by | April 27, 2010 · 11:19 pm

Huskies Practice Report – 4/27

It was a cold and windy day through most of practice today.  They must have been the winds of change, as Mark Emmert announced his resignation today (sorry I couldn’t help but put a terrible ‘winds of change’ line in).  The sun did end up poking through towards the end and gave me hope that the spring game on Friday won’t be absolutely freezing.  The team was in shorts, shoulder pads, and helmets today.  This was the shortest practice of the spring and there isn’t a ton to report.  Thursday will be another short one as they prepare for the Spring game on Friday night. 

There are no new injuries to report.  Sadly, it looks as if Jesse Callier will be out for the game on Friday.  I did see him do some running today which is a good sign but there is no reason to rush him back.  Even with the injury, Callier had a great spring and has set himself up to be in the rotation next year. 

Jermaine Kearse gave everyone a scare while going up for a deep ball from Locker and coming down grasping his ankle.  I thought that he broke his ankle but after laying on the ground for a minute he got up and walked off.  Turns out he just tweaked his ankle. 

As I mentioned, there isn’t a lot to report from this practice.  Jake was good.  Kearse was good.  Johnson was good (unlike his cross-town rival, Rob).  The defense did do a better job against the run today but struggled a little more against the pass.  Izbicki made a great, diving catch and impressed me all day.  Middleton got yelled at all day.  Backup defensive ends, De’Shon Matthews and Peter Follmer, made back-to-back sacks in the scrimmage portion.  They’ve each grown this spring.

A few more notes about practice and the resignation of Mark Emmert after the jump. Continue reading →

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by | April 26, 2010 · 4:07 pm

Series Preview- M’s vs. Royals 4/26-4/28

The baseball gods reward the Mariners for a difficult weekend in Chicago with a trip to Kansas City.  The Royals are 7-11 on the year and are being carried offensively by Jose Guillen and Scott Podsednik, which can’t last.  The pitching match-ups aren’t great, but this is a series the Mariners should win.

Who’d You Rather Have

C:  M’s Rob Johnson    KC Kendall

1B:  M’s Kotchman    KC Billy Butler.  This one is tough.  Kotchman is having the better season so far and is better with the glove, but Butler hasn’t been terrible, was better last year, and will likely be better going forward.  I usually pick the guy I’d rather have for the series, so I’ll go with Kotchman, but if I had the chance to trade Kotch for Butler, I’d do it real fast.

2B:  M’s Figgins    KC Alberto Callaspo.  It’d be really nice if Figgins would start hitting, though.

3B:  M’s Lopez    KC Alex Gordon.  Lopez finally started hitting a tiny bit.  Gordon is getting on base some but not hitting much.  From my distant vantage point, he’s looking more and more like a huge bust.

SS:  M’s Wilson    KC Yuniesky Betancourt.  Hehe.

LF:  M’s Bradley    KC Podsednik.  Here’s where I’m going to be a homer and go against what I said about the first basemen above.  Podsednik is hitting like crazy, but I’ll still take Bradley.

CF:  M’s Guti    KC Mitch Maier.  This one’s really close though.

RF:  M’s Ichiro    KC David DeJesus

DH:  M’s Griffey    KC Jose Guillen.  Guillen’s bat is exactly what we could use right now: a guy on an incredible hot streak who’s hitting home runs.   Extremely unlikely to last, but I’d be happy with a series like that from anyone on the Mariners.

That’s 8-1 Mariners, but three spots are close due to either two guys playing pretty well (first), one guy hitting incredibly and his counterpart slumping (left), or a huge battle of suckiness (catcher).  Know what doesn’t suck?  The Beach House album I’m listening to.

Pitching Match-ups

Monday:  M’s Felix  vs. KC Kyle Davies.  Unless Halladay gets traded back into the AL, I won’t be picking against Felix all year.  For the only guy close, see below.

