I gotta admit to being a little relieved so far at the relative positions of the Mariners and A's for purely selfish reasons.

Nobody's going to blame me for ZiPS projecting the Tigers to win the division or the Marlins to play poorly, but ZiPS projecting the A's to win 89 and the Mariners to win 72 when the other projections average 78 wins for both could really come back and bite me on the ass (and still can with 3/4 of the season to go).

I'm really shocked that a lineup featuring Vidro as the DH is underperforming this year. Shocked.

Sure, we - and by "we" I mean THT, USS Mariner, Lookout Landing, and dozens of others - didn't expect them to be good, but we didn't expect them to be this poor, either. How can this count as a victory for us sabermetric types?

Sure, we - and by "we" I mean THT, USS Mariner, Lookout Landing, and dozens of others - didn't expect them to be good, but we didn't expect them to be this poor, either. How can this count as a victory for us sabermetric types?

I think Szym is less concerned about this being a victory for all of saberdom and more of a singular triumph for ZiPS.

I could not agree more. I moved to Seattle in 1986 and sat in the Kingdome hoping the M's would get better. They finally did, and then they built a great stadium. But it is true that the entire marketing effort is for non-baseball fans. I guess there might not be enough real baseball fans here to support the team. I know I've met very few people here in 22 years that know baseball and its history the way people back East do. (I'm from Chicago.)

The greatest symbol of how the M's are run is their namby-pamby broadcast team of nice guys who provide zero insight about the game. Rizzs is the worst; he broadcasts as if this were minor-league ball in 1955. God, I'd love it if Steve Stone would magically replace him.

The moves the M's have made for the past several years under Bavasi are mind-boggingly bad. Signing marginal guys for long contracts, trading prospects, and utterly failing to have any coherent plan. Releasing Norton and keeping Cairo; now that's smart. Signing Kenji for 3 years, when he can't hit and the pitchers hate him; now that's smart. The whole Carlos Guillen debacle. Soriano for Ramirez. BTW, trading for Griffey would just continue the pattern -- a move only grandmothers could like. And it's not as if these are guys who looked good in advance. No regular baseball fan who actually follows the game thought Wilkerson could be a regular. Or Ramirez. Or Jeff Weaver. Or Broussard. Or Vidro, who even when he hit .300 never had the power to be a DH. Just to name a few of the stiffs the M's have thrown money at.

Yes, Beltre was a good signing, but we didn't get the juiced up version. And that's fine.

It's time to blow it up. I picked the M's to finish third this year, because it was obvious that there offense stunk, and their pitching was only marginally better. Only little kids and grandmas (and a bunch of media dudes) could see contender in this club. It turns out they're even worse that I thought, but not by much.

I want a GM who could see this too. Fire Bavasi now. McLaren too. Clearly, the personnel decisions are the main problem, but McLaren needs to go, too, just to start over.

Finally, here's the bold move no one will suggest: TRADE ICHIRO. He's the one truly valuable commodity on this team. And it would be the one way to show that we're moving on. Convince Ichiro that the gig is up, that he should play for a contender. How about the Red Sox (replacing Drew or Crisp) in exchange for Masterson and Lowrie? Or something like that.

Really, I will spend money at Safeco when they stop with all the god-awful promotions and start taking baseball seriously.

How can this count as a victory for us sabermetric types?

Well, they probably aren't this poor. Johjima has been terrible. Bedard was hurt. JJ Putz has been hurt and terrible. Ichiro's OPS+ is 101. They might end up with the worst record in the AL depending on how things play out at the trade deadline, but they aren't really "worst team in the league" bad.

But I said before the season I thought they were an under .500 team, and I think a lot of people (ZiPS included, for instance) thought that as well.

Finally, here's the bold move no one will suggest: TRADE ICHIRO. He's the one truly valuable commodity on this team. And it would be the one way to show that we're moving on. Convince Ichiro that the gig is up, that he should play for a contender. How about the Red Sox (replacing Drew or Crisp) in exchange for Masterson and Lowrie? Or something like that.

Jacoco Crisbury seems to be working out okay for them. I doubt very much that the Red Sox would be interested.

I think Szym is less concerned about this being a victory for all of saberdom and more of a singular triumph for ZiPS.

Well, I'm more concerned about avoiding looking like an idiot than winning a victory!

SG can verify, when he first was running sims, he IMed me to let me know that DMB was projecting the A's to do well and we sat there, trying to ponder things that could have gone wrong. I even regenerated all the event tables for the A's just in case there was something goofy going on there. So the final SG sims came out and I wasn't feeling confident, I personally felt the A's would hover right around .500 and I was pretty annoyed to see, in the end, the A's mean sim projection still being 2 wins more than the Angels.

So anyway, both DMZ and Geoff Baker noticed it, to my chagrin. Don't get me wrong, both were extremely complimentary, but I had really kinda hoped that nobody had seen it because I was thinking that no way I was going to come out looking smart. Got quite a bit of uh, "appreciative" feedback about that projection. Had to change my avatar photo too, I had assumed that it was only seen in the lounge, but Baker found it and described me as a "grand wizard" which had a couple interesting e-mails resulting from that; apparently a few people thought that he meant that I was actually a Grand Wizard.

So with the A's playing pretty well, I consider it kind of a relief, at least for the moment. I'm still not convinced they're an 89-win team, but I'll be giddy if they continue to play like they are. When you do projections, you get used to being wrong a lot, but I'm so far doing well at the two I most wanted to not get wrong, the A's and Mike Lowell (I got a lot of nasty e-mail about that, too, plus one guy who said he was going to send me Lowell's seasonal line every single day this season so I remember how dumb I am - he seems to have lost interest on May 4)

he IMed me to let me know that DMB was projecting the A's to do well and we sat there, trying to ponder things that could have gone wrong. I even regenerated all the event tables for the A's just in case there was something goofy going on there. So the final SG sims came out and I wasn't feeling confident, I personally felt the A's would hover right around .500 and I was pretty annoyed to see, in the end, the A's mean sim projection still being 2 wins more than the Angels.

Screw you guys. Screw you guys straight to hell!

This is amazingly premature, but...

As a Yankee fan, I want to see the Yankees win every year. However, I must say that if the A's somehow managed to win the World Series this year, I would be extraordinarily happy and probably laugh myself silly on multiple occasions thinking about it during the offseason. It would be like the ultimate "Eff you!" from Bill Beane to all the haters.

Actually, I'm having a swell time just thinking about it.

No regular baseball fan who actually follows the game thought Wilkerson could be a regular.

Which tells us a lot about J.P. Ricciardi now doesn't it?

(sigh)

The knot goes behind the left ear ... correct?

Best Regards

John

alas (because I had Dan's back on the Lowell projection), Lowell has recovered fairly well, currently posting 263/304/432 (97 OPS+). Now that puts him pretty much right on his ZiPS projection (given I think the league scoring is down quite a bit from what Dan used in his projections), but it's a big step forward from where he was (i.e. 310/329/569 since his return).

Sorry if that means you start getting daily updates again Dan.