Tealeaf-reading: first base
Sweeney: MLB.com and Baker, who thinks it’ll be Sweeney. Why?
[…] Mike Sweeney has done everything asked of him since getting here. Sweeney has also become a harmonizing focal point in the clubhouse. He’s provided that vocal leadership the Mariners had been seeking out the past few years. And he’s producing with the bat now that he’s playing more regularly
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Unless Sweeney’s knees blow out on him these final two weeks, it’s going to be very difficult for Shelton to make the squad.
This stuff about how he’s a great leader and whatnot isn’t coming out of nowhere. We can safely assume that our manager and staff have been offering good reviews of his play. And Mike Sweeney’s gotten great character reviews through his career, so sure, I’m sure he’s doing fine on that score.
But you’re hoping he hits .260/.320/.410. Shelton’s going to be a much better hitter. And if you’re small sample-sizing, Shelton’s been destroying the ball this spring.
The team’s said again and again that they’re looking for talent first, that they want to build a winning team by winning games. This minor roster decision may end up offering us some welcome insight into how they actually value these different qualities. Because if they want to win games, it’ll be Shelton if only one of them makes the team.
Optimism Sunday: What are you excited about?
Really — we’re two weeks out from the start of the season. What are you looking forward to this year?
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The Interview versus The Bums
Bedard v the Cubs! Right now!
And then Ichiro action at 5!
There’s the Silva we know
Newer, Slimmer Carlos Silva pitches like Older, Fatter Carlos Silva
Which of these outings
5/30/08: .2 IP, 7 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 0 HR
6/29/08: 2.1 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 1 BB, 1 K, 1 HR
is most like yesterday’s:
3/21/09: 1.1 IP, 6 H, 7 R, 6 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 2 HR
Games of March 21st, 2009
A’s-M’s, 1pm. Today Garrett Olson’s pitching as he competes for the post-Washburn/Bedard trade rotation spot.
WBC: Korea-Mariners, 6pm
NCAA: all day
I Had A Feeling This Would Get Nutty
Stephen Strasburg struck out 15 of the 25 batters he faced last night, and his season line now stands at 34 1/3 IP, 7 BB, 74 K. That’s a 19.4 K/9. But you probably already know he’s just too good for NCAA hitters right now.
Peter Gammons, however, tosses out this nugget – Scott Boras is floating the idea that he might ask for a major league contract worth – get ready for it – $50 million for Strasburg.
Now, just for comparison, David Price got $8.5 million for being the consensus top pitching prospect in the 2007 draft. Mark Prior got the largest contract for a player signed through the draft, netting a major league contract worth $10.5 million in 2001. Mark Teixeira got $9.9 million that same year, and those contracts helped push MLB to start a slotting program that drove down signing bonuses going forward.
So, yea, $50 million for Strasburg would be a record… by $39.5 million. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he doesn’t get that much. But, it does raise the question of how teams are going to view his signability. Boras is obviously going to make the comparison that Strasburg is much more like Daisuke Matsuzaka than a normal college pitcher, and he got $52 million for Dice-K from Boston despite the fact that the Red Sox had exclusing negotiating rights, just like whoever drafts Strasburg will. Because Strasburg is making such a strong case that he’s not really a pitching prospect, but more like a professional pitcher playing in the wrong league, Boras should be able to make a pretty good case that this is going to be more like a Japanese player being posted than a traditional draft pick.
So, maybe $50 million is out of the picture, especially since Boston can’t magically acquire the top pick in the draft by outbidding everyone else. Even if Boras threatens to take Strasburg to Japan for a year for added leverage, the big money teams are never going to end up high enough in the draft to select him, so at some point, Boras is going to have to accept that he’ll be negotiating with someone from the Washington/Seattle/Pittsburgh/Kansas City/San Diego group of teams, and trying to extract $50 million from one of those teams probably isn’t going to work.
But I think we can be sure that the $12 to $15 million numbers that had been speculated are out the window. It’s probably going to take something between $20 and $30 million to get him signed, and that might even be a bit low. There’s no doubt that he’s going to turn the slotting system on its ear. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Weekend feature testing: linkage tools
Hey, I’ve finally been spurred into action on throwing one of them social media link-o-matic things on the site. I’ll probably test at least two options this weekend, so if you see one, either in the posts or on the sidebar, give it a quick test and let us know how it went. I’ll be watching performance and issues, and if people really like one option (or the concept generally) I’ll integrate it more seriously on Monday.
You kids today, with your social media. When I first got online we didn’t have social media, we called Facebook “Stonehenge” or “Citadel” and you only got there with a modem and there wasn’t any link sharing because we didn’t have links. And we loved it! We invented all those “25 things” memes that have been re-infecting Myspace and Facebook and Overshare. It’s like 2008 was the year the Internet dug up a time capsule from the mid-1980s, cracked it open, stuck its head in, inhaled deeply of all the stored viruses, and said “oh yeah, that’s the stuff.”
