Warm Your Heart, Satisfy Your Snark
Jeff · July 10, 2006 at 9:16 am · Filed Under Mariners
Warm your heart on this Monday with a touching story about Katie Morris, a fan who visited Safeco Field with the help of the Make A Wish Foundation.
To cleanse the palate and chill those cockles, we have an effort by Jonah Keri. For all who complained about Eddie Guardado not making Jonah’s No-Stars Team, I offer the following: Hidden in this column like the delicious center of a Tootsie Roll pop is a shot at the Mariners’ erstwhile closer.
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and for more cockle-warming, the video piece about this visit is on the Sportscenters tonight … although the ESPN series reminds me of the Dream Catchers show the Moyer Foundation aired around Christmas last year …
Sweet… not only an Eddie dig, but a surreptitious USSM link as well!
What a nice little plug for USSM.
Oh, yeah. I think I was at the game that Katie Morris was at, or at least, I remember them showing her on the big screen with her little league teammates and all. It was cool.
And of course, Jonah makes a great point about the Tigers – you don’t need a ton of big names to have a great team. On the other hand, I personally think it’s due to their prevalence of guys who wear high socks.
That’s just mean. Only ONCE all season has Guardado given up two home runs in a game. The Mariners are actually 4-3 in games where Eddie gave up a HR.
I do like the Tigers player/coach rating system. It indeed is boring to assign teams letter grades. Is there a letter low enough for Kansas City?
Milton and Guardado on the same team, and even pitching in the same game, seems scary; yet the Reds won that one too.
The M’s are 4-3 in games in which Eddie gave up a HR because a manager would have to be bat-shit insane to put him into a game in which his team was leading by less than 412 runs.
“a manager would have to be bat-shit insane to put him into a game”
Helloooooo, Mike Hargrove.
OK, I’ll take the heat for planting that seed. If you looked at the thread (“complained”) linked above, it was my rant about Eddie that Jonah was responding to, and I’m the one who said “He’s the “sixth inning if we can afford to give up a couple of home runs†closer.” So that’s on me, I guess.
Hope he does well for the Reds. Hope he has a great rest of his career. Still glad to see him gone. My liver couldn’t stand the sudden alcohol spikes my mouth supplied everytime my eyes saw him coming into a game.
8- You and me both, and hey I also deal with “Jorge “1-9 & have given up 20 jacks this year” Sosa as the Braves closer. Though I think that Bobby Cox may have seen the errors of his ways and return Ken Ray back to the Closer spot.
9 – I’ve heard that the Braves have convered less than 50% of their save opportunities (16 saves, 17 blown saves was what someone told me). If it is really that bad you’d have to think that with JJ and they are probably in the race with the Mets. That is truly painful. I don’t know if even Ayala and co. were so depressing to watch.
Something in # 10 reminds me of something. A few years ago, Arizona was blowing game after game; and Colangelo concluded that they had to get a closer at all costs. So, they got a closer (Matt Mantei)at all costs (Brad Penny).
Teams do it all the time. Recently the Mariners addressed their right-handed pinch-hitting needs at all costs (At all costs ?) They got Eduardo Perez for Asdrubal Cabrera (Asdrubal Cabrera ?)
10 – Yeah with JJ we’re damn near back in it. I’m not sure what to think at this point. Maybe a 15th title was a bit of wishful thinking. I’m hoping there’s a deadline deal for a proven arm for the pen. Farnsworth was a great pick up, though we had to deal Zach Miner to do it.
That’s an arm that could’ve made an impact as well and hopefully Kyle Davies comes off the DL here in the second half.
My kingdom for a closer..
Dave and USSM got plugged by Rotoworld today while taking about Gil Meche in an article as well.
The man that I wanted the Seattle Mariners to acquire back in 2004, Ryan Howard (.278/.341/.582), just won the Home Run Derby yesterday.
From what I recall, however, neither Dave nor Derek liked Howard — nor, for that matter, did many other posters at USSMariner — which was mainly due to his poor walk to strikeout ratio.
