9/16: Open Game Thread

Today the Mariners play at the ungodly early hour of 10 AM, which is both stupid and annoying. I am writing the game thread the night before, because like hell am I waking up at eight-something on the day of to write the game thread about this stupid game that the Mariners will probably lose and half the fanbase will sleep through anyway. Therefore, I do not have lineups to issue you. All I can tell you for sure is who will be doing the pitching. That will be our own Erasmo Ramirez, who if you squint your eyes kind of looks like a decent middle-of-the-rotation pitcher, against bona fide ace Dallas Keuchel. I do not expect things to go great. However, a still-broken James Paxton and an uninspiring bullpen assortment of Ryan Garton, Yovani Gallardo, Dan Altavilla and Casey Lawrence managed to hold the Astros to just five runs, so who knows. NB: Altavilla was actually quite good, issuing no walks and three strikeouts over 1.1 innings of work. He was able to spot his slider well to K Bregman to end the sixth and stopper up the steady stream of runs constantly hissing out of Yovani Gallardo, and he worked a 1-2-3 inning in the seventh, striking out Altuve on three pitches (all sliders), getting Correa to fly out on two pitches, and then battled back out of a 2-1 count to K Marwin Gonzalez on the slider. His fastball sat around 96-97 and he showed great command of the slider, using that heavily and baffling the Astros batter. So, at this point in the season we want to see our young players performing well, and Altavilla certainly did.

Lineups!

I don’t have lineups. Remember, I’m writing this the night before. My guess is it will be the same lineup we saw yesterday but with Danny Valencia substituted for Yonder Alonso, long live the platoon.

As for the Astros lineup I think it will be:

CF - ugh why can’t you be a light-hitting leadoff hitter who never homers
3B - Smackable McSmackyface
2B - Pebble in your shoe that somehow wins a batting title
SS - Lab-created, but looks just like the real thing and performs even better
DH - The Washed Man
C - the one that isn’t Evan Gattis
RF - Grease Bro #3 (currently the only active Grease Bro)
1B - Tony Kemp maybe? Man, the Astros are righty-heavy.
LF - Derek Fisher?

The game is at 10:05 AM PST, which, RUDE, on all the usual bat-channels. I will probably fix this with an official line-up later. Or not.

If you missed it: last night the Modesto Nuts won the California League Championship. It was pretty awesome. Here’s a pretty good shot of Art Warren recording the final out, and one very epic dogpile: