Fielder Signs With Detroit

Dave · January 24, 2012 at 12:07 pm · Filed Under Mariners 

9/214. Seriously, if you’re upset that the Mariners “missed out” on that deal, you’re nuts. Huzzah for the Mariners not wasting that kind of money on one player.

Comments

128 Responses to “Fielder Signs With Detroit”

  1. Dave on January 25th, 2012 8:17 am

    These are the same people who were mad that the team didn’t sign Barry Zito, Alfonso Soriano, and Carlos Lee. Shhh – don’t tell them that those deals have been unmitigated disasters.

  2. kinickers77 on January 25th, 2012 8:22 am

    Agree totally 6-4-3. And where I agree with Dave’s posse here on this site is that Fielder would not have automatically made the Ms a condender so the $ isn’t worth it now. It’s not our “window”. My only concern is that many of these guys seem so concerned about pinching pennies and bang for your buck that when the time does come, will they be for it then or not? Time will tell. Now’s the time to fold but when your “window” is here, you gotta go all-in, in my honest opinion.

    I greatly respect Dave’s thinking and many times am persuaded by his logic. But as a fan, I also empathize with – dare I say his name here – Mr. Baker’s frustration. What he just doesn’t understand is that now’s not the time to go all-in. But I don’t have a problem with his desire to spend the bucks, and maybe even overspend, just wait until it can really put us over the top.

    PS – I’ll probably get reamed just for even saying that I empathize with Baker’s frustration.

  3. cebo04 on January 25th, 2012 8:39 am

    Haven’t been on here in a while but for those suggesting that Jack made the Montero move just to satisfy people, that’s just foolish. While I’d like to see this team add offense, as Dave has pointed out, we don’t have much room to add players and right now there aren’t many big names available or worth our time.

  4. xsacred24x on January 25th, 2012 9:12 am

    [Quote]You have NO idea on how to build a baseball team, do you?[/Quote]

    Do you have any idea to build a baseball team? No thats why you don’t work for one. The payroll since Jack has gotten here has gone from 116M down to 93M probably going to go down again next season.

  5. gwangung on January 25th, 2012 10:01 am

    Do you have any idea to build a baseball team?

    Yup.

  6. gwangung on January 25th, 2012 10:14 am

    My only concern is that many of these guys seem so concerned about pinching pennies and bang for your buck that when the time does come, will they be for it then or not?

    If you’ve read Dave or anyone else here, I think you’ll realize that they would agree that this would be PRECISELY the time to go all in. The site has consistently said that paying for 5 or 6 players is an economic AND baseball sound strategy, particularly if you’re on the edge of a championship.

  7. xsacred24x on January 25th, 2012 11:11 am

    “My only concern is that many of these guys seem so concerned about pinching pennies and bang for your buck that when the time does come, will they be for it then or not? ”

    My guess would be no remember when Lou wanted a bat when we were contending? They told him no so he left.

  8. KaminaAyato on January 25th, 2012 11:26 am

    The complaint about ownership assumes they can’t learn no matter how many years down the road.

    I’m not willing to buy that given they’ve extended Z, because if they listened to people like you and the majority of callers to talk radio and readers of that other blog, then he’d be gone.

    Oh, and you’re not working for a MLB baseball team either, so don’t go around using that argument either. Spending money just to spend money is ridiculous and a terrible way to run an organization.

    If you’re going to take the young route like it appears they are, understand that the draft picks from Z’s first year are predominantly sitting in AA right now. So why spend money on contracts when your draft picks are still working their way up the org? And though we may want to sign short-term deals, the players we’d want to sign would have to also want to sign a short-term deal. It’s not as easy as pushing money and saying “You’re signing here”.

  9. xsacred24x on January 25th, 2012 11:46 am

    “Oh, and you’re not working for a MLB baseball team either, so don’t go around using that argument either. Spending money just to spend money is ridiculous and a terrible way to run an organization.”

    Did i ever say i worked for a MLB team? No..He said i didn’t know how to run a baseball team so i said he didn’t either because if he did he wouldn’t be talking on blogs he would be to busy. Also did i ever say for the M’s to throw money around? No i did not i said even if we were contending and a player made sense they won’t get him because they won’t spend the $. When Z got here after the Bavasi debacle we went from a 116M payroll to a 96M payroll now were down to 93M next year we will have money to spend but they won’t give it to Z to spend as we have seen.

  10. Dave on January 25th, 2012 11:47 am

    You have no idea what you’re talking about. Just go back to Baker’s blog and hang out with the ignorant folks there.

  11. xsacred24x on January 25th, 2012 11:50 am

    “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Just go back to Baker’s blog and hang out with the ignorant folks there.”

    Ok i will because Baker tells it like it is with this ownership.

  12. JoshJones on January 25th, 2012 12:26 pm

    3rd base is our glarring hole. Seager is a super utility player who I think will be a 3rd, SS, 2nd,and OF at some point. 3rd is the position we need to target.