Tuesday:  M’s Snell  vs. KC Zach Greinke.  Greinke hasn’t been quite as dominating yet as he was last year, but that doesn’t mean much.  Bad match-up here.  Snell needs to be pretty excellent to avoid the bullpen, from the sounds of it.

Wednesday:  M’s RRS  vs. KC Gil Meche.  Meche has been pretty bad so far, so hopefully he’ll keep that up, but I don’t feel good about RRS at all.

Closer:  M’s Aardsma  vs. KC Joakim Soria

That’s 3-1 Royals.  Two of the starting match-ups look as lopsided as they could get, and anything could happen in the third.  I’m hoping for two out of three, and if we somehow beat Greinke, that’ll be pretty alright. 

In other news, Lee apparently was great in his rehab start in Tacoma yesterday, and will make his M’s debut Friday.  Also, the Phillies signed Ryan Howard for 5 years and $125 million today.  I’m no expert, but that doesn’t seem like it’ll end well. 

Enjoy the series!

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by | April 26, 2010 · 10:10 am

Huskies to Play a Thursday Night Game

The Husky football team is on the verge of playing its spring football game this Friday night and this apparently won’t be the last time they on a weekday this year.  The school has announced that they are moving their final home game, against UCLA, to Thursday, November 18th.  The game will be televised nationally on ESPN.  This game has several implications:  It will be senior night (Jake Locker’s last home game), Rick Neuheisel’s return to Husky Stadium, and a possible bowl game on the line (we can hope).

I’m excited about this.  I see the downsides to it and I tend to be more of a traditionalist in that I like my football on Saturday, but there are some real positives to this.  Some of those are:

  • The program is on the up-swing and the more attention we get the better. 
  • If the team had some success throughout the season that means Jake Locker’s Heisman campaign is probably in full force.  With this game on national TV, everyone will get a chance to see what Jake can do.  This should only help his Heisman chances (unless he has a bad game).
  • The atmosphere should be fun.  Any game that’s on national TV usually has a little different atmosphere which adds to the excitement.  The crowd should be fired and that does help the team.
  • ESPN helps with recruiting.  Players want to play on the biggest stage and ESPN is that right now (as much as I don’t really think it should be).

I’m looking forward to this.  What do you think?

Andrew

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by | April 25, 2010 · 3:33 pm

Game Recap 4/25 — White Sox 3 M’s 2

Those were three tough losses in a row.  It’s easy to panic and over-react after a series like that, but the series told us nothing about the Mariner’s we didn’t know already.  The defense was good to excellent, even with Tui at short most of the series.  RRS was okay but not great.  Fister and Vargas were better than expected but not dominant.  The bullpen had a rough series, taking the loss in each game, but they’re not any different than what we thought they were: a group of sometimes dominant guys who occasionally get lit up or lose their command.  That’s pretty much every good but not incredible bullpen.  If they blow every lead the next two series too, then it’s trouble.

Unless the Mariners decide they don’t like the team they’ve assembled all of a sudden, those pieces are going to remain.  They were the focal point of the rebuild: excellent defense, solid starting pitching designed to take advantage of Safeco and the defense, and a potentially shut-down bullpen.  So far, so good, the bullpen’s last three games not withstanding.

The offense has been the concern, and continues to be.  The team is scoring runs better than it did the first week, but it’s short on threats.  A quick scan through the roster:  two guys are producing better than expected, Guti and Kotchman.  Two guys are hitting decently, within shouting distance of what was expected, Ichiro and Wilson.  The catching duo is about where we feared they would be, which isn’t good.  Figgins and Lopez are below what was expected, but show no real reason to worry yet.  Bradley’s in the same boat, with a little more worry, given his combination of age and injuries on top of his 2009 season and low contact rates this year.  Not much was expected of Griffey (and Sweeney) by those not with the team, but they’ve done even less.  The bench has done nothing.

