Quick self-promotion
Check out this (free) column of mine at Baseball Prospectus on how to become a fan favorite. See if you can count all the Mariner references that snuck in there.
Game Report, Rays over M’s 9-0
Overheard at the ballpark, 8-24-2004: the Ripkin-Costner story, which won’t die
Best crack of the night: Jason, when Bloomquist came up as “Rock You Like A Hurricane” played: “Hurricane? He’s not even a small craft advisory.”
First, the Mariners brought out their stupid beer-garden destroying stands for this homestand. I have no idea why. It’s not as if they needed the capacity, or there’s a marquee matchup this week. Why the team would destroy one of the only unique and cool things about the stadium in order to sell — what, 12 tickets? — is beyond comprehension. Attendance was announced at 34,000, but again, that has to be either sales (as opposed to gate) or a galling lie.
Second, and I’m going to be totally blunt about this —
anyone who thinks scorekeeping isn’t an issue isn’t watching games at Safeco. I’m entirely serious here: when we argue about the importance of runs versus unearned runs, and the issue of scorer subjectivity comes up, that is really important. Tonight there were several plays that should have been errors and in one case *was* an error where the scorekeeper made a different call.
For example: man on third. Jacobsen fields a weak hit to him and stares down the runner at third, who isn’t going but is clearly jerking Jacobsen around. Meanwhile, Boone doesn’t break to cover first but instead takes his time getting there. When Jacobsen finally turns to get the runner, Boone’s not there and… runner safe.
What do you score that?
I score it an error on Jacobsen. There was an out to be made and he didn’t make it. You could even argue an error on Boone for not getting there in time, which might have made up for it, but I think it’s an error on Jacobsen.
You might even argue it’s a fielder’s choice. With no runner on, it’s an out, with the runner on third, something happened… maybe.
What it’s not is an infield single. Which is what it was scored. My scorebook has two more errors than the official count. You can say that scorekeepers don’t score errors on plays that deserve them but certainly don’t score errors on plays that don’t deserve them, thus consistenly moving the bar one direction. And I would say “bah” to you, because that’s crazy. The Safeco Field scorer is so parsimonious with his errors you’d think he had to pull them out of his own wallet.
Madritsch had a great changeup I think may have been the best pitch of the game, thrown with the same arm motion and everything, but it came out at seventy-something and left batters trying to slow their swing while moving the bat out… it was nice.
So here’s my question to you, dear reader: what’re the Mariners going to call those awful seats that destroy the beer garden?
Outfield View Reserved?
Select Outfield View Bleacher?
Garden Club Outfield Centerfield View Box?
And where are they going to stick the next set of seats, and how will they manage to mess up something cool about the stadium?
Selling tickets to the Bullpen Pub
Building a stand of seats over the bullpens
Selling standing room only tickets (this *will* happen if we ever get to the playoffs again and advance)
Grrr.
Oh, Kazmir! Looked shaky. Throws fast. Some of his stuff looked good, some… not so good. He certainly wasn’t a flame-throwing, batter-roasting phenom, but his motion looked pretty smooth (note: my seats don’t have a particularly good view for judging that). He threw a lot of pitches. Looked much less comfortable with men on than with the bases clear, but then, that’s working from the stretch for you.
Ouch
So this is what we’ve become. When talking to a friend of mine about the promotion of Scott Kazmir for tonight’s game, he replies:
Perhaps they just wanted to avoid those tough Southern League lineups and let him face inferior competition this time around.
I had no reply. We’re now being mocked by Devil Ray fans. This may be the low point in franchise history.
Carlos Delgado
One thing that amazes me when I talk to folks about the upcoming offseason is that there are still so many people who want the Mariners to pursue Carlos Delgado. Frankly, to me, he’s one of those players with enough red flags to attract half of Spain. I can’t imagine any realistic scenario where I’d offer Delgado a multi-year contract, especially not at the money he’s going to ask for. A quick 2004 comparison.
Delgado
.241/.346/.476
League Average 1B
.263/.344/.442
Jacobsen
.303/.379/.550
Delgado is a lot closer to B than C this year.
First baseman with knee problems do not age well. Delgado is already showing signs of decline and health issues, and at age 32, it’s more likely that this decline is the beginning of the end than an aberration that he’ll recover from. Even before this season, the prospects of signing Delgado to a multi-year contract and having it work out looked dim. BP’s PECOTA system projected Delgado to tail off significantly starting this year. He has been worth about 6 wins above replacement each of the past three years and was coming off a career best season, and PECOTA still pegged him as likely to produce just 4.7 wins over replacement this year, 3.6 next year, 2.8 in 2006, 2.1 in 2007, and 1.6 in 2008. Based on that projection, before his poor season and injury are factored in, you don’t want to be paying more than about $7 million to Delgado next year, $5.5 million in 2006, and $4.5 million in 2007. You probably don’t want to be signed up for his 2008 season at any price. And the projection after factoring in his poor 2004 season is going to be significantly more negative. Anyone think Carlos is going to sign a 3 year, $18 million contract with decreasing salaries this offseason? Me either.
