USSM Year-end Best-of: June 2006
6-2: Dave’s draft preview.
6-5: Dave does “Good News, Bad News”
6-6: I’m all excited about draft day.
6-7: “Why not Miller?” Dave explains the politics of the draft and how it led to the Mariners passing up Andrew Miller.
6-7: The wider view of the draft and economics. “Level the field, let them play.”
6-20: In “Abandoning the catch-up” I argued the small chance at division contention then wasn’t not worth sacrificing long-term success
6-22: Dave, basking in the happiness of brief success – “This is fun”
This still isn’t a great team. They have some major flaws, and while this season may not end with a championship parade, they’ve made a huge step forward – it’s no longer painful to be a Mariner fan.
Hooray for hope.
6-29 So what now? Dave’s plan to keep the team in contention from the season’s midpoint.
6-30: Dave reflects on the A’s vulnerabilities and the strange perception that they were the best team in baseball.
Bonus for the masochistic: totally unsupervised comment threads for Games 59 and 60
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15 Responses to “USSM Year-end Best-of: June 2006”
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Man, sometimes I miss thebig708. That guy was awesome.
Unshockingly, I’m so self-centered that I occasionally miss myself.
Where have you gone, thebig708? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
you gotta admit that Dave’s article about the M’s being better than the A’s was just a tad funny. You can’t really judge a team when so many of its players are on the DL.
You certainly had a point about the preseason hype being overdone, but at exactly no point last year were the M’s even in the same stratosphere as Oakland. Look no further than the head to head matchups for proof of that.
There were points in the season where the difference in RS/RA was ten runs. That’s neck-and-neck.
so at one point in the season, the Mariners were almost as good as the Rivercats?
“There’s no reason to be afraid of the A’s. The Mariners are a better team”
You were right once again, Dave. Just like you were right when you said Huston Street would fail as a major league closer.
Who could have predicted the A’s would be a better team in the second half of the season than in the first half. Oh wait that happens every year.
Actually, I think you said as a major leaguer all together, not specifically that he wouldn’t cut it as a closer.
When did Dave say that? He put Street 18th on the AL West trade value list, mentioned him positively in the context of the A’s bullpen, and had him in the “Franchise players” list as the RH setup man, and a year ago mentioned him as one of a group of good players waiting to get a chance in an excellent A’s bullpen back in 2004.
Also… does it matter? It’s all in good fun.
AL West trade value list and “a year ago” were both after his earlier comments.
Yeah, it’s all in good fun, does any of it matter? Does your response matter? Do your angry posts about Bavasi’s latest bonehead trade matter? Does baseball matter?
It was during a thread on Sickels’ new site shortly after it launched. He was exposed when he claimed to have either scouted Street himself or “his friends” had done so, but didn’t know Street’s repertoire or his velocity (his velocity dropped due to a groin injury), so it was clear that the only “scouting” that was done was to watch the CWS, even though countless posters were informing him of the reasons for the drop in velocity.
Additionally, in the very same thread, he tried to claim that Rich Harden was simply not a good pitcher.
It wasn’t the best of threads for ol’ Dave, who didn’t exactly show himself to be a knowledgeable baseball guy. He did show himself to be arrogant and a bully to those with whom he disagreed. The fact that he was ultimately beyond wrong on both guys is awfully funny.
The article he posted on the A’s not being as good as the M’s was just an embarrassment to baseball writing. Sad, sad article.
Minor League Ball?
So, first off, I’m skeptical. I know people have problems with Dave’s tone, and I’m not really going to argue about that, but I’ve known Dave for years, and I’ll immediately attest to:
– Dave sees more minor league baseball than anyone I know
– Dave knows more scouts and MLB player development people than anyone I know
He doesn’t make this stuff up. That doesn’t mean he’s not wrong, but if you’re going to tell me that he was lying about something, well, I haven’t seen any evidence ever that he’s made something up. I don’t know what else to tell you.
Now, you can take my word at whatever value you want. I’m obviously on good terms with him, he’s a co-author, I like him. I’ll be disappointed if you’re unwilling to take my word for it, but to some extent I’m willing to accept that as an Oakland fan, you’re probably going to look at me and suspect I’m biased too (and so forth).
I disagree with Dave on a lot of players, sometimes vehemently. But I don’t think I’ve ever had an argument with him where I came out and thought “that was a really crappy argument on his part”. I usually, if I’m not persuaded, at least think “those are interesting arguments that I should consider.”
So if all that helps, and you’re willing to trust me, great. It would be helpful.
In the Harden stuff, I’ve read the arguments, and before 2005 Dave was arguing that Harden’s 2004 performance was due in part to luck he didn’t see repeating and that he was concerned about throwing the slider for strikes.
(looking it up — yeah, I think this is the thread you’re referring to)
I don’t see him saying what you think he’s saying. Skepticism and argumentation about how GB/FB predicts homer rate, and what that might mean, isn’t the same thing as saying Harden sucks.
Really. There’s an argument about whether his improvement’s real, some reasons why it might not be, and Dave’s preference for Beckett over Harden at that point. I don’t see the incompetence or… whatever you’re seeing.
I also, on a general note, don’t understand why anyone gets so hostile about this stuff. Prospecting’s an imperfect science. You use the best tools you have, make the best evaluation you can, and you’re still going to be wrong a lot. That doesn’t make you a good person or a bad person, any more than the ability to hit .300 makes someone better than someone who hits .290.
But that’s beside the point. I think if you read Dave’s arguments there, they’re not at all unreasonable, and they certainly don’t say that Harden’s “simply not a good pitcher”.
i assume you’re not responding to me.
personally, i think this is a very good blog, as is lookout landing. obviously you’re all m’s fans and therefore somewhat biased, but so is everyone else.
i can’t speak for this other a’s fan, but i was just pointing out a couple of specific comments dave has made: “There’s no reason to be afraid of the A’s. The Mariners are a better team” and the Street comments.
note i didn’t mention the harden stuff, because even though i disagree with “Beckett in a landslide”, he made some valid points.
i do agree with this other person that the m’s better than the a’s thing was a bit of an embarrassment. teams have ups and downs throughout the year, and it looked somewhat close at the time, so we get that post from dave. that’s something i expect from mainstream sportswriters, like when the rockies are doing well in june or the nationals are in first place at some random point in the season.
also note that is different from being critical of “the strange perception that they were the best team in baseball” which is how you described his post above.
one more thing: david’s “al west trade values” were a bit odd, with the silliest part being jose lopez at #9.
http://ussmariner.com/2006/07/20/al-west-trade-value/