Game 44, Padres at Mariners
Dave · May 23, 2010 at 11:06 am · Filed Under Mariners
Latos vs Hernandez, 1:10 pm.
Happy Felix Day.
Line-up presented without comment.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Small Sample Size Hero, 1B
Bradley, LF
Griffey, DH
Tui, 3B
Johnson, C
Josh Wilson, SS
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296 Responses to “Game 44, Padres at Mariners”
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there is something that I think gets underrated as people blame the lack of offense for the season and bash the pitching and defense combo. Pitching and defense and no offense means that to win, you must maximize every aspect of a bad offense, since it is true that you cannot win without scoring a single run. However, if your pitching and defense consistently keeps runs scored by the other team below 3, a bad offense can win, IF it is optimized.
The Mariners built a team with bad (and unlucky) offense and good pitching and defense. They then proceeded to ignore optimization of this offense. We could have not had Griffey and Sweeney on the roster, instead DH’ing Bradley and platooning Saunders/Langerhans/Byrnes in left and keeping flexibility for the late innings by having actual pinch runners and pinch hitters. We could have immediately batted Guti 3rd and Bradley cleanup. We could not have Rob Johnson on the roster, eliminating a significant number of runs given up by his pathetic squatting. We could have stayed aggressive on the basepaths, but intelligently (letting Ichiro and Figgins run wild, and Guti/Saunders/Langerhans occassionally, but everyone else, be smart). We could have a backup shortstop so that we don’t wind up punting defense some days by making Tui scramble around there. We could not ever use Sean White and Jesus Colome. Our bullpen could have been Kaneoke, Kelley, Lowe, League, Aardsma, and a long man. While it is easy to blame things on the offense, the M’s took a roster of players built to optimize the performance of the pitchers and defense and score about as many runs as it did last year, and decided that optimizing the number of runs they scored and prevented didn’t matter and that they would instead pass out playing time based on Wak’s gold stars
Can somebody tell Salk to bring Kenji home with him?
Yea, I have gone from a major Wak believer to a big time doubter. I think he could be a good manager for a Billy Beane style team where most of the decisions are made upstairs and the manager is left to make in game decisions. He needs to have his pets taken away and just given the best 25 players that Jack Z thinks he has, as well as some guidelines as to who can play where. He can manage people pretty well, but apparently he can’t figure out who should play.
I’d like a belief system we can believe in. Like, can Wak and the FO start believing in winning, and do everything they need to do to make that happen? Dave’s gone over the particulars of what needs to be done ad nauseum. Why can’t they see what needs to be done? It’s so damn, bloody obvious.
I don’t think I’ve been this pissed at a Mariners team maybe ever, because the fixes, the ones that could get us easily another 5-10 wins over the course of the season, are easy, but because of their fricking “belief system” (which I guess means “respecting” veterans – Griffey/Sweeney – and being enamored with personalities and grittiness – Johnson – and relievers in whom they see something, but no one else does – White, Colome), they stubbornly refuse to change and so continue to sit and watch while the season spins down the toilet.
All the good will that Z and Wak generated last year is completely gone for me. They’re starting from square one at this point. They now have to show us fans that they know what they’re doing, because last year is looking like a fluke.
I’g guessing we’re not going to get game recaps anymore as Dave prepares to get his rage on.
I truly, truly hope attendance collapses down to the people with knitting bags and yappy little dogs. The owners of this team deserve no more.
Missed the game and the game thread…fortunately, it seems. Once I saw the lineup I decided to go for a walk…good choice. Nice epic backpedaling by SODOMOJO on this thread, though…
Attendance has already collapsed. Other than weekend giveaways/promotions, no one’s going to the games.
Now excuse us while us Americans are playing on our Nintendo Wii systems and our 80+ year-old owner in Japan and Howard Lincoln are laughing their asses all the way to the bank.
Alec is spot on with this. The problem isn’t that the team had a plan emphasizing pitching and defenese with only mediocre offense. It’s that the team isn’t following through on the plan. It’s punting offensive upgrades (that wouldn’t impact the defense) and undermining the pitching and defense with bad lineups and bullpen useage.
Zduriencik is not making the hard choices “The Plan” requires, and Wak doesn’t seem to have a clue what the plan was in the first place.
Unless of course the whole thing is Zduriencik’s evil plot to restore the bargain status of defense next year by convincing the rest of the league it doesn’t work this year.
What exactly does the ownership group have to do with the failure of this team?
Look no further than the Bavasi years. It was PAINFULLY obvious by the end of 2.5 years that Bavasi was not going to be the right guy as GM as he continued to waste more and more money on bad baseball.
But Armstrong and Lincoln didn’t care because this team SOMEHOW improved its win total every year under Bavasi until 2008 and more importantly, turned a profit until 2008.
