8/4/18: Open Game Thread

Despite many of our best wishes (and probably some of theirs too), the Seattle Mariners will play a baseball game tonight. Should they win, it will validate, if only for one night, the idea that this team is capable of turning things around. One convincing win, silencing the Canadian invasion, could be a brief cure-all for the current state of exhaustion surrounding the Mariners’ players and fans.

Luckily, James Paxton is tasked with shutting down a furiously-competent Blue Jays lineup. Last time Pax toed the rubber against Toronto he threw quite literally one of the best games in franchise history. It was a high point of the Mariners’ season and maybe the best Canadian-on-Canadian crime ever committed. Duplicating even 75% of that effort tonight should put his team in good position to win.

The word “should” does some heavy lifting for that sentence, as it often does. The Mariners should be better than this, while the team should also regress to better form in accordance with Oakland cooling off. The organization should make Blue Jays games more enjoyable and affordable for Mariner fans, and should relieve Kevin Mather of his duties as President and CEO. They should win tonight, as their best pitcher faces a bad team. It’s now a matter of turning the unknown of several “shoulds” into the absolutes of “dids”.

Lineups

First Pitch: 7:10 p.m. PT

TV: ROOT SPORTS NW, mlb.TV for out-of-market viewers

Radio: 710 ESPN, MLB At-Bat app