Game 158, Mariners at Rangers
King Felix vs. Alexi Ogando, 1:11pm
Happy (final) Felix Day!
This season hasn’t gone according to plan, unless the plan itself is terrible. Only Felix and Pineda have had full seasons and lived up to expectations. Everyone else has battled inconsistency, injury, and general lack of skill. I’m really glad that we get to watch Felix every five days, and I’m glad he seem to really like playing for this team, and while it’s trite to wish that we had a better supporting cast around him, it’s also not wrong. I want to skip ahead and see Felix playing for a contending M’s team, but on days like this, it’s sort of hard to see how to get from here to there.
The M’s face Alexi Ogando, the Rangers rookie, and a compact version of Michael Pineda. Both Ogando and Pineda feature plus fastballs from the right side, and also throw a slider. Both have a change that’s a work in progress which they go to rarely, and both are fly ballers. Ogando’s done exceptionally well against righties, but has struggled with HRs to lefties. It’s a tiny sample for both, but in some sense Ogando’s season is what we thought a great Pineda season would look like. Instead, Pineda FIP’s about the same against both lefties and righties, while Ogando’s got the big platoon splits many feared we’d see from Pineda. Pineda’s been more dominant – his K%, contact rate and K:BB ratio easily beat Ogando’s. But Ogando’s been just as valuable by limiting walks and by being tougher on righties than Pineda.
The M’s have attempted to stack their line-up with lefties to take advantage of Ogando’s relative weakness, but that means we get more Adam Kennedy. Hmmm.
1: Ichiro
2: Seager (SS)
3: Ackley
4: Carp (LF)
5: Smoak (DH)
6: Olivo
7: Kennedy (1B)
8: Robinson (CF)
9: Liddi
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13 Responses to “Game 158, Mariners at Rangers”
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I’d add Fister to the other two. So what if almost half his season has been with Detroit?
Now if you add getting run support to the qualifications – OK; forget Doug.
I’ve gotten to where I hate Adam Kennedy – but it’s not his fault his manager is apparently an idiot.
Heaven spare us a winning season and any more games on KFFX. The Fox Sports announcers have to be the most fatuous babblers in professional sports. And KFFX doesn’t seem to care enough to ship the HiDef signal to the TriCities so I am watching 480P on a HiDef TV on a (supposedly) HiDef channel. (Yes, I can tell.) Well, I’d like a winning season but I surely don’t want to watch any more games on Fox Sat-turd-ay.
Case in point “Olivo is not half bad.” Miguel Olivo is indeed, about half bad….
I think it’s only fair that we play Kennedy until the season is over. He won’t be here next year, and he isn’t the kind of suck that Figgins was.
We are the ones who signed the guy, after all.
Jesus.
Crap!
Should have expected that ending to one of the bright spots of this season……
Can we please sign Tanner Boyle so we have someone good at throwing their mitts on the ground in frustration?
Though sadly ironic, I just heard the funniest thing I have in years from one of the Foxbots:
“It’s a Bad News Bears movie!”
Well, on the bright side, at least the overrated Red Sox are going down in flames once again today as well.
According to the announcers, it was apparently a contusion to the forearm. Nothing broken.
So Wedge was complaining about mistakes and sloppy play. While that was an accurate assessment, it certainly doesn’t help when the manager apparently chooses player positions by throwing dice.
If he doesn’t care about defense when making a lineup, he shouldn’t gripe about crappy defense after the fact – I don’t care who ends up making the errors. A decent defender might screw up simply because he’s trying to do too much and doesn’t trust one of his teammates to cover his position adequately.