there’s a reason why they call ‘em long bombs
The largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Jutland in May of 1916, didn’t have to be a disaster. It didn’t even really have to happen. But poor choices, some made in the design phase of modern battleships and some made minutes before the engagement, meant that at the end of the 3-day battle, nearly 10,000 sailors would meet their ends in the cold North Sea. When met with the constant shelling from a determined enemy, the combination of foolishness and failure was an explosive brew.
As spring training comes to a close and we inch closer to opening day, we’re getting our final pre-season looks at the starting pitchers. Luis Castillo’s last start before next Friday got off to a rocky start. Travis Jankowski and Luis Robert Jr. both hit quick singles (first pitch and second pitch respectively) and put Castillo on the back foot. It was from there that he hit Andrew Vaughn with a pitch to load the bases. He bounced back to strike out Matt Thaiss, but Lenyn Sosa ambushed a first pitch sinker, and hit it hard on a line to center. But he may have hit it too hard, as it got to Julio and back to the infield too fast for Robert Jr. to score from second.
With the bases still loaded, Luis buckled down and escaped the jam by striking out Tristan Gray and getting Chase Meidroth to ground into an easy fielder’s choice. Castillo’s a veteran, and it’ll take more than the Chicago White Sox to rattle him. Which he proved for the rest of his 5.1 inning outing. When Jankoski singled and stole second base in the second inning, it was the last time Luis let a runner advance past first. Twice he induced double plays, and despite some poor command he was able to get a lot of weak contact from the Chicago hitters. Luis, it seems, is ready for opening day.
Aboard the SMS Seydlitz, artillery officer Richard Foerster is ready for the battle to come. A battle hardened veteran like the rest of the crew of Seydlitz, he is confident in the ability of his gunners to out slug the British Navy, 9 miles away and matching the German formation. When an early shell struck a turret on Seydlitz at the outset of the battle, Foerster had the turret flooded, and Seydlitz kept on fighting. Across the water, her target was HMS Queen Mary, one of the newest ships in the British Navy, and the pride of the Royal Navy. As the battle progressed, Seydlitz’s shots inched closer and closer. But not even Foerster could know what was to come.
That run Luis Castillo allowed in the bottom of the first was not the first of the game. The Mariners had actually taken an early 1-0 lead in the top of the inning when, with Victor Robles on third and Julio Rodríguez, Donovan Solano put a run on the board in the worst possible way by grounding into a double play. In the second inning, the Mariners were eager to get their run back.
Mitch Garver walked, Dylan Moore singled, and Blake Hunt walked, loading the bases with one out for J.P. Crawford. But captain J.P. is a patient man, and worked a walk of his own, forcing Garver home. Victor Robles, now batting for the second time, followed that up with a single, and the M’s went station to station, keeping the bases loaded and stretching the lead to 3-1. Chicago starter Hagen Smith was temporarily replaced by Andrew Dalquist, who wasted no time picking up where his predecessor left off. He walked Julio, forcing home another run. Solano redeemed himself for the previous inning’s double play, and singled home both J.P. and Victor. Luke Raley was able to pick up the 6th run of the inning when he grounded into a forceout, but used his baffling speed to beat out the double play.
The British Navy suffered from two major flaws at this engagement. The first was that their slugging vessels, their battlecruisers, had extremely thin desk armor. Their hull armor was thick and strong, with the thinking being that enemy fire would come in horizontally. But in this battle, they were engaging the German navy at extreme range, with German shells coming in like a high fly ball, dropping nearly vertically. Onto the weak deck armor.
Secondly, Admirals Jellicoe and Beatty were napoleonically obsessed with rate-of-fire. In the days of Nelson, Jarvis, and Cochrane, the British Navy dominated the French and Spanish because it could fire nearly twice as fast as the opposition. Such obsession made sense when battles were fought at a distance best measured in feet, but was useless in modern, long range fighting. At Jutland, they were overshooting their targets by over 1,000 yards.
Their crews, in order to meet the extreme rate of fire demands placed upon them by their admirals, threw caution to the wind. They stacked ammunition in the firing rooms. They left fire doors open, they brought shells out of the magazine before the cannons were ready. And this left, in the words of an investigation after the battle, “an unbroken train of cordite” from the cannons to the magazine. If any of the shells in the train detonated, the explosion would cascade all the way to the magazine, and the ship would explode. Which is exactly what happened. To three different ships.
HMS Indefatigable was struck in the aft just 14 minutes into the battle.
HMS Queen Mary, the ship Seydlitz was firing at, was struck in the forward magazine. As Foerster put it “the ship seemed to lift itself from the water, shattered in the middle, with debris flying all around, the whole picture is framed in a blue-red fire glow.”
And finally, just a couple of minutes later, the same happened to HMS Princess Royal.
After these losses, the British withdrew back towards their reserves, and the battle continued for nearly 3 days. It was inconclusive, with both sides claiming victory. But the British blockade of Germany, which the German navy had hoped to smash, remained in place, and would for the remainder of the war. The battle, much like WWI as a whole, need never have taken place.
The Mariners game today, however, was extremely conclusive. Powered by the three home runs from Solano, Arozarena, and Julio, the Mariners cruised to an easy 14-1 victory. They showed patience at the plate, and worked with what they were given. Sometimes that meant a pitch to drive. In J.P.’s case, it meant walking 3 times in 3 plate appearances. The bullpen was nails, with only Drew Pomeranz allowing a hit (a single to Kyle Teel in the 7th).
With 5 days to go until opening day, the Mariners are looking like a team that’s ready to contend. Fangraphs currently gives them the best odds in the AL West of winning the division. Maybe, like Foerster, they’ll get lucky, and their opponents will make mistakes for them.