Awwww, woodja woodja woodja
DMZ · April 14, 2006 at 8:52 am · Filed Under Mariners
Poor Bloomquist, not getting a lot of playing time. So sad.
“The hardest part of my day, every day, is to walk into the clubhouse and peek around the corner and see if my name is in the lineup,” Bloomquist said. “Everything else is easier than that.”
[snip]
“My job is to be ready, and I accept that,” Bloomquist said. “But it is difficult to stay sharp. So I do all the work I can and I wait. But you can do all the batting drills you want and spend all the time you want in the batting cage. The fact still is that when you get in the (batter’s) box, everything changes.”
Yeah. Those pitchers throw you curvy stuff! And fast stuff! It’s horrible!
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Not included in the article was this quote:
“The easier part of my day, every day, is to be woken up by my rolex watch’s alarm clock, roll over on my 400 thread count sheets, put on my egyptian cotton sweats, walk downstairs, tell my personal chef that I want my free range eggs made sunny side up, and have the maid pour me a bottle of Cristal. That part doesn’t suck.”
And nowhere in Hickey’s piece is the name Petagine mentioned, as in here’s a guy who hasn’t started any games all year (and is hitting 1.000 while the regular player at his position is barely hitting above .100). If anybody else were managing this team, they’d be a little anxious to see what Petagine might be able to do with four at-bats, but not Dudley M. Hargrove…
But Willie just hasn’t gotten his shot. If he were given a real shot, I’m convinced he would do significantly better than his career stats would indicate. He might even be the next Ty Cobb.
Poor guy, in a role that fits him best, being used as he should be used. Though I suppose that is more Hargroves tendancy not to use his bench rather than insight on how to use the 25th player on the team.
Ahh, sorry for the extendo link. Please edit.
He might even be the next Ty Cobb.
You understate the case. if Willie gets his shot, people will say “Ty who?
Because Mr. Grit doesn’t get to grit up the grittiness every day with Seattle, I hope he starts agitating for a trade soon. I don’t even care what would be gotten for him (what’s the going rate for a bag of balls these days?), I just wouldn’t be too sad if he were to go away. Quietly.
but part of Willie’s charm for the media is that he will ‘tell it like it is’ in his gritty, hustling kind of scrappy way…
Hargrove is of that old school of managers who believe that if you play your veterans no matter what, they will reward you eventually… it will be interesting to see if that changes as the influence of the younger managers and GMs becomes the prevailing mindset.
(finishing my thought) a change across baseball… not just in Seattle
While Willie gets the sympathetic article, Jeremy Reed’s 8-game hit streak barely gets a mention deep in the notes section. Come on!
In reality you could put Willie in Left field and DH Ibanez. Jurassic Carl is hitting even less then I think Willie would.
Except that Jurassic has hit a homer in the last two years. And Jurassic had 20 more homers last year than WFB has had in his entire career.
We’ve missed the biggest part of this article!
Yep, Willie lost the 2nd base job because he cut his finger.
From the TNT article (Derek’s other thread):
“Guys are regulars for a reason, and the only way a manager can really reward a regular is by sticking with him, showing confidence,†Hargrove said. “You bail on them, you find later in the year they bail on you. They start looking over their shoulders.â€Â
Everett’s going to play for a while. Especially since Hargrove had him in CLE, and pulled for getting him here.
Grover likes Willie, and has mis-used him once already (starting him for a streaking Reed instead of Beltre the day after his wrist was hit). But I think Hargrove does see Willie for what he is – a 25th guy who can rest the regulars and bring flexibility to the bench.
Here’s a tip Willie:
When you DO start, don’t suck. Difficult, I know, but there it is. Throwing yourself at balls in the outfield like you just got shot by Dick Cheney doesn’t help.
Speaking of Everett, I note with interest that he has 9 walks despite his 100ish batting average. Small statistical sample, I know, but if he keeps it up, that type of .170 avg., .330 on base is typical of a player who knows his bat is slowing way down, swings mostly at the rare pitch he feels he can hit, and accepts a lot more walks until the league catches on.
#14: no no no no no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Being the annointed clubhouse leader, he is trying to lead by example…. obviously he has bought into the patience philosophy…. he’s the long sought after answer the M’s need for left-handed patience….
