Friday potpourri

Conor · January 16, 2009 at 1:43 pm · Filed Under Mariners 

• Adrian Dunn from Melbourne’s Herald Sun reports that the Australian World Baseball Classic team will feature Ryan Rowland-Smith and Doyle, who is still a minor-league free agent.

• The Mariners recently made a couple front office/coaching moves, including the hiring of former GM Woody Woodward to be a pro scout in Florida. Woodward certainly made some terrible, horrible no-good, very bad moves for the M’s (the Kevin Mitchell trade, the Heathcliff Slocumb trade, keeping Edgar in Calgary, trading David “Arias” Ortiz, trading Mike Hampton, trading Tino & Nellie for Russ Davis & Sterling Hitchcock, etc.), but he also brought in Randy Johnson (eventually trading him for Freddy Garcia, Carlos Guillen & John Halama), Brian Holman, Norm Charlton, Chris Bosio, Dan Wilson, Omar Vizquel, Jamie Moyer and Lou Piniella.

• In 2009 we could see improvements to Pitch f/x and Hit f/x could be on the way. Woo!

Comments

41 Responses to “Friday potpourri”

  1. ernier on January 16th, 2009 1:55 pm

    RRS’s blog says that he is undecided about the WBC

  2. Joe C on January 16th, 2009 2:09 pm

    Having a more competent GM around makes me feel a lot better, but no post should ever lead with “Ad… Dunn” unless its a one-year flyer for $1 million. That scared me.

  3. NoStars on January 16th, 2009 2:27 pm

    Real time scouting for Pitch f/x could possibly make my life worth living…

  4. msb on January 16th, 2009 2:30 pm

    DoyleDoyleDoyleDoyleDoyleDoyleDoyleDoyleDoyle

  5. msb on January 16th, 2009 2:32 pm

    oh, and it was arbitration filing day

  6. Player to be Named Later on January 16th, 2009 2:56 pm

    And this article isn’t interesting? Brought to my attention thanks to mlbtraderumors.com:
    http://www.freep.com/article/20090116/SPORTS02/90116021/1050/rss15

    Basically, Putz didn’t go to Detroit because Upton wasn’t healthy. We didn’t think Matt Joyce could play everyday CF, so we looked at Fernando Perez from the Rays (making it a three team deal). The Rays weren’t ready to pull the trigger due to health of Upton’s shoulder.

    Is this the first mistake of Z’s tenure as GM by missing out a guy we could have put in LF instead, or did he see something that made him pass? Since it’s a potpourri post, I thought I would throw that one out.

  7. Breadbaker on January 16th, 2009 2:58 pm

    Buster Olney had a provocative piece about the huge gap between what the top four free agents were getting and what anyone else can expect.
    http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=3837453&name=olney_buster

  8. Mike Snow on January 16th, 2009 3:11 pm

    Is this the first mistake of Z’s tenure as GM by missing out a guy we could have put in LF instead, or did he see something that made him pass?

    Who are you thinking they missed out on putting in left? It sounds like the Rays would have been getting Joyce in that version, just as they ultimately did.

    There’s no indication that the Mariners would have gotten more than what they got from the Mets and Indians. Even supposing they pick up Edwin Jackson and Jeff Larish in the deal (the others who moved or were discussed), you’d have to assume that Perez/Jackson/Larish is a better package than Gutierrez/Heilman/Carp, more or less.

  9. Player to be Named Later on January 16th, 2009 3:19 pm

    Mike Snow –
    No, at first there was an offer Joyce for Putz, plus any other small extras, but that was the main deal. Then, the M’s didn’t want him and looked to the Rays to complete the deal (We get Perez, Tigers Get Putz, Rays get X) since the Tigers still wanted Putz. I only gave a brief overview, not the whole thing.
    We might have missed out on getting Joyce for LF, the young left-handed possible power bat we need.

  10. Mike Snow on January 16th, 2009 3:27 pm

    So you’re saying we missed out on “the young left-handed possible power bat we need” in order to get the young defensive whiz centerfielder we need, and suggesting that might have been a mistake?

