Derek’s gigantic pre-Opening Day Mariner post-o-rama
I’m still sick, so there’s been little to do but sit around and write a couple thousand words about the M’s as they go into Opening Day. Please do note there’s a lovely post by Dave under this one.
Starting rotation
SP-L Erik Bedard
SP-R Felix Hernandez
SP-R Carlos Silva
SP-L Jarrod Washburn
SP-R Miguel Batista
I’ve heard that this is going to be the best M’s rotation ever, and I beg to disagree. Bedard and Felix are great, no doubt, but I submit for your consideration a couple of other candidates.
First, the 2001 rotation. 2001 doesn’t have the top-line names, but they ran out Freddy Garcia (the good version), Jamie Moyer, Aaron Sele (the good version), scrap-heap find Paul Abbott, and by the end of the season, Joel Pineiro, who ran off a crazy late-season surge. Paul Abbott threw 163 innings of average baseball, and he was the #4 starter. That was a sweet rotation. Sure, they were backed by a fine defense, but that was a good rotation top to bottom (which is part of why the 116 wins didn’t translate, but that’s a whole other post).
An even better and less-remembered staff might be the 1990 and 1991 teams.
The 1990 staff was Erik Hanson, Randy Johnson, Matt Young, Brian Holman, and some scraps. The pitching staff allowed 674 runs as a whole, but those top four guys gave up 389 runs allowed in 870 innings (Matt Young pitched in relief once, I didn’t take the time to chase that out) for about a 4 RA/9 and a 3.5 ERA – in the Kingdome.
In the Kingdome! That staff rocked. Then in 1991, you get future TV talking head Bill Krueger starting 25 games and kicking butt instead of Matt Young. That year’s pitching staff only allowed 680 runs total!
I know, they were almost twenty years ago. But holy mackerel, that was a good pitching staff.
Bedard/Felix is a great 1-2, but I wonder if the rest of those guys are anywhere close.
And in terms of the best 1-2-3, I have to go with the Johnson-Moyer-Fassero 1997 team. Ridiculous. They went 53-18. 52-18 if you throw out Randy’s vulture win.
Does pointing this out make me a bad fan, though? Because before I talk about Bedard, there’s something else to deal with.
I don’t understand part of the discussion around the Bedard trade, and I’ll try talk about that and explain why I find it so frustrating. We take a lot of crap around here for supposedly being too negative. Both Dave and I were huge fans of George Sherrill and Adam Jones, in our own ways. This does not get counted in our favor. Then when they were traded, an honest disclosure of my opinion on the trade (it was bad) and my feelings about the trade (I hate to see Jones go) even as we look forward to seeing Bedard pitch for the M’s (I do) is taken as being down on the team. Or being too attached to prospects, while being too enthusiastic about an M’s prospect is not a point in our favor.
Or season predictions. When I’ve been high, I don’t hear a chirp, but being low by a couple games last year, well, how dare I not predict the M’s would win that many games! Can’t win for losing. If someone thinks that we’re too negative, there’s seemingly no way to break out of it. They’re going to keep emailing us their opinion of the number and size of dicks we have in our mouths (because our disagreement equals our homosexuality). Which in itself is a depressing indicator on humanity in general, but I digress from my digression.
All this goes to a larger issue of what it means to be a fan. When I was one of a couple thousand people in the Kingdome, watching the M’s find ever more frustrating ways to give games away to their opponents like it was a promotion (first visiting team gets a win!), I always believed that as bad as things were now, they would eventually get better, and we’d beat those annoying Blue Jays, and Yankees, and the hated A’s and Brewers. But I never denied that the team in front of me was pretty bad. When I was skipping classes to see day games, and I’d get to the stadium to find out John Cummings was starting, I didn’t yell “woo-hoo!â€
That’s just me. I have faith in the long term, and I’m realistic about the short-term. This may help explain why I’m particularly attached to players I think can contribute to a winning core the team can build around, like Ichiro, Felix, or even what I saw in Adam Jones.
This is part of my day job: making things happen requires me to know as much as I can about what’s going well and what’s going badly right now, while keeping the long-term vision on the release date and figuring out how we get there from where we are.
That’s the overlooked theme of my USSM writing, and I wish I was better about consistently expressing it clearly. I want what everyone else wants: a World Series win.
This is what I love in some of Dave’s posts. We get not only why ERA is deceptive in evaluating a pitcher, but how to do it better. I try and talk about the bench in terms of bench construction, rosters as part of a larger discussion about team building, and on and on and on.
I can see why my reaction to other people’s opinions comes off strangely. If someone told me they thought the Mariners will win 95 games, I’d probably give them a blank look. And then they’d wonder why I wasn’t happy to hear it. This goes back to the fundamental divide: that news doesn’t affect anything, and I don’t see why their belief that the team will win 95 games is something I should rejoice in.
