The good and the bad.

The bad news is that the Mariners are woefully short on good hitting. The good news is that there’s clearly nobody noticeably better in our division. As we’re in the midst of what looks like a second straight loss to the Tigers (who are a good team, by the way), the A’s got shut out by the Jays and the Angels got swept by Minnesota (and with Vladimir Guerrero now out for a couple of months, this season is quickly heading into a tailspin for them). Unfortunately Texas did win today, but they’re not any good either.

I have no illusions about the Mariners winning the World Series this year…but it appears that we’re going to be relevant for most of the season, by default if nothing else. After last year, it’ll be good to still care about the M’s in mid-May.

Nice start for the M’s.

I went into this baseball season with zero expectations, especially after Ichiro went to the DL to start the year…but 4-2 after six games is a really fine start, given the circumstances. We even snatched a win today on a day when Felix was off his game and gave up five runs; that’s huge.

I fully expect the rest of the AL West to be pretty bad this year, so as long as the Mariners can hover around .500 they’ll be relevant. Hopefully Bedard brings it tomorrow and can lead us to a sweep of the A’s.

Good day in sports.

I like the Cougars’ hire of Ken Bone as the next basketball coach. A guy with northwest ties, who probably already knows some of WSU’s recruits for this coming year, and has had success at Portland State…this was as good of a pick as we could hope for, I think. The next step is to keep our recruits in the fold, and especially to keep our freshmen like Klay Thompson and DeAngelo Casto from skipping town, but I’m glad that Jim Sterk acted quickly and decisively in getting us what appears to be a good pick for coach. Again, it’s imperative that we win pretty soon under Bone and keep the positive trend going in Cougar hoops.

The Mariners win on opening day, Griffey goes yard…that was nice. We should obviously be expecting to win when we throw Felix Hernandez against a subpar offense like Minnesota’s, but I’m happy about it regardless. If we’re going to see much success this year, it’s going to have to be on the backs of some great pitching by both Felix and Bedard, so here’s hoping that Bedard has a good outing tomorrow night.

A-Rod news disappointing.

I was sufficiently surprised by the new revelation that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003.

Even as a Mariner fan who didn’t appreciate his phony personality, I thought in recent years that it would be a lot better for the game of baseball if A-Rod could keep his home run pace going and take the all-time home run mantle away from Barry Bonds; for some reason, I always believed that Rodriguez was just a once-in-a-generation talent who didn’t need steroids to be as great as he was. Now that I know that he was juicing, too…screw it, I don’t care if he catches Bonds or not.

To be clear, I don’t really sit in judgment of these players who were doing steroids when Major League Baseball was doing nothing about it. If I was talented enough to be a big leaguer, and steroids were the physical risk I would have to take to make millions of dollars, I can’t say with confidence that I wouldn’t have done this also. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have, but I really don’t know. I’m simply saying that as far as this guy with a fairly unlikable personality to begin with goes, I’ve run out of reasons to pull for him; he’s not a player getting by on tremendous talent and hard work like I hoped he was. We’re officially a long, long way from having an all-time home run king who isn’t tarnished by the steroids asterisk.

As an aside, let me say that I think it’s ridiculous for Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, or anyone else under suspicion of probable steroid use to be kept out of the Hall of Fame over this infraction. These are some of the players that really defined the game (and for A-Rod, still do define the game) over the last 15 years. People will always know what went on during this era, putting them in the Hall won’t exonerate them in the public eye or anything. This was something that MLB themselves pretty much enabled and fostered, and it seems like nothing short of selective prosecution to keep some of the best players of the generation out for this reason while some players of this generation who simply didn’t get caught will undoubtedly make it in there. The best players should be put in, and the public can view them for what they were.

Apparently baseball season is still going on…

…I’m not paying any attention, the season ended months ago as far as I knew, but it sure is shameful to see the way every media story is focused on cheering on the Cubs’ quest to finally win another World Series. It’s reminiscent of hands across America for the Boston Red Sox a few years back, which was one of the most sickening things I’ve ever seen as a sports fan.

Once again, we as a sports fan society are informed that choking repeatedly over the years is a virtue, and something we should cheer a team on for doing.

Hit the bricks, Bill Bavasi.

