It’s alive… ALIVE!
Funny thing happened over the course of the past two days — I updated the Big Board for the first time since April. If you’re new to the site, the Big Board is/was a full organizational depth chart, and one of the things I think made the USS Mariner unique among M’s blogs (and MLB blogs in general).
When we moved out to New York in April, I went without easy Internet access for about a month and just never got around to updating it. Baseball America’s lack of statistics didn’t help the cause any. So rather than have it be horribly out of date, I simply removed the link from the left nav. I’m pleased to report that both link and Big Board are back (and they’re baaad).
A few notes: The Big Board represents, more or less, the way the season ended and is based on Baseball America’s team rosters. This means you’ve got wacky placements like Michael Garciaparra in Tacoma, despite the fact that he spent the entire season at Inland Empire. So please no complaining about that. I also make no guarantees about position players — I mostly just threw guys in where I thought they fit. Starting rotations are much better, listing the five guys who started the most games.
It’s not perfect, but at least now you can see all the players who are in the system.
I’m sure there will be questions and corrections, so away we go.
Comments
61 Responses to “It’s alive… ALIVE!”
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Hey Jason – Not a big deal, but it’s kind of confusing to have guys on the 60-day DL count as part of the 40-man roster, because then there’s 45 guys on the 40-man roster.
Well, those guys *are* 40-man roster players for transaction purposes, they just don’t take up a spot while on the DL. If you have a suggestion for how to differentiate, I’m all ears.
Speaking of the 40-man, I saw an article today that said the M’s had 37 players on their 40-man after removing Campillo. I’m going by what’s on the M’s website right now in case anyone was wondering.
jason
2: JMB, the M’s website is slightly off. Wiki was actually outrighted and isn’t on the 40 man.
Cool stuff JMB. Always appreciated.
Some minor stuff I’m noticing…
* Ismael Castro is a switch-hitter (I think Jesus Guzman stopped that though)
* Kevin Gergel bats left-handed.
* Brandon Green is a switch-hitter.
* Kendall Bergdall, Troy Cate, Miguel Martinez, and Tanner Watson have all been released.
Keep up the good work
Thanks guys. I’ve fixed them locally… I’ll wait a bit until the next upload, since there might be other stuff as well.
Bergdall and Cate, eh? Dave and I were just talking today about how bad the 2002 draft was; those two were the M’s 5th and 6th rounders, respectively. Throw in a 1st and 3rd who didn’t sign (Mayberry, Martinez-Esteve), a 2nd who can’t hit (Womack), a 4th who walked twice as many guys as he struck out last season at low-A (Frye), and a 7th who went after the pitcher with a bat (Bastida-Martinez) and you’re looking at one stellar group of selections.
TJ Bohn looks like the only solid bet from that draft to make the majors, and it’s not like he’s a top prospect or anything.
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/statistics/26_2002_R.shtml#D
jason
Quick question… I knew troy cate when he was in college, and was wondering why the m’s released him? Did it have anything to do with him taking steroids?
Thanks Jason. I have always appreciated the Big Board and had wondered where it had gone. Its great to have it back. Keep up the good work!
LaHair is about the only other one on that list that looks like they could even possibly make the majors (among picks that signed).
But God how much nicer the system would look if we had Eddy Martinez and John Mayberry.
I believe Leone and Bubela are off the 40-man roster. At least, assuming I understand “outrighted”.
Anyone know what the M’s strategy is on 1st round picks? It seems to me that we have no problem giving up the 1st rounder to sign a player as we have done it alot recently. But yet we never seem to get anyone else’s draft picks for signing our players. It always seems like a team like the A’s have alot of picks, do they just constantly turn players over and play them enough to hit the minimum stat numbers to get compensation? I remember seeing the post awhile back about what it takes, so we don’t need that again. Just curious why we aren’t receiving extra picks?
We’ve talked about this many times before: Gillick/Mattox believed that early picks, and particularly first-round picks, were too risky for the money and not worth the investment (this is, to be blunt, quite stupid) and didn’t care at all if they gave up many early picks.
