Browsing Tag: mariners

    Miscellany

    Felix’s Perfect Game … as seen in Jackson, MS

    August 15, 2012

    This is awesome.

    Felix Hernandez threw a perfect game today, the first one in Mariners’ history. Starting at about the 5th inning, I was holding my breath with every batter he faced and tweeting as he got through each inning without letting anyone on base. It was electric to watch from home.

    Meanwhile, the Jackson Generals were watching, too. That’s the Mariners’ AA-level farm club and here’s what it looked like as they were getting ready for their game and watching Felix on the scoreboard video screen.

    How great is that?

    ichiro
    Miscellany

    Goodbye Ichiro

    July 23, 2012

    ichiro

    In a few hours, I’ll be settling in for what’s almost a daily summer routine: Sitting down to watch the Mariners game on TV with my son (sometimes) and wife (occasionally). But tonight’s game will be anything but routine.

    We’ll be watching Ichiro Suzuki play in a Yankees uniform.

    The Yankees!!!!!!!!!! The evil empire of major league baseball!!!!! My least-favorite sports team in any sport … well, aside from the Pittsburgh Penguins.

    That’s gonna be strange. And, even though he’s a shell of the player he was a couple years ago, it’ll be a little bit sad.

    Don’t get me wrong: I won’t mind at all seeing the Mariners play younger guys who can improve the team for the long haul, and I didn’t want Ichiro to come back to Seattle next season. It’s time to go in another direction.

    But, at the same time, there’s this: Ichiro is easily one of the top five Mariners ever, and there were summers in the not-too-distant past that Ichiro was the only reason to bother watching a Mariners game.

    And here he is again … in another long summer … giving us a reason to watch the Mariners.

    Miscellany

    Vote for Felix (Cy Young)

    September 10, 2010

    The McGee family took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Seattle last weekend to watch the Mariners play the Indians. We hadn’t been to a game all summer, so that was part of the attraction. But seriously, if not for the fact that Felix Hernandez was pitching, I wouldn’t even have suggested it at the last minute. (Let’s face it: The Mariners are miserable and he’s one of the few guys on the team worth watching.)

    So we want and had a great time. And Felix was Felix. He dominated the Indians, just like he’s dominated most teams this year. There’s no question in my mind that dude is…

    felix

    Everybody’s talking about Felix’s chances of winning the Cy Young Award. It was pretty much the only thing they talked about on the postgame show as we were leaving Seattle. The Mariners broadcast team has been talking about it for a month or two already, and now there’s starting to be a lot more chatter on the national level, too. I heard a conversation on Sunday Night Baseball while we were in the car driving home. I’ve heard them talk about it on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight.

    Slowly but surely, a lot of people are starting to realize that Felix deserves the Cy Young despite his 11-10 record. A .500 pitcher winning the Cy Young is pretty much unheard of, and no one with less than 15 wins has ever won. But check out this article on ESPN.com talking about Felix being the deserving Cy Young despite the won-loss record:

    “…what King Felix’s advocates have to persuade voters to do is ignore wins more than ever and value things like this: After Sunday’s win, Hernandez ranked first in the AL in innings pitched (219.1), strikeouts (209) and quality starts (27) and he was tied for first in number of starts (30). He was second in ERA (2.30) and third in opponents’ batting average (.219). Still not impressed? The more advanced argument is Hernandez either leads or sits at the top among AL starters in every meaningful sabermetric pitching stat too: first in WAR for pitchers (5.7), first in +WPA (16.67), first in Adjusted Pitching Wins (4.3), first in opponent OPS (.597), second in Adjusted ERA+ (176), third in FIP (2.96), third in xFIP (3.25), third in WHIP (1.09).

    The Mariners, by far the worst offensive team in the league, are averaging 3.32 runs per game for Hernandez, the second-worst support any AL starter has gotten. In his 10 losses, they’ve scored just 10 runs. Sabathia, on the other hand, has had 24 starts in which the Yankees scored four or more runs, and 18 of his 19 wins came in those games, plus one loss and five no decisions.”

    On a contender, Felix would be about 20-3 this year and a lock to win the Cy Young. Here’s hoping the voters don’t penalize him for the fact that the Mariners have no offense.

