Hurry Back, Adrian
Good news from Larry Stone concerning Adrian Beltre’s rehab – he’s rejoined the team and believes he’ll be able to return to the field this year.
“No doubt. That’s why I did it this year, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to be back. Hopefully, it will be 100 percent, and I’ll be able to help the team, because our team is doing really good now. We have a really good chance to win the west. The race is really close, and it’s wide open. That’s what make made my decision tougher. I know our team is winning, playing good, and we have a really good chance to get really hot in the last 2 1/2 months of the season, and who knows what will happen.”
This almost certainly will convince the M’s to not trade for a third baseman (besides Hannahan, who is just a stop gap kind of guy), I would imagine. If Beltre is able to get back before the end of August and give the team five good weeks, that will be a real boost to the club, no doubt.
USSM Goes To Safeco Sold Out
The response to the August 8th event has been tremendous, and despite only posting two notices about the event, we’ve sold out of the 300 tickets that were available for USSM Goes To Safeco. The response has been so great, in fact, that we’re getting a good amount of emails from people who didn’t buy tickets before they were gone and are looking for a way to go.
So, if you bought tickets to the event and are now not going to be able to make it (or one or more of your friends has dropped out), this is the thread for you to sell them to others who are trying to get in. Just put a comment down below saying how many you have available, and give people a way to email you, and you’ll get a buyer post haste.
If there aren’t enough people whose plans have changed, there is one last option for those of you looking to score a pair of tickets to the event – Brock and Salk will be giving away a pair on the air at some point in the next few weeks.
Thanks to everyone for their interest. We’re really happy that you guys are as excited about this as we are, and it should be a great time. I’m sure this won’t be the last one of these we do.
Photo of the day
— from the White House photostream
Lincoln and Armstrong
Highighting a paragraph from Drayer’s latest:
We are going to have wheels up in a minute, but before I head off to Cleveland, one quick mention has to go out. Been listening to all sorts of analysis of the first half, first half mvps, awards etc. A big dose of credit should also go to Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong for making the choice of Jack Z, who made the choice of Wak. Howard and Chuck did not know Jack personally, and Jack did not know Wak. They all took risks after doing their homework, and without those works, we would not be where we were right now, which I daresay, is in much better position than this team has been in years.
Over the last five years, Howard Lincoln and Churck Armstrong have taken a massive beating from Mariner fans. There was a sizable part of the fanbase that held all the failures of the organization against them personally, and even during the GM search last winter, it was common to hear people make comments like “it doesn’t matter – this franchise can never win with those two in charge.” They were the least popular guys in the city, and they had to know it.
For instance, here’s one comment from our thread announcing Zduriencik’s hire:
I want to like this hiring but color me extremely skeptical. This was more or less the hiring I expected out of Stincoln and Armstrong.
Those two couldn’t think out of the box with a boxcar load of extra “THIS END UP†arrows. I think they picked a candidate that most reflected themselves and their perspective as franchise managers.
I agree with Dave that a great next step would be to hire a stat department to supplement their scouting perspective, but I’m not holding my breath that Stinkchuck will ever allow it.
That was how a lot of people reacted to the news, and it was a fairly predictable reaction. Lincoln and Armstrong had to know that the reaction was going to be something like that.
But Shannon is entirely right. Despite some fairly significant momentum for the M’s to hire a different kind of GM than the last few, Lincoln and Armstrong tabbed the candidate who most resembled Bill Bavasi – older, white (and bald – sorry Jack, but it’s true), from the scouting side of baseball, and a guy who came from an organization that wasn’t generally considered one of the “new school” type of teams. But he was the right guy to hire.
Since then, I think absolutely everyone following this team has realized just how great of a hire it was. Zduriencik has proven to not just be open about the new ways of evaluating talent, but excited about using all the information he can get his hands on. Literally, we couldn’t have dreamed of the M’s changing course in the way they have in the last 8 months. They’ve gone from laughingstock to well oiled machine, and they’ve done it because Howard and Chuck hired the right guy.
You might not like the two executives in charge of the team, but you have to admit that they made a great decision, and one that could easily turn out to be the most important in the history of the franchise. They literally changed the entire focus of the organization by hiring Zduriencik and allowing him to build a first class organization in Seattle.
So, congratualations, Messers Lincoln and Armstrong. You made the right choice, and we’ve all got years of great baseball to look forward to because of it.
Mini All-Star Thread
Sorry, worked late, thought I had time. What in the world is going on with Ryan Franklin’s facial hair?
Link Roundup
Mike Salk, of the Brock and Salk show on ESPN710, has started collecting a bunch of relevant baseball links from around the web every morning, and posting them on his blog. If you’re looking for one stop shopping in a recap of recent Mariner tidbits, he’s doing the legwork for you. Brock and Salk is easily the best thing going in Seattle sports radio right now, so support them by checking out their work too.
Also, I’ll be on the air with Brock and Salk at 2 pm to defend my Bedard/Washburn for Hardy suggestion. Salk thinks I’m crazy, just like the rest of you. I’ll do my best to convince him that I’m not totally insane. Should be fun.
Lincecum Lincecum Lincecum
The semi-ban on Lincecum mentions will be lifted today for the All-Star Game. If everyone could not get into the whole draft thing, though, that would be really, really nice.
The Felix Derby
So apparently there’s some kind of exhibition going on, which is why we don’t get any real baseball for a couple days. I don’t know what all this has to do with the Mariners. Maybe we can strain a little bit to point out that some guy Jack Zduriencik drafted won some sort of contest. It wasn’t that exciting, but it’s all the news we have right now.
I guess Felix likes this stuff, though, as Larry Stone tells us in an entertaining blog post. You get the sense that Felix would have more fun competing in the Home Run Derby than pitching in the All-Star Game. To which I say, why not?
Let’s have a home run derby specifically for the pitchers. Right now, other than the drama of picking who gets to start the game, there’s not a whole lot of All-Star attention for them. Half of them won’t even play out of fear that we might get another Bud Selig Special. And it’s not like you can have a real skills contest because the starters in particular have to save their arms.
So split the pitchers up into pairs, give them alternating batting practice swings, and whoever hits one out first advances to the next round. Sudden death, keep eliminating guys that way until you have a winner. Instead of numbing repetition as the Ryan Howards of the world knock balls over the fence, you get real suspense throughout. On every fly ball to the warning track, you wonder if this is the one that’s going to make it over. Okay, so maybe the NL guys have a bit of an unfair advantage, but you know Felix’s greatest moment of glory is still that eyes-closed grand slam off Santana. That’s why he would love to be part of something like this.
Wouldn’t this be fun? At least until somebody messes up his arm trying to make a home run swing. Oh well, it was an idea.
Riggleman takes over another moribund last place team
We mentioned this repeatedly last year, but we here at USSM have an immense amount of respect for the job Jim Riggleman did trying to keep the M’s together and playing in a lost season. Well, he gets to try again, as Manny Acta’s been fired in Washington-the-non-state.
Good luck, sir.
Bedard currently middle of the Type Bs
Wanted to touch on this since it affects trade value: there are ~10 guys ahead of him in the Bs right now, according to Eddie Bajek in Detroit Tiger Thoughts latest calculations. You want page 7. So the value for hanging onto him is not so great.
Fun fact: Washburn, according to this, is not so far off the B ratings himself.
Dave adds: However, offering Washburn arbitration, a necessary step in order to get compensation for a departing free agent, would be crazy. He’d clean the Mariners clocks in arbitration, thanks to his rosy ERA this year. So, he’s a non-compensation player, for all intents and purposes.