Carp Up, Sweeney to DL
Per Shannon Drayer and Larry Stone on Twitter, Mike Carp is expected to join the Mariners in Texas on Monday. He will replace Mike Sweeney on the roster, who is expected to be placed on the 15 day disabled list with his chronic back problems.
As much as I’m happy that Wak can’t pencil Sweeney into the cleanup spot anymore, I have to say that Carp is something of an odd choice to fill the roster spot, assuming he’s not going to displace Kotchman as the starting first baseman. He doesn’t really give them much in the way of defensive flexibility, and it’s not like he can fill Sweeney’s role as DH vs LHPs, since he’s a lefty himself. The team didn’t need a backup first baseman, considering that both Tui and Langerhans have experience there. And, seeing as how Langerhans has been basically invisible the last few weeks, it’s hard to imagine that Wak was clamoring for another left-handed bat off the bench.
So, yeah, unless the M’s have decided to give Kotchman a break and are going to insert Carp into the line-up on a daily basis, I don’t really get why he’s the one they called up. But, at this point, it probably doesn’t matter anyway. The M’s season is on the verge of extinction, and so getting worked up about stuff like this seems a bit silly now.
My initial excitement clouded my ability to see the big picture. The choice for a replacement doesn’t make much sense at all.
At least we’ll have lots of things to talk about at the next USSM event other than “OMGJACK!” The standing ovations should be a bit shorter.
It might make sense if Jack is waving the white flag on this season…
Who would you recommend that they have called up instead of Carp Dave? I understand where you’re coming from but if you are going to post a gripe about it how about offering up a suggestion of who might have been a better choice?
Please understand I mean no disrespect in this post. I really am just curious about who you would call up in his place.
Hannahan or Vazquez. At least then Tui wouldn’t be the only reserve middle infielder on the team.
Interesting choices… neither one gives us any kind of offense boost though.
Dave, we need a first basemen and a catcher…can you lead the way on finding those two places now on the Cliff Lee trade block? Who are we looking at, in you opinion, Red Sox, Dodgers, Mets, Twins? Maybe the Yanks? (I doubt it, considering their long term plans for him).
Also, where do you see Saunders two years from now?
Well, I’m hoping this means the end of Kotchman, at least for awhile. Yeah, his glove is good, but at the plate he is THAT BAD. Give someone else a shot at it.
Is Bugs Bunny still banned by MLB’s absurdly out-of-date, semi-enforced rule requiring a player on the active roster to be human AND corporeal? Because Ichiro and Bugs, with Felix and Cliff sharing pitching duties with the Oscar-winning Rabbit and the Wizard would be all the roster they’d need.
I’m also hoping this is the end of Kotchman at 1st (at least for a little while). Even before his prolonged slump, Kotchman had little chance of sticking around for 2011 anyway. May as well give Carp a chance.
Well I’m excited about this move, because It means Bradley is the #1 choice at DH, so Saunders will play a lot of LF over the next 15. Not to big on Carp, but oh well, he has more potential than Kotchman at this point. Sadly this is a move for the future, but also will probably be the best lineups we run out there all year. Will anyone take Tui? I’m really getting sick of this guy.
Dave, what is our hope for cathcer come 2011 and 2012? What do we have, and what can we trade for?
Dave: True, true. I only quibble with the phrase “on the verge” of extinction. Realistically, and for some time now, there has been nothing, statistically or gut-level, giving any reason to maintain post-season hope. They are not only extinct, they are deeply buried and fully fossilized. Time to start taking a look at anyone they’ve got, calibrating towards off season decisions. That’s maybe not fan friendly, in the short term, but recent moves show they perhaps now own a bit of longer range thinking upstairs. Or, at least, that’s where I’m placing my own brand of hopeful thinking these days.
They might as well call up Bugs, ’cause a fictional universe is the only place this season has a happy ending. And even if Selig won’t let him play, Bugs would still be an improvement over half the roster.
On the other hand, maybe Wile E Coyote ought to get the call. This whole season has felt like a string of his schemes backfiring.
Beep beep. Where the hell did that anvil go anyway? And what’s that whistling noise?
You have to expect that they are going to play Carp most of the time at first and hope that he catches fire. They have little to lose, since Kotchman has been awful offensively.
