Wiki, etc
Wiki’s on the 15-day DL, and word is he’ll be out at least that long and probably longer. Rene Rivera’s up.
In Tacoma, they’re now running a Ryan Christianson-Bryce Terveen combo, which is interesting at least. Terveen’s a lefty-hitting, righty-throwing catcher the M’s signed as a minor league FA, 27… and that’s about all I know about him.
The Times has the Mariners possibly looking into (repeatedlyCorcoran-endorsed) Benito Santiago, or some other possibilities: Kelly Shoppach in Boston, Pat Borders, Ben Davis (no, really) Todd Greene, Shawn Wooten (no, really), and even Gerald Laird.
The PI offers in return: Pat Borders! Bentio Santiago, Greg Myers, and possibly calling up Ryan Christianson. They also note that any player brought in would require a spot on the 40-man (while Rivera does not). Obvious candidates for clearing that spot would be Aaron Sele and Jeff Nelson.
Bucky had surgery, feels good, will continue rehab. No return date.
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38 Responses to “Wiki, etc”
If the M’s could talk the Rangers out of Gerald Laird, that’d be pretty sweet. If given the choice between Laird and Olivo last year, I’d have taken Laird, and Miguel’s awfulness since the trade certainly hasn’t swayed me on that. He’s a similar type of player to Olivo, but younger and more talented, in my opinion.
I also give Laird my official endorsement.
At this point, though, you have to wonder if Mariner catchers = Spinal Tap drummers.
Great way to start Monday! “You can’t dust for vomit.”
The M’s would’ve had to get a catcher from outside the organization for next year anyways. My bet is that they do everything they can (probably even Bloomquist) until the trade deadline…
I had the pleasure of being in your fine city for two games this weekend. Friday’s massive win, and Saturday’s expected loss.
When Wiki ran down the line trying to get that infield hit, and then pulled up two steps short of the bag, there was a cry in my section of “Hamstring!” Edgar taught the fans well.
A few observations on the ballpark. First, the food in the bullpen pub isn’t bad. And that’s a nice Heffewizen they have on tap.
For Friday’s game, I was in section 110. That’s the field-level section who’s view is obstructed by the right-field foul pole. From where I was (5 rows back from the foul pole), it was nigh impossible to see any infield play that wasn’t at first or deep short. But, I did have a great view of Ichiro’s infield hit to first. Man, that guy’s fast. And Beltre’s shot was huge.
For Saturday’s game, I was in the very last row of section 318. That’s the upper-deck just into right field behind first base. Though nearly 15 stories above the field, I had a much better view of the infield defense, which mattered less with Franklin on the mound.
For both games, I was surrounded by Boston fans (including one guy on Saturday who looked a like Schilling – I told him so). The Let’s Go Red Sox chants all started down in section 109.
Oh, and I liked Seattle’s architecture. I was staying at the hotel downtown (I walked to the games), and downtown Seattle is a far more attractive city than downtown Vancouver.
Our newest catcher will be named “umpire’s groin”.
I’ll again throw out Pete LaForest’s name out there. He’s free talent just waiting to show something good.
AP NEWS ALERT:
SEATTLE  Rene Rivera died suddenly Monday morning in what Mariners team officials are terming “a horrible gardening accident” ….
So what is it with the Pat Borders lovefest? Sure, he was great ten years ago, but even last year he was clearly washed up, both here and in Minnesota.
Austin … you’re obviously underestimating one of the sabermetricians favorite player attributes (right after clutch hitting):
Veteran Presence. 🙂
If we trade for Gerald Laird, I think Adam Morris might kill himself.
What’s the problem with just using Olivo and Rivera? Where’s this team going anyway?
Apparently Santiago is may no longer be available. There is only one detail to work out…
Santiago: Well, I suppose I could work in a shop of some kind or… or do um… freelance… selling of some sort of… um… product, you know…
Reporter: A salesman, you think you…
Santiago: A salesman, like, mabye in a haberdasher, or maybe like a… um, a chapeau shop, or something… you know, like: “Would you… what size do you wear, sir?” and then you answer me.
Reporter: Uh… seven and a quarter.
Santiago: “I think we have that…”, you see, something like that I could do.
Reporter: Yeah… you think you’d be happy doing something like-…
Santiago: “No! We’re all out, do you wear black?”, see, that sort of thing, I think I could probably muster up.
Reporter: Yeah, do you think you’d be happy doing that?
Santiago: Well, I don’t know, wh-wh-what are the hours?
Tap Rules.
Have a good time. All the time.
To continue with the dual thread (thanks to #2 Jeff):
Perhaps Willie Bloomquist will get an emergency call to play catcher and spontaneously explode, leaving a “green globule.”
