Pat Gillick, Mariners Savior
Well, he owes us big time for the crap he pulled while he was Mariner GM, but this is a decent first step towards making it up to the Mariners. The Phillies have agreed to a deal with Adam Eaton for 3 years and $24 million.
This takes a local white kid off the market, which is always dangerous fruit where the Mariners are concerned, as well as establishing the market for mediocre starting pitchers at a much lower threshold than expected. Now, teams will have a little more leverage in their direction while trying to drive down the salaries of all the other mediocre back-end starters on the market.
So, thank you Pat Gillick. It’s about time you did something to help the Mariners.
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I had a Ford Tempo (87 GL, the one year/model that was actually a very good car). I took care of it religiously, for the first couple of years, and it drove great. Got to college and, well, not so much. (Though, to be fair, I did change the oil once between the 60k and 80k services.)
Amazingly, the thing drove great, despite the abuse, and I even took a celebratory picture (while drving) when it cracked 100k miles. (116 wins !!!)
It dropped dead at 102, leaving me to walk 3 miles every day to the bus in the dead of winter.
It’s your site and if you’re going to treat people like this I don’t want to be here…
It seems to me that you are acting like an ass towards me in a dirty attempt to get me to stoop to your level and say something of the like so that you can feel justified in deleting me. Why don’t you save everyone the hot air, be a complete asshole and just delete me, I have other email addresses and you won’t even know it’s me
10,000 extra miles works out to about 400 extra miles per week. I don’t know how fast an airplane flies, but I would say the extra 1 hour per week on the plane is pretty close. (MLB teams play two series per week. that’s two flights a week on the road, zero when at home. Season is 26 weeks long, so I simplified by dividing by 25.)
Right now the biggest problem seems to be the rehiring of Hargrove and Lincoln’s “Hot seat” statement. It gives the impression of a team in transition, not a team that will be competing for a ring anytime soon.
Still, money is more important than perception to free agents. Bavasi seems to be in an impossible situation this winter. His need for pitching is much higher than his budget constraints.
Totally Vidya…It’s unrealistic to see Bavasi pull out a good team next year without trading away a good chunk of the farm. Hopefully a part of being in the hotseat is that he can’t reach into the farm. I’d like to see a good deal done for Jason Jennings, but I don’t trust the present FO to distinguish between good deal and bad.
Wishhiker – look at the starting roster and payroll breakdown of the 2004 Mariners. That (sans Jolbert Cabrera) was the legacy Gillick left us.
I’m intrigued and would like to know more about this Gillick fellow and the apparent horrors he inflicted on my favorite team, the Seattle Mariners. Apparently, some of the authors on this site have previously critiqued Mr. Gillick’s performance in some detail. But, gosh, this post is really about Adam Eaton’s contract. Maybe instead of calling attention to myself and repeatedly posting comments asking why no one has answered my curiosity in the amount of detail I demand, I will follow the friendly suggestion in the comment guidelines and send an email to ussmariner@gmail.com. That nice David Cameron has always answered the questions in my emails promptly and politely in the past.
Uhm…the title of this post Is
“PAT GILLICK, MARINERS SAVIOUR”
leads me to believe it has something to do with Pat Gillick. That and the comment that led me to respond “So, thank you Pat Gillick. It’s about time you did something to help the Mariners”
Grizz it was not my idea that I should know what he previously posted.
I asked that if other posters thought I should know what he posted, maybe they could supply a link.
When I respond to something someone else says and there is response back and I respond to that it is not me posting off topic. I asked for Daves explanation in stats and facts, which is a perfectly reasonable response that I’ve seen posted 100’s of times BY THE AUTHORS and others. I was asked by other posters to know from his previous breakdowns why he believes what he does. I find that response absolutely unreasonable. I am willing to read previous posts, but having spent 40 minutes searching the archives myself and 1.5hrs reading a post I was linked to that had little to do with the topic I think it’s not my responsibility to know. My points which related to the discussion have not been disputed in much of any way and I take pride in that.
Gillick did indeed do good things for the Mariners!
I do not deny the success of the Blue Jays in the early 90’s. For a while, Gillick was likely on the right track philosophically.
But again, Gillick’s rep is not about the early 90’s, but about his entire career past and present. Look at how he left the Mariners and the Orioles. After that glory with the Jays, he built teams in BAL and SEA to win in the present, to hell with the future, and took off before he had his chance to pay the piper for a myopic approach to roster building.
Filibuster all your want, Wishhiker, but it happened, and his two world titles were 15 years ago.
Gillick launched the Mariners international scouting into elite status while watching the good pitching prospects the team had on the farm crumble to injury and ineffectiveness. He had little control over the draft until his final year as GM. With all the talk of him trying to get rid of first round picks they had first round picks every year he was here except his first, which he used wisely to fill multiple needs and lose the first 3 rounds rather than filling one each year and losing first rounders for each. The fact that Bavasi’s teams have done poorly enough that they get better first round picks is not a plus for Bavasi.
116 wins was 5 years ago
Is there a -reason- all our pitchers got injured? If Gillick was so good at seeing the innate talent of players that he can turn everyone’s castoffs (included noted losers Ichiro, Olerud, and Edgar), why the hell didn’t he trade Nageotte? Why dump Guillen? Why all these things? Why Cirillo? Why did nothing of note come out of our farm system between Raul Ibanez and… I don’t know, Jose Lopez?
You can praise Gillick all you want, but he did the organisation a lot more harm than good, and ran away just as the house was about to fall down.
I also disagree with you about first rounders, but hey, I’ll save that for later.
Now you’re just making stuff up, Wish. Gillick had little control over the draft until his last year? Why would you believe that?
