Wednesday, April 07, 2004
PAINFULLY LOCAL
Guess what local newspaper subscribers in Bremerton had to wake up to this morning?
You guessed it, the obligatory Willie Bloomquist article. Unfortunately for us here at Sports and B's, he didn't do too bad. The article is written by one of my former assistant coaches, Chuck Stark. I'm not going to really blast the hell out of this one like I do with some other articles (if you read the article, you can pretty much guess how I'd react to certain things), but here's some tidbits...
On a day when the M's mostly stunk it up in a 10-5 loss against Anaheim, Bloomquist drove in Seattle's first run of the season with a double on the first pitch he saw from fireballing Bartolo Colon. He later provided the defensive gem of the game -- barehanding a chopper off the bat of Jose Guillen and gunning him out at first base on a move ala Brooks Robinson.
The Mariners definitely did stink it up. In all likelhood, Garret Anderson should have caught that double. To Bloom's credit, he did get onto the Baseball Tonight Web Gems with the play that was described.
Two years ago, during a September call-up, he hit .455 in 12 games.
Emphasis added by me. The words "small sample size" come to mind. If you multiply 12 by 4 (number of at-bats per game, though he probably had less), this .455 average would be over 48 at-bats. Bloomquist hasn't proved since college that he could hit consistently over the span of an entire season. Raise your hand if you think Bloomquist could hit .270 over a span of 300 at-bats...put your hand down, Mister Rizzs...
A lot of September call-ups will get a start here and there, but Bloomquist was so hot that then-manager Lou Piniella couldn't afford to not play him. The more he played, the better he played, erasing the doubts of a management that had started to wonder if the former Pac-10 Player of the Year could hit it at baseball's highest level.
I already commented about the "hitting consistently" thing and the "small sample size" thing which has netted the Mariners such luminaries as Quinton McCracken (one year not like the others), Raul Ibanez (won't be facing Mariner pitching this year), Scott Spiezio (an at-bat in the World Series), and Rich Aurilia (anyone hitting in front of Barry Bonds should have more than one good year). And the reason why Piniella couldn't afford not to play Bloomquist? Well, at that point, any warm body with a glove was better than putting in Jeff Cirillo and having an eight-man lineup.
Bloomquist earned a spot on the 2003 roster as a utility player. ... He hit .341 while at third base and .250 overall in 196 at-bats.
Once again, that thing about hitting consistently, or in this case, consistently WELL. One out of four...yayyyy!!! Give me a break. Moving on...
In his second at-bat in the fourth, Bloomquist took some good hacks at Colon pitches that were clocked at 97 and 98 miles per hour by the radar gun at the stadium.
As we know, the gun at the stadium that shows on the scoreboard tends to inflate the MPH by about three or four MPH, something Ron Fairly has harped on countless times in the past. As an aside, where the hell was the gun on the FSNNW telecast? They didn't have it the whole night. Is the Mariner brass trying to withhold Bartolo Colon's velocity from me? I wouldn't put it past them. All I said in my recap about this at-bat was that Bloom should have been wrung up on his 0-2 pitch and then I laid into Melvin for sending Dan Wilson.
Bloomquist's fifth-inning at-bat was short -- he struck out on three pitches.
Damn right. Blew two straight fastballs right by a waving bat.
That's all I'm going to post about that article. Except that Bloomquist still has a long way to go to achieve Steve Scheffler status.
And now, another article in the Bremerton Sun (they hate it when you call it Bremerton instead of "West Sound," easily the stupidest geographic name ever hallucinated) is here. I'll just take one craptastic quote out of this...
That forced the Angels to bring in right-handed setup man Francisco Rodriguez. He got Wilson on a grounder to end the eighth and struck out two in the ninth, including Bret Boone to end the game.
"At least we made them think a little bit," Melvin said. "Even when they seemingly have it in hand late in the game, you still want to take somebody down with you if you're going to go down."
I think we've crossed the line where "[making] them think a little bit" is acceptable for this "competitive" team. Can you believe with the two playoff appearances this team had and all the ups (and excruciating downs) we witnessed, that three years later we're supposed to take solace in the fact that the other team was "thinking" a little bit? So you won 393 games the past four years, great. You won 186 games the past two years, didn't make the playoffs, and want sympathy? Tough sh!+. Oakland and Anaheim are in your division, you know that, that's not going to change for a while, you know what those teams have (hell, you face them so many damn times), and that's the way it is. Live with it and prepare accordingly.
In a note similar to Melvin's, I had to think long and hard to find out what GOOD things happened in the game, which I sort of chronicled in the recap post.
Mariners will be playing at seven, but don't expect a long recap again from me because Flames/Canucks Game 1 of the playoffs will be played around the same time.
