Startling new trend in player-team relations
Players unhappy with team-assigned contracts providing less than players felt was deserved!
Tales from spring training
From the Seattle Times: The reason why Balentien and Ibanez were on the ground in the fifth inning in the outfield was indeed a swarm of bees buzzing around them.
“Hey, Raul!”
“Do I know you?”
“I’m Wlad. You know me, from last season?”
“I don’t want to know your name until you make the 25-man.”
“Last inning? No? You’re just going to stand there and chew tobacco. Okay, whatever. Too bad about Jones, huh Raul?”
“Whatever. You’re all just prospects to me– WAAUUUGGGHHH!!”
(Two bees cc-licensed by wolfpix)
Unintentional headline comedy
MLB.com: “Morse’s code for success is all positive”
Previously: “Morse suspended for positive drug test“
A.L. West Roundtable
I participated in a roundtable about the A.L. West in 2008 with Patrick Sullivan, Rich Lederer, and Sean Smith. It has been posted over at The Baseball Analysts website. Much to my chagrin, people quote ERA a bunch when talking about pitcher abilities, but beyond that, there’s some interesting stuff in there, even if I don’t agree with all of it.
M’s post media guide
Check it out, the 2008 Mariner Media Guide, chock full of bios, weird team history, and wacky tidbits.
Let us know if you come across anything particularly interesting.
Small graph for Sunday
I put this together after I realized that the 2003 M’s outfield included two of the franchise’s all-time putout leaders at their positions despite those players not getting full seasons.
Unless I messed up, this the total putouts by Mariner outfields since 2000:
Note, of course, that this doesn’t take into account whether the staff was made of groundballers/flyballers/gopherballers, and other stuff.
Update: check out this further exploration o’er at Lookout Landing
Mariner all-time putout and assist leaders
I realized in making a quip earlier this week about Ichiro’s base stealing that the information on who the M’s leaders in putouts and assists is not readily available. Caveat: in the database, outfielders frequently have their position listed as “OF” and since center fielders dominate defensive statistics, it’s hard to pick out left fielders particularly. I welcome corrections.
Neither of these are particularly great defensive statistics on their own, though they’re also not as worthless as you might have been led to believe — but I’ll leave that discussion for another day. So!
Mariner all-time putout leaders
| Player | Year | Putouts | Position |
| Dan Wilson | 1997 | 1050 | C |
| Alvin Davis | 1985 | 1438 | 1B |
| Harold Reynolds | 1991 | 348 | 2B |
| Alex Rodriguez | 1998 | 268 | SS |
| Bill Stein | 1977 | 146 | 3B |
| Randy Winn | 2003 | 299 | LF |
| Mike Cameron | 2003 | 485 | CF |
| Ichiro! | 2005 | 381 | RF |
A putout is an action that “causes the out of a batter-runner or runner”. Catchers rack up putouts for strikeouts, first basemen rack up putouts for catching balls thrown to them. Centerfielders get theirs the hard way.
Beltre owns spots 2-4.
Updated: 1999 Brian Hunter gets bumped by 2003 Randy Winn, who managed that line in only 134 games started in left (!).
Mariner all-time assist leaders
| Player | Year | Assists | Position |
| Dan Wilson | 1997 | 72 | C |
| John Olerud | 2000 | 133 | 1B |
| Harold Reynolds | 1987 | 507 | 2B |
| Omar Vizquel | 1993 | 475 | SS |
| Jim Presley | 1985 | 335 | 3B |
| Brian Hunter | 1999 | 14 | LF |
| Ken Griffey Jr. | 1998 | 11 | CF |
| Ichiro! | 2004 | 12 | RF |
A shortstop gets an assist for fielding a grounder and throwing to first (where the first basemen gets a putout). So the infielders get a ton of those, while outfielders have to really work for those.