Hector Noesi Is A Supervillain, Mariners Lose

From what we’ve seen up close, it may seem like Hector Noesi has turned a corner since leaving the Seattle Mariners. After all, he’s essentially spent this season dominating his old team, and so obviously he’s better now, right? Well, no. His strikeout and walk rates are the same as 2013. He’s allowing more homers than before. His ERA has gone down, but his FIP has gone up. Same old terrible Hector Noesi, basically.

Except that he’s been lights-out against the Mariners. Noesi has only had five outings this season where he did not allow an earned run. One of those was a five-batter relief excursion against the Tampa Bay Rays in his White Sox debut on April 26th. The other four have all been against Seattle. Those four outings, of course, span his entire season to date vs. the Mariners. His ERA against Seattle is 0.00. Against everyone else, it’s… not 0.00.

Maybe the big accomplishment of the day was that the Mariners scored an unearned run, then. Robinson Cano reached on a fielding error in the fourth, moved up on a Kendrys Morales single, and scored on a Kyle Seager double. That was it for scoring, as the M’s used up all their runs over the previous few days.

James Paxton is the real star here, as he turned in 6.1 excellent innings. He allowed six hits and zero walks for one earned run while issuing four strikeouts. He once again looked the part of an above-average major league starter, and that’s going to be critically important to the Mariners down the stretch. You can never have too many above-average major league starters.

This game went to extras, though the White Sox didn’t let it go far. A ball bounced off Chris Taylor‘s glove, a Fernando Rodney pitch found it’s way to the outfield grass, and that was that. Jake Petricka, real-life MLB closer, nailed down the save for Chicago. I blame Hector Noesi, personally.

Today feature’s a 1:10 “let’s get this over with” start time, starring Erasmo Ramirez and John Danks. Ramirez gets the nod over Taijuan Walker, who was atrocious in his last outing with Tacoma. It would be really nice to win this series, especially since the Royals apparently couldn’t lose a game if their lives depended on it. Think playoff thoughts!