    Reynolds and wright aren’t long term solutions. The royals can’t afford the talent they have in the long term. Id give up the farm for hosmer. He’s one of the only talents in baseball worth doing it for. And I hate blowing the farm up like that after we just got it built again but achley, hosmer, montero, and smoak is hard to argue with. jack can rebuild the farm again. We wouldn’t be spending money to do it.

  13. Dave on January 25th, 2012 1:02 pm

    The Royals can’t afford their star rookie first baseman, so they should trade him to the Mariners, where he can fill their hole at third base?

    I can’t even begin to count the number of things wrong here.

  14. gwangung on January 25th, 2012 1:16 pm

    Ok i will because Baker tells it like it is with this ownership.

    Baker knows even less about business partnership dynamics than he does about baseball team construction.

    He does well with reporting, but what he says about the ownership is not sourced nor is it crosschecked with other experts on businesses (let alone baseball team businesses).

    When Z got here after the Bavasi debacle we went from a 116M payroll to a 96M payroll now were down to 93M next year we will have money to spend but they won’t give it to Z to spend as we have seen.

    No, you haven’t seen this. Not at all.

  15. Carson on January 25th, 2012 2:46 pm

    I don’t even know what to say about portions of this thread. I’ve exhausted myself trying to help some co-workers not be doom-and-gloom about this, but they all think I’m nuts.

    I thought this town had taken a step forward. I guess I was wrong.

  16. KaminaAyato on January 25th, 2012 3:11 pm

    @Carson Blame our print and radio media for that. Until we actually get knowledgeable people who have widespread reach over the masses, we’ll get the same crap.

  17. MrZDevotee on January 25th, 2012 3:31 pm

    xsacredx-
    Not really sure what your point was here? Were you SO ANGRY at the Mariners for not overspending that you decided to come over here to USSMariner and take it out on all those guys who don’t agree with your way of building a team? What because you think they had something to do with Baker not getting his way? That’s what it looks like on this end…

    I mean, seriously… what sort of response were you expecting here?

    Baker gets paid to get as many readers, and as many responses, as possible. They want faces to put in front of their advertisers. They want to appeal to the upslope and downslope of the vast majority of the curve of baseball fans. Sure, he believes what he’s saying, but it’s inherently a different sort of take on things that he’s appealing to, and by it’s nature a more conservative (ironically– as in “to be expected”) approach to baseball.

    Two ENTIRELY different enterprises going on between there and here.

    I think XBox has ruined MLB for many fans/baseball columnists. There’s a super simplistic gut-reaction mentality that goes something like: “Well once you’re spending 100’s of millions of dollars, just go all out and pay whatever it takes to put the best team in the league on the field. You’re all billionaires anyways, it’s not like you can’t afford it.”

    There are maybe 3 teams in the league that without much risk can say “he’s awesome… we need that guy… let’s pay what it takes”… We’ll soon find out if Detroit is one of them. We already know that Texas isn’t (or at least wasn’t– re: A-Rod).

    And Seattle definitely isn’t.

    I mean, honestly, NO ONE knows how to, without fail, build a championship baseball team… Some people buy a lot of really good players. More than other teams can afford.

    But Boston last year says “hi”, and San Francisco (on the other end) says “hi” from the year before.

    It’s headscratching how many folks get uber frustrated with the very nature of baseball that makes it appealing to so many others of us out here in fan-land.

  18. dantheman on January 25th, 2012 8:52 pm

    xsacred24x is exactly right about Baker and the Mariners ownership in contrast to a blog which somehow finds it impossible to criticize a Mariners ownership that has been absolutely abysmal for 8 years and counting. Even the signing of an injured Japanese League pitcher for $1,500,000 (“low risk!” – ahem, there might be a reason he came so cheap) results in cries of “Brilliant move” for Jack Z, who’s record after 3 years is virtually identical to the much hated Bavasi’s. Insert excuses for Jack Z’s performance here: ____________________________. By the way, exactly how many years have to go by before Jack Z no longer gets to blame Bavasi?

    Lastly, the personal attacks and lack of any analysis to support criticism of people who disagree with the “brilliant” Mariners front office (for example, “I can’t even begin to count the number of things wrong here” – that’s it???) which has produced “Pittsburgh Pirates” results (oops, the Pirates have actually won more games than the Mariners the last couple of years) is more than a little disappointing from people who claim to be devotees of statistical analysis.

  19. Johnny Slick on January 25th, 2012 10:00 pm

    To answer your question which was ensconsed in there somewhere, yes, we still have a lot of time remaining to blame Bavasi. Between the lack of top picks under Gillick (and, I should add, wasting those picks on legacy guys with iffy prospect status like John Mayberry Jr.) and the flat-out horrible job done by Bavasi in the draft, this team has had to basically restock a bare cupboard in the last 3 years. The higher minors are still not particularly great, but there does (finally) seem to be youth coming in on the horizon.

    It costs roughly $5M per win to buy victories on the free agent market. In order to get past Texas, the Mariners will need about 45 wins (50 for replacement level + 45 to get to 95 and a shot at competing with them). That’s what? $225? they’d need to spend in the market? Yeah, great strategy. Even if there was talent available at every position, that would be a dumb idea that not even the Yankees could pursue. The M’s not signing Fielder for the price he signed for was pretty much a slam-dunk, and whinging that the M’s didn’t sign some magical made-up fairy player for less than what Fielder signed for doesn’t change that.