So, we have mostly a bunch of guys who aren’t performing as expected, with Franklin and Kotchman carrying the team (with occasional help from Ichiro and Lopez).  They should still get better, but I’m not sure they’ll be good enough even then.  I already made my case this week for what they should do: lose Sweeney and/or the seventh reliever, find a righty left fielder/1B to play the majority of the time, shift Bradley to DH the majority of the time.  That’s not likely to happen for a bit still, if at all.  Getting Jack Hannahan back will help with the versatility issues, so that we can use a pinch-hitter or -runner for someone other than the catcher on nights like tonight.  That’s not a difference maker, though.

On the bright side, this team is one game below .500 and 2 and a half out of first.  They play the Royals next and get Cliff Lee back on Friday.  Things could be worse.  If they win this series, they’re back at .500 or better when Lee comes back, which is all we were hoping for at the start of the month.

Hero: Franklin, because home runs are great.  Vargas was good too.

Goat: League.  Holding them without a run in the 8th would have been huge.  Or they might have just lost it in the 9th.

-Matthew

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by | April 24, 2010 · 6:58 pm

Saturday Recap (Huskies and Mariners)

I didn’t make it to the scrimmage at Husky Stadium today and I didn’t feel like devoting a full post to the Mariners loss so I’ll just combine the two keep things brief. 

First, the Huskies.  It should come as no surprise that the freshman running back, Deontae Cooper, was the star of the day.  He has been the Huskies best running back the entire spring (Chris Polk is sitting out with a shoulder injury).  Today he rushed 114 yards and 2 touchdowns on 12 carries.  The backup running back job won’t be decided until the start of the season but Cooper has the early edge in my opinion.  His style is similar to Polk’s in that he’s a downhill runner. 

Locker had a decent day in ugly conditions.  The backups appeared to struggle but sometimes stats don’t tell the whole story. 

Jesse Callier, Nate Fellner, and Alameda Ta’amu sat out today.  Unfortunately, Callier may be out for the rest of the spring.  He also has impressed this spring.

Now, for the Mariners.  I was okay with last nights loss because they really didn’t deserve to win that game.  Today was a little different.  I don’t get to up and down with my emotions throughout a baseball season but today would have been a nice game to have.  The M’s fought back and, to their credit, got 2 runs off a pretty good pitcher, Jenks, in the 9th.  Then, Aardsma came in and showed why some people don’t want him to be our closer.  I think he threw more fastballs down the middle than Fister threw all game.  Granted, Aardsma throws harder than Fister but he doesn’t get a ton of movement and was facing major league hitters.  Just because you throw hard doesn’t mean you don’t have to locate your fastball.  He didn’t and he got beat.  I think he’ll be okay going forward and I’m not jumping ship yet but he scares me and will continue to scare me no matter how many saves he gets.

Hero:  Doug Fister.  Yep, he was fantastic again.  He needs to be in the rotation.  Right now he looks like Greg Maddux.  Seriously.  He’s throwing his fastball a ton and why not?  He’s putting his fastball exactly where he wants it and is getting some good left to right action on it.  Right now that’s a well above average pitch. 

Goat:  David Aardsma.  Read the paragraph above.  He was pretty awful.

  • After I called for Wak to move Lopez out of the clean-up spot the other night he’s done some good things.  I’m still not crazy about him there but at least he’s had a few decent at-bats.
  • The play where Byrnes kept the ball in the ball park caused a mix of emotions.  On one hand I’m thinking, dang it Byrnes , why didn’t you just catch it.  On the other hand, that was an incredible play just to reach the ball.  He was high on that fence and did save a run.  All in all, it was a good play but really weird.
  • I hope Milton Bradley comes back soon.
  • I saw Byrnes drop more F-bombs today than I’ve said in my life.  He’s annoying but at least he cares.  He did get screwed in the 9th inning when he beat out the throw to first but was called out.  That really wasn’t very close.
  • Don’t get too down about this.  There is another game tomorrow.  And Cliff Lee has a rehab start in Tacoma! Take the good with the bad, things are still looking up in Mariner country.
  • Casey Kotchman keeps hitting the ball hard.  That double in the 9th was smoked.

