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Game 156: Mariners at Tigers
“Not even Jason is paying attention today” edition.
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68 Responses to “Game 156: Mariners at Tigers”
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Twittah
My good God, that Kirby Arnold sure knows how to cram a gallon of nonsense into a quart-sized article.
It should be easy to spot him arriving at the next Mariners’ game, when the short bus drops him off near the gate.
Well, the Mariners’ seasons is mercifully coming to an end.
Now the real fun begins: HOT STOVE LEAGUE!
Did anybody catch that article saying the Mariners would like to trade for Ken Griffey, Jr–if he is healthy? YIKES.
This article makes me doubt whether reacquiring Griffey would be a good idea:
The reacquisition theory:
http://www.sports.blogs.com/
53. That writer needs to turn his energy into something more than games. What a thicket of trivia.
The success of Winn and Olerud, after leaving Seattle is disturbing. This smacks of issues greater then what can be quantified with stats.
If you combine the success of those players who leave Seattle with the decline in production from those players who join Seattle, the implications are that this is a dysfunctional club, much like the Mets. I won’t speculate on what the problem is but there must be something going on.
We have near equal payrolls, a fan base any club would be happy to have and an innate ability to build clubs that don’t perform. Every decision that the FO makes this coming off season should be the opposite of what they think. They should go radically another direction once they begin trade discussions. They need to contact people who actually understand the numbers and put them to work fulltime beginning right now. Every player who even gets invited ought to have some compelling, verifiable talent.
We do have a nucleus of a strong team. We know that 3rd, 1st, SS and RF are solid. Raul could be a fine DH. We now need few middle guys who can hit a ball, more often then not. Add a couple of proven arms with pysche’s that are not damaged adn we could be in the hunt.
Easy? No way. Doable? Absolutely. We have plenty of money, if we spend it wisely.
Add to the list Olivo, Guillen, last years opening day SS(shows how good he was; I’m can’t remember his name). It seems this is an org. that lulls players to sleep, for whatever reason.
I know they’ve bored me the last 2 years the whole season and the 2nd half of the 2 years before that. BoMel was canned because players went elsewhere played better. Whose fault is it now?
Russ said:”The success of Winn and Olerud, after leaving Seattle is disturbing.”
why?
Olerud put up good numbers in a non-hitters park, slowly declined, was released, played a little in NY, got hurt, got healthy and as mentioned in #42 is not with more rest playing well. The M’s didn;t get rid of Winn because they thought he couldn’t hit anymore, they traded him as one of the few trading-chips they had. Winn also put up numbers in a non-hitters park, often doing better in the 2nd half of the season; he was traded to the NL, and is putting up numbers there that he himself can’t explain this September. If your theory is right, then they should never had hit well as Mariners, and their numbers before they got here should have been different.
#56– Spike said:”Add to the list Olivo, Guillen, last years opening day SS(shows how good he was; I’m can’t remember his name)”
any improvement out of Olivo would be amazing. In 34 games:
AVG OBP SLG OPS
August 86 ABs .302 .344 .523 .867
Sept 25 ABs .320 .346 .400 .746
year 263 ABs .217 .246 .369 .615
Guillen wasn’t traded because he couldn’t hit, he was traded because some in the FO worried about his durability. In the 82 games he’s played this year:
AVG OBP SLG OPS
.318 .366 .435 .801
the SS would be Rich Aurilia, who returned to the NL:
AVG OBP SLG OPS
.279 .339 .444 .783
Aurilia was also terrible the year BEFORE he came to the Mariners, so it’s not like we broke him and he got fixed when he left. He collapsed well before we got our hands on him.
msb,
I agree with your assessment however I was not saying Ole and Winn were bad players or that they never hit well. That each of them are true Major Leaguers is without doubt. Ole showed some decline here but his career numbers are awesome.
