Let’s assume Olson and Feierbend are with the club..

How’s a rotation of the following look:

Olson
Feierbend
Jakubauskas
Rorbaugh
Baldwin

Vega
Rivera
Jimenez
White
Vargas
Kahn
Kelly

I’m gonna miss Jon Huber myself. The guy was good when he was healthy. The M’s also had the opportunity to bring Fruto, among other back.

I think Seddon gets cut. Other then that, I’m excited to see Kahn and Kelly. Vargas, Jimenez (who we know down here) and White are useful mid relief arms. Vega (if I rememeber right) and Rivera are hard throwers with poor control..

I don’t see Thomas and Hernandez starting in Tacoma. I’m bummed about that. I personally like a little velocity in my LHP, so I heart Thomas. Been curious about Hernandez since he was acquired.

I really don’t think this staff is great, but it’s better than the crap that was here last year. I don’t mind AAA fillers, but when there are 5 of them in your staff, then it’s kind of a boring year prospect wise.

Which hitters are coming to Tacoma though? Carp? Moore?? With those two and Saunders, + the addition of Mike Wilson (who you’ve gotta be curious about)… I’m excited about what lies ahead offensively for the Rainiers in 2K9.

I’m betting Olson and Feierbend are in the rotation (if Feierbend’s not gone). Rorbaugh will be in the rotation.

Didn’t Vargas pitch in relief in the AFL? I’d be happy if he was a starter, but I’d read that he’d moved over to the pen, and was pitching quite well there.

And Seddon is new. I’m guessing he doesn’t but Jakubauskas, who was on the M’s 40 man at one point.

I see Olson (if he’s not in Seattle as the long man)
Feierbend (if he’s not packaged with Johnson, and traded)
Jakubauskas
Rorbaugh
Baldwin

Not as much fun..

BTW, I went to several Rainiers games last year. Baldwin and Dorman weren’t world beaters, but they were effective at times. Dorman in particular, could take over a game.

I guess what I’m trying to say is what is going to win out in the long term, the right handers having the ’split advantage’ and facing a left hander on the mound or the park’s toughness on right handed hitters – regardless of the pitcher?

Yeah, teams can stack their lineups. But they can’t change their ballparks (at least not until 2012, the earliest the A’s might get a new one). So you can’t control what the other manager does when he’s filling out his card, but you can at least try to exploit the field he’s playing in. Obviously you want to take the best advantage of your home park that you can and then, given the way the unbalanced schedule works, try to exploit the parks of the other teams in your division. Of course for that to work, you’d really like all the other teams to cooperate by playing in parks that have a similar bias to your own.

This is where it gets interesting:
THT has some park factors that look strictly at home runs, broken down by outfield sector (LF, LCF, C, RCF, RF). Starting from there (and throwing out RFK), I averaged the LF+LCF and sorted by that value to get “best pitchers’ parks for left-handers” (at least in terms of HRs). Here’s the top eight:
Safeco Field (91.60)
PNC Park (93.80)
Kauffman Stadium (96.09)
Dodger Stadium (97.16)
McAfee Coliseum (97.48)
Angels Stadium (98.66)
AT&T Park (99.41)
Rangers Ballpark (99.62)
Again, this is strictly home run data, not fly balls or balls in play in general.

Nevertheless, notice that Safeco is significantly more a pitcher’s park than the others when it comes to hitting balls out of left field (all the more reason Wlad needs to be playing somewhere else). Also notice that all the other AL West parks are in the top 8. Granted, the other three are pretty close to neutral when it comes to pitchers giving up dingers to LF, but none of them are strongly biased against them. So we can conclude that there’s no significant penalty to tilting the pitching staff in this way, at least for the purposes of not giving up HRs within the division (and in the most games in the schedule overall). And the AL West is the only division where all the stadiums are bunched together at the top or bottom of the RF or LF lists like this. It’s a opportunity unique in all of baseball. And one that may not have escaped the notice of Blengino and Zduriencik. (It also reinforces the need for more left-handed sock in the M’s lineup, and they’ve clearly noticed that too).

BTW, using the same method here are the bottom 8 parks for right-handed pitchers:
Safeco Field (122.90)
Jacobs Field (122.98)
Minute Maid Park (124.28)
Metrodome (128.67)
Yankee Stadium (131.02)
Coors Field (131.59)
Great American Ball Park (132.32)
Miller Park (133.79)
Put another way, Safeco is the 8th best stadium in baseball to be a left-handed hitter… if you actually make good contact — remember, according to the data in that first link, Safeco enhances strikeouts and infield flies. But it suppresses grounders, so it’s actually a lousy place to be a right-handed groundball king… like Felix. He’s even better than we know.
(This is probably another reason to not expect Silva to do as well here as he did at the Metrodome, incidentally, though losing some weight couldn’t hurt).

He pitches lefthanded. Don’t believe the first source you check with.

Jakubauskas is a guy the M’s signed out of an independent league, and he’s pushing 30. He’s not a prospect. That said, I have a soft spot for the guy since he’s an intriguing story, and his stuff isn’t bad. Think of him as the opposite of Greg Jacobs, a guy signed as a pitcher, who had a meh MiLB career then went to the indie leagues to become a hitter (and went on to have a decent MiLB career as a corner OF before he took a banned substance. He’s still kicking around the PCL.).
Anyway, Jakubauskas was a decent hitter in a big-time college program, but never really did anything with it. He took up pitching seriously in his 20s it sounds like, and he’s gotten quite a bit better at it. He’s got a great change-up, which he used to rack up some great K totals near the end of 2008. Nobody’s counting on him, and he may get forced out with Olson, Vargas, Seddon, etc. coming in, but I think he’ll get a shot at the rotation based on his season last year.

You could add Justin Thomas to the list of potential Rainiers LH starters next year. He’s been working more in relief recently, but he’s been a starter for years.