Cactus League Game 7, King Felix vs. Chone Figgins
Felix Hernandez vs. Brian Wilson
It’s hard, even after being without baseball for many months, to really care about spring training games. There’s really not a whole lot of point in trying to, frankly. You know about the stats, and how little predictive value they have. You know that the games are finished by (and sometimes started by) guys will never actually play for Seattle. For those of us not in Arizona, it takes something more specific to really capture the imagination or interest – the young prospect facing big-league hitters, the new shortstop prospect playing on the big club or facing a big-name pitcher.
This game has neither of those things, but it has something better. This game is Manichean. This game features good vs. evil. You can try to tell yourself that games vs. the Yankees, Red Sox or, yes, the Dodgers carry a similar tinge – the scrappy local team facing the titans who are trying to buy a pennant, etc. It feels a bit forced given how much the M’s themselves used to spend, and frankly it’s more fun to laugh at the Yankees aged roster than to get all high and mighty about spending. But this…this is pure.
1: Miller, SS
2: Seager, yay
3: Romero, LF
4: Smoak, 1B
5: Morrison, DH
6: Gillespie, RF
7: Jones, CF
8: Zunino, C
9: Marte, SS
SP: King Felix
Happy Felix day!
Cactus League Games 5+6: Rockies at Mariners, and Mariners at Reds
Blake Beavan vs. Brett Anderson, Erasmo Ramirez vs. Alfredo Simon, 12:05
The M’s split into two groups today to take on Colorado and Cincinnati. The benefits of this baseballing mitosis are several: they get to take a look at two candidates for the 5th starter job (at least until Iwakuma’s back) in one day, and they’re able to showcase Nick Franklin at SS while giving Brad Miller some game action as well. Logan Morrison can play 1B AND Justin Smoak can play 1B.
Courtesy of Shannon Drayer, Kyle Seager’s absence from the line-up now has an explanation: he jammed his finger sliding into 3B in the first game, and should be ready to return to the line-up soon. That’s great news for everyone but Nate Tenbrink.
Peoria Line-up:
1: Almonte, CF
2: Franklin, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Smoak, 1B
5: Hart, DH
6: Ackley, LF
7: Avery, RF
8: Bloomquist, 3B
9: Quintero, C
SP: Beavan
Gooodyear line-up:
1: Chavez, CF
2: Miller, SS
3: Morrison, 1B
4: Montero, DH
5: Saunders, RF
6: Romero, LF
7: Tenbrink, 3B
8: Zunino, C
9: Triunfel, 2B
SP: Ramirez
The game in Peoria will be broadcast on local radio (710am) on delay, but should be streaming live at mariners.com.
Here’s a good article on the fielding system I talked about yesterday by Jack Moore.
The UW Huskies baseball team kicked off baseball at Cheney Stadium this week with a planned four-game set against UC-Davis. They got in three games – one on Friday, and a doubleheader Saturday, before Sunday’s contest was rained out. UW won all three games.
Early Signs from Spring Training + The New Player Tracking System
1: Every year, we all tell ourselves not to read too much into miniscule sample results, and every year we end up talking about them because they seem like a better thing to talk about than “attitude changes” or the “feel of the clubhouse.” Those aren’t scare quotes; those numinous qualities may have more relevance to the 2014 team than Roenis Elias’ fastball velocity, but I have access to one and not the other.
The M’s have played a handful of games, and most all of the encouraging signs from last spring are still present and still tantalizing. Dustin Ackley and Justin Smoak have driven the ball, and Logan Morrison seems to be tracking the ball well. Of course, Smoak had a slugging percentage of nearly .800 last spring, so this all looks awfully familiar. That said, the pitch fx system always provides a bit of problematic-yet-objective information from M’s home games in Spring Training, so what have we seen so far?
