A small request

The Oakland series was a blessed relief.  I don't think baseball was ever supposed to look like what the Ms have shown us over the first nine weeks of the season, be it double-digits wins or losses.  8 runs total between two teams, a 5 to 3 game, feels about right.  So these last two games seemed normal... still plenty of excitement  and suspense, but not that dizzy sensation of seeing six or seven runs scored at a time.

This team needs a little bit of normalcy.  If the hitting and pitching are to settle down, if they are to establish an identity and a template for winning there needs to be less chaos.  Here's hoping the nightmare in Boston last weekend marks the end of the craziness.  Less hope for some regular baseball, win or losing, so these players can master the technique of that kind of game.

The power is back on!

It's pretty clear, the Mariners offense is built on the long ball.  Sometimes they hit, sometimes they don't, but if they start hitting home runs they can win.  Vogie (again), Beckham, Haniger (again) crushed A's pitcher Brett Anderson, who only given up one homer in eight starts this season.

Excellent start by ever-steady Leake.  Shakey defense, but they held on and Elias pitched like a closer.

Two-game winning streak!

The homestand begins

No quit here.  Yes, the A's hit five solo home runs.  And Kikuchi deserved better.  He gave up three of those dingers, but pitched well otherwise.  Ms weren't  really hitting, except for Haniger's lead off homer and Vogie's late inning blast to temporarily tie it.  Otherwise, three hits.  Can't win that way.  

A's break tie in top of tenth but with two out in the bottom of the inning, and all hope just about gone, Vogie hangs on to get a walk and the bats finally wake-up.  Santana gets down 0 and 2 and then drives a double down the left field line. And, how sweet it is, Narvaez, hitting over .300, gets a single to win the game.  Walk off win feels great after the last week.

A winning streak begins at home.

Notable, not in a good way

I have followed this team since it's first season, pretty closely.  Admittedly I have given the Ms a greater level of attention this year than ever before.  I cannot think of much worse baseball than I have witnessed on this 2 and 8 roadtrip.  True, the played winning, championship teams, but they were crushed. And even where it looked like they might be bouncing back, like today, they blew a 4-1 before they got through three.  The pitching is a disaster.  The hitting is starting to falter.  I can't imagine how the players must feel.  Maybe this is what Houston went through on their rebuild.

Ugly

When I decided to write a blog through the full course of a baseball season I anticipated this would be a chaotic year as the team went through its step back from the team of Felix, Robbie and Nellie to step up to the Mariners of Mitch, Marco and Mallex.  I never imagined it would be so crazy.  Two days, two blow-out losses to Boston have been disturbing as, quite frankly, most of this roadtrip has been.

I keep going back to what I said about fundamentals the other day.  Baseball has been played long enough that what comprises good pitching is as understood as well today as it was 100 years ago.  But this Mariners bullpen pitches as if totally ignorant of those fundamentals.

In last night's throttling by the Red Sox, M's pitching gave up 15 hits, ten which scored runs.  I kept track, All but two of those hits came with the pitcher ahead or even in the account.  Smart baseball says to play with the hitter... try to get them to chase.  You've got pitches to spare.

Not this staff.  Five times they gave up hits with two strikes on the batter.  Why?  Why throw a hittable pitch while the advantage is to the hurler?

Frustrating.

Come on Ms, pitch smart!

Trying to get a finger on it

I'm returning to an earlier theme: the issue of team identity, more likely, the lack of one.  Who are these guys?  What can you expect?  It's easy to think they're going to get demolished every night, then they lose a low-scoring one-run pitchers' duel.  You're pretty sure they're going to blast out 4 homers a game, then they're lucky to get two hits.  Just lots and lots of inconsistency.

I don't have the analytics on this, but I'm getting the sense that some of this inconsistency has its roots in breakdowns in pretty basic rubrics of baseball.  In pitching, it comes from first pitch balls, first batter walks and hit yielded on two-strike counts.  Batting 3-2 called strike outs, failure to hit to the right side.  Base running mistakes: out at home on contact, wandering off base and getting picked off.  Defensively?  Outfield throws to the wrong base, failure to get the lead runner, passed balls, only getting one out in a possible double play.

Note these are the kinds of mistakes that lose games and are almost all mental errors.  These are not failures tied to physical limitations.  These are breakdowns in thinking that give your opponent an extra at bat, rob your offense of a run, extend an opponents' chance to score runs.

Killers one and all.  Maybe all fixable with more experience and cosching.

I recall Chuck Knox explaining something about football that applies just as well to baseball.  In the course of a game there are three or four moments that explain the outcome.  When they occur they are often small and unnoticed.  But in the end they make the difference.  These mental mistakes I've enumerated occur all too frequently with the Ms and explain why so many of these losses are hard to explain (and even harder to digest).

At least it wasn't 1-0

The M's wrapped up their four game series in New York with a 3-0 loss.  This was almost the second time this season the usual potent Mariner bats were held to one hit.  They eked one more hit in the 8th, but how long before this tram gets no-hit on an off night.

It was almost another 1-0 loss, but the relief pitching saved us that horror, one of the "zaks" giving up two runs in the bottom of the eighth.

Off to Boston where I am sure they are looking to get even for their bad start in Seattle last month.

