Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

http://www.ussmariner.com/2013/01/16/the-fundamental-flaw/ A nice piece of analysis on what is next, a trade of Wells and a reliever for a utility player and a catcher. Captures the decomposition of this rebuilding effort into Bavasian decisions, explained with comic-book phrases.

A bag of balls (prospects) goes from Oakland As to Washington Nationals. Michael Morse goes to Mariners where he joins the fifteen players in camp as left fielder and dh. Oakland meanwhile gets John Jaso.

Mariners now with Jesus Montero and, well shoot nobody else at catcher. Mike Zunino? Mike Hicks? Miguel Olivo re-signed?

Lots of reaction in local blogs such as Lookoutlanding or USSMariner. Universally panned. Morse with some right handed power, Jaso was actually a better hitter by a significant margin last year. Like Casper Wells, Wedge did not like Jaso. Ran Olivo out until even the peanut vendors were aware that Olivo could neither catch the ball nor block it. Did not bother Wedgester.

By far the worst thrower amongst the three guys from last year was Jesus Montero who threw out eleven guys in sixty five attempts. Olivo was twenty one of sixty nine and Jaso seven of thirty four. Jaso had twenty one wild pitches and passed balls when he caught. Olivo thirty four and Montero twenty six.

The consenus seems to be that the Mariners will get an additional catcher, Miguel Olivo for example as the current scuttlebutt is that Wedge does not want to rush Zunino.

Just to keep track between first base, left field now we have Morse, Morales, Bay, Ibanez, Smoak, Carp…did I mention Wells? He might be in right field for a bit.

It is easy to rip this up. Jaso is younger, more healthy, much but hitter, under financial control, bats left handed when the team sees more right handers. Morse hits right handers
better than left handers. Jaso well, Jaso was snapped up by Billy Beane. What do you all think? So who knows horse flesh the best, Billy or Jack…I’m thinking it’s Billy.

Dave Cameron says, “Mariners Do Stupid Thing” Says Bavasi was never this bad, which is not true.

Jeff Sullivan’s piece is here, http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2013/1/16/3884682/seattle-mariners-trade-john-jaso-michael-morse-mike

His first two paragraphs are worth noting for you,”he Seattle Mariners didn’t get Josh Hamilton. They didn’t get Nick Swisher, they haven’t seemed to pursue Michael Bourn, they haven’t gotten far with Andre Ethier, and they were turned down by Justin Upton. They didn’t get Mike Napoli. The Mariners were left with money and something of a need, but no obvious fits. Given such a circumstance, the Mariners had three options:

(1) Sit tight for now and wait for better opportunities in the future
(2) Search harder for a non-obvious fit
(3) Do something dumb

The Mariners, ultimately, opted for #3, as today they traded John Jaso for Michael Morse straight up, basically. Morse is coming from the Nationals, and Jaso is going to the A’s, because as if this needed to be any worse, now Jaso’s going to a rival instead of the National League. I don’t even know where Jaso fits on that roster right now, which hardly helps. He definitely fit on this roster. You know what the Mariners need now? A catcher of some sort. Kind of like John Jaso.

If Zunino comes up and is Buster Posey, nobody remembers this. But, the wooden headed on says nope, we’re not going to push Zunino.

Lest you think that I’m making it up about Jaso, here is a link to Jeff Datz talking about Jaso throwing: http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?topic_id=16508278&c_id=SEA&content_id=25520139
I was going to talk to Jaso on a long term piece about catching. Not so fast buster.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2013 at 5:52 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.