All-Stars: National League
“Democracy is on trial, on a more colossal scale than ever before.â€Â
–Charles Fletcher Dole, The Spirit of Democracy 1845 (?)
I was at the Reds and Cardinals game last night. Watching such fascinating things you never imagine can happen like Jason Marquis giving up two home runs in 2+ innings. Or So Taguchi collect three consecutive singles, all to right field (one bounced off Brandon Claussen, but still wound up in right field). And Albert Pujols leg out a double, steal third and score on a popfly that can’t have traveled anymore than 200 feet.
And pondering such questions of the universe as: Why does Tony LaRussa bat Jason Marquis ninth in the lineup, when his .978 OPS is second on the team? Or why is Einar Diaz (Einar Diaz!!) hitting for Brad Thompson with two on and two out with the Cardinals down 6 runs in the sixth?
No matter. And there were no ushers busily distributing All-Star ballots. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times at Great American Ballpark.
Ah yes, the National League All-Stars. Again, here are each of the top-five ballot placers at each position (so many too close to call!), with their Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP1 as provided by Baseball Prospectus) in 2005, 2004 and 2003. We here at USS Mariner laboratories encourage you, the fan, to watch as many games as you can, talk to as many educated fans as you can, and come to your own conclusions about who you, the fan, believe are the true All-Stars. And remember: It’s only an exhibition game, and on July 12 there will be 80-90 All-Stars in attendance. (Sorry, that cynicism slipped through.)
Game 69, Athletics at Mariners
RHP Rich Harden (2-3, 2.80) vs. RHP Joel Pineiro (2-3, 5.69)
7:05pm, FSN and KOMO
See how won-loss record can be misleading for pitchers? Oh, and Harden’s making his first start since May 13 after missing a month with a strained stomach muscle. Meanwhile, Pineiro’s allowed just three earned runs over his past two starts (13 innings) and induced 10 and 13 outs via ground balls in those two outings. Hence the importance of keeping the ball down.
Griffey v. Griffey
Concerned that modern ballplayers are cold, unfeeling automatons? Vexed that your All-Star votes are going to these unreachable, unappreciative subjects? Then turn your attention and critical thinking skills toward something that is actually, by its very nature, incapable of feelings — the modern stadium giveaway statue.
On May 24, our own Peter White braved the perilous Kentucky-Ohio border to score a Ken Griffey Jr. bobble-head in a Cincinnati uniform — a piece we’ll refer to as “Reds Griffey”. Tonight, the M’s will give away “Teal Griffey,” third in the “1995 commemorative statues” series.
With these two giveaways occuring in the same season, how could we at USS Mariner Labs not host a classic confrontation between these two diminutive powerhouses?
Maybe a top-ten tale of the tape will help fans on the fence decide whether or not to brave Safeco Field tonight to pick up Teal Griffey. Maybe we’ll help fuel the Internet economy with a rush in consumer spending. And maybe the following will contribute in some small way to peace, leave and understanding.
But probably not.
After the jump are 10 reasons to prefer each statue over the other. With pictures. See the photos, judge for yourself, and feel free to contribute your own evaluations in the comments. Read more
All-Stars: American League
“Democracy is on trial, on a more colossal scale than ever before.”
–Charles Fletcher Dole, The Spirit of Democracy 1845 (?)
I used to get really worked up about filling out my All-Star ballot. I just can’t bring myself to do it anymore. It’s just not a big deal to me. It’s an exhibition game. Maybe that’s a sad thing. Maybe not.
My inner-12-year-old chockful of wonder and idealism would love to see the very greatest baseball players on one field playing against each other. My inner-world-weary-cynic says its a heinous MLB publicity stunt that nobody takes seriously. So why should I?
And thus the dilemma as I sit in the stands, All-Star ballot in hand.
Everybody’s got a system. And I’m starting to believe that All-Star voting systems are like fingerprints and snowflakes. No two people share the same All-Star voting system. The home team. Favorite players. Highest batting average as of May 1. Win Shares over the last three years divided by pi cubed. Best looking. RBI. Whatever. The five contributors to this website can’t seem to agree on who we think are the All-Stars. Except Ichiro!. That we can all agree on.
I swore I wasn’t going to bother. I voted from my gut. Stars are stars, stats be damned, right? Some friends and colleagues didn’t agree with me, so my curiosity is piqued now.
Most every discussion you’ll hear this time of the year focuses almost exclusively on offensive stats. But you and I both know offense only tells half the story. Defense matters, too. Unless you’re David Ortiz.
So I’ve compiled the Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP, courtesy of Baseball Prospectus) for each player in the top five balloting thus far. I’m not trumpeting WARP as the end all savior of the universe statistic. It’s one of many tools to evaluate and compare players. So for your reading pleasure, and for some educated ammo for your next ballpark/barstool discussion of the All-Stars, here are the top five vote getters at each position (as of today), followed by their WARP score in 2005 (current through last night’s game), 2004 and 2003. Any interesting players to me not in the top five, I included separated from their colleagues by an ellipsis. Here’s hoping you have many fruitful All-Star discussions this All-Star season.
