Washburn new team leader, other ephemera
(photo by ms.Tea, generously licensed)
From an ESPN spring training article:
“I’ve always been on teams where someone said what needed to be said. Last year, we didn’t have that,” Washburn said. “Now, I’m more comfortable [doing that].”
Really? Wasn’t that Ibanez’s role? Or Bloomquist’s role? Or even Hargrove?
Teh Times: “Ichiro’s next step subject of speculation“
Saturday’s news and rule changes
MLB tried to bury a set of rules by releasing the story late on Friday. I wrote something up on the Cheater’s Guide Blog anyway (and remember, if you like this kind of rules geekery and cheating, you can pre-order the book for $11).
MLB.com:
Aaron Small wants his shot.
Chaves wants the pitchers to throw strikes
MLB.com auto-playing super-loud ads on all their pages is amazingly annoying and unfriendly
Seattle Times:
Geoff Baker on Felix’s mound session and Felix’s conditioning, Lopez’s injury, and so on. Baker’s putting out some fairly substantial content in this blog thing of his, especially compared to what we’re used to from the company over at the PI.
Baker thinks the division is there for the Angels to take, and I… I don’t understand that, but it does seem to be a fairly common opinion. I like the Angels for fourth, but I’d have to admit I haven’t given it substantial consideration.
He also offers a pointer to a WSJ article which discusses, among other things, the M’s creation of the All-Star Suite, which we discussed here at the time of announcement as an ill sign for suite revenue. Ah hah! We have been validated.
The new All-Star Club is a bit short on intimacy — with a capacity of 140 people — but it is $100 to $125 per game versus at least $17,000 for a 10-game suite package. The lounge has the potential to generate well over $1 million annually, which the team says would be a net gain because on a typical night 10 to 14 suites were sitting vacant. “We’re smarter now than we were when we planned this facility,” says Mr. Aylward.
In a business sense, he means.
Seattle PI:
What’s Edgar doing?
Jaime Burke wants a spot
In the notebook, Baek and not getting a spot
Ted Miller wastes newsprint and electrons with a column pointing out that Bonds potentially breaking Aaron’s career home run record will be awkward. He doesn’t like Bonds, Selig’s no help, society’s in the downward spiral, being flushed down the drain of history, or something. No link.
Spring Training Preview
With training opening, this is a good point to look at the team the M’s are bringing in and how things might break down.
Rotation (5)
SP-R Felix Hernandez
SP-L Jarrod Washburn
SP-L Horacio Ramirez
SP-R Miguel Batista
SP-R Jeff Weaver
Possible flux: without a job up in the air, it’s going to take an injury or total abject ineffectiveness to get one of those out.
Other candidates in that case:
SP-L Jake Woods
SP-R Cha Baek
Bullpen (7-8)
RP-R J.J. Putz
RP-R Chris Reitsma
RP-R Julio Mateo
RP-L George Sherrill
Possible flux: Lots. The first three there have been described as “locks” already, with Sherill, RP-L Arthur Rhodes and Jake Woods described as “in”.
Candidates: That would still leave 1-2 spots for RP-R Jon Huber, RP-L Eric O’Flaherty, RP-L Ryan Feierabend and hopefully, if he’s able to come back, RP-R Mark Lowe (among others).
Starting lineup (9)
DH-B Jose Vidro
C-R Kenji Johjima
1B-R Richie Sexson
2B-R Jose Lopez
SS-R Yuniesky Betancourt
3B-R Adrian Beltre
LF-L Raul Ibanez
CF-L Ichiro!
RF-R Jose Guillen
Possible flux: barring injury, this is the lineup they’ll go into the season with
Candidates: An outfield injury likely puts OF-L Jeremy Reed into a starting job for a while. You might hope for an Adam Jones appearance, but it’s not going to matter how well he does until the team has a manager willing to play him. It may be a question of whether he dislikes Jones or Reed less, which is always a great way to pick your lineup.
An infield injury could see DH-L Ben Broussard or DH-R Mike Morse, though it does still seem likely Broussard’s going to be moved. To fill a middle infield or third need, that’ll be UT-R Willie Bloomquist. IF-R Oswaldo Navarro, Bust-R Michael Garciaparra, and ?-L Bryan LaHair are all on the 40m, but it seems unlikely that they’d ascend. They’ve got about as much a chance as non-roster invitees 3B-L Sean Burroughs, IF-R Gookie Dawkins, or IF-R Rey Ordonez, which really zero.
