Four In a Row
.
Wednesday M's 5, ROCKIES 0
James Paxton mortifies an elite NL lineup. Also, Steve Cishek throws quite well. With a closer-quality performance in the 6th and 7th, for just a moment Dr. D got a flash of an NL All-Star pitching staff. For a moment, you understand.
Kyle Seager, Danny Valencia and Mike Zunino continued to light the enemy up, with two hits each. The M's went up 3-0 early and celebrated their victory for two hours.
.
Tuesday M's 10, ROCKIES 4
The Rockies' talented young lefty Tyler Anderson had come in hot, and the M's had come in struggling vs lefties. Servais seemed to find the key with Segura and Valencia in the first inning. Sudden Jean had a 4-hit day, Gamel and Heredia reached him for 3 more hits each, and the M's beat Anderson about the head and shoulders.
Unimpressed by Anderson's lefty fate in Coors Field, Ariel Miranda continued to surge like Secretariat down the back stretch of the '73 Belmont. He's now 5-2, 4.17, by the way, and Dr. D is enjoying the W-L records piling up at the top of the rotation. :- )
.
Monday M's 6, ROCKIES 5
Sam Gaviglio is, inexplicably, the darling of the M's brass based on his 3.50 ERA and his 3.50 strikeout rate. (Well, it's actually 4.00, but you take the point.) We need a separate article on Gaviglio's pick-and-poke 88 nibbler and his quite decent 83 slider, but that article ain't going to predict glory for three strikeouts a game.
But Gaviglio held the Rockies to 5 and then Servais went one-batter-at-a-time to lock the score right there. Pazos! Zych! Vincent! Zip! Altavilla. Sugar! Now that was a 2001 Mariners game! Any lead halfway through the evening, and you just point the RP's at the enemy dugout and keep pullin' the trigger. Boo-yeah.
Cano, Cruz, and Seager were the keys in building the early lead. Which they three are likely to be again at some point during the summer. ...
.
Sunday M's 5, BOSTON 0
Christian Bergman's second lifetime memory in three starts. This morning, Servais anointed both Gaviglio and Bergman to be keepers. Not exactly, but he gushed. That's a topic in itself, Bergman and Gaviglio, possibly in this thread.
But in fairness, against the transiency of the favorable Bergman news, the M's fearsome offense piled up 16 hits (!) in the game and 55 over the four-game winning streak. Ominously, Sugar wiped out the 9th inning, which might have been the pivot point for the M's fortunes.
.
Either way you slice it, that's four very kewl wins to stitch back-to-back-to-back-to-back. The Wild Card is running +3, while the M's have scrambled back to -4, so that's a series out of the playoffs. The offense is firing on all triple gunz, so if we grovel a win out of HWMNBN's start tonight then we're back to The Big Two And Two.
BABVA,
Dr D