P-I goes baseball crazy
One of the worst things about the offseason is that there are rarely any stories to read about the Mariners. I hate going to the local daily’s sports section and seeing a top story about UW’s women’s volleyball team.
Thankfully, the P-I isn’t going out without a fight. It’s a veritable cornocopia of baseball content over there today.
John Hickey: State of the Mariners. John’s overview on what the team needs to do this offseason.
Art Thiel: Lincoln on Hot Seat. Art Thiel talks to Howard Lincoln about the pressure he’s facing.
Dave Andriessen: Line-up Stability Big Goal. Andriessen gets to hear Hargrove whine about not getting to post the same line-up 162 days in a row.
Andriessen: Open Secret, M’s Need Pitching. Andriessen weighs in with the M’s need for help in the starting rotation.
Hickey: 0-11 Road Trip. For some reason, John Hickey rehashes the godawful road trip from hell.
And, if that wasn’t enough for you, John Hickey will be chatting at noon about the team.
None of the articles say a whole lot that we didn’t know already, but if you’re into quantity instead of quality, today is your day.
Wonderful. This is just what I need after I finally saw that Mariners season in review pile of vomit over at the official site.
It shouldn’t be hard to better that, but I have a feeling many of these still may not. Oh well, dissecting bad baseball insights is better than having no baseball.
Thanks for giving me reading material until 10am. 😉
Funny how Grover wants someone to “hear” him whine about being able to put the same lineup out there with Doyle’s non-platoon platoon.
Line up stability. To Grover that means he gets to play the same guys every day, with no changes regardless of anything. (except for WB, of course)Not mentioned in this post is the article yesterday quoting Lincoln as saying both Grover and Bavasi are on a short leash. I cannot imagine a worse message. Forget player development, go with Veterans be damned. Make off season moves that pay the mid thirties ex star big dough in hopes of one shot.
Grover had more stability in the lineup and on the roste than most clubs. All clubs run through waiver pick-ups and minor league call ups. Grover made Bavasi’s job harder by not effectively using some of the players he had and continuing to play Everett.
At least there was one nugget buried in Thiel’s interview:
Let’s try this again.
“If I’ve learned anything, it’s to focus on scouting and player development,” Lincoln said. “When I got into this thing initially, we had more focus on signing veteran free agents. But when you look at the impact of losing draft choices, or trading away prospects to get veterans, it’s more apparent to me that player development gives us the best chance to get things done.”
Welcome to the 21st Century, Mr. Lincoln.
Well, gee, Mr. Lincoln, a LOT of people figured this out YEARS ago. Aren’t you a bit dim not to have figured this out until recently?
“I hate going to the local dailies sports section and seeing a top story about UW’s women’s volleyball team.”
hey, unlike any other UW teams last year, they were the NCAA national champs… they even had an ESPY nominee 🙂
And for those of you with access to the actual paper version of the P-I, you’ll get the extra bonus of a nice breakdown of the Organizational Top-10 Prospects as brought to you by Jason Churchill. Well worth the extra $.50 😉
So far this week:
Girardi: Fired
Baker: Fired
Robinson: (apparently) Fired
Showalter: Fired
Hargrove: Retained
At least I’ve already written off 2007.
Apparently Hickey thinks the same way as Steve Kelley. Saying that winning 9 more games and finishing 3 wins from going .500 isn’t “winning”. God knows what is.
Well, gee, Mr. Lincoln, a LOT of people figured this out YEARS ago. Aren’t you a bit dim not to have figured this out until recently?
Well, let’s give him some credit for figuring it out AT ALL. You might also consider who Lincoln’s first GM (Pat Gillick) and scouting director (Frank Mattox) were, and that Lincoln’s first exposure to baseball franchise management is through the CEO position.
Um, most people use “winning” to mean at least above .500, if not a lot more than that. That they didn’t do. The season showed improvement but it was not “winning”.
