Sunday, May 30, 2004
POP GOES PERFECTION
Only one thing stood in my mind from about halfway through the game until it ended.
I referenced Jeremy's line yesterday about the Mariners (even when they win, they lose).
(The other thing: I have to really try to restrain myself every time someone comes up with some idiotic Raul Ibanez nickname. Ee-BOMB-Yaz? Yeah, that's a great nickname just like a milkshake I would make after hearing it: bananas, crushed brick, strawberries, and razor blades.)
How does Jeremy's line fit in today? Randy Winn Breaks Up the Perfect Game is brought to you by the Seattle Monorail Project. Randy Winn cheated me and the rest of the baseball fans out there out of seeing Curt Schilling throw a perfect game in close temporal proximity to that of his former teammate Randy Johnson. Let's face it, if this team is going to lose, why not just do it in style and set some records? A perfect game by Curt Schilling? Why not? The franchise has let Roger Clemens whiff 20 of them twice in their history. After the perfect game was broken up, I was hoping for the Mariners to make history in a different way, because I felt absolutely cheated. Twenty errors in an inning, a 35-run inning by the Red Sox, SOMETHING to make up for it.
Anatomy of Schilling's part-perfection -- 17 batters, 8 groundouts, 3 flyouts, 1 lineout, 1 foulout, 4 strikeouts
And it was all spoiled when Randy Winn sliced a ball in no-man's land down the leftfield line. If you're going to break up a perfect game, at least do it with a solid base hit or a homer or something. Or charter a flight for Ben Davis so he can lay down a pinch-hit bunt. The worst part was that it looked like those perfect game-type things were happening. Schilling had fallen behind leadoff hitter Jolbert Cabrera 3-0, then fought back to a full count. Cabrera bounced one up the middle, but not quite hard enough for a base hit. Cesar Crespo was able to nail Cabrera at first. Then Schilling struck out Dan Wilson on three pitches. It was looking great. Then Randy Winn spoiled it for all of us.
Predictably, my attention wavered because I was no longer watching what I thought would be history. That left us with the rest of the game.
Lost in all of this was Ryan Franklin getting into the 7th inning. He let the first two baserunners into scoring position in the first, and they both scored. He beaned Kevin Youkilis in the third and Manny Ramirez doubled him home (you may remember this as another "Mike Cameron Would Have Had That" Moment, brought to you by BMW of Seattle). Franklin allowed eight hits over his 6 1/3 innings, and was yanked in the 7th after at-bats of nine (Pokey Reese strikeout), six (Mark Bellhorn single), and five (Kevin Youkilis single) pitches, ramping up Franklin's pitch count to a surprising 126, a long leash by usual Bob Melvin standards.
Ron Villone came in (man, I hate the way this team was built) for Franklin, got David Ortiz to foul off two pitches, then struck him out with the third. He was pulled for Julio Mateo. It was an All-Star outing for Julio Mateo, as he walked Manny Ramirez to load the bases, and then he made the kind of play the Mariners seem to be really good at coming up with this season. On a 1-1 pitch to Brian Daubach, he threw a pitch that got by Dan Wilson and rolled all the way to the backstop. Mateo ran to cover home, Wilson threw the ball to Mateo, and Mateo tried to come down with the glove for the tag on Bellhorn before he had actually caught the ball. The ball got by Mateo and rolled out toward the mound, where no one was covering, and Kevin Youkilis came around to score. It's not history, but seeing two runs score on a play involving a wild pitch certainly isn't something I see every day. Think about it though -- there was a wild pitch, and somebody scored FROM SECOND. I know there was this play we had back in Legion ball that was a bunt-and-run with two guys in scoring position, and somehow the guy from second ended up taking off toward home on the play, but I forgot how the play worked. Anyway, this wild pitch play reminded me of that. A LEGION play. This is supposed to be MAJOR LEAGUE Baseball I'm watching here.
The game would now leave Mariner fans with TONS of False Hope, today brought to you by Kitsap Sports (one convenient location; don't be fooled by the ads about the new location in Silverdale. Location is new, but Kitsap Sports has had a location in Silverdale for years).
