Deal With Rangers Done
Dave · July 9, 2010 at 1:58 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Per Joel Sherman, as always. Ken Rosenthal confirms.
i have learned deal done with #Rangers, Smoak and 3 others for Lee and reliever Mark Lowe
I love Justin Smoak, and prefer him to Jesus Montero, so I’m prepared to dance with joy.
Celebration time. The M’s now have a first baseman of the present and future.
Are you out of your minds? I’d give someone a big bowl of salsa and chips just to take him off our hands. I’d throw in some guacamole, too.
Smoak’s BABIP this season is only .239 – so that .209 is probably not representative. For comparison Old Man Sweeney’s BABIP this year is .250 (Griffey’s was .220), and league average is .298.
We get the chips or they get the chips. It doesn’t matter either way. Send him somewhere else!
Really? In 3 minor league seasons he’s had 226 k’s to 61 bb’s in ~394 innings. Not a huge strikeout guy, but not nothing either.
Don’t know where else to post this comment, so here goes: What did I see on last night’s telecast??? I have re-played the Tivo a number of times frame-by-frame. I saw Ichiro Suzuki caress (fondle!) a young girl’s leg intentionally, then watched the Mariner’s send her a bag full of goodies a half-hour later for what purpose? To keep her or her father from suing the team for sexual assault?
I am a high school teacher. If I had done what Ichiro did, I would lose my job and be arrested! Seriously. This is the most surrealistic thing I have ever seen during a ball game!
Being a Tiger fan during my youth, I was taking Lance Parrish as an educated guess. He wound up having a pretty decent major league career and was a multiple-time All-Star…but was rip-and-grip miserable in his first full season (.219/.254/.424/.678 overall in 85 games in 1978).
Our next step is to trade Aardsma and League for a flex-fuel pitching machine.
Pravda is reporting that Luke French has been recalled. I assume he’s starting tonight against the Yankees, because there ain’t nobody else around who can.
Here’s the start for a young player you might have heard of:
Year 1: 13 G. 34 AB, BA .206, OB .325, SLG .294, OPS .619
Year 2: 132 G, 443 AB, BA .196, OB .324, SLG .373, OPS .697
A bust, right? Wrong. Those are the lines for Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt, whom some consider the best to ever play his position.
And that’s a hell of a lot bigger sample size than Smoak’s is.
Dustin Pedroia started slow in his first 52 games, posting a .184/.273/.272/.545 over his first 166 PA. He went on an 18 game tear after May 1, 2007 and by his 70th game (amazingly), he had already improved to .251/.330/.374/.705.
Remarkably, he went on to win the Rookie of the Year after posting a .172/.294/.224/.518 line in his first 25 games in 2007.
For those that want to play small sample size bingo with Smoak’s 2010 ML stats and dismiss him, why not focus on his most recent performance? In June he had an .832 OPS.
Or better yet, check out his minor league numbers.
Other recent slow rookie starters:
Chris Young, Alex Gordon, Troy Tulowitzki, Stephen Drew
Ivan – you are my hero. Love the scrappy Mike Schmidt Stat Slapdown. BOOM!!! “Smoakshow” is the answer to our 1st base prayers. Massive upside for the organization, nice move Jack!
BTW – if you think we could have signed Lee? Stop trying to sell “crazy” around here – we’re still stocked up from the Bavasi era.
I can tell you want to be excited. i want you to be excited. Justin Smoak is awesome! Hopefully this will help.
Smoak was the #11 pick of the 2008 draft. Last year in AA he hit .328/.449/.481 with a .427 wOBA in 227 PA. He has received favorable comparisons to Mark Teixeira, Chipper Jones and John Olerud. Coming into the season John Sickels had him ranked as the #2 prospect in the Rangers organization (which is loaded) behind only Neftali Feliz. He also ranked him the #10 hitting prospect in baseball at the end of last season.
You cannot judge a player on 275 MLB PAs at the age of 23. You can judge him on his numbers in the minors (which have been quite good) and his scouting reports (which have been almost universally positive.) He is as close to a sure bet at being a quality regular in MLB as you will find at his age and experience level. Justin Smoak is awesome and you will love him in due time.
Good enough. I’m excited. It’s official.
I like our young, left hand/switch hitting infield future:
1b Justin Smoak
2b Dustin Ackley
ss Nick Franklin (maybe early, but promising)
Talk about denial, enabling, and diva-obsession! Only Ichiro could get away with sexual harassment on live TV.
He definitely stroked that girl’s leg last night after chasing a foul ball in the stands. This is outrageous. I have frozen the re-play on the DVR and slo-mo’d it frame by frame. This was an intentional act of sexual harassment. If the guy sitting next to her had done that, he would be up on charges.
Bad enough that Ichiro’s arm has become erratic and ineffective and his routes to the ball remain parhetic. Now he gets protected even though he clearly and intentionally committed a perverse act.
Why else would the M’s send an autographed ball and a jersey to the girl in the stands two innings later?
She gets prizes after Ichiro touches her. Crude, corrupt, and criminal.
Good.
I was gonna say that
A) THIS year is his second full year of pro ball.
B) And his HR total right now would lead the Mariners.
I think there’s a small chance he’ll get better.
I saw something entirely different when I watched. I think it’s just you. Seriously.
To say nothing of the fact that the supposed transgression would be the girl’s (and her parents) call to make, and not yours.
Don’t try to kill our buzz with an imaginary hornet’s nest.
Wow, Nellie, you’re insane.
Yeah Nellie he touched her leg after chasing a
flyball. She didn’t seem to think he molested her. This kind of hyper-sensitivity is fucking annoying, to put it kindly.
Settle down there Nellie, you’re acting like rape occurred in the middle of a game.
Seriously though, that was just odd. It did look like he stroked her leg.
If that had been my girlfriend, I don’t know if I’d be pissed, or be pleased that my girlfriend is up to the standards of Ichiro haha
Tom Tuttle-
How the hell does ANYONE know if the Mariners didn’t really talk to Lee about an extension. That’s speculation.
Nellie- you’re a fucking idiot…the guy just made her day…she was estatic…take your ICHIRO! bias and go away…that girl was so happy, and you’re saying she was molested? Dude, stay off the meth…
As awesome as Lee has been, it’s entirely possible that Z was looking at him as a pure rent-a-player unless the deal was really, really good. This is still a team that has $20M tied up in essentially dead salary (sorry, MB, but you’ll never be worth that contract) and given the state of the economy the M’s might just not see themselves as being able to afford a guy like that for the long-term.
Anyway, overall the fact that we had Lee in the middle really shouldn’t take too much away from the fact that Z essentially traded away a relief pitcher prospect who looked really good in the WBC (Aumont), a couple of B-level prospects, and a reclamation project middle reliever (Lowe) for a very, very good 1B prospect and a couple more B-level prospects in return. In a sense, it’s Aumont for Smoak. How is that not an awesome deal?
Reed, Olivo, and Morse was a great haul for Freddy Garcia at the time Bavasi made the trade. That trade was quite possibly the best move he made in his tenure as Ms GM. The fact that it did not work out for any of the three players is unfortunate, but let’s not re-write history here.