Madritsch gone
Dave · October 21, 2005 at 1:41 pm · Filed Under Mariners
First reported by KJR, Bobby Madritsch was designated for assignment and claimed off waivers by the Kansas City Royals.
The organization clearly believes that his injury problems are not something he can rehab from and come back to being a major league pitcher.
Comments
74 Responses to “Madritsch gone”
Shoot. I hope they’re wrong.
Even injured, he’s the Royals’ second-best pitcher.
They are the Cleveland Spiders of the 21st century.
Meh, I hope he is able to have some sort of career, someplace else.
We’ve been trying to work the finesse type pitcher far too long. I want to see some guys take the mound in the likeness of Oswalt. I want to see some power pitchers tossing mean, mean stuff. I want batters to look towards the mound and see a pitcher is as likely to toss 95 mph stuff high and tight as he is to drop a nasty slider over the outside corner.
Here’s to hot and heavy
I have a feeling that people are going to make more of this than they should. However, Madritsch is a soon-to-be 30 year old that may never pitch again. No big deal…
Russ – we don’t acquire pitchers with “mean, mean” stuff because that goes against the “nice” environment that our fans want. Sorry, couldn’t resist
I’m with Connor — this probably isn’t a big deal. Do you think the M’s would let him go if they thought there was a chance he could contribute? For them to flat out released him, the injury must be pretty serious.
It’s too bad Mads has to go to an organization that is so bad at developing pitchers. Any chance he has at coming back as an effective pitcher was significantly diminished when the Royals got hold of him.
“It’s too bad Mads has to go to an organization that is so bad at developing pitchers.”
Haha…that’s what they said when he left the Indy. Leagues!
It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I actually liked the guy; his crazy tattoos and fighting attitude brought a nice touch of flavor to a dreary 2004 season. While I guess it’s sounding less and less likely, I still want the guy to succeed.
Bye bye, Bowflex.
I wonder if this injury is the result of those long outings at the end of ‘04 when Melvin left him in so long for no good reason- those games met nothing. I think I remember him making 130 or so pitches. I am so grateful they are not ruining Felix.
I imagine Bucky’ll be next.
Wow, what a flameout- we were expecting this guy to really contribute in 2005 all over this blog.
Best of luck, Bobby.
Well, I’m not totally surprised — I really only expected him to come back and pitch out of the ‘pen, in the best-case scenario. I don’t expect him, really, to pitch in the majors ever again. I hope I’m wrong, because I really like B-Mad.
I am still sad, though.
So much salary for next year did the Mariners just save?
IMHO – We now need three pitchers and a bat. Starting to look like 65 to 70 win season next year.
I know this probably isn’t an important move as other people have stated, but it sucks. The guy was a gamer and I wish we’d have stuck with him. Best of luck to him, I hope he goes on an Olivo-esque tear with his new team.
Well, part of Bavasi’s quote in the press release was interesting:
“We have been very concerned about Bobby’s overall health and his approach to improving it.”
You have to wonder if it was more than just the injury?
At 65 wins we’d need to be worse than this season. With no Spezio, no Sele, no Olivo, no Valdez, no ghost of Bret Boone, and a full season of Felix, how exactly do you see the Mariners getting four games worse?
I’m with Colm. The team is already better than it was this year.
Frankly, if we added Brown, Matsuzaka, Jojima and Jones, we’d have a chance to contend (assuming Oakland doesn’t run away with the division).
Why is Kida still on the 40 man but Madritsch isn’t.
Madritsch is broken goods.
Kida atleast still works. ALthough in a near broken way.
#16– it was that darned bowflex.
Kida, and, Baek?
Boy, Corco, we were seriously wrong on both of these guys. Looks like they’re peeling away the infirm before the lame (in the sucktitude sense). They can free up three more spots, with Baek, Kida and Ramontiago…
Isn’t the larger issue that this is just another promising pitcher that broke as a Mariner? Yeah, I know he had a previous injury, but he was really quite excellent as a Mariner until the Price/Melvin/Mariner wood-chipper got ahold of his shoulder. For Bavasi to imply that Madritsch didn’t have a good work ethic after the Mariners shredded him and quite possibly his career is distasteful, at best.
