May Games Recap

The Mariners were .500 during the month, going 4-4, and are now 6-8 overall when I attend.  We were 2-1 in one run games and were not shut out, although we did shut out Minnesota 7-0. The average attendance was, 21,028 which is pretty close to April's 22,200 (including Opening Day).  We scored 28 runs, our opponent's 21, for a run differential of 7 runs in our favor.   I would say we were much more competitive this month in that our 4 losses were by a combined 7 runs, whereas in April it was 13.

Our starting pitchers were much better this month, averaging 6.2 IP per game.  Of the 8 games, 6 were quality starts.  Beavan's stats were skewed because he left one game early due to getting hit on the elbow.  The starters accounted for 75% of the innings, up from 62% last month, and gave up 71% of the runs, which was down from 76% from April.  The best start by far was by Felix on the 5th, when he went 8 innings giving up only 1 hit.  Take out his last start in which he gave up 5 runs, and he would have been the best pitcher of the month, by far.  Vargas once again suffered from a lack of run support in both of his games.  An interesting stat, almost 20 extra innings pitched (33.1) yet our starters gave up the same amount of hits and walks and had nearly double the amount of strikeouts (42).

If you compare to April's hitting stats when we had . 200/.284/.319/.603, May's are eerily similar!  Our homers were actually down (5), but we had 6 more doubles and 2 triples (none last month). Hopefully we can start picking up our offense as the weather gets warmer, because batting .200 for half your games isn't going to cut it, neither is getting on base less than 30% of the time.

Carp came back from the disabled list but did not pick up where he left off last year, although he did draw a fair amount of walks.  Figgins was demoted to utility player, and Olivo missed most of the month because of a groin pull.  Smoak's stats look pretty paltry, but he really started heating up the last few games.  Montero, after an exciting first month, dipped.  I was surprised to see Ichiro as our top hitter... as I am not a fan.