Monday’s Mariner news
DMZ · November 14, 2005 at 11:42 am · Filed Under Mariners
PI: “Hargrove says language barrier not an issue to courting Jojima”
DMZ: “Seattle PI runs longest sub-head ever”. Also in that article, Eddie Guardado runs a poker tournament.
Sunday, the Times ran The Mariners meet with Jojima
Yup. On MLB.com, there’s a story that the M’s want to acquire a pitcher. There, I’ve just spoiled the whole article for you.
Comments
80 Responses to “Monday’s Mariner news”
Everybody be cool
This is even weirder than that trade rumours thread. So Corco’s been optioned down to the farm blog, apparently? I knew he was doing poorly with RISP (Randomly Inserted Silly Posts) but this is ridiculous.
That other blog was intentionally started as a means for people I know personally, particularly those of the female sex (80% of my readers are females), to know that I was thinking.
#53: The mind boggles. Really. All I’m left with is a fizzing sound between my ears and the sense that something’s not right in the world.
I can’t imagine, incidentally, in a multi-million dollar business like baseball, that there would be any issues at all with any language. I mean, really.
#39:
Winn and Olivo were not enough at the time to acquire a starting catcher. First of all, what team in their right mind would trade starting catching for a few months of Randy Winn and a sub-Mendoza hitting catcher? None.
Second of all, it would have taken more than Winn and Olivo to get a starting catcher with Johjima’s potential production, both on offense and defense.
Third of all, if you seem to know what teams want and what teams need, and if this FO is constantly being out-witted, how come you aren’t GM of this club?
I think you have an overly optimistic view of things here. You believe that Randy Winn is nearly an all-star caliber hitter. You believe that Olivo is the next Pudge. Then you believe that a team (probably in contention) would be willing to give up a starting catcher for just these two players, who are not as good as you think. I’m exaggerating here, but I’m not doing it out of mockery, I’m doing it to make a point. We received better players than we thought we would when we traded Winn and Olivo.
Also, Foppert’s arm isn’t “blown out.” Googling “tommy john surgery” should help you understand Foppert’s injury.
(80% of my readers are females)
Great, the Corcoromance is back.
Winn and Olivio were certainly worth more than what the M’s got in return.
Let’s see…
July 30, 2005
The Red Sox get outfielder Jose Cruz Jr. and cash considerations from the Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday night for minor league infielder Kenny Perez and minor league righthander Kyle Bono.
February 6, 2005
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays trade outfielder Jose Cruz Jr. and cash to the Arizona Diamondbacks for left-handed pitcher Casey Fossum.
Do I need to cite further examples?
“Great, the Corcoromance is back.”
Let’s be fair now, if Corco has 4 sisters or some combination of sisters/aunts/mother that totals 4, and his total readership is 5, then that 80% would conceivably have nothing to do with Corcoromance. No need to sound the alarm bells just yet when we’re working with a potentially very small sample here.
And yeah, getting a capable, reasonably priced backup catcher for 3 months or so of Randy Winn is a good move. I’d do it every time my team is way, way out of contention and Pat Borders was at some point considered a reasonable option during the season.
Nope. I have zero relatives that read the blog, as far as I know. And I have 20 regular readers; 16 females.
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Please, no further discussion of Mr. Corcoran, whether ladies are attracted to a man who showers every day and isn’t shy about telling you, and Mr. Corcoran’s blog. I would trim this thing all the way back if I wasn’t so lazy.
deal.
I’m sorry, DMZ; I should realize it’s like opening the Necronomicon and pronouncing some of the names of Old Ones in there.
And we not only got a decent backup C for relatively cheap, we got a decent arm to stock the system with.
Jojima sounds like a good guy to have, but with Clement in the wings and JoeJessica and Rivera sufficient in what will be a non-playoff 2006 (even with Jojima), I don’t particularly like the timing. But I guess in the next year or so, we can trade Clement and Foppert for Heathcliff Slocumb, right?
EC: You mean the Corconomicon?
(I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist)
If we get Jojima, Colorado is rumored to be after JoeJessica, which I say, fine. Maybe score a solid bench guy (lefty killer to platoon with Jones?)
I suspect Pineiro would see a little career rebound if he went to the NL. He just seems primed for a new beginning somewhere else. Perhaps we can pry Delgado out of the Marlins somehow. Cough.
I think Meche deserves another year here. Especially at, what, $4 million?
Isn’t Torrealba a solid bench guy already? Maybe not spectacular, but backup catchers get more regular play than practically anyone else on the bench, so I don’t see why the M’s would get rid of Torrealba unless they get some sort of reasonable solution for backup catcher at the same time. There’s no need to patch a hole and make a hole on the bench at the same time.
