Introduction that tactfully avoids mentioning last night's game.
Mariners Hitting
Every year, some random minor-league free agent type has a freaky-good year. This year, the answer was Russell Branyan. Russell Branyan. He's hitting .308/.389/.623, though I'm going to assume that's coming with a BABIP of .999. Other than that, the Mariners' lineup kind of resembles the Giants' lineup. I had no idea, but it kind of makes sense. One black hole of suck would consume us all, but two equidistant black holes of suck kind of stabilizes things.
Fat Ichiro hasn't been as good as Real Ichiro this year, but it's closer than you might think. Still, it's a safe bet that Real Ichiro is going to get eight hits this weekend, possibly in one inning against Brian Wilson.
And if you thought Adrian Beltre was the answer, please note that he his EqA is lower than Travis Ishikawa's this year. Wow.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go daydream about how awesome it would be to have Russell Freaking Branyan in our lineup.
Mariners Pitching
While some of us are laughing about the Mariners' 2006 first-round pick -- Guy Who Is Not Tim Lincecum, a fantastic talent having a rough start to the year -- the Giants' 2003 first-round pick is going to sneak up and make the Giants look like idiots. That stings, even if it's Aardsma's third team since the Giants. Something that stings even more: LaTroy Hawkins is having a better season than Brian Wilson.
Carlos Silva might be the worst pitcher in baseball right now. Thank goodness the Giants don't have to face him, as it's a given that he'd throw six or seven strong innings. And then the Mariners fans would think, gee, maybe he figured something out, which would just end up disappointing them. Erik Bedard and Felix Hernandez are a pretty sweet tandem -- mercifully, we miss Bedard in the series, though we should probably tack on a couple of strikeouts to Fred Lewis's total just to be safe.
If you want to save nine hours of your life, check out the new series preview feature:
What Will Happen This Weekend:
Game 1: Randy Johnson pitches well enough to win, and the Giants lead off each of the first seven inning with a double against Jason Vargas. They'll score one of the runners on two consecutive ground balls that are hit too weakly for the Mariners to make a play, but lose the game 2-1.
Game 2: Matt Cain pitches well enough to win, and the Giants get eight hits off Jarrod Washburn. Unfortunately, they'll hit into two double plays each inning, except for the eighth inning, in which they hit into three. The Giants lose 2-1.
Game 3: Felix Hernandez pitches a perfect game. He also reverses the rotation of the Earth and takes away some of the runners from previous games. Barry Zito pitches well enough to win. The Giants lose 2-1, with the Red Cross airlifting in a run that was donated by the Rangers. The perfect game will still count, though.
Hmm. Rereading this, it's coming off more optimistic than I intended. I certainly feel more pessimistic than this. Apologies for the Pollyanna post.
And don't forget to visit Lookout Landing. They're like us, but to an uncomfortable degree, so I don't trust them. They don't like LOLcats, though, so there are some significant differences. What's that? An excuse to post this again? Okay.
