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The American economy has suffered from an ever-worsening performance in its manufacturing sector. Greater Seattle is an exception. Here we have a robust new growth initiative some call Manufacturing a Pennant Race.
The captains of this industry include decision-makers at several local news organizations. Print-outlet editors have become especially keen on leading sports-section fronts with graphics pertaining to where the Seattle Mariners are in the American League West standings as well as their position in the wild-card race for a postseason playoff spot.
Even though 47 games remained for the M's as they came home Sunday, August 12, from a 5-1 road trip to start a six-game homestand, local papers seem destined to continue carrying above-the-fold page-one teasers as to whether Seattle is .000111 or .000999 in front of or behind other A.L. clubs in the coveted wild-card configuration. If it keeps up, by mid-September editors at the Seattle dailies may have decided to start carrying the information on page one in 48-point bold-face type, all caps.
Meanwhile, there actually seems to be a much lower-case caliber pennant race developing. After dispatching the White Sox 6-0 Sunday, the M's were 65-50 and still in the thick of both races cited above. Yet, in order to temper all this possibly premature conjecture about the postseason, M's managers have had to concede the need to solve several pressing problems. Each of the latter has been roughly the size of batting helmets Barry Bonds has been wearing during his mysterious late-career home-run surge. (Fairness note: Yes, Bloated Barry looks a little out of place next to players with traditional-size heads. Still, he looks perfectly normal when juxtaposed with other beings, such as she lions and the Jack-in-the-Box guy.)
As for Mariners' problems, one used to be Raul Ibanez. The sweet-swinging left-fielder had been looking more like whiffin' Richie Sexson at the plate. One wonders whether bringing lineup-threat Adam Jones up from Tacoma had anything to do with it but Ibanez recently went on a tear. His five home runs in as many games through Saturday, August 11, lifted the M's when they needed it. The Ibanez problem, then, had seemed solved, at least until he fanned all four times during Sunday's road-trip finale.
The greater challenge for the team could be starting pitching. Many arbiters feel the M's barely have three-fifths of a rotation capable of taking them to the playoffs. The unlikely staff ace, already with a career-high 12 wins, is Miguel Batista. Prize lefty Jarrod Washburn is 8-9 -- inexplicable on a 65-50 team with only one other solid starter. That would be Felix Hernandez, of course, although observers now have every reason to believe Jeff Weaver is the dependable rotation guy the M's never picked up in a July trade. Weaver, with eight K's, frustrated the White Sox Sunday, scattering five hits for the shutout. It's gotten to where one actually overhears M's fans confessing to looking forward to Weaver starts, and if you don't grasp the irony then you might've been in a coma when center-cut Jeff was tossing batting practice last spring.
Team problem three (depending on the analyst) either has been or soon will be or, more likely, never will be solved. It has to do with that 80-vertical-inch specimen filling the No. 7 hole in the M's lineup. Sexson actually was 8 for 21 during the road trip, the brief .381 pace raising his season mark all the way to .206. M's partisans would have forgiven him for a lesser road average if only Richie hadn't hit into a pair of double plays (one of them nearly a triple play) during Seattle's Friday loss to Chicago.
The five-win trip means pennant-race conjecture remains a growth business for bullish local speculators. Team marketing reps are pushing playoff seating packages as a pretext for selling season-ticket futures.
Amid all this Gold Rush-caliber speculation, seemingly nobody is noting the reasonable prospect of the M's staying home yet again in October, so far be it from us to bring it up. Besides, pennant-race speculation is a pretty low-polluting enterprise, creating nothing worse than the stuff left by the bullish members of the cattle-producing industry.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Aug 13, 11:06 p.m. Inappropriate
The Mariners are quietly the third best team in baseball...: Good analysis, although I think you see the glass as half empty instead of 56.9% full and getting fuller. The more one has followed the M's over the last three years or so, the harder it is to believe that they're really as good as they are. But they're good and they're winners. The only big problem is that they are prone to running on all cylinders for long stretches and then blowing a piston and falling into counterbalancing losing streaks.
They're playing great at the moment. The touchy absorption of Adam Jones onto the team has occurred and they keep winning. Richie just hit 2 HRs, one a walk off homer in the 9th, and Ibanez was named the AL Player of the Week. Problems exist, but they're manageable. As you point out, however, although the M's may have the third best record in baseball, they're only .001 ahead of the Yankees, who've been streaking since the All-Star break.
The Angels have been playing winning baseball too and are always elusively a few games ahead of the M's (3 games at this writing). Unfortunately, it would be quite easy for the M's to finish with the 4th best record in baseball, yet out of the playoffs behind the Bosox (with the best record); the Angels, whom we may never catch; and the Yankees, who at the current rate things are likely to pass up the Red Sox.
On the other hand, the Mariners have one of the best bullpens in baseball (I would've said the best, but they've been not quite so good lately), they have a versatile productive lineup from 1 to 9, and the starting rotation, although not great, might do quite well in a short series. Weaver's now in top form. Hernandez has been pretty good in his last few starts, and can beat anyone on a given day, and Batista has shown that he can be a money pitcher. Overall, the starters have been a bit erratic, but winning with them is more than possible.