That’s going to have to wait until 2008, unless we go all out for Zito, in which case it will never happen.
Howard Lincoln’s first GM wasn’t Pat Gillick.
Does Andriessen harbor some sort of animus against Ichiro?
The two mentions of Ichiro “after five years of resisting a move to center field . . . suddenly decided to make the switch to center field when there was nothing on the line.” And the classic “theories include courting the respect of his teammates and trying to make himself more marketable in his free agent year” are obvious putdowns.
Five years ago was 2001. Did he resist a move to center field while Mike Cameron was still here?
The “theories include . . .” is a classic slam because it fails to mention what the other theories [sic! should be hypotheses] are–could helping the team be one of the hypotheses? If so, he should have said so. Instead we are led to infer that all the other hypotheses are also negative.
Bad thinking, bad writing.
And yeah, the lineup story irritates me. It’s no coincidence that John McGraw, Casey Stengel, Billy Martin and Lou Piniella, while all having their issues, could manage lineups with semi-regulars and keep fresh benches. Hargrove’s inability to manage a roster and do anytihng more than vanilla, by-the-book substitutions is pretty vexing.
September 22, 1999: Woody Woodward announces retirement as Seattle Mariner GM:
http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/chronology/1999SEPTEMBER.stm#day22
September 27, 1999: Lincoln announced as John Ellis’s replacement as Seattle Mariner CEO:
http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=4:3572
October 26, 1999: Pat GIllick hired by Seattle Mariners as GM:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E7D81438F935A15753C1A96F958260
OK, fine, Woody Woodward hung around the Mariner offices ffor a month before he went golfing. Why is this significant enough to pick a nit, in terms of how Lincoln was exposed to methods of baseball franchise management, as opposed to the multiple years he spent with the GM he hired?
Well winning 78 games for us is like 90 games for the Royals.
Jeez, remind me not to be a stickler in the future. No offense or implication intended.
None taken, really. I think the more important point is that Lincoln cut his teeth on the Gillick/Mattox regime, and the piece about him really shows how they influenced his thinking as CEO about “how you make your baseball team win”.
If Bavasi and Fontaine are helping with that, that’s good. At least there’s a learning curve.
Does Andriessen harbor some sort of animus against Ichiro?
Maybe, but he’s also just an idiot. Ichiro played CF in Japan and had to “convert” to RF when joining the Mariners, since the team decided that was best with Cameron around.
#20: I think the more important point is that Lincoln cut his teeth on the Gillick/Mattox regime, and the piece about him really shows how they influenced his thinking as CEO about “how you make your baseball team winâ€.
This is a good point. It’s seemed to me that, after apprenticing in the cult of Gillick, Lincoln emerged believing that the way to succeed was to build the roster around established vets who were solid players with good character and habits. Spread the payroll around so that it wasn’t all concentrated on a handful of players. The blend would be a harmonious team for which the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts.
A team like that was relatively easy to assemble – veteran players meeting those criteria were generally available via trade or the FA market. Further, it seemed to be a low risk approach; i.e., the performance of each player could be accurately projected thatn with younger players. Lincoln thought he had the process down cold, with 2001 validating the precepts.
***
Since then he presumably has been unlearning what he previously thought he knew.
A team like that was relatively easy to assemble – veteran players meeting those criteria were generally available via trade or the FA market. Further, it seemed to be a low risk approach; i.e., the performance of each player could be accurately projected thatn with younger players. Lincoln thought he had the process down cold, with 2001 validating the precepts.
Hm, isn’t that problem not they you could project veterans better than younger plays, but they couldn’t project EITHER very well?
