Jingoism and the WBC

Woalter and new acquaintance in Miami

This year's World Baseball Classic is not proceeding to my liking. Mostly because what I still maintain is the best baseball team on planet Earth, Team Japan, was bounced out in the quarterfinals the other night.

It wasn't a great game—the other four Japan played were better, or at least more entertaining, not just because Japan won them but because they were more evocative of the kind of well-balanced, multifaceted baseball favored in Japan. The quarterfinal against Venezuela turned out to be more USA/Latin America style ball, i.e. home-run dependent. 13 runs scored in the game, ten of them on homers. And one of them on a mind-blowing error by Japan pitcher Atsuki Taneichi (of the Chiba Marines in his day job), which really did Japan in even though the score remained relatively close.

Anyway, Japan's exit from the tournament would, you might expect, also end my interest in it; usually, you'd be right, but there are two mitigating circumstances: One, my young friend Woalter, the softball player I took to my last regular season game of the year, is from Venezuela and is attending the Miami games of the WBC. So he was in the stands, cheering on his guys, when I texted him to say, "your guys beat my guys and I am holding you personally responsible." Woalter replied by sending me video of the final play, Shohei Ohtani popping out to shallow right-center field, he'd taken on his phone. Sigh. Well, if I have to be disappointed, at least he is getting his money's worth down there. He's clearly having a blast, as evidenced by the photos he sent.

A lone Venezuelan surrounded by a pack of Dominicans and having a blast

Meanwhile, there's mitigating circumstance number two: Team USA, who will play for the title tomorrow against either Venezuela or "Italy." The members of Team USA are acting like assholes. On purpose. You've got pitcher Paul Skenes entirely missing the point and declaring, "We’re America. We’ve got to assert our dominance over everybody else." You've got team manager Mark DeRosa enforcing a sort of Bob Gibson-esque "no fraternizing" rule among the players, leading to guys who are teammates during the season snubbing each other on the field in the WBC. Seattle Mariner Cal Raleigh has been the most visible doing this because he's a catcher and everyone who comes to bat has a chance to greet him, so we saw his Mariner teammates Randy Arozarena and Josh Naylor both offer him a warm greeting only to be given the cold shoulder out of what appeared to be misplaced macho bullshit (which is indeed what it turned out to be, just teamwide rather than Raleigh-specific). You've got right-wing military asshats being brought into the clubhouse to give motivational pep talks. You've got a team of guys behaving like jingoistic ugly Americans you'd hate to cross paths with on a foreign vacation, behavior that embarrasses themselves and offends their peers, in a sporting tournament that is designed to promote and share the game of baseball with the international community. DeRosa and Team USA appear to be taking cues from our current despotic regime in their manner and attitude, and I find myself rooting hard for Venezuela to kick their asses tomorrow evening.

Here's how our pal Craig Calcaterra explained this yesterday:

While the other countries in the World Baseball Classic are celebrating their culture, engaging happily with their opponents, and appear to be having a wonderful and even joyous time, Mark De Rosa's squad has leaned into jingoism, militarism, and redass chumpfuckery. I suppose that's inevitable given that American culture and identity has increasingly become little more than an economy backed by a military. But Jesus, guys, you could do a hell of a lot better.

As I type this, though, Venezuela is losing 2-1 to "Italy" in their semifinal game. They've got three innings to come back and win it. Otherwise, the championship game will be Team USA vs. a Team Italy that is 90% American. "Italy" even getting this far is a tremendous upset, but since there are only three Italians on the roster it would be far less satisfying for them to take on Team USA tomorrow.

Plus, it would make Woalter sad. And we don't want that.

Tagged Baseball, WBC, Umping, Politics, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on March 16, 2026 at 7:05PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Ump tales, WBC action, and a few links

I've been feeling pretty good lately—the Black Hole has been keeping its distance and there's been little to no slow-witted gauzy-brain to impede my thinking. So when I found myself making mistakes during last night's umpire shift I had nothing to blame it on; I was somehow off my game in some other way.

Nothing was seriously bad, the games were not close and no one took issue with me in any major way. But, being the perfectionist I am, I noted the mistakes even if no one else did (or no one else said anything, anyway).

The most egregious thing is one I don't even know if I got wrong: for the second time in the same game, a specific player slid into a close play at third base in a forceout situation. He beat the fielder to the bag, just as he did the first time, in a comical slide, just as he did the first time. But this second instance had people objecting to my call, and since the fielder did in fact have the ball ahead of the runner making it to third, it was more than conceivable that a tag had been made at an angle I couldn't see. So, I did what you're really not supposed to do as an umpire, and polled the players that were involved and/or had a better view; no one was willing to state firmly that they were right and I was wrong, but the runner himself was so wishy washy that I took it as a tell, he knew he'd been tagged. So I overturned myself and called him out. No objections. But I have no idea what the right call would have been. He was definitely not forced, but might have been tagged, and if we'd had a second ump it might have been a sure thing. Alas.

Also, on two occasions a batter hit a ball down the left field line that skirted the third-base bag and I called them both fair. In almost immediate retrospect, I knew that they weer actually foul, but too late to change the call. In these cases, though, I do have an excuse: the turf at Bobby Morris Field has been slowly and steadily migrating north over the years, which is most notable when placing the bases in their postholes because every now and then I have to take a knife and cut the turf a bit more to extend the hole in the turf for the base peg, which no longer lines up with the hole below the turf. Those holes began as squares, but are now rectangles of around five or six inches long. This also means that the third base/left field foul line, which is supposed to overlap the edge of third base, is several inches to the outside of third base. This is wrong. But in the split-second I have to make a fair/foul call as a ball skitters past the bag, my brain noted the line and said fair when it should have noted the base and said foul. Eh, at least in those cases I can shrug it off.

There were a few ball/strike calls I messed up too, which happens here and there, but when I called ball four on one batter on a pitch that did nick the top of the strike zone, it is not unreasonable for that batter to assume that will be the call the next time she gets that pitch. In her next at-bat, the same pitch came in and I called a strike on a 3-1 count, costing her a walk. It was correct, but she was annoyed at the inconsistency (and as I had just given Todd Tichenor crap for being all over the place with his zone in the WBC game the other night I sympathized). She grounded out to end the inning.

Anyway, for the most part we all had a good time despite the frigid temps and sporadic rain and I didn't make anyone too mad. Most of the players in the three games are league vets and knew me well enough to give me a pass. Or they didn't notice or care. (Like I said, the games weren't close.)

After the shift, I got home around midnight and then stayed up all night to watch the final World Baseball Classic game from Tokyo, which saw the Czech team shut out Team Japan—for my money the most well-balanced, fundamentally-sound, top-quality team on planet Earth—for seven innings before Japan realized, hey, we're the best team on planet Earth! and opened up some whoop-ass on the poor Czech relief pitchers. A nine-spot in the 8th and a 9-0 final score. But for those first seven innings it was really something; these Czech players are pros in their home country, but mostly on the order of what we'd think of as semi-pros; the starting pitcher, who was awesome in a Jamie Moyer slow-curves and changeups kind of way, earns his living as an electrician. They take vacation time from their jobs to do these tournaments. There is one (maybe two?) player on the team that is in American minor-league ball, but generally these guys play in a low-tier European pro league that pays next to nothing and keep day jobs. Their manager is a neurosurgeon. It's impressive as hell that they shut the Japanese out for seven frames. All four of Japan's games thus far in the WBC have been tremendous: the whomping and near no-hitting of Taiwan, the tightly contested game against Korea, the pitcher's duel with Australia, and then this one against Czechia. 4-0, undefeated going into the next round in Miami.

