Tom Wilhelmsen Claims Final Bullpen Spot
The M’s went with upside in the last spot in the bullpen and have decided to carry Tom Wilhelmsen as the final reliever, outrighting Cesar Jimenez off the 40 man roster in the process. Wilhelmsen has the stuff to be a quality reliever, but after spending five years out of baseball and then topping out in A-ball last year, it’s a legitimate question of how ready he is to contribute in the big leagues. That said, the arm is legit, and if he can throw strikes with regularity, he could be an asset for the M’s this year. He’s certainly more interesting that Jimenez, who is lousy and offered no long term potential.
Also, the M’s made it official and placed Franklin Gutierrez on the DL – because he hasn’t played in spring training for a while, he’s eligible to come off as early as April 6th, but given that they still don’t know what’s wrong with him, that’s probably unlikely. Expect Michael Saunders to get a bulk of the playing time in center field to begin the season.
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The Tom Wilhelmsen story gives me warm fuzzies. I hope he plays well.
Michael Saunders has drawn a lot of attention over the last couple of weeks for improvement at the plate. And it’s not just, “Oooh, he’s X-for-Y!” Folks who seem to have a clue are saying that he’s doing more with outside pitches and not trying to pull everything. Does someone more informed than me want to comment on Saunders’s new stance/swing?
When Willie Bloomquist was a Mariner, I had a hypothesis that has so far, proven to be true:
“Any team that Willie Bloomquist can make out of spring training doesn’t have the talent to make the playoffs”
I am looking forward to seeing some of the new faces, like Tom Wilhelmsen, this season. However, my new working hypothesis is:
“Any major league pitching staff that Jamey Wright can make out of spring training doesn’t have the talent to make the playoffs”
Jamey Wright has pitched 15 seasons without pitching in the playoffs.
The top 5 pitchers in major league history who have the highest similarity scores to Jamey Wright (Herm Wehmeier, Sidney Ponson, Brian Moehler, Jack Knott, Frank Castillo) pitched a combined 63 seasons and appeared collectively in one playoff game (Ponson started a game for the Giants in the playoffs….they lost that game).
I doubt if many believe that the Mariners have chance to make the playoffs this season…but at least we can look forward to seeing Tom Wilhelmsen.
The promising thing for Wilhelmsen is he seems to keep the ball down really well. It’s a simple thing, but an average pitcher can go a long ways with that philosophy. And with his body type it makes for an imposing presence on the mound. All about angles, and Wedge seemed to pick up on it first couple outings in spring, because I remember him mentioning it too. I think those are valuable guys in our bullpen– they aren’t gonna shut anybody down, but they aren’t gonna get rocked either. I’ll take it.
That’s ridiculous criteria for evaluating a player. Mark Langston finally pitched in the playoffs after 14 years in the big leagues, and compiling 47.4WAR.
I guess he sucked too. There are ways to evaluate players, but playoff appearances and even playoff stats are not one of them.
I agree that Jamey Wright isn’t any good, but that is not why.
Why would you think Langston’s career was an anomaly? The simple fact is that there are good, or even excellent players on bad teams. And bad players can be found on just about every playoff team. Mike Fontenot racked up -0.3WAR in 78PA last year for the Giants and even made their playoff roster, he is still a bad player, but not an anomaly.
You can’t make any meaningful judgment of a players ability based on the fact that he has been on playoff teams, or hasn’t been on playoff teams.