If you’d like to read Derek’s serial — and you should — you can find it right here.
I’ve been watching this animated series Princess Nine which I’m going to have to give my full endorsement.
Note that Ryo there is a lefty.
It’s brilliant and awful all at once. I’ve been arguing for women in baseball for a long, long time — I wrote a serial once, there’s a screenplay I’ve sat on for years (baseball movies don’t make a lot of money, so it’s sort of pointless to try and sell one)… so it may be that I’m a little vulnerable to this stuff.
To get the awful part of the way: It’s got some real bad parts in it: on this star girl’s baseball team, there’s a preening girl who jumps out of the way of the ball and I want to reach through the screen and throttle her (and every time it looked like the team might have a little blanket party with her and eight bars of soap in socks, if you know what I mean) I cheered… but it never came. There’s some boring plotting elements. That stuff is so eye-rollingly annoying I laughed at it. And then there’s a lot of the Japanese baseball philosophy in it (big match-up tomorrow? better throw 100, 200 pitches to get ready!) which is a little weird.
It’s cliched but it’s awesome. When Ryo’s pitching impossibly well, it’s implausible, but I nod and say “Yeah, you want some more of that? ’cause she can throw that by you all day.” When one of the girls unveils her Wave Motion Swing, I grinned like an idiot. There are beautiful stages for epic confrontations that will determine if the team gains another recruit so they can play a game. There’s baseball in a strange context, with girl power themes and funny moments.
All of which is to say that if you’re as bored this off-season as I get, and you have access to a quality video store that carries quality animation like Scarecrow, which I fully endorse, or subscribe to Netflix (with which I have a long and complicated love-hate relationship), you might consider giving it a rental.
That’s it. I’ll return to my regularly-scheduled negativity soon.
Juan Gonzalez, who tears the cover off the ball when he’s healthy, which happens sometimes, reportedly signed a 1-year, $4m deal to outperform Raul Ibanez in KC. This seemingly brings to the count of better outfielders who signed cheaper deals than Raul to 42. At 50, I understand, Bavasi will be given some kind of gag present by the other GMs, possibly a disassembled Rubik’s Cube he will be forced to try (and fail) to put together while they pelt him with sunflower seeds, or a year’s subscription to Dog Fancy, the first issue of which he’ll be allowed to peruse at his leisure before the other 29 teams in baseball take him out back and make him their bitch.
Just ran across a neat feature in the PI — key baseball dates for 2004. Check it out.
Is that fair? Woody made his share of bonehead moves, Piniella easily manipulated him into making stupid moves, but I don’t think Woody ever had an off-season this bad. 97-98 was 90 wins to 76 wins, but what’d he really do in that off-season that was so bad.
Woody’s career is a list of dumb moves to patch things he’d left open and occasional smart moves that turned out really well. Woody poured prospects and money into trying to fix a bullpen that didn’t need fixing, left-fielders that didn’t solve anything… but I’ll say this for Woody: first, the moves worked sometimes. He didn’t make, say, 20 stupid moves in a row. And second, Woody, he at least was looking at actual problems (though with the bullpen/pitching, not looking for the cause of those problems). As opposed to Gillvasi, who seems determined to swap every perfectly adequate player for a worse one no matter the cost.
It’s like… imagine sending someone to the grocery store with a list that says “cracked wheat sourdough, eggs, orange juice, peanuts.” You give them a twenty.
Woody comes back from the grocery store and he’s got the wrong kind of sourdough, eggs, he’s bought fresh OJ in the bottle instead of concentrate, and shelled peanuts, for $19.50.
Bavasi comes back and he’s bought a 24-pack of Budweiser, a frozen pizza, a family-size box of Saltines, 3 oranges and a juicer, a carton of the kind of instant noodles you hate, and a copy of “Monster Truck Weekly”. He takes the Redhook out of your fridge and leaves it out on the street, where someone scoops it up within seconds. He tells you that you don’t really need sourdough, because you can eat Saltines instead, and they’re awesome with EZ-cheese, which you don’t have because he tossed that out too. And besides, this ramen is awesome, he used to eat it all the time at the last place he was at and he loved it, so you will too. The pizza he cooks and eats immediately while reading the magazine and drinking the first of his Budweisers. Then he tells you you owe him $100 because he went a little over on the groceries.
I hope everyone had a Happy New Year and you’re enjoying your snow back in Seattle. I’d just like to point out that the forecast calls for a high of 71 degrees in High Point, NC on Saturday, and 73 degrees on Sunday. Looks like I’ll be breaking out the sunscreen and shorts. I’ll be thinking about you guys, though.
While others have touched on it and its appeared at the bottom of a few columns across the country, it hasn’t received as much notice as the Guillen-Aurilia-Mariners hate triangle. However, from what I understand, a tentative deal has been reached that will send Jeff Cirillo and cash to San Diego in exchange for RHP Kevin Jarvis and C Wiki Gonzalez. If the Mariners can find a taker for Ben Davis by Monday, the deal will be completed. Including the buyout of his 2005 contract, Jarvis is owed $4.75 million this year. Wiki Gonzalez is owed $1.2 million for 2004 and is under contract for for 2005, though I can’t get my hands on the exact number. The Mariners are going to have to send a significant amount of cash to San Diego to even out the transaction.
Now, I know everyone is going to hail Bavasi for finding a taker for Jeff Cirillo, but this is a deal the M’s would be better off not making. They aren’t likely to save any money, and neither Gonzalez or Jarvis represents anything resembling an upgrade on the players currently in place. Gonzalez posted a .200/.264/.277 line last year, one that eerily resembles another M’s offseason pickup. And he’s not even the worst player the M’s are getting back. In 9 major league seasons, Kevin Jarvis has posted a cumulative ERA 25 percent worse than league average. Last year, he was 33 percent worse than league average. In the 2001 season that “earned” him a 3 year contract extension by virtue of winning 12 games in 193 innings, he was 16 percent worse than league average. DURING HIS BEST SEASON.
Kevin Jarvis is a terrible pitcher, something along the lines of a brittle, expensive Giovanni Carrara. He’s worse than darn near everyone at Tacoma who would make the league minimum and actually has a chance to turn into a decent pitcher if given the right opportunity. Jarvis does not belong on a major league roster, much less the Mariners, who are overloaded with quality young arms that deserve a chance at the big league level.
There is simply no market for Jeff Cirillo, and rather than focusing on acquiring other peoples crap just to say we traded him, the M’s should release him and eat the $15 million. At least that way they won’t be committing more roster spots to terrible players.
Add in the downgrade at shortstop for more money, and Bavasi has almost completed the task of turning a 93 win team into a 73 win team in two short months. A Woodward-esque performance from the new guy. Nice job, Bill.
The P-I, scooping the Times once more, is reporting that the M’s have agreed to a one-year, $4M contract with free agent shortstop Rich Aurilia. The deal is contingent on the Mariners being able to trade Carlos Guillen. Possible trade destinations include Detroit, Milwaukee and Colorado.
As an aside, imagine if you have Guillen in a fantasy league. You might luck out and score some Coors-inflated numbers next season, or you might wind up with him playing in Detroit. Ouch.
Getting back to Aurilia, I don’t have strong feelings about this one way or the other. Sure he’s older and slightly more expensive than Guillen, but he’s also a better bet to play 140 games in 2004. It’s also a very good thing that this is a one-year deal — perhaps they invision Jose Lopez taking over in 2005 — rather than the long-term deal Aurilia and his agent were supposedly looking for. Finally, there’s a chance the M’s wind up with a decent prospect for Guillen. Overall, I’d put this one down as a small net positive.
Happy New Year.