1-2, Quick Thoughts

Yeah, these losses sting, especially when they happen on consecutive nights, but in the grand scheme of things, they aren’t any more than just that – a loss. Even the best teams suffer ~60 of them in a season, and the Mariners are probably going to have to deal with a lot of close ones. That’s just what happens when your team is built around pitching and defense – on the bright side, they’re also going to win a lot of close ones, much like they did in 2009.

Tough to really assign blame in this one. RRS wasn’t sharp at all, but he managed to keep us in the game. He was leaving almost everything up in the zone, and he gave up a whole lot of line drives – pretty much all of which were falling for hits. I can’t really place any blame on the offense tonight, as they managed to score five runs, which is usually going to more than enough for this team. These guys clearly lost sight of their approach last night against Braden, but they appeared to get back on track tonight. They drew a whole lot of walks, and they were able to use the running game to their advantage. There really isn’t much more you can realistically ask from this lineup – we all knew what we were working with entering this season.

I guess if you absolutely have to pick a goat, your two best choices are Brandon League or Mark Lowe. League didn’t have much command of his fastball, and he just couldn’t hold onto the lead we gave him. Lowe, on the other hand, really only made one mistake, it just happened to be the one that officially lost us the game. Hey, that’s baseball.

One guy who really shouldn’t be blamed for this loss is Milton Bradley. There’s no doubt that he could have done a better job of playing that last fly ball, but it was an extremely tough play any way you slice it, and he’s never been represented as a great defensive outfielder. Perhaps some of us were just a bit spoiled by the two nice plays he made earlier in the game, but with an average defender, we should view the above average plays he does make as a bonus, rather than seeing the ones he doesn’t make as a disappointment. And if you’re going to call out the defense, it makes a lot more sense to look at Ichiro than it does to look at Milton Bradley – not only did his gaff cost us a run too, but it was also a much more routine play. I’m certainly not advocating Ichiro bashing, because he’s incredible and we can’t expect him to be perfect, but it’s just much more reasonable to be upset with him in this scenario.

Lastly, Rob Johnson can’t catch the ball, Griffey can’t hit, yada yada yada.