  20. Dave on January 25th, 2012 10:15 pm

    Yep, that’s us, shills for the organization…

    Your history of comments on this blog show a long pattern of ignorance. You can join your fellow conspiracy theorists over at the land of stupidity. You won’t be missed here.

  21. bongo on January 25th, 2012 10:22 pm

    PBS said:

    “At least it wasn’t even close… or to the Rangers”

    With a contract this bad, I wish Fielder *had* signed with the Rangers. This contract could price out at $7 million/WAR or worse. Appalling!

  22. leon0112 on January 25th, 2012 10:34 pm

    Dave, do you think this will make Brandon Inge available? Should the Mariners want him?

  23. djw on January 26th, 2012 5:14 am

    What value do you see in Inge?

    He’s 35, owed 6 million dollars, and his performance fell of the cliff last year. He’s the sort of person you maybe, just maybe, consider giving a non-roster invitation to, if there’s a bench spot available or you think he might be interested in providing depth at AAA if you’re really weak in that area. You certainly don’t move value for him, or pay anything close to 6 million for him.

  24. MrZDevotee on January 26th, 2012 9:05 am

    Why do I still give Z a pass? Did you see MLB’s Top 100 prospects list released this week? We have 3 of the Top 20, 5 in the Top 100, and graded out highest in all of baseball for top prospects.

    And those guys have YET to hit the bigs yet. Bavasi couldn’t (and DIDN’T) do that.

    Case closed.

  25. dantheman on January 26th, 2012 7:58 pm

    “Yep, that’s us, shills for the organization…
    Your history of comments on this blog show a long pattern of ignorance. You can join your fellow conspiracy theorists over at the land of stupidity. You won’t be missed here.”

    Another way to prove my point would be…..

  26. akampfer on January 27th, 2012 8:34 pm

    I agree with the poster who suggested Johnny Damon. Sign him for a year. Wouldn’t hurt, might even help.

  27. dantheman on January 30th, 2012 8:05 am

    “Yep, that’s us, shills for the organization…
    Your history of comments on this blog show a long pattern of ignorance. You can join your fellow conspiracy theorists over at the land of stupidity. You won’t be missed here.”

    One might question who actually resides in the “land of stupidity”. Is it the people who point out that the Mariners’ front office has an abject record of failure or the people who rave about every transaction by a mediocre GM (same record as Bavasi after 3 years) and cannot grasp the concept that a team’s won loss record is the ultimate basis on which performance should be judged? But no worries. Just keep getting high on million dollar “no risk” deals and ignore the fact that the Mariners’ payroll is rapidly plunging downward, as is their attendance. I guess lots of people live in the “land of stupidity” who can’t quite justify paying to watch a last place team despite their brilliant personnel moves.

  28. eponymous coward on January 30th, 2012 12:54 pm

    Did Peguero, Halman, Saunders, Wilson, Robinson, Liddi’s minor league success have any sort of predictive power at all? I’d say no. You really have no idea what a prospect is until you see him at the MLB level. You can just use the farm to weed out the bad ones.

    Out of all those guys, Saunders is the one guy that you might have projected as being having potential to be a quality regular inn 2011 (and after his 2010, you had to question that for 2011). All the rest of them, you can look at their minor league stats and go “no way, you’re hallucinating”. Peguero should have never been called up, no matter how many dingers he was hitting while having a strike zone the size of the North American continent.

    And we ARE buying lotto tickets. Prospects are the lottery. It’s a numbers game – throw 10 kids out there and hope 3 or 4 stick.

    This is a horrible way to run an organization. If you can’t figure out from a good chunk of minor league games which prospects are good and which don’t deserve full time MLB jobs, you’re the Royals or Pirates.

    And finally, once again, yes, marginal wins have value for your organization even if you’re behind other teams in your division, something Dave keeps pointing out to you. A good team has a 1.5 WAR guy like Seager as a bench player; a bad team plays him every day and hopes they get lucky. If the objective is getting to be good, there’s no time like the present.

    The fact that the Mariners have turned into Oakland North isn’t something to be celebrated, especially if it’s 2016 and we’re bouncing around between 75-81 wins.

    the people who rave about every transaction

    Actually, if you had any semblance of intellectual integrity for your argument, you’d realize that USSM has NOT been cheerleading for every Zduriencik transaction. They’re skeptical about trading Fister. They’re not huge fans of Trayvon Robinson. They think Pineda for Montero is a sideways move that doesn’t really improve organizational talent levels. And they’ve been arguing for additional payroll spend for 2012.

    But like Baker, it’s easy to tell the nerds to go back to their parent’s basement, huh?

    Anyways, the results are mediocre because Zduriencik has had to drop 30 million in payroll to go along with some misfires on veteran acquisitions (Figgins, Bradley, and so on). I don’t think there’s much argument that there are moves he’s botched. Where he’s done better is identifying talent in trade and in the system/draft.

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