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Philadelphia Phillies' Cliff Lee watches as members of the grounds crew set about hastily constructing a throne. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

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And we're back to the bullet points. It's like the season never ended. In the interest of full disclosure, I didn't watch the whole game.

• If the Yankees were considered 60-65% favorites to win the Series this morning - which is where pretty much everyone of any significance had them - then they're down to something in the neighborhood of ~45% after dropping game 1. One the one hand, that's a huge drop, not unlike the drop in productivity a hitter will see if he takes a first-pitch strike. On the other, what that means is that even spotting the Phillies a one-game handicap makes this little more than a flip of the coin. The Yankees are uncomfortably good.


• One of the topics of conversation coming into the game was that CC Sabathia was working off 7 days' rest while Cliff Lee was working off 9, and that being away from the mound for that long could have a negative effect on their respective performances. A glance at their career splits shows that this isn't necessarily a silly suggestion. Sabathia responded by being good. Lee responded by being terrific. If we assume that guys remain on a throwing schedule, I can't really think of a good reason why extra rest would be a bad thing in the playoffs. Short rest, yeah, that has some obvious issues. But long rest? I'm not sold on there being such a thing as "too fresh."


• Sportswriters love a game like this. Maybe not the good sportswriters, but the average sportswriters...they don't even have to think. Two years ago Cliff Lee ran an ERA north of six and spent time in the minors. This summer he was traded midseason to the defending world champs without ever having thrown a game in the playoffs. He made his World Series debut in New York and shut down the best and most clobbery team in baseball. The stories write themselves. The story would've written itself had the opposite happened, too. Come to think of it, if you're lazy enough, your story could write itself no matter what took place on the field. Lee dominates? Coming-of-age tale for a guy who doesn't know what it means to quit. Lee falls apart? Phillies pay for gambling on guy with no experience. Yankees win a close one? Experience prevails. Phillies win a close one? Experience prevails. A feral cat sprints onto the field and bites Jayson Werth in the leg? Aura. Being an average sportswriter sounds like an easy job.


• 0-4 with three strikeouts for Alex Rodriguez. How people respond will tell you a lot about how they feel about him deep down. If they give him the benefit of the doubt after a white-hot first two rounds, they're happy to have him big a big part of the Yankee machine. If they get mad at him for having a bad game under the brightest lights, they never wanted to support him in the first place.
  


• The network and media love affair with Derek Jeter is annoying. This much is beyond well-established. But also annoying - and perhaps more annoying - is the horde of people that feel compelled to say something snarky every time Jeter comes up on the broadcast. We get it. His defense isn't very good. He doesn't always come through in the clutch. He's just generally overrated. You don't have to say "past a diving Jeter" at every possible opportunity. It's like Willie Ballgame grit & hustle jokes on a national scale. It sucks. It sucks. This material isn't fresh, and though FOX's Jeter Cam tonight may have been a little over the top, truth be told I'd rather watch Derek Jeter get into position than Joe Girardi make another trip to the pitching mound. At least the former presents an angle we don't get to see very often.
  
  If nothing else, just say something different. I'm not saying people should stop ripping on the media for fawning over its favorite son. But if you're going to rip, rip well. If you want anyone to pay attention to you, you have - you have - to be original.


• Chase Utley came into the game as far and away the best player in the world that nobody talks about. If people still don't know who he is tomorrow then we'll know there's something more sinister at play than simple oversight. Ryan Howard returns almost twice as many Google hits. Second base seems like a good position to play if you want to fly under the radar.


• Cliff Lee threw 122 pitches tonight, 16 of them in the ninth when the score was 6-0. He was excellent this year in starts after throwing 120+ pitches, but none of those came on short rest, the situation Lee would be facing should he go on to start game 4. It's worth noting that his velocity started slipping somewhere around pitch #80 or 85.
  
  I don't know what this means. If Lee throws in game 4 and dominates, it won't be fair to say it didn't effect him. And if Lee throws in game 4 and sucks, it won't be fair to say it's Manuel's fault for working him too hard. It's just a bit of information. He threw a lot of pitches. He threw a lot of really good pitches, but he threw a lot of pitches.


• In the bottom of the eighth, Robinson Cano hit a comebacker that Lee snagged behind his back without looking. It was an astonishing play, but it didn't look as hard as it was, so given two points - one being this play, and the other being the Jeter Flip - we can say that Recognition = Improbability * Flashiness.
  


• David Robertson has struck out 99 hitters in 74 Major League innings. After watching him for a little bit today, I don't understand how.


• Interesting bit from Tim Brown:
  

  
  As wonderful as Lee was, as confident as he was, he started 16 of the first 27 Yankees with ball one. You know how many Yankees walked? None. How many struck out? Ten.
  



• I can't think of a single reason why starting Pedro Martinez in game 2 would be a good idea.

