I was thinking Sunday how neat it was for the Mariners to have swept the Twins and be on a little five-game roll. Felix Hernandez threw a perfect game, and the Mariners have walked off twice. I wanted to bask in that for a little while, but nope. Baseball keeps going. By the middle of winter, the perfect game will be remembered, but the wins surrounding it probably won't be. Those will just merge with the other short-sample blips along the spark line that is a 162-game season. Oh well.

The Indians come to town and they are currently not very good. It was almost a clean sweep for the Mariners in the team breakdown. Curse that pesky, horrible, hitting.

On July 26, the Indians were above .500. They entered play that day with a 50-49 record. The Indians are 4-18 since. The Mariners began that day at 44-57 and are 14-7 since.

Stuff

P/PA = pitches per PA [avg~3.8], nBB = uBB + HBP, Sw = swinging [avg~45%], Ct = contact [avg~81%], Qual+ = a measure of quality of batted balls [avg=100, higher is better]

With three right-handers coming up in this series, I don't expect to see much of Casper Wells, so he'll have to continue riding out his slump on the bench most likely. I do expect to see three more John Jaso starts though.

The Indians aren't winning of late, but it hasn't been from lack of hitting as much as it has been from the everything.

That being said, Casey Kotchman is down to almost as bad with the Indians as he was with the Mariners. Jack Hannahan has about the same batting line as Brendan Ryan does. Jose Lopez got dumped overboard. Shin-Soo Choo continues to be a beast of a hitter and Asdrubal Cabrera an asset when combined with his defensive position, but the sting of ex-Mariners-turned-Indians has dimmed a bit.

The Mariners'run prevention is helping keep the overall run differential close to even. It's getting near the point where I feel like watching that more than the wins and losses. The Mariners haven't finished with a net positive run differential since 2003.

What has happened to Ubaldo Jimenez? A pitcher who once combined missing bats with getting ground balls now has below average rates in both. He was always not of the strictest in control and 2012 is a new career low there as well. Jimenez also used to be one of baseball's hardest throwing starting pitchers, averaging 95 on his fastball between 2006 and 2010. That dropped off quite a bit last season to 93.5 and has fallen even further this year to 92.6 mph.

Correlation? Causation? Coincidence?

Ha ha ha, a battle of Hernandezs! Ha ha ha

Ha ha ha

I somehow have no recollection of anything about Roberto Hernandez. He was fourth in the AL Cy Young voting in 2007? He pitched in the playoffs that year. He was an All-Star in 2010. He's not actually very good, though he was in those two years, but hmm. I remember Runeylvs Hernandez, but not Roberto? Weird. Sure seems like I'd remember a Roberto Hernandez with that high a profile.

By TRA, Zach McAllister is Cleveland's only above average starter this season. Hisashi Iwakuma is still below average in the rotation for the Mariners, but only just. And with trends, the Mariners currently have five above average starters in the rotation, and Erasmo Ramirez seems like he could be a sixth if given the chance.

Str% = strike rate [avg~63%], Ct% = contact rate [avg~78%], GB% = groundball rate [avg~45%], Qual- = a measure of quality of batted balls [avg=100, lower is better], LI = leverage [avg~1.2]

Look at all this bullpen usage! In the month of August, the Mariners have played 16 games and the Indians have played 18 games. The Mariners' bullpen has averaged 9.5 batters faced per game. The Indians have averaged 15.5 per game.

Series Drink: Pimm's No. 1 Cup
Yeah, because of Archer. It's quite refreshing though.