Game 86, Mariners at Angels
Pre-game quotes about the potential for trading Eddie Guardado:
“I’m not sure we would want to (trade him),” Seattle general manager Bill Bavasi said. “We certainly would not take a cavalier approach to moving him. This guy’s really important. I know important guys have been traded from clubs, but he’s very important to us.
“This team right now is lacking success, it’s lacking character – it’s lacking a lot of things that Eddie Guardado’s got.”
Eddie’s got success? He’s been holding out on us! I’ll hold him, you search his locker. He can keep the character.
Let’s see if Ryan Franklin’s character involves keeping the ball down, getting ahead in the count and scoring runs early. John Lackey goes for the Angels.
Comments
169 Responses to “Game 86, Mariners at Angels”
This is the sort of person Casino owners love:
“Gambling at a casino is a good analogy for whether or not to play someone. Because if I’m $1000 up at a casino table, that means that soon I will lose, so I should pack it up. But what if I kept winning? I guess I’ll never know, because it was “safer†to cut my losses before I had any. But what if I never had any.”
The odds of winning at a Casino are against you. A recent streak of freak luck does nothing to improve your future odds. You should quit now.
Similarly, thanks to a long track record of suckitude in the minors, the odds are that Bloomquist will resume sucking.
Poor people shouldn’t go to casinos, and bad teams shouldn’t be playing the hot hand.
130. “Let your winners run and cut your losses early”
That translates as ‘buy high and sell low’, and is the reason most casual traders aren’t making bank in the stock market.
Indians just brought in Arthur Rhodes in the 7th with a 7-3 lead. 3-run homer by Matsui. The Circle of Life continues.
Been lurking for a while, but DAMN….
Everyone here is discounting the idea that players develop their skills as they gain experience, and that MAYBE the crappy Bloomquist you all remember has finally put it together and developed into a decent Bloomquist who, once he gets playing consistent time and into a groove, could actually play decent ball and, given his hustle, could help get the M’s going. From any one of SEVEN positions.
Maybe the M’s had too long a love affair with the guy. EVERY team has their guys. The guy’s hitting .271 as of today: what a piece of garbage, huh? Are we going to stay upset even though we just took a series from the FIRST PLACE ANGELS because we’re still 10 games under .500, don’t have a chance of making the post season this year so we should just tank it just like last year, lose our 95-100 games and go home? Because your boy Doyle isn’t getting any starts? Are we gonna argue that starting a hot Bloomer does us no good? You know what else doens’t do us any good? Throwing whoever out there and seeing who sticks, looking so far ahead to 2006 that we don’t even bother with the games we’re playing now, and completely throwing this season in the garbage. We did it last year, lost more games than ever, and fan interest in our team was clinically dead by August, even after the FRESH AND EXCITING call-ups. If you spend every year looking ahead, you become the Royals and the Devil Rays.
You guys have a fanatical, almost al-Qaeda-like hatred for Willie and you need to chill out. The man is on a tear, isn’t playing the terrible defense everyone here insists he is, and even when he cools off could at least be good for some hustle off the bench, .250 hitting and spot starts to spell our starters. Can’t we wait until the guy wears the golden sombrero for a couple games before we bury him?
I don’t understand the point of bringing Doyle and Olivo up to sit, they’re not getting at bats, Doyle isn’t gaining experience, and Olivo can’t fix his swing without hitting. On the other end, Tacoma has fallen 2.5 out of first place, and seems to be missing a lot of the spark Doyle brought. If you’re going to sit them in the show, they may as well get to play and win in the minors. Make some moves, shake things up, and realize starting Pat Borders every day isn’t helping anything, anywhere.
Gomez…
Throwing out comparisons like al qaeda tells me all I need to know about your post and your state of mind. That’s really repugnant.
As far as chilling out… read back. The “pro-Willie” crowd’s posts are full of far more vitriol and bile. The “anti-Willie” posts are primarily reasoned and thought out, the people raging against the “whining” are emotion-based.
Full of land mines like “al-Qaeda-like”, for instance.
And everything in your post has been answered if you read up.
One more time, for the record: I don’t hate Willie Bloomquist. The site owners don’t hate Willie Bloomquist.