First, Scott Baker’s outing yesterday gave a little something for everyone. For the optimists, he averaged just shy of 90mph with his fastball, up from 88+ is his brief stint last year, and just about 1mph lower than his average from his last healthy season, in 2011. Most pitchers tend to throw about 1mph slower than the regular season in ST, so if that holds true, his arm strength looks solid – better than it did in 2013, anyway. For the pessimists, he went two innings, and couldn’t sustain that velocity. He averaged 90+ in the first inning, then trailed off to 88 in the second. Something to watch this month.
Baker was relieved in yesterday’s game by Cuban lefty Roenis Elias, the free agent the M’s signed at a try-out several years ago. The 25-year old averaged 92+ on his fastball, touching 94, and threw a flurry of slow, slurvy curve balls in his 1 1/3 IP. Fastball looked good, the breaking ball less so. But the story of the day was his shifting release point – I get the RHB vs. LHB shift, but there are three separate release points in this graph:
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Cactus League Game 4: Mariners at Indians
Randy Wolf vs. Aaron Harang, 12:05
Randy Wolf’s best season, by WAR, came back when the M’s were still perennial contenders and led the league in attendance – the heady days of 2002. Wolf’s been ravaged by time and injuries since then, and the M’s have dedicated themselves to self-ravaging. Wolf hasn’t been terrible since that great 2002 season – he’s been worth over 11 bWAR pr 13.8 fWAR since then, and he’s had a couple of 2 win seasons. Importantly, he’s hit the 200 IP mark each year from 2009-2011, allowing him to claim the mantle of “workhorse” for a while before his arm gave out on him again. Still, he hasn’t quite been the same since everyone was listening to Interpol’s first album.
Aaron Harang was around in 2002 (he faced the M’s that year three times), but peaked with Cincinnati in 2007 when he finished 4th in the NL Cy Young voting. He hit 6bWAR and 5 fWAR that season, capping an incredibly consistent 3-year run with at least 4 WAR and 200IP. Unfortunately, after an injury in 2008, Harang’s never been the same. He never again posted 200 innings, and he’s posted less than 4 bWAR/8fWAR in 952 innings since. His season with the M’s last year earned him a DFA, but he’s in a decent situation to make a big league rotation with Cleveland.
The M’s and Indians both have visions of competing for a wild card spot (or a divisional crown, if things break right). Both have exciting young pitchers, but some question marks in the back of the rotation. The M’s pitching depth will be tested early in 2014 thanks to a string of injuries to Iwakuma, Walker, Maurer and, going back to last season, to Danny Hultzen (read Ryan Divish’s story on Hultzen and his rehab here – it’s great). The Indians somewhat unexpectedly had a top-10 rotation in 2013 thanks to big bounce-back seasons from Ubaldo Jimenez (!) and Scott Kazmir (!!!!), as well as eye-opening performances by youngsters Danny Salazar and Corey Kluber. Unlike the M’s situation, the Indians are probably healthier this season than last (as Josh Tomlin makes his return from TJ surgery), but they let Jimenez and Kazmir sign free agent deals elsewhere, and stayed out of the bidding on free agents like Matt Garza, Ervin Santana and Masahiro Tanaka. Thus, the odds of both of today’s starters making the opening day roster are a bit higher than when they signed, and thus today’s game may get more attention than I ever would’ve thought a ST match-up between Wolf and Harang, post 2008, would deserve.
You could make the argument that the more important outing today is that of Cleveland’s 2nd pitcher, Trevor Bauer. The one-time #3 overall prospect and the Indians haul in the three-team Didi Gregorious/Shin-soo Choo deal, looked to be just about MLB ready in 2013. The brainy, undersized righty had an underwhelming call-up in 2012 with Arizona, and then fell apart mechanically with Cleveland, giving up 17 free passes in 17 innings. Things were better in AAA Columbus, but not by much – 73 walks in 121 1/3 IP underscored the fact that his command lapses pushed him out of contention for the Indians rotation. After a lost season, Bauer’s in camp with far fewer expectations and seems likely to head to Columbus again to start 2014. He’s overhauled his complicated delivery, with at least some help from local pitching mechanics/training guru Kyle Boddy. I know, I know: we hear about mechanical “fixes” that are going to change everything dozens of times each spring, but the Indians and Bauer himself seem convinced that his command’s going to be a lot better thanks to his offseason work.
