Mariners are the cat’s meow, beat the Reds 5-1

Meeeeeeeeeow

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this article that the New York Times ran yesterday about these Australians who are murdering as many cats as they can. By the fifth paragraph, we’re reading about “the carcasses of more than a dozen cats . . . piled in a large, shallow tub.”

It’s very disturbing, but while it’s not the unanimous view, many Australians think it’s vital to the continent’s ecology that they rid the land of feral cats, who are not a native species. Since the local wildlife never developed defenses to the adorable but ferocious predators, many species are in danger of being wiped out by the furry felines. The government has been waging what it calls a “war” on the wild cat population for ages.

I was thinking about this again during today’s game as Seattle’s own sharp shooter, Sheriff Bryce Miller tore through the Reds lineup. The Reds might not be the prototypical killer lineup, but they’re very tough outs, not unlike the cats that have burrowed their way into every corner of the country. And despite an inconsistent strike zone as unpredictable as the Outback, Miller racked up seven strikeouts to just one walk and one hit, a home run to Elly De La Cruz. It’s hard to be too mad about that last bit; the Mariners had held Elly mostly in check through the first two games, and he was bound to do something amazing at some point.

And just as I have love in my heart for Elly, the cat killers know their targets are cuddly friends. They just have to be merciless anyway. “Fresh blood trail’s a good sign,” one of them says as they return to headquarters, hoping it means a sniper shot a whole litter’s worth. How could I not think of that when watching Miller strikeout Elly in his next at-bat.

The guns aren’t enough for the hunters down under. They’ve had to develop new tools, like boxes that are equipped with sensors to distinguish a cat from other critters, and if it spies a target, will spray it with a toxic gel that the victim then ingests when it cleans itself. It’s a clever idea, like Bryce Miller’s splitter. None of Miller’s pitches picked up many whiffs today, but the more complete pitch mix had batters frozen all day, leading to 21 called strikes, across his whole arsenal. On the whole, he completed the Mariners’ seventh quality start in a row, the kind of thing we were expecting when we signed up to watch this season.

The Australians are attacking the problem from both ends, with a group of researches engaged in concurrent efforts to help the cats’ prey evolve. If the cats are in Australia to stay, then the species they threaten are just going to have to develop new strategies. So they’ve set up some refuges where they let loose a bunch of prey species along with some cats, hoping the cats will kill the weak ones and the ones that can survive the close calls will reproduce. And in fact, that’s what’s happened, as the bettongs and bilbies that survived and were reintroduced to the wild behaved more cautiously and had bigger heads and feet.

So too have the Mariners’ hitters adapted. After a very rough opening week, Seattle’s bats have looked wide awake over the past week plus. It hasn’t always translated to runs, but they are playing better. Before the game, Scott Servais talked about the need to change things up, put down the iPads in the dugout and actually watch the game. In other words, having a plan is great, but you need to be paying attention to the actual circumstances of the game and adapt to it.

That change has really been paying off. Cal Raleigh, for instance, responded to Elly’s homer with one of his own in the next half inning. It was his second Beef Boy Bomb from the right side already this year. And he added on with two walks, including one that came with the bases loaded, and thus an RBI. This is the Cal we came to see, and it wins him today’s Sun Hat Award.

Cal wasn’t the only guy showing improvements today. Mitch Garver got on the board with his first ding dong as a Mariner, a deep, deep shot on a bad, bad pitch.

Josh Rojas has been the pinnacle of adaptation since coming over to Seattle last summer, changing up his contact profile to try to pull more fly balls. He put one of them in the seats today on the first pitch he say in a pinch-hitting appearance.

Finally, Julio showed signs of life today, getting the ball in the air more, including a mirror image of the 5%-catch-probability contact that he caught yesterday. Except that not everyone is the defender Julio is, so his version dropped in for a double.

The Australia story fascinates me because I find myself rooting for the both the predators and the prey. The hunters are right—Australia’s wild life clearly needs help. But the prey are cuddly cousins of the one who lives in my apartment. It’s the kind of torn heart you feel in a game like today’s, where you can’t decide whether you like the offense or the pitching better. Gabe Speier broke the tie in the pitching’s favor, striking out the side 1-2-3 in the eighth. So I guess go hunters. Catch those kittens.