Our WE peaked at 87.5%. There was our usual share of bad luck (line drives caught), bad plays (Moore not taking himself out, Saunders' throw in the 8th) and odd, but sure to be overblown managerial decisions (White, not calling for bunts late in the game). 2010 Mariners, meet your nutshell.
Biggest Contributor: Jason Vargas +.221
Biggest Suckfest: Jesus Colome -.354
0 recs | 113 comments
Fire Wakamatsu
ManifestDestiny - May 15, 2010
Thanks, I missed it the first time you said it.
Eyeball Kid - May 15, 2010
It bears repeating
ManifestDestiny - May 15, 2010
At the very least he could use some guidance on his assessment of his players abilities.
Or someone explain to me how he’s doing it right, and I’m just missing the boat here.
Kermit. - May 15, 2010
No no, he's doing it wrong
Griffin Cooper - May 15, 2010
It appears to be a pattern as well. Not a one off event. This is disconcerting.
Kermit. - May 15, 2010
The "fire Wakamatsu" sentiment is a little overblown, but I agree he needs to manage better.
Jeff Nye - May 15, 2010
His mismanagement seems prevalent in almost every game in some form.
Fearless Frog - May 15, 2010
I blame Texas for giving me reason to hope, and myself for hoping
Cantu Easley Winn - May 15, 2010
Hoping is the worst thing you can do most of the time.
JY - May 15, 2010
I was more annoyed at the offense going into hibernation right after the Sweeney homerun.
I had a feeling it was going to be trouble holding the Rays to just a run or even two runs.
Oh well, would’ve been nice to secure a series win heading into Cliff Lee’s start.
ThundaPC - May 15, 2010
Poor Cliff.
melenious - May 15, 2010
I bet he's loving the chance to be the hero and win the series himself.
Not that I think he wanted us to lose, but someone’s gotta have a half full glass. Playing the hero gets him more money this offseason.
Jon S. - May 15, 2010 via mobile
Cliff Lee is not going to get more, or less, money this offseason for "playing the hero" during a series in May
Matthew - May 15, 2010
You think bringing in White was just odd?
I know League sucked it up the other day, but I think it’s fair to say that he deserved more of a shot than Wak gave him and benching him for White was a big mistake. I know the end result of bringing White in wasn’t terrible and the odds of League not allowing at least as many runs to score were surely not good, but didn’t I read somewhere that we should be looking at the process not the result?
DAMellen - May 15, 2010
I meant to say the odds were good.
That is to say, there’s a good chance League would’ve given up at least one more run. Again, that doesn’t change the moves terribility.
DAMellen - May 15, 2010
I like how we used our best reliever, a worse reliever, and finally our worst reliever...in that order.
That was fun
BRKLN M'S - May 15, 2010
That makes me really sad and frustrated.
Has Wak never heard of the two-inning save? Or that you should use your “bullpen ace” in the highest leverage situation? Maybe Wak thinks White is our best reliever and is therefore a complete nar-nar.
Jon S. - May 15, 2010 via mobile
What were the options? I would say our four best relievers are League, Aardsma, Kelley, and Tex
Three were unavailable (used already, closer, used two innings last night).
I guess you could argue that Kelley should have gotten in before White and Colome, and it’s what I would have done. However, we all know this manager has some odd distaste for Kelley, plus he pitched an inning last night and gave up a 2 run homer.
Distaste + used yesterday + bad results yesterday = no Kelley
Rudy4three - May 15, 2010
Closers are actually allowed to pitch in non-save situations, believe it or not.
seattlesundevil - May 16, 2010
Jesus
waldo rojas - May 15, 2010
Fuck that guy
I Lick Squirrels - May 15, 2010
Nobody fucks with him!
JAH - May 15, 2010
He deserves to die for his sins
Cantu Easley Winn - May 15, 2010
This is all so annoyingly bizzare.
Why do so many of this teams games fall apart in such a painful fashion?
