Seattle: 58-101
Athletics: 75-83

GAMES

Game 1: Brandon Morrow's Dead Arm vs Sean Gallagher
Game 2: Ryan Rowland-Smith* vs Greg Smith*
Game 3: Ryan Feierabend* vs Josh Outman*

Under Mel Stottlemyre, we have seen the Mariners pitchers rely more and more on fastballs to start games. We have seen multiple pitchers take the mound despite having serious injury issues. We have seen a lack of development at the major league level and we have seen Morrow left out there when even a lobotomized lemming too preoccupied with eating its own excrement to bother comprehending baseball knew that it was unwise to have him start the 7th inning.

Hitting coaches don't do all that much, and bench coaches don't do anything at all except take over should the manager get ejected from the game (or team), but pitching coaches can actually matter a little bit. Especially when you have a number of young pitchers on the team that need to keep developing. Our pitching coach appears to think that they only thing they need to develop is the number of times they manage to throw consecutive fastballs at the beginning of a game. 90% of the Mariner management team deserves to lost their jobs this winter. Mel Stottlemyre deserves to lose his twice.

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Seattle: 57-98
Angels: 96-59

GAMES

Game 1: Ryan Rowland-Smith* vs Ervin Santana
Game 2: Ryan Feierabend* vs Jered Weaver
Game 3: Felix Hernandez vs Jon Garland
Game 4: Carlos Silva (questionable) vs ?

Rowland-Smith has had thoroughly mediocre results out of the rotation so far this year despite possessing the talent to be a satisfactory back end option. The main culprit has been the disappearance of those strikeouts.

As a reliever, Rowland-Smith went 0-2 on a hitter 20.3% of the time (average ~18.5%) and overall notched a strikeout in 19.8% of all PA (average 19%) [NB: these two figures are not computed dependently. That is, I'm looking at total strikeouts, not strikeouts after reaching an 0-2 count].

As a starter, the 0-2 figure has dipped slightly to 19.7%, but the average starter only reaches that mark about 17.8% of the time so Ryan is still above average in that regard. However, compared to an average strikeout rate of 16% for league starters, Rowland-Smith's currently stands at just under 11%.I'd like to think that's just a sample size problem and he'll go back to punching out hitters at a slightly above average rate which would return him to usefulness.

Like Matt Tuiasosopo and Felix Hernandez, it's easy to forget how young Ryan Feierabend is because he's been a part of our collective conscious for going on three/four years now. But he's only 22 and while he's still not anything special, and does not really possess the tools to turn into anything of that regard either, he has been markedly better in the big leagues this season over prior attempts. Notably, the walks are well down and he's actually missing a fair number of bats.

In fact, if you want somewhat depressing numbers, Feierabend has so far (SSS alert) generated a swing and a miss on 8.1% of pitches. Felix is at just 8.7%. Speaking of Felix, this is the last start of the year for Felix. By recording 16 outs, he'll surpass 200 innings for the season.

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Seattle: 57-95
Athletics: 71-81

GAMES

Game 1: Felix Hernandez vs Dana Eveland*
Game 2: Carlos Silva vs ?
Game 3: Brandon Morrow vs Sean Gallagher

I don't want to talk anymore about Felix regressing this season. Dana Eveland is decent but not altogether all that good since he throws too many balls and misses too few bats.

Justin Duchscherer was scheduled to make this start before he got scratched for the remainder of the season. The Athletics don't even know who's going to take this turn yet but it's even money that he'll be a more skilled pitcher than Carlos Silva. I'm not sure I've loathed a Mariner more. Even Vidro was funny in a way when he was succeeding somehow and the Ms were winning. On a side note, I spelled Duchscherer right without looking.

Sean Gallagher's been markedly worse since switching leagues, seeing his percentage of strikes thrown dip a whopping seven percent. At the same time he's posting a hilarious 27.4% groundball rate. If Brandon Morrow retains some semblance of control, he could pass through the A's "hitters" like an intelligent thought on the PI boards. If he's lousy with command, the A's might wait him out into many walks and pretty much anyone can hit a fastball if they're sitting on it.

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Seattle: 57-91
Royals: 65-84

GAMES

Game 1: Carlos Silva vs Kyle Davies
Game 2: Brandon Morrow vs Brandon Duckworth
Game 3: Ryan Rowland-Smith* vs Gil Meche
Game 4: Ryan Feierabend* vs Zack Greinke

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Seattle: 57-87
Angels: 88-57

GAMES

Game 1: BRANDON MORROW!!!! vs Jered Weaver
Game 2: Ryan Rowland-Smith* vs Joe Saunders*
Game 3: Ryan Feierabend* vs Jon Garland
Game 4: Felix Hernandez vs Ervin Santana

For the third straight year, Jered Weaver's tRA has regressed toward the league average and his tRA+ now rests at just 104. While his ability to throw strikes continues to improve marginally, his number of missed bats took a dive last year but has managed a slight rebound this season. However, the amount of called strikes that he's managed has fallen each year and the line drives allowed have sky rocketed up to over 20% as his groundball rate falls back to 2005 levels.

Joe Saunders has come back from a terrible 2007 year to post a reasonably solid 2008 campaign though his missed bat rate has fallen to just 6.5% and he only throws strikes 62% of the time. The problem with thinking this might be sustainable is that Saunders is posting just slightly above average tRAs in his good years, and those are largely the result of very low line drive rates, on the order of around 16% while in his two other years they've been above 23%. It's a wide variance and something tRA* would regress heavily and likely put Saunders at below average.

