Marc and I discuss the team at some length

DMZ · July 24, 2011 at 9:05 pm · Filed Under Mariners 

It’s a podcast-type thing, kind of! 40+m of raw USSM power! Sighs! Awkward pauses!

On the Mariners at 100 games

Table of contents

Ichiro
Jack Cust
Brendan Ryan
Ackley as the source of our problems
Jack Wilson as Patient Zero
A long chemistry discussion that avoids mentioning a certain tattooed third baseman
Chone Figgins
Does (and should) Zduriencik get fired
Miguel Olivo
Josh Bard and canned meats
Olivo and Wedge
Moving the fences
Pineda
Bedard
Pitchers
Smoak
The outfield: Carp, Halman
Adam Kennedy
Saunders
Mike Wilson should get another shot
Saunders, C
We can’t have nice things
Figgins, again, briefly

It’s our first attempt at this kind of thing, so it has issues:
– we couldn’t get recording right, so this is all done from Marc’s side
– audio quality is not great

But hey, we’re giving it a shot. We’ll only get better from here. Probably.

To-do for future efforts:
– Figure out how to record the whole thing on my side (and I’m happy to bore people with details)
– Figure out how to record it on both sides and then merge it for super quality
– Spend too much time on chapter breaks and other ridiculous audio features
– Find a player for wordpress so you can just hit ‘play’ if your browser doesn’t support it

Comments

27 Responses to “Marc and I discuss the team at some length”

  1. Westside guy on July 24th, 2011 9:43 pm

    Halfway through… enjoying it immensely. I’d love to hear more like this.

    Sound quality is bad, as you note, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s certainly listenable.

  2. dnc on July 24th, 2011 9:59 pm

    Listened to it all, really enjoyed it. Would love to hear Dave and Jay make their way into a couple of these at some point. Thanks for doing this.

  3. lalo on July 24th, 2011 10:05 pm

    Great job, the podcast is really good, and the audio quality is OK, i can only hope next year we can talk about playoffs, world series or something like that, and not only underperformance… 😉

  4. mfan on July 24th, 2011 10:11 pm

    DMZ,

    I’m so glad you’ve posted over the last few days. I can only hope you are back for awhile. You can check the archives to see that I’ve been around since the beginning of the blog, since the days of super-commenter Paul Covert, though I’m an infrequent commenter. I must ask the question that everyone is wondering: Are you back for good or is this just a tease?

  5. Typical Idiot Fan on July 24th, 2011 10:15 pm

    Typically what we do over at Nihonreview with our podcasts is broadcast over Skype and have each person participating record via Audacity. Afterwards, we just splice the various Audacity files together when each person talks to make it sound like one continuous recorded piece and with some decent quality.

    Works really well.

  6. StatBoy on July 24th, 2011 10:16 pm

    I quit listening when the argument was put forth that two seasons in a row this bad when a team was supposed to be a contender means the GM should be fired.

    1. What definition of contender are you using, because it must be pretty broad. O/U on betting sites for M’s wins this year was around 68. They are 43-58, would you make the same statement if they had started 28-58 and won 15 in a row? I doubt you would, but ultimately what is the difference?

    2. This blog is supposed to be objective, not reactionary. After preaching patience for the last 2.5 years, why are we now glossing over the complete pile of shit that Bavasi left Mr. Z with?

    3. How do you think dominant MLB teams are formed? Unless you’re the Yankees or the Red Sox, you build your team through developing players which the Ms are now doing, and which we will see paying off soon. How many players that were in the M’s minor league system when Z took over have made significant contributions to the team in the last 3 years? Fister, anyone else? That is amazingly pathetic. Furthermore, there is a reason why Z’s FA acquisitions are all players with warts, where is the budget? And how is it Z’s fault he has no money to sign players nor any desirable assets to trade for major-league caliber players?

    Don’t even bring up Chone Figgins because everyone thought that was a great signing at the time. Z did a pretty good job with the assets he did have in the Putz trade and both Lee trades. Obviously the Brandon/Brandon trade was not a positive.

    Jack should get 5 years to put his vision in place. That is not an overly long time to go from bottom of the league in organizational talent to the top.

  7. DMZ on July 24th, 2011 10:19 pm

    I don’t think we made that argument at any point, so I’m confused.

  8. Jim_H on July 24th, 2011 10:26 pm

    Perhaps the timing was bad after today’s 15th consecutive debacle, but I found it hard to stomach the attempted humor.

    Back to your isolation pod with you!

  9. StatBoy on July 24th, 2011 10:28 pm

    2008 Rainiers roster: http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/team.cgi?id=156b992d

    Not a single future major league contributor(for ANY team) that was primarily still in the minors.

    2008 Diamond Jaxx roster: http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/team.cgi?id=1388b8ca

    Doug Fister and Shawn Kelley. Not a single position player that has yet contributed in MLB, Halman, Wilson and Mangini may yet.

    Are we really surprised that the Ms still suck? What GM could have done more with this crap?

  10. StatBoy on July 24th, 2011 10:28 pm

    If it was sarcasm, I apologize. It went over my head. I am a little touchy these days.

  11. DMZ on July 24th, 2011 10:34 pm

    I don’t think it was sarcasm at all, I asked Marc if he *would* get fired, not whether he deserved it, and then we talked back and forth about the different factors weighing on that decision. That’s wholly separate from whether he deserves to be fired, and if that distinction wasn’t clear enough, I’m sorry.

  12. StatBoy on July 24th, 2011 10:40 pm

    I apologize if I misinterpreted the conversation, obviously that is a question that a lot of people are going to be asking(unfortunately.) I thought Marc was saying that he thought Z should be fired after the results of the last two years though maybe I misunderstood.

