Game 90, Orioles at Mariners
LHP Bruce Chen vs. LHP Jamie Moyer, 7:05pm, FSN & KOMO
I just got back from Maryland tonight after a really long — amazing how Friday afternoon NYC traffic can turn a four-hour drive into seven hours — one-night trip with wife and son. Palmeiro was on the cover of the Baltimore Sun, as you might have guessed.
Chen’s in search of his fifth straight win, and since he’s a lefty, Hargrove has take the liberty of benching Reed in favor of Willie Bloomquist. Morse at short, Lopez at second, Borders behind the dish; the rest is pretty standard.
And hey, how’s this for amusing? For a mere $4.95 per month — $44.95 a year — Major League Baseball will host your baseball blog at their special URL which I won’t be mentioning. They really are all about the fans, eh?
P.S. Blogger hosts blogs for free and even lets you post photos now. No foolin’.
Comments
168 Responses to “Game 90, Orioles at Mariners”
re: 149
Good point. I was going to mention Guillen as a comparable but I hadn’t run the numbers. I think if Morse stays healthy and hits numbers equivalent to Guillen before he left Seattle, then he will actually be an improvement over Guillen as the long stints on the DL got to be tiresome, at least for me.
re 149
Really? Wow. I think I woulda been happy with a .253 and .724 OPS period.
Gee, if we could get that kind of production out of short and catcher, think where we’d be…
I’ll agree with that, I guess. Willie runs pretty fast, so it’s really hard to assume whether a play would have been an out or a basehit if the throw is on line. Usually in plays that are “tough” to call, they’ll just give them a basehit and put the error on the throw that got the one extra base (ball went out of play).
As for Willie being in the lineup tomorrow, I stick by my original statement. He wasn’t seeing the ball as well as he was before the break, so taking a seat isn’t a bad thing.
Unless anybody has any evidence of this, could we dispense with such comments? I like facts as much as the rest here, so when someone posts something that sounds tabloid or “watercooler gossipish” I get a little annoyed. I’d be the same if someone said that about anybody.
Dear God me too. And I had the day off as well. =/ I don’t think there’s any brain in the Mariner organization I would like to pick more then Bill Bavasi’s right now. Just hearing his insights on the present and future of the team, without all the bull of the cameras in front of him…. jeez that would have been something. Gah! Envy be my name.
Sounds like total denial to me. C’mon folks… letting Guillen go was a bad move. Rationalizing Morse as being something that Guillen was not based on his time in Seattle is silly.
Willie’s error AB changed to a hit? Awesome! I want that September 4th M’s/Angels ticket to mean something, and I’d hate to imagine these game threads without yet another Willie/”hot hand” debate. And with this hit being controversial, the righteous indignation on both sides might flare up even more. Yes! More entertainment for the rest of us!
11 games down, 46 to go. At this point, the hit streak record seems like a mere formality. Chalk it up.
152. Dispense with the hyperbole? Sure! Let’s stick just to numbers. Bloomquist can’t hit. His “hot hand” can be chalked up to a small sample size, as can his September call-up of a few years back. He didn’t hit at AA and he didn’t hit at AAA. As for the water cooler comments, I suppose I can dispense with them. Think we could get Rizz to stop, too, though, in the interest of balance? After all, he started it. He is to Bloomie what Dick Vitale was to Bobby Hurley.
153. You are one sick dude.
i always seem to end up posting at the end of the thread, but just got back to Olympia from the game. Bavasi was quite candid. He indicated that starting pitching is priority 1, not surprising. [edited at user request and also because it’s a good idea] BTW, I was amazed at the weight and handle thickness of the Joe Jackson bat. Sucker was heavy.
So, in other words, your comment…
…has no evidence and no basis in fact, and you simply pulled it out of thin air?
Thanks. That’s all you had to say. I wasn’t looking for other “ZOMG I HATE WILLIE” arguements. I just wanted to dispense with any blatant bull.
Bavasi was awesome. My favorite line:
– Questioner (paraphrase) It seems like we idolize our long time players here more than other places…
-Bavasi: Oh, you wish.
(hilarity ensues)
Caple describing his writing projects was pretty good as well (Final Fours at frats and sororities, white water rafting with models).
I give Bavasi points for being as straightforward as is reasonable for a GM (though I’m still not buyin’ that the M’s are still in this, as he indicated they might be), honest, and thoughtful in his answers. Considering he talked to a bunch of people that have publicly ragged on him in the past, he came off very well. I don’t know if he’s the best GM in the universe, but I wish him well, and I think more of him after tonight.
There’s going to be a Feed recap thread, everyone, fear not. Be patient.
We’ll have a feed recap post tomorrow. One thing I want to make sure everyone understands, though, is part of the reason that Bavasi was so amazingly candid with us was because there weren’t any reporters on the scene and he was assured that what he said was not going on the blog. So, as to the specifics of what Bill was candid about, no, we won’t be recapping most of it, especially as it pertains to certain players. We’ll discuss what he talked about in regards to organizational philosophy and general baseball theory, some of which was terrific, I felt, but the player-specific stuff was a treat for the people who attended.
