Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

Or deserves, or has earned it…

Let’s look at his last three major league seasons, along with his September performance with OPS:

2010 For the year .694 and September .975
2011 For the year .719 and September .793
2012 For the year .645 and September 1.063

The full year is terrible the third worst in the American League ahead of only Jemile Weeks, Yuniel Escobar and our own Dustin Ackley with 500 plate appearances. I think it is doubtful that either of Ackley or Smoak become good. Ackley gets the benefit of another 500 plate appearances, Smoak should not.

There is not any there, there.

Yesterday Stone in a subsequent piece says, “Here’s the No. 1 challenge for Jack Zduriencik this offseason: Make the Mariners relevant again. They need to send out a team that compels people to care — not just the hard-core zealots who would care if they lost 120, but the casual fans who checked out a long time ago. The hard truth is that the Mariners have once again lost this town to the Seahawks.

Then he notes that attendance at the Mariner games had declined by half and makes the following statement, “To execute a 50 percent attendance drop in a decade — and heading ever downward — takes some really special alienation. The Mariners have obliged with seven last-place finishes in nine years, and 11 years and counting without a postseason appearance in baseball’s only four-team division (until next year, when the Houston Astros arrive).

All this so far has been the setup, he puts some frosting on that by saying he’s bored with watching guys go through their development stuff, up and down, but they could the mariners that is, and here he’s winding up and going to throw the high cheese for the finish line…He says, they should make the right moves.

It was really… two columns for that? I mean want to have something that burns my throat and warms my innards after that…if you think it’s bad about watching a team develop, what about reading bad and terrible coverage of the Mariners for four and a half months and then your paper stops covering the team? Then you deliver that, well, That REALLY SUCKS!!!

But I digress.

Despite what Dave Cameron will write there are not any good free agents to pick up, or hardly any. If they don’t draft and develop several players to bat 3,4 or 5 that are great hitters, no great free agent is going to come here, ever. EVER, EVER, EVER!!! They never have.

The relevant exasperation, if you look at the last two years, from a quality control perspective is to say, “So how did the Yankee deal for Pineda turn out? For the Mariners that is. Or, and how did the Tiger trade workout, Fister for Wells, you Fister the guy that was great in the playoffs last year and just struck out nine guys in a row? Well, shoot the manager treats Wells as if he’s serial dog crap, sort of like Ground Hog day, where Wedge steps in something and it’s Wells and he hates him and plays crappy, really crappy players instead. Or we get Eric Thames for Steve Delabar. Thames can’t play, has some power, but does not get on base and is a terrible outfielder. Bad trade. Fister deal is terrible, the Pineda deal looks one sided now, but big Jesus might be great in a year or so.

The whole make a few moves is like Chuck and Howard are doing the Tom Sawyer paint the fence thing you fools, through a surrogate in Larry Stone.

It is possible I suppose that they would make a move, conceptually, but they care not about winning baseball and the whole zen thing to that is only desperate players would come here, the agents stuck to Scott Boras’s shoe.

The only great players this franchise has had have been drafted or signed as a kid. Ichiro qualifies as pretty good, but there was not demand for him elsewhere.

Here is what’s wrong now with the Mariners development thing. They are blind to what their own eyes tell them. Smoak and Ackley, I can’t get beyond that they have played very bad and they are blind to it.

That works on several levels. Whatever daily work they do, it is not being led by someone that can help them. Bad plate appearances pile up, with no adjustments.

I’m convinced that the pitching side of dev at the major league club works. Defense especially infield defense is very good. Hitting thing is inadequate, no adjustments.

Any process that concludes with Miguel Olivo playing a lot is hugely flawed.

If next springs formula is Smoak, Ackley, Olivo, Peguero, Gutierrez then I will be lamenting future failure.

WSU vs the ducks. This takes on aspects of the Roman Colosseum, lions versus Christians.

Ducks ahead by fifty at half time? First Pac12 game where a football team scores 100?

As always there is the under card of the Mike Leach kick a kid derby. We can pick a kid or first or second half for when he punts some freshman as a secondary issue.

Talked to a long term Cougar who was a great high school coach and there is just this feel that one way or another Leach is not the guy for the Cougars for long. Win or lose.