That's more like it

Damn, I forgot to press the publish button.  This should have been posted yesterday.  I'm proud ti have wriiten everyday since this Mariners blog started.  This should be May 8.  Sorry.

 Kikuchi showed just exactly what we've all hoped for.  A no-hitter into the sixth, a bloop hit and one just outside of the reach of Dee for a run, then a couple of more scoreless innings.  Add in three M home runs and some timely hitting and they cruised to a 10-1 win over the Yankees.

Queasy

Around the start of the bottom of the 8th inning I began thinking about what I wanted to day about this game.  Things were fairly encouraging.  The Ms were up 4 to 1, playing pretty good ball to back up a strong start from Marco Gonzalez.  But I was feeling uneasy.   Already in mid-May this Mariners team has shown itself to be so unreliable that there is this uneasy feeling things could go wrong.

And they did.  The reliever, Brennan walks the first two batters, looks like he's going to settle and get out of it and a wild pitch gives New York a run.

Top of the ninth.  Ms waste a scoring opportunity, for the second time tonight runner out at home on a  ground ball.  Bottom of the ninth?

Swarzak gives up another home run.  Two runs to tie.  That's Swarzak's fifth home run in his last six appearances.  Elias comes in... single, an out, a stolen base, a base hit.  Game over.

M's at .500 for first, and most likely last time, this season.

Felix descends to earth

Six Yankee runs in Felix' first two innings pretty much explains this.  To his credit, Hernandez hung in there for three more innings, the Ms tried to punch their way back, but they couldn't catch.  They had their chances, but couldn't get clutch hits when the needed.  The Ms left 8 on base and four times left runners in scoring position with two outs.

Haniger who showed signs in the Cleveland series of getting in his groove, looked bad tonight: 0fer5, two strike outs and four lob.  A thoroughly forgettable game in the Bronx.  It didn't help what the Ms last 12 batters made outs, six of them strikeouts.

Confusing

It was Churchill who once referred to the Soviet Union as a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an  enigma.  The same could be said of this season's Seattle Mariners.  We haven't seen this team for eight days when they beat the Rangers 14 to 2.  In between we've seen that Ms team that gets crushed by giving up 11 or more runs (3 times) or loses by one run (3 times) or, once, actually wins by one run.

Again, what's the pattern or identity of this team.  A couple of patterns appear to be: lose big, win big, lose close.  What kind of pattern is that?

New disturbing trend, maybe it was just what comes of being in Cleveland, the Lake Effect.  Base-running mistakes.  More part of the learning curve?

Off to New York.

And still another one run loss

Six losses in a row, today's eerily similar to last night's.  Decent offense kept pace all day with Cleveland, enough to pull ahead in the 8th, only to see another late inning relief failure, this time the other "zek," Sadzeck.

Maybe this is the "learning" DiPoto claims the year to be about.  Let's see, Reliever Lesson 1:  tied or with a one-run lead, do not allow anyone to score anything against you.  That's what a "hold" is. 

Another one run loss

Great pitching by Kikuchi tonight, matched almost pitch by pitch by Cleveland's Shane Bieber.  Swarzak lost it in the bottom of the ninth.  Let the lead-off batter walk, saw him score two outs and another walk later.  In a low-scoring game small mistakes get amplified. The walk to open the inning was bad.  The two out walk was worse, because it moved the first runner into scoring position and the next batter's hit brought him in.  No second walk and it's unlikely he would have come home from first on that hit.

Five losses in a row.  Fifth loss by one-run.  Better than losing by 14, but hurts just the same.

Hard times

Wow!  If those weekend clobberings at the hands of the Rangers were awful, yesterday's one-hit 11-0 humiliation by the Cubs was worse, because after a promising bounceback in defeat the day before, the Ms appear to have learned nothing.  It was all there, lousy pitching, undependable fielding, no hitting.  

This graph, the proprietary work of baseball-reference.com, tells the whole ugly story.  It shows run differential, how much a team won by (green) or lost (red) for each game through the season.  Four games ago the Ms led all of the major leagues with 43 RD.  Over the next four games the team's run differential fell to two... 2.  That's it.

Just when I think they have it turned around, they stagger off the path.  Keep in mind the red lines are losses.  After reaching an early April high of 13 wins with two losses, Seattle has played 5 and 13 ball.  That's a .278 winning percentage.  That projects to a 51-111 season.

I don't know if I can think about that much less write about it.  Back on the road... Cleveland, the Yankees, the Red Sox.  Okay?

A credible loss

The Ms impressed me last night.  After the back-to-back humiliations at the hands of the Rangers, the lost to the Cubs, but, strange to say, in a way that shows they have some of that most basic baseball stuff: heart.  I was most impressed with Felix.  He gave up a home run on his second pitch to start the game and just settled down and ground through six innings.  He wasn't stellar... he gave up three more runs, but he was steady and solid, notching 8 strikeouts along the way.  It would have been easy for him to fold, but he hung in there tough and waited for the offense to wake up.

And it took a little time for the bats to get going... Hamels is a tough pitcher... but they fought back, squeezed out a couple of runs to take the lead.  Felix was actually sitting on a win when Brennan, really for the first time this year, blew it.

This was a mature rebound after some bad bad baseball.