M’s Stink up Safeco; Bench Yuni, Bring Up Carp

The Rays massacred the M’s tonight behind good hitting and solid pitching. At one point, the Rays 2nd/3rd/4th hitters were an out-of-this-world 8 for 9. Although Evan Longoria is only 23 years old, he is the best player that nobody has ever heard of. His swing is effortless; everything he hit went deep into a gap somewhere.

Meanwhile, the M’s looked like a bunch of hackers. It took 5 innings for the M’s to get their first hit. Some observations: despite his .300 average, Yuni Betancourt needs to sit. His defense sucks and his lack of pitch selection is killing this team. Although management keeps telling him to be more patient, he’s clearly tuning them out. First pitch? Ground out. 2nd pitch? Ground out. Two pitches, two quick outs. I’m done with Yuni. I want him out of here. Let’s give Cedeno a week and see what we’ve got.

I’m still laughing at the injury sustained by Mike Sweeney. Sweeney, who will turn 36 this July, apparently pulled a muscle in his ribcage while swinging at strike two early in the game. Sweeney then proceeded to take himself out of the ballgame (I had a weird Miguel Cairo flashback when Cedeno replaced Sweeney in the lineup in the cleanup spot. Eeew). If Sweeney is placed on the DL, I don’t think the M’s will miss his bat much anyway. It might be nice to see Carp get a call up from Tacoma.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to watch Ken Griffey struggle. On one hand, you look at him and hope to catch lightning in a bottle. Every sports fan wants to see the Kid hit 30 home runs and drive in 100. One the other hand, Kenny is 39 and has a lot of baseball on his personal odometer. Stop drinking the kool-aid, Seattle fans, Kenny isn’t the same Kenny we saw back in 1995. He isn’t going to hit north of .250 and we should be very happy if he hits 20 bombs and drives in 80. Hopefully, there will be a night or two when Griffey is enough to win a ballgame by himself. (Cue the soundtrack from the Natural). Single tear.

Perhaps the M’s saving grace is that they are 9-6 despite the fact that their 3 main run producers (Griffey, Beltre, Lopez) are all hitting .206 or less. Maybe the guys will get hot and revive the offense. Or maybe the team’s lack of patience and power will render the team uncompetitive when they fall behind.