Game Recap: M's 3, Phillies 1

First off, another stellar post from yours truly, in which I correctly predicted that that Dave Hansen would get the start with Beltre out, that he would contribute with a homer and a couple of RBI, and that the Beltre-less M's would have no problem with the Phillies. Wait that was my post on the Bizarro Tatonka Blog.

That was the kind of game that makes you love baseball. A little over two hours, some good defense a nice pitching performance and a Mariner win. Its all good.

The highlights were the 8 inning, 3 hitter from Meche, 3 hits from Jeremy Reed and the homer from Hansen. Ichiro got his 1,000th hit for those who care about such things. Jim Caple has a good column up about whether his Japanese hits should be "counted" when it comes time for him to be considered for the Hall of Fame. Of course they won't be counted, there is no official counting that gets into the HoF, but I expect most voters will consider them, at least. A few will not and that's their prerogative I guess.

Meche did look good, but not as dominant as they would have had you believe on the post-game show. Even Hendu, when asked if that was as good as Meche has pitched this year, said (surprisedly), "No." He did seem to be moving the ball around well, but he only got 4 k's, all on called third strike breaking balls. Really doubt he's going to be able to keep doing that.

Hansen has only had 16 at-bats this year of crappiness compared with Bloomquist's 58 and the Dobber's 34. If Hansen could get make a run at usefulness, then maybe we could dump Dobbs for someone who might actually help the team a little bit (Leone, Lopez, Snelling, hell even Jamal Strong would at least provide some OF insurance).