I think when people are saying “tough,” they really mean “evenly matched.” To me, Seattle, Oakland and Anaheim aren’t more than, say, five games apart right now.
The Blackley comment was an off-the-cuff remark, and he’s not going to get serious consideration for a major league job coming out of spring training. As Jason alludes to, Madritsch (and possibly George Sherrill) are better fits as lefty one-out guys, and are closer to the majors. Blackley’s repetoire is built for starting, not relieving, and he’s not especially tough on left-handers anyways. Bringing him out of the bullpen to throw 40-50 innings this year would be a monumental waste of development, and it won’t happen.
Also, I continue to be befuddled as people, mainly referencing Rob Neyer’s recent columns, refer to the AL West as a tough division. It has been a tough division the past several years, but 2004 looks like a race to 85 wins. The A’s are probably still the consensus favorite, but Billy Beane has got his work cut out for him if he’s going to repair that offense. As much as we’re not looking forward to watching the M’s take their hacks, the A’s group of hitters resembles something from the Texas League.
1. Bobby Kielty, LF
2. Mark Kotsay, CF
3. Eric Chavez, 3B
4. Erubiel Durazo, DH
5. Jermaine Dye, RF
6. Scott Hatteberg, 1B
7. Damian Miller, C
8. Mark Ellis, 2B
9. Bobby Crosby, SS
Thats just u-g-l-y. Now, the A’s can spend some more money and find another competant bat before spring training, but that offense is still going to struggle to average four runs a game.
If the Orioles or Blue Jays played in the AL West, one could make a compelling argument that they’d be the favorite to win the division right now.
In the never ending search for that elusive second lefty, the M’s have apparently narrowed their choices to free agents Mike Myers (of neither Austin Powers nor Halloween fame), Mike Matthews and Scott Sauerbeck, as well as in-house candidate Travis Blackley.
Personally, I think Bobby Madritsch (Blackley’s teammate in San Antonio last season) would be a much better choice, at least than Blackley. At this point his assortment of pitches is better suited to relief — he’s the sort of guy who could thrive there, only having to worry about throwing two, or at most three pitches — whereas Blackley has the arsenal to be a successful starter once he picks up the finer points of pitching.
If it were up to me, which of course it’s not, Blackley would spend all of next season in Tacoma. He’s still very young and needs more work on his curveball, which the organization thinks will eventually be his best pitch once he gets it fully under control. In my opinion that’s not the sort of pitcher you want to “waste” as a reliever. Madritsch, however, could probably do the job tomorrow.
A couple of readers wrote in to say (and I’m paraphrasing) “If you take it in context as ‘members of the starting lineup and not the rotation’, it does make sense.” Here…:
The projected starting lineup for next year includes
only one player from the farm system, Edgar Martinez
(1987), and two players from trades — Dan Wilson in
1994 and Randy Winn in the Lou Piniella trade.
If they hadn’t traded their manager, the last player
they acquired via trade or development would have been
Wilson, 10 seasons ago.
To which I say: pah. You still have to give Locke two giant assumptions and then you’re still ignoring Davis as part of the job-sharing tandem. Ignoring the pitching half of the roster is like ignoring the guitar in rock and roll. You could just as easily make that kind of point about any of the pieces of the roster…
“The pitching rotation clearly demonstrates how bad the Mariners are in free agency, as none of their rotation was signed on the open market.”
or
“The bullpen clearly demonstrates how bad the Mariners are at trading for players, as none of the players there were traded for.”
I expected better from the P.I. honestly: David Locke’s column today… well, it’s just wrong. Take this:
If they hadn’t traded their manager, the last player they acquired via trade or development would have been Wilson, 10 seasons ago.
This is obviously, blindingly, incontrovertably false. Serious, more-than-one-season full-time players who came over in trade and contributed to the team:
Jamie Moyer for Darren Bragg.
Mike Cameron in the Griffey deal.
Guillen, Garcia in the Johnson deal.
And that doesn’t count Ben Davis, Jeff Cirillo…
I don’t understand how this article got into print, I really don’t. I also don’t understand why the PI, which carries a stable of far superior writers compared to the Times*, seems determined to become the worse sports section with additions like the Go2Guy and Locke columns. I don’t get it.
* in general — I do like Stone, the Times day-to-day M’s coverage is pretty good
A Seattle listener turns on the radio…
“Hi, I’m Emerson Robbins. Of E.E. Robbins. We have the largest…”
“Please could I go one commercial break without hearing this idiot?”
“… engagement rings in the northwest. If you’re in the market for an engagement ring, and you didn’t buy from us, I can only think of two reasons. One..”
“I hate your radio advertisements and would like to punch you in the nose.”
“… or two, you don’t really care about her ring.”
“Don’t you insult me, I cared about her ring, that’s why I bought her a nice one.”
“How could it be the finest if you didn’t buy it from me?”
“Shut up shut up!”
“You must not love your wife.”
“Of course I do.”
