Kuzul

On Thursday night, Yu Darvish beat the Detroit Tigers and threw 130 pitches. It wasn’t his best performance this year or even this month, but it may end up the most scrutinized. 

As Darvish’s pitch count climbed, everyone—including announcer Matt Vasgersian and analyst Tom Verducci—had something to say about it. Vasgersian called Darvish’s deep pitch count a “Herculean feat.” 

Unfortunately, Rangers CEO Nolan Ryan wasn’t in his customary seat just to the left of the Texas Rangers dugout, so the camera couldn’t cut to him. Ryan, who pitched in the major leagues for over two decades and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1999, was as well known for his durability as he was for his fastball.

While I don’t know what Ryan thought about Darvish pitching the eighth inning with a six-run lead or giving up the ball in the ninth, we can look back and see what Ryan the pitcher did in similar situations. It’s food for thought when considering whether more pitchers could go as long as Darvish, if only their managers would let them.

Even the amazing Baseball Reference doesn’t have pitch-count data before 1988, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make solid estimates. Stats analyst Nate Silver, known for his work with Baseball Prospectus and The New York Times, created a pitch-count estimator that uses the known data, such as batters faced, walks and strikeouts, to tell us what a pitcher likely did on a given day in history.

The estimator was able to be tested against the pitch counts kept by Allan Roth, the statistician hired by Branch Rickey to track the Dodgers throughout the 1950s. It proved to be very accurate.

I had my stats guru, Dan Wade, run Nolan Ryan’s career starts through the pitch-count estimator, and here is what he found:

> 200: 3

190-200: 1

180-190: 3

170-180: 8

160-170: 14

150-160: 37

140-150: 67

130-140: 85

120-130: 80

110-120: 85

100-110: 72

If 130 pitches is “Herculean,” then Ryan was that almost 300 times in his career. That means of his 773 career starts, almost 38 percent of them ended up with a pitch count north of 120, and 28 percent were at Darvish’s level or greater.

Of course, Ryan pitched in a different era. It wasn’t that long ago that pitchers went deeper into games, coasting against the weak hitters and saving their best stuff for when they needed it. Today, pitchers go all out all the time, putting stress and fatigue on their arms. 

It’s also important to remember that Ryan pitched the last decade of his career with an elbow ligament that was hanging by a string. In his last start it popped, and he walked off into the sunset.

Darvish’s outing is notable not only in the amount of pitches he threw, but also that he was even allowed to throw them. Pitching coach Mike Maddux focused on his pitch effectiveness, not his pitch count.

While this is likely the discussion of two outliers—Darvish’s start and Ryan’s career—we do have to remember that outliers are what make the game great. Darvish’s durability and ability to go deep into games is what makes him one of the top pitchers in MLB. There are likely more out there if managers would stop relying on a stat and start relying on what they know.

Pitchers’ fatigue levels and durability should be measured and maximized not by fear, but by ability.

Statistics courtesy of Baseball Reference.

Will Carroll has been writing about sports injuries for 12 years. His work has appeared at SI.com and ESPN.com, and he wrote the book “Saving The Pitcher.”

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After their first 40 games, the Oakland A’s are 20-20 in the 2013 season.

Remember 2012? The A’s started 20-20 as well. In 2006, The A’s—led by Frank Thomas—rode a five-game winning streak to get to 21-19 after 40 games. 

Historically, the A’s have tended to be a slow-starting team. Under manager Bob Geren, the club never started better than 23-17 through 40 games (2008) and started as slowly as 15-25 (2009) while opening 20-20 three times. 

Go back to the Moneyball era when the A’s opened 21-19 (2000), 18-22 (2001) and 19-21 (2002) after 40 games. Oakland went on to win 91, 102, and 103 games those three seasons, respectively.

In many ways, the 12-4 start that the Athletics have raced out to this season was a bit of fool’s gold. Eleven of those 12 wins came at the expense of AL West foes Seattle, Los Angeles (Angels) and Houston. Those teams sit a combined 31 games under .500 heading into Tuesday, May 14.

Once the torrid starts by guys like Jed Lowrie and Seth Smith died down, so did the early offense. Add to those laws of averages the injuries to Coco Crisp, Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick, Brett Anderson and Jarrod Parker as reality dragged the A’s back down to earth.

