I am one smug little bastard who thought this was a discussion board, not the baseball thought police.

And if there is a cliche that is appropriate for the shape of this thread, it would be “even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes” since most opinions stated here seem to be mostly supported with that one, rare occasional fact.

No, what I posted isn’t a personal attack. What Graham posted was a personal attack.

My comments have been about this particular thread – entitled “The Template” and the assumption that some version of the 1980’s Cardinals would be a great path to go down.

Yes, it would be terrible if the Mariners of the 2010′s won 4 division titles, two pennants and a World Series during a decade, similar to the 1980′s Cardinals.

“Oh no!!! He is a heretic!!! Make him go away!! It hurts my ears to listen to a different opinion.”

Sorry, if eponyous, DMZ and Jeff Nye are not really representative of the community – I don’t know who is who here yet, but you three seem to have rather fragile egos when it comes to having your pet theories challenged. That is not a personal attack, just simply an observation of how personal your attacks on me became when I didn’t kowtow.

You state that power in itself has no intrinsic value. You are right – power must take place during a game, and not during batting practice in order to have intrinsic value. Sorry I didn’t clarify that.

And history does not tell us to all be Yankee fans, but to not learn from the Yankees about what a winning team needs to look like is foolhardy. Sure, the M’s cannot spend like the Yankees, so they have to be smarter with their money and be good enough to get to the post season. In a short series, anything can happen. This year the Nats led their series with Yankees 2-1, but were 3-15 with the Phillies.

If we’re going to argue from history, history tells us we should be Yankee fans, as one team (3% of MLB) has something close to 20% of ALL championships (and, by the by, have done so largely by being big bruisers).

The Yankees play in an environment where they CAN overpay for power and offensive prowess, as well as for superior players, because $50 million in dead salary is nothing for them. If you are suggesting that the Mariners need to push the payroll over $100 million and try to sign Bay, Holliday, Lackey and Harden, that’s great, but you’re bound to be disappointed.

The point you seem to be missing is player value comes from many sources, not just power. Right now, the market values lead-footed sluggers who can crank 30 HRs and draw 100 walks over guys with some steals and baserunning, who also draw walks, hit for decent average, and play good defense- but in many cases, these players can have comparable value- and when you’re building a team and you do NOT have the luxury of just signing as many checks as you would like, things like positional flexibility and looking for players with undervalued skills becomes important.

Neither here nor there though.