No MLB Games? Go To Everett

Dave · July 14, 2008 at 1:10 pm · Filed Under Mariners 

So, because Major League Baseball thinks it’s a great idea to give us four days without a Mariner game (seriously, four days? Come on.), and because the all-star game and its festivities are boring and generally meaningless, we’d like to remind you that you can still see some actual real baseball this week, as the Everett Aquasox host the Eugene Emeralds up at Everett Memorial Stadium tonight.

Walter Suriel takes the mound tonight, and that should mean you’ll get to see some run scoring. No worry about a pitcher’s duel there. On a brighter note, however, the Aquasox actually have a couple of real hitters, led by second round pick Dennis Raben, who has destroyed the ball since signing with the Mariners. He’s the guy in the line-up you’ll want to watch.

The Aquasox are home through Wednesday, so you have three days to head up north and catch some real NWL action. Don’t miss out.

Comments

38 Responses to “No MLB Games? Go To Everett”

  1. msb on July 14th, 2008 1:19 pm

    coincidently, the Herald has a piece about Raben today

  2. vj on July 14th, 2008 1:28 pm

    Is Suriel pronounced “surreal”?

  3. scott19 on July 14th, 2008 1:30 pm

    I’m kinda wondering when Suriel will get called up by the M’s…I know it’s A-League and all, but his numbers aren’t much worse than Silva’s or Batista’s.

  4. joser on July 14th, 2008 1:35 pm

    Was Ichiro in last year’s ASG boring and generally meaningless? Dude won an SUV!

  5. JH on July 14th, 2008 1:46 pm

    2. No. He’s Dominican, and vowel sounds never change in Spanish. Suriel is pronounced sur-eee-el.

  6. Evan on July 14th, 2008 1:52 pm

    vowel sounds never change in Spanish.

    Really? Spanish is phonetic?

    Huh.

  7. Logger on July 14th, 2008 2:09 pm

    Speaking of Raben, how does he project considering his skill set and his college/recent performance. I understand his AB’s in Everett are a very small sample size.

  8. MattThompson on July 14th, 2008 2:17 pm

    Wednesday is very tempting. The Wednesday after the All Star game is the slowest sports day of the year. And no M’s on Thursday? Crud.

  9. TumwaterMike on July 14th, 2008 2:25 pm

    I’ve been following Raben. He has more walks then K’s which is a good sign. I’m just wondering when they are going to push him up.

  10. hughdawg on July 14th, 2008 2:51 pm

    One of the criticisms of Raben was that “he is too patient at the plate”? Can he play shortstop?

  11. Gabriel on July 14th, 2008 3:04 pm

    I just watched the Vancouver Canadians play a couple weeks back, and while the team itself kinda sucks, Nat Bailey was an awesome place to catch a game. Highly recommended for anyone in Vancouver or anyone willing to drive up I-5 for an evening.

  12. TumwaterMike on July 14th, 2008 3:17 pm

    Patience at the plate? It didn’t hurt Edgar’s career did it. Didn’t he usually lead the league is pitches seen? I think Raben is a keeper.

  13. G-Man on July 14th, 2008 3:29 pm

    One of the criticisms of Raben was that “he is too patient at the plate”?

    Remember, this is the Mariners organization.

  14. TumwaterMike on July 14th, 2008 3:37 pm

    This is just a random thought. I hope the Mariners sign Fields soon. They can send him down to AA for a couple of appearances. When JJ is back they can then sned Morrow down to AA and bring Fields up. Morrow can work on becoming a starter. He doesn’t have any more to prove as a reliever. Why wait until the winter. Find out what you have with him and if it works out with him and Fields you’ll be in a lot better shape. Any thoughts?

  15. centerfieldsports on July 14th, 2008 3:42 pm

    fyi
    Ryan Feierabend will be geting the start for everett tuesday night

  16. ConorGlassey on July 14th, 2008 3:44 pm

    My dad and I have tickets to the game tonight, but can’t make it. If anyone would like to head up there and see the game in person, the seats are awesome (first row, right behind the AquaSox dugout) and the tickets are free. If you’re interested, send me and email (cglassey- AT -gmail- D O T -com) and we can work out the details.

  17. TumwaterMike on July 14th, 2008 3:45 pm

    If they trade Washburn, he may be starting for Seattle after the All-star break.

  18. msb on July 14th, 2008 4:03 pm
    One of the criticisms of Raben was that “he is too patient at the plate”?

    Remember, this is the Mariners organization.

    of course, Nick Patterson was saying that critics outside the organization were saying that. Who I don’t know.

  19. JH on July 14th, 2008 4:15 pm

    6. Yeah, it’s a much more logical language than ours, and it makes name pronunciation really easy.

  20. sass on July 14th, 2008 4:24 pm

    Dave, will there be a future 40 anytime soon that takes into account our new draft picks?

  21. joser on July 14th, 2008 5:24 pm

    He has more walks then K’s which is a good sign. I’m just wondering when they are going to push him up.

    Just as soon as they can cure him of that habit.

  22. buckleybats on July 14th, 2008 6:16 pm

    OT but [deleted, ot]

  23. Mid80sRighty on July 14th, 2008 6:29 pm

    First time caller, long time listener here. Just wanted to say that I watched Raben play in 3 games last week when he was in the Tri-Cities and he looked pretty damn good. Good patience at the plate and a sweet swing. The only knock would be his defense….not the fastest guy by any means. Decent enough arm, though. He’s one of those guys that makes everything look effortless. Don’t expect he’ll be in Everett much longer so watch him while you can!

