The Florida Marlins will visit the Emerald City for the first time ever for a meeting with the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners have been the biggest disappointment in the Bigs so far. Pre-season, progrnosticators everywhere were predicting the Mariners to challenge the LA Angels of Anaheim for the division. It's gone downhill since then. Seattle has a MLB low 24 wins, and just today, the M's announced they will part ways with General Manager Bill Bavasi. Clearly, if there is ever a time to get a winning streak going, it's on a trip to Seattle.
The Marlins will also get a favorable pitching schedule against the Mariners. 2 of the 3 Seattle pitchers that Florida will face combine for fewer wins then the first 2 Fish hurlers have by themselves. Carlos Silva and knuckleballer R.A. Dickey have a combined record of 4-9. And although the Marlins will avoid the "what-was-supposed-to-be-key-offseason-acquisition" Erik Bedard, they will have to face Mariners' ace Felix Hernandez (5-5) in game 2, and they will have to work hard to win that one. King Felix has won his last 3 starts, averaging 7.0 innings, 4 hits, and 6 strikeouts while doing so. Hernandez has been a bright spot on an unfortunatly dark season.
Unfortunatly for Felix, (and the rest of the Mariner pitching staff) the M's rank dead last in runs scored, and have a team batting average of .249. More than a few quality starts have been lost by a massive lack of run support. In fact, tonight's starting lineup for the Mariners features exactly ZERO players currently batting over .300. They have more players under .200 then over .300. Look for the Marlins team ERA to get a boost.
On paper, it looks like the only thing that might hamper the Marlins this week is the 10:10 EST start time for these games. So if you get to sleep in this week, or are lucky enough to have a job or class schedule that allows you to stay up past midnight, be sure to check out the Marlins - Mariners first ever showdown. It looks like it should be a good time for the Marlins to get back to their winning ways.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Fish Head to the Great Northwest
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I agree that this is a series we definitely should be able to take. We out-pitch them and out-hit them, so there really is no reason for the Fish to lose more than, if even, 1 game this series. Btw, I'm pretty sure that we have already played them 1 series, I'm thinking '05 or '06...
The Marlins have playes the Mariners before, back in 2005, but only at home, not in Seattle. The Mariners won two of the three matchups during that series June 7-9, 2005.
Felix and Dickey back-to-back worry me.
I second Warman's apprehensions. Something tells me the Marlins are not a knuckleball-hitting team (based on past performances against *cough (Jamie Moyer) soft-throwing pitchers.
You have to like what we're seeing from the Marlins rotation though.
Post a Comment