Fitness report
Jeff · March 15, 2005 at 11:45 am · Filed Under Mariners
Richard Seven of the Seattle Times’ Pacific Northwest Magazine follows Dan Wilson through an offseason workout with trainer Peter Shmock, a former Olympic shot putter.
In the article, Seven mentions that Wilson takes a month off after the season “to clear his mind and allow his body opportunity to recover and recharge. Shmock calls this ‘active rest,’ and says it is critical for amateurs like you and me, too.”
Good thing, too, since I do a lot of “active rest.”
Okay, so it’s just regular rest.
Comments
49 Responses to “Fitness report”
Jeff, I just want to say I am so glad you join USSM. You are awesome, man. So I wonder do ice cream, beer and pizza count for “active rest” since Spiezio did a lot of those in the past?
Alex Sanchez was just released. He would be an awesome 4th OF
How does a guy with his numbers at his age just get released? There must be more to the story. Is he some sort of head case or something?
Awesome? Uhh, no. He’d be, well, about as good as Jamal Strong for far more money.
He’s an abysmal defensive center fielder. Probably the worst everyday CF in the game. He takes routes to the ball that make your mind go numb. His speed can’t compensate for his lack of instincts or his poor effort.
At the plate, he had one of the emptiest .300+ seasons of all time. He doesn’t walk and has less than no power, and he’s not really a .300 hitter. Offensively, he’s basically Tom Goodwin. Except he’s also a horrible baserunner, despite all his speed.
The Tigers made the right move in releasing him. Sanchez is a bad player coming off a “career year” in which he was only merely poor rather than outright atrocious. He’s an outmachine who can’t play defense or run the bases well. Avoid like the plague.
And Jeff, tell your mom to stop with the overly complimentary comments.
What about the “veteran presence” and the stolen base potential?
OK… I see your point. About the only thing Sanchez has over Strong is veteran presence. But we don’t really need veteran presence…
7 walks to 50 strikeouts, 2 home runs… Good god.
Tiger’s fan here. Best move all winter in terms of convincing me they are finally committed to winning. Could’ve skipped the Ordonez deal and headed straight for this. Now for the downside – pulling the trigger at the end of winter without a decent backup – I’m excited about Nook Logan but not starting CF excited. Are you ready to laugh at Craig Monroe in CF? *Sigh*
Trade you Higginson for Reed straight up . . .
9 errors in CF last year in half a season. The Tigers say they released him because of his sloppy play: “We’ve had a chance to watch him this spring and his defense was just not up to the level we like” according to Dombrowski.
He was set to make $1.35 million this year. I wonder if he’s over last year’s leg injuries; if he doesn’t have his speed he loses what little value he has.
He seems like a more expensive equivalent of Jamal Strong. Maybe less valuable defensively, though Strong isn’t the second coming of Mike Cameron.
What about Granderson? I still think a Higginson release is on the horizon.
I have active rest tomorrow morning around 11, ESPN2 has the M’s and Giants.
DJC: Sanchez is an awesome fourth outfielder … in an AL-only roto league that counts steals.
Dave: Hey, if my family quit checking the site, that would diminish our page views. Literally tens — tens! — of hits are at stake.
Scott: thanks. The check’s in the mail.
Dag Nabbit. Bloomquist is our 3rd string catcher now…
http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20050315&content_id=967595&vkey=spt2005news&fext=.jsp&c_id=sea
Fine Kettle Of Fish…
Was Jeff always this snarky, or is Derek rubbing off on him? Either way, I like it.
Sanchez managed .322/.335/.386 last year. That’s 2 HR, 3 3B, 9 2B, 7 BB, and 93 singles. Plus, he has a shiny 59% stolen base success rate, he’s a lousy defender, and he’s injury prone. He could be the worst .320 hitter in history.