Let me give a work example instead. I’m working on a project that’s in trouble. It started with an aggressive timeline, and everything’s gone haywire since then: it turned out to be more difficult than we thought, half the team’s had the flu and missed more than a week each, and that’s just the start of it. I spend all my time working on mitigation, trying to fix broken stuff, make the problems that are holding progress up go away or at least make them less painful.
Someone stops me in the hall and says “Your project’s going to come in on time!â€
Thanks! But that changes nothing, and if it is going to come on time, I need to go back to work.
Now if they offered me some additional information, that’d be different.
Steve Phillips at ESPN, or any other supposed analyst or writer thinks the M’s are going to win the division, or go to the World Series? Okay. I’d love to hear some insight into how that comes together.
I have come to realize that for many people, all of this I might as well wear a name tag that says “#1 Angels fan†or something. Sorry. I wish people didn’t take that so personally.
To Bedard. I’m a little worried about whether he’ll get to 200 innings or start thirty or more games, but even if he doesn’t, he’s great. Barring a total collapse in his performance, Bedard is going to be the best starting pitcher the team’s seen since Moyer’s amazing 2002-3 run. That’s huge. It’s exciting. I’m excited.
Felix. He’s still young. He’s still mostly just flinging stuff from the mound to the catcher. If he doesn’t progress much at all, he’s still very good. If he starts to pick his pitches better, work them more consistently, and especially if he hones his command of his fastball a little, he’ll rack up the wins like crazy. He’ll strike out a batter an inning and threaten to pitch a no-hitter once a week. Here’s hoping.
Now, the rest of the staff… I don’t like the Carlos Silva signing. Picking up Silva was like acquiring Ryan Franklin after he put up that 3.57 ERA in 2003. Silva’s not that good. He doesn’t offer a significant upgrade over a guy like – just to pick a random example – Baek. If both of them were in the rotation, I’d give you even odds for which one finished with better stats. I’d probably discount Silva, now that I think about it. We’ll see, of course, but the potential good outcome of this deal is that Silva’s another Washburn, who eats innings and pitches well enough to avoid notice.
Which brings us to Washburn. Who is Washburn. This defense isn’t going to do him any favors. Ugh.
And Batista. I like to watch Batista pitch. There’s something weirdly hypnotic about how he gets his outs. It’s like watching Bosio, in a way: Batista doesn’t have great stuff, and you’ll see sometimes he has to really labor to get his three outs each inning, but he ticks along. And I don’t know why I enjoy seeing Batista pitch over Washburn, when the end result is so similar, but I do.
The ideal scenario, and this will tie into the bullpen section, is that Morrow’s put back on the starter track. We can’t know if he’ll be ready next year, or whenever, but it would be amazingly productive to have a start-capable Morrow ready to replace Washburn/Batista down the road.
I don’t want to neglect the pleasure of not having to see Jeff Weaver or Horacio Ramirez. I don’t think Jeff Weaver’s even signed anywhere yet. That’s a long fall in a short time. Carlos Silva may be adequate, and we don’t look forward to adequate, but that’s a huge improvement over the stomach-knotting dread of seeing HoRam’s name as the day’s probable starter. Let’s move on.
Bullpen
RP-R Putz
RP-R Green
RP-R Baek
RP-L O’Flaherty
RP-L Rowland-Smith
RP-R Lowe
I expect Putz to be great in relief and not as good as last year, which is another fine example of the perception generated by being realistic: talking to someone about Putz and mentioning that he’s likely to come down to earth a little, well, I might as well have told them that roast puppy was delicious if you put a little barbecue sauce on them.
Putz is solid. I’m not worried.
The rest of the staff, though… I frequently said that I had a lot of faith in the team’s ability to put together a cheap and effective bullpen. But now that Sherrill’s gone and Morrow’s out, I’m not as confident. I like Baek and Rowland-Smith as long relievers, though I’m not as sure the team needs them in that role. Rowland-Smith’s likely to get pounded into the “second lefty specialist†role though, like Sherrill, it’s not the best use of his skills. But then, neither is having two long relievers. It’s not like we have Jeff Weaver and Horacio Ramirez in the starting rotation. I like Mark Lowe a lot, but like Dave I worry about his health. We can’t know how well he’ll be able to pitch through a season, or whether he’ll stay healthy. And as for O’Flaherty and Green, everyone’s probably tired of me saying this, but if you’re reasonably careful about picking their spots, you can get a lot out of those guys. Green’s the reliever I’d be calling to staunch rallies by getting grounders, but you’ll take your lumps with him too.
The lineup
CF-L Ichiro!
