festivities, but certainly not because of the game. I had high expectations for yesterday, and while the sun didn’t shine too bright, Cliff Lee wasn’t pitching, and the game sucked, I still got my money’s worth. In fact, the price of admission was well covered after watching Randy jog in from centerfield, only to be joined by the other 4 Mariner greats from the ‘90s. It was awesome, and I remember thinking, without those 5 guys, we aren’t sitting in Safeco Field, and it’s likely that we don’t have baseball in Seattle at all. I wouldn’t have opposed retiring all 5 of those guys jerseys right then and there. That’s how much they have meant to baseball in Seattle.

The game is actually very simple to recap. Just read our previous 5 posts on Mariner losses! Solid starting pitching was the highlight. But no offense (2 hits!) and a couple timely hits by the opponent spelled the loss for Seattle again. It’s starting to get pretty tough to swallow these games with no offense, and while the law of averages tells us the M’s won’t hit .200 all year, you start to wonder if a 2008 type year is in the making. The ’08 team had high expectations as well, but it was a house built on sand. I really don’t think this team will replicate the failure that was 2008, but as a fan, the thought keeps creeping in my mind, and the only solution is more cowbell!…or some wins.

Also, I will take the honor of selecting the hero/goat from yesterday.

Hero: RRS. He had a no-hitter through 5 innings, and despite 5 walks, he pitched well enough to keep us in the game. Tough to find a bona fide hero from yesterday though.

Goat: Rob Johnson. Most will point to Bradley and his horrible error in left field. But the truth is, that 2 run base hit never would have happened if Johnson could have just caught the foul tip for strike 3. Milton’s play looked worse, but both runs were going to score anyway, and the real culprit of those runs was Robo Rob (because his glove is made of steel). Clever huh?

Joe’s Perspective:  This opening day was special for me personally; it was the first I have attended at Safeco Field. Back in the good old days at the Kingdome, I went almost every year. Since Safeco opened though, not so. I was understandably excited. My brother and I got up to the field early and took in the sights and sounds. Despite the 2-5 start, there was a buzz in and around the stadium. Seattle truly is a baseball city. People love this team.

The pre-game festivities were memorable. Having one of my heroes Randy Johnson throw the first pitch to Dan Wilson, and then Jay Buhner and Edgar Martinez show up along with Junior was a trip down memory lane for me. Those guys are legends to me. I was a teenager in the 1990’s, I grew up with them, and they are heroes. I can’t count the number of times I emulated their stances and swings in backyard wiffle-ball games. The buzz in the stadium was palpable. People were excited, we wanted to believe, we want to believe big, as the slogan goes. We were jacked up. Then, the game started…

The other Good Guys undoubtedly have better summaries than I do. So I will keep this somewhat short and to the point.

The biggest thing I noticed and observed is something you can only do if you are at the game: Watching defensive positioning. The Athletics absolutely have the Mariners figured out. My broither and I made a pact to simply watch the A’s defense all game because frankly nothing else was exciting. I kid you not: There was not one play the A’s were not in good defensive position. Every ball the Mariners hit, with the exception of Gutierrez’s double, was covered by Oakland defense. I was thoroughly impressed. They had Figgins shaded shallow left center, Guti straight away, Ichiro shaded to left, Bradley, Kotchman, on and on, they had the Mariners figured out. I give a ton of credit to Bob Geren for his prep. In the post game news conference Wakamatsu commented that the Mariners had been working on taking the ball the other way, working counts and going with pitches. The problem is for the Mariners the A’s knew this and played defense accordingly. I know this sounds like a minor point, but defensive positioning in baseball is vital to a teams success, and I thought the A’s put on a clinic.

Other than that, there really wasn’t much to say. Ichiro and Figgins were terrible at the plate (I love both of them, they are far from the teams biggest problems…), RRS pitched well, Bradley showed he has a cannon arm from left, (what a throw), but then made the blooper reel misplaying a routine ball in left.

