What I Would do

Not a very pleasant time in Marinerville. Anyone who watched yesterday’s game is ready to jump off a cliff. If you read USS Mariner this morning, you’re even more depressed. The seasons probably over unless we go on one of those 20 game winning streaks like those pesky A’s did back in the day.

This really is the worst-case scenario that nobody planned for. No one thought Lopez, Figgins, Johnson, Moore, etc would be this bad. We knew going in there were risked. We could have set our watch to the fact that Bradley would freak out and Jack Wilson would get hurt. But there were things that we could have done better roster wise. And while our playoff hopes might be lost, there are moves that can be and should be made internally to squeeze every last win out of this schedule, because my lord we need it.

Griffey to the 15 day DL for CSS (Carlos Silva Syndrome)
It’s no secret, Junior is bad. He is awful. He is terrible. There is no way around it. I love him dearly and I hate to say this. But the fact of the matter is we have two players on the team that can’t play the field. That is unacceptable for a professional baseball team. You cannot waste two roster spots. The boys at LL had a great idea to put Jr. on the DL until around August, and if we’re out of it by then he can come back and parade around like last year. That is the ideal plan, because every day that he is on this roster, our chances of winning are slimmer. At this point in their respective careers, Sweeney does have more life left, and as terrible as he is, Junior is just that much worse.

When Bradley comes back, slide him in to full time DH role while Saunders takes over in LF full time
Hopefully when Bradley comes back, there will have been a miraculous change of character, he will be born again and start hitting. He was hitting when he left, and we could really use some of that as has been well documented. But we need Bradley in that lineup EVERY GOD DAMN DAY. You cannot put him in left field as much as you did before, because he will get hurt. He plays harder than his body will allow and gets hurt, so limiting him to DH is the best thing for everybody involved. Plus by doing this we get to keep trotting Saunders out there, who is a stud in the field and at the plate. Sweeney will become the back up DH/pinch hitter and Langerhans will be your greatest Mariner of all time 4th outfielder.

Get rid of Jesus/Sean White
It’s one thing to have two players that can never pick up a glove and it’s an entirely other thing to have that plus a seven man bullpen. Bedard is set to come back in early June and with the way things are shaking out it looks as if Hyphen has already lost his rotation spot. So you’re probably gonna move him to the bullpen leaving you with Aardsma-Lowe-Kelley-League-Snell-RRS. By getting rid of both Junior and the extra pitcher, it leaves you much more flexibility. No one wants Tui to play short stop in a Major League Baseball game. And with Jack Wilson seeming to have been constructed out of glass, you need an effective backup like Josh Wilson that can eat innings at SS with out totally embarrassing himself at the plate. Plus Sean White sucks. He has two strike outs this year. In total. TWO!

So there’s all I can think of for now. We needed a lot of things to go our way and until we do some of these things we are only hampering our chances even further.

Sign him up!

Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle has a nice little tidbit of information for all those fans that are still getting over the tragic “Eric Byrnes” era. Byrnsy is doing just fine and found a everyday job, in a slow pitch softball league.

Wednesday night, in the Menlo Park League, Byrnes, the cleanup hitter, led off the bottom of the second inning against Vintage Construction.
The Vintage pitcher was Bill Lopez, who, as a local Little League coach, passed over 9-year-old Eric Byrnes in a draft.

Revenge time, 25 years later: Byrnes hit the first pitch deep over the left-field fence. When he arrived back at the dugout, Lopez nodded and rolled the ball to Byrnes, a souvenir of his first slow-pitch homer.

If come August the Dutch Goose need a sweet-swinging lefty, hopefully the M’s can make another deal.

Valve Bursts Pipe on Steam for Mac

Remember how Steam was coming out for Mac? It happened. Right now, as long as you have a computer and don’t use Linux, you can use Steam.

The Steam application runs well, although downloads are a little slow right now, probably because a lot of people are downloading games right now. Thanks to Steam Play, there are already 57 games available for Macintosh consumption. That includes hits like Torchlight and Civilization IV.

Also, Valve’s first game on Mac, Portal, is free right now until the 24th. As far as I know, that’s for Mac and Windows gamers. Portal, as you might remember, is pretty much the best game ever. You really should get it. I’m looking at you, Colin and John. It’s free. You’ve got no excuse. Give it a shot.