2B-R Lopez
LF-L Ibanez
1B-R Sexson
3B-R Beltre
RF-L Wilkerson / RF-R Morse
DH-B Vidro
C-R Johjima
SS-R Betancourt
I freely admit I’m guessing at how the bottom of the lineup will turn out.
Ichiro. I love watching Ichiro play. They could trade everyone else on the team and I’d still tune in, fuming at myself for not being able to stop. I don’t think there’s a better value for your ticket dollar than Ichiro.
Lopez. If putting him at #2 makes him a more selective hitter and helps him get his career back on track, I’m all for it. We’ve seen the Lopez that’s full of potential and was on a track to become a key part of a young Mariner middle-infield tandem that would help the team field competitive teams for years to come, and we’ve seen a wince-inducing Lopez that makes us wonder why the team ever invested in him. I want to think that last season’s swoon was due to off-field problems as much as anything. I have to admit that I wonder if Lopez is just going to end up being another young player who stalled. And then maybe two years after everyone’s cut bait on him he’ll put up an All-Star season playing for some awful .400 team that invited him to spring training on a lark. Baseball’s a weird game. And as much as I resist making any kind of personal judgments of players, I’ll say this: I think Lopez is a smart guy, and knows all that. The question may be whether or not he wants to work that hard now, and what he decides he wants to do with his career, more than whether or not he has the talent.
Ibanez. It’s sad he’s out there in left. He’s a DH. Maybe a first baseman, though as I’ve mentioned before, reports out of KC from his limited time there were just as scary. Ibanez is pretty good about catching what he gets to, and we see him occasionally make the highlight-worthy play against the wall, but that obscures the fact that he doesn’t get to many balls. He just doesn’t. It’s not his fault. The team should be able to see this, and they should particularly have realized that if they were going to commit to making him the heart and public face of the team, they would also need to clear a spot for him to play. Playing left field in Safeco, he’ll have to hit a ton to make himself a net asset to the team.
Sexson. Ugh. He needs to hit a lot to make up for his glove, and he’s a long way from hitting that well. Here’s hoping. The interesting question may be how long the team waits if he gets off to a poor start. If they’re competing for now, they can’t have a punchless first baseman hitting .205 who can’t play defense striking out in the middle of the order every game. How long will their faith in Sexson’s comeback last in what we hope will be a pennant race?
Beltre. I know, the Beltre admiration runs strong here, but why not? I don’t pretend to understand the whole timeline of the injury – at some point that might be worth puzzling out – but Beltre plays good defense at third and hits well. What’s not to like? I’m still baffled by the belief that he isn’t, or at least wasn’t, worth the deal the M’s gave him. As we’ve pointed out here, thinking renewal might be smart, not cutting losses.
Wilkermorse: what a fine example of the team’s perception of roles getting in the way of reasonable decision making. You don’t have to platoon for Wilkerson. He hits lefties okay. Ibanez is the guy who sucks against lefties. But they’re going to leave Ibanez in the middle of the lineup against lefties, because he’s Ibanez, the middle of the lineup presence. Ugh.
Plus, turn Ibanez into Morse in left and you’ve upgraded the left field defense a little while still minimizing Morse’s general defensive badness. Turning Wilkerson into Morse doesn’t help at all. Why do they do this to us?
Vidro. He’s still the DH. Here’s another Sexson-like question. Assume that Vidro’s option vests at 400, 450 at-bats, and the team really believes that having their DH hit .300 and walk sometimes is helping. If he’s hitting .330, sure, they let him play and the option vests. What else, though?
What happens if Vidro starts slow, and really looks like he’s done? Where do they go from there? Work through the scenarios, and it gets weird pretty quickly. Move Ibanez to DH and put Reed in left (or right?)
Or what happens if Vidro’s hitting an empty .280 halfway through the season and the M’s are out of the race. Do they bench him? How?
And what if Vidro’s hitting .300 while Sexson and Lopez both stink up the joint and the team’s three games back? Do they move Vidro to first, Ibanez to DH, and play Bloomquist? Could they go through with swapping a third of the everyday lineup?
I find this kind of thing fascinating.
Anyway, I think there’s some good evidence that Vidro’s just done, stick a giant novelty fork in his back. Put it at 40%. Maybe 50%. And then there’s a 40% chance he’ll hit .280/.350/.375 and the M’s will wring their hands all year about what to do. And I’ll acknowledge say a 10-20% chance Vidro’s awesome and all the danger signs I see of a collapse are just mirages, and he hits .330 and is the toast of the town again.
Johjima. Johjima didn’t get a lot of notice, but getting .287/.322/.433 out of your catcher is pretty sweet. He’s in the top third of catchers offensively, without the Josh Bard defensive liabilities. 40 runners caught stealing last year! And only 46 successful! That’s pretty great. I don’t expect him to repeat that, but he’s solid. I’m glad the M’s have him.