As an aside, again, something you’d only see if you were at the game. Later in the game, Bradley fielded a routine base hit to left and threw the ball in, no big deal right? Well after he threw the ball in, some fans down the left field line stood up and gave him a Bronx cheer, mocking his fielding. I told the guys around me that’s a bad sign. First home game and the fans are already mocking him. You know Bradley saw and heard those cheers. He won’t forget. I didn’t like to see that, it’s already starting here. Very bad sign.

Overall, a great day. Loved seeing the Mariner legends, will always love those guys! Also, I trust Jack Z to make the right calls on this team, so all in all I am not worried, I know changes will come.

Thanks for stopping by and reading!!!

–Joe

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by | April 11, 2010 · 5:24 pm

Game Recap — 4/11/2010

I’ll just do a quick write-up since I doubt none of the other good guys want to talk about this one.  The M’s lost 9-2 today and finished their road trip 2-5.  Here’s a few quick bullet points for this ugly game.

  • Hero:  Chone Figgins.  He looked much better today and might start hitting the ball now.  There wasn’t much of a hero to this game but Figgins had 2 hits and an RBI.
  • Goat:  Ian Snell.  He sucked today, enough said.
  • Don’t judge Ian Snell by either of his starts this year.  He shut the A’s down pretty well but just about every ball was hit hard today.  I think he’s somewhere in between these two performances but we won’t know until he has a few more starts.  He was awful today.  I don’t know what that 88 mph pitch he was throwing was.  I hope that it’s not his fastball because if it is he’s going to have a long year.
  • Guti continues to be hot.  He had two hits and a few more great catches today.  Maybe the off-season made me forget how great he is in center field but he has been amazing to watch this week  and will be for the rest of the season.
  • Jose Lopez does not look good at the plate right now.  I can’t put my finger on what it is but he doesn’t look comfortable at all.  It’s probably just a slump but out of all the M’s players who are in a slump, he’s the one I’m most worried about.
  • Griffey’s bat looked slow the first few games but it’s looked a little better the past 3 games.  He was 1 for 3 today and just missed a home run in one of his outs.
  • If you want good news there actually is some.  Erik Bedard and Cliff Lee each threw 45 pitch bullpen sessions today.  They were both throwing hard and felt good.  Lee is expected back at the beginning of May and Bedard in mid-May if all goes according to plan. 

That’s about it for today.  The road trip is over and I think coming home will help this team.  I’m not very worried about them but I will be after a couple more weeks like this.  Opening day will be fun tomorrow and hopefully we go out and get a win.

Andrew

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by | April 10, 2010 · 8:49 pm

Game Recap – 4/10/2010

In my quest to tricking my fellow good guys into letting me cover each Felix start, I get to recap the Mariners second win of the season. 

For much of the game it looked as if it’d Seattle’s 5th straight loss.  The Mariners scored a run in the top of the first and then the offense went cold.  It didn’t go cold like it did in prior games though.  The Mariners outhit Texas all day long but they just couldn’t get runners across the plate.  Seattle had 12 hits on the day and a good share of those came before the 3-run ninth.  Baseball is a weird sport and the Mariners have been bad this week but luck hasn’t been on their side.  Their BABIP (batting average on balls in play) was way below average for the week and their were a few bad bounces in the field that hurt them.  I’m not making excuses for them but there’s statistical reason to believe things will get much better.

Anyway, the Mariners might not have had much of a chance in this game if it weren’t for King Felix.  He was fantastic today and if it weren’t for a Figgins throwing error, Felix might have only given up one run.  My favorite thing about watching Felix is that I never know which pitch will be his best on a given day.  Today I think it was his change-up.  His change came in at 86-88 mph and fell off the table when it reached the batter.  It was beautiful.  Another thing that stood out to me about this start was the way Felix handled Guerrero.  He used his two-seam fastball to tail in on the hands of Vladimir and then threw that change into the dirt.  He produced two strikeouts and a groundball to third from this.  Long live the King!

