You can’t make this stuff up
Dave · November 25, 2006 at 9:50 am · Filed Under Mariners
The Mariners have made a signing! The offseason has begun. The Mariners have…
signed Willie Bloomquist to a contract extension through 2008.
No, we’re not kidding. We’ve now guaranteed the worst player in baseball two more years in a Mariner uniform, where he can continue to make outs and hurt the team while getting tongue baths from the announcers.
Feel free to commence mocking… now.
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126 Responses to “You can’t make this stuff up”
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whoa boyz
listenin to yall you think this guy been given a (gaaaak aaaak) carlos lard contract.
if this utility guy is the popular guy who gets seattle fans into baseball, well, that is actually worth something, no matter if he is not a good player.
if he can actually play good D at 7 positions and be a good baserunner/basestealer, well, that’s pretty darn good.
i promise you joe mcewing can NOT play D at 7 positions. or run good neither. we’ve got eric bruntlett on the astros who can play ok D at 6 positions (for some reason he really sux at first) but is not what you call fast or a basestealer.
it is kinda like my stros insisting on playing biggio full time and in away games.
look at it like this – is willie the one guy keeping yall from winning? i disbelieve that. so he is basically entertainment for a losing team.
it could be worse – yall coulda signed one of them estupido mucho soriano/matthews/pierre/lee contracts.
count your blessings
in the glowing firmament of lights around here
No matter how much you try to cast this as an “us against them” thing, it’s not.
We’re simply cognizant of two things that you, seemingly, aren’t:
1) Bad contracts aggregate over time and, when taken as a whole, make it harder to build a quality team in future years;
2) Bad contracts demonstrate a lack of ability to evaluate talent on the part of the team’s decision makers.
Is paying Willie Bloomquist $1mil per year going to single-handedly destroy the Mariners? No, and none of us are saying it will.
It’s just a symptom of a larger problem.
At least that should not increase the price if the Ichirolls? He-hee!
102:
1) a 2/2 contract just isn’t going to bring the M’s down. If they need to reach down deep and come up with another million to contend, they’ll do it.
2) well no shit, but didn’t you notice that when they were signing Jarrod Washburn? Did you wake up this morning thinking the M’s front office was full of baseball geniuses, and now your hopes are crushed?
1) a 2/2 contract just isn’t going to bring the M’s down. If they need to reach down deep and come up with another million to contend, they’ll do it.
Can they reach into their pockets and buy another roster spot while he’s out there playing half the time? How about another out every time Willie Ks with the game on the line? Maybe a re-do when he misses a routine ball in center?
Then consider that Jeff Nye said bad contracts aggregate. He didn’t even claim that a 2/$2m contract would bring the M’s down.
So, what really was your point?
You’re just doing exactly what he (rightly) said some are doing: saying people are making claims that they aren’t.
Willie doesn’t have to be that popular with a fan segment to justify a couple of extra bucks — 350 seats per home game at $20 a seat would do it and that ignores profits on the ubiquitous Willie jerseys, pictures, etc. (which are already in inventory), plus the beer and garlic fries all these Willie lovers will snarf down. Sure you could sell the fans a new guy, but it would cost expensive up front advertising dollars. It would be really interesting to know how much (and what) in depth information management has developed on fan preferences and behavior.
#58: The Ms would be better off letting their pitchers bat there instead of Willie.
As #62 points out, no, not really so much.
In order to directly address this issue, I’ve formulated a new metric to evaluate Bloomquist’s *special* skill set. I reveal VORPi (value over replacement level pitcher) here at USSM for peer review. Briefly, VORPi calculates WFB’s offensive value using a replacement level pitcher as the baseline.
Willie’s ’06 VORPi is 27. He’s good for almost three wins versus a replacement level pitcher. Impressive. Once again sabermetrics shatters another commonly held misconception about a player’s worth by definitively proving WFB’s bat IS more valubale than any average replacement level pitcher’s bat…..
#105:
Thank you for helping me fend off the big mean straw man!
