Call up Curto
(oh, you knew this was coming)
Two unrelated facts:
– Many people don’t like half of the Mariner play-by-play announcers (three if you include Ron Fairly’s occasional time filling in)
– Mike Curto does the Tacoma Rainiers broadcasts, and he’s awesome
You can improve the quality of the broadcasts you watch and complain about (fans of other teams: you too, though frankly if you get him, I’m going to be tiiiicked).
We’ve given Curto much respect in this space before, so I’ll be brief. Curto calls a straight game. There’s not a lot of embellishment, no false suspense, no insincere excitement. And I don’t mean that it’s boring — it’s exciting when the play is exciting. But you’re not going to hear Curto putting a lot of mustard on the call for a routine pop-up to second.
Curto’s game feels a lot like having someone smart describe the game over a cell phone to you, which is why it’s almost jarring sometimes when he does the Geico ads. It’s like if my mom called me and said “by the way, Derek, after you talk to Grandma, give your local Farmer’s agent a call…”
One of his strengths is part of the problem: appreciation of Curto’s broadcasts comes on the second game. He’s a preperation freak, and his between-pitch isn’t repeating the last play, it’s more information in the service of making the game more interesting, providing history and context. His game is deep. It means that a tape of Curto’s call might not blow away a major league team because the work is not flashy. But you will be smarter for having listened to it. He’s stat-saavy without being obnoxious about it, and he understands the scouting and can argue intelligently about playing the hot hand (Curto says “yes”). He does the team-marketing part of the job (don’t thrash players) without being obnoxious about it, and even there the depth of knowledge can make the point without it having to be called out directly that a player’s got no idea what he’s doing up there at the plate.
I’ve been trying to think about a good baseball player analogy, and here it is — Curto’s like a Todd Helton, who isn’t out being exciting and stealing bases, but knocks out at a hit or two a day, and by the end of the year, there’s no question you’d want Helton over that guy who had a hot start and stole 30 (and got caught 20 times).
Here’s what you can do if you agree and want to hear better broadcasts:
– Write the Mariners. Email or snail (Seattle Mariners, Safeco Field, 1250 First Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98134) . Tell them you’ve listened to Curto (please, listen to Curto first) and you were impressed. Be specific. I’d suggest that you not flame current announcers, but instead focus on why you’d like to hear Curto up here. You may want to mention that the mid-year break, when Niehaus traditionally takes a vacation around the All-Star Game, would be a great opportunity to try this.
– Talk to KOMO, same deal. Email, post (KOMO RADIO & TV, 140 Fourth Ave. North, Seattle, Washington 98109)
– Attempt to move the Fox monolith. Only contact info I’ve found is this uninspiring web form, which likely goes to /dev/null
– Spread the word. I try to post the Rainiers broadcast info here in game thread posts. But listen, and when other people complain about M’s broadcast quality, mention it. The more people that are aware that the Rainiers get a consistently better 1-9 broadcast than we do, the better. Feel free to ask local media figures and outlets why this is.
– You might even Talk to the Rainiers(contact page). I have no idea if this, particularly, would do any good.
I’d also say — this is unlikely to happen soon. But if you do this now, and do it again the next time you’re appalled at the broadcast quality, that starts to pile up.
The worst thing to consider is that if Rizzs takes a job elsewhere or is run over by a bus, there’s a great chance that with no action by the fans, we would get a replacement Rizzs.
If you’re like me, you spend a great deal of your season listening to these games, watching the broadcasts, tracking the progress of your team. Wouldn’t it be nice if that was a pleasant, almost educational experience, instead of one of tolerance and occasional frustration? It can be done.
View from the other side
Patrick Reusse of the Star-Tribune reviews the season opener from the Twin Cities’ perspective. His take:
For one cool Monday afternoon in Seattle, the dollars spent on hitting were more beneficial to the M’s than were those used by the Twins to maintain their pitching.
One afternoon doesn’t mean a lot, of course. Also worth mentioning is that the Mariners’ budget affords them more flexibility to add players than Minnesota’s does. Regardless, Reusse is bearish on the Twins’ lineup.
[T]he Twins — rich in pitching, marginal in hitting — were feeble against Jamie Moyer, the 42-year-old, slop-throwing lefty.
The decision to give full priority to pitching has this downside: It has left the Twins with hitters of limited experience batting second (Jason Bartlett), third (Joe Mauer) and fourth (Justin Morneau), as well as eighth (Michael Cuddyer).
There is another way to look at that, of course: with so many young hitters, there seems to be significant room for the Twins to improve. Whether this is the year that any one of them takes an offensive leap forward is uncertain, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this team got better offensively as the season went on.
Recall, too, that Justin Morneau is still getting his strength back after having virtually every illness known to humans this offseason. Unless he gets the hydrophobia, and they have to shoot him like Old Yeller, he’ll hit.
Perhaps the most entertaining part of the article is this quote from Jacque Jones:
“After Moyer, even Eddie looked like he was throwing gas,” right fielder Jacque Jones said.
