Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

Jack Zduriencik was quoted by Geoff Baker in his piece today, “You know, we’ve played decent baseball here lately. We have pieces here of the future. And I think that in order to make a move it would have had to be the right thing to do. And I just didn’t feel that in any of my discussions that it was the right thing to do.”

You should pay more attention to him than anybody else.

Between National fomenters like Ken Rosenthal or JP Morosi and local writers for the Times who have been so very critical and continue to hammer this activity of Zduriencik’s ha to better the team. Sports radio and Kevin Calabro and Jim Moore of of ESPN710 and Elise Woodward at KJR really acting dismayed and even angry that the Mariners did not trade Brandon League and Steve Delabar or Vargas for Albert Pujols or Joey Votto or not happening in a million years. The national guys just want fodder to talk about and all pull for Eastern seaboard teams if nothing more than all their companies are owned there.

I mean really. They gave up a two number two pitchers in Pineda and Fister last year and got flawed players, maybe some guys that might be nice players. But not stars. I like the Wells and Montero, but there is not a window there to steal a star.

There are guys playing now: Montero, Wells, Seager, Saunders, Carp and maybe Ackley that this time next year will be playing at a much different level and will give people a different sense for this process. There are no great hitting free agents available this winter. No Stars.

There might be two good short stops in the system right now, Brett Miller and Nick Franklin and several catchers including Zunino and a couple of guys at High Desert.

Last July and August Mike Carp hit the shit out of the ball, tailed off in September a bit, but was the best hitter on the Mariners last year. At the same time Smoak stunk. Carp’s reward was to have an uncertain winter and get stuck in left field and hurt in the first game in that misbegotten trip to Japan.

So he’s recovered and is now scalding the ball. Smoak is in Tacoma and playing the same as he was here. 537 OPS, courtesy of Larry Stone. That is terrible. Meanwhile old dog doo on the shoe Mike Carp is hitting .375, onbag .407, slug .583 and OPS of .990 for July. He’s healthy.

Please wake up and look at what is going on. It is not Smoak to watch, Carp may never be a hall of famer but he’s a nice player.

There are very good pieces here now. Not all of them are here yet, but the ones that are here need to be nurtured and allowed to get more time and more success and more at bats and games played.

We let go two relievers that may not be nearly as good as Capps and Pryor. (100) One hundred miles per hour twice. Eric Thames will platoon and play left field. The festering stuff with Ichiro and Smoak is over and the team is playing really well and is actually fun to watch.

By the way if Brendan Ryan hits .260 or so like he his now, he’s the best short stop in baseball defensively.

Iwakuna goes eight innings and strikes out thirteen setting “Rookie” record. Saunders, Seager and Carp with an assist from Brett Lawrie put together four runs to win.

Beat guys don’t criticize team for winning games as they did with first four at KC. Sock puppets for Chuck.

Two trades: Brandon League to Dodgers for two low minor league guys, center fielder and reliever. Neither project to play in Seattle as starters. Second trade is Steve Delabar to Toronto for outfielder Eric Thames who has been on the Las Vegas-Toronto shuffle for two years.

Thames is a left handed hitting outfielder that does not defend well and has gap power and struggles against left handed pitching, or at least did in 2011. I would have greatly preferred Travis Snider who went to Pittsburgh for a thumber. You want to see a guy play and adjust, but there is nothing to suggest this means anything other than Carlos Peguero has been given up on by Mariners.

Of larger import is to consider the cost of League, both historical and opportunity. The Ms got him for a trade of Bavasi drek, i.e. Brandon Morrow. He is a free agent and has a relative high salary and is coming to his free agency winter. Wilhelmsen is better and Stephen Prior and Carter Capps and their dueling 100 mph fastballs will be here soon. So something from nothing, but not a whole lot of something.

Delabar was out of baseball due to a broken elbow was resurrected by Zduriencik last year and now is traded for Thames. Again something for nothing.

Rough counting the M’s payroll is now reduced, on annualized basis, to $55 million or so, which includes totally empty money for Figgins and Gutierrez. That reduces to $40 million or so.

So Ms are down dueling with Astros and Rays for lowest payroll pit. The strategy being Chuck and Howard get their bonus payment or the team is sold. Maybe both, due to timing.

There are no significant free agent hitters in the off season.

So Zduriencik fights on with no help from the leaders of the organization Lincoln and Armstrong.

