By Blaidd Drwg
The new ‘aggressiveness’ for the Mariners at the plate is really paying off – in terms of inflating the opponents strikeout totals.
Here are the last 7 Mariners games I attended with the gritty details:
| Date | Opponent | Score | Mariner Hits | Mariners Walks | Mariner Strikeouts |
| 9/9 | Royals | M’s win 7-3 | 15 | 2 | 12 |
| 9/10 | Royals | M’s lose 4-2 | 2 | 0 | 16 |
| 9/11 | Royals | M’s lose 2-1 | 6 | 1 | 12 |
| 9/13 | Yankees | M’s lose 3-2 | 6 | 4 | 17 |
| 9/16 | Rangers | M’s win 4-0 | 6 | 2 | 9 |
| 9/17 | Rangers | M’s lose 7-6 | 8 | 1 | 13 |
| 9/18 | Rangers | M’s lose 3-0 | 6 | 2 | 14 |
This final stretch of M’s games that I will be at this season started off with a legit 7-3 win. They pounded one of the worst pitching staffs in baseball for 15 hits and 7 runs as they should have, so I could forgive the 12 K’s with only 2 walks. I also got to see Alex Liddi’s first MLB hit and the pitching debut of Steve Delabar, so it was all good. The wheels just came off after that – the next 2 games against the Royals were a disaster, making their mediocre pitching staff look like the Phillies with the Mariners offense producing just 3 runs on 9 hits, 1 walk (!!!) and 28 strikeouts(!!!!!!).
Things went from bad to worse against the Yankees as the M’s had AJ Burnett on the ropes early, but couldn’t put him away. There was a lot of swinging and missing that night for the Mariners as they managed to strike out more times than I have ever seen one team strike out in a single 9 inning game. On the flip side, I did get to see Mariano Rivera’s 600th save, so something could be said for that game.
The Rangers series wasn’t as bad, but the one win was ugly (probably would have been a 1-0 game if Ian Kinsler had not made a bad throw on what was a routine ground ball that should have ended the inning or if the routine bouncer up the middle 2 batters later had not bounced off the bag keeping the inning going), but it guaranteed that they would not lose 100 games this season.
This offensively may be the worst seven game stretch I have seen 12 walks and 93 strikeouts is not a winning formula in any way. It also goes a long way to explaining the attendance in some of those games – the game on the 13th against the Yankees had a whopping 18,306 show up while the weekend games against the Mariners drew 22,000 for fan appreciation night on Saturday and 21,000 for kids appreciation day on Sunday, although the Sunday game felt a lot emptier than that.
FlatbreadGarden 