I think that this is a useful exercise, especially when I consider all of the really great players that I don’t have the chance to watch on a regular basis. Jose Bautista is the player that comes to mind at the moment. While Blue Jays fans obviously can appreciate his run, he carries on with his unusual greatness while most of us simply hear about him after the fact.

Now, to Felix Hernandez. First off, King Felix’s motion is one that I haven’t heard expounded upon at much length in the time I’ve been paying attention. It’s fairly standard until he goes into the leg kick. Instead of just raising up his knees and then tipping forward into the throw, Felix works in a twist, rotating his hips towards center field like Luis Tiant. Before 2010, I had no idea that King Felix had a such a hitch in his motion, the likes of which you tend to see more with junkball deception artists rather than power pitchers with very hard sinkers like Felix has.

Just recently, I was watching a Mariners game, and a broadcaster–I wish I could remember which one–mentioned that King Felix didn’t really stabilize as a great pitcher until he incorporated that hitch. It was, said the expert, the rhythmic touch that he needed to reach his true potential.

Felix throws:

- A sinking fastball in the 91-94 range.
- A hard vertical curveball.
- A straight change-up.
- A straight fastball.

On to the game. Felix faces the Twins, who aren’t much on offense. I will comment by the inning.

1st Inning. Felix started out throwing four fastballs out of the strike zone. Pacing the mound early in the game, the fourth was a 90 mph get me over pitch that wasn’t close. Felix isn’t necessarily a control pitcher, though he doesn’t walk hitters. He’s more the type to hammer the strike zone with pitches whose movement and speed makes them hard to hit, rather than relying on pinpoint control to make them hard to hit.

Felix threw his first bender of the game to Matt Tolbert on a 1-2 count. Tolbert grounded it weakly to second, flailing to keep the straight up-and-down hook from nicking the bottom of the strike zone for a third one. The Felix curve drops, like all of his best pitches, with a sense of profound gravity, like the earth wants them back.

On this night, Felix walked two out of his first three. His fastballs are straight, and rising away from the strike zone. They lack, so far, the gravity mentioned above. This is hardly the typical Felix Hernandez start, but it does highlight Felix’s ability to work out of trouble. A minute after walking Kubel, he goaded a very weak grounder back to himself to finish off Morneau. The force of his pitches may leave him for a batter or two, but there’s a well that he can always draw from, no matter what the situation is.

That said, Felix gave up a single to Michael Cuddyer that scores two runs. When Felix throws poorly, it becomes more apparent how great his “on” stuff is. When the movement is absent is when it’s the most obvious.

2nd Inning. “He gives himself a stern talking to,” noted Dave Sims after Felix returned to the mound in the second. King Felix reasserted himself in the second inning, re-proving that if he doesn’t walk anybody and lets his pitches dictate the game rather than his location, then he’ll do okay. (It doesn’t hurt to face the back end of a light lineup). It was over as quick as it started, this inning, as no Twin managed to square up a ball like Cuddyer did the inning before.

3rd Inning. The themes established in the first two inning show themselves in the third: the Twins can’t hit the strikes and they don’t need to hit the balls. Against Denard Span, he threw his first great pitch of the night, a sinking fastball that crossed the plate low and away at around 90 mph. Slower than King Felix’s normal sinker, but darting like it can. Felix took out another hitter, then faced Kubel, and he’s picking up steam. Kubel dribbled another one to Felix, a sinker that rose up to around 94.

Felix is in the school of great pitchers, which Mike Blowers and Dave Sims in the booth noted, who really settle in through the course of a start. Already, the third inning ended with the sense that King Felix was warm. It’s a cliche, to use that metaphor of rising temperature, but it feels accurate, that sensation most of recognize from personal experience, the feeling of muscles loosening and holding heat, of remembering muscle memory and working with the tools at our disposal rather than against them. As Felix’s game progresses, he throws harder, his pitches get more slippery.

