Every game in adding examples of the M's getting the shaft on the strike zone way more often than run-of-the-mill missed calls that happen to every team. The M's are not considered a franchise worthy of equal enforcement of the law. It occurs to me that other teams and their players are probably aware of this phenomenon if we are.
I wonder if this is an opaque factor in the Mariners' inability to actually land mega free agents. If you're a free agent, you look at the list of suitors and make a list of pros and cons for each. The M's have a unique con with regard to travel, a con with regard to Safeco and the history of free agent performance there, and a con with failing to present an opportunity to play meaningful August and September games and compete on the big stage of the playoffs. My guess is that clubs like the M's who demonstrate second class standing year after year and rarely stake a claim to legitimacy (like, for example the Pirates) get the ump treatement we are seeing. Surely the players in the league know this and, if free agents, conclude that signing with Seattle will needlessly put in jeopardy their job = their stats = their future salary = their status in the fraternity.
Add up the standard cons and THEN put the more unique cons on top of them, and you get what we've seen. The M's are used to make the price go up for other teams. End of story. Make sure you don't sign THERE, buddy!
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Shoppach, 5th Inning
The M's were down 3-0 and being no-hit. Parker was in a rocking chair. A turtle on first base to lead off the inning, but two meek outs followed.
2-2 count and Shoppach had fouled away three pitches. Fastball low-away and Shoppach hit it out, well into the RF seats. The M's buffet of off-field home runs continues, and they're down only 3-2.
The Athletics had six (6) base hits before the Mariners had one. Even after the homer, they have still outhit the M's, 6-1.
Time to roll over? Nope, the Mariners dug in grimly and battled the A's pitchers for a long series of sharply-struck balls in play. The last four innings, the M's were consistently getting the top half of the ball, as opposed to the bottom half of it while swinging from the keister hoping for lightning to strike.. The A's had the first six hits, but ... the M's outhit them 7-2 from there.
A++ for effort. That's the kind of manly challenge you got to have, bub.
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Chavez, 7th and 8th Innings
Raul singled, putting two on with two out. Sgt. Wedge put Chavez on 1B, the tying run, and Chavez will go out and play defense for Ibanez. There's no downside here, right?
It's a good move. But what's the catch? Wedge always worries about the lineup spinning around again!
This in fact came back to BITE him, taking half his leg off. Very next inning, M's load the bases, two outs, and ... big moment, right? Nope. Cook had walked Smoak to load the bases to get to Chavez.
Cook absolutely broke Chavez' arm with a light shove to the shoulder, detonating him on a 4-pitch strikeout and it looked like Cliff Lee vs. a pitcher at the plate.
Now, gentlemen, we know why Wedge tends to hold moves back. ... I'm not saying he's right. I'm saying there is substance to his concerns.
Of course, if the M's had Nick Franklin on the roster...
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Ackley, 7th Inning
Two on, two out, Mariners down 4-2. Lefty Sean Doolittle throws two 97 MPH (!!) fastballs right by Ackley. No chance. Let me read that last phrase again.
1-2, Doolittle gets cute and throws a slider. Ackley smacks it into right field, scoring Smoak who runs through a stop sign. Blowers, right on the play as he seems to always be this year, points out that Doolittle "does Ackley a favor" with the slider.
One good thing, though. Dustin Ackley is taking a good look at the pitches up there, man. He had complete control of the slider from the moment Cook let it go, and this despite a scary-dangerous fastball that could make him look like an idiot on the pitch.
Ackley's SwStr% is down to a piddling 4.8% this year. Remember when he went like 15 games as a rook before he swung and missed at one? The talent is there. Dr. D's prediction stands: Dustin Ackley is looking at stardom, one day. Unfortunately it's just as liable to be after we can afford him and Team Boras.
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Kendrys Morales and Michael Morse, 8th Inning
Mariners down 4-3. Saunders on 1B ... he'd had an Ichiro-like infield single to lead off. One on, one out. Every GAME, Dr. D is becoming more convinced that Michael Saunders IS an impact player in the major leagues. I'd give him a big FA contract right NOW.
.................
On TV they showed a stat -- Morales hit .350 ahead in the count, .250 behind in the count this year. On TV they said, wow, .350, not bad. But Dr. D was thinking, man, that's not much of a split. Morales is still a rawhide-tough AB.
Morales battles through a 7-pitch at bat. Ryan Cook threw him one of several 98 MPH (!!) fastballs and ... Fat Ichiro "kneed" a liner over the SS's head.
Tough, tough out. ... But Morse fanned; he still hasn't got his timing back after having his hand busted. Curse you, Red Baron. ... set up the Endy Chavez debacle. The spirit is willing, but the cleanup hitter is weak.
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Blown Call, 9th Inning
Mariners down 4-3. One on, one out. Smoak had worked a very high-leverage BB. But Robert Andino went down even more easily than Chavez had the inning before.
