=== Eric Brynes ===

Rox announcer sez that the M's "won the lotto" on this guy.  $11m ballplayer, just dinged up a little, now we got us a star for the minimum wage.

Brynes swung horribly through RH fastballs all game long, but still, we get what the guy meant.  As a #4 outfielder, he reminds you a little bit of the days when the LA Lakers used to bring Bob McAdoo and Steve Mix off the bench to make fun of your own second shift...

.498 SLG lifetime against LH pitchers.  But don't let that fool you:  Byrnes is, at his core, a leadoff hitter.  I'd have him hitting 9th when he's in there.

Fast starter:  .805 OPS first half, .701 second half, that being in a thousand games.  I'll take some power chords on the first road trip and a shredded homestand to follow.

.

=== Adam Moore ===

Just missed a 350-foot homer a few feet foul -- down the RIGHT field line.  Chew on that, Jose. 

Moore hadn't decided to swing until the ball was on top of him -- then took the ball out of the catcher's mitt with zero CG involvement whatsoever.  Just unsnapped the barrel chest and simian upper arms and the ball whistled over the RF fence.

It ain't gonna be this year, but one of these years the kid is going to just start swatting pitches over the fence like Bench.  Going to be quite a bidding war for this hombre after year six.

.

=== Matt Tuiasosopo ===

Shawn Kelley telegraphed a change, and Miguel Olivo (.490 SLG last year from the catcher position, Grover) split the LF and CF with a 1-wood to the fence, 380 feet away.

I counted 17 strides that Tui took while the ball was in flight.  On a low arc.

Awkward little two-step adjustment horizontally at the end -- the right adjustment to have to make, if you're not taking a Franklin Gutierrez route -- but caught the ball easily against his chest. 

The announcers, impressed, jumped right in about Tui's athleticism.  My mon Griff would tell you he needs a minute and a half to take 17 strides.  It takes me around three minutes, and that's only when my wife is chasing me with a paintball gun.

..................

Ryan Langerhans is the 5th benchie -- so you have 2 OF's and only 1 IF along with Sweeney and Johnson -- and yet here's the IF still playing in left.

Hopefully this means that when org darling Hannahan is back, Langerhans goes out and not Tuiasosopo.

.

=== M's Offense ===

David Pinto's article on the M's -- predicting +154 runs -- has gained a lot of traction. 

M' mon Geoff Baker, for instance, deftly Peyton Manning'ed back into the pocket yesterday about the offense.  Now no longer sure that the M's offense will chop-block them, nor that the M's are longshots in the division.

True that the M's didn't jump at the sexy adds, but also true that they powerflushed the 98-lb. weaklings in the offense -- and put bats on their bench.

Adding 100 or more runs is theoretically quite possible sez SSI.  Friday's 11 runs against Colorado was a picture worth a thousand blog posts.

............

We remember a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon in which swimmers bail out of the water onto the beach .... two sharks side by side look up at their fins out of the water.  "How long has THAT been there?!"

I wonder how long analysts have been trying to guess offensive deltas by looking at the top 3 hitters, rather than at the bottom 3.

Cheers,

Dr D