Boy, you have to wonder if this is where the idea of Wiki as “laziest baseball Player” etc etc.. is shown. I mean, catcher is a tough position, and you have to be in decent shape. Hamstring pulls are quite often the result of poor conditioning (but not always, and I don’t want to unfairly malign Wiki)
This in turn reminds me of a quote I remember from when Griffey was in SI the first time – it was something like “No, I don’t stretch, does a cheetah stretch before going after his prey?” I have always wondered if all these injuries are a result of that attitude towards conditioning/stretching/flexibility earlier in his career…
I don’t really see what’s to like about Laird his career minor league OPS is .721. What ever happened to Mike Rose, he seems like a way better option than any of those guys. With the numbers he’s put up in the minors I can’t believe no has given him a shot, is he horrible behind the plate?
#15– FWIW, Rick Griffin has said that Griffey did take care of his legs, and did do his work when a Mariner. The story seems to have grown both from Jr’s own lines about being ‘naturally natural’, and media noticing he was often absent during team stretching (usually because he was doing his Make a Wish obligations, according to teammates)
#17 sorry, that should be:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/211443_thiel10.html
How about Jamie Burke? He would most likely be cheaper than Ben Davis and the White sox seem to be happy with AJ and Widger.
Not your long term solution, but nobody else mentioned is either.
If we don’t go after somebody who doesn’t at least have the potential to be a long-term solution… then why go after anyone at all? At least anyone that wouild cost us anything of value.
It had been my impression that Laird and the guy from Boston’s system at least had potential to be long-term.
If not, then heck, we can probably get Borders for a buck fifty and an Rick Rizz autograph.
While stretching is important to athletes in terms of reaching full potential in terms of speed and agility recent studies have shown that pre-event stretching provides little improvement in terms of muscle pulls.
In general hamstring injuries are instigated by muscle imbalances, i.e. the quads are much stronger then the hamstring. In general, ball sport athletic conditioning is stuck in the dark ages in terms of muscular balance, core strength, cardio capacity, nutrition, etc.
I’m not advocating not stretching as I believe that a supple muscle has more capacity and more potential for energy release than not.
10: No, he’ll only throw things. http://www.lonestarball.com/
I like the Laird and Shoppach ideas. However, I would imagine that both of these guys would not come cheap. Both are good hitters, ML ready, and have some upside. Those types don’t come cheap. Especially not this early in the season.
Way OT:
Anybody care to comment on Safeco’s ranking in this report? (link to ESPN.com)
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor
The Safe suppresses triples by _half_ but actually inflates doubles a little bit? Doesn’t compute for me.
The explanation for these numbers leaves a lot to be desired- it’s impossible to tell how they’re arrived at. Any links to alternative in-season park factor reports?
Frack.
Nick,
Are you sure you don’t have that backwards? It looks to me like Safeco is hard on doubles but easy on triples (and homers, which I’m sure will surprise people).
OK, forget all that. Their tables are screwy — the values change based on what you’re sorting by. Who knows what the real factors are.
jason
Well, they take all the results of what has happened at the stadiums and devise conclusions from there. I find this to be flawed since you have to factor in whether the pitching staff is effective or not, whether the defense is effective or not, and whether the offenses were effective or not.
I mean, say over the course of the year your team pitching staff has managed to give up fewer hits and fewer runs then any other pitching staff in history… in Fenway Park. Then take say your offense all year has been miserable too. Would that make Fenway look like a great pitching ballpark or not?
I realize they take past numbers into consideration too, but just assume that such a thing has always happened, would that make Fenway Park a pitcher’s ballpark? Obviously not.
Now, there are fundamental reasons why some ballparks give up more triples then others, but it mostly comes down to the players who play there. For most of SafeCo Field’s history, there hasn’t been a lot of triple-hitting players there. In fact, for a stretch there, our team speed alone was pretty sad.
I mean, say over the course of the year your team pitching staff has managed to give up fewer hits and fewer runs then any other pitching staff in history… in Fenway Park. Then take say your offense all year has been miserable too. Would that make Fenway look like a great pitching ballpark or not?
Part of park factors is the performance of the team on the road, and the performance of visiting teams in that park compared to the norm.
To throw them off in this manner, they’d have to be historically good in Fenway, bad away, with the hitters awful in Fenway, good away, *and have the visiting teams perform the same way*.
And at that point, Fenway pretty much would be a pitcher’s park.
I realize they take past numbers into consideration too, but just assume that such a thing has always happened, would that make Fenway Park a pitcher’s ballpark? Obviously not.
Um, yes, yes it would. That would define what a pitcher’s park is: it favors pitchers. Clearly, there would be other factors at work.
Now, there are fundamental reasons why some ballparks give up more triples then others, but it mostly comes down to the players who play there. For most of SafeCo Field’s history, there hasn’t been a lot of triple-hitting players there. In fact, for a stretch there, our team speed alone was pretty sad.
Park factors do not, nor have they ever, come down to the players who play there. Triples are more prone to small sample skewing than any other event, but that’s the issue, not that a particular player can tilt the scales.