Some observations from these four Tokyo games relevant to the coming season: White Sox fans will be happy on balance with their new slugger, Munetaka Murakami, but he's streaky. Don't be surprised if he slumps here and there. Also, if the Sox are planning to use him at first base instead of third, don't expect any gold gloves. He's fine, but I've noticed a few times he's poorly positioned for a throw and wasn't reading the ball off the bat as well. But the grand slam last night was pretty. Meanwhile, Blue Jay fans will be ecstatic at the play of their new third-sacker, Kazuma Okamoto. Okamoto has gold gloves at both first and third, showed impressive range at the hot corner, and is going to draw lots of walks. Red Sox fans will probably continue to suffer at the underuse of Masataka Yoshida, who is a lot better than the Boston people think he is.

Meanwhile, Felon47’s regime of bigotry and authoritarianism has, for the moment, cost Cincinnati Reds (and former Seattle Mariners) third baseman Eugenio Suárez his chance at being a US citizen. Geno's citizenship application was cancelled even though the processing for it had already been scheduled for later this year. Why? "Because of the Venezuela thing," Suárez said, which is a slightly more polite way to say, "because I am a Latino guy and the people running this country are racist assholes." Most ballplayers don't pay much attention to politics, they don't understand how different things are today from two years ago or why, and Major League Baseball, in the person of Commissioner Idiot, is not doing anything substantive to help the scores of foreign players in the major and minor leagues. Suárez would like to be of help to his fellow would-be immigrants and other Latino players, as a source of information if nothing else. "[It's a] good platform for us as baseball players," said Suárez, "to be able to help people know [what's going on]. We need help with that." Don't expect any help from the Commissioner. Here's what he had to say when asked about Suárez's citizenship and the legitimate fear of arrest and worse from Felon47’s DHS brownshirts: “Look, obviously I worry about anything that could be disruptive to the very best players in the world being out on the field. But the prospect of that disruption, given that our players all had visas, it’s speculation at this point.” Is it really? Let me quote our pal Craig Calcaterra on this subject: "I don't know what makes anyone think that a ballplayer, even one carrying their visa, is immune from Trumpist brutality. ... How anyone could read the news over the past two or three months and think that the brutalization of Latin Americans in this country is the stuff of 'speculation' or that if someone has their paperwork in order they're all safe [is beyond me], but that's Rob Manfred for ya."

Stepping away from the diamonds to close this post out, here are some tidbits worth a link or a note:

• Paul Waldman wrote about the current White House Cabinet as "the worst in history" and at one point refers to them as "a kind of Bizarro World 1927 Yankees," thus combining three of my nerd spheres—baseball, politics, and comics—into one statement.
• Meanwhile, Dan Froomkin takes mainstream journalists to task for failing to adequately sound the alarm about Felon47 being loony-tunes and demented when it comes to his unconscionable and incoherent war on Iran. Addressing the press at large, he asks, "Doesn’t the fact that he is bombing the hell out of a country for no particular reason, endangering the region, and destabilizing the world make it incumbent upon you to be blunt about the problem, rather than dancing around it? Isn’t it time for clarity instead of euphemism? Isn’t it time to put aside your aloofness, your concerns about appearing partisan, and your fears of offending your corporate masters? Isn’t it time to tell the whole truth, in the best interests of the country and the world?" He goes on to detail what's not being reported, then continues: "When [an] obsessive pursuit of impartiality leads them to deny or obscure the objective truth, it’s gone too far. And the objective truth is that Trump is deranged. Choosing not to make that explicit doesn’t win over new readers. It doesn’t change MAGA minds. The people who think Trump is rational get their news elsewhere. It’s bad journalism. It normalizes something that is very alarming. And it pisses off their own readers."
• Jeff Tiedrich makes the observation that Felon47 accidentally told the truth in response to a reporter's question regarding the girls' school the US hit with a Tomohawk missile and the 160+ people killed in the strike:
  
  Reporter: “You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war. But you’re the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn’t say that, when he was asked, standing over your shoulder, on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this?"
  Felon47: “Because I just don’t know enough about it. I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation."
  Tiedrich: “'I’m insisting something is true even though I don’t know enough about it' just might be the most honest thing Donny’s ever said, even if he’s far too demented to realize that’s what he’s saying.”

That's all for now. I'm going to fix myself some dinner and watch some TV. New episode of Paradise is out.

Tagged Umping, WBC, Baseball, Politics, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Posted on March 10, 2026 at 11:06PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

New sketch, the WBC, SFA, and cabinet chaos

Masataka Yoshida homers against Korea, demonstrating that the Red Sox have criminally underused him the last two years

A few disparate things today...

