Aaaaand… another loss.
Don’t let those ten hits fool you — this offense is anemic. In nine innings, M’s hitters managed just one extra-base hit and one walk. As Dave said earlier, that just isn’t going to get the job done. Meanwhile, they’ve fallen 10.5 games back of Anaheim and are five full games out of third.
Time for a major overhaul? You bet, particularly with the number of free agents the M’s have this winter: Edgar, Wilson, Olerud, Garcia, Aurilia, Hansen. And frankly, I don’t want any of them back next season (with the exception of Edgar, who can play here as long as he likes). Sadly, Garcia’s the only one likely to fetch much in trade. That’s OK, though, because it’s about time to look ahead to next season.
One interesting side effect of Boone’s back problems is that he has an option for 2005 which vests if he reaches 450 plate appearances. He’s still well on pace to do so, but if the back winds up being a bigger issue, he might not make the cut. Moving along, and at the risk of upsetting people — Boone’s probably the team’s most tradable regular, and I wouldn’t be averse to dealing him. By the time the M’s have a chance of competing again (and that’s not next season, barring free agency miracles), he’ll no longer be a top-shelf player. I’m not saying I’d be out shopping him — no, wait, why the heck not? — but he shouldn’t be off the table.
MLB.com:
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Bavasi said he and his staff are in the process of identifying which MLB teams might have the best matches for trades. The Mariners, who need more offense, have the kind of starting pitching that other teams covet.
Most teams are still in process of determining whether they will be a buyer or seller leading up the July 31 trade deadline. Bavasi wants to be in the group that adds players for the second half of the season, but it’s up to the present players to make it happen.
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Nice indirect quote. It’s also up to the manager and general manager to make that happen, and they’re doing a pretty good job at making sure it doesn’t happen.
I love that the Mariners have the kind of starting pitching other teams covet. If Garcia’s turned around and pitching right, he’s still expensive. Pineiro and Meche are question marks. Franklin would be an effective back-end rotation guy who goes deep into games for relatively cheap and do well for a team with a good defense, but what contending team meets those criteria, and what can they offer the M’s?
More importantly, I like that the team is still unable to figure out what’s wrong with on the field, or why they’re losing games. Smart people saw the flaws before the season even started, we know the Mariners know what the criticism of their team have been, and we know that those criticisms were spot on.
I cannot understand how any business can run like this.
“Hey, your fruit stand is on fire.”
“No it’s not.”
“It is, seriously, and I mention this because I like your fruit.”
“You must be some kind of complainer. I will ignore you now. Now where did all the customers go? I note that, totally independent of that first dude, that it’s unusually hot here. I will call to have an expensive air conditioner installed.”
This latest news is ill tidings for the Mariner fan: if you thought Bavasi did a bad job patching (and opening new) holes in the ship’s hull this off-season, take a second to imagine what’s going to happen when he decides to rebuild the ship entirely in his image.
Blub blub.
More fun with the brilliance of our grand poobah in today’s Times. Keep in mind, this is the man that Howard Lincoln praised as “exactly the right man for this team” and gushed that he’s been “better than we even imagined.” Presumably, he said it with a straight face while sober, but one can’t be sure.
“But it’s almost as if there are two tracks,” he said before the Mariners lost the series opener here last night. “You are investigating ways to get better, and at the same time you have to think you’ll be getting better with the guys you have now.”
This is about as public a proclamation as you’re going to get that the management realizes that there is something wrong. They’re going to put a positive spin on things, but they have passed the slow start thinking, and now realize that this team has fundamental problems that need to be addressed. The question will be whether they realize just how severe those problems are, and that the best way to address them is by tearing this team apart and starting over.
The team has a .242 EqA, 3rd worst in the majors (ahead of Tampa and Montrael, whose combined payrolls are roughly 1/2 that of the Mariners). Their three best hitters to date (Spiezio, Wilson, and Ibanez) are performing at a level equivalent to the career marks of luminaries such as Tony Clark. Their worst hitters are performing like AL pitchers in interleague play. The pitching has been bad, but made even worse by an abysmal defense. The core players are showing their age, and the young guys counted on for improvement are hurt or mysteriously struggling.
If you assume the M’s need to win 95 games to win the AL West, they’d have to go 83-47 the rest of the way, which is .638 baseball. No team in baseball finished the year with a .638 winning percentage last year. That’s a clip that would win you 104 games over the course of the year. Regardless of how much better you could expect some players to perform, does anyone see any kind of acquisition enabling this team to play like a 104 win team for the next four and a half months?