Certainly, I don’t expect Delgado to hit .240 for the rest of his career, but I can’t imagine any scenario where I’d rather be paying Delgado $10 million per year than Bucky $300,000. Delgado and Magglio Ordonez (with his chronic serious knee issues) are two big name free agents that the Mariners need to run far, far away from.
Meche redux
There’s a lot of good stuff from the contributors in the comments on the Meche thread from last night. I was a bit surprised at how resounding the support for Meche was, with every single person chiming in that they feel he’ll be worth $2+ million next year. I don’t think it’s quite so clear cut, but I do agree that he’s shown enough to at least warrent a contract tender.
It appears that there is little concern for Meche’s future health, which to me is still a significant factor. The history of pitchers recovering from labrum surgery is downright terrible, and Meche is basically blazing a new trail here. He was worked pretty hard last year, and I can’t see any reason to commit to him for more than a year at a time. Meche’s injury history scares me enough where I’m not sure I’ll ever be in favor of giving him a multi-year contract. As such, I don’t necessarily view him as any long term solution to the franchise’s pitching situation like some apparently do. Even in the best case scenario, where he has figured it out and pitches well the next two years, the M’s will then have to either let him walk or commit a lot of money over a lot of years to keep him around. With no prior cases of how labrum recoverers age, this would basically be a guess and a prayer, and considering the volatility of pitchers anyways, it’s probably not one I’m comfortable making.
I just don’t see that many ways that Meche can help this club in the long term. As such, I would support moving him if the Mariners could get talent in return. And by talent, I don’t mean Brandon Inge.
Tonight only! Kazmir Kazmir Kazmir!
If you’ve been slacking off on your Mariner-watching lately, what with the Olympics and all (and I have greatly mixed feelings about the Olympics, but that’s beside the point) , tonight’s a good one to tune into, even if only for the first couple of innings. We get young super-prospect Kazmir starting for the Devil Rays, who stink in an entirely different way than the M’s do, and Madritsch for us. Now, did the Mets abandon Kazmir because Rick Peterson saw something in him that doomed his chances for future success? I’m looking forward to going to the game tonight, and I’ll be honest — that hasn’t been the case for many matchups this year.
Gil Meche
I’m going to take advantage of our new fangled comments to start a discussion on Gil Meche. I was thinking about posting my thoughts, but I’ll hold off for now. I want to hear what you guys think. I really don’t have a good feel for the majority opinion on him.
Obviously, we’ve all been indoctrinated by the “Gil Meche has all-star stuff” doctrine, which I’m not sure I agree with, but most people have bought full force. It appears to me that most folks think his problems are almost all mental, and once he “learns how to pitch”, he’s going to be a frontline major league starter. The fear of letting him go seems very high.
So, what do you guys think? The M’s have to offer him arbitration in two months, meaning he’ll make a minimum of $1.9 million next year, and possibly more. Do you spend the $2 million to bring him back and hope he turns a corner next year, or use his stuff as trade bait and let someone else try to get him to live up to the hype?
AquaSox 6, Volcanoes 3
As I mentioned in my last post, I caught Everett’s win tonight. My real reason for going up there was to get an interview with Matt Tuiasosopo for the September issue of the Grand Salami, but I’m always happy to catch a game as well. I arrived about 4:40pm, and it was raining pretty hard. I checked in at the office to see if the game had been called already, and either way, if I could perhaps sneak in the interview before the players either needed to take BP or were told to go home.
Amy Randall, Everett’s media relations guru, told me the players were still around, waiting for the weather to clear up so they could take BP. She radioed up to another team employee to check on Tuiasosopo’s availability. Word comes back that manager Pedro Grifol has given me until 4:45 to complete the interview… or less than five minutes. I am to meet Tuiasosopo outside the clubhouse. Now, if you’ve ever been to Memorial Stadium you know that it doesn’t have clubhouses. In an arrangement you’d only find in minor league baseball, the players get dressed at the high school next door, then walk down to the stadium for games. For me, this meant I was roughly one block away (up hill) from my target with less than five minutes to make the walk and complete the interview.
Fortunately, he wasn’t outside waiting for me when I got up there. He emerged, along with most of the team, a few minutes later, presumably from some sort of team meeting. I introduced myself, we shook hands, and I conducted the interview. When Grifol and a team employee (presumably the guy Amy radioed earlier) started giving me the evil eye, I knew it was time to wrap things up. You can read the interview for yourself in next month’s Salami.