• ITEM: I've Just Seen a Face! The sketch I was working on the other day is now finished and can be seen in the sketchbook.
• ITEM: Dig It! Kristi Noem got taken to the metaphorical gravel pit! May she be but the first of many to fall. Meanwhile, the nominee to replace her is quite possibly the dumbest person in either house of Congress.
• ITEM: I'm Only Sleeping! This week saw the start of the 2026 World Baseball Classic, which opened with games held in Puerto Rico, Miami, Houston, and Tokyo. Naturally, the ones I'm most interested in are being played in Tokyo and they start at 2:00am PST. So I've been even more nocturnal than usual, staying up to watch Team Japan live rather than wait and watch a recording of the game during normal waking hours like a sane person would do. And they've been really fun games, too! In the opener, Japan clobbered Taiwan in a fashion that was reminiscent of some softball games I've both played in and umpired in recent years: the 13-0 drubbing ended early by WBC mercy rule, and one 6th-inning single is all that kept Taiwan from being no-hit by the loaded Japanese squad. Last night/this morning was more of a fair fight, with the Koreans nearly matching Japan play-for-play until the home 7th, when Korea brought in Young Kyu Kim (one of their many Kims) to pitch with one on and two out and poor Kim couldn't find the strike zone. Which, to be fair, was rather variable. The home plate ump in that game—Todd Tichenor, who is generally well regarded as an MLB ump—was truly bad, not remotely consistent with high strikes, low strikes, edge strikes, pretty much nothing was certain unless it was down the middle. Even so, Kim was wild and walked Kensuke Kondoh and Seya Suzuki after intentionally walking Shohei Ohtani, forcing in the go-ahead run, then Masataka Yoshida delivered a 2-RBI hit to put Japan up by three. That was enough for closer Taisei Ota to seal the deal in the 9th with help from Ukyo Shuto, just into the game in center field after pinch-running in the home 8th, who made a leaping catch against the wall for the second out.
• ITEM: She Came in Through the Bathroom Window! Once again, the eligibility rules in the WBC are a little too lax for my taste, though I get the rationale. Players can be on a nation-team's roster not only if they're citizens or permanent residents of the country, but if one or both of their parents are/were citizens or were born in the country or if they would be granted citizenship if desired under the country's laws. That last one is mostly for Team Israel, basically if you're Jewish you can play for the land of King David. So we have, for example, three Americans playing for Korea (named Dunning, O'Brien, and Whitcomb) who have never lived in Korea but have Korean-born moms; a Great Britain team with only two British players; a Team Italy with only three Italians; 13 Americans playing for Mexico; and an entirely American Israeli team. The Latin American teams have no trouble filling out their squads (you'd think Mexico would be fine under stricter rules too), of course Japan is a baseball powerhouse, the Netherlands is well-stocked because of that kingdom's Caribbean territories, Canada has plenty of Canadians, Taiwan is stocked with their own pros, and, kind of a surprise, Team Australia is almost entirely Australian, save for a couple of guys born in South Africa to Australians. So it's improving, but between Team USA, Team Puerto Rico, Team Israel, Team Italy, and Team Great Britain, the tournament has basically five American squads out of 20. I'd say it feels like stacking the deck, but only USA and Puerto Rico have a prayer of moving on.
• ITEM: It's All Too Much! On a less pleasant topic, Kristi Noem may be out of a job, but ICE hasn't changed its ways. The new American Gestapo have a betting pool going at their El Paso area detention camp, but instead of picking winners of football games they're betting on which of the incarcerated will kill themselves. In addition to being unconscionable and cruel and spot-on emblematic of our current presidential regime, this is encouragement for these thugs to treat their prisoners—you can call them "detainees" if you want, but they're prisoners—even worse than they otherwise would. It's a low bar to begin with, but this is insane. More insane, I mean.
• ITEM: Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey! Alleged attorney general Pam Bondi has been subpoenaed to testify in Congress and there have been articles of impeachment filed against her over her coverup of the Epstein files. About fucking time. Bounce her ass out, then bring her up on charges. (I know it isn't likely to get anywhere real, but we've got to try anyway, repeatedly, and with many other Cabinet officials, preparatory to when we have a majority and can impeach Felon47 and his bearded bootlicker.)
• ITEM: Don't Let Me Down! Starfleet Academy has been surprisingly good, and dropped it's ninth episode this week. The season finale streams Wednesday night, and I'm looking forward to it—when the series started, I had no idea what to expect; could be good, could suck. But it's been largely excellent considering its target audience as a YA show. It's improved on the other streaming-era Star Trek series by having an apparent quality control process with scripts. The writing is better structured and when there are holes in the stories they're forgivable. Like in this week's penultimate episode, the villain's dastardly plan is revealed to be, essentially, a blockade of the reborn Federation of Planets; how this was accomplished stretches my suspension of disbelief, that's an enormous area of space to cover even with this post-Burn mini-Federation. But the twist worked, the story that plot point is in service of is valuable, the situation it sets up for next week's finale is compelling, so I forgive the implausibility. It helped that this week's ep was a Jonathan Frakes episode, Frakes in the director's chair always elevates the material. But, the real make-or-break for this new show will be episode ten. Will it continue to be solidly written and character-focused and maintain its themes, or will it take a page from Discovery or the first two seasons of Picard and completely drop the ball at the end of the season, wrapping things up in a sort of, "shit, we're out of time, I guess just shrug off what we did earlier and invent some deus ex machina that we can forget later?" I'd be more optimistic if Alex Kurtzman wasn't a credited writer on episode ten. At least he's just the co-scripter of the teleplay. (Am I too hard on Kurtzman? Is my bias against anyone involved with writing the JJ movies too strong? I guess we'll see next week.)
• ITEM: Get Back! Or, more accurately, go forward—we begin our annual 8-month-long social engineering trickery tonight, turning the clocks ahead an hour for no good reason. The tyranny of morning people continues, and we night owls are shoved to the ground in our grogginess and given the finger. Tonight's WBC game in Tokyo will now start at 3:00am, which is so much worse than 2:00am, because the Japanese are smarter than we are and don't do stupid Daylight Saving Time.

That's all I have for now. Umping this week was good, no highlights/lowlights to speak of. Back out there Monday evening.

Tagged Baseball, Sketches, Politics, Republicans, Star Trek, Daylight Saving Time, The Beatles, WBC, Posted on March 7, 2026 at 7:45PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Priorities

Judging by the noise level outside, which for a time included quite a lot of firecrackers that surely freaked out every pet in the neighborhood, the hometown Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl a little bit ago. Good for them. Whatever.

I did not watch the game, I ran some errands and did some work instead, because I care not for football. But while I was out, wearing, as I tend to do, my Seattle Mariners baseball cap, a number of people at the grocery store wanted to know my opinion of the Super Bowl, whether I planned on watching the remainder of the game when I got home, that kind of thing. That's cool, striking up conversation and all, but my replies of "no opinion," "no," "I don't care," etc. were a letdown.

But there was one guy. He was stocking bananas in the Fred Meyer produce department. As I picked out a small bunch from his supply, he too struck up a conversation.

"You know what tomorrow is?" he asked.

"Tomorrow?" I said.

"Pitchers and catchers report," he declared, nodding slightly with a small smile.

Oh yeah.

We reach, Mr. banana-stocking dude. We reach.

Tagged Baseball, Posted on February 8, 2026 at 7:57PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

The Donovan trade

New Seattle Mariner Brendan Donovan

As the long offseason winds down and spring training fast approaches, Your Seattle Mariners have finally made a personnel move, trading for infielder/outfielder Brendan Donovan.

I'm of two minds about this trade. First, yay, I like Brendan Donovan. He's an outstanding defensive second baseman with a great eye at the plate and offers the sort of batting profile I want to see: solid on-base skills, not especially streaky over his career (though last year there were some good and bad months), not power-focused. He's not fast, he won't steal many bags, but he should be a solid presence in a lineup that needs it. Donovan is a good get, solid target for a trade.

Second, boo, I'm not happy with with who got traded away and how that affects the depth chart. The M's sent third baseman Ben Williamson to the Tampa Bay Rays in the convoluted three-team deal, which isn't great on two fronts: Firstly, Williamson is one of the best defensive third basemen I've ever seen play, and as I place more value on defense than does the baseball world generally I'd have been far more interested in keeping him and trading one of the other high-level prospects instead; and secondly, losing Williamson means there is no incumbent third baseman, thus Donovan will likely be asked to play there instead of at his customary second base position. You may recall the M's tried this sort of thing last year with Jorge Polanco, who did not last long at third base. Donovan is a good defender wherever he plays—he owns a Gold Gove as a utility player from 2022—but he is best at the keystone. The Mariners must feel like rookie second-sacker Cole Young is actually as good as his minor-league hype even though in a brief stay with the big club last year he was quite overmatched in his way-too-early promotion; I was also unimpressed with his defense.

The Mariners also gave up prospects Tai Peete and Jurrangelo Cijntje; aside from having a great name, Peete, as an outfielder, didn't hold a lot of value for the M's, so I don't mind that, but it's sad to give up Cijntje just because of the novelty—he's that rare breed known as a switch-pitcher, who can throw 90+ with either arm with an impressive degree of accuracy. Overall, of the three teams in the trade—Mariners, Rays, and St. Louis Cardinals—the M's may have done the worst. The Rays get an elite defensive third baseman who has shown hitting chops at the Triple-A level if not the bigs and all they gave up was a low-level OF prospect and a low competitive balance draft pick; while St. Louis gets those two prospects, another minor-league outfielder from the Rays, and two competitive balance draft selections in exchange for Donovan in a classic stock-the-farm rebuilding move.