The Mariners had an ungodly 8th inning. They had two in scoring position with nobody out and managed to score both runners. Rich Aurilia had a pinch-hit single. Edgar drove in a run with a single, but we're used to that. Something we;re not used to seeing (not even Raul himself) was Raul Ibanez (0-for-14 lifetime against Keith Foulke coming in) hitting a homer into the bullpen on 0-2 to get the Mariners a 2-run lead. One, don't get used to it. Two, why the hell is Keith Foulke hanging a pitch on 0-2? Three, Jeremy will tell you this, Raul could keep doing this over the course of the season, and it won't matter with this team.
As it turned out, it didn't matter after that point in the game. Dave Niehaus said at one point, "man alive, how big is that wild pitch and error now?" Not to say there wasn't any drama.
Eddie Guardado was summoned in the 8th to get out of Shig Hasegawa's completely futile two-in-scoring-position-with-nobody-out mess, but let's face it. Guardado was going to have to get some nicely-placed ground balls, get some high or shallow popups, or strike out two hitters to get out of that unscathed. Johnny Damon hit a pinch-hit sac fly, and Andy Dominique had a pinch-hit RBI single (first Major League hit) to tie the game. Guardado blew the save. He is the closer. Should he have been brought in to start the 8th? Probably. I knew as soon as the Mariners got the lead in the top half of the inning that Hasegawa was coming in; it seems almost like a telegraphed move nowadays. Granted, Shig hasn't been too bad in his last couple outings, but I just had a feeling about this one. In the end, Shig didn't set the table too nicely for the closer.
The Mariner bullpen would then help extend the game to the 12th. Guardado struck out the side in the 9th. You know, there's few things I like about this season, but one of them is that it is an absolute joy to watch Eddie Guardado pitch. I wish he was the closer the last four years in Seattle. It sure would have been nice, and it would have given the team a much-needed dimension the last two years. Of course, he may have had the guts to say something at the deadline, so he would have been out the door with Jeff Nelson.
JJ Putz took the bump from the 10th to the 12th. He got two quick outs in the 10th. Dominique hit a grounder toward third, and Jolbert Cabrera tried to throw to first even though he probably didn't have a chance. Ball in stands. Winning run on second with two outs. JJ then got the clutch strikeout of Mark Bellhorn.
In the 11th, JJ got a Youkilis groundout before getting some key strikeouts of David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, surely a confidence-builder for the young'un.
From the 9th to the 12th, the Mariners sent two batters over the minimum to the plate. They had three baserunners (one erased on a Scott Spiezio CLUTCH pinch-hit double play). Only one got into scoring position (Raul Ibanez on second with two out in the 11th). This happened against a relief corps of post-blown save Keith Foulke, Mike Timlin, and Anastacio Martinez.
So it was time for the bottom of the 12th. JJ Putz was out there again. He got Cesar Crespo to fly out on the first pitch. He had a 2-2 count on Jason Varitek before he beaned him in the back pocket. Putz fell behind 3-0 to former Mariner farmhand David McCarty. Knowing how former Mariners always seem to do against the Mariners, why not let him swing on 3-0? Young Putz has to come in with a fastball, right? Bingo. Shot to centerfield, into the green-shirted folks in a section that used to be overlain with a black tarp for a hitters' backdrop. Surely JJ could only have been so good for so long before the mucho suckage bug bit him again, right?
So, in short, Randy Winn screwed us out of history, and Raul Ibanez helped steal an extra hour of my life. The Mariners had absolutely no business winning this game, and I'm really glad they didn't.
How bad is it when I'm rooting against my own team? I've surely gone mad.
Gameball: Edgar Martinez. 2-for-4, the only hitter with a multihit game today.
Goat: Julio Mateo. Without the wild pitch/error combo, the Hasegawa situation might not have turned out quite as bad, and the Mariners quite possibly could have won this game. Add to this the fact that he walked Manny Ramirez before that after falling behind 3-0 on his first three pitches out of the bullpen.
Both Eddie Guardado and Keith Foulke blew saves in the 8th inning today. In a related story, Arthur Rhodes blew two saves in two days in Cleveland this weekend.
Hentgen. Moyer. Monday.
[Edit ~Mon ~5:26p -- I hope everyone doesn't solely depend on us when it comes to being off with days, because I thought the Mariners had this Monday off again. Nope. The little white space on their schedules confused me. They have the next two THURSDAYS off, weirdly enough.]
