Road Trip Reflections

By Patrick

Condor up!

The Mariners have woken up offensively. In a nine game road trip against three of the best teams in the American League, the M's went 5-4, scoring 7.3 runs per game. They scored three runs a game last season. I'll take the first of those numbers. Remarkably, the starting pitching during this trip pretty much tanked. Of the five games started by Mariner pitching, only three were won by starters, and Jason Vargas won two. Blake Beavan pitched terribly and got lucky to win the 21-run game. Yeah, the Mariners scored 21 runs in a game, not a week. Yikes. Go team. Anyway, here are five things that became clear over this past week and a half about the squad.

Justin Smoak is just fine: Sure, he didn't have a great series in Anaheim, but this observation extends beyond the past week. Justin Smoak was hitting .170 just a few short weeks ago, and now he's up to .229. The Goose Creek Crusher hit three homers in the six games last week, and drove in eight runs, scoring seven. He took a downward turn in Anaheim, with a 1-for-12 series, but qualitatively, he's just looked better and more confident at the plate. He's hitting the ball harder and tapping fewer and fewer ground balls to second base. His defense even shined over the weekend in Chicago. Think about how you thought of Justin Smoak at .170. Something like, "he's a bust" or "what a waste." At best, you said "he better pick it up soon." At .240, it's more like "we'll take that with his power" or "that'll do." At worst, it's "for now, that's fine, but he needs hit 20 points higher." Again, Justin is fine, and should hold down the starting job for the rest of 2012.

Michael Saunders was worth the wait: Raise your hand if you had Michael Saunders in the highest batting average on the team on June 7 pool. Raise your hand if you made that pool with such a random date. Probably no one in either camp. A 19-for-38 (.500) road trip did worlds of good for Saunders and the Mariners, as he raised his average to .277, up by 53 points during the nine game stretch. He had five three hit games out of the nine. Five! That's incredible! And he did most of it from the eight spot in the order. Time to move up and take Ichiro's spot it seems. I don't know, that's just my opinion. And the rest of Mariner nation's as well.

Tom Wilhelmsen is a closer: Sure Saunders and Smoak had great road trips, but Tom Wilhelmsen proved himself more than anyone. Two saves and a win in which he had to throw three shutout innings to buy enough time for the bats to wake up again. Everyone will point to Wilhelmsen's deadly out pitch, his sick 12-6 hammer curve, as the reason for his success, but I actually think his fastball has been more valuable for him. His location with his heater has powered him through exceptional hitters of late. His best spot for it seems to be about six inches off the ground in an 0-1 count, where he can get even Albert Pujols to chase. He won't relinquish his closer role for a while, and hopefully not for the rest of 2012, unless Brandon League gets it back so he can get traded. I'd be fine with that. Gotta love the Bartender though.

The rotation needs work: The Mariners can genuinely feel good about one pitcher in the rotation right now, and that's Jason Vargas, their trade chip. So that's cause for concern. Felix might be headed for the DL, but even if he isn't, something's wrong. His velocity is way down, we all know that, but recently, people have been hitting him and making him look decidedly un-Felix-like. His only start on the road trip ended in defeat, and he worked just five innings, surrendering four runs on three homers. He had a three batter stretch where he allowed a two run shot to Gordon Beckham, got taken yard by Adam Dunn, and then issued a four pitch frustration walk to Paul Konerko. I've never seen him do that. He got scratched from his start yesterday for Hector Noesi, who didn't fare much better, and looks like he needs Tacoma fast. Kevin Millwood and Blake Beavan pitched like exaggerated versions of themselves on the road trip. Millwood was brutally inefficient and logged nine innings in two starts even though he only allowed five runs. Beavan threw way too many strikes and got knocked around in Texas and Anaheim. Erasmo Ramirez is almost ready in AAA, and Danny Hultzen might shoot up to the bigs by July, so changes appear imminent for the Amigos.

The Mariners may have turned the corner: In two months, heck in two years, Mariner fans may look back at this trip and say "that was when Jack Z's plan started working." Because really, this kind of road trip is exactly what the Mariners are looking to do in the future. Namely, hit the ball hard and score a ton of runs. Sure, the pitching wasn't great and they still had a couple of one and two run games mixed in, but the pop that they showed on this road trip just doesn't show up and vanish into flukedom. What Smoak, Saunders, Seager, Montero, Ackley, and even Ichiro did in these nine games exists somewhere inside of them, and they need to keep channelling it for the M's to win. Regardless of how we look at this trip in two years, for right now, it was pretty damn awesome. Go M's.