17. If Willie Bloomquist gets 500 at bats this year at second base. I know he won’t, but someone had to say it.
23: Madritsch was already damaged goods back with the Reds. We were his second chance.
or third or fourth.
Chris W. said
I think you probably need to have some factual evidence to present before you make a statement like this.
Corco, was he damaged goods when the Ms got him? How do you know that? I know he had previous injuries, but they didn’t seem to be causing him any problems in 2004 when he was the Ms best pitcher in the second half. If you’ll recall, he was asked to throw several 120+ pitch games (and 1, maybe 2 130+ pitch games) in meaningless games in a lost season with a lame-duck manager at the helm. We all held our breath when that happened and many of us predicted it would show up in a future injury. No one knows what might have happened if the Ms hadn’t abused Madritsch, but blaming him for what happened, without even acknowledging that the abuse occurred, as Bavasi seems to be doing, is wrong.
Bavasi’s quote seems to imply that they didn’t like his effort in re-habbing his injury.
Check out Dave’s post on 9/30/04, after Madritsch threw 138 pitches: http://ussmariner.com/?p=1933.
Here are Madritsch’s pitch counts that year leading up to the 138-pitch outing, his last outing of the year:
9/29 (tonight): 138 pitches
9/24: 66 pitches (3.2 innings)
9/19: 119 pitches
9/14: 122 pitches
9/9: 126 pitches
9/3: 100 pitches
8/28: 118 pitches
8/23: 109 pitches
8/17: 119 pitches
8/11: 116 pitches
8/5: 105 pitches
He threw all of 4.1 major league innings after that fateball September 29, before blowing out his arm. I know correlation does not equal causation, but c’mon… at least admit that that 138-pitch outing might have led to the current situation. If this were a court of law, and Madritsch sued the Ms for damages, the Ms would certainly settle in order to avoid having to bring those facts in front of a jury.
Chris W. also said
Actually, I don’t recall. I do, however, recall 2 120+ pitch appearances (9/9 & 9/14) and one 130+ appearance (9/29).
For the record:
#14 – they need 1-2 SP and a LH bat (LF or DH). I agree, less than 81 wins, but more than 65 or 70 (barring injury). Our bench needs some big time work though, because a couple key injuries and 65 – 70 aint all that hard to invision. Their offense looks pretty good from what I can tell. Who they fill our rotation in with will tell a lot about where we end up next year. I think seeing if Phillies might do a Jon Lieber for Joel Piniero AND Gil Meche (or even better Frankie). I doubt they’d be that stupid, but Lieber might be pretty good at Safeco. Hardball times lists his xFIP as 3.89. This is adjusted for HR on flyballs. Safeco would probably allow LESS HR than they are predicting. Again, I doubt they’d do it, but I think the FO should inquire.
>Ahh, half my post got eaten! My fault.
RE #11: I think Bucky was released just after the season ended.
It’s not like he never pitched from “that fateball September 29″ until the season started again. He did pitch 19 innings in Spring Training. I know that doesn’t mean a whole lot, but you don’t need to get overly dramatic about it.
In addition, he’s pushing 30. He was not your average 23 year old rookie. I don’t think there is anything wrong with pushing him. If Melvin had him throw 180 pitches in his first start, I’d have a problem with that, but building up the endurance and strength to occasionally throw 130+ pitches isn’t necessarily a bad idea.
I realize that I am probably in the minority here in thinking this way, but I would like to know why everybody thinks the pitching fairy will rip your arm off if you throw more than 120 pitches.
No one thinks that.
Accepting that each pitcher is different, historical evidence suggests that starts in excess of 120 pitches place an undue strain on the pitcher. The value gained from those extra 20 pitches generally isn’t worth the risk they entail.
There wasn’t any reason to risk his health at that time.
Yahoo baseball just reported it too : http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=Ap9bPHKxMQiXytycRvB3mTgn0bYF?slug=royalsmadritsch&prov=st&type=lgns
RE #32, others,
I agree that the M’s need to bring in some starters and at least one bat. However, they have money to spend, and if they are creative, they can improve the team.