Who else thinks the Devil Rays have already called his agent?
re 13: I do. He’ll fill in GREAT until Baldelli gets back! Then they can trade Crawford to make room for him!
re: #10
Count me in for the Active Rest club tomorrow.
re: #12
Even I think that article is a bit over the top, and I actually like Willie as a pinch runner/utility player. But a headline reading “stellar utility player” and those glowing quotes from Grover? It smacks of Finnigan-like propaganda. He is no Mark McLemore.
#4, Dave, so he’s the second coming of Brian Hunter? Doesn’t that make him perfect for the Mariners?
Brian Hunter was actually a terrific basestealer and capable defender. So, Sanchez is worse than Hunter. Oh the questions I could ask…
I’d like to congratulate DJC on his outstanding work hijacking this comment thread. By coming in early with the chop-block, there’s little chance this will ever get back on topic. Kudos to you, Mr. Corcoran. Your continued contributions to comment quantity and thread drift will not be forgotten.
Richard Seven?
We’ve got sci-fi robots reporting on baseball now?
And if active rest==Dan Wilson, what kind of rest is Kevin Mitchell?
Re 18:
If this were a roundtable or something, well, I wouldn’t’ve done that. But seriously, what was there to say about the original topic, DMZ?
And I can’t tell if you are seriously congratulating me or being sarcastic.
I salute DJC for giving me some decent content. Spring training is killing me this year, as no one is putting out even a decent box score. Combine that with a cube where I have no AM reception and corporate monitoring of streaming data, and it’s a desert out there. USS is the only place I can find any info whatosever.Does anyone know of any pay sites putting out good(live) information?
The Grandpa Mariner thread has usually two daily updates on spring training progress, as well as the Sportspot game threads which usually have someone monitoring the play-by-play during spring games.
I actually found the article quite interesting. More and more sports teams have been moving to this model of training, centering around balance and core strength. I know when the Canucks moved to it – and the team bought in 100% they went from about middle of the league in games lost to injuries to far and away the least injured teams. No groin/hamstring/abdominal strains. I am always amazed at how sports teams don’t have workout regimens more firmly put into the contracts of players. I mean these are hefty investments, and the evidence seems to be filtering in that proper workouts can reduce injuries. At Will Carroll’s next chat, I would love to hear his opinion on all this core strength stuff (wobble boards, balls etc etc)
Re: 20 —
Corcoran, your analysis of why Sanchez sucks, after first saying he’d be an awesome fourth outfielder, should take place in your head, or perhaps written down somewhere on your own machine (try Start -> Accessories -> Notepad). Since I needn’t be as judicious as Derek here, I’ll tell you flat out that it sucks having to scroll through your desultory comments in order to get to actual discussion.
Re 24:
That WAS discussion. I said Sanchez was good, Dave told me he wasn’t, I looked back at the numbers and realized he was right and conceded, and then I responded to a comment on the Tigers OF situation. Then DMZ came on and bashed me, and now we’re here. I don’t want to flood this thread with junk, so I encourage you to click my name and send me an email if you wish to continue arguing this.
Derek, what can you expect from DJC? It says so right there ON HIS OWN BLOG: “I won’t have time to post anything worthwhile.”
Re: #23
In discussions with Carroll last year regarding Rafael Soriano’s oblique problem, I can tell you that he absolutely believes core training is necessary and vital to the upkeep of good health. Without a strong midsection, it’s hard to do much of anything athletic without risking injury.
I would propose the creation of a permanent Corcoran sidebar thread. This would divert all Corcoran-bashing posts (including those posted by Corcoran himself) from other threads. The rest of us could then ignore the Corcoran thread and all other threads would be shorter.
I would support that, except for one thing. DMZ publicly calls me out and everyone bashes. If DMZ doesn’t do that, no one bashes. DMZ has my email address, as does every one else. If you wish to discuss these matters, I would really prefer if people would just email me so we could work something out. I am a very reasonable guy in one-on-one situations.
Pity that this is unlikely to make Wilson a better hitter- but it might keep him from being injured.
Now, if this was Ken Griffey we were talking about…
If DMZ doesn’t do that, no one bashes.
