Series Preview: Anaheim Angels @ Seattle Mariners

Seattle: 68-63
Anaheim: 77-52

SUMMARY

We cross into the month of September and the closest divisional race is in the AL Central where the Tigers have a 4.5 (soon to be 4?) game lead on Minnesota. Four games is a huge lead with just one month to play. Basically, six, close to seven playoff spots are already decided.

It will be partially interesting, I suppose, to see who gets called up as the Minor League seasons end and Major League rosters expand. Mike Carp probably comes back up and might be making some starts at first with Russell Branyan's back being an issue. Even after Branyan is healthy, we might see Carp (or someone else) at 1B and Branyan at DH.

Some pitchers will obviously return, none of them likely to be interesting in the least. Olson, Vargas, etc (Are they injured or just down in Tacoma? I forgot and don't really care.) Maybe Eric Hull, Gaby Hernandez and Andrew Baldwin?

GAMES

Game 1: Lucas French* vs. Joe Saunders*
Game 2: Doug Fister vs. Ervin Santana
Game 3: Felix Hernandez vs. Scott Kazmir*(?)

Joe Saunders is not good. Lucas can be better than him, but has not been so far with Seattle. It would be nice to see French throw a few more strikes and keep the walks down.

Ervin Santana's fastball still is not all the way back, hovering around 92/93 mph now instead of the 94/95 that he was last season.

The Wednesday starter is still TBA at this point, but I've heard that it might be Kazmir making that start, which would go against something else I heard, that they were planning on using him out of the pen in September. Neither "source" was even close to reliable so whatever, something will happen. Not like it actually matters one way or the other.