We have our work cut out for us as Washington is truly a horrific team, but besides the AL advantage we get that I mentioned before there is another key aspect that could affect this race; the trade deadline.

Washington has zero enticing assets so they're pretty much going to stay as they are. However, of the other three teams, Seattle probably has the most pieces to deal. The Rockies really only have Fuentes and the Pads might slough off Wolf and/or Maddux, but the Ms have already ditched Sexson (which actually helps us Strasburg-wise) and could lose the services of Washburn and Ibanez within the next few weeks which would be the rare win-win; helping us lose now and win in the future.

There's one last bit of mixed news as well and that comes from BaseRuns. The good news is that according to it, The Padres have actually played like a 74 win team and the Rockies a 75 win team; both well above our own 68 win performance. The bad news is that the Nationals are at a 59 win pace and there are two other teams to keep an eye on, the Pirates and Astros at 63 and 67 wins respectively.

This weekend series is sneaking up on us, so if any of you are going to be around and feel like meeting up, either leave a comment or send me an email. Looks like we're on pace for the following matchups:

Friday: Washburn vs. Baek, 7:05
Saturday: Silva vs. Wolf, 7:05
Sunday: Felix vs. Peavy (!!!), WHY 1:05

Assuming the Mariners don't do anything funny with the rotation what with their offday on Thursday...yeah, next Sunday looks incredible. Next Friday does not.

Carrying this over from the last thread...

First Round: Joshua Fields, RHRP, U Georgia

Fields is a reliever who's walked 42 batters in 70 innings these last two years. He throws hard, with a fastball in the mid-90s and a sharp curve, and he's proven difficult for righties to hit, but he has trouble against lefties and did I mention that he's a reliever? Because if there's one thing this team needs more of, it's right-handed relief pitchers with hard fastballs and iffy control. Also, at an alleged 6', he's one inch taller than Tim Lincecum, who I guess was too little for our likings.

Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. Taking relievers in the first round is dumb, especially when building an effective bullpen on the cheap is the only thing your GM can do even remotely well. This is the worst season ever.

Second Round: Dennis Raben, LHB COF, U Miami

Big slow dude with power and patience, his scouting report makes him sound an awful lot like Brad Wilkerson (before the aging and injuries). Won't be good in the field; will have to make it with his bat, which has both a bunch of holes and .500 SLG potential.

Third Round: Benjamin Pribanic, RHP, Nebraska

Fourth Round: Steven Hensley, RHP, Elon

Fifth Round: Brett Lorin, RHP, Cal State Long Beach

Jarrett Burgess, RHB COF, high school

Since drafting is pretty much the only thing we do well I'm not yet going to let myself get too pessimistic, but I'm 100% confident that we'll be able to screw this up somehow if we so desire.

The first round kicks off at 11am PDT. The Mariners select 20th overall, and given, say, 30 players who have an argument for going in the first 19 slots, there are 6,645,143,393,563,388,313,600,000 different ways in which the draft could theoretically proceed before we even get to pick.* So I'm going to hold off on talking about individual players until we actually take them.

For the sake of convenience, what follows is a list of organizational needs, shown here in positional order:

Catching
Corner infield (offense)
Corner infield (glove)
Middle infield (offense)
Middle infield (glove)
Corner outfield (offense)
Corner outfield (glove)
Center field (offense)
Center field (glove)
Positionless bat (offense)
Starting pitching, righty (power)
Starting pitching, righty (control)
Starting pitching, lefty (power)
Starting pitching, lefty (control)
Relief pitching, righty (control)
Relief pitching, lefty (power)
Relief pitching, lefty (control)
Good players

So that should help the front office narrow down who it would like to select.

We trust you, Fontaine. We trust you more than everybody else in this organization combined. Do us proud.

* my math could be wrong but you get the idea

I'm in a bit of a rush, but consider this the long overdue official announcement. While I'll direct you to Dave's post for the more detailed information, here's the short of it:

Who: us, others
What: us, others gathering together
When: June 14th (Saturday), 1-5pm (M's get started against Washington at 7:10)
Where: Seattle Central Library, big huge meeting room
Why: commiseration, self-loathing
How: gath·er  /ˈgæðər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[gath-er] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –verb (used with object)

Cost is $20, but there'll be cool people there, like me, so you should consider your invitation an honor and a privilege. If you'd like to attend, send an email to ussmarinerfeed@gmail.com with the number of reservations in the subject line. Space is limited to 100, so be quick. To pay us.

Hope to see you there. It'll be a blast.

(Note: this is not an open thread. Any and all posts by Corco informing the community that he'll be out of town at the time will be deleted.)

(Also note: we'll talk about a potential softball game on the 15th in some other thread yet to come)

Enter at your own risk, as I can only imagine several spoilers being posted below.

(In case you don't read the game threads, yes, this place is full of dorks who love House. I'm one of them. Get over it and shut up.)

2009 AL West Standings

Whole lot of winning, offense and good starting pitching in this wrap-up, which is a veteran that has been through the wars and thus totally worth a bullpen spot, if not your time.

On to the wrap-up!

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