Comments on: Game 23, White Sox at Mariners

By: msb

msb — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 00:14:59 +0000

not management then, but the local media (who just love that he is a very honest interview, and more esp. a very easy story for them) and the hired broadcasters (who prob. fall into the exact same catagory) …. I sure couldn’t recall anyone on the management side making a point of talking him up as the 2nd baseman of the future (they have always gone out and gotten someone else to play his positions) or as anyone other than a local guy they like….

By: John in L.A.

John in L.A. — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 21:57:33 +0000

Steve T – Ooops. I meant 2004-2005, sorry.

msb – announcers/press/interviews… they sold the local scrappy guy angle hard and it worked too well, fans like him way out of proportion to his value.

By: eponymous coward

eponymous coward — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 21:38:43 +0000

in 2004 was still one of the best players on the Mariners.

Whaaa?

Bret Boone, 2004: .251/.317/.423

TEAM stats for 2004 Mariners: .270 BA (6th), .331 OBP (10th), .399 SLG (14th)

His defense was nothing to write home about in 2004, either. In 2004, Bret Boone was just bad, as opposed to 2005 being truly awful.

By: Steve T

Steve T — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 20:20:17 +0000

Bret Boone in 2003 was a legitimate MVP candidate, and in 2004 was still one of the best players on the Mariners. Willie has never been within a country mile of either of those conditions.

By: msb

msb — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:51:22 +0000

just curious, how has M’s management ‘oversold’ Bloomquist?

By: John in L.A.

John in L.A. — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 07:13:19 +0000

138 – Who?

Assuming we are talking about mariners, which is all I really care about, I can’t think of anyone who comes close to the level of undeserved fawning of Bloomquist. I’d say that a distant second is Guardado, but even he gets called out once in a while. They’ve never really over-fawned, on Betancourt or Lopez. They’ve been pretty hard on Lopez, actually. They’ve never fallen over themselves praising Reed. All of those young guys they talk a lot about what they need to learn, even when they are outperforming everyone else.

Betancourt gets a lot of glove praise, but that’s hardly undeserved.

2003-2004 Bret Boone, maybe gets about halfway to Willie on the undeserved platitudes scale – and at least in his case at one point he had been worthy of the fawning.

Two days ago Betancourt has a real big moment in a young guy’s career – he drove in a run in the bottom of the ninth to win the game… and all anyone wanted to talk about was how awesome Willie Bloomquist was to steal that base.

137 – my sentiments exactly.

Mariners management has really backed themselves into a corner with Willie. For years they’ve oversold him… and now they have to justify finding playing time for him to appease the masses.

And at this point it is irrelevant how good a utility guy he is, because the Mariners largely refuse to use him as such.

By: Harold

Harold — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:46:07 +0000

Well as long as the M’s are 3.5 games out of the AL West (or is it waste?) lead then were likely to see the duties in CF split between The Ignitor and Reed. Just don’t call it Platooning. It’s “Sharing”.

By: G-Man

G-Man — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:27:12 +0000

I’d say use the excuse of Willie’s previous success against Buehle to play him in place of Beltre or Sexson tonight.

I agree that the fawning over Willie is overdone, but there is sure a lot of other undeserved platitudes said about other players, too.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 05:46:32 +0000

“Spite” isn’t why I’d fault Grover for playing WFB over Reed. Instead, it’s because I believe that:

WFB’s advantage against Buehrle is ephemeral.

WFB is a clear defensive downgrade in CF compared to Reed. (To your examples of missed dives, I’d add the double that he turned into a triple this week by misplaying the bounce off the wall.)

Grover’s pattern of sitting Reed against lefties is preventing his development against same.

By: Goose

Goose — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 05:24:06 +0000

125.

To be the man, WOOOOOO, you got to beat the man!