The Mariners fired Bill Bavasi today, at long last. Bavasi was a terrible general manager who did very little right along the way. His last big move, the trade of Adam Jones, really might haunt us in years to come. He has left the club in a position where they probably won’t come around to be particularly competitive again for at least a couple of years, especially if Erik Bedard skips town when his contract comes to an end.

Well that was a nice little release.

That sweep at the hands of the stupid Yankees this weekend really deflated most of the hope I had been holding onto for this season. Granted, 6.5 games isn’t some huge margin that can’t be made up over the course of 130 more to play, but the good writers at USSMariner.com put up some pretty sobering numbers when it comes to what we have to hope for to overtake a very good Angels team. We have to outperform them by a pretty good clip the rest of the way, and let’s face it, there’s nothing to really indicate that we have a better team than them.

With all of that said, dominant performances like tonight are a real pleasure to watch.

Two more games…two more runs.

There just isn’t anything to say about the Mariners right now that I haven’t said already. Most games they’re not scoring more than three runs, and they’re playing in the offense-heavy American League, where the rest of the teams are averaging almost five runs a game.

We’re expecting you to throw shutouts every five days, Felix. Anything less won’t be enough.

11 innings, 2 runs.

The Mariners are trying hard to kill my will to write about them. Make no mistake about it, they had no business winning last night’s game…they were gift-wrapped a lucky run in the 9th just to keep it going, between a wild pitch and an error by the 3rd baseman when Ichiro was certainly going to be caught stealing. The whole thing should’ve ended earlier than it did, but once they caught that break, they really had a chance to steal one…and still found a way to give it right back.

Yes, I’m concerned.

From time to time, in a 162 game season…

…you get your butts kicked. No deep analysis needed for game two between the Mariners and Indians.

Quite happy to see Wladimir Balentein and Jeff Clement called up though (and hitting a combined 3-for-5, with a 3-run HR from Balentein). The M’s will certainly be a better team for it going forward.

Here’s hoping for an appearance from good Miguel Batista tomorrow night, and a series win in the rubber game.

Very kind of the Mariner offense to make a cameo.

This Mariner offense could be pretty good if we could just skip lineup spots five through eight. It was looking like another night where the M’s were going to have to try to scrape out a third or fourth run in the futile hope that it would be enough to win…and suddenly, the floodgates opened in the 9th inning. Finally, a game where I can say that the M’s were resurgent in the face of adversity…and we largely have Adrian Beltre to thank for it.

Okay, I’ve decided, I hate the lineup more than the bullpen.

Sunday afternoon. Mariners build an early 2-0 lead. Felix Hernandez on the mound, masterful as always, cruising right along. As the innings go on, things feel well within control, but the offense has failed to build upon the two run lead. Heard this one before?

I’m not going to put the majority of this on Felix’s 8th inning meltdown.

Our starting rotation is a rock.

There have been valid complaints about the Mariners’ lineup and bullpen so far this year…but aside from Miguel Batista, who has mostly been terrible, the starting pitching has been really good, and that’s mostly without the #1 starter that we sold the farm to get. Thankfully, that very Erik Bedard was back tonight, and didn’t look like a pitcher still being saddled by any kind of injuries. It was thrilling to see; since he was put on the DL, I feared the worst, that we had received damaged goods…but the way he dominated tonight, it seems as though John McLaren’s proclamation, that the team was just playing it safe early in the season, may indeed have been sincere.

6.2 shutout innings of work. Fantastic.

The bullpen came back, the offense took a rest. This is getting tiresome.

Miguel Batista couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn last night. He wasn’t just having a few control problems; he looked perfectly capable of aiming for the catcher and decapitating a fan in the front row. After watching him flail wildly and get away with somehow only giving up three runs, Cha Seung Baek came in and pitched amazingly, at one point retiring 15 straight Oakland batters. He wound up giving up one hit that came around to score, but in a tight spot like that, going six innings and giving up just the one run is excellent.

Hats off to Baek, for giving us a really great opportunity to win the game after a bleak start.

The offense showed back up. It didn’t matter.

Seven games against the Orioles. Six losses. Entirely stupid.

