I want to cry
I was at a Christmas party when my phone started going nuts. “Goodbye Snelling” was the first message, then they started pouring in.
Needless to say, the rest of the party wasn’t quite as enjoyable.
There’s no other way to put this – I want to cry. This sucks.
WaPo report: M’s agree to trade Snelling, Fruto for Vidro
The Washington Nationals took a major step toward freeing room on their future payroll and breaking loose a logjam in the middle infield, agreeing to trade second baseman Jose Vidro — who has spent his entire career with the Montreal-Washington organization — to the Seattle Mariners for a pair of prospects that could contribute to the 2007 team, Vidro said in a telephone interview tonight.
The trade — which is pending a physical for Vidro, expected to take place Thursday
I guess we hope Vidro blows that physical like a horse in Enumclaw, because this is crazy.
Chris Snelling is a 25-year old corner outfielder with an injury history and a plus arm who hit .250/.360/.427. Based on his PECOTA projections, he’s one of the best hitting prospects in baseball. He was the third or fourth-best hitter on the team last year (performance, not taking playing time into account).
Fruto’s a 22-year old reliever. He’s a big boy. He’s got a ridiculous change and through his whole career in the minors he was as stingy giving up the home run as you could possibly hope for.
Jose Vidro is a 31-yr old second baseman who hit .289/.348/.395 for the Nationals last year.
Does this bode ill for Jose Lopez? It does.
Nearly as important for Washington, however, is that Seattle has agreed to pay $12 million of the remaining $16 million left on Vidro’s contract for 2007 and ’08.
You don’t take that on if he’s going to sit.
The Mariners have traded two players, one finally healthy and tearing the cover off the ball who can play right or left, and a still younger, cheap, effective reliever in order to acquire a 31-year old passable hitter who plays a position where team has another cheap, effective player (if Hargrove would just stop telling him to ground out over and over).
I’ve tried to come up with a justification for this, and I can’t. There must be another deal waiting, which makes this hard to justify in isolation: at least one of Broussard/Lopez/Sexson is going to be booted.
But this move hurts the team. More than just next season: Snelling and Fruto were both the kind of players who could be parts of the next Mariner championship team. Snelling in particular could be one of the best hitters on any team (if he stays healthy, of course), and he’s under team control for years for very little money. Jose Vidro’s a declining, increasingly immobile player on the wrong side of his peak who’ll be paid an immense amount of money. Vidro will not help the M’s win a pennant. If it comes to be, this will be one of the worst trades the team’s ever made, even if Snelling never plays another game and Fruto doesn’t throw another strike.
This is ridiculous garbage.
Update: Geoff Baker at the Seattle Times writes
Another offensive upgrade for the Mariners is to be finalized later this week when Jose Vidro joins the team as its full-time designated hitter.
No, but whatever.
“I think this is the best deal for me,” Vidro said in a telephone interview tonight from his home in Puerto Rico. “By me becoming the DH it will give me the chance to focus exclusively on my hitting and not have to worry about all that other stuff.”
So DH it is, which means the team’ll be paying him a ton of money to be a below-average DH. Broussard’s then the obvious next move.
Update: the hot rumor is that this also involved picking up Vidro’s 2009 option, which is a dingleberry topping on the shit frosting on today’s shit cake. Whee.
People smuggling case names Betancourt
Seattle Mariners shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt and the family of Chicago White Sox pitcher Jose Contreras were among the Cubans allegedly smuggled into the United States by an agent and others accused of immigration violations, federal prosecutors say.
Betancourt and another Cuban baseball player, Zaydel Beltran, were among a group of Cubans smuggled to the United States by boat on Dec. 4, 2003, and then driven to Los Angeles, according to documents filed this week in the case against agent Gustavo “Gus” Dominguez and five other defendants.
It gets weirder:
Betancourt was driven from Los Angeles to Mexico to obtain a visa to legitimize his entry into the United States but his Mexican passport was “determined to be fraudulent,” prosecutors said. He was arrested by Mexican authorities but later released and entered the U.S. again on Oct. 10, 2004, as a Cuban seeking asylum.
Some strange stuff afoot.
Wednesday’s random transaction news
Apologies, I thought I posted this this morning before I headed out but I got back and it never went up
Red Sox have reached an agreement with Matsuzaka
Astros dealt three for Jason Jennings and Miguel Asencio – Willy Taveras, Taylor Buchholz, and Jason Hirsch
Marcus Giles is a free agent. ESPN lists the other non-tenders
Don’t let the door hit ya’
Joel Pineiro is officially a free agent.
