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Twittah
Tampa chooses to fill their roster holes with scrubs rather than rushing prospects. With their payroll, there’s no such thing as the FA stopgap.
Oh, and I think they will finish above 500 this year.
Bavasi acquired Vidro to get on base at a decent rate, to limit strikeouts, and to avoid a platoon split, not to hit for power. As long as Vidro continues to meet those low expectations (for a DH, anyway), he is not going anywhere (at least until the offseason, when a new GM might change the expectations for the DH).
100 – The Rays will be competitive once a few more Kazmirs plummet from the heavens and onto their roster. They had the chance to deal Baldelli for a mint this past offseason, before the glut of FA CF’s hit the market in 2008. They missed the boat. His contract is still appealing but his hamstrings are not.
w/r/t Nintendo of America and voting power residing in its former direct owner: I think there’s a pretty huge difference even if you grant (and I haven’t found evidence that this is indeed the case) that he continues to have voting control over NCL decisions, or that he’s now the owner-by-proxy, there’s a huge difference in the decision for someone to sell a team they own and a traded stock.
Or, to put this another way: Nintendo of America is the nominal owner of the majority of shares in the Baseball Club of Seattle, and beyond that, I don’t think anyone’s untangled who controls what, and what that means, and until that’s done, I don’t think repeating that the owner of the team is not NoA but a 70-year old guy who never sees game presents an accurate or useful picture of the actual situation.
Vidro: 9 XBH’s and 10 GIDP’s. That’s dog crap. And so what if he walks more than he strikes out? He has a whopping 19 walks, which is 4 less than Jack Cust has amassed in just 35% of the PA’s. There really is no excuse for using Vidro and his .710 OPS as a DH.
I think if you factor in the home park, Vidro gets a little more credit, but the point stands that he is a well below average DH.
106: And that’s with an unsustainably high infield hit rate.
Vidro is not a problem. The Mariners are on a path to win maybe 87 games this year–continuing an upward trend for the Bavasi era and for the long-term history of the team. The huge disappointments this year to date are Ibanez and Sexton. If they can recover a bit of their lost youth the rest of this season, the Mariners will have a shot at the 90+ wins they will need to take the division. If not, the Mariners are headed for 3rd place.
I wonder if the Mariners even have a standardized, empirical way of evaluating hitting ability, aside from observational stuff such as “Everett has left handed sock, or Vidro is a veteran switch hitter who makes solid contact, doesn’t strike out and is a career .300 hitter.” Do they understand the difference between being an average to below average hitter, and a horrible DH?
I bet the correlation between people who can’t spell Sexson and who think Vidro is good is probably 1.00.
Of course, those people will also have no idea what that sentence means.
Other problems don’t make Vidro any more or less of a problem. Vidro is a problem because they could probably scour all of professional baseball (or just try Broussard) and find someone who can post an OPS 100 points higher than Vidro, substantially improving our run output and buying a couple of extra wins.
Also, isn’t a non-Ichiro, no-power, no-speed guy not supposed to be able to sustain a .300 average?
Said it once, will say it again:
Carl Everett, May 30, 2006: .259/.340/.411, .711 OPS
Jose Vidro, May 30, 2007: .300/.357/.369, .726 OPS
Just as I wasn’t convinced Carl Everett wasn’t a big pile of suck last year, I’m not convinced about Vidro this year (and Vidro is grounding into a huge number of DPs). If Vidro is posting .300/.360/.370 numbers at the END of the year, maybe he’ll just be mediocre to bad, but I suspect the numbers at the end of the year won’t be this good.
#10 – no, not really, not at all. The number of teams you are competing against is completely different.
Oh, and Vidro by month:
April: .318/.356/.400
May: .285/.353/.341
Vidro’s CAREER splits show him to be a better first-half hitter, BTW.
Anyone want to start a pool on when the M’s send him to the DL with a suspicious injury, and what it will be? I’ll take July 2nd, and tendinitis.
You can’t expect Cleveland, Detroit or IMHO Minnesota to finish with a worse record than the M’s. Oakland, maybe, at at least within our own division we have more of a direct impact as we play these teams more.
(It’s already been said, but…)
Vidro is definitely a problem. His level of production could have been achieved in any number of ways for free. A platoon of Broussard and (insert any name here) could have done the same or better with the added bonus of having an extra defender on the bench. Instead, the Mariners are stuck with Vidro and his slappy bat through 2008 for $8 million instead of something more productive and more useful for between $450,000 and $1.25.
Ibanez 284/335/383, 717 OPS, $5.5 million salary
Vidro 292/349/361, 710 OPS, $6 million salary (M’s share)
How exactly is Ibanez the problem, while “Vidro is not a problem”?
