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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Meh, no biggie…Richie Sexson would have swung and missed.
Ichiro is so unpopular in the Seattle Mariners’ clubhouse that teammates considered physical harm to the All-Star outfielder earlier this season, the Seattle Times reported.
The turmoil on the team peaked in May as the team Ichiro got off to a slow start, the Times reported.
“I just can’t believe the number of guys who really dislike him,” one clubhouse insider said, newspaper reported. “It got to a point early on when I thought they were going to get together and go after him.”
John McLaren, the Mariners’ manager at the time, reportedly intervened when he hear overheard a player talking about Ichiro, saying he wanted to “knock him out.” A team meeting was called, the newspaper reported.
Repoz
Posted: September 25, 2008 at 04:18 PM | 57 comment(s)
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1. Big Train Posted: September 25, 2008 at 04:27 PM (#2954790)wow, that's the complete inverse of what you normally hear.
Unless you're Cal Ripken Jr.
Isn't it kind of up to the management structure to do that part if the player won't himself....
Whatever. You hear a lot of lame stuff in a clubhouse like Seattle's: not a good team, some misguided expectations going into the season, lots of turnover among veterans as the ship changes course in mid-season, an outsider superstar not carrying the team to success, etc. Grow up.
And anyone reporting this without including a bit of context (such as describing who is talking beyond "insider") also needs to read up on professionalism.
Can someone explain to me how a guy with a 2008 OPS+ of 103 and a lifetime OPS+ of 117 is a "super-star". I have never understand the Ichiro love. I understand he is a cool guy, with the one-name thing going and the neato stretching exercise, but all of the singles to LF aside, the limited walks and relative lack of power from a corner outfielder make him...pretty good?
How Snowy! I guess they really are looking to put him on ice.
They Call Him Bruce.
Really, after seeing what he did to Lucy Liu in "Kill Bill", you'd think they'd know better.
add in his terrific outfield play and baserunning (seriously, look at his CS%) and you have a guy that, when not in a down year such as this, is one of the best outfielders in the game
Ichiro: (in Japanese) "Nothing much. Get some dinner, get to bed early."
Ichiro's translator: "Your mom."
So, Seattle was predicted to be in the playoff hunt pre-season, they had serious clubhouse issues, and are now finishing the season with 100 losses. If that's not proof positive of how essential team chemistry is...
Well, for one thing, he's really a decent center fielder who seems to prefer playing in right. I guess I think of his situation as analogous to Alex Rodriguez's--I still think of him a shortstop playing out of position for mostly stupid managerial reasons.
... then isolated anecdotes don't prove anything anymore!
The non-SB baserunning is very good too, his throwing arm has been well above average, and he almost never hits into double plays - probably about 10 fewer DP per year than an average player would have in his opportunities. I think he reaches on error more often than average as well. Add all this up, and you take a guy who's in the +10 to +15 range (offensive runs above average) and push him into the +25-+30 range.
But deserved or not, this looks like a bad situation for Ichiro. Considering how bad the Mariners are, it might make sense to keep Ichiro and get rid of all his teammates that have problems with him (assuming Felix is not one of them, Beltre is a FA after 2009 so don't worry about him). But more likely, Ichiro will need a change of scenery. Maybe he'll be a Yankee in 2009.
I didn't see any mention of Felix Hernandez or Raul Ibanez; oh, I am sorry: "Felix!" and "Raul!"
So that's why my co-workers keep giving me the evil eye.
Day 1: Purchase baton.
Day 2: Club Ichiro! with it.
Day 3: Produce sex tape with Chuck Armstrong.
That isn't a nice thing to say about Pedro's little friend.
Based on prior history, the safest person in a clubhouse where Richie Sexon is trying to hit someone specific is the person Richie Sexon is trying to hit.
Linkie
Just like that little dude at the end of the Scorpio Simpsons episode.
....with the zeal of a challenger!
Even if he is claiming that (Silva could be read as a hypothetical), he's not backing it up with anything.
I think that's a Trubyesque kind of reading you're doing there, unless Zumsteg has written about this somewhere else.
Nerd alert:
It was the Marge pretzel episode, not the Scorpio episode.
Best. Movies. Ever.
I just flashed to the end scene of the Jet Li movie The One. Ichiro looking down at the others, yelling "I Ichiro, I no one's #####, you all mine!" and proceeds to just beat up everybody else.
Check the last para of that post (I misidentified the writer -- it was Cameron, not Zumsteg). They have both written multiple times about Silva's lashing out at teammates throughout the year. I would say it's more than a blind guess, less than a cite.
I read the last paragraph, and it read more like a "insert any crappy Mariner here" as an example rather than a specific claim that Silva is the source. But if they've written about that before, and I allowed for the possibility, then it probably is more of an educated guess.
It was the Marge pretzel episode, not the Scorpio episode.
You, sir, are absolutely correct. <hangs head in shame>
Correlation does not equal causation.
The bad season could just as easily have caused the bad team chemistry.
Silva has been quoted in the Seattle papers, on the records, as lashing out at his teammates. So it's not just "insert any crappy Mariner here".
I find it fascinating that this past off-season, Carlos Silva was able to wrangle a 4 year/48 million dollar deal, while Kyle Lohse despite having a similar track record, and being the same age was only able to get a 1 year/4.25 million dollar deal.
Now this offseason someone will probably give Lohse a Silva-esque deal, and I wouldn't be surprised if he went Silva-esque next year.
The point seems to me to be less about Silva, or about guessing which player it is, than about the fact that the majority of the players are worth much less than Ichiro is and shouldn't be complaining about someone who isn't the reason for the teams failures.
I didn't see any mention of Felix Hernandez or Raul Ibanez; oh, I am sorry: "Felix!" and "Raul!"
Of course, Raul spent the first four months of last year with the same injury also, and played through it and played abysmally.
And yes, the worst defensive LF in the AL is a better overall ballplayer than Ichiro Suzuki. . . .
Seattle was predicted to be in the playoff hunt by mainstream writers who were taken in by a lucky win total in 2007 and the Bedard trade. Various projections (Zips (post 55) and Cairo) had them under 80 wins.
Are you saying Steve Phillips may not know what he's talking about?
So how is it surprising that his team-mates find him selfish?
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