PROPS TO GEOFF BAKER who, though he has predicted 90-100 losses all spring long, sagely declined to pile on after a nauseating blowout extended the losing streak to five:
Despite how it may feel, the Mariners lost only one game tonight. It doesn't count for 10 losses, though some of those who spent money on tickets might want it to as a punitive measure.
That'll do for us too. Except:
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SLOPS TO THE HR RATE, sitting at 2 homers in 7 games. After eight games, the M's should have at least 6 homers, so four tonight and we're fine.
This particular stat is the one Dr. D sends out to a specialist. Like a patient who's healthy except for one dark spot on the lung, the Mariners would be fine if only they didn't finish last in the AL in homers.
We need those results back fast, Jack. And care to leak in the media a little hint about what Arizona wants for Upton?
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PROPS TO JACK ZDURIENCIK, who has walked the long way around the block to field three All-Star starting pitchers in this rotation.
Earl's Seventh Law: momentum is only as good as that night's starting pitcher. Win a couple, with one of the Big Three scheduled the next night, and the fever will break.
But not until.
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SLOPS TO CHONE, now at 31 plate appearances without a walk. New poster jjellison is keeping score for us. :fistbump:
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PROPS TO JACK WILSON, who pulled himself from the game after throwing away Felix' gem on him.
My basic reaction to Wilson is not annoyance. It's deeeeeep sympathy.
It is evidently true that he "broke code" by pulling himself from the game, as Milton Bradley did last year. But this kind of situation can be a lot more complicated than "you got to man up out there."
There are times when it is best to acknowledge that you need to leave. There are times when quitting is the right thing to do.
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I've been playing basketball on the streets of Tacoma, and found myself suddenly on the wrong side of a 7-1 blowout, game to 11 or 15 by ones, and thirty brothers are standing around the sides yelling, "Get off the court. Get off the court!"
What do you do then: start arguing you have the right to be there? And let them fast-break dunk the last five points to show you're not a quitter? And maybe get your butt kicked when you walk to your car?
Your mistake was being there (and accepting the teammates you wound up with!). You rectify the mistake by leaving.
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Ken Griffey Jr. last year, had he insisted on staying with the Mariners and insisted on staying in the lineup, would that have been cool?
His mistake was being there in the first place. He rectified it.
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When a starting pitcher's arm is hurting and he refuses to tell his manager how bad it is, is that courageous or is that stupid? The line is blurred.
If a reliever is hung over, and he knows that he's going to blow the game if he takes the mound, should he tell his manager that, or should he "cowboy up"? Is it macho we're after or intelligence?
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Certainly in chess, we resign. Continuing to play out an awkward and painful mismatch, going through the charade of "battling," that is what would be pathetic. Not quitting.
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When Mike Schmidt retired in the middle of his age-39 season, was that cool or uncool?
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When Carl Lewis butchered the National Anthem, should he have finished the song to everybody's acute pain, or smiled halfway through, waved, and said "Thanks y'all. God Bless America!"?
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There was a looonnnnnnng, long time that a starting pitcher was "bailing on his team" if he'd thrown 140 pitches and didn't want the ball in the 9th. Dick Williams pulled this "coward" card on Mark Langston a lot.
Nolan Ryan is trying to revive the practice, but he's kind of lost his audience on it.
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When the rosters expanded to 40, on the road, Earl used to let a bench bat "play SS" and take Mark Belanger's first AB -- then he'd sub Belanger in, in the bottom of the inning. Belanger hated Weaver's guts for it. Earl did not accept this. "He was too emotional to remember what was best for the team," Earl sniffed.
Jack Wilson remembered what was best for the team: a different guy playing second. He shouldn't have been on the court, so he got off it. Probably fifty years from now, that will be considered admirable.
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There are times when it is intelligent to get off the court.
Granted, you're supposed to let your manager make this call. But that's what Dick Williams told Mark Langston...
Wilson should have gone to Wedge (which, I suppose, he actually did). We're not justifying him; we're sympathizing with him.
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PROPS TO ERIC WEDGE who did, obviously, do a great job of putting Wilson back into a warrior mindset.
DR's R/X: Brendan Ryan can play second base. Dr. D would simply put Wilson at SS and Ryan at 2B. ... so Ryan has to move back when Ackley gets here. So what?
PROPS TO SPEC who has pointed out the handful of equally-decent infielders the Mariners have. Failing a Wilson SS / Ryan 2B fix ... well, I wanted to see Luis Rodriguez anyway. And you know what? I like Adam Kennedy real well, too. Lefty bat, likes to hit, with his bat and with his fists.