I’m not an Indians fan, and it doesn’t matter much to me, but the difference between a moderately effective Bauer and the Aaron Harang experience seems like it’s at least a win or two. The Indians won a WC spot by 1 game last year, and the race is every bit as wide open in 2014. The M’s believe they’ll be a part of it too, so I’d imagine M’s scouts will be following Bauer fairly closely today.
This would’ve been a great game for Brandon Maurer to pitch in to make the parallels even more explicit – two aging starters looking for one last run in the rotation, followed by two talented youngsters coming off of disastrous 2013 campaigns. Back stiffness took care of that, but Maurer is throwing live batting practice today, which is what passes for “good news” regarding M’s pitcher health these days.
Lineup!
1: Almonte, CF
2: Franklin, SS
3: CANO, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Saunders, RF
6: Ackley, LF
7: Tenbrink, 1B
8: Buck, C
9: Bloomquist, 3B
SP: Randy Wolf
Both teams are going with quite a few legitimate starters today. The M’s have a split-squad day tomorrow, so many of these guys are going to need to get used to playing 2-3-4 days in a row. Blake Beavan and Erasmo Ramirez get the starts tomorrow, and then King Felix starts vs. the Dodgers on Tuesday.
Cactus League Game 3, Angels-at-Mariners vs. the Elements
Scott Baker vs. CJ Wilson
With the news that the M’s are resigned to start the season with both Tai Walker and Hisashi Iwakuma on the disabled list, Scott Baker’s starts should generate a bit more interest. Baker’s elbow injury was an odd one, and his recovery has not been terribly smooth. But the M’s suddenly need him to be a better-than-replacement level arm to help stabilize their rotation.
1: Almonte, CF
2: Avery, RF
3: CANO, 2B
4: Smoak, 1B
5: Morrison, DH
6: Ackley, LF
7: Miller, SS
8: Zunino, C
9: Triunfel, 3B
Good test for Smoak and Miller facing the lefty Wilson today.
Cactus League Game 2: Mariners “at” Padres
James Paxton vs. Andrew Cashner, 12:05
Well, yesterday’s game was fun. Let’s do that same “Robinson Cano plays for Seattle” thing, add the same dash of spring training hype/excitement (“Justin Smoak spent a day with Cano and now he can *hit*!), and add an interesting pitching match-up. Ok, ok, Cano isn’t actually playing today, but he’s still wearing an M’s uniform – a fact that is still moderately shocking to me.
Last year at this time, James Paxton was a darkhorse candidate to make the opening day roster. He was coming off a solid season, and had finished strong after returning from knee surgery. He’d looked pretty good in the Arizona Fall League, throwing 94-95, and without the command lapses that had plagued him previously. So we were all pretty excited to watch his first few Cactus League starts. The Paxton that we saw *then*, one year ago, looked like a non-prospect. Batters had no trouble barreling him up, and his fastball velocity was down to 89-91. He looked like a different, much worse, pitcher, and thus it fell to Brandon Maurer to be the darkhorse candidate who actually grabbed an opening day roster spot.
He was better than that in AAA Tacoma in 2013, though he was still plagued by big innings. He’d look dominant through 4 innings, and then everything would fall apart in the 5th. He had middling results to go with somewhat more encouraging scouting reports, though his failure to get deeper into ballgames meant that the chorus predicting an imminent move to the bullpen grew louder and louder. Something happened, though, in the last month or two in Tacoma. Part of it looks like mechanical tweak, some may be rest and the return of some arm strength, but he was suddenly able to go 7-8 innings and maintain his velocity at 94-95 (or more), not 91-93. Very encouraging. His MLB debut was, if anything, even more encouraging.
