Sodo Mojo’s Mariners In-Game Twitter Poll: Paxton Strikeouts

The has been a lot of hype this offseason about James Paxton possibly taking over the role as the team’s #2 starter after he has a outbreak season in 2017. In honor of that possibility, our poll asked the fans how many strikeouts he would record against the Houston Astros through three innings.

As a note for polls the rest of the season, make sure you get your votes in early as the polls last for only 20 minutes. Let your voice be heard Mariners fans.

The Mariners have had fairly decent outings from Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma so far this season, although neither resulted in a win.

Nevertheless, if Paxton could strike out a good number of batters through the first three innings of the game, maybe he could help give the M’s that elusive first W.

In his career, Paxton has struck out an average of five men per game, although that number nearly reached six per game in 2016, so he is trending upwards. He also has recorded slightly less than half of his K’s in the first three innings. So how would he fair in tonight’s game with this poll going on unbeknownst to him?

As shown in our poll, we asked M’s fans if they thought Paxton would have a poor, average, or excellent start to the game in terms of total strikeouts through the first third of his start.

In the 1st, Paxton got ahead of the count and had two strikes on all four batters he faced but he couldn’t strikeout out anyone. He did have a walk despite having a 1-2 count on Alex Bergman.

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Believe it or not, in the 2nd he came out in front with 1-2 counts on the first three batters he saw. The steak of going ahead of the count ended at seven when Josh Reddick lined out to Mitch Hainger on 1-0 count. At this point, Paxton still had no strikeouts.

With only one frame remaining for Paxton to give you the fans a poll win on the night, he forced a pop out to Jake Marisnick to start the 3rd.

Then, on a 2-2 count to George Springer, Paxton threw a nasty pitch that got past the Astros batter in the dirt but also hid from Mike Zunino so the speedy Springer ended up on first base with one out and Paxton’s first K.

Two batters later, Paxton battled against Jose Altuve for nine pitches but came out on top and with his second K of the frame. The 2nd K in the final frame (in terms of the poll) gave four of our voters the win.

Next: Mariners Need To Start Stealing Bases

If you got today’s poll wrong, don’t fret, tomorrow we’ll have a brand new poll fro you to try your luck. We hope you’ve gotten more of our polls right than the total of games the M’s have won!