And the endorsements keep coming:
Official Female Reader Who is Too Cool for her Current Boyfriend: Jen Van Dijk*
Favorite Long Endorsement of the U.S.S. Mariner: Shannon Fears, Seattle PI (“Day in, day out, you will not read more startling nuggets, potshots at the manager, wistful daydreaming, hard and fast facts, and just plain enthusiasm for following the Mariners day in and day out than at the U.S.S. Mariner.”)
Longest Emails: Pete Livengood
Official Broadcaster of the USS Mariner: Pat Dillon**
Official Columnists of the USS Mariner: Corey Brock and Larry Stone
Best Provider of Content: Box Melvin
Second longest emails: Joe Mealyus
* because she wanted to put the first endorsement on her resume, and might get some mileage out of this one
** Mike Curto also endorsed, but Pat Dillon put Dave on the air once a week
Some changes on the GM Scorecard and, well, you’ll see something else has changed too.
On Dave’s point on the Yankees: Yes. Steinbrenner runs that team like Franklin Roosevelt ran his administration: overlapping responsibility, ill-defined roles, two different competing brain trusts, all so he can step in and sort out the constant issues, and there’s never a shortage of people to blame, credit, and shift around. Evaluating anyone in that organization is almost futile: I think Cashman’s done a good job juggling the chainsaws, and some of their player development guys are good (and they’re really good at the pump-and-dump), but even there, if you said “what’s Cashman’s strengths and weaknesses” I’d have to shrug. Nobody knows. It’s a wonder those guys do as well as they do, even with the amount of money they spend, when you consider how messed up their organization is.
Well Derek, I don’t have a good GM for you, but for your birthday the M’s have re-signed Bryan Price.
And I looked and looked and looked for a pony, but they’re all on backorder.
Sorry dude.
I’m alive! Well, sort of. No one ever told me working three jobs was going to be this time consuming. If any of you want to volunteer to swing by North Carolina and clean my apartment, do some laundry, buy groceries, and run errands for me, I’d love you forever.
Oh, lots to catch up on. Hooray for corporate lunch breaks. Lets get to it.
1. Nothing against Gordon Blakeley, but I’ll pass on just about everyone from the Yankees organization, thank you very much. There are some good minds there, but the way George has that group structured is insane. The player development/scouting side of things are headquartered in Tampa and are almost a seperate entity from the major league operations. There exists a fractional mentality in the New York front office that I want no part of here. Blakeley could very well overcome the challenges and become a bright General Manager, but I would rather bring someone out of an organization that we already know is well run. Like, say, Cleveland.
2. Lots of Mike Port questions. Really, I’m ambivalent. He has a reputation as a good analyst, but he rubbed some people the wrong way in his days as the Angels GM in the mid-80’s. He has likely mellowed in the past 20 years, but some people are not great communicators, and Port is one of those. He could be effective, but I don’t see him as a real asset.
3. Dave Dombrowski; heck no. He’s a poor version of Pat Gillick, without the respect or the track record. He is exactly what the Mariners do not need.
4. Happy Birthday Derek. Get well soon.
5. John Halama blows. We will pretend that Jason did not suggest that we spend money on him. I’d rather give that roster spot to half of the guys in Tacoma, and probably a third of the guys in San Antonio. Editors Note: I’m illiterate. Jason endorsed picking up Mark Johnson. Ignore this entire point
6. Am I the only one who thought Mike Aldrete hosted American Gladiators? I actually had to google to remember that it was Mike Adamle. Maybe its just me. But I’m glad we didn’t hire that guy to be our hitting coach.
7. Also, I would like to endorse Interstate 40 as the worst freaking highway in America. It is the Official Road To Avoid of the U.S.S. Mariner.
8. The Twins are reportedly willing to move both C A.J. Pierzynski and 3B Corey Koskie during the offseason. It would take some kind of monster package, but the upgrades those two would represent would be huge, and both are in the prime of their careers and signed for somewhat reasonable money (Koskie-$4.8 million, Pierzynski is arb. eligible).
9. The Arizona Fall League is going on. The stats are worthless, but it is nice to see Cha Seung Baek taking the hill with relative frequency. Also, Justin Leone gets his first action with Team USA today. Hopefully he can open enough eyes to get himself a 40 man roster spot.
There’s a new GM candidate on the rise — New York Yankees VP of Baseball Operations Gordon Blakeley. Larry Stone and Bob Finnegan mention him here in the Seattle Times, and then there’s this piece from the New York Post. He has ties in the organization, having served as an area scout, East Coast supervisor, cross-checker and international director for the Mariners before joining the Yankees in 1994 as their Pacific Rim scouting coordinator.
