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And I looked up several pages on the "punt gun." I want one!
How in the world did you ever come to know about them DaddyO?
Mariners Flock Has Been Punt Gunned
But They Still Survive, Even Thrive
Mariners pitching staff has worked it's way up to a team ERA+ of 104. That's quite an achievement considering where they were. It also matches their OPS+, which, of course, has come down.
With regard to the hitting, the reason for the comedown is obvious, injuries and the concomitant slumps that come with the remaining players buckling under the increased load and the pitch-around tactics of their opponents (Mitch Haniger, for example).
You figure the recent pitching success has at least partly to do with their recent opposition, often consisting of bottom-feeding offenses, sometimes additionally saddled by the absence of some of their few dangerous hitters. But we must also take into account what appears to be just better pitching.
Still, all this has been accomplished with a team that has not so much been sniped with injuries to the lineup as it has been SHOTGUNNED (see headline graphic). If it weren’t for this fact, you could say that this team is about a 104+ overachieving team compared to the league, and there’s some truth to that. Then again, they’ve done this while deploying a fraction of their lineup most of the season.
Last year we spent all season waiting for the injuries on the pitching side to die down. They never did. This year we are expecting the linups injuries (apart from Cano’s suspension) to abate, and then, look out for the M’s. Let’s hope that’s the scenario that plays out.
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Easter Egg One:
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/punt-gun-1910-1920/
Interesting historical note about the shotgun pictured, called a Punt Gun:
"Market hunters first made their appearance in what would become the United States around the time of the Pilgrims and continued plying their trade en masse until around the beginning of the twentieth century. Some earned their living by bringing as many ducks or other waterfowl to market as possible. While various methods were used for bringing down the maximum number of birds per hunting trip, the most effective was ambushing a large flock with a punt gun."
Easter Egg Two:
Comments
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The punt gun? I didn't even know they existed until I was working on this article. Late in the article the idea for a shotgun vs sniper rifle came to me as an apt metaphor for the team's bevy of injuries. (When I was a teenager my Dad took us to the gun range and out hunting, where we learned to shoort 12-guage shotguns. When I stumbled on this pic, it was perfect for my idea of a shotgun that would take out severl birds at one time. Even a shotgun would not normally do that. The pic was so well suited for my point that I changed the title of my article. Pretty cool gun, huh? I suppose not if you're a bird, though.
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Still workin' out some kinks here. :- )