USSM Off-season Feed early announcement
Hey, all. I feel bad we haven’t done this much earlier this year, but we’ve had some huge scheduling conflicts and then Jeff caught mono (I think he may be just really bored).
In any event, this is likely to be more of a hang-out-and-chat feed than a secret guest and long Q&A feed. Right now the dates depend on where we can find a good location, and how many people are interested (we’re probably going to keep this to 30-50).
Potential dates:
Sat, Feb 18
Sun, Feb 19
Sat, Feb 25
Sun, Feb 26
aaand maybe Sat, March 4
Please don’t comment on whether you can or can’t make it on any of those dates. If it’s important enough that you’re willing to engage in the cool practice of bribery, email us.
Possible locations:
We don’t know, and we’re open to suggestions. Ideally for purposes of us not being stuck with the bill, no room charge and everyone pays your own tab would be great.
Everyone showing up somewhere and taking over is not out of the question.
The Elysian, which wasn’t so good for a stand-and-speak QnA, might be ideal for this. Especially if Friend of USSM Pete Livengood comes to the table with something.
Price:
We don’t know, and that’ll depend on what the place charges for room rental, etc, etc, availability, and so forth.
What happens next:
We’re going to research dates and location this week while soliciting bribes, and next week we should have a date and a place to announce.
Quick 2006 projection
Spent some time tinkering with the projected rosters today and thought I’d throw this out for your amusement: I came out at about ~775 runs scored,~750 runs allowed, which would get them over the .500 mark, though not by a lot. If anything, I think the pitching number’s the one likely to be too optimistic. As always, YMMV, DTTAH, and other standard disclaimers apply.
This just in: drastic news shortage continues
I know, content’s been scarce, but that also means I have time to write up stuff about Dave Fleming. Anyway — if you’ve got an article suggestion, random thought, or even question, drop us a line. If nothing else, I can throw together some emails and try and stave off your boredom until there’s some news to mull over.
And go Seahawks!
Friday funny
From McSweeny’s: “HISTORY’S MOST LOPSIDED TRADES, AS RENEGOTIATED BY OAKLAND A’S GENERAL MANAGER BILLY BEANE.”
Original Trade: Boston Red Sox trade Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $125,000 (1920).
Beane Trade: Red Sox also acquire rights to high-school star Lou Gehrig, California kindergartner Joe DiMaggio, and unborn son of semipro player and zinc miner Mutt Mantle; as part of three-way deal, the word “curse” is expunged from the Oxford English Dictionary.
Seattle shocker: some fans want Bavasi canned
Firebillbavasi.com. Contains petition, etc, and a logo that I suspect will get them a Cease & Desist pretty quickly.
Except as an exercise in venting, this is pointless. He’s almost certainly going to be fired if the team doesn’t turn around this year, in part because the powers that be know the fan base is discontented, but also because they’re going to have to heap blame somewhere and the chances they’ll consider themselves as candidates is somewhere between naught and zero.
And if the team turns around, wins 90 games and heads to the playoffs, there’s not going to be any widespread fan support for firing him anymore.
This isn’t going to bug the GM, though. He understands this is part of the job. To quote Bavasi himself from a 3/2004 PI article titled “Internet critics aside, Bavasi gets high marks“*:
“Any coverage is good coverage, even if you’re getting ripped,” he said. “It’s when they stop writing about your ballclub; then you’re in trouble.”
In any event, it is always nice to see vocal fans, and I totally support the trend towards a more rabid and informed fandom.
* hee hee hee
M’s on World Baseball Classic rosters
Larry Stone’s got a complete rundown o’er at the Times. 21 players on 10 provisional rosters — but none on the U.S. team.
The M’s still have that “grievance” against Felix pitching for Venezuela and Blackley for Australia (Blackley coming back from injury).
Bloomquist gets two years
And not in baseball limbo for being terrible but a two-year contract to play for the team.
While we don’t know how much it’s for… if it’s close to $1m/per, it’s a bad deal. If it’s about $500,000, it’s excusable.