We called Jon Garland terrible at the beginning of the season and he's only managed to be worse this season, having his tRA rise a few points while overall offense fell in the league. Even though he's upped his groundballs to the highest mark of his recent career.

What the hell happened with Ervin Santana? I still don't know. He went from a 5.69 tRA in 2007 to a 3.40 tRA this year. He's throwing strikes at a good rate and suddenly started missing tons of bats. Guh.

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Seattle: 56-86
Rangers: 70-74

GAMES

Game 1: Felix Hernandez vs Vicente Padilla
Game 2: ? vs Kevin Millwood

Vicente Padilla was a headcase his entire career and had a reputation as being somewhat dim. He came to Texas and finally had one year of moderate success (104 tRA+) and landed himself a lucrative three year deal. Now into the second year of that deal, Padilla has posted tRA+s of 87 and 86.

Kevin Millwood was a solid enough pitcher in his 20s while with the Atlanta pitching juggernaut. He moved to the Phillies in 2003 and the good luck began to slip. While Millwood continued to pitch well, his ERAs rose and he suffered health issues in 2004. Unable to land himself the multi-year deal his agent thought he worth, Millwood took a one year deal with the Indians and proceeded to rock the house in ERA and grabbed hisself a nifty five year deal.

Now, Millwood had a legitimately good season in 2005 (116 tRA+), but he got paid for his 146 ERA+. Millwood gave the Rangers what they hoped for in year one with a full season of 111 tRA pitching but since then he's suffered more injury problems and posted consecutive tRA+s of just 91.

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Seattle: 54-85
Yankees: 74-64

GAMES

Game 1: BRANDON MORROW!!! vs Andy Pettitte*
Game 2: Ryan Rowland-Smith* vs Sidney Ponson(snicker)
Game 3: Carlos Silva vs Mike Mussina

Andy Pettitte is in the midst of another Andy Pettitte season. He's hitting the zone a little more often and missing a few more bats leading to a few more strikeouts and few less walks than 2007. But balancing that is a slight uptick in home runs allowed.

Hahaha, oh sorry. I mean, Sidney Ponson. His control is uhhh hahahaha. Sidney Ponson! He's horrid.

With Mussina's stuff falling ever further toward Triple-A quality, he's taken to pounding the strikezone and has ratcheted up the groundballs. The result is that despite missing bats just over 4% of the time, Mussina has produced another decent season of performance for New York.

However, there are some huge red flags, notably in his called strikeouts. Mussina actually has more strikeouts of the called variety than of the swinging type and called strikeouts do not carry over year-to-year anywhere near the level to that of swinging Ks. Mussina seems to me to be tight-rope walking on the cliff.

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Seattle: 53-83
Rangers: 67-71

GAMES

Game 1: Carlos Silva vs Matt Harrison*
Game 2: Ryan Feierabend vs Brandon McCarthy
Game 3: Felix Hernandez vs Dustin Nippert

Matt Harrison had been terrible so far in 2008 when we last faced off against the Rangers and he lived up to the billing allowing six runs in 4.2 innings with five walks and just two strikeouts. He checks in at a 5.43 tRA. Of course, that's better than Carlos Silva and his 5.65.

Brandon McCarthy hasn't had much of a season with just 10 big league innings thrown (poorly) so far and just a handful more thrown down in the minors. Feierabend only has 15 innings thrown but his have been ok, thanks in large part to a so far low homerun on ball in air ratio and a really low walk rate. I'm sure that being a flyball pitcher in Arlington, his homerun rate will manage to stay depressed.

Dustin Nippert becomes our third consecutive small sample size pitcher so I'll just take the time to note that going by tRA, the Rangers have had just two starting pitchers play above average for them this season. One of them is Warner Madrigal who threw four innings for them in one start. The other one was Sidney Ponson. Huh?

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Seattle: 50-83
Indians: 65-67

GAMES

Game 1: Felix Hernandez vs Jeremy Sowers*
Game 2: Jarrod Washburn* vs Anthony Reyes
Game 3: Carlos Silva vs Zach Jackson*

Jeremy Sowers is bad. Almost Miguel Batista bad. His control and missed bats rates are mediocre but not as horrible as his batted ball profile wherein he gives up line drives like a guy who gives up a lot of line drives resulting in numerous homeruns which, hey, aren't good. Meanwhile, the Indians don't have many left-handed bats so if Felix at all decides to grace us with a good day then he should be able to roll over.

Anthony Reyes has decided to so far pitch radically differently in the American League moving toward more groundballs and fewer missed bats. Of course, it's four starts. Hey, everyone, Jarrod Washburn is still here! He's still here! Yippee!!!!

Behold Zach Jackson, a project of the CC Sabathia trade and a small sample size wonder so far in his Cleveland career. He gets to face off against, oh god, Carlos Silva is back already? Screw that, I'm going to go witness physics graduate Jeff Francis take on some white guy in a Padres uniform.

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Seattle: 48-82
Twins: 74-56

GAMES

Game 1: Miguel Batista (aww goddammit) vs Francisco Liriano*
Game 2: Ryan Rowland-Smith* vs Scott Baker
Game 3: Ryan Feierabend* vs Glen Perkins*

Holy crap we're playing the Twins again? Not only that, but we're on exactly the same rotation schedule! The only difference is subbing in Miguel Batista for Carlos Silva. Oh great, there's a big positive.

The Twins (and the White Sox) have an opportunity to knock the Red Sox out of the playoffs if they can manage to play well enough to ensure that the wild card comes out of the central. Perhaps we can help them along again this series.

Jeremy Reed got to sit out the entire Oakland series and now we face two more lefties. I hope he has a hobby to occupy his time while he sits on the bench. Macrame is fun.

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