By Blaidd Drwg
Eric Wedge did something the other day that frustrated me to no end. Leading 1-0 in the 8th inning against the Angels, Charlie Furbush was cruising; he had given up a couple of hits and had only thrown 82 pitches. Furbush got the first hitter, Mike Trout, to fly out on a drive to center. The next hitter is where the wheels started to come off. To protect against the bunt, Wedge moved 3B Alex Liddi in on the grass and practically right on the line. Eric Aybar hit a shot that would have been a routine ground ball to 3B had Liddi been playing back, but instead it went by him and was fielded by Brendan Ryan, running away from first base, with no chance of getting Aybar.
Then things went really wrong. Maybe Furbush got too preoccupied with the runner, but he suddenly couldn’t find the strike zone. The second pitch to pinch hitter Alberto Callaspo ended up in the dirt and to the backstop because of a half-hearted attempt on a backhand stop by Miguel Olivo (he didn’t even move to try to get his body in front of the ball to block it). Needless to say, two more pitches that were not even close put Callaspo on first. The Mariners had Tom Wilhelmsen ready to go in the pen.
At this point, I probably would have at least sent the pitching coach out there to calm down Furbush – he really missed badly on balls 3 and 4, but the Mariners chose not to. This brought up Macier Izturus. Furbush again missed badly with his first two pitches and at this point he is looking like he had nothing left and I am practically yelling at the TV for Wedge to get out there and talk to him, if not take him out of the game. Heck, Olivo should have gone out there to talk to him. The young kid has just threw 6 pitches in a row that were nowhere close to being strikes and he looked like he was out of gas, so I am sure in his head he was thinking, “I have to throw a strike,” which he did, right down the middle of the plate, which Izturus smacked up the gap for a 2 run double and the lead, ending the night for Charlie Furbush.
I am not saying that going out to the mound would have made a difference, but leaving the kid out there to make the mistake he did was a terrible move by Wedge, and people wonder why this team is 20+ games under .500. My other question for Wedge – why are you playing Brendan Ryan and Willy Mo Pena? At this point, let the kids play and see if you might have some guys who can help next year. Pena and Ryan will probably not even be Mariners next season, so why bother.
On a side note, the Mariners inept offense was held to one hit by Jerome Williams, a 29 year old former prospect who was out of professional baseball for 3 years prior to this season.
FlatbreadGarden 