The Seattle Times reports that the GM search is down to three finalists; Benny Looper, Al Avila, and Bill Bavasi. Good candidates like Tim Purpura, Chris Antonetti, and Paul DePodesta were never interviewed. Instead, we get to recycle some old-boy-network scouts. Color me unimpressed.
I guess, at this point, we just hope they sign a short contract. Not surprising, but still disappointing. There will probably have to be a change at the very top before we can purge the organization of the current philosophies.
Rose watch: Pete Rose is bubbling over about his coming reinstatement.
You’ll recall that earlier this year, Baseball Prospectus broke the story that Rose had reached a deal with MLB for his reinstatement. Will Carroll broke it, we wrote it up after getting more confirmation, and MLB flatly denied it. Utterly fallacious, irresponsible journalism. Since then, more and more signs have pointed to it being entirely true, though even as Mike Schmidt denied it he seemed to confirm an agreement was in place.
Now hold that thought for a while, I’ll be back.
When I posted the other day about Ken Cloude signing with Tampa Bay, and that reuniting with Lou might not be the best move for his career, we got a few emails which said, basically, “Yeah, but he’ll be back with Chris Bosio and that’s a good thing.” And I’ll tell you, I was inclined to agree — it was a good point which I missed completely. Today, however, I came across this: “Rays’ Bosio resigns; Chuck Hernandez new pitching coach.” There aren’t really any details about why Bosio chose to resign, other than it was for personal reasons. The story on MLB.com includes this quote: “Right now my family needs me more than baseball does, so I have decided to step down.”
Pelooper — that’s priceless.
So this Edgar thing seems like a good deal, on the surface, but at the same time…
…aw, who am I kidding? I can’t say a single bad word about this. Edgar is the Mariners and the Mariners are Edgar, if that makes any sense at all. If he wants to play until he’s 50 that’s a-OK with me.
I’d like to nominate Edgar to be the first modern player-GM. He’s a DH, he’s got spare time, and even though we know nothing about his talent evaluation abilities, it’d be cool even if it didn’t work, whereas the Pelooper GM is more likely to be sad.
My reward for my rant about how people seem to believe it’s okay to do bad things as long as it’s them doing them, like spamming?
“Hello. Please, please, pardon this interuption.
We are very sorry to spam you with this message, but we are so excited about our new website, Sports Blogs, that we just had to tell you about it.”
Whyyyyyyyyyyy??????
Also, there’s an argument that Edgar clogs the bases and thus takes the M’s off the gameplan. If anyone wants to make a serious case for this — particularly if they want to go through game logs and show us the number of times Edgar failed to move over or score from first/second/third on events that should have moved him over or scored him, I’d love to read that.
The American League Gold Gloves were announced today, and the Mariners dominated the squad. Mike Cameron, Ichiro Suzuki, Bret Boone, John Olerud, Rick the Peanut Guy, Joe Simpson, Steve Trout, and The Guy With The Cowbell all won at their respective positions.
While they were better this year, the gold gloves are still a complete joke. If you can’t hit, you won’t get recognized, end of story. It is an award to give kudos to quality players who make a lot of webgems. That said, Mike Cameron really is an awesome defensive centerfielder, and the Mariners will greatly miss his glove. The dropoff from Cameron to Winn is going to be huge, and Ryan Franklin should demand a trade to whatever team Cameron signs with.
Also, to everyone who continues to email us about Edgar being too old and the Mariners needing to get over their sentimentality, wake the heck up.
Martinez, 2003 AL ranks:
BA: 25th
OBP: 4th
SLG: 26th
EqA: 8th
Martinez, 2003 team ranks:
BA: 2nd
OBP: 1st
SLG: 2nd
EqA: 1st
Edgar Martinez is still a tremendous hitter, a vital cog of the Mariners offense, and a valuable player. If it pains you to watch him run, turn off the T.V. and listen on the radio. If you need speed to enjoy your sporting experience, I suggest Nascar. There are few things more entertaining in the game than watching Edgar work a pitcher into submission before lining an unhittable pitch into the alley for a double. He’s not only a joy to watch, but he’s a huge reason why the Mariners won 93 games, and they should thank their lucky stars that he’s coming back. When Edgar stops being one of the 5 or 6 best hitters in the league, then you can tell him to retire.
Seattle PI reports Edgar’s returning! HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
O Happy Day!
In the “good news that surprises no one” category, Edgar Martinez is not going to retire. His agent makes the right comments about keeping options open, blah blah, negotiating ploy, blah blah, but make no mistake, Edgar will be a Mariner next year. He’s not going to sign with another team. They will reach an agreement, and Edgar will be the DH for the M’s again. And there was much rejoicing.
The Seattle P-I also says that the M’s won’t be allowed to talk to Brian Cashman, which isn’t really a surprise.
Also, we’ve created a mailing list for all interested in the U.S.S. Mariner Feed and we’re in the process of finalizing a location. If you did not receive an invitation to the mailing list and are interested in attending, email us and we’ll get you added.
When is spam spam? If someone drops us a line and says “Hey Derek, you mentioned Chavez v lefties, I totally disagree, check out this thing I wrote on our A’s blog…” that’s cool.. and I’m likely to check it out. If someone emails us and wants to involve us in what would appear to be a complicated but lucrative money-laundering scam but which is, in fact, just a scam, that’s spam. Spam’s unsolicited email, generally (but not necc.) commercial in nature.
I ask this because I’m totally pissed that Football Outsiders took to spamming this week:
“Howdy baseball bloggers and objective analysts!
With the World Series over, and more attention turned to the
NFL, I wanted to introduce you to our website […]”
This is spam. It’s bulk, unsolicited email intended to get readers. So it goes on and then ends
“P.S. This is a onetime only email, don’t worry, I don’t plan
on spamming you!”
Which means, I guess, that the email sent to “baseball bloggers and objective analysts” was totally unplanned.
I hate spammers. They’re theives, stealing bandwith and passing on the costs to you. Now, because this dude isn’t forging headers or running off an open proxy, there’s an argument to be made that the cost is minimal and it’s no big deal. I don’t really buy this: email as we know it is dying because of abuse, and it’s entirely reasonable to be sensitive about this. I know someone who, in the midst of a career change, spammed everyone he had an email address for trying to drum up business as he left the nest, and as much as I understand his need, I have never entirely forgiven him (and he, for his part, has never apologized).
Outsiders probably feels like their mass-maililng was justified because it was for them, just as this guy I know thinks it was cool for him to mass-mail people because he was trying to start a new career. Or that it was good because they thought we’d be interested, in the same way the Nigerian scammers think I want them to take my money.
The inability to see the larger consequences of one’s actions, the cumulative effect if everyone acted as you might, and particularly to see your actions from the point of view of those who are affected by them is a defining hallmark of selfishness and stupidity. If for no other reason than that, I wouldn’t load Outsiders. And when it comes to spam, there’s a larger issue: by patronizing those who spam, spam as a method is encouraged. Roger Ebert came up with a solution, the Boulder Pledge, in which you agree that
“Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.”
Already, email servers have restrictions that make it difficult to set up things like our Feed: no more than 20 people on a CC or BCC. No more than three attachments. No messages longer than X lines. All of these restrictions are to stop the flow of spam, much of it from people, like this guy, who sincerely believe that I, and 100 other people, want what he’s selling. When you can’t email me because every email server in the world’s gone to white lists, and you have to go through challenge-response systems to get a letter through to your friends if you’re not at your regular computer with an IP address on their safe list, feel free to direct your frustration at everyone who thinks that it’s okay to spam people if they’re the ones doing it.