Series Preview: Seattle Mariners @ Texas Rangers

by Matthew on Sep 27, 2010 12:30 PM PDT in Seattle Mariners Previews

Seattle: 59-96
Texas: 87-68

	MARINERS	Δ Ms	RANGERS	EDGE
HITTING (wOBA)	-178.9 (30th)	-5.3	25.5 (10th)	Texas
FIELDING (UZR)	11.9 (11th)	0.0	15.3 (10th)	Texas
ROTATION (tRA)	2.7 (18th)	-3.0	40.0 (4th)	Texas
BULLPEN (tRA)	-30.5 (29th)	-0.3	29.1 (7th)	Texas
OVERALL(RAA)	-194.8 (29th)	-8.6	109.3 (4th)	TEXAS

The Rays now hold a half-game lead over the Yankees in the AL East. YOU'RE WELCOME, TAMPA! Thankless jerks could have at least given us a muffin basket or something.

500 Runs Scored Watch:
7 games remaining
491 runs scored

With this late season plunge in rankings, the Mariners are now just 5.1 runs better than the last place Pirates. With sub-500 runs scored now a near-impossibility, at least I've found some other terrible chase to give me a reason to check box scores at some point.

Mon Sep 27, 17:05: David Pauley vs. C.J. Wilson*

Tue Sep 28, 17:05: Felix Hernandez vs. Scott Feldman

Wed Sep 29, 11:05: Jason Vargas* vs. Rich Harden

Texas clinched the AL West over the weekend and have very little seeding motivation to play for. Thus, who knows with their pitching rotation, but these are the currently listed projected starters. Rich Harden? I thought he was shut down. Being both injured and atrociously bad this season, I suppose the Rangers are going to give him a couple starts to see if he might provide any postseason help. Harden might make a deadly reliever.

There's a chance this is Felix's last start of the season as there was some water cooler chat about the Mariners nixing his last start due to the number of innings he's thrown this season. I doubt they will and it would certainly suck for his last start to come on the road, but it is something to watch out for if you wanted to make sure to catch Felix one last time in a possible Cy Young-winning season.

David Pauley

Felix Hernandez

Jason Vargas