Ibanez in left
If the org recognizes that Ibanez is terrible defensively, as some people like to argue (Baker particularly among the local press), why isn’t he in the DH mix to at least keep his aching legs marginally fresher, and particularly, why doesn’t the team send out defensive subs in late-inning situations where the game is close and he’s just batted? If they recognize that he’s a huge defensive liability out there, they haven’t taken any action on it all season.
They’re tanking
They’re sending Balentien down to see if he can play center after being bad defensively in right. To do so, they’re moving Ichiro back to right, creating a hole in center they’d fill with Reed, who is the only other player on the roster who can defend in center. But they’ve also been working him out at first, to replace Sexson, who they’ve turned from a three-outcome power threat into a taller, fitter clone of 2007 Vidro who still can’t play defense.
The roster spot opened up by sending Balentien down will be filled by Jeff Clement, one of the best hitters in the organization, sent down after a 50-PA trial didn’t work out (and replaced by the shorter and one year regressed designated hitter version of the singles-hitting first baseman). Clement is a catcher, but he can’t play catcher because the team already has two, one of which was just signed to a lucrative three-year extension and who hasn’t hit so far this year. They could play him at designated hitter, but that would displace the designated hitter they already have who isn’t hitting.
The could also solve the team’s outfield defense problem by putting the team’s outfield defense problem at designated hitter, so he needs to remain a designated hitter who stands in the outfield and lets balls drop around him and never gets a defensive sub.
A possible solution is to play Clement at catcher and move the recently-signed catcher to first, where they’re also thinking about playing the good defensive center fielder.
The M’s position players, for your amusement
DFA Vidro: DH
DFA Sexson: ?
2B Lopez: 2B
SS Betancourt: SS
3B Beltre: 3B
DH Ibanez: LF
CF/RF Ichiro: RF
UT Bloomquist: CF/UT
UT Cairo: UT
OF Reed: 1B/OF
C Johjima: C/1B
C Burke: C
There’s no rational explanation for what the M’s have done with their lineup this year, or their promotion decisions, their playing time decisions — and yet we all know they’re savvy baseball people who’ve been around the game forever. There must be a reason.
Stephen Strasburg
This is the best-executed plan we’ve seen from the Mariners since they bid for Ichiro.
Resume: Chris Antonetti
For those of you tuning in, wondering who that button over there is for and why you should care, I was going to write a long post laying out the resume of Chris Antonetti for the Mariners GM job. Then, I looked over the post I wrote a year and a half ago and realized that it’s all still true, so I’m copying and pasting, with minor edits and additions. If you missed it the first time around, here you go.
You may have noticed over on the left sidebar that there’s an image that looks an awful lot like a political button. In a sense, it is a political button, though for an election that isn’t run by democracy. Due to the way the offseason is unfolding, it is becoming apparent to us that, barring an unforseen miracle, the Mariners
aren’t going to beweren’t contenders in 2007. Even in a best case scenario, where the young core takes a step forward and the aging veterans stave off decline, this is still an inferior team to that of the Angels, Rangers, and Athletics.Given a public ultimatum to win or lose their jobs, the Mariners current baseball operations department will begin the year as underdogs, and it’s a distinction they’ve earned with moves like the Horacio Ramirez acquisition. Simpy put, this regime couldn’t afford to have a bad offseason following the Jarrod Washburn and Carl Everett debacles of last year, and while we have yet to see a disaster along the lines of those two signings, it’s fairly evident that the Mariners are not going to be able to sufficiently upgrade the team this winter in order to expect to challenge for the division crown next year.
So, we believe that a change in management is inevitable. While we will be the first to say that Bill Bavasi is a good person, and he’s been kind enough to spend time talking with us the past couple of years, we’re endorsing Chris Antonetti as his replacement. Like any good grass roots campaign, you can never start too soon, and this is a cause worthy of your support.
So, without further ado, an introduction to the man we hope is the next General Manager of the Seattle Mariners.
Who is Chris Antonetti?
