8/9: Open Game Thread

Well, Ken Griffey Jr. is in town and if you haven't noticed, there has been quite a bit of fuss out of Safeco about the guy today. But wait--there is still baseball to be played! And said baseball unfortunately doesn't include contributions from Ken Griffey Jr. or Randy Johnson or Edgar Martinez, or even Felix Hernandez for that matter, except Felix might make a face from the dugout or something at 8pm that you can see on TV. But that's about it. Leave your emotions at the door tonight, folks.

Instead we get Joe Saunders on the mound to face Kyle Lohse, who is having A Year pitching for the Ryan Braun-less Milwaukee Brewers. I mean, "a year" can really mean anything. Lohse used to be really good, and now he's pretty good. Aaron Harang has been kind of good at times too, so who really knows what to say about that. Lohse's strikeouts are down this year, but they've fluctuated all over the map for the past couple of years, so that isn't a concern. The one thing that is undeniably worse about Kyle Loshe is his career-high 11.8% HR/FB rate. Actually, no. The one thing that really surprised me when I eyed his statistics today is that he's been pitching in the Major Leagues for 12 years. His rookie year was the same as Ichiro's. I guess I always kind of knew that, but seeing it written down is kind of weird. So let's get to this aging arm with some dingers, folks. Too bad the Mariners can't put Humberto Quintero AND Henry Blanco in the lineup to beat up on Loshe. Man. We just can't win, can we?

Other than the usual catcher swap out, the lineup looks about the same as it has been, sans the standard deviations for injury and days off. Who's attending any of the events this weekend, and can I pay someone to get a bobblehead for me?

Mariners:

P. Joe Saunders (L)

Brewers: