8/4/21: Open Game Thread

Lovers of breakfast baseball, rejoice, for the Mariners play not one, not two, but three 10 AM PT contests over the next five days. Here’s how the teams line up for today’s brunchball contest:

Born-and-bred Florida Man Logan Gilbert gets his first start in his home state in front of what will probably be a vocal segment of supporters in the library-silent Trop. The Rays are countering with a lefty in Josh Fleming, so the Mariners are going for their most righty-optimized lineup and...what’s this?

Despite assurances from Drayer and Divish that Torrens has been taking work with the infield since being recalled, this is an alarmingly big ask of the lefty-mashing Torrens. Gilbert is more of a flyball/strikeout pitcher (45% FB vs. 34% GB and a 28% K rate), so the load on the infield is a little less, and with the Rays running out a lineup of 7/9 lefty bats, the load on the left side of the infield should be even less. On the one hand, this instills no small degree of fear, and on the other hand, I like the bravado of saying “screw it, won the series already, let’s get weird.” I might have personally saved the debut of Torrens at the hot corner for one of the approximately 3,000 times they play the Rangers over the rest of the month, but appreciate the fact that for everything the 2021 Mariners are, “boring” definitely isn’t one of them.

UPDATE:

Well, rats. I had just talked myself into that.

Today’s game starts at 10:10 AM PT, and can be found on ROOT Sports NW (TV) or 710 ESPN (radio). It’s not the free game of the day on MLB TV, although if you’re out of area you can find it there, but the free game is one of interest to Mariners fans: it’s the Padres-Athletics game starting at 12:37 PT, so you could flip on over to that if you’re office-bound and unable to see the Mariners game because most offices are rudely not equipped with regional sports networks, despite my repeated letters.