2 starts, 8 IP. Eight! 14 earned runs and 4 strikeouts. He sucks and the Mariners are wasting 8 million on him. Why was this obvious to everyone EXCEPT the Mariners? The M's should have just put Baek or Feierabend at the back of the rotation and pocketed that extra money for the trading deadline. I'm not sure what the Mariners were expecting from Weaver, who went 8-14 last season with a 5.76 ERA (3-10 with a 6.29 in the AL), but it should have been clear that Baek or Feierabend could have done the same thing for FAR less money. Oh, and remember back in December of '05 when I was hoping the Mariners picked up Chad Gaudin? Well, he started for Oakland today and tossed 7.2 innings while only giving up 4 hits and 1 run. Who did he outduel? Oh yeah...the better (yet still terribly overrated) Weaver. Whatever...what's done is done, I'm just bitter. The sooner the Mariners get rid of Weaver, the better.

My wife is the best. She's not a big baseball fan, but she puts up with it. I think one of the ways she copes with the daily grind that is the baseball season is through her great sense of humor. She knows how much I dislike Willie Bloomquist, and she uses it against me. It kills me when she jokingly roots him on and claims that he's her favorite player. She even went as far as putting him down as the player she'd most like to be partnered with on her Wheel of Fortune application. She's hilarious and, deep down, I love her good-natured ribbing. On April Fool's Day, I woke up to find the background on our laptop littered with little, tiny Bloomquist faces. She saved his mug shot from ESPN.com, set it as our desktop image and selected the "tile" option. It was disgusting. But it was a great prank. Today, I got another little surprise when I opened the laptop and found this...

Wow.

Roy Halladay is all that is man. Doc went 10 innings today as the Jays knocked off the Tigers, 2-1. Halladay was extremely efficient, only needing 107 pitches to get through 10 frames. There have been some impressive pitching performances in April!

It’s Friday and I’m pumped because I’m going to the Mariners’ game tonight. If you’re going too, stop by section 143, row 10 and say hello! If not, have a great weekend!

I’m sure Royals farm director, J.J. Picollo, doesn’t like to see one of his players jumping over parked cars. See…that’s where we differ. (Tip of the hat to Aaron Gleeman for linking to this first)


Miguel Cabrera going deep on my birthday.


This has to be some sort of record…


ESPN’s Top 10 Web Gems of all time. David Wright got robbed.


Haha…here’s a commercial for RBI Baseball on NES.


Bonus! Whoever added this video disabled the ability to embed it on other pages, but here’s a link showing that Nick Swisher is the man.

It’s my birthday today and it should be a good one. I’m going over to my friend’s house to play some MLB 2K7 on XBox 360, and then it’s back home to watch the most exciting Mariners match-up in recent memory before heading out for a nice, birthday dinner at PF Chang’s. Boo yeah!

Others celebrating today: Mark Teixeira, Kelvim Escobar, Trot Nixon, Jason Varitek, Bret Saberhagen and USSMariner Super-Reader, Paul Covert.

It happened today:
1962: The New York Mets played their first game and lost 11-4 to the Cardinals in St. Louis.
1969: The Seattle Pilots played their first game, with Gary Bell shutting out the White Sox 7-0 at Sicks Stadium.
1985: Seattle's Gorman Thomas crushed three homers and drove in six runs to lead the Mariners to a 14-6 victory over the Oakland A's.
1990 California's Mark Langston and Mike Witt combine to no-hit the Mariners 1-0 for the first combined no-hitter in the major leagues since 1976. It is Langston's first start for the Angels since signing as a free agent in the off-season.

It’s happening today:
Daisuke Matsuzaka makes his Fenway Park debut…vs. FELIX HERNANDEZ! Mmm. Seriously, it doesn’t get better than this.

Derek Zumsteg will be at Third Place Books talking about his awesome, new book, “The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball.”

The Greenville Drive, the low-A affiliate for the Boston Red Sox, are having Shoeless Joe night and all season-ticket holders will receive replicas of what Joe Jackson’s Hall of Fame plaque might look like. The connection, of course, is that Jackson was from Greenville and I thought this was a really great idea for a promotion.

D-Rays fans are loving Akinori Iwamura, and why shouldn’t they? The guy has been a beast so far, hitting a nice, clean .500/.600/.700 over the first six games.

Did you know that Emiliano Fruto tossed six no-hit innings yesterday for the Nats’ AAA team? Everyday, Top Prospect Alert allows you to check out how your favorite organization’s minor leaguers performed the day before.

JC Bradbury at Sabernomics wrote a very convincing piece that argues that HGH isn’t impacting the game at all.