4th Inning. I don’t mind being right about the King’s sense of flow. The first pitch he threw to Justin Morneau to start off the fourth was a rain-making curveball, a classic (if any of King Felix’s pitches have a precedent) six-to-twelve hook. Morneau swung at it like it was dark out. Morneau skied a feeble fly ball to center. Michael Cuddyer parlayed a sinker away into a single up the middle. Follow that with a walk, then a fielder’s choice and you’ve got a complicated inning. Cue the back end of the lineup, and Felix ended the inning with a hard sinker to strike out the hitter and end the inning in an uncomplicated manner.

5th Inning. A strange night for Felix. A hard curveball, the first pitch of the inning, hooked down straight into the foot of Alexi Casilla, who was at the time trying to lay down a drag bunt. It appeared that the bunt was still on offer, making it a strike, but the hitter was granted the base. The hard Felix fastball is still there, however, as he popped the mitt to get Span for the first out.

A weak ground ball should have produced the final two outs of the inning, but some weak defense reveals the issue of bad defense for pitchers. Felix, as he is wont to on a team as bad as these have been, takes matters into his own hands, spinning a hard curveball that produces a grounder to himself, him turning and throwing it to second to start the double play.

He has not given up a run since the first inning, but it doesn’t seem that way. That’s one characteristic of the Felix Experience: make sure you check the scoreboard. On a night that could feel like a flounder for Felix, you realize he’s flexed his way out of all of the tight spots.

6th Inning. After a couple of balls, Felix broke Morneau’s bat on an outside fastball, which the Bunyan-esque big fellow grounded weakly to shortstop. That is the power of the pure Felix fastball. A super slow-mo of the play showed Morneau hitting the pitch out on the end of his bat. The bat broke and shook in his hands like it was goosed with an electrical charge. A crazy change-up in the dirt struck out Cuddyer, tonight’s villain, and another fastball dispatches the final hitter of the inning on a fly to center.

In this inning, Felix let his fastball get hit in the area of the zone, with positive results, and he showed a killer change-up, which he hasn’t featured heavily tonight after he missed the zone with it a few times early on.

7th Inning. Felix rarely looks out of place on the mound. He is often dominant. Not so on the first pitch of the seventh, which he left up to Ben Revere, who sent it screaming back to whence it came, narrowly missing Felix’s forehead. Felix is an expert at pitching for himself, regardless of run support. His Cy Young Award with a 13-12 record speaks volumes. Tonight is a perfect example, as his team has put up just a run in support of his 2-run effort, and yet he sustains, he holds the line, he battles.

After the liner across his bow, to wit, he struck out the next two batters looking, with sinkers on the outside corner.

8th Inning. The company of pitchers whom one expects to pitch deep into every game is exclusive, with members like Halladay, Cliff Lee, Lincecum, Verlander, Price, Weaver. King Felix stepped out for the 8th inning. He has struck out 7 in the game, and locked the game down after the first inning. A smattering of fastballs to start the frame, before striking out Tolbert with Thor’s Hammer. A 95 mph fastball greeted Jason Kubel on a full count, and a pitch later he flied to left.

Justin Morneau was the last barrier between King Felix and 8 strong innings of work. The first pitch, Thor’s Hammer, for a called strike. The second, a high fastball that Morneau flailed at. The final pitch of the inning, and perhaps of King Felix’s night, was a heater on the corner, a called strike for the 9th strike out of the night.

THE DAY IN ICHIRO, just for the heck of it

1. 1-2 to Ichiro against the no-hit pitching master Liriano. He got a fastball inside, and rather than swinging at it, he held his bat at an angle and let the ball glance off of it, foul. Then he grounded out to second.

2. Ichiro ran away from the first pitch as it passed through the zone. He topped the second pitch right off of home plate and hit a high infield parabola to first baseman Justin Morneau, who waited for it to fall like he was at the bus stop. Meanwhile, Ichiro was sprinting towards him down the first base line. The ball finally fell and the first baseman was just able to tag Ichiro, who was falling away in an attempt at a hood slide.

