Seattle 1, Washington 3
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GameFlow
Dr. D had to double-take, check whether this was the best team in the history of Washington D.C., if not the history of baseball. We thought we were going to see a very good team. We didnlt know we were going to get buzz-sawed by the best team the Mariners had played all season. Them and the early Oaklands.
As it turns out, there was a D.C. team as good as this ... in 1924 the Washington (AL) Senators won the World Serious, led by some dude named Walter Johnson, who that season won exactly 5% of his career 417 games.
Ninety years on, Stephen Strasburg provided a taller, less-sidearmed facsimile of the Big Train. Like Walter, Strasburg would have slaughtered anybody any lineup that ever existed on Saturday night. Does he always locate that fastball like that?! And the changeup was vintage Pedro Martinez, popping a parachute and sailing down-away. Like Pedro's change, Strasburg's was so devastating that he could (and did) throw it right down the middle. He was unpossible. It was like watching Chris Young +10 MPH, plus the Pedro change.
Somehow or other, the Mariners cobbled six hits off The Big Train II...
... one of these base hits was a Dustin Ackley home run -- off a 95 MPH jam pitch right on the hands, barely a strike. Ackley pointed the bat head at Strasburg, saw the laser beam inside, blinked, and swatted it into the seats.
So Stephen Strasburg is a plateau better than MLB(tm), and Ackley is a plateau better than is Strasburg. That makes Ackley a Major Leaguer, with the Angels being double A baseball?
Following this, the SSI shout box was filled with denizens claiming that they now believe Ackley is for real. So does Walter Johnson.
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Roenis Elias
SSI had recommended that Roenis "revert" to his earlier fastball/hammer combo, with changeups merely for show. Remarkably, Elias did precisely this, and this time nobody suspected him of subscribing to mysterious Magic 8 Ball blog sites.
The outcome:
- Elias' changeup was terrible under these circumstances
- His curve ball was at about 60% of its previous form (few K's the first 5 IP)
- His fastball was 100%
- His makeup was 100%
So he went 6 IP, only 2 ER, despite a two-pitch attack in which the curve was unimpressive. This was exactly where we came in. March 15, as in.
McClendon had taken one look, in Arizona, and said "They just don't seem to do much with his fastball." That was the way on Saturday night; he threw 18 of 24 first pitch strikes, or something, and they couldn't punish him for it.
So Elias has come full circle. Except! Now he's got a whoooooole buncha big league games under his belt. He's back to "exciting young starter, especially for a #5."
Cheers,
Jeff