Apparently, durability gets you the utmost praise in the Mariners organization nowadays.  The Mariners just traded for someone named Mike Leake from the St. Louis Cardinals for a minor league infielder and cash.  Cash towards the international free agent signing market and just plain ol’ cash to offset Leake’s high contract.  He’s apparently owed $53 million after this year (counting a $5 million buy-out in 2021), and the Cardinals have forked over $17 million, meaning the Mariners essentially have Mike Leake on a 3-year, $12 million deal.

So, who is Mike Leake?  Well, he’s a career National League pitcher who got his start in the Bigs in 2010.  Since 2012, he’s made at least 30 starts per year, peaking in the first half of 2015 before he was traded from the Reds to the Giants.  He signed as a free agent with St. Louis in 2016 and has seen a sharp decline in his abilities.  Or, maybe just his results, but I’m willing to bet it’s both.  This year, he’s 7-12 with a 4.21 ERA, so he immediately becomes the Ace of the Seattle Mariners.

And, of course, right there in Jerry Dipoto’s quote, he calls Leake, “one of the most durable starters over most of the last decade.”  That’s the bar you have to clear to make it on the Mariners, because this season can seriously go fuck itself.

Ariel Miranda, about to give up another home run …

Ariel Miranda is another one of those durable types.  He tends to get lavished with praise for the simple ability to not land on the DL, though less praise is coming by the start, because YEESH is he fucking terrible.

Staked to a fucking 6-2 lead, Miranda proceeded to fuck that all away and couldn’t even get through the fifth inning in the process, giving up 4 MORE home runs, to put him at a Major League-leading 35 on the year, in 27 fucking starts, or nearly one and a third home runs per start.

That’s what you get when you combine a shitty fastball with a shitty arsenal of off-speed pitches and a general shitty command of all of it.  Fastballs in the 91 mph range might be considered “average”, but to me they’re shit.  Anything below 94 mph – if you don’t have a significant amount of movement – is a worthless fastball at the Major League level.  You’re only going to get swings and misses if you totally fool the hitter into expecting that you’re going to throw something else.  Combine that with a change-up that tends to float out over the middle of the plate more than dive towards the dirt, and you’ve got a recipe for one of the worst fucking pitchers in the league, from a homers-given-up perspective.

In case it wasn’t abundantly clear by now, THIS is the reason why he was a sixth starter heading into this season (before Drew Smyly got hurt), and THIS is the reason why the Mariners still have a lot of work to do before next year to shore up this rotation.  Because I don’t think we can afford to suffer through another year of Ariel Miranda making 30+ starts, unless he makes a dramatic improvement in his overall pitching presence.

You know what’s odd?  He doesn’t even necessarily get more homer-prone the second and third times through the lineup.  Of his 35 homers, 13 of them have been given up in the first inning, his worst inning by far.  He seems to settle down in the second inning, but this would still make him a miserable candidate for the bullpen, because out of the gate he’s throwing meatballs right down the middle of the plate!  After the second inning, he slowly but surely gets worse as the game goes on, until you get past the sixth inning, when the sample size is too small (ostensibly, if Miranda is pitching into the seventh, eighth, or ninth innings, he’s probably on top of his game that day, which is exceedingly rare).

So, yeah, the Mariners blew a 6-2 lead yesterday, ultimately losing 8-7.  David Phelps got injured again, probably because he was rushed back into pitching after his last DL stint.  Christian Bergman was used in a rare (for him) late-game, short-inning appearance, going 2/3 of an inning, giving up a hit and a walk before being pulled by Scrabble, who allowed the game-winning run to score on his only pitch of the day.

Just a perfect end to a disaster of a road trip.  5-7, including a 5-game losing streak to close it out.  The Mariners went 12-15 in August (not shocking, considering the road slate they were faced with) and have fallen 4 games back of the second Wild Card, behind the likes of Tampa, Texas, Baltimore, Anaheim, and Minnesota.

Day off today followed by a 10-day, 9-game homestand.  The M’s don’t have to travel any farther than the state of Texas the rest of the regular season, but considering all the teams (save Oakland) are legitimately better than us, I could see September being a real ball-buster.

Thank Christ football season is officially upon us starting tomorrow.  God Awgs!