6/18: Open game thread

To be honest with you, friends, the Mariners do not have a good chance to win today. In previewing the series Jake's numbers, pulled from FiveThirtyEight, gave the team a 41% chance of victory. That was when we thought Wade Miley was starting. He is no longer starting, Adrian Sampson is, as he has been recalled and Dave Rollins has been optioned back to Tacoma after 24 hours, 20 pitches, and 1.1 effective innings pitched.

I don't know how a projection model adjusts for a largely unknown factor like Sampson, but let's say things are fairly static, as he may be unknown, but Wade Miley is a bit too known. To be bad, you see. That's my point; Wade Miley has been bad.

So the Mariners don't have a great chance to win today, and the Red Sox offense is a sharp collection of knives flying through the slaughterhouse that is Fenway Park at all the pinkest and softest portions of whichever poor soul is tasked with pitching against them. It's a bit of a mismatch, on paper.

Let me just remind you that on June 9th, 2014 the Mariners faced David Price, four (!) teams ago with Tampa Bay. The Mariners, thin, tired, and desperate, but clinging to a record a few games above .500, threw out the following lineup:

Bloomquist 1B
Jones CF
Cano 2B
Romero LF
Zunino C
Seager 3B
Gillespie RF
Buck DH
Miller SS

Ramirez P

Erasmo went 4.2 IP, walked five, and the team was forced to lean on Joe Beimel, Dominic Leone, Danny Farquhar, and Fernando Rodney. David Price went 8 innings, struck out 10, and walked none.

The Mariners won, 3-0.

That's baseball, and that's what the Mariners will attempt to do today: Win against the odds, and take a desperately needed series from one of the American League's best teams.

Get 'em.