Felix Hernandez pitches a gem for seven innings and leaves with a 5-2 lead only to see Brandon League and Oliver Perez cough it up. If there is a baseball dictionary and there is an entry for fragile egos, those two reliever’s pictures will be shown.

Mariners came back and got two in bottom of eighth on a Carp double, followed by Trayvon Robinson’s sacrifice that was thrown away by Mijares allowing Kawasaki to score who had pinch run for Carp, Robinson to second on the error. Ackley intentionally walked and Casper Wells singled Robinson in. In the top of the ninth the Royals pushed across a run against Long Tall Tom Wilhelmsen, but he held on for the save and the Ms win.

Carp with two doubles and a home run last night does not seem troubled with the size of Safeco and had three hits in total today. Kyle Seager also had three hits today and two rbis garnered when he got a two out bases loaded single up the middle. Seager has been hitting the ball at people during this series with little to show for it and got a sun driven double yesterday and then had three line drives today. Robinson had a double and an rbi and a great sacrifice bunt. In the 8th when Perez gave up a hit allowing two runs to come in, Robinson showed the one problem with his game and that is he can not throw much at all. Oliver Perez coming up big on that play, not bothering to backup home plate.

I’m not sure if it matters to the Mariner’s brain trust as Carp is hitting now, healthy for the first time this year, his injury due to being stuck out in left field, but now hitting as he did last summer. He has been the subject of some criticism for the lack of walks in his game. At times he’s shown he has discipline, but the only way he sticks is to do what Smoak hasn’t done, which is to hit with some power in critical times. In July he’s got a .409 onbag (mostly hits) and .609 slug. His second double was an oppo shot off the wall. Crosby, Stills and Nash used to sing about loving the one you’re with, well for all Smoak’s unfulfilled potential, here’s a guy who’s banging out hits…again and not whining about not being able to get hits in Safeco.

Brendan Ryan with a single, rbi and sacrifice and sterling defense.

Pretty nice win.

One of the best sports writers in this market is Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times. He is primarily the Husky Football beat writer and also covers the Time’s blog on Husky Football. He used to cover Husky basketball too. If memory serves he previously worked for the News Tribune.

It seems as if he is the putative beat writer for the new Sonics, should they come to be.

For the last six weeks the Times has waged a campaign of distortion, lies and biased opinion against the potential new arena in the stadium district south of downtown. To date they have not presented a shred of reason to not move forward. No verifiable traffic problems, no lost jobs to the Port that have not already been likely to their continued mismanagement. Seriously, if you Google the Port of Seattle and throw in the word court, suit or resignation, you will have a laundry list of things that come up against Port Commissioners and others.

The Times would have us believe that there is a huge avalanche of economic substance to come from that group of stooges. Which is to insult the Three Stooges.

It begins to look like the owners of the Times, the Blethens were left out of the buying group or Chris Hansen, Steve Balmer and the Nordstroms are no longer Seattle people and they should not be allowed into the sandbox that is Seattle money.

So yesterday comes the respected Bob Condotta to wring his hands about whether the market will support six teams. One can only imagine how that came to be? I have this vision of the executive editor of the Times coming up to him after other guys had refused to write this and he says write about this or else.

So Bob seemingly walking a tight rope, interviews several Merlin-esque experts, who each shook their chicken bones and came up with opposing statements and also all the teams except Howard Lincoln in his Dick Dastardly best imitation, all come down in favor of the arena.

Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but you have to feel for Bob Condotta and the position he’s put in. Things swing back and forth, but newspapers are starting to look like Dodo birds, certainly regionally and that leaves an employer like the Times in the position to have a stranglehold on the market for journalists. Tough times.

The three links below are about nefarious activities by Port commissioners and managers in recent years as reported by papers other than the Times. All retrieved by a simple Google search for “Port of Seattle Commissioners Resign.” 350,000 responses. Could not find a single piece by the Times in the first few pages of answers. Curious.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Port-commissioners-call-for-Davis-to-resign-1238107.php

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Two-Port-of-Seattle-managers-quit-after-1294117.php

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1345&dat=19881108&id=mN1WAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4fkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4005,938366

Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports and correspondent for MLB the network in and around Christmas of 2010 spoke in a forum that included Al Leiter and asserted that dialogs were going on between the Mariners and the Yankees. Leiter on air said he doubted that was true.

Several more times that has happened and he’s been quoted in the Seattle Media.

I have asserted that he should up for the Makeup Of The Year Award for this bs.

