Kitsap Sun on Bloomquist
On the flip side, he’s disdained by a very active Mariner blogging community, which pokes fun at Bloomquist because of his lack of power and overall offensive production. Among his nicknames: “Ballgame,” “The Ignitor,” “Princess Willie” and “Willie Boom-Boom.”
Willie Ballgame might not be a favorite of those number-loving cybergeeks, but he’s earned the respect of those who count.
“disdained by”?
Isn’t “Willie Boom-Boom” a Rick Rizzs creation?
Nice name-calling. That’s some quality journalism. Way to cover the story.
Projecting the 2008 Mariners team
Using random guesses, hunches, wishcasting, and general skullduggery. You can, as I frequently note, get extremely close to a good projection using a player’s three-year average. Therefore!
C-R: Johjima. No change. I still (as always) think he might outdo himself, but .285/.325/.435, no problem.
1B-R: Sexson. Ugh. Dead cat bounce. .245/.330/.460 … that looks high, now that I check it. Oh well.
2B-R: Lopez. I’m bullish on his 08 season. .275/.320/.400 on the low end. The more Cairo plays, the worse this gets.
SS-R: Betancourt. Last year’s about as well as you can expect him to hit without a change in what he’s doing up there. Step back a little, he’s still a .290/.315/.410 hitter. If he’s playing good defense, you take it.
3B-R: Beltre. Wooo! Beltreeeee! Call me a fan, but .275/.325/.460 is entirely realistic.
LF-L: Ibanez. .280/.350/.455.
CF-L: Ichiro. .330/.380/.420
RF-R: Jones. .270/.330/.440. I have no idea. OBP’s probably high, SLG might be low.
DH-B: Vidro. .280/.350/.380. Really. I realize I’m going to have to write up a long post on this at some point, but I’ve been spending a lot of time studying Vidro’s balls-in-play charts and I think he’s nearly done as a hitter, and if he doesn’t go off the cliff next year, we’ll still see a lot less. Now that I think about it, there will probably be two reactions to that post, and they’d run
– yeah, I see those same warning signs
– Vidro’s on fire! Revitalized! You hate him because of the Snelling trade!!!11!!oneone!!
which makes me wonder if it’s worth writing.
Bench: Burke/WFB/Cairo/?. They’ll drag down the line a bit.
So as a team, that’s a line of about .280/.340/.430, which is… drum roll please… about what they hit last year, when they scored 794 runs. No surprise there.
Defensively, it’s a step up. Replacing Guillen with Jones is a huge upgrade. Perhaps he and Ichiro can play left-center and right-center, and Ibanez can back up Sexson at first.
So to the pitching, then.
SP-R Felix Hernandez. Continues to progress.
SP-L Jarrod Washburn. Continues to be Jarrod.
SP-R Carlos Silva. Even if his fundamental stats don’t change, he’ll likely have an ERA of 4.50 or more.
SP-R Miguel Batista. Figure another year eats into his K rate a little, and he’ll still be pretty effective.
SP-? ?
That last one’s a pick-em: Baek, HoRam, Morrow, whoever you want. Who it is, and how they do, could make a huge difference. Hard to be worse than HoRam.
Just swapping out Weaver for someone decent is worth 20 runs, at least. And then if you replace HoRam with any decent pitcher, that’s another 20. They’re not going to have any trouble putting a dramatically improved rotation out there.
Bullpen: I don’t think they’ll have any problem throwing together an equally-effective bullpen for next year, even with Putz bound to come down a little.
Overall on the pitching side, let’s call it… fifty runs. Might be better than that, but that’s reasonable, especially considering the defense with Jones offset somewhat by Ibanez and Sexson both getting a little creakier, then Betancourt not making as many errors.
We’re at ~795 runs scored, and ~780 runs allowed. That’s an over-.500 team, though not by a lot.
You can immediately identify where this could go wrong on the scoring side (Sexson not hitting would kill that offensive number, as would Cairo playing) or right (Vidro somehow sustains his crazy hit rate, Lopez breaks out) and on the pitching side (Felix breaks out/Jarrod breaks down).
But I don’t see a team that’s ready to challenge the Angels, and I don’t understand why people think they might be competitive. A lot of things have to break the M’s way, while a lot of other things can’t go wrong (particularly, this is not a deep squad that could take any serious injury to… well, I won’t point out who, because I’m paranoid). The Angels are pretty easily a 90-win team, and the Mariners as presently constituted aren’t close. Luck can swing a season, certainly, but hoping both that the M’s get lucky and the Angels suffer a catastrophe seems unrealistic and, if that view leads to trades that hurt the team’s chances to compete for a championship in the long term, harmful.