Betancourt. His defense took a huge step back last year, between the throwing issues, which we hope he’ll avoid this season, and what appeared to be reduced range. When Betancourt came up, he got to balls he had no business catching. Every game I remember being shocked at least once by him. Last year, it didn’t happen. I don’t have a good explanation for what happened. I don’t think I just got used to him: his rate stats for the balls went way down too. As a decent glove at short that hits well for the position, he’s a quality contributor. If he can avoid throwing the ball away, he’s still better. If he can hit well again and play good defense, well, that’d be great.
Bench
C-R Burke
WFB-R Bloomquist
WFBL-R Cairo
OF-R Jimerson
Whatever half of Wilkermouse isn’t playing that day.
And here we reach the single most ridiculous roster choice: Miguel “I can’t believe he’s not Bloomquist†Cairo. Bloomquist Lite. The team was so happy having a no-hit, good baserunning, decent-fielding utility player that they decided they needed a worse-hitting, worse-running, worse-fielding backup to allow them to use the first one more often. It boggles the mind.
Beyond that, I’ve argued before for Jimerson and Morse on the bench, so that’s fine. As a unit, though, what do these guys offer?
| Who | Bats | C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | LF/RF | CF | Baserunning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burke | R | Avg | |||||||
| Bloomquist | R | Good | Avg | Avg | Avg | Good | Avg | Good | |
| Cairo | R | Bad | Bad | Bad | Bad | Bad | Yeaagh | Meh | |
| Jimerson | R | Good | Avg | Good | |||||
| Morse | R | Avg | Terrible | Bad | Bad | Horrific | Doesn’t |
You have to believe that could have been handled better.
The whole deal
I haven’t come out strongly with any predictions because I’ve been really torn up this off-season. Like many of the teams the last few years, there’s a huge swing in potential outcomes based on the performance of players we can identify going in. If you could guarantee a Sexson bounce to career norms while everything else remained uncertain, my instinct would be to say “85 wins” before I even thought about it. And yet when I sit down and work through everything to figure out how they’re going to shake out, I don’t get to 85. I get to .500, which is what I somehow manage to get to every year. I can see how they’d finish 75 without having to injure Bedard or Felix or Ichiro, and I have to remind myself that seeing all the potential ways things can go right or wrong doesn’t help the outcome.
I’ll say 83 wins. And yet that feels too high and too low at once. I don’t think I’ve ever been this conflicted about trying to guess the season totals. Already I want to write “but I’m sick, and haven’t slept well in a week and so I’m really tired and I’ll have another opinion in a minute.” But I’ve thought this through, and I feel like I’d clearly take the over on BP’s 75 wins, and the under on 90, and when I repeated that all the way through it was at 83 where I couldn’t decide which way I’d go.
That’s where the balance between my fandom and my judgment lies today. Take it for what you will. If nothing else, the Mariners go into this season as an intriguing team.
Comments
63 Responses to “Derek’s gigantic pre-Opening Day Mariner post-o-rama”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Gigantic posts from DMZ? Does want.
Awesome!! Can’t wait to sink my teeth into this.
Morse – baserunning – doesn’t. I love it.
Way to be so negative in your belief that Sexson won’t rebound that you subconsciously made the decision not to bold his name. I hate this site!
Watching the ATL-WSH game (on mute, though) and devouring an awesomely long post that reads as if DMZ is just casually chatting about baseball is a fine way to spend a Sunday evening. I completely agree that, at the very least, this season could be quite the ride. Whether it ends up with WS rings or in a giant fireball, who the hell knows, but here’s to holding onto that hope for dear life no matter what!
Good luck on that work project too!
All this goes to a larger issue of what it means to be a fan.
At some level, it’s irrational. As fans, we have zero real influence over what the team does. Trade Jones? Play Sexson? Sign Silva? Move to Okalahoma? (sorry, not sure where that last one came from). Ultimately, the team decides what it wants to do, and we get to live with it. Or find something else to do with our summers.
So, there exists a point of view that recognizes the futility of identifying the problems with the team. What good does it do to point out Ibanez’ lack of range, when you can’t write someone else’s name on the lineup card? Wouldn’t it be better to just enjoy the occasional spectacular catch along with the fans who don’t know any better? Since you can’t bench or trade Sexson, wouldn’t it be better to believe that he’ll “heat up” when the weather gets warmer? Isn’t it better to cheer on Bedard amidst the smug satisfaction that we got him for “just a prospect, a LOOGY, and a couple of live arms”? To call Vidro a “professional hitter”, and revel in all the grit, vereranosity, and aggressive baserunning, without the metallic taste of irony clawing at the back of your throat?