  11. Player to be Named Later on January 16th, 2009 3:40 pm

    I’m still happy with the trade that happened(much better than last year’s “Blockbuster” one), but could we have gotten something better? Dave did say some pretty nice things about Joyce, and defense was a good bonus. Sure, it’s not like Gutierrez/Chavez, but clearly better than lumbering Ibanez’s.
    http://ussmariner.com/2008/12/09/joyce-larish-analyzed/

    This isn’t a Washburn “Wait for best value” ideal but that they passed on someone that a majority of people though the Rays stole from the Tigers. Maybe this is something we’ll look at 5 years from now and debate.

  12. et_blankenship on January 16th, 2009 4:31 pm

    Lou Piniella wasn’t the one responsible for bringing in the ex-Reds (Wilson, Charlton, Ayala)?

  13. Mike Snow on January 16th, 2009 4:44 pm

    Okay, I just wasn’t too sure if the opportunity costs were being considered. Joyce-for-Jackson may be a steal, Joyce-for-Putz is not so obvious. But whether we should have focused on Joyce as opposed to Gutierrez is a good enough question, and it will be interesting to watch how both of them turn out.

  14. Jeff Nye on January 16th, 2009 4:47 pm

    Was there ever any sort of confirmation that Joyce for Putz was actually on the table?

    From Dave’s post:

    the Mariners and Tigers are almost certainly talking about a deal that would send J.J. Putz to Detroit. Speculation has the Mariners wanting some combination of prospects that would include Matt Joyce or Jeff Larish

    I never saw anything more concrete than that, but maybe I missed something.

  15. Typical Idiot Fan on January 16th, 2009 4:51 pm

    There wasn’t, but the heavy rumor and speculation was that Matt Joyce was involved. Now that we have the truth, the rumors were validated. Joyce was involved, but he wouldn’t have come here. Sullivan’s got a big thing on it at Lookout Landing.

    As for Woody Woodward, didn’t Howard or Chuck say something about going back to the way things were done 10 years ago? Yeeeaaaahhhh…

  16. joser on January 16th, 2009 5:20 pm

    If they had done some variation of that, the M’s would still be looking for a CF. Unless you were looking forward to running Reed out there again. As it stands, they are still looking for another bat but it’s for 1B/DH, the easiest place to find one. I’d rather have that problem than still be searching for a full-time CF.

    Meanwhile the upgraded outfield defense is a good thing for Safeco, and especially for this pitching staff, who may even look “rejuvenated” enough by the trade deadline to make moving one of them possible.

    We can certainly debate the “might-have-beens” of the offseason trade market, but nothing in this report makes me wish Zduriencik had done things differently.

  17. jwgrandsalami on January 16th, 2009 5:41 pm

    Conor,

    Woody Woodward didn’t bring in Omar Vizquel. He was signed in 1984, four years before Woody became Seattle’s GM. Woodward did, on the other hand, trade Vizquel away for Felix Fermin and one year of Reggie Jefferson (but ownership had a hand in that as they did with the trade of Tino and Nelson to NY)…

    Signing Chris Bosio can hardly be considered a good thing (and I’m kind of surprised nobody has pointed that out yet). $16 million over four years (which was a ton of money back then when the team’s entire payroll was around $30 million — in today’s baseball dollars that would be $13-15 million a year) for a pitcher who went 27-31 with an ERA in the high 4’s and didn’t exactly eat innings either (average of 130 IP a season while with the M’s). Bosio was the third highest paid player on the ’95 team (behind only Griffey and Randy Johnson, making more than Edgar, Tino, Buhner, Blowers, Cora, etc.)

    In fact, if they hadn’t been on the hook for the last year of Bosio’s contract in ’96, it’s likely they wouldn’t have had to trade away Tino and Nelson. Bosio made $4.25 mil in ’96 (more than Tino and Nelson made combined that year). And of course dealing Nelson led indirectly to the need for bullpen help in mid-’97 and the disastrous Slocumb trade… The M’s got 60 innings (and a 5.93 ERA) out of Bosio in ’96…

  18. Jeff Nye on January 16th, 2009 6:25 pm

    There wasn’t, but the heavy rumor and speculation was that Matt Joyce was involved. Now that we have the truth, the rumors were validated. Joyce was involved, but he wouldn’t have come here. Sullivan’s got a big thing on it at Lookout Landing.