#106 (and others): seriously, WHO gets up in the morning and decides to go buy an Ms ticket just to see WFB????
I want proof that giving him a roster spot is good for 350 butts in Safeco a night (and I don’t mean cigarette butts or head butts against something hard)….
Terry, I think you need to invent BORP – butts over replacement player.
Does a replacement butt-bringer even bring any at all? Is it 15% below league average?
Questions that must be answered to find the true value of the commodity known as Ballgame.
It seems that the anti-Bloomquist attitude is a microcosm of something that’s wrong with USS MARINER and its readers.
It seems that the people at USS MARINER (and their followers) are evaluating Bloomquist on his baseball talent (or lack thereof), whereas the Mariner FO is evaluating him on his ability to draw fans.
Similarly, USS MARINER (and its followers) seems to evaluate the team on its ability to win, whereas the Mariner FO seems to evaluate the team on its ability to make a profit.
We seem to be banging our heads against a stone wall.
HEAD-BANGING: I agree with those who feel that there is no room for Bloomquist on a competitive team with a 25-player roster.
If they were to pay me $400,000 a year, I can guarantee you that I would do outrageous things to draw 350 fans per home game. Simultaneously, I would not take up a roster spot.
It is possible to make a small investment to draw fans (to sell tickets and other items) and make a good margin. That can be done without forfeiting a spot on the roster or quality of the product on the field.
I’m fairly certain that a recently posted graph showed a correlation between winning and attendance– the best way to get fans in seats and make profits is to win. Not even the Cubs are content with being loveable losers anymore.
WTF! WFB for 2008!
The FO needs to stop screwing around and just give that 10 year, $12 million contract to give Boom-boom.
Odds on WTB retiring as a Mariner? At what age?
How much longer do we have of this guy?
So does this mean his new nickname is WT08B?
seriously, is this for that game were Bloomquist went 5-5?
105: As other people have pointed out WFB isn’t that bad of a 25th man. If Grover doesn’t know how to manage him than at least bitch about that, not his salary, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t going to matter.
How much bad contract aggregation do you really fear for 2007 and 2008? If you want to wear sackcloth and scratch yourself with potshards over this, knock yourself out, but it’s really not the end of the world.
If you want to wear sackcloth and scratch yourself with potshards over this, knock yourself out
I thought only Japanese pitchers still did that and then only in offseason camps….
If you want to wear sackcloth and scratch yourself with potshards over this, knock yourself out, but it’s really not the end of the world.
It is in fact possible to think that this was a mistake while simultaneously not wearing sackcloth and scratching myself with potshards, or considering it to be the end of the world. I’m doing it right now, actually.
Can we maybe get a definition of straw man added to the site FAQ?
No one is about to commit suicide over this; we just see it as yet another bad player decision by Mariners management in a loooooong string of them.
Yes, I do want to wear a sackcloth. I also commit to scratching myself with potshards. I’ve clearly been shown that this is the end of the world, and I want to go out my way.
Hmm… Or I could have the viewpoint that I’ve portrayed within every single post I’ve put up.
Nah, that’s too logical. It would be of much more shock value were I to pull a random belief from my sleeve that I had never taken a moment to prove, quite possibly because it happens to be absurd.
The sky is falling!!!11!!11one! (!)
At least we know what uniform Willie will be wearing for the next couple years when he hits his annual home run off Barry Zito.
121, was someone talking to you?
What uniform will Zito be wearing?
You people are hilarious.
121, was someone talking to you?
No, no one was.
That said, given that you were directly responding to the now defunct #105, I thought he could use a little help. That guy’s a sap. I’m curious as to how he’s even possible to function in society with, you know, saying all those things that he never even said. Does he use telepathy? Is it a controllable urge? Does he even know when he’s said-but-not-said them?
Instead of having the dunderhead, who coincidentally goes by the same name as I do, come in and spoil the conversation by saying more things that he wasn’t saying, I thought I’d come in and speak for him.
So no, no one was talking to me. It was totally directed toward Josh. I’ll go back to my corner now, because I clearly don’t know what I’m talking about.