Tagged: Lowe
Over here in the Emerald City….
It’s hard to sit with a cup of coffee, maybe a cookie and find time to write a new entry when your life is chaotic. I won’t bore you with my latest antics but we’ll leave it at this; my life has been crazy.
Even that sounds like an understatement.
Over here in the rainy beautiful Emerald City, more specifically at 1st Ave and Edgar Martinez Dr, lots have been happening. The Mariners organization has been busy. Busy dealing with arbitrations, busy signing new and old players, busy inviting players to Spring Training, busy having photo shoots with new players, busy mourning the departure of Branyan and Johjima….
….ok the last one is just me.
Like I said on my Twitter, I have waited too long to update my blog that I have no idea where to start. I’m going to machine-gun my way through some Mariners updates but please note that they are in no particular order.
1. Felix Hernandez is staying! For FIVE more years! I expected 2 or 3, but 5? I’m beyond ecstatic and I’m sure a lot of other Mariners fans are too. The exact number for Felix’s raise is not disclosed, but I’m guessing it’ll be a chunky amount compared to his 3.8 million salary last season! When you’re a Cy Younger runner-up, you deserve it.
Wow, I’m pretty confident when I say we have the most vicious 1-2 punch for our starting rotation in the entire Major Leagues. Sorry Angels, we’ll be dethroning you this season.
2. Mariners closer David Aardsma and relief pitcher Derek Lowe signed a one-year extension and both a raise in their salaries. They certainly both deserved the raise after their outstanding (especially Aardsma) performances in the ’09 season. Aardsma was 38 for 42 save opportunities, and Lowe was one of the only consistently dependable RPs for us last season.
3. Say hello to our new 1st baseman Casey Kotchman from the Red Sox. Please don’t ask me how I feel about this or I’ll start crying. I would like to ask our GM one question; why wasn’t Branyan a good candidate? Sure, he was injured but he did his job as the team slugger hitting 31 HRs and manned 1st base extremely well. Ok fine, I guess the M’s offered him a 1 year deal and he rejected it. Let me pout for a few seconds.
…….
Ok I’m done. As a faithful Mariners fan, I should welcome Casey Kotchman with a smiling face and open arms. Casey, I wish you success in our amazing team but please don’t do anything that’ll make me regret the smiling face and open arms. Mmmkay?
Russell, I will miss you dearly and I wish you the best. I highly doubt that anyone in our lineup (so far) is going to blast 31 homeruns like you did last season. What are we going to do without a slugger like you? Eeep!
4. The Mariners welcome Brandon League as a result of a trade with Brandon Morrow. I don’t have much to say about this trade because it kind of feels like an even exchange. Both their ERA’s are kind of high, both had an unstable season. I do like his glasses though.
There you go, a quick update of what the 2010 AL West Champions Mariners have been up to. :] I can’t believe Spring Training is right around the corner; it feels like it’s been ages since I’ve watched baseball. Now that I’m back in the Pacific Northwest, I plan on going to a ridiculous amount of Mariners game this season. Besides, I have my game shirt ready and everything:
It was a gift from Santa! ♥
xoxoxoxoxoxo
Ichiro robs Royalty
Ok so a little bit of a false alarm. I didn’t think I was going to have any easy access to internet let alone from my own laptop but turns out my host has wireless internet and the first thing I thought?
Sweet, I can blog during down-time ♥
So here I am in beautiful Portland, Oregon. I have jetlag of +3 hours so I was wide awake on my vacation at 6:30am. Unfortunate but this gives me time to blog while my host sleeps in so it’s a wonderful thing! :]
I know this is off-topic but my flight from Detroit to Portland was hell. I had a great window-seat exit row but had an extremely obese woman sitting next to me and her muffin top was spilling over the arm-rest and into my seat. Not only that but she kept wanting to look outside the window and mercilessly leaned over me to do so. Couldn’t breathe! Although I’m used to flying 9+ hours on a plane back and forth from Tokyo to Seattle, this flight of a mere 4 hours seemed never ending. I’m sure you guys have had horrible flight experiences. Just thought I’d share.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
The most amazing thing that happened to me yesterday apart from the fact that I’m back home and spent the whole day with best friends, it was when I was scrolling down the comcast remote and when I selected “MLB Baseball“, it was the Mariners vs Royals game. Wow, how nice is it to be able to watch your favorite team on TV without having to log into GameDay or paying for MLB Extra Innings? Wow I’m going to be so spoiled for the next month. Sounds ridiculous I’m sure. :]
I didn’t watch the entire game; I actually started watching in the top 4th and the Mariners were down by 1. Rowland-Smith was our SP and definitely didn’t do a repeat on his last start where he went hitless for 6 innings. He struggled by giving up 5 runs within the first 4 innings and he was done. As I’ve mentioned before, the Mariners relief pitchers make me extremely nervous but Kelley, Batista and Lowe did a great job. Kelley gave up the 6th run to the Royals but ended up with the win. Aardsma came out to close the game and succeeded despite loading the bases for himself.
He had a little help from Ichiro. He blasted a homerun in the first inning, went 2 for 5 with 3 runs, but the biggest oomf that saved the Mariners was this…….
In the bottom 9th with 2 outs bases loaded, Buck hit a slicing foul ball towards right field, right in the corner where absolutely no one but Ichiro could see. It was quite a long dash for Ichiro but as soon as the ball dropped, we saw a blow of dust and a glove rising from the corner. Ichiro had caught that insanely difficult catch and rescued Aardsma from a blown save. Ichiro isn’t an 8 time Gold Glover for no reason, huh? I wonder if he was on the Web Gems last night? He should’ve! He’s amazing!
We definitely can’t forget the man that gave the Mariners the one run lead which ended up to be the only one we needed.
Russell Branyan! He’s been in a little slump as of late but turned that around for himself and for the team last night. Branyan hit a line drive between Butler and Callaspo scoring Jack Wilson. Branyan went 2 for 4 with 2 RBIs. Good job, Russ! :]
As far as watching the game (on TV, yay!), it’s always been so fun to watch the Mariners take on the Royals because of all the former Mariners players that they’ve acquired throughout the years.
Gil Meche*
Yuniesky Betancourt*
Willie Bloomquist*
Jose Guillen
Miguel Olivo
They were all great players for the Mariners and it’s always so nice to see their smiling faces. Not only that, but Olivo and Yuni both went 2 for 4 last night scoring half the runs that the Royals produced.
Miss you boys! So much! ♥
With all that said, I’m happy I managed to write up an entry this morning. Busy day ahead but turns out my friends are having a party for me at Buffalo Wild Wings where they have TVs in every corner, and at 4pm which is exactly when the Mariners start.
Am I completely ridiculous and horrible for thinking that?
Toodles!
xoxo
*=Missed the most by me. Hehe. ♥