Nationals Sign Dunn
Two year deal for $20 million. He’ll play first base for them.
He was never coming here anyway. Don’t get worked up about this. A clever GM would realize that this makes Nick Johnson completely useless to the Nationals and see if you could get a LH, high OBP bat for nothing.
But, I’m not counting on it. At this point, the over/under on days until a Griffey signing is announced by the M’s is probably 2. I’ll take the under.
The Depth Chart, pre-spring training
Unless there’s another signing, here’s what the M’s will be sorting through
Rotation
SP-R Felix Hernandez
SP-L Erik Bedard
SP-R Brandon Morrow
SP-L Jarrod “The Bus” Washburn
SP-R Carlos Silva
Alt SP:
SP-L Ryan Rowland-Smith
SP-L Ryan Feierabend
SP-L Garret Olson
Bullpen
RP-R Miguel “Doc” Batista
RP-R Roy Corcoran
RP-R Tyler Walker
RP-R David Aardsma
RP-R Mark Lowe
RP-R Randy Messenger
RP-R Shawn Kelley
RP-L Cesar Jimenez
RP-L Justin Thomas
RP-L Jason Vargas
RP-L Garrett Olson
RP-L Jose Lugo
RP-L Tyler Johnson
RP-L Chris Seddon
RP-wow I am tired of typing reliever names
Position Players
DH-R Wladimir Balentien
C-L Jeff Clement
C-R Kenji Johjima
1B-L Russ Branyan
2B-R Jose Lopez
3B-R Adrian Beltre
SS-R Yuniesky Betancourt
RF-L Ichiro!
CF-R Franklin Gutierrez
LF-L Endy Chavez
Also:
C-R Jamie Burke
C-R Rob Johnson
1B-R Chris Shelton
1B-R Mike Morse
1B-L Bryan LaHair
1B-L Mike Carp
2B-B Reegie Corona
2B-L Tug Hulett
SS-R Ronny Cedeno
3B-R Matt Tuiasosopo
OF-L Michael Saunders
OF-R Michael Wilson
OF-R Greg Halman
DH-R Mike Sweeney
That’s a lot of sorting.
Podcasting, hypothetically
If, say, we were going to try this, and we really had zero experience and were finding internet recommendations for simple things like microphones etc plentiful, contradictory, and confusing, what would you, the USSM reader with some experience in this area, point us to?
Abreu Off The Market
According to various reports, the Angels are fairly close to signing Bobby Abreu to a one year deal for something like $5 or $6 million. We have to assume that Abreu would have chosen the Angels over the M’s given equal offers (assuming he thinks the Angels are a much better bet to win in ’09), so you’d think that the M’s would have had to go to somewhere between $8 and $9 million to sign him. By all accounts, they just don’t have that kind of room in the budget.
It will be interesting to see how the Angels handle their roster, assuming this news is true. They now have Vlad, Abreu, Rivera, and Matthews to rotate between the RF/LF/DH spots. They’d been talking about giving Brandon Wood real playing time, too, but with Figgins locked in at third base now, that probably goes out the window. So if we assume that Vlad plays RF most of the time, and Abreu/Rivera split the LF/DH duties, then the Angels made a pretty nice move to upgrade their offense, but their outfield defense is going to be cover-your-eyes-awful.
At the price, it’s still a good move for them, and this probably adds the extra win or two that they needed to actually be favorites in what still looks like a bad AL West division, but it creates a lot of question marks as well.
For the M’s, this leaves them looking at the second tier LH bats. At this point, they might as well just sign Junior for $1 million and get it over with. He won’t make the team better, but at least it gets the whole story out of the way and everyone can just move on with their lives.
New USSM rule: no one is the judge of fandom
No one.
I don’t get to say that people who could watch tonight’s replay of Ichiro setting the single-season hits record and not feel choked up aren’t fans.
And they don’t get to say that I’m not a Mariner fan because I’m not as enthusiastic as they are about bringing Griffey back, or whatever they might see as my most egregious shortcoming.
I’ve seen this come up repeatedly in recent comment threads (you’re not a fan if you don’t think steroids are the worst thing ever, you’re not a fan if you aren’t interested in the team’s long term fortunes, and on and on and on). I’m tired of it. Mariner fandom comes in many forms, and I try to hold some appreciation for all its varieties.
I will no longer have any patience for being a jerk about your personal view of what “fan” means being the only valid interpretation. And if I do it, please, yell at me.
That’s all. Please return to your regular business.
Alex Alex Alex
I updated the previous post, but… so now he’s everywhere in the news, again, having admitted that he used banned substances after going over to the Rangers from 01-03. He previously has denied ever using anything. I don’t know why we’d particularly believe this limited admission any more than we should have believed previous denials. I’m sure in a couple days someone’s going to ask “hey, wait, then what happened when he moved to third and put on all that…” and we’ll be in for yet another round of attack-denial. But whatever.
M’s fans can take some small consolation that his time with the team is not currently tainted.
Ichiro is awesome
Threw 56 pitches in a bullpen session, hitting 91mph. Has a forkball. (Nikkan Sports and this SimCentral post)
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Yup.