He is currently the Vice President of Baseball Operations for the Cleveland Indians and the annointed successor to Mark Shapiro as the next Cleveland GM. He was Shapiro’s go to guy on contract negotiations and evaluative analysis before being promoted and given a large raise (now, he’s just Shapiro’s go to guy for everything), as well as spear-heading most of the initiatives to create new programs that give the Indians a competitive edge on their opponents. The Indians have been the leader in using technology to their advantage for years, and they’ve leveraged their intellectual knowledge of systems into a sustained advantage on the field. Antonetti has been the man responsible for overseeing these areas and pushing for their use throughout the organization. A lot of the things that make the Cleveland Indians the best run organization in baseball are in place due to the work of Chris Antonetti.
Why is he qualified to be a major league GM?
Antonetti is going to be labeled as a “Moneyball” executive by the media, as he did not play professional baseball and has advanced degrees from elite universities. He got a bachelors in business administration from Georgetown and a masters in sports management from Massachusets, learning the academic side of how to be a successful manager. From there, he took a low level job with the Montreal Expos in their minor league operations department before joining the Indians organization in 1999 as, essentially, an intern. From 1999 until now, he has worked his way from the title of Assistant, Baseball Operations to Assistant GM (a position he earned in 2002) to his current VP of Baseball Ops and has held numerous roles during that time. The Indians have had him work in both administrative and player development positions, and he’s spent thousands of hours working with both scouts and statistical analysts.
No one understands how to use both subjective scouting information and quantifiable statistical data together as well as the Indians (Okay, maybe the Rays have caught up), and Antonetti has been successful in both sides of the baseball operations department. Under the leadership of John Hart and now Mark Shapiro, the Indians have become baseball’s most well-oiled machine. Antonetti has been a vital cog in that machine for the past nine years.
What are his unique strengths?
Antonetti has many things going for him, but a few notable traits set him apart. He’s brilliant, without a doubt, but there a lot of people in baseball who are extremely smart, and most of them would make terrible general managers. The most important responsibility a General Manager holds is to gain the respect of those who work for him and motivate them to do good work. In this respect, Antonetti is set apart from other executives with an academic background. He commands the respect of his employees, but also exudes humility with his soft-spoken manner. While he has his own set of convictions about truths as they apply to baseball, he seeks input from a variety of sources and seeks to find knowledge wherever it may lie, whether with new statistical research or old scouting truisms.
Antonetti isn’t the most outgoing person on earth, and he’s not the charasmatic figure that Billy Beane or even Bill Bavasi is, but he combines respect, humility, and intelligence in a package that makes him one of the best leaders of people in baseball.
Why do you want him to be the next GM of the Mariners?
The Mariners are an organization in transition and are looking for an identity. During the Pat Gillick era, the team focused heavily on the present success of the major league club at the expense of the farm system, and while they experienced short term gains on the field, the price was paid during the Bill Bavasi era, where the major league club was sacrficed in an effort to replenish the organization with young talent, both through trades and amateur acquisitions, and then built up again in a terrible manner that resulted in disaster.
Chris Antonetti understands player valuation at the major league level extremely well, and has had a hand in many of the Indians numerous good acquisitions over the years. While the Indians have shared the Mariners strong desire to build through the farm system, they’ve also been able to acquire quality players in trades and on the free agent market to put around their home grown talent, allowing them to contend in a competitive division despite restraints on their payroll.
The Mariners need a better philosophy of major leauge player acquisition. They need to do a better job of selecting pitchers, getting away from ideas of value based on not-useful statistics such as W-L record and ERA and moving towards a more realistic understanding of how to project pitching ability. They need to stop collecting athletes with impressive skills and start collecting ballplayers who contribute runs on the field.
Most importantly, however, they need a philosophy that permeates the organization, from the parent club through the minor leagues. They need cohesiveness in what is being taught to their players as well as what is valued in terms of abilities. They need to establish a foundation to work from and a strong identity in what being a Seattle Mariner is all about.
The Indians have refined organizational cohesiveness, and while no one is perfect, they do it better than anyone.
Well, if he’s so great, then why does he need a grassroots campaign to get the job?