Bench (3-4)
With 21-22 roster spots already spent (5+7 or 8+9), this’ll be thin.
UT-R Bloomquist
OF-R Reed
C-R Rene Rivera
Flux: possible. Reed may still get moved, say if some other team suffers an injury and the M’s sense opportunity. I thought C-R Rob Johnson might get considered for the backup catcher slot, but the team doesn’t really care about it, and Rivera’s already on the 40-man roster, so that’s less thinking the team has to do. Except–
Candidates: If there’s a fourth bench spot open, Broussard gets paid way more than Morse does. Broussard’s salary might be so large as to force Hargrove to only carry 12 pitchers.
What’s there to watch for, then?
Without position battles, we’re going to be hoping not to see gruesome injuries, first, but moreover, looking to see if the team was out of their gourd this off season:
Is Jose Vidro in good health and hitting as well as his peak form, as the team hopes?
Is Horacio Ramirez a solid middle-rotation starter with the potential to be a #1 starter, as the team hopes?
For Miguel Batista, nearly the same question.
If I’m reading the schedule right, the first broadcast game is March 15th. Until then… I guess we just hope.
M’s spend, skimp, as 2007 approaches
The M’s are going to claim they’re way over $100m in payroll this year. Larry Stone covers the new old math
The team is using a working budget figure of $111 million, which includes about $103 million in raw salaries, another $6 million or so in pro-rated signing bonuses, and their annual “contingency fund” of $2 million for prospective deals and minor-league callups.
The M’s monetary woes are reflected in their interviewing process.
Spring training almost starting… almost… almost…
“I’m more excited going into this spring than I’ve ever been. In my heart, I believe we have a chance to [win the division].”
— Hargrove, quoted on MLB.com
or, even better
“We feel like we had a good season last year — notwithstanding the 11-game debacle,” Hargrove said. “We were able to establish a winning attitude here, an attitude where when we take the field every day, we expect to win that ballgame.
“A lot of people pay lip service to that, but there’s a difference between saying it and believing it. Our players, certainly by the end of the year, got to that point and got over that point.”
almost as good as
“Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. ”
— Morpheus
Larry LaRue in the News Tribune has health updates and the first “it’s an open competition” story.
“For me, the challenge in camp is to give every pitcher here a fair chance at making the team,†Chaves said Tuesday. “Later in camp, when the innings disappear, that’s tougher. Early on, I want to give everyone a fair shot.â€
Note that they’re already looking at a seven-man bullpen. Hooray for Hargrove.
Community Projection: Yuniesky Betancourt
143 of you have spoken, and Yuniesky Betancourt is apparently going to experience deja vu this season. I’d imagine that his projection will look closer to his 2006 season line than any other projection we end up doing. Take a look at this:
2006 Actual Performance: .289/.311/.403, 558 AB, 161 H, 28 2B, 6 3B, 8 HR, 17 BB, 1 HBP, 54 K
Community Projection: .289/.320/.410, 562 AB, 162 H, 29 2B, 7 3B, 8 HR, 23 BB, 3 HBP, 59 K
4 more at-bats, 1 more double, 6 more walks, 2 more hit by pitches, and 5 more strikeouts, but other than that, it’s the exact same line. I’ve been spearheading the “Betancourt has essentially maxed out his skillset” argument for the past six months or so, and while I agree with the general sentiment that there’s not much room for growth, I didn’t mean that he’s literally going to just repeat last year over and over.
The other projections of note:
Low Projection: .218/.247/.318 – probably the least believable “real projection” we’ve had yet.
