Who knows with this team?

Obnoxious John

7/22/10

The Mariners played another one of their typical games last night (Wed 7/21). I was all set at one point to blog pointing out yet again the flaws and failures of the 2010 edition of the team. However, they managed to overcome the latest in a series of bone headed base running boo-boos and got a victory over the Chicago White Sox and their softball beer league look-alike closer, Bobby Jenks.

King Felix, looking every bit a member of pitching royalty, was masterful. He had to be because the M’s couldn’t get on the board while he was in the game. While they did rack up 10 (gasp!) hits all told, for the first 10 innings they couldn’t get a runner all the way around the infield. So as Hernandez throws a great game, a real example of good pitching beating good hitting; the M’s offense was doing its best to not be offensive to the Sox.

Finally, after Felix did what he could throwing 8 innings, they pulled him and he took his 2.75 ERA, 8 K’s, no walks and no runs allowed to the dugout with him. Probably wondering what his teammates have against him since they don’t seem to put up any runs for him when he’s the starter.

As evidenced by 10 hits it’s not like they didn’t try. But somewhere along the line this year, the M’s players downloaded “Baserunning Boners 1.0” into their thinking and their performance on the base paths now borders on the ridiculous.

It is not a pretty sight. In this game they twice, TWICE, ran afoul of the base path gods and paid the price with rally killing outs. Neither instance is worthy of repeat in this blog except to say ‘Oh no! Not again!!’?

In the 11^th inning the Sox pushed a run over with Little O doing the damage and driving in the run. And then Chicago brought in Jenks.

Right off I figure they’re done for. Jenks looks like a guy that would as soon punch your lights out as throw you a strike. He’s a 2010 version of David Letterman’s infamous description of Terry Forster; ‘a fat tub of goo’. His gut hangs over his belt and that is meant only to say, since my gut hangs over my belt but I don’t pitch major league baseball and I’m a  day or two older than Bobby, that he plain looks more like a brawler than a pitcher, like he doesn’t care what you think.  In other words, the perfect mind set for a closer.

But the M’s finally got one right.  Jack Wilson bunted his way on, Ichiro moved him to second with a sacrifice bunt, Figgins got a single to put runners on the corners with one out then stole second to eliminate the double play and Gutierrez singled to center scoring both runners and the party was on!

The M’s won a game in extra innings and scored a grand total of 2 runs. It just doesn’t get any worse than this, does it? I should mention Wak got tossed after the ump seemed to miss a tag made by Figgins on Juan Pierre stealing second in the ninth. It was the quietest tirade I’ve ever seen. But that’s a subject for another day.

Now get out there and take one for the team!