Bad news from the Hickey Chat:
Wednesday, Oct. 4 · 1:09 p.m. PT
Brett (Edmonds): One more from me John–what do you think are the chances Chris Snelling gets platooned next year? I know Grover did it this year, despite Snelling’s split stats throughout his career arguing otherwise. He seems to be the perfect #2 hitter. He takes walks, has some pop, and plays good D. Do you think he’ll get a chance vs. LHPs or will Grover remain too dense to read the split stats? Also–Just say no to Barry Zito…his walks, FIP, xFIP, and K/BB have gotten worse every year the past few years…
John Hickey: Hey Brett, I think Snelling will be a role player next year. The Mariners want to go with a set outfield, and they want more power than they believe Snelling can provide.
#23: Hm, isn’t that problem not they you could project veterans better than younger plays, but they couldn’t project EITHER very well?
Yeah. To clarify I wasn’t endorsing that as a strategy. I’m saying that Lincoln came away from the Gillick years thinking that projecting performance for vets was low risk – until he started learning that the downside risks for players in their mid-30’s were much bigger than he thought.
24-Hickey speculation and nothing more but it does remind of Sweet Lou and his fixation on a left handed power bat such that he never could see Ibanez sitting at the end of the bench. It also should remind us that Lincoln said win or go next year. Neither Grover or Bavasi will screw around with any rookie. It’ll be high priced gritty vet’s with 3-5 year contracts this winter. Dumbest thing he could have said.
24-Hickey speculation and nothing more but it does remind of Sweet Lou and his fixation on a left handed power bat such that he never could see Ibanez sitting at the end of the bench. It also should remind us that Lincoln said win or go next year. Neither Grover or Bavasi will screw around with any rookie. It’ll be high priced gritty vet’s with 3-5 year contracts this winter. Dumbest thing he could have said.
And what free agent is out there that can do that?
Yeah. To clarify I wasn’t endorsing that as a strategy. I’m saying that Lincoln came away from the Gillick years thinking that projecting performance for vets was low risk – until he started learning that the downside risks for players in their mid-30’s were much bigger than he thought.
Yeah, seems to me that he was mucking around in the baseball decisions with stuff he learned by rote, without ever understanding the reasons for the stuff he “learned”.
From Hickey:
“They’re due a total of $59.8 million, although if the $1.75 million option on Perez’s contract is not picked up, that drops to about $56 million.”
59.8 – 1.75 = 56
yup.
Or Eduardo Perez has really expensive clubhouse snack tastes.
From Andriesen (aka “Hargrove’s Lament”):
“It was like this every year in Baltimore,” said manager Mike Hargrove, who managed the Orioles through four losing seasons ending in 2003.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
At least Hickey gets the fact that this team doesn’t walk enough. Larue uncorked this one in the News-Tribune this week:
“Hargrove and his staff need a leaner, meaner approach to winning, one that demands aggressiveness and the willingness to make outs to score runs.
Yuniesky Betancourt, Jose Lopez and players like Chris Snelling, Mike Morse and Bloomquist can be factors in that kind of game.”
Guess he missed those games lost through aggressive baserunning and apparently he hasn’t figured out who won the division and why.
Doyle as a role player? What, so Hargrove can let him rot on the bench getting 2 at bats a week, and we can trade him for some 35 year old bench bat once Hargrove has “proven” he can’t play?
Also, Hickey needs to quit writing about how the offense sucks. It doesn’t. Safeco is the reason the M’s look like they have a horrible offense.
I just don’t have the warm and fuzzies about 2007. Grover is already yearning for the “set” lineup, Bavasi is now so tied to his manager by Lincoln so cannot fire him without firing himself and now has no long term incentive to build and develop. As an aside, despite his records with teams, I have always liked Showalter. Thought he knew how to manage. Tejas has made a mistake that we, in our rush to confirm, cannot take advantage of.
Showalter = Meh. I’m not saying Hargrove’s better, but meh.
Ichiro played CF in Japan and had to “convert†to RF when joining the Mariners, since the team decided that was best with Cameron around.
um, no. Ichiro played only a brief time as a CF in Japan. He was primarily a RF, which (not coincidently) is why he feels more comfortable in RF.