Now as a result, we are so far behind everyone else as far as minor league talent goes, it’s mind boggling.
Armstrong always seems to live in his own little version of Pleasantville and in this case, as far as we know, he seems perfectly okay with a slumping Griffey on the roster and a “family guy” manager that doesn’t dare argue with a umpire and show any fire under his belly.
Because that would cause in-fighting between Wak and Armstrong/Lincoln, and we wouldn’t want to have that now, would we?
And plus, the Mariners are still “leaders” in Armstrong’s eyes as far as community work and corporate sponsorships thanks to that amazing 1995 run (cue Rick Rizzs reminiscing).
LONG STORY SHORT:
——————
This franchise is SO far behind everyone else as far as minor league talent goes and no rosters will get blown up or heads will roll this year because this organization is too damn patient and too damn content with its work to think about making extreme changes.
That’s why it will never be anything close to what the Yankees or Red Sox are for at least the foreseeable future.
None of those people are ownership. Ownership is cutting checks for $93 million this year.
The Mariners are still on track to draw over 2 million fans this year. Attendance has declined just 4% from last year, and the summer crowds haven’t started coming in.
To begin, Aramis Ramirez in the NL. I said AL. Secondly, you’re wrong. Since you obviously didn’t revert to the link I posted earlier, I’ll just put it in words for you. Using value metrics, his hitting comes in at -13.8, second worst only to Aramis Ramirez’s -15.3. Pedro Feliz, Akinori Iwamura, and Jose Reyes are 3rd, 4th, and 5th respectively. The next worst AL hitter is Gordon Beckham, who has posted a -10.3. Not such a miniscule margin. What does that make Jose Lopez? The player with the least hitting value in the AL to date.
This obviously isn’t to say that his raw hitting talent is worst in the AL. He’ll get a nice little kick in the rear from positive regression, as his BABIP checks in at .237, which is clearly low.
In the meantime, here’s a nice little writeup.
That was in my spam email as the “free play of the day”… HA!
But “ownership” won’t fire these idiots (Armstrong/Lincoln).
So say what you want about Nintendo or our 80+ year old owner, but they deserve part of the blame for this crap too.
Which is why it doesn’t matter to them whether the team wins or loses. Only we, the fans, can change that. Make it matter, STOP GOING TO GAMES – they will always only care about $$$, but we need to make the existence of those $$$ contingent upon the team winning.
Nintendo never has fired our idiots and probably didn’t even know who Bill Bavasi was. They just saw the bottom line.
That is sad.
My only chirp for today’s pathetic “game” is that, with any luck, it has moved Colome from DGC (Designated Gas Can) to DFA status.
I think you about nailed it there, Tom. While it sucks and is frustrating as all hell from our perspective as fans, there seems to be little we can do about it except hope that this current bunch eventually turns the reins over to competent people.
As far as the Yanks or Saux-type “dynasty” is concerned, I’d be happy if these guys would just win a pennant and World Series once in my lifetime before I’m too old to enjoy it — though I don’t if that’s ever going to happen, either.
Before we go too far overboard, can I remind people that while we’re not doing great this year, Z’s primary goal was to get out from under the terrible contracts of the Bavasi era in order to start building the organization from the ground up.
There was a *hope* that the Ms would contend this year, but I’d be willing to bet that if you asked the FO whether they’d rather get rid of the legacy baggage over contending this year they’d take getting rid of the baggage every time.
And let’s be real: We’re all frustrated and impatient, but when the Ms start winning again we’ll all be there.
We will NEVER get close to consistently matching Boston or NY. They have way more financial resources than we could ever dream about.
Best case: we’re the third best team in the AL every year, or second if one of those two is rebuilding.
While part of me likes that sentiment, even that may not help. After all, the A’s — win or lose — have had suckworthy attendance for most of their 40+ years in Oakland…and yet nobody has succeeded in either boosting their gate on a long-term basis or moving them to someplace more profitable.
<strikeThat is sad.
If people stop going to games, and ownership starts to lose money, which direction do you think they’ll go?
A) Reduce payroll to maintain profitability at cost of on-field product
B) Raise payroll to meet demands/expectations of fanbase
C) Sell team
My guess is A. Not going to games because the product sucks is one thing. But not going in order to force some kind of action in the ‘right’ direction is naive.
how do you use that blue line to copy what someone else said?
We need a little John McClaren…”The fans are pissed off…I’m pissed off…and the players are pissed off.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr1NclalCOA&feature=related
Oh how true this is right now.
The two things are not unrelated. Cf. General Motors except substitute ‘Buying cars’ for ‘going to games’.
