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The Future Forty 3/19/09
Evaluating Defense Evaluating Pitcher Talent
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The Attrition WarDisclaimer, Copyright
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“Beach Reading” by CarbonNYC, cc-licensed
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Twittah
Fire sale! Fire sale! Everything must go!
Could we add On The Beach to that suggested reading list?
Can’t we at least make it one of those Visa Mariner towels?
The M’s are Waiting for Godot
how many innings have we been without an EARNED run?
super funny hearing Dave N. talking about the streak ending, i found it funny that it was from an error.
Does this tailspin force us move Bedard? Maybe to NY for Chamberlain?
hmm. summer reading …
Despair?
Anguish?
State of decline?
Decline and fall?
The Pain Machine?
The Last Days of Summer?
The hitters look like they’ve been drinking too much wine made from The Grapes of Wrath
…And this team runs about like Tom Joad’s old pickup truck!
Fox Sports NorthWest replays each game about four times. I wonder what those ratings are like?
Come on, we scored two runs tonight! That is, literally, infinitely better than the offense has performed in the last three games. 😉
Gee, haven’t they got any info-mercials they can play late at night instead?
Don’t forget your towel.
FSNW Mariners replay:
Due to time constraints, and to reduce the suffering of the general public, we are experiencing technical difficulties with tonites rebroadcast of the Mariners-White Sox game
DMZ, sorry about all the people leaping off the bandwagon. They annoy me too. I haven’t had much time to participate here for 2 or 3 years but I always read all the pieces and I continue to follow the Mariners. I mean, what else is there to do.
Now, if only the M’s could get on a really, really hot streak, then we could save some money on towel expenses.
Some good has to come out of this inept stretch of baseball.
You know what it is?
It’s that this team is so bad that it can’t be passed off as a team close to winning something.
The empty seats, whether Armstrong admits it or not, have to be noticed at the very top of the organization.
The result: Bavasi gone, McLaren gone, and (one can at least dream) perhaps at long last, Armstrong gone too.
This team is jaw-dropping bad. Laughingstock bad. Horrendously bad. Ludicrously bad. Sickeningly bad. Beyond bad bad. Choose your adjective bad.
At best, this was going to be a mediocre team. But who knew this was also a gutless and faceless team, too.
“The Seattle Mariners – Hey, at least San Diego is worse!”
I still think by the end of the season “mediocre” will turn out to have been the right guess.
It’s DMZs fault for drinking “limited-run” beer.
Ok, I don’t get it. What’s the significance of the towel pics the last few days?
Here’s hoping I don’t feel too stupid when someone explains it.
Throwing in the…
I have an idea for M’s manager: Jack LaLanne.
Just wondering something: How long was Mac in charge last year before our ‘swoon’ that put us out of contention?
I agree with #16. There is good that can come of this. The owners want butts in the seats. At this point, even if they went on a winning streak that is not gonna happen. I think even the casual fan knows that this regime has failed. I don’t think attendance will be where they want it until they take a new approach. Although they might delude themselves into thinking it’s just the economy. Or the weather. Or school.
I’m sure being an GM is difficult, especially here. It’s one reason why they need such a high payroll, because the best free agents want to play elsewhere and they have to overpay for middle rate FA’s. But still…..
Ouch, nikko. How about you just don’t talk for a while.
And, at about 93 years old (literally!), he could probably hit better than some of the guys we have in the lineup.
It’s one reason why they need such a high payroll, because the best free agents want to play elsewhere and they have to overpay for middle rate FA’s.
Mid-tier FA’s are pretty much negative values at the salaries they command. There are other, better ways to construct a roster. Any GM that feels the need to rely predominantly on those FA’s probably shouldn’t have a job.
The last three weeks have made me wonder why we didn’t go for Girardi. But then even he might not have been able to save us. Sigh. And I’m still watching/following online every game. And the chick(from India) doesn’t know why, especially when we keep losing and I yell at my phone while it happens.