Does Kotchman still have options? Then they could send him down and hope that he finds his stroke. In the meantime, the M’s have to start deciding which AAA guys are part of the solution and which are flotsam and jetsam.
At this time, replacing Kotchman is not an admission that the season is over. But it looks like they are starting to think about the future rather than the present.
Any discussion of Cliff Lee to the Yankees has to start with C Jesus Montero, with C Austin Romine as the fallback, as part of a package.
If it is Lee for Montero straight up, the Mariners will have turned Aumont, Gillies, and Ramirez into one of the stud RH power prospects in the game. Forget his present numbers. He’s 20 years old playing in Triple-A!
If Lee must go, this is the guy I want.
The Yankees don’t need pitching enough to pay a lot for a half-season rental of Cliff Lee, and I doubt they see the need to land him just to prevent the Red Sox from grabbing him. Certainly he’s in their long-term plans, but that just involves paying money for him in the offseason without giving up any talent; while I’m sure they’d love to have him for 2010 they probably feel confident enough about making the postseason that they wouldn’t be willing to part with big talent to get him. After all, just look at what the M’s and Phillies handed over for much longer use of his services (at least potentially). Not to mention the Yankees know they have a need for their stud catching prospect in the near future as Posada passes through permanent DH-hood into history.
To maximize your return from Lee you want to trade with teams that are in tough fights for their division and, ideally, have prospects they under-rate or don’t need (because of existing contracts, etc). The NL West and NL Central are ultra-tight, for example (it’s too bad the Buster-Posey-mis-using Giants are slipping out of it but perhaps Sabean will panic and do something stupid). I’d hate to trade with a division rival but it sure would be nice to get something out of the stacked Texas system.
But I’m sure a “What to get for Cliff Lee” thread will be up for discussion eventually, and we should probably leave such speculation for that (or the game threads). The point here is roster discussion with the guys already in the system, and I agree that Carp wouldn’t have been my first choice to replace Sweeney (who, we should note, has ended up producing for the team about the way Dave predicted, and not the way the fervent Sweeney-ophiles were expecting when he had his little blip of HRs)
Looking at the current program of re-arranging deck chairs puts Griffey’s departure in a bit more perspective. Dude didn’t get forced out — he just grabbed one of the last available life boats.
There is no way the Giants would trade Posey for half a season of Lee. Much more realistic might be the Twins trading us Wilson Ramos.
Clearly the spotlight is on our hapless first baseman and his .259 wOBA (-0.7 WAR). However, lurking in the shadows is our .276 wOBA (-0.3 WAR) DH. There could be a little more to this move than meets the eye.
I gotta think that Bavasi is sitting back somewhere laughing at this point, saying to himself: “See, it’s not as easy to build a winning team as you thought!”
Don’t get me wrong, I hated the Bavasi regime, he was the worst GM ever for the M’s …
But I’m sure Bavasi is enjoying a little schadenfreude right now at the M’s expense.
I still have faith in Jack Z and the M’s FO, but they have to be scratching their heads at this point going WTF? How did we go from having the best offseason in baseball to having one of the worst teams in baseball?
That’s fine, Joser, and I don’t disagree with what you say. But the Mariners’ need for catching is dire, and I hope no one disputes that.
If Montero is off the table, and if the Yankees feel the need to deal (who knows, a pitcher could go on the DL), Romine, presntly in AA, is a highly regarded catching prospect.
If this is off-topic for this thread, I’ll shut up now.
By having every offensive player except Ichiro and Guti not even come close to their career numbers for almost 2 months now. Most not even over .200 until recently. The bullpen has been bad recently too. Starting pitching has been great except for our 5th starter spot and it’s sad our offense hasn’t helped them out.
We pretty much had the worst case scenario for Bradley, Kotchman, Figgins, and Jack Wilson. That’s nearly half the lineup. It’s very difficult to overcome something like that.
This front office hasn’t been really good at constructing a roster that fits together well. They seem to start off in the right direction, but then they end up without much flexibility in the roster, and with a bench that is mostly unusable.
Jack Z. has only had 1 year and a couple months to do a total makeover of the mess that Bavasi left. He needs a little more time.
To clarify again, I am NOT comparing Jack Z and company to Bavasi in any way!
The new M’s regime is light years ahead of Bavasi.
I was just saying that I’m sure Bavasi is enjoying the M’s misery this year after all the heat he took during his tenure.