Even if Williamson didn't hit much, the team could probably carry him in the lineup as a great-glove-weak-bat type. Young, not so much. He's going to have to hit or stay in the minors. The M's do have Ryan Bliss as a 2B option, he was the opening day starter last season before going down with injury and missing most of the year. So they might be OK. But I'd still have much rather seen Young go in the trade instead of Williamson, which would have given the M's an infield of Josh Naylor, Brendan Donovan, J.P. Crawford, and Ben Williamson first-to-third, a defensive quartet to rival that of the 1999 Mets in excellence. Naylor-Young-Crawford-Donovan is good, but not elite. Plus, there is no depth at the third base position now, none of the upper prospects on the farm have much experience at the position, whereas there are several decent second basemen.

So... short-term, this helps the Mariners' lineup (but not the defense), therefore, good trade, though it seems like it could easily have been better. Longer term, well, Donovan is a free agent after the ’27 season, by which time we'll have a better idea if Young can live up to his first-round-draftee status and how much we miss (or don't) Williamson. 

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on February 4, 2026 at 7:03PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

High-wage jobs

The rich get richer, with the Dodgers adding Kyle Tucker

Pro sports has been, at least since free agency became a thing, an industry that pays well. For the big leaguers, I mean. Minor league players toil in poverty, for the most part, excepting highly-touted prospects that got big signing bonuses or whatnot. But if you could make the Majors (or your sport's equivalent high rung), you'd get paid. And if you were a star player, well, then you could get seriously rich.

But such things are relative, and with today's announcement of some new Major League Baseball free agent contracts it got me going down a bit of an historical rabbit hole.

Outfielder Kyle Tucker, late of the Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs, is a really good baseball player. Any team would love to have him. Is he the best baseball player? No, I don't think anyone could credibly make that argument, though he is more well-rounded than most, good at several things rather than elite at one or two (looking at you, Aaron Judge). Nonetheless, the Los Angeles Dodgers just made him the highest-paid player in the game not named Shohei Ohtani (who is a special case and cannot be used as a comparison with anybody, not just for what he does on the field but because he is responsible for so much of his team's income). The annual average value of Tucker's new contract is a staggering $60,000,000. There's some creative structuring of when he'll be paid how much over time, but bottom line, it's $240 million for four years playing as a Dodger. The previous record-holder is the similarly-aged and similarly-skilled Juan Soto, who set the mark just a year ago when the New York Mets (who shelled out another high-dollar contract today for shortstop Bo Bichette) gave him $51,000,000 per annum. Before that it was Aaron Judge breaking the mark in 2023, getting $40,000,000 a year from the Yankees.

Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge elite athletes getting paid. It's a comparable amount to what the star of a hit TV series would make (at least back in the days of 22-episode TV seasons), and it's all ultimately in the entertainment field. I'm just stunned at the rate of player-salary inflation versus the general rate. When Kirby Puckett got $5M in 1993, he was the top dog; adjusted for inflation, he was getting less than a fifth of Tucker's new paycheck, and no way is Kyle Tucker five times the player Kirby Puckett was.

Nolan Ryan got the first $1,000,000 per year contract in 1979. I remember clearly when Orel Hershiser became baseball's first $3,000,000 per year player ten years after that. I recall Ken Griffey Jr. breaking the $8,000,000 per year mark in 1996, and that his figure was eclipsed by Albert Belle's $11,000,000 annual contract later that year. Not too many years after, Manny Ramirez would top $20M and A-Fraud would top $30M and Mike Trout would top $35M. Then Judge, Soto, and now $60M with Tucker.

At first I assumed the sports fan was taking more of a hit every time the big contracts got way bigger. Though it's true that ticket prices have gone up more than the general rate of inflation would indicate, they haven't risen to the same degree, not even close. We pay about three times as much for a ticket today than we did back when Griffey signed his $8M-per-season deal, not the sixfold jump Soto sees over Junior's pay. (Though there's also the matter of having to pay for TV broadcasts we didn't used to have to pay for and ever-increasing cable fees—which, thankfully, are finally dying off in favor of more a la carte streaming options—so it's not quite apples-to-apples.)

What I haven't been able to research is how much increase there's been in the revenue the league and its teams bring in. It's likely that individual clubs have always been far more profitable than they've publicly acknowledged, and especially in the Rob Manfred era they sell ad space and naming rights on/for anything they can and have soaked television providers so heavily that some of them have gone bankrupt. Almost every team now has a stadium with luxury seating options that didn't exist in 20th century ballparks and that now account for most of the gameday revenues.

So in terms of percentage of the employer's income, these huge contracts probably have kept fairly consistent over the years? Maybe? At least through Trout's record-breaking 2019 deal?

Nevertheless, I remain stunned to consider these guys getting $50 and $60 million a year when I'd just gotten used to the top guys making $35M. It's psychologically jarring when the vast majority of us are seeing our buying power get smaller and smaller even though the scales and circumstances don't equate.

Also, it makes me nervous because Manfred and his bosses, the MLB club owners, are notoriously dishonest about their finances and unwilling to share anything even with each other, and the collective bargaining agreement MLB has with the players' union expires next December 1st. With the fat-cat teams like the Dodgers and Mets and Yankees and even the Cubs shelling out contracts like this, the rest of the owners are going to cry poor and Manfred will saber-rattle and we'll have a lockout come Spring Training time 2027. My faith in Manfred's ability to keep the peace is not quite absolute zero, but it's close.

Tagged Baseball, Rob Manfred, Posted on January 16, 2026 at 10:04PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Mélange of miscellany

Kudos to the great people of Minnesota, who go out in the cold to document the fascism

Rather than pick a topic and dive in I'm going with a potpourri of assorted notes on various things today...

Dateline: Occupied Minnesota

• The campaign of state-sponsored terror continues in occupied Minneapolis, and thankfully the good people who live there are out documenting it. One video made it to the cablewaves of the Chicago-based allegedly-centrist-but-Republican-slanted station NewsNation, which showed it over an interview with Congresswoman Mary Miller (R–IL). Rep. Miller said the woman shown in the video being abducted out of her car while trying to drive to a medical appointment deserved to be manhandled and abused because "she's here illegally [and] probably getting free health care." She later admitted that she doesn't know who the woman is and thus has no earthly idea if she's here illegally or not, but she also says, "who cares? She's breaking the law and resisting arrest." For the record, the woman was later identified as a biracial U.S.-born software engineer and ICE had to release her.

  The video, which is all Rep. Miller had to go on, shows no lawbreaking whatsoever on the woman's part; it shows ICE acting illegally, though, breaking her car windows and abducting her rather than allowing her to move along her way. Was she being arrested for cause? Was she to be charged with something? Would the charge be, say, asking an ICE patrol why she was being hindered from traveling to her appointment? That's the "lawbreaking" Rep. Miller sees and says "who cares?" about? This interview is the first and thus far only time I've ever seen Rep. Mary Miller, I'd never heard of her before, but it's plenty sufficient to reveal her as a racist, authoritarian abettor of criminals with no respect for law or her oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. In a sane world, she would be censured, removed from committees, or even expelled from the House by her fellow Congresspeople for what she said in this interview.

