New Unified Meche Theory
— [updated late Wednesday] —
Meche is drafted out of high school, so he has four years, not three, before he has to be protected on the 40-man roster.
1996, 1997, 1998, 1999….
1999
Meche is called up and put on the 40-man roster. He does not return to the minors. Not an option year.
2000
Meche splits time between the majors and minors. This is an option year, 1/3
2001
Meche is injured. This doesn’t count as an option year.
2002
Meche is injured and then goes down to San Antonio (where he stinks up the joint). It currently appears that he was on an optional assignment, for two reasons:
DL assignments are limited in length
Meche went on San Antonio’s DL when he was there, which can’t happen if he’s on a rehab assignment as far as I know.
However, some still disagree. This is option year 2/3.
2003
Meche is sent to Tacoma but only momentarily, and this doesn’t count as an option year.
If all of this is true, then 2004 now becomes Meche’s last available option year. If everything’s correct up until this point, that also means the assumption about 1999 not being an option year has to hold up.
Man, this is annoying to work out. However, it again proves our readers r00l d00dz! j00 0wnZ!
I’d like to announce that I lasted until just after Ibanez’s home run before I muted the television. Rizzs and Henderson… couldn’t the Mariners just send someone over to sing “Wind Beneath My Wings” over and over if they want to torture me?
Ibanez, by the way, is set to be the only Mariner who hits significantly better than Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections had him. PECOTA had Ibanez at .267/.332/.442 with 15 HR. We can be pretty sure he’ll do better than that, though — and this is going to sound petty, I know — overall his producitivy is probably going to work out to be about what PECOTA figured his 75% forecast was (though we’ll see… the season is long).
Fairly: “Isn’t it funny how things like that come back to haunt you?”
Niehaus: “Borders looking to tie it up here.”
Fairly: “Reminds me of when I killed that fan after a game in LA. I think about that every day. It was late and as I was leaving the stadium–”
Niehaus: “THAT BALL WILL DROP!”
Seriously, Nageotte comes in because Meche can’t throw strikes? Did the M’s just not pay attention to the fact that Nageotte can’t either? He had 25 walks, 2 HBP’s, and 6 wild pitches in 48 innings for Tacoma. There really isn’t any reason for Clint to be in the majors right now, and if they are thinking of putting him in the rotation full time, well, they’re fooling themselves.
Is there a player you want to beat you? I’m just saying.
So Ron Fairly and the broadcast crew have to be careful of what they say about Nageotte because they’re afraid the other team has the game on in the dugout and will use that information, as if the Blue Jays didn’t think to pull their scouting on him coming into this series, particularly since as trade bait they’ve scouted everyone in Tacoma most likely —
ahhh, Niehaus has torn into him for it. Fairly’s defense “Well, sure, but until you’ve seen it–”
Soooooooooooo your information isn’t valuable at all.
CLIIIIINNNNTTTTT
How long before the stadium music idiots play some Clint Eastwood-associated music (Good, Bad, Ugly with the whistling probably)?
Oh, hey, time to check in on some guys:
Greg Colbrunn, traded straight up for QMcC: injured and ineffective.
Ben Davis, in Tacoma, 56 at-bats… .214/.290/.268 and being out hit by Wiki Gonzalez. That’s got to be embarassing.
Oh, Halladay got scratched after he “experienced discomfort” in his throwing shoulder before the game.
“Anonymous Pissed Off M’s Fan” writes:
My case that Bob Melvin is ruining Gil Meche.
IP for Meche:
1999: 85
2000: 85
2001: none (injured)
2002: 65 (AA)
2003: 186
Looking at Meche’s pitch counts from 2003, even after the September call-ups, he pitched two >100 pitch games (106 and 115), two sub-50 pitch games (where he was getting hit hard)… and he also started another game just three days after one of his poor (45 pitch, 1 inning) outings, where he ended up throwing 86 pitches.
Considering they had potential long relievers like Brian Sweeney on the roster, this sounds like pitcher abuse by the manager to me
Meche has also reported feeling tired after bullpen sessions this year, and yet he’s *still* been asked to pitch >100 in 4 of his 9 previous games this year.
—
Thanks for the email, APOMF, whoever you may be.
Dave didn’t think Meche was ready last year, I’d hoped he was, but… man, wouldn’t it have been smart to treat the first guy to attempt to come back from a torn labrum with kid gloves? Severely limit his workload? Really play it safe?
Especially late last season, when Meche clearly started to run out of gas?
Bad news is Meche is looking crappy. Good news is that Clint may actually get into a game.