Future Hall of Fame denials
(I wrote this on commission for a different media outlet, but they sat on it until it wasn’t fresh. So, like day-old bakery goods, I present it slightly stale – but free – for your enjoyment)
At long last, Hall of Fame decisions look like they’re now based as much on suspicion and petty motives as merit. Finally! Every year, we have tiresome debates over who sports decide to honor. Was Bert Blyleven great, or just really good for a long time? Can one wide receiver be elected over another based on their performance in three playoff games? Can a great point guard make his team better in ways that don’t show up in the statistics and, if so, how should their contributions be considered in thinking about their worthiness for the Basketball Hall of Fame?
Boooooooooooooring. Let’s get to the juicy gossip, the personal axe-grinding, the knife in the back. And the sooner the better.
A survey conducted by the Associated Press found that of voters “one in four who gave an opinion plan to vote for McGwire this year.†McGwire’s being punished for not denying steroid use, like angry finger-pointer Rafael Palmeiro. For some, he’s being punished for admitting steroid use. And yet McGwire never failed a drug test, and the closest thing to evidence against him is Jose Caseco stories — and Canseco initially denied that a home run bounced off his head.
If suspicion and resentment can keep a 12-time All-Star from serious consideration in the Hall of Fame voting, what’s next? Here’s how future elections will play out for ten deserving Hall of Fame players.
The first election swayed by personal reasons not related to baseball’s drug problems comes in 2008, when all-time great Rickey Henderson is left off most ballots.
“Can’t Rickey write Rickey in his own Rickey self?†said one voter. “Oh man, that cracks me up.â€
“I don’t know, didn’t he say something dumb once?†another voter said. “He stole some base and said ‘Now Rickey be the greatest’ and pointed at Lou Brock in the stands, didn’t he?â€
“What?†a startled Henderson said when asked for comment. “I didn’t say that! Or do that! And Lou was there, I went over the speech with him! Where does this stuff come from?â€
Henderson is forced to hire a public relations firm, send out videos of the actual speech, and finally, accompanied by Lou Brock, visit each voter at their home or work to clear up common misperceptions using a 30m audiovisual presentation followed by a question-and-answer session.
“I could have sworn someone told me talked to himself or something,†a chastised voter said after his visit. “But he never referred to himself in the third person at all when he came over.â€
But steroids returned to the forefront in 2012, when despite having over 350 wins and nearly 5,000 career strikeouts, Roger Clemens is denied election. Anonymous voters say they never got over the suspicion raised when Clemens was named in the 2006 Jason Grimsley deposition, and combined with his surprising effectiveness into his forties, they felt his career was “fishyâ€, even though Grimsley’s charges were never substantiated and Clemens never failed a drug test.
A furious Clemens declared that at 49, he would make a comeback and prove, once and for all, that he isn’t human and doesn’t age. Though initially the subject of jokes, twelve teams tender him a contract. Clemens goes 15-3 with a 2.90 ERA, wins the National League Cy Young Award and is named the Comeback Player of the Year. Clemens, still simmering, retires again and in 2018 a still-terrified electorate votes unanimously to induct Clemens, and asks if he would please stop glaring at them.
Ron Artest, meanwhile, surprised analysts when he cruised into the NBA Hall of Fame. Voters expressed sympathy with his anti-fan actions. “I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to charge through the phone and strangle some reader who calls me up to tell me I’m a moron,†a West Coast beat writer said. “I don’t even care that he went after an innocent fan. They’re not that innocent. Good for him. Put a little fear into the rabble. Oh, I’m sure they’re going to yell at me, tell me Artest wasn’t good enough to vote for, and I’ll stand there and imagine him charging after them in the stands… yeah, that’s nice.â€
The next year, things got even stranger. Greg Maddux doesn’t just miss induction despite his stellar career, but almost drops out of consideration entirely when unsourced reports circulate before 2014 balloting alleging that he doctored balls using brother Mike’s moustache wax during the early 1990s.
Retired center Shaquille O’Neal is lambasted by the press and voters alike when, only a month before balloting, he scores an even 400 points, collects 92 rebounds and blocks 87 shots in an interdepartmental charity police basketball game between Shaq’s own Miami Beach and neighboring Fort Lauderdale. “There was no need to run up the score so badly,†one voter said. “That’s just showboating, and disgraces our sport.â€
Shaq was placed on administrative leave by his department for use of excessive force in both his rejections and dunks, but returned to active duty within a few weeks and was elected a year later when the incident was covered up.