  Miller represents a gerrymandered district created in the 2020 redistricting that moved Illinois 15 from the southeastern corner of the state to a rural expanse in the center that is nearly bisected by population centers. If you live in Decatur, Springfield, or Champaign, congratulations, you are not Miller's constituent, though you are completely surrounded by those who are. If you live in East St. Louis, Bloomington, or Peoria, you're less than 20 miles from IL–15. The 2020 census took a seat away from Illinois, necessitating a redistricting, and the state redrew its map to group cities together as much as possible in a "fight back" gerrymander. It gave the state three more Democratic seats in the House but eliminated toss-up districts and made the three remaining R districts deeply, deeply Republican. This new blood-red district had two incumbents, one holding the seat lost in the census, and its voters reelected Miller over the more moderate R and then overwhelmingly reelected her again. Congrats, IL–15, you people are batshit crazy. At best.

• In another incident on Monday, ICE agents kidnapped a black woman, a U.S. citizen, in occupied St. Paul. It wasn't clear if the damage to her car seen in the video was caused by ICE or not, but rather than assist someone after an automotive collision of some kind the agents abducted her, threw her into an unmarked vehicle, and drove off.
• Also Monday, ICE agents abducted two teenage employees of a Twin Cities area Target store, tackling one of them to the ground and beating him, only to dump them out of the unmarked vehicle, bloody and sobbing, eight miles away when they were satisfied that the teens were American citizens. (Video is on X, so I'm not linking it. Screw you, Elon.)
• Three Minnesota school districts (and counting?) are now accommodating remote classes as it is unsafe for students to attend school. ICE has abducted parents, tear-gassed playgrounds, and generally terrorized various Minnesota schools this month in their alleged quest to deport immigrants.
• A Minneapolis resident, abducted by ICE for following an ICE vehicle and alerting neighbors to ICE's presence—agents stopped her car, broke the driver and passenger side windows, and forced the two occupants from the car—said that while being forcibly taken in an unmarked vehicle to a nearby Federal building agents told her, "you guys have to stop obstructing us, that's why that lesbian bitch is dead." The threat, the misogyny, the bigotry, the callous disregard for law, the small-minded insecurity, all there in one quote from a government-sanctioned thug during an illegal arrest. Before being released, agents apparently offered at least one of the two abductees money if they would name or identify other protesters.
• Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D–IL 2, south Chicago suburbs) has spearheaded a move to impeach Kristi Noem over her use of ICE thugs in Minnesota and elsewhere. More power to you and your colleagues, Rep. Kelly. It won't succeed in this House, but I applaud the effort and want to see more of this. Just because Speaker Johnson won't allow such things to be voted on doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing them every damn day.
• An activist in the Netherlands was given a list of more than 4,000 names of people working as ICE agents or support personnel. He put it online. Since these people have no business trying to hide their identities in the first place, I'll link to it. The site is slow to load, I imagine it's getting a bit of strain put on its server.
• I look forward to the massive number of lawsuits that will eventually be filed against DHS, the least of which will be a plethora of demands for financial restitution for property damage to the various cars agents have rammed, broken windows of, sliced seatbelts in, and, you know, shot.

The hot stove league

• With the signing of free-agent third baseman Alex Bregman, the Chicago Cubs have bumped incumbent third-sacker Matt Shaw to the bench. Shaw is a MAGA ideologue who left the team to attend the funeral of Charlie Kirk and again during the pennant race to go to a MAGA rally in Arizona. Thus, when the Bregman signing became official we got this outstanding post on BlueSky:

  

  Our buddy Craig Calcaterra followed up on that with this sentiment:

  I suppose Shaw will now be a super utilityman. Which makes me REALLY want the Cubs to acquire a better utilityman such as Santiago Espinal or someone like him so Shaw can be replaced, in the same offseason, by both a Jew and a Latino guy. That'd probably break his fascist ass.

  Schadenfreude for the win.

• The Kansas City Royals are the latest team to do something stupid with their field dimensions. That's my bias, of course, that it's stupid. The Royals are moving the fences in at Kaufmann Stadium, shortening the alleys between the foul poles and dead-center field by ten feet. Not satisfied with that, they are also making the fence height 18 inches shorter. KC's general manager, J.J. Picollo, claimed he wasn't "trying to jump-start our offense," which is silly, of course he is. But the thing is, Kaufmann has always been a great hitters' park. It just hasn't been a great home run park. Especially in the days when it had AstroTurf, but even with grass, KC's was a terrific park to hit doubles and triples in. A big outfield means potentially fewer homers, but it also means more base hits—outfielders have more ground to cover, balls are going to fall short of their positioning or go over their heads more often than they would in smaller outfields. Also, a curved symmetrical outfield wall meant any roller that hit the wall had the opportunity to hug the wall as it rolled on rather than carom back to an outfielder. I haven't seen whether or not they're trying to keep the curvature of the wall, but no matter what it won't be as prevalent since the degree of curve will be lessened. This is a move intended to make home runs easier to hit and to thus encourage batters—Royals and opponents—to keep up the dumbness that has made for less interesting baseball since the post-strike 1990s. That is, the all or nothing, "three true outcome" style offense that has reduced balls in play, skyrocketed strikeouts, and massively devalued defensive skill, particularly for outfielders.

  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Home runs are boring. Compared to most other ways to score, unless it's a walkoff ending a game, a homer is dull. It's a flash-in-the-pan event, a potential rally-killer, while a string of base hits keeps pressure on the pitcher and the defense. Other than a bases-loaded walk/hit batter, a balk, or, god forbid, a pitch timer violation, the home run is the least interesting way to score. Teams ought to be doing what the Orioles did a few years back and making their outfields bigger. Encourage more contact, encourage smart baserunning, make outfield defense important, and above all, make the game less reliant on brute force. Rob Deer was an interesting player because there just weren't very many Rob Deers. Nowadays every team has at least two of him. The world champion Los Angeles Dodgers had five players top 120 strikeouts in 2025. Five! (Your Seattle Mariners only had one, which is a big reason they were so much better in ’25 than in prior seasons.)

  I realize I'm never likely to see a team like my beloved 1985 Cardinals ever again, but can we stop trying to make baseball dumber? Please?

• The Washington Nationals are the latest team to ditch their cable television contract, leaving the Mid Atlantic Sports Network and turning over their TV rights to Major League Baseball. The cable TV model is quickly dying and I am here for it. What remains to be seen is how MLB is going to be handling the various teams (now including Your Seattle Mariners) they need to televise. Presumably they will find a cable outlet in each of the markets they can pipe feeds to, but really the need is in streaming. Because Commissioner Dumbass shot himself in the foot trying to extort a better playoff TV deal from ESPN, he ended up losing revenue and to try and make up for the loss in the short term sold ESPN the streaming rights for what had been MLB.TV. Until very recently, MLB.TV was only meant for subscribers to watch out-of-market teams and that's what ESPN now has control over; whether MLB will retain these individual teams' in-market streaming rights or lump them in with the ESPN deal is unclear. We'll find out in a couple of months. Regardless, the death of the cable model means an end to the stupidity of making it difficult/impossible for local fans to watch their own team without paying through the nose for a cable/satellite package. That stupidity remains for playoff games, though, so there's still a ways to go. But it's more evidence that Commander Data was right in Star Trek: TNG when he mentioned that broadcast television didn't last in any significant form beyond the year 2040.

