If not Sexson, who? Willie! Boom-Boom! Yes! That guy!
I said some unkind things about McLaren’s choice to start Cairo in Sexson’s stead tonight. But there really is no way to justify the decision. With Sexson lost, here’s who was available:
– WFB-R, plays a good first base, terrible hitter
– WFB Light-R, plays a bad first base, terrible hitter
– Turbo-B, plays a bad first base, terrible hitter so far but probably a good bet to do better than either of those two, offensively
– play someone out of position, either Clement, Ibanez, or someone else, like someone tall from the bullpen
Once you’ve eliminated that last one, you really only have two defensible choices: Vidro, because you want a guy who’ll take a walk and might get a hit, or Bloomquist, because as long as you’re punting offense you might as well get a good glove out there.
There is no reason to play Cairo. There’s no reason Cairo’s on the roster, frankly, but this is supposedly exactly the reason Cairo’s there — to allow them to use Bloomquist while still having a Bloomquist facsimile on the bench. Arrgghhh.
And then — to not pinch-hit for Cairo late in the game when they’re down but things are still close… why not? You in the world do you pinch hit for Clement, who can hit, with Bloomquist in the 9th and not Cairo in the 8th? Why — this is just crazy.
Dog bites man, Armstrong feels team is great and you’re stupid
Club president Chuck Armstrong said before Wednesday’s game that there is more to the Mariners’ attendance troubles – seven of Seattle’s top poorest Safeco Field attendances have come this year – than the club’s 14-20 record.
”You expect some ebb and flow,” Armstrong said. ”The weather hasn’t been good. We haven’t played as well as we wanted. And this is the worst schedule ever.
…needless to say, I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust.
Really. Worst schedule ever. Worse than the time the team couldn’t play in the Kingdome and was on the road all year? Worse than last year, when they were trying to make up those missed games in absurd fashion? Substantially worse the Mariner schedules before unbalanced divisional play?
”I’m optimistic, but when you see 15,000 against a division rival, yes, you are disappointed.”
I’m optimistic, but when you see your team squander year after year of great revenues by having the wrong people spend that money on the wrong things, yes, I’m disappointed.
Jeez.
The most vocal portion of the Mariners’ fan base has long advocated changes at the top, specifically targeting general manager Bill Bavasi and, somewhat less often, manager John McLaren.
That’s only because McLaren hasn’t been around that long.
”There’s a fine line with patience,” he said. ”We already made moves (Clement and Balentien) to address the problems. Maybe those moves will come back to bite us. We don’t know.
“the problems” being.. two of them? I’m not sure how to read that. Does he really think that’s a complete solution to all the problems? I’m probably being too critical.
”But we made the moves in a considered manner with everybody involved. And I remember that last year at this time people were talking about making a move with Raul Ibanez. We stuck with him, and it paid off.
Who was advocating “a move” with Ibanez at this time last season? Seriously, I’m drawing a blank here. Was it me? I don’t think that was me.
If there was, though — shame on you, stupid people, talking about making a move with Ibanez, who was injured and concealing it and absolutely sucked. How dare you talk about making a move for such a selfless leader who gets injured and conceals it so that the team can’t figure out what’s wrong and stupidly keeps running him out there so his injured self looks terrible. How dare you! Don’t you know he’s injured?
Now, if you remember, at this time last year, there were people advocating that all kittens and puppies should suffer horrible, gruesome fates too terrifying to even detail here. But we persevered, and today those puppies and kittens are all living happy, fulfilling lives, letting doubles skip on past them in left field, and giving great post-game interviews.
People may ask “what do you expect Armstrong to say? He’s the president, after all.”
And I would respond here’s what I’d like Armstrong to say: “They’re right to be dissatisfied. We’ve tried to put together a contender this year, and we’ve gotten off to a bad start. I understand that it’s a mid-week night game, and it was cold, too. I appreciate the fans that did come out to see the team, and I’m sorry we put on such a poor showing.
“I still think the team is a lot stronger than we’ve shown so far, particularly with Bedard and Putz returning from injuries. I expect we’ll play much better from here on out and hopefully we’ll be able to make up the ground we’ve lost.”
And that’s probably not far off what Armstrong would like to say, but here — and you see this in Lincoln’s statements, too — what he actually says is steeped in the organization’s long-standing contempt for their customers, who here are irrationally concerned about the chances of a team with the worst record in the AL, a team they were assured was going to make a run at it.
I hate that. It does as much to turn me off as the losing, as irrational as that is at times, knowing that my ticket dollars support an organization that can’t even pretend to understand and sympathize with entirely reasonable fan sentiment.