Bavasi can cite June 1st as the date to throw in thet towel, but on May 12th, it’s rather obvious that they might as well start stretching their arms in preparation for the heave. For this team to play .638 ball the rest of the way would be a miracle of heavenly proportions, and it just simply isn’t going to happen.
It sucks having to give up on a season in May. But at this point, it’s the right choice. It’s time to look to 2005 and preparing to make that club as good as it can possibly be. It’s time to explore a selloff and see if you can find some takers for the veterans that the organization thought would bring them success. It’s time to tear this team apart and start over, because 2004 is down the drain.
Steve Kelley wrote a melodramatic column after the Yankees came back to win on Sunday, proclaiming the team dead in the water and holding that one game up as everything wrong with the franchise. I didn’t watch that meltdown, so the column felt like an emotional overreaction to a tough loss.
Consider this my version of that column.
First, the offense. In one of their biggest outbursts of the season, they were still bad.
The Mariners got 18 hits. 17 of them were singles. Seventeen singles. Just unreal.
They drew one walk in 52 plate appearances. That’s an approach that just won’t work.
Rich Aurilia was the only starter to not leave at least two men on base.
This sums up the offense. The M’s made a point of acquiring a bunch of impatient hacks who can’t drive the ball, and it’s no surprise that they can’t score runs. You just can’t single your way to blowouts. Screw the broadcasters and their love for little ball and moving runners along; good offenses draw walks and hit home runs. The Mariners do neither, and until they learn the value of patience and power, they are going to be a poor offensive club.
Now, the pitching. Pineiro rebounded, which shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Unless he’s hurt, he’s coming back to decency. But man, the bullpen sucks, and its exacerbated by a manager whose giant, gaping weakness is bullpen management.
Shigetoshi Hasegawa faces four batters, retires none, all score. Is this the most predictable meltdown in major league history, or does Ryan Franklin edge him out for that award? Did anyone think this wasn’t going to happen?
Mike Myers, the lefty specialist who can’t throw strikes, throws one pitch two feet inside, allows a run to score, and is yanked. Giant waste of a roster spot. Replacement level pitcher making twice the league minimum to be worse than half of the relievers in Tacoma. George Sherrill, anyone?
But the real story of tonight’s pitching debacle is the absolute insanity of the bullpen management. Apparently, Eddie Guardado is completely incapable of pitching in any situation where the team isn’t winning in the 9th inning. Letting Hasegawa start the 8th is fine. Replacing him with Mike Myers, up by 3, with the bases loaded and nobody out, well, that’s just ridiculously stupid. Yanking Myers after one pitch to bring in J.J. Putz, now protecting a two run lead, that’s managerial stupidity of the greatest kind. I like Putz, and we stumped for him to have a job in spring training. But this situation demands you try to win with your best reliever, and Guardado didn’t even begin to warm up. After Putz allows a pair of inherited runners to score and tie the game, we’re subjected to 2 innings of Ron Villone. Why? Seriously, there is absolutely no rational reason for the M’s to play 11 innings of baseball, use 4 relievers, and have Guardado not get on the mound.
Earlier today, I was ready to write a piece on why its too early to throw in the towel, why the slow start was causing overreactions, and offering some reasons to expect a turnaround. But you know what, this team stinks. And they deserved to lose this game. This is the kind of game that makes you want to root against Melvin and Bavasi, with their flaws being so obviously pointed out that one can’t help but wonder how they got their jobs in the first place. Melvin’s an awful strategical manager playing with a roster of bad baseball players with little chance of improvement. The 2004 season is just about a waste, and it’s not even mid-May. Forget trading for Beltran; I’m not sure trading for the entire AL Central would help at this point.
This is a last place team that might win 80 games if things break right. Bavasi deserves to be the shortest tenured GM in recent baseball history. An awful offseason leading to one of the most disappointing seasons in Mariner history, and it was as predicatble as it is hard to watch. Forget the optimism; it’s time to clean house.
Much longer post coming after this game, but I’m getting this in now so it doesn’t look like second guessing. Bases loaded, no out, tying run at the plate in left-hander Jacque Jones in the 8th inning, and you go to… Mike Myers. The stupidity of the closer role defined, right here. Guardado should absolutely be on the mound right now. This is the game.
From today’s Gammons:
Hats off to GM Bill Bavasi for recognizing the Mariners’ problem is that they need to get younger, more athletic and energetic. Now they have to figure out what’s going on with Joel Pineiro. “It’s not stuff or velocity,” said manager Bob Melvin. “He’s throwing with the same velocity he had last season.”
