Cactus League Game Thread 3/10/2010
Cliff Lee makes his Cactus League debut for the Mariners. As I’m sure you have seen from other sources, the team made its first round of cuts this morning. Players whose dream of cracking a major league roster will have to wait a little bit longer include Ryan Feierabend, Josh Fields, Chris Seddon, Steven Shell, Nick Hill, Mauricio Robles, Steve Baron, and Luis Oliveros. Nothing too surprising here. Of these guys only Nick Hill had any chance of working his way onto the roster, and he could benefit from time in Tacoma.
Today’s lineup:
RF Ichiro(!)
2B Figgins
LF Bradley
DH Sweeney
1B Kotchman
CF Gutierrez
C Moore
3B Jo. Wilson
SS Ja. Wilson
Lee’s first official outing as a Mariner has him pitching in front of 2/3rds of the best damn defense in baseball. Figgins is still manning 2B, which may or may not mean the Mariners are seriously considering pulling the trigger on the Figgins-Lopez position switch. Stay tuned.
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Awesome. I think we need a name for Cliff Lee day though. We have Happy Felix Day, why not a Cliff Lee day?
Figgins still looking for his first hit of the spring…0-2…and his second caught stealing of the season…good thing I don’t put too much stock into veterans performance during the spring ALTHOUGH Sweeney has tore it up and I would love to find a way for him to make the club.
On another note, Lee has gone 2 innings so far 1 bb 2 hits no runs…not bad.
Danny
UnbeLEEvable Day, since it was a miracle he is pitching for the M’s this year?
Josh and Jack Wilson get back to back hits off of Neftali Feliz. I… I did not expect that.
Sounds like Lee is already overmatching the lineup he’s facing — from interpreting Ryan Divish’s (@TNTMariners) Twitter feed:
1st Inning: 1 hit, 21 pitches (17 were strikes), 12 of which were to lead-off man Borbon
2nd Inning: 1 hit, 1 walk, 12 pitches (8 strikes)
3rd Inning: 15 pitches (12 strikes)
Total: 48 pitches (37 strikes)
Nice.
BeLEEve Big, indeed.
I’m probably way too curious about this, but does anyone know how Milton got his 2 RBI?
I’m guessing a couple fielders choices or something.
What’s with Mike Sweeney refusing to retire quietly? Ryan Garko better watch his back.
Bradley’s RBIs: one on a fielders choice, and the other by being plunked with the bases loaded. Information courtesy of this place.
Sweeney’s hitting .769 this spring. No no, that’s NOT his OPS. It’s his (in whisper tones) batting average.
Somewhere, Derek’s head is exploding with the emerging idea of Junior and DH-xoxo on the 25-man roster again on Opening Day.
This is so fraught with potential humor, horror, and intrigue I can’t stand it. That Milton Bradley of all people drives in the run in classic “Homer at the Bat” fashion on a team that includes Griffey is just too delicious.
Of course now we need to know if that was just spring training wildness (probably), payback for something, or a pre-emptive strike in a war that we’ll now have to worry about every time these two teams meet for the rest of the season.
(I mean, if I was the devious manager of a team that had a divisional rival with Milton Bradley as one of the best hitters on its roster, I just might plunk him in Spring Training as the first step in an scheme to bait him into getting ejected or benched in every game you faced him for the year…)
Somewhere in Florida Mike Morse is hanging his head, weighed down by the sad realization that the only notable record he ever held is being threatened with obliteration.
Lee’s line, updated:
One of the silliest things I’ve heard so far this spring, paraphrased from the Texas radio broadcast of the game around the 7th inning or so:
“Texas fans have got to be happy about the arrival of Cliff Lee in Seattle — he has a career 7+ ERA vs the Rangers”.
Uh huh.
“Of course now we need to know if that was just spring training wildness (probably), payback for something, or a pre-emptive strike in a war that we’ll now have to worry about every time these two teams meet for the rest of the season.”
Well, it was a curve ball that may or may not have hit the ground before it hit his foot by the sounds of things, so if it was a purpose pitch, it was a cleverly disguised purpose pitch.
Statistics that say the M’s will finish 4th in the AL West.