The Times article also mentions a few candidates we haven’t covered much here yet: Mike Port and Josh Byrnes, both currently with the Red Sox, and Larry Corrigan and Wayne Krimsky, both currently with the Twins.
There’s also this bizarre Dave Dombrowski (current GM of the Tigers, former GM of the Marlins and Expos) rumor going around, which seems to have stemmed from some comments he made in the Tacoma News Tribune this week. To me those are incredibly generic vanilla comments and not much to get excited about. There could be more going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about, but these comments alone don’t exactly make him a candidate.
Oh, and here’s some indirect GM news: Houston GM Gary Hunsicker is going to interview with the Mets for their vacant (well, they’ve got an interim guy now) GM spot. I have to think that if he winds up getting the job, the Astros would look to promote their current assistant GM, Tim Purpura, thereby taking him out of the running as an M’s candidate. In any event, the Astros might be a bit careful about letting Purpura interview elsewhere if they think there’s a chance Hunsicker might bolt.
In former M’s news: The A’s designated LHP John Halama for assignment.
They did the same with C Mark Johnson. I realize I’m probably the only fan he has left on this planet, but I’d pick him up. At the very least, he’s better AAA insurance than Pat Borders.
This kind of slipped by yesterday, but the M’s hired Mike Aldrete as their new first base coach for next season. Aldrete replaces John Moses, who has been in the organization for 19 years (the last ten as a coach/instructor).
In the grand scheme of things, the first base coach probably has less actual influence on the game than anyone but, say, the bullpen catcher (but keep up the good work, Alan Wirtala). But honestly, what did Moses do to lose the job? And more importantly, how on earth did he lose his job when Dave Myers was able to keep his?
Ah, but there’s a catch. Aldrete managed for three years in the Diamondbacks system (Melvin) and began his playing career with the Giants (Melvin again). Turns out the two have been teammates — or at least in the same organization — off and on since age 15, and they were Pac-10 opponents in college (Melvin played at Cal, Aldrete at Stanford).
Basically, the M’s allowed the Box to bring in one of his cronies at the expense of a guy who has been with the M’s for nearly 20 years.
Jason and I have a comedy routine we do, and it’s gotten to the point where we break into it naturally while walking down the street. It’s about the standard sports cliches announcers use to describe matchups, and it’ll go like this:
We walk down Occidental from wherever we’ve been hiding out and you, the U.S.S. Mariner readers, have not been buying us drinks because you don’t recognize us, and see two street musicians playing close to each other, glaring back and forth between bars.
Jason: “There is no love lost between these two competitors.”
Derek: “These guys flat out do not like each other.”
Jason: “When these two musicians get together, you can throw out the sheet music, because anything can happen.”
This is adaptable to anything. When I go to the demolition derby at the Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, there are two guys who always enter the roll-over competition, and the announcers like to make it out like it’s a rivalry, so I’ll get into it there… anyway, you can imagine my amusement when I went to ESPN.com (“Working to make our pages less accessible and harder to load every day”) and found that their lead for the ALCS was
“There’s no love lost between the Yankees and Red Sox. Now there’s more at stake. The ALCS begins tonight (8 ET, FOX) with very little separating the two bitter rivals this season.”
Speaking of which — both CS games at the same time? Does Fox do this to amuse themselves?
“Bud Selig here.”
“Fox calling. Bud, we want you to schedule both games Wednesday at eight o’clock Eastern.”
“Both of them? But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do it!”
“Yes, master.”
“And stand on one leg.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not doing it, we’re watching from the other building. Do it! And hop up and down.”
“Yes-I’m-hop-ping-now.”
“Good. Continue hopping for at least one hour. We’ll be watching.”
Ugh. I’m on vacation, my birthday’s coming up, and I’m sick. Onwards! Today’s nine U.S.S. Mariner Season Endorsements:
Official Pre-Game Food Spot: King Street Bar and Grill
Official Pre-Game Watering Hole to Watch Baseball: Slugger’s
Best Column About The Official Player: “So Long, Edgar“*
Official Prospect of the U.S.S. Mariner: Chris Snelling
Favorite Moment of 2003: Mike Cameron’s game-winning walk-off grand slam during U.S.S. Mariner group trip
to the park
Second Favorite Moment of 2003: Pat Gillick announces resignation.
Official U.S.S. Mariner Reader-in-Germany: Shane Lidman
Official U.S.S. Mariner Reader-in-France: Jeffrey Wood
Favorite Short Endorsement of the U.S.S. Mariner: “The blog of choice among discriminating Mariners fans,” Shannon Fears, Seattle PI
Coming up: local broadcaster and columnist endorsements, and much, much more.
* Dave and Jason endorsed this, I abstained