A Salute to Seattle Mariners I Never Want to See Again

Positive reinforcement!

Baseball thrives on statistical analysis.  One of my favorite writers, Joe Posnanski, recently commented on the fact that only in baseball can one throw up a random stat line and get a picture in their head of who that player may be.  With today being the last day of the baseball regular season, it is time to truly look into these statistics and realize that age-old truth: the Mariners are terrible.

Yes, I know it's nothing new.  In fact, the terribility of the Mariners has a storied history, ranging from the Van Winklean longevity of Diego Segui's suck to the overwhelmingly varied suck of Yuniesky Betancourt, a man who could exhibit every single baseball skill in the exact wrong way.  Of course, as a Mariners fan, one can always hope to get rid of players like that, even if there is little chance that our wishes will come to fruition.  As such, it is time to look back at the 2011 season and pick out the players who really shouldn't ever play on the Mariners ever again.

A Few Tidbits from Around the Web

Writing original and thought provoking posts can be so taxing on the mind. So I will work on them later. Time for me to post more content without doing any creative brain work. Here are some links to interesting sports related web content, enjoy!

• It is no secret that the Seahawks offense has been terrible. The Onion got this exclusive as to why.
• The Mariner's ownership group is one of the most mysterious in professional sports. The Seattle Times wrote this interesting piece about them.
• After stumbling aroudn the internet, I ran into this semi-serious post about closer walkup songs.

People Who Are My Favorite

It has come to my attention that a lot of what I write is fairly negative.  Of course, this is the one thing holding us back as a nationally respected news outlet.  No player wants to hear negativity about themselves, and as such our blog gets held down to avoid hurting anybody's feelings.  This stops today!  As such, I am here to introduce to you a list of players that I love, regardless of sport.  Who knows?  If you're really lucky and ask nicely, maybe I'll even say why I like them.  That way other players can try to emulate them (here's looking at you, the entire National Football League) and also be my favorites.  Even with this exciting undertaking, let's agree that nobody likes Boston.

Manute Bol: I never said they had to be alive! (editor's note: they really should be alive.)  Not only was Bol a somewhat hilariously single-minded player, the man was great off the court, contributing huge amounts to improving his homeland.  Furthermore, the man used to fight off lions when he was nothing but a mere 7'7" sheep herder and coined the term "my bad."

Curtis Granderson: Sure, his stats are ridiculously inflated by playing in a park specifically designed to give him homeruns.  Sure, his defense is pretty average and he can't make much contact.  Even with all that, Granderson (question: why does Blogger say it is spelled wrong here but not above?) is a productive player who is quite hilarious in his blogging (check Yahoo! Sports) and wears his socks so high as to be completely adorable.

Evander Kane: He knocked out Matt Cooke with one punch as a 19 year old.  That is all that matters.

Mauro Rosales: My brother and I attended the first Sounders home game this year.  Rosales came in as a sub and I immediately decided he would be my favorite.  I can only assume that, upon hearing of his newfound burden, Rosales decided he must live up to that title and immediately became an MVP threat despite getting payed the veteran's minimum.  I know how to pick 'em!

Ryan Kesler: Because interview bombing is an art.

Matt Bonner: He created the Coach B Fundamentals of Basketball video, which is hilarious.  He is also the Sandwich Hunter.  Hilarity forever, as well as (strangely) excellent basketball ability.

Cameron Maybin: Being a Padres fan, there is very little happiness nowadays.  Pretty much the entire roster is spare parts, with very little hope for the future beyond Anthony Rizzo and his .125 batting average (hooray!)  Luckily, Maybin makes me believe that somebody in San Diego knows anything about baseball.  The guy got traded for Miguel Cabrera, then everybody stopped caring and the Padres got him for practically nothing.  Now THAT'S awesome.  Admittedly, I rarely get to see him play and haven't heard a peep from him, but he plays great defense (7.5 UZR) and leads the Padres in homers.  In other news, he has nine homers.  Damn Padres.

Seahawks Week 1 Reaction: 33-17 defeat

Below are my thoughts and reactions to our disappointing loss to the 49ers in week 1. If you're interested, here's some reaction and analysis of the game from Field Gulls, 17power, and HawkBlogger. I might have hit up on a few things they didn't, but I probably sound like a broken record if you've read those since there appears to be a lot of consensus in the Seahawks blogosphere.