I’m not too sure how pissed off Griffey is with this team’s situation. If he was really that pissed, he’d hang up his damn cleats.
My guess would be probably first A, then C — which was kind of the situation back in the 80’s with this team.
Not to mention, more recently with the Sonics — and, sadly, we all know what happened to that franchise.
Because, as we all remember, THAT changed EVERYTHING and made everything all better…
(And, it looks like the recent Wak ejection can only be claimed to have earned the team two wins–if you buy into things like that. So, we’ll need at least 35-40 more ejections to salvage the season, huh?)
Last year, I felt there was a method to the madness. It made me feel confident.
This year…it feels like there’s only madness.
Makes me feel icky.
Wow, everyone needs to relax. The Padres are basically the M’s – a team geared around pitching, defense, and speed. The fact is they’re playing better baseball than the M’s and that’s why they took two of three at Safeco.
If you think the season’s over, complaining about it here might make you feel a bit better, but I think we’re blowing up about one bad game (admittedly, not the first).
The M’s are what they are this year, which is third-fourth place in the AL West unless they get a big winning streak going.
When Fister and Vargas regress, around that time some of the batters may as well. Which means the team will be in the same mediocre condition. Those with hope are adorable in their hope, but a 5% chance to make the playoffs makes these hopes unrealistic.
Ugh this team makes me want to puke sometimes….
C would be the best thing that could possibly happen to this team, sell it to an owner that actually cares
The M’s were 11-12 in the month of April. They lost 2-0 to Texas in Cliff Lee’s brilliant Mariner debut (7 IP, 3 H, 8 K, 0BB, 0R) to close out the month. It prompted Dave to point out the team had major problems that needed fixing, and if they weren’t fixed soon, they were going to start losing because May was a tougher schedule.
The M’s didn’t make any major changes. Bradley imploded, Lowe, Moore, and Jack Wilson got hurt, Griffey got caught napping, and the team sacrificed Byrnes for not being able to sacrifice, and then the hitting coach because they had to look like they were doing something. But fundamentally they kept the same inflexible roster, the same lineups, and the same poor useage patterns for relievers and defenders. All they did was react to injuries and toss a couple of fall guys under the bus.
Their record in May so far is 5 – 16. To a certain extent, May is the 2008 season to April’s imitation of 2007. Good luck let a flawed team think it was doing okay, and then the luck took a vacation and the weaknesses were exposed.
Fixing the problems three weeks ago could have made a major difference. But they squandered the gift they got in April by…
Oh, what the hell’s the use? They’re stuck on stupid. They screwed around long enough that fixing the problems doesn’t matter any more. Let ’em have their damned bobblehead nights and play 1995 highlights for eternity. I’m going to take Cliff Lee’s approach – find another team as fast as I can. This one is a joke.
And you know what? After this year, after 2008, after all the crap since 2004, I don’t care.
Let ’em sell it to that jackass from Oklahoma and reunite them with the Sonics (or Thunderchickens, or whatever they are now). Move to Florida, move to Mexico City, move to Roland-Smith’s hometown in Australia. Let Bud Selig move them to Milwaukee and merge them with the Brewers so maybe they can get one decent team out of the two of them. Auction them off and use the proceeds to keep the Ranger’s solvent, at least they’re trying and their damned bankrupt.
I don’t care. Be gone. Good riddance.
The Seawaukee Brewiners…now that’s a team I could get behind.
The only thing worse than angry fans are fans that are resigned and just don’t care anymore. Unfortunately, we have the latter. I was at the game last night, and it was clear that we have a fanbase that is just resigned to a lost season and are not willing to let the Mariners know about it by, you know, booing or yelling a little; letting their frustration out. And the thing is, I think a lot of that has to do with the resigned, passive stance of our manager. Hell, if he isn’t going to get pissed at things and show some fire, why should we?
Didn’t watch this. Saw the score and Ichiro’s two hits, no RBI or RS.
Fuck this team, this season.
That is all.
Not Wak, but NINTENDO. Which takes us down to Chuck and Howard. What has Nintendo done or ever will do for us (the actual fans) since Pinella left in ’02 starting the breakup of our
good teams here?
Nothing. That’s what.
Obviously we have to thank the Nintendo people for helping us keep the team here, but this marriage is working less and less with each passing year.
So if Nintendo doesn’t really care about us (Seattle fans), why should fans bother buying season tickets or booing in the stands and showing some passion?
I don’t get it. This is a Stadium that is easier to pitch in and harder to hit in. Shouldn’t we be getting guys that know how to hit because of that and let are average Starters just pitch to contact. We don’t even need number one and two starters. I know that you can’t win play off games and the World Series without good defense and pitching but why don’t we just start with making the fucking playoffs for F#$#cks sake……
🙂