Site tweaks and email issues

• I have succeeded (I think) in eliminating the duplicate email problem with the new daily update email subscription thing. However, I have in the process discovered that the emails being sent have a moderately high spam score. This is mostly because the system is intended for a lot more stuff to be in the emails than I want to include, and thus they go out with a lot of blank lines in the formatting. Lots of blank lines are suspicious to spam filtering algorithms. So I would ask any who like receiving the updates-via-email to add *@starshiptim.com to the whitelist in your spam filter of choice to prevent the emails from going into your junk folders unseen. If you don't know how to do that, just ask me, I'll walk you through it.
• I have always disliked WordPress as a platform, and these days, while I don't exactly hate it with the fire of a thousand suns, I heavily discourage anyone from using it unless there are mitigating circumstances of some sort. This site, obviously, has nothing to do with that platform and never will, and my reasons for eschewing it are many. One of them is that the WordPress platform has become ubiquitous, it's everywhere, and thus bad actors—hackers, phishers, malicious billionaires, etc.—target WordPress sites specifically to do their fuckery. They target other sites too, of course, but there's a reason an entire subindustry of WordPress repair and protection services has popped up over the years. Anyway, with that in mind it should not have surprised me to find in the data from my recent experiments in bot-fighting that many of the malicious bots attacking this site are specifically trying to find WordPress login pages and file structures. Shouldn't have, but it did. In a way, it's comforting—it reinforces the belief that bots and their operators don't do subtlety. They're kind of like Rob Deer, really; brute force, swing hard and either get the homer or strike out. So, another thing to cite in my ever-present recommendation that if you use WordPress you should move to something else (I'll help you, my rates are good!), and if you're thinking about starting a WP site to think again.

Tagged Politics, ICE, President VonClownstick, Republicans, Baseball, Site issues, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on January 14, 2026 at 9:29PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Skeeters, extra innings, the ER, and Mexican food

Shohei reached base safely nine times in last night's game. Incredible.

I've been down here in greater Palm Springs for almost a week now, and it's been basically fine. I mean, the mosquitos are sure happy, they have a whole new buffet with me here. No mitigating actions seem to help dissuade them from my sweet, juicy A-pos. Which is a convoluted way of saying, "my feet itch."

Yesterday was my dad's 83rd birthday, and though we celebrated it the day before by driving over to LA to have an evening with my sister, bro-in-law, and nephew, he spent the day itself in the emergency room. As Marty put it, that wasn't on our collective bingo card for the day.

He's fine. There was an issue with vertigo that was concerning and in the end the docs gave him some dramamine and he's doing better. I used the time Dad & Marty were waiting around at the ER to visit my friend Mark, a newly-transplanted Seattleite to the area, and gape in awe at the house he bought that he decided was a massive fixer-upper and wonder at the expense of all the renovations he's planning. More power to you, Mark! Gotta make it your own. We got caught up a bit over lunch at a nice Mexican restaurant with a big outdoor patio before I made my way back to Dad & Marty's in time for the first pitch of World Series Game 3.

What a wild one that was.

The longest game in World Series history, the eventual 6-5 Dodger victory took nearly seven hours to play. It was the second 18-inning World Series game at Dodger Stadium this century. And boy, did it have drama. Great feats! Brain farts! Good umpiring! Not-so-good umpiring! Outstanding defensive plays! Lousy defensive plays! Future Hall of Famers pitching! Why-is-that-guy-even-on-the-roster types pitching! Celebrities in the stands! Marlins guy looking at his phone! Ridiculous managerial challenges! One sensible managerial challenge! Four intentional walks to one guy! (Well, five, really.) It had a lot going on, and by the end my friend Dave and I were musing about suspended-game potentials and crazy what-ifs on BlueSky in between my posting bits of #SmoltzWisdom, words of insight uttered on the air by Fox Sports commentator John Smoltz during the game.

Those bullpens are totally spent, so both teams better hope for complete-game-level performances out of their starters tonight.

Tagged Baseball, Traveling, Posted on October 28, 2025 at 3:55PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

ALCS postmortems

The fateful moment of Game 7

I've been seeing a number of articles and posts today about Dan Wilson's alleged failure managing his bullpen in last night's Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, which the Toronto Blue Jays won by a score of 4-3. Most of these pieces were written by people that have not followed Your Seattle Mariners all year, and the way you can tell that is by noticing what's not in those articles/posts.

Wilson, the Mariners' first-year (full year, anyway) manager, made the following pitching moves in Game 7:

• Relieved starter George Kirby after four innings and just 65 pitches, leading 3-1. Kirby hadn't been at his sharpest, but he was getting the job done. He was replaced by Bryan Woo, who had been Seattle's best pitcher all year but missed the last few weeks with a pectoral strain; he'd thrown two innings in Game 5, his first action since September 19th. Theoretically, Woo could go for a few frames; he wasn't ready to go a starter's duration yet, but if he was on he could get pretty deep. Woo pitched two scoreless again, bringing us to the 7th with the score still 3-1 M's.
• Left Woo in to begin the 7th inning. He immediately looked tired, though, and walked the leadoff batter. Next batter, Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, grounded a single up the middle. The next guy did the obvious thing and sacrificed the runners to 2nd and 3rd, bringing up George Springer. Here's the first time I disagreed with Dan—I would have pulled Woo after the leadoff walk based on how far he was missing his target and his body language during/after that batter. He was gassed, he's not used to the relief role and hadn't been stretched out to starter length, so even though he theoretically could have given you another frame or two, you need to adapt based on his obvious fatigue.
• Dan then relieves Woo with one out, runners at 2nd and 3rd, and Springer up. New pitcher is Eduard Bazardo, who had been pretty reliable during the season but had been used A LOT during the ALCS. Critics are saying Dan should instead have brought in Andres Muñoz, the All-Star closer, as this was a potential inflection point of the game and thus the series and you want your best reliever out there even if it is only the 7th inning. There's validity to this argument, more because of the repetition the Blue Jays already had in seeing Bazardo versus the comparative paucity of ABs against Muñoz, but there's also validity to Dan's choice to keep Muñoz in reserve for the 8th and 9th—you weren't going to get more than two innings out of him for sure, and aside from a solo homer given up to Vladimir Guerrero Jr in Game 4, which the Jays were already winning handily, Bazardo had gotten the job done. My thought at this point was that they would intentionally walk Springer—Springer has the 3rd-most postseason homers than anyone over his career, he has a knack for it, plus he's probably not running all that well even though it's been a few days since he was hit in the kneecap by an errant fastball. True, it would mean putting the go-ahead run on base with Vlad Jr. on deck, and irritant Nathan Lukes coming to bat, but it's a pick-your-poison circumstance and I felt hoping for a ground ball out of Lukes was preferable to pitching to Springer. Springer, of course, homered to give the Jays the lead.
• Dan brought Muñoz on in the 8th, as planned, but he wasn't sharp and escaped only with the aid of a double-play turned behind him. Would he have been better if he's not come in with the team trailing in the score? Eh, I doubt it mattered in this case.

The M's failed to score in the 9th and the season was history.

So, was Dan wrong to bring in Bazardo? If he brings in Muñoz instead, that means Muñoz can't pitch the 9th (unless he somehow had two straight 4- or 5-pitch innings; highly unlikely) and you have to assume the score gets no better than the two-run lead the M's were then sitting on. Someone else, then? Well, Matt Brash had been used nearly as often as Bazardo had, but could have been an option. Otherwise... otherwise you play with fire. Carlos Vargas? Fuck, no. Emerson Hancock or Luke Jackson, the mopup guys? Starting pitcher Luis Castillo? Probably the only other viable choice, but he'd have needed a lot of time to get ready.