I’m looking for velocity, movement (though Peoria’s pitch fx system is notoriously bad for inflated movement readings) and command. He’s only throwing 2 IP, so stamina’s not an issue yet. This season, Paxton’s being counted on as an opening day starting pitcher, so while he’s undoubtedly more confident, there’s a bit more pressure on him than there was last year. I’d love to know that the M’s understood what happened, and that the M’s were behind his late season surge in 2013. Today, more than most days, we could use the psychic balm of hope.
1: Chavez, CF (I’d literally forgotten he’d re-signed)
2: Franklin, SS
3: Kelly, 2B (we’re doing that weird thing where the back-up replaces the starter’s line-up spot in addition to his position, are we?)
4: Hart, DH
5: Montero, 1B
6: Saunders, RF
7: Romero, LF
8: Buck, C
9: Bloomquist, 3B
Ok, that’s…that’s a worse line-up than yesterday’s, and there’s no getting around that. But baseball is still fresh enough that you can find interest in it. Will Romero grab the last bench spot? Can Saunders finally make the leap from bad-to-mediocre-to-actually good?
Taijuan Walker Isn’t Dying
It doesn’t literally exist in any tangible form, but there is a list of things we would and would not want to read about Taijuan Walker. Let’s examine the very bottom of that list:
- Elbow problems. But at least it’s not his shoulder
- Viral encephalitis. But his shoulder is ok?
- Traded 🙁 but if nothing else, hey, trade return
- Prison sentence
- Shoulder problems
Nothing more terrifying for a pitcher than undiagnosed shoulder discomfort. At least, nothing more terrifying for a fan of a pitcher. Early in Mariners camp, Taijuan Walker came down with undiagnosed shoulder discomfort. That was a problem, although the Mariners insisted it wasn’t a big deal. Walker began his recovery, and now, there’s a setback. Walker’s going to take some time off from throwing, having been given a diagnosis of inflammation. More specifically, bursa inflammation, or bursitis. Again, the Mariners insist it isn’t a big deal, and Lloyd McClendon doesn’t sound too worried. I think he means to be reassuring, but when it comes to shoulders, you can’t easily reassure.
As Danny Hultzen reminded us of. Hultzen’s shoulder problems were no big deal until they were the biggest of deals, and he’s not going to pitch this whole season. The rest of his career is up in the air, not that it wasn’t always, but now things are even more uncertain. At first, Hultzen just couldn’t get loose. He was basically day-to-day. Then he got cut open and important shoulder bits got patched up. Doctors have been optimistic, but that’s how you can damn a pitching career with faint praise.
The good news is this could really be almost nothing. Simple bursitis. You treat it with anti-inflammatories. Walker’s back to throwing in a week. Maybe he’s somehow still ready to go come Opening Day. Bursitis can be chronic, but if you want to be encouraged, you need look no further than Felix Hernandez. In June 2005, when Felix was 19 years old, he was diagnosed with bursitis. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt the symptoms. First, he was expected to miss one start. Then, he was held out of another. The Mariners, understandably, acted with caution. Felix didn’t start for something like a month, then for a brief time he worked out of the bullpen. Once he was fully back to normal, he was promoted from Tacoma and pitched like the perfect major-league pitcher. Since then he’s been Felix Hernandez. His shoulder hasn’t bothered him since. Bursitis isn’t a death sentence, if that’s all that there is. It can be no more worrisome than a moderate bruise.
Here’s the problem, even if this might seem a little irrational. Is bursitis all that there is? Walker’s second opinion confirmed the diagnosis, and MRI exams revealed no structural damage. The issue is that, oftentimes, MRI exams fail to identify structural damage. The only way for a doctor to know for sure what’s going on in a shoulder is to actually get into it. Imaging can tell you a lot, but it can’t tell you everything. It feels like a whole bunch of times I’ve read that a surgeon went in for a simple clean-up and was surprised to find a disaster zone. More significant shoulder problems can hide themselves, which is the root cause of all the worry. As long as a shoulder doesn’t feel right, that’s bad. You can get a diagnosis, complete with imaging, but that occupies a level in between facts and a guess. We can be pretty certain that Taijuan Walker has an inflamed bursa. Is that all? Sure hope so.
