Cactus League Game Thread, 3/13/2010
Here we are again with another exciting day of baseball that sort of matters but…. yeah…
There are some news bits this morning though.
* Via the Seattle Times, we have four cuts this morning in 1Bs Brad Nelson and Tommy Everidge along with OFs Mike Wilson and Greg Halman. So, anyone hoping that Everidge’s early hot hitting would somehow leave the Mariners with a different 1B platoon from what we are expecting, sorry.
* Via Drayer, Bedard has been throwing for the past ten days from 120 feet and is showing no ill effects from his August surgery. He is scheduled to throw a bullpen ten days from now. Don’t get too excited now.
* Via the Everett Herald, Hannahan has a strained groin and will be out for the next week to week-and-a-half, which means that he’ll be getting less time on the middle infield and Tui and the other J. Wilson might have a chance to make impressions in the meantime.
* Via just about everyone, the Mariners will be heading down to Tucson for two games after today, and they aren’t bringing many regulars with them. We’ll be seeing Ackley, Carp, and Tui, but not Ichiro, or Figgins (both of whom have played the last four games), or Griffey. In addition to this, Adam Moore will be catching Felix tomorrow, which I think is a first. Rob Johnson will be catching Cliff Lee on Monday.
Lineup!
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
3B Lopez
DH Griffey
LF Byrnes
1B Kotchman
CF Gutierrez
C Moore
SS Josh Wilson
RHP Fister
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On the pre-game show, Drayer talked about how much Moore has impressed the coaching staff with his defense, the pitching staff with his intelligent pitch-calling, and Wakamatsu in general (apparently Wak spent some time during the offseason tutoring him one-on-one). She went so far as to declare him the winner of the starting catcher competition. Tomorrow may be the first time Felix is pitching to him, but it sounds like it won’t be the last.
And that would be fine with me.
I know it’s only spring training and this lineup doesn’t mean much of anything, but this is me already starting to complain about Wak’s batting order choices. Gutierrez so far down? Not a fan.
Guti is coming back from a bum shoulder in early spring training and hasn’t been playing much. They don’t need to put the pressure on him immediately.
joser, if it was anyone other than just Drayer saying it, i.e., the M’s saying “well, we don’t want to rush to any conclusions but *wink wink*”, I’d be all over this. At this stage, it’s certainly a possibility though.
I think later this evening I’m going to see if I can do a little write-up on the possibility.
Looks like Fister has just about pitched himself off the roster.
Batting line-ups are really just not that important. This is especially true in early, very early spring games. There are countless reasons why Wak may choose a particular line-up and I’m sure we are privey to none of them. Of all the things to consider while watching a spring game, line-ups wouldn’t even hit the list of the top 100.
Well, there’s no upside to the M’s saying anything, even with a wink, at this point — Moore hasn’t caught Felix yet (what if Felix decides he likes Johnson better?) and Rob Johnson is still rehabbing (and it’s not helpful to suggest he’s already lost his job in the meantime). So while Drayer almost certainly is getting ahead of events somewhat, I’m sure she’s accurately reflecting the “vibe” she’s been getting from the coaches and others so far. The default assumption going into the camp was that the starting job was Rob’s to lose; if a combination of Johnson’s health and Moore’s progress mean it’s now Moore’s to lose, that doesn’t really change a lot in the scheme of things. At least, not yet.
As for the lineup, worrying about it at this point in ST is a bit like complaining that Wak is not using his relievers “correctly.” It’s not like we expect to see both Byrnes and Griffey together in a lot of regular season games. They’re trying stuff out, and the lineup will be completely different by the 6th inning anyway, so who cares?
If you want to get worried about the lineup, you might want to mull over Wak’s idea of batting Kotchman 3rd. I actually expect Gutierrez to bat 5th a fair bit this year (though I’d love to see Guti’s continued progress with the bat force Wak to pencil him in even higher).
Agreed on the second point wholeheartedly, and as Jay pointed out, he is coming back from being banged up. On the first point, I also agree that so far, batting order doesn’t seem to be very important (at least there isn’t enough to show a noticeable effect). But after seeing the way Jack and the new FO have gone aggressively after literally EVERY possible competitive advantage, I would expect them to have someone up top crunching numbers on figuring out the ideal batting order. And I would hope they have Death to Flying Things up higher for the real games.