I’m not gonna say it again. If you continue to believe things about me, about the site, about Willie Bloomquist, about player evaluation that simply aren’t based in reality…. then nothing I can say will persuade you.
Have a good day. And please, in the future, avoid comparing me or anyone else here in any way with terrorists. That’s about as low as you can go.
Um, could you actually pay attention to what people are saying before saying we “hate” Willie Bloomquist?
He’s a decent bench option at his current salary. A decision to play him like he’s Mark McLemore is, I think. sort of questionable at this point, based on the much larger sample size of past performance and the fact that the M’s need to evaluate younger players because the season’s DOA at this point. Though Mac’s career started out much like Bloomquist’s as a no-hit middle infielder with unimpressive minor league stats, except Mac had better speed, the odds that Willie will turn into Mac aren’t particularly good unless he develops a lot more patience. I think Willie’s more likely to be Luis Sojo and hang out for a 10 year career as a utility guy, only starting regularly when there’s really no better option for a position due to injury or paucity of talent.
That doesn’t mean I hate the guy- he’s going to be what he’s going to be, and if he turns out better than I think he will, more power to him. It would not be the first time this has happened, and based on how the USSM folks have happily chimed in “we were wrong” on Ibanez, I’m sure they’ll be willing to do that. But I don’t think it’sn “hatred” to take issue with your team deploys their available talent or makes managerial/rotster decisions. There is such a thing as “reasonable people can see things differently and disagree about something”…
wow Bloomquist has been getting alot of attention on this site lately. Seems alot like the attention Morse was getting only about a week ago.
Oh I’m not. Willie Bloomquist has been a useful player to us for quite a while now. Everybody here acknowledges his usefulness. What I am saying is that right now there is no logical reason whatsoever to take Willie out of the lineup. I’m in agreement with whomever keeps saying that when he goes 0-fer, it’s probably time to evaluate the use of putting him in everyday.
You have years of nothing. What he does right now is more important. His career hasn’t indicated that he isn’t capable of helping the team right now. He’s a lifetime .250 hitter in the ML. That’s not a great set of numbers, but it’s not an indication that you should automatically bench him, giving him no playing time whatsoever.
And does Neifi Perez play when he’s on hot streaks? If you were a coach and not playing someone on a hot streak, you’d be categorized as a fool. You ride out good waaves until they stop, then you try something different. That’s the nature of managing.
Only in the most short-sighted way imaginable could you say he’s NOT helping the team. What’s this “is he helping the team’s future” thing? You think Willie Bloomquist’s playing over the course of his hot streak is harming the team’s future? You make no damn sense.
So we just went in a circle. Why play him? Why not play him? Neither result will make or break the year. Neither result will make or break the future. Your arguement is that it doesn’t matter either way, so don’t play him?
How idiotic.
I think a lot of you come up with all kinds of arguements against Willie seemingly on a whim. Like I said, if it was Willie holding down one of our beloved hot studs from playtime, then I’d probably be able to see the arguement. Right now, Willie is playing a different position every day giving some of the other struggling kids a day off. With the exception of Mike Morse, the other positions he’s filled has given some unproductive players days off to think about things. Reed and Lopez right now aren’t exactly tearing the cover off the ball. Willie is. If he gives them a chance to rest, relax, think about what they need to do to improve, and still helps the team by being productive, I fail to see any arguements you have against him.
Oh wait, his lifetime stats mean he’s “unplayable”. Jesus.
You haven’t shown me one piece of evidence that Bloomquist’s playing time is hurting the team now or the future. And you can’t.
Let him play. It’s not harming anything. In fact it’s doing the opposite to the team as a whole. Winning can be more helpful to the team then losing. I’m all for playing Lopez, Reed, Morse, Snelling, and the other kids who deserve a chance, but blaming Bloomquist for anything and knocking on him is just flat stupid. If you want to knock anybody, you can knock Hargrove for benching people or playing people, but it’s not Willie’s farkin’ business who plays and who doesn’t.
The analogy and counter analogy were equally ludicrous because it’s stupid and fallacious to compare baseball to gambling. The implication is that it’s all luck as to what Willie is doing. Maybe it is. Maybe that’s all a “hot streak” is. But if that’s all a hot streak is, is luck, then you can probably throw any statistical analysis anybody does on the subject out the window.
