Tuesday, April 20, 2004
BALK CHOW
After I was done jotting down the Canuck notes last night, I went home and the Mariners were still playing in the 11th inning. I'd known a few things via SportsLine GameCenter at this point -- Freddy threw something like 60 pitches in the first three innings and looked like a 5 2/3 innings-type Freddy who'd throw 120 pitches, the Mariners were getting a bunch of baserunners on and not scoring, Ed Guardado blew the save in the 9th on Jermaine Dye, and the Mariners were choking quite a few times with runners on in the extra innings.
I went home, I saw a few innings, and I watched the ending. A balk? Sadly, there's a chance it may have saved the Mariners another inning of futility. This might be somewhat of a stretch though, considering there were runners at the corners with nobody out. However, Scott Spiezio had the count 0-2 on him. If Spiezio strikes out, there's one out and a ground ball makes the game an inning longer at the very least.
About the balk itself, I don't know what the exact rule is, but I do know that the move Justin Duchscherer made seemed weird just seeing it unfold. Something was not complete about it, like he didn't step toward third enough or something.
Anyway, there's not too much more I can say about the game because I was visually detached from it until the very latter stages. I just know it was a shame Freddy lost this game because he appeared to rebound from what seemed like a struggle in the early stages of the game.
Without further adieu, the gameball and the goat.
Gameball: Freddy Garcia. He rebounded fairly well from a shaky start and should have won. More offense would have helped on the Mariners' part, but what are you gonna do? I was going to pick Julio Mateo for this because of his three innings of scoreless relief (even with the four hits he gave up), but then I looked at the game logs and realized he played a high-wire act the whole time. Any kudos to him is due to the way he got out of his own jams.
Goat: Dan Wilson. What kind of world do we live in where Dan Wilson can strand four runners and go 0-for-6, yet still be hitting .306? It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, MAD world, I tell you.
Harden. Franklin. Tonight.
I went home, I saw a few innings, and I watched the ending. A balk? Sadly, there's a chance it may have saved the Mariners another inning of futility. This might be somewhat of a stretch though, considering there were runners at the corners with nobody out. However, Scott Spiezio had the count 0-2 on him. If Spiezio strikes out, there's one out and a ground ball makes the game an inning longer at the very least.
About the balk itself, I don't know what the exact rule is, but I do know that the move Justin Duchscherer made seemed weird just seeing it unfold. Something was not complete about it, like he didn't step toward third enough or something.
Anyway, there's not too much more I can say about the game because I was visually detached from it until the very latter stages. I just know it was a shame Freddy lost this game because he appeared to rebound from what seemed like a struggle in the early stages of the game.
Without further adieu, the gameball and the goat.
Gameball: Freddy Garcia. He rebounded fairly well from a shaky start and should have won. More offense would have helped on the Mariners' part, but what are you gonna do? I was going to pick Julio Mateo for this because of his three innings of scoreless relief (even with the four hits he gave up), but then I looked at the game logs and realized he played a high-wire act the whole time. Any kudos to him is due to the way he got out of his own jams.
Goat: Dan Wilson. What kind of world do we live in where Dan Wilson can strand four runners and go 0-for-6, yet still be hitting .306? It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, MAD world, I tell you.
Harden. Franklin. Tonight.
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