Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

Journeyman Aaron Cook, he of no-stuff, limited the Ms to two hits, one of which was debate-able, and the Red Sox beat the Mariners 5-0. Hector Noesi pitched well for a bit and then decided the Red Sox needed some batting practice to snap out of their funk and gave up four home runs and a ringing double and the game was over. It was largely over after the first home run, though.

There are tons of things available to read today that are pertinent. Larry Larue, Dave Cameron, Jeff Sullivan wrote about themes on how the team home splits are now below the Mendoza line, which includes suggestions that it’s just not home runs but hits that are a problem. Links to all below.

Larry Larue’s theme is about the benchmark ineptitude of the players and sort of a first derivative on that was Jeff Sullivan’s piece in Lookoutlanding talking about sinker balls and by imputation the complete lack of adaptation on the part of the hitters, as if they’d never seen a sinker ball in their whole life. They’re both very good.

Cameron’s piece is more long term, as in this season rather than last night, in which he suggests that the root cause of the terrible hitting is the heavy, heavy air that is the hallmark of summer never having arrived to this point. He suggests that once the warm weather shows up, things will turn around.

There is a truth present in all three pieces, however. Whatever is going on, voodo or hexes, opposing teams are far better than the Mariners playing at Safeco. That would seem to be the thing operating here, more than anything. After the game Wedgie was at his firmest, saying the team had taken a step back and he was mad as hell…blah blah blah.

Here is the lineup he ran out there last night and how they have looked in June batting average in parentheses :

Ichiro (.273)
Wells (.361)
Seager (.204)
Montero (.244)
Smoak (.154)
Ackley (.207)
Jaso (.342)
Figgins (.208)
Ryan (.172)

Gutierrez is on 7 day dl due to concussion from taking shot to face and in response to that event the Mariners called up a pitcher, to cover Millwood’s nagging groin injury (poor guy) and Iwakuna’s big start on Monday. The best player on the team Michael Saunders was sick, so that’s what Wedge had to use.

It is easy to look at the numbers and see which of the kids are “developing” and which seem bent on destruction. Wedge has been threatening the ones bent on destruction that they need to adjust or somebody from the minors might be coming up to replace them. The adjustments need to be shown in the context of game play, but the work needs to occur daily prior to the game. As a chronicler of this team, Ackley and Smoak seem to be falling apart. In other words, no adjustments are showing up. Noesi, falls into this mess as well.

That said, to expect to compete with that lineup is silly.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/whats-going-on-at-safeco-field/#more-91195

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/06/30/2200124/how-low-can-mariners-go.html

http://www.lookoutlanding.com/

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2012 at 1:21 pm 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.