This just in: drastic news shortage continues
DMZ · January 21, 2006 at 10:10 pm · Filed Under Mariners
I know, content’s been scarce, but that also means I have time to write up stuff about Dave Fleming. Anyway — if you’ve got an article suggestion, random thought, or even question, drop us a line. If nothing else, I can throw together some emails and try and stave off your boredom until there’s some news to mull over.
And go Seahawks!
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30 Responses to “This just in: drastic news shortage continues”
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Gotta love that Efren Herrera. Can’t wait to see him play tomorrow, he throws an awesome touchdown pass.*
* We had Manu Tuiasosopo over for dinner one night, c. 1979. I think I also have Jack Patera’s autograph.
What do you think of Verducci’s “Run Prevention” article?
An update in ” Drinking At Safeco” would be appreciated. Plus it may create an abundance of useful information from posters who know other hidden gems.
I am reminded of Mr Thompsen’s New Year’s resolution to get a life and suggest all read at times Corco’s Blog. That MaCall resident is good for a laugh or WTF especially while listening to Gary Jules “Barstool”.
It looks like the Red Sox are about to give up Andy Marte to get CoCo Crisp.
Might it have been worth the M’s to try to get Marte back in a Reed deal, or is pitching too much of a pressing issue to bother trying to get Marte? Marte seems like he’s going to be a real stud…
#1– speaking of Manu & fine dining– the University of Washington Libraries owns a (gift) copy of the “Seattle Seahawks gridiron gourmet”, a fund-raiser cookbook by the 1983 players’ wives. The recipes themselves aren’t that great — but in the accompanying family photos there are some faaabulous ‘fros and threads on display…
so, are we at that point of the winter where desperation sets in and we start listing baseball movies? Shall I start rambling on about the glory that is “Curveballs along the way: the Joe Torre story”?
do we need to make plans for the pooling of FanFest photos/reports?
A Marte-for-Crisp deal is crazy, unless Marte is damaged goods.
I just got this tool that attempts to visualize manager decisions forwarded to my del.icio.us account by a friend. It’s definitely got some issues – a lack of ground ball and fly ball tendencies, for example. But on a slow news day when almost anything is “on topic” it might be worth a look…
Baseball Visualization Tool
How about a review of the guys, especially free agents, USSMariner liked/didn’t like going into last season and how they did. Both Mariners (e.g. Sexson, Beltre, Reese) and non-Mariners (e.g. Clement, Guzman). Are there any lessons to learn? I actually think that all of the ones I mentioned were fairly reviewed here before last year – there were disappointments and one surprise (Sexson so healthy), but all were within the range of possibilities discussed here.
Speaking of Dave Fleming, I had never heard of him before your article here a few days ago, and a day or two later he came up in a book I was reading about MLB players’ debuts; he was pitching during A-Rod’s first game.
re #5 — I was trying to come up with a good way to mark myself as a blogizen at FanFest in a way that won’t be utterly embarrassing, but the best I’ve come up with is just to go with my Vote for Felix shirt. Is it feasible/worthwhile to try to have a blog meetup during/after FanFest? I dunno.
I think after all the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and renting of garments over the potential Reed to Boston trade, the fact that Boston just picked up Coco Crisp (it almost doesn’t matter who Boston gave up) is cause for great celebration.
Here’s an off the wall question. Does anyone know somewhere on the web I can find M’s desktop wallpaper? Methinks it should be easy to find.
well Marte’s arm is due to fall off on given throw…he does have an arm injury…..
ESPN is saying the Coco/Marte deal is only in pending and not final yet…here’s to praying they actually finalize it and quit giving Bavasi time to hand them Reed.
Anyone else going to FanFest?
Anyone know the autograph schedule? All I can find is Felix, Jeremy, the new catcher, and “others”. Mmmm, think of how awesome a Felix sig would be in about 20 years after his Hall of Fame career……
So Theo Epstein returns to the Sox. Wow, a year off goes by way quicker than it used to. Was it a plan, or just a 28 year old having a tantrum?
Or, take on the question always alluded to. Do players get better when they leave the Mariners or not? Everybody remembers the ones that get better, but if you look at all the players we released or traded in, oh, the last 5 years…would they average out to generally good, bad, or medium levels of performance with a few spikes here or there…
#12–you know this for a fact how?
#14–the autograph and Q&A schedules aren’t handed out until the first morning of FF…
for me it would prob. have to be a “during” get-together… Is
there a particular give-away cap that everyone might have? I could wear my “Kendall Krunch” shirt– but with the layering needed to ward off the damp/chill factor, to recognize each other via t-shirts we’d be flashing strangers all day long 🙂
A Marte-for-Crisp deal is crazy, unless Marte is damaged goods.
