Ibanez to the DL, Ramon Santiago comes back up. Seriously. The M’s lose their cleanup hitting left fielder and decide that the best replacement is a banjo-hitting backup middle infielder, when the team is already carrying a plethora of (f)utility players. With Ibanez on the DL, you know which of the now regular starters has the highest slugging percentage? Ichiro. I’m not joking. His .411 mark edges Scott Spiezio’s .400 SLG for the team lead. Just for fun, here’s the likely M’s lineup for the next few weeks with OPS in parentheses.
1. Ichiro, RF (.794)
2. Winn, CF (.645)
3. Martinez, DH (.730)
4. Boone, 2B (.671)
5. Olerud, 1B (.742)
6. Spiezio, 3B (.692)
7. Wilson, C (.725)
8. Cabrera, LF (.711)
9. Aurilia, SS (.629)
Of course, the logical thing would be to move John Olerud and his .382 on base percentage up in the order, since he’s one of the few guys on the team capable of reaching base. Remember, the guy with the second highest OBP on the team was also the guy who got a “pep talk” and took a good share of the blame for the M’s offensive struggles early on. I don’t see anyone talking about releasing Jolbert Cabrera, and despite the announcers affection for Hole-Bear, he’s been far more of a drain on the team offensively than Olerud.
The league average hitter in the AL this year has a .767 OPS. So, for the next two weeks, the M’s will be sporting a line-up that consists of exactly one above average hitter, and Ichiro is perfectly capable of having a patented off-month where he hits .250/.300/.300. And oh, the bench, let us not forget that group of winners:
Hansen, 1B/DH (.864). Note he can only replace our second and third best hitters.
Bocachica, OF (.628 career mark, since no 2004 numbers to show)
Bloomquist, UT (.605)
Borders, C (.286, 2-14). Seriously.
Santiago (.609 career)
I mean, how do you justify a roster that contains that many below replacement level players? 80 percent of the bench belongs in Triple-A. The only major league player not in the everyday line-up can only fill in for two of your better players. The awful starters are backed up by players even more awful. This is perhaps the worst roster management, factoring in available revenues and desire to be competitive, that baseball has seen in years.
New York Times is reporting that the M’s are sniffing around Jose Contreras. Jose Contreras folks. The team’s got more pitching than we can shake a stick at, and we’re looking at… bleah.
On the other hand, the New York Times has been a pretty bad paper lately, so take what you will from that.
Also, I’m having some weird computer issues that are keeping me off the Internet, so if you’ve gotten used to seeing what, a thousand or more words a day from me on this team, I’m sorry.
Chicago White Sox at Seattle Mariners
Folks, if you liked the Mariners anemic singles-based offense before, you’ll love new Ibanez-free Mariners offense!
Friday, 7:05, RHP Freddy Garcia v RHP John Garland
Saturday, 1:05, RHP Ryan Franklin v LHP Scot Schoenweis
Sunday, 5:05, LHP Jamie Moyer v RHP Estaban Loaiza
Then it’s the wonder of interleague play as Houston comes to town. Please, contain your hatred as our long-time rivals visit. I know emotions always run high when these two teams get together, but we should conduct ourselves as fans with the kind of dignity that becomes our city.
Ibanez is out for at least 15 days. For one, that doesn’t seem like the slight hamstring pull I heard it was, and for two, ow, ow, ow.
Right now, Bloomquist, Cabrera, and Bocachica are circling each other in the clubhouse, switchblades drawn, eyes flicking between each of the two. Only one can win Melvin’s favor this night.
Jack McKeon of the Marlins just pinch-hit Dontrelle Willis, a pitcher, for a pitcher in with two outs in a one-run situation in the 5th.
This is part of why McKeon has done well, while other… less flexible or inspired managers do not. If Willis, who’s a good hitter for a pitcher, gets on, the lineup turns over and maybe they make something of it. If not, no loss, he’s got his bench intact to use if he gets spotted better odds later.
How cool.
Watching Cameron make tough plays look routine in Shea makes me sad. He just fielded a ball that required him to run two, three miles to make a jumping catch at the wall — speed, jump, a perfect guess at where it would end up, then timing… sigh.
Please note we’ve moved our email off to ussmariner@gmail.com to hopefully get away from some of the problems hotmail presents (like not working). I’d like to say we’re going to be better about responding to email, but.. we get soooo much email I don’t think as a percentage of mails we respond to is going to get a ton better.
Please know that we do read them all, though, even if we can’t get back to them. If anyone out there wants to pay us to write about the Mariners and respond to emails full time, well, you’ve got our email address.
Also, I realize the Big Board is horribly out of date, and I apologize. I’d love to say I’ll have a new one up this weekend, but I’m not sure I’ll get around to it… let’s just say early next week and leave it at that.
Here’s a piece by John McGrath (Tacoma News Tribune) about Christensen from a few days ago. I pretty much agree with McGrath on this one (not to mention Derek), and really, if you’re going to take a chance on someone with questionable character, shouldn’t you at least take that chance on someone who can play?
I’ve gone after the Mariners repeatedly for their valuation of good clubhouse guys over talent, meaning they’ll pass up a chance to pick up Milton Bradley because he’s got a short fuse, but gladly overpay for Raul Ibanez for his community relations.
I’ve also drawn a sort of unstated line, which in as few words as possible is: pick fair fights. If a batter’s apt to scrap when pegged in the yap, I’m not going to get up in arms about that. Al Martin socking his backup wife? Nuh-uh. But Al Martin’s a hard worker, a good clubhouse guy, so the M’s made a joke of their domestic abuse campaign.
Now they’ve signed Ben Christensen. There’s been enough wailing over him in the past, so I’m not going to get up and rant for a thousand words about what a scumbag he is. That’s freely available on the Internet, and you all know how to use search tools. But for those of you who don’t know, the short version is this:
In a college game, Christensen felt that a batter, Anthony Molina, in the on-deck circle was timing his pitches. When Molina wasn’t looking, Christensen beaned him in the head with a fastball, destroying Molina’s vision and, pretty much, any chance he had at a baseball career.
That’s all indisputable. You can go look up the accounts of the game, the investigation, and so on: Molina wasn’t anywhere near the plate, as some have claimed, and if he was timing pitches, wouldn’t he have seen that one coming? This isn’t standard practice in college ball, as has been tossed around. Anyway.
Christensen never expressed remorse about what he did. He still hasn’t fully fessed up to what happened.
I don’t doubt that his coaches trained him to do it, possibly encouraged that kind of thing, but Christensen’s never come out and said “I was in college and my blood was all angried up, I realize that was insane and I’ve made my peace with Molina beyond settling his lawsuit.”
Instead, Christensen’s always seemed like he feels the attention on him is undeserved. That if he’d missed, everything would have been perfectly fine. Like he’s a little bit resentful that Molina didn’t dodge the fastball coming for him.
Now Ben Christensen is a Mariner, and I feel like shit about being a Mariner fan. Thanks, Bill Bavasi.
I’d like to point out that the words I came up with were:
Boone! Here comes the Boone!
Ready or not
Here comes a ball that’s caught.
That is all.