Mariners Walk All Over Angels, Still Lose

One of the reasons why I love baseball is that there has to be an end.  There is no running down of the clock, there is no taking a knee.  27 outs must be made.  It’s equality.  In the NFL, the team with the longest time of possession will usually win.  There are many things that contribute to the amount of time a team has the ball, and that becomes skewed near the endgame when the team that is ahead in the score is trying to run down the clock.  You can’t do that in baseball.  The Red Sox and Yankees would like to think you can, but you can’t.  27 outs must be made to finish the game.  There is no two-minute warning, there are no ties.

So the Mariners split the series with the Angels.  I’m content with that.  I’ve been writing about how we want the Mariners to at least achieve average-ness.  In this series, the Mariners scored 16 runs.  That’s four runs a game – looking pretty average.  When a team is in contention, they have to win series.  That’s what the Angels came into Seattle thinking they would do, but they didn’t.  They split a series against a rival team who currently resides in the American League West Division cellar.  It’s almost like a tie.  It’s almost like they kissed their sister!

Whoever thought up that saying must’ve not liked their sister.

One of the most frustrating things about this game was the walks.  Santana walked seven batters tonight, and the Mariners could only bring two of those walks home.  Ervin Santana was handing them out like candy, but the Mariners couldn’t eat it up (wow that’s a horrible analogy, but, oh well).

He walked both Kyle Seager and Mike Carp in the second inning. After Miguel Olivo had flied out, Casper Wells came up to bat.  I had forgotten that Wells had that streak of four consecutive games with a homerun.  Reason being that he is currently in a 0-for-28 rut.  I’m excited for the prospect of seeing Wells in right or left-field, but when he grounded into an inning ending double play, I could see the frustration.  He knows he’s in a slump, and he must be pressing.  During the first half of August, from the 1st to 16th, he batted a .350/.435/.725.  The 16th was the day of the fourth consecutive homerun.  Since then, his slash line is .108/.214/.189.  I hope he can figure it all out, because when he was on, he was really on.  I’m sure his team-mates would appreciate it, too.

The one time that the Mariners took advantage of the walks was in the third inning.  Ichiro golfed a pitch low and out of the zone into right field for a double.  I’m really starting to feel like Ichiro could be onto something, but it’s probably just my brain protecting itself.  I know that it’s improbable that he’ll get to 200 hits.  I know this.  But he keeps on stringing me along.  Just stay bad and stop playing with my heart!

Scott Downs faced Mike Carp again in the eight inning, showing him the utmost respect:

Or maybe Downs just missed his marks.  I wish I could pull up the replay here and capture where the catcher was setting up.  It would be nice to see if he actually was pitching him away, or if he just missed.  I wonder if ballplayers ever hack at ball four just to keep the at-bat going.  Smash! they probably think to themselves.  I should ask Wily Mo.

I’m not sure what I think of Charlie Furbush anymore.  On what I thought was a good pitch, Torii Hunter blasted a three-run homerun out of the park:

It was a curveball right at the bottom of the zone, but Hunter stayed back enough and mashed it out of the park.  Too bad Furbush walked two batters earlier.  I guess he was trying to be more like Santana?

Did you know that the Mariners in Spainish is Los Marineros?  I didn’t know that because I never look at the backstop.

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Adam H. Wong
Follow: @adamhwong