Bob Finnigan on the Kevin Jarvis move has some fun stuff:
Howard Lincoln making the call to Bavasi to have Jarvis canned:
No sooner had Adrian Gonzalez’s long ball hit the right-field seats than Mariners CEO Howard Lincoln was on the phone to general manager Bill Bavasi.
“I knew those guys would be calling me, at one point or another,” said Lincoln, who is traveling with the team in the first of his four planned trips this season. “I felt I might as well save them the trouble.”
Also, we hear “The front office imposed the decision on manager Bob Melvin. ” Their intention, Finnigan reports, was to see if they could milk something out of him (looking back to his past success at San Diego, which … and I’m just looking at his lines here… what success in San Diego was that? His 12-11 2001 season, with the 4.79 ERA?), or to include him and his salary as part of a deal with another club (“Here, we’ll throw in Leone, Zapp, and a set of steak knives… but no take-backs”).
We (me, particularly) mock Finnigan frequently for being the unofficial mouthpiece for management, but it’s times like this when having that insight into what’s going on there is amusing and educational.
I do want to point out though that the Mariners aren’t eating $5m all of a sudden, as if a bill will show up requiring them to hand over the Kazu money they never spent. They ate that when they brought his contract over. That money was going to get paid to Jarvis if he stunk it up and if he was a servicable part. It was much more likely to be the former, but we shouldn’t forget that they took on his contract in the Cirillo trade, and it was a sunk cost then as it is a sunk cost now. If this is used as an excuse at any point this season for not making moves, or taking on salary, or raising beer prices, everyone should know this — this is not an added expense in any way. It’s an admission that they’re not going to get any value out of an investment they already made.
Reader Paul Covert writes on the Thornton call-up:
I note that this marks the first time an M’s first-rounder has advanced to the majors in almost five years, since Meche’s initial promotion in July 1999. Of the first-rounders since then (Anderson ’97, Thornton ’98, Christianson ’99, Heaverlo [supplemental] ’99, nobody ’00, Garciaparra [supplemental] ’01, Mayberry [oops] ’02, and Jones [supplemental] ’03), none had made the big time until now.
Further to that here are (as far as I know) all the M’s signed (i.e. non-Rich Harden) draftees since ’97 who have made it to the majors:
1997 5th Jermaine Clark, 12th Pineiro
1998 1st Thornton, 3rd Van Hekken
1999 3rd Bloomquist, 6th Putz, 8th Sledge, 9th Steve Kent
2000 6th Strong
Pineiro looks like the only solidly established regular in the bunch (although of course others could still do it)….
Mariners at Orioles
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Monday, RHP Meche v LHP Riley, 4:05
Tuesday, LHP Moyer v RHP Ainsworth, 4:05
Wednesday, RHP Pineiro v LHP DuBose, 4:05
Thursday, RHP Garcia v LHP Bedard, 1:05
Whew! A break from those good AL West teams, and a breather against the lousy… what? Oh crap, Baltimore’s 10-7! Fifth in the league in defense, fifth in offense! Noooooooooooo…
Also, Dave — you guessed that was his release date. He’s just been designated for assignment: they could release him tomorrow and you’d be right on.
Headline: “M’s throw in towel on throwing in towel”
or how about “M’s throw out towel”
Kevin Jarvis is no more. Not in a morbid, grive for his family kind of way, but in a put the fans out of their misery and release him kind of way. And for that, hurrah. I do wish the M’s had done this tomorrow, however. Even waited til midnight would have been fine. As is, I missed it by one day.
I didn’t know this, but watching the game — did Randy Winn change his name to Goodtrythereby Winn in the off-season? It still shows up the old way in the batting box, but whenever they say it it’s the other way.
Bob Melvin Watch
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Some people think that expressions of confidence are the goodbye kiss of baseball management, but it really only tells you that the ownership is aware enough of discontent that they have to address it. They’d rather not.
You’ll know Melvin’s going to get fired when you start to read stories about how he’s lost the clubhouse, which will percolate a while, followed by local loyal ownership-and-front-office sources (they have their choice here in Seattle) start to mention that maybe Melvin’s not the guy to keep the team competitive.
Team Watch (6-13)
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Many people, from readers to TV personalities, liked to mention that the Mariners weren’t off to that bad a start, that the 2001 A’s were just as bad and had gone on to win 102 games that year (2nd in the AL West to the Mariner juggernaut). This is still true: the A’s were 6-13 on 4/22/2001. They’d also been smacked about badly by the Mariner team on their way to 116 wins — the M’s went 5-1 in the first month against that A’s team. The A’s sucked it up for the rest of the month, leaving April 8-17, and then started to reel of the wins for the rest of the year. So there’s hope. Another team’s done it before.
