Game 162, Athletics at Mariners

marc w · September 28, 2011 at 5:37 pm · Filed Under Mariners 

Anthony Vasquez vs. Gio Gonzalez, 7:10pm

The final game of the season comes on a day with two great playoff races in the balance. The M’s and A’s aren’t involved, so this was always doomed to irrelevance, but somehow the contrast between David Price pitching for the Rays playoff life and Anthony Vasquez trying to avoid ending the year with more HRs than strikeouts just feels…magnified.

This season hasn’t been what any of us wanted. Even before the year began, we had to deal with the passing of Dave Niehaus. We hoped for a bounce-back from Milton Bradley, but watched a recently-great hitter descend into madness. We watched Franklin Gutierrez shuttle from doctor to doctor and diagnosis to diagnosis before coming back and attempting to major league pitching. We saw Justin Smoak struggle with a bruised hand, a broken jaw and heartbreak. We’re now dealing with a new acquisition battles an unknown neurological issue affecting his balance and sight. We no longer had to wonder what an “old” Ichiro would look like. I said earlier in the year that this was better, somehow, than the experience of watching the 2010 team – that the lack of expectations and the rookies made it a lesser evil than watching the 2010 team slowly disintegrate. I still believe that, but I’ve watched the Rangers move up another level, I’ve seen the Angels compete after their big off-season acquisition became one of the most expensive replacement level players ever. And then I tune in to watch Adam Kennedy DH against Gio Gonzalez, and well, that #3 pick in next year’s draft better be awesome. I will miss watching the M’s, I will look forward to 2012, but I will not miss this season.

The final line-up of 2011:
1: Ichiro
2: Robinson (CF)
3: Ackley
4: Smoak (1B)
5: Carp (LF)
6: Kennedy (“DH”)
7: Liddi
8: Seager (SS)
9: Gimenez

Comments

24 Responses to “Game 162, Athletics at Mariners”

  1. TherzAlwaysHope on September 28th, 2011 6:19 pm

    Boy do they love Fister over in Detroit.

  2. The Hamms Bear on September 28th, 2011 6:25 pm

    You know, maybe Franklin Gutierrez really has forgotten what he’s supposed to be doing to major league pitching.

    (That’s not going to make any sense if you edit the original post.)

  3. Breadbaker on September 28th, 2011 7:06 pm

    I’m sure glad we’re showcasing Adam Kennedy here. I’ll bet he makes the team in April with another blistering spring. The Mike Sweeney of 2012.

  4. TomC on September 28th, 2011 8:06 pm

    Runners on first and second, and the heart of the order coming up. On most teams that means a run or two. But this is the 2011 Mariners and it means only disappointment.

  5. Breadbaker on September 28th, 2011 8:47 pm

    I think I’ve said this before, but the motto of the 2011 Mariners is “Two On, So What?”

  6. groundzero55 on September 28th, 2011 9:03 pm

    I’m sure glad we’re showcasing Adam Kennedy here. I’ll bet he makes the team in April with another blistering spring. The Mike Sweeney of 2012.

    Don’t hate on Sweeney…at least he could hit. When he wasn’t hurt. The couple years he was with us he was actually one of our better hitters.

  7. TomC on September 28th, 2011 9:31 pm

    Are the Mariners really going to go 20 shutout innings to end the season?

  8. TomC on September 28th, 2011 9:32 pm

    Yep.

  9. Westside guy on September 28th, 2011 10:07 pm

    I just couldn’t watch this one – I, for one, was ready for the Mariners’ season to be over.

    On a side note – while I ranked on Sweeney – a LOT – while he was here, the guy could still rake on those rare occasions his body was healthy. Adam Kennedy can only rake if one of the grounds crew accidentally leaves one behind.

  10. UnderTheClouds on September 28th, 2011 10:44 pm

    Maybe the best news from this season: Safeco Field is officially paid for, 3 years early. The State will stop collecting the tax October 1st. I wonder if the M’s will have a mortgage-burning party for one of the games next year? Every gimmick helps.

  11. Westside guy on September 28th, 2011 11:43 pm

    The team should offer free admission to one game next year in celebration of the stadium being paid for.

  12. greentunic on September 28th, 2011 11:55 pm

    Or get Pujols with the money typically put into payments…

  13. jjracoon on September 29th, 2011 12:24 am

    If your going to spend Pujols money it might as well be on a Votto or even Fielder. At least you are gtting a younger player so may get more years of productivity.

    Listening to Zhurensik(sic) earlier on KJR and it seems like he wants someone on this team to step up and become the offensive power by working this off season to fix weaknesses. Reading between the lines, he isnt interested in a quick fix unless the team is on the brink of contending.

    On this team that would mean:

    Ichiro pre 2011
    Gutierrez 2009 version
    Figgins 2009 version
    Smoak 2010 aug/sep or at least 2011 start of season version
    Ackley improving
    and at least a couple of the rookies showing they get it when they come back.

