Felix Hernandez will be on the mound for the Seattle Mariners on Saturday night as the King's Court will be in full swing at Safeco Field as the team takes on the Los Angeles Angels and pitcher Joe Blanton in an AL West matchup that has two teams struggling early in the year. The Mariners are second to last in the division ahead of Houston, while the Angels and Seattle have nine wins each and team received tough news as third base coach Jeff Datz has revealed to the club that he has cancer.
Last season the team ranked 27th in the league in runs and finished 30th in batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage. The Mariners have solid pitching with Felix Hernandez and Jason Vargas, but unless they start driving in more runs, the team is going nowhere fast.
The Mariners went only 75-87 last season, but it was the most amount of games the team has won since 2009 when they were 85-77. The team has finished in fourth place in the AL West three years in a row and only won 61 games in 2010. The best offensive player on the team last season was third baseman Kyle Seager, who hit 20 home runs and drove in 86 runs to lead the team while hitting just .259. Justin Smoak, the centerpiece of the Cliff Lee deal in 2010, has been a disappointment for the Mariners, hitting .217 with 19 home runs and 51 RBIs last season.
Hernandez went 13-9 with a 3.06 ERA and pitched the first perfect game in team history on Aug. 15, winning 1-0 against the Tampa Bay Rays. He also had 223 strikeouts last season, making it his fourth consecutive year with at least 200 strikeouts. Hernandez won the Cy Young in 2010 and has been a workhorse for Seattle, pitching over 230 innings over the past four seasons.
There were a few bright spots last season, including the combined no-hitter in June and of course, Felix Hernandez's perfect game on Aug. 15, the first-ever for the franchise. Fans in the Pacific Northwest have been hurting for a while. If the Mariners can win on Saturday, it would give the King's court something to cheer about.
Hernandez's career record is 98-76 with a 3.22 ERA in eight years, all with the Mariners, and it likely would be even better if the team had a more productive offense. According to ESPN.com, "For his career, Hernandez has allowed two earned runs or fewer in 141 of 238 starts, but the team is only 99-42 in those games due to the offensive problems."
Seattle has worked on building up its farm system and the team has a number of young pitchers that will follow Hernandez, including 24-year-old Blake Beavan, 22-year-old Erasmo Ramirez, second-year starter Hisashi Iwakuma, Taijuan Walker, Danny Hultzen, Brandon Maurer and James Paxton.