The Orioles are not a crappy organization because of who Pat Gillick left in the lineup. They are crappy because he left, and because Angelos felt free to meddle with the new regime. Hence the one-year Frank Wren era and the chaos that followed.
The philosophy you speak of is exactly what Lou Piniella wanted. Matter of fact I wouldn’t be sure if “SEA to win in the present, to hell with the future, and took off before he had his chance to pay the piper for a myopic approach to roster building.” was about Lou or Pat without context. I believe that it was largely Piniella’s approval that brought in Gillick and built the roster during the stretch of history you speak of. They did well until Piniella left.
He wasn’t even allowed to choose his own guy and Gillicks drafts with people he brings in look alot better than the first 3 of 4 he supposedly presided over here. I agree I’m speculating here, but it’s not baseless.
Uhm…the title of this post Is “PAT GILLICK, MARINERS SAVIOURâ€
“Of Mice and Men” is not really about rodents.
I agree I’m speculating here, but it’s not baseless.
Yes it is. It’s just not true.
Uhm…I just gave you my base and then you told me it was baseless.
I have looked over Mattox’s drafts from 1998-2003 and Drafts under Gillick with different Scouting Directors in Baltimore and Toronto and the Mariners drafts from 2000-2002 look more like Mattox’s horrible drafts of 1998 and 1999 than any presided over elsewhere by Gillick. That is true, is the recent basis for my opinion and was only researched by me because an informed individual pointed out the whispers of it in our conversation. I recently read more talk of Mattox’s responsibility on Mariners Revolution.
They brought in Bavasi to oversee the Minor League aspects of the team and let Gillick continue (with dissention from Bavasi) on Major league roster acquisition. The same happenned on the other end with Mattox having more MiL control than Gillick, the difference is that Mattox had no say at all on the Major league level and that worked better.
Regardless this is more in depth than it needs to be…Gillick wasn’t all bad for the M’s is all I was saying.
Let’s look at our drafts from 1999-2003.
I’ll go through and pick the players the team signed who have done anything interesting (i.e. not Rich Harden).
1999
Bloomquist, Nageotte, Putz, Sledge, Leone.
If someone tells me that they could tell that Putz would somehow develop the splitter from hell in 2006 from what he looked like in 1999, I’ll laugh at them. I like Sledge, but he wasn’t an M very long. 4 fringe players and one really good closer. Mmkay.
2000
Strong, Bubela, Ambres.
I really don’t know what to say. So I won’t.
2001
Michael Garciparra. Rene Rivera.
That’s a draft? And nobody’s killed themselves over it?
2002
Bohn, Lahair.
????….????…
2003
Jones, Feierabend.
Out of 5 years of drafting, we got: One top prospect, one closer essentially obtained by random chance, and a whole lot of mediocrity.
That’s some good drafting.
Exactly my point except you missed 1998
Matt Thornton, Scott Atchison
Thank you Frank Mattox
So… why was he still the scouting director?
Armstrong?
I just gave you my base and then you told me it was baseless.
Your base is created in your mind. There’s no evidence of anything there – it’s just “those drafts sucked, I bet that Gillick didn’t have control then.”
I recently read more talk of Mattox’s responsibility on Mariners Revolution.
There are good sources of information in the world, and then there are blogs like that.
They brought in Bavasi to oversee the Minor League aspects of the team and let Gillick continue (with dissention from Bavasi) on Major league roster acquisition.
That’s not true.
The same happenned on the other end with Mattox having more MiL control than Gillick, the difference is that Mattox had no say at all on the Major league level and that worked better.
That’s not true either.
Regardless this is more in depth than it needs to be…Gillick wasn’t all bad for the M’s is all I was saying.
No one’s saying he was all bad.
This sounds like it may come from the root of this teams inability to admit it’s mistakes and move on so I’d say somewhere between Armstrong and Lincoln, but that’s a guess.
Funny, isn’t it, that Bill Bavasi brought in Bob Fontaine to run his drafts for him to replace Frank Mattox. It’s almost as if he thought it was an important way to bring talent into his team, and he thought it important to put a guy with a proven track record there.
Whereas Pat Gillick left Frank Mattox there- almost as if he didn’t give a crap who got drafted during his tenure as GM.
Huh, go figure, people critiqued Gillick on that and the unproductivity of the farm system (exactly ZERO Mariner regular position players from the minors between A-Rod and Jose Lopez). I can’t imagine why, or why it would be related to an old Mariners team collapsing in 2004 and not getting back up afterwards.
It’s from the header of the Post I was sent back to that DAVE wrote that I got the information that Bavasi started out as Gillick puppet, so if it’s not true could you explain why you’ve changed your mind?
“No one’s saying he was all bad.”
Then I proved my point, because it started with:
“So, thank you Pat Gillick. It’s about time you did something to help the Mariners”
Which does not say exclusively, although it alludes to, Gillick not doing anything good for the Mariners. It’s possible that by “it’s about time” you meant something along the lines of “it’s been years since” however that’s far from a standard translation of the phrase.
I don’t see how someone as intelligent as you could have meant anything but “Thanks Gillick, this is the first thing you’ve ever done to help the Mariners.” That is simply the most direct translation for the paragraph.
You’re a very silly person, and we’re going to stop trying to reason with you now.
Bavasi started out as Gillick puppet, so if it’s not true could you explain why you’ve changed your mind?
I haven’t changed my mind. There’s a huge difference between what I wrote and what you wrote.
Which does not say exclusively, although it alludes to, Gillick not doing anything good for the Mariners.
No, it doesn’t. That’s a lousy interpretation of a statement obviously dripping in hyperbole. You’re the only one who took it that way.
*head in hands guy*