Doin' the Twist
................. A sense of depth can be very aesthetically satisfying
Geoff Baker with a video of Ackley's two-run shot in the Saturday intrasquad. Ichiro's necessarily standing on deck, watching Ack! hinge the wrists and send the missile over the RF fence.
This is the second time in a row it's happened: I skim down to the lineups and I go, oh, the Mariners' starting lineup on team 1. Guess it must be a varsity vs jayvee type game, huh?:
Team 1
3B Chone Figgins
2B Dustin Ackley
RF Ichiro
1B Justin Smoak
C Miguel Olivo
CF Casper Wells
DH Adam Moore
LF Trayvon Robinson
SS Munenori KawasakiRHP Felix Hernandez
Then I skim down to the second lineup and I go, oh, the M's starting lineup is on team 2. Guess this is the real varsity.
Team 2
CF Franklin Gutierrez
DH Brendan Ryan
LF Mike Carp
C Jesus Montero
3B Kyle Seager
1B Alex Liddi
RF Michael Saunders
2B Luis Rodriguez
SS Nick FranklinRHP Kevin Millwood
Am trying to think of precedents for this situation - you've got legitimately 15 different players and 9 starting pitchers that I, for one, could perhaps be comfortable with starting on Opening Day. I mean, there were precedents in 1977, because you had 24 different useless players.
But 24-to-make-14 -- that's not including the bullpen or bench -- and they're all dynamic, intriguing major league (or ML-ready) players? I've never seen that. Have. never. seen it.
Like, John Jaso is an intriguing ML starter, right? 2010, he OBP'ed .370 and led off for the Rays. Jason Kendall scored a real big contract at one point. Jaso isn't on the varsity OR jayvee.
Split squad in 2012 means something very different now. Thank you, Jack Zduriencik.
.
=== Oh Yeah! ===
In 5-card stud, a "twist" is when you've had your five cards but you pay extra to trade one in for a "twist" card. It's a lot easier to get a good hand, with 6-to-make-5, than it is with 5-to-make-5. Your odds go up exponentially with every twist. If you had nine twists like Eric Wedge does on his roster right now, if you could swap Casper Wells in for a struggling Franklin Gutierrez, then the hand to beat would be like, four of a kind.
Big smile ghost'a, DaddyO :- )
Oh yeah, better clarify ... since we're having Spell It Out Friday, the "Oh Yeah!"s are a good-natured satire of me, not of you. One time we had a non-baseball Klat editor check out our site and say, very sincerely, "I don't understand one word on this site." Which was a great relief. If anybody understood this shtick I'd be in dire peril.
...............
Franklin Gutierrez hit a ball over the fence real early here, and that against Felix - SSI grades that "significant." Significant in the dictionary sense of the word. Franklin Gutierrez in 2011 would not have hit any ball over any fence, and I'll take it.
Chone Figgins is seeking to get on base via the walk; we look forward to this coherency in his plate approach. A confused athlete is a losing athlete. If the vapors of his brain fog are dissipating, that's fine by Aiki-Doc.
Munenori Kawasaki tripled; remember, he has a big swing, and he's liable to play 80 games this year. The over/under on Brendan Ryan's 2012 games played total is "a miniscule amount."
Kevin Millwood, who we presume to be a dead man walking at this point, is kicking Felix' keister.