Posted Tue, Aug 14, 8:28 a.m. Inappropriate
Excellent imagery! And very true! It's like they need an occasional time out to check the oil, but never do it so the team crankcase runs too dry and...THWACK!
The Piper
Posted Wed, Aug 15, 11:16 a.m. Inappropriate
It's all starting pitching: Despite all the high-test bats and bullpen theatricals, the thing I've most enjoyed watching this season has been a rather pedestrian starting staff working their underwhelming asses off. I'm talking about Weaver, Felix, Batista and Washburn.
Horroracia Ramierez, alas, does not yet qualify for his share of the laurels. Thus far, he serves best as an example (for those who can't recall the Piniero/Meche epoch), of just how futile an exercise mush-headed starting pitching can be.
Felix, too, is a bit of a special case. Unlike the other three, he actually owns the stuff of dreams. But he's just so damn young and uncrafty, in what is ultimately an exceedingly crafty profession. God bless him, he's working the problem, and it's fun watching him push and drag his immense talent up, down, up, down, and up the learning curve. Someday very soon, he's going to master the craft, and be the kind of pitcher that wins world championships for a merely better than average team. And with a large bucket of fairy dust, it might even be this year.
But it's the other three guys, Weaver, Washburn and Batista, that are giving me the chills. These men are all blood and guts, rubber arms, and steely resolve. Watching these three guys pitch is like watching a blind-folded man on a high-wire, fighting off a hungry pterodactyl with an open umbrella and a pair of nail-clippers. You think, over and over again, `There's no way he's getting out of this mess'.
But then, 45 minutes later, their requisite 6-1/3 innings are in the books, and the club is still in the ballgame. The bullpen sends out 4 primadonas to hammer down 8 outs, someone in the productive 1-9 line-up hammers a dinger, and more often than not, the M's have built a win.
But don't kid yourself. It's these three starting pitchers doing all the grunt work. And I do mean WORK. They're not getting by on stuff. Nope, it's all fierce concentration; working off the plate, throwing a ton of borderline pitches, pitching to the defense, and never giving in. When the going gets tough, they're tough anyway. By nature and practice, they just keep on toughing it out. They cough up a run here and there, but they never wilt. It's inspiring theater.
Posted Fri, Aug 17, 10:13 p.m. Inappropriate
Oh, Mr. Henderson: Mr. Henderson (you know who I am, lol),
I saw the M's crumble against the Twins Wed, and so I know what you mean about our "issues." That being said, I think we have a decent shot, for once, maybe, possibly, perhaps, etc. etc.
-Will
P.S. my fluffy internship is going well; they gave me a real news piece to do, which was cool; I'll show you a clip once the quarter starts
Posted Tue, Aug 21, 11:38 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: It's all starting pitching: Good analysis of the starting pitching. I think Horacio's starting to come around. Pretty solid this last outing. And Washburn finally picked up another win, so he's working hard too. I wouldn't say it's all starting pitching, but you're very right to give them a lot more credit than people have been giving them.
Here are some interesting observations that are in line with yours:
- The M's really do hammer out wins, as you say, even though the team is in the MLB top ten in just a few statistics. Yet, they have the third best record in all of baseball, not too far behind the Bosox and Angels.
- The overall hitting quality of their line-up seems to be a key. Even the 8 and 9 hitters are close to 50 RBIs as was pointed out in the post game show tonight.
- The M's are in the top two in the majors in two intriguing hitting stats: fewest strike-outs and fewest walks. I think this says a lot about our hitters. Fewest strike-outs implies that we foul off a lot of pitches and get the ball in play more often than not. This in turn means that we can get base runners moving and advancing, but more importantly, we can take pitchers deep into the count and wear out starters early, culiminating in us getting to teams' often weak middle relievers early. This means we're likely to score runs in the latter innings, and why, along with our great bullpen, we're number one in come-from-behind wins (or so I heard a week or so ago).
Fewest walks means that we have aggressive hitters who aren't looking for walks, but for hits. This can at times work in reverse and there have been games where the M's have been swinging at everything, including balls thrown in the dirt. But generally, it means that we have hitters who like to hit, and don't really want walks.
As for the pitching, you did a perfect job of describing how the bullpen works:
"[The starters] requisite 6-1/3 innings are in the books, and the club is still in the ballgame. The bullpen sends out 4 primadonnas to hammer down 8 outs, someone in the productive 1-9 line-up hammers a dinger, and more often than not, the M's have built a win."
With Ibanez and Sexson now peaking, I think the Mariner's have a good shot at going all the way. I did notice, however, that we have 17 of 20 games away from home, while the Angels have 17 at home during the same stretch. That should be worth two or three games to the Angels. Since our three home games in that stretch are against the Angels, it makes them all the more important to win.
So we may not catch the Angels, and we may not hold off the Yankees, but we've gotta play the games and find out. If we do either or both, then we've got a shot at getting into the Series and winning it too. We've matched up well against Boston and have been holding our own against the Angels. And we'll know more about the Yankees when we play them in a couple of weeks.