“No, I don’t think so. The foundation of your marriage is a sham. If you’d only bought your engagement ring from my store…”
“I hope you get a case of laryngitis that baffles medical science.”
“Oh, the board of directors insured against that… we’ve got a whole vault of these commercials. Why, I could die tomorrow and you’d still hear my grating, sunny voice until the sun stopped burning hydrogen.”
“Why won’t you stop?”
“I have to tell everyone that we have the largest–”
“We heard you the first million times! Now shut up!”
“It’s obviously not getting through. You bought your ring elsewhere.”
“Because I hate you!”
“Maybe you were dropped on your head as a child. But I won’t rest until everyone buys their ring from E.E. Robbins, even if they suffered brain trauma as a kid.”
“I’m fine! I just hate you!”
“Why? Because at–”
“Okay, I give up. What’s it going to take? Do I have to blow up the vault of recordings, shoot you into space without a transmitter? Jam all the radio stations?”
“I might take a break if I knew you bought a ring from E.E–”
“Shut up! Fine! I’ll do it tomorrow! Now leave me alone!”
“Okay, but first, let me tell you about my brother–”
“No!”
“T-ball team–”
“No, go away!”
“All right, I’m going, I’m going. No guarantees on how long, though…”
“Whew. Finally I can listen to a half hour of music without…”
“This is Tom Shane. Others may imitate my radio ads, but…”
“Waaaaaaaaahhh-hah-hah….”
Ryan Anderson cleared waivers and was outrighted to Tacoma today. Now, this may cause some confusion, because most players who are designated for assignment and clear waivers have the option to elect free agency over taking the outright assignment to Triple-A, but since this is the first time Anderson has been outrighted, he does not have that option. He will be placed on Tacoma’s roster and it will not use his final option year. All in all, this was a good move for the M’s, possibly saving Anderson’s last opportunity to contribute to the M’s by not using that option this year. If Anderson can start pitching again this year (and, at this point, its about as likely as Bill Bavasi having Moneyball turned into a life size bronze statue and placing it at the entrance of the team’s offices), the team will be able to keep him in the organization next year by placing him back on the 40 man roster, preventing him from walking as a minor league free agent, and still be able to send him to the minors next year.
A bit confusing, but in all, this is good news. Not that I’m expecting Ryan Anderson to ever pitch for the Mariners, but the slim chance remains.
Speaking of building a stadium in Oregon… for the four of you who are wondering what happened to “The Fix,” I was having a hard time keeping up while I was writing my Prospectus 2004 stuff and I wasn’t getting much response anyway, so I took it down for a while. I’m still working on it, it’ll return at some point. As always, if you like something here and don’t want to see it go away, let us know.
From an interview with Rob Neyer:
OSC: What’s your take on Bavasi getting the GM position in Seattle?
Neyer: I have a natural aversion to people that may have jobs because of who they are and not what they have done. You wonder if he would be where he is if his name wasn’t Bavasi. His father was a major league executive for many, many years.
I have never heard people say great things about Bavasi but maybe that’s just because I haven’t been listening to the right people. In all honesty, I’m not all that impressed so far. The Raul Ibanez contract is going to be a problem, and the M’s were apparently more than willing to spend way too much money on a season of Omar Vizquel.
This from the Oregon Stadium Campaign website. The interview is mostly about baseball in Portland, but there’s some other interesting stuff in there as well.
I know this isn’t going to do anything for our reputation for negativity, but — consider the team’s ability to handle injuries. Think for a minute about each of the M’s players and what happens if they’re knocked out for the season in the first week.
Olerud: tough because they’re without a replacement, but only a couple games
Boone: totally screwed, 5 games lost at least as Ugeuto replaces him, maybe up to 10, unless the team spends the farm system on a replacement
Aurilia: Santiago plays, 5 games lost
Spiezio: not really screwed, Leone/Bloomquist can play, but probably won’t hit as well. 2-3 games?
Edgar: totally screwed, 5 games or more lost
Ichiro: moderately screwed depending on McCracken’s performance, but 4-8 games lost
Winn: ditto, but more like 2-3 games lost
Ibanez: no big deal
Starters: the team’s got Soriano ready to replace anyone but Moyer and do well, so no worries, and a bunch of guys that can take back-end positions in the rotation
Relievers: lefties a problem, but there’s usually one or two floating on the waiver wire, and the farm system has a ton of righties, so I’m not worried here.
While I’ve penciled the team in for 85 wins and think they’ll come in on the low side of that, a serious injury to even one of a couple key players and this team drops under .500.
No news on the Soriano trade front, which is good news — if it doesn’t happen tomorrow it’s probably dead and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
One of the things I complained about last year was that the M’s were a two-dog sled team, and when Edgar and Boone weren’t hitting well, the whole offense tended to suck. Just as Dave mentioned the cascade effect of defense, the opposite is true, and while I’m unhappy with the state of the team, I must concede that I think they are much improved offensively and unlikely to go through the kind of run-scoring dry spells (requiring, say, Randy Winn to have 3-4 games with a HR and two walks in order to get a win) that they did last year.