"Real" baseball today

Tad earlier noted that we got a MLB game today, but unfortunately, nobody told the Mariners. What an embarrassment!

Well well, the M's have hit something of a rough patch. We've scored, let's see...one run in a week (thanks, snow!), and our offseason acquisitions are making Bill Bavasi look, if anything, even more clueless than I thought he was.

Small sample size, right?

Nope. I fear it's far worse than just a bad day against a good opponent. Other folks might be willing to give Jeff Weaver a pass, but did anyone WATCH him all of last season? I mean, with the rather inexplicable exception of the World Series, only moving to the NL Central made him look like he might still be able to get major league hitters out. His ERA went down over a full run from his 16 AL starts (6.29 ERA, matching his perfectly respectable 6.3 K/9 rate in the AL) to his 15 NL starts (5.18 ERA, a limp 4.9 K/9). Sadly, this one-time first-round pick and young Tiger pitching phenom, only 30 years old right now, looks absolutely awful.

To be sure, he'll have better days than today. But what's his upside, really? This was one of the guys that Bavasi said he WANTED in the offseason. Sigh.