Mariners fire Don Wakamatsu

Those who follow Just South of North know that I leave the baseball writing to Brandon. I'd rather watch preseason football than baseball. The season is too long and the local team is, well the Mariners.

Today the Mariners used manager Don Wakamatsu as the scapegoat for a terrible season. The Mariners currently sit in last place in the AL West with a 42-70 record. Yikes!

In his first season in Seattle, Wakamatsu lead the Mariners to an 85 win season and many preseason media outlets thought the Mariners could contend for the West title. Of course what followed once the season started was not that.

An aging Ken Griffey Jr. sleeping in the clubhouse during a game, crazy Milton Bradley bailing during the start of the season, an always injured Erik Bedard and an offense that is lucky to earn one run in a game. Their current run differential is -125 and third worst in Major League Baseball.

As at team they have a .236 batting average (30th in MLB), 67 homeruns (30th in MLB), 344 Runs Batted In (30th in MLB), 879 hits (30th in MLB).

By the way, there are only 30 teams in Major League Baseball.

He'll be replaced by Tacoma Rainiers AAA manager Daren Moore for the rest of the 2010 season.

Wakamatsu finishes his 1 and about 2/3 season tour of Seattle with a 127-147 record. But now he's packing his bags and is out as the manager.

I don't believe that Wakamatsu is the only reason that the Mariners are so far back in last place in the West. I think the team should fire every batter who is under .200. Wait, that's almost all of them. Oh well, call up the entire Rainiers team.

Seattle's Betancourt Draws First Walk of Year!!

Yuniesky Betancourt of your Seattle Mariners has drawn his first free pass of the year, and it only took him 26 games to get there. Now for the first time all year Betancourt's on base percentage is higher than his batting average (.302 to .298). In comparison, Ken Griffey Jr. is currently batting .108 points lower than Yuniesky but Griffey still has a .036 point lead in on base average.

Pitchers have tried to intentionally walk Betancourt a few times already this year but they can't seem to get the ball out of his strike zone without throwing a wild pitch. The way Yuni drew this walk was a combination of manager Don Wakamatsu tying Betancourt's hands behind his back and the Rangers catcher standing in the Mariners on deck circle when relief pitcher Frank Francisco delivered the pitches. Still Betancourt got the count to 3-2 before eventually losing his balance at the plate and falling down when ball 4 was delivered.

At this rate Betancourt should end up with about 6 walks this year. Casey, with his obsession of gambling is already taking bets on the over/under.