Dave on KGA and going to Zebulon
Two quick notes – my weekly radio spot with Toby, Danny, and the guys at KGA will be at 5:05 pm tonight. You can listen online at 1510kga.com.
Also, on Wednesday night, I’ll be in Zebulon, North Carolina with USSM alum Conor Glassey to watch the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx play the Carolina Mudcats. Michael Pineda is scheduled to take the mound for West Tenn, plus the game should feature Dustin Ackley, Carlos Triunfel, and the regression to the mean show sponsored by Carlos Peguero. We’ve already had one USSM reader express interest in meeting up at or before the game, and if there’s enough interest, we’ll put something informal together. RSVP in this thread if you’re interested.
Minor League Wrap (5/17-23/10)
Instead of an intro this time out, I’d like to do something different. Alert readers have probably noted Wes Littleton’s coming and going from the West Tenn roster. Well, a few days ago, I found out why, via a blog. As it turns out, he and his wife had a son recently, and the kid has been going through an awful lot of medical trouble early on, with diagnoses of bacterial meningitis and a form of hemophilia. These are both very serious health issues for a kid so young, and so Wes has been flying back and forth between the team, which seems to have been fairly understanding, and the hospital. Of course, if there are any comments you want to leave or any support you might be able to provide them as they go through this, I’m sure they’d appreciate it. Even at the minor league level with eight innings in the books, he’s still part of the Mariners family.
To the jump!
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Large Item Pickup Day
The part of North Carolina that I live in is a pretty interesting mix. Wake Forest University is one of the more uppity schools in the country, and the combination of rich white college kids with the old money homes that surround the area make the town feel more well off than your traditional southern town. However, there are days when the area reminds me very quickly that I now live in the south. Today is one of those days.
It’s officially called “Large Item Pickup Day”. It’s my neighborhood’s turn to have the city come by and collect items that are too large for us to haul away, but that we don’t want around the house anymore. It’s a pretty nice service, actually. Between appliances and furniture, it seems like something big and heavy gets replaced every year, and not having to try to borrow a friend’s truck to take it to the dump is pretty convenient. You just hang onto whatever you don’t want until your neighborhood’s turn comes along, and then you put your large items by the curb and the city takes them away.
At least, in theory, the city comes by and takes stuff away. In reality, Large Item Pickup Weekend is one of the most hilarious, insane, can’t-believe-what-you’re-watching activities of the year. Before the cities trucks ever make it around to collect your items, people come to see what they can grab first. And by people, I mean the cast members of Deliverance. And by collect, I mean “grab as much useless junk as they can haul”. Generally, within 15 to 20 minutes of putting something out at your curb, a man in a truck (with a low probability of wearing a shirt and a very high probability of smoking) will have stopped, loaded up the whole pile, and driven away. Sometimes, he’ll have a partner who will pick through your junk, deciding which of the things you want to discard isn’t good enough for his home, but in the end, they usually take everything.
A few years ago, I was helping a friend by taking his stuff from his garage to his curb the day before Large Item Pickup Day, since he was under the weather. I took the first thing (a broken kiddie pool, I believe) to the curb, walked back to the garage, grabbed the second thing, and by the time I got back to the curb, the first thing was already gone. These people are like hawks. Hawks of trash.
Today, when observing the folks who deemed my crap nice enough to load up in their remarkably nice truck (perhaps if they spent a little less on their trucks they wouldn’t need my broken screen door?), I had an epiphany – the Mariners constructed their roster using the baseball version of Large Item Pickup Day.
The rest of baseball left Mike Sweeney, Milton Bradley, Ian Snell, Jesus Colome, Josh Wilson, Josh Bard, and Ryan Langerhans on the curb this winter. That’s 28 percent of the current active roster that no one else wanted, and we’re not even counting Griffey (who wouldn’t have gotten another job had the Mariners not brought him back), though we probably should. Essentially 1/3 of the roster the M’s are running out on a daily basis are rejects from other organizations who have either cleared waivers recently or would clear waivers without a problem. The Mariners, in their shiny new truck, went around the league and rounded out their roster with discards.
There can be value in things left at the curb. Today, I put out a bookshelf/armoire/dresser thing that my wife hated and we didn’t have room for, but it was in pretty good shape and I probably could have gotten $30 or $40 for it had I put it in on Craigslist. It has some value, and the fine (marginally clothed) people who took it got a good deal with that free piece of furniture. But they had to pick up a lot of crap to get to that relative diamond in the rough, and when they get home, they’re going to have to find places to put all their junk (and my armoire). There’s a pretty decent chance they’d have been better off just buying an armoire on craigslist and not have to sort through and store the rest of the crap they left with too.