If I told you in early April that there would be whole thread devoted to Wiki Gonzalez and the questions surrounding who we could get to fill the void that has been created by his sudden absence you would have thought me insane enought to bar me from posting again. I loves baseball.
I vote for Border. Then when we’re done with him, he can go catch Kind Felix 😛
Spelling Error. I odn’t know why I didn’t see this. I meant to say King Felix, not Kind Felix.
That’s what I meant. The other factors have a lot to do with things. When a park is designed (at least these days) we can usually figure whether the park will be geared more towards hitters or pitchers and what types of hitters would benefit, etc. The old Kingdome was a more hitter friendly confine because of several factors. Short distances to the outfield and the astroturf probably had something to do with it. Whereas SafeCo was geared more towards a pitcher’s park with greater distances while at the same time still an attempt to be friendly to a certain left handed power swinger (who left anyway).
Fenway, I don’t think, can ever be considered a pitchers park, regardless of what numbers people put up there to skew the stats.
Well, be that as it may, I can’t see how a hitter’s, or many hitters’ influences, can not effect the park’s stats. Back during the first decade of existence of the Kingdome, we didn’t have the great power hitters that would occupy it in the mid 90s. Would the teams of the 90s effect the stadium’s status more then the 80s?
Fenway, I don’t think, can ever be considered a pitchers park, regardless of what numbers people put up there to skew the stats.
You do realize that park factors are calculated as how a park plays in relation to all the other parks currently in use, right? Your statement that Fenway can never be a pitcher’s park would clearly be wrong if there were 15 parks in baseball that favored hitters more than Fenway.
Would the teams of the 90s effect the stadium’s status more then the 80s?
Nope. Because the teams of the 90s could hit the crap out of the ball on the road too, and that was reflected in the park factor. If a team hits like mad at home and sucks on the road, and their pitching vice versa (see Colorado Rockies, creation to present), it’s almost certainly the park and not the players.
ESPN’s park factors might be useless, but the understanding that correctly calculated park factors are legitimately viable and extremely important in player valuation isn’t really something that’s arguable.
I’m surprised that no one has thrown out Tom Wilson’s name here. I would rather have him than Myers, Santiago or Borders (maybe he’s not old enough at 34?) I have to think that they are not going to be able to get anyone with much potential(i.e. Shoppach, Laird) at this point in the season. Wilson is killing the ball in Colorado Springs, for what that’s worth; he would seem to be the perfect guy for the M’s right now.
It sounds like there’s no way the M’s are going to get another questionable glove guy to go with Olivo. They’re looking for a guy to handle the staff, be a veteran presence, yada yada yada. Pat Borders is pretty likely, I’d think.
TIF – I think you’re still missing the point of park factors. They don’t compare straight-up RS/RA numbers in a specific park against all other parks, they compare the performance of specific offenses compared to how they perform elsewhere.
Joe Sheehan actually answered your specific question in a BP article from way back:
“Park effects are traditionally calculated by dividing the number of events by both teams in all of a team’s home games by the number of those events in a team’s road games. For example, in 1996, there were 813 runs scored, total, in Pirates home games. There were 796 runs scored in Pirates road games. Dividing the first number by the second yields 1.05, which we state as a percentage. “In 1996, Three Rivers Stadium increased run scoring by 5%.”
Calculating park effects this way cancels out the impact of an individual team’s characteristics, because their performance counts just as much as that of the rest of the league. That the Braves have good pitching won’t distort the numbers of Turner Field, because they carry that good pitching with them on the road. If the Indians have a great offense and no pitching, they’ll have that for 81 home games and 81 road games, and against all the same opponents.”
Sheehan goes on to explain how interleague play and the unbalanced schedule have created a need to modify this simple method of calculating park effects, and the calculation has adapted to those changes. The quality of hitters or pitchers that play in a given park is normalized in the equation, so it has no effect on whether a park is considered a pitchers’ park or a hitters’ park.
#21: Agreed, Russ. But we can also note that once the hammy has been pulled it loses a lot of flexibility and is prone to being injured repeatedly after that. The memory of Edgar waddling around the basepaths like a fat goose running from an axe was the result of several hamstring injuries and the fear of stretching their scarred remnants too far again. This is the sort of thing that plagues very muscular people more than the lean types. Catchers don’t usually run well because their legs are so meaty and they spend so much time on their haunches. Olivo is a rare exception but don’t expect his running ability to last very long. Its too bad about Wiki. He was showing some ability to hit.
ESPN’s park factors are useless. Why do they bother archiving park factor information from previous seasons if they don’t include parks no longer in use? What good is an incomplete archive?
ESPN’s 2004 park factors list only 29 teams – the Expos are missing. The 2003 list includes only 27 teams. It’s like ESPN doesn’t want to remind people that there used to be other parks.