    Oh, well, LL is the blog of the bourgeoisie. I only read USSM, the blog of the proletariat!

  19. cornchops on January 16th, 2009 7:23 pm

    Those would have been terrible, horrible no-good, very bad moves even in Australia.

  20. John D. on January 16th, 2009 8:01 pm

    It is said that when a team goes good, the manager gets too much credit; that when a team goes bad, the manager gets too much blame.
    It’s the same with GMs and trades.
    GMs don’t act in a vacuum. “I need a slugger,” says the manager: the KEVIN MITCHELL trade.
    “I need a closer,” says the manager: the HEATHCLIFF SLOCUMB trade.
    Some day, perhaps, we may find out that BAVASI was told to get rid of JONES: the BEDARD “trade.”

    W/R/T: EDGAR being left in Calgary. He may have been left in Calgary because–besides PRESLEY’s popularity– the Calgary numbers were suspect [Look at BRAGG and NEWFIELD’s Calgary numbers.]

    Having said that, I have my fingers crossed.

  21. Breadbaker on January 16th, 2009 10:04 pm

    I need an experienced bench player, says the manager: the DAVE HOLLINS trade.

  22. TomTuttle on January 16th, 2009 10:27 pm

    Geez, I don’t care if he is a part-time scout, why Woody Woodard?

    What’s next, Bavasi is going to come back as an assistant GM?

  23. Johnny Slick on January 16th, 2009 11:09 pm

    IIRC the point of the Mitchell trade was to lower payroll while making it look like the M’s were trying to get better. After the 1990 season, it appears he signed a contract for $3.75M a year over 4 years. The salaries of the other parties, according to BBRef:

    Swift $2.32M
    Action Jackson $1.67M

    Not too big of a difference, although it’s probably easier to then turn around and trade one guy who makes that much instead of two. Especially if he has an off season (which was still not terrible; 118 OPS that year)(okay, his defense was awful when he did play in the field, but still). I mean, you could probably flip him for a closer at barely half the price and people wouldn’t have complained.

    I do think that the Lou Piniella trade was predicated on Mt. Piniella exploding as much as anything else. It seemed like every trade Woodward made during that period looked like a desperation move, like he wasn’t even interested in getting value for value and just wanted to find guys with a chance of winning now. I guess he did well with the Moyer trade, but I’m hard pressed to think of anything else that doesn’t look like a net loss in retrospect.

  24. msb on January 16th, 2009 11:09 pm

    I dunno–this just doesn’t sound all that ground-shaking:

    Woodward lives between Daytona and Jacksonville and will likely scout the Florida State League, as well as major-league games in Atlanta, Miami and Tampa Bay.

    “I’ve known him for many years on a professional basis,” Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik said Thursday. “He wants to get his foot back in the game and with his past affiliation with the Mariners he expressed an interest to us to see whether we had anything for him.”

  25. msb on January 16th, 2009 11:17 pm
  26. SonOfZavaras on January 16th, 2009 11:26 pm

    I think the real prevalent question here is…how is Woodward going to shoot all the holes of golf he wants to on company time if he’s scouting some prep hurler?

    Wasn’t Woodward’s nickname “Howard Hughes” because other GMs wanting to talk deal could never find the guy?

    I’m still bitter about the Slocumb trade.

    Not that I was fond of most of his moves, but that one in particular just really hurts.

    I mean, I’ve heard it said he started out offering Varitek and Lowe when all the Red Sox had in mind was Varitek.

    Overmatched in trade talks 95% of the time, none moreso glaringly than that one.

  27. DaveValleDrinkNight on January 16th, 2009 11:59 pm

    Yeah, Woodward was responsible for the Slocumb fiasco and giving up that worthless bum David Arias.

    He’s obviously a Red Sox fan.

    But… and I’m waiting to be lambasted here.

    He did get Andy Benes for the stretch run in 95. Benes went 7-2 and gave us the third starter we needed.

    Not defending the guy, just saying.

  28. SonOfZavaras on January 17th, 2009 12:12 am

    DaveValleDrinkNight- (GREAT name by the way, I really wish I’d thought of it)

    No lambasting here. After all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

    Regarding Doyle: I really would LOVE to see him back.