Barring having the foresight to get Castillo warming up an inning prior, Dan's options were Bazardo, Brash, or burn Muñoz and have Bazardo or Brash pitch the 9th, when they'd very likely see Springer again. I don't fault him.

The real spot where it might have mattered more was the first choice, pulling Kirby for Woo to start the 5th. I like Woo, so I was happy to get him in the game, but in retrospect, that was the mistake. Try to get another inning from Kirby, then go to Woo, and maybe you get to the 8th still ahead. Maybe.

Just saying it isn't as cut and dry as the pundits at the Athletic, the Times, BlueSky, and elsewhere would have us believe. When Carlos Vargas is a key part of your bullpen you're already in trouble. Next year, if the M's are fortunate enough to be in a similar bind, Dan will have more experience under his managerial belt and might have that foresight to ready Castillo (or next year's analogue) well ahead of time. Or, hopefully, his standard relief options will be more robust.

Besides, the real point at which the Mariners lost the series was the previous night, when they grounded into two inning-ending bases-loaded double-plays. And struck out 13 times. Worry about that stuff going forward.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on October 21, 2025 at 7:14PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Well, that happened

John Paul "The Gazelle" Crawford leaps over Andres Gimenez to complete a nifty double play in Game 7. Not that it did much good.

I wasn't surprised.

The American League Championship Series is over and Your Seattle Mariners did not win it. They are the only Major League Baseball franchise to never win a pennant, and that badge of distinction will continue for yet another year.

When the Toronto Blue Jays took Game Six of the ALCS last night—rather easily, at that—and tied the best-of-seven series at three wins apiece, I pretty much assumed it meant curtains for the season for the Mariners. So when the M's took a slim lead in tonight's Game 7, I wasn't particularly confident. My neighbor Rachel was watching with me at that point and asked how much of a lead would make me comfortable. I said five runs. And I don't know if I was even being honest about that. (I mean, five runs can be coughed up in a hurry. Just ask Heathcliff Slocumb. Or Carlos Silva. Or even George Kirby, tonight's starting pitcher, who got shelled for eight runs his last time out.)

Why? Two things.

One, I've been following the Mariners for 35 years, the vast majority of those as a season ticket holder of one type or another. I've seen things, man. Horrible things. Things that stay with you and cause a particular form of nihilism. Even when the M's took an unexpected two-games-to-none lead in the series, any optimism I had was...let's say tempered. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 20 times, you don't get any faith.

Two, postseason history. At least, as remembered by me; looking at the record, the overall numbers don't quite bear this out, but certainly in my formative years, any team trailing a best-of-seven LCS or World Series three games to two that then won game six nearly always had the confidence/momentum/drive/vibes/juju to take game seven and crush the hopes of the formerly-leading team's fanbase. It happened to the Orioles in 1979, the first year I was really paying attention. It happened to the Brewers in 1982. To the Blue Jays themselves in 1985. To my Cardinals in 1985 and 1987. To both the Angels and the Red Sox in 1986. The Giants in ’87. The Pirates and the Braves in ’91, and the Cardinals again in ’96. Exceptions during that span were few, just the 1988 Dodgers, ’92 Braves, and ’97 Marlins. That's a series winning percentage of .786 for Game 6 victors. This century, it's not been as stark—just 14 out of 21 times (.667). The pattern held for the Yankees in 2001, the Giants in ’02, the Cubs in ’03, the Astros in ’04, the Yanks again in ’04, Cleveland in ’07, the Rangers in ’11, Cardinals in ’12, Cleveland again in ’16, Yankees again in ’17, Astros in ’19, Braves in ’20, and both the Phillies and Astros in ’23; it was overcome by the 2003 Yankees, ’06 Cardinals, ’08 Rays, ’14 Giants, ’17 Astros (with help), ’18 Dodgers, and 2020 Rays. So, a touch more hope if you only look at recent years, but it's ingrained into me from those 1980s experiences: Lose game 6 and you lose the series.

Tonight's game 7 was brutal in that it was another one that got away, a lead blown in later innings. But I'm trying to be philosophical about it—this is incremental progress. The Mariners made to just one win shy of a pennant. Never done that before. They did it with a team that was vastly improved from the prior few year's version when it came to management, but it was still a flawed bunch. It's tough to win a pennant when you strike out nearly one out of every four trips to the plate and blow too many opportunities for productive outs. The Blue Jays don't have those flaws—their K rate is under 18%, best in the Majors, and they led everyone in on-base percentage too. They were the better team.

Though if the M's had just walked George Springer instead of pitching to him, who knows what might have been.

Alas. World Series starts Friday, Los Angeles at Toronto. I think I'll be rooting for the Canadians.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on October 20, 2025 at 11:59PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Last game of the year? Part III

"THE MARINERS ARE GOING TO PLAY FOR THE AMERICAN LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP! I DON'T BELIEVE IT! MY OH MY!!" So said the late great Dave Niehaus thirty years ago, broadcasting the end of the thrilling Game Five of the American League Division Series on the radio. Ken Griffey Jr. had just scored all the way from first base on Edgar Martínez's famous double down the left field line in the bottom of the 11th inning to give Your Seattle Mariners a series victory in their first-ever playoff appearance.

It was a classic game, and I was there, perched in the 300 level of the old Kingdome alongside my friends Erik and Mike and 50-odd thousand strangers.

I was also in attendance last night, again with Erik (Mike was there too, working as ballpark staff), as the M's played another Game 5 of an ALDS, another extra-inning victory and another classic game. Well, in some ways; in other ways it was a really frustrating game of missed opportunities and blown chances. And once again, at its conclusion the Mariners punched their ticket to the Championship Series, which begins tomorrow in Toronto.

This made three consecutive playoff games I've attended, all with Erik, that went extra innings: last night, Game 1 of this ALDS the Saturday before, and Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS, which went 18 innings and saw the M's go down in defeat in a series sweep to the hated Houston Astros. It was also third consecutive Seattle appearance in a deciding ALDS Game 5 that I've witnessed in person with Erik: last night, the classic in 1995, and 2001’s victory over Cleveland. (I was not with Erik for the ALDS win in 2000, I was instead with my late friend Carl in seats near the very back of the upper deck in straightaway right field, but that was a game 3 win that finished a series sweep against the White Sox.)

I won't go into the details of the game itself, all that is available here for anyone who wants it. Suffice to say it was a pitching clinic for the first 5½ innings that the M's amazingly had a lead in (1-0, but still) against the best pitcher around today, Tarik Skubal. George Kirby matched him until he started tiring in the 5th; he got through that frame but couldn't get an out in the 6th and was relieved by Gabe Speier. Who immediately gave up a two-run homer to Kerry Carpenter. (Carpenter was incredible in this game, 4-for-5 with two walks. Amazing they got him out once.) Still, it wasn't a move I objected to, Kirb was clearly done and Speier is your go-to lefty despite how Detroit beat up on him in Game 4.

In fact, the only managerial move I questioned was one that paid off in a big way—with two on and two out against righty reliever Kyle Finnegan, Seattle manager Dan Wilson went to his bench to pinch-hit lefty-swinging Dominic Canzone for Mitch Garver. That was good. Then Detroit went to its ’pen and brought in left-hander Tyler Holton. Then Wilson pinch-hit switch-hitter Leo Rivas for Canzone before Canzone even stepped into the batter's box. That was the move I questioned, I probably would have let Canzone bat. But damned if Leo didn't deliver, lacing a base hit to left to score the tying run. Even Detroit's managerial moves were sound. Going to reliever Tommy Kahnle in the 15th failed dramatically, but what was the  alternative? Rafael Montero again? I think not.