Go. Now.

Langerhans>Griffey

I’ve often enjoyed the Game Day screen shots you see around the M’s blogosphere, so here’s my first attempt.

First let’s look at Ryan Langerhans’, greatest Mariner of all time, triumphant home run last night.

That is one fat sunova bitch fastball. Langerhans is extremely patient. Yes, he is only batting .143, but that is only based on 14 at bats. He’s walked eight times already in his brief time up here, getting on base at a .455 clip. His patience allows him to punish pitches like this one. Yeah he’s not going to hit 30 bombs, but he’s also not going to get himself out like Mr. Sweeney. He’s going to wait for that sweet pitch even if it means striking out looking every once in a while. These are reasons I love Langerhans so very very much.

On to Griffey. Junior is extremely patient as well. He is also looking for that one fastball he can still handle.

The problem is, he can’t handle it any longer. Here’s his juicy fastball:

These are both very similar pitches. Junior’s was around 94 MPH while Langerhans’ was around 92. They both arrived at the plate around 85 MPH. Juniors broke about 2.2″ while Langerhans’ broke 3.8″. Junior’s is a bit higher in the strike zone, which is usually what they tell pitchers NOT to do while they are pitching to future HOFers.

The point I’m trying to make is, yes Griffey is done. I hate saying it. It saddens me greatly. But we are at the point where Griffey is really dragging the team down. Sure this comparison is based on 2 isolated at bats, but we’ve seen this all year. Griffey has to guess, and even when he guesses right, he’s incapable of doing anything with it. At this point in his career he is WORSE than Langerhans. He is WORSE than Josh Wilson. If Wak batting him 7th behind those two says anything, it says “Hey Junior, we really appreciate all you’ve done, but go home to Orlando and be with your family.”

Da Podcasket Episode 01

In this first episode of da Podcasket, da morticians discuss the Mariners, movies, TV shows, video games and more. A real smorgasbord.

This is our very first attempt at the whole podcasting thing. We’d really appreciate some feedback on what you guys want to hear discussed in future shows.

Download the episode here.

Subscribe to us iTunes:
Choose Advanced -> Subscribe to Podcast and put in http://www.damorgue.org/feeds/posts/default

To Mock? Or Not to Mock?

This is weird cause my fellow co-bloggers and I were just talking about this topic on skype recently. Joaquin Phoneix the man who “supposedly” quit acting to focus on his “rap career”. What followed was a confusing series of incidents including a now infamous interview on Letterman and Joaquin Phoenix falling off a stage at a club. Word soon arose that a documentary directed by actor/Joaquin’s brother-in-law Casey Affleck was being made about his career change, hmm the plot thickens. Phoenix denied time and time again that this was a hoax but recent reports have said that the documentary has been completed and shown to buyers and the word “mockumentary” has begun to surface again.

So is it all a hoax? Maybe it’s being called a mockumentary just because of how stupid it is? At this point it appears to be leaning towards the “It was all a big joke” category and if that’s true, than I think that’s just brilliant. It’s a stunt so bold that it seems like something concocted from the mind of Andy Kaufman. Why have I been following this story so closely? Well what’s funnier than a hoax that fooled all of Hollywood? Not to mention I love mockumentaries. This gimmick has potential and I really hope it lives up to what it could be.

What I also find amusing is all the people hearing about the “now possible hoax film” who are angry like, “That’s not funny, what a douchebag, blah blah blah who still cares?” These can only be the words of someone who hates being fooled. Most people don’t like what they don’t expect, sad but true. I’m still holding out for this to turn out to be a stunt but only time can tell.

Either way I got to get a copy of this song.

This is Only a Test

Being that it’s a typical slow week at DaMorgue I thought I’d share some footage here. So about two weeks ago Paul and I bought a new camera the “XH-A1” and just recently we finally got the right cord to upload footage. So far it surprisingly uploads easier and takes up less room on our new computer so I figured I’d give a little preview of what we’ll be working with for future projects. It’s just a simple test video that Paul shot with our new Letus35 attachment. The Letus35 is an attachment that changes the depth of field, you know like when the background is blurry and the foreground is sharp. I’m excited to be working with such nice quality from here on and am excited to do some Morgue videos and what not with it. Already doing some filming this weekend, Otteni out.