More photos » by John Froschauer - AP

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This is not a review of the 2009 season, per se. Although I will touch on certain things that happened during the season, this is not meant to be a comprehensive review of each player, their contributions, their triumphs and defeats, steps forward or back. What follows is a collection of thoughts that went through my head after I got home after the final game of the 2009 season and just started writing. I tried to organize it into something resembling a linear flow. If it’s obtuse and unclear, blame my no talent editor.

Now then, it is not unusual to overindulge in things that we enjoy. Unfortunately that often leads to a predictable downfall, a numbness if you will, to that very thing that we are supposed to be enjoying. Baseball is no exception. Its 162-game regular season plus month of Spring Training can all reduce to becoming background noise after awhile. It certainly happens to me at times. That is why I try to take some time at the conclusion of every season to ponder and reflect on the last seven months as I head into the dark abyss of the offseason and a pattern of shortening daylight hours.

I liken the 2008 season to being a senior in high school and dealing with a long-term relationship, with the Mariners playing the role of significant other. I knew we were parting ways at the end, and by May, we had emotionally distanced ourselves, but the pure inertia of the relationship meant that we spent all summer pretending to care about each other. The whole time our eye was on the calendar, anxiously awaiting the flipping of the months. We were trying to move on, trying to ignore that you existed and prepare ourselves for the exciting and fearsome new future, but we still had a daily reminder that you were sticking around for the short-term future.

Faced with the reality that we could not speed up time, we made the best of it. Or, not really. To be fully honest, we sort of cheated on you a bit, but I swear it didn't mean anything to us, and come on, you knew what things were at that point! We just wanted to get a small taste of October play and we may have lashed out at you unfairly waiting for that to occur. We're sorry, at least a little bit. Kind of.

At the end of it all, what we desperately needed was change, any change. Yes, some of us were (rightfully) terrified at the prospect of continued, or even a completely new brand (cough, Randy Smith, cough) of mediocrity and idiocy. However, for the most part, there was a sense, despite how we joked about it throughout 2008, that we had a much better chance of moving upward rather than finding new ways to express that there really was no floor.

Still, you never can be sure and years of disappointment have conditioned some of us, certainly myself, to… maybe not expecting the worst, but to keep the hopes and excitement in check until it's a sure thing. I can give no better example of this than to relate it to other sports. For example, during Sounders away games, I would be in a lively bar and if the Sounders managed to hit the back of the net, everyone around me would go nuts instantly. Meanwhile, I stayed glued to the monitor, scoping out the body language of the players and the ref. Is offsides about to be called? Was play stopped right before for some reason? A full 10 seconds would pass before I was 100% sure that the goal stood. Then I would flip out.

Years and years of heartache from all sort of different angles go into building up a conditioning like that, and it would take far far more than just the firing of Bavasi to put a dent to it. Even through the GM search, when the names were mostly good, I held back. Even after we had our GM and the public parts of our organization named, and I was pleased, I held back. Even after I heard about Blengino overseeing a group devoted to statistical based analysis and an enlarging use of video scouting, I was melting a bit but still held back. Then I got word of who was being hired behind the scenes and I got satisfied, even a little incredulous, but I still held back.

That’s when the player moves started and perhaps that is why it seemed we here did such a turnaround from the doom and gloom of the Bavasi-era to hyperexcitability about even the more mundane of Zdurencik's moves (another injured closer candidate? Hot damn!). It's because for the first time in, well, ever, I had a peek into the inner workings of the machine controlling the team that we so irrationally devote so much of our lives toward and it was comforting instead of frightening. No longer did I have to settle into bed each night after praying for the continued employment of Brian Sabean to help spare us from Bavasi’s misguided ideas. I had confidence and that was new. See, it wasn't always us being excited about the move itself, but rather what drove the move, what the move meant about who was calling shots and what their plan was. We got to be baptized in the waters of intelligent analysis so to speak and the sins of the past administration were washed away. I was not holding back anymore.

As the start of 2009 neared and rosters began to take on a semi-solid shape, the projections trickled in and wouldn't you know it, but the Mariners, a team that lost 101 games the season prior, were not that big of an underdog. Sure, a big reason for that was that at the time the AL West looked decidedly mediocre. I didn’t care. Ask Padre fans (if you can find some) if they cared about getting to the playoffs with 82 wins, or Cardinal fans about 83 wins. Just get in, that's what mattered, and the numbers showed the Mariners to be closer to that possibility than many could have imagined just a few months before. It was going to take a magical season on the field though.

This season didn't end up having that storybook ending. Despite an early 15-10 record and a division lead, the team didn't rally behind Griffey and a redemptive Erik Bedard to the playoffs. Instead, Erik Bedard got hurt like he always does, except worse, leaving us to wonder for another year if the Erik Bedard era in Seattle is over. Now a year plus removed from the taint of Bill Bavasi, and with the greatness of Franklin Gutierrez helping to balm the sting of losing Adam Jones, I'm no longer mad about the trade and what we lost out on. I am, instead, just genuinely sad for Bedard.