The only thing is that this is still a very talented team. WIth a quarter of the season gone, the projected Oakland lineup has played less than 15 total games together. Even if the A’s don’t duplicate their wins from 2012, there is no way that Anderson and Parker continue to post ERA’s of 6.21 and 6.86,  respectively. 

It is still a marathon in the game of baseball and right now, the A’s have run roughly 6.5 of the 26.2-mile 2013 race. They’re just getting warmed up.

Relax and hope that players like Daric Barton can hold the fort down when called upon until all of the gang gets back. When they do, the A’s will take off like they traditionally do when the talent takes the field in Oakland. 

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As the 2013 Major League Baseball season race reaches the quarter pole, it becomes time to take stock of where teams and players are in terms of production. 

In the American League West, the Texas Rangers have taken their customary position of being the front runner, largely due to tremendous pitching and consistent power in the lineup. The A’s and Mariners have both been largely inconsistent, with the A’s scuffling back to .500 since starting the year 12-4. 

However, the biggest story has been the lack of success in Anaheim as the Los Angeles Angels are not fighting for an expected spot at the top, but trying to keep clear of division newcomers the Houston Astros. In the basement.

There have been solid performances from individuals on all five teams. But sometimes, overlapping positions keep deserving players from receiving deserved accolades. This will likely be no exception. 

So instead of lamenting who is not, we shall spotlight who is. Starting with catcher and ending a pitching rotation (relievers included), here is the AL West’s Quarter-Pole All-Star Team.

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Since the team moved from Kansas City to Oakland 45 years ago, the A’s have largely been a team built on great pitching. Whether it was Charley Finley’s Mustache Gang, the 1981 “Billyball” club, the Walter Haas owned/Tony LaRussa run team from 1988 to 1992 or Billy Beane’s Moneyball teams, Oakland has always won with great pitching.

As such, there have been great pitching performances—some in the regular season, others in the playoffs or even the World Series. Finding the 10 best is a matter of circumstance and history. It is also highly subjective. Having followed this franchise since 1985, I have seen good, bad and ugly. But it has almost always been interesting. 

With that said, here’s a nice look back in to time. Here’s my list for the 10 greatest pitching performances in Oakland A’s team history. 

*Stats are courtesy of “Baseball-Reference.com unless noted otherwise.

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It’s hard to look at Albert Pujols these days without asking, “Man, what the heck happened?”

The last time we saw Pujols in St. Louis Cardinals red, he was standing tall at the top of the baseball mountain after a 37-homer regular season that constituted a bad year. He was also celebrating the second World Series victory of his career, having helped the Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers with a 1.064 OPS in the seven games.

The man was a baseball god. 

Less than two years later, we’re looking at Pujols in Los Angeles Angels red and what we see is anything but a god. What we see is an albatross, not to mention the latest case study of how albatrosses come to be.

What he goes to show is that, shoot, it really doesn’t take much.

What’s happening to Pujols on the field isn’t the result of some sinister conspiracy. He’s old and beat up, and he’s playing like a guy who’s old and beat up.

The exact number varies depending on who you ask—and J.C. Bradbury of Baseball Prospectus and Mitchel Lichtman of Hardball Times are two good people to ask—but the conventional wisdom is that ballplayers peak around their late 20s, and that it’s all downhill from there.

Pujols warned, in 2011 at the age of 31, that he wasn’t going to be immune to this reality, and it’s only become increasingly obvious since his arrival in Anaheim just how not immune to it he really is.

Even after he shrugged off a brutal start to finish strong, the 2012 season was still the worst of Pujols’ career. After averaging a 1.037 OPS and 40 homers per year in his first 11 seasons, he could only manage an .859 OPS and 30 homers in his first season with the Angels.

This year, of course, has been worse. Pujols started the season strong with a .322/.431/.508 line through his first 16 games, but has since sunk to .169/.225/.310 over his last 17. He’s grounded into more double plays (four) than he’s hit home runs (three).

The pain hasn’t helped. Pujols had knee surgery over the offseason and has been dealing with plantar fasciitis in his left foot from the get-go. 

