My pimples, MLB win streaks and the best scouting report ever

So Julio Rodriguez announced his presence with authority on the national stage this week, the Mariners are carrying a 14-game win streak into Friday’s sold-out game against Houston and there’s talk of adding a superstar to the emerging supernova that is Seattle’s baseball franchise.

And we’ll get to all that and cover 50 years of history when it comes to 14-game win streaks in Major League Baseball, but first I’ve got a general objection that I’d like to note for the record: Gray nose hairs and acne should be an either/or situation.

I’m serious. No one should have to deal with both simultaneously and yet here I am at the age of 47, having plucked a gray hair from a nostril earlier this year and and still finding myself on the 13th floor of a midtown office on Monday afternoon telling an exceptionally nice doctor all about my exceptionally broken-out face.

Read more about my pie-faced tale of woe

The Mariners have matched the longest win streak of any team in the league this season and are a single victory from matching the franchise record for consecutive wins. What does this tell us in the big picture, though?

1. The Mariners starting pitching is awesome, and if they get the offensive uptick that’s to be expected simply by getting guys healthy, the second-half could be awfully exciting.

2. Bad teams don’t 14 games in a row. Well, OK, one bad team won 14 games in a row. The 1999 Padres are the only team in the past 50 years to win 14 in a row and still finish with a losing record.

3. These sort of streaks have become a bit more common the past couple seasons, though.

Read more: Putting Seattle’s streak in perspective

DJ Suonandajie was not among the amateur baseball players chosen in the first-year player draft. That’s because he’s still in college, playing for Division II Rockport, which is located in Kansas City, but should he play his way into draft consideration he would have the single best scouting report ever. You see, Suonandajie is from Tibet and he didn’t play baseball growing up. He learned the sport through one of the development centers Major League Baseball has opened in China, attributing the strong throwing arm to flinging rocks in the direction of yaks to get them to stop grazing. Seriously. That’s what it says. The New York Times ran this story about the unusual path that has taken more than half a dozen baseball prospects from the baseball development centers in China to U.S. colleges.