It is hard to believe how bad Fister and Olson have looked against this AAA lineup. If camp broke today they would probably both be headed to Tacoma.
Yeah, I know it’s only spring training and the starters are all gone after a couple of at bats.
Personally, I would prefer Guiterrez hitting 3rd because he doesn’t pop the ball up all that much (a huge plus if Ichiro! and Figgins get on a ton), and will probably see a good amount of fastballs with someone like Bradley hitting behind him. He’s also fast enough to hopefully stay out of some DP’s.
But you guys are right. Considering that it’s early spring training, I shouldn’t be complaining about this right now.
Garrett Olson with yet another underwhelming performance.
I think Olson might’ve pitched his way right off the roster.
Dave Niehaus on Eric Byrnes: “sometimes when you’re down 6-0 in an exhibition game, you just stay at first” (after Byrnes nearly injured himself sliding headfirst into second).
Yea, Guti at 3 seems like a good call from my armchair, especially if he keeps developing the power that smacked that monster homer last year. With Ichiro! and Figgins at the top it makes sense to get some guys behind them who will put the ball in play since they can take more advantage of it than your average 1-2
Give EB the Crash Davis Award for today…
Re: Adam Moore. Fangraphs ran an article on him yesterday. It’s a “What should we expect from Adam Moore now?” piece. The answer? ~1 WAR, which is a bit of an upgrade over Johnson.
Figgins is having more trouble with the position switch than Lopez. I’d wager that after the trip to Tucson the experiment will be over. The risk to Figgins while turning double plays was something I was never comfortable with anyway.
Well, Lopez with an outstanding catch (according to Dave N) and Figgins with two errors today (and four errors in three days). Not necessarily indicative of anything, but who’d have thought that Figgins would be the weaker of the two on any given day?
Well, I’d say it has just as much relevance as Lopez’s career +49.3 UZR/150 at 3B and Figgin’s career -8.5 UZR/150 at 2B…which is to say, not much given the sample size.
I couldn’t tell if she was saying he’d made the starting role, or just made the team (instead of all the vets brought to camp)
Nah, never gave Everidge much of a chance for this year. But I’m completely surprised by Mike Sweeney’s hotter-than-hot hitting early on. Dude is making a second career out of making managers make difficult decisions.
I really, really want Eric Byrnes to make this team. I admit to a touch of personal bias, he’s been one of my favorite ballplayers for years.
And as far as Adam Moore goes, I was sincerely hoping he’d take this spring training and grab it by the throat, saying “Gimme a major-league job! GIMME a major-league-job!”
So far, so good. This is fuuuuuuuuuuun and it’s going to be one fun year.
Good news on Er-Bed. This article from February stated he could return in June. So does the upcoming bullpen put him ahead of schedule?–or is it just a prelude to several months of additional rehab?
I was at the Friday’s and Saturday’s games. I gotta say that Figgins looked bad. I am surprised at how quiet reporting is on this issue. I hope he ends up turning the corner. He does not look comfortable @ 2nd.
While I, SonOfZavaras, read this:
and shudder in horror, realizing he’s going to be everything I dreaded. But perhaps he’ll injure himself in ST and the issue will resolve itself.
At least it sounds as though Dave won’t be suffering that fool gladly in his booth any time soon.
Hoping for people to get injured is pretty classy.
How can you hope for a guy like Byrnes to get injured. Sure, he’s got a loud mouth and is outspoken. But, he clearly loves the game and is one of the few that showes up early and leaves late. His injuries in the past have all been the result of pure hussle and you can never have too many of those kind of guys. He’s a gamer, and in those late innings you need a guy like that. He’s always going to give it his all, which from a fans standpoint, I don’t see how you can’t love that.
With regards to batting Guti third because he’ll put (ground)balls in play, I want to point out that he doesn’t have especially low K% (22%) or FB% (38%). In fact, he has the highest K% on the team and one of the highest FB% (second to Griffey, Byrnes, and Garko).
