By Anthony
Well this turn through the Amigos was slightly better. Not really in wins and losses but at least in peripherals and lack of Kevin Millwood. Noesi did a nice job in the wilds of Petco and I learned I should watch an Erasmo Ramirez start at some point. In my defense, I was still on vacation and apparently MLB TV is blacked out in Hawaii so I was once again Mariner-less. Also, Hisashi Iwakuma showed up and was pretty decent. Then Yoenis Cespedes decided he didn’t care Iwakuma came all the way from the afterlife to pitch against him. Once again, I will point out that the Mariner offense is atrocious, like rotten eggs marinated in garbage atrocious. WAHHHH!!! I want a team that can hit. To the Amigos….
Hector Noesi
Well it seems like Hector was finally able to tell the difference between an 0-2 and 2-0 count. I’m happy to see that kind of progress. He was going against the Padres offense, who are supposedly worse than us but I don’t see how that’s possible. Anyway, Hector went 6 innings, gave up 2 runs, struck out 6 and walked 3. I don’t mean to point out the obvious here, but Hector seems to be able to dominate bad teams and sucks against good teams. This is really logical, but at least we can see that he has the stuff to beat some teams, just not most teams. Oh well, I guess it could be worse. Noesi threw a bunch of breaking balls. Like 24 sliders and 15 curves and got a bunch of whiffs. That is good news goldfish for Hector. He also was pretty inconsistent with his changeup, but with his improvement on his breaking pitches, it didn’t matter much. You get an A- since you got two hits.
Erasmo Ramirez
Ummm… ok, raise your hand if you saw this coming. Patrick I know you didn’t so I’ll ignore your hand (Editor's note: my hand is still up). Alright, I don’t feel too bad about messing this one up. I was flying all day and didn’t even see the gamecast or anything about the game. Somehow Erasmo went 8 innings, got 10 K’s, gave up a solo home run and walked one. Ok, so I guess I have to try and figure out how he did that without having watched the game. Thank god for Pitch F/X. Based on what I see, Erasmo did one hell of a job with mixing up his pitches. I was unaware he could consistently hit 94 with his fastball which is awesome. His fastball was on point and that set up his change up excellently. He threw his changeup 28 times. The A’s whiffed on it 13 times. That is a percent of 46.4. That is ridiculous, especially for a guy who wasn’t known to have an excellent changeup. Go Erasmo! I will wait for Saturday to think of a nickname since you lose any tie to Blake Beavan when you get double digit K’s. Erasmo gets an A. Summer school worked for those two.
Kevin Millwood
Old Man Jenkins did not last very long. Looks like his groin is acting up again. Maybe there’s a storm coming or something. Anyway, for the 2 2/3 innings he gave up a homer and struck out 3. Pretty meh numbers from the old timer. What I really want to talk about is Hisashi iwakuma. After Wedge contacted the shaman to summon the spirit of HIsashi to the mound, I pretty much lost hope. The A’s aren’t very good but I felt like Iwakuma would not be very effective. Once again I was wrong. Besides a bad pitch to Cespedes, Iwakuma was very good. I know he doesn’t pitch much but I think we have reached the point where he should get a start. It’s not like he would be taking away a start from an all-star. Let Millwood take a start or two off and let Hisashi show us something. We are paying him enough and its not like one or two games will cost us the season at this point. #FreeIwakuma? Millwood gets an Incomplete, and this time it is kind of justified. Huzzah!
The Word
Cursed
I was tempted to tip my cap to the person controlling Guti’s voodoo doll, but then Felix did his thing to recapture his crown and so he will be getting a tip of the cap. But seriously, what is wrong with Franklin. He probably has the worst luck of any person in the league right now. He has a weird stomach bug one year, screws up his pectoral to start the year and now he is concussed. Stupid Adrian Gonzalez, learn to catch a ball! It’s not that hard. I can do it pretty regularly. Patrick can too. So Franklin, I apologize but I feel like you’re cursed. Good news is that the team shaman can probably do an exorcism or the team could put a priest on retainer.
Tip of My Cap
Felix Hernandez
So remember how after I analyzed Hector Noesi, he started getting better? Well after I analyzed Felix, he goes off. In his past two starts, Felix has gone 16 innings, allowed one run and struck out 23 guys. Yeah one was against the Padres. But the best one was against the Red Sox. A team that is very good, despite their record. I was in Tacoma for the game so I was unable to watch it. However, I did watch the gamecast on my dads phone (I was using my own phone for tweeting) and it was much more interesting than some parts of the Tacoma game. Felix is back. He seemed dominant, he put up some crazy numbers and even David Ortiz said he was unhittable. Crown the King! He’s back….
Wag of My Elbow
The offense. This one is obvious. Our offense sucks. You know what is depressing? Losing twice to the Oakland A’s. Know what is worse? Scoring 3 runs the entire series. I know this is supposed to be a young team that has its ups and downs. But this down is really low. Like nearly Mariana’s Trench low. So the next high better be pretty sweet. Seriously though, Smoak, Ackley and Ichiro all need to step it up. This is not looking like a team that scored 21 runs in a game only a few months ago. This offense looks pathetic. Come on guys; play like we all know you can.
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