Updated Draft Board
The 2005 Draft Board has been updated. The changes aren’t dramatic, but there is some movement in the top five, and I have updated the statistics for each of those players. For those who really don’t like clicking on links, the top five are Gordon, Upton, Maybin, Hochevar, and Drew, in that order.
This is a great thread to bombard with draft questions. I’ll be around for the next hour or so, and I’ll get to the rest tomorrow.
Game 33, Mariners at Yankees
Sele v Wang. 4:05. KSTW.
This has a reaaaal high chance of being a reaaaaal ugly game.
Mariners, World Champions that Weren’t
“The Mariners had Junior, A-Rod, and Randy Johnson, and they didn’t win squat.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that about the Mariners. But I’ve never sat down and taken a serious look at that window, and considered what might have been, and how it could have got there.
The window’s shorter that many people realize. Griffey came up in 1989 and was here through 1999. Randy Johnson came over in 1989, but didn’t ascend to dominance until 1993 and after that was astoundingly good until he was traded in 1998. Alex Rodriguez debuted in 1994 but didn’t play full time until 1996, when he too was insanely good, and he left after 2000.
Two years with those three players: 1996 and 1997. And with Randy out for much of 1996, really 1997 is their shot at it.
In 1996, they went 85-76 and finished second in the AL West by five games.
In 1997, they won the division and the Orioles handed them their ass in the Division Series.
How can a team with those three players putting up Hall of Fame years not win the league and go to the World Series?
Offensively, it’s hard to find something to improve on. The team led the league both years in runs scored per game, and that was legit even given the Kingdome’s effect on offense. They got great production out of Buhner, Edgar and some of their stop-gaps, like Paul Sorrento, worked out pretty well. They juggled a couple of holes (1996: 3B, LF, 1997: LF) but overall, there’s not a lot to criticize here. Sure, there are some dumb what-ifs (sign Barry Bonds in 1993, for instance) we could look at, but generally, scoring runs wasn’t the issue.
The problem, as we know it, was that they had poor pitching. Could that have been fixed?
Yup.
Essentially, the team needed a couple of pitching widgets:
1996: five decent starters. That rotation (Hitchcock-Wolcott-Wagner-Mulholland-Wells) was awful. Randy only pitched in 14 games that year, too. The late-season acquisition of Moyer helped, but this team desperately needed starters.
The bullpen is okay.
1997, though, things change a lot. Jeff Fassero comes on, there’s a full season of Moyer and Randy, and only the 4-5 starters are terrible. The bullpen is awwwwwwwwwwwwwful.
What could the team have done over these two years? I looked for free agents in those years who signed with teams other than their last team. The list of players who could have changed history for the team is short.
Before the 1996 season
Kevin Brown. The deal he signed with the Marlins for 1996-1998 was a steal. His performance in 1996 alone might have swung the division between the Mariners and the Rangers.
Al Leiter. Another part of the huge Marlins rotations, Leiter would have been big in 1996 and filled in the back of the rotation in 97, and then been great again in 1998 which is, again, outside the scope of this exercise.
And that’s all I see, surveying the free agent market before the 1996 season like this.
Those two would have cost the Mariners an immense amount of money to sign. However, headed into the season they would have had an amazing Johnson-Brown-Leiter-crap-crap rotation, where crap and crap don’t make the post-season roster (then Randy drops out, they still trade for Moyer…)
1997 — hey, Albert Belle’s available! That’ll fill the left-field… oooooh.
I like Roger Clemens here. He and Randy instead of Randy and Fassero… man, that’d have been awesome. And Clemens was brilliant in 1997 — that contract worked out really well for Toronto.
But for super-ace relievers, what am I going to say? Picking the crop of these guys even with hindsight is terrible. I mean, there were smart people who thought Mike Henneman was going to be a star for years after 1995. Didn’t happen.
(mmm.. Piazza in 1997, too…)
Here’s what If ound particularly interesting: it wouldn’t have cost them all that much. Leiter and Brown’s salaries for Florida in 1996 added up to $6m.
$6m, and I think they win the division and pound the tar out of every team they face in the playoffs. They spent $4m on Chris Bosio that year and $2.85 on Hibbard.