“I’m dying,” he told Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times in late April. “It’s hurting real bad.”

An American League scout who spoke to Andy Martino of the New York Daily News put it bluntly: “He’s got bad wheels. I bet he doesn’t play more than 50 games at first this year.”

He may be right. The Angels have played 34 games, and Pujols has started at first base in only half of those. When he has played first base, he’s posted a .616 OPS. When he’s DH’d, he’s posted an .828 OPS. The writing is on the wall that Pujols should be barred from first base until further notice.

Pujols isn’t as broken as Alex Rodriguez, as the Angel at least still has two working hips and a pair of knees that have only undergone one surgery. But there’s no denying that he’s trending toward becoming a broken down shell of his former self, just as A-Rod is now with four full years still to go on his 10-year, $275 million contract.

The Angels may be wishing that Pujols’ deal only had four years left on it. It has twice that many years remaining on it, and his is a back-loaded deal. The first four years (2012-15) the contract will pay him $75 million. The last four (2018-21) will pay $114 million.

So yeah, if you think Pujols is an albatross now, just wait until those four years come along. Not that it’s going to be his fault, of course. It’s not his fault now, mind you. I’m as distressed as anyone by his situation, but neither I nor anyone else can blame the guy for anything.

Pujols can’t be scolded for getting old. He can’t be scolded for getting hurt. And he certainly can’t be scolded for being willing to sign a contract that guaranteed him $240 million. The only thing to scold is the process that resulted in Pujols’ contract coming to fruition.

It was a two-sided process, with the Cardinals on one side doing things one way and the Angels on the other side doing things another way.

Brian Costa of the Wall Street Journal took a dive into the Cardinals’ side of the process in an article posted earlier this week. Costa got Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak to admit that he was “down, depressed, disheartened” when Pujols signed with the Angels, but Mozeliak also highlighted how the Cardinals weren’t as desperate to keep his star first baseman as the Angels were to steal him away. The story went a little something like this:

Mozeliak said several different contract structures were discussed in the final days of Pujols’s free agency, but those proposals were never substantially better than that spring-training offer [reported to be worth over $200 million].

Two days before Pujols agreed to terms with the Angels, Mozeliak sent an email to Cardinals owner Bill Dewitt Jr. asking, in essence: Is it time to forget discipline and bid whatever it takes, given Pujols’s importance to the franchise? But both men remained wary of committing so much to one player.

“In the end, it came down to business discipline versus emotionally driven negotiation,” Mozeliak said.

As Costa pointed out, the Cardinals’ discipline is paying off. Despite not having any big contracts at first base, Cardinals first basemen rank in the top five in MLB in both Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) and Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) since the start of 2012, according to FanGraphs.

Business discipline, meanwhile, is something that basically had no place in the Angels’ decision to go as hard after Pujols as they did.

In an interview with GQ magazine last April, Angels owner Arte Moreno explained that the decision to go after Pujols had much to do with the club’s new television contract: “We’d just signed an 18-plus-year [deal] through ’30, we have no debt, and we have a payroll that gives us all the flexibility to make the decisions we want to make.”

In other words: We suddenly had a ton of money on our hands, so why the heck not? That’s fine, but vast sums of money are still best served being invested in players, and that’s not really what Moreno did. Here’s a telling quote from Moreno:

We had done homework on the type of person he was, you know a family guy, and where he was from, etc., etc. So I asked Dan [Lozano, Pujols’s agent] if my wife and I could get on the phone with the player and his wife, if they were available.

And why was it important for Moreno’s own wife to be a part of the conversation?

I think I had read a lot of the decisions they made were made together, with their family, with their four kids. And I knew that they met in Kansas City, and I had met my wife in Kansas City, and my wife had grown up in Kansas, and his wife was born and raised in Kansas City, and he went to high school there. And I just felt that there was a connection. So it was important for me to help them to understand how important community involvement was for us and that we really work hard to make sure this is a family environment.

Moreno’s overture had the desired effect. 

“What he made me feel in those phone calls I had with him was how bad he wanted me,” Pujols told Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com in 2011. He added: “I’m like, ‘How about this guy? I don’t even know him.’ And when I made that decision, he told me that I was his partner, and that means a lot.”