I find it hard to believe that people pay money to watch horror films and this is sort of like that. You want to avert your eyes, or maybe watch a replay of the Husky victory over Stanford.

Hisashi Iwakuma pitches well, yet again and the Mariners squeeze in front of Angels then blow game open.

John Jaso got to play today, for the first time in too long and as he’s the best hitter on the team, the Mariners won and he was a critical component.

Just as I was getting warmed up to write about how Franklin Gutierrez is fool’s gold and those trumpeting him rely on UZR in the defensive WAR concept which doesn’t work, he ran into a wall and is hurt again. Not sure how bad. Let’s wait and see if he comes back.

Some time Monday night after the win by the Hawks due to the now much discussed end of game play, ESPN sends out an internal memo that they need to protect their brand which is now at risk due to the so called bad call at the end of the Hawk Packer game. The Fans are mad and calling for a resolution on the ref’s strike, because the Packers got screwed.

To repeat this point which others have made, in the last fifteen years Dennis Erickson lost his last game as Seahawk coach due to maybe the worst call I’ve ever seen, Vinnie Testaverde laying short of the end zone and a touchdown is called and the Seahawks lose and missed the playoffs. ESPN did not say a damn thing then, not one.

The referees in the Hawk’s lone Superbowl appearance cost them the game. Mike Holmgren said something and the upshot of that is the ESPN people laughed about it. Later on the official admits to costing the Seahawks the game.

I’m reminded of the NBA playoff game between the George Karl coached Sonics and Phoenix Suns, where the officials called no fouls on the Suns and fouled out the Sonics and the Suns won.

There is no proof of course but there is a latent whiff present that almost suggests that the regular guys would have made sure the Packers won, which suggests that is better for ESPN’s brand.

Before everybody gets all hinky about the remark, remember ESPN is not a journalistic enterprise, no matter how they make it look. They are part of ABC or vice versa and they sell ads on their shows. That is what matters to them. If the fans stop watching because the wrong teams win, they sell fewer ads. They can sell more ads if teams win that have larger populations. Don’t say no, the fix is always done with the officials.

Through the end of business yesterday the Mariners had scored 577 runs with eight games to go at the pace of runs this month they should muster enough runs to get to just over 600 runs, say 601. That off of 556 and 513 in the two previous terrible years.

The Mariners are the worst offensive team in the American league in terms of runs scored, of course which is how you tally up wins and losses. Cleveland is the next closest at 628 runs which is fifty runs more.

Going into September barring an absolute collapse scoring 625 runs for the year seemed achievable. Missing 600 after last night’s debacle of twenty strikeouts is possible.

There has been much a do about Justin Smoak’s resurgence, however I would remind you he is as constant to September as Hailey’s comment is to every once in a while, Smoak laces call ups. If you just look at who Wedge has run out to play as opposed who he has not then this whole thing looks sort of discouraging, I mean how often has Wedge, talked about making them tough and always playing to win?

John Jaso since May when Wedge understood he was the best player on the team was far and away the best hitter on the team going into the last month. He is 7th in plate appearances.

The best players this month are Smoak, Saunders and Seager.

NAME Plate Appearances
Smoak 66 1.077
Saundrs 63 0.945
Seager 91 0.831
Olivo 48 0.781
Jaso 52 0.741
Gutie 83 0.699
Montero 64 0.663
Ackley 81 0.644
Thames† 39 0.636
Ryan 56 0.382

If a team is good by being strong up the middle, the only real strength the Mariners had in the middle has been John Jaso. But in September he has not got to play much with Olivo getting almost as many plate appearances as Jaso.

Ryan, Ackley and Gutie are so bad offensively that in order to play that group of strong defenders, then one of them has to carry the other two. The hypothesis is that Ackley is your man. I am not seeing it, Gutie has faded into the background. Ryan is terrible and Ackley is a little better.

Trade Jesus Montero says Dave Cameron. Jeff Sullivan says trade Mike Carp.

Cameron says don’t be fooled by Justin Smoak hitting in September put him Tacoma next spring.

Entering camp in February if that were all to happen, first base would have to be manned by either Rich Poythress or a free agent. These two guys Sullivan and Cameron both work for Fangraphs, so it is probably a coordinated set of bologna.