And that’s kind of how dumpster diving in baseball works as well. You can do it effectively to fill out a couple of roster spots and take some gambles on guys – if it works, great, if not, you just dump them and try someone else. But when your starting catcher, starting shortstop, starting left-fielder, starting DH platoon, fifth man in the rotation, and your long reliever are all guys that you picked up on the curb, well, then you just have too much crap on the roster. And when you can’t cut bait on experiments gone wrong because it will upset the clubhouse or cause you bad P.R., then you have no business owning that particular large item in the first place.
If the Mariners want to make up the significant hole they’ve dug themselves, they’ll have to stop hoping to find a marginally useful free armoire, go to the store, and buy something that actually makes the place look nice. Or, in this roster’s case, buy a few somethings in a hurry, or you might as well starting preparing for the garage sale in July when you sell off everything that was too nice to leave at the curb.
Game 44, Padres at Mariners
Latos vs Hernandez, 1:10 pm.
Happy Felix Day.
Line-up presented without comment.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Small Sample Size Hero, 1B
Bradley, LF
Griffey, DH
Tui, 3B
Johnson, C
Josh Wilson, SS
Game 43, Padres at Mariners
Richard vs Snell, 7:10 pm.
Ian Snell makes his triumphant return to the rotation by default, as he wasn’t as bad as Ryan Roland-Smith. He’ll try to shut down the Padres tonight, but unless he’s figured out how to to get lefties out in the last few weeks, I’d imagine Adrian Gonzalez will have all kinds of fun this evening.
Richard is a righty, by the way, but Saunders is not in the line-up. His small sample size power display is not as shiny and new as Sweeney’s small sample size power display. Defense, schmefense. We are slaves to the hot hand. I’m a moron.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
6-4-3, DH
Lopez, 2B
Bradley, LF
Kotchman, 1B
Bard, C
Josh WIlson, SS
Game Forty-Two Recap
Yay, 16-26.
Livan Hernandez has a 1.62 ERA. Ty Wigginton, Kelly Johnson, and Jose Bautista are in a three way tie for second in the majors in home runs. Jose Lopez leads the world in UZR. You can now add this line-up scoring 15 runs in five innings to the list of things that make you just shake your head and laugh.
Mike Sweeney… he’ll get a post of his own next week.
How about Josh Bard? No, he’s not an all-star or anything, but I’d suggest that the M’s may have found their starting catcher, at least as long as they’re still playing for 2010. Another couple of well struck balls and a walk, plus no annoying passed balls or other defensive problems I knew I shouldn’t have written that sentence while the game was still going. And we should note that he has a history of major league success – just under 1,800 career plate appearances, during which he’s been worth seven wins over a replacement level player. That’s 2.3 wins per full season. He’s on the downside of his career, so we shouldn’t expect him to play that well, but it’s not like he’s been a scrub for years and is having the best run of his life. He’s a switch hitter with some patience and power, and given the alternatives, that makes him the best catcher in this organization right now.
Cliff Lee is running a 31:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio this season. Yeah, the Padres got a few balls to find holes and put up a couple of runs on him, but he’s easily one of the five best pitchers alive right now. He’s just so, so good.
Enjoy this one – you won’t see many more of those this year. Unless Wade LeBlanc ends up pitching against them again.
Game 42, Padres at Mariners
Lee vs LeBlanc, 7:10 pm.
The Padres are about as close to the Mariners as you can get, only their pitchers are more overachieving than legitimately good. I wouldn’t expect them to start underachieving this weekend. These two teams meeting in Safeco Field should theoretically equal a lot of low scoring games.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
6-4-3, DH
Lopez, 3B
Bradley, LF
Kotchman, 1B
Bard, C
Josh Wilson, SS
Revisiting the ’09 Mavericks Hitters
Since the Mariners signed on with the affiliate in ’07, we’ve talked a lot about the High Desert effect and what exactly that means to the development of prospects within the organization. It’s common to see the Mavericks at the top of the leaderboard in runs scored per game, and last year was no exception, as they lead by 0.40 runs and were first in most offensive categories, save doubles, base stealing, walks and strikeouts. To start the season, three prominent hitters from that ’09 lineup were promoted to the West Tenn Diamond Jaxx, Joe Dunigan, Alex Liddi, and Carlos Peguero. So how have they fared thus far and what lessons can be taken from it? Let’s take a numbers-heavy look at what each of the three have been doing, starting out with Dunigan.
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Game Forty One Recap
Yay, 15-26.
Don’t have much time, will add more later, but congratulations to Junior (and Sweeney) for a big hit and a big win that the team desperately needed. Here’s to hoping the Mariners run off about 15 more of those in a row.
Game 41, Jays at Mariners
Romero vs Vargas, 12:40 pm.
Romero has a nasty change-up. This should go well.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
6-4-3, DH
Lopez, 2B
Bradley, LF
Kotchman, 1B
Bard, C
Josh Wilson, SS