This probably wasn’t a one time deal, so if you missed it, just make sure you don’t miss the next one. But if you were there, we’re asking you to not reveal the player specific comments he made, and we will remove comments from the site that repeat items that Bill would not have said with the understanding that it would be transmitted outside of that room.
BOO! BOO! YOU’RE THE WORST PERSON SINCE JOEL PINIERO WALKING PALMEIRO IN THE FIRST! BOO!
Yeah, but Bavasi isn’t an idiot. He knew he was talking to people who run an internet blog, and a popular one at that, and that most of the attendees were probably frequenters of the internet or the blogsphere. I’m sure he’ll actually expect quite a few “leaks”.
Yeah, but Bavasi isn’t an idiot. He knew he was talking to people who run an internet blog, and a popular one at that, and that most of the attendees were probably frequenters of the internet or the blogsphere. I’m sure he’ll actually expect quite a few “leaksâ€Â.
No.
That’s it — no.
You can’t make a deal with someone and welch on the deal because you figure the other person should have known you’d welch on it. Bavasi said some extremely candid things in front of the crowd that I don’t think he’d have said had he thought it was going to be on the internet and rumor fodder instantly.
At the least and even if you disagree with that, failure to honor such an agreement means we don’t get to do this again, or at least, not like this, and certainly without that level of candor. That’d be a loss for everyone.
Bingo. We offered Bill a level of protection from public reporting of his comments before any of them were made. That was part of the deal. He spoke on the understanding that it was “off the record”, at least in terms of the blog. Obviously, we can’t tell you not to tell your friends what he said. But we can stop the information from being published here, and we will do so.
Having the information be off the record was linked to the honesty he took with us tonight. If we hadn’t offered that level of protection for his comments, he wouldn’t have made them. So, the benefit is that the feed was a huge success and everyone there had a great time. The downside, for people who couldn’t make it, unfortunately, is that the information won’t be made available here.
Time out.
I never once said anything about you guys welching on your agreement, nor did I even mean to imply that any of our readership would or should do such a thing here on this blog or even others in the blogsphere. What I said is that people who go to things like this and hear things, at least one person is going to narc something. It doesn’t have to be on this blog or whatever. There are tons of other mediums where something can get out, somehow.
All I was trying to imply was that Bavasi is not stupid. He knows that anytime he goes to an event or some other public or private gathering where he’s going to say something about the team, he runs a risk of it getting to the main media public SOMEHOW. He knows this, he’s been in the game a long time. Hell, he’s been in a bigger market environment with larger media hounds then Seattle before. Someone who went to the feed is going to say something to someone and it’s going to get out. You guys can’t control that and neither can Bavasi.
But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know stuff like that happens.
Along the lines of TIF’s comments, Bavasi isn’t an idiot. The Mariners would have to go 41-31 (.569) to finish at .500; I’m an optimist and think that might happen but it’s a reach. If they played .700 ball the rest of the way, they’d wind up with 90 wins and still MIGHT NOT make the playoffs.
The M’s FO knows they have no chance this year and are sellers. Bavasi (and others) don’t want to say it publicly, even semi-publicly, because it will spread like wildfire (though not on this blog), affecting fans and trading partners.
#157.
Bloomie can’t hit. Period. He’s overmatched by major league pitching (hot streaks notwithstanding).
Call that BS and argue with it.
Fine, it’s BS.
Willie Bloomquist isn’t ever going to be a great hitter, but his numbers this year may well be within the range of what you can expect out of him for a few years.
He likely got promoted too soon (before he was a decent bench player), but that’s not his fault, is it?
You can’t “notwithstand” a hot streak just because it doesn’t fit your arguement. Baseball is about hot streaks and slumps. When someone bats .400 for a week, then bats .100 for a wee, they average out to .250 for the two weeks. Over the course of the season, a .270 hitter is going to have a period where he hits more then .270 then a period where he hits less then .270 in order to even out his average over the year to… you guessed it… .270.
I’m not saying Willie’s a .270 hitter; his career average is about .250. But even that is a better current average then Olivo, Borders, Spiezio, Hansen, and a lot of others not on the Mariners. If that means he is “overmatched by Major League pitching” then what’s that say for people who are batting worse then Willie Bloomquist?
I think I just did. But you’ve completely missed the POINT I was trying to make in the first place. My beef with what you said is that you basically called him a kiss-up… suckup kissass whatever… and that his only reason that he’s in the Majors is because obviously he’s done something shady and underhanded in order to be here. I just find that arguement, which has no basis in fact whatsoever, to be a totally irresponsible reason to hate Willie Bloomquist.
You can hate Willie for whatever reasons you want. But don’t make crap up.