Looking At What We Have
Before we get into discussing who the Mariners should go after, we have to first do a little bit of inventory and figure out exactly what the organization has in place for 2011 already, and then figure out what kind of pieces will complement the existing players in order to form a roster that works. This will require some speculation, but we’ll try to explain the thought process as best as we can. Today, we’ll deal with the position player side of things, since that’s probably where most of the interest lies.
This is, essentially, the M’s position player crop for 2011, based on what they have in house at the moment.
C – Adam Moore
1B – Justin Smoak
2B – Empty
SS – Jack Wilson
3B – Chone Figgins
LF – Michael Saunders
CF – Franklin Gutierrez
RF – Ichiro Suzuki
DH – Empty
Bench: Milton Bradley, Rob Johnson, Empty, Empty
Barring an unforeseen move, I’d guess that all of the starters listed above will be back next year. Gutierrez and Ichiro aren’t going anywhere, obviously. Moore, Smoak, and Saunders are part of the young group that the team needs to evaluate at the big league level over a full season. Figgins and Wilson have contracts that will be nearly impossible to trade and no obvious internal replacement if the team moved them. It’s possible that the front office could move one of these guys this winter, but I wouldn’t count on it. 2B and DH are holes because it’s unlikely that the team will want to depend on anyone in the organization to handle those jobs on an everyday basis. Ackley will likely begin the year in Tacoma, while Bradley can’t be counted on as any more than a part-time player.
On the bench, I’d say that the spots are more fluid. Bradley and Johnson are penciled in because they’re here and they can fill the 4th OF/DH and backup C roles respectively, but I don’t think either is guaranteed a roster spot. They could be back next year, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Mariners replaced them before the 2011 season opened up. There are no good internal options for backup middle infielder or backup corner infielder, so both of those spots will have to be filled externally.
That leaves us with potentially four to six new position players. We’ll assume four for now, as adding six new guys in one winter requires a lot of work. So, let’s just focus on the open spots, and figure out what kind of player the organization will be looking for to fill those holes.
Second Base
It’s no secret that the organization is counting on Dustin Ackley to be the future at the position, and they’re hopeful that he’ll take over the job at some point next year. However, he’s only got one professional season under his belt, and it’s the only year in his career that he’s played the position, so he’ll almost certainly begin the 2011 season in Tacoma. That means that the team will need a starting second baseman to open the year, but will need someone who can potentially move into a utility role if Ackley proves he’s ready for the job sooner than later.
This won’t be a place where they’re looking for a long term fix or for a guy who wants 600 plate appearances next year. The guy who lands this job will almost certainly just be a placeholder. They’ll be shopping in the low rent district for this spot, I’d imagine, so they might not have the ability to be too picky. If they had their druthers, though, I’d guess that the preference would be for a right-handed hitter who could potentially give Ackley a day off against LHPs if he does make it to the big leagues. The ability to play SS and 3B is also probably on the wishlist, since they’ll want him to be able to slide into the utility infielder role if he surrenders his starting job at some point during the summer.
Designated Hitter
This is where it gets a little more interesting. This is really the only spot where the team can add some offensive punch this winter, but most guys who fit the DH mold aren’t guys you rebuild with – they’re guys at the end of their careers, unable to play the field, and often come with injury problems. The team is going to want a guy with some thump in this spot, but they’re not going to be much of a destination for the Jim Thomes of the world, who will all look for contending teams to land with.
So, I wouldn’t expect a free agent to fill this void. I think the team will turn to the trade market to try to find a guy with some offensive firepower who doesn’t have the ability to command a market rate for his salary, doesn’t have the right to choose where he plays next year, and could be around for more than just one year. I’d also suspect that the preference will be for a left-handed bat, since the organization won’t want to invest heavily into a bat-first player who will have to overcome the Safeco factor. Finally, I’d expect them to favor a guy who can play either LF or 1B, since they have unproven young players at both positions and an injury prone 4th OF at the moment. They’ll want some depth at those positions, and bringing in a guy who can’t play the field would limit their options at both spots.
Reserve Middle Infielder
Any team that is starting Jack Wilson needs a backup shortstop, and one that they don’t mind playing on a fairly regular basis. Josh Wilson is obviously not that guy, so the team will probably be on the hunt for someone who can handle the position without being a total black hole in the line-up. Given that the best case scenario probably involves Wilson staying healthy enough to establish some trade value, there’s even a chance for some real playing time in the second half of the season, so the club would like to have a guy with some upside. If they could get an unproven young guy in his pre-arbitration years, that would be ideal. This is the kind of spot where the team has to hope to find a diamond in the rough.