I am also willing to move forward without giving it another thought, except Bedard kept issuing these seemingly well-meaning public statements about wanting to stay in Seattle. If left me to ponder; why? Yeah, Safeco is a great pitcher's park on its own, its dimensions are perfectly suited to you and our outfield can make you look even better than you did in 2007. Maybe that's all there to it. Maybe he's just blowing smoke as so many people do. I like to think though that maybe he wants to stay because he wants to prove something to people here. To prove to us and maybe to himself as well, that he was worth trading for, worth being excited about. There would be something so achingly identifiable in that.

Erik Bedard was not the only injury casualty this season. Adrian Beltre didn't have a resurgent 2004-esque season to finally get the adoration that his defense has deserved for so long. Instead, he struggled as much as ever and battled serious injuries all season. He even suffered the ignominy of a ruptured/shattered/ohmygodIhavetostopthinkingaboutit testicle caused by his own tragic insistence on not wearing proper protection on the field. Did I mention that he finished the game in which that injury occurred? And that he played through immensely painful bone spurs in his shoulder? Adrian Beltre appears fun loving from his mocking of Griffey and dancing to his own introduction music. He has quirky histrionics at the plate including his own appeals and a shuffle dance at breaking pitches. He's an art form with the glove. Who cannot relate to the person with an under heralded talent they feel is not appreciated enough? And he gives it all, every last drop, on the field. More than maybe any player aside from Ichiro, Beltre deserves appreciation from local fans for his combination of skills and effort. I just want to meet him in person so I can give him a big hug and let him know that some of us, not just Red, think he’s awesome.

Even the team's arguably biggest success story, Russell Branyan, got hurt and was unable to play the final six weeks of the season. We never got to fully congratulate him on his season or thank him for his help in keeping the team relevant so long into the season. Instead, we’re left with question marks as to his health and efficacy heading into free agency and whether we should pursue re-signing him and the gaping hole in power for our team if we do not.

On the trading front, moves for Jack Wilson, Bill Hall and Ian Snell didn't see them find their old grooves in a fresh environment. Instead, they managed to find deeper and more terrible grooves. Kenji Johjima did not prove himself worthy of his retarded contract extension but rather lost a significant amount of playing time to a guy who has trouble holding onto fastball strikes at his eye level. Jose Lopez hit over 40 doubles and 25 long fly balls to left field that cleared the wall, good to great numbers for a second baseman, but he also got on base barely 30% of the time and was thus merely an average hitter. This team had their share of hardships and plenty of flaws, some of them ultimately tragic, but the presence of those flaws also endeared the team to me.

See, I was nine years old when the movie "Little Big League" came out and I, being a huge baseball nut and a retarded child, demanded to go see it. The ending to that movie, when Griffey makes the leaping catch to prevent the Twins from reaching the playoffs*, always stuck with me. Not just because it involved the Mariners, it was 1994, and here was a movie showing a Seattle team actually winning something at a time when all anyone talked about was the upcoming strike that would kill interest in baseball while our home park was doing its best to literally kill us off. No, it stuck with me because even at that age, I could tell it was different. That wasn't how kid-geared movies were supposed to end. It was like if 101 Dalmatians had ended with Cruella De Vil skinning 20 of the puppies while the rest escaped. Yeah, most of them were unharmed, but that's still a downer. "Don't care," said this movie, "we're not having your sepia-toned dripping with sentimentality family-approved ending." I loved it for that, but I might be wired weird.

(*You finally got your win, Twins fans! Hope it was fun.)

This team was an underdog coming into the season and in the end it came up quite short; it was not to be. They needed an absolutely perfect season to dent late October play and didn't get it. So it ends, but none of that matters right now. For all that went wrong, so much went right. It wasn't perfect, but part of me is happy about that*. I'm not sure what it was like to go through what Rockies fan went through in 2007 when they reeled off that insane beyond-Hollywood end to the season, but part of me thinks that it must have felt a little fake, a little scripted. Right up until the point where they got utterly demolished by the Red Sox in the World Series. Then, yeah, it must have felt a lot like how I feel now.

(*Do not mistake this to mean that I would not have been overjoyed had the 2009 Mariners won a World Series. Don't be stupid, of course I would have been.)

It's funny that in retrospect, the most controversial move discussed the entire offseason might have been Ken Griffey Jr's return. We here were pretty pleased by the J.J. Putz trade return, many of those from not 'round these parts were not. There was not much to say until the season started on that matter though and once it did begin, it became quickly apparent just how much of a steal that trade turned out to be. And the various budget free agent signings were mostly ignored.

But the debate and the ensuing drama surrounding the whole Griffey saga was ever-lasting and drove people to emotional depths I doubt some of them even knew they had when it came to Mariners baseball in 2009. Whether they were nostalgia for the times gone by, hope for a renewed season of glory, hatred of already present sentimentality, distrust of the personality or any of the other myriad of possible reactions, there was no more talked about move, well before it was official even, this winter.

