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WOW! What an improvement. Great job, and thanks!
Mariners 4, Orioles 3 (one)
PROPS TO FRIDAY the 13TH:
On Friday the 13th, the Cleveland Indians refuted Brandon League's pitch selection by splashing three XBH's the other way off his outside FB's.
The walkoff 5-4 loss dropped the M's back to their low-water mark, 16-and-23. They were then rained out for two days, in case they hadn't noticed what had happened. Seattle blogs had. Go check the archives 'round the 'sphere that weekend :- )
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The M's responded by getting off the canvas and goin' to the body like nobody ya ever seen.
Fortunately for you, Michael Pineda was in the American League, not in AAA, and he was the man pitching the next game. His line that Monday was 7 3 0 0 0 0 7. The game began:
- Span popup
- Plouffe strikeout swinging
- Kubel strikeout swinging
- Morneau strikeout swinging
- Cuddyer fly out
- Delmon Young strikeout swinging
The M's win probability was never negative in that game, the walkoff losses were forgotten inside of 6 hitters, and they have ripped off 11 wins and 3 losses since the Friday the 13th gutpunch.
Like Earl said, momentum is as good as that day's starting pitcher. They don't call them "Stoppers" for nothin'.
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PROPS TO FIGGINS BATTING 8th:
Geoff Baker likes to represent himself as not caring much whether the Mariners win or lose.
This is belied by the fact that he is the only writer who will risk the Mariners' ire in challenging them to do the right thing. Changing a batting order, acquiring a bat, getting rid of an anchor, if it is holding the M's back, the Times is relentless. This gusto is not, IMO, driven exclusively by journalistic integrity.
SSI suspects that the Times' full-court press played a role in the fact that the Mariners jumped out to an early lead on Monday.
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Brendan Ryan, hitting 2nd, will get one more PA than Chone Figgins in 66% of all games, including Monday's.
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One or two of the defensive plays that Figgins botched were understandable. But that two-bouncer that hit him on the thumb of his mitt? That one was about as bad as any play we've seen in baseball.
Human beings react to threats with one of the following emotions:
- Anger
- Fear
- Sadness
Last year, Figgins reacted to batting 9th with anger. This year, he reacted to it passively, and you saw the result in the field.
Let's hope the Mariners didn't win the batting-order battle only to lose a greater war -- Figgins' destruction as a player. (Yes, that would be a ridiculous outcome: it is only in Figgins' own mind that his self-worth is defined by his place in a batting order. Karma finally presents the bill for his own neurotic vanity.)
During Memorial Day's game, the fans were routinely boo'ing Figgins. An ugly problem just got several orders of magnitude more grotesque. Now, and only now, SSI begins to wonder whether the Mariners have to sink Figgins' contract.
I wish they would. Figgins could go on to moderate success elsewhere, the Mariners could put their best team on the field, and Zduriencik could proceed with his business of building a dynasty.
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Comments
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Am sure the admins will love hearing that :- )Personally have always liked the UCLA blue/gold color scheme... anything else in particular you go for, DaddyO?
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per Baker's twitter.........Article above noted that Chone's on-field, passive/depressive reaction to his "demotion" was, well, gasp-inducing...Eric Wedge is not slow to respond... you can't have the dude blowing up in front of a live audience..........A wrestling 'reversal' has definitely been scored, as far as the politics of this situation... creative solutions to 3B / part-time / etc now appear feasible............It's too bad that Figgins vested so much of his ego into batting leadoff. It was an artificial way to define himself in the first place.
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Aside from a couple super minor things, the redesign of the site is a HUGE improvement. Not that I didn't love the site before, because I did. But the hard work deserves some props.
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rooting for Gary Beban and the Bruins, and since I had a one-time privilege of going to the Rose Bowl game in 1966 (I was 10 years old) when the "gutty little Bruins" upset the supposedly all-powerful #1 Michigan Wolverines 14-12, and since I was a devotee of the John Wooden Bruins starting with guys like Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard, continuing through Lew Alcindor/Sydney Wicks/Mike Warren/Henry Bibby and on to Bill Walton/Keith(later Jamaal) Wilkes and then Marcus Johnson, I'm perfectly satisfied with UCLA colors!
Oh, did I mention my cousin was a UCLA cheerleader during the Alcindor years and ended up dating and marrying one of the basketball players, a forward named Jim Neilsen? Got to talk with him at family get-togethers.
Oh, by the way, forget that Rendon guy from Rice, get me Bauer from UCLA. In a few years if we can re-sign Felix we'll only need to score 3.2 runs per game to win the division. That's a joke.
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Because I was just thinking how annoying the new look is. The Screen is centered with giant blue bars on the outside, decreasing the usable space, plus the twin columns on either side of the main reading screen reduce it even more. The writing in those columbs does not line up and has icons over the tops of words, and the Recent Posts column is just wide enough with the picture to post one word a line, so
I
Feel
Like
I'm
Reading
Like this. I've lost at least two and up to 4 posts, and all the old posts show as having their paragraph markers removed so everything is one long jumble of words with no formatting unless it's been posted after the updated format. Going back to read anything before yesterday is a chore.
I'm decidedly not a fan of the new look. Here's hoping for improvement as we go.
~G
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And most baseball players have it in spades, just look at the stink Posada put up when he was moved down in the order, and that was with all the half billionaires hitting in front of him, just think how Chone feels hitting among the Saunders' and the Peguero's... :)
Hopefully this will spur him to humility and he will once again find that water bug, annoying, hard nosed, good utility defensive player that we hated to play when he was with the angels.
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And you know, goeth before... something, can't rememeber what ;)
And most baseball players have it in spades, just look at the stink Posada put up when he was moved down in the order, and that was with all the half billionaires hitting in front of him, just think how Chone feels hitting among the Saunders' and the Peguero's... :)
And really, in this humbling game they NEED it. I cant image what my psyche would be like if I went to work and failed 70% of the time and was considered GOOD at my job.
Hopefully this will spur him to humility and he will once again find that water bug, annoying, hard nosed, good utility defensive player that we hated to play when he was with the angels.
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Those of us who used to work in software, have a feel for the huge garden of bugs you run into with any global update... all apologies for the kinks...The fact that the site was back up with so little downtime, able to post and comment at all, was pretty surprising to me...Not to minimize your feedback G, y'know that...