With MLB’s adoption of mandatory testing for steroids, many thought that home run rates would drop dramatically. They didn’t, and many felt that the lack of a test for HGH could be part of the explanation. Well, it’s time for the scientists working on such a test to start something else more important. Even if players are taking HGH, the drug no more effective than ionized bracelets, magnets in your shoes, or jumping over the foul lines. The impact of HGH on home runs in today’s game is zero. If a player is dumb enough to take this stuff, let him go right ahead.

This is why I love blogs. Seen any articles in newspapers like this? Let me know…

Beyond The Boxscore is doing weekly MLB awards .

The headline, “Gritty attitude nearly cost Tigers shortstop his life” made me laugh. See Seattle? Grit isn’t always a good thing!

Rich Lederer writes about a recent ceremony for his high school coach, John Herbold.

Alan Schwarz writes about Pat Venditte, an ambidextrous pitcher for Creighton University.

I’m in Boise, ID this week with Cheryl. We’re visiting her brother and his family (including my super-cute nephew, Max!), so I probably won’t be posting too much this week. I guess that’s not so out of the norm…but, whatever. OPENING DAY is just three days away and I’m stoked. Go Felix! Go M’s!

A nine-minute interview with one of my favorite baseball guys, Bill Veeck. One of my all-time favorite baseball quotes came from Veeck: “It’s not the high price of stardom that bothers me, it’s the high price of mediocrity.”


Comedian Dan Brennan doing a Harry Caray impression


Stan’s dad on South Park getting in a fight at a baseball game


One crazy baseball play!


Dropkick Murphys playing “Tessie” at Fenway Park

All this talk about the Mariners bringing Brandon Morrow north with the big club has the veins in my forehead swell with rage. And this is coming from someone that loves Brandon Morrow. I interviewed him last year. I drafted him as the Mariners scouting director in John Sickels’ mock draft. I really like the guy, I’m really looking forward to his future with this franchise and I wish him the very best. That’s precisely why I don’t want the Mariners to put him on their Opening Day roster. It’s just so short sighted!

Sure, he’s looked pretty good during Spring Training. But hey – it’s Spring Training! Willie Bloomquist is hitting .448 and Albert Pujols is hitting .262. Do I think Morrow could succeed out of a Major League bullpen this year? Yeah, he could probably hold his own, but that’s not the point. The point is that converting Brandon Morrow into a Major League reliever is a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea for many reasons. I know the M’s bullpen isn’t great, by any means. Putz’s sore elbow has me worried, as do the struggles of Reitsma and Sherrill. Rhodes is old and Mateo sucks. But, it could be alright. And, it’s not like adding a setup man is that one, golden missing link to this team.

Very few relievers are effective for long periods of time. Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman are the exception, not the norm. Just look at some of the top relievers from 2003: Foulke, Donnelly, Hawkins, Cormier, Marte, Dotel, Mota, Hasegawa, Worrell, Mantei, Tavarez, Riske, Aqulino Lopez, Looper, Kolb, Quantrill, Weathers, Beck…I could keep going, but I think you get my drift.

This is why I’m a big fan of building bullpens on the cheap. Adding Morrow to the big club would certainly be cheap in terms of payroll, but the risk is expensive. For one, you’re starting Morrow’s arbitration clock a year or two earlier than expected. But, even more worrisome is how Morrow’s career track will be thrown off if he pitches out of the Mariners bullpen this season. Whether he succeeds or not, there are question marks. If he succeeds, does the club pigeonhole him as a reliever? What a waste of a fifth-overall pick and 2.4 million dollar bonus, if you ask me. And if he isn’t lights out, which he most likely wouldn’t be, how does that affect his progress as a starting pitcher. We simply don’t know, because there isn’t a history of guys with this type of career path. Brandon Morrow could be a pioneer of sorts – albeit one that breaks ground only because his bosses are impatient idiots.

The smartest thing for the Mariners to do would be to send Morrow to AA, where he can learn how to be a starting pitcher. That is his future and doing anything aside from that is not in the best interest of the team, long-term. I think a bullpen of Putz, Reitsma, Rhodes, Sherrill, Mateo, Woods & Huber/White is sufficient. If the team really wants to add another right-hander because of the questions surrounding Putz and Reitsma, they can go with Huber AND White. If that doesn’t work for them, guys like Rudy Seanez, J.D. Durbin, Rick Bauer & Andrew Brown are all available and probably wouldn’t take much to acquire. The Mariners really need to get a clue. I can’t believe this is even an issue. If Brandon Morrow makes the Mariners’ Opening Day roster, I’ll be furious.

And, don’t even get me started on Rey Ordonez…