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At BJOL there's an article up which asks the question, "Is the typical ballclub's Opening Day starter its best starter?"

He stimulates your thinking by asking you to guesstimate how often the two "titles" coincide:

• 14%
• 34%
• 54%
• 74%

The answer is 34%.  Meaning that for the typical team, the guy starting Opening Day will NOT be the guy who should be pitching Game Seven that year.  Usually, most of the time, the Opening Day starter is there because he has the Biggest Name, but usually, most of the time, there's somebody on the staff better than him.  I wonder how aware the clubhouse is of that.  I'll bet, Very.

It's topical for us at SSI:  even though Felix Hernandez is his generation's Roger Clemens, even though Felix is certainly one of the five best pitchers in the game ... here we are, thinking that next turn around the rotation, we probably have a better chance on Hisashi Iwakuma's day.

We can't be fickle, of course.  Three years from now, Felix will hit the halfway point on his run to 300 wins.  Fifteen years from now, he'll be inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame in a Mariner cap.  Three years from now, Iwakuma will probably be a Dodger.

But this was the second game in a row, that the enemies called Iwakuma "unhittable" in the postgame.  You ever remember anybody saying Felix was unhittable?  He's great.  His changeup is unhittable.  But Iwakuma is raising an issue here:  in 2014, is he a better pitcher than Felix Hernandez?  It's an interesting debate in my mind, at least.

....

Randy Johnson had 14 Opening Day starts.  He messed up that 34% stat, because nobody was any better than Johnson.

The Unit is showing up in on Bill James article after another ... "The Most Important 35 Games of Your Career," Randy Johnson was either first or second on that list, with simply AMAZING stats during his biggest starts.  He was #2 on the Opening Day list, since 1960, only to Tom Seaver (who usually was outpitched by somebody on his team).

There was an article on pitchers, The One Percenters, on guys who Back-To-Back fired games that ranked in the top 1% in major league history.  Johnson of course had three (3) straight.   Bill, describing that one,

Randy Johnson on May 28, 1997, pitched 8 innings of 4-hit shutout ball against the Rangers, striking out 15 batters.    He didn’t finish the game, perhaps because he had thrown 132 pitches through eight.   He followed that up with a 2-hit shutout of the Blue Jays, striking out 9 (June 2), and then, for those of you who are difficult to impress, a 1-hit shutout of the Tigers, striking out 15 (June 8).     Johnson was also the only pitcher in 1997 to pitch two in a row, and he pitched three in a row.   Even in 1967, the year Gaylord threw three in a row and a pitcher’s year, only one other pitcher was able to throw two straight, that being Gaylord’s teammate, Juan Marichal.

When you adjust for context, Randy Johnson was UNIQUE since World War II.  And if you don't really count baseball since World War II, you could say that Randy Johnson was the greatest pitcher who ever lived.

Greg Maddux -- they call him The American Hisashi Iwakuma, we hear -- did have a few more WAR than Johnson did.  You trading the Unit for Greg Maddux?  Postseason included, league adjustment included, tomorrow's game included?  I'm not.  Maddux the guy you want tomorrow?  Or do you want Randy Johnson tomorrow?

In all baseball history, Randy Johnson's the guy I want for Game Seven.  That's taking into consideration the fact that baseball pitching was so much easier in Walter Johnson's day, which is dubious.  But still.  There was never a human being who threw the baseball better than Randy.

And the Big Unit could have been doing it in Seattle, could have been a Mariner for life.  But stuff like that hasn't been what the Mariners have been about.

It is what the Seahawks are about, though.  So sports around here, all things considered, are cool.

........

I changed the subject, didn't I?   Well, that's part of baseball's charm, its history.  :- /  You own it either way, boys.

Subject was:  the Mariners have two tremendous pitchers.  They have Felix, and they have somebody almost better than Felix.  

Would be nice to get to the playoffs so that we could deploy them meaningfully.  (Couldn't resist.)

........

If the Mariners wanted to console us a little bit here at SSI (ha!), they could leak a little something about Hisashi's extension, and/or their intentions on July 31.