Stepping back a bit, though: We all need to remember where we were 6 months ago. The team was circling the drain in the standings, fratricidal in the clubhouse, and just mailing it in on the field; management had been reduced to nothing but handcuffed care-takers; the roster was stuffed with horrendous contracts; and the best-case scenario most of us could see involved a multi-year rebuilding project. And that was assuming Howard and Chuck somehow managed to hire a GM who “gets it” even though they still clearly don’t.

+1

I have a few questions for everyone here:

1) If the M’s could bring in Griffey for the league minimum or give those at-bats to Clement, Shelton, Morse, Balentin, etc., who would you rather see get those at-bats?

2) Would you rather see the M’s play Washburn, Batista, and Silva and try to trade them or get something out of their contracts or cut them for nothing and play Greg Olson, RRS, Gaby Hernandez, etc.?

3) If the M’s could either compete for a Playoff birth in 2009 OR be able to compete from 2010 to 2012, would you want them to do?

My answers would be:

1) Give the at-bats to Clement, Morse, Wlad, etc. so that they can continue to develop on the field and potentially develop trade value if the team chooses to shop them.

2) Play Washburn, Batista, and Silva until they show that they are below Replacement Level. Have Olson, Gaby, and RRS start the year in Tacoma as starters and bring the best one up if/when Washburn gets traded.

3) As you can tell from my first two answers, I want the team to build towards competing in 2010 and beyond. If they had the payroll for Dunn, Abrea, etc. this year, I would have been all for picking up someone who could help them compete this year without blocking future contention. As Dave pointed out in previous posts, Griffey could outright hurt the team this year.

Reegie Corona is our only switch hitter? That can’t be good for the grit factor

That’s what I was thinking, too. How can we hope to compete with only one switch-hitter? Gone are the glory days of Turbo, Everett, and Ben Davis! (end sarcasm)

Also, well said joser. This should be an awesome draft, looking at what Z helped to do in Milwaukee.

In other words, there is one more (slightly above replacement level) batter who will be in the lineup 120 times that will be signed soon…

Except that guy could very possibly be Clement, who’s already on the roster for free. Given his history there’s still a very good chance this could be his breakout year, and I’d hate to stunt or dilute that because a one-year stopgap is stealing AB’s. If Joh wasn’t around and Clement was obviously the full-time catcher, this wouldn’t be a concern, but that inexplicable contract haunts the team as much as the no-trade of Wasburn to the Yankees — everybody talks about Washburn’s $10M, but Joh’s $8M would buy a lot of hitting in this market too (as it would in ’10 and ’11).

Stepping back a bit, though: We all need to remember where we were 6 months ago. The team was circling the drain in the standings, fratricidal in the clubhouse, and just mailing it in on the field; management had been reduced to nothing but handcuffed care-takers; the roster was stuffed with horrendous contracts; and the best-case scenario most of us could see involved a multi-year rebuilding project. And that was assuming Howard and Chuck somehow managed to hire a GM who “gets it” even though they still clearly don’t.

And yet here we are.

I’m not saying the FO should just call it a day and stop burning up the phones trying to creatively add another bat. As Zduriencik himself has said, everybody always likes to have a little more offense, and I expect he’ll keep looking (and if anybody can find a creative way to succeed at that, I have a lot of faith in Zduriencik). But given what he was handed, we have to be pretty pleased with where the team is. Yes, there’s only some crazy fluke 1951-Giants/1995-Mariners chance the team will end up contending for the AL West (hey, you never know — Holliday breaks something, Vlad and Santana go on the DL, things happen). But this is looking more and more like a 1-year turnaround to get back into contention, and that’s not bad. And meanwhile, we’ll get to watch some fun defense and and maybe see the M’s surprise a lot of people and win more games than the “conventional wisdom” expects. Plus we have the monster draft and trade-deadline intrigue to look forward to. After the bleak Bavasi years, it’s a good time to be an M’s fan. And we’re in before the bandwagoners!

4 runs a game is 648 runs for a season. If a team scored 648 runs in a season and gave up 610 runs ( which was the best in baseball last year) they would have a pythag of 85 wins. Sure that would be competitive but you really need to have a plan to score more runs than four a game to be successful.

Heck, even Gammons is noticing the move toward defense and away from Incaviglia.

You may be right, but he’s still younger than Jeff Clement AND Ronny Cedeno.

I’d compare them more to the Oakland teams of the last few years, where Billy Beane has consciously gone for defense and selectively imported players that are undervalued offensively. The A’s haven’t been able to consistently win, but they have been able to parlay pitching talent in trade because their pitchers look better surrounded by a good defense. It’s something to think about when you have nearly 30 million dollars being paid to guys like Silva, Washburn and Batista.