After watching the sheer beauty of Felix and Bedard pitching back to back in the first two games, I was overcome with a fairly peculiar thought.  I know it's not rational really, but I think there's a certain logic to this.

Unfortunately we know that the King is not infallible.  We also know that Bedard is not perfect either, so it would be too simple to say that they are going to win every game they pitch.  Even as early as the second game we saw how a good performance can turn in to a loss.

It's also true that no matter how powerful the vortex of suck that surrounds Silva and Washburn, the team isn't going to lose every time they take the mound.  So with some major simplifications, the following isn't too much of a stretch.

If we assume that for every game where Felix or Bedard pitch, and the team loses, there will be a game where Washburn or Silva pitch and the team wins.  Seems like a fair trade to me given that our top two starters and those clowns are pretty much on opposite sides of the awesome scale.

So if we had only those 4 guys pitching, we'd have a .500 season.  Enter Mr. Rowland-Smith.  Every time he takes the mound, he holds our season in his hands.  If the team goes .500 in his starts, the team goes .500 for the year.  For every win the team gets over .500 when he starts, that's a win over .500 period.

If he has 32 starts (160/5=32) all he has to do is get us to win, say, 20 of them.  That would put our overall record at 85 wins and, by all accounts, that should put us in contention for the post season in the AL West.

There you go.  Ryan Rowland-Smith is really the guy we need to root for.  Sure he's got a good blog and a MLB salary and he's 'that cute guy with the accent' according to my girlfriend, but he is the key to our season.

Go Ryan...dominate!  As you go, so do the M's!