Seattle, WA (Safeco Field) — Chuck Richter
It’s a beautiful day for Baseball in the Pacific Northwest as the Angels are in position to sweep the Seattle Mariners with a win today on Mothers’ Day. I’m positioned in between Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register and Kevin Baxter of the LA Times. Mark Saxon of ESPN Los Angeles is just to the left of Plunkett.
A few items of interest. The Mariners fired their hitting coach Alan Cockrell this morning. He’s been replaced with Triple-A hitting coach Alonzo Powell.
Torii Hunter is not in the lineup today due to a sore knee, an injury he sustained from fouling a pitch off his back knee in last night’s game.
The bottom third of the Angels lineup has just two home runs, six RBI’s and all have hit under .200 for the season thus far. In fact, if you add Mike Napoli to the mix, the bottom four in the lineup, you tally up 57 strikeouts between the four. Yikes!
Hideki Matsui has a scheduled day off.
Today’s Angels’ starter Ervin Santana has posted a 2.83 ERA (28.2 IP, 9 ER) in his last four starts. Seattle hasn’t been too kind to Ervin of late as he’s winless in his last three starts vs. Seattle with a 5.00 ERA (18 IP, 10 ER) in 2009. Lifetime, Santana is 6-3 with a 4.18 ERA (92.2 IP, 43 ER). Santana is currently 10th on the Angels all-time list with 722 strikeouts… Andy Messersmith (768) is next on the list.
Juan Rivera the cleanup hitter today has the best stats against the Mariners starter Jason Vargas, going 3-4 with two home runs against the southpaw. Erick Aybar is the next best though with just one hit in three trips to the plate.
More to come as it happens…
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