Now this morning on Fox Sports he publishes a story in which all pretense is removed and he’s urging, as he has in the past, for the Mariners to deal Felix Hernandez. To be fair and unbiased (get the Fox reference) he mentions other pitchers, but Felix is number one.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/felix_hernandez/

http://www.mlbtrforums.com/showthread.php?5595-Rosenthal-of-King-Felix-to-Yankees

There are hundreds of this stuff out there. The only thing that is wrong is the Mariners might be closer than Ken Rosenthal thinks and if the trade were to happen, they’d get back a buck of spit. Not even warm.

Lots of bologna about the Mariners rebuilding plan over the past few weeks after the All Star Break, then the extended Ichiro drama. It is enough to make a grown man cry. Mostly all of the stuff on the radio is jabberwocky.

How reductionist can somebody get about this? Let’s try this: In year 2010 the Mariners pitchers allowed 698 runs, in 2011 675 runs and through 102 games 410 runs which projects to 651 runs. That is progress.

The balance of the season could see the rotation changed due to further trades which would change that simple projection.

On offense in 2010 the team scored 513 runs and in 2011 it was 556 and this year the projection is 637 off of the 401 runs through 102 games so far.

Clearly the offense is making moves that are more significant so far, but there are pitchers coming.

There are players coming too.

The team is playing very relaxed baseball for the first time in years.

It is something to observe and a reason to watch the rest of the year.

No Mariner TV today, announced attendance last night was fourteen thousand and change, looked like about half that.

Under the presumption that nobody is paying attention it seems as if Larry Larue of the News Tribune is the only professional amongst the locals at Safeco. Follow him on twitter to keep up if you want. He’s funny.

Lineup link below. Team is showing very positive signs. If they are getting better, then they are supposed to beat Kansas City. They indeed will struggle against teams that have experienced veterans with a payroll that is six or eight times or more.

http://blog.thenewstribune.com/mariners/2012/07/28/eeek-mariners-face-a-crafty-left-hander/

Since Ichiro left the scene of his disentanglement with the Mariners, contractual and physic, the Mariner’s younger players seem free and reborn. Almost as if a baseball exorcism had occurred. With apologies to \William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin, ever since the 2001 season, really Christmas of 2001, Cirillo, at Lou Piniella’s request the Mariners traded for Cirillo. He had been a line drive kind of hitter with some success with the Brewers and then went to the Rockies in 2000. Everything went bad for him after he was in Safeco, no power, couldn’t buy a hit, ran his mouth and whined about Lou and ultimately sickened Lou to the point Lou left and Cirillo himself was traded to San Diego for a bag of balls after the 2003 season. The details are fuzzy, but when this trade occurred either Cirillo or someone in his circle of people cursed the Mariners.

Even when the team had it’s rare season of better than .500 baseball, something was amiss, like in 2007 when Ichiro had the whole team traded when he was the brunt of criticism for playing for his own stats and not the team. If the curse was not in place, Ichiro would not have done that, as witness his demeanor with the Yankees as the ultimate team player.

More recently Fr. Damien Zduriencik thinking the soul of the Mariners was possessed by Ichiro worked tirelessly to free the team from what seemed like demonic possession. Candles, incense, phone calls, clenched fists, and lots of prayers and Ichiro was gone. But he was not demonic, he was possessed and controlled by the curse of Cirillo and after the trade, people saw apparitions circling the field and screaming filthy things at Lou Piniella. See the exorcism had not only freed the team of the perceived possession, it freed it of the curse.

People have only reluctantly talked about this to me and I have to protect sources, but what they say they saw would weaken grown men’s knees.

In the past two days Mike Carp has five hits, so far as I write this, including a home run. Dustin Ackley has four hits, Ryan has two hits tonight, Montero has two tonight, Jaso has a bomb and a couple of hits. Blake Beavan is throwing a gem, and struggling a bit now but has six ks and one walk, which is the second transforming kind of game due to the use of his new big pitch, a curve ball.

Beavan might be very special after all. Right in front us he made an adjustment that makes the rest of his pitches work better. All the would be braniacs have written him off, as they did before with Doug Fister. It is illustrative that players and pitchers can get better after they arrive.

As to the curse being gone, I don’t know what to make of it. Could be just the thing for the Mariners and I will remain optimistic.

I wrote during the winter and the spring that I thought Mike Carp was a better prospect than Justin Smoak. I think that is true. All the guy does is battle and compete. Now that the curse has removed the wool from the eyes of the organization, perhaps all the politics can be set aside and a player like this be given a shot to play himself out of consideration. He was by far the best hitter last year and was rewarded by being moved to left field.