Brett Favre fails to be elected to the Hall of Fame the same year when voters, confused by his Prilosec ads, ask their doctors if voting for Brett Favre is right for them.
Then in 2014, Ray Lewis is elected to Canton in his second year of eligibility. “Lewis was a dominant linebacker and won a Super Bowl,†a voter said. “Sure, he was charged with murder in 2000, but he only pled guilty to obstruction of justice. It’d be different if we thought he’d killed someone but we didn’t have any evidence. Then there’s no way I’d vote for him.â€
Skip ahead to the strangeness of 2020. Tom Brady is denied election after a voters’ cousin’s uncle complains that he didn’t get the outstanding service Brady was claimed he’d receive at a Boston-area car dealership. Brady offers to reimburse anyone who had a bad experience at a car dealership he did any kind of commercial for, and ends up having to hock his Super Bowl rings when angry Chevy owners sue him because their trucks played a loop of “My Country†continually and could not turned off or even muted, making them unsellable. In his induction speech at Canton, Brady makes a point to curse out both Chevy and John Mellancamp over his newfound poverty.
Peyton Manning, meanwhile, is also rejected the same year despite his long record of regular season success. Rumors circulate that the constant exposure to initially amusing commercials that through repetition quickly turned into grating, unbearable torture so annoyed voters that they were willing to overlook his impressive career achievements in order to get him back. .
Tim Duncan is turned away from the basketball Hall of Fame. A survey of voters indicates that they found the center “too clean†to the point of suspicion. “Guys like that, quiet, kind, never attracts a lot of attention, they all turn out to be serial killers or something,†one voter said. “Duncan’s hiding something, I can feel it.â€
“If that’s how people feel, that’s how they feel,†Duncan said at an impromptu press conference at his home, before stabbing 14 reporters to death with a pen. “I just played the best I could and hoped that I’d be recognized for my accomplishments.â€
Duncan is elected next year by surviving voters, reassured that now they know the whole story.
But the most dramatic incident of all will come in 2025, when Albert Pujols misses election to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot when it’s revealed that he consistently voted for gray-and-white kittens on Kittenwar.com over other kinds of adorable kittens. His ugly prejudice revealed, Pujols issues a public apology in which he admits that while he holds a special place in his heart for grey and white kittens, he loves kittens and puppies of all colors and breeds. The voters say “Awww,†in unison and elect him with an extra-fuzzy 150% of the vote the next year.
Oh, you may think I’m joking. But is this any more laughable than the Judge Dredd imitation the baseball voters are already doing with real ballots, real players, and the wisps of suspicion and doubt?
Pretty boring Tuesday
The Red Sox and Boras/Matsuzaka are sparring
Jeff Bagwell might retire today
Rangers get Gagne for a year
Today’s when the M’s will offer arb to arb-eligible players. So we’ll see if Pineiro gets an offer and heck, Broussard for that matter.
[Updated to clip my bafflement at weird ways people use RSS feeds, which ends up looking a lot like plagiarism, which we know too well).]
Lack of learning, looming losses lead to Lincoln layoff?
Superreader msb emailed us this morning and I’ve been pondering this all day:
If we go back to Thiel’s offseason piece, and pretend Lincoln is also on the hot seat (“”The entire organization, and especially me, is on the hot seat,” he said in an interview at his stadium office. “I thought long and hard about continuing with Bill and Mike. I’m putting my neck out on the line because I believe in them. I’ve made it clear to the ownership group that, having made the decision, I’m fully responsible for it.”) who do we want to come in as CEO so that they can hire Chris Antonetti for us?
I don’t know. I’ve felt for a long time that Bavasi was the best GM Lincoln might hire (and I mean that in the nicest way to Bavasi possible), and that in a lot of ways, we’ve been lucky to get him, because the organization as a whole is a lot better off today than it was a couple years ago. But what about that question?
I’ll start with some overly broad generalizations. There are members of the M’s ownership group that are smart, tech-industry people we’d like to think would be more saavy ownership stewards, more open to a pitch for Antonetti, or Ng, or any of the half-dozen interesting GM candidates who aren’t retreads and might bring something really interesting to the team and help it build sustainable, competitive teams that are both profitable and win pennants.
There are also members of the M’s ownership group who are more retail-oriented, and we might think they’d look at the team on the field as product (we want to sell a high-quality product, so we need to have a high-quality team). Buuuut they might also do exactly what drives us, as the hardest of hard-core fans, insane: marketing over substance, a constant drive to identify, brand, and sell players to us, and the same kind of brand-over-results thinking that gets Bloomquist pointless extensions.
