2014 Tacoma Rainiers Preview
If you’re now wondering about this or that player whom you may not be seeing in these previews, I’d recommend starting here and scrolling back through their archives to see who has been released lately. Those not released are either in extended or injured in some way. This year it was particularly a who’s who of “oh yeah, I remember that guy! Man, whatever happened to him?” Lots of guys who at one point were draft intrigues or ranked at the back end of top 30 lists based on an interesting thing or two that they could do. The Rainiers this year seem to be… average? The rotation is uninteresting and uninspiring at the moment, but competent. The bullpen fares better on the account of employing a couple Destroyers of Worlds and a few other guys who you could probably trust with a lead. The catchers know how to catch and the infielders mostly know how to hit and the outfielders, if nothing else, can run a ball down. It’s not a star-powered roster or anything but it can probably manage out there in the wilds of the PCL.
As for where the ramblings take us, we have schadenfreude, pica (sort of), everyone’s favorite rhetorical technique, guys who could be in Pantene commercials, the 188th most popular male baby name of the 1980s, dread and doomsaying, players the Oakland A’s would probably like, and repeated instances of name confusion and pointless conjecture. Let’s get to it.
2014 Jackson Generals Preview
Good morning, people still on a high after sweeping the Angels for the first time since 2006. I can’t think of a more deserving group. This will be the third installment in which I address the state of our double-A Jackson Generals of the Southern League, formerly the West Tenn Diamond Jaxx. I miss those Xs sometimes, it’s nostalgic in a 90s sort of way. The digression machine this round takes me to the unreliability of the written word properly conveying tone, unpopular music opinions (I have MANY), splicing of data that the mind refuses to process, my preferences in hard liquor, a Wilson Valdez name check, things that seem really Irish, someone I describe as being a professional enigma (and translate into how unpopular my music opinions can be), the depression that follows an encounter with the sublime knowing that day-to-day life is going to fail to live up to it later, and… I think that covers it.
There’s not a lot of high-end talent, we’re talking one top ten guy, one on the fringe of that, a guy in the late teens, a guy or two in the twenties, and various thirty/forty-somethings. It’s better than High Desert, probably not quite the ceiling that the top guys have in Clinton, but you know what? This rotation looks good. The bullpen has some solid contributors and few weak points. The catchers are reliable. The infield has some guys that can drive the ball and the outfield has some that can cover ground and all of the starters out there can hit. Some of these players, even at this level, are still improving, still somewhat unknown to me, and with some things breaking right, they could really be a force. Could be a middle of the road team, but there’s potential for a lot more. I like this team. I like where it’s going. Let’s get to it.
2014 High Desert Mavericks Preview
Hello and welcome back to the second installment of oh crap I’m only halfway finished. Among tangential meanderings in this round, games common to carnivals and fairs, pitchers of limited archetypes, forces of nature, Latin American magical realism, the Orestia, hipsters, people’s nicknames not making any danged sense, the Cartesian coordinate system, and bloodlines. What follows also contains reference to at least one Jabari. Go ahead and guess which. I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
The Mavs look this year like a team that could threaten some serious offense, which seems like it could go without saying but between the core of the infield, the starting catcher, and the mish-mash of potential and results that you have in the outfield, I’m guessing some silly numbers are ahead of us. On both sides. I like two of the starters all right but can acknowledge that they themselves might have issues and the rest of the rotation may fare no better. Likewise, a few names to like into bullpen and a whole lot of question marks and repeaters. Battleship Baseball, set sail!
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2014 Clinton Lumberkings Preview
Hello and welcome back to a sometimes-annual round of previews concerning the full-season Mariners minor league affiliates. For those unfamiliar with the process, I take the opening day roster of each team and try to write as much as seems relevant about each player and the result usually weighs in at a few thousand words despite my best efforts to curb it. The spectrum tends to run from “informative” to “inane”, and so in addition to the topic at hand, I’ve drifted into early 2000s Mariners pitching prospects, architecture, aphorisms, surnames, etymology (real and pseudo), Pokémon, theory, actors with iconic mustaches, and fictional spies. This all sounds considerably more interesting than the results, but as I’ve said before with regard to my baseball writing in contrast to my other writing, it trends extemporaneous and could easily be damned by Capote as typing and not writing at all.