High Projection: .311/.351/.461
Dave Projection: .279/.314/.374
Community Projection: Jose Lopez
As of last night, we had 155 entries in the Jose Lopez projection, which figured to be one of the more interesting assignments of this whole project. He’s a young player with significant talent who had a Jekyll/Hyde season in 2006, and the extremes at both ends of the projection scale are believable. This is a kid with a wide range of possible performances. Let’s see what you guys expect:
Community Projection:.285/.330/.435, 588 AB, 167 H, 32 2B, 5 3B, 15 HR, 32 BB, 7 HBP, 81 K
High Projection: .310/.366/.511
Low Projection: .241/.288/.347
Dave Projection: .280/.324/.443
I actually expected to be in the optimistic segment of the population, as I know Lopez’s terrible second half soured a lot of people on his abilities, but in the end, I basically came out dead in the middle. This projection, by the way, might not look like much, but a .765 OPS from a second baseman playing half his games in Safeco Field and not being a total butcher with the glove – that’s a hell of a player. If Lopez performs as the community expects, he’ll be a borderline all-star.
Another weak news week
Fortunately, the spring training news machine cranks up as soon as… Thursday? Really? Awesome.
Young star Mauer signed a fat four-year deal with the Twins
Bernie Williams declined to return to the Yankees on a minor league deal. Fortunately, the M’s aren’t even mentioned as sniffing around.
Also, I talked to Jonah and it looks like we’re going to be able to take additional RSVPs for the March 3rd pre-game feed with M’s GM Bavasi and Padres GM Towers. Details after the break. Read more
How I would be a national baseball columnist
My rant about “managers about to be fired” goes to a problem national writers face: they can’t possibly be as informed about the state of 30 teams as a dedicated, smart fan of one team unless they’re cultivating inside information. But the age of the national columnist isn’t over – there’s still a call for people who can talk about industry-wide issues, compare team A to team B, and speak intelligently about things that cross team lines, like potential managerial changes, or trades.
How do you do that job well, then?
First, you have to make a choice about which side of the fence you’ll be on. Will you be peddling insider information, cultivating relationships within the industry so you can attempt to break news, with the inevitable compromises that come with that, or forsake that knowledge to be the informed outsider, and try and offer as much insight as you can without wearing your press pass into the locker room?
If I got a job as a full-time national baseball columnist, I’d be the latter (uh, obviously).
Then how to do that job well? Here’s what I’d do:
Find the good newspapers in every market, either bookmark them or subscribe to whatever electronic distribution they offer.
Throw every decent team blog that offers a feed into an RSS reader. Skim the headlines at least once a day. Repeat with decent high-level general baseball blogs. Seems like a huge load, but you’ll be able to blow through the repeat stories really fast, and still stop and read good pieces of analysis.
Send everyone of those people – everyone, beat reporters to the Batters Box – a nice email and say “hey, I’ve got this new gig, and while I’m going to try, I know I’m not going to be able to cover your team as closely as dedicated fans, so please, if you see me going wrong or if I’m not realizing a basic truth about the team, like their PR attachment to a player that makes trading him unlikely, please let me know.”
Then when you get things wrong, as much as possible, fess up. Unfortunately, unless you have a regular column that allows notes-style tidbits, that’s tough to get out there. If the outlet allows you to have a short-form blog, at the very least write them up there. Characterize someone’s platoon splits wrong, or read a statline badly? Fess up. Learn. One of the things that drives fans batty about columnists is they’ll do something like say Raul Ibanez is the only right-handed hitter in the outfield and you never know if they realized the error or not.
I’d say “answer emails” but I tried to do that at BP until I got overwhelmed and we can’t even manage it at USSM. Then again, as a full-timer, maybe you can pull it off.
Take notes. Tons of notes. I should be able to quickly summarize what the major strengths/weaknesses are of every one of the thirty GMs and managers, and even better, their ownership groups if they’re at all active in decision-making.
Research. Take the time to look stuff up. Even under deadline, I shouldn’t toss off a line about someone’s platoon splits to support a conclusion if it’s wrong. If I had an intern, that’s totally a great intern task: every time there’s a fact like that, do the three clicks to go to baseballreference.com and look it up. If you come across any other interesting nuggets, let me know.
Write about good stuff. The remaking of the Devil Rays isn’t news to their fans, but what happens there in the next few years is a great story: how do you fix a broken franchise, and how long does it take? What lessons are there for fans of the Royals, for instance? How did the best teams last year build their staffs? Where do all the closers come from?
And for worn story ideas, make them good. Eight managers on the hot seat doesn’t have to be a nearly content-less piece. What qualities do those managers share? What are they criticized for, and are those complaints valid?