• The first-half offense..yikes. It’s going to be a long season if the Seahawks offense decides to show up an hour and a half late to every game. Even worse than expected, the offensive line allowed way too much pass-pressure and the run blocking was no better. There’s no way T-Jack is off the hook either with the terrible pocket presence he showed and holding onto the ball way too long at times. Those 5 sacks were a shared responsibility between him and our line. On one play Golden Tate had his coverage burned but TJ overthrew the ball on what would have been a sure TD. The 49ers offense wasn’t much better, but their o-line at least played well enough to give Alex Smith some time and set up those FGs.

o Okung appeared to uncharacteristically struggle at times with a few penalties and allowing a big sack on 3rd-2. I wonder if this is at all related to the ankle sprain he endured earlier in preseason. I’ll have my eye on him in particular next week.

o James Carpenter and Breno Giacomini looked like they were the most abused. Carpenter in particular had trouble with speed-rushers. Don’t start up with the hysteria about him being a bust yet. We’re still experiencing the lockout fallout effects and he’s a huge work in progress. That being said, he’s probably on Tom Cable’s shit list and if Robert Gallery is back next week then I wouldn’t be surprised to see Carpenter sitting this one out.

o I didn’t notice much from John Moffitt and Max Unger..I think that’s a good thing (?).

• The Seahawks defense -run defense in particular- was great. They limited the 49ers to 209 yards of total offense, 1/5 in the redzone, and 1/15 on third down conversions. Yes...the 49ers offense is nothing to write home about, but holding a past Seahawks killer, Frank Gore, to 2.7 ypc is no small feat either. I believe few teams did that last season against him. We knew our defense was going to be the most consistent part of the team this season, but they showed some real potential this first week.

o Of all the big name FA acquisitions we’ve had this off-season, re-signing Mebane to a reasonable contract might have been the biggest. Mebane is one of the guys who probably won’t rack up lots of sacks and garner much fan attention, but he is passively contributing by drawing double-teams and collapsing the interior.

o The secondary wasn’t bad either and looks much better than last year. Although the Niners game plan obviously called for screen passes and such, it looked like we forced Smith into some checkdowns when they wanted to throw further downfield.

o Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor are the real deal. These two are the youngest safety tandem in the league. They both had a couple tackles for lost yardage at critical times. ET was everywhere and Kam is going to be one of those guys that severely disincentivizes receivers from running routes into his coverage zone. On one play, he was gearing up to put a huge hit on Vernon Davis but pulled back as he realized the ball was overthrown and avoided any chance on getting called for a late hit. Smart.

o Brandon Browner also played well and looked like he had Braylon Edwards frustrated for most of the game. There’s going to be a lot of temptation from Seahawk fans to curse him for all the pass interferences he’ll likely attract, but that’s the nature of the beast when you have a 6’4’’ 210lb cornerback. Keep in mind those PIs are still much more preferable to giving up big plays Kelly Jennings style. The PI call on him in the end zone was unfortunate since it looked like Braylon Edwards was the first to push off him. A much worse shit call on him was the roughing the kicker penalty. David Akers should have been a soccer player with that flopping.

• Tedd Ginn Jr thinks he’s the new Leon Washington..but not quite since his 2 TD returns weren’t against the Chargers. Nonetheless, Ginn is damn fast and a legitimate special teams threat. I wonder how much it hurt not having Michael Robinson and Byron Maxwell (both injured with sprains) on special teams during those returns. In fact, I just read a bit ago the Seahawks signed FB Eddie Williams. Watching the game, it looked like they simply played way too aggressively on the kickoff return and left the outside lanes wide open. Just about anyone I know is faster than whoever our kicker is because it looked like he was in a position to push Ginn out of bounds. *Sigh* Josh Brown would have nailed him…

• Conservative QB play. I’ve read a lot of Seahawks fan reactions looking to lynch T-Jack for playing so timid and not giving looks to wide open receivers. I think once we’re deeper into the season and Rice is back, we’ll (hopefully)start seeing him make some decent long throws downfield, but for now the emphasis on QB play will be more about ‘not losing the game’ as opposed to ‘winning the game.’ And that’s absolutely intentional by PC. I think everyone is still stuck in last season’s mentality of seeing Hasselbeck throw aggressively downfield in futile attempts to put us back in the game. That time is over, and it’s for the better.