    By the way, we had amazing seats last Sunday — 12th row behind home plate on the Mariners’ side. Here are my photos.

    Miscellany

    Seattle Mariners: The Biggest Train-Wreck in Sports

    August 9, 2010

    And I can’t stop watching them.

    It’s weird. In a typical baseball season, I’ll watch the Mariners until about maybe 8:00 pm or so, when I come out to my office and get back to the day’s work. And then I’ll look for the score the next day. But for some reason, when the Mariners are possibly about to have their worst season ever, I’m watching a lot of games all the way ’til the end. It’s like I can’t stop watching. I can’t turn my head and look away. What creative way will they find to lose a game tonight? How will the broadcasters entertain themselves during this sleeper?

    They’ve become the biggest train-wreck in sports. That’s gotta be why.

    And Don Wakamatsu certainly deserved better than being fired today. If anyone deserved a firing, it was GM Jack Zduriencik. He’s the guy who built a roster with a bunch of guys that wouldn’t be good enough to play for any other team in baseball. He’s the guy who agreed to let Griffey come back for one more year. He’s the guy who thought Milton Bradley and Casey Kotchman were going to make the Mariners offense better.

    The roster has been the Mariners’ problem all year long. The guys who spent most of this year batting 3-4-5 for the Mariners (Gutierrez, Lopez, Bradley) would be batting 6-7-8 on nearly every other team in baseball. If I knew on Opening Day that this team wasn’t gonna score any runs, why did so many other people expect Big Things? (The Mariners’ marketing dept. didn’t help things with those ridiculous commercials at the start of the year talking about the World Series, about Ichiro and Figgins being the best 1-2 hitting pair in baseball history, etc.)

    In my perfect world, Zduriencik and Wakamatsu would have stayed together, taken a mulligan on this season, and started fixing the roster in the off-season. Oh, well.

    I’ll say this: I bet Don Wakamatsu wins a World Series ring before the Mariners do.

    Social Media

    I Was on FSN Northwest Tonight

    June 2, 2010

    Well, come to think of it, it wasn’t technically me on FSN Northwest … it was my Twitter pictures. And my Twitter username. That’s kinda like being on FSN, isn’t it?

    What happened was that Ken Griffey Jr. retired today, and during the Mariners pre-game show, Sean and I grabbed our Griffey bobbleheads and placed them in front of the TV as if they were watching FSN’s Griffey tribute. I took a photo and posted it on Twitter:

    Picture 1

    And here’s the photo from that tweet:

    bobbleheads

    Whomever handles the FSN Northwest account on Twitter saw that pic and retweeted me with an “AWESOME” in all caps. Then, like 45 minutes later while we’re watching the game, all of a sudden … holy crap, FSN is showing that photo in the middle of the game broadcast!

    tweet

    So, I did what anyone would do: I took a photo of my photo being shown on FSN Northwest, and also put that on Twitter:

    tweet2

    And here’s the photo attached to that:

    photo

    FSN saw that tweet/photo, too, and sent me a message saying they were planning to show both photos during the post-game show. And sure enough, they did!

    last photo

    They actually showed both photos in order, and Brad Adam & Bill Krueger talked about them and all. It was kinda funny. As I’ve said before, I love Twitter.

    Next time I wonder why I’m taking silly photos and putting them on Twitter, I’ll remember this episode. You just never know what might happen….

    Miscellany

    Punchless Mariners

    May 7, 2010

    When discussing the Mariners’ offense, or lack thereof, I’ll resist the urge to say I told you so and just point out this bit of news from Geoff Baker at the Seattle Times:

    But for opening March/April stints, the only Seattle team worse than the 2010 Mariners was the 1986 group.

    That bunch of Mariners posted an OPS+ of 76, compared to this team’s 78.

    For those unfamilliar with the stat, OPS+ is on-base-plus-slugging percentage in relation to how the rest of the teams in your league are doing in a given year. The base point is 100, so any number above that is the percentage above average that your team is while anything below that is below average.

    So, the 2010 Mariners are 22 percent below the average in regards to the teams around them in their league.

    Here’s the full piece if you’re in the mood to get really depressed.