Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Double, double, toil and trouble

The Mariners continued their losing streak today in Cleveland. I tuned in during the 5th inning when it looked like they were going to be no-hit, but then Johjima hit a double. Whew.

Strangely enough, there were eight doubles hit during this game -- four by the Mariners (Johjima's, two for Yuniesky Betancourt, and one for Petagine), and four for the Indians (Blake, Boone, Martinez, and Peralta).

Washburn seemed pretty efficient with his pitches at that point, too -- I think he had thrown about 40 in 4 innings, which was much better than The Other Day Eddie throwing 40 pitches in one inning. Unfortunately, right about when I tuned in was right about when he gave up back-to-back home runs to Jhonny Peralta and Travis Hafner. Whooosh.

By the way, we have two guys in the Mariners lineup right now who are batting lower than their listed body weights -- Beltre's .148 and Everett's .115 -- Ichiro only escapes it with his .176 because he's listed as weighing 170. I'm also not counting Borchard, listed as weighing 230 and currently batting .222 because he's had one-fourth the at-bats of the rest of the staff.

Contrariwise, Petagine would have to weigh half a ton to be batting less than his body weight. So far, Petagine's been in 3 games, had 3 plate appearances, 1 walk, 2 hits, 1 homer, 1 double, for a 1.000/1.000/3.000 line so far. You gotta love this guy. And more importantly, you gotta play this guy.

However, the 8 doubles in the Mariners game doesn't beat the 7 home runs in the Reds-Cubs game today, which the Reds won 9-2. The wind must have really been blowing out at Wrigley Field, as Michael Barrett hit one for the Cubs, and for the Reds Adam Dunn launched two homers, and there was one each for Edwin Encarnacion, Austin Kearns, Ken Griffey Jr... and Bronson Arroyo. If you're keeping track, that's two games Arroyo has been in this year, where he's made 5 plate appearances, walked once, and gotten two hits, both of which were home runs, for a .500/.600/2.000 line. Also, Griffey has only homered twice this year so far, and both times were during the same game as Arroyo.

Now, the funny part is, you may say: "Ah, that's no big deal, Arroyo's been hitting those home runs in hitters' parks." So, I'll give you that, the parks have been helping his hitting. But shouldn't the parks then be hindering his pitching, as well? The even more crazy thing to me is that he's started and won two games, and in 13.2 innings hasn't given up a walk yet, has struck out 11, has an ERA of 1.98... it's pretty impressive no matter how you look at it. I don't know how long he can make it last, but it is really entertaining to read about.

The Pirates actually decided to go ahead and win a game today with a homerun-pumped comeback. Four homers were launched by Pirates players, 2 by players who have the last name Wilson. I was debating finding a seat in PNC Park when I arrive in Pittsburgh this weekend, and refusing to leave until they won a game, but maybe I won't have to do that. As it is, this leaves only the Phillies and the Marlins in the category of "MLB Teams which have yet to win a second game in 2006".

No comments: