Seattle Mariners

Manager Eric Wedge moved some pieces around in his lineup Wednesday in an effort to get a new look against Angels southpaw C.J. Wilson and change things up in the face of a five-game losing streak that hit bottom with Tuesday’s 12-0 loss to the Halos. Left fielder Jason Bay moved into the leadoff spot for just the second time in his career, the first coming April 26 against the Angels when he went 1-for-4 in a 6-3 loss at Safeco Field. Michael Saunders, who has hit just .125 (4-for-32) while leading off on the road trip, dropped into the No. 2 spot. And with Kyle Seager getting his first day off after starting 29 games in a row, Michael Morse was hitting third for the first time this year after spending 31 games batting cleanup and then the past eight games hitting fifth. “Just shaking it up against the left-hander and giving the guys a different look,” Wedge said. “Every now and again I think you need to do that. And we’re giving Kyle a much-needed day off. I’m trying to domino that with an off day tomorrow, too.” Wedge said Saunders has been trying to do too much at the plate recently and needs to get back to the approach that had him hitting .286 coming into this road trip. That number has fallen to .235. “I don’t think it’s fatigue,” Wedge said. “I think he’s expanded the zone a little from time to time. When he stays within his zone, he does damage. I think he’s just expanded his zone, trying to do a little too much. We’re at our best when these guys are willing and able to set the bat down and take a walk and let the next guy get a shot at it. When they try to do too much or get a little greedy up there, that’s when you get in trouble.” As for Morse in the three-hole? “He’s had some success against Wilson and I wanted to give our guys a different look and give them a different look, too,” Wedge said. “Rework the dynamics with him and [Morales] and see how it plays out. We’ll get him up there in the first inning and see what happens.” Here’s the full lineups for today’s 4:05 p.m. series finale:

There are moral victories and then there are real ones. After taking a bunch of moral victories out of Cleveland, the Mariners need the real thing this afternoon as they conclude a road trip currently at 2-6 after starting off oh so promising with two wins and nearly a sweep in New York. For all of the nice things being said about how well the Mariners have played and how hard, they are now just 20-26 on the season and the platitudes won't matter if they finish roughly the same as last year. Mariners manager Eric Wedge isn't panicking yet, or so he says. But his lineup today refelcts just how badly he wants the win here today just to give his team something to build off with the Rangers coming to town this weekend. Wedge had Jason Bay in the leadoff spot once again, a role he occupied in Houston last month after Franklin Gutierrez got hurt with Michael Saunders already on the 15-day DL. Saunders is now healthy, but his offensive numbers have taken a nosedive on this road trip. He is just 4-for-32 (.125) with an on-base-percentage of .152 with a .188 slugging mark for a .340 OPS. It's amazing that the Mariners as a team had done so well offensively on this trip prior to last night, given how poorly the leadoff hitter has been performing. But with two shutouts in three days, the lack of a presence atop the order may be catching up to the Mariners. That's why you see Bay in there today, with Saunders at No. 2 and Michael Morse now No. 3 with Kyle Seager given a rest. Wedge was asked about why he thinks Saunders has seen his numbers go off a cliff. "I think he's expanded the (strike) zone a little bit from time to time,'' Wedge said. "You know what? When he stays in his zone, he does some damage. So, I think he's just expanded his zone, is trying to do too much. So, again, we're at our best when these guys are willing and able to set the bat down and take the walk and let the next guy get a shot at it. "So when you try to do too much, or get a little greedy out there, that's when you get into trouble.'' Wedge said it's important for his players to keep rememering how well they played in New York -- going 5-0-1 in their most recent six series to that point -- and in most of the Cleveland series before getting blasted last night. "You can't compute that,'' he said of the Indians series. "Those things happen once in dozens of years. And then we're one game into here, so you've got to keep it all in perspective.'' Wedge has Jesus Montero on the bench against left-hander C.J. Wilson. He said it's strictly a matter of wanting to better control the running game the Angels have and he feels Kelly Shoppach is best positioned to do that.

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Well, it was enjoyable to make fun of the Angels there for a second, and I guess, considering the standings, it still is. Last night, however, didn't do much to further the cause, and hopefully some time in the very near future, the ill-fated Aaron Harang experiment will be over. It was a good try, kind of, and sort of worth a shot if you're able to wipe your mind clean of all the confounding roster movement that it was preceded by. You may or may not have that particular skill and if you do could you please teach it to me? But we can be done now. Aaron Harang, it should be noted, is not starting the game this evening for the Mariners. That distinction belongs to Brandon Maurer. Maurer continues to do just enough to remain interesting and worthy of consideration. While his peripheral numbers (.314 BABIP, 5.47 FIP, 4.72 xFIP) don't trigger a whole lot of inspiration, they aren't nearly the final word on a young pitcher learning and evolving over the course of a young season. And Maurer has shown a willingness to adjust, recently making a play to get more left-handed batters swinging and missing by throwing his curveball more often. Pray for that curveball, all of you. Swaddle it in an organically woven, hypoallergenic blanket and softy hum a peaceful lullaby. Nurture and care for that curveball so that it may one day grow to be big and strong with lots of movement. Make it drink a glass of 2% milk with dinner. Pitching: Brandon Maurer vs. C.J. WilsonTime: 4:05Location: Angel Stadium of AnaheimTelevision: ROOT Sports

One of the rites of passage to be a successful or quixotic baseball writer is to invent a new statistic. Last fall, I joined this exclusive and imagined inner circle by crafting, in tandem with my colleague Joel (twitter: @CajoleJuiceEsq), a statistic called FAME. It's inspired by Bill James's Blank Ink, a neat little stat that collates the number of times a player has led the league in various categories, and thus how dominant a player was in his era. Black Ink is often one of the tools used to gauge a player's Hall of Fame candidacy. If Black Ink is a descriptive statistic, FAME (or: Fanfare and Acclaim Measurement Extraordinaire) is predictive: it counts the number of accolades awarded to the player by the media, and thus how strong his Hall of Fame case will appear to be. Essentially, it measures how much a player was talked about during his career, and how important he seemed. Points are awarded to players as follows: Award or Milestone Points Most Valuable Player 12 MVP (Top 5) 4 MVP (Top 10) 2 Rookie of the Year 4 All-Star Game appearance 3 Gold Glove Award 2 Silver Slugger 1 World Series victory 2 World Series appearance 1 Memorable, good nickname 1 3,000 hit milestone 2 400/500/600/700 HR milestone 1 each FAME scores are intended to compare with WAR, although some modifications need to be made now that Cameron and Forman have aligned their statistics. Still, I think it's a useful tool. My highlight as a statistician came with the 2013 Hall of Fame ballot, where I predicted that Sandy Alomar, Jr. would receive a surprising level of support. Despite a career WAR of 13.8, hardly more than Kenji Johjima, Alomar received 16 votes, two less than Kenny Lofton. Meanwhile, in Seattle, the city has always felt its place on the periphery of both baseball history and geography. What does FAME have to say about the Mariners greats of today and yesterday? Name FAME fWAR RATIO Alex Rodriguez 107 111.1 0.96 Ken Griffey Jr. 93 78.5 1.18 Ichiro Suzuki 73 53.5 1.36 Omar Vizquel 34 42.7 0.80 Edgar Martinez 30 66.6 0.45 Adrian Beltre 26 59.9 0.43 Bret Boone 21 23.1 0.91 John Olerud 18 57.6 0.31 Tino Martinez 18 29.7 0.61 Mike Cameron 9 49.7 0.18 Alvin Davis 8 20.8 0.38 Jay Buhner 7 23.4 0.30 (A full breakdown of the results can be seen here.) By these standards, the famous Mariners are surprisingly famous. Griffey and Ichiro are both first-ballot Hall of Famers, with the latter showing one of the highest FAME-to-WAR ratios in baseball history. (Note that this number will go down, however, as he plays out his twilight years, and also fails to reflect his younger years in Japan.) Alex Rodriguez's score is uncannily accurate, though he too has his autumn season before him. The news is less cheery for other M's hopefuls. Edgar Martinez is unsurprisingly underrated, and will continue to be throughout his fifteen long, sad years on the ballot. He's actually eclipsed in FAME by Omar Vizquel, who should see a sturdy and likely futile support from a cadre of voters. Adrian Beltre's candidacy will be an interesting one. He has the unfortunate quality of being a stellar defensive player without retaining any of the useless, memorably physical qualities of a stellar defensive player. He is not small or lithe, and he also plays third base, which means he already faces a sizable disadvantage. Still, amazingly, he's only 33 years old, and if he can even hold out for another three or four years, he'll be within reach of both 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. That low FAME score is worrisome, but he's got a pretty good shot at the Hall if it isn't broken by the time he gets there. Finally, we conclude with two sadly neglected characters in John Olerud and Mike Cameron. Olerud may have hurt his cause with an early .400 chase, which

Needless to say, the Mariners could use a victory later this afternon in this finale of a road trip that began so well and then went south on the team in a hurry. The Mariners are 2-6 on the trip after losing five straight, the most recent of those defeats a 12-0 thrashing last night. This is where a coaching staff becomes so important. The Mariners simply cannot allow this recent string of setbacks to ruin everything they've built up over the past month. But for a few breaks, they'd have won most of the games in Cleveland and then last night's Aaron Harang debacle would not seem to be as catastrophic as it does. The coaching staff has to communicate what Raul Ibanez tried to last night. That this team appeared to be on the verge of a breakthrough in Cleveland, but just ran into a red hot squad. This is a huge test for the Eric Wedge staff. They have to convince players not to aandon their approach at the plate. That the offense had run a .348 OBP on this trip heading into last night despite all the ate defeats and that one terrile outing in Anaheim doesn't change that. We'll see. Because the future of this staff might depend on it. If the Mariners can't pull out of this tailspin in time, it does not bode well down the road. This is an area where Wedge excels more so than in-game mangement. He has to use that veteran player support network as well and get the Mariners to realize they should have won many more games on this trip and the process appears sound. We'll see whether they are up to the task.

Sometimes, as in what happened this past weekend in Cleveland, there isn't much a coaching staff or front office can do. Players are the ones who play and when they lose games because of walkoff home runs, or dropped balls, or whatever, that falls under the guise of on-field stuff and we all know that stuff happens. But sometimes, there are things a team can do to help. The back end of this Mariners starting rotation has been a shaky loose link for most of the season with a few points of stability. Tonight wasn't one of those stable moments. The Mariners lost 12-0 and were down 7-0 by the fourth inning when starting pitcher Aaron Harang gave an extra-base hit clinic -- and not from the side you want to be giving one of those. Nope, he was on the mound, unfortunately. By the time that inning was done, he'd given up a home run, two triples and two doubles -- in the same inning. That's not the kind of pitching a winning team needs. The Mariners, unfortunately, need better than that every five days. They need it because the bullpen is going to get torched otherwise before the season is even halfway over and this clu's shot at a winning record will go out the window as well if it keeps punting games at one or more rotation slots. Thursday is an off-day, so the front office will no longer have the continuity of games as an excuse for inaction. They can make a switch and bring back Hector Noesi, or promote Jeremy Bonderman. Neither option is really all that thrilling. But neither is the prospect of watching any more of this. At this stage, Bonderman makes sense because a DFA of Harang would free up the 40-man roster spot needed to add Bonderman to the roster. The Mariners have to make a call on Bonderman by June 1, or he can become a free agent if not added to the big league club. Noesi isn't going anywhere. He got hit hard in AAA tonight and can still be added at any time without 40-man roster worries. “We’ll have to talk about that,’’ Mariners manager Eric Wedge said. “You can’t keep putting this kind of heat on the bullpen. You want to give everybody ample opportunity, but having said that, you can’t keep doing what we’re doing and expect to compete.’’ And this is exactly what it all boils down to -- giving the Mariners a chance to win. Harang didn't do that tonight. The back end of the rotation hasn't done that on too many nights this season. You have guys in that cluhouse busting their tails and taking gut-wrenching losses in Cleveland. Just throwing this game away was like a kick in the gut for them. You can't point fingers at an offense when it trails 3-0 after one and 7-0 after four. A major league team needs major league pitching. The Mariners cut some corners in the rotation this winter and are getting what they paid for at times. Now, they have to try to fix it. If they send Harang back out there, they'd best pray he turns it around. If not, they will have set themselves up big time with the bullseye smack dab on their forehead. For Harang's part, he feels he has more left to show the Mariners. “I think it’s just a matter of getting the repetition,’’ he said. “I had the stints off and as a pitcher you have to stay sharp, to keep throwing. Obviously, that hinders you. So, I think it’s just a matter of being out there and throwing my pitches and getting my feel back.’’ He added: “It’s tough to get into game speed when you just keep throwing bullpens. So, I’ve got to keep grinding and I know I can get back to where I need to be. It’s just a matter of getting the repetition in there and getting that muscle memory back.’’ Harang may be telling the truth. It just may be that he does have more left to show. But he might be showing it someplace else. At this point, after tonight, he has no reason to expect the Mariners will keep sending him back