But almost every other team that had finished over .500 after such a slow start: the 1991 Brewers, 93 Royals, 95 Reds, 03 Diamondbacks, started turning their ship around at this point.
1993 Royals and 2003 Diamondbacks were at 7-12
1995 (division winning) Reds were 10-9 and the 1991 Brewers were at 10-9 (and Bosio picked up his 3rd win)
Historically, a start this bad indicates a team that is bad, with few counter-examples. And those counter-examples are starting to walk away from the team.
I got up early this morning to log some serious miles on the bike, planning to miss as little of the game as possible. On my way back, I stopped at Marymoor to snack and drink some water. The baseball diamonds were filled with women’s fast-pitch softball (for instance, the “Seattle Spice” (I’m guessing the 12u/14u/16u is age-and-under), so I watched. I’m a sucker for baseball in any form.
So I was watching these two games, and they sang. The team hitting would sing from the dugout, like uh.. like cheers, only not stupid (“We’ve got spirit, yes we do…” none of that). There was a “get a hit” song, a “the pitcher sucks” song I heard after a wild pitch, a “good hit” song, it was totally cool. I sat next to my bike and watched fastpitch softball with a stupid grin on my face. It’s the most fun I’ve had watching baseball this year.
After a while, I climbed up Bel-Red back into town and by the time I got the game on, Melvin had thrown in the towel, and I watched Kevin Jarvis give up home run after home run to destroy the team’s chances of even possibly coming back. It was the saddest thing I’ve seen all year: swept by Texas, wishing that Melvin had fought harder to keep the game even remotely in hand when he had the chance, because the way they’re getting blown out even three-runs down seems like a moral victory.
But I’m still smiling.
Real quick — I don’t have fielding info from Japan, but didn’t Ichiro play center his entire career over there? In that sense, he’s played it a heck of a lot more than Winn has, albeit not as recently.
In any event, I think it’s pretty clear the outfield should be Winn (decent range, poor arm) in left, Ichiro (good range, good arm) in center and Ibanez (OK range, better arm than Winn) in right.
Reader Cliff Classen writes:
The Texas GM calls and says: “Hey, my nine for your nine, straight up.” Do you answer something along the lines of basically working out the transportation details?
Ah, John Hart, wacky team-swapper.
What are you getting? Assuming it’s the starting best nine —
Huge young stars: Hank Blalock, Mark Teixeira
Not as young stars who might not really be able to keep their level of productivity up but then again might be: Alfonso Soriano
Good prospect-y guys: Gerald Laird
Decent semi-young guys: Mike Young
Decent players still developing who might have promise and might not: Kevin Mench, Laynce Nix (I could write about that for a while, but I won’t)
Servicable regulars being paid as such: Fullmer
Floatsam: Delucci
And you’d be giving up
Stars: Edgar, Boone
Really good guys who maybe don’t contribute at that same level but are still cool and I like a lot: Ichiro!
Servicable regulars, some of whom are paid enormous amounts of money: Ibanez, Aurilia, Spiezio, Winn, Wilson
Old guys dragging boulders around: Olerud
Given too that this season looks like a wash, I take the offer and wonder what Hart’s been smoking. Then I deal Soriano off (because we’ve got Lopez & Friend to play next year). Well, no, I don’t, because I couldn’t bring myself to trade Edgar. I’d wuss out and have to have an assistant take the offer. If you’re going to play for next year, the Rangers offer you a bunch of players that will be better in a year that you can build your team around. The Mariners are built to win now, and they’re losing.
Tacoma News Tribune ran an article about Winn that contains some weird statements:
On the difficulty of catching balls in the sun:
In fact, that was the impetus behind [Griffey’s] famous “demand” that the Safeco Field roof be used for cover on an otherwise pleasant afternoon.
Look, no one knows. Griffey’s a guy who may have told many people many different versions of the story — I really do like Griffey, but following his career there’s a lot of post-event justification that goes on when he’s done something wacky.
During spring training, when Winn was being groomed for his return to center field – he alternated between left and center in Tampa Bay – manager Bob Melvin urged patience, as the veteran was adjusting to a position whose difficulties were masked by the elite likes of Griffey and Mike Cameron.
Small problem here. Winn’s defensive positions, by year
1998, 70 CF games, 16 LF games, 12 RF games
1999, 77 CF games
2000, 18 CF games, 29 LF games
2001, 48 CF games, 62 RF games, 9 LF games
2002, 138 CF games, 8 RF games
Soooooooooo he didn’t alternate so much between left and center in Tampa as much as he alternated all over the outfield… and then played center full time. Or focusing on his last couple of years, you could say he played center and right field.