Five Days
This will sound overly dramatic, but it’s simply a realistic assessment of where this team stands – the Mariners have exactly five games to save the 2008 season. If they don’t perform well between now and Sunday, the rest of the year will simply be playing for second place, because the hole will be too large to overcome. They have five home games against below average teams, starting with Bedard and Felix to close out this series.
If the Mariners don’t win three of the next five games, they can cash in their chips and go home. The deficit would just be too large to believe that anything short of a miracle could cause them to win the division.
With the Angels and A’s both off to strong starts, you have to set the bar for minimum wins required at 93. It would take some historic collapses by both clubs for the division winner to finish with less than 92 wins, especially considering how well they’ve both played through the first five weeks of the season. So, the M’s target has to be 93+ wins.
If they go 2-3 to finish out this homestand, that would put them at 16-23 with 123 games to go. In order to finish the year with 93 wins, they’d have to play .626 baseball, a 77-46 mark. This team is just not capable of playing that well. Very few teams are, and this is certainly not one of them. If they can go 4-1, they “only” have to play .608 baseball the rest of the year – very freaking hard, but at least within the ream of possibility.
Two wins or less and it’s pull the plug time. The season will officially be over, and they can start shopping the veterans around and setting up the interview list for the new front office and management staff. Three wins keeps the team on life support, with a faint chance of contending still hanging by a thread. Four or five wins gives them a little bit of life as they head out on the road next week.
But they’re at a crossroads. Finish this week strong or fold your tents, because the rest of the year is a waste of time if they can’t beat the Rangers and White Sox at home with the season on the line.
15,818
That’s announced attendance and not actual turnstile count. So 15,818 fans didn’t see the game in person.
Why? A couple things come to mind:
– it’s cold, and more and more people are catching on that Safeco Field night games early in the season are really unpleasant.
– the M’s, for all the talk about this year being a contention year, were way under .500 and way back in the division, which makes the sales pitch not that much different than other recent years
– they were playing the Rangers, who have a bad record (like the M’s) and have been bad for years, so there’s not a lot of rivalry or divisional interest there either
– uninspiring pitching lineup
If I’d had season tickets, I’d have been trying to move or exchange for a future matchup. This is the kind of game it used to be really hard to convince my wife to go to, because she had good sense (“Ryaaaan Fraaaaaaaanklin? Uhhh…. I couuuuuuuuld goooo…”)
This isn’t all that far off previous season lows, especially the last few years, where they’ve had mid-week night games in the cold draw poorly. It happens. I have no doubt that as we’ve seen before, the stadium will fill up when the weather gets better.
But it is a new low, a benchmark for how fickle their fans have become and how few the most dedicated are.
Dave on KJR
We’re doing the KJR gig today at 1:50, since I was a little busy proposing yesterday and all.
An Update
A few months ago, I put up a post mentioning that my girlfriend was running a marathon in Alaska this June to raise money for leukemia and lymphoma research. Well, I wanted to give you guys a couple of updates.
First off, she stands all of $13 away from her goal of $5,000, and you guys were a huge part of that, giving almost $2,500 in a day. She was overwhelmed by your generosity, and both her and I can’t thank you guys enough for being willing to give to a great cause. Thank you.
And, as a further update, she’s actually not my girlfriend anymore. As of yesterday, she’s now my fiancee`. I proposed in front of Elk Falls in the mountains of North Carolina, and her response was “Are You Serious?”. Apparently, even when dating a blogger, it’s hard to imagine that they’ll ever actually propose. She did say yes once the shock wore off, at least.
We’re probably headed towards an October or November wedding, which means that I’m officially rooting for the Mariners to not win it all this year. Feel free to suck eggs and not be playing meaningful baseball this winter, fellas. You have my permission.
Game 33, Rangers at Mariners
7:10. Both teams 13-19. Huh. Who woulda thunk it?
Millwood (who, as Sims noted last night, it seems like we’ve seen pitch against the M’s waaayyy too many times) v Washburn. Lineups when I get ’em.
Update: Huh, interesting. Sexson at 5, and Betancourt moves up to 7 behind Clement with Balentien at 9. I wonder why they’re moving Betancourt up from 9?
On sunk costs, the value of wins, and the course of the season
Today’s earlier post veered frighteningly fast from my “here’s a good thing that’s happened” to “blow the team up aieeeeee!”
Which was a little disconcerting for me. But it took an interesting turn late into sunk costs, with a comment about, as I understand it, a box with contents almost everyone would find disappointing.