Despite this outing, the Mariners were still down by 2 heading into the 9th inning.  They scored 3 on a flurry of singles and pesky baseball.  Here’s exactly what happened:  single, walk, sacrifice bunt, single (run scored), single (run scored), single (run scored), double play.  It’s innings like this that explain why the Mariners, Angels, and A’s are described as “annoying teams”; there were no extra base hits in that inning, they just produced runs by playing simple baseball.  The singles were hit hard but watching single after single gets annoying when you’re opposing fans and it prolongs the inevitable agony more so than a quick 3 run homer. 

In the bottom of the 9th Aardsma looked very good in striking out the 1st and 3rd batter.  But the second hitter, Elvis Andrus, hit a rocket to right center.  Luckily, we have the best center fielder in the game.  Guti covered a ton of ground and jumped up against the wall to take away a home run from Andrus.  I could try to describe this more poetically but it wouldn’t do it justice; just go watch it if you haven’t seen it already (heck, go watch it if you have seen it already).  If he doesn’t make that catch who knows what happens in this game.  I’m glad that Franklin is on the Mariners and will be for quite a while.

Does this game take away my worries?  No, it was an ugly week (although, not as ugly as many people say) and we were dangerously close to being 1-5.  But, the way it stands now is that if we somehow get a win tomorrow we finish the road trip with a mediocre 3-4 record.  Not good but okay.  It’s not the end of the world if we lose either.  But let’s not worry about tomorrow until tomorrow.  Today was the type of game the Mariners will be playing all season and it was good to see them win. 

My hero/goat and a few other notes after the jump.  Continue reading →

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by | April 9, 2010 · 10:29 pm

Game Recap — 4/9/2010

An anatomy of two half innings: 

Top of the first, Mariners up, Colby Lewis on the mound.  Ichiro doubles to lead off, Figgins walks, they go to second and third on a wild pitch with Kotchman up.  Kotchman drives in Ichiro with a groundout, Figgins is at third with one out.  Bradley strikes out, Griffey flies out.  Mariners up 1-0.

Bottom of the sixth, Rangers at-bat, a tiring Jason Vargas on the mound.  Young grounds back to Vargas for a quick first out.  Josh Hamilton walks, then Vlad scorches a pitch on the outside corner for a double, scoring Hamilton.  Cruz singles to score Vlad, on another decent pitch.  Chris Davis gets an infield single when Kotchman dives and has the ball go off his arm and bounce into foul territory.  First and second, one out, Shawn Kelley in for Vargas.  Teagarden strikes out, but Arias sneaks a single past the diving Lopez and Wilson, scoring Davis.  Borbon flies out to end the inning.  4 runs in, Rangers up 5-1.

**********************************************

The first inning started exactly how the Mariners would love to start every game, with Ichiro and Figgy on 2nd and 3rd with no outs.  It’s the linchpin of the Mariners’ offense.  And really, they’d be pretty happy to start every game 1-0.  They should have gotten Figgins in, but it wasn’t a bad start.  In comparison, the Rangers got Hamilton on because he’s scary to pitch to, then they smoked a couple of tough pitches and had two runs in three batters.  Not real different from the Mariners’ first at that point.  They scored in drastically different ways, but there was only a run difference.  At that point in the sixth, luck kicked in for the Rangers, with a couple of weak hits to score the final two runs.

I don’t have a lot of point in this, except that those two half innings exemplify the current difference between the Rangers and Mariners.  They were similar innings, except that the Rangers had a couple of huge hits from the middle of the order with a runner on, and then the bottom of the order kept the inning alive for an extra couple runs.  The Mariners only hit of the first was Ichiro’s leadoff double, it took a lot of work and a wild pitch to score him, and then the middle of the order couldn’t come through to add on any runs.  Both pitchers threw similarly, well enough to win if they got a few runs or were facing a weak offense.  Unfortunately, both of those were the case for Lewis and neither was for Vargas.  Will it stay this way for the Mariners all season?  It shouldn’t.  They have good hitters who just aren’t hitting.  Still, without some major line-up changes, they’re not ever going to come close to what the Rangers can run out there.  Whether that will be the difference in the division remains to be seen.

