Meet Tease, Part Two
I was hoping to have finalized information for you guys this afternoon, but it will have to wait one more day. Since we’re getting close to the date, however, I did want to give you guys a reminder:
Sunday, April 2nd, big USSM shindig. You’re going to want to come, and we’re going to have a cap on how many people can attend, so clear your calendar. Exact time, how to sign up, where to meet, and fun announcement to come hopefully tomorrow.
Thursday or O season, why won’t you start?
No game today (Obviously, I misread the schedule when I made the original post). Two games: 12:05 v the Cubs, 6:05 vs the Diamondbacks. There were bees, though. And the M’s lost. Betancourt’s being tried in the #2 slot. Huh.
The Onion offers this brief news on Ichiro’s WBC participation:
SAN DIEGOâ€â€In an interview following Japan’s 10-6 victory against Cuba in the World Baseball Classic championship game Monday, Ichiro Suzuki called the tournament a “great opportunity to represent anything besides the Seattle Mariners.” “Playing alongside my countrymen on the world stage was nice, but the highlight of the event for me was not having to watch helplessly from the on-deck circle as [Seattle outfielder] Willie Bloomquist pops out for the fourth time in one game,” said Ichiro, who has been contemplating a return to his non-Mariner roots since late 2003. “Honestly, I would have played for the Netherlands team if it meant 17 days away from the Mariners spring-training camp.” Although he said that the legendary Sadaharu Oh did a fine job coaching Team Japan, Ichiro added that “next to Mike Hargrove, any idiot in a baseball cap would seem like a decent manager.”
Yeeeeeeeeeeeup.
I have a guest article up o’er at Baseball Analysts. Short version: people who bet on baseball bet based almost entirely on last year’s standings and winners, a bit on a team’s offseason, but really not at all on projected standings or competitiveness. This has some implications.
Wednesday, March 22nd
Mariners won yesterday [PI], and Beltre got a homer. Borchard’s got a new locker [TNT]… for now. The Times has a story on Nageotte and Blackley.
Book Review: The Museum of Clear Ideas
T.S. Eliot once wrote that April is the cruelest month. Given that Eliot was the most British American ever conceived, it is unsurprising that he did not appreciate baseball’s approach. This despite being born in St. Louis and living during the era of Rogers Hornsby. Working on some poem is barely an excuse.
To the rest of us — poets, too — April means baseball. After reading Donald Hall’s vastly underappreciated 1993 work, Museum of Clear Ideas
In Clear Ideas, Hall draws on themes from sport and visual art. The book’s first baseball poem is an attempt to explain baseball to Kurt Schwitters, the artist acknowledged as the 20th century master of the collage.
The volume isn’t all baseball, but the narrative of the game informs (and bookends) everything else. We start with a non-baseball poem (“Another Elegy,” which nevertheless alludes to rain delays), then move on to nine long baseball poems divided into nine poetic “innings”. Concluding, Hall offers three warm, darkly beautiful extra-inning baseball poems that are succinct and perfect, like black pearls.
Like Schwitters, Hall wraps seemingly unrelated elements into a package that works. And while any fan of poetry ought to enjoy the book, you might have to be a longstanding baseball fan to truly appreciate some of the wit here. Besides lines about storied games from yesteryear, there are references to Dock Ellis’ acid no-hitter, Wade Boggs’ affairs, Steve Blass disease, expansion and Nolan Ryan’s Advil ads.
To the poet, baseball is a pleasure (“Baseball is not my work. It is my/walk in the park, my pint of bitter,/My Agatha Christie or Zane Grey.”), but it also reflects the grand collage of life. Generations of young men become old men, barely hanging on as skills and vitality fade. Hall’s is a world where ” … even losing three out of four/is preferable to off-season,” as life is preferable to death.
Baseball, like sexual intercourse
and art, stops short, for a moment, the
indecent continuous motion
of time forward, implying our death
and imminent decomposition.
Being a Red Sox fan, Hall knows something about loss, death, hope and rebirth. Even if you win the Series, he reminds, the season ends anyway. Fortunately, there is still spring.
The Museum of Clear Ideas
[Ed note: those are affiliate links. We recommend the book even if you go buy it some other way. Standard disclaimers apply.]
Felix article at Baseball Prospectus
From the Department of Don’t Miss This:
Jonah Keri has a 2,800-word, link-laden subscriber-only article up about King Felix at Baseball Prospectus as of yesterday. The Felix-love flows around here like ouzo at one of Socrates’ parties, so I’ll leave belaboring that point to Jonah.
Suffice it to say, Felix Hernandez is one of the best reasons to be very excited about watching baseball this season.
Tuesday newsotronic
PI:
Johjima has glove, tongue
Beltre doesn’t think Cubans will defect from WBC team.
