We are at the 1/3 mark of the season, kids.  Well, all the other AL teams are.

Saw Vicente Padilla at a Safeco game in '05 or '06 and couldn't figure out for the life of me why this guy wasn't a top-15 starting pitcher.  He was dealing 95-97, crackling overhand curve, just slicing and dicing.

The Rangers thought so too… what did he get $50m+ over 5 or something?   Here he is 2-7, 5.77.

Dr. D's roto team, BABVA, took Padilla in the middle rounds, chuckling over the wise selection and counting the points all the way to the bank…. Padilla, who scored 558 points in that system last year, has a grand total of 62 points for me this year.   He might crack 200 on the year if he really gets with it.

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One of our amigos clued us in that Vicente is (he sez) one of the hardest drinkers in the league.  Which is saying kind of a lot. 

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=== SIZZLERS ===

Felix Hernandez, SP.  Very frustrating that the King is not 7-1, 2.25 right now. 

Very important, the loss Wednesday.  Very deflating, to come home from such an exciting road trip no closer to the Angels.  

Very meaningless game, as to the question of whether Felix is ggrrrrrrrrrATE!.  He is.

Comfort stat of the day:  42k in 37ip.   Hey, aces go through frustrations… DiceK just got butchered today.  I heard Jered Weaver had a tough time.  Roy Halladay. Curt Schilling.

Wednesday night was an owie, but the 2007 Felix still figures to be as good as any SP in the league other than Santana. 

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xFLIP points out:

since May 26 of ‘06, Beltre has hit 33 home runs and has been putting up a .287/.341/.533 line.

Huh.  Meaning?

Well, if you got a free agent you KNEW was going to:

1) Play 3b
2) Play it like a Gold Glover
3) Hit .290/.340/.525
4) In Safeco

He would be a franchise player for you.

You'd have been very happy to get that production from Miguel Tejada.  Tejada's career line is .287/.344/.478, an amazing comp for Beltre's past year.   His ELP, the performance you can expect from him right now, is about .310/.360/.510.

You probably wouldn't have gotten that .290/.340/.525 from Tejada in this park… 

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'course you guys knew that Kenji Johjima was slugging .550… a 143 OPS+.  Gary Carter territory.

He has an HR-K ratio of 7-10.  Anybody who runs a HR-K ratio like that is going to hit way over .300, which is why Johjima is at .324.  In Safeco!

We speculated that in 2006 — although Johjima was easily the best catcher the Mariners ever had — that we had not seen his best.  NPB fans agreed.

……………………..

Jose Lopez has easily the 2nd best HR-K ratio, at 6-18.   (Raul 1-18, Guillen 5-26, Ichiro 4-17, etc.)

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Q.  What is REL and do we want it?

A.  Ron Shandler (baseballhq.com) gives a 0-100 grade for "reliability."  

Miguel Batista had a 78 this year, one of the highest in baseball, meaning, "you can count on this guy's xERA."  Horacio Ramirez had a 0, meaning, "I'd prefer to forecast the attack angles of a group of dancing monkeys."

. 

Q.  Is reliability a good thing?

A.  You get into a lot of heavy game theory here.  Sometimes in games you want the action randomized; sometimes you don't.

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The “debate” about whether Morrow could start is a … well, a non-starter.  :- )  Everybody knows by now that Morrow would be a Justin Verlander-type impact SP.

He *did* need, um, two weeks to get the hang of blowing away ML hitters.  Great, he had the two weeks.

He *would* spend, um, a month getting the perfect feel back on his offspeed stuff, and might go 1-2 in his first four starts.  But you know and I know that within a few starts, the Mariners would have added a legit All-Star starting pitcher.  

True contending status begins and ends with dominating aces.   Boston, New York, Oakland, they are all about getting the Zitos and Hudsons and Becketts and DiceK's and going to war. 

………….. 

Nobody seriously imagines that Brandon Morrow would go into the rotation and run a 5.50 ERA.  We’re just playing ping-pong against a backstop trying to deny Morrow's ability to start,  ’cause we don’t have the guts….

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This D-O-V Yahoo article doesn't have a comments section, so here is a comments thread…

FWIW, the Mariners' official website updated, and instead of TBD, they now list Jorge Campillo, and this 'scouting report':

Scouting Report:
Mariners: While the Mariners have yet to announce who will replace Horacio Ramirez, who went on the disabled list on Friday with left shoulder tendinitis, Campillo is a leading candidate. He went seven innings for Triple-A Tacoma in a no-decision on Thursday against Las Vegas, allowing two runs on six hits and a walk while striking out five. The 29-year-old Campillo, who made his Major League debut Sept. 26, 2006, with Seattle, is 2-4 with a 3.90 ERA in 10 starts with Tacoma. He has walked 19 and struck out 42 in 62 1/3 innings.

But Ryan Feierabend went 1 inning tonight for Tacoma, suggesting that Feierabend will get the call Tuesday. 

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The last two games, the Mariners went in to face a KC team that was on a hot roll … and the Mariners looked like a $100m team in both games.

. 

=== Line 'Em Up Dept. ===

Neihaus pointed out something I noticed a few games ago even when we were still having some trouble scoring runs. The Ms seem to have decided collectively to take the first strike…a lot of the hitters have stopped making first pitch contact in the last week or so…it seems to be getting SPs out of the game earlier.

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