Not that high rates here are a bad thing – his projected OPS and wOBA are a little above average and he’s shown that monster pop on occassion. But he’s more of a power and Ks guy than a put-things-in-play-make-things-happen I’d say.
Maybe batting him 3rd would benefit though – he might see more fastballs with base-stealing threats on base.
I’m not hoping he gets injured. I’m expecting him to get injured, since he’s apparently learned nothing from shortening his career in hopes of ending up on Web Gems.
I am intrigued at the thought of he and Ichiro in the same outfield. I wish to see the Ichiro reaction shot the first time Byrnes does one of his spectacular full-lay out, rib-crushing bell flops.
Hustle (hussle?), gamer, shows up early/leaves late…no, actually, I want the most talented players the management can afford, on the field every day, playing well. I don’t care if his heart is pure and his uniform’s dirty.
This is a “Dave Niehaus is awesome” post.
Friday night, we’re watching the Husky game on FSN, and there was a play where the camera shows Lorenzo Romar going ballistic (as far as I could see, they called a foul on a Husky for allowing a Stanford player to jump on his back). The announcers were doing a recap of the Pac 10 tournament to that point and literally never described what was going on: who the foul was on, what Romar’s reaction was, nothing. I said to my wife, “this is the Pac-10 semifinal and they’re announcing it like spring training.”
Only, that was an insult to the greatest announcer I’ve ever listened to.
Today, I’m listening to the game and Dave is interviewing Dan Wilson about some fine points of catching. And in the middle of each question, he was able to describe the action so that the listener never missed a beat. Like this, “So Dan, how important is footwork to fly ball to center and a routine catch and [some Giants minor leaguer] is out, footwork to a catcher’s success?” It was 6-2 at the time, half the players on the field will never appear in a major league game this or any other season, and he nonetheless kept up the integrity of his broadcast.
We can never repeat too often what a treasure we have in Dave.
Eric Byrnes is a perfect example what the current regime has been doing a stalwart job of doing…finding helpful talent at the right price.
Juneau_fan, you don’t have to like the guy, of course…but you’re striking me as not being completely fair to the dude. I think to say that he plays recklessly ‘just to see himself on Web Gems’ is a bit of an unsupported supposition.
For me, unless I know for sure otherwise, I’ll take it on good faith that he does it because he wants to win.
And regarding his outspoken nature, to quote Lou Brown in Major League, “I like ballplayers that show emotion.”
As long as there’s productivity attached, of course.
I don’t know how much exposure you’ve had to Byrnes, Son. I was working in Northern CA while he was with the A’s and listened to the Giants’ radio station all the time, so I got a nice wall to wall of Mr. Byrnes.
Then of course, he managed to get himself a spot on ESPN’s overnight show, which I also listened to. Hey, I’m all for the ball players having a plan for once their careers are over, but this type of ‘guy I’d want to have beers with’ persona that he’s projecting for the media is not what I want to listen to on a regular basis.
Surely he’s seen by now that ‘going full out’ has resulted in debilitating injuries that have basically ended his career and will rob him of one of his skills, speed? Does that make him unintelligent or crazy to continue it? Let me guess. His soundbite will be, “I only know how to play the game one way. I give myself 110% on the field.”
Ichiro will play into his forties; Byrnes won’t.
This I agree with 110% myself. He came at the right price and can either be productive for the team at that price or a nice trading piece. I trust the front office to have evaluated him properly; to pick up the right washed-up players, unlike, say, Vidro.
I remember a former Mariners center fielder that was known for his reckless play. One particular play he ran straight into the wall and broke his arm trying to make a catch when his team was in the middle of a pennant race. It all worked out in the end though. But I don’t remember anybody of accusing him of just trying to make a webgem. That was the way he played.
1. I doubt even Byrnes would put himself in the same class as Ken Griffey. Brynes is the type of player that has to do things to draw attention to himself; he’s just not that upper tier player. His all out-play did get him a big contract, and then he wasn’t able to do anything with it.
2. I thought it was generally agreed that Griffey lost what could have been the career of an all time great because of his injuries. Would he change some of those running into walls choices now?