Ummmmmmm, then how about hats back on for spending the offseason making the team older, less athletic and energetic? Oooor for not doing anything with this recognition by Bavasi? And didn’t Bavasi just say a little while ago that the team was fine, it just took veterans longer to get started (which, side note, also ridiculous)?
This is like applauding Ken Lay for saying “whoops, maybe I was a little aggressive there” after the fall of Enron.
We should take our hats off for people who are smart enough to spend some time thinking about these things in advance, and avoid them.
Actually, you know what this is like? It’s like when I worked at AT&T Wireless, and they had this Circle of Excellence thing they sent the best teams on, and you could predict the teams like so:
Year X: Team that screwed up the implementation of a huge new system and worked long hours to get it into production (saaaaaaaaaaay, Siebel)
Year X+1: Team that spent the year cleaning up the horrible, business-destroying bugs the last team left in in their rush to get into production (Siebel upgrade)
Year X+2: Team working on business-wide issues involving inefficent, badly designed-and-deployed systems (Performance And Reliability team)
Year X+3: Team that screwed up the implementation of a huge new system to replace the last one that never worked right, and worked long hours to get it into production (saaaaaaaaay, Siebel 7.5)
Meanwhile, if you did a great job, thought things through, managed your timelines and budget, no matter how much money you contributed to the bottom line, there was no chance you’d go to Hawaii, because you weren’t high profile enough.
At the end of this season, will we look at a 81-81 Mariners team and say “Good job salvaging a disaster out of the catastrophe you created, Bavasi”?
I won’t.
Rafael Soriano was placed on the DL today with a sprained ulnar collateral ligament, or basically pain in his elbow. Spin this any way you want, but its bad. Soriano plus elbow pain is not good news.
To take his spot until Willie Bloomquist comes back, we get to watch Ramon Santiago hack away. Don’t waste your breath complaining that Leone, Strong, or Zapp should have gotten the call; no point in wasting an option on a replacement for a couple of days until Bloomquist is healthy. Santiago is just roster filler right now.
Also, thanks to everyone who sent us the quote on Bavasi in Gammons latest column. No, I have no idea what Peter was thinking either.
Finally, just as a point of clarification, the M’s don’t save a dime on Kevin Jarvis’ contract until the Rockies give him a major league contract. A minor league contract does not supercede the M’s responsibility for his major league minimum. If the Rockies eventually purchase Jarvis’ contract from Triple-A, at that point, the M’s will save the prorated version of $300,000. Odds are, even if Colorado ever does get around to bringing Jarvis up, the M’s won’t save more than $100,000 or so.
Two things, real quick:
Kotchman’s up in Anahiem. Dude rakes. In AA he’s hitting .368/.438/.544. Even adjusted for the league, that’s good. Of course, only 14 of his 42 hits are for extra bases. So he’s not Superman. I only wanted to point out that the Angels, with like 40 guys on the DL, are calling up a guy who could pretty easily steal the starting job at 1b… though Erstad’s contract and compromising photos of top Angels executives seems to make that unlikely.
Justin Leone’s hitting in Tacoma. He’s not hitting like last year, but he’s hitting. At this point it does look like we have to start thinking some of his gains were for real. That’d be pretty cool, even if it just means that he’s stuck as a guy not good enough to force his way into a starting job. He’s fighting for playing time, but… dude.
I complain about the sacrifice all the time, and sometimes people ask me if it ever makes sense. James Click has written a two-part piece on this: “When does it make sense to sacrifice”
Part 1
Part 2
(subscription required, but come on, it’s worth it for this kind of stuff)
That I recommend to anyone. Click has to make some assumptions for the sake of the article (sacrifices 100% successful, which as Dan Wilson shows us regularly, is optimistic), but the results are clear. The answer is “pretty much never”: only when your batter’s a weak-hitting pitcher, or when you really need that one run, and even then only in certain circumstances. It does (unless I’m reading this wrong) also omit the small number of sacrifices that result in the batter reaching first safely, but given that meaty 100% success rate, if anything I’d say the data’s slanted in favor of the sac bunt here, and it still comes out that negatively.
It also includes a really swank run expectation chart based on 2003 data. People bug me for this sometimes, and here’s a brand-new, nicely formatted one. I’d pay $40 for that.
DMZ
Before I sign off for the night…
If any Blogger-types are reading this, I’d like to toss in my two cents and say I don’t care for the new publishing system. Not only is it harder to use, it just posted my previous post four times.