This isn’t true, as demonstrated elsewhere.
I am a very reasonable guy in one-on-one situations.
Except that you have not been a reasonable guy in one-on-one situations relating to your commenting. I’m not airing this publically, but you should know what I’m talking about, and I’ll leave it at that.
Here’s the thing — if you’re going to post 900 times a day and hijack threads:
– you should be reasonably prepared to accept some grief
– you should probably not respond that grief by posting repeatedly
Perhaps it would be best to get the thread back on topic, rather than discussing the how and why of DJC’s constant hijacking.
So, how about that ‘active rest’? Eh?
(Argh, no, I’m not a spammer, dammit!)
Perhaps it might be useful to have a chat thread each day, to capture the assorted thoughts that people would otherwise share on whatever happens to be the top post at the moment? I realize that it might encourage even more off-topic talk and an increase in moderation for you fine folks, but it might also provide an outlet for people as well.
I second that. Minor League Ball uses open chat sessions every couple days and it is very effective. I promise that if this were executed I wouldn’t “hijack” existing threads on specific stuff. This is not to say I won’t try to stop “hijacking” threads anyway.
As far as this topic. I really would like to know a lot more about how the minor league guys work out in our system. A lot of systems are working more on the midsections and using technologies to keep their arms from blowing out. Its obvious that whatever the Mariners are doing isn’t working. Therefore I get the idea they aren’t doing the same steps as other organizations. It seems fairly stupid to spend all that money on scouting and then not spend a lot on ways to take care of the players before they get injuries, not after.
“Active rest”
Yes, that particular artform has been practiced by Dan Wilson and the rest of the Seattle Mariners since 2002.
For Corco…
Use your own blog for your own thoughts, bro. Oh wait, you’re on hiatus! How could I forget…
MLB.com is reporting that Bloomquist is the M’s #3 catcher.
I got paid for 8 hours of active rest today. At my current rate I could be in the hall of fame by the time I’m 30.
Guys, I’m sorry. No more for me.
And DMZ, I have a weird request. Could you put me in the moderation queue for a couple weeks?
Okay, everybody take a cue from Dan Wilson … take a deep breath, let it slowly, and repeat the following mantra:
“The Dude abides.”
To DJC:
Wouldn’t that risk lowering your OBP (On-blog Percentage) though??
Off Topic: This has been one entertaining thread…
On Topic:
“Shmock calls this ‘active rest,’ and says it is critical for amateurs like you and me, too.”
Recalling the earlier thread on Jim Street’s grammar and syntaxt, does this sentence mean Dan Wilson is an “amateur”?
Sorry. “syntax”
Don’t kick out Corco … he’s like that peed-upon rug that really ties the room together.
…maybe more like that insistent, enthusiastic dog that conintually pees upon the rug that ties the room together?
Perhaps it might be useful to have a chat thread each day, to capture the assorted thoughts that people would otherwise share on whatever happens to be the top post at the moment? I realize that it might encourage even more off-topic talk and an increase in moderation for you fine folks, but it might also provide an outlet for people as well.
Anything that results in an increase in work for us is pretty much out.
Further, here’s the thing — the purpose of adding comments was to open up the kind of email discussion that we had with readers on things we posted here so that everyone could read them.
Until one or more of us works on this full-time and we can post on everything quickly, and even then — we’re going to make compromises on what we decide to post on and when. It’s like an editorial filter.
I feel that if you’ve got something to post about and it’s not a topic yet, you have a couple entirely reasonable choices:
– email us, give us a link, ask us. We post a ton of articles this way.
– post it elsewhere, like your own site, and you can post whatever comment you want there
I know that’s not an ideal solution, and what you’re proposing allows people to say “Hey, Randy Winn just saved a kid from stepping in front of a bus at First and Seneca” without spraypainting it on the side of another topic… and that’s a fine point.
Re 45:
Thanks…I think?
Oh c’mon. Leave Corco alone. Maybe he’s said some things that people don’t agree with/like, but it is no excuse to be mean to him.