By Blaidd Drwg

The Kyle Seager experience is over for now as he was shipped back to Tacoma. Seager managed to actually be worse than Chone Figgins in his 22 MLB at bats, posting a whopping .136 BA with no extra base hits and 7 strikeouts. It should have been worse – he had an infield single against Texas that was scored a hit that really should have been an error. You know you are off to a bad start when Chone Figgins looks like a better option; heck I think Bob Seger might have been a better choice at 3B for the Mariners.

I know that the Mariners were trying to catch lightning in a bottle when they called Seager up from his hot start in Tacoma, but what made them think that a guy with 60 PA in AAA was ready for the big club?

In other Mariners news, it seems the never-ending LF tryouts has moved from Bradley to Saunders to Peguero to Halman and now to Carp. Good luck to Carp – you probably have about 100 AB to figure out if you can hit your weight.

By Blaidd Drwg

That is the question. I decided to take a look to see how much of a home road split there has been for the Mariners over the last few seasons; seasons that are stringing together one of the most inept offensive streaks in baseball history (we are talking dead ball era bad).

The first thing I noticed today was the park factor for Safeco this season is 100, which means that the most historically pitcher friendly park in the league is playing neutral this season, which is a huge surprise. Here are the splits for the Mariners between home and road over the last few seasons:

I picked 2004 as the starting point for this since that was the year I became a season ticket holder (has it really been that long) and I wanted to see if my memories of these teams fit the reality of the numbers. Looking at these numbers, the team was pretty consistent between 2004 and 2009 – they were about 12 – 17 % below league average hitting at home and hovering right around league average on the road, then they fall off a cliff offensively; interestingly enough in years 2 and 3 of the Z-era (he can’t take any credit or blame for year 1, those were mostly Bavasi’s players). The numbers indicate that there is a significant enough split between the home and road stats that maybe the Mariners should consider moving the fences in a few feet to try to generate more offense, although I doubt that it would at all help the current offense – they just can’t hit regardless of where they play. I also think that the honeymoon period for Z is long over – he came to Seattle with the reputation of being a great evaluator of talent. His Evaluation has driven the Mariners offense directly into the ground and produced a season and a half of the worst offense since WW2.

To answer the question, should the fences come in, I would say yes!

By Blaidd Drwg

It is all over the news in Seattle – for the second time in 8 games, the Mariners had an opposing hitter take a base on balls with just 3 balls. Ok, as a former umpire, I wanted to put my 2 cents in on this one.

It happens. You occasionally make a mistake on the count – every umpire has done it. You have a ball/strike indicator in your hand and you occasionally advance it too far or not enough or just forget on a pitch and you have the wrong count. It has happened to me multiple times but only once do I believe that a runner took a walk with less than 4 balls. In that case, I was the only umpire, it was a long at bat and the opposing coach did question it, but didn’t put up any argument when I said I had ball 4. In this case, I find the mistake excusable.

What is not excusable is the situation that happened twice to the Mariners, I am just trying to figure out who is more at fault – the umpires or the Mariners bench.

There are 4 umpires in a MLB game. They all have a ball/strike indicator which they keep independently. You generally have to look at it to reset it for the next batter. How the heck did none of them notice that the hitter only had 3 balls, not 4? In both cases, the home plate umpire had 3 balls on his indicator and assumed it was a mistake after looking at the scoreboard. NEVER LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD. You are paid to get it right, the scoreboard is there for the fans. If you think the count is wrong, consult with the other umpires. Seeing the umpires blatantly miss a call like that twice in the span of a week drives me nuts. They will consult on home run calls, they will consult on close plays, why not on the count? Are they afraid of looking stupid?

While the umps are supposed to get it right, the Mariners bench coaches should be fired for what I see is a lack of attention to detail. Every MLB has someone on the bench charting pitches. That person should have noticed it. There are at least 10 guys on that bench who are supposed to be watching the game. One of them should have noticed. I am even more disturbed by Wedge’s comments about the 3 ball walk to Abreu:

“I was OK with that,” Wedge said. “I figured it worked against us last time, let it work for us this time. … I was fine with (Abreu) not being up there 3-1 with the next two guys coming. I felt good about Felix facing those next two guys. I was hoping for a double play, but we got a strikeout and a popup.”

Does this mean he noticed and just didn’t care? If that is the case, he shouldn’t be managing a MLB team. Baserunners are bad if you are on defense, even with Felix pitching. It changes the dynamic of how a pitcher approaches a hitter and that could lead to trouble. Is it any wonder why the Mariners are sinking quicker than a deflating balloon*?

* I almost used the Indianapolis, but I pulled it back since I did not want to make light of the deaths of 900 US sailors in the worst single naval disaster (and probably failure in military intelligence) in American history. You probably only know the Indianapolis from “Jaws”, so if you don’t know the whole story, read about it here.

By Blaidd Drwg

A quick question: Which of these fine hitters would you want in your lineup?

It would be pretty easy to eliminate Player C from this list – the OBP is awful, despite having one of the “better” slugging percentages on the list (and that is still pretty lousy). Player B wouldn’t be the worst choice and player E does not have enough plate appearances to make a call on. Players A and D would be the logical choices, but I would be cautious of Player D – small sample size. I have also intentionally left out Batting Average. You might say that Player A is the no-brainer when I add that he has 44 walks in those 245 PA and Player D only has 3 in 52 PA.

The list of players (in order of appearance): Jack Cust, Milton Bradley, Carlos Peguero, Greg Halman and Mike Carp.

The Mariners recently announced that Cust and Chone Figgins would see reduced playing time. It is funn, because it is hard to lose playing time when you are only in the lineup maybe twice a week anyway. I can’t make the argument for that being a bad thing for Figgins, but it does not make any sense to me to reduce Cust’s playing time if you are trying to win.

His power numbers are way down this season, but Cust has the highest OBP on the team, leads the team in walks (one ahead of Justin Smoak, who has roughly 100 more PA) and really is better than his .215 BA. Besides, the only Mariner with more than 100 PA and a higher OPS+ is Smoak. Adam Kennedy figures to take the bulk of the AB from Cust at this point.

Considering Bradley is gone, Carp is back in Tacoma and the Halman/Peguero platoon should produce somewhere around 20 walks this season and, if we are lucky, hit over .220, why not play Cust on a regular basis?

It seems to me that the team is adopting a “let’s play the kids and if we win, great, if not, we will call it a rebuilding year” mentality, which is fine, but let Jack Cust go to someplace where he can produce.