It’s easy to get carried away with worry, but then, worry is legitimate when you have a talented pitcher whose shoulder feels off. Walker, to our knowledge, isn’t broken, and he could be throwing normally again soon, but until that’s actually happening…look, we’re a nervous bunch, but I think we’ve earned it. And I might rather be worry-prone than over-confident. It’s a feeling, at least, and all we’re really here for is to feel.
Meantime, expect even more rumors about the Mariners looking to trade Nick Franklin for a starting pitcher. Already those rumors were going to dominate the spring, but given the Mariners’ 2014 plans and given the question marks they have in the rotation, there could be an even greater sense of urgency. It’s been reported that the Mets will be watching. It’s been reported that the Rays will be watching. Others, too, will call or get called, and though Taijuan Walker isn’t the reason Franklin will presumably get dealt, this isn’t lowering the odds. This front office can’t chance a bad season, and Franklin isn’t in position to make much of a difference, directly.
Cactus League Game 1, Holy Crap, Really? A (sort of) Game?
Man, time flies when the Seahawks are marching towards football immortality. Hey, baseball games are back to being a nearly-daily thing we can talk about, analyze, and read too much into. I’ll be honest: I’ve missed it. The M’s have been bad, more or less, for a decade, and there’s still a glimmer of excitement about a scrimmage in Arizona. In February.
Erasmo Ramirez starts today, and he starts with renewed confidence. Confidence borne of a revelation he had in Venezuela this off-season – you don’t have to throw 95, the voice told him, just throw strikes and take it easy. For those of you who’ve followed Erasmo’s somewhat unlikely journey to the fringes of the bigs, this ‘revelation’ is somewhat ironic: for years, he was the undersized kid throwing in the 80s who just never walked anyone. By the time he hit AAA (I saw his first AAA start and was completely blown away by the velocity he’d added), that wasn’t the case. He had legitimate weapons, but he sacrificed a modicum of consistency for them.
I’m not sure if Erasmo’s injury problems in 2012 and 2013 were the result of overthrowing, mechanical issues or rotten luck, but I’d submit that staying healthy is job 1 for Erasmo this year. “Undersized righty” is a headwind Ramirez faces and has faced for years. “Injury-prone, undersized righty,” is the kind of thing that gets you sent to the pen or, worse, to the Astros.
All of that said, no one should forget that Ramirez was a very successful MLB starter down the stretch in 2012. His change-up was remarkable, and his fastball could hit
95 in a pinch; this wasn’t a guy throwing 87 and praying for mis-hits. Whether due to injury or supremely bad advice, Ramirez went away from his change in favor of fastballs and a slider last year, and the results weren’t pretty. I and others talked about the lack of separation in movement between his FB and CH, but his problems were deeper than vertical movement: Erasmo never had a feel for his pitches, and his Zone% went down, and thus walks and HRs went up.
He was at his worst with no one on. Like Iwakuma, he may be guilty of over-challenging when the stakes are low. And like Iwakuma, his success with men on gives some hope that real improvement is a relatively small change away. This is an awfully long intro for a Cactus League game in which Erasmo will pitch two innings. But Ramirez is key to the M’s pitching depth in 2014 because Ramirez IS the Mariners’ pitching depth in 2014.
Brandon Maurer was quite bad in 2013, and had his back ‘seize up’ in warm-ups two days ago. Scott Baker may need to throw significant innings this year – something he hasn’t done since before his “oops, I guess you need Tommy John surgery” er, surgery in early 2012. Danny Hultzen won’t pitch in 2014. If Baker and Erasmo can’t go, then ( today’s other scheduled pitcher) Blake Beavan stands between the M’s and the void. But Beavan looks suspiciously like the void draped in an extra-large M’s jersey, so…..*
Line up:
1: Almonte
2: Seager
3: CANO
4: Morrison
5: Smoak
6: Saunders
7: Ackley
8: Miller
9: Zunino
*. Larry Stone had a funny column about not heeding the siren’s song of Cactus League optimism – about Munenori Kawasaki’s bat , Maurer’s poise, or the M’s dominant offense. I laugh because I was sort of taken in by Beavan’s mechanical tweaks last year.