Dan Lozano hit the nail on the head: “I think he was just able to touch a part in Albert’s heart that not a lot of other people were able to get to.”

What the Cardinals were concerned about was exactly how much they were willing to invest in Albert Pujols, the baseball player. Based on Moreno’s approach to the situation, he was at least as concerned (if not more) with how much he was willing to invest in Albert Pujols, the person.

Somebody was going to pay Pujols eventually, of course. He would have gotten his $200 million contract one way or another, and nothing would have stopped him from slipping into the downward spiral that he’s caught in now.

But once again, it’s hard to ignore the parallels between Pujols and A-Rod (in this case) how both their contracts came to be. Moreno is very much responsible for the Pujols signing, as he took precedent over his baseball people to get it done (Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports wagged his finger at Moreno for this last month).

When A-Rod opted out of his contract with the New York Yankees in 2007, Bill Madden of the New York Daily News wrote that it was to general manager Brian Cashman’s “great relief.” But a few weeks later, Hank Steinbrenner went over the baseball people and gave A-Rod his monster contract to make sure he didn’t get away, as told by Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News.

Going over the baseball people isn’t a good idea. They know baseball, after all, and they know that stars are defined not by their names but by their numbers, from their batting averages to their ages.

The Yankees invested in a name when A-Rod was re-signed, and they’re paying for it. The Angels did the same thing with Pujols, and they’re only beginning to pay for it. This is how albatross contracts happen. All it takes is the influence of Father Time and a bold choice where there should have been a measured choice.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter. 

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Dear Alex Rodriguez,

Or should I address you as “A-Rod?” Yeah, that sounds good. Certainly easier to type, anyway.

At any rate, I hear you’re on the comeback trail. It’s been almost four full months since you had surgery on your left hip, and the word on Monday from Adam Berry of MLB.com was that you can finally participate in some baseball activities.

The word after your surgery was that there was a chance you could return to the New York Yankees around the All-Star break. That sounded optimistic at first, but now it sounds about right. In fact, it sounds like you may even be back on the field before Derek Jeter.

But you’re not too sure, are you?

“I really hope so. That’s as specific as I’ll get,” you said when asked if you were positive you were even going to return at all this season. I took that to mean you don’t want to make any promises, that you don’t want to shut the door on the possibility of you not returning. You know, just in case.

And to that, I say this: Good. Here’s hoping.

Frankly, I’d rather not see you on the diamond this year, A-Rod. Or ever again, for that matter.

But don’t crumple this letter up just yet. You’ll find that hard to do seeing as how you’re reading it on a computer monitor, and I want you to know that I’m not here to yell at you. I’m not one of these guys:

No, I just want to talk, and what I want to talk about is how much better off the Yankees and Major League Baseball as a whole would be without you.

It’s not that I don’t like you, A-Rod. Though I should state, just for the record, that I don’t.

No offense, but you’ve become quite the hard player to like ever since you left the Seattle Mariners all those years ago. You continued to be a damn good player for years, but you lost the charisma you once had.

You came to exude a selfish personality, and I distinctly remember giving up on you when you tried to hijack the baseball headlines from the World Series when you opted out of your contract in 2007. It may have been Scott Boras who pushed the button, but he worked for you, A-Rod. That incident was on you, and it made you look like the biggest diva in the sport. 

It’s been almost six years since then, but I’ll be damned if the shoe doesn’t still fit.

I realize that has a lot to do with the media, as the writers and talking heads still paint you as a diva and as a 37-year-old problem child. But while I’m honestly not sure what you could have done, the fact is that you haven’t given them enough reasons to paint you as anything else. You helped them make a character out of you, and that character has stuck.

And there’s my issue with you coming back, A-Rod. When you return, that character is going to return and ruin everything. 

Consider your Yankees. I assume you’ve been paying attention, but I’ll fill you in just in case. 

While you, Jeter, Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira have been sitting out these first few weeks of the season, the Yankees have played like nobody told them their roster is sorely lacking in star power. They’re 18-12 and are one of only five teams in the majors that have hit 40 homers. They’re still playing like the Yankees.

