Mariners baptize Rangers with something old, something new

Some days the Mariners are playing a game I know I want to watch again. Those evenings have not been many and far over the past year and a half, but in the ever-gray afternoon of mid-January, I know tonight will be a game I point to. Our wardrobe at LL is such that we need to be experts in our place of residence nine 26, capable, sometimes critical analysts but also real fans. Today we started on the site with a grim subject, analyzing Evan White’s miserable tears on the record in this young season, and there were things that were critical in this game, but we ended the night in a brilliant glow of past, present, and future glory.

30-40 years ago Justin Dunn’s line would have been enigmatic, but would have left us without tools for judgment for those who did not see every pitch. 6.0 innings, two deserved runes, not ace-things, but more than capable, sure. To offer instead a brief rainstorm for the parade, this was not nearly as good of a night as some numbers for Dunn show. He threw barely 50% strikes, walked more (3) than he presided over (2) and sat 88-90 through the last few innings with his fastball. Strikeouts are not everything, but combined with subpar command, speed dipping, and a still suspicious change, Dunn was divergent than his baseline might suggest. And yet, until his credit, energy savings, and his longest outing worked in nearly a calendar year, he missed tons and did not snowball into the disastrous innings that his predecessor had begun. Is that the joy of the Rangers ‘starless sequence instead of the Angels’ top-heavy lineup? Maybe, but every pitcher sometimes gets mediocre teams, and it all counts.

Offensively, on a day that rose to 99 degrees Fahrenheit in Arlington, things were anything but icy cold for the Ms, although things did not roll seriously until halfway through the odd 8:05 PM local time. Dylan “Putting the UTIL in Mutilator” Moore had his deadliest hit of the day to start the score and ride in Daniel Vogelbach, whose double was of the “no we didn’t move anyone there” grounder variety. It was a worthy single, and revenge for his first record appearance of the day, which ended in a batflip of ominous portents for Rangers starter Kyle Gibson.

While Texas took a 2-1 lead in the 3rd, their attempts to start a morbid offense ended with the first opening of Globe Life Field’s new retreat roof there, however, it worked all too well for their guests. In the top of the fifth, with Moore at first and JP Crawford (2-for-4 with a walk at night) at second, Kyle Lewis took the hint.

As Mike Blowers would say on the broadcast, about the Rangers’ false public sound / what sounded like an eight-lane highway right behind the entire left-wing field, this was not a bad pitch. Lewis put a single earlier on a spinning heater in his hands, so it made sense that Gibson would move on to his solid move. While the field misses its location, it is still a boundary line, hardly a meatball, that comes forward in the count.

The new Kyle in town certainly made an impression on Texas importer Kyle, and was 3-for-5 at night with a walk to boot, but Seattle’s most iconic Kyle was the man of the hour in the city he has supported his career many times over, and last night Kyle Seager was kind enough to hit The Narrative in the middle. After Dylan Moore played another RBI single in the middle to make it 5-2 in the 6th, Seager turned it into a laugher with the first grand salami globe run of the existence of Globe Life Field.

I’m hardly an alderman for a player’s state, but it’s hard to see Seager excelling this season as he’s crawling after 33 years, looking like a spy and jumping over Arlington’s new graves with a roster full of young people who focus nowhere fast but maybe, just maybe, somewhere slow. Players with much more and much less knowledge have chosen or continue to play risks, and here Seager, in his 10th season in MLB, continues to compile figures that, combined with a short-lived 2019, are in line with syn prime. One day, Kyle Seager will be on the ballot for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and like several influential but under-qualified Mariners, he will not make it. But he will, like almost every player in history, pile up to log more than a decade in size. I hope that when Kyle the Elder finally hangs it up, instead of a Jeter-esque year-round tour of prostration, the Rangers retire the Seager jersey and then light it on fire. They will all be right because his ownership of their franchise has helped him build an exceptional career.

Finally, as we were about to ignore it, Dylan Moore continued his absolutely restless evisceration of the ball in the young season. His pulverization of a fastball by Jesse Chavez hit undefeated land, going 435 feet to dead center as the first ball to hit the center wall outside the 407 mark in GLF history.

Jake wrote last week about Moore, in an attempt to discover the bright adjustments the MUTILator has made to increase his contact without sacrificing influence. We’ve seen Taylor Motters come and go, less than a month a year is hardly a time to start clarifying the covers for a new 28 year old handyman who signed his first walk (s) of the year last night . But Moore at least looks a little more like one of the pieces that a great team should have; the skeleton key that can fit in any slot, handle any position, hit enough to put fear in pitchers, run enough to scare off catchers, and scare opponents that he’s the man they’re every now and then battle.

The Mariners are a team this year, in many ways. A 10-2 victory does wonders for the whole difference from Seattle, so far, but even as the only victory, it’s a reminder of what this year could contain. Moments for analysis. Problems giving criticism. Sparks of hope. Embers to remember and reach back in the dark days, to remind us that spring is always around the corner, sooner rather than later.