Bow down to Ibanez
DMZ · September 12, 2004 at 8:30 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Okay, first — Ibanez looks baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad at first. We can argue about whether he’d get better with regular play, but he’s baaaaaaaaaad right now.
HR for him was his first since Auguest 21st, his second since returning from injury. After the All-Star break Ibanez has hit for average but almost no power at all: his line is .292/.344/.400 compared to .262/. 344/.490 in the first half of the season. If we wanted a hollow OBP left-handed first baseman, we’d have been better off with Olerud.
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7 Responses to “Bow down to Ibanez”
Yeah. Too bad he has nearly no trade value, and Winn does…and we likely have to ditch an OF.
I saw Raul play both first base and the outfield when he was in Tacoma before he made it to the majors. He was not particularly a good defender at either position. If he had been able to run a little bit and play defense, I doubt the Mariners would have let him go to Kansas City for no return. Nontheless, I would like to see him at first for the rest of the season simply because it seems to me to be the only way to get Winn out of centerfield. As I wrote in a previous post, I would like to see the Mariners have a dh/1st base rotation in 2005 of Bucky, Raul and Carlos Delgado. I doubt that all three would be healthy at the same time, so one could be on the disabled list while the other two were in the line-up.
And he’ll be 33 next year, which as we all know means he’s due for his best season! Any bets yet on what his PECOTA line in the 2005 BP Prospects book will be? I’ll take .252 average, 14 HRs, .318 OBP, 645 OPS. In other words … sheer suckitude. Oh, and 44 different occasions when he has a chance to advance a runner from scoring position with less than two outs and fails to do so because he’s not disciplined enough to drive the ball to the right side … or anywhere, for that matter.
But he’s a hell of a nice guy.
Oh, and a VORP value of -2.5.
Which is why he has no trade value, barring a dumb GM. He’d be OK as a LH part of a platoon, I guess, but not if the other half of the platoon at 1B is Spiezio, who’d also be awful at 1B or DH.
The good news about Spiezio is: how can he get any worse? I mean…it has to be all up-hill from here, right?
Ibanez, Spiezio. Expensive Bench players.
I was at that game with my dad. As they read off the lineups and I heard that Ibanez was playing first, I told my dad,”Watch out, he’ll probably belt a homer, and BoMel will put him at first every game for the rest of the season.” I still think that this fact is true. Due to BoMel’s illogical gm skills, Ibanez’s hr, and the M’s win, we’ll probably be seing alot of Ibanez at first and therefore alot of base hits that maybe should have been outs.
BTW did anyone else hear the interview with Ibanez on the post game show on the radio? When asked about the position change, Ibanez said that he would do whatever Melvin wanted him to do. Does that type of willingness answer any questions about their playing this season?