Is that a bone in your pocket...?

Birds chirp furiously outside, as Spring has arrived in full force.

Moreover, despite their tough opponents up to this point, the Mariners are hanging in there. Oh, sure, Eddie nearly gave us all heart attacks last night, but in the end, the M's used their sticks to smack the ball delivered by Paul Byrd and a cast of thousands, and Seattle prevailed over Cleveland.

All is right with the world.

Oh, yeah, and the King pitches today.

King Felix takes on Cleveland's replacement for the departed Kevin Millwood, right-hander Jason Johnson. In addition to having a cool name, Johnson is one of those players who might underscore the difference in GM IQ between a Shapiro and a Bavasi. Sure, he's a finesse pitcher whose career record and ERA are both, ahhh, pretty blase (53-86, 4.86). And he's not going to end the season with his current ERA (0.00, after a nice opening seven innings against the Twins). But for $4 million on a one-year contract plus mutual 2007 option, here's somebody who could have, oh, I don't know, replaced Gil Meche in the Seattle rotation? Grrr.

All we have to do today to erase such crazy talk is to pound Johnson like we did Byrd and Graves yesterday.