Lookout Landing

Seattle: 10-6
Angels: 6-9

SUMMARY

GAMES

Game 1: Erik Bedard* vs. Shane Loux
Game 2: Carlos Silva vs. Anthony Ortega
Game 3: Jarrod Washburn* vs Jered Weaver

Erik Bedard looks to continue rolling and faces off against our opponent in the home opener, Shane Loux. Loux is no prospect; he's really something akin to our Chris Jakubauskus except probably a touch better. He doesn't throw strikes and he doesn't miss bats, but does get ground balls. If the Mariners actually made a cognizant game plan, they would be patient and wait for Loux to pitch himself into hitter's counts requiring him to throw his pedestrian junk in their wheelhouse. Instead, they'll be swing happy and consistently ground out over and over again. Any rally that starts to maybe suggest that it could form sometime in the future will be squashed by an immediate double play ball. Hopefully we can win on an error again.

Anthony Ortega split last year between Double and Triple-A with most of the time spent in Double-A Arkansas. The 23-year-old has middling strikeout and walk rates, especially for the minor leagues. His batted ball profile is mundane and he shows nothing extraordinary on his pitch profile either. Essentially perusing his various numbers, he looks like a run of the mill minor league starter. tRA agrees with this. He's not even Quad-A quality, but firmly Triple-A. With Carlos Silva on the mound, as weird as this sounds, this should be a big advantage for us since the Angels' line up is so righty-heavy.

The battle of Jareds! The Angels version has settled into being a slightly above-average strikeout-to-walk pitcher with a rather big flyball fetish. In so doing, he's turned out so far to be slightly better than I pegged him for back in 2006 based on his stuff, motion and core results, and far far far worse than your typical Angel fan pegged him for based on things like HR/FB, BABIP and amount and quality of SoCal-approved hair.

The rotation and bullpen continued to gain steam over the series with Tampa, even with the 9-run defeat on Wednesday. The lineup however, fell another seven runs against average just over those three games and as a result the team's overall profile lost a 1.5 runs versus average, not counting defense.

THIS SERIES BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

Pizza Port Hop 15
Port Brewing/Lost Abbey. San Marcos, CA

"15 of our favorite hops which were added every 15 minutes to the boil."

Yeah, it's not big on balance, but it has a wonderful blend of hops flavors, from pine to grapefruit to more astringent and more traditional citrus as well. And while it doesn't have much in the way of a malt backing, the palate is still smooth and not overly bitter. Also, it clocks in at 10.5% ABV and it masks that very well.