Seattle Mariners

Before I begin, I must state two things: I am a Yankees fan and I fully believe in utilizing advanced metrics to determine who deserves certain awards.

What exactly does that mean? That means I think the individual performance should far outweigh aspects of a player's profile that are affected by their team's performance.

Mired in a hole of one poor transaction after another, the Seattle Mariners are nine years removed from their last playoff berth.

They have struggled with upper level management, found it difficult to find perennial stars in the lineup, and haven't been able to solidify their rotation.

Much of these struggles can be amplified by a series of questionable moves that the franchise has made in recent memory, because there are quite a few of them.

This article can also be found on North and South of Royal Brougham

The Seattle Mariners have shut down top pitching prospect Michael Pineda for the season after throwing 139.1 innings for the year (last season he was limited to just 12 appearances and 47.1 innings).  Let’s take a look back and review his year.

This article and other ones like it can be found on North and South of Royal Brougham.

There are many deserving pitchers for the Cy Young award in the American League this year, but there is one pitcher who has stood above the rest this season.

King Felix.

Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Felix Hernandez is the AL leader in innings pitched this season with 204.1 and strikeouts with 192. Felix has a 2.47 ERA this season, good for third in the AL and a WHIP of 1.11, tying him for third in the league.

There was a serious fantasy fallout with Brian Fuentes being traded to the Minnesota Twins on Friday. One player’s stock soared for the final month of the season and one player’s stock went down.

Let’s take a look at the Fuentes trade from a fantasy perspective.

The Cy Young Award is one of many awards that typically sparks debate over whether or not the right player won; think back to when Bartolo Colon won the award in 2005, a year when he led the league in essentially one statistical category, wins.

The Seattle Mariners' Felix Hernandez is a legitimate first starter.  Doug Fister is a second starter type, who is third in the rotation because Jason Vargas is in between. Coming into this year, Seattle had also "imported" two first-starter types in Cliff Lee and Ian Snell.

With that kind of a rotation, Seattle ought to have had a shot at the postseason. No such luck, which is why Lee was re-traded to the Texas Rangers early in July.

Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki is a unique fellow, to say the least.

Now he has become Japan’s version of the “Most Interesting Man in the World” from the Dos Equis commercials.

It seems as though the hit machine is the face of Kirin beer, a Japanese product.

Watch Ichiro act the part of a salesman on TheSportingRave.com.

Apparently, they make excellently processed beer. And that's the way Ichiro likes it.