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LET MY GLOVE OPEN THE DOOR, Dept.
Three nifty plays by Shawn O'Malley -- one good, one great, one heretofore unseen. And the man does not play third base. The good one: a pulled bouncer takes him over into foul territory; O'Mall sets his back foot and fires a 30.06 that hits Adam Lind chest high. Didn't know he had that plus of an arm.
The great one: a hot, low two-hopper to the glove side spins him around -- and the ball hit just in front of him for a short hop. Good play even by Seager's standards.
The heretofore unseen: bases loaded, one out, swinging bunt, can he get the out at 1B? Probably not ... whoop! Especially not since he went home with the ball, shocking everybody in both dugouts and the postgame broadcasters.
After that play occurred? The M's needed four outs to the wire. They were: foul popup, strikeout, strikeout, strikeout, Mariners' playoff chances rise by 1/6 over the day before.
Also had a hit-by-pitch and run scored. This is one of the great disconnects between guys in their basements armed with WAR (like me) and guys in the dugouts, armed with a lifetime of baseball. That your franchise 3B can get hurt, and you can sub in somebody you trust with your playoff chances. Without O'Malley the Mariners don't win that game.
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ADAM LIND
Dr. D has been joking about Lind's homer string off of guys you never heard of. Some denizens have been joking about worse. But it ain't like Lind is 0-for-his-career driving in tough runs. Friday night against Sale, LH-on-LH, a 98 fastball and Lind cut down his swing to take Sale up the middle, off the left-center wall.
Scott Servais free-associates (1) ham with eggs, (2) mornings with coffee, (3) Nelson Cruz with power and (4) Dr. Detecto with brilliance. When he was asked about Adam Lind taking Chris Sale!? into the gap, he free associated "Yes, Adam had a good batting practice just covering the ball" as opposed to swinging from his wallet. The necessary inference: that Servais thinks exactly as we do. We're in good hands, babe.
Who knows: maybe the neural pleasure that Adam Lind received on this controlled-swing, huge RBI will click him into synch for the stretch run.
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FRANKLIN GUTIERREZ
Another off-field home run, as he is wont to do at this point in his career. You and I care about OPS+ in situations; Scott Servais cares about playoff-type RBI from role players. ... well, that's a bit much; Servais' data is way better than ours is. But y'know.
Guti has an ISO of .210 this year, which is the same as Jose Abreu's lifetime ISO of .215. (Bill James confirms that baseball people spend way too much time worrying about the third decimal place.)
Fascinatingly, the Mariners defensively substituted Nori Aoki for Franklin Gutierrez in the ninth inning. This from a crew that has 9,000 kinds of StatCast era defensive metrics. How does that sub grab you.
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THE MEKANEEKS
Generally, Chris Sale is 90% of Randy Johnson. It's not exactly a backhanded compliment to say that Paul Allen has 90% of Bill Gates' wealth. But on Friday he was 100% of Randy Johnson, and this fan has seldom been prouder of an offensive effort. It was a Game Seven pitcher. When it was over he was dead and we were alive.
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EDIT TO ADD LATER
Just read our own Shout Box. :- ) As usual you mooks are ahead of me. That's the danger and the thrill of typing up postgames "fresh" with no undue influence, especially no influence from accuracy or currency.
Moe and Bat are way ahead of me on O'Malley; Rain and Matt are ahead of me on Dae-Ho Lee's AAA rampage, we presume; Nori Aoki is being optioned so Bat was ahead of me on Guillermo Heredia, also.
We've been arguing about platoon splits, but not as hard as they've been arguing about it at BJOL. Some wag sent in the 30th comment contradicting Bill and he replied acidly with five words: "Pat Venditte for Cy Young." He's gonna be fun to watch, though. Only such pitcher in history, pretty much.
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GOMS,
jemanji