2007 Mariners, post-meetings
If the season started today…
~80 wins. That’s probably a little low… 82? 83? Assumes they blow their last chunk of change on one starter, as seems likely. Also omits Reed, who is almost certainly gone.
SP Felix Hernandez
SP Wrss Fhccna
SP Jarrod Washburn
SP Horacio Ramirez
SP White/Baek/Woods/Foppert/Whoever
RP Putz
RP Mateo
RP O’Flaherty
RP Lehr
RP Sherrill
RPx2 Woods/Baek/whoever
DH-L Broussard
C-R Kenji Johjima
1B-R Richie Sexson
2B-R Jose Lopez
SS-R Yuniesky Betancourt
3B-R Adrian Beltre
LF-L Raul Ibanez
CF-L Ichiro!
RF-R Jose Guillen
C: Johnson/Rivera/whoever
UT: WFB
UT: Morse
OF: Snelling
This squad overachieves if
All the good things they said about Ramirez turn out to be true, Broussard turns in a good season, Lopez is Lopez instead of the horrible hitter Hargrove turned him into, Johjima hits better in his second season, they get Snelling three or four starts a week somehow to get the bat in there, Guillen is healthy and productive. Betancourt turns in another good year with the bat, Sexson starts well and hits all season long. Ibanez defies age entirely for another year. That magical team wins 90 games. Hargrove quits to pursue another career during spring training.
They undershoot if
Ramirez is what everyone thinks he is, Snelling never plays, Lopez is the horrible hitter Hargrove wants him to be… you know this litany.
The year collapses if
Felix or Ichiro is injured for any significant amount of time.
Things that could yet help or hurt the team
– Whoever that last starter they throw money at turns out to be
– Whether Broussard is moved, and for what
– Whether Sexson is moved, and for what
– Whether spring training actually matters in determining spots
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Since Liriano’s out for the 2007 season (and God knows whether he’ll ever come back), let’s hope Felix doesn’tdo anything amazing “like Liriano last year”.
Wrss Fhccna is destined to become a fan favorite; I can feel it. He’s my darkhorse candidate for Cy Young.
Get on the Wrss Fhccna bandwagon now before it becomes full.
Wrss FhccnaMania! is coming to Seattle.
I don’t see how this team is worse than last year’s. Broussard/Whoever is better than Everett and Guillen/Snelling is better than Reed was. The rotation is pretty much the same or slightly better IMO.
ok, minus the injury part…
Wrss Fhccna … I hear he’s a distant cousin of Sidd Finch.
I heard that Wrss Fhccna ruptured his MCL while working out the other day (or maybe it invloved a suitcase – I’m not sure), and will undergo Tommy John surgery sometime next week.
I wasn’t concentrating apparently – must have been fatherhood and work or some other such distractions – but WHAT THE F**K happened to the John Thomson signing? A week ago I filed that in my head as a done deal; then with the not bad Guillen signing, and the rumours of flipping Sexson for something useful – things were looking pretty darn good.
One week, one terrible trade, one pointless trade and no good moves later and we’re looking at compounding our misery by locking up the future of the franchise in Jeff Scrub-pan?
Oh my God… tie that to the Washburn deal and the Mariners are going to spend the next five years beating no-one but the Royals.
In terms of playing time, it may be reasonable to think of it as a Broussard/WFB platoon (though WFB will obviously take the field when he plays).
I don’t suspect Snelling will get enough playing time to stay loose. Not good.
Can you win 83 games in the AL without a starting pitching staff? I’ll take the under (though even with Lopez and Betancourt’s anticipated struggles, the offense looks nice)
Didn’t they win 116 games in 2001 without one? 🙂
I tend to think that teams need to have periodic rebuilding years in which they trade off their veterans for prospects. This concept never seems to be mentioned on this site, so maybe it’s an old fashioned notion or something. Still, it seems like the past few seasons have shown that either it’s too hard to patch together a winning team from a team as bad as the Mariners, or else the Mariner’s front office just doesn’t have the skill to do it.
At this point, I’d love to see the M’s start moving veterans for minor league guys. Send Sexson to San Fransico, and offer to pay half his salary if necessary. There may even be a market for Washburn if Meche is considered an $11M pitcher. Heck, cash in Ichiro.
We’re going to suck next year, and I don’t see any convincing reason to think we’re not going to suck in 2008 and 2009. Adding the yearly Jose Guillen is not ever going to make us contend.
catching up woth yesterday, i think this about sums it up:
“This was one of the more miserable winter meetings I’ve ever been to,” Mariners GM Bill Bavasi said.
Geoff Baker shows again that he is not Finny in his winter meeting wrap-up and Edgar continues to utilize those business classes he took at American University…
Anyone see this article? I think it sums up a lot of the feelings being expressed around here, and made some good points.
Dude. Seriously, we talk about this all the time, and particularly how the M’s, armed with so much cash, can spend on higher-quality stopgaps during the down years to make rebuilding easier.
USS Mariner has oft espoused the virtues of the “Cleveland approach.”
“This was one of the more miserable winter meetings I’ve ever been to,†Mariners GM Bill Bavasi said.
This is classic. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant to be heckled right and left after making the worst one-sided trade off the off-season.
The Mariners seemed to have made the biggest splash at the Winter Meetings, though not exactly in a positive way….
The deal that got the most attention within the industry was Atlanta’s acquisition of Rafael Soriano from Seattle for Horacio Ramirez. “That was a great John Schuerholz deal,” said one general manager. “Unbelievable.”
Bill Bavasi, he’s craptastic!
Our bullpen went from awesome to okay. Is Mateo officially the new Bobby Ayala?
Trading Ibanez is a great idea, even if you can only get a mildly good prospect for him… If even that. Bavasi is too afraid at this point to do something so smart (I mean really Bill, it’s not that hard: Buy low, sell high. Friggin’ A!)
Also, I hate Wee Willie Bloomquist as much as the next M’s fan (or maybe it’s just me who hates him?), but I almost have sympathy after the way he was ripped into in that article. Sheesh.
A “dud organization”? As someone who grew up with Jack Perconte, Spike Owen, and Pete O’Brien among others, I feel right at home. If only they still had the Kingdome to play in. Safeco is a waste… Plus the voters voted against it. Right now my favorite Safeco moment was seeing Tommy Lasorda fall on his ass at the All-Star game. Heh, that was great.
M’s won’t have three lefties in the rotation or three in the bullpen.
O’Flaherty will start in AAA and will come up if and when Woods or Sherrill falter.
Huber or an acquired veteran replaces O’Flaherty on your roster.
And,don’t forget Lowe, who hopefully will be up by May, best case scenario, or the ASB (someone may have mentioned him already but obviously I didn’t read all comments up to this point).
Why should Bavasi show up. Last time he went to one, he offered some information under the agreement that people attending wouldn’t post it……..and, it was up on the web before he could get his car started.
Why should he bother?