High Desert Mavericks: Success at High-A

Unlike their parent club, the M’s California League affiliate, the High Desert Mavericks, have ripped off a current four game winning streak, and have come out on top in six of their past seven games.  Four Mavericks had multiple hits as they roughed up Lancaster starter Christopher Province to score seven runs- six earned- on eleven hits in five innings, only to survive a seven spot posted by Lancaster in the seventh inning as the Mavs held on for a wild 8-6 victory.

Mariners’ shortstop of the future Carlos Triunfel did not see any action in yesterday’s game, as his recent poor performance has not matched the team’s success.  Triunfel has picked up just five hits in his last 41 at bats, while striking out eight times to two walks.  Luckily, Geraldo Avila has picked up the slack, with a .303 average his last ten games, including two triples and a home run.  Closer Aaron Cotter has also been dominating lately, with a 10:2 strikeout-to-walk ratio and four saves over his last 12.2 innings, and picking up saves in the team’s last three save opportunities.

Sadly, these players are years to offer contributions at the major league level, rather than, say, tomorrow….

Hey M’s fans: Mariners are losers- get over it all ready!

So, after the M’s bid adieu to former GM Bill Bavasi yesterday, I joked to my friends that the Mariners would reel off an eleven-game winning streak.  (Which would put them just ten games below .500!)  Of course, the M’s promptly dropped the first game of the Marlins series by a 6-1 score, extending their home losing streak to eight games, the longest such streak in twelve years.

I guess the team celebrating their independence from Bavasi by reeling off a string of victories will have to be postponed.  Maybe until next week or something.  I guess the more things change, the more things will simply stay the same.

Yesterday, the M’s were shut out by Marlins’ left hander Andrew Miller, who stymied the M’s, allowing just one run on six hits through seven innings.  It seems like it would be almost ironically cruel to point out that Bavasi got fired on the same day that Miller shut down the M’s line-up in his first career outing against the Mariners.  Miller was the top pitching prospect in the 2006 amateur draft, but signability issues dropped Miller from the No. 1 spot that Miller was expected to be picked at.  With the fifth pick in that year’s draft, the Mariners had the ability to grab Miller, but as they were leery of Miller’s contract demands, they bypassed Miller in favor of Brandon Morrow, allowing the Tigers to pluck the North Carolina product.

This is not intended to be a knock against Morrow, who has showed flashes of brilliance in the late-inning spot and may eventually be a poor man’s Northwest version of Joba Chamberlain if the M’s decide to put him into the rotation.  Indeed, Morrow struck out the side with his high heat in a scoreless ninth inning yesterday.  But he wasn’t tying the Marlins’ bats into knots for seven innings as Miller did against the Marienrs yesterday.  (Admittedly, Miller was able to enjoy a dominant performance due to the fact that he was facing off against the weakest offense in the American League.)

Just how much of a good pitcher Morrow will turn out to be for the Mariners depends to be seen.   However, in the 2006 draft, the M’s had a chance to draft a great pitching prospect in Miller, and the Bavasi-led front office allowed Miller to slip through their fingers.  That’s okay, though, because the Mariners ex-GM had the wherewithal to sign the “top free agent” on last year’s market in Carlos Silva, who yesterday allowed three runs in 4.2 innings as he extends his winless streak to eleven starts, not having picked up a victory since April 17th.  The context for yesterday’s game explains why Bavasi is no longer the Mariners’ GM, while the Mariners’ offense goes 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position as little run support was once again offered for their pitchers.

There has been much gnashing of the teeth lately as plenty of Mariners fans have bemoaned the incredibly horrid season 2008 has devolved to.  (Considering that the first official day of summer occurs next week, it’s hard to beleive that the Mariners are 20 games below .500 before summer even officially starts.)  Maybe we got our hopes up by last season’s misleading 88-win season, and all the pundits picking the M’s to mount a serious challenge for the division title this year.  But c’mon, folks.  We’re talking the Seattle Mariners here!  Losing is part of the franchise’s DNA!  Look at the team’s franchise encyclopedia page on baseball-reference.com.  There’s a reason why the club’s all-time winning percentage is .471.  M’s fans who have climbed aboard the bandwagon in recent years may have been unduly influenced by the team’s streak of success from 1995 to 2003.  But those years were an aberration for an otherwise dismal team that is best known as being the punchline for the joke “What has eighteen legs and lives in the cellar of the American League West?”  Indeed, if you subtract the team’s 802-637 record (and .558 winning percentage) from that span of seven years, you’re left with a franchise all-time winning percentage of .437, which translates to 71 wins over a 162 game season.  And that mark is much better than the pace the team is currently on for this season.

Sigh.  Felix Hernandez is taking the mound tonight, so the M’s might have a chance to win.  But smart money should go on the Marlins.  I’m picking the Fish to win, by a 3-2 score.  I mean, if today’s game is going to be a close, well-pitched, low-scoring, one-run affair with the Mariners kept to four runs or less, their odds of winning are pretty much nil.