Figgins-Lopez Switch Official
So says Geoff Baker, who got it from Wakamatsu this morning.
Various casual reports coming in from those at spring training have not been enthusiastic about Lopez at third, though it seems that he is fine with the switch and is going to be taking additional groundballs at the hot corner before and after games to get him up to speed. Bear in mind that he only played about a third as many games there as he did at second while in the minor leagues.
To get to the standard comments about this we’ve all rehashed before, part of the reasoning behind this is that Figgins has a better first step and gets to balls easier while Lopez has an arm that’s more of an asset at third than second. We’re going to have to expect a few blunders here and there early in the season as guys adjust, and put to bed any thoughts of charging, bare-handed, off-balance throws to first, but the end effect is that the defense could be stronger up the middle than it was last season, while taking a hit at one of the corners.
Cactus League Game Thread, 3/20/2010
I post this partially because I imagine some of you out there have devised Chris Snyder voodoo dolls and are waiting for the opportunity. And it’s FELIX DAY.
Lineup:
LF Byrnes
CF Gutierrez
1B Garko
DH Griffey
“SS” Tuiasosopo
RF Langerhans
3B Jo. Wilson
C Johnson
2B Woodward
RHP FELIX
Cliff Lee has a Strained Abdomen
Here’s some unpleasant news, via Larry Stone’s twitter account:
Mystery solved: Cliff Lee has a right lower abdominal strain and was treated in Seattle today by team doctor Edward Khalfayan.
To add injury to insult, re: the whole suspension thing:
Wakamatsu: Lee believes he suffered abdominal strain during collision with Arizona’s Chris Snyder in Tucson last Monday.
Fantastic.
For those of you out there unfamiliar with abdominal strains, their worst feature is that they’re easy to aggravate, being one of those core stabilizing muscles. This also contributes to slow recovery times. It’s not the same exact thing, but think of last year when Kelley and Fields both missed months of time due to oblique injuries and you’d see why this might be problematic.
The M’s solution has been to inject some platelet-rich plasma into the area and wait a week to see what happens. Despite how it may sound, this is more scientifically sound than when Professor Farnsworth used stem cells to fight the aging process on that one episode of Futurama. In addition to various other uses, including bone mending, PR-P has had some practical applications in sports medicine on things like tendinitis, though the application of it in such measures is only a few years old.
In the past, Cliff Lee missed about two months of time in 2003 due to a similar injury coupled with a hernia, and in ’07, he missed a full month. One can be somewhat hopeful that the new treatment method might help things, but to say the team is weaker without him is quite the understatement, particularly with the back three in the rotation not looking too hot at the moment. The M’s get off a bit easy facing Kansas City, Baltimore, and Oakland for thirteen games in the month of April, but the eleven games total within the division (we escape having to face the Angels) could also make for a bad place to lose ground out of the gate.
Another televised Cactus League game
The M’s are playing the Rockies this afternoon, and FSN is picking up the feed from Fox Sports Rocky Mountain to get this game on TV. The line-up is mostly reserves, but Ryan Rowland-Smith takes the hill, so tune if if you’d like to cheer on The Hyphen.
CF Patterson
LF Byrnes
1B Garko
DH Sweeney
2B Tuiasosopo
RF Langerhans
C Moore
SS Josh Wilson
3B Liddi
Saunders Sent Down
Not much of a surprise here, as the writing was on the wall once the team traded for Milton Bradley, but Michael Saunders was sent to minor league camp today and will begin the season with Triple-a Tacoma. With Bradley and Byrnes expected to split time in left, there just weren’t going to many at-bats for Saunders on the big league roster. If he plays well in Tacoma, he’ll be first in line for a recall when Bradley or Griffey land on the DL, but until there are regular at-bats for him in Seattle, he’s better off in the minors.
Mike Koplove and Levale Speigner were also sent to minor league camp, but neither of them had any real chance of making the team. They’re just bullpen depth for the Rainiers.
First TV game Cactus League Game
The M’s are playing the Rangers tonight, and FSN (and MLB.tv if you’re a subscriber) is carrying it, so you can actually watch the team play. The M’s are running out what should be their regular line-up against RHPs, at least to begin the season.
1. Ichiro, RF
2. Figgins, 2B
3. Bradley, LF
4. Griffey, DH
5. Lopez, 3B
6. Kotchman, 1B
7. Gutierrez, CF
8. Johnson, C
9. Wilson, SS
Ian Snell gets the start for the M’s.
Cliff Lee Suspended
MLB’s selectively enforced rules strike again – they have reportedly suspended Cliff Lee for five games, which may or may not end up being the first five games of the season, depending on who you believe. Lee, as you’ll remember, threw a couple of pitches near Chris Snyder’s head the other day, and baseball decided to send a message, despite the fact that: a) it’s spring training, guys are wild b) No one got hurt and there was no fight c) Chris Snyder does MMA as a hobby, so odds a pretty good that pitchers don’t throw at him on purpose.