Stone’s argument for Bedard
Larry Stone’s not as pro-Bedard-trade as some advocates, but he’d still give up Jones… with a lot of caveats. Caveats that in practice make him anti-Bedard-trade.
(updated to fix date: I thought this ran in the Sunday edition for some reason)
USSM fantasy interest ping
Hey folks — with the collapse of my long-running Diamond Mind sim league, I’ve been thinking of cooking up something on one of the free services (ESPN/Yahoo/?), using some more realistic measures (no defense, unfortunately) to set up something fairly light-weight… who’d be up for it? Any thoughts on what we should use if it happens?
(and don’t worry if we get like 9k responses — if this happens, participation would be a whole different issue)
Reset the counter
Fortunately it’s not a Jones trade. The M’s signed HoRam to a one-year, $2.75m deal to avoid arbitration.
Pick your reason why it’s a bad deal:
– Taking a historically bad pitcher to arbitration after seeing him suck all year.
– The deal itself
– The fact that they’re in this situation at all after bringing HoRam in believing he was potentially a top-of-the-rotation guy despite there being no reason to think that was true
Ugh.
Prediction contest: Bloomquist’s new contract
Like fellow Mariner-for-life Raul Ibanez, Willie Bloomquist’s contract is up after this season. Make your predictions in a comment, including
* date contract is announced (Mariner press release or press conference, whichever comes first). Last extension was announced November of 2006
* years
* salary only — don’t worry about signing bonuses, incentives, or anything
Speaking of incentives, fun fact about Willie’s last contract, from CoT:
award bonuses: $0.15M for MVP, $0.1M for WS MVP, $50,000 each for LCS MVP, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove, All Star ($25,000 for AS selection)
Belated USSM 2007 Music post
The last off-season post was a hit with some people and annoying to others. If you’re in the latter group, please, don’t read any further.
Read more
Rumors and Jones speculation
Nothing’s happened today so far (wooo!). I don’t know what that means. Jones being pulled from winter ball (a fine reminder, btw, that their management of him this season was ridiculous) and particularly the account of his conversation with Bavasi seem to indicate that a Bedard deal was so close the Orioles could ask for Jones to stop playing and have it happen — and then at least that deal fell apart. Of course, I don’t know for sure.
In situations like this, I’ve increasingly become reluctant to speculate on rumors and try and figure out what happened, and when. I don’t know who told who what, and why some sources reported one deal and others another. We have limited information, and sometimes that means you wait.
During last season, I heard repeatedly that Broussard was going to be traded. Three of those times it was enough that I thought about running the rumor, and other times it was “I know Broussard’s business manager, and he’s trying to find Ben a place in New York to stay after he’s traded”-type stuff.
You don’t remember me writing about it because I didn’t write any of it up. And it didn’t happen. After a long stretch of getting burned, from hearing Hargrove was going to get fired to other stuff, I decided to set the bar for writing anything up at, essentially, “trade announced.” It’s just not worth it. If a major media outlet runs something, or the Times/PI mentions talks are ongoing, well, if nothing else it’s a current topic of discussion and potentially worth commenting on it.
I’ve learned though that to some extent people are going to believe weird stuff. I’ve read online that USSM spread rumors that we refuted, that we supported things we opposed, and the other way around. At some point, you have to say “well, I’m trying as best I can” and shrug.
So back to Jones. Churchill‘s reported that he heard a deal would be announced today, and it wasn’t. And yet, I don’t doubt he heard that — and Jones being pulled certainly does seem to point to the team being perilously close to a deal. If all of this means that for whatever reason the team’s stepped back from a huge mistake, I’m happy to accept that.
I’d really like to see some rumors of “talks have broken off” though, maybe with some strong public statements to go with it. Let me know if you see any.
Selig to remain commish through 2012
News only if you believed him when he said he’d retire after 2009.
Whee.
USSM on KJR returns
Not sure what I think about the Erik Bedard rumors? Haven’t heard me profess my love for Adam Jones’ defensive abilities lately? Need to hear someone’s voice crack on the radio as they talk too fast? You’re in luck, because I’m back on the air with the Groz at 2:20 pm this afternoon on KJR.
As always, you can listen live online or just turn your less fancy radio down the dial.