FairWeatherFred - May 15, 2010
That's ten so far
According to MLB.com, this is our tenth walk-off loss this year. That sounds impossible.
Jon S. - May 15, 2010 via mobile
And here I thought the Chicago series was a fluke.
FairWeatherFred - May 15, 2010
I think we've got 6 walk-off losses.
MFAN - May 15, 2010
That sounds more plausible than 10.
Can anyone fact check Mr. Street for us?
Jon S. - May 15, 2010 via mobile
It feels like 10
Cantu Easley Winn - May 15, 2010
Might be 6 walk offs on the road
And another four in the other team’s last at bat when they’re the road team.
Drdjp - May 15, 2010
How can it be a walk off anywhere but the road?
How can the road team score in their last at-bat and have the game end? They would have to have another batter get out.
seattlesundevil - May 15, 2010
"last at-bat" usually refers to a team's last half-inning of batting
Milendriel - May 15, 2010
This is what we in the baseball biz call a Cleveland Steamer
Well run organization, everything seemingly headed in the right direction, everyone’s all lovey dovey, then the baseball gods decide to shit on your chest.
OlSalty - May 15, 2010
Because we dont score enough runs. We leave ourselves with very little wiggle room.
Rudy4three - May 15, 2010
Curse of "wak"ing it too much
Hairy palms affect hitting and bullpen pitching
Sirbunt - May 15, 2010 via mobile
Speaking of "a painful fashion"
Drayer had a list of the recent killers in her blog
msb - May 16, 2010
I think I'm more upset about Tui playing 1st and batting 5th against a righty than I am about going to White in the 8th.
League is obviously better than White and probably had a better chance of getting a DP, but I can’t really blame Wak for for having his confidence in League shaken a bit.
MFAN - May 15, 2010
My confidence in League is pretty well shot, too.
But how does Wak think that White will do anything but blow?
Jon S. - May 15, 2010 via mobile
Your confidence in League really shouldn't be shot
He has not been bad
Griffin Cooper - May 15, 2010
He's scuffling a bit now. I dont blame Wak for having a short leash with him today.
Can we really complain about White? He came in with bases loaded, gave up a run on a very shallow fly ball, and then got out of the inning.
The use of Colome bothers me more.
Rudy4three - May 15, 2010
White's first 4 pitches to Zobrist with the bases loaded were all balls - he just got 1 gift call
If he hadn’t, we’d probably all be bitching about him rather than League. League has for the most part just been really unlucky lately.
Griffin Cooper - May 15, 2010
Eh, we all know White is mediocre/poor, but we are going to get on a guy now because
he runs a 3 ball count? I thought White did a fair job there given the circumstances.
Rudy4three - May 15, 2010
He got lucky - but I'm not trying to complain about White
My point is that Brandon League is still good
Griffin Cooper - May 15, 2010
Of course he's still good, but he hasn't been throwing the ball up to his standards
the last two outings.
Rudy4three - May 15, 2010
What exactly did he do wrong tonight?
He gave up one hit, and it came on a good pitch low and in that Brignac did a hell of a job putting in play. And the pitch Scott hit out on Thursday wasn’t even a strike.
Griffin Cooper - May 15, 2010
The final out was on a hard-hit line drive that Lopez made an amazing play on.
You can’t really credit White for that at all.
I Lick Squirrels - May 15, 2010
That ball wasn't hit that hard, and it was a foul ball. There is plenty of reason to
get on White and his usage in certain games. I don’t like the guy either, but League isn’t throwing the ball well the last couple days, and the options are limited right now with Texeira likely unavailable, and Kelley not having the trust of this manager (i guess you can rip Wak for this).
Anyway, White was a curious call there, but I don’t think he pitched all that poorly today.
Rudy4three - May 15, 2010
I think it's more hitters putting good swings on good pitches.
Slurvey - May 15, 2010
Yeah, I don't get putting White in.
