Smoak played in 5 games with Tacoma, hitting .238/.273/.333 with a couple of doubles. That obviously doesn’t mean much however, so take it as a grain of salt.

As for Liddi, it was only a matter of time until he returned to his pseudo-home of Tacoma. As tradition, he struggled in his brief playing time during his call-up. In just 18 at bats he had just one hit, while striking out 7 times. He will return to AAA as he tries to make himsef into more than a organization filler, but that is unlikely to happen. He has been about average with the Rainiers this year, so I wouldn’t expect much moving forward.

While this move may seem pretty cut and dry, there are some larger implications at hand. As if the team was not already filled with enough 1B/DH types, Michael Morse seems to still be suffering from an injury, while Kendrys Morales just returned from one of his own. Morse may not see much time in the outfield for a little while, so that leaves three guys for two spots.

Morales obviously deserves to play as much as he can, so that leaves the other two batting for time. While Morse has been underwhelming himself this year, he has fared better at the plate than Smoak has. He currently has a 118 wRC+, to Smoak’s 105.

Defensively however, it is a different story. By most accounts, Smoak is average or better at 1st. Morse? Not so much. It all depends on what the team is going for. Offense seems to be the main priority, as the outfield defense has been terrible. That suggests Morse will get the majority of the time, until he is able to return to the outfield.

However, this team has stuck with Smoak this long, and may like what he has been able to do in terms of getting on base. The most likely case is some kind of time share. I am not saying they will split it evenly into thirds, but I doubt any of the three will be relegated to full time bench duty.

It will be interesting to see how the M’s decide to handle the problem that they created, and that was bound to pop up at some point. In my opinion, Smoak belongs on the bench as a late inning defensive replacement and pinch hitter. But I doubt the M’s and I will see eye to eye.

Anyone who follows this team at all closely, or even glances at the rotation can tell you that the back end of our rotation sucks. Aaron Harang and Jeremy Bonderman are not MLB level starters. There is no way you could ever convince me otherwise. So I’m going to go over the potential replacements and the reasons why Harang and Bonderman could be replaced and may not be. Here is a hint: it’s not pretty. In Part 1 I’ll talk about Harang, Erasmo Ramirez and James Paxton. Part 2 will be up tomorrow at about the same time and will discuss Jeremy Bonderman, Blake Beavan, Hector Noesi, and Brandon Maurer.

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Aaron Harang

First and foremost, I would like to say that the nickname “The Harangatan” is one of the worst ever, and I am willing to sue on behalf of all Orangutans for psychological damages for being linked to that nickname. Second of all, Harang has had some very good games. He leads the league in complete game shutouts. Yes. Read that again. I’m not kidding. Baseball is weird. However, his complete game shutouts came against the Astros and the Padres. Two very bad hitting teams and the Padres start was in Petco, which is still a pitchers park, albeit to a lesser degree than the past. Here are Harang’s stats with the two shutouts removed. 8.30 ERA, 8.3 K/9. That is awful, but even when those two games are included his ERA is over 5.50. He is like a super poor mans Jason Vargas. And I really did not like Jason Vargas. I will admit this, Harang has also had two solid starts against the Pirates and Orioles, two of the better hitting clubs in the league. In short, Harang has faced some bad offenses in favorable conditions and done well. He has also faced some good offense and done poorly much more often. Get him out of here.

 Erasmo Ramirez

Was anybody else concerned that Bartolo Colon ate Erasmo in Spring Training? But seriously, I was very concerned about his arm injury. After the team announced it there was no news. Nothing about him rehabbing or doing a throwing program, it seemed like Erasmo was destined for a year on the DL and possibly Tommy John. Anyway, he eventually did do a throwing program and some rehab and is now in AAA Tacoma and he hasn’t lost a step. In his 20.2 innings pitched, he has allowed 2 runs, 4 walks and has struck out 18. And I’ll go ahead and remind everyone that he turned 23 in May. So yes, everyone should be very excited for him to get to Seattle and be there for a while. It is only a matter of time before he is called up and Aaron Harang looks to be the one who will be leaving.

Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports

James Paxton

Once a member of the vaunted “Big Three”, Paxton has seen a lot of his prospect polish die recently because of his struggles in AAA Tacoma. I don’t understand why that has happened, he has the same stuff he did last year and is still 24. His 5.18 ERA is pretty bad, but he has an FIP of 3.67; meaning that he has been the victim of some bad luck and command issues. His .385 BABIP corroborates the bad luck part and his 4.23 BB/9 agrees with the command issues. Essentially Paxton is the same pitcher he was last year, and that is the issue. The team wants to see him figure out his command and he has not been able to do that consistently. I don’t see Paxton coming up anytime this year, but he is an option and I do think he will compete for a spot next year.