Ah, but you’ve eaten the cursed apple. You know better, and the scorn you get is a natural reaction from the other folks who don’t want to leave the garden.
Hope you feel better soon.
I decided to go with the faith of my fathers and be a Red Sox fan living in Seattle. The only thing the Mariners have going for them is great bloggers; USSM and LL deserve better.
Also, it’s good to hear my own crogglement at the Cairo signing echoed here. Of all the WTF moments the M’s front office has treated us to in the past few years, I feel that Cairo is the WTFest. There really isn’t even a little bit of sense to it.
When Betancourt came up, he got to balls he had no business catching. Every game I remember being shocked at least once by him. Last year, it didn’t happen. I don’t have a good explanation for what happened.
Go back and look at video of him from his rookie year — he was a beanpole. Three years and the introduction of Applebee’s to his diet later, he has filled out. The extra 15 pounds or so might have cost him half a step.
any thoughts on Beltre?
The MLB preview in our local paper today had the M’s as the only AL team ranked 5/5 in defense–in other words, the best defensive team in the league. No explanation was given for this ranking, though…
As an optimistic fan, though it pains me sometimes I think I’ll stick with this site for analysis.
I’ve been on the Cairo anti-bandwagon since his signing, too.
As for Turbo’s option vesting, MLB teams usually act as if oblivious to any such contract provision – which is, of course, what the union rules says they are supposed to do, but I’ve been surprised that they’re haven’t been more wallet-conscious when there were defensible reasons for benching a guy.
[if you know your comment is incoherent, maybe re-write before posting?]
But, to my mind, this is where your judgement lies, not your fandom. What it seems to me your detractors typically miss is the difference. Call me crazy, but I’d guess that you want the M’s to win more than 83 games. But the fans who can’t separate judging how this team and others stack up against each other from what they want to see are why bookies can make big bucks off of sports betting.
Honestly, I don’t come here for a Mariner’s love-fest. I believe y’all do a great job of giving a great combination of team information and analysis. It allows me to just be a fan, but also be an informed one
[we love ponies]
Questioning the fandom of the people who put a lot of time and effort into creating content for you guys with no compensation whatsoever is pretty freakin’ classless.
Cut it out.
USSMariner.com – Arguing That Ignorance Is Not Bliss Since 2002.
For those who think that ignorance is bliss, you’re in the wrong place.
it’s as though you see his brain turning over, figuring out how to get himself out of the mess that just happened.
especially as he doesn’t have a gut, yet.
in an aside, saw this last year about Abbott
Great post. Here’s to a realistic projection for this 08 season.
Agreed about Paul Abbott being a solid #4 in 01, though I’m partial b/c he signed a baseball back in the day.
Simply put:
I love you guys and the outstanding analysis given. I love the honesty of this site. I love the M’s, for better or worse. I know you love the M’s in the exact same way.
I will come back here to read everyone’s thoughts on the first win, the first loss, all the way to the end. The important part isn’t that you criticize the team, or that you congratulate the team; the important part is that you care about it like I do, like we do.
And you do, without a shadow of a doubt you do. I know, because I care in the same way – it’s comforting I’m not alone in my frustration of losing Jones, of signing (and keeping) Cairo, of paying $12M/yr to a league average starting pitcher. It keeps me sane. And I thank you endlessly for it.
Go M’s, now and forever.
Give in to fandom, Derek. It’s Opening Day!!!! Enjoy the feeling of hopefulness.
As a wise man said,
” . . .at the end of the day, the computer and all this data cannot go above human emotions and feelings. If you do that statistical side too much, it seems like you are choking some abilities that humans carry.”
Or at least that’s how he was translated in the Times.
PLAY BALL!
There should be a new button agreement:
“I have read the post that I am about to criticize.”
This “I’m a better fan than you” shit drives me crazy, especially when a big chunk of the author’s piece goes into detail about his feelings of balancing fandom with actual analysis.
I fixed the Beltre paragraph.
Watching Batista is like watching Bosio…
Apt doesn’t do this simile justice.
In fact, that merits you a refreshing beer…well played.
Fandom and blind homerism are not the same thing.
If you think they are, please click this link
From my perspective, the key to the Season is the performance of three guys. Lowe, Morse, and Sexson. If those guys can produce, things are going to get interesting down the stretch.
Baseball is cool. USSMariner is cool. DMZ and Dave are cool. Lookout Landing is cool. Jeff Sullivan is one funny cool MF. I am going to Opening day tomorrow, not work, and baseball is back!!!!!!!!!!!