There were some positives.  Vargas looked solid until the sixth, when he ran out of gas a little and the Rangers figured him out a little.  Before that, he looked pretty similar to Braden for the A’s on Tuesday: solid command, good change.  Franklin continues to swing the bat well.  He needs to be hitting higher in the order against righties and lefties.  Kotchman hit his homer farther than he’s probably ever hit a ball before.  I’m not convinced on him by any means, but you can see the potential for him to blossom into a threat.  He’s shown more than I expected, so far.  Sean White looked solid, although it didn’t really matter by then.  Franklin had a couple of excellent catches.  And that was the game.  Better luck tomorrow.  It’s still plenty early, but they could really use a win with Felix throwing.

Hero:  No one stands out, but I’ll give it to Franklin, as the only guy who looks like he’s in midseason form.

Goat:  Milton got the biggest suckfest at LL, so we’ll give it to him.  A double, or even just a single, in the first could have made it a different ballgame.

-Matthew

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by | April 8, 2010 · 3:11 pm

Game Recap – 4/8/2010

I will make this as short as possible, because frankly I am not sure how many folks actually watched the game (day game), and it was brutal to listen to and follow.

Doug Fister started the game and only went 4 innings, 96 pitches. That tells the story right there. 56 strikes, 40 balls, not many swings-and-misses. Oakland was able to put the ball in play and force the issue offensively. Now, Oakland has no power, it was a lot of singles and doubles, and running the bases (sounds like what the M’s would like to do…). Davis, Barton and Ellis did all the damage for Oakland…

The Mariners on the other hand struggled yet again offensively. Brett Anderson took a shutout into the 7th inning. (An aside: If you look at Fister’s and Anderson’s lines for the game, they are also identical, yet Anderson was much more effective. That speaks volumes to how bad the Mariners hitting is right now…) Tuiasosopo played well at 1B, had 2 hits and an RBI. That’s a GREAT day for a Mariner right now. Good for him, I like his bat in the M’s lineup. Hopefully Wak can fit him in more. Gutierrez and Sweeney had the other RBIs. I like what Guti is doing at the plate. Overall though the offense sucks right now at generating runs. Trying to tag Figgins up at 1B to 2B on a fly ball to right really shows the hand Wak is playing, and what he is saying to the team: I know we will struggle to score so Ichiro and Figgins must steal and tag up all the time or we’ll never score. That’s a tough spot to be in. Other teams know this and are very aware of the steals and tag-ups.

Hero: Matt Tuiasosopo. He had two hits, an RBi and played 1B well. Sounds like a good day. (Jesus Colome is a close second, 3 very solid innings out of the pen…)

Goat: Doug Fister. Gotta go more than 4 innings. We all know the bullpen will be (is?) over-worked, so Fister only going 4 really sucks.

There is nothing else to observe from this stinker. (I really want to be optimistic, but this game set me back a bit…)

–Joe

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by | April 8, 2010 · 2:16 pm

Game Recap – 4/7/2010

Well that sucked.

Seriously, that was hard to watch. The quick summary is Hyphen missed his spots a few times tonight, our offense was mediocre, and Oakland clawed back from 3 separate deficits to earn its second walk off victory in as many nights.

Baseball is a tough sport to follow for 162 games. We are attempting to do it here on this blog, and already I’m thinking this will take years off my life. In the NFL you play 16 regular season games, so losing a tough one can only happen once a week. Not the case in baseball, where there’s a game almost daily. This is good when trying to get past a tough loss like this one, but the point is, we have to pace ourselves as fans. It really is a marathon season.

That being said, these April games seem a little more important than usual because the last thing this team needs is to be 10 games below .500 when it finally gets healthy in June. Not a good sign when we can’t win with our 2 and 3 starter either, considering our 4 and 5 aren’t very promising.

This afternoon the M’s have a shot at salvaging a split in this opening series. It would be nice to walk away with a split, and pretty bad to lose 3 in a row to this team. I really don’t think Oakland is good, but you have to give credit to a team that makes the most of its hits, and capitalizes on its opportunities. I doubt this timely hitting can sustain the A’s all year, but for a few nights it has been their winning recipe.

