I noticed last night that the Mariners were the only team left in baseball that had yet to play an extra-inning game this season. Division-mate Oakland has already played eight. Sometimes I am content to let a little nugget like that pass off into the twitter-verse and let it die, but in this case I got intrigued enough to head to Retrosheet and see if I could dig up some context. I restricted the search to seasons starting in 1962 when the expansion to 162 games took place and started the season earlier in the year.

The best that I could do was to go by calendar dates. I would prefer to go by game counts, but that was not available to my database at this time. Luckily, calendar dates are a reasonable proxy for how many games a team has played. And the winner for the longest it has taken to play extra innings goes to the 2005 Boston Red Sox who didn’t go beyond nine until their 99th game of the season on July 25. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners offense is comfortably in baseball’s bottom third. And while they are getting positive offensive contributions from Ichiro Suzuki, Adam Kennedy and Milton Bradley, who knows where they would be without Justin Smoak, who, after a 7-for-12 performance against the Rangers this week, is beginning to look more and more like the potentially great player many thought he was when he was traded last season. Read the rest of this entry »

It happens every year. A manager gets an itchy trigger finger early in the season and buries a guy before he even gets a chance to earn the faith the manager put in him to start the season. This year is no different, and with an idea sparked from Eric Seidman’s piece yesterday on Brad Emaus — an article that the Mets completely ignored when they waived him today — I present the 2011 Brad Emaus All-Stars.
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Yesterday, Tommy Rancel wrote about Alexi Ogando’s impressive start to the season, but while Ogando pitched well and his team won, he wasn’t the big story in that game. His counterpart on Tuesday was Michael Pineda, a highly touted prospect who was making his Major League debut for the Mariners. At 6’7 and 250 pounds, Pineda looks the part of a dominating frontline starter, and after he showed off his mid-90s velocity and dispatched the Rangers on 10 pitches (despite racking up two strikeouts) in his first inning of work, it was easy to see why his arrival was so highly anticipated.

The Rangers were able to get to Pineda a couple of times later in the game, notching four extra base hits that led to three runs off the young hurler in his six innings of work, but it was certainly a successful debut overall; there’s no shame in giving up a few hits to the Texas Rangers, after all. However, while Pineda dominating the right-handed bats in the Texas line-up – they combined to go 2 for 16 with a walk and a sac bunt in their 18 attempts against him – his one big flaw was on display on Tuesday, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m not quite sure that he’ll be able to live up to the hype this year.

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Wow, it seems like we were just in the high teens, and now we’re all the way up to #6…

[rimshot]

Present Talent – 70.00 (25th)

Mariners Season Preview

Future Talent – 85.00 (t-5th)

Mariners Top 10 Prospects

Financial Resources – 78.08 (14th)
Baseball Operations – 78.33 (t-15th)

Overall Rating – 76.76 (17th)

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