I tried the same work analogy, since I get paid for the type of analytic and personnel skills that I scream at the M’s for lacking. So far the only people who got it were people who already thought I wasn’t crazy. The other responses were along the lines of, “it’s baseball, dude, you gotta love your team.” I also point out to these people that it doesn’t matter if I think the M’s will win 60 games or win the Series (and I know this conclusively after 40+ years of useless bargaining with an array of Supreme Deities, threatening the universe, and offering the soul of my firstborn for my teams to win).
Thankfully, you and Dave are here (and have a kick ass sense of humor) for those of us who understand the joy in knowing something about the game and the team we love.
LAAAAA is hobbled for now. I’m actually looking forward to being in first place at the end of April. I’m not so looking forward to the season past that.
I have never ever been a proponent of what I’m about to suggest, but looking at our strengths and weaknesses, wouldn’t it seem we’re something like a Griffey/Freel trade away from really having a pretty darned good and competitive team? I’m not trying to rosterbate so much as I’m attempting to hype myself up for a new season, and as I see potential on our team to really make a playoff run with the right moves (and now that the Angels are reeling), I think it’s appropriate to look into Griffey as a viable option for the M’s in ’08.
I’m extremely happy about Lowe finally being back from his injury. I can only hope that he can maintain some modicum of health as his stuff is pretty much lights out as a set-up man. He’s going to be my favorite middle reliever to watch this season if healthy…
Great post, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I’m really glad that baseball is finally back. If we can pick up some wins against the crippled Halos in the opening month, I think we have a decent shot at convincing the rest of the nation that we’re contenders for at least the first half.
But seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited for Monday in my life.
very good Derek! Hopefully I can catch the game at work and on the way home tomorrow.
I was wondering if you think that the way the bullpen shaped as well as the bench means a possible trade, with this month (which I think the Mariners have a fairly light schedule early on) to deal with this? From what I have heard, Baek and Reed, as well as Norton, are looking valuable on the trade market. I think other teams were waiting for Bavasi to cut them both Baek and Norton in order to claim them, but now that they are both under the control of the Mariners, teams will have to deal with the Mariners. Any chance they could be bundled up for a hitter and have Dickey come up after the trade? Also, I think what they are doing is having Morse platoon with Wilkerson because they don’t want Wilkerson to get enough ABs for the incentive pay. After that, once they do take care of that, won’t they platoon Morse with Ibanez, and have Ibanez DH when Morse is in LF, which will keep Vidro on the bench, and hopefully avoid the number of ABs for Vidro’s option in 2009? Seems like the club throws money left and right, but with Wilkerson’s incentives being worth $3 million, and Vidro’s option will cost $9 million in 2009 and having Vidro on your roster one more season, so I would guess it would make sense for them to be trying to cut costs.
Ok, I am not taking credit for this, just saw these ideas posted by someone on Geoff Baker’s blog, and couldn’t help but think that with all the looniness going on with the Mariners’ current roster set up, that that could possibly be a logical explanation. On the other hand, does Bavasi have the wit to pull all of that off? If so, he may be much more clever than we all think he is.
Plus, I think its a good thing you are realistic about short-term expectations. Its better to expect some problems up ahead rather than have all this excitement built up just to be crushed once reality sets in.
Thanks for all your hardwork and insight DMZ. Very nice post.
No no no. It’s Opening Day. “Let’s trade for Griffey!!!” posts are only allowed during the offseason.
I kid, I kid.
I have to say, I thought maybe someone had showed Finny how to log-on ….
Fandom and blind homerism are not the same thing.
I’m not sure I agree 100% with this statement. Not that I don’t feel the authors and commenters on USSM aren’t pro Mariners, nor do I feel that comments by people unable to use more than 1% of their brain capacity should be left in the comments thread, but I do think there may be a need to coin a new word to describe what we are.
‘Fan’ is generally considered to be short for ‘fanatic’. The definition of fanatic (from the Merriam-Webster site – ) is “marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion.” To me, this puts intelligent criticism and thought-provoking analysis at odds with being a per se fan.
What then do we become, if not fans? The phrase “thinking fan” has been used in the past, but has never felt comfortable to me, although I do admit to not having been able to develop a reasonable alternative either. Perhaps a combination of words, Fanalyst?
Well it only took exactly zero days after the first game for someone to start up the old “This site hates the Mariners” garbage.
Can’t wait for that to keep happening. At least Felix Day has now become a two day holiday like Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Ha’Rotation (Head of the Rotation), a 2 day festival involving a filthy Canadian lefty and his nasty righty friend, back to back.
wouldn’t it seem we’re something like a Griffey/Freel trade away from really having a pretty darned good and competitive team?
Depends on what “pretty darned competitive” means. I think Derek’s 83 wins is a pretty good estimate of the team’s luck-neutral record. If “competitive” means a .500 ballclub, we’re there already. If “competitive” means “good chance at the playoffs”, we’re 10 wins away. You can’t make up 10 wins with one player. Trading Sexson for Vlad wouldn’t do it. But, there’s always luck, and hopefully Bavasi remembered to sign Luck to an extension (obviously the Angels didn’t, or maybe they signed Jeff Luck instead of Jered Luck…).