Sorry, I’ve pretty new to the website.
Since the M’s have to set aside a budget every year for prospects/draft picks are we spending that money on international players instead. Was Felix signed in 02 for his 700k.
I guess my real question would be if we are not spending the few million on 1st rounders are we spending it internationally. Is the draft as important if we sign 4 international players that year who end up on the ballclub. Its obvious that hasn’t happened as we don’t have a bunch of international players ready to contribute.
Casey Abrams was released, and a minor change at Wisconsin, Wilson played right field and Colton played center, also, Soto doesn’t catch too much anymore (other than in the bullpen), he is more of a 1B now
DMZ #11- Their MO was known but saving that draft money why didn’t they spend (when it mattered) at trade deadline? Of course this could only be a guess since unless your powers extend to being a (?) on the wall.
Will we be enlightened regarding your favorite beverage down under? One last question How did that IPOD work for you? Is it true DJCorcoran programmed it for you?
Felix Harnandez. Is that the kanji spelling?
DMZ #11- Their MO was known but saving that draft money why didn’t they spend (when it mattered) at trade deadline? Of course this could only be a guess since unless your powers extend to being a (?) on the wall.
Gillick’s comments at the time was that there weren’t trades to be made, salary flexibility or no. Now, whether you believe that or not.
Generally, their feeling was that they were better off spending first-round money on guys who other teams avoided for signability reasons and dropped into later rounds. Sometimes they got their man, and it cost them, but generally speaking it was a poor strategy.
How do you get from 45 down to 37 on the 40 man roster?
Bubela and Wiki were outrighted. Are guys whose contract is up — like Reese and Hansen, and probably Nelson and Shiggy — off the roster now? Or do they have to declare free agency first? I’m not sure how this works.
Also: I liked the Cascade beers. And good. And no.
Reading what DMZ has said on previous thread on the M’s FO, I am really starting to develop an extremely bad taste for the guys at the top. And it really makes me wonder if the M’s will ever make it to the world series with their thinking.
And nice work on the board but it’s sad to look at because how many guys are there really to get excited about. I could count them on one hand and still have plenty of fingers left over.
BTW, is the thread title a reference to Frankenstein or those B-horror movies about those deformed babies. I suppose either way it describes the farm system?
I didn’t have Leone on the 40-man. Bubela, I did; I thought he had been optioned. My bad on that one. Removing him brings them down to 37, which is what that article said in the first place. Darn me for trusting the M’s website.
jason
Are guys whose contract is up — like Reese and Hansen, and probably Nelson and Shiggy — off the roster now?
They’re still on, technically; I believe contracts expire at the end of the World Series.
Current 40-man:
Atchison, Baek, Balentien, Bazardo, Beltre
Betancourt, Choo, Cruceta, Dobbs, Foppert
Franklin, Guardado, Hansen, Harris, Hasegawa
Hernandez, Ibanez, Kida, Lopez, Mateo
Meche, Morse, Moyer, Nageotte, Nelson
Pineiro, Putz, Reed, Rivera, Santiago
Sexson, Sherrill, Soriano, Suzuki, Thornton
Torrealba, Wilson, OEPN, OPEN, OPEN
jason
Bavasi and Fontaine not a big fan simply because ignorant of resume despite Google. Did go to school in San Diego in late 70s. Both of them have great baseball pedigrees and appear to be willing to use statistical information.
They wil probably be the sacrifical persons when Mariners do not reach playoffs. Is two years enough time to rebuild starting with strong foundation which seems to be Bavasi-Fontaine operation?
Personally prefer buy, spend dollars to field team now but if 200 million does not work perhaps wrong.
So should our GM and staff be allowed more time for plan to blossom?
Well they spent their 2002 1st round money on Felix, so if nothing else we have Bohn and and Felix, not a bad year for talent. Imagine what it would have been if we had signed our draft picks and drafted better.
