Last chance for the coolest shirt yet
The “Optimism” Limited Edition Shirt gets pulled this coming week. Buy now (which supports USSM to the tune of a couple of bucks and makes me and Jeff feel validated) or forever go without this hilarious thing. I promise that if I spot you wearing the shirt at a local watering hole pre-game, I will personally buy you a beverage.
Here’s the CafePress image of the back.
Right through our fingers
Hee Choi was claimed by the Red Sox after the Dodgers cut him from their roster.
Choi’s an odd guy. He’s been passed from team to team, with each seemingly dissatisfied with his performance and eager to get rid of him, even when he was doing well. He’s been passed up for inferior options a couple of times, which makes you think there’s something about him that his managers don’t like to the point they’d rather sacrifice runs to avoid him. His minor league numbers are pretty awesome. He’s 27. He’s left-handed. He plays first. He was *free* to pick up.
I realize that this can’t happen for PR purposes, but here’s the case for cutting Waste-of-Carbon Everett and picking up Choi.
Team-wise:
– Choi’s way younger and less likely to collapse
– Choi is a better hitter
– Choi can play first (unlike Ibanez/Everett)
– Choi doesn’t have a easily-vesting option that would tie the team to him for 2007
Create a better world wise:
– Choi, even in the worst-case he’s-a-selfish-jerk, doesn’t get into fights with teammates
Even with Choi’s up-and-down major league career, he can still hit, and projection systems still like him. Here’s his “equiavalent” lines, so we can compare them.
Choi
90% .296/.407/.592
Weighted mean .270/.371/.511
10% .239/.324/.411
Everett
90% .299/.370/.504
Weighted mean .268/.334/.449
10% .220/.274/.362
Everett’s a sunk cost: they’re going to pay him that ridiculous $3.4m no matter what. Choi’s going to cost under a million dollars. The question is: is an extra 50 points of OBP and 50 points of SLG worth a million dollars?
Of course it is, unless you believe that somehow Everett provides clubhouse leadership that’ll get you more than that through indirect benefits like increased team energy and whatnot.
A great team would have seized this opportunity. It could have been a significant upgrade to the offense at little cost. Instead, it’s another demonstration that the team is not looking to constantly improve any way they can, and that they’re still tied to previously failed notions of chemsitry and leadership — and they think Everett’s the man to provide it.
Ahhh, Saturday
PI: Reed’s injury leaves M’s with a gap in center and Reed injury shakes up infield.
Times: Baek had a good outing.
The Times manages to go through a series of scenarios to cover CF:
– Bloomquist plays
– Ichiro moves over
– Borchard plays center (yeagh) or right
– Lawton plays center (OH GOD NOOO)
– Trade for someone
Despite having a couple possible internal options like Bohn. Ah well.
The short version is nobody knows, but they seem to think it’ll be Bloomquist.
TNT: M’s could pursue Thomson. But there’s no room in the starting rotation! Where would he go? Wait… oh yeah.
Cut: Dave Burba, Fernando Vina.
Reed out two months
Jeremy Reed has a broken bone in his wrist and will be out for 6-8 weeks.
The likely scenario is that Willie Bloomquist becomes the regular center fielder. There’s a real possibility, however, that the M’s decide to take the opportunity to try Ichiro in center. With the current composition of the roster, moving Ichiro to center is the logical option; Ibanez slides in as the right fielder, with Lawton/Morse/Borchard holding down left field for a few months.
Should be interesting to see just how the team, and Ichiro, handles the situation.
USSMariner Gathering – Details
Okay, enough beating around the bush. The details are finalized, and we’re finally able to make the official announcement.
Sunday, April 2nd, from 2:30 pm to 6:30 pm at Safeco Field
We’ve got space for 200 people to come join Derek, Jeff, Jason, and myself for four hours inside Safeco on the eve of opening day. 24 hours before the season kicks off, you get to come hang out with us as we spend a few hours talking baseball and having a good ol time.
Of course, we won’t be the only people talking. Once again, Mariners General Manager Bill Bavasi has graciously agreed to give up a good portion of his free time and participate in a question and answer session. Quite simply, this is a unique opportunity for Mariner fans to get together and pick the brain of the guy who makes the decisions.
Four hours of baseball talk, including time with the number one guy in the front office the day before the season starts? Hard to beat that, honestly.
We’ve done our best to keep the costs as low as possible, and we’re really happy we can offer this get together for $15 per person. That will include snacks and drinks, so while it’s not a feed, you will be able to get fatter while attending, which is a nice plus.
If you’re interested in attending, here’s what you need to do: send an email to ussmarinerfeed@gmail.com with the number of people you’re requesting spots for in the subject. In the body of the message, I need full names of those who will be coming under your reservation.
Due to the event being just nine days away, we’re going to have you pay-as-you-enter to avoid problems with the postal service and getting checks around in time. We’re counting on your good faith to attend the event if you sign up; we’re paying for your spot whether you come or not, so if you don’t come and don’t pay, that’s money out of our pockets.
One last note; we’re making one minor change to how we handled the event last summer. Instead of a free-for-all where everyone gets the mic and we pray that they ask a question that isn’t insulting and makes sense, this time around, the Q&A will be moderated. If you have a question you’d like to hear Bavasi answer, leave it in the comments of this thread, and we’ll cull the best ones and make sure they get asked.