What I find fascinating is just how the whole process ended up. Could anyone, I mean literally anyone, have predicted the effect that Griffey would have on this clubhouse?

"He's the only teammate I would ever let do that. In Japan, all relationships are respectful, so no one would ever do that to me," Ichiro said. "If someone else did it here, I'd probably punch them in the face."

-Ichiro Suzuki, on Ken Griffey Jr tickling him during stretching routines.

It broke me down a little inside to see Griffey bring Ichiro to a completely new level of happiness. We knew that Ichiro cared a whole lot about team success; nobody who gets an ulcer during a team competition, national or not, is getting one because he only cares for himself. However, it seemed like Ichiro had built a wall around him in Seattle, buffered with bizarre and fanciful media quotes that only acted like a moat to keep really substantive looks inside Ichiro the person at bay. It was clear though from his demeanor during the WBC, his livelier attitude when in Japan, his famed All-Star speeches and other small clues that there was this version of Ichiro in there. We just hadn't seen it in Seattle before.

Along comes Griffey and right away, things start to radically change. He goes out of his way to have Ichiro's back, directs probing questions to himself and demands reporters stop pestering Ichiro about last year's clubhouse. Rather than never hearing anything about Ichiro and other teammates in the beat stories, suddenly we had an almost endless stream of interaction between Junior and Ichiro.

It was as if Ichiro had been waiting his whole career for Griffey to come along and be in the same clubhouse as him to bring this out. And Griffey had needed his whole career for it to sink in how much he meant to this city. A perfect match at a perfect time, it seems so surreal in a way, and that's incredibly tough to give up as a fan. It was a connection to not just the team, but to two marquee players, one present and one past. It was a connection to a history that has been over-commercialized to death and turned many of us cynical about any references to it, but that history still exists and is wonderful and was somehow made tangible again. To acknowledge that said connection has likely ended is difficult. I was just beginning to appreciate it. For however hard it is for me, it's probably 100 times harder for either of them to acknowledge. I am just so glad that should it be now that it ends, that it ended with them riding off together, on the backs of their teammates, wearing grins and at least one of them fighting back tears.

This was an outwardly emotional team even beyond those two. I suppose last year was too, but it was 90% negative emotion and nobody except Hot Topic feebs enjoy being around that much negative emotion. We mention frequently that above all else, we want a team that wins. Damn the players, attitudes, etc that goes into it. We want to win. I'm not going back on those statements, but this past season has made me open my eyes a little more to the positives that come from being able to enjoy the season even with an unlikely postseason berth.

Even without the almost overbearing amount of happiness and funtainment this team produced, enough to single handedly power away the autumn rains until October, the change that I mentioned earlier was enough to produce a group of players that I found myself constantly energized to follow. The bullpen was one giant new question mark, we had new hitters all over the place and remarkably some of them were quite good. There was a time when our rotation consisted of Felix (Whoo!), Washburn (how long can he keep this up?!), Rowland-Smith (whoo), Bedard (please stay heal-aw dammit) and Vargas (… I like your changeup…). There was no Batista, no Silva, no Horacio Ramirez, no Joel Pineiro, no Ryan Franklin; nobody that I hated. There were even four lefties to boot, always a plus in my left-handed book.

That would have been good enough, but they went above and beyond all that with a display of solidarity and camaraderie so opposite, so completely turned around from last year that you would have thought they were filming an infomercial for some hokey hemorrhoid relief cream or something. All that pain Before and now here's After! What a difference. It drew me in because as much as I love winning (I really, really love it), I also love seeing a team that enjoys being together, especially a group that inhabits so much of your life because then you get to feel like you are a part of it as well. From Sweeney and Griffey getting everyone involved on the bench, to the bullpen's 300 fetish and line dancing antics, to Miguel Batista's lonesomeness, they acted like a group of guys that regardless of it being their job, liked hanging around each other*. And that's an infectious attitude, it can make things brighter just being on the periphery.

(*Well, except for the Miguel Batista part)

Which brings me to Felix. I cannot say anything better than Jeff can and since he just recently wrote several thousand words on Felix, I'll try to keep my thoughts a bit pithier.  One angle that I personally think was understated concerning the emotional connection with Felix is when it comes to his very prominent emotional side. I love it and it connects him to me in a way even beyond what others have mentioned. It's the same reason Freddie Ljungberg is my favorite Sounder. It's why I could never get seriously upset at Felix for losing his cool so often when he was younger and why, when he records a monster strikeout and just lets loose with one of those battle roars, I want to go out and conquer Greenland or something. It's passion, and to me, that's the whole point of sports, as a relatively harmless way to release those passions.

There's something magical when a pitcher dominates. It's greater theater than when a hitter is on a tear since the hitter still has eight other teammates that have to take their turn in order. The pitcher stands there, tall on the mound, the center of attention and he dictates the game. It gives him the opportunity to carry a team on his back as Felix has done at times. He has given us tastes of some incredible experiences and glimpses into what the future might hold. I don't want to give that up. It's Felix Day dammit, it's special.