In a way, USSM is easier than being a national columnist. We don’t draw a salary, the money’s bad, but if because of the forum, when I mess something up (see:yesterday) I can fix it myself in minutes. It’s not in print for everyone to see forever. And in my experience, not getting a paycheck every two weeks means generally people are understanding when I mess up a stat. If I was writing for Sports Illustrated, there’d be an expectation that my salary paid for me to do fact checking.
It’s interesting that better-informed local fans have made the national writer’s job much harder, subject to quick, withering, valid criticism, but it’s also true that the changes that have made those local fans smarter about their teams offer national writers a chance to acquire the same knowledge and write wider-reaching pieces of higher quality than their predecessors did. I hope that we’ll see some take up that challenge and succeed. Baseball could use more prominent, sharp, and insightful voices in the mediums that reach most fans.
And if I could fly, I would be a superhero
ESPN.com’s baseball page lead story blurb for “Best In The Biz” story.
Gary Matthews Jr. had a career year last season for the Rangers. And if he can have another huge campaign in 2007, Matthews could help make the Angels’ outfield tops in the majors.
Yeaaaaaaaaaah.
Chan Ho Park signed somewhere.
Corey Patterson got a one-year, $4.3m deal from the Orioles
Jeff Fassero retired. I remember when he was pretty bas-ass. Good times.
Arroyo signed an extension with the team the Red Sox traded him to after they said they wouldn’t trade him.
Jon Heyman, over at SI, put Mike Hargove at #1 on his list of managers on the hot seat.
Seattle ownership has made clear that the small improvement the team made last season, from 69 wins in 2005 to 78 in ’06, wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. Hargrove, an all-time survivor and one of baseball’s nice guys, got a reprieve when few figured he would. But he won’t get two.
all-time survivor? What does that even mean? And one of baseball’s nice guys?
A) no
b) What does that even mean?
It’s times like this that I think there’s some coded message in there that I lack the necessary background to hear, like dog-whistle politics. It’s like when Peter Gammons writes about some prospect and says “Jerimiah Jake Johnson, of the Massachusetts Johnsons..” I always stare at the sentence and think “huh? What should that convey to me? Who’s he writing to there?”
Let me take a stab at this.
all-time survivor: he’s repeatedly walked away from horrible plane crashes caused in no small part to his failures as pilot
one of baseball’s nice guys: he’s deigned to be interviewed by me.
Feel free to submit your own interpretations.
Mariners GM Bill Bavasi didn’t get Barry Zito, despite offering close to $100 million and finishing second, but he did rebuild the rotation with the additions of Miguel Batista, Horacio Ramirez and Jeff Weaver. While none of the three is Zito, improvement will be expected. The Weaver signing could prove especially worthwhile, with a superb left side of the infield of third baseman Adrian Beltre and shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt.
Improvement will be expected. By you? By the team? By fans?
DMZ: Updated to delete this paragraph on account of I totally screwed it up in the most basic, obvious way possible
Especially worthwhile. Okay.
Hargrove’s strategy has come under fire in all three of his managerial stops, but he did right by moving Ichiro Suzuki to center field. What he needs most, though, is improved production from Beltre and Richie Sexson.
More of the passive-voice thing. Plus, Hargrove doesn’t have a strategy. He doesn’t. His strategy is “I’d like to win”. If you want to argue about his in-game tactics, or his player managing, or his horrible talent evaluation skills, sure, but to say that Hargrove’s strategy is under fire… I don’t understand.
And what he needs most is improved production from Beltre and Sexson? Where do you even get this stuff?
Hargrove has:
– a second baseman with a once-promising bat he’s turned into some shadow version of his own glory days
– a starting pitcher the Angels put out on the curb with a “free” sign taped to his forehead and no one picked him up
– another starting pitcher who has never struck batters out but the team thinks might be a #1 starter
– a broken-down, beat-up DH who hasn’t hit well in years that the team is praying will somehow rehabilitate his legs and return to glory
– a notorious clubhouse cancer also coming off injury and a wretched year at the plate
What he needs most is Beltre to play better? Beltre? Or Sexson? The team has two everyday lineup spots occupied by longshot gambles, with another two in the rotation, and he really needs Beltre and Sexson to step up.
Argh.