I must have been sick that week, because I don’t remember it.
Jason, didn’t we already hash out batting orders here? Everyone in the blogosphere spent like a week on it.
Not that, uh, I don’t repeat myself anyway.
Ewwww.
I don’t know how I missed this, but apparently Raul Ibanez is going to hit fourth this season, dropping Edgar Martinez to fifth.
If there’s one certainty in baseball, it’s that Edgar Martinez is going to post a .400 OBP until the day he dies. Moving him down in the order not only gives him few plate appearances, it means worse hitters behind him to drive him in once he’s on base.
At this point you’re probably saying, “So then, smart guy, how would you set the batting order?” I’m glad you asked.
vs. LHP
RF Ichiro (L)
CF Winn (S)
DH Edgar (R)
2B Boone (R)
SS Aurilia (R)
1B Olerud (L)
3B Spiezio (S)
LF Ibanez (L)
C Davis/Wilson (S/R)
Ichiro leading off is a given. Winn has hit lefties well the past three seasons, and showed a willingness to work the count and take walks last season when hitting second. The next two are pretty clear — Edgar’s your best OBP man, Boone your best power hitter. Sadly, Aurilia’s the next-best option against lefties. Olerud vs. Spiezio was a tough call; Olerud can’t hit lefties, but at least he still walks against them. Spiezio hits them a bit better, but isn’t at all patient. Ibanez’ struggles vs. LHP are well-documented, and the catching tandem hits ninth until they show us they deserve not to (though Davis has mashed lefties in limited at-bats).
vs. RHP
RF Ichiro (L)
1B Olerud (L)
DH Edgar (R)
2B Boone (R)
LF Ibanez (L)
3B Spiezio (S)
SS Aurilia (R)
CF Winn (S)
C Davis/Wilson (S/R)
Again with Ichiro. Olerud hitting second is unconventional to be sure, but c’mon, the guy gets on base like crazy against righties and it’s not like you’re wasting his “power” up there. Edgar, Boone, you know the drill. Ibanez slots in 5th; he can hit RHP. Switch-hitting Spiezio gets the nod over right-handed Aurilia. Winn, who doesn’t hit righties that well, drops to 8th until he shows otherwise. Catching duo rounds out the order.
Kevin Jarvis was shelled again yesterday, which I think has to be considered good news. The worse he pitches, the greater the chance the M’s will simply release him and eat his salary for 2004. Neihaus mentioned on the radio yesterday that Jarvis was throwing nothing but junk, and that he still doesn’t appear fully recovered from the elbow surgery that cost him the first two months of the 2003 season. Elbow surgery or no, he’s not a good pitcher. The M’s would be better off carrying a second lefty, or one of the young guys like JJ Putz or Aaron Looper, than Jarvis.
Today’s rah-rah MLB.com piece by Jim Street (“Retooled Mariners can win“) has some of the more standard broad assertions I wanted to point at.
Mariners general manager Bill Bavasi and his staff have assembled a team that should put the ball in play more often and score more runs than last season.
That seems like it’d be true… but not so much. Using Baseball Prospectus‘ awesome PECOTA projections, we can make some good guesses about this.
2003 –> 2004 swaps (remember, that’s 2003 performance against 2004 projections)
Cameron into Ibanez: -25 runs (yup)
Cirillo into Spiezio: +20 runs
Guillen into Aurilia: -8 runs
2003–> 2004 offensive declines
Winn -20 runs (PECOTA really, really doesn’t like Randy Winn
Edgar -40 runs (I’m going to throw this out in a second: no projection system ever gets Edgar right, he’s unique)
Boone -35 runs
Total it up… the team project to lose about 70 runs from last season’s lineup without Edgar’s numbers in there. That seems pretty harsh, but it’s worth considering that this is an old, old team with an offensive core in their mid-30s, way past a player’s standard peak (which around 27-28). I’m not so sure that Boone’s projection is something I’d agree with either, because Boone’s profile is so weird (crap player to annual MVP candidate starting in 2001) that he’s hard to compare to other players.
70 runs is 7 games in the standings. And it’s not as if the bench is going to be contributing. If age catches up to this team — if age even keeps pace with this team — they can hit all the weak grounders to second they want, but they won’t score any more runs than last year’s unit did.
Back to the article. Jim Street presents three things that the Mariners “can win their third AL West title if:”
– Regulars stay healthy (The dropoff from Martinez to the backup DH is substantial).. hey, that’s funny, today’s Prospectus Triple Play includes a blurb on exactly that. Anyway, that’s such an obvious thing to say. That this team is particularly vulnerable to injury points the giant Finger of Accusation at the front office for assembling such a shallow organization
– Olerud has to bounce back. It’d sure be nice… the gap between 2002 and 2003 Oleruds was four games in the standings, maybe more. But he’ll be 35 heading into this season. It seems kind of unlikely.
– Garcia has to pitch like an old ace. Street says “the Mariners almost traded Garcia during the offseason” — to who? for what? They could have packaged Freddy Garcia with Selma Hayek and had trouble getting teams to take a second look. Okay, they actually wouldn’t have had any problem with that, but it still wouldn’t have been an attractive package. Okay, so it still would have been.
That’s still a dumb idea, though, because if Garcia fails, they could slot Soriano in there and be just fine.
In rebuttal, I present the keys to Mariner contention this year
– Ichiro stays in top form all year, even if that means more frequent rest earlier
– Ibanez and Winn play better outfield defense than expected, keeping Franklin from being a disaster, or
– Franklin’s a disaster and Soriano steps into the rotation
– Melvin gets over his platoon obsessions
– Boone and Edgar play at least 80% of the season and are healthy for the playoffs
Injuries in the A’s rotation would also be helpful.
In case anyone’s wondering, I’ve been to Derek’s garage and didn’t see a dragon there. Of course, that was a few years ago, and there were all sorts of weird things going on… like the Angels winning the World Series. Those were strange days.