I'd be perfectly happy to give Wilson his change of scenery, rotate the other 4 guys through 3 spots, and wait for Ackley.
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PROPS TO THE HUSTLE BOARD, which, incredibly, racked up another 166 pitches seen, in a blowout loss. (The M's threw 174 in giving up 12 runs.)
We don't say that the Hustle Board wins games (all by itself, with no homers among the TTO's). We do say that it's nice to see some hitters trying to take an idea up to the plate.
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Cheers,
Dr D
It looks like the offense will be painful to watch this year because while we are taking a lot of pitches (good) we aren't capable of doing real damage when we get into favorable counts. The Mariners were absolutely mulched by an average pitcher last night who did not have his best stuff. This team is patient but we don't do much damage when we get our pitch.
I wonder how long it will take for teams to begin pounding the strikezone against the Mariners.
Sympathetic or not, if a player does not believe he's good enough to play, you can't win with him. If that's the case, then Best case for Wilson is with another team or out of baseball. Which is sad because I like Wilson, but if a player's got no fight, you can't win with him.
while we are taking a lot of pitches (good) we aren't capable of doing real damage when we get into favorable counts
Well said etown...that's my take too.
I think that a home opener loss where the team falls behind 12 to whatever early, with clubhouse issues surfacing before the fans ever arrived, is a harbinger of a very, very tough season. Small sample size, yes. Could turn out to be a blip on the radar. Doc blew me off when I questioned his sanguine analysis of the first two games. Hey, he knows more than I will ever forget. Who am I, anyway? Just a bloke who sees what he sees and says what he sees. But it wouldn't be so easy to blow me off if I had posted the same thing after last night's game. Instead, I was saying it after the team had won it's first two games.
In the end, he may well be right, and me wrong. But that's not what my eyes told me from the very first game of the season. My eyes told me, this team is going to be nearly as bad offensively as the one last year. My eyes told me the bullpen looked very shaky, as expected. Add that up and you have a starting rotation that feels like if it gives up two runs their goose is cooked.
I sincerly hope I'm wrong, and I DO agree with Doc that 2-5 does not a season make or break. What bothers me is what my eyes see.
Re: Jack Wilson, I agree with you on this one, Doc. To me J-Wil was BEING a team player, at least in the way HE thought about it. I think he was probably shocked and deeply hurt that the manager characterized it as quitting on the team. At least Wilson had the grace to not stir things up any further to argue the point. He swallowed his pride and hurt, and trotted out and told the press he's sorry he did what he did, that he understood that it came across like quitting on the team. Total class, unlike how Figgins handled things last year.
Hopefully Wedge will have made his point and everyone can put it behind them.
Meanwhile, this offense is not AS bad as it looks...but in my view it's NEARLY as bad as it looks.
Which is why you might sometimes compliment a guy as you fire him ....
I think Wilson's gig is just that he wants to play SS, and that his spirit would un-break under those circumstances. But yeah. The M's have all they need with Adam Kennedy at 2B and Luis Rodriguez backing everybody up.
Maybe we need an office pool on the date of demise?
Good last line...
Well, their team OPS+ is 75, whereas last year's historic train wreck was 79. A pathetic offense registers 85. How close to 75 are they going to finish?
Let's hope they can get up in the 85 to 90 range before too long, or even WITH the magnificent possibilities of the rotation we are staring at another train wreck of a season. I sure hope so. My chest is already awfully sore from all the hair being ripped out. I don't know how much more I have left!
I'd just like to say in advance that Ichiro's decision to drop a push bunt in the 7th inning tonight with the tying run at third base was just incredibly unmanful and ill-advised. DREADFUL move by Ichiro...dreadful...dreadful weak-minded thing to do. Wow.
I am declaring Cust a complete and total write-off at this point. Not because of the small sample of statistics he has to date, but because of the template and the guys in the line-up around him.
As a complimentary player, he might still have some utility, but as the clean-up hitter for a lousy team, he's dead meat walking. He'll still draw a few walks, but aside from when he (rarely) makes contact, producing the occasional solo homer, Cust is going to get abused by the shift, murdered by left handed pitchers in every crucial situation late in close games, pitched around with a base open, and in the way when he's actually on base and someone behind him by utter miracle gets a hit in the gap somewhere.
Cust is useless to Seattle. A complete and total write-off.