Mariners Finish Off The Pace In Fielder Derby
January 24th, 2012 by terrybenishPrince Fielder lands in Detroit to play second banana to Miguel Cabrera.
$214 million for nine years, $23 million and change per year on average. Actual structure of deal could be extremely back loaded, we do not have those details yet.
MLB the network was treating this like the shocker of the deal, location etc., marveling at the late appearance of the Tigers.
To his credit, what Geoff Baker said all winter long was correct. This deal was well within M’s potential to do. It is not clear if the Mariners bid, or as some notes have popped up in the last week or so, that Fielder did not want to play here.
I did want to remark about the repetitive fatuous gushing of hall of famer Peter Gammons both today and in the duration of this Derby including his remarks about Seattle, Safeco field and then today the absolute inanity that was reached in his comments about Detroit.
I think it is possible that Fielder did not want to play in Seattle. There are a number of immediate notions to cite:
1. The team has not won and is unlikely to win this year or any time soon. If they are it will be due to players now in their minor league system.
2. The team does not have a good reputation amongst baseball people. Does not seem committed to winning.
3. The park is horrible for hitters…Gammons and others would repeat this, despite that it is not that true for left handed hitters, nor that the Mariners have scored lots of runs when they had a good lineup.
4. It is so far away from Florida…this is my favorite. Who flies home during the season?
If they were truly pursuing Fielder and had the money, I will repeat myself and say why would you ever do business with Scott Boras. It rings hollow that they have. Stupid even.
Peter Gammons today gushed about how wonderful Detroit is and what a cool downtown it is and then spoke about how wonderful the Tiger’s owner is and how charitable he is to do this. He has also said over the past weeks that Safeco is a terrible place to play and Seattle is so far away and it’s bad for hitters.
I have several rejoinders to that:
1. Downtown Detroit is the closest thing we have to Baghdad in the U.S., empty buildings, bad, bad people. A population that is a quarter of what it was in 1960. I have personally heard gun fights from my hotel in downtown Detroit on more than one occasion.
2. Comerica Park is still big.
3. Seattle according to Brian Cashman has the best park in baseball. In contrast to Baghdad it looks like Switzerland with water and mountains. It is a great place to live.
4. That the Red Sox play in a Triple A park makes the remarks of Boston homey Gammons really fatuous.
Sorry, had to do that. The more sane and sober side of me, clean of any booster-ism, says, “Whew, we dodged a bullet.” A great big guy, who might break down…blah, blah and more blah.” It has been said and does not need to be repeated.
So now it is on the rebuild with their own kids…they must dump the dead wood and not let it get in the way.
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
January 24th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
I think I echo the majority of the fan base in saying that I’m glad we didn’t get Fielder for the terms Detroit agreed to. After the offseason the Angels put together and the Ranger’s signing of Darvish, I’m all for the Mariners putting together a team that just plays good baseball. I’m not expecting postseason; I just want to like watching baseball again. Ackley, Montero, and Smoak together in the lineup is very exciting in a wOPA+RBI kind of way. I think the upcoming season would have been a better candidate for the awful “Believe Big” slogan that was foisted upon our poor unsuspecting souls in 2010. Whatever happens, I still believe in Jack Z (but not Armstrong and Lincoln).
January 24th, 2012 at 10:48 pm
Also, if I were a pitcher, left-handed batter, or oppo power right handed batter free agent, I would be fighting hard to land in Seattle. Do baseball players/experts not realize the ridiculous advantages of Safeco?
January 25th, 2012 at 7:41 am
Tony, thanks for writing. Generally most Mariner fans wanted the signing of Prince Fielder. Generally, most fans do not care about what players are paid except to complain when they don’t perform well.
The Sun has a headline that asserts that the Mariners were spurned. I don’t think there is any evidence to suggest that they bid on Fielder.
Ackley-Smoak-Montero and the un-mentioned Carp are the M’s backbone. Ackley collapsed in the last 45 days of the season and Smoak’s had three successful months in twelve in major leagues so far. Two of those in September against call ups. At the end of the day if Montero sustains his year end with the Yankees, he may take some of Smoak’s plate appearances.
Collectively there is young talent at or near the major league level. Whether it smoothly advances is why they play the games.
The pitching rotation from July 1st of last year of Felix, Fister, Pineda, Vargas and who knows is vastly superior to Felix, Vargas, Iwakuna, Millwood and who knows that they might run out. Should Paxton be ready and he is further along than Hultzen and Walker, they will be better than the team that broke camp last April.
Time will tell.
January 25th, 2012 at 7:53 am
They have not signed any good pitcher free agents during their time in Safeco. Jarrod Washburn and Carlos Silva are the only starting pitcher free agents they’ve signed and they both were terrible before they got here. They traded four guys and a horse for Erik Bedard and the few games he threw for the Mariners were consistent with how good he was before. The ownership has not tried to go after high end free agents.
Adrian Beltre failed here and he hits the ball up the middle and away too…although failed might be too strong a word. Ben Broussard sucked. John Olerud put up great numbers here and I believe his numbers should put him in hall of fame discussion, but when you talk about Brett Boone, then people cite the cloud of PED as to his success.
More important than that though is if you look at the 2000 and 2001 team they each scored over 900 runs. If the Mariners put a good line up together it will score adequate runs to compete and win. In August of last year, unfettered by Ichiro’s quest and the need to play Gutierrez the team scored 121 runs which annualized is 726 runs, 200 more than the 2010 team and 175 more than actually happened in 2011.