8/19: Open Game Thread

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Friday night game thread with this special announcement:

#Mariners activate Steve Cishek from 15-day DL, recall INF/OF Stefen Romero from AAA Tacoma. Option INF Dae-Ho Lee & RHP Joe Wieland to AAA.

— MarinersPR (@MarinersPR) August 19, 2016

This news might make some excited, since Stefen Romero is possibly good!

Aye, there's the rub. Stefen Romero is, actually, unsurprisingly, a bad baseball player. In 230 plate appearances over the past three seasons, he's posted an OPS+ of just 55, with seven walks compared to 58 strikeouts. His numbers against lefties aren't much better, as he has a batting average just above the Mendoza Line and a slugging percentage that barely crosses .300. Yikes.

Of course, he's been torrid as of late in Tacoma, with a .314/.371/.551 slash line this season, and he can't be much worse than Dae-Ho. The lovable Korean first baseman has been far from lovable at the plate, with a .109 average and just three extra-base hits since the All-Star Break. For those of you who like Fangraphs' statistics more than Baseball-Reference's, that's a wRC+ of...nine. Not 109. Not 99. Nine.

So perhaps this will work. Perhaps Romero can figure it out. Just know that I'm not optimistic.

(Oh, and welcome back, Steve Cishek. You have a great Twitter presence and I think you're a great reliever when not closing out games.)

***

A couple brief news items for your Friday evening perusal:

• The Astros decided it was time to move on from Carlos Gomez, and he's officially being released. Any team could claim him in the next 48 hours, and there's certainly a possibility the M's will pounce. But given the fact that Norichika Aoki has actually hit pretty well since being recalled from Tacoma (.316/.350/.421, though with a slightly-inflated .329 BABIP), and the fact that Gomez will be a free agent at the end of the season, I'd be surprised if the Mariners end up with the Houston center fielder.
• Yesterday's MLB owners meetings had some significance within Seattle...

Mariners finalize ownership transfer to group led by John Stanton

Mariners finalize ownership transfer https://t.co/bM7uDJQPI3

— Ryan Divish (@RyanDivish) August 19, 2016

Of course, Stanton & Co. were already part-owners, and we've known about this for months, but it's still pretty exciting to have the transfer complete.

But before we get to the lineups, a few words about the Brewers' starting pitcher, Brent Suter, who is making his major-league debut tonight.

• Suter is the first southpaw to start a game for the Brewers since Tom Gorzelanny on August 28, 2013. That's a crazy long time! And the Brewers haven't had a lefty regularly part of their rotation since Randy Wolf in 2012. I can't imagine many teams have had longer streaks than that.
• Suter has great control, walking just 1.1 batters per nine innings in 23 appearances in AAA this year. He makes up for it by allowing a pretty decent number of hits, however, which is bad for him but good for the M's.
• Finally, Suter went to a very bad school in Massachusetts. I am incredibly and unapologetically biased, but right now Brent Suter is leading a baseball team against my favorite team, representing my school's biggest rival, and my baseball team actually wants to win because it is somehow competing for a playoff spot. There is probably nobody in the world I dislike more than Brent Suter. Sorry, Brent.

Game info:

Game Time: 7:05 PM

TV: ROOTNW

Radio: 710 ESPN

#goms #keepfighting