Lefty Cliff Lee has a 2-2 record but has pitched extraordinarily well all season without much help.
How well can he have pitched with a 3.44 earned run average? Consider this: In 36 2/3 innings this year, Lee has allowed one walk – and no home runs.
Now comes the hard part. Can Seattle score behind him against Scott Kazmir and an up-and-down Angels bullpen?
Patient teams can usually get Kazmir out of a game on a high pitch count by the sixth inning, so expect to see the Mariners try to work the count tonight.
The Seattle Mariners have the good sense to realize their chances of winning increase when Cliff Lee or Felix Hernandez take the mound, so they’ve changed their rotation to get Felix a start tomorrow.
Origninally, staying in rotation, Lee was pitching tonight, Ian Snell tomorrow and Mr. Hernandez on Sunday. That would have Felix pitching on his seventh day.
Pitching coach Rick Adair and manager Don Wakamatsu huddled, and this is what came out of it:
“We’re starting Felix tomorrow and the way it works out, it gives Ian, Doug Fister and Jason Vargas one more day of rest each,” …
The Mariners catching problems grew again today when the team placed veteran Josh Bard on the disabled list and recalled veteran Eliezer Alfonzo to take his place.
To make room on the 40-man roster, Seattle designated utility player Jack Hannahan for assignment.
Bard joined the team last week when rookie Adam Moore went on the disabled list. He’d played well enough in his brief stint with the team to get the majority of playing time behind the plate – then strained a calf muscle Wednesday.
Now the Mariners are on their fourth catcher of the season, and Alfonzo will share …
As soon as Mike Sweeney said it, you could see several writers lower their heads and begin scribbling furiously in their notebooks.
No, he was challenging his teammates to another fight. No, he gave the money quote, the one that everyone was going to use in their stories.
Sweeney can be many things, over the top, too earnest to be believable and at times too ridiculous to take seriously. But he can also be quite engaging and perfect at summing up the mood of the team and the season at that very moment.
One of the things we are starting to see is some players being moved up after strong starts, most notably infielder Nate Tenbrink and first baseman Dennis Raben
Tenbrink was tearing up the offensively-charged Cal League, hitting .379 (66-for-174) with nine homers, 49 RBI and an OPS of 1.101 (.452/.649) in 34 games for Class A High Desert. He was moved up to Double A West Tenn went Joe Dunigan went on the disabled list.
Rainiers broadcaster and frequent TNT contributor Mike Curto wrote about Tenbrink for his minor league notebook earlier this week. Also Jay Yencich of USS Mariner has an informative post about Tenbrink being called up.
After playing 27 games in 2008, hitting .275 with five homers and 14 RBI with an OBP of .411 and slugging .560, Raben missed all of last season recovering from microfracture surgery on his right knee. The Mariners started him in Class A Clinton, and he was hitting just .221 (33-for-149) with eight homers and 23 RBI. Raben also struck out 49 times and had drawn just 15 walks.
Dennis Raben
But in his first game with High Desert, he went 2 for 2 with two home runs, walked four times, scored four runs and drove in five runs.
In the next month or so we could see some player movement as well, perhaps a few players from Double A like Michael Pineda or Carlos Triunfel move up to Triple A.
That is if there ever going to be another Rainiers game. Mother Nature has not been kind to the Rainiers as rain has limited games. Yesterday, they had a four-hour rain delay. Curto wrote about what the players did during that time for the TNT today.
In Double A West Tenn, lefty Mauricio Robles had his shortest outing of the season, allowing five runs on seven hits in four innings. Robles walked three batters, struck out five and allowed a homer.
Here’s my game story from Wednesday’s big win and here’s the notebook talking about Jason Vargas’ start and the update on Josh Bard’s strained calf and Milton Bradley’s bruised shin.
To put it simply, the Mariners haven’t had a win like that this season. They just haven’t. This season the largest deficit they had overcome and won was two runs. TWO RUNS.
Why?
Because offensively when you don’t have the ability to drive the ball out of the park it limits your ability to come back. When you have to rely on that many singles and doubles it makes coming up with three and four-run rallies difficult. There are too many opportunities for outs and double plays.
On Wednesday, the Mariners got that home run from Mike Sweeney. It changed a 4-1 deficit to a 4-3 deficit in one swing. And at one run, things are much more manageable for any team, specifically the Mariners.
“It’s a game changer,” Josh Wilson said of Sweeney’s two-run homer. “It changes the outlook of a game in a hurry. We’re not hitting a whole lot, but when they happen that’s big for us. It’s definitely a big relief and then in a one-run ball game we can get back to more of our game, get the guys out there and drive them in.”
Sweeney tried to make the story about Wilson’s two-run single, saying the “Paperboy delivered” over and over. Perhaps, but Sweeney’s recent run of hitting has been remarkable. Since he went Braveheart during a team meeting and challenged teammates to fight following the Ken Griffey Jr. “napgate” controversy on May 11, Sweeney is hitting .441 (15-for-34) with six home runs and 14 RBI.
“We really needed a defibrillator to come in here and give us a shock because we didn’t have a heartbeat for quite some time,” Sweeney said. “We lost some tough games that zapped some of it out of us, but the last couple of games have been huge for us.”
Will it lead to something more? It’s difficult to say. The Mariners are still going to have trouble scoring runs no matter who’s in the lineup, but perhaps this is the start of a run of wins. They need a run of wins if they want be any sort of factor in the AL West. If it does happen, then maybe you look at these two wins as a turning point.
“We’ve had a lot of one-run ball games that haven’t gone our way,” Manager Don Wakamatsu said. “But these guys have stayed together. That ball game momentum-wise was kind of going away from us, but they just kept battling.”
Well, the Mariners are looking for a mini-sweep and they will do so against Pasco native Jeremy Bonderman, who 2-2 on the season with a 4.43 ERA. The Mariners faced Bonderman earlier this season and scored 10 runs on nine hits in four innings on April 16th. Bonderman also walked four batters.
So as Wak would say, there is a “belief system” for success against Bonderman.
Ichiro has probably the best success against Bonderman. He’s hitting .389 (14-for-36) in his career against hijm.
For the Mariners, Jason Vargas (3-2, 3.08 ERA). Vargas is on a run of seven straight quality …
Pretty quiet morning here at Safeco, except for the multitude of kids here today. I barely made it in time for manager Don Wakamatsu’s pre-game meeting with the press. Some of you also know that I-5 was a bit of an adventure today.
But really there wasn’t much to talk about this morning.
Jack Wilson wants to take ground balls, but the Mariners are going to make him wait till Monday.
Wakamatsu said that when Wilson talked about his hamstring issues and even mentioning retirement that it was just a “down moment,” and that Wilson has been more upbeat in …