Much uncertainty lies ahead; let us not act as if it does not. A winter of questions about Felix, Beltre, Bedard, Griffey, Branyan, Lopez, our pathetic offense, the left side of our infield, our rotation, etc looms. Change brings another year of age on Ichiro, whatever that might actually mean. Change sucks.

But change also brought us these past 12 months. Just as change has, and uses, the power to destroy, change has the power to create. It is why, with one eye holding just a hint of tear for the fun and entertainment that made up 2009, I am turning my other eye toward 2010. May it bring us just as much joy and perhaps even end with the same walk around Safeco Field, a little later in the calendar year.

More photos » by John Froschauer - AP

TELL US

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I'm going to be kind of quick about this, because, I gotta be honest, the high of pumping out your final content of the season is unlike any other and I'm eager to drink.

• Maybe it's just because none of my teams have ever won a championship, but I honestly can't remember ever enjoying a season's end as much as I did today. I'm not going to try to summarize the gathering on the field after the game. There's no point. I couldn't. There's no way I could do justice to an impromptu celebration that actually made me tear up. You'll just have to see it for yourself, if you haven't already. But...man, for a team that didn't win anything, this one was something special. A year ago, Carlos Silva was the prime suspect when it came to an anonymous Mariner player threatening Ichiro. Today he carried him off the field on his shoulders. Mike Blowers couldn't stop talking about how he'd never seen a whole team mill around like this before. These Mariners were as close as any team that's ever shared a clubhouse, and knowing that they were all enjoying themselves was a big part of what made this season so fun.
  
  Thanks, guys. You've been a treat.


• Six strikeouts, one walk, a bunch of groundballs, a bunch of strikes, a bunch of swinging strikes, and a win. Felix Hernandez showed no ill effects from his 121-pitch outing last Tuesday and looked as kingly as ever from the start to the finish. He may not win the Cy Young, but this was a Cy Young-caliber season, and when he told Angie Mentink through laughter and tears after the game that he'd like to spend his whole career in Seattle...Z should just call him up right now while he's still feeling emotional. Also, when the whole team is out there walking a victory lap and thanking the fans, maybe you should wait a few minutes before pulling one of the players away from the rest for a pointless one-minute interview.


• You always hear about the fan who caught a home run, or the fan who caught a foul ball. You never hear about the fan who caught a ground-rule double. I wonder what happens to that fan.
  


• I know a lot of Mariners fans. Not one of them has ever gone to a baseball game with a rally fries sign. Which makes me wonder if there have ever been repeats. Has anyone won rally fries twice? Griffey tried his hand today but didn't luck out, which is just as well, because one more handful of fries and I don't know if Tui and Langerhans would've been able to lift him.


• In the top of the first, it looked like Bill Hall dove for David Murphy's double and missed by 15 feet, but replays showed that he just fell down. Bill Hall, everybody. I urge you not to get too down on him, because he's very clearly been injured, but by the same token, Christ, Wak, why did you have to subject us to so much of this guy? What was there to be gained?


• Adrian Beltre led off the game with a sparkling diving stop on a grounder to his left, and later pulled off another one of those spectacular off-balance barehands on a swinging bunt the way only he can do. Though Beltre went hitless and struck out in his final at bat, this final homestand saw him display every part of his skillset, and my only complaint about this whole afternoon is that the crowd didn't give him any recognition for everything he's done. I'm sorry, Adrian. I am deeply sorry that so many people just don't get you. I hope you end up somewhere that you can feel loved, because few people deserve it more than you.


• Attendance for the home opener: 48,514. Attendance today: 32,260. That's up about 5,000 from a year ago and 2,000 from 2007, but, really? Either a lot of Seattle felt they'd shown Griffey enough love, or a lot of Seattle doesn't believe that he's going to retire.


• It's fun to end the season with a win. We've done it four years in a row. Three of those years we've directly prevented the Rangers from the same satisfaction. Suck it, Texas.


• Mike Blowers, paraphrased, on Hank Blalock: You have to be careful, because he can still turn on a good fastball. You hear this about a lot of guys, but I don't get what it means. Of course Blalock can still turn on a good fastball. If you can't hit a fastball, you can't be a position player in the Major Leagues. That's like saying, you have to keep on your toes around this hockey player, because he knows how to skate. If Hank Blalock couldn't hit a fastball, he'd be listening to announcers talk about guys who can hit a fastball on TV.


• The second-to-last pitch of the game was a high fastball. Rob Johnson dropped it.

When I was younger, I had a parakeet. His name was Chirpy. When I got him, I had visions of training him to be a superbird. I would teach him to talk. I would teach him to hold a conversation. I would teach him to retrieve crackers from the cupboard. I would teach him to fly over on command and lean forward so I could pet him. Nine year old Jeff was aware of ordinary parakeets, but he had visions of turning his into the greatest parakeet of all time.