As fans, we’re in a really strange spot for what to hope for.
Uncontroversial tenets:
Not a lot of faith that the team’s going to compete
We know the team is great at marketing and has huge amounts of revenue and a sweet stadium deal that allows them to print money
Ownership that is not particularly savvy and isn’t interested in getting with the program, if you will
A front office that reflects that philosophy
A front office that isn’t particularly good at talent evaluation, but pretty good at drafting and player development
Which leads to a whole other spiral: you don’t want anyone fired if you can reasonably believe that their replacements will be worse (and I really do think that Bavasi & Co are as forward-thinking and talented as we’re likely to get hired under Lincoln’s stewardship). Then what?
If you think they’re totally incompetent, you don’t want them to tear the team down because they’ll never recover from the funk. And even if they tore down, who would they trade, and why should you think they would get anything worthwhile back? But then again, they were pretty good at losing there before, and player development pretty much saved their butts… and you don’t want them to go for it, because they’ll trade the rest of the team for the wrong veteran reinforcements. Even if they rally, keep it close, that’ll just extend the current regime’s reign. And playoffs? This punchless, no-field team with a shaky pen’s going to have a hard time getting anywhere even if they do luck into it, but their berth will get everyone even longer contracts.
Really, if you believe that the people running the team are totally incompetent, there’s no course of action you want to happen except a team sale and house cleaning.
Your fandom, not the off-season acquisitions, are the sunk cost.
Still, I’d like to talk for a second about something Dave and I wrote about repeatedly during the worst of the losing years: there’s no need for a Cleveland-style rebuilding. There’s no need for the team to blow everything up and lose 100 games for a few years. There’s a huge reason for them not to: while as a borderline obsessed fan I might willingly trade years of terrible teams for a World Series title, the team’s financial viability and fanbase depends on winning games. People who come to see the team and watch the M’s lose over and over stop coming to games.
Others have done a lot of research into what drives a team’s marketing reach, and we find that it’s a team’s success over years that brings in the TV deals, keeps the turnstiles going, and so on. It’s worth winning 76 games instead of 72, and it’s worth winning 72 over 68, because unless you get the #1 or #2 draft pick, it’s not that big of a deal.
Or to put it more bluntly, a win is probably worth $2m to the M’s. Probably more. Winning keeps the revenue coming.
To tie that back in, look at the rest of the season. The M’s are unlikely to make a playoff run at this point. Do you, as many people have advocated, tear it all down?
I don’t see the point. For many of these guys, the M’s don’t have internal replacements and it’s hard to see who’s going to trade them enough prospects in return. There’s value in giving playing time to young prospects if you’re trying to develop them, or sort out how they fare against major league competition. If they’re all organizational fodder with no long-term future, it doesn’t help anyone (except the fodder, who get delicious service time).
Take Beltre. Beltre, as Dave’s argued, is a fine value when weighed against his competition, even as he’s generally slagged for being a free-agent bust. If you traded Beltre now and stuck Bloomquist out there (or Cairo!) to finish out the season, whoever you received in return would have to be good enough to make up for that loss over their Mariner career. I don’t see who offers that. Better to take his contributions this year and enjoy his play.
And so on, down the roster. Maybe you pull a Beane and try and haul some top-line guys for Bedard, but to who, and when, and what can they offer the M’s that helps in the long term?
Because of the way the team budgets (the “no carry-over” accounting method) there’s almost no point even in trading Sexson. Saved salary doesn’t benefit you next year, so unless you can make an improvement on the field now, you might as well pay him.
It’s no good to argue that the M’s should trade their vets for good prospects. That’s all fine and dandy. But on any serious consideration, it becomes extremely hard to imagine reasonable scenarios where the players the Mariners have on hand that have trade value would get them the blue chip prospects they’d need to get in return.
And similarly, I’d argue that even if the M’s have a 10% chance at the playoffs, there’s no reason not to keep working towards improving the team. Ibanez is still a huge defensive liability — if they had a chance to upgrade left field and move Ibanez to DH… whoops, Clement’s there now. My point is that there’s no reason for this team to ever give up wins, much less seasons. I for one would much rather see a .500 team playing interesting baseball late in the season without a shot at a division title than I would a torn-down team patched with more Cairo-style acquisitions to patch newly created holes from trading off players they don’t have replacements for.
If you think the team’s run by incompetents, there’s no course of action short of a Politburo-style purge by a new leader that won’t make your skin crawl, so your skin’s going to be crawling. Sorry.
If you think they’re about as good as we’re going to get right now, we have to accept that and draw our enjoyment from what we can (Ichiro! Felix Day and so forth).
