Mariners Week in Review: April 10-16

The Mariners ended the week 6-7. They've scored 63 runs, 8th in the AL and given up 61, 5th in the AL. It sure doesn't feel like the pitching is better than the hitting does it?

For the week they were 3-3 winning 2 out of 3 in Cleveland and losing 2 of 3 in Boston with one weird Monday game left to go (which they lost, but that's next week!). I would have to say that .500 in 6 days on the road is almost always a good thing for this team, especially in Cleveland and Boston, definite upper division foes.

For the week they hit .240 with just 4 homers. OPS for the week was .724 (.303/421). Fairly mediocre all the way around. They were led by Kenji Johjima who hit .368 and slugged .526 for the week and Raul Ibanez who hit .360 and slugged .600 (a pretty mean feat without a homerun). Jose Lopez slugged a sweet .629 for the week, belting a couple of homeruns. Jurassic Carl hit only .167 for the week but walked 4 times to post a respectable .333 OBP. Beltre continues to look lost out there (1 single in 22 ABs, yowch!) and Ichiro has started off slowly, hitting .167 for the week and only .185 for the year. I don't know about Beltre, he just looks awful, like he's a serious guess/mistake hitter at this point. I don't know what they were throwing him in the WBC, but I wish we could bottle it.

The pitching staff as a whole had a 4.53 ERA for the week, striking out 43 while walking 23. The starters got just one win on Joel's 6 and 2/3 innings of shutout ball, Mateo and Woods picked up the other 2 in relief. Putz was unconscious this week, 4 and 1/3 scoreless with 8 strikeouts. 8! Soriano and Mateo also had good weeks in the pen. Jamie lost a good start, and Meche and Hernandez both pitched poorly. Washburn got hammered by the Indians, then lost a duel to Josh Beckett, where he only gave up 3 runs despite walking 4 guys in 6 innings.

It is only two starts but you have to be a little bit worried about King Felix. He has really struggled with his control, walking 4 in each of his starts and throwing a lot of pitches to the guys he doesn't walk. He's still got a nice 3-1 groundball ratio but nothing like 4.5 to 1 he threw up last year. He showed better control in the majors last year (2.5 walks per nine) then he ever did in the minors (Minor league composite of 3.58 per nine), so I am mildly concerned. I retract my worried from above. Lets stick with concerned.

So overall a pretty decent week. On Deck: the one against Boston, then home against Texas and Detroit. 5 and 2 would be nice!