A little more in there (put Buhner in left, sigh Sheffield, who goes on a tremendous run for another chunk, that’s probably eight games right there over the left field tilt-a-whirl) and it starts to get sick.
The lasting lesson I see is that the great failure of the 90s Mariner teams wasn’t in a failure to develop players, or anything like it. It was the steady adherence to the old M’s Bosio/Hibbard philosophy: attempt to find undervalued modest free agents coming from bad teams.
By itself, this isn’t such a bad philosophy. You want to look for value wherever you can get it. But what it meant to those two teams with the greatest home-grown core was that they were saddled with modestly-priced modest players that then failed to live up to even that expectation. For every success the team had in finding a guy like Paul Sorrento, it failed at another position and sometimes an entire unit.
Which brings me to the failure of strategy. The Mariners of the late 90s were a lot like the Mariners 0f 2004 in that there was not a lot of deep thinking about how to construct a team. There were players they had, holes they wanted to fill, and Lou screaming about needing pitches who could throw strikes.
Bullpens are junk. You can assemble a rag-tag collection of servicable relievers out of organizational floatsam, minor league free agents, and waiver claims. Look at the bullpen today: Putz and Thornton are random dudes, and Sherill could outpitch Nelson. Plus, the risk on investment in the bullpen is so huge (for a number of reasons). I’d much rather put that kind of money in a hitter or a starter.
But back to my point — if you’re the Mariners in 1996, you’re confronted with a rotation that any rational evaluation will tell you is going to be a problem, and a couple position holes. At the same time, the clock’s ticking. While you’re not in Safeco Field yet, even if you figure that Randy will stay through his contract year, you have three seasons. After that, it’s pointless to forecast.
So the miracle season is over.
You face the off-season, and you have:
Randy and then question marks and gaps in the rotation (Benes, Belcher filing for free agency)
A bullpen with some issues.
Some hard choices to make with players like Tino Martinez and Mike Blowers, with teams expressing interest in making trades.
That stupid three-year clock ticking.
This was the great failure of the Mariners, and one we would see again in 2001: with great success and acclaim, the team didn’t look to make massive improvements and try and make choices that would allow them to compete for and win a World Series title for the next few years, or even a year. They shuffled the deck. Blowers to LA for junk. Tino to NY for Russ Davis and junk.
The way that great teams are great is not because of luck and circumstances, though both of those play an important role. It’s that those teams both believe they can be great and are realistic about the challenges they face and so can find solutions to those problems. While I may disagree with some of the choices the Red Sox made last year, they were a great example of this. Every day: “Is this the day I have to make a deal to improve our defense? Do I have to go get a better platoon partner for Trot Nixon? Is it worth it to upgrade defense at first base?”
This is why people screamed about the team’s “ennnhhh, get into the playoffs and luck out” philosophy. If you want to have people walk around on the moon, your goal has to be putting people on the moon so they can walk around. You can’t say “we’re going to put people in orbit and maybe they’ll luck into landing on, walking around on, and returning from the moon”. If your vision and belief in your ability to achieve your goal waver, you may get there, but your chances are greatly diminished.
That’s your 1996-7 Mariners, the World Champions that weren’t. “Will this move make us great?” “I don’t know, but Lou will stop yelling at me about the bullpen for a week.”
Dave’s Game Notes
I wasn’t up to liveblogging the game, so here are my retrospective thoughts from tonight’s affair.
The M’s lack of any kind of right-handed bat on the bench kills them against lefties. Every southpaw gets four guaranteed outs in the lineup every time they face us. Starting Bloomquist in CF isn’t helping anything. Acquiring Beltre and Sexson doesn’t change the fact that the rest of the roster is useless against left handed pitching.
Rick Sutcliffe was awful announcing. I could spend several paragraphs harping on his stupidity, but the open legs = curveball thing was by far the worst. He cherry picked examples to defend his statement, ignoring every pitch where Wiki had open legs and the pitch was a fastball. He took something completely random, proclaimed it a tell, and then proceeded to only point it out when the randomness matched up with his claim.
Robinson Cano’s last name is pronounced “K-no”, by the way. Not “cuh-no”.
Beltre smoked that home run.