That’s it for today!  Thanks for reading.

Andrew

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by | April 24, 2010 · 11:03 am

Game Recap — 4/23/2010

When the Mariners score 6 runs, they are usually going to win. Maybe that’s what made last night’s loss so hard to swallow. Or maybe it was the the fashion in which they lost, giving up a walk-off homer to Andruw Jones. Or maybe it was especially difficult given how the A’s, Rangers, and Angels all won their games. Either way, that game really put me in a bad mood. Just ask my wife…So on that note, let’s review some quick points and move on!

  • Jose Lopez didn’t just hit his first HR of the year, he hit his first career grand slam. Congrats Jose.
  • Milton Bradley is missed. It doesn’t take long to get tired of seeing Eric Byrnes in his spot.
  • That last pitch by Mark Lowe was an absolute meat ball. I would have kept challenging Jones with 98 mph heat, but it’s all hindsight. I thought Lowe had him struck out on the 2-2 slider he threw. Oh well.
  • Jack Wilson is one injury prone dude. I mean really, he nearly breaks his finger on a ground ball. Thankfully x-rays were negative.
  • Hey Sean White, you suck. Hey Wak, why do you have a crush on him? I understand White had not technically given up a run all year, but he is shaky every time, and really shouldn’t ever pitch in a game we are leading. That needs to be Brandon League’s spot. That’s my opinion anyway.
  • Tui can’t field and strikes out a lot. I guess that’s to be expected for a young guy, but you have to wonder if he is cut out to be the utility guy on this team. I like him on the team, but he can’t play any position well, other than maybe first base, let alone fill in at multiple spots. Of course I’m a little biased because I have flashbacks of yelling “Tui sucks” throughout my high school career when Bothell was busy bruising Woodinville. (Quick shout out to Rocky Jorgensen and his 80 yard TD return in 2002. He stiff armed Tui running down the sideline to end the first half. It was like James Harrison in the Super Bowl.)

    Hero: Jose Lopez. His first career grand slam got Seattle back in the game, and it was nice seeing him pumped up in the dugout. I especially liked that he hit it off Putz, because it reminded me that we traded him for Guti. That always puts a smile on my face. I also really like how Jose has played this year. I figured getting rid of Yuni would be a positive thing for Lopey and his so-so work ethic, and it looks like it has been.

    Goat: Mark Lowe. It’s tough to single out Lowe as the reason we lost, and I could give it to Kotchman for his 0-4 performance, but Lowe did give up the walk-off to Jones, and that usually makes you the goat, at least for a day.

    I like our chances today with Fister on the mound against Freddie Garcia. Hard to believe he is still pitching! The M’s need to start winning some road games, and let’s hope it starts today.

    -Dan

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    by | April 23, 2010 · 3:46 pm

    Series Preview- M’s vs. White Sox 4/23-4/25

    While picked by some to win the AL Central, the White Sox are struggling so far, at 5-11.  They’re not hitting, and not pitching terribly well either.  With Mariners teams of old, this would be the time when our starters would fall apart and the White Sox would get hot all at the same time, and we’d get swept.  I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I guess we’ll consider this a minor litmus test.

    Who’d You Rather Have

    (As usual, tonight’s line-ups, with my pick between the two players in BOLD)

    C:  M’s Rob Johnson    CWS Donny Lucy.  I have never heard of Donny Lucy in my life.  Pierzynski is the usual guy, but I’m not sure I’d even take him over Ro-Jo, which is saying something.

    1B:  M’s  Casey Kotchman    CWS Paul Konerko.  I guess this one’s kind of close, right this second.  Konerko has 5 home runs, which is nice, but Kotchman has 3 and is hitting a little better overall.  Actually, they’re both decent so far, but I’ll take Kotchy for his glove and left-handedness.  Check again in two months.

