Seattle: 16-26
Padres: 15-26

GAMES

Game 1: Miguel Batista vs Chris Young
Game 2: Erik Bedard* vs Randy Wolf*
Game 3: Felix Hernandez vs Shawn Estes*

Well, I was right about the one game. Yay! I had a whole paragraph written about Washburn and what the Mariners might do and then they went ahead and already announced they were skipping his start. So, shoot. On the plus side, I get to see Felix for the third time this year instead of that asshole Bedard and his regressing self.

Randy Wolf was a pitcher I desperately stumped for this offseason. The Padres signed him for one year and $4.75 million guarenteed with some performance bonuses for games started and innings pitched that could push his salary to a maximum of $8.75 million. That's three less years and at leat $40 million less than Carlos Silva. Randy Wolf is better than Carlos Silva and is also left-handed. Padres = smart. Mariners = dumb. This is the sort of thing that fills me with confidence for our shot at first overall in 2009.

Likely Starters:
C Josh Bard
1 Adrian Gonzalez
2 Tadahito Iguchi
3 Kevin Kouzmanoff
S Khalil Greene
L Jerry Hairston
C Jody Gerut
R Brian Giles
D Probably someone who sucks

Adrian Gonzalez and Kevin Kouzmanoff were acquired in trades much in the favor of San Diego. Besides those two, the Padres have developed exactly one half of an offensive asset, that being Khalilbot. They are scoring 3.38 runs per game, worst in the bigs while the Ms are at 4.07 runs per game, 25th in the bigs. This is either going to be one incredibly boring series or it's going to one amazingly boring series. TUNE IN TO FIND OUT!

CONTEXT

This freefall has inspired a lot of self-examination by all of us between LL and USSM and thus, most every topic of the Mariners have been covered over the past few days. I know it sounds like a copout, but I'm just not sure what else there is to bring up. Jeremy Reed's OPS is still hovering about 1.000. He's probably a better bat than Griffey at this point and his glove is approximately runs better.

An Ibanez-Ichiro-Griffey outfield would be so stupid as to cause time itself to collapse in on itself. Acquiring Griffey only makes sense if it's as a DH, of which both Ibanez and Sexson already need to be and which Clement currently occupies because Kenji Johjima, who should be biding his time to Type A free agent status, is locked here for the next 3.75 years.

I'd like to continue pulling for the team to sign Bonds but they'd probably put him at 2B, so you know what? Screw you Mariners. Grow a clue.

THIS SERIES BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

Old Rasputin Imperial Stout
North Coast Brewing Company. Fort Bragg, CA

Pours with a delicious looking 3-finger tan creamy head that sticks around for quite awhile. It's muted on the nose with mellow chocolates and a little smoke. Little bits of coffee, oat and cocoa come through on the taste and the palate is both creamy and filling, as you'd expect from how it looks.

I cannot give this beer enough justice in words. It might be the perfect imperial stout so if that's a genre that you enjoy, you are only hurting yourself by not drinking more of this beer.