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Tigers lost.
Orioles lost.
Yankees lost.
Jays lost ... well, are losing through eight.
... so even though the M's get stifled in their attempt to catch Baltimore ... Saturday night works out not much differently than a Thursday off for everybody. With 14 games left to play, the M's have to catch up +3 games on Toronto or Baltimore, whichever plays worst. Hopefully that will be Toronto, bein' as they're here Monday.
FanGraphs works this out to a 24% chance of postseason play for the M's, but ... it's pretty much the same thing as saying there is a 24% chance the M's will play well. 7-and-7 isn't going to make the playoffs, and it shouldn't.
Sudden thought. The Astros didn't lose ...
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POST MORTEM, Dept.
The "Happy Zeus Day" thread has several hundred Shouts. 'ave at them.
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WE DIDN'T START THE FIERS
Amigos were watching on the GameCast and wanted to know, Were the M's bad or was Fiers good. Most assuredly the latter. Most decent starting pitchers have a "See You Later" mode, for exactly the same reason that any NBA scorer can get 25 points on a given night.
Fiers was using a Mike Marshall 33-33-33 split. He threw his fastball where he wanted, rarely to catch the circle over the plate, never to catch the plate on 2-0. He threw 30 fastballs, 30 fadeaway changeups, and 30 slowwwwwww curves, 30 +/- 4 on each of them. He'd have locked down the Maris-Mantle Yankees.
Which is why offense is unpredictable. You get all these slogans like "Speed Never Slumps" and "Good Pitching Beats Good Hitting" and "Game of Inches" and yada yada yada, precisely because if the other guy throws great, never gives you anything, you're going to be in a 2-1 game.
That was the way Saturday. And it's why all teams lose 60. You can't get to this point, two weeks left, and then assume you'll just go out and win 14 in a row. Baseball is a weird sport; you don't control your fate as much as you do in chess or football or something.
One a' those games.
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LOSE THE BATTLE, WIN THE WAR Dept.
James Paxton not only had a perfect game through five ... if there was a grade point > 4.0, you'd have given him that instead. About 4.4, I'd say.
He threw the 97 heater to the inner third at will. Then he went away with it. Then he went up with it. He tossed a few changes and "foshballs," always down out of the zone. His curve was Kershaw-like and he enjoyed using it on 1-0 counts. If you're keeping count, he averaged 97.5 MPH on 66 fastballs -- located fastballs. He threw 64 strikes and 31 balls; I'd say about 25 of the balls were "good misses," balls that the Astros had a tough time deciding on, or pitches that served a purpose in terms of the next pitch. Man, it looked good.
This was a predictable ace, a guy who was routinely butchering star hitters. If he threw these pitches next year he'd have a 1+ ERA over thirty starts. And the funny thing is, he's got upside YET. He's not using the spike curve to its utmost.
Here is the Brooks Baseball game log, fo yo convenience. So, yeah. Like BPJ said in the Shout Box, if Taijuan keeps gathering his energy (his front shoulder blade) to his right hip, and coming down the tube, we get to play the last two weeks with Felix in the 4 slot.
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Three games out,
Dr D
Fiers was throwing a lot of tempting pitches out of the zone and caught the Ms fishing for heaters. One of the most frustrating games to watch this year especially after they failed with the same approach yesterday.
Against junkballers like this that nibble with their fastballs, the hitters need to sit back on the ball and chill out. Everyone is too tense with pressure and getting greedy.