In summary, this is one of those losses that is not nearly as bad it seems and there’s definitely some silver lining. Our solid run defense will be a good foundation to build on and the offense in the 2nd half recaptured momentum in a meaningful way that the Niners never had. More importantly, they hung in there despite the awful first half display and put us within a 2 point differential in the 4th quarter before special teams blew it. A win is a win, but if I’m a Niner fan (and I used to be) I feel like I’m heading into the next week with more question marks than us. They can’t rely on Ted Ginn Jr. to bail them out and we know something about that with Leon Washington from last season. Lastly, this isn’t a season where we evaluate success in terms of just wins and losses. At this point in the re-building phase, we’re probably more interested in evaluating key individual performances (Russell Okung, Kam Chancellor, etc) and developing the pillars of our team (run defense, gelling of offensive line, etc). Keep that in mind.

Comments? Any other significant points to add?

On another note, ill plan on following Kevin’s lead and get out a post on the top 5 NFL teams for 2011 soon before next week. Since I’ve seen about 6% of the season, I’ve got an edge.

Philip Rivers is a Jerk...?

Something that I notice recently is that there is a general consensus around Seattle fandom (myself included) that Philip Rivers is a jerk and a general bad sport. Many fans would go as far as to call him an A-hole. This interests me because I cant figure out exactly why he has this reputation. Sure he flipped off the crowd a few years back, but plenty of other players have done similar things and managed to shake the jerk reputation. The biggest example of this is Ray Lewis, who was an accomplice to a murder, yet fans still love him. Rivers has definitely produced on the field (58 TD to 22 INT in the last two seasons) to a point where most players would earn fans, but he just doesn't. His negative vibe appears to hurt him in the wallet also, as he doesn't have very many, if any, national endorsements. It seems to me that Rivers must exude a natural aura of jerkiness because for whatever reason people just don't like him.

NFL 2011, The Bottom Five

After a long and boring lock out and a fast and exciting preseason, the NFL regular season has begun. As is customary around here at USTN we are going to breakdown the top five and bottom five teams in the league. This will give you a chance to see who will be playing with the Super Bowl in their sites and who will be playing with Andrew Luck in theirs. Our football super-fan Tyler will be covering the best five, so look for his post shortly. I, Kswiss, your less football obsessed author, will be previewing the worst five teams.

In past years you could start your list with the Lions, Raiders and Browns in ink at the bottom and work on filling in the final two from there. This year, picking the five worst teams was a bit of a challenge. There appears to be a lot of mediocrity in the league this year. Only two of the five teams jumped out at me as guaranteed bad. The one common characteristic you will see in all five teams is questions about the ability of the QB. The NFL is a QB driven league and quality play at that position is required to find success. In the past teams with weak QB talent tend to struggle and this year should be no different.

Trades that Matter: MLB 2011

"Soon I'll have your rotation spot, Miss Iowa!"

Every year in Major League Baseball, there are a few trades that shake up the whole league and make a big difference in the playoffs.  Be it Cliff Lee pushing Texas to the World Series or Carlos Beltran hitting like a thousand homeruns, trade season is always exciting.  Of course, now that rosters are about to expand, no traded players from here on out can be on the playoff roster, meaning that moves are just about done for the year.  Of course, this gives us a chance to look back at the least important trades of the season, excluding any trade that only involved one player and cash and/or PTBNLs.

Three Seahawks to Consider Liking (or think slightly positive of) in the post-Lofa Tatupu era

With Lofa Tatupu and Matt Hasselbeck gone, there seems to be a lot less to cheer about as PC boasts a team of mainly talented young players that have yet to prove themselves. To help ease the pain, here's what I think are a few underrated Seahawks that should either play a good season, have some strong upside in the long term, or are just flat out fun to like. Much to the dismay of Matt Swanson, two of my picks are what he described as 'solid choices' in filling the shoes* of Kelly Jenning's haterade.