    I could see a lineup

    Ackley 2nd
    Gutierrez CF
    Ichiro RF
    Fielder/Votto DH
    Smoak 1st
    Carp LF
    Seager SS
    Olivo C
    Figgins 3rd

  14. mwb on September 29th, 2011 12:42 am

    How could anyone have watched the M’s game while all that wildcard craziness was going on? That had to be the most fun one night of baseball could be.

  15. groundzero55 on September 29th, 2011 4:50 am

    Sorry, the Reyes stunt ruined it for me. That’s just plain poor sportsmanship.

    Bring on the 2012 Draft speculation thread!

  16. don52656 on September 29th, 2011 7:31 am

    It’s hard to believe that the M’s wee 43-43 at one point this season. From then on, they went 24-52. So during that time, they played worse than Houston. I guess that’s the price you pay when you are trotting out what is mostly a AAA team against major leaguers.

  17. eponymous coward on September 29th, 2011 9:05 am

    Listening to Zhurensik(sic) earlier on KJR and it seems like he wants someone on this team to step up and become the offensive power by working this off season to fix weaknesses. Reading between the lines, he isnt interested in a quick fix unless the team is on the brink of contending.

    Hope is not a plan. If your team’s lost 195 games in two years, while paying those players nearly $200 million to lose those games, the answer isn’t to just hope that players who are aging (Ichiro, Figgins) or have significant injury history (Gutierrez) have fairy dust sprinkled on them to revive their careers.

  18. UnderTheClouds on September 29th, 2011 9:42 am

    The “Upping Our Game” mantra (maybe 2012’s tv commercial motto?) starts with Jack Zduriencik. Yes, he’s been hamstrung by a terrible farm system, but many of the veteran players he’s brought to the M’s have been busts, and many of the rookies he’s traded for (Smoak, Wells, Lueke) have major questions hanging over them. The failings of the old regime should not excuse the fact that Z’s own baseball decisions are currently mixed, at best.

    Now, he’s got a multi-year extension and a vote of confidence from ownership. As far as I’m concerned, the door is now closed on blaming Bavasi.

  19. auldguy on September 29th, 2011 9:45 am

    I’m sure glad we’re showcasing Adam Kennedy here. I’ll bet he makes the team in April with another blistering spring. The Mike Sweeney of 2012.

    There is more reason to play Kennedy than there is to play Gimenez. All the posters constantly whining about Kennedy’s getting at bats have conveniently forgotten that he virtually carried the team for about 6-8 weeks earlier in the year. Which is far more than any of the various outfielders, catchers, or most infielders have done. And what is the fascination with Gimenez anyway? He is the third best of three catchers, the fifth best of five left fielders, and the third best of three first basemen.

  20. The_Waco_Kid on September 29th, 2011 10:00 am

    Kennedy was a placeholder for Ackley. He was doing great, but after Ackley came up, he was terrible, so there was no reason to play him. Giminez has played a lot less, so that’s probably why no one is complaining. Also, it’s good to see Olivo get days off. He didn’t get enough this year.

    Thanks for listing Kennedy’s position properly, Marc.

  21. msfanmike on September 29th, 2011 11:55 am

    Can a new “line” be named so poor Mario Mendoza can be taken off the hook.

    Saunders hit below .150 (.149 to be precise) and that result almost has to be deserving of some sort of informal recognition.

    They messed with his stance/approach/swing so much during the season, that he eventually resembled the human form of curdled milk standing up at the plate – with very little hope to even make contact, let alone get a hit.

  22. Westside guy on September 29th, 2011 1:08 pm

    The problem with the “Saunders line” is almost no one’s going to hit it – with the Mendoza line, a few players are hanging around it every year.

    The only reason Saunders has been given the chance to suck at the plate is he’s a very good outfielder. And, even then, it was a pretty unusual set of circumstances that led to him being in Seattle for more than a handful of games.

    Poor Condor. I really want him to succeed, but if he has any chance at all… I don’t think this is the right organization.

  23. MrZDevotee on September 30th, 2011 12:55 am

    Sigh. Folks trot out the same lines, getting a bit tiresome, about “none of the veterans Z has brought in have been successful”… Uh, yeah. That’s right. They were all mediocre guys with little hype, and a somewhat optimistic idea of a high upside. And they stayed mediocre here– the most likely scenario to play out, if we were honest with ourselves. The only “big time” move he’s made was the Figgins signing– which if you say you saw him falling off the cliff he’s flown, I simply don’t believe that. And Guty’s good years weren’t expected, so that was actually a positive surprise.

    We need to let this play out, and get to a point where we’re growing our own talent, and subsidizing them with a few select, pricier free agents, who provide key, bonafide upside, for playoff pushes. When you start with no MLB level kids in the minors, that plan is on hold indefinitely, until the situation changes. The only alternative to what we’ve done the past few years is to continue throwing lots of money at all the “lower” top talent, where we have to overpay for the 2nd tier top free agents, just to get them to come here. Maybe we all just got used to doing things the Bavasi way, and perhaps this attitude is some insight into WHY the team built itself that way– the “new toys” we brought to town each year, even though they weren’t TOP talent, gave the fans a quick fix of optimism. But we all saw where that actually led us. (Cue: Silva, Sexson, Bautista, etc.)