You know, I see special significance in the towel topics. I mean we are MARINERS for god’s sake. If we throw in the towel while riding the storm we will never get dry. Be sad, be disappointed, bu I wouldn’t go so far as throw in the towel. I’d be a sucker even if the team was 40 Cairos. All because of the family connection, the Griffey moments, Edgar, Johnson, the Ichiro, the Beltre, the KING, and all the others in my relatively short life.
This season makes me want to cry though. But another thought is, are we going to be that team that only has an all-star because we have to? I always felt bad for those teams, even though the All-star game is pretty much stupid now with inter-league play.
I posed this question in another thread, but I think it’s just as relevant in a “throw in the towel” thread: When is it a good time to fire the GM? Knowing nothing at all I would guess that either after the draft, or right after the trade deadline would be best. I would assume that when the season is over the GM is at his busiest and you don’t want to fire him.
But, more importantly, when does ownership come to understand that a change is necessary. THIS ownership clearly is slow on the pick up. Just because the GM repeatedly makes stupid decisions means nothing to them. But there must be a level of suck that they won’t tolerate any longer. My guess is that it has nothing to do with on-the-field numbers, but with butts in seats. If attendance stays down through July they’ll can Bavasi.
Here is another book that should be must reading this summer for all Mariner fans.
It’s a heartwarming tale that provides fun for the whole family!
Hey, 27K showed up last night. Where’s the problem? Things seem fine and that gets lost on this focus on wins and losses. Maybe some extensions in the FO are in order.
Time for some solutions oriented criticism.
Johny Mac has to bare some responsibility for this failure, so while he should finish the season he should not be back next year. To replace him I suggest a manager who has ties to pro baseball in Japan and the states-Bobby Valentine. Many have criticized him over the years but I have always found him to be very knowledgeable. He also took a Mets team that was not that good to the World Series.
On the field right now it is obvious that the team is all pitch and no fielding or hitting. I don’t see any #3 lefty hitters in their prime, who play plus defense in the outfield, available through trade or who are free agents next year. So, it’s time to do what the team can this year. That is improve the defense and start stealing, bunting and doing more hit and runs. It is now obvious the majority of games the team wins this year are going to be games in which they score four or less runs. In that case each run like Ichiro’s last night is even more important and each run prevented is just as important as the runs scored.
The solutions for the remainder of this season.
Call up Jeremy Reed to play left field and hit ninth versus right handed pitchers. DFA Miguel Cairo.
Catch Clement against tough righties DH him versus lefties and over the next month teach him to play first base. By June first Jeff Clement is your first basemen for this year and the next two while Kenji is still around.
Richie Sexson is the first basemen until Clement is ready.
Richie then becomes the DH versus left handers.
Ibanez is the new DH with starts in left field only when a lefty is pitching.
Pepe Vidro is strictly a pinch hitter to be used in late innings when a single is all the team needs.
Lineup versus righties.
CF Ichiro LHB
2B Lopez RHB
3B Beltre RHB
DH Ibanez LHB
SS Betancourt RHB
1B Clement LHB
C Johjima RHB
RF Balentien RHB
LF Reed LHB
Lineup versus lefties.
CF Ichiro LHB
2B Lopez RHB
3B Beltre RHB
LF Ibanez LHB
DH Sexson RHB
SS Betancourt RHB
RF Balentien RHB
C Johjima RHB
1B Clement LHB
Against righties the team has Sexson and Vidro on the bench to hit. Againts lefties the bench has Vidro and Reed to hit while Reed can also replace Ibanez in left in the late innings of close games the team is winning. Bloomquist is only a pinch runner for slow players when the team has to have a run and Burke plays only when Joh has to sit.
This will not make the team a contender but it will allow them to see exactly what they have going forward. Will Clement hit and field well enough to stay at first base? Is Balentien for real? Can Jeremy Reed contribute to a major league ball club? Can Lopez and Betancourt be contributors in the top half of the lineup going forward? Or, are they destined to be the eight and nine hole hitters for the duration of their careers?