3. With the opportunity to send a couple of runner home from first and third, but with two outs, Ichiro took a tough call slider strike to go down in the count quickly. With a glance at his teammates on the base, he dipped a bit to drive a low fastball into right center, a confident RBI single on a pretty good pitch. “I don’t know how he does it every time,” said Mike Blowers. The night before, the broadcast team spent some time looking at Ichiro’s head while he swings. As the body shifts and ducks and moves, the head remains as still as if it were operated with Steadicam technology.

4. A non-descript pop-out to left field at a crucial point in the game.

HAaRD TO WATCH

David Aardsma walked in the tying run. That’s hurtful. In Seattle in 2010, 4 runs represent a flash flood of productivity that can hardly be wasted in such a Mark Wohlers-esque manner, against a team such as the Orioles. One could probably look at the last play of the game, which featured Jose Lopez missing a rolling bunt with his bare hand, but really a walk and a borderline error are really very distinct.

Aardsma’s a good player, so there’s not much to say about his performance other than that he probably would’ve been better off chunking one over the middle and giving up a run-scoring hit rather than an utterly mediocre bases loaded walk.

MOORE POTENTIAL

I did enjoy seeing Adam Moore lay into a pitch and hit it a long way. When you look at the departed Rob Johnson, you see that he had no power, whether actual or potential. Moore, at least, has potential power. Everybody fails sometimes, and those that stick have the potential to pop off in a heartbeat. Moore has that potential, and RJ did not.

SEAN IN 60 SECONDS

Bad teams have to put indisputably bad players into the game at very important moments. That’s what we saw when Sean White entered the game in what became the final half inning. He quickly gave up a double to Nick Markakis. That’s no match. And even if he didn’t give up much, his presence on the mound is that of someone trying badly not to give up the secret: that he shouldn’t be out there; that Jamie Moyer at age 60 is probably gonna be better than him. It’s not his fault, he’s doing his best and the powers continue to run him out there. The loss was mercifully quick, at least.

Jose Lopez hits the game-winner, via DayLife

GAME NOTES

It’s hard to say much more about Jason Vargas. The guy can really pitch (see below). These are the games we should have been winning all year long, in which one run makes the difference because the pitching and defense held the opposition to a microscopic output. It took some extra time for us to tally the second and game-winning run, but it came from a timely base hit–not a feat of amazingness or a huge tally by the offense. Just a base hit to cover a great pitching performance.

We tanked the series, but at the very least we left it with a good taste in the mouth. Now we go on the face one of the hottest teams in baseball, after losing 3 of 4 from the second place Halos.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE THE GRAY MAKES

On the surface, Jason Vargas and Ryan Rowland-Smith don’t seem so different from each other. They’re both soft-throwing lefties with a little wrinkle in their stuff, working in the 80mphs. But when you zero in, it becomes apparent that Vargas, he’s the real pitcher out of the two. He works around the edges of the strike zone, living in the gray area between strike and ball, playing that daredevil game that you have to in the pros, taunting hitters with good-looking pitches that are just out of reach.

RRS, on the other hand, ends up in the middle of the plate so often they know his name and his drink. He just lacks that high level command. Now a pitcher like Felix, he can get away with a margin of error on account of his awesome “stuff.” RRS has no stuff. His survival–or lack thereof–depends on control. Bad news for him.

OFF BASE

I coached 13-year-olds a few years ago. That’s their first year on the big field, when they can finally lead off the bases and steal at will. They’re like newborn foals, just getting their legs under them, shaky but exuberant.

They got picked off fewer times all season than the Mariners have since the second half began.

I can understand the occasional runner getting picking when stealing on “first move” with a lefty on the mound (which happened against Joe Saunders). But we’re talking about getting picked off by righties here. Baby stuff: Jack Wilson and Ichiro getting pegged at third trying to squeeze more out of a play than is available. Milton Bradley breaking early to steal and getting picked. Chone Figgins getting picked, Michael Saunders getting picked.

If there’s a team that can’t afford to get picked off, thereby reducing the odds of their scoring just that much, it is the team that is 30th in RBI, 27th in home runs, etc. etc.

We’ve stolen some bases, which is nice and it makes for a fun game and there’s been a lot of success lately. But if you add in the pick-offs and the obvious baserunning errors, I’m sure it negates a lot of the positives of aggressiveness.

