The American League Gold Gloves were announced today, and the Mariners dominated the squad. Mike Cameron, Ichiro Suzuki, Bret Boone, John Olerud, Rick the Peanut Guy, Joe Simpson, Steve Trout, and The Guy With The Cowbell all won at their respective positions.
While they were better this year, the gold gloves are still a complete joke. If you can’t hit, you won’t get recognized, end of story. It is an award to give kudos to quality players who make a lot of webgems. That said, Mike Cameron really is an awesome defensive centerfielder, and the Mariners will greatly miss his glove. The dropoff from Cameron to Winn is going to be huge, and Ryan Franklin should demand a trade to whatever team Cameron signs with.
Also, to everyone who continues to email us about Edgar being too old and the Mariners needing to get over their sentimentality, wake the heck up.
Martinez, 2003 AL ranks:
BA: 25th
OBP: 4th
SLG: 26th
EqA: 8th
Martinez, 2003 team ranks:
BA: 2nd
OBP: 1st
SLG: 2nd
EqA: 1st
Edgar Martinez is still a tremendous hitter, a vital cog of the Mariners offense, and a valuable player. If it pains you to watch him run, turn off the T.V. and listen on the radio. If you need speed to enjoy your sporting experience, I suggest Nascar. There are few things more entertaining in the game than watching Edgar work a pitcher into submission before lining an unhittable pitch into the alley for a double. He’s not only a joy to watch, but he’s a huge reason why the Mariners won 93 games, and they should thank their lucky stars that he’s coming back. When Edgar stops being one of the 5 or 6 best hitters in the league, then you can tell him to retire.
Seattle PI reports Edgar’s returning! HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
O Happy Day!
In the “good news that surprises no one” category, Edgar Martinez is not going to retire. His agent makes the right comments about keeping options open, blah blah, negotiating ploy, blah blah, but make no mistake, Edgar will be a Mariner next year. He’s not going to sign with another team. They will reach an agreement, and Edgar will be the DH for the M’s again. And there was much rejoicing.
The Seattle P-I also says that the M’s won’t be allowed to talk to Brian Cashman, which isn’t really a surprise.
Also, we’ve created a mailing list for all interested in the U.S.S. Mariner Feed and we’re in the process of finalizing a location. If you did not receive an invitation to the mailing list and are interested in attending, email us and we’ll get you added.
When is spam spam? If someone drops us a line and says “Hey Derek, you mentioned Chavez v lefties, I totally disagree, check out this thing I wrote on our A’s blog…” that’s cool.. and I’m likely to check it out. If someone emails us and wants to involve us in what would appear to be a complicated but lucrative money-laundering scam but which is, in fact, just a scam, that’s spam. Spam’s unsolicited email, generally (but not necc.) commercial in nature.
I ask this because I’m totally pissed that Football Outsiders took to spamming this week:
“Howdy baseball bloggers and objective analysts!
With the World Series over, and more attention turned to the
NFL, I wanted to introduce you to our website […]”
This is spam. It’s bulk, unsolicited email intended to get readers. So it goes on and then ends
“P.S. This is a onetime only email, don’t worry, I don’t plan
on spamming you!”
Which means, I guess, that the email sent to “baseball bloggers and objective analysts” was totally unplanned.
I hate spammers. They’re theives, stealing bandwith and passing on the costs to you. Now, because this dude isn’t forging headers or running off an open proxy, there’s an argument to be made that the cost is minimal and it’s no big deal. I don’t really buy this: email as we know it is dying because of abuse, and it’s entirely reasonable to be sensitive about this. I know someone who, in the midst of a career change, spammed everyone he had an email address for trying to drum up business as he left the nest, and as much as I understand his need, I have never entirely forgiven him (and he, for his part, has never apologized).
Outsiders probably feels like their mass-maililng was justified because it was for them, just as this guy I know thinks it was cool for him to mass-mail people because he was trying to start a new career. Or that it was good because they thought we’d be interested, in the same way the Nigerian scammers think I want them to take my money.
The inability to see the larger consequences of one’s actions, the cumulative effect if everyone acted as you might, and particularly to see your actions from the point of view of those who are affected by them is a defining hallmark of selfishness and stupidity. If for no other reason than that, I wouldn’t load Outsiders. And when it comes to spam, there’s a larger issue: by patronizing those who spam, spam as a method is encouraged. Roger Ebert came up with a solution, the Boulder Pledge, in which you agree that
“Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.”
