Ouch
Toronto Star columnist Richard Griffin:
Even the struggling Yankees, with all their millions and a frothed-up owner, were not able to change their landscape in a significant manner. Besides, with so many teams still alive, the only teams with any “give up” in them seem to be the Royals  and maybe the Mariners.
Hey, that’s unfair!
Ryan Franklin cares so much that he’s willing to risk having his arms plucked off by Adrian Beltre. Willie Bloomquist cares so much that he stars in those helpful instructional videos you see at the stadium. There’s no “quit” in “Ichiro,” and not just because there is no “Q” in the Japanese language.
Rick the Peanut Guy cares, I am certain.
How can this team have given up? The Jumbotron still plays that “When-the-Germans-Bombed-Pearl-Harbor” clip from Animal House on the rare occasion the M’s are within striking distance late in a game. Rick Rizzs still reminds us in the seventh inning of every 10-1 shellacking that this team never quits.
Didn’t they trade Bret Boone?
The Seattle Mariners are full of young, hungry players eager to prove themselves. Yuniesky Betancourt wants to win so badly he actually tried the hidden ball trick last night. Wiki Gonzales might be the laziest man in baseball, but he’s in Tacoma, so he doesn’t count. And if Matt Thornton didn’t retire after his performance two nights ago, when even Dave Niehaus was openly mocking him, he’s not going to just up and mail in a season.
You might have thought that Mike Hargrove had given up on winning games when he kept starting Scott Spiezio, but … okay, you’ve got me there.
Doyle doesn’t quit. He just breaks. That’s different. Joel Pineiro doesn’t quit, even though I wish he would.
If the Mariners ever do give up during a game, they should do it in style. Give the grounds crew tiny white flags to wave while dancing. Have the Moose start at second instead of Bloomquist. Pencil in a starting battery of Demetrius the Batboy and the Non-Blonde Ballgirl, whom I saw make some nice stops the other night. Or even play Spiezio regularly. Things like that.
This team, though, didn’t slog through decades of grim failure to throw in the towel now. It slogged through those decades to milk countless entertainment dollars from the pockets of people like, well, me.
And that’s not over until I say it’s over. You hear me, Toronto?
Bizarre Hate Triangle: My Take On Beltre-Franklin-Price
After Adrian Beltre, ahem, straightened Ryan Franklin’s collar tonight, Mike Hargrove acted quickly.
The manager informed us that Franklin’s frustration resulted in cross words with pitching coach Bryan Price, who told the hurler to relax. Franklin’s response, according to Hargrove, was “I just bleeping care.” Moreover, he assured the media, the incident was mere piffle, a tempest in a teacup. Read more
Guardado to the White Sox?
Dismayed by the Mariners’ failure to score even four runs against Joe Mays? Flabbergasted that Scott Spiezio got his third hit of the season? Superstitiously ready to suggest that Derek write about Sand Frog in the P-I every week?
Take your mind off of the desperate horrors of todays game with the soothing salve of a new trade rumor. The Daily Southtown reports that Eddie Guardado has apparently cleared waivers, and the White Sox may be looking to add him.
Standard caveats apply, but note that Bill Bavasi and Ken Williams have worked together on major trades before. Also note that Williams isn’t afraid to make a big deal, and that hungry Pale Hose fans are spoiling for their team to do all it can to win this year. After the Freddy Garcia trade, Williams offered the following explanation to Baseball America: “Two words: nineteen seventeen,†Williams said, referring to the last year the White Sox won the World Series. “How many more generations of fans are going to have to wait? I don’t want to wait.’’
To complete washing the shameful loss taste out of our collective mouth, I offer this: Chicago’s got some prospects I’d love to have, including Brandon McCarthy, who the Mariners were reportedly trying to acquire before the deadline.
There are reasons to believe that a deal could happen. While I don’t advocate trading Guardado just for the sake of doing so, a swap that included McCarthy would be well worth completing.
[Bonus grammatical pedantry inside.]
Simmons on King Felix
In the new ESPN Magazine, Bill Simmons writes about our very own King Felix Hernandez. He makes the Dwight Gooden comparison and reminisces about those thrilling summers in the mid-1980s when Gooden was Doctor K. If you haven’t, check it out.
Spiezio on the PI pages
Jim Moore writes a column not on anything related to sports but instead drools over Spiezio’s tattoo of his girlfriend, who, from reading the article, Moore finds quite attractive.
When I asked Spiezio what he liked about Jenn, he said: “What first attracted me to her was her looks. I thought she was going to be stuck up, but she was opposite of what I thought. We have a lot of things in common.”
Yeah, like neither of you can hit major league pitching.
Which brings us to my bit in the PI this week, where I write about how Spiezio isn’t just awful, he is all-time historically awful and has a chance to set some crazy records. Check it out.
Jamie Moyer, circa 2006
From April 30th to May 18th, Jamie Moyer had four starts that were, to be kind, awful:
4/30: 4 2/3 IP, 10 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 1 K
5/6: 3 2/3 IP, 7 H, 6 ER, 3 BB, 2 K
5/11: 2 1/3 IP, 10 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, 2 K
5/18: 5 IP, 8 H, 6 ER, 3 BB, 2 K
For those four starts, his ERA was 12.63 and people were calling for his release. Since May 18th, he’s pitched 102 1/3 innings and posted an ERA of 3.34.
For the season, Moyer’s ERA is 4.20. His Fielding Independant ERA of 4.26 is better than C.C. Sabathia, Brad Radke, Barry Zito, and Jarrod Washburn, among others.