    I don’t know if any of you ever got to talk to the guy, but I had the good fortune of playing e-mail tag with him at attheyard.com a few years back, and I must tell you: just a genuine, real good-hearted guy.

    He’s the kind that if your kid says that’s his favorite ballplayer, you’re just really proud of your kid.

    And, dang, but I hope this is the year he gets 500 AB, doubly happy if it’s for us. Such a sweet, natural swing.

    Doyle Doyle Doyle! Oy oy oy!

  29. msb on January 17th, 2009 7:53 am

    Wasn’t Woodward’s nickname “Howard Hughes” because other GMs wanting to talk deal could never find the guy?

    bet he finally got that cell phone…

    of course, remembering to turn it on is a whole other matter.

  30. Johnny Slick on January 17th, 2009 9:37 am

    But… and I’m waiting to be lambasted here.
    He did get Andy Benes for the stretch run in 95. Benes went 7-2 and gave us the third starter we needed.
    Not defending the guy, just saying.

    7-2 with a 5.86 ERA including 8 homeruns and 33 walks in 63 innings. He was really good at getting the M’s to score runs for him though!

  31. terry on January 17th, 2009 10:56 am

    Gutierrez’s projected ’09 assuming 600 PA’s (Marcels/CHONE):

    -6 bat (before Safeco);
    +2.5 for playing CF;
    +19 for how he plays CF (CHONE projection);
    +20 for the difference between avg and replacement;

    He’s a 3.5 win player in ’09!!!!!!!!!!!

    In all reality, Safeco might make 40% of his BIP automatic outs but still….

    The M’s stole Gutierrez and Zduriencik needs to go to jail.

  32. TheImmortalAzcue on January 17th, 2009 11:32 am

    Wooo! Wouldn’t it be something to see Doyle in left?! Would the M’s send him a spring training NRI?

  33. joser on January 17th, 2009 12:17 pm

    Meanwhile, in ex-Mariner news, the Phillies gave Greg Dobbs a two-year, $2.5 million contract (thus avoiding arbitration), and Joe Posnanski waxes philosophic on all things Bloomquist

    At the same time, I think it’s probably also fair to say that Willie Bloomquist, for all his obvious shortcomings, can be a fun player to watch, if you are a certain kind of baseball fan.

    He does eventually clarify what he means by that “certain kind” of fan — he’s creating a false dichotomy by contrasting Dunn (OBP and slugging) and Bloomquist (defense and “all the little things”) — though the whole exercise leaves open the question of the relative proximity of his tongue and cheek. It’s apparent he’s never actually seen the Gritster play, which leaves him relying heavily on Boom-Boom’s “jarringly lengthy Wikipedia entry” — much of the length of which is attributable to the work of LL and USSM folks — but he seems to understand the spirit of that commentary, noting the Ignitor’s many nicknames are given “mostly in jest/derision.” On the other hand, he does seem to take seriously the idea that “defense and speed” and “passion” (and other “intangibles”) can be grouped together and contrasted with “get on base, slug the ball, don’t worry too much about catching it” as philosophies that are followed by different teams. Which is a little odd, because the teams that are starting to value defense also tend to be the ones that value things like OBP and discount “intangibles.”

    Still, it would be kind of entertaining to try to organize our understanding of baseball (and perhaps the world and life, since baseball is life) along the meridian defined by the poles of Dunnsian and Bloomquistian play.

  34. SonOfZavaras on January 17th, 2009 3:34 pm

    Still, and it pains me to admit this…considering how many times I know I’ve complained about him in the past- but I would take Woodward as a GM over Bavasi, if I had to pick between those two.

    At least Woodward had more than one thing that worked out.

  35. msb on January 17th, 2009 6:07 pm

    the 2nd Hot Stove show aired today, and Blengino was on in the first half hour

  36. joser on January 17th, 2009 7:30 pm

    Woodward had the benefit of working at a time when almost all the other GMs were going purely on gut and guesswork too. I don’t think he’d have any more luck than Bavasi in this century.

    But hey, if he was going to be sitting around at Florida League games talking baseball with the scouts and other random old coots anyway, you might as well put him to work. You don’t have to actually do anything with the reports he files.

