Last year, I called Kevin and Go To Man on ESPN and compared our new team members to puppies. I had in mind the large breed puppies who spend their first few months growing into their big paws and learning to manage their growing bodies. They are typically noisy, boisterous, chewy and quick to repent with big brown eyes when they find they have strayed from what we want them to do or expect of them. They wobble when they run and they fall down a lot, but they are so happy and so full of love that your heart goes out to them in spite of their puppy short-comings.
Sadly, it quickly became evident that neither of the guys knew anything about dogs! The only puppies they could imagine were toy breeds with ribbons in their hair and yappy little faces. It was NOT the image I had wanted to impart! I won't even go into the ridiculous few minutes they spent in identifying what breeds the various players might be.
My original intent had been to get them to lay off the constant criticism of the kids and have them spend more time enjoying the fun they bring to the games now. I think at least GoTo has reached that point this year, but the rest of the fan base has not.
At first, I thought Seattle was condemned to criticism and complaints on all fronts when I found the same whining or bitching about the players and their poor quality of play in both the baseball and football fan forums. But as I got online to follow Matty and Jake in Tennessee, I found that there are die-hards there, as well. I find them tripping over each other as the M's are going through these few losing games.
Today I did some searching out batting averages because the main source of fandom's pain appears to be because Wedge is allowing the guys to remain in the batting order who are struggling at the plate. So far, we have only Ichiro and Kyle Seager hitting over 300. Both Liddi and Montero are in the 290s so I count them as almost 300s, as well. The majority of them (6) are in the 200s. Not good. But the ones who are strugging in almost a death throe are Figgie (.198), Smoak (.184), and poor Brendan Ryan at .125. In his press conference, Wedge said that he was a patient man and he wanted to give them a good chance, but they had to break out of it soon to justify getting playing time.
A poster whose ID is *domeking2* (and who must be a pretty good dad because he had left his son watching the ballgame while he was getting dinner) posted this today. I think it is really cute.
"I have another heartwarming family story to tell. Gather round. So I left my oldest son in charge of watching the game while I made dinner. Then I hear this awful noise coming from the TV room. I rush in and say, "Hey! What was that terrible noise? Sounded like a loud sucking noise." My son says calmly, "Oh, dad, that was Chone Figgins' average going below .200." Kids nowadays."
Isn't that cute? Clever kid! Hope he will post some positive things when he gets his own account.
We have a good hitting coach, and on the days that the guys are not in the line-up, they are working in the cage during their days. Smoaky has been working at shortening his stride and he is getting good wood on his hits. He has had 2 long ones that were caught on the warning track. They were mere feet from sailing over the fence.
I think the most painful things were 2 plays that I think ended up being called errors. A pop-up in today's game hit one of the high wires in the support of the roof of the domed stadium. It was deflected. Both Alex Liddi and Dustin Ackley were making an attempt to catch it. Alex was backing up and lost sight of the ball. So did Dustin. Dustin was calling out to Alex, asking him if he had it. Alex misunderstood and thought that Dustin wanted to catch it. As a result, it fell on the ground. Much bitter comment from their "fans." (gag me!)
Then Michael Saunders, one of the hardest working kids on the club who spent his entire off-season shortening his stride and improving his hitting, had a home run ball deflect off of his glove. He jumped for it, failed to catch it, and ended up falling to the ground on his back as the dwxyz ball sailed over the fence with the eventually winning run. He later said he can't tell what actually happened--just that he thought he had the ball.
As far as I'm concerned, I am going to focus on the fact that Kyle Seager, who hit his first major league home run as a rookie last year here in Tampa Bay, hit TWO MORE today. In fact, he was responsible for batting in ALL of our runs for today. Before this game, we had gone THIRTY at-bats with men in scoring position and had failed to get a single hit. THAT was bad. I prefer to focus on the fact that we scored the first 3 runs and we had 2 home runs in the game. This is definitely an improvement over last year.
I am worn out so I am not going to edit this as I should. At 2:35 a.m. I am ready to go lights out for tonight. The M's play at 9:30 in the morning so I need to get to sleep! I hope they can win tomorrow!
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