Our SS position is like playing without the DH. Does anybody have any estimates for that? Take two .500 teams, give one the DH, the other has to have the pitcher hit. How would they finish? About 87-75 vs 75-87?
Anyway, you saw it. 3-0 pitch to Seager, the closer walks Seager, but the ump gives Balfour a second at-bat. Let's get this game over with. I've got no words...
Let's give it up for Derek Norris, though. f there's such a thing as pitch framing, it occurred on that pitch. Norris snapped the ball back down the top of the strike zone in a completely natural and convincing manner. If there was ever a game won with a gorgeous pitch frame, there you had it.
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Comments
Now just when is he coming back? We miss him greatly. Chavez did flash the defense late, but that probably only could have impacted the point spread, not the outcome. Too many missed offensive opportunities, and too many bats in the lineup from the weak sisters of the poor. Maybe we need to carry fewer pitchers if we are going to continue with Ryan and Andino. Or maybe it was a mistake to trade Vargas. We could use his bat.
Andino is 2 for his last 20. If you take away his two 2-hit games this year he is 6 for 54! That's .111 guys.
Ryan is 2 for his last 28. If you take away his first five games of the year he is 5 for 64. That's .078!!!!
Between the two of them we have 138 AB's and three 2B's (all Andino's).
OK, so we're already spotting the league one spot in the lineup.
Our 1B hits like a SS. I'm not being critical of Smoak here, he is what he is, and that's a guy who is BB dependent. He's slugging .322. Even factoring in his current "hot streak," he's still hit one homer in 14 games of hotness. He should be batting #2, BTW. He's on pace to drive in 30 runs this year. He's came to the plate with 76 runners on base, 43 of them in scoring position, and driven in just 5 of them (his one homer was solo).
And then we have such a lack of flexability that if we PH for Ryan or Andino, we are done as far as batting for those two automatic outs, because we have no 5th glove-position IF'er.
Franklin, Triunfel, and Miller all have to be better solutions to our SS mess. Heck, move Seager there and put Liddi in at 3B. Do something. Waiting for Super Two status is irresponsible and almost reprehensible at this point. We also can't pack 5 OF's who don't play the IF. I can't imagine another team in the league has such an OF structure. We bet the farm that Guti could stay healthy....which is always a bad bet. Raul and Bay are both 1/2 players (Bay has a .537 OPS against RHP Raul has a .258 vs LHP) and neither can play CF....so we have to carry a 5th OF. There's a reason a guy like Wells was valuable. He wasn't great. But he made your lineup flexable....especially when Guti is such a high risk player. Really we should dump Bay, since we are totally married to Raul, as it appears. Well, really we should just dump Raul and bring up a flexable IF/OF type. Anybody, please. But we won't. If we're not bringing up Liddi or Romero, dump an OF and bring up Tenbrink. He's actually looking like a pretty nice utility player. He's played every position but SS and C this year, even CF. He's actually hitting some, he's 26 and will never be a star guy so who cares about Super Two status way down the line. Heck, he'll be 32 after his 3rd arb year, anyway. He give's us instant flexability. ,291-.430-.455 in Tacoma. He'll do.
We have a heartbeat. But it's a WC heartbeat. Seven teams in the league are currently ahead of us in the WC chase (not counting divisional leaders). There's the competition.
We will quite likely never get a one-two punch like Felix and Iwakuma are right now. Their COMBINED ERA+ is above 230 and their COMBINED WHIP is about .8! Both of those guys are throwing like '68 Hoot Gibson. He had a 258 ERA+ and a .85 WHIP. In case you forgot, they changed the rules of the game after that season! Literally we are wasting one of the great tandem pitching performances you may ever see.
Oh, Wilhelmsen has given up ONE RUN and FIVE HITS in 16 innings.
Sitting and waiting and betting that, as good as those guys are, they can keep that up is organizational folly.
And our 17-20 record is actually over our 16-21 Pythag.
Z and Wedge, make some moves that enhance our ability to compete now! There's no mystery here. Get us ANY SS (We have 'em by the bushel, BTW) who might hit and then make us more flexable, too.
Franklin and Tenbrink (or LIddi/Romero) in, Bay or Raul (or Endy) out. (Raul is .214-.267-.464 vR, so he's not helping us much their, either. His recent homer notwithstanding,)
Do that and we're instantly better. We're flexable. We might compete with those 7 teams ahead of us.
If we're not making roster moves for two months, let's just tell our two aces that we're not bringing in reinforcements and they can take the hill by themselves.
C'mon.
moe
Even Larry Stone says it is time for new blood at SS. Is there a more poorly constructed roster in all of baseball?
Is there a fan-based movement to implement a computerized strike zone? Because there should be. I would gladly join/contribute to a group that is actively lobbying for that.