Chone Figgins Was Never The Problem, Says Chone Figgins
Let’s cut right to the chase. Figgins is in camp with the Dodgers, trying to make a baseball team. Naturally, with Figgins around, reporters want to know what happened to him. You don’t have to drill deep to tap into Figgins’ vast reserve of excuses. Here’s the newest thing:
[Figgins] said the Mariners had competed well that season against the Angels and he thought Seattle would be good for him.
It wasn’t.
“It kind of says it all,” he said, “when you have just signed a $38-million contract [four years] and they pinch-hit for you in the fourth game.”
As several others have pointed out, Figgins was indeed pinch-hit for early, and he was pinch-hit for by Ken Griffey Jr., and Griffey delivered a crucial ninth-inning single in a game the Mariners won. I don’t remember reading anything about Figgins being upset at the time, but I was able to find this from Mike Salk:
He pouted when Ken Griffey Jr. pinch hit for him.
Obviously, Figgins wasn’t upset about the result — he was upset about feeling disrespected, about feeling doubted. If there’s one thing Chone Figgins is probably sick of, it’s being doubted, because, think about what he faced as a younger player, as a prospect. Think about how a ballplayer is perceived when he stands 5-foot-8 in a funhouse mirror. Figgins has had to fight for everything, proving doubters wrong at every turn, and in his head, he’s earned the right to not be doubted anymore. Remember when he blew up at Don Wakamatsu after he was removed for not hustling? Don Wakamatsu doubted Chone Figgins. Chone Figgins has never doubted Chone Figgins.
Every player has to be driven by something. Perhaps Figgins has been driven by his doubters. I want to point out that Figgins wasn’t blaming the pinch-hit removal for everything that happened afterward. It was just intended to be representative. But it’s the end of February, 2014. Griffey pinch-hit for Figgins in early April, 2010. Figgins still recalls the specific instance of feeling slighted, four years later. It still stings. Figgins can’t stand that he hasn’t proven his latest doubters wrong. The difference is, this time, the doubters are right. Figgins built a whole career on being better than he should’ve been. Now he’s 36, and I’m guessing when you’re 36, you still feel a lot like you did when you were 30. Figgins today isn’t too different from the good version of Chone Figgins, but he’s different enough, and the major leagues aren’t very forgiving.
This was Chone Figgins last year, when he was trying to make the Marlins:
Playing part time made it tough to shake the slump, he says.
“I’d go three weeks to a month not playing, going from getting 700 at-bats every year,” he says. “It’s tough. You sign a four-year deal, and the second year of the deal you’re sitting on the bench. That’s hard to swallow. But I stayed positive as much as I could. This is where it has taken me.”
Figgins missed one game in 2010. In 2011, he started 26 games in April, 22 games in May, and 18 games in June. He then started 11 games in July before missing the final two months with injury. He was a starter for the 2012 Mariners into early May, when the team finally decided it had had enough. Absolutely, that last year, Figgins mostly just stayed on the bench as highly-paid insurance. That was after more than a calendar year of batting under .200.
Figgins didn’t make the Marlins. The way he tells it, he was surprised — he didn’t know how he didn’t make the team after batting .308 in spring training. I don’t know how many times I’ve read Figgins highlighting his own 2013 spring statistics, as if they were in any way meaningful. He finished 8-for-26, with eight singles. In the same camp, Casey Kotchman went 18-for-45 with six extra-base hits. In the same camp, Kevin Kouzmanoff went 10-for-29 with six extra-base hits. They were regular-season non-factors. Figgins has to cling to that batting average, though, because it’s his only recent evidence that he can still play. There’s nothing from his record in Seattle. Figgins has to believe in last spring, because the alternative is being confronted by the big dark empty.
