Yes, we got us a front runner. …but he stands on the brink as we write this.
It’s a week into the postseason, but it only took us a day to wonder just what the hell is going on. The box score of the Yankees-Red Sox wild card game contained exactly zero ex-Mariners on either squad. For a couple of teams that regularly feature former M’s like Varitek while we slobber over bums like Slocumb… wait, we digress.
Our home team boys packed up their stuff and left town in September. But 25 ex-Mariners didn’t go home when the 2020 postseason started. Instead, gracing the rosters of new squads, they girded their respective loins for a World Series run. Only one would earn the ring. But would that be enough to garner the coveted Ex-Mariner of the Year (Xmoty)? Let’s revisit the top candidates.
Felix: You think they do this kinda stuff in Atlanta?
Alert and devoted reader Steve from Spokane suggested way back in August that the opted-out Felix Hernandez was a fabulous candidate for Xmoty honors. But Steve, we said, Felix didn’t even play this year. Took himself off the roster. It was the Rona. Exactly, said Steve. And if Atlanta goes deep in October without him, doesn’t he deserve recognition for staying the hell out of the way? Great point, Steve. The Braves went on to lead the NLCS 3 games to 1 but coughed up the series to the Dodgers. How might that have played with the King in the house? Steve seems to know the answer. We’re not so sure over here.
Twenty-five guys, a perfect postseason roster, fill the ranks of this year’s playoff teams’ 40-man rosters. Plus a former Mariner ace on IR, another who chose not to play under Rona Risk, and a couple honorable mentionables. Some of these guys are “who?” …and as of this writing, just 24 hours into the postseason, a few have already gone south on Elimination Street. But laugh as we may at them now, they each took their season farther than Jerry’s Boys from Dave Niehaus Avenue. Read ’em and wonder. Click the names for stats and such. Continue reading “Mariner playoff rosters!”
“You’ve got a great case there,” says my own Adult Son, which bears eerie similarity to the name our buddies at Lookout Landingpinned on Daniel Vogelbach even before he first filled the clubhouse doorway at Safeco Field.*
And boy could he fill a doorway. An even six feet, he weighed in at two-fifty and immediately endeared himself with his teammates when he reenacted Chris Farley’s Chippendale routine on Rookie Night.
Your Mariners are in the playoffs. Except, these particular Mariners aren’t your Mariners anymore.
This man just will not go away. See him tonight vs. Milwaukee.
Ten teams made the postseason, starting today. 25 former Mariners are on the 40-man rosters of those clubs, and this is one hell of a playoff team. Check it out…
The petunia withereth, the Mariners choketh. And it’s only the bottom of the 5th®
Take heart, Mariner fans!
The excitement of the 2018 season is just getting started. Now that the Mariners are officially, gracefully, thankfully, mercifully, and without fanfare, eliminated from the postseason, who will be named Playin’ In The Dirt’s 2018 Ex-Mariner of the Year? Continue reading “Who will be 2018 Ex-Mariner of the Year?”
“Jerry DiPoto is a nut job…” …but he means that in the most nicest way…
Dude in the video likes Vogelbach. Playin’ in the Dirt is not sold. But there’s some solid analysis here.
Fifty-four men took the field in a Mariner uniform in 2016. Just twenty of them, exactly half of the current forty-man roster, are in camp in Spring 2017 as part of the big-league squad. Continue reading “Change is done, change is comin’…”