What’s with the complaints? Having too many good players is NOT a problem, particularly if you wheel and deal.
Wow. Something interesting really needs to happen with the M’s.
Roger that.
The NY Times has a really interesting reaction to A-Rod winning the MVP, “BIG Deal.” The article goes into details of how ambivalent the Yankee fans are for A-Rod, who gets the blame for all of their post-season failures.
“They (Yankee fans and management) should also by now recognize that not all the baggage A-Rod brought to New York was filled with those pristine GQ suits, that some contained the residue of his being the highest-paid baseball player ever. The $252 million man wilted in the heat of the 2004 American League Championship Series against the Red Sox. He collapsed when the Angels nibbled him to pieces last month.
Fair or not, he now carries the biggest of individual Yankee burdens. Five years and counting, the Yankees have been unable to power their way to the promised land. With each passing season, they have spent more, reaching levels of historic salary inflation, while becoming less proficient in the art of the game.”
[The reporter then offers, IMHO, a smart observation about the value of defense and on-base %.]
“Nobody can blame A-Rod for that, but the memories of him, Matsui and Gary Sheffield flailing and failing last month should have sounded the alarm for significant philosophical change. If Brian Giles, who has played sparingly in center field, is their replacement for Bernie Williams, then they are still dreaming. They would be less likely to crash again in October by sacrificing Sheffield in a deal with the Mets for Mike Cameron, and signing Giles, a high on-base-percentage hitter, to replace Sheffield in right.”
The whole A-Rod thing is a shame, really. It is a shame for us. Having A-Rod in the lineup of that 2001 team might have made a HUGE difference. And I can guarantee that he wouldn’t have to read article in the Seattle Times explaining how he – and he alone – is the symbol of the Ms failures.
Even with all of the frustrations of being a Mariners fan, I much prefer associating myself with the Mariners organization and its fans than the NY Yankees. The way the fans in NY treat their own team, not to mention how they treat visiting players and fans, is shameful.
We have had two and half painful years, but the Mariners organization has acted professionally the whole time. While I often wish the Ms owners showed a little more passion for the game in public, the upside of their silence is they haven’t embarassed themselves and the city.
Like the author of Lookout Landing said, no one in the Ms is stupid. We may not always agree with their moves, but I do think they are making the moves that are available to them. Signing the new catcher from Japan would be a great example of a smart, low risk/high reward move, that will turn this team around. We just need to keep making moves like those, keep running the team professionally, and things will turn around.
BTW, I believe that the unsourced rumor that ran in Newsday last Sunday, the one talking about Ichiro and Hargrove trying to get each other fired, was probably driven more by the desire of someone in New York to create the perception of disarray in Seattle. Those things get written – or placed – so that teams who are competing with the Ms for free agents can point to articles that portray a screwed up situation in Seattle.
I can guarantee that you won’t see unsourced paragraphs in our local papers with rumors about how A-Rod wants Jeter traded. And the reason you won’t see those sentences in the Seattle Times or the PI is not because those reporters are above reporting the occasional rumor. Those things don’t appear because the Ms aren’t calling up Art Thiel
and saying, “Word on the street is that A-Rod is trying to get Jeter traded . . . and we would really appreciate it if you that thought could find its way into the paper.”
Go Ms!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OT: Batgirl points out that Choi Hoon is back with his Korean baseball cartoons — as far as I can see, the M’s only appear a couple of times so far: during the Hot stove and a look at the AL West mid-season
Wow, those are hilarious!
Well, I think they are at least.
The NL West and NL Central cartoons are both very funny.
Why is Ichiro a monkey? And what is he doing to that tree?
I laughed out loud.
#74, I thought perhaps he was counting in the Korean equivilent of hide and seek, and thus out of the AL West contest 🙂
The best thing about all of those comics is that you really don’t even need to understand Korean to appreciate them 🙂 They’re very well done.
Why is Ichiro a monkey?
It’s the ears.
From the Associated Press, at 2 p.m. today:
[i]SEATTLE (AP) — The agent for Japanese All-Star catcher Kenji Jojima said Tuesday his client is not close to signing with the Seattle Mariners, one day after Jojima left Seattle following a weekend stay.
“The visit went well,” agent Alan Nero said Tuesday morning via telephone from his Chicago-area office. “But I don’t believe we are close to an agreement.
“The Mariners were incredibly hospitable. But we are still in the middle of this process. He’s only visited one team. He’s only been to Seattle.”[/i]
That makes a lot of sense. His preference was Seattle, so he came to Seattle first so he could compare it to the other cities he visits, but he can’t make a decision after visiting just one city because then he’d never know if he’d like it more elsehwere.
Most people handle job or college choices in similar fashion, so I’m not surprised either.