Cubs score a lot of runs, Mariners score less

We could do a couple of things. We could be worried that Felix gave up six hits in two innings and some change. We could be asking ourselves what it means that the most dangerous pitcher in the American league left today's scrimmage with six earned runs coming, in part, from two mammoth dingers off the bats of Kris Bryant and Addison Russell. We could be worried that The King was testing his slider out and not having much luck locating his bread and butter changeup, or that this poor performance came pretty much within two weeks of Opening Day. We could do all those things if we wanted to, or we could do none of them and I suggest the latter, because it feels a lot better.

Now the real fun part is that you could go back to that last paragraph, and replace every usage of Mr. Hernandez' name with someone like Roenis Elias, and then we would say Boy rough stretch for the kid, but at least we can send him down to Tacoma to work on his stuff without consequence. And to be honest, that's exactly what we did yesterday after Elias had an even better outing than Felix did. But Felix has a little bit more of a track record, he was testing out his pitches rather than trying to win a game, and his velocity was apparently better than in his past couple of outings. Ultimately, nothing to worry about. I mean, after the game his comments were basically "eh whatever," so listen to the man.

Felix: "I definitely didn’t have the results I wanted, but I got my work in and threw a lot of pitches. That’s what I’m here for."

— Greg Johns (@GregJohnsMLB) March 21, 2015

It was an eventful game, to say the least. After Nelson Cruz got beaned in the leg in the top of the first, Bryant hit the aforementioned two-run blast that looked something like this:

Felix's box score wasn't the sexiest thing in the world, but Kris Bryant is thought by many to be the third-best prospect in the game, so that dinger doesn't exactly mean a bunch. And the other one? Well, Felix gave up a two-run blast to Addison Russell, the fifth best prospect in the game. These aren't your grandfather's Cubs anymore, ladies and gentlemen. Well, actually maybe they are, and that's the whole point.

It wasn't just Felix that was all over the map today, however. As you may be able to see from the box score, it was a crazy game that saw sixteen runs before the fifth inning. There were the aforementioned Cubs dingers, but there was also some small ball that provided us with a Robinson Cano RBI groundout, Austin Jackson reaching on a fielding error to score a run, and a solo blast to center off the bat of Nelson Cruz. There was an RBI double from Logan Morrison, another dinger from Kris Bryant (his eighth of the spring), and back-to-back doubles off the bats of Brad Miller and Willie Bloomquist. Fernando Rodney struck out two, put two runners on with a walk, and then escaped the inning, of course. Endy Chavez walked twice. I mean, holy shit. Back and forth. Back and forth. Swing to the left. Swing to the right. Magnets. How do they work?

There were runs and more runs. The M's tacked on three more in the eighth, after Austin Wilson cleared the bases with an inside-the-park home run. An inside-the-park home run. A ball that was hit inside the park, bounced around for a while, and then failed to reach the infield before Wilson could touch home plate. At that point it was 10-11 in favor of the Cubs, which, wow guys, this isn't football. But regardless, it wasn't enough to turn the tides in favor of the M's, and the game ended after three and a half hours and twenty two runs. 10-12 Cubs. And that's the way it was.