Los Mariners Estan Bueno en Cinco De Mayo

Today is Cinco de Mayo. In honor of Cinco de Mayo my girlfriend and I had decided to go to Chipotle and buy some Mexican beer. I typically don’t like Mexican beer, but when I drink Mexican beer, I prefer Dos Equis (which I drank before the douchey pseudo-Chuck-Norris spokesman existed). I also typically don’t like franchised Mexican food. That’s not to say that I don’t like Mexican food. I love Mexican food. Real Mexican food.

But she likes Chipotle, so when we get Mexican food we get Chipotle. We did this at the same time as the game started. But I managed to see the end.

I saw Kyle Seager’s homerun. His fourth homerun. Kyle Seager came into today with a 124 wRC+, Adrian Beltre had a 137 wRC+. More importantly though, Beltre’s highest wRC+ with the Mariners was 112. Sure it’s early in the season, but Seager is playing very well. He’s playing out of his mind. He’s playing out of his fucking mind! I dug the Kyle Seager draft pick when it happened, but I never thought he’d be more than a two-win player.

Felix pitched very well, obviously. As much as Tom Wilhelmsen disposed of the last shred of legitimacy ERA had as a measure of production last night, it’s quite rare that a guy pitches lousy and goes eight scoreless innings. But Felix was particularly dominating. He struck out nine, missing 14 bats, and threw 10 groundball outs. 19 of Felix’s 24 outs are the kinds of outs that we don’t consider to be statistically “lucky” outs. And he threw only 107 pitches. Felix walked two batters, struck out nine batters, all high-pitch-count outcomes, and threw only 107 pitches. That Felix guy, he’s good at baseball.

I’ve been singing the praises of John Jaso for months now. He got a hit today. He got an eight-foot single. Sometimes guys get lucky singles, sometimes they get unlucky outs. This was a lucky single.

Dustin Ackley got on base three times in four plate appearances. I’m not in love with the idea of using his bat in the leadoff spot. I think he’s an ideal No. 2 hitter, but his on-base skills make some sense there. If the Mariners are a very good offensively he could be a long-term leadoff hitter, there a long ways a way from being a very good offensive team though.

The Mariners walked eight times today. I looked back to find the last time they walked eight times in a game, and I expected it would be a couple years ago. It was September 1 of last year. They only struck out twice though. The last time they had eight or more walks and two or less strikeouts was May 3, 2007. They won 88 games that year. That means absolutely nothing to predict the future of this team. Interesting what pseudo-analysis can apply though.

Ichiro is hitting .303 now after going 2-2 today with two walks. Ichiro walked twice. He doesn’t usually walk twice.

Tomorrow is another game, and another Hector Noesi start. I’m the last member of the Hector Noesi fan club. Tomorrow will be fun for me, and hopefully fun for everyone else.