What a cool game! We lost, obviously, but it had a lot of the feel of that massive win last season against the A’s when we came back to win 17-16 or something like that.
The only huge negative to this game appeared to be Rick Helling, who looked totally lost out there. He didn’t have any control, his pitches were all over the place, and he just generally appeared like he had pitched yesterday. The Mariners jumped all over him, and forced him out in the fourth inning. Rick’s ERA is now 11.00, a positively disgusting ERA – this is something I would have expected out of the 5th starter, not the first. However, we did have some nice spots pitching wise – and I refer of course, to Pat Mahomes. Pat pitched 4 2/3 innings of scoreless relief. In fact, the only person he didn’t retire was the first batter he faced – everyone else he got out, which was awesome to see. When he was pulled, I was wondering aloud why, because he was cruising so well. Anyway, Venafro came in, pitched to one batter, and then was pulled for Zimmerman. Zim did his “thing” by giving up a home run ball, but not right away like usual. He waited until the 10th inning to do that, which cost us the game. Zim didn’t pitch all that bad, but his annoying tendency to give up home runs in pressure situations is really starting to bother me.
A big night offensively for Raffy. He scored a couple of runs, and drove in 5, including a massive 7th inning grand slam, which really put us back into the game. In the bottom of the 8th, we had a chance to take the lead after tying, but a play very reminiscent of Pete Rose happened – Ken Caminiti barreled into Seattle’s catcher at the plate, completely bowling him over. However, Tom Lampkin held on to the ball, and Ken was out.
After that, I just had one thing to say. Kaz Sasaki & Ichiro Suzuki. Blech. :)