2012

According to Dave Cameron at USS Mariner, 2012 will be the year. Not in the John Cusack, flying limo sense (not safe for sensitive eardrums), but in the “good” sense, in that that’s the year we will contend again. And by “good” I mean “good if you are a patient, well-balanced person.”

Smoak stands out, via DayLife

GAME NOTES

Wait, which team is this? Am I watching the 2004 Texas Rangers? Maybe not, but we slugged the heck out of the ball this Saturday. Our pitching let us down in the end, giving up 7 runs, but at least we lost in a different way. There was a good while there when I thought we could well catch up and surpass the Angels.

It didn’t happen, but what matters almost as much is the sense of hope from inning to inning. In a season when the macro-level hope is gone, that much more mental energy goes into the micro, the inning-by-inning. When the Ms knocked 5 hits in a row in the 4th, it was like a fresh breeze blew through the room. What a feat! And after the Halos had put 5 up before that, off of RRS. Going quietly has been a trademark of the 2010 Ms. It was a pleasure to see them rattle the cupboards and break some dishes for once.

Justin Smoak, for one, will make that pursuit more bearable. He continues to prove that he has the pure talent and the poster boy swing to warrant the big trade:

SMOAKIN’!

Smoak batted right-handed tonight, the first time I’ve seen him hit from that side of the plate. He promptly tagged a double to left, then an RBI single, then a big old home run. He has not yet hit well as a righty, but the naked eye suggests to me that his righty swing is as smooth and powerful as his lefty version. Time will tell.

As I wrote about in yesterday’s game, Smoak swings with energy. He misses big at times, but he hits it big. He is this lineup right now. Hit him 4th, Wak!

MISCELLANEA

How valuable is a guy like Mike Napoli of the Angels? He played first last night, and caught tonight. He hits homers, and takes very good care of his beard.

Chris Seddon quick scouting report: “A lot going on there,” I’d say, but he works quickly and throws with some confidence. He doesn’t have real zippy stuff, but at least for a little while it seems that his gangly, weird pitching motion can add a sliver of deception to his offerings. On another note, there’s a lot to like about Brian Sweeney. He throws strikes, has some poise, and has a shut-the-door change-up. You like to see a reliever with one really good pitch to get out of tough situations (I didn’t realize until just now that he is 36. He looks about 24).

Dave Sims is Erick Aybar‘s #1 FAN. “This guy doesn’t get the attention he deserves.” “Erick Aybar is major league shortstop ladies and gentlemen.” It’s kind of fun to watch (good) broadcast get hung up on a player or an idea like this. We all do it as fans–Justin Smoak is the future!–and I never begrudge a broadcaster the same luxury. It’s fun, and it adds structure to the act of watching a game.

The converse would be someone like Joe Morgan or Tim McCarver, who pick up on a very minor detail and say the same mediocre observation about it inning after inning.

Sims is right in that Aybar has done a number in the last few days, with some key hits and very solid defense. Coming out of Spring Training, I thought that Maicer Izturis would have a good year. He got hurt, and opened the door for Aybar to play regularly.

Watching Ichiro in the All Star Game

For the second night in a row, the Mariners banked on a single inning, and basically a single swing, for all of their runs. Tonight, instead of Ichiro, it was…the Smoak Monster! He launched one, with the gusto that nobody else in the lineup (at least in this Branyan-less iteration) is capable of. The rest of the team proved once again that they are incapable by failing to score outside of Smoak’s 2-run homer in the top of the 7th.

Mike Blowers–a yeoman’s color commentator who is capable of a broad, straight ahead kind of insight, said something that resonated regarding Smoak: “He has an aggressive swing. When he gets a fastball to hit, he’s trying to do something with it.” Now, this might sound like a throwaway line. On another team, it would be.

But as I said, with this team it rings true. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a team that gives the impression of swinging so lightly. I’m not a stat whiz, but I looked at Fangraphs’ Home Run per Fly Ball numbers, and no Mariner appears in the first five or so pages. Chone Figgins is way close to the bottom of the list, coming in at a whopping 0.0 home runs per fly ball. This makes me think that, when they hit fly balls, the Ms do not hit them hard. And often it doesn’t look like they have taken a major league hack at the ball.