Draft money != foreign acquisition budget, as the Mariners will tell you. It’s not as if Gillick & Co. were using it elsewhere. They were taking money they would have spent in the first/etc rounds and using it in the 3rd, 4th to convince guys like Garciaparra to not go to college.
The 2002 draft is always worse than I remember it. Even with the high-round picks we had that year, most of them are out and were never terribly interesting (though I’d take Travis Buck back in a heartbeat). But the one that just kills me is the 2001 draft. Bobby Livingston might be the highlight there, Rene Rivera might latch on as a backup, and Michael Garciaparra may be headed in the right direction, but agh…
David Wright was picked AFTER Garciaparra, as were Andy Sisco and Kelly Shoppach.
J.J. Hardy, Dallas McPherson, and Brandon League were all picked AFTER Rene Rivera.
Dan Haren and Jesse Foppert, picked AFTER Mike Wilson.
Stephen Shell, Kirk Saarloos,and Scott Hairston picked AFTER Lazaro Abreu (who lasted in the system for all of, what, three months?)
It’s just TERRIBLE.
J #27 I agree, but the old saying goes hindsight is 20/20 look at when Albert Pujols was drafted and how EVERY team had the chance to sign him before the cardinals signed him in a late round. Correct me if I’m wrong but diddn’t the mariners sign willie bloomquist before pujols as well.
You can probably look back at every teams drafts and see who they could have had and so on.
Hey J,
When I brought up 2002, Dave replied with, “Yeah, but 2001 was even worse; you’ve got a 5th starter (Livingston) and a marginal backup catcher (Rivera).” And we were just talking about how poorly the M’s drafted, without even mentioning the other players available!
jason
My view from the upper deck. The M’s just spent a lot of picks on pitcher that throw in the 80’s and hitters that are 5′10 180. It seems like Bavasi in the past draft was taking 6′2-6′3 pitchers and some bigger hitters. We need more power pitchers and home run hitters.
although I look back and we only signed half of the players we drafted and barely any of the H.S. kids, yet a team like the A’s signed most of their picks, the Red Sox had 5 1st round picks, all signed. The M’s just need to spend more time and money on bringing talented players into the system so we don’t have to spend that money on marginal players later. Granted the don’t all pan out, but some will.
That’s a good thought, but Mattox seemed to draft nothing but left-handed power pitchers out of high school, and all of those guys came to naught.
The Bavasi-Fountaine drafts are more balanced (that’s not quite the word I want there) if nothing else.
It’s not all that uncommon for teams to sign only half of their picks, particulary if they draft HS-heavy. The A’s sign the majority of their picks because they pick a ton of HS guys who don’t have the negotiating thread of going to college. They also tend to “overdraft,” taking guys earlier than they were projected to go, making them more signable.
The M’s do seem to have collected a ton of pitchers with similar profiles in recent years, though: mostly lefties, who aren’t exactly soft-tossers, but who get away with good command of decent stuff. Livingston, Blackley, Oldham, Rowland-Smith, Cate, Ketchner, Bott, and so on. Before that you had Craig Anderson and a few others (though Anderson really didn’t have any stuff at all).
I wonder if the thought process is, “Well, Moyer has been really good for us… and this guy has even better stuff than Jamie!”
33: Why are all Aussie pitchers soft throwing lefties?
No idea.
We should have had Derek do an in-depth research project while he was there.
Hey, we do have an Aussie pitcher who isn’t a lefty… actually, we had two at one point, but Matt Sundstrom didn’t last long. I’m refering to Aaron Thorne, in this case. Had minor surgery this year, apparently there was a bone in the upper part of his arm that had broken and never fully reattached, since he started pitching again whenever it was healing. Good stuff though, may be worth watching in the future.
Is he a soft thrower or a power guy?
He was topping out around 90 mph as a 16-year-old, IIRC, and will probably end up adding a few more MPH to that before he’s done. His brother was in the Expos/Nats system for a while and threw in the mid-90s.
good to have that in the system, I guess, although this totally ruins my theory that Aussies can’t throw hard.