You can’t expect Cleveland, Detroit or IMHO Minnesota to finish with a worse record than the M’s. Oakland, maybe, at at least within our own division we have more of a direct impact as we play these teams more.
Right, except we don’t know the future. I don’t see why we can’t play some games out before we start throwing dirt on the team’s grave for 2007. Being over .500 and even marginally in a race sure as hell beats talking about which veteran gets traded in the next 2 months, which is what June and July were all about in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
As positioning goes, the schedule doesn’t look too bad up until the Red Sox series at the end of the month- and at least we get it at home. I think if we pick up 2-3 games on .500 for the rest of month we will be doing fine. That’ll be my gauge as to whether or not the team has a shot- getting to the halfway point significantly over .500.
Also, Ibanez is still playing through pain in his shoulder, at least according to Rizzs. As for Vidro, the only physical malady he deals with on a day-to-day basis is the 2.5 layers of chub that adorn his neckless body.
#113, if you’re talking true talent, I think that’s probably the case (there may be occasional exceptions historically). On a per season basis it happens sometimes. Most guys who hit low power, high average are SS, 2B, CF, or are LF/RF who are known to be fast, so yeah.
If you’re looking for other bright spots in a playoff sense, the M’s have 5 games in hand on the Angels, 3 on Detroit and 2 on Minny.
I’m guessing it’s better to be further behind in the wins column than the losses column.
I think the official misspelling should be “Sextant”, since it’s the Mariners and all…
*dives for cover*
Boy…I LOVE watching the Yankees on ESPN…AGAIN – not.
Argh. I mean, how could you go wrong with John Phelps at 1B now that Giambi and Mientkiewicz are out for at least 6 weeks.
I’m not sure which is worse, the nautical pun or the “dives for cover” device.
122 – And those types typically contribute above average defense at a premium defensive position, exluding the small-market teams of course. Unfortunately, Vidro plays no defense whatsoever for a mid-market team with an aggressive budget. It’s rediculous.
Alright. I need to stop now. This is same aggravating conversation we (all of us I’m sure) have on my couch every time Vidro shuffles to the plate to flail away with that wet newspaper of his.
Ryan sent down, Reitsma activated, Weaver activated and set to pitch saturday.
We like you Ryan, but in order to have any chance, we have zero margin for error, and we like our chances better with Weaver going forward.
and does then to dismiss the others (Christopher Larson, John Ellis, Frank Shrontz, Wayne Perry, Craig Watjen, John Bauer, Carl Stork, Judith Bigelow, Raymond “Buck†Ferguson, Rob Glaser, Jeff Raikes, Bill Marklyn, John Stanton, Rufus Lumry) as irrelevent
tend, not then.
First post. Hasn’t the Mariners management gotten the memo that Weaver is awful? Oh wait — they feel like they owe Weaver another shot because of his huge contract. I bet this guy gets second chances the entire season b/c of that $8+ mil.
Considering all the Vidro talk in this game thread, you just know Vidro is going to have a huge game tonight.
As far as Tampa goes (who may be just the “Rays” by next year), and since we’re on the topic of ownership: don’t forget their controlling owner changed last year. He’s shaken things up quite a bit in ways small (letting people bring their own food into Tropicana) and large (firing most of the front office). They’ve spent millions trying to upgrade that concrete blister they play in, so I imagine they’ll be willing to spend more on players too — though with the farm they have, they may not have to. And they have the first draft pick this year, too.
Which brings me to this question for Dave: is David Price, pride of Vanderbilt, all he’s cracked up to be? If he had been in the draft last year, where would you have ranked him?
Ryan sent down, Reitsma activated, Weaver activated and set to pitch saturday.
I read that and my head started hurting. How can you activate that much veteran pitching suck at once?
#133. Vidro is sitting again.
lets see.
Weaver
refuses to godiscusses going on a rehab assignment; they decide he doesn’t have to go.Weaver pitches simulated game, claims all went swimmingly. Rumors fly that his velocity and control was just the same as before he “was injured”.
Mariners return him to the rotation.
possibly a case of ‘give him enough rope’?
Umm, Derek, this is quite common in business, particularly for estate planning.
One, who owns Ninetendo of America? Nintendo Japan. Whos is the most influential person within Nintendo? Yamauchi. By stock ownership, he owns a fraction of Nintendo stock, but major decisions flow from his decisions.
Second. How do business decisions get made in this country? Take for example, real estate development. Almost all the titular owners of downtown properties and development properties are in names of LLPs and businesses. The people who wield power and made decisions are, on paper, fractional owners—but they wield the power because they set up the partnerships that way.