Hero: Milton Bradley. I don’t care that some think he should have caught Suzuki’s game winner, the bottom line is Milton hit a 2 run dinger, his first hit as a Mariner, and when you hit home runs for this team, there’s a good chance it’s enough to earn our stud performer. He also had 2 nice catches in the field.

Goat: Rob Johnson. 0-3, 3 K’s, 1 passed ball, at least another 3 drops.

Some bullets:

  • Every time I watch a Mark Ellis at bat, he singles to right field.
  • For the second year in a row, the M’s have had back to back 1 run losses in games 2 and 3. Last year, Minnesota gave us the painful losses thanks to some Brandon Morrow implosions.
  • I don’t understand carrying Eric Byrnes, Ryan Langerhans, and Mike Sweeney. One of them should go.
  • The attendance for game 2 was 18,000. The night before it was 10,000. I can hardly blame Oakland fans though, considering the stadium is a dump and across the bridge is AT&T Park, which is a gem.
  • I thought Mark Lowe pitched well tonight. That slider he threw to strike out whoever it was flat out stank! (as Dave Niehaus would say)
  • Eric Chavez looks like Orlando Bloom.

    -Dan

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by | April 7, 2010 · 12:09 am

Mariner Recap – 4/6/2010

The idea that the season really starts with Game 2 is common with baseball fans and writers.  Opening day has all the ceremony and a couple of aces throwing (theoretically for some teams), but the next day brings a little more routine and Ian Snell vs. Dallas Braden.  Braden was excellent.  The first couple of innings, he didn’t seem like much, but the Mariners weren’t hitting him either.  By the third or so, he had them in-between on every pitch.  Not sure he can do that every game, but he was impressive, just one well-hit Franklin Gutierrez double away from a shut out.

I’m not quite sure what Ian Snell was.  I guess you take 6 innings, 1 run, 3 hits and 2 walks however you can get them, but he just makes me nervous.  Actually, it’s not so much that he makes me nervous, it’s that I feel no confidence when he’s on the mound.  It looked a little bit like smoke and mirrors today.  Maybe he’ll get better.  I’m not writing him off, and I’ll take that outing anytime.  The problem is that if he throws like that against a better offense, the results will not be anywhere near as good.  Can he improve?  I’m not holding my breath.  His stuff looked decent at times and very hittable at others.  I guess I’ll just be happy that he didn’t get crushed and not make any judgments until we see a few more outings.

Unfortunately, the offense was everything we feared it might be tonight.  They certainly ran into an unexpected buzz-saw in Braden, but without Ichi and Figgy on base as much, with Kotchman struggling against lefties, Bradley just struggling and nothing from the bottom of the order, well that’s pretty much everyone.  Guti had the lone good day, and it still took a balk and wild pitch to score him.  It won’t always be this bad, but we’re going to see a lot of these types of games.  Some will go the M’s way, some won’t.  No reason to panic, but anytime they want to trade for a big bat, go right ahead.

Hero: Ian Snell. It wasn’t very pretty, but you have to give credit to Snell, who pitched 6 innings, and only gave up 4 hits and 1 earned run.

Goat: The Offense. 5 hits in 10 innings won’t cut it. Guti had 2 of those hits so maybe he should be exempt.

Some bullets:

  • I told Andrew a couple of times Monday how natural I thought Jose Lopez looked at third, but tonight brought a few hiccups.  Still, he didn’t make any mistakes due to a lack of tools that I could see.  That spinning throw is something he’ll get better at.  No reason to worry, I’d say.
  • We definitely saw the value of Kotchman’s defense today.  He gave no signs of being able to hit lefties at all, but he dug out a couple of tough throws, and that short-hop play he made was excellent.  Still, amazing how much worse he looked against a lefty, rolling everything over for weak grounders.  Then his first at-bat against a righty, he smoked a line drive straight to Ellis.  Time to see if Sweeney can still play first on occasion?
  • Bradley looks extremely uncomfortable at the plate, like he’s guessing on everything.  He seemed to take better cuts later in at-bats, especially in the ninth.  I’m betting once he gets a couple of hits he’ll lock in pretty good, but I’ll be anxious until that happens.  The longer he goes without success, the better the chance of something bad happening.
  • Welcome to the big leagues, Kanekoa Texeira!  Looked nervous, but that slider/sinker/whatever is nasty.  He looked a lot better than Sean White, not that that’s saying much.  Getting out of a bases loaded one out situation is no small feat, especially in your debut, even if he put himself in the situation.  Too bad he couldn’t do it again.
  • Shawn Kelley and Mark Lowe, on the other hand.  I like those guys.  Kelley is a much better pitcher than Ian Snell right now.  Just not sure that would hold true if he moved to the rotation.