Thornton and Nelson are arguably the two worst relievers in the pen. They’re allowing far more baserunners than any other pitchers in the pen, and in a tie game on the road, they’re the ones who get the call? Why? Is there any rationale at all for using Nelson in that situation? How on earth is he a better choice than Putz or Mateo?
Dave Hansen and Jeremy Reed get a DNP-CD, while Greg Dobbs gets to make the final out. I wonder how much Greg Dobbs Is Good Kool-Aid Hargrove had to drink when he got hired.
Willie Bloomquist is now hitting .138/.166/.172. National League pitchers are hitting .141/.174/.175.
Updated Future Forty
A few days later than I had hoped, but the Future Forty has been updated for the month of May. I’ve made a few minor template adjustments to help the overall look of the page.
Not too many drastic changes on the player evaluation side. In general, one month of competition isn’t going to change many opinions, especially when a player has several years of established track record. Some of the notable changes include the removal of Rett Johnson (released), Jesus Guzman (steroids), and Hunter Brown (exposed against Triple-A pitching), plus the addition of TJ Bohn to the list. I’ve dropped two more players than I’ve added, getting the list back down to 40 players instead of the 42 I had during the last update.
I’ve adjusted several of the risk/reward ratings as well, but none drastically. Asdrubal Cabrera and Matt Tuiasasopo each got their risk rating lowered by a point as they’re both pounding Midwest League pitching, while Yuniesky Betancourt went the wrong way in the reward category as he’s been completely overmatched at the plate in the Texas League.
And, as always, this is a great thread for random minor league questions, and I’ll try to answer as many as humanly possible.
#504
It’s been nearly 16 years in the making. And I can’t help feeling just a little inadequate in making this confession as a contributor to this little corner of the interweb-thingy. But here goes anyway.
I witnessed tonight my first live and in-person Junior Griffey home run.
There I said it.
I was there. He led off the 4th. Blast to right-center. No doubt about it. He tied Eddie Murray for 19th on the all-time list.
He also robbed Milton Bradley in the top of that same inning. Back against the “404” sign in dead center, glove just over the wall. He seemed most surprised to find the ball in his glove.
Ex-Mariners on the night:
Junior Griffey – 1-for-3, solo homer, Weaver beaned him his next time up
Rich Aurilia – 0-for-3, two strikeouts, flung his helmet and bat nearly as far as Griffey’s moonshot when he struckout with the bases loaded to end the 6th and the Reds down 5-2
Giovanni Carrera – 1 IP, 2 K (including Griffey) and 1 run on back-to-back hits to Dunn and Randa
Reese, Wilson news
Reese went in for his second opinion with Dr. James Andrews and ended up having surgery. 4-8 weeks is the word.
Wilson’s scheduled to go under the knife on the 20th for his ACL. And then… I guess we’ll see. If he’s back this season it’d be good.
Week #5 in Review
Happy Seis de Mayo!
Vital Signs
As of today the Mariners are 12-16, sitting in last place of the AL West and five games back of the first-place Angels. They’ve scored 114 runs (3rd in the division and 11th in the league). Stop me if you’ve heard this before. They’ve hit 17 home runs (last in both division and league, 2 fewer than the A’s and more than half less than the Orioles’ 40). They have drawn 86 walks (3rd in division; 7th in league, and just as close to last as to 4th in league). Their EqA is .243 (11th in league, and just .002 better than last place Kansas City). But as Dave brought up earlier this week, the Mariners have faced the stiffest pitching of any team in the league over the first four weeks.
Defensivley, the Mariners have allowed 119 runs (2nd in division; 5th in AL). The gloves are gobbling 72.5% of balls in play into outs (2nd in AL). That’s just outstanding.
And again, their record accurately reflects their offensive and defensive contributions.
Not a good week in Marinerland. Not at all. The M’s have hit (no pun intended) a five-game losing skid versus division-mates Oakland and Anaheim. The culprit? How about the offense that slapped .237/.296/.333, had just 12 extra-base hits in 208 at bats and scored 15 runs over 6 games. They haven’t scored any more than 5 runs in a game since Tuesday April 26. And while the case has been made for quality of pitching the Mariners have faced, the five pitchers notching “wins” against the M’s this week include Keiichi Yabu, the pitcher formerly known as Barry Zito, Jarrod Washburn, John Lackey and Paul Byrd.