What about Nintendo, though? They’re the majority owners, and we can reasonably assume they’ll control any replacement for Lincoln if they finally sack him. Superreader Aditya Sood (two superreaders in one article) sent us this:
This James Surowiecki article from the New Yorker is an interesting analysis of Nintendo’s current mindset in the gaming world–and actually also speaks volumes about their philosophy to the baseball world as well.
The bottom line is what is good for the one (the Wii) is dreadful for the other (your 2004-2006 Seattle Mariners!)
What is interesting though, is that the Wii’s development and execution indicates a willingness to embrace out of the box thinking and a refreshing strategy for success which seems like it supports the Billy Beane/Moneyball model. So basically the Mariners are the GameCube in the Wii world. Or maybe it’s more like the Virtual Boy.
(Another, possibly unrelated side note. Nintendo didn’t embrace the Wii mindset until AFTER Howard Lincoln stepped down from the day to day oversight of the company–to focus on the Mariners.)
It’s a particularly interesting point. Nintendo’s Wii, at least this holiday season, beaten up on the higher-powered Xbox 360 and PS3 in both raw sales and to an even greater extent, media love, despite having far inferior technical specs. In the past, each generation of consoles has been a huge step forward in raw power, and here we see the Wii essentially opt out of it in favor of a cheaper, wackier system that attempts to appeal to an underserved demographic.
(Blantant suck-up: We would love to evaluate the relative merits of these systems here at USSM Labs. Please contact us.)
Would they, as Sood suggests, put that to work in choosing a Lincoln replacement? Someone willing to spend in strange directions that might help the team escape ever-escalating free agent competition? Or does being owned by a company whose fortunes are not directly tied to the team mean that they’re likely to act conservatively to protect the team’s profitability and value? That suggests that Lincoln would, if replaced at all, be succeeded by a different face of the same philosophy.
Miguel Batista
Ken Rosenthal reports that, barring a last minute change, the Mariners are expected to sign Miguel Batista to a deal expected to be for more than 3 years and $24 million.
This one is tough for me. I like Miguel Batista as a pitcher. I lobbied for the M’s to sign him several years ago, and he’s consistently underrated. He’s better than most of the guys who were on the market this winter. If you had forced me to sign free agent starting pitchers this winter, he’d have been near the top of the list of guys I would have gone after.
But context is also important, and in the case of the roster the Mariners have built, Miguel Batista is not what this team needs. He’s a durable guy that turns 36 in February who keeps the ball in the yard and won’t get you blown out of ballgames, but he doesn’t miss bats and has mediocre command. That package makes him a #4 starter on a team with a good rotation, but now, he’s the Mariners #2 starter. A three year contract would wrap him up through his age 38 season.
If the Batista signing comes through, the rotation will be Felix and four guys who profile as back of the rotation arms. They’ll be paying in excess of $20 million for Jarrod Washburn, Miguel Batista, and Horacio Ramirez. That’s just poor roster construction, and the opportunity cost is just as large as the salary.
The M’s had a great opportunity to pick up undervalued pitching this winter. John Thomson, Rodrigo Lopez, and Angel Guzman could have provided the M’s with 90% of what they’ll get from Batista, Ramirez, and Baek and done so for 25% of the cost.
After a promising start to the offseason, with the Guillen signing, the avoidance of the crazy contracts being given out to bad pitchers, and the rumors of a John Thomson deal, this winter has gone to hell in a handbasket. And it only took about four days.
Antonetti in ’08.
Sportsline: Put a Hit on Boom-Boom
Larry Dobrow has an article up at Sportsline taking stock of the Mariners.
There’s a lot of advice to the M’s here, some good, some asinine, but it’s a well-written piece that gets off a few hilarious lines. Take suggestion five, for example:
5. Purchase a subscription to Soldier of Fortune and see if there’s a heavily armed go-getter willing to take care of Bloomquist once and for all. There’s no greater indictment of Bavasi, Mike Hargrove and the Seattle brainiacs than that they remain willing (as evidenced by the recently extended contract) to sacrifice 200 outs at the altar of Bloomquist and his ghastly bat. Short of the entire active roster oversleeping and missing the bus to the stadium, he shouldn’t be on the field. Ever.
If that isn’t enough to justify a leisurely Sunday read, well, it’s a good thing it’ll be Monday here in Japan in four short hours.