Carp can hit and play first base. Smoak only hits in September, last three years running and has good hands and feet around the bag but has almost no range.

Zduriencik is obsessed with Smoak and it may end Zduriencik’s journey here. Carp can play. Montero is a bit away from being a great hitter, or not. He can’t catch and probably is not a first baseman. I think he is slower than Smoak, but I’ve not seen them in a race or under the stop watch.

Mike Zunino has them all agog and praying that he will make the roster out of camp so they can save their jobs. There are as I noted yesterday, several other guys that are players. Poythress, Nick Franklin, Brad Miller and Stefen Romero. If Zunino does make the team, Jaso could play first as well, being the best hitter on the team this year by miles.

The Times and Tribune are not covering the Mariners now. I suspect they will cover the off season, but the ill will towards the Mariners now is palpable so maybe not.

The point is that last winter the Times wrote all winter in a series of articles about the financial desperation of one of the owners who was going through a divorce, then a little bit about the declining value of the Japanese owner’s stock portfolio, then they shifted to talking about the value of the team whether from Forbes or the divorce hearing and then later during the season after San Diego’s cable deal and the implication here.

Meanwhile Ichiro’s salary is gone and Figgin’s is not, so he will be back, still worthless from a baseball view. The Times would, if they are still covering the team, would pick up their downbeat that the Mariners should spend as Toronto did twenty years ago, or like the Yankees and Red Sox do now, because the writer has seen so many rebuilds not happen or come to any good thing.

Not all guys turn out great, or good even, but they are not instantaneously great. So the point is that lots of very good things happened this year, Saunders, Seager, Montero, Jaso (best hitter on team by far), Ramirez, Capps, Pryor and Wilhelmsen. I hope that Paxton ascends as well.

With the destruction of the team’s good will and continuing decline of their attendance it is unlikely that these owners will spend a penny on a free agent, unless he’s somebody that has been drop kicked by other organizations and is a clone for Russell Branyan and will sign for peanuts.

The biggest dilemma in the organization now is that they are trying to decide who is going to be bobble head night guys and who is going to be in the commercials and Howard keeps calling Bud Selig to see if the team can go to Japan again, maybe in December and Chuck is pitching bringing back Aaron Sele for a Poulsbo night sellout. The Kitsap Sun might after all cover the team for 162 games next year…

The phenomenon of writing baseball blogs about a major league team began here in Seattle, largely with the USSMariner with Dave Cameron and Derek Zumsteg. Jeff Sullivan had a fun titled one named around a former Mariner prospect from St. Martin’s College in Lacey, WA Justin Leone.

Derek Zumsteg quit writing several years ago, Dave Cameron has gone on to the Wall Street Journal, ESPN and Fangraphs and suffered a bout with leukemia. Sullivan went on to Lookoutlanding.com and now writes primarily for fangraphs on wider baseball topics than just the Mariners. Jason Churchill started prospectinsider.com and he now has a paying gig with ESPN.

Making money doing this is the best thing since sliced bread and peanut butter. The blogger may be a sabermetric guy or think he is, not sure what that difference is, but it’s obvious when you encounter the latter. Post game show on KIRO and the guy was talking about defensive WAR as if it is meaningful as an example.

But for most it is a mix of baseball and writing. It could start at any point in terms of proportionality, i.e. 80% baseball and 20% writing, but that swings way around to the reverse where it is mostly about the discipline of writing daily and picking something in daily events or trends to discuss.

The die off in local bloggers is not mirrored around baseball. The Mariners have become the modern day equivalent of the St. Louis Browns.

A laughing stock around baseball that always loses and ultimately moved to Baltimore. This year they lost less than the previous years, largely due to the efforts of GM Jack Zduriencik and some measure Eric Wedge and the young players and Felix Hernandez, Vargas etc.

But in the face of those efforts there is the perfidy of the executives, Armstrong and Lincoln and the reaction that ensues:
1. Japan trip. Most of the team was sick and Carp was hurt for the year.
2. The decision that marketing Ichiro was more important than team development.
3. Chone Figgins opens season at third base, while best player on team, Kyle Seager sits.
4. Lincoln fights Sonic’s Arena
5. Sale of Team looms.
6. Major Newspapers stop covering the Mariners

There are a group of very talented guys that could be part of the team next year, from the start to the end of the season. As a purist that should be fun.