Third, functionally, the team is acting as if the power is residing in Yamauchi, and not in other corporate personnel or organizational.
I’m not sure why you’re quibbling on this point; I’ve seen enough other business transactions occur where this happened, where an owner transfers paper ownership to a corporate entity for estate purposes (you do agree that Yamauchi is old enough where this is a consideration? And that it would simplify things if ownership was assigned to a business entity and not an individual?). Given that, I think you have to bring more evidence to the table that there is a functional difference here–it would be inaccurate and misleading to overemphasize that ownership now resides in a business entity and not an individual.
That would depend on the structuring of the partnerships, of course. With respect to a sale, I’d be surprised if there WASN’T a right of first refusal among the minority owners.
Given the way the tech boom went in the 1990s, the worth of people like Larson, Perry, Raikes, Glaser, Stanton, etc. are much higher now then when they bought the team—the Nintendo money may have been the big chunk of change needed then, but I almost think its an afterthought now, compared to the McCaw, Real, Microsoft and Western Wireless money.
Should be a fun game to watch tonight.
M’s have a bottom third of the lineup as Betancourt, Bloomquist, and Ellison.
Ichiro is DHing, Bloomquist at 3B with Beltre still ailing. Vidro not in the line-up.
Two of the top AL pitchers and two boom or bust offenses. My, oh my.
I don’t think this is quibbling at all. Who owns and controls the team are important questions and distinctions, and I don’t think that they necc. carry the same implications.
So let me digress for a second to hopefully better express what I mean. (Hypothetically, of course) I’ve worked for company Q. The largest, but not majority, stockholder was Bob. Bob owned 29% of the company but for all intents and purposes controlled it. He was chairman of the board, blah blah blah blah.
Bob and the rest of the board decided to spin the company I worked for off. Bob could not make that decision by himself, despite being the chairman and and wielding enormous influence: he had to go to the board, lobby, cajole, do a roadshow for investment banks and whoever, and then it came up to a vote of shareholders.
The deal had to be structured in a way that it would meet the muster of everyone, and get a fair market price or else he’d be buried in lawsuits that he didn’t do his fiduciary duty to other shareholders, etc.
If Bob had owned my subsidiary company whole, or even owned a controlling interest, he could have done whatever he wanted with it. Fire us all, whatever.
There’s a vast difference there. If Bob owned my company on the side, and then in a private equity deal sold it to his conglomerate, the company is no longer his to deal with at a whim in the same way it was.
That’s my question here: he doesn’t personally own the team any more. Whether or not he personally finds running the team a waste of his time is much less important: the NCL board that told him to act as Lincoln’s boss could just as easily give that job to someone else and continue to own the team.
And if he wanted NoA to get out of the baseball business entirely, I have no doubt that, like Bob, he could bring that up and steer that movement.
But could he just do it? I think the answer to that question is dramatically different than it was before the transfer, and that’s why I think the issue of characterizing the team as being owned by “a 70-year old guy who never goes to games” is at best simplistic.
keiretsu
Google it, read about it. Understand it and understand the way business works in Japan. Understand why Mr. Yamauchi got us Ichiro and Jojhima and passed on Dice-k. The winning negotiating price for Ichiro was set by the team that is a part of Mr. Yamauchi’s keiratsu. Dice-K was owned by another team in another keirestsu…no bid.
A keiratsu is a weird Japanese hybrid of the old school tie and loyalty to companies that do business with you. The antitrust laws in the US discourage this behavior as some laws do in Jaqpan, there are six main keieretsus in Japan which involve 5400 companies, including Nintendo. Mr. Yamauchi is very much in control of this team with respect to Asian players. (Many Japanese keirestu’s are also in South Korea).
Addendum:
Elders are revered in keiretsu’s and they are the guys who made the deals, introductions, bribes, etc..
They rule until they are buried or senile. The “Board of Directors” ain’t the same here as there.
Any chance these Angels start to fizzle anytime soon? They’re really handing the Twins their asses tonight.
Vidro comes through.
As much as I still hate the trade, as much as I still know Vidro’s replacement level, I gotta give him his due.
Yay Jose!
I am NOT as certain that the answer is that different. The possibility (and in my view the probability) that this was done for estate purposes changes much of the reasoning here. The idea behind estate planning is to reduce taxes, reduce paperwork while retaining control. This was not a deal to generate money, as in your example–this is a matter of inheritance. And you better believe that if it’s a matter of inheritance, there’s not going to be a difference in control and ownership.