Chirpy never fulfilled the potential I projected onto him. Though I'd leave the radio on when I left for school, he never learned to talk. He'd just squawk in his own language at all hours of the night. He never learned to fly where I wanted him to, and in his older age he couldn't fly at all. And he never quite got the petting thing down. Instead of acting submissive, Chirpy would go on the attack, using any opportunity to climb onto my shoulder and bite my ear. To be sure, Chirpy was one of a kind, but he never became the fuzzy blue megakeet I dreamed he would be.

What Chirpy was, though, was a cute and idiosyncratic little ball of feathers that always knew just the right way to stare at me to make me feel better. He never did a whole lot, and I think he just annoyed visitors more than he did anything else, but no matter how down I felt or how angry I was at my brother or school or the New Jersey Devils, all I had to do was go to my room and watch Chirpy do whatever it was he was doing. It was impossible to see Chirpy scurry around the top of his cage or stare back at me with his head at an angle and not feel like laughing.

It's been a few years since I had to bury Chirpy in the yard. Sometimes I'll glance out back at the depression in the lawn. "Man," I think. "Chirpy was a great bird."

Biggest Contribution: Franklin Gutierrez, +23.2%
Biggest Suckfest: Adrian Beltre, Jack Hannahan, -5.7%
Most Important AB: Lopez double, +16.4%
Most Important Pitch: Kinsler double, -11.8%
Total Contribution by Pitcher(s): +33.7%
Total Contribution by Lineup: +16.3%
Total Contribution by Opposition: 0.0%
(What is this chart?)

A few days ago, incidentally, I was in one of the worst moods I can remember. I bottomed out in a way that I haven't done in a couple years, and for two hours I laid in the bedroom and stared at the ceiling. Around 7 o'clock I looked at my phone, realized a game was about to start, and rolled out of bed to come to the computer. And by the third or fourth pitch I was right back to joking around and feeling good about everything that was going on.

LookoutLanding.com isn't a thing. I mean, it's not a thing that exists. I can't go anywhere in the world and open a door and point and say "look, there it is." But for something of intangible constitution, I can't begin to explain to you just how much this place means to me. Sometimes it even takes me by surprise. I love my girlfriend more than I've ever loved anything that wasn't the sour cream & onion corn puffs from Trader Joe's, and there've been times that I've just wanted her to leave me alone so I could write a post or participate in a comment thread. This place is a vital component of my lifeblood, and were it not for the community that built around some asshole writing fake AP captions and saying which starting pitchers look like they smell, I don't even know what I'd do. I don't know what I'd do, but I know I wouldn't be as happy.

Thank you to Matthew for his series previews. Thank you to Graham for his like three or four posts. Thank you to everybody in the blogosphere for providing links and material even though I suck at giving links and material back. And, of course, most of all, thank you to every single one of you guys who at some point or another decided to make LL a destination for reading about the team or participating in the banter. You have all given me so much more than I could ever give back.

Though there have been better teams than the Mariners, not one of them has had a better website. Thank you. Thank all of you. So, so very much.

P.S. Z I fuckin love you

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Hole In The Wall

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And so we're to that point in the year where it becomes less about wanting to see these guys win at all costs and more about wanting to see them be happy. It's a transition that, I think, makes you more forgiving, and it's with that in mind that I'd like to congratulate Miguel Batista on a job well done. He made that ninth inning look easy.

We've flipped Batista a lot of crap for a long time. It'd be hard to say he didn't deserve it. From his poor performance to his laborious pace to his seeming aloofness and detachment from his teammates, he didn't do a whole lot to win anyone over. He just never really looked like he cared very much, and as a professional athlete, that's a bad attitude to convey. He never endeared himself to the fan base, and the list of people counting down the days until his contract expires would take longer to read off than the time between any two of Miguel's pitches.

But fanhood changes as the summer winds down and you realize you're not playing for anything. When you root for a competiting team, it's all about performance. It has to be. You're cutthroat about it, because you know you need the best performance to bring home a title. When you root for a team that's faded out of it, though, it becomes less about the numbers and more about the actual players. More about finding enjoyment in the fact that the players are still enjoying themselves despite being out of the race. It's a different sort of satisfaction, but a fulfilling one. Smiles and celebrations give us glimpses of personality, and nothing draws us closer to the players than when they come across as people.

After Miguel Batista struck out Taylor Teagarden to end the game, he leapt in the air and pumped his fists in a rare display of emotion. And where a few months ago I might've joked about it, tonight I just feel genuinely happy for him. Miguel Batista is a person. We have no reason to believe that he's a bad person, and a handful of reasons to believe he's a good one. There are any number of explanations for why he's done things the way he's done them, and just because he works slowly or doesn't participate in the bullpen hijinks is no reason to wish him ill. People are different. And Miguel Batista is a 38 year old reliever coming off a couple rough years. This very well could have been the final appearance of his career, and so for him to nail down a save in such dominating fashion...Miguel was able to close out a difficult chapter and perhaps a whole book with a fairytale ending, and no matter how frustrating he's been in the past, you have to feel good that he feels good. Every author knows the power of a strong conclusion.