This team would have to better defensively. They would have speed throughout the lineup instead of having all the slow guys hitting right in a row. And they just might be more fun to watch trying to scratch out three or four runs and stop the opponent from scoring than the horror that is Mariners baseball right now.
for the “Ichiro thinks only of himself, not the team” crowd, a brief note from Bob Condotta:
“Not much earth-shattering from the clubhouse. No throwing of furniture or anything. The only guys who really talked with the media were McLaren, Silva and Ichiro, and I give the latter a lot of credit. He gets some guff for his supposedly standoff-ish ways. But every time I’ve covered a Mariners game he’s been available to talk afterward, which is more than can be said for a lot of the other guys.”
This is your captain speaking. Smoke em if ya got em, we’re goin down.
Yes, this season’s team is the Titanic, and we’re the band. It’s far too late to tell the captain how to steer the ship to avoid the iceberg it’s already hit, much less get after the shipyard and the naval architect about the flaws they put into the thing as it was built. It’s our job now to just keep playing a jaunty tune (Nearer My Pony to Thee!) even as the icy water creeps up our legs, to offer a stirring symbol of stoicism to the fans of all those other teams, or at least give them the consolation, as they go steaming past, that at least I’m not one of those poor bastards.
Legend has it that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Elihu Phinney’s cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York in 1839. Recent research, however, has revealed that not only is the Doubleday myth just that, but that the real origins of baseball lie with the grim Danish philosopher Soren Kirkegaard who not only invented baseball but presciently predicted the soul-shriveling nature of a world in which baseball was played:
Over 150 years later, Kirkegaard would look at our Seattle Marines and nod his head approvingly. “Just as I predicted,” he would say. “Just as I predicted.”
A good time to fire a GM is right after he’s extended a non-hitting catcher on the wrong side of 30 for three more years. Just my opinion.
34 – bravo.
35 – Not just your opinion
If you’re going to fire him for it, the thing to do is tell him that no, he can’t spend that money, then fire him for the idea.
Why don’t we just DFA Joh and then swallow his contract? It makes perfect sense.
I actually have a hard time believing Joh has completely fallen off the cliff in the way that his stats so far this season suggest. I’m not saying the extension was a good idea (in fact I’m quite certain that last year or two is going to be money they might as well have set on fire) but even for a catcher of his age, to have that kind of drop over one offseason just seems extreme. Even if he’s not nursing some injury (like Raul last year) I still think he’s going to regress a little more toward his career performance over the rest of the season.
A quick recap of this year’s questionable moves made by Bavasi and McLaren:
…trading Adam Jones, George Sherrill, and three top prospects for Erik Bedard
…signing an old, declining catcher who is in the middle of a huge slump to three more years
…continuing to keep Ibanez in LF and Vidro at DH when there is an obvious solution.
…keeping Miguel Cairo (let me say that again, just in case you missed it the first time. MIGUEL CAIRO!) on the roster when you have an exact copy of him, albeit a younger exact copy, in Willie Bloomquist.
So, to sum it all up, we traded away a whole bunch of our quality youth for an injury-prone ace, we signed an old, declining catcher for three more years when we have a quality AAA catcher-in-waiting who is possibly ready for the next step, we continue to watch Ibanez “field” LF and Vidro be a “professional hitter” when Reed is tearing up AAA and Vidro is tearing up a hot dog, and we still see both WFB and WFB-Light on the bench and occasionally subbing in places where they have no reason being. Oh, and let’s not forget that we watched Greg Norton get booted out the door when it should have been Cairo.
Disgusting.
Still an M’s fan until I die, though.
I hear Willie Randolph and Omar Minaya are going to be available soon.
Anybody see the May 9 Dilbert?
Made me think Scott Adams is a Dilbert fan.
I’d post it here, but I can’t figure out how.
um, I meant, “Made me think Scott Adams is a MARINERS fan.”
I’m a Dilbert fan.
Evert time I see that image, I think of this:
http://tinyurl.com/y8zdvh