Different players & coaches...
SAME OL' MARINERS...

Aw, gosh, here we go again with another fractuous baseball season. The "horse" has barely left the starting gate, and, there are some problems, some of the same ol' problems that if not corrected, will make this team the 'same ol' Mariners in terms of another .500 season (if that).

To begin with, as Rick Rizzs (Bob Costas wannabee broadcaster) points out every single solitary chance he can get, (as he is wont to do), so far, the greatest amount of Mariners runs have come via the HOME RUN. Oh yeah, it's nice to see a ball soar into the sky faster than a shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral, but, says Rizzs Niehaus, and everyone else from Corporate Prezzidents to shoe-shine boys, the M's need to "Manufacture Runs"...you know, getting a guy on base, getting the runner in scoring position, hitting a single, double, or whatever to git 'im home so he can score. And that's not happening a lot this season. Not so far, anyway. Many of the M's are below the .240 mark in the hitting department. No matter how the good the coaching is, if the hitters aren't hitting, well, they're well-coached whiffers, I guess.

Richie Sexson, the Paul Bunyan of baseball (I still think he keeps a giant Ox at his winter address), is whiffing and whiffing and striking out and whiffing, and then whiffing some more. Ichiro is off to his usual really-slow start, but says Niehaus (with more than a glimmer of hope), Ichiro will turn things around once again. Maybe so. I don't know. When I ran foot races, me being, well, not fast, my strategy was to "start slow and then taper off." One of these days Ichiro is gonna start slow, and then taper his way into oblivion. When Ichiro's doing GOOD, he still hits more than his share of little weak, dribbly, dinky ground balls that don't possess half the force of a ping-pong ball struck by a parakeet with a ping-pong paddle in its beak. Oh well, maybe Ichiro's got his sights set on being a Japanese Baseball Broadcasting star, like Kazuhiro Sasaki, the great relief pitcher, who, after a few seasons with the M's, became totally ineffective...playing in Seattle seems to have that effect on an athlete...

But, if the M's are to have any chance at all, the PITCHING has got to get better. The Mariners right now can't get any more than 5 innings out of its starters. That's gotta change. The effect of not lasting 5 innings? You end up playing COME-FROM-BEHIND baseball, and even if you're a really, really good team, if you find yourself in the hole after the 4th or 5th, well, chances are against ya if ya plans on winnin' at least enough games to get into the divisional playoffs, where you'll almost certainly lose to your opponent, 'cos their pitchers are better than yers. So the starting pitching has woes. The middle-relief pitchers aren't providing much relief, and there's a hole in the bullpen 'cos flamethrower J.J. Putz is on the disabled list right now. It almost sounds like the M's are a team of Destiny, with a capital "D". Remember, in school, a "D" meant that you were among the lowest of the low?

Look, I love baseball; I'm glad that my ol' buddies Niehaus and Rizzs are on the air; hearing their by-now-extremely-familiar vocal timbres coming out of whatever cheap little radio I have on in the house is always a Comforting Thing. Even if Rizz's top grade is "R"...as in "Repeat, repeat, repeat......." I predict here and now, that the M's will probably be 3rd again in their division, losing slightly more games than it wins over the season. I hope they prove me wrong. If not, well, look for roster changes come mid-season...
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BLOG UPDATE: So, after I wrote all of the above Saturday night, what did the M's go and do today? Well, first of all, they GOT GOOD PITCHING for 8 SOLID INNINGS!!! Trouble is, baseball games are 9 innings long...and that was enough of an opportunity for the M's to once again snatch Defeat from the jaws of Victory...Felix Hernandez pitched 8 innings of shutout ball...he was taken out after that, probably 'cos the Manager didn't wanna take a chance on damaging Felix' arm with a 9-inning performance, so the bullpen came in. A wild pitch, a couple of hits, and Baltimore beat the M's 3-2, scoring 3 runs in the ninth. In some ways, this loss is the more painful of the two I've described here. Can you say LONG SEASON? I knew ya could...if i was Felix Hernandez, I'd be tempted to just QUIT after this bullpen letdown and go work for a "Taco Bell" somewhere, sinces my chances of ever going to the World Series as a Mariner would be equally as null and void. Wait, the M's pay better than Taco Bell. But, if the M's don't get it together soon, it won't be just the fans who incur apathy...

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So why do I keep tuning into M's games year after year when they continually let me down? It probably has a little to do with outright masochism, but more than anything else, I take immense pride that I'm not a 'fair-weather' fan. And maybe I shouldn't be so rough on the M's. In my own little league career, I had THREE hits in THREE entire seasons. There was no such thing as "T-ball" back then, but if there'd been, I STILL would've struck out a lot.