But in the words that LeVar Burton taught me, don’t take my word for it…
Japan and/or Ichiro to skip World Cup?
Japan’s participation in next year’s first-of-its-kind World Baseball Classic is up in the air. Negotiations are ongoing, with an important deadline at the end of the month. The Japanese players’ union is the holdup, citing scheduling issues.
If an accord can’t be reached, it would be a big disappointment. Japan’s tentatively slated to be one of the first-round host sites. A baseball-crazy fan base would be disappointed, and the tournament would end up being less interesting.
Perhaps due to this uncertainty about Japan’s participation, both Ichiro and Hideki Matsui appear pretty lukewarm about whether they would want to play.
Personally, I think they’re just taking a wait-and-see approach. The tone of the comments seems to be “we’ll see if this tournament works out, and then we’ll decide.”
This World Cup-style tournament could be great for baseball if the kinks get worked out. May negotiations be smooth from here on in.
The Attrition War, Marlins
Part of a continuing series, follow-ups to the initial post detailing the Mariners history over the same period.
Do the Mariners, in comparison to other teams, suffer a higher rate of injury to their pitching prospects than other teams? Here, I look at the Marlins.
The Attrition War, Indians
Part of a continuing series, follow-ups to the initial post detailing the Mariners history over the same period.
Do the Mariners, in comparison to other teams, suffer a higher rate of injury to their pitching prospects than other teams? Here, I look at the Indians.
Game 68, Oakland at Seattle
Pop quiz, hotshot: identify what the following pitching lines have in common.
90.2 IP, 4.27 ERA, 1.32 WHIP 51 K
85.2 IP, 3.78 ERA, 1.52 WHIP, 51 K
92.2 IP, 4.66 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 69 K
87 IP, 4.14 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 67 K
All are or were members of the Oakland A’s rotation. It seemed fitting to bring this up as the M’s start a series with the Green and Yellow Elephants tonight.
First up is Mark Mulder. Next is Tim Hudson. Third is Barry Zito, rounding out the former “Big Three.”
And number four? That’s Dan Haren, who goes tonight against the Mariners. You could make a solid case that he’s pitched at least as well as any of the others — including Mulder, who he was traded for. The A’s also got Kiko Calero and catching prospect Daric Barton in the deal.
The A’s offensive moves haven’t worked out this year, but Haren is legit. And he turns 25 in September. I’ll be rooting for the M’s to treat him like Tom Glavine, but if they don’t, it may not be the fault of the bats.
Aaron Sele v. Dan Haren. TV: FSN. Radio: KOMO.
The View From The Other Side
Sometimes it’s interesting to see the spin from other markets after games, or, in this case, a series.
It seems Tom Glavine feels that — apart from Richie Sexson’s home run — the Mariner offense just plain got lucky off of him yesterday.
[“]The rest of the stuff, ground balls in the hole or bloop line drives falling in front of guys. If you get a break here or there, it’s a ground ball at somebody or it’s a fly-ball out.”
Without irony, I can say that I admire confidence. It’s a necessary stock in trade for any high-pressure industry, professional sports perhaps the best example. But Tom, you’re giving up 11.8 hits per nine this year. Crash Davis’ “ground ball with eyes” speech aside, not all of those are bleeders.
Besides, it seemed to me that command was the real issue for Glavine yesterday. In over 80 innings, he’s walked just 34 men so far this year — but issued two free passes in two-and-a-third yesterday.
Perhaps he was just frustrated at giving up so many runs against the heretofore anemic Mariner attack. Hopefully, the bats have woken up just in time for another offensively-challenged ball club, the A’s, to roll into town.
Random notes
There’s a lot of stuff to talk about, so forgive me for going all Peter Gammons on this post.
The lesson here, though, isn’t that Mike Morse is a tremendous player. He’s not. He’s a mid tier prospect who is having a phenomenal hot streak to begin his career. The lesson of Mike Morse is the one we’ve been clamoring for the front office to learn for years: the perceived dropoff from major league to Triple-A talent isn’t nearly as vast as a lot of people think. Rather than spending millions of dollars on players who have proven to be mediocre or worse at the major league level, the team could improve remarkably by simply reallocating those resources to upper level players and giving opportunities to younger, unproven players with similar skills. Paying a premium for players with a major league track record of failure has cost this team dearly over the past few years. If there’s one thing we can hope comes from the ridiculous start that Morse has had, it’s that the organization may begin to realize that freely available talent often can outproduce the bottom rung of major league players, and do so for the league minimum.
Oh, and if you’re one of those wondering why Morse can’t keep this up, 82 percent of his hits in the majors have been singles. Besides Ichiro and Luis Castillo, two burners who get a huge amount of infield hits, there aren’t productive major league hitters who avoid extra base hits at that kind of clip. A realistic projection for Morse for the rest of the season is still something along the lines of .250/.290/.360.