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After dropping a probably-winnable game last night, the Mariners have put themselves behind the eight ball for the remainder of this series with Houston’s premium pitchers coming up. The Mariners have been beating up on a lot of subpar pitching so far this young season, but tonight they face their toughest test yet in Justin Verlander, who unless he’s been taking some Chris Sale pills should be his old dominant self. While the Astros were favored in every game of this series, the odds for tonight are the highest of the whole series, at an over 60-40 split.
Personally, I don’t have high expectations for this game. I’d like to see the offense put up credible at-bats against Verlander; they started off strong with Miley last night, but failed to really rack up the runs against him, and then looked overmatched against Brad Peacock. I’d like to see Félix hang in there as best he can against a powerful Astros lineup, and hopefully limit damage against the bottom half of the lineup. It’s going to be a very long night if Tyler White, Josh Reddick, and Jake Marisnick all have multi-hit games again.
Scratch that! Tyler White isn’t in the lineup tonight, as Alex Bregman is back. Great.
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Vogey gets back in the lineup tonight, while the Edwing is grounded.
Game info:
Game time: 6:05 PT
Available on: 710 ESPN, ROOTNW
Also, while I have you here, can we all agree that “take it back” is a stupid slogan? Take It Back is the name of a Christian boy band that opened for DC Talk in the 90s that sings thinly-veiled songs about waiting for marriage and you cannot convince me otherwise.