Day 2 back up
The first day up facing traffic and we did fairly well. The game thread got up to 150 and I saw some delays, but it never took more than a couple of seconds to get back to me, and we didn’t see any timeouts, which is good.
That said, I have to admit that I was nervous all day as the delays went from 1s to 2s to 6s. And for a 150-comment game thread? I’m not convinced we’re safe yet.
In any event, I’m going to be doing some tinkering with the site to try and help, and we’ll see how tomorrow goes. If you notice anything wonky with the site behavior in the next couple of hours, please drop me a line and let me know what happened, with as much information as you care to include. Or throw it in the contents there.
Like, for instance, seeing a blank page the first time you load anything and only getting served a real page on reload. That would be a problem I’m having right now. WTF is that about?
Update: seriously, wtf?
Update: That’s it, I can’t easily figure out why caching results in blank pages being served the first time, so I’m turning it off while I research
In the meantime — the plan’s to take the donation buttons down tomorrow and see what we want to do from there, so if you want to support USSM with cash, here’s your chance:
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Jeff and Derek on Q It Up Sports tonight
UPDATE: Jason’s in, too.
With Derek’s heroic efforts to revive the site having borne fruit, we’re off to dabble in other forms of media again. We’ll be on Q13’s Q It Up Sports show tonight at 10:30. Evidently, we’ll be discussing Mariner (in)activity in advance of the trade deadline.
It’s live television, so there’s always the possibility of unhinged hilarity. Those of you who have been to feeds know that Derek and I usually have bets about who can better work certain obscure references into public appearances, too, so there’s that.
The lineup: me, Derek, New York Vinnie and Dan Devone. We’re trying to talk Jason into coming as well, but we’ll see Jason Barker makes it a USSM triumvirate. We’ve got the others outnumbered.
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Tune in, or don’t. I’ll still respect you in the morning either way.
Scouting the 2007 Mariners
I started to kick this around today and it’s interesting, particularly with the trade deadline near. Bavasi’s thinking about this as he works on trade possibilities for this year, and you’ll see that some of the possibilities start to cascade into others.
Position players
Cornerstones
RF: Ichiro!
I suspect many columnists, on and off-line, have macros or column templates they use on the looming, imminent fall of Ichiro. I’ll believe it when I see it.
2B: Jose Lopez
He’s here to stay.
SS: Yuniesky Betancourt
Same deal. Barring injury, those two are going to anchor the lineup for a while
C: Kenji Johjima
Under contract and a steal for the price
LF/DH Raul Ibanez
He’ll retire a Mariner unless the team’s sold.
Challenging at those positions:
C Jeff Clement but he’s not forcing the issue just yet.
LF/RF/DH Chris Snelling he can hit, he’s still only 24, but forcing his way into the lineup’ll be tough
Less certain
CF Adam Jones
I’m still going to argue he was rushed. His defense is erratic, but we have to remember that he only converted from shortstop in the last Arizona Fall League – considering how long he’s been out there, he’s progressing well. Offensively, he’s obviously struggling, and I’d have let him spend more time in Tacoma working on both sides of his game… but he’s up now. If he’s overmatched all season, they might consider having him start 2007 back in the PCL.
CF Jeremy Reed
The only way I see him on the 2007 squad is if Jones does really badly for the rest of the year.
Possible moves
1B Richie Sexson
So they get the first, cheap year of his contract, get great production and now facing the remainder (which was, if you recall, what we were really worried about). Free-agent first-basemen are almost never a good deal, and finding replacements is not so hard. If there’s a chance to move him, would they take it?
3B Adrian Beltre
The enigma. There’s no one to take his place internally, and it’s a lot harder to find a good replacement. And yet — this too has to be tempting.
1B/DH Ben Broussard
If the team keeps him, he can be one half of a deadly platoon. He’ll likely only get a couple million in arbitration.
You’re starting to see where one of the weird problems is: Snelling, Broussard, and Ibanez are all looking at the playing time for two positions as long as Sexson’s still here. Defensively, you’re best off putting Snelling in left as much as you can and spotting Ibanez out there, but then you’ve still got one of the three on the bench every day, and they’re all good enough hitters that they should be playing versus right-handers.
Overall, though, you can see something really heartening: this is a much younger and improving team, especially compared to the decrepid debacles we saw for a couple of years.
The rotation
Locks
Felix
Washburn
Good bets
Jamie Moyer will likely get offered a one-year deal again. If he wants to come back, it’s there for him.
Gil Meche leaves after the team offers him less than he thinks he can get as a free agent, and some dumb team wildly overpays for him.