I know that this has nothing to do with todays game (or for that matter any spring training game thus far) BUT what ever happened to Jack Hannihan? One day he was catching and then ……nothing. Did I miss an injury or an illness or a personal leave?
Fair and balanced, heh.
I particularly love that the FOX writer revels in his (her?) ignorance.
Doesn’t know, doesn’t care, and hey, join them in mocking people who do.
About the same as the CHONE projections.
I’ve got to think Sweeney is seeing so many at bats to showcase him for another team. The Mariners brass wouldn’t take Garko and Sweeney north at the expense of Byrnes or Langerhans would they? That leaves Milton as the everday LF which would seem to be a recipe for injury both early and often.
Oh, be still my beating heart. 6 of 8? If his system were 50% accurate, then the chance of “beating the odds” in 6 of 8 seasons is ~15%. Please.
The Professor missed the Mariners 2009 season by 22 games, pegging them for 65-97. If he’s that good this year, they should have 99 wins. The man’s a genius. You just have to give him the appropriate Kentucky windage.
Notably absent from his list: defense.
Actually, that
ignoramus, er, “analyst” may not be long for Faux’s payroll, anyhow — seeing as though he has the mighty Angels not picked to win the division.As much as I hate long games (and love DVR), I don’t get why baseball can’t expand the rosters to 26 – or just a simple 30 for that matter.
ALL-STAR game rosters currently sit at 36! Even if you allow for one pitcher per inning, that still doesn’t really calculate…
(NOTE) Before anyone talks about salary, does anyone think that spots 26-30 would make that much more than the minimum? I say it’s a good bargaining spot for the owners when the ‘players’ object to a cap.
Who cares about the money? Adding one more marginal UT or reliever doesn’t make the teams appreciably better but would have the drawback of added pitching changes, which are tedious and slow the game down. Who wants this? Why in the world would we want to make a change that, maybe, benefits 25 players who already are likely to spend some portion of their year on the back-end of major league rosters, and comes at the cost of everyone’s enjoyment of the game?
Not to mention, what makes 25 too few and 26 or even 30 just enough? Heck, why not the whole 40 man roster? Hey, let’s have a hundred guys per team just so that one guy you like despite his marginal skills gets to sit on a major-league bench.
(I do think it would be interesting for teams under .500 at the trading deadline be allowed to expand their rosters to 30, while everybody else has to wait until September, but that’s in the interest of tightening races and giving the fans of those teams something new to look at as they play out their string)
That’s a dangerous idea since it might create an incentive for .500 teams to throw a game or two right before the deadline.
While we are at expanding the roster to 26 players, let’s add a 4th outfielder to the game and a 10th spot in the lineup. This will allow fans to better relate with teams because this is how their softball leagues are set up.
Yes, I already thought about that objection. In my longer version of my suggestion, I consider and dismiss it. First, that seems unlikely — these guys play to win, even in September when they are long out of the race. As the Black Sox scandal (among others) demonstrated, you generally need more than one player to throw a game, and it’s hard for them to keep quiet. In reality it would probably be accomplished by a scheming manager announcing day-to-day “injuries” to his key starters. Now, a .500 team is going to lose a lot of games, so it would be quite possible to “naturally” fall under .500 in July, but a team that did so in any kind of suspicious fashion would be the target of a lot of ire from the press, the fans, and (more importantly) the rest of baseball. Probably not enough to dissuade one of those most notorious of managers (or players), but it would dissuade some.
But, more to the poiht: what if they did? So what? It’s not going to make that big of a difference — it might make the team a bit better, sure, but they first have to overcome those additional one or two games they threw away. If some 26th (or 27th or 28th) guy is going to make that much of a difference, wouldn’t they be juggling their roster to get him on the squad anyway? A team that’s bumping along at .500 is not a team that has a lot of monster prospects held down in AAA because they’re blocked by better players on the big club. The most significant benefit might be the expansion of the bullpen, but as we well know it’s hard for a reliever to add even a full win, especially in half a season.
And the whole point of this is to tighten the races. Even in a division like the NL West a couple of years ago where even the best teams ended up around .500, this isn’t going to allow one team to come from behind and run away with the pennant. It might make things a little more interesting, that’s all… but isn’t that enough?