I promised that I'd sneak a front page game thread up here today so that we could all root for the Mariners and lend them a little bit of extra karma to beat down the Colorado Rockies.
Wonderfully, the starting pitching matchup is the Mariners' Jeff Weaver vs. the Rockies' Jeff Francis. Elsewhere, you can see the matchup of Lookout Landing's Jeff Sullivan vs. USS Mariner's Jeff Shaw.
Starting lineup posted to the Seattle Times blog reads as follows:
Ichiro CF Finley DH Bloomquist 3B K. Matsui 2B Vidro DH Hawpe RF Ibanez LF Lopez C Sexson 1B Gomez LF Broussard RF Koshansky 1B Johjima C Stewart 3B Lopez 2B Barmes SS Betancourt SS C. Sullivan CF ---------- ---------- Weaver (2 IP, 13.50) Francis (2 IP, 0.00)
Adrian Beltre has a sore shoulder, which is why Willie's at third today. Baek, O'Flaherty, Sherrill, and Reitsma are scheduled to pitch for the Mariners as well, and Putz has tightness in his right elbow so he won't be out there.
I'm guessing that the Gameday app for this will be here, but won't know for sure until the game actually starts.
Last time I posted a front-page game thread was the only time the Mariners won a preseason game. Can they do it again? Who knows. At the very least, getting beaten by the Rockies would be marginally less embarrassing than getting beaten by the Royals.
LET'S GO MARINERS!