I referenced Jeremy's line yesterday about the Mariners (even when they win, they lose).
(The other thing: I have to really try to restrain myself every time someone comes up with some idiotic Raul Ibanez nickname. Ee-BOMB-Yaz? Yeah, that's a great nickname just like a milkshake I would make after hearing it: bananas, crushed brick, strawberries, and razor blades.)
How does Jeremy's line fit in today? Randy Winn Breaks Up the Perfect Game is brought to you by the Seattle Monorail Project. Randy Winn cheated me and the rest of the baseball fans out there out of seeing Curt Schilling throw a perfect game in close temporal proximity to that of his former teammate Randy Johnson. Let's face it, if this team is going to lose, why not just do it in style and set some records? A perfect game by Curt Schilling? Why not? The franchise has let Roger Clemens whiff 20 of them twice in their history. After the perfect game was broken up, I was hoping for the Mariners to make history in a different way, because I felt absolutely cheated. Twenty errors in an inning, a 35-run inning by the Red Sox, SOMETHING to make up for it.
Anatomy of Schilling's part-perfection -- 17 batters, 8 groundouts, 3 flyouts, 1 lineout, 1 foulout, 4 strikeouts
And it was all spoiled when Randy Winn sliced a ball in no-man's land down the leftfield line. If you're going to break up a perfect game, at least do it with a solid base hit or a homer or something. Or charter a flight for Ben Davis so he can lay down a pinch-hit bunt. The worst part was that it looked like those perfect game-type things were happening. Schilling had fallen behind leadoff hitter Jolbert Cabrera 3-0, then fought back to a full count. Cabrera bounced one up the middle, but not quite hard enough for a base hit. Cesar Crespo was able to nail Cabrera at first. Then Schilling struck out Dan Wilson on three pitches. It was looking great. Then Randy Winn spoiled it for all of us.
Predictably, my attention wavered because I was no longer watching what I thought would be history. That left us with the rest of the game.
Lost in all of this was Ryan Franklin getting into the 7th inning. He let the first two baserunners into scoring position in the first, and they both scored. He beaned Kevin Youkilis in the third and Manny Ramirez doubled him home (you may remember this as another "Mike Cameron Would Have Had That" Moment, brought to you by BMW of Seattle). Franklin allowed eight hits over his 6 1/3 innings, and was yanked in the 7th after at-bats of nine (Pokey Reese strikeout), six (Mark Bellhorn single), and five (Kevin Youkilis single) pitches, ramping up Franklin's pitch count to a surprising 126, a long leash by usual Bob Melvin standards.
Ron Villone came in (man, I hate the way this team was built) for Franklin, got David Ortiz to foul off two pitches, then struck him out with the third. He was pulled for Julio Mateo. It was an All-Star outing for Julio Mateo, as he walked Manny Ramirez to load the bases, and then he made the kind of play the Mariners seem to be really good at coming up with this season. On a 1-1 pitch to Brian Daubach, he threw a pitch that got by Dan Wilson and rolled all the way to the backstop. Mateo ran to cover home, Wilson threw the ball to Mateo, and Mateo tried to come down with the glove for the tag on Bellhorn before he had actually caught the ball. The ball got by Mateo and rolled out toward the mound, where no one was covering, and Kevin Youkilis came around to score. It's not history, but seeing two runs score on a play involving a wild pitch certainly isn't something I see every day. Think about it though -- there was a wild pitch, and somebody scored FROM SECOND. I know there was this play we had back in Legion ball that was a bunt-and-run with two guys in scoring position, and somehow the guy from second ended up taking off toward home on the play, but I forgot how the play worked. Anyway, this wild pitch play reminded me of that. A LEGION play. This is supposed to be MAJOR LEAGUE Baseball I'm watching here.
The game would now leave Mariner fans with TONS of False Hope, today brought to you by Kitsap Sports (one convenient location; don't be fooled by the ads about the new location in Silverdale. Location is new, but Kitsap Sports has had a location in Silverdale for years).