At this point, there should be no doubt that Jamie Moyer should be part of the Mariners 2006 rotation. The man continues to defy age, and his skills are perfectly suited for pitching in Safeco Field. While the team rightfully acknowledges that the rotation needs serious upgrades, the new acquisitions should be replacing Ryan Franklin, Gil Meche, and Joel Pineiro. Jamie Moyer should be back in 2006.
Address
People’ve asked me if we’re going to have some giant letter or card of support that everyone can sign and send to Snelling. I have no plans to do so, or any idea how we’d manage that. If you want to do this on your own, though, please, go right ahead:
Chris Snelling
c/o Seattle Mariners
P.O. Box 4100
Seattle, WA 98194
Doyle’s knee torn, future uncertain
In a grim, honest assessment of his baseball health, Snelling acknowledged that there is “definitely a tear” in his left knee, which he reinjured one week ago at Safeco Field.
…
“Right now, I’m thinking very irrationally,” he said. “I just thought, ‘You know what? I’m tired of this.’ I did everything they told me to do. I was smart about it. I worked hard.”
If you’ve been around reading USSM for a while, you know there’s probably not a bigger booster of his than me. This season I winced early, got so paranoid about injuries that I started to call him by his middle name in public for entirely irrational reasons. And then things started to happen, and I got more and more excited as he hit everything the Pacific Coast League could throw at him, seemingly finally healthy and given the chance, showing that his talent could overcome. When he got the first call, I was overjoyed.
And now even a day after I watched a dominant Felix Hernandez start, I feel some fraction of the disappointment — the despair — that Chris must face. It’s like I’ve been punched in the gut and don’t know what to do. I have, through long and what must look like irrational fandom, become too familiar with these trials, and become more emotionally vested in his career than pure talent or performance or risk analysis would justify.
Much of this comes from my appreciation of his unearthly dedication. Many prospects don’t achieve their projected greatness because they don’t care enough to listen to their coaches, or follow a conditioning program, many of them at the same time cultivating a kind of strange arrogance that sours teams on them. Some of them disappoint us with their off-field conduct.
That’s not Chris, though. Setback after setback, he’s come back the same humble, kinda-weird-in-a-cool way guy. He has a personality, and it comes through that he’s a nice guy, he’s humble but driven, he’s scrappy and tenacious, and maybe he’s even a little weird (or dorky, or whatever you want to call it) and that comes along with his sense of humor.
But this isn’t funny, and I don’t envy him the choice ahead. It’s easy for us to say that he’s going to get over it and get back on the comeback trail, but that’s got nothing to do with it. Just as I dismiss people who mock Rick Ankiel, say, as a head case, having no more idea what kind of immense pressure he’s labored under than they know what went wrong, no one but Chris knows how hard all of this has been on him. The breaks, the tears, what must seem like endless, painful physical therapy, all the time away from his family, the brief stretches of success brought to a close by Fate noticing and coming back around to put him back in rehab again (“Okay, now lift that… does that hurt?” “Yes!” “Good. Do that nine more times.”) and now he faces the same decision he’s made over and over again.
Each time it must be harder to make that same choice to go back to baseball. What’s the point, after all, if the body can’t take it? If his obvious gifts for baseball are paired with a fragility that prevents him from ever fufilling that talent? He’s young, certainly, but he must worry about whether another couple years of this will reduce his ability to live normally the rest of his years, and that’s a decision not to be made lightly either.
I haven’t ever been more depressed about anything in Mariner history, and I’ve talked to other fans who aren’t as huge Cult of Doyle members as I am and they’ve agreed this was a huge blow. These last two seasons it’s been hard to be a fan and carry the torch. The promotion and promise of Doyle and King Felix were more than interesting transactions, or even the ascension of future contributors. It was first light in the morning. If Chris Snelling could come back from everything he’d faced and overcome to make it back to the major leagues after three years of fighting his way back, if Felix Hernandez could stay healthy and step over the corpses of all the pitching prospects who’d fallen before him, then things had to be turning around. I wonder how the universe can apportions karma so unjustly, what kind of a God torments a good dude like that, whether this is some Greek epic where it’s going to take a ten-year journey to get back and stay in the majors, and the next time he heads back to Australia to visit his family his plane’ll be diverted by Sirens.
As a Mariner fan and a Doyle cultist, I hope after the knee surgery he decides to come back and he’s able to become the player I have always had faith he could be.
As a Snelling fan, I’ll understand whatever decision he makes, and I wish him good health and all the best in whatever he chooses to go on and do from this point.
2005 Mariner Playoff Odds tracking
Clay Davenport over at Baseball Prospectus does this odds thing where the computer does a huge number of simulations about who needs to beat who and when to get into the playoffs, and fortunately for us, there’s historical information so we can see the team’s chances decline over time. It’s pretty depressing.
For extra depressingness, check out our divisional rivals: here’s the same odds against the A’s.
Yup.
Holding Court with King Felix
David Schoenfield (Kentridge graduate) writes about Hernandez on ESPN’s Page 2.
I had to watch because I’m a Mariners fan and it’s been a stinking lousy two years. I had to watch because he’ll be a phenom with an unlimited future for only a breath of time. I had to watch because if he were pitching for the Red Sox or Yankees, the stadiums would have melted from the red-hot hype.
But he’s not with Boston or New York. He’s with the Mariners. And I had to watch Monday night because maybe — just maybe — he really is the King who can save my baseball team.
We can hope.