That they shouldn’t be playing like the Yankees is what’s so cool about it. With so many stand-ins performing well, the 2013 Yanks have a kind of scrappy, “in your face” underdog thing going for them. It’s a nice change of pace from the whole pompous act the Yankees usually have going.

As long as the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles continue to play well, the Yankees have a chance to retain their scrappy vibe even after Granderson, Teixeira and Jeter return. Instead of a team of spare parts attempting to chase down an AL East title, they’d be a team of spare parts and past-their-prime old guys attempting to chase down an AL East title. Not quite the same, but still a cool story.

But things will be different if you return, A-Rod. And not in a good way.

No matter what you do, you’ll always be a symbol of all that’s wrong with the Yankees at any given moment. When you’re playing well and the Yankees are playing well, you’re a symbol of what wonders their vast amounts of money can reap. When you’re not playing well and they’re not playing well, you’re a symbol of the downfall of the Yankees empire.

That’s what you were the last time you were on the field, of course. Your Yankees couldn’t hit a lick in the postseason, and the media basically made it out to be all your fault. Your 3-for-25 showing was portrayed as the problem rather than a problem.

It was bogus, but this is how it is. You’re bigger than the Yankees, all too often irritatingly so.

If you were to retire, the Yankees certainly wouldn’t mind being rid of your contract. The four years and $86 million remaining on it would be forfeited if you were to walk away, which would greatly aid the Yankees’ payroll quest.

I can guarantee you the Yankees also wouldn’t mind being rid of their resident negative-attention magnet. They would be allowed to be a baseball team again, rather than a soap opera with you as the star.

The fans would dig that, too. Like all other fans, Yankees fans want good baseball first, and drama a distant second.

But you’re not just a negative-attention magnet for the Yankees, A-Rod. You’re also a negative-attention magnet for Major League Baseball, as you well know.

If you were to retire, Commissioner Bud Selig and the rest of the league office would miss you like a marathoner misses a rock in his shoe, for you’re a walking, talking reminder that the league still might not be past an era that it really, really wants to be past.

You’re one of the key faces of the Steroid Era, A-Rod. That’s a role you signed up for the moment you made your big admission to Peter Gammons in 2009.

You’ll recall that you made this admission less than two years after you had sworn to Katie Couric that you had never used PEDs or ever even felt the need to use PEDs.

As soon as you admitted that you actually had, you may as well have been telling everyone, “Whatever you do, never trust me.”

This, of course, is relevant to more recent events.

The Miami New Times reported in January that you had been purchasing PEDs from a seedy clinic in the Miami area called Biogenesis since 2009, the year of your big admission. You denied it.

Just last month, the New York Times reported that you tried to buy the Biogenesis documents to keep them out of Major League Baseball’s hands. According to Ken Davidoff of the New York Post, you’ve denied that too.

You’re asking us to trust you with these denials, A-Rod. But shoot, why should we? You surrendered your right to the benefit of the doubt four years ago when you sat down to talk with Gammons.

Major League Baseball would leave you alone if you were to walk away. The league can’t punish a retired player, and there’s no precedent for barring somebody from the Hall of Fame—not that your chances to get in are particularly good, if we’re being honest, based on PED-related controversy. 

The fans would leave you alone too. There would be grumbling every time you popped up in the public eye, as there is with Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens now, but that’s nothing compared to the grumbling that would be going on every day if you were to suit up again.

Basically, if you were to go away, the baseball landscape would be much calmer. Serene, even.

Kinda like it is right now. Your time away from the game this season has provided fans with a sneak peek at what life after A-Rod is going to be like. It feels like that window of time between Bonds’ and Clemens’ last games in 2007 and your big bean-spilling in 2009.

I’m enjoying it, and I’d prefer not to wait until after the final year of your contract in 2017 for this to become the status quo. 

So please. Just go. Now.

And don’t come back.

Yours truly,

Some guy

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter. 

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The Los Angeles Angels (11-20) currently sit in fourth place in the A.L. West with a winning percentage of .355 (third worst in the American League).

To say that the team has underachieved through the first five weeks of the season would be a giant understatement. Prior to the 2013 campaign, fans and analysts alike had the Halos slated as true World Series contenders. 

But winning hasn’t come easy. 