Also, any general questions that you think may be of interest to others, feel free and ask in the comments.
Is it Friday? Oh thank goodness
(having a bad week)
PI: King Felix had a nice outing. Ichiro’s been emotional lately. In the TNT, Betancourt liked watching Cuba play in the WBC.
Times: Moyer’s the Opening Day starter. Close those jaws now, or something might nest in there.
Also, Dave’s got a Mariners Preview up over at the Hardball Times. It includes this fun little segment:
It isn’t rare at all to see a team “come from nowhere†to make a strong push for the playoffs. It’s actually so common, you have to expect it. Teams who underperformed the previous year, have significant young talent, and got career years from a key player or two entering their prime often blow the common wisdom out of the water and remind everyone that improvement does not have to come in small, incremental steps.
There isn’t a team in baseball better poised to make that leap this year than the Mariners. They have young players with solid track records or established stars at every position on the diamond besides left field and a pitching staff that will be anchored by the best young arm to enter the major leagues in a couple of decades.
Hooray for Friday optimism.
Meet Tease, Part Two
I was hoping to have finalized information for you guys this afternoon, but it will have to wait one more day. Since we’re getting close to the date, however, I did want to give you guys a reminder:
Sunday, April 2nd, big USSM shindig. You’re going to want to come, and we’re going to have a cap on how many people can attend, so clear your calendar. Exact time, how to sign up, where to meet, and fun announcement to come hopefully tomorrow.
Thursday or O season, why won’t you start?
No game today (Obviously, I misread the schedule when I made the original post). Two games: 12:05 v the Cubs, 6:05 vs the Diamondbacks. There were bees, though. And the M’s lost. Betancourt’s being tried in the #2 slot. Huh.
The Onion offers this brief news on Ichiro’s WBC participation:
SAN DIEGOâ€â€In an interview following Japan’s 10-6 victory against Cuba in the World Baseball Classic championship game Monday, Ichiro Suzuki called the tournament a “great opportunity to represent anything besides the Seattle Mariners.” “Playing alongside my countrymen on the world stage was nice, but the highlight of the event for me was not having to watch helplessly from the on-deck circle as [Seattle outfielder] Willie Bloomquist pops out for the fourth time in one game,” said Ichiro, who has been contemplating a return to his non-Mariner roots since late 2003. “Honestly, I would have played for the Netherlands team if it meant 17 days away from the Mariners spring-training camp.” Although he said that the legendary Sadaharu Oh did a fine job coaching Team Japan, Ichiro added that “next to Mike Hargrove, any idiot in a baseball cap would seem like a decent manager.”
Yeeeeeeeeeeeup.
I have a guest article up o’er at Baseball Analysts. Short version: people who bet on baseball bet based almost entirely on last year’s standings and winners, a bit on a team’s offseason, but really not at all on projected standings or competitiveness. This has some implications.
Wednesday, March 22nd
Mariners won yesterday [PI], and Beltre got a homer. Borchard’s got a new locker [TNT]… for now. The Times has a story on Nageotte and Blackley.
Book Review: The Museum of Clear Ideas
T.S. Eliot once wrote that April is the cruelest month. Given that Eliot was the most British American ever conceived, it is unsurprising that he did not appreciate baseball’s approach. This despite being born in St. Louis and living during the era of Rogers Hornsby. Working on some poem is barely an excuse.
To the rest of us — poets, too — April means baseball. After reading Donald Hall’s vastly underappreciated 1993 work, Museum of Clear Ideas
In Clear Ideas, Hall draws on themes from sport and visual art. The book’s first baseball poem is an attempt to explain baseball to Kurt Schwitters, the artist acknowledged as the 20th century master of the collage.
The volume isn’t all baseball, but the narrative of the game informs (and bookends) everything else. We start with a non-baseball poem (“Another Elegy,” which nevertheless alludes to rain delays), then move on to nine long baseball poems divided into nine poetic “innings”. Concluding, Hall offers three warm, darkly beautiful extra-inning baseball poems that are succinct and perfect, like black pearls.
Like Schwitters, Hall wraps seemingly unrelated elements into a package that works. And while any fan of poetry ought to enjoy the book, you might have to be a longstanding baseball fan to truly appreciate some of the wit here. Besides lines about storied games from yesteryear, there are references to Dock Ellis’ acid no-hitter, Wade Boggs’ affairs, Steve Blass disease, expansion and Nolan Ryan’s Advil ads.
To the poet, baseball is a pleasure (“Baseball is not my work. It is my/walk in the park, my pint of bitter,/My Agatha Christie or Zane Grey.”), but it also reflects the grand collage of life. Generations of young men become old men, barely hanging on as skills and vitality fade. Hall’s is a world where ” … even losing three out of four/is preferable to off-season,” as life is preferable to death.
Baseball, like sexual intercourse
and art, stops short, for a moment, the
indecent continuous motion
of time forward, implying our death
and imminent decomposition.
Being a Red Sox fan, Hall knows something about loss, death, hope and rebirth. Even if you win the Series, he reminds, the season ends anyway. Fortunately, there is still spring.
The Museum of Clear Ideas
[Ed note: those are affiliate links. We recommend the book even if you go buy it some other way. Standard disclaimers apply.]