My guess is Wak was thinking White has a better chance to get the groudball and just didn’t really trust League at that point.
MFAN - May 15, 2010
Should say that I get why he put White in, just don't agree with it.
MFAN - May 15, 2010
My balls are beyond broken
What a sharty way to lose.
Jon S. - May 15, 2010 via mobile
We are starting to lose in predictable fashion.
I had Pena hitting the homerun to win. I was close. Either way, a loss is a loss. Tell Griffey to wake me when something changes on this team.
FisteeFisterer - May 15, 2010
What is sad is the implacable belief, leaving the car in the bottom of the ninth, all tied up, that there was no way to win the game.
msb - May 15, 2010
I had the exact same feeling when White had a 3-1 count vs Longoria
Snowman1025 - May 15, 2010
Woops Zobrist, not Longoria
Snowman1025 - May 15, 2010
I had that feeling when Vargas came in to pitch the eighth.
JY - May 15, 2010
It felt bad to me when we didn't get a run out of the Moore-Ichiro-Figgins stretch in the 8th
Matthew - May 15, 2010
At that time, I had been thinking that we needed a little something extra with the bottom of the eighth inning coming up.
I didn’t want to be right :(
JY - May 15, 2010
Sell!
OlSalty - May 15, 2010
Winnable game down the drain again. Moore is a fucking idiot.
Send his dumb ass down. Why are there so many fundamentally crappy or stupid players on the team? Like Byrnes, Moore, Rob Johnson, Lopez (except for his defense). And inept guys like Kotchmann and Figgins who can only hit much worse than AAA nonames.
Also a stupid 3rd base coach who cost us a couple wins.
It is so aggravating rooting for this team..
Sam Regens - May 15, 2010
You can't fault Moore without knowing the situation
Of course he’s going to want to stay in the game – baseball players always do. But there’s certainly a chance he really thought he was alright, it just got worse when he needed to start sprinting again. Wak/the coaches probably shouldn’t have let him stay in anyway.
Griffin Cooper - May 15, 2010
How can somebody get on Moore, he knows that Johnson has back issues and was only
to be used in an emergency. I doubt he realized he couldnt run when he was standing on first.
Rudy4three - May 15, 2010
Character assassination without evidence is a immature critique.
And your characterization of certain player’s skills is off base and foolhardy. Kotchman and Figgins are not worse at hitting than “AAA nonames”, it’s not even close. They may both be struggling but time and time again we have gone over why their numbers look as poor as they do. If you choose to ignore that, fine, but you don’t get to misrepresent their skills without getting called on it.
Matthew - May 15, 2010
You are a saint.
Eyeball Kid - May 15, 2010
Yes, fine. Expect to be called out yourself when you're badmouthing Griffey or Sweeney, etc.
Or is not “character assassination” if you’re the one badmouthing players?
As for “evidence” .188 .314 .250 (Figgins) and .186 .273 .354 (Kotchmann) seem to be producing worse now than someone like Saunders (.280 .308 .600) who was just called up from AAA and is relatively obscure.
Hell, even Sweeney has a .244 .320 .467 line. Or are we just supposed to ignore and cut out the games where he’s produced? That would be convenient when you’re trashing Sweeney again.
Sam Regens - May 16, 2010
And to add, I will be more careful myself.
But people who have been scapegoating Sweeney something terrible, should also be called out when you have Figgins and Kotchmann (and Lopez) hitting like crap (batting lines posted above) and people like Byrnes, Moore, and Rob Johnson playing like crap.
And the 3rd base coach making some questionable calls which also cost us wins.
Sam Regens - May 16, 2010
You seem to have a severe misunderstanding for sample sizes and talent.
Kotchman and Figgins have long histories of being better than they are right now and are at ages where falling off the cliff is just severely unlikely. Griffey has been bad for several years, can not play defense, and is not only old but visibly missing the tools to succeed. Also, he can’t be used on defense. Go take your weird and uninformed crusade somewhere else, because this isn’t the place for it.
abender20 - May 16, 2010
Griffey has zero MLB skills. He can't even run!!
