Odd quotes in the press by Kevin Millwood saying it was his best pitched game of the season. He may have felt like that, but the numbers don’t lie. 6 innings pitched, 5 earned runs, 2 walks. Did get five strikeouts, as well as ten hits. That doesn’t seem like his best game of the year to me. Although, it didn’t seem as bad as the line went. It felt like he was pitching better, but you can’t argue with the results.
Mahay, Feldman, & CJ Wilson did pitch well out of the pen. Not sure which of these guys was the closer today, as Gagne was put back on the DL (shocker), and Wash said in the pre-game that Aki was unavailable this game. Our three relievers went three innings, giving up just two hits and no walks combined. Not many strikeouts, but an out is an out.
Cha Seung Baek, who seems to be a second coming of Bartolo Colon vs the Rangers, was actually not as a good against us as he normally was. Baek went 4.1, giving up 4ER on 10H and 2BB. However, their pen was better than ours was. Using just two guys (Morrow & Putz), the M’s pen gave up just one hit and two walks with no runs over 4.2 innings (longer than Baek went by a little). Morrow looked particularly impressive. We were probably lucky we got the four runs we did.
Seattle’s offense was led by Ichiro who just needed a home run for the cycle. He was what he was supposed to be. I wonder where he’ll be after this year; I can’t imagine him sticking with Seattle. Unfortunately, he’ll probably end up a Yankee playing with Matsui when Abreu’s contract isn’t picked up.
Our offense was topped off by a home run by Hank Blalock into the wedgie in right, driving in two. We also had a triple by Calananotto, a double by Cruz, and six other scattered singles. However, the only person with more than one hit was Sammy Sosa. His .500 performance for this game now RAISES his batting average over the Mendoza line to .206. Blech. Actually, our hits were quite evenly spread out – everyone had one except Gerald Laird, whose season batting average has gone under .100 (.098). Is there a “Mendoza line” nickname for .100 batting averages? Wash has said many times that “whatever you hit is a bonus”. I’m wondering if that’s not the way to take it. Tell him “Dude, you need to get some hits”.
Disheartening loss, as it’s one we should have won. :(