Reserve Corner Infielder
This spot could go a few different ways, depending on how the first three spots shake out. If the DH can also serve as a first baseman on days when Justin Smoak can’t play and the reserve infielder is a guy that the club is okay using at third from time to time, this spot could go to a right-handed hitting outfielder to complement Saunders. If the DH can fake it in the outfield occasionally, than this would probably be more of a 1B/3B type. Either way, I’d expect him to be a right-handed batter or a switch-hitter – they don’t want to find themselves in a situation like this year where Ryan Langerhans was their platoon LF vs LHP.
Based on those rough estimates of what the team may be looking to acquire, we can begin to identify potential targets at each spot. We’ll do that in a couple of different posts over the next few days.
Things are More Hopeful than They Appear
Survey any Mariners fan out there for their outlook on the season and you’re not going to hear much that’s positive. Why should they say anything to that effect? The team has lost 101 games for the second time in the past three years. We’re going to have yet another new manager taking the field to start next season. There’s not a whole lot of payroll maneuverability to go out and to big things this winter.
And then, of course, there’s the matter of hope. Following this past offseason, we were an incredible story in the making. We had a huge turnaround to improve by twenty-four games over ’08. Felix had finally broken through, and happily signed a contract extension. Cliff Lee was a Mariner and the rest of the league was jealous. Our old third baseman left, but we replaced him with another strong fielder whose hitting wouldn’t likely be hurt by the park. We had finally found a regular center fielder, and an exciting one at that. Batista, Washburn, Silva, and Betancourt no longer played for us. Life was wonderful in many respects.
We all know what happened next. I could rehash all the individual points, but pouring salt, lemon juice, and maybe a little battery acid in the wounds wasn’t something that I really came here with the intention of doing. The team played badly. They also had the worst case scenario emerge as a reality for most of the players on the roster. Very little went right outside of the starting rotation. Not even the most committed of cynics could have predicted as many things going to pot as they did.
The interplay of expectations versus reality is something that’s inevitably going to colour the way we look at ’10, and ’08 has been coming up a lot for comparison’s sake. Now, the 2008 Mariners had been bad for a lot of demonstrable reasons. The expensive and mediocre players were still around, Miguel Cairo was playing first base for us by the season’s end, Jose Vidro was our designated hitter for half the year, and Jeremy Reed logged most of the games in center. But there also wasn’t a great deal of hope for the future either. What future options did we have at first heading into that offseason? Bryan LaHair. On the middle infield? A Carlos Triunfel who had recently hit eight home runs over a full season in High Desert. In center? Either you were hoping Saunders could stick it out there and get rid of his strikeout problems along the way or you had Halman, whose plate discipline was still horrifying, for whatever else you thought of his physical talents. Sure, we had Bedard, but for a short window of time. Morrow? Still a bit of an enigma. The rest of our good pitching prospects were just wrapping up a season in Wisconsin and were two or three years away.
And these days? We have Justin Smoak at first for the foreseeable future. He hit .325/.400/.525 in September and October after fixing his swing during his tenure in Tacoma. At second, we have one of the better prospects in baseball in Dustin Ackley, who will likely be ready to contribute at some point next year. Nick Franklin is a possibility down the road at shortstop, and rumors were circling by the end of the season that he would begin 2011 in double-A. Third base features enough possibilities to where something should eventually come together out of Figgins, Mangini, Liddi, and Morla. Gutierrez is going to recover. Ichiro is going to be Ichiro. Pineda is the most exciting arm we’ve had internally since Felix, and capable of stepping in to follow him from the early part of next season, health willing, fingers crossed, and wood knocked on. The rest of the rotation is going to be cheap and serviceable, if nothing else. Cortes is going to hit triple digits at some point. And that’s all just assuming we spend much of the offseason sitting on our hands. Historical precedent says that’s hardly likely. On top of all that, much more money will be coming off the books after next year.
It’s hard to be a Mariners fan right now. We just endured six months of historically bad baseball, in which nearly everything that could have gone wrong did. Still, we shouldn’t interpret horrifically bad luck as setting the new standard, nor should we see the current foundation as wholly lacking integrity. It’s pretty safe to say that we’re not heading to the playoffs next season, but we’re a lot closer to having a good, or at least watchable team than many might think.
Moving Forward
The 2010 season is mercifully over, and the eulogies have started to pour in. From Larry Stone to Art Thiel, the local scribes have recapped the misery, with both detailing how this season is probably the worst in franchise history. Sure, they’ve lost more games in other years, but this was an epic failure in a year when at least a measure of success was expected. Off the field, the drama surrounding the organization served to create a circus atmosphere, which just compounded the ridiculousness of things like Josh Bard hitting fifth.