Game 3: Justin Duchsherer vs. Ryan Rowland-Smith, 7:05

-Matthew

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by | April 6, 2010 · 12:46 am

Game Recap — 4/5/2010

Thank God that baseball is back.  Halfway through the game I was sitting on the couch with my brother, each of us sipping a Mexican Coke and enjoying a baseball game.  There are times in life when you know you’re at the right place and that was one of those times.  I can’t remember the last time I was able to watch opening day with my brother and, in a life where it’s vital to cherish the little things, this was one small event that I am very grateful for.

On to the recap.  The Mariners were in control for most of this game.  They played like they will for most of the year: solid pitching, good defense, and tacking on a run here and there.  For most of this game the pitching was more than solid.  Felix’s line isn’t extremely pretty but take away some bad pitches from Sean White and it would be much better.  (More on Sean White later.)  Felix was still dominating, his control just wasn’t quite where it needed to be.  He got a ridiculous amount of ground ball outs, it’s hard to remember a fly ball.  As for his control, I’m not too worried.  The umpire tonight was bad (apparently he didn’t know what  low strike was) and Felix got a little tired in the later innings.  As the King gets stretched out more and more, his command will get better.  In the 6th and 7th innings he started leaving the ball up in the zone, this is what pitchers do when they’re tired, but for the most part he missed down in the zone.  This is a good sign and will be vital against Texas next time out.

The end of Felix’s outing brought us to Sean White.  Let me just say that I’m not a Sean White fan.  He benefited from a good deal of luck last year, his FIP was 2 runs higher than his ERA.  Wak doesn’t feel the same as I do about Sean White though and therefore he put him in after Felix.  I would’ve put in League, Lowe, or maybe even Sean Kelley but that didn’t happen.  Maybe White will prove me, and other skeptics, wrong this year but if he doesn’t I’ll be anxious to see what Wak does with him in the bullpen.  Thankfully, we won this game so I don’t have to be too upset with Sean White but if he keeps costing Felix wins I will get angrier.  For now, he’s okay.

As for the other two pitchers, I was impressed.  League was what I expected.  After that Jack Wilson error I got a little nervous but he produced another ground ball that turned into a double play.  I’m excited to see League throughout this year.  Aardsma did what he did last year.  I’ve always been on the fence about Aardsma but I do like that he comes right after hitters.  He was good tonight.

The offense tonight was about what I expect for the season.  Score a run here, score a run there and then what do you know, we end up with 5 runs in a game.  This team is way more patient than last years.  I’m pretty sure we matched the amount of walks we had last year in one game (sarcasm).  It will be nice to see Figgins, Kotchman, Bradley paired with Griffey give this team a patient approach. 

The stolen bases were fun and something I expect to see a lot of.  Speed is an underrated aspect of baseball and speed is something we have. 

Hero: Casey Kotchman. He was awesome tonight. I’m a Kotchman believer and one of the few who seem to think he will produce at a higher level this year. I like him batting third in the order and am excited to see what he can do this year. The fact that he got 4 RBI and a game winning hit in his first Mariner game is pretty cool.

Goat: Sean White. I didn’t understand White being the first reliever to pitch this year, especially considering it was the 7th inning and he was entering a jam. Everyone knows how lucky White got last year on balls in play, and his inability to strike guys out scares me. Tonight’s performance confirmed my fears of White this year.

A few more quick notes after the jump. Continue reading →

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