The last thing you want to do as a baseball team is overreact to a bad stretch. But the Mariners have reached a point where a few moves are necessary not just as a knee-jerk way to shake things up in the middle of a slump, but as a realistic means to improve the team moving forward. Tonight's loss, a 12-0 rout to the Angels, was as ugly in its own way as the three agonizing walk-off defeats in Cleveland. At least the Mariners fought hard in those games and were in them until the end. Tonight, they were completely non-competitive, an outcome that was set into motion by a very poor start from Aaron Harang. He had missed his last start because of back spasms, and now has had four poor starts out of six as a Mariner. His ERA climbed to 8.58. Harang seems like a great guy, but the team has little reason to endure his ups and downs for what might be at best a modest payoff down the road. Remember, Harang was brought here in somewhat of a desperation move when Blake Beavan got off to a rocky start. It's unfortunate that both Erasmo Ramirez and Danny Hultzen are hurt, and that James Paxton has been up and down. But the Mariners need to find some more stability at the back end of the rotation. As I've said before, Joe Saunders and his $6 million salary isn't going anywhere, and it seems far more worthwhile to live with the inconsistency of a young pitcher with upside like Brandon Maurer while he learns what it takes to pitch in the major leagues. But they can't afford another rollercoaster pitcher, so I would advocate replacing Harang with another veteran, Jeremy Bonderman. He has been building up his arm strength all year in Tacoma, and has pitched at least six innings in six straight starts. That includes an eight-inning gem in which he blanked Tucson on two hits on May 2. Overall, Bonderman has a 3.79 ERA in nine starts. Hey, he's no sure thing either, but I'll bet most fans are ready to try something new. If it doesn't work, then you can go to Plan D (Beavan being Plan A, Harang Plan B, and Bonderman Plan C). I'd also give strong consideration to making a move I've been advocating for awhile -- elevating Nick Franklin from Tacoma. He's hit a little bit of a rocky spell, batting just .222 over his last 10 games. But Franklin still has a .370 on-base percentage in that stretch, and is hitting .311 overall -- down from .330, but still providing the promise of being an offensive improvement. I like the idea I heard from Matt Pitman tonight on the post-game show: Calling up Carlos Triunfel (.307) along with Franklin, and cutting loose Robert Andino -- another good guy, but one who has hardly made himself indispensable with a .192 average and .500 OPS. The accompanying move would be a tough one, but how about letting Dustin Ackley go down to Tacoma to try to find the stroke we saw when he first came up to Seattle, but has been largely absent since. Ackley is hitting .224/.284/.273, and that just doesn't cut it more than one-fourth of the way through the season. I still believe in Ackley's long-term potential, but perhaps a stint in Tacoma to work things out in a lower-pressure environment would be beneficial. Franklin's ability to play shortstop at the major-league level has been questioned. This way, he could slide in at second base, and Triunfel could get some time there as well and share time at shortstop with Brendan Ryan, who right now is riding a hot bat. Even under .200, Ryan is worth keeping around for his glove, but it sure seems high time to see if the Mariners can get a needed offensive boost from Franklin and Triunfel. In the best-case scenario, Ackley would eventually push his way back into the Seattle lineup -- a good problem to have, as the old saying goes. The other move that is simply crying out to be made is for Jesus Montero to go down to Tacoma as well. He's too often a detriment behind the plate, and for some reason his offense has fizzled as well. Montero w

