Mike Wilson came off the Tacoma DL to go 2-4 with 2 doubles AND played CF.
Now at .333/.417/.667!  (OK...I know, Just 21 AB's.....but is anybody betting that Cust can go .333 over a 21-AB run in AAA?)
Is that Langerhans and Cust glancing back over their shoulders?
Well they probably aren't....But I wish Wedge would look at that move.
Heck...I could live with Peguero as the LF and Milton as the DH. Peguero is Cust's near equal right now (Wilson is easily his equal), and he may have a future.
But I keep having the sense that Wilson might go all Joe Charboneau on us, given 400 AB's. 
The alarming thing about Cust is that I haven't seen him really drive a ball all year. 110+ PA's and nothing loud at all.
At some point, we're watching potential youngster-type AB's go down the drain.
14 BB's/15 K's for Ackley. 

See who gets to the majors first.  Chances are neither one will (sigh).  Maybe they can face off in wiffle ball.
I'll just sprinkle in a few other notes here for good measure:
Nick Franklin seriously had two more walks.  He now has 10 walks in his last 7 games (vs. 5 K) -- moving his eye ratio over 1 for the season -- 16 BB/15 K.
Paxton is not the only one making his Clinton debut this week.  21-year-old OF Jabari Blash is an 8th-round pick from St. Thomas Virgin Islands. Big kid at 6-4, 195.  Last year at Pulaski he put up the very interesting .266/.362/.477 line, but he's another one of those guys who strikes out too much. Interestingly, he drew 3 walks last night in his 2nd game of the season.
Optimism!: to be 10-15 without your best defensive player, without your closer, without your best hitter for a week, with your infield defense unsettled, with your bullpen not exactly lights out [Fkey7 standard-issue Chris Ray snark here], with your 2nd-best SLG being a utility infielder, with a potential key offensive puzzle piece still in AAA . . .   Could be worse!

Spec,  which Patterson?
One has been unsaid and might be the most impressive  part of Smoak's night was the terrific poise that he showed in the post-game interview.  He is certainly a ready for prime-time player.
He's got the bat and the huevos that can completely carry a team for a couple of weeks.
Climb on guys.....it is gong to be a fun ride.

Hopefully only in the respect that we need to survive until May.  Get to May with a respectable record, get Aardsma back, possibly get Franklin back, get Ackley, remove Cust, Ray, have a shot at dark horse contention.

Trying to think of the power hitter that Smoak reminds me of, and it's not coming to me.  A guy that hits a ball and you go, "Oh well, didn't quite get all of that...hard screaming double in the gap." 
"Good swing, just a little late, pop fl...no, that's seven rows out to the deepest part of the ball park."
Maybe I'm just too used to Mariners who could get 100% of a ball and still have it die on the warning track, but I keep finding myself surprised by just how far Smoak hits em on swings that I didn't think were perfect by any means.
He's not doing an Ichiro and just destroying an inside fastball with a wicked pull swing that sends a screaming liner outta here.  It's easy power.
It's power that doesn't require perfect contact to blast a ball 400 feet, from a bat that's not moving especially fast.  Sheffield he ain't, but he gets his power other ways.  His hip swing and torso rotation are a dream that puts all 230 pounds of him into play, and he's country strong.  I really hope he can keep it up - but I'm not really a skeptic.  That 130 OPS+ I was aiming to get out of him looks legit out of the box instead of an end goal.  We'll see once he slumps and how he handles it, but man...
When you HEAR the contact live you whip your head around and watch the ball sail away, but on TV, it never looks like Smoak REALLY got a hold of one.
I wonder how far the ball will go when he does. :)  Couldn't be happier with his first month of 2011 at the plate.
He's taken to having the weight of the offense dropped on his shoulders like it doesn't weigh a pound.
Good stuff.
~G

Maybe they already are?
Felix is a role player?
Actually, it's a huge plus if Ichiro and Ackley are role players, because they could be two of the best in the business.

Reading your description reminded me a lot of Chipper Jones, (also a switch hitter).
Chipper isn't particularly big or bulky.  He never had the bat whip that Sheffield did - (and I got to watch both all the time).  And I often found myself thinking "I hope that's in the gap for a double" when he swung and then realize the ball is 7 rows up, as you said.  ESPECIALLY true when he went the other way.
 

Chipper Jones comp, and even typed it.  Then I thought Sandy would think I was way ahead of things.  Glad he said it himself.
Now suppose that 23-year-old Chipper had been traded to the Mets in 1993 . . . history might be a little different?
Hard to judge the combined impact of removing him from the Ranger roster and adding him to ours, but with the Angels and As looking pretty mediocre going forward, it will be huge.

Best thing I liked about your post, G_man, was concern about how Smoak might handle a slump.  The dude's already handled a slump.  That first big slump was dealt with last season, baby.
Smoak has got me stoked!

That's a good call, Sandy.  I didn't watch as much NL but TBS brought me a lot of the Braves, and Chipper had this same habit of hitting balls that I would have sworn would lazily find a fielder and instead were tattooed off the wall.
There are worse things than clubbing pedestrian-looking power shots all over the park.
~G

He went like 1-for-25 with 20Ks or something when he first got here, and got demoted to AAA to work on it without pressure.  And he wasn't hitting MOTO at the time.
Now?  He's carrying the offense on his broad shoulders, and he's not going back to AAA to work on anything again, probably ever.
So he's gonna have to work it out while being the guy expected to drive in runs, and one of the few in our lineup who can. It's a different kind of pressure.
I think he'll be fine.  Smoak is a great hitter, and a laid-back guy.  He's not high strung, and not the sort to screw himself into the ground at the first sign of trouble (see Cirillo, Jeff, et al).  Last year helped show that, as you said.  Moving away from the south for the first time ever, having the trade pressure on him, being demoted, changing the load for his swing...he dealt with a lot last year, and that's just after the trade.
I love seeing him settle in, believing more with every game that he belongs. He's not out of the woods yet, but I don't see how you see him casually take Verlander yard on 97 mph outside and think "nah, that guy's not gonna cut it long-term."
His power is middle out, so I expect teams to start busting him inside hard as Doc suggests was one of Clement's (many) downfalls.
But RH he seems to do better inside than LH, which is interesting since inside pitches to LH hitters aren't the best way to pitch in Smoak's home park. I wish teams luck as they pound him inside as a lefty, he adjusts, and they find out that the RF porch is shorter in the Safe, making that a bad plan too.
It should be a fun cat-n-mouse the whole year long - but I expect Smoak to be the cat in the end.
~G

But if we had the RJ/Griffey/Bone/Gar Mariners, and the Freddy/Jamie/A-Rod/Edgar Mariners, then there's room for the King/Kong/Smoak/Ackley/(Rendon) Mariners.
During most of the Ichiro years, they've just been the Ichiro Mariners - he's a lone gun.  But I'd love for him to be a plus vet fronting a great lineup, even if his name comes lower on the marquee than some as we go forward. 
Having his name be the biggest (or if you prefer, the only) is actually an indictment of the last 6 years of offense, actually.  If we can Ray Borque him to a championship with a roster of excellent players, I'm sure he would be just as happy as we are and not complain too much about the route.
~G

I cannot believe that Smoak has made so many positive adjustments in such a short time.
He was a pull hitter in the minors, a pull hitter in the bigs, and now hes an extreme opposite-field hitter as a lefty (which is perfect for his skillset).
Two huge adjustments in a short time-frame (fixing his load and turning into an oppo hitter). BA will go down, but I believe in the power and patience. Hes the biggest suprise for me this season.