Spiezio at second, in OF?
“As we sit here today, he is one of our bench guys,” manager Mike Hargrove said. “He’ll play first and third, a little in the outfield and we can also use him at second base.”
Toonces nooooooooooooooooo! (explosion)
On the other hand —
“I’m not going to say he’s locked into the bench,” the manager said. “If someone gets injured, or he has a tremendous spring and someone else doesn’t, we’d look at him being a regular.”
That’s a pretty generic spring training comment, but still — pretty much that means that either Beltre or Sexson has to be hit by a bus that also hits Leone or Ibanez (respectively) and that careening bus would probably also have to get Dobbs if he’s having a hot spring.
And yet… Scott Spiezio, super-utility player? I can’t bring myself to see him in left.
Special note: I’ll be deleting all comments that get names wrong. No, really.
Comments
61 Responses to “Spiezio at second, in OF?”
Is there any possibility that Lopez would fill out the bench? I know the FO would like to get him regular playing time, but I would have guess that he is a better option than Gil, Guttierrez (sp?), or any other middle IF in M’s camp.
About Lopez, I think he can become a much better 2nd baseman. Look at what they did with Matsui (Mets). It seems he is much better at 2nd than SS.
If the Mariners had reasonable expectations of competing, you might consider carrying Lopez as a part-time player. But if they aren’t, their future is much better served by him learning 2B and replacing Boone next year. As it is, the last man on the bench is pretty small beer for use this year.
Re 50:
Say you have Wilson, Bloomquist, Spiezio, Bucky, and Leone on the roster. Since the org won’t option Willie, we would be able to do without Leone for 10 days. It’s still a better situation than having 4 guys on the bench ALL the time. This way you only get it SOME of the time.
Love the Toonces reference !!!!!!!!
bloomturd,spiezio,wilson ,guttierz and sgtrong is your bench……….Like it are not bucky will start on the d.l. are in tacoma hell he cant play for 2 weeks and he will behind and hargrove has never seen him play..a friend of mine said leone hit against the padres the other day and wasnt able to run to 1st because of 2 bad quad muscles at least thats the story thats out there so im sure this will hurt his chances and hargrove is known to be like lou i dont want young players….they will not keep lopez and sit him if he is there he plays are he goes to tacoma…..
I feel for Spiezio AND Mientkiewicz. I have 12 letters in my last name, including six, count ’em, SIX, vowels.
I’d have made a great scrappy fan favorite other than the fact that I’m a zero-tool player.
The infield of the Twins first WS champion team included Gagne, Gaetti, and Hrbek. One wag commented it was good that they distributed the ball better than they distributed vowels.
I’m assuming the Guiterrez thing is a joke. If I had to open a 25 man roster come the start of the season, I still have 12 pitchers. While I have no question marks about the starting 5, it’s the remaining 7 in the bullpen that I worry about. Guardado isn’t gauranteed to be “Everyday Eddie” anymore, most of our younger guys don’t have the experience necessary to be the big time setup guys, and the start of the season features at least the 3 best starting pitchers against each other, which opens up possibilities for long games.
Factor in the signing of quite a few pitchers this offseason and it stands to reason that we could see quite a few arms. Besides the starting five (and I am convinced Franklin is the fifth starter until someone of authority says otherwise), I believe that Guardado, Mateo, Shiggy, Villone, Sele, Nelson, and Campillo will all make the cut on the initial roster. I have no logic to this, merely a gut instinct. I have a feeling none of our young arms (who should make the team) will make the 25 man roster, and that these veterans will all be included, barring abysmal springs. That leaves 4 bench players of which the only lock is Wilson. The other 3 will be very tough decisions and the people we have available only fill in spots in places where we already have tons of depth. Leone, Spiezio, and Willie all backup a solid everyday thirdbasemen. Spiezio, Bucky, et al, back up our everyday firstbasemen. We already have a bevy of outfielders, so Strong has no chance, nor does any outfielder from Tacoma.
Do you see my point? Besides Catcher, we need no more depth at the positions we have bench players for. The places we need bench players would be shortstop and secondbase, which Willie can fill alone. The second base situation may also be what prompted Hargrove to mention Spiezio.
So I think we’re getting hints that we’re not going to have too many bench players, and that Hargrove is going to make do with a small bench of position players, and more pitchers. He has a bevy of needed pitchers, and too many batters already.
Sele is going to ask for his release if he pitches well, but doesn’t make the rotation, like Mulholland asked for last year when he wasn’t going to make the roster even though he pitched OK. He’s made it pretty damned clear he doesn’t want a bullpen job.
And again, it’s VERY HARD to get 12 men in a bullpen work if your starters don’t totally suck. 11 is usually what you go with unless it’s April or you are looking at lots of doubleheaders or a paucity of off days. Jesus H. Christ, teams used to use a TEN man bullpen, back in the day before Tony LaRussa started the “OMG, let’s use 6 pitchers in a game so I can always have platoon advantage!” trend. (This is the equivalent in baseball terms of the four corners offense in basketball- it might win you games, though there’s some question about that, but it’s boring as hell for fans to watch 5 guys spend 3/4’s of a hour doing warmup.)
Hate to use up space like this, but I’m with 55 above — any Mariners post that references Toonces correctly is an auto-candidate for post of the year. I’ve got two words for that: Nice!