I think that this team will be at least 10 games better if they don’t add anyone. With the youngsters having another year to develop, plus the absence of a lot of dead weight players, the team is very likely be improve no matter what they do.
I don’t see the M’s contending next year. But I think that .500 is a reasonable goal. If they can add two good starters and a bat, with a few other minor pieces, they can realistically get to .500. If a few things fall in their favor (like Beltre, Piñeiro, and Reed playing much much better), they could be well above .500. But .500 is a realistic goal. If they can do that, while making moves that are designed to make them better in 2007, then 2006 will be a success.
They won 69 this year so that’s 79+. Optimistic, but reasonable.
Huh? You think two good starters and a bat only gets them 2 or 3 wins.
Tell us how you really feel
Great move for the Royals. Tons of inexpensive upside. Real cheap downside. I hope Bobby gets to shine.
Paul Silvi on King 5 reported that the Ms wanted to clear him off the 40-man, and thought he’d make it thru waivers but he didn’t and the Ms were surpised by that.
Which, if true, simply means that the front office didn’t make an active decision regarding Mads ability to recover from injury, but instead made a miscalculation in expecting him to make it thru waivers.
As to Bavasi’s quote regarding ‘approach to improving it’, I wasn’t at the USSM feed that listened to the guy in person (so I didn’t get to drink that particular Kool-Aid), but given the Larue article in the TNT yesterday, and Bavasi’s quote in Finnegan’s article about Ichiro (both articles may have indeed been overstated for reasons of selling newsprint) …I’m starting to wonder if the man is intentionally trying to get a rep for not being somebody who backs his players or coaches…, or if it’s just another miscalculation on his part.
So this now makes three inexpensive, potentially contributing players (Madritsch, Bucky and Ryan Anderson) that the M’s have jettisoned in the past year seemingly because they didn’t like the way these players handled the rehab of their injuries. I don’t pretend to be an expert in these matters, but to me it calls into question the organization’s approach to rehab. Maybe they need a different approach during the players’ rehab, maybe they need to have veterans get in these guys faces. Maybe they need to be a little more patient with players who are dealing with injuries. They can’t all be Jay Buhner…
To just toss these guys in the trash and watch them potentially contribute for other clubs if awfully frustrating. Now it’s doubtful that Anderson will ever be a star (or even pitch in the Majors) after all the surgeries he had but it seems like the other two didn’t get much of a chance to recover from their injuries. These two (Madritsch and Bucky) were the stars of the second half of the ‘04 season and the only reason to come to Safeco those months. Had they been healthy in ‘05 and fulfilling their potential the team might actually have sniffed .500.
Yeah, Madritsch is 30 years old but he’s also left-handed. I’m not saying the M’s should have counted on him to fill a rotation spot in ‘06, but he certainly should have been kept for insurance, either for the rotation or for the bullpen. A hard throwing lefty that can actually get guys out rather than Matt Thornton, either as a set up man or a potential closer. Nah, we’ll keep Thornton around, the M’s say…who are all these hotshot prospects that we need to protect that they had to take Madritsch off the 40 man? I’d sure like to know…
Notice that despite the injury the first team that had a shot to claim him, did so. Ryan Anderson cleared waivers from all 29 other teams when he was designated for assignment after the ‘03 season… KC is desperate for starting pitching, you say? Well so are the M’s. Are they now gonna keep Gil Meche around for another year in the hopes that the new pitching coach can fix him????!!!????
Finally, there’s certainly more to this than meets the eye. I don’t have a ton of inside info on this situation, but I do know that the organization was pretty pissed at Madritsch during the winter after the ‘04 season when he didn’t show up for personal appearances and autograph signings that they’d set up for him…
Knowing our luck he will fully rehab and pitch great for K.C..
Good post Jon Wells.
I wasn’t aware of any failure to perform PR. It seems that Cameron was pretty good at that for all the good it did him. Bucky seemed more than eager.