I’m not saying that Seattle has always been a bad place for players, I’m saying that since the astounding 2001 season with admittedly career years for many players, the Ms have both had players perform below expectations and selected and played people who have no business starting every day, i.e. WFM, Dobbs and a whole host of others I can’t even bother to remember.
Winn was traded because he was worth something. In my opinion that trade was a mistake. Winn is an outstanding LF player with a dependable bat. I believe we should have kept him in place as he isn’t expensive and is a valuable contributor with the glove, the bat and on the bases. I’m saying it’s sad to see us trade away capable players who go elsewhere and play with a renewed vigor. I’m asking why? Why do they go elsewhere and thrive? What is happening in our clubhouse? How come players seemingly come alive after leaving Seattle?
With the fan base and payroll that Seattle has, we should be playing every October, much like Atlanta. I’d take 14 shots at the chance to go to the WS? The Ms could disappoint me for a dozen years by not winning a WS if they were at least in contention.
If you combine the success of those players who leave Seattle with the decline in production from those players who join Seattle, the implications are that this is a dysfunctional club
It might be a nice theory if it could explain Bret Boone, Minnesota Twin. Conclusions are always easier to draw from selective evidence.
#61. Can’t Boone be that he was simply done? His power was down (for whatever reason) and his hard hit ground balls didn’t make it through the infield and his flyballs fell the warning track.
My opinions are simply that, an opinion on the construction of the Mariners organization.
On more interesting topics… Are Betancourt’s 188 ABs enough to draw a solid conclusion on his potential? Can he be taught to walk a bit more?
Russ – would you say the Winn trade was a mistake if Snelling hadn’t gotten hurt? Snelling is the main reason we traded Winn.
As far as Olerud is concerned, you talk about his career numbers as if they indicate how he is performing now or how he is likely to perform in the future. His great years are now quite a few years in the past.
I do think the “success” of Aurilia, Olivo, Olerud and Cirillo after leaving Seattle is a little bit overstated. Olivo, for example, has 4 BB and 29 K as a Padre. While he has hit dramatically better as a Padre, those atrocious BB/K numbers make me think his performance there isn’t sustainable.
You don’t rebuild a team by hanging onto aging players into their decline years. You rebuild by trading them for players more likely to improve. Even if some of those players have bounced back from bad years, guys in their late 30’s just don’t bounce back all the way to the performance they had in their peak years (obvously I’m not including Olivo in the category of aging players; he’s a different situation entirely).
Can’t Boone be that he was simply done?
It’s quite possible, but your argument has basically been that being a Seattle Mariner makes a player worse, and leaving Seattle automatically makes a player better (whatever the reasons). That’s not consistent with Boone post-Seattle (he should have been at least slightly less done in Minnesota if your argument is correct), or for an example going the other way, Sexson, who’s just as good as he’s always been and healthy again this year besides.
I don’t think you could say that coming to Seattle damaged Ichiro, either.
And it certainly made Moyer better. As it did with Boone, who had all of his productive seasons here.
All right, stop picking!!!
No, Ichiro is Ichiro but you can’t tell me he is everything you expect from him this year? He is not stealing bases which is an integral part of his value.
Obviously none of my posts cleary elucidate my thoughts, partly because I’m a woeful writer and partly because to do so would require a long detailed post which I cannot do while working. I apologize for generalizing and not backing up observations with all scenarios covered, each player scrutinized for value. To be truthful, I was venting.
Russ,
I do think you make a valid point about the series of poor performances the M’s have gotten from players they have brought in.
I think the reason for that, though, is not that players underperform when they come to Seattle.
To me, the lesson from that is that the M’s have (over the past several years) done a poor job overall in evaluating talent. The main reason Aurilia, Spiezio, Cirillo, et al, performed below expectations in Seattle was because the expectations were too high, not because they weren’t trying here. Same for Boone and Olerud who were in decline but the team didn’t see it coming. And, for different reasons, the same for Meche, Pineiro and Franklin.
Ichiro’s declining about how I expect him to. Speed and average are not old player skills, and average is also incredibly volatile.