It requires no discernment to look back and point out what went wrong. We all lived through it and saw the disaster unfold with our own eyes. I, for one, don’t need a reminder of just how bad that was. Thankfully, it’s over now, and we can finally bury the 2010 season. Now, we look forward. And we should do so honestly and objectively – not with rose colored glasses, but also not through the lens of bitterness that 2010 forced us all to stare through.
The best thing we can all do is let this season go. It was like the worst date of our lives – just a train wreck of epic proportions. But, one bad date, or bad year in this case, doesn’t mean that you expect the next one to also be a horrible disaster. You put it behind you, you move on, and you figure out how to make the next one good.
That’s what the Mariners will try to do this winter – make 2011 enjoyable. It might be too much to ask to make 2011 a championship season, but you can fix a lot of problems in one winter with the right approach, and this front office has done this before. Their challenge will be to have their first off-season all over again, making smart moves and quality upgrades while keeping the team’s future in the forefront of their minds. This can be done.
This off season should actually be fun. I’m looking forward to writing about what the team could do and will do over the next few months. Following this team can be enjoyable again – you just have to be willing to let go of the pain that this year inflicted. Starting today, it’s a new year. Look forward, not back. That’s what we’re going to do, anyway.
Ichiro Reflects
Ryan Divish collects Ichiro’s thoughts on this disaster of a season. The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s my favorite line:
What are you feelings at the end of this season?
From a players standpoint, I couldn’t say I feel tired or relieved. All I can feel is I feel very bad towards our fans. It’s like what we saw today. It was a tough game, but our fans believed that we would come back. And not being able to overcome that is very tough as a player. We made a lot of our fans, a lot of the people in Seattle, expect so much from what we believe in. But at the end of the day, to come up with results like this, that’s very tough as a player. All you can feel is you feel just bad for what you’ve done this year. You feel very guilty. That’s all I can say as of now.”
Game 162, A’s at Mariners
Braden vs Rowland-Smith, 1:10 pm.
Oh thank God, it’s over.
The season in a sentence: Josh Bard is hitting 5th today.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, DH
Smoak, 1B
Bard, C
Saunders, LF
Halman, CF
Mangini, 3B
Josh Wilson, SS
Game 161, A’s at Mariners
Pauley vs Anderson 7:10 pm
Locking up the #2 pick proved to be rather easy last night. Of course, it also meant that we got blown out on Fan Appreciation Night. Indeed, shut out, tying the Indians for the AL lead. We could claim that lead all for ourselves tonight. It would be something.
In more positive news on the larger scale, you have the emergence of David Pauley as some kind of major league pitcher. I don’t know that I’d qualify that as great news for us in particular, but great news for him certainly. Awful teams have that benefit of giving opportunities to guys otherwise on the fringe, and if they establish themselves, they can go on to have decent little careers in the big leagues. Pauley probably isn’t part of the team’s long-term plans. Despite an ERA under four this season, he has a tRA of 5.32 as a starter. His Ks aren’t impressive and he’s walked a few too many. But still, he’s living the dream and getting the paycheck. That’s nice.
Since the topic interests me, at least, I’ll add that in the game notes for today, they mention that the full-season affiliates for the M’s led the minor leagues with 2956 runs, 527 home runs, a .439 slugging percentage, and a .782 OPS. Things are looking up.
Speaking of things that are up (up in the air, that is), Death to Flying Things has gone the entire season without making an error. Assuming that continues, he’ll be the first Mariners outfielder to end a season with a perfect fielding percentage, and he would set the MLB record for most total chances in a season without an error.
This was more than I thought was possible to write about a team that has a chance to lose its hundredth game today.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Gutierrez
1B Smoak
C Moore
3B Mangini
CF Halman
LF Saunders
SS Jo. Wilson
Game 160, A’s at Mariners
French vs Cahill, 7:10 pm.
We’ve entered the stage where a lot of what’s going on is just bookkeeping. The Mariners are almost certainly going to pick #2. Aardsma and Branyan are likely out for the rest of the season. Felix won’t be going in the final game and instead we’ll get Ryan Rowland-Smith, for which there will be a substantial enthusiasm gap. The ERA title goes to Felix since Buchholz won’t be pitching.
A few new bits of info include that Pineda is with the team, basically as a spectator, and that Shawn Kelley’s surgery wasn’t as bad as expected. How good it will be is still up in the air, but the fact alone that he didn’t end up needing Tommy John a second time should be positive news for our bullpen future. He’s had a rough first couple of years in the majors and hopefully will get on track soon enough.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Gutierrez
1B Smoak
LF Langerhans
C Bard
CF Saunders
3B Mangini
SS Jo. Wilson