Minor League Free Agents
DMZ · October 28, 2004 at 11:09 am · Filed Under Mariners
This year’s minor leauge free agents posted at Baseball America.
As predicted by Dave, AJ Zapp’s off to greener pastures.
One of the ways good teams build their rosters is through minor league free agents: the A’s, for example, spend quality time building a roster in Sacramento that can help the major league roster if things go wrong.
Note that Jack Cust is available to be re-united with Hargrove, who gave him all of what, 10? 20? at-bats when Hargrove had the chance.
Comments
24 Responses to “Minor League Free Agents”
Any chance of some analysis of what available minor-league talent there is here that the M’s should target?
Two names we should definitely sign: Gooby Gerlits and Stubby Clapp.
Are those baseball players or STD’s?
I hope to update this post later tonight. Or tomorrow.
Wow, some classic names on that list: Andy Van Hekken… Jeff Farnsworth… Alex Fernandez (the outfielder, that is)… Adonis Harrison….
I didn’t even realize Evel Bastida-Martinez had signed with Baltimore, much less that they were letting him go already.
And who’d have thought Jeremy Giambi’s career would come to this?
Mike Rose is a catcher who can hit… I am surprised he is not on Oakland’s 40 man roster…
M. Lo will probably be back though, right? Not that I care either way, just curious. We will probably resign Gus Mart too?
Horner is retiring, right?
Otherwise, good riddance to the guys on our list (except Zapp)
Mike Rivera could be an interesting pickup, and Brent Butler, and Chris Prieto, Reynaldo Garcia, Seth Etherton, Mike Colangelo, Cory Aldridge is a guy I like, Billy McMillon, Graham Koonce, Ramon Castro, Pablo Ozuna, Colin Porter, Chad Zerbe, and Aquilino Lopez would all be interesting pickups…
Matt White was a D-Ray? Wondered what happened to him. I knew he floated around Cleveland for a while, interesting…
There are two Matt Whites.
I’ll do a brief overview on this probably tomorrow.
Stubby Clapp’s a fun little guy. He played on the Canadian Olympic team.
A few actual comments…
Since when is Edwards Guzman a catcher? And why did I think he was with Montreal?
Corey Hart. How can anyone not want Corey Hart on his team?
Bob File is a minor-league free agent? Someone sign him!
Well, I guess it’s the new GTA for Derek, then. Mmm… larceny.
Well, for one thing, he wears his sunglasses for night games, which dramatically lowers his effectiveness.
Hey — Dave Nilsson’s available. We’d probably use a decent backup catcher, and what the heck — throw another Aussie into the mix. I’m sure Mr. Blackely and Mr. Anderson would enjoy pitching to him. It’d be an interesting conversation on the mound, to say the least…
Dave Nilsson!
Eugene Kingsale!
Carlos Febles!
Denny Hocking!
Jason Bere!
James Baldwin!
Jeremy Giambi!
Shane Spencer!
Kevin Jarvis!!
The Rockies have two guys named Elvis.
Hey, since we’ve got some depth problems there, and he’s not THAT old (26 as to compared to the 30 of Mickey Lopez), how about signing Ryno’s nephew, and bringing him back to the area.
We do have a glut issue there, but Eric Almonte from the Rockies’ org is a decent 3B.
Seriously, I really like Bob File. Someone is going to take a flier on him; to quote the Red Sox, “Why not us?”
We have a glut of unproven or mediocre 3B; one good one would be nice.
What happened to Jeremy Giambi, anyway? If he comes in healthy he might be worth a spring training invite as a left handed bench guy.
Somebody should count up how many of those FA’s are ex-Mariners. I think you could field an entire team of them. An entire very bad team.
Yes, and we’ve NEVER had a good 3B-man. Sure, a case could be made for Edgar, but he certainly won’t be remembered as playing 3B (any more than he’ll be remembered for making his MLB debut as a pinch-runner, and that his first MLB hit was a triple — all of these would be interesting answers to trivia questions, but not moments of his career that will be forerunners).
It appears moreso to me that 3B is a position in Seattle that kills careers for players. Hence my nervousness for targeting Beltre…
Somebody should count up how many of those FA’s are ex-Mariners. I think you could field an entire team of them. An entire very bad team.
Shhh! Don’t give Lincoln any ideas!
Somebody should count up how many of those FA’s are ex-Mariners. I think you could field an entire team of them. An entire very bad team.
Shhh! Don’t give Lincoln any ideas!
It appears moreso to me that 3B is a position in Seattle that kills careers for players. Hence my nervousness for targeting Beltre…
It’s funny how true that statement is for a NUMBER of franchises (White Sox/Tigers/Mets for instance), where they have crap at that position for a number of years.
Basically, we’ve had maybe 2 years of decent Jimmy Presley, a few years of edgar, a season plus of Blowers, and that’s it in the last 20. Everyone else has ranged from mediocre (David Bell) to bad (Russ Davis) to horrible (Cirillo/Spiezio)
Re. #20 and #23 on Seattle 3B’s:
Some time ago I compiled the VORP tables from BP into a single spreadsheet. Using VORP as a measuring stick (for whatever it might be worth), the weakest historical position for the M’s has been neither 3B nor LF, but rather behind the plate. 3B has had a few solidly above-average seasons here (Edgar 1990-92 and 94), and so has LF (Bradley 1985-87, and also Paciorek in the strike-shortened 1981); but the best catcher years we’ve seen have been Wilson 1996-97, Stinson 1978, and Valle 1993 (all of those with VORP’s in the twenties). That’s the only spot where we’ve never really seen a true all-star quality performance (even if Wilson did sneak into the ASG one year).
Even if one argues that VORP is biased against catchers (by the way, yes, I included backups in the overall position totals: 635 LF, 411 3B, 253 C), it still comes out at best equal with the 3B total. (The high end of the spectrum shows CF 1116 and DH 1018– probably not surprises.)
I suppose what this tells me is that we tend to perceive a position’s history as worse if we have a few good years there and otherwise swap in a different horrible player every year, rather than having one guy be consistently mediocre for a decade.