  24. smb on July 14th, 2008 9:57 pm

    Some of my best baseball memories are Everett Giants/Aquasox games. I can remember being at one of the two games Jose Cruz, Jr. played in Everett and how excited I was to have him sign my glove and ticket stub. If you have kids, I highly recommend taking them…it is cheap and a ton of fun.

  25. TumwaterMike on July 14th, 2008 10:10 pm

    Doesn’t Jay Buhner own part of the Aquasox? If not him one of the Mariners does.

  26. ConorGlassey on July 14th, 2008 10:38 pm

    The majority owners are a father and son duo, both named Peter Carfagna. Buhner is among seven minority owners, along with Dino Rossi, Tom and Shawn Hoban, Mark McNaughton, Mike Harmon and Bill Tsoukalas. Here’s a link: http://www.aquasox.com/news_view.php?id=267

  27. DMZ on July 14th, 2008 10:40 pm

    Dino Rossi, who recently went rogue and mined the Aquasox mailing list for a political fundraiser. Classssyyyyy.

  28. msb on July 15th, 2008 9:08 am

    oddly enough, those who received the mailings were not happy.

  29. Joe C on July 15th, 2008 9:18 am

    I caught four of Everett’s games in the Tri-Cities.
    Raben didn’t put up the stats that he had up to that point, but he did look good. He was patient, took some walks, and hit a couple screaming doubles. His opposite field power is almost amazing (not that that would be worth much in Safeco).
    Luis Nunez is really fast.
    1B Fromm and 3B Tenbrink are both good LH hitters.
    Wasn’t too impressed by the pitching, but I missed the shutout they threw on Sunday.

  30. joser on July 15th, 2008 11:25 am

    Also: Josh Hamilton in the home run contest. Meaningless. But not boring.

  31. Joe C on July 15th, 2008 11:59 am

    Raben has been playing of lot of RF and DH, but I’ll bet he ends up as a 1B/DH type.
    The Mariners aren’t weak there are they?

  32. busplunger on July 15th, 2008 2:18 pm

    Fun with small samples:

    Dennis Raben, Everett (45 PAs)
    429/556/743 (1.299 OPS)

    Craig Wilson, Tacoma (18 PAs)
    500/611/929 (1.540 OPS)

    Food for thought: in a game where batters experience failure more often than success, a small sample of unusual success is slightly more meaningful than a small sample of unusual failure.

  33. joser on July 15th, 2008 4:36 pm

    The Mariners aren’t weak there are they?

    But the time he ends up in the majors they probably won’t be. See Clement and the catching position, for example.

    But unless the FO undergoes an honest-to-god revolution, Raben will get traded for some overpriced relief pitcher or $10M/year bottom-of-the-rotation starter before he cracks the roster anyway.

  34. joser on July 15th, 2008 4:38 pm

    Food for thought: in a game where batters experience failure more often than success, a small sample of unusual success is slightly more meaningful than a small sample of unusual failure.

    No it’s not. That’s the definition of “small.” Say I have a loaded coin. Say I flip it twice. Say it comes up once heads and once tails. Can you then tell me how loaded it is, and in which direction?

  35. busplunger on July 16th, 2008 7:43 am

    Can you then tell me how loaded it is, and in which direction?

    Of course not.

    But let’s say we’re pulling coins from a jar where we know the average coin is weighted such that it flips 25% heads and 75% tails (w/ normal distribution). We randomly grab two coins from the jar and flip each coin only once. Coin A lands heads, Coin B lands tails. Clearly, neither result will have any statistical significance, but:

    Hypothesis 1: Coin A is a “heads” coin (> 25% heads)
    Hypothesis 2: Coin B is a “tails” coin (< 25% heads)

    Wouldn’t we have slightly more confidence that H1 would prove true if we repeated the coin flip 999,999 more times? Doesn’t the occurrence of an improbable event give us slightly more information than the occurrence of a probable event?

  36. Jeff Nye on July 16th, 2008 8:14 am

    No.

    Small sample sizes are small sample sizes, whether they produce the result you’re “expecting” or not.

  37. busplunger on July 16th, 2008 9:26 am

    Okay, I just whipped up a quick simulation for peer review. 🙂 I don’t have enough expertise in probability theory to use equations, so I’m trying a brute force solution. This is going to be an overly simplistic representation, of course.

    I created a semi-normal (i.e. symmetrical) distrubution of ten batting averages, assuming .250 is average:
    [.200, .220, .230, .240, .245, .255, .260, .270, .280, .300]

    Then, based on each average, I roll once for a hit (loosely simulating a single at-bat). If it’s a successful hit, I “predict” that I’m looking at a good (above-average) hitter. If it’s a miss, I “predict” that I’m looking at a bad (below-average) hitter. Since I already know the hitter’s “true” average, I can compare the prediction to the actual value.

    My hypothesis is that a hit is a better predictor of a “good” hitter than a miss is a predictor of a “bad” hitter.

    So I run the sim for 10,000,000 hitters.
    Hit correctly predicts good hitter: 54.64%
    Miss correctly predicts bad hitter: 51.54%

    You can fiddle with the input values all you want to change the variance, but until the average average gets up to .500, then a positive outcome will always be a better predictor of an above-average hitter than a negative outcome predicts a below-average hitter.

    Huge disclaimer: none of this implies any statistical significance whatsoever! These outputs are still very close to 50%. Looking at a single outcome (or a small sample) to guess a hitter’s performance is not a good idea.

  38. busplunger on July 16th, 2008 9:28 am

    I should clarify that I’m randomly grabbing a hitter from the pool of ten each time I run the event.

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