Leroy Hill - Prominent ESPN writers who are never ever wrong have described Hill -along with Daryl Washington and NaVorro Bowman- as one of the three emerging linebackers in the NFC West. I'm not sure I would go that far as Hill is 4-5 years older than both of those guys, but Hill has reportedly had a great camp and has definitely put on a pretty good showing in preseason. He's been reading defenses well, made some good plays, and in general playing with the aggressive form that got him drafted in the first place. Hopefully this is him channeling his off-the-field problems into the game. But most importantly, his one-year signing makes him a low-risk gamble on a player that is still talented. As much as it hurts, cutting Lofa Tatupu makes more sense given Hill's prospect for decent veteran linebacker play this season.


Kam Chancellor - Another shiner in camp, Kam has had a huge presence in run support and had quite a few tackles for lost yardage in preseason games. At 6'3'' he looms over most other DBs and fulfills PC's vision of a monster strong safety. Given his performance thus far, I could see him having a strong first-season similar to the one Earl Thomas had last year. Hopefully he's benefited from watching Lawyer Milloy play last season and learning how NOT to play strong safety. Come on, Matt, have you ever seen Kelly Jennings -or many Seahawks DBs before him for that matter- hit like this or this? The closest Kelly Jennings could ever get to that is by paying Leonardo Dicaprio to break into his dreams and plant those memories (they call that 'inception' in the dream-trespassing-corporate-espionage industry).

Jon Ryan - Yes, I know what you're thinking: "Hurr hur what a punter omgwtfbbq!" The reality is that Jon Ryan actually had a relatively big and underrated impact on the successes of last season. He only had one touchback all of last season and ranked 5th amongst all punters in fair-catch percentage. During last season's final game against the Rams, he had four punts within the other teams 10-yard line. One of them was on the 2nd yard line. Also, he's in general awesome.

And unless you haven't already, you should already be liking -in some cases lusting- returning Seahawks Earl Thomas, Russell Okung (if the guy can stay healthy), Mike Williams, David Hawthorne, Leon Washington, Chris Clemmons, and Raheem Brock.



Your thoughts? Other nominees?

*Ironically, these would actually be small shoes as I believe Kelly Jennings wears a size 6 in young boys.

Three Seahawks to Consider Hating in the post-Kelly Jennings era

With Kelly Jennings gone, so too is our number one method for relieving stress and anxiety. I mean, come on, you know exercise, stress balls, or even masturbation will never come close to the proven method of screaming Kelly Jenning related slurs/insults at the TV. So instead of resorting to hitting your significant other*, I want you to consider three Seahawks you should use to fill that empty void of hate:

Tavaris Jackson - At first during the preseason, I was happy to make excuses for TJ due to the terrible pass-protection and poor play in general from our young offensive line that got screwed from the lockout. On the other hand, he has thus far not been holding up his end of the bargain when it comes to dealing with pressure packages. In pressure situations, QBs are also responsible for either throwing it away or dumping off to an open player in the flats. The past games he's started we've seen a lot of him holding onto the ball way too long and retreating backwards for lost yardage instead of rolling out of the pocket. If Jackson maintains the starting position with below-mediocre QB play (just not bad enough to justify Charlie Whitehurst), he should be a top candidate for directing your Seahawk related fury at.

Aaron Curry - If Mr. Magoo was black, had a more intimidating posture, and played football, they would call him Aaron Curry. He is one of the most aloof players on defense; always in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Tricking Curry with play-action is a lot like pretending to throw a ball for your dog and quickly putting it behind your back - you know, when the canine briefly chases off only to stop for a whole minute and realize something is not right. Fortunately, management has finally caught onto this and re-structured his contract to make this season his last. This could very well be his last year as a Seahawk unless he finally starts making some plays.

Golden Tate - When he's not stealing maple bars or pissing off NASCAR fans (but does anyone really care about NASCAR?), he's dropping passes. One of Tate's latest bobbles in preseason against the Vikings first-string defense resulted in a interception TD. Even though PC & Schneider have shown that they won't hesitate to cut their losses with respect to personnel, I have a hard time believing they won't give a roster spot to a player they gave a first-round grade to in the draft.



Your thoughts? Other nominees?


*The views expressed in this post do not necessarily the represent the views of the Unique Sports Themed Name blog. They could very well be pro-domestic violence, but I've always been a writer that goes against the grain.