With a little luck, this could be a good season. With the Angles skidding, we have an outside shot a winning a weak division. With Bedard and Felix, and JJ closing, the M’s are probably a better playoff team than regular season team.
We appreciate all the thoughtful work you put into this site.
It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that it’s driven by your love for the game, the Mariners, and a general refusal to settle for empty and ignorant platitudes.
As Sensei Ichiro said “If someone makes a statement [of criticism] that is beyond my imagination, something I didn’t realize, that definitely I take in,” he said. “But most of the time, it’s below what I’ve been thinking.”
(great article btw)
Keep up the good work.
83 wins is a fair guess, but there’s no much randomness in this division I couldn’t begin to predict outcomes. Oakland could finish anywhere between 88-76 and 67-95, and that has a huge impact on the rest of the division. There’s cleraly some uncertainty surrounding Texas. How well does Escobar’s replacement do? How much time does Lackey miss? Does Vlad stay healthy?
There’s not another division in baseball where the outcome is in such doubt.
I think about what’s going to happen if Sexson and/or Vidro sucks pretty much all the time. Do they call up Wlad and have Ibanez DH and Wilkerson play first? Or do they bring up Clement and let him 1B/DH leaving Ibanez and Wilkerson where they are? They are in win now mode so I can see them sacrificing something with Clement’s development as a catcher to get to the playoffs.
An even better question is: what if Sexson AND Wilkerson suck? The assumption that Wilkerson will have the season Guillen did last year is a bit presumptuous. To say the least.
Maybe it’s because I’m boggled by the stats but I remain utterly baffled that there are people asserting that this blog “hates the Mariners”. Eh. All those hundreds and hundreds of hours spent crunching numbers and doing seriously analysis of a team sounds like hate?
Lordy. Looking forward to game threads again; I just hope I can look forward to the season without too much wincing. Vidro hitting into a DP during an exhibition game was just too familiar.
I think about what’s going to happen if Sexson and/or Vidro sucks pretty much all the time
Y’know, that suggests an interesting bit of research. For all the playoff teams of the last few years, what percentage of their wins came from their opening day regulars, and what percentage came from reserves or AAA callups?
If you look at PECOTA cards, the typical Attrition rate (e.g. the likelihood that a player’s playing time will decrease 50% or more, either due to injury or poor performance) for starters runs between 5 and 15 percent. Given 9 lineup spots and 5 rotation spots, the chance of an entire team making it through the season with no dropouts about 25%.
So, are playoff teams the ones that:
a) don’t suffer significant attrition during the season
b) replace attrition with quality players through good planing
c) just have more talent to begin with.
Maybe I’ll take that on as a background assignment.
Great post.
It’s incredibly frustrating to talk to anyone who’s a fan who’s completely uninterested in factual evidence that dissuades their idea of what will happen. Talking to another M’s fan recently who legitimately thought the Mariners would win 98 games this year. Now, I’m all for being optimistic, but the realist in me knows that the odds of that happening are so thin they aren’t worth mentioning. But dare to point out the M’s were outscored last year, and they overachieved based on their RS/RA, and you’re called a pessimist who’s not really a fan at all.
I see the team struggling to win 85 games this year. The offense is terrible in spots, roster selection is abysmal, and the team’s devotion to veterans is striking. The oft-repeated comments about Vidro having no place as a professional DH, the Cairo signing, the Silva signing, and the disinterest in replacing Vidro with Ibanez and putting a competent outfielder in left.
The team, with a few tweaks, could be so much better and I think that’s what is frustrating to those who see the potential and then see the results.
sigh. and people think we’re negative. Sample phone call, as I flipped past KJR …
“the Mariners only do enough to keep butts in the seats, they won’t spend money like NY or Boston or the Angels, and they had the opportunity to win one, maybe three World Series earlier in the decade but they wouldn’t spend the money and that’s why Lou left, because they wouldn’t do what they had to do”
KJR doesn’t have ponies!
Hey, I just noticed this:
What injury is Derek talking about? Did I miss something important?
Thanks
What injury is Derek talking about?
Beltre’s thumb, which is a “torn ligament” or “scar tissue” depending on how you want to characterize it.
Got the XM ready to roll tonight… hate living in NYC during opening day. This Yankees garbage is too much. I wish I could watch the M’s, but listening will have to do.