I know that’s kind of picky, I’m sorry… but doesn’t anyone besides Larry Stone and David Andriessen fact-check their assumptions before they file their stories? We could write a “media watch” column every day where we go through the local dailies and point out things that are wrong in each story. Could do that with the broadcasts, except we can’t point to broadcast transcript URLs and there’s so, so much in three hours.
The point here being that Winn played 371 games in center field just at the major league level before this season, and many more in the minors. It’s not as if we’ve transported him to some wacky planet where the gravity is twice Earth’s and he has to run across uneven formations space crystals to get to the ball. He’s just not a good center fielder out there. He’s okay, but he’s not good. There’s a temptation (as in that article) to dismiss the downgrade as a perception thing, that he only appears to suck because Cameron was awesome, but that raises three issues:
– No
– He seriously is below-average in center field
– Where were these people when many M’s fans (like us) kept protesting that Cameron’s glove far outweighed his problems hitting at home?
So… what’s the solution? It’s crazy! It’s revolutionary! It’s something we’ve been pushing since Cameron was booted out of town:
Beyond a blockbuster trade – and it’s too early to talk about that – here’s a simple solution: restore Winn to his comfort zone in left, move Raul Ibañez to right field (he’s played it, on and off, since high school) and switch Ichiro Suzuki to center.
Ichiro is a world-class right fielder, but let’s face it, a world-class right fielder is a luxury when the center fielder is Mike Cameron. When the center fielder is a mistake waiting to happen, the best defensive player in the outfield should man the busiest station in the outfield.
It’s never too early to talk blockbuster trade, but beyond that… hey, here’s a problem, though: if veteran outfielder Randy Winn’s having all these problems adjusting to center field, wouldn’t Ichiro! have the same problems?
On today’s game:
What a tough game to watch. The rain delays, the length of time it took to get to a loss… watching the team chip away at the lead only to have Texas put up 3 in the seventh, and then see the Mariners answer that three but fall short… just watching I felt like I’d had a lot taken out of me.
Hard to find fault in the offense: they were patient and drew four walks off Drese and nine on the night, really whupping up on some of that middle relief. Problems again giving up the extra-base hits, which we almost never saw last year. But the real problem again came from the defense and the long ball, both problems that continue to dog the team. Tonight Pineiro faced 28 guys. He struck out six, walked one, and gave up two home runs (ow) (and they still count for a full run if they’re solo shots). Of the 19 batters he saw put the ball into play, 11 of those went for hits. 11! That’s crazy. We got to see balls get by Davis as well as the infield… just ugly play all around.
When your pitcher goes almost 110 pitches, throwing 61% strikes and racking up a strikeout an inning (even while getting slapped around), you’ve got to think he’ll walk away with a win. 11 hits on 19 balls in play. Ow, ow, ow.
I noticed, though, that the Rangers have a lot more electronic noise between pitches and stuff than Safeco does this year. It tends to grate on me, but I don’t seem to have noticed its absence. I’d gladly trade the dumb in-game annoyances for the “Rally Jig” even if I’d rather not have either. I want to watch the game, talk to my friends, maybe score, drink a beer, have an Ivardog. I see a ton of games every year, and I don’t like the hydros (though, again, I prefer the simplified hydros to the hyper-active, waving-camera hydro races of last season). And while people think that the casual fan comes to the game for the music and crazy videos, I think maybe they come to the Mariners game for the baseball, like me.
Note on the missing post:
Deleted a post today, a lengthy riposte to the Seattle Weekly letters to the editor about the stat rats article. One I disagreed with in a sort of civil manner, though I think the writer’s quite wrong. The other involved name-calling and threats to force-feed me my stats. My responses weren’t that great.
I wrote a long thing about how I was trying to elevate my work and hopefully the quality of debate. Umm… here it is.
I’m going to keep working on that. So if you see a lame post from me and later it goes away, that’s me trying to self-edit. Sorry. I planned a much longer article on the nature of chemistry at some point. But I’m going to defer to Rob Neyer, who hit this in his chat today:
Dan, Chicago: Whenever anyone talks to me about the Yankees’ lack of chemistry, I think of the 72-74 Oakland A’s. Is there any reason why chemistry should affect this Yankees team negatively if it didn’t affect the A’s?
Rob Neyer: No. And there’s a better example, closer to home: the 1976-1981 Yankees, who fought each other all the time. But you already know what I think about “chemistry.” Often discussed, never explained.