So, what is it with the M’s? PR, performance, don’t party, don’t get hurt; all of the above with Ryan Anderson who they protected until his value was below zero.
Can I go with Ichiro to see what he tells Yamaguchi?
For the love of god someone please explain the M’s philosophy to me!
Please, help me…helpme…
Paul Silvi on King 5 reported that the Ms wanted to clear him off the 40-man, and thought he’d make it thru waivers but he didn’t and the Ms were surpised by that.
They could have pulled him back. I don’t buy this story… the M’s are plenty convinced Madritsch is done.
I don’t believe they could have pulled him back. Once he’s designated for assignment the team has 10 days to trade the player, release him or outright him to the minors — if he clears waivers. There is no procedure for “pulling him back” once he’s been designated for assignment. During the season players are often placed on “revocable waivers” and can be pulled back if they are claimed. The M’s did not have that option in Madritsch’s case.
I’m so-o-oo not surprised to see this. When I heard, in September, that he was going in for surgery on his labrum, it was my conclusion that he would never pitch effectively for the Mariners again, if pitch at all, anywhere. He’s had years of arm trouble; he missed the entire year with an unusual but obviously major ligiment issue. Then we find out that in the process of stretching that ligament he’d torn his labrum, and that the latter injury couldn’t be rehabbed. He’s, what, 31? I like the guy—but he’s as nearly done as a guy can get. He zeroed out in my future image of the team at that point, and with even the ligament injury he’d been nearly to that point all during the year, anyway.
Whether or not this is another one of those ‘failed medical assessments’ one seems to find so frequently with the Mariners is hard to say, but certainly no evidence to the contrary.
#47 said “He’s what, 31?”
And by the time we get to post 75 of this thread Madritsch will be 39 and in a wheelchair… He’s actually 29 and will turn 30 during spring training of 2006. Our best starter last year (and the only lefty in our rotation) was 42 and a 43 year old is pitching in the World Series tomorrow night; so all this talk about Madritsch being done when he hasn’t yet turned 30 is a bit odd…
Speaking of Jamie Moyer this move with Madritsch makes me even more concerned now that the M’s will overpay to bring Moyer back. Taking into account his last two seasons they shouldn’t pay him anything over $3 million and that includes incentives for innings pitched. I’m not interested in one of those $2.5 mil guaranteed, $7 mil if he pitches 180 innings deals. It’s time for some new blood in the rotation. Just say no to Moyer if he won’t come back cheap…
Well, now that Bobby Madritsch has been waived, I am curious as to who is next . . . which of the following ten players will it be:
SP Francisco Cruceta (25 to 1)
RP Cha Seung Baek (5 to 1)
RP Jeff Harris (10 to 1)
RP Masao Kida (2 to 1)
RP Matt Thornton (100 to 1)
1B Greg Dobbs (500 to 1)
SS Ramon Santiago (3 to 1)
RF Shin-Soo Choo (75 to 1)
CF Jamal Strong (50 to 1)
LF Chris Snelling (1000 to 1)
Let’s start taking bets!
I don’t particularly want to pay Moyer $7 million either, but we need somebody to take the ball every fifth day and give us some innings. The rotation is looking abysmal if Moyer and Madritsch are both gone and no solid starter is signed, and I don’t want to overpay in a thin starters market.
#42– Jon Wells said:”I don’t pretend to be an expert in these matters, but to me it calls into question the organization’s approach to rehab. Maybe they need a different approach during the players’ rehab, maybe they need to have veterans get in these guys faces. Maybe they need to be a little more patient with players who are dealing with injuries.”
then how does that explain all the other players who do successfully rehab in the system? These are supposed to be adults intent on saving their careers, isn’t it incumbent on them to do the work? Anderson sort of had the excuse that he was a kid who’d been pampered, but Madritsch & Jacobsen were veterans of the minors/independent leagues, they knew what was what.
#44-skipj said: “So, what is it with the M’s? PR, performance, don’t party, don’t get hurt”
yah, imagine a team wanting that from their players.