Ichiro’s out of his slump.
And the M’s traded Thornton. PI, TNT, Times.
The Times, in their re-designed and vaguely confusing new page, have similar content (Johjima and the staff)
Bye Bye Matt Thornton
The M’s have traded Matt Thornton to the Chicago White Sox for Joe Borchard.
There’s almost no way to not like this move, in my opinion. Thornton was, and still is, essentially useless. Yes, he throws 95, but big whoop-de-doo. He’s basically pitched well as a pro for all of one season, back in A-ball, pre surgery, and been mediocre to bad the rest of his career. He throws straight, without command, and has no real secondary pitches to speak of. He doesn’t hide the ball well, and hitters tee off on his hittable fastball, especially when they’re sitting on it 2-0. He didn’t deserve to be on the team last year, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be on the team this year. Removing him from the roster almost certainly guarantees George Sherrill a spot on the team, and he’s a vastly superior pitcher who was squeezed off the team by Thornton’s presence last year. Simply removing Thornton from the equation is a net positive.
Then we come to Borchard. He was one of the best college players of his time, earning a then-record $5.5 million signing bonus when the White Sox took him in the first round of the 2000 draft. He battled injuries, but showed promise in his first exposure to Triple-A pitching at the age of 23, hitting .272/.349/.498. He’s stagnated since then, failing to improve at all at the plate and losing agility and fielding prowess.
The guy has flaws that aren’t easily fixed. He has a poor approach at the plate, the main factor being a problem with pitch recognition. Borchard, essentially, has turned himself into a guess hitter. If he gets a fastball, bravo, the ball may go 400 feet. If he doesn’t, well, he’s screwed.
I’ve seen a lot of Borchard the past few years, and I remain convinced that there’s a good hitter hiding inside of the player he is now. His approach needs work, but it’s a fixable flaw. If he can improve his theories of hitting and turn himself into a .270/.330/.450 guy, that’s a valuable reserve, giving the M’s a legitimate major league hitter coming off the bench who swings the bat from the right side.
Borchard has the potential to fill a need; right-handed power hitting reserve outfielder. The M’s options for OF are currently all left-handed. If the team brings in a lefty to face Reed, Ibanez, or Everett, your options are essentially to let them hit or to replace them with Willie Ballgame.
Borchard, at least, has the chance to offer a bat with some juice from the right side and the ability to play all three outfield spots, though he’s a bit of a liability in center at this point. He’s essentially a slightly different version of Mike Morse; better defense, less contact, more power. I’m sure some folks would prefer Morse to make the roster, since he hit .800 for a few weeks last year, but the fact is that the team doesn’t have to choose.
If they deem Borchard able to help them in the role Morse was penciled in for, they get both Borchard and Morse. Morse goes to Tacoma, giving the team something they badly lack; depth. This team has been dangerously thin for several years, leaving them one injury away from playing a replacement level player at pretty much every position on the diamond. Having Borchard in Seattle and Morse in Tacoma gives the M’s one more layer to go through before resorting to Willie Bloomquist, starting left fielder, or rushing Adam Jones to the big leagues prematurely.
In the end, the team gets a few weeks to see if Borchard can fill a hole on the roster. If he can’t, no loss, because we didn’t want Matt Thornton on the team either way. If he can, well, congratulations Bill, you just got more free talent. These are the kinds of moves Bavasi has specialized in, getting potentially useful parts for nothing. Make enough of these moves, and you’ll eventually hit a home run.
Thumbs up. Good move for the club, and adios to Matt Thornton.
Bronson Arroyo traded
After an offseason full of rumors, most of which had him coming to Seattle, and then a contract extension that reportedly came with a handshake agreement that he wouldn’t be traded, Bronsono Arroyo was traded to the Cincinatti Reds for Wily Mo Pena today.
After being so successful with flyball pitcher Eric Milton last year, the Reds apparently are going back to the well, acquiring another flyball pitcher who needs his defense to keep him in the ballgame. And, when you have the worst outfield defense in baseball, that’s generally a bad idea.
I’m still thrilled that the M’s didn’t swap Jeremy Reed for Arroyo, but in the end, it looks like that was a wise non-trade for the Red Sox, as well. Wily Mo is lousy with the glove, but the kid’s got serious, serious power, and he’s clearly more valuable to the Red Sox than Jeremy Reed would have been.
Monday might be boring, but …
… you still shouldn’t miss Jim Caple’s piece about Ichiro and the World Baseball Classic. Worth reading for the “filthy dugouts” line alone.
Monday, boring Monday
PI: Thiel on the unfixable Gil Meche. Sexson wants to win a World Series. Johjima’s getting hazed.
M’s lost — PI version, Times version.