Tomorrow afternoon, we're going to say goodbye to Ken Griffey Jr. Even if he's not actually going away. He's going to receive a rousing, thunderous ovation twenty years in the making. But while Griffey's will get all the press, there are dozens of stories in that clubhouse, stories at different stages, some building up and some winding down, but all of them changing. Though they're not all best-sellers, every single one of them means the world. Take a moment to recognize as many as you can, if only because every story in there has in some way affected your own. 

• A strong way for Ryan Rowland-Smith to cap off a year that wound up way better than anyone would've imagined back in May. RRS breezed through the better part of the first six innings, and though he got himself into trouble there in the seventh with the Elvis Andrus ground-rule double, he pitched himself two-thirds of the way out of the jam before letting Shawn Kelley finish the job. I've said it a million times before, but while pitcher wins don't mean much of anything to us, they mean a ton to the pitchers themselves, and so after losing his win late against Toronto the last time out, tonight RRS is probably one part relieved and two parts ecstatic that he was able to come away with win #5. I'm sure he would've rather taken care of the seventh inning himself, but realistically, this is just about how every pitcher wants to close out his season.
  
  In twelve starts a year ago, RRS posted a walk rate of 8.7%. This year he trimmed it to 6.7% while slightly raising his strikeouts. Once the injuries were behind him, he answered every question.


• RRS also happened to turn one of the more unusually impressive double plays I've ever seen. With men on the corners and one down in the top of the sixth, Marlon Byrd hit a comebacker on the ground that RRS fielded in midair, behind his back, and between his legs, before firing to second. It was a powerful reminder of the effectiveness of instant human reaction, which, when considered in conjunction with Jose Lopez's error problem on slower groundballs, causes me to entertain the unexpected possibility that Lopez's problem is that he thinks too much.


• Before the game, David Aardsma and Mark Lowe apologized to Jason Vargas for costing him a win last night. Inspired, Alan Cockrell left notes in every pitcher's locker.


• Sometime in the early going, Dave Sims mentioned the Mariners' positive record and negative run differential in the same sentence. I know sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but between things like this and all the previous on-air talk about UZR and OOZ and so forth, we have to have one of the more statistically-advanced broadcasts in baseball. I like Sims for always being so genuine and enthusiastic, but I think what I love about our broadcast the most is that it so rarely says anything stupid. Godspeed, Hendu.
  


• Weed used to bother me. It used to bother me a lot, and even though, in my head, I knew that it wasn't meaningfully different from drinking, it still took ages to get over whatever obstacle it was and let my brain's reaction be my body's. With that said, one of my greatest regrets is that, even after five years, I still haven't come to terms with the fact that chasing after bad pitches is just part of Adrian Beltre's overall package. Intellectually, I know it's not a big deal. Every player has flaws, and it's not fair to ask them to be perfect. But for some reason, though I'm perfectly willing to accept, say, RRS' fly balls or Russell Branyan's strikeouts, I still respond to Beltre's fishing exploits the same way I did in 2005. "STOP! JUST STOP AND DON'T DO THAT!!" I don't know what it is about certain players that makes us always want them to be better, but I'm afraid that's a burden that Beltre's going to have to shoulder as long as he plays. Unless he maybe stops swinging at those God damn unhittable pitches.


• Andruw Jones was once the premier defensive outfielder in baseball. Now he's a fat DH with the occasional spell at first base. He's 32. The way he bluffed towards third on his fifth inning double looked just like how Yuni used to bluff towards any groundball hit to his left.


• Kelley got the job done in the top of the seventh, but realistically, Franklin Gutierrez is the reason Michael Young didn't pick up a three-run double. Young smoked a pitch to deep center field that kept slicing to the right, but Guti read it off the bat immediately, set off in a dead sprint, and arrived so quickly that he actually had to slow down before making the catch. This isn't a play I can do justice with words. There wasn't anything visually spectacular about it. He didn't have to dive or leave his feet or crash into the wall. It was just a display of how perfect instincts and awesome range can make a nigh-impossible play look almost easy. When Gutierrez ran it down, I thought "well I guess that wasn't as difficult a play as I thought," but the more I reflected on it, the more I realized that there aren't many other outfielders in the league who track that ball down. Gutierrez is just that much better than pretty much everyone else. And he has a bad knee.


• Griffey's line drive home run just barely had enough to squeak out. Hopefully that means he saved up enough strength to hit another one tomorrow. If I have to watch another Mariner legend end his career with a double play I'm going to be mad as a wet hen.

Biggest Contribution: RRS, +26.6%
Biggest Suckfest: Adrian Beltre, -10.8%
Most Important AB: Griffey homer, +13.0%
Most Important Pitch: Andrus double, -24.2%
Total Contribution by Pitcher(s): +66.1%
Total Contribution by Lineup: -16.1%
Total Contribution by Opposition: 0.0%
(What is this chart?)