And then “Hayes? Who the hell is Hayes, and what are these blinking lights?”
Should They Just Waive Miguel Batista?
Heading into spring training, it seemed like the team had five right-handed relievers that were very likely to break camp with the team – Miguel Batista, Tyler Walker, Mark Lowe, Roy Corcoran, and David Aardsma. Which roles they were going to be given was up for grabs, but it seemed pretty likely that these guys were going to be the RH portion of the bullpen, in some way, shape, or form.
Since then, however, the team has signed last summer’s first round pick Josh Fields, brought Chad Cordero into the fold, claimed out-of-options Jesus Delgado on waivers from the Marlins, and been impressed with what youngster Shawn Kelley has shown in spring training. Fields and Cordero aren’t candidates to make the team out of spring training, but there’s a chance that either of them could show enough to force their way onto the club come this summer. If the M’s like what they see from Delgado the next few weeks, they have to keep him on the major league roster or put him back on waivers. And Kelley, with his 0/9 BB/K, is just continuing to show an ability to miss bats while throwing strikes.
So, all of the sudden, the picture is a lot more crowded. At this point, we need to ask whether Miguel Batista fits in with what the Mariners are doing this year. While he still throws hard and has experience as a closer, keeping Batista likely means losing Delgado, and the team would still have to figure out who to toss overboard if/when Cordero/Fields/Kelley are deemed ready for the majors. Of the original five expected to make up the bullpen, Batista’s the one who doesn’t have a future with this club. At 38 and in the final year of his contract, he won’t be back with the team after 2009, and if he pitches well in relief, he’d only be accelerating his exit.
The only reason to keep Batista around would be if you thought he could succeed to the point that he’d create enough value that someone would agree to trade for him without requiring the Mariners to pick up his entire salary. But what’s Batista’s absolute best case scenario value? $2 million for a full year, maybe? So you carry him for three months, hope he pitches well, and if he does, you might be able to get a contender to pick up $1 million of his remaining salary at the deadlilne. That’s the upside? Best case scenario, you save $1 million. And there’s probably like a 20% chance of him pitching that well?
Meanwhile, if you reserve the roster spot to give Jesus Delgado a chance to make use of his live arm, there’s some small chance that you’ll get a young, league minimum reliever out of the deal. And if he doesn’t figure it out, you now have a roster spot for Cordero, Kelley, or Fields. Unlike with keeping Batista, there’s actual upside to the roster spot at that point, and given the low leverage nature of the innings that the roster spot will probably be pitching in, it won’t make a huge difference in terms of wins and losses.
Or, if it helps, look at this way – you can trade Miguel Batista for Jesus Delgado right now, but you have to pick up all of Batista’s salary. Do you make that trade? It’s not likely you’re going to get a better offer for him this summer, after all.
The M’s just have too many live arms with some upside in camp to keep Batista for a shot at saving a little bit of money this summer. The roster spot is more valuable than what Batista can offer. Cut him loose.
Today’s M’s action
Sure, the M’s-Cubs game at one is probably where most starters will be, but the nightcap against the hated Padres at seven is where we get to see if Griffey’s knee is so healthy he might exceed defensive expectations, because he’ll be in left! Also, there may be a sighting of some dude we’re unreasonable fans of.
Future Forty Updated
So, I know it’s been too long, but the Future Forty has been updated once again. You can find the link over on the left hand side. As always, I’ve tinkered some.
The graphs from last time have gone away – sorry. They were, at this point, too much work and not enough reward. They might come back eventually. We’ll see.
I got rid of the somewhat ambiguous categories of prospect types and replaced them with affiliation level. Between the WAR/ETA columns listed for each player, you should be able to infer more information than a placement of “projected regular, a few years away”, and categorizing the prospects by level of play should give you a pretty good idea of how far from the majors a particular prospect is anyway. Plus, this makes the Future Forty a better reference guide for those who are looking at it to figure out who to watch when going to a minor league game, which is a nice side benefit.
The minor league rosters haven’t been decided on yet, by the way, so some of the placements are guesses. Triunfel could start out in High Desert, for instance. We’ll update these once the rosters become public.
Don’t worry about not having any prospects listed for the Aquasox – most of their prospects come from the draft, so it will start to fill out in June.
Some basic overall thoughts – the M’s probably have more prospects ticketed for Triple-A than any other club in baseball. For the most part, they aren’t high upside types, but the M’s have pretty significant depth at the highest level. If nothing else, the Rainiers should be pretty good this year, especially when you factor in some of the roster filler types are useful Triple-A players.
If Triunfel starts off in High Desert, that West Tennessee team is going to be barren.
Four of the best young pitching prospects in the system are ticketed for High Desert. Can’t wait until we get out of that place. On the bright side, Raben should have lots of fun there.
Overall, I think the M’s system is average-ish, compared to the rest of MLB. They probably won’t graduate many players this year, and they’ll have four picks in the top 50 during the draft this summer, so if the young arms stay healthy and progress, the M’s are easily looking at a top 10 system next year.