This fall’s Arizona Fall League features the Peoria Javelinas with a large group of players and pitchers are very good for the Ms:

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/afl/club.jsp?team_id=490

The stadium commission deal with the Mariners needs to be looked at, I think this group of dilettantes will sell this team to anyone in the world.

The consequences of this is that even though the blogger is turned around to writing as being the primary motivator, if you follow this franchise you know they will do something to screw up any positive momentum. I call it the curse of the superstar.

Similar to the Red Sox trading Babe Ruth so that their owner could finance

, the current Mariner brain-trust traded Omar Vizquel, Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and let Alex Rodriguez walk. All hall of fame or soon to be hall of fame players. You must respect and honor the game.

Writing day after day about the Mariners is like getting gangrene in your little toe, you know if you don’t cut it off, it will kill you.

So there are but a few left.

There are now rumors about Zduriencik being fired by electronic media types which could be pure bs, but who knows.

I could always steal from Jim Moore, do a reversal and supposedly write about the Huskies and rip the Cougars instead. Lots of low hanging fruit there. People cheer me and rip me both, it is great fun.

What’s that?

You say the games over?

I thought it was a 7:00 start.

Oh, so was I correct, to take the Buffs and the points?

Colorado won, giving 18?

NO WAY!

WAY you say?

35-34 Colorado with a late victory.

Oh no, the Cougar fans must feel despondent.

Well, gee whiz and shoot.

Do you think Leach went off the edge and locked a kid in a shed or kicked him or something?

Christian Caple is not tweeting much recently, maybe got his wings clipped. Certainly quiet tonight.

Poor Jim Moore, with his young twins, was there in person. Many more games like this and they will want to go to Eastern or Central or even Oregon.

I wonder how Paul Wulf and Jim Walden are tonight?

Bill No E Moos has got to be beside himself. Can you imagine those fifteen wheat farmers he put the arm on to raise money, and now they lose to Colorado. I mean Colorado is not very good and listening to WSUsportsradio950 here in Seattle would make you think WSU and Leach had something going on.

Oh the inhumanity of it all…

The organizational strengths continue to be pitching. Going to spring training earlier this year much was written and talked about with respect to Danny Hultzen, James Paxton and Taijuan Walker and very little else. They opened the season at Jackson at the AA level. Hultzen set the world on fire and after thirteen starts was advanced to Tacoma and struggled horribly to throw strikes and ran out of gas, which I suspect will be a recurring issue.

Paxton had a good start, had a non arm injury, recovered and finished the year throwing better than anyone in the system as a starter, should be a starter next year. Walker pitched well, for a 19 year old at AA, leading team across season in Ks in 126.67 innings. His pitch selection and comfort with his secondary pitches will improve and I bet will be in the rotation by the all start break.

Unheralded and not starters, Carter Capps and Stephen Pryor are now on the Mariners roster and playing in Seattle as relievers and Capps routinely throws 98-100 and is showing touch on a nice slider. Pryor, not quite as firm, 96-98 with two other secondary pitches is liked more than Capps is now, and is good, time will tell who is better. Both are special.

Erasmos Ramirez is a 22 year old that broke with the Mariners out of spring training, got hurt and returned after too much time in Tacoma. He is now in the rotation and has excellent stuff and command. He has ridiculous strike out to walk numbers and throws 93-95 with movement and two to three secondary pitches. He is far superior to Danny Hultzen, but is not a first round pick and has more upside than Hultzen.

For guys that played at Jackson in terms of positional players the organization recognizes four guys as prospects, in order they are Mike Zunino catcher (.974 OPS), Brad Miller ss (.882), Stephen Romero 3b (1.012), Nick Franklin ss (.896). I also like Rich Poythress 1b (.843).

Franklin advanced to Tacoma and did ok, and adjusted showing an OPS of .725 which contrasts with Carlos Triunfel’s .699 for a full year. Triunfel’s playing in Seattle now and is a scout’s delight with his tools and had a double last night. Franklin is not short of tools and has better results…God help us if Jack falls in love with Triunfel.