I would suspect that hard throwing Aussies would be highly coveted by cricket teams
Incidentally, DJC, Travis Blackley sort of learned to throw his changeup and curve by messing around with a cricket bowler’s style.
I think #40 is probably right – there are aussie cricketers who can *bowl* at 95mph, and then you’re not allowed to bend your elbow, so I reckon they should be able to pitch OK…
OT, but has all the crap finally caught up with the Angels? they look like they did when the Ms played them…..
ok, they are just cursed.
from Lou– “young pitching can be electric at times, but they’re just not as consistant as your veterans”
Here’s a hint if you ever get into a fight with Vlad Guerrero: just refer to yourself as “The Cutoff Man”. No matter how powerful his punches are, he’ll miss you by at least 5 feet.
Cricket analogies:
You’re not allowed to bend your elbow, that’s true, but you are allowed to run full pelt up to the crease (that’s where you release the ball) and leap into the air as you deliver it. I can’t see them allowing Travis Blackley to do that.
Probably not a good idea to call Travis Blackley a ’soft tosser’; I think it means something different to Australians. It certainly means something different to the English.
Colm,
This was before Blackley had signed with the M’s and was still playing some sort of junior league baseball in Australia. One day he was messing around with mechanics, cricket-style (the throwing, not the running part), and stumbled upon his off-speed stuff. It was about grip and arm action, not the running start.
jason
wandering further OT, Don McKee, a Philly Inquirer columnist referred to the Philles/M rumor of last week… “The hot rumor last week had the Phillies sending Thome and David Bell to Seattle for disgruntled third-base slugger Adrian Beltre.” Gosh, who knew he was disgruntled?
Of course, to indicate the quality of his … research… McKee begins his column with the rumor that “Influential Temple alumni insist the next Owls football coach will be Rick Neuheisel, one of the most famed offensive gurus in the land.”
Is it just me, or was that Charles Gipson slapping high fives and hugging people in the Astros dugout?
Yup. Gipper is an Astro, not on the postseason roster, but still in uniform and in the dugout and an Astro.
and a very enthusiastic cheerleader
I haven’t heard as much of the tv audio for the Angels games– has Lou mentioned when he had Podsednik in Seattle, in the way he’s mentioned Garcia, Cora, Norm?….
53: Lou has conveniently *not* mentioned Podsy as a Mariner, for obvious reasons.
Lou had Podsednik in Seattle for all of 26 at-bats. He probably barely remembers the guy.
msb is getting at the fact that it was Lou himself who got rid of Podsednik, saying he wouldn’t make it in the majors…
msb: Owls? Surely Rick Neuheisel is not going to coach my beloved Sheffield Wednesday?
Posednik was as a Mariner and is now scrappier than Bloomquist. Some ML players that Ms got nothing in return for is confusing and frustrating at times.
Bases loaded triple in his first ever major league at-bat. Wasn’t that Podsednik?
Yep, the triple was Podsednik. Got fined by Buhner in kangaroo court, too, for not running through the stop sign at third (he probably could have had an inside-the-park grand slam).
For all the acclaim he’s getting, he’s not that great a ballplayer, though. He’s basically cruising on the reputation of his 2003 season (.822 OPS with 59 SB). He stole more in 2004, but his power numbers have cratered, and his OBP fluctuates with his batting average such that he has to hit .280 or better to be useful. He’s a one-dimensional player (speed) who can only play the outfield. His OPS was sub-.680 in 2004, and this year he slugged for a lower percentage than he got on base (hard to do). No homers, and just one triple for all that speed.
When he was released by the M’s, what the club really needed was a slugging left-fielder, to complement Ichiro and Cameron in the outfield, not a singles-hitting speed guy.
Hey Matt!!! I talk to Troy weekly he is doing well!
His daughter is getting tall! Troy Cate was black balled by one of his coaches!! Thats why he was released!!!!