Some might say that fanatics care too much about their team. That it is unhealthy to let a game hold so much real estate in our minds, and our hearts. And those people may be right. But it doesn’t matter to most of us. We love the sport, the team, and everything that comes with it.

It just so happens that much of what accompanies that is somewhat less-than-positive. And when you are a fan of a team like the Seattle Mariners, you have to endure that more often than most. And it gets old pretty quick.

Or at least, it feels like it does. We go through year after year of disappointment, and sometimes it begins to be too much. We think to ourselves, “how much losing can we put up with?” Being a fan of a bad team can be terrible at times. But yet, we never stop. Talk is cheap.

This team has not made a playoff appearance since 2001. The last respectable season we saw was 2009, and we know how long that lasted.

It is safe to say that, while they may lack a large number of consistent fans, those that stick around are some of the best. As tradition, year after year, we come back with high hopes, only to be let down again. But we repeat that sick cycle over and over without hesitation.

And with that level of fandom and passion comes, to put it gently, over excitement, be it positive or negative. We have so much invested into the team — both monetarily and emotionally — that whenever something abnormal happens, we immediately have a knee-jerk reaction to it.

If it is something positive — like Henry Blanco‘s grand slam (part-inspiration for this post) — we want to cling to the moment of goodness because, unfortunately, we don’t get a whole lot of them. We are “jonesing” for something positive from the team that we care so much about, so anything that remotely fits that bill becomes a bigger deal than it should be.

I am not suggesting that anyone believes that Henry Blanco is going to be a good hitter, all of the sudden, at 41 years old, for the Mariners. But there are those out there who will begin to think that he is better than Kelly Shoppach, and that anyone who was perplexed by cutting him overreacted.

Those people are most likely wrong. Again, we don’t know for sure (don’t jump to conclusions), but there is really no reason to believe that Blanco will perform better than Shoppach, even when Shoppach is at his worst, which he has been.

Some fans have very little sense of probability, or sample size. They see a player do one thing, and that is all they care about. Nothing else matters, including past performance . This is a very small portion of fans, but they are there.

The fact is, his home run was a statistical anomaly. It does not mean anything for the rest of the season, or give as any insight into what to expect from him. He just is not a good player at his age.

And then, there is the negative side. When something goes wrong — say Tom Wilhelmsen‘s recent struggles — people use it as fuel for the fire. As an opportunity to express their ill-feelings towards the team. Oh, a player is struggling? What else is new, right?

These kinds of reactions are much more common, among all types. From casual fans, to bloggers (cough cough Dave Cameron). It is hard to ignore negative occurrences when we have so much invested in the team.

In the case of Wilhelmsen, I have had multiple people ask me about what I think about him. Because he has struggled this year, especially as of late, to a degree that we have not seen yet. We are used to seeing such dominance from him, that any struggles he goes through instantly scare the hell out of us.

The fact is, closers, and really all relievers, are extremely volatile. There is a reason they are in the bullpen and not the rotation. They usually just aren’t quite as good.

Every pitcher goes through a period of struggles. Starters, relievers, closers, aces, back end starters. No one is good all of the time. It just so happens that closers are put under the microscope much more than other players. When they have a bad game, they “cost their team the game.”

If another reliever struggles in the 6th inning, no one really cares. Because one, there are three innings left. It isn’t a high leverage situation. And two, they aren’t the big name closer. People don’t expect as much out of them as they do guys like Wilhemsen.

In my opinion, Wilhelmsen will be okay. Key word there is okay. I don’t see him getting back to where he was last year, but he is better than he has been lately. But, we just do not know for sure. We have to wait it out, because things change so frequently.

In short, sometimes it is hard to not take every single thing that happens really seriously. We put so much into our team, that any time they waver from the norm, it has a massive affect on us, both good and bad.

But we have to be careful to take a step back, and look at the big picture. Henry Blanco is not a good baseball player. Tom Wilhelmsen is probably better than he has shown lately. The Morse for Jaso trade is probably pretty even right now. These things take time to iron themselves out, and a few games do not tell us enough to make a conclusion.

This may seem like a somewhat obvious message, but it isn’t in practice. Most  of us are guilty of overreacting from time to time, because it is hard not to. But it is smart to just take a step back, and look at all of the facts before making conclusions.

I realize there were some generalizations made in this post. Not everyone does this, but I felt it was common enough, particularly as of late, that it needed to be addressed in some way. Some people do exactly what I said above, and they shouldn’t.