The Mariners had an ungodly 8th inning. They had two in scoring position with nobody out and managed to score both runners. Rich Aurilia had a pinch-hit single. Edgar drove in a run with a single, but we're used to that. Something we;re not used to seeing (not even Raul himself) was Raul Ibanez (0-for-14 lifetime against Keith Foulke coming in) hitting a homer into the bullpen on 0-2 to get the Mariners a 2-run lead. One, don't get used to it. Two, why the hell is Keith Foulke hanging a pitch on 0-2? Three, Jeremy will tell you this, Raul could keep doing this over the course of the season, and it won't matter with this team.
As it turned out, it didn't matter after that point in the game. Dave Niehaus said at one point, "man alive, how big is that wild pitch and error now?" Not to say there wasn't any drama.
Eddie Guardado was summoned in the 8th to get out of Shig Hasegawa's completely futile two-in-scoring-position-with-nobody-out mess, but let's face it. Guardado was going to have to get some nicely-placed ground balls, get some high or shallow popups, or strike out two hitters to get out of that unscathed. Johnny Damon hit a pinch-hit sac fly, and Andy Dominique had a pinch-hit RBI single (first Major League hit) to tie the game. Guardado blew the save. He is the closer. Should he have been brought in to start the 8th? Probably. I knew as soon as the Mariners got the lead in the top half of the inning that Hasegawa was coming in; it seems almost like a telegraphed move nowadays. Granted, Shig hasn't been too bad in his last couple outings, but I just had a feeling about this one. In the end, Shig didn't set the table too nicely for the closer.
The Mariner bullpen would then help extend the game to the 12th. Guardado struck out the side in the 9th. You know, there's few things I like about this season, but one of them is that it is an absolute joy to watch Eddie Guardado pitch. I wish he was the closer the last four years in Seattle. It sure would have been nice, and it would have given the team a much-needed dimension the last two years. Of course, he may have had the guts to say something at the deadline, so he would have been out the door with Jeff Nelson.
JJ Putz took the bump from the 10th to the 12th. He got two quick outs in the 10th. Dominique hit a grounder toward third, and Jolbert Cabrera tried to throw to first even though he probably didn't have a chance. Ball in stands. Winning run on second with two outs. JJ then got the clutch strikeout of Mark Bellhorn.
In the 11th, JJ got a Youkilis groundout before getting some key strikeouts of David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, surely a confidence-builder for the young'un.
From the 9th to the 12th, the Mariners sent two batters over the minimum to the plate. They had three baserunners (one erased on a Scott Spiezio CLUTCH pinch-hit double play). Only one got into scoring position (Raul Ibanez on second with two out in the 11th). This happened against a relief corps of post-blown save Keith Foulke, Mike Timlin, and Anastacio Martinez.
So it was time for the bottom of the 12th. JJ Putz was out there again. He got Cesar Crespo to fly out on the first pitch. He had a 2-2 count on Jason Varitek before he beaned him in the back pocket. Putz fell behind 3-0 to former Mariner farmhand David McCarty. Knowing how former Mariners always seem to do against the Mariners, why not let him swing on 3-0? Young Putz has to come in with a fastball, right? Bingo. Shot to centerfield, into the green-shirted folks in a section that used to be overlain with a black tarp for a hitters' backdrop. Surely JJ could only have been so good for so long before the mucho suckage bug bit him again, right?
So, in short, Randy Winn screwed us out of history, and Raul Ibanez helped steal an extra hour of my life. The Mariners had absolutely no business winning this game, and I'm really glad they didn't.
How bad is it when I'm rooting against my own team? I've surely gone mad.
Gameball: Edgar Martinez. 2-for-4, the only hitter with a multihit game today.
Goat: Julio Mateo. Without the wild pitch/error combo, the Hasegawa situation might not have turned out quite as bad, and the Mariners quite possibly could have won this game. Add to this the fact that he walked Manny Ramirez before that after falling behind 3-0 on his first three pitches out of the bullpen.
Both Eddie Guardado and Keith Foulke blew saves in the 8th inning today. In a related story, Arthur Rhodes blew two saves in two days in Cleveland this weekend.
Hentgen. Moyer. Monday.
[Edit ~Mon ~5:26p -- I hope everyone doesn't solely depend on us when it comes to being off with days, because I thought the Mariners had this Monday off again. Nope. The little white space on their schedules confused me. They have the next two THURSDAYS off, weirdly enough.]
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