Lloyd McClendon calls out Mariners, takes shot at Astros
By Matt Fisher
One of the great hopes for the Mariners this season was their new manager Lloyd McClendon. Whereas Eric Wedge was seen as a stoic, stalwart, quiet skipper, McClendon is a little more aggressive, brash and outspoken.
Sometimes, as was evidenced when he jumped to Robinson Cano’s defense after some inflammatory remarks by his old club, that can be an admirable and desired quality in a manager. Sometimes, the right combination of words can be a fire that ignites a team, and sometimes, that may not even be your own team.
After a 4-1 loss by Seattle to the Houston Astros, McClendon was frustrated. In the span of one sentence, the Seattle skipper managed to not only call his team out for badly under-performing in the last two days, but also call out Houston for perennially being a bad team. He pulled no punches to either side, as Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times writes.
"“I saw average stuff (today),” McClendon said. “We didn’t swing the bats very good. At some point, you gotta stop giving credit to average pitchers. That becomes a broken record. At some point, you have to start swinging the bats.”"
The Mariners were expected to be a higher run-scoring team this season with the addition of Cano, Corey Hart, and Logan Morrison. They are sitting right in the middle of the pack with 201 runs at this point this season, which is far lower than where expectations lie for this team. Cano has been hitting more for average than for power, putting up .323 average with just two homers, and Corey Hart and Logan Morrison are both on the disabled list.
The starter for the Astros on Sunday, Dallas Keuchel has been anything but average this season. Over ten starts this season, Keuchel is 6-2 with a 2.55 ERA. On Sunday, he held the Mariners to four hits and one run as he went the distance in 106 pitches. The one run was unearned. It is the second complete game in the last three games that Keuchel has thrown without allowing an earned run. The last time was against another team whose offense was expected to be a dynamo this season, the Texas Rangers. In the start between those two, against the Angels, he went one out shy of throwing a complete game.
While the Mariners are not performing to their expectations, the Astros are showing signs of the promising future envisioned during this offseason. Houston just won’t be steamrolled over again this year by the rest of the division.