  37. junglist215 on January 18th, 2009 10:19 am

    Florida actually has an outstanding prep draft class this year. Austin Maddox C, LeVon Washington SS/2nd, Bobby Borchering 3B, Mychel Givens SS/RHP, Keyvius Sampson RHP, Scooter Gennet SS/RHP, Devin Marrero SS, and Mike Zunino C could be some the players available to the M’s in the back end of the !st round through the 2nd. Most of them already have their college commitments. So having Woodward down there shaking hands can’t hurt.

  38. John D. on January 18th, 2009 12:48 pm

    Son of Zavaras writes:
    I mean, I’ve heard it said he started out offering Varitek and Lowe when all the Red Sox had in mind was Varitek.

    The story is–and it’s probably apocryphal–that Duquette was preparing the paperwork to give SLOCUMB his release when the phone rang. An assistant answered it, and said, “It’s Woodward; he wants to know what it would take to get Slocumb.”
    Duquette replied jokingly, “Tell him VARITEK or LOWE.” Woody thought he said Varitek AND Lowe, so sent them both.
    A more plausible story is that Varitek had been agreed upon, and Duquette kept insisting they add WOLCOTT. Woody kept offering someone else; finally offered Lowe (who Duquette really wanted), and the deal was done.

    [BTW, the Twins also disappeared DAVID ORTIZ.]

  39. JI on January 18th, 2009 2:11 pm

    I don’t think the Tino Martinez trade was that bad.

  40. Conor on January 18th, 2009 8:25 pm

    Woody Woodward didn’t bring in Omar Vizquel. He was signed in 1984, four years before Woody became Seattle’s GM. … Signing Chris Bosio can hardly be considered a good thing…

    Thanks for dropping some knowledge, jwgrandsalami. I was quickly scanning Retrosheet’s transaction logs and saw the M’s signed Omar. They really should differentiate between initial signings and re-signings. As for Bosio, I didn’t realize that about his contract. In Woodward’s defense, Bosio was coming off of some pretty good seasons and it certainly would have been difficult to convince pitchers to come pitch in the Kingdome for the Mariners, so he probably had to overpay.

    Those would have been terrible, horrible no-good, very bad moves even in Australia.

    Nice catch. That’s my favorite children’s book and I even have an Alexander tattoo.

    I think the real prevalent question here is…how is Woodward going to shoot all the holes of golf he wants to on company time if he’s scouting some prep hurler?

    and…

    Florida actually has an outstanding prep draft class this year. Austin Maddox C, LeVon Washington SS/2nd, Bobby Borchering 3B, Mychel Givens SS/RHP, Keyvius Sampson RHP, Scooter Gennet SS/RHP, Devin Marrero SS, and Mike Zunino C could be some the players available to the M’s in the back end of the !st round through the 2nd. Most of them already have their college commitments. So having Woodward down there shaking hands can’t hurt.

    Florida always has a lot of good prep prospects, but as a point of clarification, Woody won’t be doing amateur scouting (high school or college). He was hired to be a pro scout. From the press release: “Woodward, who served as Mariners General Manager from 1989-1999, rejoins the club as a professional scout. His work will be focused in the Southest, and will include spring training, Major League and minor league coverage.”

    [BTW, the Twins also disappeared DAVID ORTIZ.]

    Yep, I’m sure it stings more for them.

    I don’t think the Tino Martinez trade was that bad.

    Martinez was a lot better than Davis & Nelson was better than Hitchcock. It was bad.

  41. JI on January 18th, 2009 10:25 pm

    Martinez was a lot better than Davis & Nelson was better than Hitchcock. It was bad.

    Well, there was every reason to think that Tino had reached the absolute peak of his career, and that Nelson was just a ROOGY who had a career year as well. At the time Hitchcock was a cheap league average starting pitcher with room for growth, and projected to be better than Nelson going forward. Davis was a club controlled player who projected to be about league average as well.

    I don’t think it was a great trade, seeing as both players were coming of big years they probably should have gotten one more piece in return, but given what we knew at the time I think it was defensible especially since the M’s more or less replaced Tino’s production in the lineup with a reasonable platoon.

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