More photos » by Ted S. Warren - AP

Seattle Mariners pitcher Mark Lowe swings a carefully switched sock full of marbles as he prepares to throw a pitch high and inside in the eighth inning of a MLB baseball game against the Texas Rangers, Friday, Oct. 2, 2009, at Safeco Field in Seattle.

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On the plus side, a tied-for-2nd-place-in-the-division banner would've just looked really pathetic.

• It's a shame Ian Snell couldn't have swapped his last start and this one, because after the excitement that he generated with his performance against Toronto, tonight was a bit of a letdown. He didn't have good command of anything and admitted as much, and though I was keeping an eye on his front foot and thought it looked okay, it (A) both came and went, and (B) clearly isn't going to be some magic insta-fix. It's just one of several adjustments the coaching staff would like to see him make.
  
  The good news is that the stuff was mostly there. Snell topped out at 95mph and threw a ton of sliders or slurves or whatever you want to call that breaking ball of his, and his nine missed bats gave him his second-best swinging strike rate as a Mariner. But the downside - and this has been Snell's problem all year long - is that it's just so incredibly difficult to succeed when you're only throwing 60% of your pitches for strikes. Good Snell - 2007 Snell - was up at 65%. So far this year he's at 59%, and tonight he just couldn't find the zone for the life of him for the first three innings or so. He managed to settle down after that and get through six (quality start!), but three innings of bad and three innings of good is no way to survive as a starting pitcher. Snell needs to be able to find a consistent rhythm, and that he's been just about incapable to date is the reason why he's a work in progress.
  
  What I've found interesting is how often we've seen Snell with a smile on his face. For a guy who as a Pirate was so utterly miserable, it's been nice to see him come over and enjoy himself again. It's a completely new environment, one that Snell says he likes, so there's reason to hope that he can be repaired. It's just going to have to wait until next season. Which I suspected all along, but secretly and irrationally wanted to see a little sooner.


• When it's a cold day and he gets all bundled up in the broadcast booth, Dave Niehaus looks like a cuddly little teddy bear. I know we use this word a lot around here, but a cold, neckless, and red-cheeked Niehaus is completely adorable.


• So the team MVP award as voted on by the local chapter of the BBWAA was bestowed upon Ichiro before the game, with Franklin Gutierrez finishing as the runner-up. Personally I think Gutierrez's performance in the clutch (.965 OPS in high-leverage situations) should've put him over the top, but Ichiro's awesome and in no way an unworthy pick, and what's really amazing is that Gutierrez got consideration from a bunch of writers in the first place.
  
  Do we care about these awards? Do we care about any awards? I feel like having really good value-based statistics updated on a daily basis kind of diminishes the significance. Back in the day awards were probably both somewhat surprising and considered a high honor, but now it seems the only thing they're good for is getting fans really mad at each other. I'm sure the players care a little, but as an outsider, man, whatever.
  


• Jose Lopez won the team's Heart And Hustle award, which is one of those things I didn't think I'd ever write three years ago, or three hours ago.


• Speaking of Jose Lopez, the fourth inning saw him come up with a man on second and hit a single without advancing the baserunner. Which I'm just going to go ahead and chalk up as his 25th walk.


• Also in the fourth, Sims and Blowers were talking about how at one point a while ago the Rangers got really close to firing Ron Washington, but then the team improved and his became a popular name in conversations about the AL's best managers. "Sometimes the moves you don't make turn out to be better," said Blowers. Right on. Sometimes it's the moves you make. Sometimes it's the moves you don't make. Chances are, if something works out for you, it's because of something you did, or something you didn't do.


• Apparently Mariner catchers are allowed to hang on to throws home after all. 


• A few days ago I got a text from Red saying that tonight would be Adrian Beltre Appreciation Night. Beltre did him proud by going 2-4 with a double, a steal, a run, and an RBI. It's been a rough year for both Adrian and Red, but these last two nights have been special, and I'm wondering if Beltre's planning one final surprise for his biggest fan before the end of the year. Or the other way around. Either one, really.
  
  That steal, by the way, was so totally Adrian Beltre in a nutshell. Standing on second with two out, attempting a steal would've been stupid and pointlessly risky, but Beltre tried it anyway, looking dead to rights but then by some miraculous feat of reflexes and quick thinking pulling his hand back at just the right moment and avoiding the tag. It was one of the greatest slides I've ever seen, but it was also a slide on a play that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Sunday may turn out to be Beltre's final game in a Mariner uniform, but he will long be remembered for succeeding despite looking like a retard. I'm gonna miss you, you crazy son of a bitch.
  

Biggest Contribution: Mike Carp, +19.2%
Biggest Suckfest: David Aardsma, -34.1%
Most Important AB: Carp single, +14.8%
Most Important Pitch: Teagarden single, -36.0%
Total Contribution by Pitcher(s): -51.3%
Total Contribution by Lineup: -4.7%
Total Contribution by Opposition: +6.0%
(What is this chart?)