Figgins never doubted himself. Not publicly, in any case. His numbers, however, invited doubt, so Figgins has had to come up with excuse after excuse. He wasn’t batting in the right part of the order. He was forced to adopt an unfamiliar approach. He was bothered by his hip. He was bothered by organizational disrespect. He didn’t play enough. He shouldn’t have had to switch defensive positions. Figgins still wants to play, obviously, and he still believes he can play, and he’s never wavered, not once. He might be the most driven, now, because he’s the most doubted. I don’t know how much thought Figgins has given to the possibility that it might be him. Probably not very much. He was capable of everything before. Why not now? He feels like the same guy. Still runs fast.
It’s pretty apparent that Chone Figgins was unhappy in Seattle. This is his latest excuse. And I don’t doubt it for a second. Figgins, then, believes that he can get back to being himself with a change of scenery, now that he’s put that chapter behind him. For Figgins, Seattle just wasn’t a good fit, for a whole lot of reasons. Figgins has identified each of them, and they’ve contributed to his having been unhappy. The happy Chone Figgins is a successful Chone Figgins, so he just needs to get back to being happy, to get back to being his old self. It all makes sense, except for the cold truth: the biggest driver of Chone Figgins’ unhappiness was that he wasn’t playing like a good player. He felt attacked on all sides because he wasn’t performing, and as long as he isn’t performing, he can’t be happy as a player again.
So he can boost himself up in February and March. No one else is going to do it for him. In Figgins’ mind, he’s still a good player, and that can’t be proven false until he’s playing in games. Even then, struggles might not mean anything to Chone. They’d just mean something to his employer, and then Figgins would find a new excuse. It just wasn’t a good fit, he might say. There’s still a lot of ability in there, he might say. Figgins would talk about wanting the right opportunity, but the reality is that there hasn’t been the right opportunity for five years. Not a lot of perfect fits for unproductive baseball players.
Eventually, Chone Figgins is going to stop coming up with excuses. Maybe, at that point, he’ll have come to terms with the reality of his career. Or maybe he’ll just quietly seethe, seethe for many of the rest of his days, because everybody around him was a doubter, and he was still a hell of a baseball player, god dammit, and all he needed was another chance to prove it.
Now Here Is A Feeling I Didn’t Expect
When I was a teenager, I started working summers in a neuroscience lab, first as an internship, then because I wanted to. At that point I wanted to become a neuroscientist, and I loved the working environment, and especially my boss. I developed a number of pretty good personal relationships, and in time it turned into one of my social circles, and I’d look for reasons to spend more time at the institute. Sometimes a group of us would get together weekend mornings for work and pancakes. Sometimes we’d hang out after hours to watch a movie in the meeting room.
One Friday night we stuck around to watch a movie about Bigfoot while someone whipped up margaritas. I would’ve been 18 or 19. I didn’t get drunk, but I did drink, and shortly after the movie I got in my car to go home. It was a drive like any other, complete with casual speeding, until, blocks from my house, I saw lights go on behind me. It took a few seconds for me to realize that was about me, and I pulled over to the side, knowing I had been speeding, and worse. There could’ve still been alcohol on my breath. I knew there was a no-tolerance policy for underage drinking. My head wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but my heart was, and I felt this dreadful sense of imminent devastation. Surely, I was about to not be able to drive anymore. Surely, I was facing uncertain but certainly severe punishment. The police officer walked up to my window and it was like all of my organs chose to escape out the passenger side.
He asked for my license and registration, as you do, and I fumbled around for them in the glovebox. He asked if I knew I’d been speeding, and I nodded. He asked where I lived, and I said just two minutes away. He asked if I was in possession of any illegal drugs, and I said no, twice. I waited for the shoe to drop. Then he said he was giving me a warning, and I swear he almost smiled, and he sent me on my way. So I turned the car back on and drove home.