It’s human nature to root for your replacement to fail after you’ve been fired.
That’s not to say that I think the M’s FO will continue to fail … as others have pointed out, this year the M’s have had horrible luck with many of the main players sucking at the same time. That was considered highly unlikely at the beginning of this season.
We can’t make a judgement call of GMZ until his draft picks start coming up in the system. That’s what he’s good at: developing talent. This team has some very good players who are young, the patches didn’t work out short term, but unlike Bavasi I’m sure Jack has a plan. I’m still waiting for it to unfold because playing .500 ball the last couple weeks isn’t helping this team get out of the rut they likely won’t get out of now.
On the bright side, I was just looking at Dustin Ackley’s stats for the last 10 games:
.483 Avg .628 OBP .586 Slugging 1.214 OPS
Small sample size, I know.
But it’s nice to see our top prospect get hot.
Ackley got off to a very slow start in April, but he seems to get better and better each month.
BTW, he’s playing 1st Base, which is kind of surprising. I thought they were trying to turn him into a 2nd baseman.
He’s not playing 1B. Look a little deeper.
Add in Griffey/Sweeney, Moore/Johnson, Lopez’s bat, Lowe and the bullpen collectively.
OTOH if some of the bets paid off more in line with expectations, the M’s would still not be much better than .500. Of course in this division, that would still put them in the race.
I wonder if there is still time to get Bedard back and productive so he can get flipped to a contender.
It’s too bad there isn’t any prospect pushing Saunders. I am having doubts about his long term prospects. 1B and C are the obvious spots to upgrade in this line up but DH and LF are not too far behind.
I like the move to call up Carp because it sets the wheels in motion to potentially correct two problems in the near term with one player (pushing out Sweeney, getting rid of Kotchman) Agreeably, it does not provide the roster with the much needed flexibility that we seek immediately but it does not preclude those things from occurring either.
If Carp produces, he will essentially allow the team to have an extra rost spot. Immediately, they can fill a spot with a soon to be 24 year old – who “replaces” a 36 year old Sweeney as well as replace a non-productive glove only 1B. The Mariners are an old team and they need to get younger if contention is not a possibility … and we haven’t seen anything this year to show that contention is a possibility.
Hannahan and Vasquez would certainly do a much better job of filling the backup infield position than Tui, but they aren’t on the 40-man roster and the M’s organization is just not yet sure what it wants to do with Tui. Additionally, neither Hannahan or Vasquez are any good … but they could probably field a line drive hit diretly to them.
I believe Leroy Stanton is on to something when he points out that there could be more to this move “than meets the eye.”
The jury is still out on Bradley, but the FO is not going to sit on their hands forever in regard to his situation. They will continue to be compassionate regarding his medical condition, but they will not let that timeline run up against the fact that this is a pro-sports franchise and the bottom line is to produce or go home.
If Carp does start at first base (which I think is a good idea) for a while, that means 4 of starters began the year at AAA. Saunders, Wilson, Alfonzo and Carp…what other organization has had to do that??
BTW, Josh Wilson is 3rd among AL Shortstops in OPS behind Gonzalez and Jeter. Hopefully we don’t trade him to Detroit.
I think the paperboy definitely deserves to stick around. One of the more pleasant (if only) surprise this year.
Just watch… Kotchman will continue to be run out there every day and Carp will rot on the bench for a couple weeks, then be sent back down. Ugh.
I’m not suprised Sweeney’s back has landed him on the DL. He isn’t a dependable player anymore, add in his streaky-aggressive hitting style, and you get a big question mark every game he plays. Cut him loose, or offer him the 3rd base coach job.
Strenuous hugging can be tough on a back.
I almost spit up all over the computer…Carlos Silva is now…..drum roll please….8-0! How did that happen? Did he sell his soul and that of his entire family? Unbelievable but true.
Hmm. I was wrong, at least for today. Carp starting @ 1st for the series opener in Texas, according to Drayer. And, Figgins batting 9th.
Nonsense! More fury! That was a pitiful showing against the angels. Fury now please.
Yes, Figgins is batting 9th but Lopez is still batting 4th… so does it really matter?
Great that Figgins is hitting 9th…but Bradley #2?? I would have rather seen Wilson there and Bradley 6th. Maybe Carp will be the answer!