Poythress is to Edgar Martinez what what Justin Smoak was to Jimmy Presley. Only Presley was much, much better than Smoak. So Edgar sat in Calgary for four years. Anytime you want to get pissed about Edgar struggling to Hall Of Fame, think of him sitting in Calgary and write a note to Chuck Armstrong, as he was part of infrastructure that did that. Poythress IS playing in AFL and off to a big start.

Carlos Peguero conjures up visions of Dave Parker in Eric Wedges mind and in 15 abs in September he has not looked totally ridiculous as before, but its 15 abs. Smoak looks good too, but I’ve bought some of that before and it went sour fast.

Right now Kyle Seager and Michael Saunders are the two best prospects at the major league level.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/team/stats/batting/_/name/sea/cat/OPS/seattle-mariners

Ackley made some adjustments and has had a better August and September, which he had to do, because June and July were terrible. But it’s still an OPS of .645, which if he’s special is a .150 light of where it should be.

If Romero is real, I’d move Seager to 2b and trade Ackley in a heart beat. Cut your losses.

Peace out.

Dave Cameron checks in the past two days with some readable stuff:

www.ussmariner.com

First piece in detail, laments the brain cramps that seized Eric Wedge in third game against Orioles. The middle Erasmos Ramierez loss with Wilhelmsen sitting unwarmed up in bullpen, is stark and simple in its stupidity analogous to Ezra Pound’s work. Is that confusing? Pound’s work is profound and beautiful, but it sits, direct and approachable. Wedge’s Ramirez decision lost the win, it’s naked.

Cameron’s second piece suggests trading Jesus Montero as he can’t catch. Rather than move him to first base, he trots out a table of 22 year olds who played major league baseball at some point and uses that to suggest it buttresses his argument. It doesn’t.

At some level to suggest Zduriencik trade Montero, is to suggest that you want Zduriencik to commit ritual seppuku in terms of his job in front of us…take the knife out…

If he won’t stop playing Smoak after 1,400 plate appearances of pure unabridged failure, why would he trade a kid that had flashes and continues to compete and adjust?

We told you it was a bad trade last winter as anybody could see he can’t catch, but nooooo. Well he can hit a bit, and maybe more than that…just don’t know how much more.

Watching player development at the major league level is a lot like listening to your nine year old practice piano in the next room. There is a certain numbing aspect, as you listen to off notes and restarts until you start to wonder what in hell were you thinking when you gave an open check to some strange lady to come into your house and yell at your kid. Especially when she goes next door and the four year old is playing Mozart the second week, with the window open.

Dick Dastardly aka Howard Lincoln, when not destroying good will and fans, reportedly is mulling over firing Jack Zduriencik. Perhaps he wants to bring back Bill Bavasi AND Pat Gillick, our version of I am death destroyer of baseball franchises…

Peace out.

Jack, Hector Noesi does not know how to compete and lacks the same thing the Tin Man did, which was a heart, or courage, whatever, he was brutally bad tonight. Same as he was in June.

He’d get ahead with two good pitches and then the third pitch would be right down the middle and and bang hard hit balls everywhere. Almost looked as if he was intentionally trying to pitch his way off the team, out of the organization. Not one sense that he was trying to compete. Or cared.

Orioles swinging from their rear end, batter after batter digging in and not one pitch inside.

Later on Wieters hits a bomb to center field that Gutierrez got to the fence planted and leaped for only to have a Mariner fan interfere with him and make him miss the catch. Mike Blowers and Dave Sims apparently have been told not to ever say anything bad about idiot fans, so it’s left to me to remark about it.

DON’T DO THAT PINHEADS!!

Howard Lincoln now is climbing that dark evil mountain where Howard Schultz lives to join him as a pariah with his Mr. Potter like stance against the Sonic’s new Arena.

There is now a Boycott the Mariners Facebook page. That is because of Lincoln’s stance.

There are maybe 5,000 actual people at the game tonight. Sales might be higher, but it is brutal. Does not the arrogant fool realize he should shut up and quit destroying value in the team. Is there no one that will tell him the truth?

In other disconnected moments, the broadcast people ran a quiz on what Mariner hit homers in three games in a row most recently. Turns out it was Casper Wells. Zduriencik wants no one to remember that Doug Fister used to be a Mariner.

Life goes on.