PROPS TO THE M's for the way they battled.

The Hanson Brothers didn't win every fight.  Winning every fight wasn't the point.  What was the point?  

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SLOPS TO THE STRANGERS for timing their 10-year perfect storm for when we were in town.  

Consolation for M's fans?  We played them a lot tougher than the Red Sox did.  (With the M's on a 4-game losing streak, SSI is changing it from "they" to "we".)

Pitching "game scores" against them the Arlington bandbox:

• 36 - Jon Lester
• 6 - John Lackey
• 48 - Clay Buchholz
• 44 - Erik Bedard
• 53 - Michael Pineda
• 65 - Felix, estimated

The Rangers looked awesome against Felix.  

They made him work harder, for less, than anybody I've seen in a long time.  It started with a 10-pitch AB to Kinsler leading off -- he fouled away a bunch of breaking pitches, Felix rolled his eyes... and then Kinsler walked.

One AB, and I'm thinking, man, this is tough sledding here.  I know the feeling a little bit:  you're only 12 moves into (say) a money chess game and it's like hacking through blackberry bushes with a dull machete.

The Rangers are just higher than a kite.

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PROPS TO ERIC WEDGE for having his team dialed into six real tough games, against six real tough SP's, every game of which was white-knuckle (for both teams) going into the late innings.

Sometimes your horn-rimmed glasses are cracked and you have the taste of iron in your mouth.  But the Seattle Mariners have looked these guys in the eye.

Eric Wedge did a blinkin' great job this March.

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SLOPS TO THE M'S for not buying one bat this winter.

That is the dynamic behind Geoff Baker's fairly-unrelenting criticism of the Mariners:  he thinks that a team with the Mariners' revenues should be less pusillanimous about its gorgeous yearly cash flows.

The M's are playing tight baseball, but you are running 8 degrees uphill when you hit 2 homers in 6 games.   

Middle innings today, as the "bad luck" continued to pile up? -- such as Ryan's mortar shot being caught at the 380 sign, followed by Saunders' screamer going right at Beltre, and then the M's getting two baserunners after that -- I'm thinking, "If they just had a two-run homer somewhere in here, Felix would have an easy win."

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This ballclub is lacking one thing:  an Adam Dunn or Justin Upton type.  Give it that, and then we'd see.

The ballpark that the city bought the Mariners cost half a billion, but the M's view that as the price of our having the privilege of baseball in town.  Half a billion doesn't impose any special responsibility on them to win.

Not saying this team can't win.  Just agreeing with Baker that the decision not to buy one bat is awfully painful.

Hope the M's don't wind up throwing away a season, for their unwillingness to legitimize the 2011 lineup with a Justin Upton.

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PROPS TO LUIS RODRIGUEZ who continues to look like a beast at the plate. 

I'd like to see what they have there.  It is likely but not established that Luis Rodriguez is not a late-blooming impact starter in the American League.  

You can't rule it out.  Rodriguez just looks terrific in the batter's box.  And that follows on a scary 2H last year.

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SLOPS TO CHONE FIGGINS.  They are now pitching around Ichiro in the knowledge that Figgins is swinging the bat poorly.

With the offense sucking wind to get up the hill, the Mariners need to use their IF bats.  A lot.  

Get the carousel going and get Rodriguez 4 games a week.  Why hit the searchlights and go find a guy like this, if you're not going to give him a chance in this situation?

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