Joel Pineiro’s gone if he doesn’t dramatically improve starting… well, now would be good. They could haul him to arbitration, but why bother? Really.
Let’s figure, for a second, that Moyer comes back. The team would have two spots open.
Obvious candidates, especially if they don’t reconfigure the fences, are left-handers like Barry Zito. Or that Daisuke Matsuzaka guy, who, if he’s available, will probably end up a Mariner.
Figure Daisuke Matsuzaka does come over. Then you have four: Felix, Moyer, Matsuzaka, and Washburn. There’s one spot to be filled through free agency or promotion from within.
We still might see Soriano challenge next year. It seems unlikely right now, given his nagging shoulder problem, but with more time between him and surgery and Putz firmly established in the closer role, he might go for it next year.
The only other pitcher I see pushing for a rotation spot next year is Cruceta, who’s been quite good (for stretches) in Tacoma this year, even as he’s struggled at times.
The bullpen’s going to be fine – I’m not worried about that at all. If both Soriano and Cruceta don’t head to the rotation, it’ll be even better, but there’s no need to look for additional help there, even if one of them did.
The whole picture
That’s a nice team. It’s certainly a lot younger, better, and more interesting to watch than some of the squads we’ve seen trotted out these last few years. While the 1B/LF/DH issue is likely more interesting to hardcore fans who worry about roster construction, it’s the rotation that will determine the outcome of the season even if they do nothing with the rest of the roster. If they make good choices on the free agent market, that’s a team that can compete and win a pennant. If they can make a move that gets them some more pitching, all the better.
Game 104, Mariners at Indians
Joel Pineiro vs Cliff Lee, 10:05 am PDT. Standard line-up vs lefties. No Willie, shockingly enough.
Trade deadline is in 27 hours, and the M’s are unlikely to do anything else. There was talk about Jose Cruz Jr yesterday, but they weren’t interested. The only team likely to make a serious run at Meche would be the Mets, and Zito is still the guy Minaya really wants. The M’s won’t move Meche unless they get a guy they could replace him with immediately (either directly or in a 3-way deal), so Aaron Heilmann would have to be part of the package, and the M’s won’t do it one for one.
There’s just nothing else brewing that looks likely. We’re probably going with the team we got. And I’m okay with that.
However, I’m disappointed that the Orioles turned down the Angels reported offer of Ervin Santana and Erick Aybar for Miguel Tejada. Yes, I’m disappointed that the Angels didn’t get Tejada, even though he’d obviously help them right now. Erick Aybar is their Betancourt, but more talented – I wouldn’t trade him for Tejada straight up, and tossing in Ervin Santana? That’s a crazy price to pay. If the Angels had made that deal, they’d have been significantly worse in the future and only moderately better in the present. Oh well.
Credit Where It’s Due
We’ve given Mike Hargrove a lot of crap this year, and honestly, he’s deserved almost all of it. His bullpen usage has been horrible, his lineups mindnumbing, and his dedication to managing by the book has been utterly predictable and hard to watch.
So tonight, I say kudos to Mike Hargrove – you earned it.
In the top of the seventh inning, you started warming Mark Lowe up, even though Washburn had only allowed 1 run through 6 innings and still had a pitch count below 90. When Ronnie Belliard doubled off the wall to put runners on second and third with one out, even though Washburn was just at 96 pitches for the night, you yanked the veteran and handed the ball to the kid with nine major league innings.
After he made you look like a genius by getting Jhonny Peralta out with a steady dose of nasty changeups, Eric Wedge sent left-hander Todd Hollandsworth to the plate. Hollandsworth can’t hit lefties to save his life, and you hadn’t used George Sherrill. You decided to leave Lowe in, and even though I wouldn’t have walked Hollandsworth to load the bases, you deserve credit for not going for the easy lefty-lefty matchup there.
Then, when Shin-Soo Choo popped out of the dugout to pinch hit, you again resisted going to Sherrill. This despite the fact that you knew Choo was useless against lefties, and you’d seen his haplessness first hand. You trusted the guy with ridiculous stuff, and it paid off.
Then, you sent Mark Lowe back out in the 8th inning, despite having the top of the order coming up, which included all-star lefties Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner. You got to watch Mark Lowe strike out the side in one of the most impressive performances you’ll ever hope to see.
You didn’t stick with a veteran. You didn’t get seduced into playing matchups. You let your newly crowned relief ace work multiple innings. You let him face perhaps the best hitter in the league, who swings from the left side, in a one run game.
I have no idea what got into you, but that was a well executed usage of the bullpen. Please, please keep it up.
Oh, and it’s good to be back.
