The other one is fairly full and I haven't done one of these so I figured I'd start it off.

 

• First topic of conversation, the Home Run Derby. I don't really care about it but the AL's participants are Jason Bay, Evan Longoria and Brandon Inge right now. Zuh? Brandon Inge? What a strange choice. Methinks Ichiro declined.
• iPhone apps. Probably has been discussed but what are the best apps for the iPhone/iPod touch?
• Biggest pet peeve?
• Most unnecessary condiment?
• What country do you want to visit that is sort of off the radar?
• Best set of 5 years of the Simpsons? If you say the recent ones I will hurt you.
• Whatever else this de/evolves into

Home: Arizona, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, Tennessee

Away: Arizona, San Francisco, St. Louis, Minnesota, Green Bay, Dallas, Indianapolis, Houston

Not really sure how this shapes up difficulty wise but at least we'll be playing the worst divisions in the NFC. It's interesting that we play the same teams as last year based on our place in the division. Who would've thought at the beginning of the year that Seattle, Tampa Bay and Dallas would all be in 3rd place?

As I made recent note of, I recently purchased a Mariners road jersey, complete with the awesome 30th anniversary patch, since I really don't care about my jersey being 100% current. It came blank. I would like to personalize it.

Poll

Rowland-Smith?

34%

Yes

15 votes

20%

No

9 votes

44%

is fucking the man

19 votes

43 votes | Poll has closed

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Link

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Given the "baseball" we've seen played the last month, I really wonder how it will be possible to justify keeping McLaren around. He has no creativity, he obviously didn't try at all to motivate the players and he refuses to ever play the young players. My question to you: Will John McLaren be retained?

I'd like to say he wouldn't be, but I really don't know if the upper management would fire him.

Poll

Will John McLaren be retained?

46%

Yes

72 votes

53%

No

84 votes

156 votes | Poll has closed

I don't know if this deserves its own diary, but I have to vent. Against my better judgment, I was listening to KJR on my work to work at around 1:30. Someone (Dick Fain?) was in for Grosby today and was talking about Adam Jones. His basic argument for not calling Jones up was "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", when in fact "it" (meaning Turbo and the rangeless LF of London) is very broke. Then he goes on to say basically "it's not like Adam Jones is Ken Griffey Jr. or Alex Rodriguez. If he was Griffey he wouldn't be in AAA at 21 years old. It's not like Jones is a future hall of famer. Griffey was the number 1 prospect in baseball when he was called up. Before the season, Baseball Examiner rated Jones as the 15th ranked OUTFIELDER."

Judging whether someone should be called up based on their pre-season ranking from a random site is asinine. Why someone would make such a retarded argument when it's their job to talk about sport, I can't understand.

Link

I'm not sure what to think of this. It looks like it's better for the Brewers since they give two guys who haven't proven anything in the majors and a pitcher who is basically as good as the one they get back for a decent catcher and a decent reliever.

I wonder what we would've had to give for either Davis or Vargas.

http://www.minorleagueball.com/

Miller, unsurprisingly, went #1. Lincecum goes 3rd The M's got Brandon Morrow in the first.

Complete list of who was taken by the Mariners in the mock draft:

1. P Brandon Morrow, Cal
   
2. P Adam Ottavino, Northeastern
   
3. P Wade Kapteyn, Illinois HS
   
4. P Chad Lee, Barton County CC
   
5. OF Shawn Scobee, Nevada

I don't know a lot about these guys but it looks a lot like what we'll do, go for pitching depth early. I know that Morrow is supposed to be good, but I haven't heard of the other 4.