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1. McCoy Wilfong for Money Posted: May 23, 2012 at 09:32 PM (#4139056)Remember when the Mariner's under Jack Z were gonna be moneyball 2.0 with great pitching and defense? Maybe they should make a movie about it.
*stifles laughter* Yes, yes -- exactly!
Make it happen, Jack Z! I heartily approve of trading Soriano and 10 million for Fingers... or who? Figgins? Oh yes, yes, equally fine.
How many of Soriano's homers are opposite field?
But Figgins is already a epic contract disaster on the level of the Titanic!
So, who won the Milton Bradley-for-Carlos Silva our-overpaid-crap-for-your-overpaid-crap trade?
I'd say the Cubs by a nose, even with Silva getting waived first.
Trust the process!
Still, in spite of all that the team isn't doing that badly. Maybe years of watching a Bavasi-run club has left me with drastically lowered expectations, but I no longer expect to say "OMG WTF!?" after the draft every year, and that's a pretty big improvement. Also, no more Rob Johnson.
They also randomly swapped the positions of Figgins and Lopez. It might be a coincidence that both of their careers died after that, but I don't see how it was a good idea.
Is there any evidence of this?
I'm not aware of any offers for Silva -- the rest of the league didn't have their memory wiped of years of suckitude by Silva's two months of brilliance either. I can't imagine even the dumber GMs being interested in taking on Silva and his contract based on a few months of competence. I suspect any suggestions of a Silva trade were probably met with "Sorry, Jim - how nice for you that lightning seems to have been bottled, but I don't trust the cork."
While he has been better than Bavasi (who friends of mine took to calling "Hydrocephalus" late in his tenure), Jack Z has not proven to be any kind of genius, either. His drafts seem goodish so far, but other than Ackley I don't know that he's hit any home runs. His defensive strategy was (A) not as revolutionary as David Cameron wanted everybody to believe, and (B) also not that big of a marginal advantage -- the reason Moneyball worked in Oakland is that you could put together a lineup that would score 900 runs if you were willing to make certain sacrifices, at least you could in the late 90s and early 00s; positional defense, it turns out, just doesn't have as much value as hitting. Shock! How can that be? Having a bunch of really good fielders cannot make up for only having one or two competent pitchers? The fact that this lineup will be one of the worst in MLB history will defeat all marginal gains it attains in the field? I know that this is aesthetically displeasing, but it was also blatantly obvious to anybody who wasn't obsessed with the shiny new toys / desperate for any hope in Mariner land.
I realize that three years is not that long for a guy whose focus is meant to be scouting, so maybe it's best not to judge Jack Z just yet. But he has materially damaged the franchise by failing to improve in any way the product that Hydrocephalus put out on the field in Safeco on a day-to-day basis. The M's are not the poorest of the poor; they should not be on the Pirates/Royals constant rebuilding round-robin. Other than the occasional Russel Branyan, Z's pickups at the major league level have been pretty bad all around. I think it's possible that, like Dayton Moore, he'll have to be replaced once/if the system starts to bear fruit -- the team will need someone who can actually acquire major league talent to complement the kids.
Awesome.
Then I looked at the Giants IF
Arias 86 RC+
Pill 82 RC+
Crawford 63 RC+
Burriss 29 RC+
Theriot has a "1" and will come off the DL and immediatly start at 2B. Burriss and Arias have negative fielding contributions as well (SSS)
Gillapii and Culberson - who were brought up to replace Theriot and Sandoval are being out hit by Zito, Cain, and Lincecum. Seriously.
So I actually think they should pick up Figgins for the minimum. At least until Sandoval gets back.
Yeah, and didn't the M's have to fork over some cash as well? That seemed to be Hendry's main criterion for a Bradley trading partner--one with a contract so bad they'd have to pay for the privilege of taking on Milton Bradley's contract.
They're coming off two years of last-place finishes and are a half-game out of the cellar right now.
As far as the kids go, yeah, Liddi is still striking out a ton but the BABIP is high at the moment and maybe some of that will stay up there. Then you've got Casper Wells, who isn't young but who definitely deserves to take up PAs in the outfield over Figgy, Franklin Gutierrez is going to have to get worked in there somehow once he's healthy enough to play again, Carlos Peguero might be finally starting to learn how to draw a walk (although the K rate is still problematic), Trayvon Robinson sucks but less than Figgins as well, Luis Jiminez is playing well enough that he might deserve a call-up later this year, and Carlos Triunfel is finally starting to maybe look like someone who can occupy a major league roster spot. It's not like the team is hiding a Mike Trout in AAA at the moment but you don't need to be Mike Trout to have a better future with the team than Chone Figgins.
As for moving Figgins and Loafie around, whatever. Figgins was pissed off in general his first year here. Lopez OTOH was never all that great of a player and it's worth noting that he has not rekindled that slight ability to hit he had for a couple years here with other teams. He was always a middling-power guy who never walked and whose entire value was predicated on hitting .290. BA goes up and it goes down and Lopez never evinced the kind of dedication to the game that's required for a talented young hitter to transform into a wise old one.
This is overstating things IMO. The American League in general is really good this year and the M's, while not great, do have a better SRS score than 13 teams in baseball (per bbref). Yeah, they've been awful the past few years, but I'm having problems blaming the utter lack of Bavasi draftees to produce on GMZ.
Yup, $9m to Chicago. In retrospect, one of Hendry's better trades.
It's a statement of facts! They've got a team OPS+ of 89, which only Oakland trails. They've got a team ERA+ of 97, which only the Royals, the Red Sox, and the Twins trail. They're a long way from a .500 record, let alone being any good at all.