Marte is a great prospect. But Crisp is 26, had an OBP of 810 and based on being very good in LF I suspect he’d be an above average CF. So it’s a potential all-star CF under team control for a couple more years for a great prospect. That seems OK to me.
#17 – I’d have to agree. Marte was log jammed with the Braves, kinda sucks for playing time when your sitting behind Chipper.
Though from what I read, if the deal does go through. Cleveland is supposedly going to send him to AAA for the year and delay is debut.
I’m curious why Derek thinks the team wont be better on the pitching/defense side of the game? They were 752 last year and you have to think whatever regression Moyer has it’s offset by more Felix innings, Piniero likely to be better, Washburn instead of Franklin and hopefully less IP by Thorton. Also shouldn’t the defense be better or at least, not demonstrably worse?
When I checked the numbers, Crisp is a totally different player than I remember from seeing him a lot in 2003. His Davenport Translated line shows good improvement each year, and it’s not as if we shouldn’t expect 25-year old players to improve. So, at the plate, he’s a lot better than I thought he was. However, I’m not so sure his defense is all that good. He’s definitely fast, but I can’t remember him having a very good arm. The only stat I can see that rate his defense very highly is defensive Win Shares, and I’m not so fond of those as a defensive evaluation metric. All in all, I’d be surprised if he winds up at all above average defensively as a CF.
To me, the question this raises is whether or not the M’s could have gotten in a 3-way deal with a team that needs a cheap 3B and has a lot of pitching. The Twins, for instance, would have been an intriguing possibility, though I’m not sure they were willing to part with Francisco Liriano or Scott Baker, even for Marte. But I’d have to think there’s someone out there who would be willing to trade solid pitching, certainly more than Arroyo or Papelbon, for a big prospect like Marte.
I’d like to see USS Mariner explore Meche-on-a-collision-course-for-arbitration issue, since the pitcher and the team are reportedly $850,000 apart  with Meche asking for $4.2 million.
If, as has been previously posited, winning arbitration is largely a matter of service time rather than actual merit, one hopes the Mariners settle for whatever they can get (give), because I don’t see how the team could avoid losing before a mediator. If Freddy Garcia, coming off a crappy 2002, can win, and Brian Hunter, coming off being Brian Hunter, can win, I don’t see any other outcome here than Meche kicking ass and walking away with a virtually untradeable $4.2 million deal.
How do you see it?
Also: What’s everybody so worked up about today? Is there a football game or something going on?
I don’t have the BIS numbers from 05, but based on 02-4 data and my own studies, Crisp’s arm rates [i]slightly[/i] below average.
UZR had Crisp at being +38 in left field last year.
That’s pretty good.
My only problem with UZR is that, as far as I can tell, there’s no place that I can actually go and look at last year’s UZR. So even that you’re telling me he has a UZR of +38, there’s nowhere I can even go and verify that. Worse than that, I can’t look to see how +38 compares to the rest of the league. I’m either blindly believing whoever has the UZR data that this actually means Crisp is good, or I’m blindly believing the scouts that he’s good. Neither way is very satisfactory to me. And even someone like Dave, who appears to be more privy to the data than I am, clearly isn’t sold about some of the conclusions you can draw from it–like the conclusion that Reed is a great defensive centerfielder. So even in the face of a gaudy UZR in LF, I’m not sold that Crisp will be even an above average defensive CF.
“I don’t have the BIS numbers from 05, but based on 02-4 data and my own studies, Crisp’s arm rates [i]slightly[/i] below average.”
Is that slightly below average for a LF or slightly below average in general? I’d say the difference in degree of difficulty for throws from CF and throws from LF is pretty big.
Over at baseballmusings.com, David Pinto has been publishing some of his Probabilistic Model of Range defense statistics, and it appears that last year, Ryan Franklin did not benefit from his defense at all, getting less actual outs than predicted. In the same post, it seems like Franklin was among the best in helping his defense.
Not that I think he’s a good pitcher; just saying.
According to the Boston Glove, the Red Sox will acquire Coco Crisp, David Riske and Josh Bard from the Indians for Andy Marte, Guillermo Mota and Kelly Shoppach.
Looks like Mark Shapiro is getting a friggin’ steal if this goes through.
There’s got to be more to this. Uber-prospects like Andy Marte do not get passed around like Aunt Edna’s Christmas fruitcake unless there’s something else going on that we don’t know about.
I’ve got a post up on the Marte-Crisp trade now.
“Is that slightly below average for a LF or slightly below average in general? I’d say the difference in degree of difficulty for throws from CF and throws from LF is pretty big.”
General. I compare plays only to the league positional totals. So, Crisp’s LF performance compared to all LFers + Crisp’s CF performance compared to all CFers
damn HTML tags.
contiued on it should read
“compared to all CFers” is less than an average ML OFer would have done given the same playing time splits. It’s not much less though. Also keep in mind that I did not study range, just everything else.