I admit readily to being something of a Morse fanboy, but can we be realistic on him defensively? I remember when we called him up in 2005: there was something very fervent in the air. our short stop had been a bust (who were we playing in 2005; so bad I don’t even remember), and we pulled up Morse at the end of the season, as we tend to do with minor leaguers. The talk was that he had a great glove in Tacoma, and having seen a few Rainiers’ games with him, I’m inclined to say good if not great. I’m just thinking that one of these days the player Morse was in the minors and the player he is in the majors–and let’s be fair, they don’t exactly build his play time in the majors at any one position to improve him there–are going to meet, and it should make for one helluva baseball player. But, then, I was never enamored with Adam Jones and was a Jay fan more than a Griffey fan in the 90′s. What’s wrong with me?
I’m just greatful I can manage to hold those two huge, exploding and diametrically opposed concepts (viz., being an Ms fan and rational human being) in my brain at the same time without stroking out.
What does “there was something very fervent in the air” mean, exactly?
Mike Morse, in 2008, would be an absolute butcher at shortstop. He is at best a mediocre corner outfielder at this point.
“grateful”. Why the hell do I always get that wrong?
Anyone who ever considered Mike Morse a good defensive shortstop wasn’t worth listening to. If you go back and read what we wrote about Morse when the M’s traded for him and during his time in the minors, it was painfully obvious that he was a 1B/3B from the get go. He’s terrible defensively, and he can play major league SS about as well as I can.
So I was maybe even a little over-generous in my assessment?
I really, really don’t understand the sudden Mike Morse lovefest.
Hit ball. In Peoria.
A lot.
It’s all about Morse’s unearthly (and irrelevant) batting average in spring training. Outhitting a record held by Edgar, even a completely meaningless one, gets some attention. It’s Bloomquist all over again. When Morse falls back to earth, we’ll be hearing how it’s because he’s being platooned, and if he got “regular playing time” he’d still be hitting .400 with power, or something. Any goofs on defense will be explained the same way (“he’s not getting regular playing time” / “he’s still young and learning the position”). Yadda Yadda Yadda.
Right, but he’s sucked for what, four years prior to that?
Are people’s memories really that short that a month of lucky hitting (while still being awful defensively, mind you) have made people forget that?
I actually probably don’t want the answer to that question.
I really, really don’t understand the sudden Mike Morse lovefest.
Simple. If this team is going anywhere, someone is going to have to play way above any reasonable projections. Probably a few someones. So, pick who you want to root for to win the Mr. Outlier award. Morse seems like as good a candidate as any. Personally, I’m torn between Lopez and Johjima.
Mike Snow, thanks for the info on Beltre. Thumb injuries seem to kind of suck.
Congratulations on your fine website and even finer analysis of the 2008 Mariners. It’s a pleasure to read such an intelligent examination of the club! Jayson Stark had a very interesting note on the Seattle Mariners this morning on radio. He said the Mariners are the most polarizing club in MLB this season. Generally speaking, he said that scouts love the Mariners while people who use PECOTA find them an average team at best. Here’s my 2 cents on Bavasi: The guy is pretty good at talent evaluation but lousy at configuring a roster. As for McLaren, he reminds me of Jim Lefebvre. That is, a guy who will just manage in all the cliche ways: play for a tie at home and win on the road; lots of talk about “making things happen” on the basepaths, etc. Nothing new or innovative, but at least it seems like the players like him.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you DMZ, and appreciate your analysis. Don’t let all the “anti-negativity” negativity get you down.
-not looking forward to another year of Ibanez in left, Sexson at first, and Turbo on the base paths.
Thanks for the great season-starting post. After a few years of reading this site I am looking forward to the USSM Game Threads almost as much as the actual games. Here’s hoping for another year of overachieving.
Go Mariners!
I am not trying to explain anyone else’s love for Morse, but count me among his supporters. I like him, for no other reason, than the look of his swing. I thought the same about Carlos Guillen’s swing, and Adam Jones’.
I realize this is not any sort of predictor of future success. I just enjoy watching him hit. That is all.
See, that’s cool. Just having an affection for a guy based on how he looks swinging the bat is kosher, as long as you realize it doesn’t have any predictive value in regards to his performance. The part that really puzzles me is when people start positing Morse as the savior of the 2008 season based on a hot streak in spring training.
Heck, for a while I was a big Byung-Hyun Kim fan just because of his crazy looking delivery. It didn’t take very long for him to become a very mediocre pitcher once the league was able to pick up his release point, but man it was fun watching him almost leave knuckle prints in the mound.
All: I apologize for comment 12 in this thread, which was deleted. It was not my intent to question the fanhood of anyone, especially the authors on this blog.
I was just trying to say that although I appreciate the constructive criticism/analysis on this site (why else would I be here?), I personally preferred to go into Opening Day with a little-kid-like, blind faith optimism.
Again, apologies.
[sorry, your post has been eaten by the most positive ponies ever]