Of course, as the old adage goes, hindsight is only 20/20; yet, in this case, I had some amazin’ vision—there’s no denyin’ it!
#14– From what I recall, however, neither Dave nor Derek liked Howard  nor, for that matter, did many other posters at USSMariner  which was mainly due to his poor walk to strikeout ratio.
and the fact that Ed Wade wasn’t all that interested in trading him…
I definitely recall someone touting Howard as a trade target for the Mariners. I would have guessed it was here, but perhaps I’m mistaken. He seemed redundant after the Phils signed Thome, and I believe the idea was that Philly needed a CF and Winn was expendable.
Yeah, because a player winning the home run derby is crucial to his team’s chances in getting to and winning a world series. Just ask Bobby Abreu.
Would it be nice to have Howard on the M’s? Sure. But at the cost of what they’d have had to give up to get him? Felix, perhaps, maybe Lopez too? At least Sexson just cost money.
You recall incorrectly. I, and you can look back through the comments etc if you’re curious, just didn’t *care* about Ryan Howard, except that he was constantly, annoyingly mentioned as someone the M’s should be able to pickup in trade, even though that wasn’t going to happen.
I don’t know what the exact proportion is, but I’d bet nearly all of the Ryan Howard comments I’ve ever made were related to that.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I remember.
Consider that Ed Wade traded away a very good, if aging and expensive, Jim Thome to put Ryan Howard in the lineup, along with a big pile of cash, and the 5743454359090485 “Hey, why don’t we trade Randy Winn and a bucket of used baseballs for Ryan Howard! This is the best and most unique post ever!” posts become even more annoying in hindsight.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I remember too: somebody (I think pretty much always a single, certain somebody) would pipe up with Yet Another Variation of “Hey, let’s trade x for Ryan Howard” and someone would either respond with a careful explanation of why that wasn’t going to happen (in the early days) or we’d just collectively roll our eyes and move on to whatever the actual subject of that discussion was. Nobody denied he was a player with promise, but nobody understood why he was such a particular object of obsession vs all the other promising players out there.
Back in the middle of 2004, the Seattle Mariners had begun their downward spiral into the abyss that they resided in through the 2005 season.
In July of 2004, the M’s released first baseman John Olerud (2004: .245/.354/.360) due to his poor performance; subsequently thereafter, Justin Leone was recalled to take his place and start at third base, while Scott Spiezio shifted over from the hot corner to first base.
I, however, advocated that the M’s attempt to trade center fielder Randy Winn (2004: .286/.346/.427) to the Philadelphia Phillies for first baseman Ryan Howard (2004 {AA}: .297/.386/.647), since the M’s had recently acquired center fielder Jeremy Reed — along with catcher Miguel Olivo and shortstop Mike Morse, for that matter — in the Freddy Garcia trade and the Phillies had Jim Thome blocking Howard at first base.
In the end, unfortunately, none of it really matters.
In July of 2006, the Mariners were meandering back and forth with inconsistency, winning some games and looking great while losing more and looking awful. Carl Everett was about to be released due to poor performance, and subsequently thereafter, Chris Snelling would be recalled to take his place at start at DH.
I, however, advocate for the M’s to attempt to trade center fielder Willie Bloomquist (oh, you don’t need his stats, we all know he can’t hit) to the St. Louis Cardinals for first baseman Albert Pujols (2006 -.400/.812/2.431 or something), since the M’s had recently called up Shin-Soo Choo, and have Adam Jones in the minors.
In the end, unfortunately, none of it really matters. Why?
Because ridiculous trade suggestions on a blog are not the kinds of things you want to come back to a blog years later and say “I told you so.”
Re. #22:
Although my advocation of Ryan Howard in 2004 and 2005 wasn’t unrealistic like your sarcastic example, I nevertheless understand your point.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2028023
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=1825421&type=story
I like Jonah’s Petagine plug in his AL report.