We’ve written a ton about Bloomquist here, but the short version is that he’s a decent bench guy: he can swipe a base, play a lot of defensive positions without killing you anywhere, and he’s not utterly hopeless with the bat. There’s utility in that. He seems like a good enough guy (though of course, you don’t really know) and there seems to be a lot of fans who like him.
I mostly agree with Bavasi, who said:
Bloomquist gives us a lot of versatility coming off the bench or from a starting role. He helps us in a variety of roles, including the ability to steal a base and play almost any position on the field.
He’s a starter? He hasn’t been good when he’s had a chance to start. He hasn’t been good against advanced competition for any sustained period in his career. At this age, we’ve seen what he’s capable of and it’s not much. His defense at any position isn’t good, which means that playing him regularly hurts the team badly.
In the grand scheme of Marinerdom, it’s not such a big deal (unless they gave way more money than is realistic).
Fun Bloomquist fact: with Willy and his scrappy, infectious play, the M’s are 225-261 (.463). During the long, lost-in-the-desert pre-Willy period, they went 1,860-2,065 (.474).
Was Franklin mostly good? No.
O’er at the Hardball Times, there’s an article that takes a look at Pat Gillick’s contention that Ryan Franklin’s actually a good pitcher who just had some bad outings (no and yes, he certainly had bad outings).
It’s interesting to see what happens when you subtract those “couple bad starts” from pitcher lines. I do disagree with where he starts to go when trying for an explanation, but as it’s admittedly not a serious study, there’s no need to get worked up over it.
And I love putting “general baseball” as the tag on a Ryan Franklin-related post.
Dave Fleming
The Rise and Fall of Dave Fleming
A look at a historical Mariner figure using modern tools
Dave Fleming had the lowest ERA of any Mariner starter in 1992, when at the tender age of 22, he went 17-10. He was a big left-hander drafted in the third round of the 1990 draft from the University of Georgia. At Georgia, he’d been an All-American and helped his team win a national championship. In 1989, Fleming went 13-3 with a 2.08 ERA. While he’d debuted in 1991, he only pitched in nine games, so it’s reasonable to count that stellar 92 as his rookie season. His most notable trait for me was that he’d throw a crazy slow looping curve I loved watching (Livan Hernandez will try this sometimes, and it still cracks me up) that would produce funny reactions from batters (“Did he really just throw that?”). I was a big fan.
His success in 1992 didn’t come out of nowhere, either. In Baseball America’s Top 10 prospect list for 1991 had him as the fifth-best prospect in the Mariner system (#6? Bret Boone) and for 1992, he was #6 (#5? Bret Boone) in a year where he was behind Roger Salkeld, Shawn Estes, and Mike Hampton in a pitching-deep year.
|
Year |
Team |
Level |
IP |
H |
BB |
K |
K/BB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1990 |
San Bernardino |
A |
79.2 |
64 |
30 |
77 |
2.3 |
|
1991 |
Jacksonville |
AA |
140 |
129 |
25 |
109 |
4.4 |
|
|
Calgary |
AAA |
16 |
11 |
3 |
16 |
5.3 |
|
|
Seattle |
|
17.2 |
19 |
3 |
16 |
|
|
Minor league total |
|
|
235 |
204 |
58 |
202 |
3.5 |
That’s pretty sweet, though it doesn’t give us a huge sample size. Players who put up a 4.4 K:BB ratio over a season at any level are good.