The Mariner offense jumped all over Baltimore starter Adam Loewen, spotting the pitching staff a 5-0 lead. Jarrod Washburn did an okay #4 starter job, laboring through only five innings but holding the Orioles to two runs. From there, though, the bullpen looked awful. Again. Even after botching the lead entirely, and digging us into a 7-5 hole, Ichiro hit a two-run homer to tie the game back up, and Shawn Green promptly gave another home run up to give Baltimore a lead that they wouldn’t relinquish. Of course they wouldn’t relinquish it…they now have former Mariner and apparent new Mariner killer George Sherrill to shut things down for the night.

I mean, seriously…how, in 12 losses, have we managed to have FIVE of them get closed out by any single pitcher from some other division, let alone one who was pitching for us 24 regular season games ago? That is truly painful.

Sorry Ichiro. Seven runs at home still isn’t enough to beat the mediocre Orioles.

Goodness…take a few walks, M’s.

Nick Markakis loves hitting against the M’s…I’m glad that he left Oakland and went to Baltimore, so he can torture us a little less often. Our encounters with him still aren’t rare enough; he hit the eventual winning HR in the top of the 8th, a solo shot to give the Orioles a 3-2 win.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that was the real story of the game, though. The story of the game is that the Mariners again failed to draw a walk, for the fourth time in seven games, and did all of (mediocre Baltimore starter) Daniel Cabrera’s work for him. He went 8 innings strong, and did it by throwing less than 100 pitches…nobody in the Mariner lineup forced him to work. The only ones who have shown any real patience at the plate this season, to my eyes, are Jose Lopez and Jose Vidro…and even they aren’t great in this regard. In general, we have a team full of free swingers, and if they’re not making good contact, we’re not going to have a realistic shot in a lot of games.

No freaking way this guy should be that dominant against the Mariners.

Putz is back, and revenge against the Orioles has begun.

Boy, was that a refreshing 9th inning to watch, or what? JJ Putz, showing absolutely no rust from his layoff of three weeks, came in and dominated at Safeco Field tonight (okay, there was a leadoff hit, but Putz had great command throughout the inning regardless). A nice, comfortable close-out to finish the Orioles team who we couldn’t manage to beat in four games a few weeks ago was eminently satisfying. During his absence, the bullpen has blown a couple of games (4/6 and 4/7 against these same Orioles), and flirted with disaster on Sunday against the Angels. My blood pressure will certainly be lower with JJ Putz back on the mound.

They can cue up the AC/DC at Safeco again.

Wow, Batista.

Carol: “That’s maybe the best compliment of my life.”
Melvin: “Well maybe I overshot a little, because I was aiming at just enough to keep you from walking out.”

That exchange from As Good as It Gets is what comes to mind in describing the game that Miguel Batista threw against the Angels on Sunday to help the Mariners avoid the weekend sweep, after I simply put the hope out there that he would finally produce his first good start. Forget good…Batista was fantastic today.

This Mariner lineup is just brutal sometimes.

Two games against the Angels.  The Mariner lineup is a combined 11 for 63, and hasn’t scored on anything but three different home runs.  Credit Saunders and Santana for pitching a great couple of games for the Angels, but I continue to think that we’re in for our share of nights like this out of the Mariner lineup.

Beltre’s solo home run was the only remote bright spot out of the Mariner offense.

R.I.P. John Marzano (1963-2008)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Former major leaguer John Marzano has died. He was 45. Police say Marzano was found dead at his home in Philadelphia on Saturday. The cause was not immediately clear.

Marzano was from Philadelphia and had been working for Major League Baseball’s Web site, where he co-hosted a show on weekday mornings.

Previously, he had been an analyst for the Philadelphia Phillies on Comcast SportsNet.

Marzano played in the big leagues for the Boston Red Sox, Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners before retiring in 1998. He also played in the minors for the Phillies and the Cleveland Indians.

He is survived by his wife, two daughters and two grandchildren.

Link

Marzano was the Mariners’ backup catcher for a couple of years in the mid-90′s. Obviously, being a career backup, he was no great player, but always seemed to have an enjoyable personality. The biggest thing I remember about him is Dave Niehaus and Ron Fairly jokingly nicknaming him “Air Time”…due to his practice of intentionally going and sitting next to the Mariner in the dugout who had just hit a home run, since it generally got him a little bit of extra television exposure.

According to his Wikipedia page, his death was caused by an accidental fall down a flight of stairs (UPDATE: the fall was caused by a heart attack). Tragic that he died young and left a family behind.