Uh, Carl Everett never played in Cleveland, and has never played for Hargrove (since he wasn’t in Baltimore either).
Getting a hit in those two weekend starts against Oakland would’ve helped his cause.
400 thread count??? Even I have 1,000s. About $80 for a queen-bed set through Half.com. I love them.
Hargrove’s quotes about Everett indicate a fatal blind spot. He’s more worried about Everett’s self-esteem than about putting out a lineup that wins ballgames?
Even if Everett’s walks totals shoot way up, he’s not helping the team. He would have to draw them at a Bonds-like frequency for that to happen. Walks with nothing behind them are just as bad as .295 singles hitting with no discipline.
I worry we’re entering one of those scary places, like in 2004, where we almost have to root for the Mariners to lose so that necessary changes can take place.
Today will be a start, unfortunately. Putting Jamie Moyer on the hill in Fenway is like trying to lose weight on an exclusive diet of McDonalds french fries.
Isn’t it impossible to actually get that high of a thread count? I mean, seriously, threads can only be so fine.
Also: I love that when Willy whines about his role, he’s portrayed as a gamer who only wants the best for his team, but if you’re any other player, woe to your reputation if you say anything remotely like this.
Even I have 1,000s
No wonder I wake up with a rash.
I don’t see this as whining. I see this as a puff piece by Hickey, who asked Willie how he feels about riding the pine. What do you expect him to say, that he loves riding the bench and is sure glad he isn’t starting because he sucks? He said what any player would have said.
Any player who wouldn’t say he would prefer to play more shouldn’t be playing professional baseball. Heck, I wish I played every inning on my softball team, but I understand my role…
Chuck Armstrong visits the Mariners clubhouse:
Chuck: Hey, Skip, did you see Willie’s comments?
Hargrove: Sure did.
Willie: I can play, guys. I know I can, honest!
Chuck (indulgently patting his head): Awww, isn’t he cute?
Hargrove: We sure get a kick out of him around here. You should have seen the other night in Cleveland when Carl yelled at him to get him another bat out of the clubhouse and Willie said, “Guys, you know, technically, I’m NOT a batboy.” I haven’t seen Richie laugh that hard since we stopped playing “Napoleon Dynamite” in the clubhouse every day.
Willie (stomps foot in a huff): I’ll show you! I’ll show you all!
Chuck: I’m sure you will, son. Now scamper along and let the grown-ups talk.
Willie (fighting tears): You’re mean! Hey, Mr. LaRue? Buy me a Nutty Buddy?
I saw a piece on thread counts, I think on Portland local TV news. They looked at actual sheets under a microscope, and found out that some low-ball brands were counting the individual strands in each thread to come up with ultra-high counts. If you’re getting high thread counts for a low price, you’re probably being scammed. I wasn’t paying close attention but recall that JCPenney was on the up-and-up.
Maybe. But I love my sheets. I am satisfied with the quality received for the price paid.
Yeah, but do they come in burgundy?
In other gossip, Red Sox fans are slavering at the prospect of the Mariners being in town, especially our pitchers.
And don’t be surprised at the stands being empty late in the game on Monday, it’s Patriots Day and the fans traditionally flock out to the street to watch the marathoners go by… Oh, yeah, on that day “late in the game” is actually about 10 to 11 AM our time.
We’d get better counts if we got this
…Sheets
Thread count is overrated, honestly. Materials make more of a difference.
I’m not liking where this conversation is going, though. Will we have the next USSM feed at Bed Bath and Beyond?
Guest speaker: Andy Sheets, former Willie Bloomquist roleholder.
#28– perhaps Bloodbath and beyond….
hey! Andy Sheets, Central League Star! he had a 3-run homer last night for the Hanshin Tigers, you know….
2006 Japanese baseball special
By Jim Allen & John E. Gibson/Daily Yomiuri Sportswriters
The defending CL champion Tigers have everyone returning after an off-season that was filled with the motivation of being blown out of the Japan Series by the Chiba Lotte Marines in four games. [snippage] Steals leader Norihiro Akahoshi, who batted .316 and swiped 60 bases, Andy Sheets, who batted .289 with an on-base percentage of .344, and Takashi Toritani’s .278 average .343 on-base percentage, always seemed to fill the bases and that allowed Kanemoto and Imaoka to put up gaudy RBI numbers. With all three returning, pitchers figure this year to have the same problems working through a tough-to-put-away Hanshin lineup.