Well, Justin Smoak takes a major league hack, and Blowers was pointing out, I think, that he stands out because he a) takes a big cut and b) has enough talent for something to hit the ball with a big cut. It was thrilling to see him connect with one of his big cuts, in a season that doesn’t feature a lot of thrills on the offensive side.

MISCELLANEA

• Jered Weaver scouting report:

- I’m always amazed that he only throws 90+/- miles per hour. – “He got a chance to tip his cap at the All Star Game,” said Dave Sims of his appearance but ineligibility for the game itself. Sims is quickly becoming my go-to quotable guy. – Weaver has a big, loopy, college-style curveball. Most big leaguers have a little wrinkle slider or a sharp change. Weaver, like Barry Zito, offers a full starched fold. – His location, as I watch him with his 90 miles per hour and his college curve, is on point, I must admit.

• Were Kendry Morales healthy, the Angels lineup would be one well-rounded outfit. From Aybar up top, to Abreu the walk machine, to Torii the RBI-guy. Morales, the all-around slugger–they’d have had a much better shot at challenging the Rangers, which they still might.

• “Balkin’ Bob Davidson” is how Sims described the first-base ump who apparently has a penchant for calling out pitchers.

• Kotchman should not be hitting in front of Justin Smoak. Not a .200 hitter who can’t hit a hard ball fair. Smoak is a middle-order guy on this team, and there’s no need for us to pretend otherwise. Throw him in there, let him rip. Kotch had his chance.

• There was a telling shot of the dugout in the last inning. King Felix was on the bench in the top of the ninth, with a towel draped over his head, as Jose Lopez put away his batting helmet and batting gloves. He had just hit an easy groundball to short, one of three Ms to fizzle in their final opportunity, down by just a run. I didn’t get the sense that Felix had very high expectations.

Aybar's only folly: getting hosed by Ichiro at home

The All-Star break was a welcome calm in the relentless gale of the baseball season, and it’s allowed me to catch my breath a bit. I’m excited to dig into the second half and watch how baseball in the Emerald City plays out.

GAME NOTES

I really like Dave Sims as a broadcaster. He’s an optimistic guy, and he noted the first game post-All-Star break as the first step on the road “toward respectability.” The Mariners tripped. They’ll have to dust themselves off again, and ease on down that bumpy road.

The story was much the same tonight. The Ms couldn’t hit enough to make up for mediocre pitching. All of their runs came from one Ichiro double in one inning. Doug Fister looked rusty, as his sinkers rose high in the hitting zone.

The Angels put the ball in play. They hit mistake pitches, stacked up hits and scored in bunches. Erick Aybar, who had 3hits and as many RBI, played the way we were hoping Chone Figgins would play this year. Bobby Abreu is a pro’s pro’s pro. I repeat, I love Bobby Abreu.

There were two moments on the Ms side that got me fired up. The first was when Ichiro drove a sizzling ball to right center with the bases loaded. As he rounded first, I probably let myself envision the Mariners offense as a juggernaut, starting now and into the future.

The second moment was when Justin Smoak almost hit a homer. It was a warning track shot in the end, but–turning again to the imagined–the real ones don’t seem far off.

MISCELLANIA

• Joel Pineiro, the Angels starter in this game, embodies mediocrity to me. He’s never broken out, and yet he stays in the league. He’s had a few good years, but his ERA will generally float back to the 5 area. His style is quite similar to that of Fister’s, with an upper-80s sinker that works best when it slides back over the corners. His change-up is probably better. He pitched pretty well tonight, in the end.

• The Doug Fister salad days early in the season seem far off now, after the injury, which seemed to rob him of his early momentum. You’ve still got some nice movement on your pitches, Doug, but your location is whack.

• Bobby Abreu is a craftsman in the batter’s box, eying pitches like a carpenter checking the grain on a piece of pine. When he chooses a pitch, he acts on it deliberately, and looks back on his successes with simple satisfaction. In the 5th he went down 0-2, then walked on the same four straight balls that Torii Hunter would subsequently flail away at and hit into a double play.