Poochie - May 16, 2010
I believe the concept you're desperately thrashing around and not grasping is "sustainability".
Figgins and Kotchman are indeed “producing worse now” than someone “obscure” (whatever that means) than Saunders. Sweeney is outhitting Figgins and Kotchman. The problem is, none of those things are sustainable – Figgins and Kotchman will eventually get back to being solid hitters, and Sweeney will get back to being a moldering pile of garbage. I am extremely happy (and not a little surprised) that Sweeney’s gone crazy offensively in the last few games, but it will not last. He’s not good and hasn’t been for a while now.
Please stop insulting people and making personal insinuations. It doesn’t help your argument.
pdb - May 16, 2010
Saunders is not obscure.
He was regarded by many to be the #2 prospect in the organization coming into the season.
JY - May 16, 2010
A bad thing turned good is Sweeney who indeed is showing considerable life with the bat now.
And amidst his miscues, Wak who keeps a hot Sweeney in the line-up everyday for now. Or is it just the left-righty bullcrap thing again?
Sam Regens - May 15, 2010
lefty-righty
Sam Regens - May 15, 2010
Sweeney has been playing against righties. He's probably getting most the DH ABs going forward
at least until Bradley returns.
Rudy4three - May 15, 2010
Thank you, that's great to hear.
Sam Regens - May 16, 2010
Can we get rid of Colome already?
Teixeira fits pretty much the same role and is better. Call up French or Fields or someone. I’m tired of even having Colome and White in the bullpen since I know that there’s a good chance Wak will use them.
Coach Owens - May 15, 2010
We don't need 7 relievers. DFA Colome and activate Bradley.
Griffin Cooper - May 15, 2010
Word.
And at some point, bring Hannahan up.
JY - May 15, 2010
Yeah I wish that would happen but I'm not sure I see it any time soon
Griffin Cooper - May 15, 2010
He's playing short now!
Not well, but it’s happening.
JY - May 15, 2010
I had a problem with Saunders in the 8th. Moore on 1st (should have taken himself out),
no outs and Saunders strikes out. He was King of the drag bunt last year. Why didn’t he try/Wak call for a bunt here? They had the shift on for him.
TrustBaseball - May 15, 2010
Eh, he got ahead 2-0, and in fairness he was called out on a pitch that was clearly off the plate
With this lineup, the sacrifice is quite worthless in most situations. Just giving up an out for the next guy who likely will fail.
We would have been in the same situation anyway if Saunders bunts, because Maddon would likely have walked Ichiro to face the hapless Figgins.
Rudy4three - May 15, 2010
Wasn't the shift in place against him?
the other side - May 15, 2010
The point is specific, not general.
Shrugging it off because of “this lineup” is incorrect because you are treating it as such. That was a wasted sentence on your part.
Matthew - May 15, 2010
I agreed with this idea at the time
I would have liked a bunt there but will point out that drag bunts go down the first base line, not the third, so the shift doesn’t play into Saunders’ drag bunt skills.
Matthew - May 15, 2010
I know GMs and GMs and managers are managers but at some point Z has to sit down with Wak and explain how this is supposed to work, right?
Is that something that has likely already happened or is likely to happen? Or do GMs tend to stay pretty hands off with their managers?
Nate Dogg - May 15, 2010
I don't think this will happen because everyone is overreacting to Wak's decisions.
ThundaPC - May 15, 2010
Bullshit.
Read the Game Thread. Everyone was calling him on it before the results showed themselves. They were poor decisions and we all know it.
harkening - May 15, 2010
There have been some decisions that he's made consistently that have hurt the team.
It seems like it’d be prudent to try to get him to reevaluate his bullpen management and his decision to bat Griffey or Sweeney in the 4 or 5 spot.