I bet Jones gets a hot foot or a pie in the face from Eddie before he leaves town.
First Opening Day!
Luke attended his second baseball game today (for some reason, people always seem surprised that he attended his first at just one month old — as if I’d allow my son to have missed the night Jay Buhner was inducted into the M’s Hall of Fame). But it was his first opener, so that’s a big deal. He cried when Richie Sexson hit his second homer of the game; got a bit too loud there for a minute. Other than that he had a great time, and certainly got more out of it than his first game, when he mostly just slept. We employed a “sit for one inning, walk around for one inning” plan that kept him pretty happy. There’s a picture of us after the “more” link.
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Holding back King Felix
Alan Schwarz has a long piece in the latest Baseball America on Felix Hernandez which I’ll link to even though it’s subscriber-only.
The particularly interesting bit is that a decent chunk of the article, and Bryan Price comments specifically on this, is that they want to make sure the King Felix is mentally ready for success in the major leagues. Price at one point says “We do need to take the prep time to say ‘Look, you do really need to stay grounded here.’ And we do need to put somewhat of a barrier around him so he doesn’t get influenced in a negative way.”
I don’t know, of course, what kind of risks there are involved with Felix, or with any other player, and you really never know with anyone what’s going to happen when their lives change so dramatically.
It cheers me greatly to know that the Mariners are thinking about this, though, and trying to make sure he’s ready for the big leagues in more ways than whether or not he can blow a pitch by a batter. Whether it works, or whehter they’re even right — who knows. But I’m happy they’re considering it.
Bad day for the minor leaguers
Okay, its officially been released, so here’s the news:
Jose Lopez out 4-6 weeks with a broken hamate bone.
Ryan Anderson and Rett Johnson have been released from the organization.
Damian Moss, Ryan Christianson, Troy Cate, Renee Cortez, Omar Falcon, Jesus Guzman, Billy Hogan, and Darwin Soto have been suspended for failing steroid tests. Soto was subsequently released.
Opening Day Running Diary
What better day than Opening Day to continue the running diary tradition?
Stuck at the computer doing some writing, I’ll offer occasional observations during the course of the game. Others may well drop by and offer their thoughts as well.
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Big Board (sorta)
There’s a new Big Board up, but don’t get too excited — it’s only accurate at the major league level, as we don’t yet have rosters for the minor league clubs. So please, no complaints about minor leaguers or where they’re placed. (I will take complaints in the comments about bad links, guys who aren’t really left-handed, stuff like that.) It’ll all get updated again this week when rosters are announced. I did want the majors to be ready for Opening Day, however, so here you go. Oh, and remember to hit refresh after you open the page or you’ll probably be looking at the old version. No complaints about that, either.
Added later: Hey, the sun’s even coming out for the game!
Added Tuesday: We’re getting close, folks. All these suspensions (and injuries) have forced the M’s to move minor leaguers around, so they’ve been delayed in getting rosters out. I do have a Tacoma roster, a partial Wisconsin roster and what I believe to be a Inland Empire roster. Shouldn’t be more than another day or two before it all falls into place.
Opening Day
It’s finally here. Just a little over five hours til the 2005 baseball season kicks off for the M’s.
Hooray. Go M’s.
Moves aplenty
We’re down to 25, which is good, seeing as the season starts tomorrow. This Times article has all the scoop, but I’ll summarize here:
So the opening day roster is as follows…
Catcher (2): Olivo, Wilson
Infield (7): Beltre, Boone, Bloomquist, Dobbs, Sexson, Speizio, Valdez
Outfield (4): Ibanez, Reed, Suzuki, Winn
Starters (4): Madritsch, Meche, Moyer, Sele
Relievers (8): Franklin, Guardado, Hasegawa, Mateo, Nelson, Putz, Thornton, Villone
Yes, I’ll have a new Big Board up this week. I’m waiting for Derek to tweak something at the techie level before that can happen.
Wilson Valdez
Claimed by the M’s today, in their attempts to acquire every scrub on the waiver wire. When I first heard the name, I thought, “Why would the Dodgers waive Wilson Alvarez? He’s been pretty good the last two years, is left-handed and doesn’t make much money.” Then I moved on and thought of Wilson Delgado, the middle infielder who’s managed just 542 at-bats over a ten-year career. But no, it wasn’t him either, although Delgado probably isn’t a bad comp — they’re both no-hit middle infielders, though Valdez is six years younger.
Anyway, this is the guy they picked up today. He’s now been waived three times in his career, and another time was traded for Billy Koch. Quality player here, folks. I suppose the positive is his career .302 batting average at AAA, but it’s a pretty empty .300 (.340 OBP, .368 SLG). Oh, and he has ten homers in 2422 professional at-bats.
To make room on the 40-man, Rafael Soriano was placed on the 60-day DL. Keep in mind, they still need to make room for Jeff Nelson and Aaron Sele… as Dave mentioned yesterday, they’ve done a pretty good job bungling the roster lately, and they’re not quite done yet.