    2B:  M’s Chone Figgins    CWS Gordon Beckham.  Ooh boy.  This is tough.  Love Beckham, but he’s off to a slow start.  Sophomore slump?

    3B:  M’s Jose Lopez    CWS Jayson Nix

    SS:  M’s Jack Wilson    CWS Alexei Ramirez.  Going past this series, I’d think about Ramirez, but right now I love Jack’s glove and he somehow has a hot bat.

    LF:  M’s Eric Byrnes    CWS Andruw Jones. Good year so far for Jones.  I’d take Bradley over him though.  Hopefully he’s back tomorrow.

    CF:  M’s Franklin Gutierrez    CWS Alexis Rios

    RF:  M’s Ichiro    CWS Carlos Quentin

    DH:  M’s Griffey    CWS Juan Pierre.  Wow.  I mean, really, wow.  This has to be the worst DH matchup ever. 

    I feel like a homer but that’s 8-1 Mariners.  Catcher and short are close to toss-ups, but Chicago has a mediocre line up that’s not hitting at all yet.  I like Quentin and Beckham, but not better than Figgy and Ichi. 

    Pitching Match-ups

    Friday:  M’s RRS    CWS Gavin Floyd.  I’m not actually crazy about either of these guys.  RRS is throwing a little better so far.

    Saturday:  M’s Doug Fister   CWS Freddy Garcia.  I have no idea what to expect out of Freddy, but oh, the memories!

    Sunday:  M’s Jason Vargas    CWS John Danks.  Matchup of young lefties.  Unfortunately, there’s is a lot better than ours.

    Closer:  M’s David Aardsma    CWS J. J. Putz.  Both have been okay this year.  Aardsma’s been a little better, and was better last year. Again, oh, the memories!

    3-1 M’s on the pitching, but our starters are a bad outing away from changing that in a hurry. 

    I’m not totally confident in this team yet, but the White Sox don’t really scare me either.  I think the M’s win the series, but don’t sweep.  Everybody have a good weekend!

    -Matthew

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    by | April 23, 2010 · 12:24 pm

    The 24-Man Roster

    The Mariners come out of a 7-2 home stand tied for the division lead.  The pitching looks excellent and gets Cliff Lee in a week, and the offense has been better.  Still this team just doesn’t look right.  Everyone agrees it could use another big bat or two or three.  Most people agree that Mike Sweeney at this point isn’t a good fit.  Some agree that going back to the 6-man bullpen seems like a good move now. 

    No one likes roster analysis more than a Seattle-area sports blogger, so let’s see if we can figure out the mess and find room for some more offense not named Adrian Gonzalez or Prince Fielder!

    The Definites

    1. In the lineup, 2B, SS, 3B, CF, and RF are not going to be changing soon.  Hanley Ramirez instead of Jack Wilson at short would be great, but it’s not going to happen.  There are incredibly few shortstops around, and it’s incredibly unlikely the Mariners would try to get one when there are easier places to upgrade.  It’s possible Lopez could still be traded, especially in a deal for a big bat, but that’s not likely to happen for at least another month or two, if at all.  The rest of these spots are manned by definite assets.
    2. One pitcher will leave the rotation when Cliff Lee comes back on (hopefully) April 30th.  It’s possible they juggle things around and wait to make the move until a few days later, so they can see everyone throw again, but one pitcher out of Fister, Vargas, Snell, and RRS will be out of the rotation sooner than later.
    3. Milton Bradley will play somewhere, preferably more at DH to help hold off minor injuries like the one with which he is currently out.
    4. There’s not much, if any, offensive help ready in the minors.  Michael Saunders might come up later, but from what I’ve heard he’s still working on his swing and not looking too great right now.  Someone else could certainly make an appearance at some point, but there’s no one likely to provide the offensive spark this team will likely need at some point.
    5. Jack Hannahan will almost surely rejoin the team once he’s done with some rehab time in Tacoma. Continue reading →

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