Already, email servers have restrictions that make it difficult to set up things like our Feed: no more than 20 people on a CC or BCC. No more than three attachments. No messages longer than X lines. All of these restrictions are to stop the flow of spam, much of it from people, like this guy, who sincerely believe that I, and 100 other people, want what he’s selling. When you can’t email me because every email server in the world’s gone to white lists, and you have to go through challenge-response systems to get a letter through to your friends if you’re not at your regular computer with an IP address on their safe list, feel free to direct your frustration at everyone who thinks that it’s okay to spam people if they’re the ones doing it.
I don’t believe anything that comes out of the NY sports press. Seriously: if you thought Blaine Newham was a tool of the Mariners (which he is), he’s got nothing on these guys. As a group, they’re managed like the White House press corps: stories are floated, spun, counter-spun, entire careers are won and destroyed in the pages of the NY dailies every season. You only have to think back to the Lou Piniella-Mets-Mariners media war for a great example of how different people with connections there can wage war against their opponents in black-and-white newsprint.
And I’ll say this, too: if the first batch of interviews were underwhelming, this goes right back to my complaint that they don’t know what they’re doing. If you interview a set of people based on their connection to Gillick, rather than their ability to add something to the organization (as if, the M’s knew what they needed, even), of course there’s a good chance that none of them are going to seem like good fits. I’ll bring up my example again: if you need a stove, and you go into your local consumer appliance MegaStore without a clue about what you’re looking for, spend a couple hours looking at fridges, wireless keyboards, new CDs, washer/dryer combos, it’s no shock that at the end of your shopping, you might have something in your cart you’re not excited about and be disappointed there’s really nothing out there that you can cook food on.
Aaaaarrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Several recent stories, from the New York Post and New Jersey Star-Ledger, suggest that the M’s were waiting around to see if the Yankees were going to fire Brian Cashman before deciding on a new GM. One article even went so far as to say the candidates interviewed were simply a smokescreen, and that Cashman was their #1 guy all along. Now that Cashman appears to be safe for at least another season, perhaps they’ll get down to business.
Hey Derek, Winston-Salem is quite nice this time of year. Property is much, much cheaper out here too. Did I mention the exciting Winston-Salem Warthogs are just mintues away? Ernie Shore Field might not be Safeco, but its the only stadium in the country with free wireless broadband internet access. No, I’m not kidding. All 14 of us who go to the games wonder why we got to be the first to show off the Wi-Fi hotspot features, and have no idea if anyone has actually used it or not. Anyways, there was a point to this post that had to do with the M’s.
I’ve been told that they might not name a GM this week, as originally expected, and that the first batch of interviews were underwhelming. New candidates could be brought in this week that have not been mentioned, and there is no frontrunner in this race anymore.
Oh, and thanks to everyone who emailed me about my post on Steve Coffey. It was therapeutic for me to write it, but I’m glad it could help some of you as well.
M’s want their 2004 season ticket deposit money now. If they need the money so badly, there are any number of locally-owned check cashing operations that would be happy to help them out (because “heart always matters” as they’ll tell you 12 times an hour if you listen to commercial radio around here).
Also, thanks to the kindness of readers, I’ve got my computer up and back on the network, but I have to finish up my Baseball Prospectus 2004 work this week, and I’m trying to buy a house/sell a house/move, so it’s likely I’m not going to put up all that delicious content I’ve been mulling over. Soon, dear readers, soon.
Because I hate for a day to go by without at least one post, I’ll pass along thing little nugget: the M’s have purchased the contract of RHP Julien Tucker from the Quebec Capitales of the indy Northeast League. That’s not the Northern League, mind you, but the Northeast League. In any event, this is what we know about him: he’s Canadian and has spent 11 years toiling in the minors. This link will give you his career line entering the 2003 season, and this one from Baseball America will show you what he did last season in extremely limited work.
You shouldn’t get too excited about this, though it is worth noting that the M’s have had success finding solid players in the indy leagues — Bobby Madritsch, George Sherrill, Dustin Delucchi, Greg Jacobs — in the past year or so.
There’s sad news tonight, folks — Ken Cloude has signed a minor league contract with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. I wish him the best, but somehow reuniting with Lou doesn’t seem like the best career choice. First Mabry, now Cloude… the organization is falling apart.
Also, I notice that the Yankees have declined their contract option on LHP Gabe White. He’d make a nice addition to next year’s bullpen, either along with or instead of Arthur Rhodes.