Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

M’s win, 3-1 in eleventh inning, Felix and various relievers great and good enough.

Dustin Ackley WAS the story, 438 foot home run to dead center to put the Ms up in fourth inning. As strung together a couple of hits to tie it up culminated by Kurt Suzuki’s double in the bottom of fourth.

In top of eleventh Brendan Ryan jumped on a tumbling curve ball, belly high and drove it into the gap in left center to lead off the inning. Chone Figgins, in the one slot, sacrificed him to third base. Ackley then lined a shot into centerfield to plate Ryan with go ahead run. Ackley then stole second, barely ahead of the Suzuki’s throw and Ichiro getting his fourth hit of the day drove him in, for the final score of the day increasing the lead to 3-1. Which was final score.

Brandon League narrowly avoided a line shot to the chops in the bottom of the inning and got the save. Tom Wilhelmsen with the win in relief of Felix Hernandez who threw well.

Almost immediately the game feed was dumped so that we could watch Mariners All access with Jen Mueller in Tokyo, with a new supply of marbles in her mouth. That was probably unfair, but am I the only one who catches the watery inflection when she speaks?

Switched to ESPN C-Team who reported on the game with Xavier Fernandez pitching well and Ichiro with the game winning RBI. So much for the news that’s fit to air.

Ichiro four for five ties an opening day record of Ken Griffey, Jr. Two infield hits and two short line drives and ONE nice rbi. As a three hole hitter, his goal should be to drive in one hundred, so ninety nine to go. He has to average .617 rbis per game, so he’s ahead of the curve. I did not detect anything new in his swing today, despite spring training pronouncements. Same guy getting on first base with small hits. Historically, he gets an rbi every four hits, so today’s game is on pace. To get one hundred rbis he needs four hundred hits.

Ichiro twice batted with men on base. Chone Figgins singled in the sixth and Ichiro promptly hit an one hundred and thirty foot single to center field moving Figgins to second and Smoak and Montero got nothing done. Then in eleventh with Ackley on second Ichiro drove him in. So, two hits with guys on base, one rbi. That is just fine. Traditionally, in the first situation, he might be expected to drive the ball into the gap and he will have further opportunities to do that.

Middle of order has been asleep in Japan so far, if we see Wedgie move Olivo up to four hole, read that as a panic move on his part.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 at 7:57 am by terrybenish and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.