I have two reactions:
– Ichiro’s coolness goes up 10% and I wish he’d pitch for us too
– If he blows his arm out or something in the WBC you’re going to hear my wail of despair from anywhere on the globe. It’ll be like the explosion of Krakatoa where days later you’ll hear it again after it’s traveled the circumference of the Earth to reach you a second time.
Valuing Leadership
One of the comments that is most often hurled at people like us is that we don’t understand just how valuable things like clubhouse chemistry, leadership, and the like are. Even as the Mariners dissolved into a pool of awfulness last year, the cries from the media and the team itself were that a lack of chemistry and leadership, not a lack of talent, was the true culprit. After all, we’re told, major league managers and GMs understand how valuable this chemistry/leadership dynamic is. Because they value it, so should we.
Except, they don’t. They say they do, but they don’t. As Tango points out, the Cliff Floyd signing from last week is a perfect example of their actions belying their words.
Cliff Floyd, widely accepted as a veteran clubhouse leader and good influence on young players, signed for $750,000 for 2009. The league minimum is $400,000. The Padres paid $350,000 more than the minimum for a bench player because he was a good leader, a good clubhouse influence, and will theoretically improve their team chemistry. That’s what the Padres valued Floyd’s off-the-field stuff at – $350,000.
It’s not just Floyd, either. Trot Nixon, who was absolutely beloved in the Red Sox clubhouse during his prime, signed a minor league contract with the Brewers. No guaranteed money for this veteran clubhouse leader. The Mariners, of course, signed Mike Sweeney to a minor league deal – Sweeney is renowned as such a good person that the Royals named an award after him. No guaranteed money for this veteran clubhouse leader.
You could do this all day – Tony Clark is often well spoke of for his mentoring of young players. $800,000 on a one year deal. David Eckstein, notable grit master and guy who gets the most out of his mediocre physical abilities – $850,000 on a one year deal. Brad Ausmus, great handler of pitchers and gamecaller – $1 million for one year.
The going rate for veteran leadership and clubhouse presence is somewhere between $0 and $500,000. That’s the premium that teams are willing to pay for a guy with highly respected intangibles.
MLB teams can talk up chemistry and leadership all they want. When the time comes to put their money where their mouth is, they buy talent, not intangibles.
The only people who really believe in the extreme positive value of these off the field things are baseball writers. You know, the ones who have a vested interest in cultivating positive relationships with these people off the field. The off the field stuff matters to them and no one else.
And Now, For Something Else
If you were going to project the Tacoma Rainiers starting rotation for 2009 right now, it would look something like this:
#1 – Garrett Olson, LHP
#2 – Ryan Feierabend, LHP
#3 – Jason Vargas, LHP
#4 – Chris Seddon, LHP
#5 – Robert Rohrbaugh, LHP
I think the M’s have figured out that LHPs are more valuable in Safeco than RHPs, due to the skew of the ballpark.
How Griffey Could Hurt Attendance
Some people will come out to see Griffey if he’s a Mariner next year, or at least tune into games, or read about the team in the one remaining paper. I don’t know if that’s one fan or twenty thousand over the course of a season, and neither does anyone else. I’m on the skeptical side, as you’d probably expect: from the Mariners own experience with declining stars and bringing aging veterans back for one more run, there’s not much reason to expect a huge bump. I loved watching Rickey Henderson play, but I didn’t attend any games I wouldn’t have otherwise that year. Some people went to see Gaylord Perry in his quick tour here, especially for #300, but not a ton, because the team stank. And so on.
That’s not perfectly analogous, because they’re not formerly hugely beloved players who forced their way off the team to another league, after which some segment of the fanbase spent the time since making goo-goo eyes at them.
I want to raise another issue, and Larry Stone touched on this in passing. What if he’s bad for attendance over the season?
What if Griffey comes in, and 5,000 more people show up for the non-Opening-Day games, and then he’s the shell of a player that Seattle fans haven’t really seen? Think Edgar 2004, but worse. Boone 2005. And these too were popular players in Seattle. Did fans come out to see what might be their last season when they sucked?
No. Of course not. What are we banking on, then? That Griffey’s going to contribute, or that he’s so beloved from his early years and so forgiven for the trade thing, that it’s an entirely different situation?
If that’s true, it’s quite possible he ends up driving people away. The last time Seattle fans saw him play regularly it was 1999, when Griffey still hit like crazy, played center field, went to All-Star games, and placed in MVP voting. If you’re an old enough fan, your memories are of the nineteen-year-old becoming one of the game’s greatest and not long afterwards departing.
What about if Griffey sucks? If he’s hobbled and doesn’t play much, and particularly if the second marriage turns sour and he starts sniping at the front office for not bringing in enough veteran leaders to support him? Or if he picks up feuding with the fans for inadequate fawning? How many people will not want to watch because he’s here, preferring to remember him as the graceful and happy-seeming Kid?
I worry that having this go badly will taint the story of the season, and instead of being about how they’re improving, playing far better defense, and have a promising future, we’ll have a year of Griffey-related pain and hand-wringing, where instead of wanting to go to Safeco to see the new direction they’ll avoid it because they don’t want to see a wrenching reminder of the toll age has taken on the Kid they still want to see.
If we’re going to acknowledge that people’s actions will be determined by their emotional reaction to one player, we have to face that the results may not be all beneficial to ticket sales and ratings.