It’s merely a balance of stats. Willie is going to suck at times, and be good at times, and that will balance out to the “average” he has over the course of a year. Right now he’s in his productive phase. I say ride it out. It hurts nothing.
Now to finish, lemme say that I recognize the usefulness of Willie Bloomquist as much as anybody else here. He’s a utility guy with good speed and baserunning instincts and occassional offensive production. In other words, not an everyday guy. But giving him about a week of straight starts compared to the rest of the season when he’s not doing such a thing, and griping about it, is just asinine. Relax. For God’s sake, just relax.
Heh.
Why is it always the most rabid and raving posters that tell others to relax?
Pretty funny. Like that scene with Phil Hartman (R.I.P.) and Dave Foley in News Radio…. Phil is completely out of control while Dave is very calm…
And Phil keeps screaming at him to calm down.
“You settle down! YOU SETTLE DOWN!!!!”
Because us rabid and raving posters seem to catch the most flak?
TIF
Managing is about doing what’s best for the team. Playing your 25th man because he is “hot now” at the expense of sitting Reed and Lopez is not doing the best for the team.
Most likely Reed and Lopez represent the Mariners’ future at CF and 2B – they need playing time. And if Grover ever rests Winn and puts Judy in left field while sitting Chris Snelling, half the posters on this site are going to have a f**king aneurism.
And for the love of Christ, give up on the ‘hot streak’ thing. You acknowlege that it’s most likely luck and likely to stop at any time. So let’s stop the silliness now and give Lopez and Reed all the playing time the Mariners need them to get.
No Snelling today. Bloomquist at short. Which bothers me less, at least, than second or center.
Sigh.
Pot, meet kettle.
You guys rave like MFY fans, the only difference is that they deify, DEIFY, their Canos and Wangs, and vilify their AFrauds only when he strikes out with runners in scoring position… 😉
Well, hmmm. Nobody asked me, but here’s my take on all of this:
–I value actual wins now more with Bloomquist more than hypothetical wins later from benching him.
–I hope Willie plays every game for the rest of the year and finishes the year hitting .350 with .450 OBP. Anti-Willie people will have to stick to the idea of benching him out of principle. “Yeah, I know he had 35 hits in August, but look at his minor league numbers!!!!” That’d be awesome.
–If I’m up $1000 at the casino, I don’t leave right away, but I’ll probably leave if I dip down to $900 up. We’re playing with Willie House Money right now…I’d roll with it until it’s done. He’s hot.
–Of course, most of the argument simply hinges on the question of is there such a thing as a “hot hitter.” Stat-heads say yes, romantics say no. Stat-heads have evidence showing a hot player is just performing above the mean for a while. Romantics say “there is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy.” It’s science against religion. This one isn’t getting settled. Ever.
–“Just because a decision worked doesn’t mean it was a good decision.” Maybe not, but it means the decision worked, and in this context, that’s more important to me.
–My prediction: Willie will cool off. Considerably. Probably soon. Ideally Grover will bench him after just a day or two without a hit. We’ll be a few wins better for it, and we’ll get to see Doyle in the end. Everyone is happy. Of course, if he’s in there after getting 3 hits in a week of play, I’ll be shouting to pull him too.
–The prediction plus 50 cents will get you a Pepsi-Cola.
Kinda. Managing is about doing what’s best for the team TODAY. Managers aren’t employed because of their propensity for winning in the future, they’re employed for winning now. General managing from the FO is about doing what’s best for the team in the future. Hargrove, like most managers, is a proponent of the “hot streak” theory, correctly or otherwise; it was ever thus, and will ever be thus.
Willie will play until he cools off, at which point Hargrove will sit him. Right? Wrong? I don’t know, and don’t particularly care right now, because as a Mariner fan, I want eight productive hitters on the field, regardless of their name/reputation; right now the M’s are as close to that as they’re likely to get with their roster as currently constituted.
Have the Braves been rumored to show any intereest in Winn or Guardado? Seems like they would need both OF help and a closer. They always seem to make a move for what they need midseason as well.
Hey, I haven’t called your posts “idiotic” or said they make “no damn sense,” though it’s true that I hardly need to.
I called your points “idiotic” and said that your conclusions made “no damn sense”. Your post as a whole? That’s a waste of database space.