That’s basically how I feel about today’s Nelson Cruz news, except maybe in the end it has to be someone else getting pulled over and set free. Dread. Four solid months of dread. A couple weeks of accelerating terror. And then, abruptly, nothing. The Orioles signed Nelson Cruz. We were all prepared to hate whatever contract he was going to sign. They gave him a year and eight million. That’s…not so bad. That’s downright reasonable, considering.
All offseason long, no part of me wanted Nelson Cruz on the Mariners. Not for what it was certainly going to take. Now that he’s signed for what he signed for, there is actually a part of me that wonders, wait, should the Mariners have beat that? I didn’t think it would ever come to this, but here we are. The Mariners have Dustin Ackley in left and Logan Morrison at DH. Cruz probably would’ve made this team better. Would he have made this team at least $8 million better, plus a draft pick? I don’t know, but it’s crazy that I can even ask the question and have it not be ridiculous.
Ultimately, no, I still don’t think Cruz would’ve been worth it. But, man, he’d at least have been close. Relevantly, there are two considerations. One is that there were whispers a while ago that Cruz didn’t want to play in Seattle. Two is that, more recently, I’ve heard suggestions the Mariners’ alleged interest was overblown. That the Mariners weren’t as interested as the media said. Either or both would explain how Cruz wound up with $8 million, with reports that his own agents initiated the latest talks with Baltimore as if a market simply didn’t exist.
The Nelson Cruz inevitability didn’t materialize, and we don’t know how close it might’ve come, but given these final terms, the Mariners couldn’t have valued him too highly. Which is interesting, given what Jack Zduriencik said about Cruz the other week, but it’s possible he was just being nice. It’s also possible Zduriencik would’ve loved Cruz, for like five or six million. Zduriencik isn’t always nice, as evidenced by his recent comments about Jesus Montero, but then he’s trying to motivate Montero, who’s a member of the organization. Cruz is an unaffiliated stranger. There’s certainly no point in badmouthing a free agent.
So it’s interesting how Cruz wound up. It’s also interesting to hear the speculation about a Mariners reunion with Kendrys Morales. The Orioles looked like a great fit for Cruz or Morales, not both of them, so now Morales has lost a suitor. There’s not a lot left out there for him. There are rumors about the Pirates, but the Pirates don’t have a DH slot. There maybe should be rumors about the Rangers, but there aren’t. There are rumors about the Mariners, and the Mariners know that Morales can hit in Safeco Field.
It would be a weird fit, though. Right now, the Mariners are trying Corey Hart in right field, so the way things seem to line up is with Justin Smoak mostly at first and Logan Morrison mostly at DH. Re-sign Morales and you’ve got a roster squeeze, and then what do you do if Hart’s knees prove they can’t hold up? And the Mariners have made a somewhat big deal of trading for Morrison — just how low would they let that playing time go? He doesn’t make for an obvious platoon at first with Smoak. He’s hardly an outfielder. You could try to trade Morrison or Smoak, but there’s not much of a market, as evidenced by the Ike Davis talks, and as evidenced by the first Logan Morrison trade. If the Mariners signed Morales, he would make the team better instantly, but the roster would be confusing with another potential glut of 1B/DH types. It could all work out, but in ways that look weird given how the offseason has progressed from the start.
There are two reasons the Mariners might sign Morales: they know they can trust him, and there doesn’t seem to be a market for his services. He’d improve their odds in 2014. By how much, I don’t know. At what cost, I don’t know. Nelson Cruz cost a year and $8 million. For a while people thought he’d get eight or nine times that much. The FanGraphs community predicted 3yr/$32 million. Nelson Cruz dropped all the way to being almost a bargain. I’m going to stop trying to predict these things.
It seems like the Mariners might well be done making moves for the time being. It also seems like, the longer Morales is just sitting out there, the more the front office might try to figure out how things could work. They might even be able to connect it somehow to the Nick Franklin question that still demands an answer. Give the Mariners one thing: they keep it confusing, and confusion can be indistinguishable from deeply-felt interest.