#47. just to be accurate, he had the labrum tear simultaneous to the ligament injury in the capsule. Did anyone really expect that Madritsch would be part of the rotation next year, coming off labrum surgery as the season started? Does anyone think that Jacobsen will be part of another big league team next season?
Bucky was jettisoned because he wasn’t doing his rehab. Unless of course one would believe rehab to be the cause of a 50 lb weight gain. Bucky is gone because he didn’t do the work. He’s done, period. Baseball for him is a dream lost.
I’m hoping Nageotte can step it up and win a spot next year, whether it be in the bullpen or the rotation. He was pretty decent this year after returning from injury, no? Pitching well in the AFL (heavy in hitting talent), no?
I agree with the position Jon Wells has taken in regards to Bobby Madritsch’s release. In defending Mr. Wells, I ask MSB if there is medical evidence to support the claim all players heal at the exact same pace. Otherwise, it’s absurd to use the “then how does that explain all the other players who do successfully rehab in the system? ” excuse in shooting down Mr. Wells opinion on this matter.
I can’t objectively comment because I’m so damn drunk, but watching Mads pitch in the second half of ‘04 was one of those reasons to live with an otherwise horrid team, with good peripheries over 88 innings to boot. I hope the best of luck to him in the future, a speedy recovery, and a medicine wheel tattoo on his neck that will plague the M’s for two starts a year. And a curse on Bob Melvin.
A lot of this depends on what they continue to do with roster moves, but who would you rather have stay in the organization, Adam Jones or Mads?
There’s a lot of “but remember how good he was in 04″ statements. Are you the same people who criticized the FO for holding on to the players from 2000-3 too long because of fond memories? What you have to give Bavasi credit for is his commitment to jettisoning players that are not producing. Mads is having labrum surgery. He isn’t pitching in 06. He might not be done, but there’s younger options to pursue.
#54– they have dealt with slow healers before (Edgar is the classic example– granted, Edgar at the end didn’t have to prove anything or worry about his status, but the first time he was hurt he wasn’t “Edgar”). Anderson by all reports wasn’t a slow healer, he was an indifferent rehabber until the last year or so. As mentioned above, Jacobsen’s knee healed slowly because the surgery was more involved than they’d thought it would be, and he apparently did his work up to Spring, as he came to camp weighing less as requested; by the time he came up to Tacoma later in the year, he had gained the weight back and added some. Madritsch’s capsule healed along the expected timeline according to his doctors; he had the secondary injury and a 40-man crunch to deal with.
#46– if I read it right, according to Neyer’s Transactions primer, they could have pulled him back
I don’t really see the connection between Madritsch’s situation and the state of the M’s pitching going into the 2006 season. Madritsch wasn’t going to be doing anything for the M’s in spring. His best case scenario was mid-season. If anything, this move allows the M’s to hold on to pitchers who actually do have a realistic chance of helping the M’s in 2006, including Cruceta, Baek, and Harris. Cruceta is an interesting project for the M’s. Baek was not healthy at all last year, but could be a mid-season option if he can get himself right. From what I have heard, his injuries were the nagging variety. Harris is worth holding on to. He is not a hot prospect or anything, but he is decent as an emergency option in guys go down.
If I were Bavasi, I would be looking to add two good starters this offseason. With Piñeiro and Felix, that would leave one spot to fill. For that final spot, they could bring in a few retreads (Kevin Brown, Pedro Astacio) to compete for the spot with guys like Nageotte, Livingston, and Foppert. Ideally, the M’s could give the latter three a chance to pitch in AAA for about 1/2 the season, but you never know.
IMHO, later in this thread the more sensible opinions came out. Before that, I was really surprised to see how many people were thinking Mads was in the ‘06 picture. Also surprised to see people against the FO clearing out roster room to allow kids to come up and develop.
I am disappointed that things didn’t go differently for Mads and Bucky, but rehab doesn’t just happen. You have to get up every morning with a goal in mind and grind it out every day — similar skills to being successful over a 162 game season. With Mads it is probably more of an issue of one too many injuries, but it sounds like Bucky is a different story.