Fleming’s major league career then takes a strange course after that first year. The next year he was only average, then then quickly got much, much worse. He was traded from the 1995 Mariners to the Royals (for Bob Milacki). He pitched in nine more games and then was out of baseball by 26. Five seasons.
| Year | IP | H | HR | BB | K | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1992 |
228.3 |
225 |
13 |
60 |
112 |
3.39 |
|
1993 |
167.3 |
189 |
15 |
67 |
75 |
4.36 |
|
1994 |
117 |
152 |
17 |
65 |
64 |
6.46 |
|
1995 |
80 |
84 |
19 |
63 |
40 |
5.96 |
Or, another way:
| Year | BFP | H/BFP | HR/BFP | BB/BFP | K/BFP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990-1* | 1044 | .214 | .058 | .209 | |
| 1992 | 946 | .237 | .014 | .063 | .118 |
| 1993 | 737 | .256 | .020 | .091 | .102 |
| 1994 | 561 | .271 | .030 | .116 | .114 |
| 1995 | 374 | .225 | .051 | .168 | .107 |
* estimated composite, based on
available minor league information
What ended Fleming’s career? In 1995, the Mariners thought that something was wrong with Fleming’s mechanics, though Fleming felt there was something wrong with his arm (or so Fleming said later). He was traded to the Royals, they found a rotator cuff tear. Surgery ended his season and career: he attempted to come back first with other teams and later, independent teams (accounts differ on what happened post-surgery, and what teams he played with when. This is likely editing for highlights more than actual confusion, but worth noting).
Looking back, it’s not hard to see that he was injured in 1995. But it’s interesting how neatly the deterioration is, and how it gets worse each year. He walked more and more batters, and they hit home runs off him with ever-increasing frequency. Even when his strikeout rate returned to what it had been in 1994, there was little else left in his game. But the surgery was described as a “small tear” and general looseness: would a developing tear, over years, account for his ever-growing performance problems? Even if you chop those minor league rates severely, it’s obvious in particular that his control went downhill quickly, which would seem to be a red flag for injury issues.
We can’t know. We don’t even know how little the small tear was, or how the surgery went and what they did. Given that Fleming was a college pitcher from a team that won a national championship overuse is an obvious suspect: the Mariners managed to get the last two good years out of his shoulder and then that was that.
But it’s more complicated: Dave Fleming was badly overused that first season. He finished 15th in Pitcher Abuse Points (using the latest refined version). His average start went over a hundred pitches, which by itself isn’t cause for alarm, but he and threw 140 pitches in one start. His breakdown for the year:
100 or less: 11 starts
101-109 pitches: 5 starts
110-121 pitches: 9 starts (this is where we start getting into the harmful)
122-132 pitches: 6 starts
133 pitches or more: 5 starts
Bill Plummer rode Fleming extremely hard that year on his way to a 34-98 finish (and a well-deserved firing). Fleming threw six complete games, some of them for no real reason. He finished a two-hitter against the Indians with a 6-0 lead, which I can understand, but his next start, he then threw a complete game against the Orioles.
This gives us a much more complete picture – Fleming pitched a ton for his college team, and while we don’t have pitch counts, it’s reasonable to assume that Georgia in the late 80s worked him pretty hard, as did almost every college program. He went into the M’s system, and his first full year on the roster he’s effective and also whipped all season long. After this, he was never quite the same and sinking fast. Three years later, shoulder surgery ended his career.
We can’t know how Fleming would have done if colleges had been more enlightened, or if the Mariners had babied their 22-year-old stud. But I can’t help but look at those years and wonder whether 1995 might have played out differently if there’d been another quality starter in that rotation from the start of the season. And I wonder too, when I was at those games in 1992 and cheering for Fleming to finish his shutout (he had four, still tying Randy for the franchise record) was I seeing a great talent, wasted pointlessly?
Update below the break Read more
Mariners fandom, as seen through poststructuralism
Third in a series of highfaluting articles that came out of discussions about how to cope with being a Mariner fan. You can blame Jeff for encouraging this kind of content.
We are not fans, and being fans is not part of us. “Fan” is a socially and culturally-defined role that we fill at certain times. During these times, we are different people, with different values, desires, dislikes, all the way to different social systems.
We may act as fans in ways that we would not act “normally” (which is to say, occupying other roles). We may have fan-friends who we don’t associate with outside of those times when we occupy the fan role. Encountering those people unexpectedly creates tension and unease unless we give in and return temporarily to our fan role, and act in a manner appropriate to that role.
Read more