Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

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…

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2012 at 9:01 pm by terrybenish and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.