Before the Beltre and Sexson signings, when I was being pessimistic and expressing skepticism that anyone would want to sign with Seattle, a Red Sox fan friend of mine told me Seattle had a great reputation for treating its ballplayers really well, and that that would be a factor. Assuming that’s really true, do you guys think something like this compromises that at all, or do players expect a team to cut a pitcher in a situation like this, even a team trying to keep that kind of reputation? What about combined with the usage pattern that preceded the injury? Does this make the Mariners seem less loyal to their players, or is that really only for established veterans anyway?
Anyway, certainly hope this lights even more fire for Madritsch and he is a productive major leaguer again soon. If he’s part of some KC playoff run because of all their great draft pics these days, it would make me very happy.
cutting players like Bucky and Mads is not something unique to the Ms. It will have zero effect on free agent signings.
K.C. will be the NEW Indians!
They will take Bobby, Bucky, Ryan Franklin, and Ryan Anderson (Fox say something like “all you need is a little R & R to win this series!”). KC will make them stars out of them and win the wild card in ‘08. Then they will go on to beat both the Yankees in the Divison series, and Boston in the ALCS! But KC will lose the World Series in game 7, even though Bobby will throw a 238 pitch 1 hitter (HR), to the Cubs.
…at least BM gave me some hope through the ‘04/’05 seasons. Good luck, you crazy tattooed dude.
#52 Do we know that Bucky slacked off and gained 50 lbs? I never saw that in print anywhere. Can you post a link?
I think in both the case of Bucky and Madritsch… Fans need to quit expecting any 30ish year-old rookie to be any type of a long-term solution or fix. If Madritsch were 24 instead of 30 maybe I’d care he was gone. Madritsch’s career K/9 is 5.95, and he’s not a young man coming off of a major injury. Odds are he’s out of the league in two years, so there really isn’t much call for the M’s to protect him on the 40 man roster.
Odds are he’s out of the league in two years
For that matter, it might be two years before he’s back in the league.
i wish the best for bobby. i had big hopes for him.
I really hope bobby comes back to bite the FO. I know some have said it’s nothing to make a big deal of but doing what Bavasi did via the media stinks of cold personal corporations. And I haven’t read anything by the good doctor (Yokum?) that suggets Bobby will never pitch well again. This (and still keeping Kida) really puts Bavasi on my Kusai Mierda List.
Go get’em Bobby!
Sorry, that should be “impersonal” not “personal”
I think it would be easier to understand the pressure to free up spots on the 40-man if we looked at the demand for those slots. Which minor-leaguers need to be put on the 40-man to avoid possibly losing them this winter? How many spots are best left open to pickup someone from the waiver wire, free agency or elsewhere?
AS for Kida over Bobby, I would bet that Maseo doesn’t end up on that roster. Sometimes a player is let go early in order to give him a chance elsewhere, so perhaps that’s in the equation.
#68: If I am counting correctly, Michael Garciappara will need a spot on the 40 man roster this year to protect him from the Rule 5 draft.
Position players are not the same as pitchers. I would agree that a 30 year old rookie position player, even if he has a good rookie season, is very unlikely to have much of a career.
However, pitchers develop at different speeds. Some get their control late (RJ), or figure out how to pitch late (Moyer). Others get hurt and then come back as a totally different pitcher (Tanana).
It’s perfectly believable that a pitcher could have a good career in his 30’s when he wasn’t in the majors in his 20’s. Especially one that has shown he can get major league hitters out. The only question would be his health. Great gamble for KC to take.
I was only a kid when the Twins released Luis Tiant when he got hurt, after a season when he had gone 7-3 for them. He was then signed and released by the Braves. He then went on to have a pretty fair (!) career in Boston.
Is there any reason to protect Michael Garciaparra?
Is there any reason to protect Michael Garciaparra?
I wouldn’t. And I don’t see a club carrying him on the 25-man roster all season, either.
Investigative journalist Dave Mahler plans to find out the REAL reason Madritsch wasn’t protected. Apparently, he feels there must be some deep, dark secret other than clearing space on the 40 man.
#72: Which brings up the next question: when, if ever, do you guys project Michael Garciaparra finding his way into a big league ballgame?