    It’s slowly changing. But now we need to begin the sifting process of throwing out our underpriced, high-upside place holders and replacing them from within the system, with real emerging talent, which isn’t a quick and easy fix (recalling the revolving left field door this year).

    Awful year. Yes. Absolutely. But also absolutely necessary. The fact that we were 43-43 at one point is sort of irrelevant. We weren’t a playoff caliber team then, and we all knew prior to that time we were rebuilding. We KNEW this year would suck. We came into the season expecting it. And now we reach the end of the season and actually complain about how we weren’t contenders? C’mon guys. Another good draft, and a couple key trades/free agent acquisitions, and truly/honestly/no kidding 2013 will be a year we can start to have expectations about realistically being a good baseball team.

    It’s an awful long time, sure. But we were truly an awful baseball system when Z took over. The wait will be worth it, moreso than throwing everything out now and starting over, by going back to making too large of signings to guys who have ALREADY peaked, so we can watch them decline.

  24. eponymous coward on September 30th, 2011 9:29 am

    Maybe we all just got used to doing things the Bavasi way, and perhaps this attitude is some insight into WHY the team built itself that way– the “new toys” we brought to town each year, even though they weren’t TOP talent, gave the fans a quick fix of optimism. But we all saw where that actually led us. (Cue: Silva, Sexson, Bautista, etc.)

    Let’s point out that while Bavasi was justly panned for signing overpriced players, he hit on Beltre, and resigned Ichiro. The argument at USSM has never been “you shouldn’t ever spend money on a free agent”; it’s that you should spend money intelligently and try to win as much as you can without doing harm to future years.

    And I’ll make this point again, because this needs to be hammered home: it is incredibly stupid to spend $80-90 million on a bad team, intentionally, on the grounds that you “have to keep the salaries up” to keep fan interest. Fans don’t care that the Mariners spent money on the 2010-2011 teams; all they know is those teams were horrible, and they stayed away accordingly. If your goal is really “we don’t care about wins and losses, let’s just load up on kids and once we have enough talent, then we’ll worry about adding salary”, veterans making $10-20 million are completely superfluous.

    Think about this: the Seattle Mariners, from 2008-2011, have spent well north of $350 million in salary for teams that have lost (collectively) more than 350 games over that time. And Jack Zduriencik had his name on the marquee for three of those seasons.

    So if the plan all along was “we’re not going to be any good until the farm system is restocked”, Ichiro and Felix should have been traded by 2009-2010 for every prospect they could have collected- if a Cliff Lee rental gets you what he got, Felix under team control gets you much, much more. Figgins should never have been in a Mariner uniform. This would have saved ownership many millions and it’s hard to see how the team would have been worse over that time, in terms of win-loss and frittering away the last little bits of attendance goodwill from 1995-2003.

    But that’s not what the strategy was, and it’s quite plain what Zdruriencik was trying to do: win as much as he can now inside of his salary limits, while “doing no harm” to the ability of the farm system to produce talent. He’s managed to do the latter, but failed very badly with the former. So it’s very much in order to point out the successes (better at talent acquisition and development than our last GM) and failures (still not doing so well at putting it all together at the MLB level, has made some questionable choices at times that have backfired pretty badly). This organization isn’t there yet in establishing excellence, and I’m sorry, getting to continually blame everything on previous GMs when almost nobody in the organization is anyone other than Zduriencik’s choice is getting very, very old.

    The idea that well, it’s OK that the team lost 195, but things will be better- tell that to Baltimore and Kansas City. They lose lots of games too, so things will be better for them, right? They get to draft high, too.

    And as for the wait being worth it… tell that to Cleveland. Anyone remember “Hire Chris Antonetti”? Well, it turns out that Cleveland’s high point of organizational excellence after THEIR razing of the franchise was two 90-win seasons and one playoff appearance, and then back into the ditch, and now back to mediocre.

    The future’s not written in stone yet- and in my mind, if you’ve been given resources like Felix, Ichiro, plenty of salary compared to even other playoff teams, ability to trade for players like Cliff Lee and Milton Bradley (and I might point out that Zduriencik added salary in that deal, so that was an own-goal if that deal hampered him in 2011), ability to sign players like Guti and Felix to long term deals, it is completely fair to judge you on your results so far, as opposed to getting mulligans until 2013. So, no, I do think I will have some expectations that with $90 million in salary and a roster almost entirely of his own making, that it’s legitimate for him to find a way to give us watchable baseball in 2012 and strong progress forwards towards organizational excellence, and if we fail again, this legitimately calls into question his skills at building a decent baseball team.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.