    Carry on!

  13. jase411 on July 24th, 2011 10:55 pm

    Good stuff guys, I can only assume you are both completely ripped right now? Talking about the M’s for 40 minutes would make a nun want to line up whiskey shots….

  14. Gritty Veteran Poster on July 24th, 2011 10:59 pm

    DMZ I’m really glad to see you back – hope we get to see more of you. I’m looking forward to listening to this tomorrow at work and I love the idea of a podcast. Hope it’s something you guys enjoy and continue with. Don’t worry about being less than perfect technically – I think most of us are more interested in the quality of the content.

  15. Typical Idiot Fan on July 24th, 2011 11:03 pm

    Statboy,

    What they said was that if the FO had marketed the last couple of seasons as part of a rebuilding process, then Jack would be viewed with less negativity. But that’s not how they were billed. This season was marketed that way, so there should be less perceived negativity towards Jack. Yet, actually, there’s more. Probably because the team was contending for a bit. Fans don’t like being cock teased.

    They’re probably right. Jack Z is going to take a lot of blame for no reason. He’s going to take a lot of blame he probably deserves, too. Whatever happens, it’s not like we aren’t going to have oodles and oodles of things to discuss regarding it.

  16. sjudy on July 24th, 2011 11:16 pm

    I’m a high school teacher and I do podcasts as well. I use box.net to create a direct link, which shows up on my pages as a straight podcast. Try that. You can check out mine at http://www.viewmont.org, then go to Faculty and Staff, and scroll to Judy, S. Then on my page, go to Podcasts and pick a random one. That’s the service I’ve used and it’s worked great so far.

  17. The_Waco_Kid on July 24th, 2011 11:23 pm

    Awesome idea, guys. You’ll work out the kinks.

  18. The_Waco_Kid on July 24th, 2011 11:28 pm

    Chemistry is meaningless.

    Exaggeration.

    Chemistry does not make bad players good ones and can’t save a bad season.

    True.

  19. Boy9988 on July 25th, 2011 12:07 am

    So where can I get one of those isolation pods?

  20. greentunic on July 25th, 2011 12:31 am

    Love it!

    I think there should be a university study on Figgins. I would not be surprised if he has the worst contract in MLB HISTORY when it comes to… [[Total Contract Dollars multiplied by WAR Over the Contract Time]].

    If we project out his performance over 4 years (assuming he’s at -0.2 WAR for the first 1.5 years), it’s something like.

    $36 Million x -0.533 = -19,199,999 Player Points

    Note, this type of math only works with negative WAR where the cash variable and the WAR variable both work against the player. But is there a worse contract in history by these metrics?

  21. Bodhizefa on July 25th, 2011 12:56 am

    I hope you’re back for good, Derek. I love Dave’s work and insight, but I always considered you the heart and soul of this blog. Great podcast and thoughts.

  22. jbarr08 on July 25th, 2011 7:22 am

    Derek, not sure what setup you’re using, but I’ve had a lot of success with podcasting using Skype in combination with Powergramo. Simple and clean.

  23. spiy776 on July 25th, 2011 11:14 am

    I definetly agree that Mike Wilson should be given another shot especially since we are way out of contention. Who would we send down though?

  24. rick m on July 25th, 2011 3:21 pm

    I was surprised at how quickly you both dismissed the idea of bringing in the fences in Safeco. The curious case of Adrian Beltre (MOTO hitter whenever he’s not a Mariner) is reason enough for me to seriously consider the idea.

    Beltre came to Seattle with a big contract to serve as a MOTO hitter. But what we found over the 5 years was a very noticable decline in home productivity accompanying a very noticable increase in away productivity.

    OPS Away Home

    2005 .736 .694
    2006 .805 .778
    2007 .850 .745
    2008 .862 .713
    2009 .717 .646 (injuries)

    We need to find a way to keep the Beltres from fleeing Seattle.

    That Beltre was never able to crack .800 in Safeco field is a warning signal. I think the historically bad last couple of seasons we’ve seen from this team can’t simply be chalked up to having bad ballplayers. It’s becoming a pattern. Definitely great ballplayers like ARod, Edgar, etc. can overcome this. But they are hard to come by, and the lesser ones are failing at an alarming rate.

    At any rate, I’d sure like to see a more indepth study on the subject. Perhaps my memory is selective. It’s great to get Cy Young performances out of journeymen like Washburn and Vargas. But not at the cost of scaring away players like Beltre.

  25. DMZ on July 25th, 2011 3:24 pm

    So, again, I think there’s confusion between what we’re discussing there and what you’re looking for. My question was whether or not they were thinking about it again, and if that rumor had re-surfaced. Marc’s against it, and if you remember way back, here on USSM we’ve debated this at length. It wasn’t at all an examination of the issue, but me trying to figure out if it was being considered again or not.

  26. rick m on July 25th, 2011 3:47 pm

    Thanks. Sorry for misrepresenting you there. Do you have an opinion on the matter, Derek? I don’t remember the USSM discussion of way back, but I do think it might be a good time to revisit the issue, in light of recent historical collapses and such. I do remember Z being asked about it at the Q and A’s and he seemed to give signals that he’d be in favor of moving in fences.

  27. samregens on July 25th, 2011 4:35 pm

    Thanks for a great podcast!
    I loved the isolation pod thing and the sound gave it some reality also. I hope this is a regular thing because I love to hear your insights and viewpoints on the team.

    And I feel your pain on Ichiro. I still feel that he will bounce back, but seeing him struggle makes me realise how much I love the guy (it’s painful). Please get back to normal!

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