Sorry about the direction of the conversation. However, for true Mariners fans there are 1000s of topics better than Willie Bloomquist’s latest feature appearance in the mass media of the Greater Puget Sound.
Actually, the thread count piece was on Good Morning America. Also Wal-Mart and other retailers are being sued over the issue.
Isn’t it impossible to actually get that high of a thread count? I mean, seriously, threads can only be so fine.
I had trouble finding the thickness of thread in any sort of standard units that I’m used to, so I resorted to looking up the thickness of human hair. This would probably give us an extreme limit, as it seems like it’d be hard to make thread thinner than a human hair. Over here, it looks like the diameter of a human hair is variable (duh), but 50 micrometers seems like a reasonable average hair diameter.
Thread count is number of horizontal and vertical threads in a square inch. An inch is about 2.5 centimeters, or 25,000 micrometers. This would give you 500 threads per side, so about a 1000 thread count with threads the size of human hair. Over here it sounds like anything much over 400 is kind of a scam. I guess I could believe a thread count up to 1,000, but I would be skeptical unless it was pretty spendy.
Also, let’s be realistic: Bloomquist has silk sheets.
let me just say, this is not a mental image I want.
So last night I walk into the bar after my softball game, in a bad mood because we lost, and I meet our 3rd basemen’s Dad for the first time (he’s probably in his 60’s). Well, the M’s game was just finishing, so naturally we start to talk about the M’s.
FIRST THING he says is “I don’t know why Willie Bloomquist isn’t starting, he’s such a great player”.
I didn’t want to fight with this guy’s Dad (who I just met), so I just bite my tongue and say: “Too bad he doesn’t hit for any power”..
Now this guy has coached baseball before, and apparently understands the game. How can he possibly think starting WFB is a good idea?
I swear, all some people see is a dirty uniform, and think “Wow! This guy must be good!”
Grrrr…..
The other day, a young woman called into the pre-game show on KOMO and asked more or less the same question: “Willie Bloomquist is my favorite player … why isn’t he playing more? Is he going to play more?”
Blowers really tripped over his tongue trying to come up with an articulate and truthful answer.
I pretty sure my wife did this to me on purpose. She wasn’t a huge baseball fan, but my mania is catching. We were in our seats at Opening Day, and Wee Willie is introduced. He gets a big response, of course, and the people in front of us are very, very pro-WFB, especially a boy who looks about 11. My wife waits till the noise dies down a bit, and she turns to me as says, “Why are they cheering him so much, I thought you told me he sucks?” I get glares from all over, and the boy looks at me like I just put his kitten on a spit.
Then again when I was that age, if you’d told me that Gorman Thomas sucked I probably would have beaten you with my Tee Ball bat.
Uhh.. that shoud be “turns to me and says”
Last year when bloomquist was hitting well (july) there was at least some logic to playing him every day. Nobody here liked it because it meant actually talented players weren’t getting as many as bats as they could, but he was hitting fairly well for this team (.750 ops for the month was second on the team i believe).
But this year there’s no real reason play him. Lopez and Reed have developed and are producing more consistently, and we actually have a decent enough bench that bloomquist’s relative value has dropped pretty considerably.
#34: either way they were made in China and Bloomquist should be boycotted for not supporting the american worker…..
If you have a bench player on a hot streak, I have no problem going with him until it ends. Willie has not only had a cold bat, but he has been scary so far defensively.
I am a Willie Bloomquist fan. I respect the hustle and effort he puts in, and I have no problem using him to rest our regulars. Plus, he is an excellent pinch runner.
That being said, I am NOT a fan of him starting every day, or even playing the role that Maclemore played (did I spell his name correctly?).
Perhaps I put that the wrong way. I should say that I “like” Willie Bloomquist, rather than “I am a Willie Bloomquist fan”.
I think there is a multitude of players around the league, or in the minors, who could do his job just as well (if not better in some cases).
Hey, what a coincidence! The hardest part of my day is checking the Mariner’s starting lineup, too. Except that when I see the name “Willie Bloomquist” listed, I totally get the opposite reaction that the Notorious WFB gets……