This has been bugging me a lot, and last night's game was a great example of it. Managers, TV broadcasters, sportswriters and basically everyone on the 'inside' of the game hate walks. They talk and talk about how when a pitcher gives up walks, that's what really kills them. They'll say that it was the walks that ruined an outing for a guy. Sure he gave up three two run homers and everything he threw got hit on a line somewhere, but it was that third inning walk that killed him. It's not that I disagree that walk are bad, but managers and members of the media seem fixated on the walk being the one thing a pitcher just can't give up.

I get that if a pitcher is walking guys he probably is missing his spots, but clearly a walk isn't as bad as a double or a homer and yet they always say that it was the walks that killed a guy.

On the flip side, it seems like managers don't really value when their hitters work a walk. The seem to see it as some sort of partial failure at the plate. The media is guilty of this as well. I almost get the impression that they would rather see a productive out than a walk in most circumstances. Maybe this is some kind of baseball code I missed after playing for 15 years.

If walks are the worst thing your pitcher can do, why aren't they among the best things your hitters can do? Where does this attitude come from?

I'm sure there are managers out there who don't feel this way but it seems like this attitude is very prevalent in Mariners baseball.

The Yankees and the Rangers have the biggest payroll differential in playoff history.  That's really not that shocking until you break the numbers down.  There is a $152 million GAP between the teams.  Here is an article that breaks it down and has some interesting little factoids  too:

http://gossipsports.com/?p=684

For instance, for the price of A-Rod you could pay all of the Rangers except the top 6.  Also Cliff Lee, C.J. Wilson, Colby Lewis and Tommy Hunter (all of Texas’ playoff starting rotation) combined make less than Mariano Rivera.

I may be defective, but I enjoy the fact that the Yankees are so unfair.  They're the evil empire and you can't have an epic hero without an epic villain.  Their advantages and history will make our eventual defeat of them in the ALCS that much sweeter (sometime in the year 2077 or so).

AFL baseball action on live TV, some kind of all-star game. Ackley is in Center ad Triunfel is at short.  So far Ackley is getting a lot of work in Center and he looks like he's got good range.  I'm not sure about his arm, he seems to be short arming the ball a bit.

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but I'm jonsing for some Mariners and this is as close as we're going to get for a while.

After watching the sheer beauty of Felix and Bedard pitching back to back in the first two games, I was overcome with a fairly peculiar thought.  I know it's not rational really, but I think there's a certain logic to this.

Unfortunately we know that the King is not infallible.  We also know that Bedard is not perfect either, so it would be too simple to say that they are going to win every game they pitch.  Even as early as the second game we saw how a good performance can turn in to a loss.

It's also true that no matter how powerful the vortex of suck that surrounds Silva and Washburn, the team isn't going to lose every time they take the mound.  So with some major simplifications, the following isn't too much of a stretch.

If we assume that for every game where Felix or Bedard pitch, and the team loses, there will be a game where Washburn or Silva pitch and the team wins.  Seems like a fair trade to me given that our top two starters and those clowns are pretty much on opposite sides of the awesome scale.

So if we had only those 4 guys pitching, we'd have a .500 season.  Enter Mr. Rowland-Smith.  Every time he takes the mound, he holds our season in his hands.  If the team goes .500 in his starts, the team goes .500 for the year.  For every win the team gets over .500 when he starts, that's a win over .500 period.

If he has 32 starts (160/5=32) all he has to do is get us to win, say, 20 of them.  That would put our overall record at 85 wins and, by all accounts, that should put us in contention for the post season in the AL West.

There you go.  Ryan Rowland-Smith is really the guy we need to root for.  Sure he's got a good blog and a MLB salary and he's 'that cute guy with the accent' according to my girlfriend, but he is the key to our season.

Go Ryan...dominate!  As you go, so do the M's!

I was scouring the web for rumors about Washburn finally leaving us, and what did I stumble upon?  This:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/forum/boards/viewtopic.asp?topicID=123273

"I want you to imagine Bloomy and clones of him Starting EVERY position but Pitching and Catcher with a legitimate bench and the same Pitching Staff"

Wow.  I'm trying really hard to imagine just how awful a team comprised of 8 Bloomquists and a catcher would look offensively, and I just can't do it.  He goes on to say such awesome things as:

"Take 8 of him at the plate and I believe he will gain us more steals over all, more walks overall, less SO's overall, can bunt better over all, certainly do pretty darn good in the field, and be a GAMER EVERY GAME.

I believe this a legitimate point. I just cannot name a player in our history or now that can be put in the same position to warrent MORE wins than the current squad."

and:

"The reason Bloomy has a better arm in CF is because he has MORE athletic abilities out there than Ichiro."

I don't know, you just have to read it.  I'm going to just assume that this guy is one of us, and that he's fucking hillarious because the alternative is just too disturbing to live with.

When you do read it, be sure that you read the comments because he goes on and on in there.