Chris Antonetti is 33-years-old, is unheard of by almost everyone who doesn’t cover baseball for a living, and has no experience as a professional ballplayer. In the eyes of most of the media, this will make him just another laptop-toting seamhead who focuses on what their computer tells them and has no respect for the establishment. For every Theo Epstein, who gained a modicum of respect after building a World Series champion, we see scathing rebukes written by local scribes when teams have hired guys with similar backgrounds, such as Paul DePodesta, Josh Byrnes, Jon Daniels, Andrew Friedman, or J.P. Ricciardi. In a city where Pat Gillick and his traditional ways are honored with the highest esteem, it’s going to be a very tough sell to get the Mariners to change directions and hire someone too young to be elected president.
He’s also strongly committed to the Indians organization. In the past several years, he has turned down the chance to run the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates, as well as declining to be interviewed for numerous other GM positions because of his satisfaction with his role in Cleveland. In order to keep him away from St. Louis, the Indians gave him a defined role of succession where he was essentially guaranteed the role of GM of the Indians when Mark Shapiro steps down. However, that timetable is still up in the air, and it is possible that if presented with an offer that is simply too good to walk away from, Antonetti would relinquish his role as GM-In-Waiting for a chance to run his own club. It is, at the minimum, worth having that conversation.
In a division where Arte Moreno is willing to spend lavish amounts of money to leverage the Los Angeles market, Oakland is taking their highly efficient development strategy to a new ballpark, and Tom Hicks’ huge dollars in Texas are now being managed by a team of executives led by Jon Daniels, the Mariners cannot afford to be behind the eight ball in terms of player evaluation.
The Mariners have the revenue streams and talent in place to build a contending baseball club. Chris Antonetti has the skills it takes to transform this club from a rebuilding process into perennial contender.
Antonetti in ’09. Spread the word.
The M’s travel schedule is a disadvantage
Our pitch to Antonetti
I’d like to encourage you to interview for the Mariner job, if you’re contacted. It’s a great gig, one of the best in baseball, and here’s why.
First, Seattle. It’s a great place to live. And unlike, say, New York, no one is going to throw rotten vegetables at you if they see you on the street after the team’s lost three in a row. No one even carries rotten vegetables around, that’s how nice people are. You can pick your neighborhood — and we’ll be happy to help you out with that — and you’ll be in walking distance of everything you might want. Our restaurants can go up against any other city in the country’s for quality, and the beer selection — if you haven’t been here, you’ll be shocked. We picket restaurants that don’t have at least two really good beers on tap.
I’ll let you in on a secret: the whole rain thing is something we spread to try and keep people from moving here. It’s a big conspiracy. The winters aren’t good, I’m not going to lie, but the summers are amazingly nice. Right now the sun is out, it’s seventy degrees with a little bit of a breeze, and it’s not too dry and it’s certainly not too muggy.
You get to enjoy perfect baseball days in a great baseball stadium all summer long. This is the place to be.
Second, you have a huge payroll to play with, and a lot of money coming off the books. If you want to go scrap-heap shopping next year, you can buy the scrap heap entirely. You can put out the best NRI package this off-season, pursue all your favorite minor league free agents and injury rehab picks. You can sign a new middle infield. Whatever way you want to go with the major league team, you’ve got the resources and flexibility to do it. You could to patch a winning team together next year, without having to wait out a long rebuilding cycle.
Third, the organization has a lot to support a new GM in rebuilding besides payroll: their international scouting organization is outstanding and has money to spend, the team has deep roots in Latin America and does well recruiting there, and while the amateur scouting side’s future may be uncertain right now, it’s made remarkable strides in the last few years.
Fourth, you don’t have to deal with the kind of media scrutiny you do in larger and east coast markets. We’ve got two papers in Seattle, though maybe not for long, a sports talk radio station that seems to be moving off local content, and that’s about it for media coverage of the team. National columnists pay about 10% as much attention to the Mariners compared to a comparable team on the other coast unless they’re contending.
And the print press here doesn’t include anyone who’ll be trying to sink knives into you from your first day. The beat reporters are high-quality, and the columnists include Art Thiel and Larry Stone. You’ll be able to explain what’s going on without having to worry about seeing twenty column inches misrepresenting you the next day, poisoning your relationship with the fan base.
