Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

Albert Pujols made it close and Brandon League gave it away, again.

It was Dustin Ackley bobblehead night Friday night. Wedge sat him down instead of rewarding the 20,000 that got the figurine.

Geoff Baker has a funny take on that: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2018290839_marinotes26.html

It is hard to sift through and see anything but sarcasm. There seems to be a shot at Ackley, but that could be read a couple of ways and several shots at the marketing folks. Generally, he comes across in the piece as kind of pissed off to real pissed off.

Smoak had his best game of the year driving in four runs. He sat on a change-up that was mid thigh and hit a line drive out to right field, it was a nice adjustment, he kept his hands back just long enough to drive the ball. If he does that a few more times and stops chasing stuff in the dirt he will start to see more fastballs.

Beavan made a terrible pitch to Pujols and out it went, 4-0 became 4-3 and then League fell apart. For a guy that is supposed to spot his stuff to a pinhead, it was a horrible pitch.

League’s walk percentage is way up over his recent years with the Mariners as the line drive percentage for balls that are hit, K-rate is down, which is a bad set of trends. Perhaps he’s reading that he is going to be traded, it doesn’t look good especially since the Ms apparently expect to trade him and get something back of value at the deadline.

If that is to transpire, he’ll need to arrest this implosion.

Dustin Ackley sits while his head bobbles in the stands

Mariners manager Eric Wedge doesn’t realize promotion was going on Friday

By Geoff Baker

Seattle Times staff reporter

Dustin Ackley Bobblehead Night at Safeco Field was thrown a little bit of a curveball.

That’s because the doll’s human likeness, the one and only Ackley, wasn’t actually in the starting lineup Friday for the Mariners.

Ackley had played in 45 of the team’s first 47 games and had not been given a day off since being named the team’s leadoff hitter three weeks ago.

Mariners manager Eric Wedge said he wanted to give Ackley a break with the team in the midst of playing 20 consecutive games and 36 games in 37 days. Wedge seemed somewhat surprised when asked about the bobblehead doll promotion.

“Oh, geez, is it?” Wedge asked. “I didn’t get that memo. Well, it shows you how much I pay attention to that, I guess.

“Well, he can revel in his own bobblehead without having to worry about playing.”

Wedge then added: “I’m surprised I didn’t get a phone call on that one.”

The Mariners’ public-relations staff notes that Ackley is the 15th different player the team has honored with a bobblehead doll since 2001. The team is 17-16 overall on bobblehead nights, but had lost three in a row and seven of nine heading into Friday.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 26th, 2012 at 6:14 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.