BREAKING NEWS: Deep throat, my Mariner Mole tells me that Felix, Vargas and Millwood may all be gone by Christmas, along with Gutierrez, Figgins and Olivo. Leaving the payroll at $20 million or so which would enable a sale.

Jason Churchill writes an interesting look and evaluation of what to do with the struggles of Ackley, Smoak, Seager and the value of Mike Carp.

It is a good read. I think he is wrong about Ackley and Seager and right about Smoak for the wrong reasons, but it is a reasoned effort on his part.

Here is where I disagree, He says Ackley has fixed his front side or his “foot” and I don’t agree remotely. It is more a timing issue, Ackley’s foot/frontside problems arise out of being late about 90% of all pitches. If guys are perfectly on time they can hit a fastball. If they’re early they can hit a fastball. Watch Cano or Arod. They are almost always early. Ackley’s frontside flies open and he rolls over on fastballs middle away or his bat head drops and he pops up. If he sees breaking pitch he’s supposed to keep his hands back and pause and then complete the swing, if he’s early. He’s not early on breaking pitches either, he just starts his movement later and his head is moving and fishes for ball. Churchill believes he can fix that at major league level, like Saunders did…umm he spent most of the back half of last year in Tacoma and fixed it in Denver with Josh Bard’s brother. If Chris Chambliss knew how to help these guys and they believed in him, things would be hunky dory. Ackley needs to hire his own hitting guy and work on it in the middle of the night. Tacoma feels better to me.

http://prospectinsider.com/view/smoak-optioned,-thoughts-on-ackley/?PHPSESSID=8a4fd270a125bbcb426bee55afccfd26

1. From Larry Stone’s piece, “10 thoughts on Ichiro trade…” “One thing I got out of yesterday in talking to Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong is the unmistakable impression that had Ichiro not asked for this trade, he would have been back next year.”

2. On October 22, 2008 Larry Stone in an article in the Seattle Times quoted Chuck Armstrong, “We have spent the past several months looking at a very complete list of potential candidates to become our new general manager. The individuals we interviewed for the position were excellent. We believe Jack[Zduriencik] is the best person to provide a new approach and to lead our baseball operations. He has a proven track record of recognizing talent, both on the field and in the front office.” http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2008297647_webmari23.htm

3. Keith Law on 710ESPN with Mike Salk this morning, was asked to characterize Ichiro’s current market value and what it might be as a free agent this fall. He responded by saying Ichiro’s skills have eroded to the point that he has virtually no market value. His bat Theyspeed and foot speed have broken down. Law is a former player development guy with Toronto.

So what do you make of all of that? So the Mariners hired Zduriencik to run their baseball operations, draft, trade, develop and release players. The context of Armstrong’s and Lincoln’s remarks is that Ichiro came to them and they made that decision. So net net, the decision was theirs and not trader Jack’s. They were going to re-sign a former great player who can not play any longer.

They were prepared to bring him back despite the objective view that he can not play any longer. Why? Or is the statement a lie? To spin and put a face on the trade that would not anger either Ichiro or the owner in Japan, Hiroshi Yaumachi?

If it is not a lie then it should be a prima facie fact showing they are baseball vidgets (village idiots)or maybe it is a lie and they’re showing proper respect so their rice bowl will not be ripped away from them.

For the rest of us it should serve to take the rose colored glasses off.

During the Lincoln portion of the press conference 710s Shannon Drayer asked him if the trade signaled that the team was for sale, (shannon that is a paraphrase). The question was one that has been around the team since last fall and it was well posed, even if Lincoln was prepared for it.

Lincoln’s answer was indirect and he said that the team was not for sale. It is possible to parse his answer, as Geoff Baker did earlier today, and suggest he was disingenuous and was giving a technical answer only. It is very likely, however that it is. The story is rumbling through several law firms in Seattle.

If I was Zduriencik I’d ask for a raise and a new deal. Would you trust these two chuckle heads? So Ichiro’s dollars are rolling off the payroll and I suspect both Figgins and Gutie are gone by year end too. That’s an approximate payroll of $32 million, the lowest in baseball.

The Mariners need the players they have not had for ten years. A number three hitter, a number four hitter and a number five hitter. There are not any free agents this winter that look like that.

Let’s explore that tomorrow.