On to the game, which began on time and was played without delay thanks to the rain letting up about 5pm.
Upon arriving in the press box, I was greeted by the following:
I was also told that Misters Gillick and Bavasi might be in attendence. They never did show up, but I just read in our comments that Bavasi was in Tacoma instead. Mr. and Mrs. Pelekoudas were no-shows as well.
Nothing says fun like Western night at the old ballpark!
The managers exchange lineups and go over the ground rules with the umpires (yup, you’re seeing things correctly — only two umps in the Northwest League).
Matt Tuiasosopo takes his hacks in the on-deck circle.
The writer for a certain paper, which shall remain nameless, spend the entire game playing hearts on his laptop, surfing the ‘net or playing games on his cellphone.
The first 1,000 kids age 12 and under were given Rafael Soriano bobblehead dolls on their way into the park. After the game I saw a kid in the parking lot playing with his… and wouldn’t you know it, little Rafael’s right arm fell off at the elbow. It was the weirdest thing.
Everett starter Aaron Jensen was considered a pretty hot prospect when he was drafted last year. He fell to the 19th round due to signability concerns, but was considered a high-round pick. From what I saw he has pretty good stuff, though he’s quite erratic. His fastball ranged from 89 to 93 MPH, sitting primarily from 90-92. He also threw a big, overhand curveball which clocked in anywhere from 73 to 77. It was at its best the slower he threw it; when he overthrew it, it stayed up and didn’t break. Jensen also threw some changeups, which registered in the low- to mid-80’s. Finally, he threw a handful (as in, five or six all game) of sliders in the high-80’s. The slider is a new pitch for him this season, and it showed. Overall, he didn’t seem very comfortable with any of his non-fastball pitches. He also fell behind too many hitters by missing with his fastball early, which then didn’t allow him to set hitters up for his off-speed stuff.
I also had my first look at Phil Cullen, a former University of Utah hoops player. For a guy 6-9, he sure doesn’t generate much velocity — his fastball topped out at 84, and more often than not it was 81-82. He has a slow, deliberate motion and threw a ton of curveballs. He wasn’t comfortable at all pitching without a full windup. To be fair, he’s just coming back from a broken arm that has cost him almost two years of pitching.
Dave’s talked about Casey Craig in the past; I was very impressed by his approach at the plate. In his first at-bat, he walked on six pitches without taking the bat off his shoulder once. Next time up, his first swing was on a 2-2 pitch, lined up the middle for a single. Third at-bat, he hammered a 1-0 fastball into right for another single. He went down swinging in the 8th, but not before making the pitcher throw six pitches. He didn’t swing at any bad pitches and saw 18 pitches in his four plate appearances. Not too shabby.
Tuiasosopo isn’t nearly as patient, preferring to swing early in the count. To his credit, he didn’t swing at bad pitches, he just hit earlier in the count. He also drew a five-pitch walk in the 7th. For the game, he finished 2-3 with a pair of singles, a walk and two runs batted in. One positive sign, particularly for a young hitter, is that he likes to hit up the middle and go the other way, as opposed to many young hitters who try to pull everything thrown to them.
The star of the game to me was shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera, who looks like he could play major league defense tomorrow. Come to think of it, so could 2B Oswaldo Navarro. Shortstop, I mean, not second base. Cabrera made a phenomenal play in the 9th, going to his right, then dropping to one knee to play a wicked hop backhanded and up around his head. Without missing a beat, he turned his body — he’s still on one knee, mind you — and threw a perfect strike from deep at short to nail the runner by two steps. Navarro and Cabrera also combined on a couple of extremely fluid double plays. Good defense is fun to watch.
Time to wrap this up… it’s absolutely pouring outside right now. Woo! I’ve missed the rain!
I agree
I’ll echo what Dave said — bravo to Derek and USSM v2.0. We’ve come a long way, baby.
I braved the elements tonight (well, Saturday, which is really last night, but hey, I’m still awake so it’s still today) to watch the Aquasox beat Salem-Keizer 6-3. Good game. I’ll post a full report here in a bit (pictures too! it was Western Night at the ballpark!), assuming I can figure out this new interface and the baby decides to sleep for another hour.
Hey, also, I made a few edits to the Big Board. Primarily I fixed a few incorrect links — major league players who still had minor league links and the like.
Naked and Famous
How’s this for cool: while I was working on site migration tonight, I was listening to the Presidents of the United States of America. Now, having called it quits for the night, I find we’re on their links page.
I’m grinning like a moron.