Time for Mojo Risin' at The Safe! Here's hopin' we don't end up like Mr.Mojo Risin'.On a cold and snowy March day the Seattle Mariners let fans forget about the inclement weather outside the closed roof at SafeCo Field and bathe in the warmth of beautiful and warming M's baseball. The controversial moves made in the offseason provided all that was expected and more. Eric Bedard the newly acquired staff "Ace" from Baltimore proved his mettle by surrendering only one run to a Texas club with massive mashing potential. Raul Ibanez scored more clutch RBIs just as his veteran grit would have you believe he would be capable of. Finally, Ichiro was Ichiro, slapping the ball through holes in the infield and raking liners just over the reach of hapless Texas defenders. For sure this was the brilliant Opening Day management and fans expected to start the season. For those that believe in such things, Opening Day could be taken as an omen for the rest of the season. Indicating that the 6 years of futility since the Mariners last play-offs birth were a distant memory and the AL west is all but secured by the Mariners.
This air of both invincibility and inevitability that club and local media would have you believe is a charade, a deeply cracked facade that, if looked at in any sort of real light, would show more blemishes and weak points than a pre-make up Tila Tequila. And if one knows how to look properly, the Opening Day salvo wasn't a reassurance of the M's predicted dominance this year so much as a very clear picture of all that might go wrong.
Don't get me wrong. I am very happy the M's won. I would like nothing more than to see the M's pwn the regular season and playoffs all the way to a World Series. But I am not drinking the Bill Bavasi kool-aid just yet. I have seen to many seasons of flawed front-office logic to just up and hand the division to the M's just because the went out and traded(the farm, many would say) for "an established #1 ace starter". And this is what I mean about about Opening Day showing all the Mariners inadequacies. For all the mystique he garnered on his way out to Seattle, Eric Bedard is still just a man. He showed that as he struggled mightily yesterday throwing 106 pitches through just five innings. Not quite the staff ace fans were expecting. Despite struggling with his command and fighting an tight strike zone Bedard did only give up one run.
For a much of the game that one run seemed like it would sink the good ship Mariner and the hopes of a fast start to the season with it. The mariners bats, impatient as ever, swung at anything near the strike zone resulting in plenty of strikeouts and meekly his ground balls. This free-swinging, plate-discipline-be-damned attitude may be one of the heavily mitigating factors in the M's success this season.
Last night the laissez-faire batting style netted the Mariners 5 runs, enough to win most games. But the same style that can lead to the entire club catching fire batting against middling pitching can lead to innings of brutal flailing as the M's batters go down in order again and again. The idea that you have to make a pitcher work and force him to throw you good pitches is alien to the Mariners as sincerity is among politicians. Last year, on average the Mariners saw the fewest pitches per plate appearance out of any MLB team. This fact significantly favors the pitcher as he doesn't have to work knowing he can throw junk up to the plate and it'll be swung at. He never has to sweat and never gets worn down. The bullpen, normally a weak point for most teams, gets used later and thus opportunities to hit against lesser pitching are lost.
One thing conveniently glossed over in the whole Bedard for the-entire-farm-system-trade was the impact the trade would have on the defense. Adam Jones, by all accounts, was an above average defensive outfielder who was only going to get better as he learned to play in the outfield at the major league level. Losing him in the trade severely hurt the defense as the Mariners had no back-up plan to replace his glove. This left the outfield defense dangerously depleted. Jones' replacement Brad Wilkerson is a serviceable vet but is long in the tooth and been injury prone. Ichiro is still a ball catching machine in the outfield His ability to gracefully lope to the ball catch and fire it back in with such ease is amazing. One could question his effort if not for the obvious black hole he creates when a ball is hit into his area. Raul Ibanez is another gritty vet with adequate power but far less than adequate legs to track down fly balls in spacious SafeCo left field. I can guarantee there will be many times this season that a perfectly catchable ball drops right in front of Ibanez because his old legs could not carry him to the ball's destination fast enough. These things may seem small and insignificant but when playing a close game that ball dropping for a hit or being caught for and out can decide the outcome.
Last night's 5-2 win could have easily been a 2-0 loss if not for a little energon and a lot of luck. These are the same ingredients that it will take for the Mariners to make a strong play-off push. If things break right we win a lot of 5-2 games, if they don't we stand to be on the losing side of a large number of 1-0 or 3-1 type games. With the Mariners there isn't a whole lot of middle ground, your either with us or against us. We win handily or we lose painfully. Either way we play in the best venue in all of baseball. Win or lose we will do it in style with our Puget Sound, Seattle Skyline and Mount Rainier views provided from the friendly confines of SafeCo Field.
No comments:
Post a Comment