 Anyway, this made four times the Mariners had faced Tarik Skubal this year and in all four games the M's took the win. Talk about defying the odds.

Now it's on to the ALCS, Seattle's first since 2001. Against their expansion cousins the Blue Jays, which is cool. 

I doubt I'll have an opportunity to attend any of those games, though. Others in my season ticket group have my normal seats for those and the asking price for tickets—from MLB, not resale tickets—is several hundred dollars. The MLB single-game price for World Series tickets is over $1,000. Which is insane. I blame Rob Manfred, of course, but it's really a sign of the times when anyone not either made of money or willing to go into debt can afford to go to the World Series. Back in the day it was a little bit of a stretch for us on our retail employee wages to buy extra tickets, but we could do it. Now it's a choice between going to the World Series and paying your health insurance premiums for the year. Which is a whole 'nother issue.

Nevertheless, it's a fun October. I'll enjoy the rest on HDTV.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on October 11, 2025 at 8:38PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Last game of the year? Redux

A little game I play in my head when I go to games is "spot the most obscure player jersey worn by a fan." Today's was Mike Morse.

Well, I got one more, at least.

Last week I speculated that I may have seen my last in-person baseball game of the year, but I lucked out and got to go to tonight's Game 1 of the American League Division Series with Erik. It was the first playoff game in Seattle since 2022, when there was but a single game to attend as the hometown Mariners were eliminated in that first and only home contest of their ’22 postseason. I went to that one with Erik as well. It went 18 innings and the M's lost 1-0.

Tonight wasn't quite so bad; it, too, went extra frames, and once more the loss was by one run, but it was Game 1, so there's at least one more home game (though I won't be attending). Still, the similarities were enough that I asked Erik if this was becoming a pattern for us that we should maybe reexamine. We'll have another opportunity to break/continue the trend if the series goes the full five games.

(An aside: Last night/this morning I had a funny/frustrating dream in which, while preparing to go to this game, I learned that baseball commissioner Rob Manfred had at the last minute declared that the game should not be played at the Mariners' regular home field, but in the Kingdome, which in this dream was still standing though unused for years. This decision was met with unanimous outrage by all, but Manfred insisted because he could sell more tickets in the Kingdome—it had a seating capacity of 59,000 while the current park's capacity is 48,000. Upon entering the Kingdome, which was shabby and smelled of years of disuse, I discovered my regular row 9 seat had been adjusted to row 18 and screamed, Admiral Kirk-style, "MAAAANNNFREEEEEEEEEEEDDDD!!!!!!!!" OK, back to the post.)

I went very early, not knowing what to expect in terms of traffic, crowd, lines to get in, etc. I took the train, which was good for getting down there, a little bit of a nuisance getting back; crowds meant I had to wait for the third train to show up, so the duration of the return was at least twice that of the trip down (and after half an hour or so I really had to pee—it was an exercise in stamina, but no accidents.) But easy and cheaper than parking—even if I scored a meter space, since, unlike a regular-season night game, they'd still be active for a couple hours (downtown meter rates are about $5/hour). Learning from experience, I circumnavigated the stadium to enter at the home plate gates instead of the more direct left-field entrance; the past few times I've been to a sellout or near-sellout, the LF lines were 15-20 minutes long. The HP line today moved much faster.

The pregame festivities included some appearances from Mariners Past, including my favorite, Mike Cameron. He and fellow 2001 Mariner Mark McLemore flanked former manager Lou Piniella, now 82, who delivered the ceremonial first pitch. That was kind of fun. Cam is still popular with folks at the ballpark, he was stopped numerous times on the field by people wanting photos; he was trying to make his way to the visiting Detroit dugout to see his son Daz, who is a member of the Detroit Tigers though not on this series' active roster. I could see him gesturing and trying to get Daz's attention and imagined Daz hiding behind a bigger player or something before going, "Stop it, Dad, you're embarrassing meee!!!!" But no, he finally came out for a minute and they had a moment before Cam, Mac, and Lou left the field for the skyboxes.

[EDIT: Since posting this I recalled that though Daz Cameron came up with the Tigers, he is no longer with them. He's in the Brewers' system now. So I guess I've no idea who Cam was trying to find in Detroit's dugout. But the imagined image still amuses me.]

The players line up for the playoff introductions

Once the game got going, it was a pitcher's duel. Detroit got two on a home run by Kerry Carpenter (Erik: "What's with this team and alliteration? Kerry Carpenter, Jahmei Jones, Dillon Dingler..."). Prior to tonight, Carpenter had batted against Seattle starter George Kirby eight times; four of those times he hit homers. I didn't know that. If I had it would have been less surprising when he smacked a fifth to put Detroit ahead. Seattle got one back in the 6th, thanks in part to Tiger manager A.J. Hinch's generous decision to put in reliever Rafael Montero. Predictably (at least to me—really, ask Erik), Montero immediately put runners aboard; he faced three batters, all reached safely and one scored, before Hinch realized the error of his ways and replaced him with Tyler Holton, who induced a double-play grounder and survived a hard lineout to end the scoring threat. Kirby and the M's relief corps were solid, shutting Detroit down rather well outside of Carpenter's bomb, and we went to extras.

Then Seattle manager Dan Wilson maybe thought he owed Hinch a favor in return for the gift of Rafael Montero? Hard to know what was happening in Dan's mind, but he brought in hard-throwing Carlos Vargas to pitch the 11th. All season, any time I saw Vargas come into a game I figured he was going to put at least two baserunners on; didn't always work out that way, but it did always feel like walking a tightrope. He finished the year with a WHIP ((walks + hits) ÷ innings pitched) of 1.35, which was actually down from the 1.6 or so he carried most of the season. That isn't good. Batters hit .273 against him. That isn't good, either. He does strike a lot of guys out, but that's not going to balance out the other stuff. There's a newfangled sabermetric stat called "runs above average" (RAA). Tarik Skubal, maybe the best pitcher in the world right now, has an RAA of 45, meaning he allows 45 fewer runs than the average pitcher. Skubal is a starter, so better comparison might be Andres Muñoz, the Mariners' All-Star closer, who has an RAA of 13. Vargas' RAA is -3. (Montero's is -5, so that's something in Vargas' favor, I guess.) I don't get why he's been in the big leagues all season, let alone on the playoff roster, let alone why he was called on to hold the line in a tie game in extra innings in the ALDS.

Maybe it didn't matter; the M's weren't able to do anything against non-Rafael Montero Tiger pitching tonight, but then neither were the Tigers doing much with non-Vargas Seattle arms. If not for putting in Vargas, maybe this game would have gone 18 innings too. Maybe Dan was just making sure everyone could get home at a decent hour, I don't know.

But, once again, this could be my last game at the ballpark by Elliott Bay until next year. If the M's can rally back and take two of the next three, I'll be back for the decisive Game 5. If not... Well, it was fun while it lasted.

At least, it was when Carlos Vargas wasn't on the mound.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on October 4, 2025 at 11:59PM   |   Permalink   |     |