Soriano on the DL, Green leaves the DL
Soriano’s been placed on the 15-day DL with shoulder “fatigue”. The move is retroactive to July 20th, the day after he last appeared in a game, which means he’s eligible to come off it next week. Supposedly he’s been feeling better when throwing, but it can’t be that good if they threw him on the DL.
Green’s back. That’s a drop in quality, obviously, from a healthy Soriano, but from the out-of-whack one, it’s not that big of a deal. Green’s a perfectly adequate reliever in the M’s pen, and with Putz and Sherrill both pitching well and Lowe just shredding opposing batters, there’s no need to throw him to the wolves as he comes off the DL.
Game 103, Mariners at Indians
Only the daring life is worth living, so here’s a game thread on the new box.
LHP Jarrod Washburn vs RHP Jake Westbrook.
4:05. KSTW-11 for your local TV needs.
Division race news: Angels lost to Boston. Oakland’s beating Toronto, and Texas gets the night off, facing Kansas City.
Your lineup tonight:
RF-L Ichiro!
2B-R Lopez
3B-R Beltre
LF-L Ibanez
1B-R Sexson
DH-L Broussard, in his M’s debut
C-R Johjima
SS-R Betancourt
CF-R Willy “The Ignitor” Bloomquist
Whatareyougonnado.
So then the bench is OF-R Jones, C-R Rivera, 1B-R Perez, 1B/3B-L Dobbs. Bloomquist has to move in to cover a middle infield need, and then Jones would have to play an outfield position.
Cleveland, meanwhile, is interesting
CF-L Sizemore
LF-R Michaels
DH-L Hafner
1B-S Martinez
RF-R Blake
2B-R Belliard
SS-R Peralta
3B-R Marte
C-R Stoppach
Both catchers on the field. I wonder who their emergency catcher would be?
Why David Corcoran Destroys Everything He Touches
or, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
A brief and vastly over-simplified summary of USSM’s technical dilemma.
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Don’t call it a comeback
We’ve been here for years.
So — this is the new box. And things are… sketchy? Unstable? Rickety? We’re working on it. In particular, you may see a really weird looking site and get page load errors until the name records get to you. Comments are going to be off for a little bit.
And still… I feel like crying for joy. Been a long, exhausting couple of days here at USSM Labs. Thanks much for all your support. Three days almost exactly from server down to letting the world onto the new server is a long time to be out.
I’ll be trying to fill in the posts from the temporary site now. If things go well, we may attempt a game thread today.
What happened, how to help
Wednesday we got overwhelmed by a traffic spike at least 50% off our normal traffic, which is already shockingly large. We blew up our web and database servers (and that’s “the massive shared servers our generous host had us on”) For a couple of hours, we were showing a version of USSM that was the last thing the web server managed to generate: a text-only version of USSM with no formatting, where every link led to a file not found error (because they’d been blown away).
This meant that while I was on the phone with our host, discussing what in the world we could do (because bringing the site back up only to get destroyed under the load again made no sense) we got high-quality emails like
What Happened to the USS Mariner web site today? New format is awful. . .and nothing about trade that just came down with Indians
No really, someone looked at that broken, formless thing and thought we were redecorating.
Helping
Probably… 95% of the email that’s come in has been requests to help in different forms, and particularly, requests to accept donations. Some of them were rather angry about not having that option. We’ve resisted this in the past, and now we relent:
And also this.
Wow, that Paypal box is way smaller. Oh well, there’s not a lot of time right now for tweaking and formatting.
Paypal (now a part of eBay) is, admittedly, uh, not the finest company, but they do charge us a little less compared to Amazon (PayPal is, I believe, 30c+2.2% while Amazon is 30c+ 2.9%) PayPal’s a little bit better, but Amazon is likely to be much easier for you if it was up, which it hasn’t had much luck at today. If any of our fine readers at Amazon want to kick their box in the hind end for us, that’d be helpful.
I fully admit that we don’t know what we’re going to do with the money right now, but the top candidates are:
- We port the site to use Movable Type, which I believe may be far better at handling the kind of loads we see. MT requires money
- Putting a box on a rack which is not hand-assembled by me with a Will Clark sticker on the case (for luck)
- Bribe our host
I would say right now that I’m 100% certain that we won’t be using the DMZ-built box as a long-term solution: either we’ll move to MT and solve the load issue that way, or we’ll be forced to buy or hire our own server. I promise not to buy my weight in Anchor Steam and try to forget all this when we’re up and stable. Unless that’s a request. Because I could do that.
Some people have suggested Google’s ad program — we’ve been down that path before, and it didn’t do it.