Well a few interesting things to point out from the series with the Yankees. A lot of negatives but a few points in the positive as well.
- They had some horrible contact rates with the exception of the last game. Strikeout totals: Thursday they had 10, Friday 12, Saturday, 11 but on Sunday only 5. Interesting right.
- They went 3-19 the first three games and then finished with a 7-18 RISP in game four. You can’t win if you don’t put yourself in position to win and you certainly can’t win if you don’t bring those people in from scoring position.
- With the exception of game one with CC Sabathia absolutely dominating people, the Mariners really had a lot of chances to score leaving over 27 runners on base at the end of innings.
- Mariner pitchers gave up 6 home runs in 4 games this weekend, this in and of itself makes me a sad panda. But the Mariners only had two, and by two of the weakest guys in the lineup (Josh Wilson and Kenji Johjima).
- The Mariners ran themselves out of a couple of situations with 2 DP and 0/2 in stealing opportunities.
- The Mariners only had 8 total walks over 4 games. That is horrible and needs to change.
- The fact the Mariners were only 0/2 on stealing (and one of those was a stupid play) shows me a lack of aggressiveness on the base paths.
- Fister looked awesome, French wasn’t bad, RR-S deserved a win and Snell just needs more time. My basic assessment of our four starting pitchers this weekend.
- Each Starting pitcher went at least 6 innings. This to me is encouraging, yes I know Ian Snell was going to be out there unless his arm fell off but he still went 6 innings and only gave up 8 runs. Wait? That’s bad, huh? Alright, well then take a look at the following three pitchers RR-S, French and Fister. They all had good starts and gave up a combined 5 ER between the three of them. Had the defense been as good as what it has been, we would be looking at coming out of this series on top 3 games to 1.
- On a bullpen note, everyone got an opportunity to pitch and what was really good is that no one pitched more than once, with the starting pitching having effective outings. It would seem that despite coming out of a series losing we have a well rested bullpen.
- We come out that last game with the complete weakest possible line-up and still managed to put up 10 runs, yes it was against the struggling Joba Chamberlin. But, 10 runs is 10 runs. I don’t care who it’s against, it’s a nice sign of life from an offense that was delinquent for most of the weekend.
- Josh Wilson was 5-14 with 0 BB – 3k’s a Home run, 2 RBIs and 3 runs scored. I don’t care which Wilson, I’ll take that from our 8/9 spot replacement shortstop (I know his defense was horrible I was trying to spin a positive).
- Josh Wilson this weekend posted the following WPA’s: -.025, -.082, -.218, and .130, but all most fans will remember about this weekend is that he hit a home run off of CC Sabathia.
- I started thinking that Bill Hall as back-up third basemen wouldn’t be too bad and then we can move Jack Hannahan to short and kick Josh Wilson to the curb. I will continue this dream when I fall asleep.
- This weekend was also a positive step in the right direction for umpires … oh wait … I mean for ROBOT UMPIRES!!
I have a Tigers preview coming tomorrow, and it is rather large. So prepare yourselves!!!