• Ichi-throw. As much as baseball fans discuss it, it’s rare to see Ichiro lock, load and discharge an unmediated cannon shot from the outfield. He did so tonight, in the bottom of the 2nd. It may have been lost in the fact that a run had already scored on the play, but he threw it from deep right field, near the line, and one-hopped RJ, who easily grabbed it as it hopped up to him (before awkwardly falling into the tag–oh Rob, you are so dramatically the opposite of Ichiro).

via Yahoo!

I’m a bit late to the game, but here are my thoughts about our newest young player on the eve of the second half of the season:

When I imagined the hitter that the Mariners lacked before their large trade of Cliff Lee, I saw the silhouette of a big, muscular young player, swinging from the left side of the plate, belting a ball to deep right center. He had a picture-perfect swing; a major league swing, that would be the fulcrum around which the rest of the lineup would spin.

In other words, I imagined Justin Smoak. Then I learned that he was a switch hitter. As an Astros fan, switch-hitting first baseman Lance Berkman has been my favorite player. Just saying.

Now, I know as well as anyone that it’ll take a while for Justin Smoak to become the slugger that I’ve imagined. But in terms of a young player who’ll be with the team for a while, and will grow into his role and his skills, you couldn’t ask for more. We’ve got Ichiro and Figgins for speed, we’ve got Guti and Jack Wilson for defense. Hopefully soon we’ll have Smoak for mashing.

And for the record, I fully support this nickname: The Smoak Monster. Even though he’s super chill.

Postscript:

Ichiro was around during the All-Star break to remind us that, as nice as it may be to pick up a young slugger, this is a Lost Year, and it’s “depressing.”

The positive impact that Lee has had is vast, on the team and fans alike. He is transformatively good. And now, if you believe the buzz, he’s helping his teammates get better too. His feats grow in scale; the myth multiplies.

In an act of near satire, the Ms sent up their punchless offense by penciling Josh Wilson at first base. Well, he went and chucked a ball away on a play that Casey Kotchman would’ve made with his goatee tied behind his back. Felix fired a ball over to first with a pick-off that may have been a revenge toss, to push Wilson as far as he could go.

Ted Lilly is a good pitcher, but he is hittable, especially when the righty match-ups pile up. Mike Sweeney, for example, was able to tag a simple double to left to score Figgy in the 4th. Odd, then, that Guti and Josh Wilson followed up with back-to-back strikeouts before Rob “Thunder” Johnson weakly grounded out to the pitcher. Despite missed opportunities, however, the 4th was a good inning, as Figgy infield singled and Sweeney drove him in.

Picking on Thunder Johnson: he grabbed a strikeout pitch in the dirt in the 5th, which the batter swung at. Instead of popping up and tagging the hitter, Thunder waddled forward on his knees towards the batter, like a toddler taking his first steps.

King Felix’s stuff is on fire today. Huge break on the curveball, crippling change-up to strike out Derrek Lee, etc.

Jack Wilson just came in and played kamikaze defense and swung the bat like he meant it on a great day for the shortstop.

This one is coming down to the wire. Ichiro could’ve won the game in the bottom of the ninth, but Lee corralled a sharp grounder. In the bottom of the tenth, they inexcusably wasted a bases loaded, one out situation with a couple of lame strikeouts against a wild Carlos Marmol.

There’s not much good you can say about this game, because every good that happened (a complete game by Felix!) was dumped on by the abysmal inability to score with the bases loaded and one out, or with runners in scoring position, in the most important instances in the game, and in what felt like the season. But maybe that point really is past. Maybe there are no more points…. A loss like this will make you cynical if anything will. As a text from a friend who was at the game put it: “goddamn ms”

via daylife

SURE THING

There wasn’t a pitch during the game that I thought a Cub would get ahold of, and I am increasingly convinced that Cliff Lee is the best pitcher in the American League. If we have to trade this super-man, whoever we send him to should be required to give up a mint, getting in return as they will a premiere regular and postseason pitcher with a walk-to-K ratio that’s as top-heavy as Lou Piniella. (Geoff Baker agrees with me on several of those points, and Lookout Landing goes Next Level with some more eye-popping numbers.)