When looking at the season statistics, it becomes rather apparent that the Angels pitching staff is the main reason why. 

The Angels staff currently has a team ERA and team WHIP of 4.78 and 1.48, respectively, which both rank second worst in all of baseball. They have allowed 129 walks through 31 games, the highest number of any team. In addition, Halo pitchers have had a hard time closing out games, converting on only four out of nine save opportunities. 

If the Angels want to be playing meaningful games throughout the summer, the aforementioned numbers need to improve. 

On offense, the Angels have been inconsistent at best. While Mark Trumbo and Howie Kendrick have been pleasant surprises, the rest of the lineup has underachieved. 

The following five players need huge turnarounds in order for the Angels to have any chance of making a run at the playoffs this season.

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Did you know that Saturday night at Safeco Field is Dustin Ackley Bat Night?

All kids 14 and under will receive a full-sized Dustin Ackley Louisville Slugger, complements of Jack Link’s Beef Jerky. 

Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up.

Don’t believe me?

Feel free to check the official 2013 promotions and special events schedule at Mariners.com.

Honestly, sometimes you need to laugh to keep from crying with this team.

However, if you’ve already given up all hope, feel free to simply take the bat home to smash your “Smoakamotive” (eBay) from last year to pieces with it to vent your frustration. 

That’s assuming you will make the journey to Safeco in the first place.   

If I had to venture a guess, I’d imagine that more people in the region probably watched the NFL draft the past two days to see who the Seahawks selected in their quest for a Super Bowl than any of the Mariners’ games.

Making matters worse as we approach the month of May it appears we’re already potentially on course for an expansion team performance this season, according to Larry Stone at the Seattle Times.

I suppose it didn’t help that beyond Monday night’s offensive outburst in support of Felix Hernandez‘s 100th career victory and Hisashi Iwakuma‘s 11-strikeout performance the next night, the trip to Texas was a complete disaster as the Mariners dropped five of six games.  

Things got so bad that manager Eric Wedge decided to bench one of his players (Seattlepi.com) and scold the team (Seattle Times).

Whether these moves have any meaningful impact remains to be seen, yet I suppose Wedge is simply trying to work with what he has at his disposal given that the list of potential reinforcements fail inspire much confidence, according to Stone in another report filed this week:

At Tacoma, there are several players with major-league experience who are off to decent starts. The problems is that in most cases, they are players who have already had struggles at the major-league level. Now, that doesn’t mean they are doomed to have their weaknesses exploited for perpetuity. But it gives you pause.

Perhaps then, I should pause in wondering whether the demotion of Brendan Ryan in favor of Robert Andino is really just the M’s way of paving a path for Brad Miller to take over in the second half?

Regardless, it just doesn‘t make sense to get too far ahead of yourself this season with this crew, especially when you look at the upcoming

After finishing up this homestand against Los Angeles and Baltimore, the M’s will head to Toronto and Pittsburgh, then come back to Seattle for a three-game set to face Oakland before swinging back east to play New York and Cleveland. They will finish off their road trip with two mid-week games against Los Angeles before having Texas show up at Safeco for a weekend series.

I’m feeling jet-lagged just typing that, I can only imagine how the M’s will deal with it in real time.

Oddly enough though, that brutal stretch could set the tone for the remainder of the season.

Coming out of spring training, I had hoped the Mariners would avoid this level of desperation, assuming (more like, hoping) the veterans brought in this winter could help bridge the gap until the team’s top prospects could be integrated into the lineup over the course of the season.

However, beyond the occasional solid pitching performance from Hernandez and Iwakuma, along with the recent hitting streak of Kyle Seager, the rest of the team has generally failed to show any sort of consistency. 

With no solid options to promote, does that mean Wedge and general manager Jack Zduriencik get to take the fall instead if things continue to spiral downward?

As always, Dave Cameron at USS Mariner, is one step ahead of us:

If it happens, I’m not going to be against the decision, and I don’t think having an interim manager or GM would lead to impending doom. But, I don’t know that it would really help anything either.

During a season, there’s only so much an organization can really do. The Mariners made this bed when they let the front office try and build a winning team around dingers and voodoo. It has blown up in their faces in a comical way, and it’s probably going to cost the people in charge their jobs. But, I don’t know that it needs to cost them their jobs in a RIGHT NOW THIS MINUTE I DEMAND CHANGE kind of way.