Every baseball season starts with varying degrees of expectation and hope. Fans and team start the first game on different but parellel paths, with both leading to the same idealistic zion: The Playoffs. As the season progresses there is nowhere to go but down each party's respective path. But as losses begin to pile up the paths stop being parallel and begin to curve and wind their separate ways. Fans begin to look for scapegoats for failure, be they players, managers, coaches or front office executives. They look for hope in the success of young players, at times to the point of forcing a mirage of success somewhere beyond pure results just to give them a hook upon which to hang their sanity. The fans yell for the promotion of prospects. The players begin to worry about keeping up their health and production to earn a job for the next year. They cling to whatever friendships they can find among the culture of the clubhouse. They try to explore cities on road trips. They kill time. How in the world does losing create all that damnable time? When there's winning, or at least enough winning to keep hope alive everyone is striving towards the same things, players and fans alike. But, as they do every year, the Mariners are giving us ample reason to start looking left and right. We've been down similar roads. 2010: 11-11 on April 28th. They lose 15 of the next 18. 2011: 43-43 on July 5th. 17 game losing streak. 2012: 11-10 on April 27th. Lose 13 of the next 18. I didn't expect this team to compete for a playoff spot this year. But I hoped, I still hope that they can give us something enjoyable at least until the weather gets nice enough that they are easier to ignore. The last 5 days have felt like the the needle skipping, playing over and over the worst part of the lamest track of that dumb record we're too lazy and stupid to change out. The next week will determine if we'll be spending the next four months talking about baseball or contorting ourselves ridiculously to talk about anything else with just enough baseball-flavored coating to appease our overlords. Baseball is really fun. I'd like to have reason to talk about it awhile longer, please. Just a few bullet points because while writing can often be easier in defeat tonight it is not. Aaron Harang was terrible tonight. Why? I'm sure there are many reasons. There are many, many factors that can lead to a pitcher performing poorly. Aroldis Chapman, arguably the best relief pitcher in all of baseball had a bad game that may be directly attributable to consuming 18 pastries prior to the game. Felix Hernandez just had a particularly poor showing and he's one of the 2-5 best pitchers alive. I wouldn't begin to try and explain why this particular outing for Harang was so atrocious. But I will offer at least a glimpse into part of a reason why, maybe:2013 American League batting line: .256/.323/.415After 1-0 count: .267/.380/.453After 2-0 count: .283/.502.514Tonight Aaron Harang faced 20 batters. 8 of them got to a 1-0 count and 6 to 2-0. That's a lot of numbers saying Aaron Harang could not locate worth a damn tonight. At times when pitchers fall behind in the count they are credited with "not giving in." The meaning behind this phrase, like many baseball phrases, is nebulous but I think it means that the pitcher refuses to throw an easily hittable pitch despite everyone knowing he needs to throw a strike. Well Harang spent the 1st and 4th innings giving in tonight. Rather than allow free passes he elected to make the Angels put the ball in play. They did, often, in the air and with frightening velocity.With the team's tough week and Harang's poor showing this year he has quickly become the easy and predictable target for demotion. Jeremy Bonderman, Blake Beavan and any other starting pitcher in Tacoma with an ERA under 5 are now the baseball equivalent of a backup quarterback; fans scream for them not so much because they are good but beca

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