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Q. What happened on the offense?
A. It was bemusing that, after three days of thematic discussion on the M's plate discipline .... they promptly went out and powerflushed a with swings on pitches outside the strike zone.
Jesus Montero's garbage swing at the 2-2 sucker pitch in the 1st inning was a tragedy, and it saved Harrison's 35-pitch keister that inning. Man alive there dude, what's the hurry? You've got a lefty and you love right field.
In the 8th, with two men on, Justin Smoak got a 3-2 pitch from Mike Adams and Smoak knew IN THE HUDDLE that he was going to be swinging. Apparently so did Adams, because he threw the ball a foot wide and way high, which would have walked the bases loaded, except he figured Smoak for a sucker.
Next AB, Seager worked 3-2 and then swung at exactly the same pitch. Not every day a pitcher gets to take a batter "up the ladder" and also into the outside batter's box for a little extra insurance.
As Jay Buhner would say, you gotta see the ball before you swing. What are you doing pedal-to-the-medal, like it's a 3-run jack or nothing? The tying run's on base.
No idea what had the M's hitters so panicky and shrill. The game was a complete reversal of the first 43 games of the season: plenty of chances to take walks, and plenty of times the M's feebed out. I got vertigo watching it.
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Don't get me wrong. They gave Matt Harrison lots more trouble than I expected. You should see their lifetime numbers against the 94-MPH lefty. For one thing, they came into the game with 120+ AB's and zero home runs against him.
They battled. I'm happy with it.
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Q. Every Mariner had bad numbers against the LHP Harrison?
A. Everybody except Chone Figgins, pretty much. Wedge's righty lineup did not include Figgins, you notice, and this despite the fact that the pre-game numbers made Figgy his number one man.
In this game Figgins was in the DEEEeeeeeeeEEEEP freeze. Just so you know.
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Q. What is SSI's version of the two near-miss HR's? Is complaining about that legit, or is it kind of chickenfeathers?
A. I had the impression that the wind was tunneling through under the roof and REALLY cut those balls down. Hey, you can't swing with the intent of hitting the ball 440 feet. Those were legitimate home runs taken away by the park. On the evening, the Rangers did not suffer the same fate.
It's a funny thing: sabermetricians will look at a pitcher who had a HR/FB of (say) 14% or 7% and say, that was nothing in the world but luck. Next season he reverts. But on a single-game basis, we drift primally into our forebrains...
Blamed tootin' the M's had two homers censored, one of which was a grand slam. Even those two HR's notwithstanding, the M's out-hit the Rangers 7-4 on the night.
The M's have played well enough to win five games in a row -- the first four very decisively, with three walkaways in Colorado and then a 6-1 pummelling of Darvish last night. It's a shame the grand slam didn't go out; a 5-gamer would have put the M's back at their Pythag, 21-24.
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Q. But the M's were jittery despite the winning streak?
A. The failed run on which Ryan got held at third, too.
Not to bust the coach's chops, but that was also a "nervy" mistake, as they say in the English Premier League. You think if the M's were up 7-1 on the Royals, the coach wouldn't have waved Ryan around with gusto? Instead, he's SUBCONSCIOUSLY thinking, this is too good to be true, this doesn't happen against the Rangers, not with Adrian Beltre right on the ball.
In Soviet chess they (namely, Tigran Petrosyan) analyzed "the problem of uncomfortable opponent." Playing against a superior opponent, with your lifetime record at 3-15, you just play badly in game 19.
There's a tendency to play too conservatively, as if normal risks and chances will backfire against such awesome resistance. And then when you are aggressive, it's an impulsive aggressiveness, a hope-for-the-best flavor of aggressiveness, as opposed to an opportunistic aggressiveness. Such as the nervy swings in the 8th inning.
You're not relaxed into a process of stepping on your enemy's neck, and the tragedy is that the Uncomfortable Opponent winds up winning games he didn't play well, winning even those few games he didn't deserve to win. The cycle becomes vicious.
From SSI's seat, the M's played an uncomfortable opponent, and played uncomfortably.
True confidence builds slowly,
Dr D
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