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Monday, April 14, 2008

Cliff Diving

Time for another weekly Mariners baseball analysis. It breaks down into good news and bad news.

GOOD:

  1. The Mariners have won 3 out of 4 series so far this season. Yet seemingly defying logic, they are sub-.500. Do the math and it does add up. See the silver lining.
  2. The Mariners won their first series against division rival Angels.
  3. Raul Ibanez is on fire. He leads the Major Leagues in extra-base hits. He's the AL player of the week. He is providing a lot of the RBIs for the team.
  4. Richie Sexson doesn't suck so bad. He's drawing a lot of walks. He's not batting super great, but he's not the black hole he was last year.
  5. Carlos Silva is so far better than I expected.
BAD:
  1. The Mariners we're spanked 10-5 last night by the Angels.
  2. Erik Beddard missed yesterday's start with a bad hip. If our staff ace is going to the DL, then the costly trade of super-prospect Adam Jones, our best middle reliever George Sherill, and three great pitching prospects will suddenly seem as stupid as many people feared.
  3. Adrian Beltre missed yesterday's game with hamstring problems. If both Beddard and Beltre are added to the DL, that means three of our five best players (Beddard, Felix Hernandez, Ichiro, J.J. Putz, Beltre) will be out of commission. It'll be hard to keep winning games in this state.
  4. Erik O'Flattery, the situational lefty, has shown himself incapable of getting lefties out. That's his job. The word is this morning he's going down to AA for a while to get his head back on straight.
Where does that leave the team? Currently just 2-games out of first, and its not really expected that Oakland will hang on to first place for long. Compare the good and the bad and you'll see good outnumbers bad, and bad is only as bad as it looks if its truly is the worst case scenario. Beltre's injury doesn't sound too bad, Putz is allegedly recovering nicely from his. There are enough good pitchers in the Mariners farm system to easily replace O'Flattery.

I'd say this, if Beddard can get healthy soon there is no reason to panic over yesterday's big loss. The return of J.J. Putz will be a boost, and if the batters keep their good plate discipline, offense will start scoring more and more runs. We've got a lot of baseball still to play and while Seattle doesn't yet look like easy favorites for the division, they are by no means a bad team. In fact, most teams in the Major Leagues are only 2 or less games above or bellow .500--its called the beginning of the season. We're far from panic mode right now. Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint.

3 comments:

Neal D said...

You may want to start panicking ... you lost 5-1 to the juggernaut Royals yesterday, setting up a good opportunity for a nice short series sweep by the boys in blue!

Anonymous said...

The Royals are much improved this year. I'm looking for them to surprise people. I highly doubt they will win the very tough division they are in. But an above .500 finish is very possible.

Marv G.

Anonymous said...

GO DIAMONDBACKS!