This whole thing is ridiculous. The M’s will appeal, of course, and there’s quotes floating around twitter from his agent saying that the suspension may not be applied to the regular season (so they’d suspend him from the Cactus League, I guess). If the suspension is part of the season, the M’s should fight this like crazy. If you assume that Lee’s performance is worth about $20 to $25 million in 2010, then each start is worth around $700,000. That’s not a trivial punishment for the M’s.
The Middle Infield Problem
When people talk about the weaknesses on the M’s, they’ll usually point to the obvious; the offense is below average and everyone knows it. Occasionally, someone will talk about the back of the rotation, which may or may not be a problem depending on how guys like Snell and Vargas pitch. But, I realized today that I haven’t had too many conversations with people about another potential problem area for the M’s – the middle infield.
This seems to be an area where there is some legitimate liability, depending on how things break. If Figgins can make the transition to second base and Wilson can stay healthy, they’ll be fine. But, if either or both of those things don’t happen, it could be bad news for the M’s.
Let’s start with second base, since its the lesser of the two issues. Figgins should be able to play there. I’m not overly worried that he’s going to struggle with the adjustment, given his skills and experience. There will be a few errors, but the added range should make up for that, at least in theory. But what happens if he makes 6 or 7 bad looking errors in April, booting easy grounders and botching double plays? Will the M’s reverse field and put Lopez back at second? What if he’s successfully made the transition to third and actually looks good there? What then?
You can flip-flop them and bet on them falling back on their experience, but then the team would find themselves in a situation that they’ve been desperately trying to avoid – Jose Lopez as their second baseman again. They clearly don’t see him as the present or the future there, and I’d imagine the hope is that he never plays the position for the M’s again. After a spring of practicing at third, and yet another year of reporting to camp in what can be generously reported as not the best shape of his life, how good would you expect him to be there? Not great, that’s for sure. But, that’s really the only option if they want to pull the plug on the Figgins at 2B experiment.
Shortstop holds even more potential for problems. As everyone knows by now, Jack Wilson is not a 150 game per year kind of guy. He’s in his decline years, has fought nagging health problems the last two seasons, and already had some hamstring issues this spring. His backup is going to play, and probably quite a bit. We’d assumed it would be Jack Hannahan, but he’s come up with a bad groin and has barely gotten any action this spring. Considering his lack of experience at SS, that’s a problem. He needed this March to show the staff that he could play short, and they haven’t had the chance to see that yet. There’s still time if he can get back on the field soon, but if this problem persists, they’re going to have to go another direction. Wilson’s backup can’t have a lingering health problem himself.
And therein lies the problem. There isn’t another option in the organization. Josh Wilson is a Triple-A player. Tui can’t play short in the majors with any kind of credibility. There isn’t a major league SS anywhere to be found beyond the 25 man roster, and the two guys on the roster who can play short have health issues (even if Wilson is 100% right now, he’s always a possible scratch). The worst case scenario here is pretty darn bad, and unfortunately, the rest of this roster isn’t good enough to carry a below replacement level player starting for any real length of time.
As we get closer to opening day, the M’s are probably going to have to address this. If Hannahan can put the groin thing behind him and show that he can play shortstop a couple of times per week if needed, then they can run with what they have and hope it works out. But if they don’t get Hannahan some reps at short soon, they may have to consider getting themselves another legitimate middle infielder.
One possibility – Cristian Guzman. The Nationals owe him $8 million in the final year of his contract, but he’s getting pushed out of a job by youngster Ian Desmond. If they’d eat most of the contract in exchange for a C+ prospect, he’s the kind of guy who could raise the floor of what the M’s could get from both middle infield spots. He may not raise the top end of the projection much, but the M’s have some vulnerability up the middle that drags down their win totals in the when-things-go-wrong scenarios, and a guy like Guzman would alleviate quite a bit of that. He’d give the team some legitimate depth up the middle on days when Wilson can’t play, and right now, they don’t have that.
It’s worth waiting for Hannahan to get healthy in the next week, because at 100%, he can give you most of what Guzman can without the need to acquire anyone else, but there’s no acceptable alternative in the organization right now. If Hannahan doesn’t get back on the field soon, the M’s will have to explore the trade avenues, because the middle infield is a problem, even if it doesn’t get talked about that much.
New Users: Please Be Patient
Hey folks, a quick moderation note:
We’re currently in the midst of fending off a simply disgusting amount of comment spam from people trying to sell knockoff shoes, etc. (I think I’ve gotten rid of something on the order of 100 comments in the last few days)
Until it subsides, please understand that any comments from a new user go into the moderation queue specifically to help keep things like this under control; this means that if you are a new user, your posts won’t show up until an author or mod has a chance to go in and flag you as not being an automated spam robot.
This isn’t anything NEW per se, but I’ve seen a couple of legitimate comments get lost in the flood and I wanted to make sure that you all understand it’s nothing personal.
I’m leaving comments disabled to have one less comment thread I have to delete spam from; if you have questions or comments, send us an email.
Thanks!
Mobile’s up
This weekend I seem to have finally figured out the somewhat magical combination of cache settings and back-end stuff to get the mobile site up without setting fire to people’s desktops or administering electric shocks via their phones. There’s two outstanding bug reports and for some ridiculous reason the Stede Bonnet flag doesn’t work yet, but generally speaking it’s good.