I can’t argue with any of that, although part of me would like to see Cameron given a shot to see if he could turn things around.

Meanwhile, I can only imagine what will be going through Dustin Ackley‘s mind tonight at Safeco as his teammates likely joke with him about the fact it’s his bat night.  Hopefully, in spite of their struggles, the players will still have a sense of humor. 

Truth be told, I almost pity this team.  As we saw in spring training, they seem to be a decent bunch, but bless their hearts, they can’t quite get their act together.

For his sake, I hope Ackley can at least give Saturday night’s crowd something to cheer about.  It may not be much, but at this point, any small gesture is welcome. 

To think that only two years earlier, Ackley was still struggling at Tacoma before catching fire prior to his arrival in Seattle.  I remember him continuing his impressive stretch after joining the M’s in what looked like the beginning of a promising career. 

Deep down, I still think there’s a solid ballplayer in Ackley searching to rediscover that spark, as evidenced by what we’ve seen the past week. 

Once again though, I’d like to avoid getting too far ahead of myself and take this one step at a time. 

Yet, if you’re of the tender age to receive a bat on Saturday night, you may be left to wonder why the adult accompanying you struggles to find the joy that he or she once had for the game and this particular franchise. 

It’s not that anyone should expect the Mariners to win, it’s more that a ticket to the ballpark should afford you an experience worth savoring, regardless of whatever swag/trinket the team hands you at the turnstile.  

It doesn‘t necessarily have to be this way, but the “dingers and voodoo” approach that Cameron described, has struggled to generate wins or excitement; therefore fans are staying away.

Could things change?

Anything is possible, yet barring a minor miracle, I think this team will look very different by midsummer. 

Until then, the show must go on. Just don’t expect anyone to show up to watch unless a bobblehead, key chain, hat or T-shirt is involved with bonus points on night’s like tonight when King Felix is pitching. 

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Los Angeles Angels first baseman Albert Pujols has five career home runs against Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Aaron Harang, which is important to consider when making your MLB picks on Friday as the two teams meet at Safeco Field.

Sports bettors will find that the Angels are minus-145 road favorites in the pro baseball odds (courtesy of SBR Forum), while the total stands at 7.5 in the betting market.

Let’s take a closer look at this American League West matchup from a betting perspective, while offering a prediction along the way.

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The Seattle Mariners are in a familiar position. They aren’t hitting.

Haven’t we seen this movie before? As tweeted by Greg Johns of MLB.com:

#Mariners shutout for second straight night in Texas, this one 5-0. Maurer pitched well (2H, 2R in 6 2/3), but no offensive help.

— Greg Johns (@GregJohnsMLB) April 21, 2013

No offensive help. Shall we all utter an audible sigh?

When are the Mariners going to start hitting on a regular basis? The team is ranked 29th in the league with a .220 team average. Unfortunately, this is a familiar statistical position.

The Mariners have been here before.

Michael Morse started out so hot. So did Franklin Gutierrez. Morse has cooled off and is now hitting .230 for the season. Gutierrez is starting to struggle with injuries—again.

Audible sigh.

There are also the hitters that are really struggling:

Brendan Ryan: .152

Dustin Ackley: .153

Justin Smoak: .200

Jesus Montero: .217

The young core of hitters that was supposed to be the future of the Mariners is not necessarily coming together in 2013. Seattle is second in the league in one category: strikeouts.

Not exactly what the fans were hoping for this year.

Two straight games without a run. Only five runs in five games.

The Mariners have now scored the fewest runs in the American League West (58) and they are tied for the fewest in the American League with the Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox.

Only three teams in the National League has scored fewer runs than the Mariners. Not good.

The season is still very young, and the Mariners have not fallen too far behind in the division. However, this season could get away quickly if the M’s are unable to start swinging the bats.

As tweeted succinctly by Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times:

“Hey, dude, is it just me, or is this season starting to blow?” #Smoakamotive #Mariners twitter.com/gbakermariners…

— Geoff Baker (@gbakermariners) April 21, 2013

Indeed. Time to start hitting.

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