Heroes
Hmmm… uh… eeny, meeny, miney… Randy Winn? He went 11-for-20 (.550/.640/.700) with 3 doubles and 5 walks. He was the only regular to reach base more than a third of the time. He also contributed a stolen base.
Then there’s the bullpen corps of Jeff Nelson, Shigs Hasegawa, Julio Mateo and Matt Thornton. They combined for 11.1 scoreless innings, allowing just 3 hits, walking 4 and striking out 5.
Not-so-much Heroes
While Winn made only 9 outs for the week, Adrian Beltre made 23, swinging 4-for-27 (.148/.148/.185). Then there’s Miguel Olivo who went hitless in 14 plate appearances, striking in almost half of those.
Following his strongest start of the season, Jamie Moyer was beaten and bruised an Oakland offense that’s struggled to score runs this season. He couldn’t finished the fourth inning and surrendered 10 hits leading to 5 runs. His ERA jumped a full run. The law of averages catches everyone.
Coming to a Stadium Near You
Next up are visits to Fenway and the Bronx. It’s less menacing than it sounds. Pedro Martinez no longer wears red socks. Boston sends Matt Clement, Jeremi Gonzalez and Wade Miller in his 2005 debut. Boston’s offense is third in the league in runs scored, just 3 behind league-leading Texas. Meanwhile, their pitching is middle of the pack.
It just might be that the cure for this anemic offense is a trip to the Big Apple. Only the Devil Rays have surrendered more runs than the Yankees’ pitchers. However, the matchup to watch will be Monday, as Randy Johnson takes the mound. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking this is the Big Unit’s first start against the Mariners. Then again, the Yankees’ offense is every bit as potent as Boston’s.
Unfortuantely, due to time constraints and the fact I’m week away from finals, that’s all I got today.
Go see Felix Friday
Friday the Tacoma Rainiers host the Salt Lake Somethings at 6:05. The Mariners are out of town, why not go see the future of the team?
Two reasons to go to that particular game:
- King Felix starts
- Fireworks night
If I didn’t have to hang around here until it’ll be impossible to get through traffic and make it to Cheney, I’d go.
As always, if you can’t go, I encourage you to listen to Mike Curto do another fine broadcasting job via the Internet or on Fox Sports Radio 850 AM.
Kids’ Baseball Books For Mom’s Day
A college fiction professor of mine was fond of saying that there are really only two stories: someone takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town.
This may explain why I love children’s books. Writing for a younger audience forces authors to strip down narratives to the few essential themes that resonate with all people: be kind to others. Don’t judge on appearances. Always try to learn, try to never hold grudges. Adding to the emotional poignance of these teachings is the fact that we adults seemingly can’t keep them straight ourselves.
When I was working at a local public library, I’d hide and read the kids’ books I was supposed to be shelving. That’s how much a mark I am for the genre. Books aiming at the diaper demographic won’t replace Mody Dick, but quality is quality in my eyes.
Earlier this week, the Wisconsin State Journal listed favorite baseball books for kids. Since Mother’s Day is this weekend, maybe the list will give you an idea for the mom in your life who loves the national pastime, wide-eyed poppets, reading to said youngsters or all of the above.
Two books that I recommend — and just bought for my nieces — have the advantage of regional ties. “Baseball Saved Us” is by Ken Mochizuki, who was raised in Seattle, and you can probably guess what makes “Dear Ichiro” by Jean Davies Okimoto of local interest.
At the same reading level, 4-8 years, are the Journal’s picks: “Luke Goes to Bat” by Rachel Isadora and “Mudball” by Matt Tavares. For a bit older kids, there’s “Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates” by Jonah Winter (5-10) and “Out Standing in My Field” by Patrick Jennings (8-12). Haven’t read any of these, but wanted to link to them: descriptions are available at the first link.
In Babe Ruth’s farewell to baseball speech, he said this: “You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth … [y]ou’ve gotta start from way down [at] the bottom, when you’re six or seven years of age. You can’t wait until you’re fifteen or sixteen. You gotta let it grow up with you.”
It’s the same with reading. Considering how much time I spend devouring things that begin with “http,” I figure anything we can do to bring up the next generation as readers is solid. Buy a baseball book for a mom and kid pair that you care about.