M's 4, Rangers 3 - Ten Minute Replay a
The concept of beauty is a favorite area of study. Every person, including children, criminals, and everyone in between, appreciates and needs beauty.
I believe that everything beautiful possesses two key elements: (1) it pleases one or more of the five human senses, and (2) it satisfies, impresses, or appeals to man's higher and nobler values.
A lime popsicle pleases the senses, but is not beautiful. The Sistine Chapel pleases the sense of sight, and also calls to our attention how much effort and mastery a single man can put into a project. It suggests to us that we could do the same. It's objectively beautiful, whether or not the art style is to our taste.
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=== Inning 1 ===
The umpire begins the game with two howlers during a Andres Blanco AB. Unashamed of himself, he then stubbornly walks Blanco on a very close pitch. This starts Bedard's evening with a serious handicap: two men on, nobody out, against the Texas Rangers.
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Michael Young works his own count to 2-2, and then Erik Bedard responds with a magnificent curve that slices the bottom of the zone on its way through, striking out Young.
The umpire, as though sounding an unintended flat note in a symphony, again interjects an element of mediocrity into an unimaginably-high level of human endeavor. He changes the outcome from "strike" to "ball" and bids the struggle continue.
Bedard gazes out blankly into space. He allows his rage only the briefest moment's inward expression before snuffing it ruthlessly, and then he accepts the unfair situation.
On 3-2, he throws yet another fine pitch, a fastball in onto Young's hands. Young, himself a great warrior, smashes a long fly ball to the left-center warning track.
The fly ball showed both the best and the worst of Michael Saunders.... Saunders was shaded well to right, and covered three Wa. State counties getting to the ball. However, he slowed up long before he got there, gingerly reached out near the wall, and snow-coned it, almost dropping it.
He's fast and rangy, but is not yet comfortable in CF. He is a courageous and graceful man, but he does not handle himself with grace or courage when near the CF wall. He lacks the ability, not the desire, to do so.
Saunders' UZR/150, by the way, has him at 13.3 runs saved per season in center field, exactly where Dr. D assumed it would be. This is more a comment on Safeco than on Saunders.
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=== Inning 2 ===
Justin Smoak gets an Ogando fastball Right! On! His Hands! and squares it up... with the label of the bat.
Smoak is so strong that the ball lines well out past the DP combo, and Smoak has the first of three (3) hits on the night. He'll finish the game with his OPS+ at 168, third in the American League.
The electric-but-wild Ogando hits Jack Cust, loading the bases, and goes to 2-0 on Michael Saunders.
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Riddle me this. 3 on, 0 out. 2-0 count. Do you, the pitcher, give in here? What is worse, to risk a grand slam, or to risk another base yielded on a walk and a 1-0 deficit?
Ogando gave in. He aimed a 94 fastball right down the middle, out and up, hoping that Saunders would hit it at somebody.
Saunders did what, do you suppose? He hit it right at somebody: right at the popcorn vendor behind the 3B dugout. Incredibly lame.
Ogando grinned in delight, threw another pitch right down the middle, and Saunders fouled it back over the 3B dugout again. He struck out with the bases loaded.
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Langerhans worked the count to 3-2. The RHP Ogando shrugged, threw a gimme pitch right down the middle (check GameDay), and the LH Langerhans foul-tipped it into the glove.
That, my friends, is why Jack Zduriencik has so much work to do. And, I'm coming to agree, why it might be so nice to get Guti back.
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Brendan Ryan hit a ball right on the screws into the right-center gap, but ... Michael Young jumped up and grabbed it.
"Line Drives" have a 75% chance of becoming base hits. THIS kind of line drive is over 90%.
The M's should have scored more than 4 runs on the night. They had 13 bases and the Rangers had only 8. The game wasn't really as close as it felt like it was.
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=== Inning 3 ===
With two runners on, Justin Smoak gets a 95 mph fastball in on his hands, in off the plate ...
He pulls his hands in like Edgar Martinez, gets the barrel of the bat onto the ball, and rips a one-hop double into the stands.
Dr. D rewound the play many, many times. Only a few hitters in baseball can pull their hands in and keep that kind of strong "hitter's box." Ken Griffey (a better player than Smoak, of course) could never do that with consistency. Most great LH hitters can't; their swings are too loopy.
Justin Smoak is 18 kinds of gifted.
The ground-rule double costs the M's a 2-1 lead and typifies their bad luck on the night.
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