Well, I thought "long way from a .500 record" was just a semantic expression of "they're shitty".
I meant in time, not in games. They're not a .500 team this year, and I don't think they'll be a .500 team next year. Like that.
The Silva / Bradley trade, I agree -- I thought Bradley was a good hitter who woud benefit significantly from time in the DH slot, and he was only a year removed from being one of the best hitters in the AL. That he was cooked was not obvious from his time in Chicago, and was mostly a bad break.
Figgins, on the other hand, was probably a poor move up front. He was 31, a middling fielder in the infield, and had just set a career high in Ks and CS, paired with a mysterious spike in walk rate. It seemed fairly likely that he wasn't swinging as well as he used to, and had become passive at the plate. Given that he was prone to bad seasons with some regularity anyway, committing to him for five years was a dumb idea, probably driven unnecessarily by the loss of Beltre. The money isn't too awful, except when compared to what they're getting, but still, Chone Figgins was not the solution to the Mariners' problems at the moment he signed, and he's really not the solution now.
Nick Franklin would seem to be the obvious recipient of Figgins's playing time. Triunfel isn't doing all that badly at AAA, either. I don't think he's ready, but I think you could make a case for it.
Also, point taken about Figgins' contract, although I don't think anyone was expecting him to repeat his 7(!) WAR season and he certainly wasn't paid to do so. Figuring on $5M per win and a 4-year, $36M salary, if he'd have put forward around 1.8 WAR a year - a mark he achieved in every season with the Angels save one - he'd have been worth the money. Instead he had the worst year of his career in 2011 and followed it with a season and a half of sub-replacement level ball. Fortunately, the 4th season won't vest, but the point here is that there weren't a lot of people who thought that he'd tank quite *that* badly.
Their pitching has been generally decent the last few years, their offensive lineup has been abysmal.
C: Olivo at one time was almost a league average hitting C (well for one year he was better than that, but that was one year I suspect his "true talent" was never better than average- for a catcher... he's been losing time to Montero- who I think would be an elite hitter for a catcher- if he can actually catch, plus he's really young
1B: Smoak, still just 25, but he's quite aways along towards bustdom, over 1000 PAs now and a career OPS+ of 89- for a 1B that... is... not... good...
2B: Dustin Ackley, was once the 2nd overall pick, hit for a 117 OPS+ at age 23 in the MLB, hit .303/.421/.487 in AAA, what's not to like?- Hasn't hit a lick outside of 2011, plus that AAA line was in less than 200 PAS, and was in a league that hit .286/.359/.448, but his MLB OPS+ of 109 is good for a 2B and he's reasonably young
SS: Brenda Ryan...
3B: Kyle Seager- actually I kind of like him, better hitter in the minors than Ackley, MLB record to date quite comparable, I suspect that as each piles up PAs, Seager will be the better hitter (of course Ackley is a Middle Infielder and Seager is not..)
OF: old guys and Saunders, Ichiro is no longer Ichiro! Saunders is 25 and has a 100 OPS+ playing CF, of course, I'm not really convinced he's a CF and I'm far from convinced that he's a 100 OPS+ hitter. A guy who can play good CF and hit 100 is a decent regular, a guy who plays a mediocre CF and hits 90 is a guy you want to replace, a guy who plays a mediocre Cf and hits 69 (Saunders MLB career average) belongs in AAA
The Mariner with the highest career OPS+ is... Ichiro, but tied with him is Mike Carp, the M's should just ditch Smoak, plant Carp at 1B and look for an outfielder who can both hit and catch the ball. Carp is only 1 year older than Smoak, his MLB OPS+ is 25 points higher than Smoak's his AAA OPS was 68 points higher than Smoak's... Smoak outhit Carp in AA... Smoak was a 1st round pick and was once ranked #13 overall by BA (an absurd overrating at the time imho), Carp was a 9th rounder who never was ranked by BA (I think BPro had him 99th or something like that one year- or maybe 9th on the Mets)-
Franklin has started well this year and I expect (hope for?) him to be a staple of the M's infield one day, but let's not get carried away. He's 21, and he's never hit quite like this before. He's been young for his level most of the way through, which is why one hopes he's got a future, but putting him in the majors today strikes me as a good way to destroy any progress he's made.
Look, I'm not arguing that they shouldn't cut bait on Figgins, clearly they should. I just don't know that there are any "kids" who should be playing in his stead this year.
Not really, unless one of the teams did some significant salary deferments that nobody knows of, for 2010 and 2011, Milton Bradley was being paid $24 million, and Carlos Silva was being paid $24,250,000. I took those numbers off of their players pages on B-Ref.
Seattle kicked in $9 million to the Cubs because they liked Milton that much.
The thing with Saunders is, I think anyway that his career OPS+ is depressed unnaturally by a horrendous 2011, when he looked completely overmatched at the plate. He had some issue with his swing that he just could not solve, he worked all offseason to fix it, and now he's recovered. Maybe he'll regress to the mean but I for one am reasonably confident that won't happen.
Nick Franklin is still a little ways away but the year before last he looked like a monster in High Desert, where granted it's easy to look like a monster but this is not the first time he's looked this good. So... promising. Carlos Triunfel is a guy OTOH who has never quite lived up to the hype, although he's looking fine in AAA now and is still only 23. I'm also a bit higher on former #2 pick Dustin Ackley than "he's average and reasonably young", although admittedly if he's going to turn into an All-Star caliber player he's going to need to get better than this pretty quickly.
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