Speaking of the fans, that’s five — look how many fans turn up now to see the worst team in baseball play another wretched team. They’re mad and disappointed, certainly, but they’re still coming out. The town wants to see the team succeed, and they’ve come out in droves when they’re competitive. The M’s have already avoided the kind of attendance drop the Indians saw, and given some realistic chance at hope — and again, next year’s a huge opportunity — they’ll be back cheering like crazy.
Moreover, there’s a huge contingent of smart fans here who know what you’re about and will be spreading the good word. The two biggest blogs, for instance (that’s us and Lookout Landing), have spent years trying to grow an educated, savvy fan base that can recognize good and bad moves, and debate moves reasonably (except Ichiro… don’t trade Ichiro, or think about trading Ichiro… trust me, all the guarantees are off in that case). You have, for want of a better analogy, a support network in place. If you want to talk about how you went after pitcher X because you thought they’d pitched better than their ERA and W-L record would indicate, people will be interested and listen. The groundwork’s been laid.
Which gets me to six — I don’t know what kind of technology the M’s have at their fingers, but they certainly don’t have the kind of stuff you’re used to in Cleveland. But you can build that, and fast. We’ve got thousands of readers who work at tech firms: when you start cranking that effort up, you will find yourself saturated in resumes from some of the best and brightest people out of an outstanding talent pool. I’ll help if you want. The only better place to try and start a project like this might be the Bay. The M’s are in a great position to be the smartest team about using technology to win in the major leagues within a few years.
Seven: we have Ichiro! You get to see Ichiro! play every day. You may have to just take our word on this: he’s unique and wonderful, and it’s a joy to get to see him at work.
Eight: the turnaround is not so hard. This team is worst in the league. You won’t have to do much in the second season to improve hugely, so you can look more than a year out. In a four-team division, even with the Angels and Athletics, getting a division title is reachable in the first few years. You’re not facing off against the Yankees and Red Sox, or even the Tigers and White Sox — though with the new A’s stadium, we’ll get there. But you only have to get past three teams to win a playoff berth. You can do that.
That’s the pitch: it’s a great city, it’s a great job, you’re set up for success, and we’d love to have you. Come on over.
Game 70, Marlins at Mariners
Andrew Miller (billed as “hard throwing” during in-game promos though his fastball is way off) versus Carlos Silva (who does not have a fastball). 7:10.
Same old tilt-a-whirl: Vidro is at #3, Beltre at #4, Ibanez at #5. Ichiro to right, Bloomquist starts in center.
We have a .219 no-power hitter in our #3 spot.
Bavasi firing press conference post
Lincoln faces a hopefully skeptical press corps! Live! 2pm our time!
“While we can identify no specific cause for what happened, and we’re all stumped as to why our hiring of Bavasi wasn’t an overwhelming success –”
“What’s that? Something’s going on offstage– OH MY GOD THAT’S YAMAUCHI’S MUSIC!!!“
Bavasi Fired
The M’s have fired General Manager Bill Bavasi. News conference shortly.
Lee Pelekoudas will take over as the interim GM and “a search for the new General Manager will begin immediately”. With as bad as this season has gone, it’s unlikely that they’ll promote anyone from within and try to call it change, so expect an outside hire. If Chris Antonetti isn’t on the potential interview list, we’ll burn Safeco to the ground.
And yes, with the new GM will come a new manager. McLaren’s being left in charge in order to not make the new GM feel obligated to keep around an interim GM in case the team starts winning immediately after Mac gets fired. The new guy will almost certainly bring in his own field staff.
Obviously, we’ve had our disagreements with Bill on roster construction and how to build a team, but as we’ve said repeatedly, he’s a really good person and it was our pleasure to host him at several USSM events in the past few years. I enjoyed all my conversations with him, and in the sense of having a good person to talk baseball with, I will miss him. But this is the right move for the organization.
When even Willie wants out, you know you’re in trouble
The second Kitsap Sun article in a day:
Willie Bloomquist says he can’t tell you why the Seattle Mariners are losing, but he can tell you why the Mariners might be losing his services after the season — if not sooner.
Bloomquist, the South Kitsap High School product who has spent his entire pro career in the Mariners organization, said he is considering a move to the National League after his one-year, $1 million contract expires at season’s end.