You guessed it, the obligatory Willie Bloomquist article. Unfortunately for us here at Sports and B's, he didn't do too bad. The article is written by one of my former assistant coaches, Chuck Stark. I'm not going to really blast the hell out of this one like I do with some other articles (if you read the article, you can pretty much guess how I'd react to certain things), but here's some tidbits...
On a day when the M's mostly stunk it up in a 10-5 loss against Anaheim, Bloomquist drove in Seattle's first run of the season with a double on the first pitch he saw from fireballing Bartolo Colon. He later provided the defensive gem of the game -- barehanding a chopper off the bat of Jose Guillen and gunning him out at first base on a move ala Brooks Robinson.
The Mariners definitely did stink it up. In all likelhood, Garret Anderson should have caught that double. To Bloom's credit, he did get onto the Baseball Tonight Web Gems with the play that was described.
Two years ago, during a September call-up, he hit .455 in 12 games.
Emphasis added by me. The words "small sample size" come to mind. If you multiply 12 by 4 (number of at-bats per game, though he probably had less), this .455 average would be over 48 at-bats. Bloomquist hasn't proved since college that he could hit consistently over the span of an entire season. Raise your hand if you think Bloomquist could hit .270 over a span of 300 at-bats...put your hand down, Mister Rizzs...
A lot of September call-ups will get a start here and there, but Bloomquist was so hot that then-manager Lou Piniella couldn't afford to not play him. The more he played, the better he played, erasing the doubts of a management that had started to wonder if the former Pac-10 Player of the Year could hit it at baseball's highest level.
I already commented about the "hitting consistently" thing and the "small sample size" thing which has netted the Mariners such luminaries as Quinton McCracken (one year not like the others), Raul Ibanez (won't be facing Mariner pitching this year), Scott Spiezio (an at-bat in the World Series), and Rich Aurilia (anyone hitting in front of Barry Bonds should have more than one good year). And the reason why Piniella couldn't afford not to play Bloomquist? Well, at that point, any warm body with a glove was better than putting in Jeff Cirillo and having an eight-man lineup.
Bloomquist earned a spot on the 2003 roster as a utility player. ... He hit .341 while at third base and .250 overall in 196 at-bats.
Once again, that thing about hitting consistently, or in this case, consistently WELL. One out of four...yayyyy!!! Give me a break. Moving on...
In his second at-bat in the fourth, Bloomquist took some good hacks at Colon pitches that were clocked at 97 and 98 miles per hour by the radar gun at the stadium.
As we know, the gun at the stadium that shows on the scoreboard tends to inflate the MPH by about three or four MPH, something Ron Fairly has harped on countless times in the past. As an aside, where the hell was the gun on the FSNNW telecast? They didn't have it the whole night. Is the Mariner brass trying to withhold Bartolo Colon's velocity from me? I wouldn't put it past them. All I said in my recap about this at-bat was that Bloom should have been wrung up on his 0-2 pitch and then I laid into Melvin for sending Dan Wilson.
Bloomquist's fifth-inning at-bat was short -- he struck out on three pitches.
Damn right. Blew two straight fastballs right by a waving bat.
That's all I'm going to post about that article. Except that Bloomquist still has a long way to go to achieve Steve Scheffler status.
And now, another article in the Bremerton Sun (they hate it when you call it Bremerton instead of "West Sound," easily the stupidest geographic name ever hallucinated) is here. I'll just take one craptastic quote out of this...
That forced the Angels to bring in right-handed setup man Francisco Rodriguez. He got Wilson on a grounder to end the eighth and struck out two in the ninth, including Bret Boone to end the game.
"At least we made them think a little bit," Melvin said. "Even when they seemingly have it in hand late in the game, you still want to take somebody down with you if you're going to go down."
I think we've crossed the line where "[making] them think a little bit" is acceptable for this "competitive" team. Can you believe with the two playoff appearances this team had and all the ups (and excruciating downs) we witnessed, that three years later we're supposed to take solace in the fact that the other team was "thinking" a little bit? So you won 393 games the past four years, great. You won 186 games the past two years, didn't make the playoffs, and want sympathy? Tough sh!+. Oakland and Anaheim are in your division, you know that, that's not going to change for a while, you know what those teams have (hell, you face them so many damn times), and that's the way it is. Live with it and prepare accordingly.
In a note similar to Melvin's, I had to think long and hard to find out what GOOD things happened in the game, which I sort of chronicled in the recap post.
Mariners will be playing at seven, but don't expect a long recap again from me because Flames/Canucks Game 1 of the playoffs will be played around the same time.
/ Click for main page