We’re on a good run, timed perfectly with the Rangers’ good run, so there’s not a lot to get excited about when it comes to the standings. In fact, most everyone else in the division is playing well, excluding the A’s.

In the near future, Doug Fister’s coming back, and that returns a fun, pretty good pitcher to the rotation. That doesn’t mean we don’t still have to watch Rowland-Smith pitch, however.

AWAYCOMING

I went to Safeco Field last night, to watch Jason Vargas shut down the Cubs and to see how pervasively the Cubs fans would invade the away field. It wasn’t that bad, really, especially compared with the nightmares I’ve seen when the Cubs came to Houston and it felt like Wrigleyville South.

In a sightly perverse way I also wanted to hear how the Cubs fans in attendance would greet Milton Bradley. They booed him, but we cheered back in support, like a current girlfriend hyping up a boyfriend in front of a surly ex. Milton didn’t return the favor by hitting anything, of course, though that would’ve have strengthened our hometowner’s case. And to paraphrase the endlessly wise Joe Morgan as he talked about Manny’s return to Boston, boos are louder than clapping, so there could be the same amount of each, but the boos win, because boos are louder than clapping.

PERSPECTIVE NOT REQUIRED

The Monday night game reminded me that when you go out to the park, it doesn’t really matter how the season is going; all that matters is that day, and that game. Each game is its own universe, with its own parameters. David Aardsma could be having a terrible season, but if he shuts down Derrek Lee in the ninth, I will bellow appreciation like he was Rollie Fingers. If Aardsma is on a Cy Young track but he gives up a walk and a game-winning infield single, he’s a goat.

Awkward. via Yahoo!

American League fans are generally deprived of one of baseball’s pleasures, and that is watching Albert Pujols hit. The Machine is a deadly appropriate nickname, from the hydrolic rise and fall of his arms in his stance, to the robotic consistency of his hitting.

The opportunity to see him play would be my just about my only argument in favor of Interleague play. This series of discombobulating encounters, especially for a recent NL refugee like myself, plays like seeing an old friend in a new city every other day or so, like the whole bunch moved into my new neighborhood.

The Mariners and the Cardinals have been on a blind date for the last few days, making awkward conversation until they can part ways and go back to the bar where their friends are all hanging out.

The one benefit, as I started with, is the chance to see players from faraway lands, like Pujols and Holliday and maybe Colby Rasmus and some of the great Cardinals starting pitchers. Every team in the league has at least a player or two that make them worth looking at. I can’t think of a single team that lacks a player I’d like to see. Even the Marlins feature Hanley and Josh Johnson.

Certainly they play too many Interleague games. The showcase should come in quick bursts and an end before it has time to become awkward. To wit, there are 15 games against NL opponents this month. Check, please!

via daylife

When a season is going poorly, even break-even moments feel disastrous. See, for example, the 6th inning of the Padres-Mariners game, in which Padre starter Clayton Richard went wild and the bases went loaded, only to have Mike Carp ground out easily to end the inning. The game was tied 2-2, far from over and in fact we had a good chance to win the game. Nonetheless, the recent history of the team imbues the situation with despair, with the feeling that it will prove to be the moment when the tide could have turned in our favor, but didn’t.

What any team has to do is what the Mariners did on Sunday: keep at it. Failure is built into the game, so the team that threatens more often is the one more likely to score the winning number of runs. Earlier in the game, Milton Bradley hit a home run in a tough road ball park, and the pressure stayed on through the course of several innings, as Jose Lopez knocked a clutch hit, and in the ninth Ichiro added a run to insulate the lead. In other words, we didn’t threaten once and fade. We stacked hits across innings, and made sure that the 6th inning didn’t define the game.

King Felix rediscovered his elite form yesterday, too, punishing the strike zone with heavy, swerving pitches. This was a needed reminder of the dominance that he can bring out on a given day.