And a sign of hope, too
Steve Nelson made this comment late in the discussion of Dave’s post:
But, but .. this is team carefully assembled with a core of gritty veterans who know how to play the game. The kind of players who don’t panic and get thrown off when things don’t go right. The kinds of players who know how to do the little things to win games.
That the Mariners handily beat their Pythag record last season wasn’t a fluke; it was the direct product of filling the roster with players of character, integrity and veteran savvy. [/sarcasm]
I think the current team situation directly relates to perceptions of last years team. Many fans, and apparently the Mariners FO as well, believed that last year’s team was a valid contender (or almost contender) – that the record at the end of 2007 was a true reflection of the ability of the team. Buying into that notion leads directly to the conclusion that if a few holes are patched (primarily in the rotation) the team is a true contender. Clearly, that’s the way the FO saw the team last winter. I’ve mentioned in several posts over the last several months that the I think the FO viewed the 2007 season as vindication for their thoughts about roster construction, viz. that a roster assembled with the proper intangibles will outplay their true talent level – said team will win more than their “fair share†of games because the will do the things needed to win games and will play as greater than the sum of the parts.
This season can be viewed as a test of that notion. Many here (myself included) saw that belief as a misperception; the Mariners were not as good as their record and that they Pythag record was a better indication of the teams true talent level. I will gladly eat crow if I am wrong, but so far this season would seem vindication.
I heartily agree on most counts, and we’ve talked about a lot of those issues and the differences in how we viewed the team and how the front office viewed this year’s team coming into the season.
But we need to point out that something interesting just happened in the Wilkerson move: they recognized a problem, adjusted, and they did it early. We can certainly argue over whether or not it was the right move, but just a few years ago they were clinging to the belief that Carl Everett would turn it around any day now (depressing fact: Everett’s 2006 line would be a dramatic improvement over Vidro this year, or, unfortunately, Johjima) much later into the season. The offense was struggling, and they did something about it.
Sure, they may have gone into this season with unreasonable expectations of building from an 88-win season and decided to go for it, but at least we’ve seen they’re not looking at the roster with blinders on. If we take nothing else away from that, we should be happy that they’re not letting that initial assumption blind them to the glaring problems they face right now.
Now, whether that leads to trading the remaining prospects for proven veteran relievers, that’s a whole other topic.
Season Salvaging Time
It’s May 4th, and believe it or not, the Mariners season is on the verge of extinction. They currently stand six games behind the Angels (who are winning 4-2, which would push the deficit to six and a half games) with 130 games to play. That sounds like a lot of time until you realize just how large of a hole that really is.
To win the division, the Mariners would have to outplay both the Angels and A’s by a significant margin. To put some context to this, here are the winning percentage pairs from here on out that would lead to the M’s ending up with just one more win then Los Angeles (ignoring the A’s for right now), ranging from 89 wins to 95 wins for the Mariners.
Angels – .527 – Mariners – .585
Angels – .535 – Mariners – .592
Angels – .543 – Mariners – .600
Angels – .550 – Mariners – .608
Angels – .558 – Mariners – .615
Angels – .566 – Mariners – .623
Angels – .574 – Mariners – .631
The Angels have played .594 baseball through their first 32 games without John Lackey or Kelvim Escobar and with Vladimir Guerrero off to the worst start he’s had in years. Even assuming they aren’t going to get Escobar back this year, Lackey takes a while to regain his previous form, and Guerrero doesn’t rebound all the way back to his prime levels of production, it’s still hard to see this Angels team playing much worse than .550 baseball the rest of the way.
A .550 winning percentage is an 89 win pace over a full season, and that’s about what I expected the Angels to finish with before the year started. If the Angels playing .550 ball from here on out, they’ll finish with 91 wins, and the Mariners would have to play .608 baseball to end the year at 92-70. No team has played a full season of .608 baseball or better since the 2005 White Sox and Cardinals won 99 and 100 games respectively.
It’s really freaking hard to play .608 baseball for any sustained period of time, even if you’re a truly excellent team. And let’s be honest, this Mariners team isn’t excellent. For a team of this quality to play .600 ball for five months is almost unheard of.
So, the M’s simply have to start winning, and doing so soon. They need to beat up on Texas, the White Sox, and the Padres, who they play their next 13 games against. They need a 9-4 or 10-3 stretch to make up some ground or else it just becomes too prohibitive to think they can close this gap.
It’s May, but it’s getting late for the Mariners. They don’t have any more time to struggle. They have to start winning, and they have to start tomorrow.