Nate Dogg - May 15, 2010
Meh, the batting order really doesn't matter
Aside from being easy to poke fun at, who’s going to bat 4th or 5th? The top 3 are entrenched, as are the bottom 3 really. It doesn’t make a huge bit of difference at this point.
On the other hand, the bullpen usage, tendency to fall in love with players, and some of the other in-game management is suspect.
Brian Floyd - May 15, 2010
I don't see how that's true at all.
We all agree that bullpen usage has been questionable but this team is where it is because it has been really bad at scoring runs.
ThundaPC - May 15, 2010
They've been really bad at scoring runs because their DH tandem is fucking terrible.
I’d be shocked to find out that Sweeney wasn’t 98% Wak and he’s the one writing Griffey’s name into the lineup.
Wak has been seriously terrible this year.
Aaron Campeau - May 15, 2010
He's not the main reason they're losing by any means but his poor decisions are hurting the team and they're correctable.
Like Matthew said in the podcast a lot of these loses have been close, it’s not unreasonable to think that some minor to moderate improvements in Wak’s decisions could result in a couple extra wins.
Nate Dogg - May 15, 2010
I agree. At the very least, they wouldn't result in predicable losses.
Maybe predicable losses isn’t fair, but please give us the best chance to win. Wak, give us a chance.
TrustBaseball - May 16, 2010
But hey, over the last 7 games Ichiro is hitting .567/.588/.967.
That’s certainly fun to watch.
Llewdor - May 15, 2010
It's really only "fun to watch" when we win.
That’s what it’s all about. Yeah, Ichiro’s doing great, but I want us to win.
TrustBaseball - May 16, 2010
I wish I could summon the relative indifference of years past
But I have hatred in my heart. Fuck you, 2010.
lemonverbena - May 15, 2010 via mobile
I'm having a harder time than in years past.
I’ve always wanted to win, but now it seems almost (and I hate this word that isn’t even really a word) “doable”. It would be so great if we could just win and it seems like we should be able to win the West. No other team has that much over us. Why can’t we win the West?
TrustBaseball - May 16, 2010
As a Mariner fan...
I watched 2001, was semi content with 2002-3, spent the next few years in Iraq and Afganimawhatsit, and now I get to watch this. Am I allowed to have my heart broken?
FairWeatherFred - May 15, 2010
The history of the Mariners is basically a history
Where the #1 lesson is it is best to assume the team will fuck up because they usually do.
Yet I love rooting for this team, that pain makes me a bigger fan.
skywaker9 - May 15, 2010
Yeah
I was 9 in 1995 and didn’t really have an appreciation for how dreadfully awful the team used to be. Whenever they’re good again, in 2011 or 2012 hopefully, I definitely will this time.
Aly Edge - May 16, 2010
Yes. Adversity and heartbreak makes being a fan much more meaningful.
Decatur - May 16, 2010
Damn, this looks sarcastic, but it's not.
Decatur - May 16, 2010
The 2010 Mariners
Finding new ways to choke every day.
skywaker9 - May 15, 2010
Only in Seattle
And it’s fucking true too.
OceanBird - May 15, 2010
Mike Sweeny attempted to start a 'fight club' in the locker room.
Since that’s the case, do the last three days count as his Project Mayhem – one that’s main directive is to destroy the blog-o-sphere?
SethGrandpa - May 15, 2010
Can they take Geoff Baker?
OceanBird - May 16, 2010
I meant, can they take "out" Geoff Baker?
TrustBaseball - May 16, 2010
You're breaking the first two rules!
marinerdan - May 16, 2010
Shannon tweeting that Moore to the DL
I assume Bard in en route.
msb - May 16, 2010
It's like he never left...
Decatur - May 16, 2010
Bards in the lineup now
Brian Floyd - May 16, 2010 via mobile
And Wak still hates Langerhans
Brian Floyd - May 16, 2010 via mobile
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