PLANS

The San Diego Padres are the team that the Mariners were supposed to be in 2010. Their pitching is great, our pitching is pretty good. Their defense is fantastic, ours is middle-of-the-pack. Their hitting is not very good, ours is very very bad. Their combination of traits has guided them to a 37-26 record, and first place in a really good division.

They seem to come out of nowhere, this team, but I’ll tell you what jumps out at me about this team: Adrian Gonzalez. It seems simple to have a great hitter in your lineup, but the Ms have proven that it’s no given. Gonzalez is a mountain in the middle of that lineup, which you can’t pass through without some difficulty.

Point proven when he sat on deck in the bottom of the ninth inning. If the leadoff guy walks (which he did not, thankfully), then you’ve got a tie ballgame in the making walking up to the plate. The Ms have no such prepackaged threat.

BALK

Felix Hernandez balked in the bottom of the 7th inning. He performed what looked to be a normal pick-off to first base, but in instant replay it proved to be a deceptive move: instead of first stepping away from the rubber with his right foot, he made a slight move with his left, then went into a quick spin and throw to first. The twitch with the left foot counts as a deceptive move towards home before changing course and throwing to first.

In my experience, from my playing days, many very good moves to first are the result of cheating.

HOOKED

Despite putting a lot of good wood on the ball in the last week or so, Mike Carp left a bunch of players on today.

FRAMING DEVICE

Rob Johnson lost at minimum two strikes for Felix. He is a terrible framer of pitches. Continually, RJ does a poor job at the little things that I’ve come to take for granted in major league catchers. He doesn’t have soft hands, he doesn’t frame pitches with his body…. In the first American World Cup game against England, the British goalie booted a very simple play and the ball dribbled into the goal mouth. The announcer said something like “that’s not just a mistake, that a mistake for an Under-10 goalie.” Rob Johnson’s poor glovework is high school level mediocrity.

At the same time, though, the ump was squeezing Felix big-time. In the 8th, the tracer showed that he hadn’t thrown a single ball in the at bat: the count was 3-1. Felix was on the brink of boiling over, but to his credit all he did was strike out the last hitter of the inning swinging, without letting the ump have the chance.

King Felix missed few bats tonight, giving up long strings of hits in half innings (bottom 6 and bottom 7) that seemed to last for hours. Felix gave up five runs over six innings, then for some reason came out for the seventh and gave up another two when Vlad Guerrero Guerreroed a ball over the left field wall. The youngbloods on the Rangers did their part too, as Elvis Andrus laid a couple of RBIs onto the grill playing his hot game, and Justin Smoak sizzled. These are good, sound players, with divergent styles, that you can really build a lineup around for a long time.

Colby Lewis outpitched Felix with 7 innings pitched and just a run allowed, though you wouldn’t have known it from the way it looked. He crept through innings, including the top of the 3rd, like a truck through the mud, only to come out the other side clean.

We are still in last place, amazingly only 8 games back of the division leader, who happens to be Texas. The steak dangles in front of Mariner eyes, and we refuse to just cut the damn string and take a bite out of it.

CONSISTENTLY VLAD

Vlad Guerrero is consistently weird. He plays weird every day, every year, doing his particular thing no matter the condition of his crumbling knees or the stuff of the ace on the mound. Today he swung at and fouled off a pitch inches from his shin. Later he hit a monster home run. If I had moved to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, this blog would have been called Every Day Vlad.

SO GOES FELIX

Jeff Sullivan over at Lookout Landing wrote something that resonated with me as a fan. About Felix Hernandez, and specifically tonight’s kind of lackluster performance, he said:

when Felix struggles, so does my mood. So much of my identity as a Mariner fan is tied up in Felix that I can’t stand it when he underachieves. It whisks me away to a time, a bad time, a time when things were so much worse than they are for us now.

This is exactly the kind of connection to a team that it takes a long time to develop. I know what he means; I feel this way about Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman. But I don’t yet feel this way about Felix. I didn’t see him from the get, I don’t have the years of learning about his tendencies, his personality, and I haven’t seen the fate of the team pitch and plow according to Felix’s successes and failures. Felix is not yet my mood ring.