To give the more distant overhead perspective on things, the rotation has a range of undersung to unknown, the bullpen has a few names to file away but isn’t especially inspiring, the infield is comprised mostly of mid-range guys who are either trying to make or re-establish a reputation, and the star power seems to be at the outfield corners. The catching crew is elided in part due to my own lack of interest. “Top-heavy” seems the most apt descriptor for this squad because the players I’m interested in here, I’m really invested in, and those that I’m not, it’s part lack of familiarity and part lack of perceived impact talent. If things break in the right direction on the infield and their offense, it could be a rather competitive team. If not, not. But bear in mind that these tend to be skewed by my own interests as an observer, and there have been teams that I looked at with a “meh” and went on to go deep into the playoffs. It all depends on what your rooting interests are.
All the rosters were released yesterday afternoon, but I’m still typing away like a maniac so as to excuse myself from other duties. The other three are forthcoming.
Some NRIs Announced, Maybe More to Come
A funny thing happened last Saturday. I’m not referring to my trip to a bar long after the game, where I think I saw a patron attempt to pay with a photograph of Russell Wilson (that did happen). No, rather, during the game I was at work and my boss had the national radio feed configured and I heard Dave Sims, calling the game with a chipperness I have not recognized in recent seasons. Later, switching to my own radio in the car, I picked up a reference by the announcers to Russell Wilson’s baseball career, noting that the last play looked like a ball flip that might be made by the second baseman to initiate a double play. Baseball was suddenly an impending thing again. My mind latched on to it and now I’m recollecting and wondering about various bits of roster minutae, both good (“hey, Nick Franklin rebounded in September sort of”) and not universally good but it’s still baseball (“oh right, Willie Bloomquist.”)
We also, this morning, got another sign of the coming spring with the announcement of NRIs, with more NRIs to come, one figures. A lot of this could have been inferred already, as we figured that RHPs Matt Palmer and Ramon Ramirez would be on the list, Humberto Quintero would be part of that backstop corps, and Cole Gillespie would probably get an invite for the outfield because why not?
Beyond that basic bit of bookkeeping, there are a few points of intrigue on the list. Sure, a lot of the invites fall under the “paid your dues” header (hey there, southpaws), but I can’t recall another year where internally developed players figured so prominently. Almost three-quarters of the NRIs were drafted and signed by the M’s and a few more were with the org last year. It could be that Tanaka has somehow managed to freeze the minor league FA market as well, but it looks more like the Mariners are trying to maintain the feeling of internal development even after the Cano signing.
Moving down the list, there are other things to note. Steve Baron is not part of this year’s backstop corps, and while he may end up joining later for split squads and travel days, he also might not with guys like Tyler Marlette around. The infield has a couple of 40-man also-rans in the bat-first Nate Tenbrink and Ty Kelly (walk-first, in his case) added to perennial gloveman in Gabriel Noriega and Chris Taylor, who hopefully can hit and field. D.J. Peterson is a noted absence, particularly when high picks often have NRI invites worked into their contracts, but it could be that they’re still trying to hold him back after that surgery on his jaw. Gillespie is also the only outfielder on the roster at the moment. No Travis Witherspoon. No Burt Reynolds and the opportunity for competitively-obscure Burt Reynolds references. Mind you, there are nine listed OFs on the 40-man already which does not include Morrison or Hart, so there may not be a need.
Probably the thing to watch as we get into March is what happens among the right-handed pitching NRIs. Dominic Leone and Carson Smith both got invites to compete and both are of the “hard-throwers of varying polish” group that has later seen mid-season jobs for guys like Stephen Pryor, Mark Lowe, Carter Capps, and Shawn Kelley. There’s also Stephen Kohlscheen to consider, a guy who has less stuff than either Leone or Smith, but has had great K numbers the past two seasons and was talked about as a potential Rule 5 selection during the winter meetings. Appearances by any of those three could be looked on as a preview of coming attractions. And this is a preview of that preview, which has now reached its conclusion. Think more on it, or don’t until you absolutely have to.
’13 40-Man Preview Extravaganza
We’re presently in one of the offseason doldrums that precedes the winter meetings, a time of frenzied anticipation when we pretend as though things are going to happen and then they usually don’t. That means it’s time for me to step in and talk a bit about other forms of anticipation, namely prospects, and who we might see get added to the 40-man in preparation for the deadline, which is I think a week from now. Given that the M’s keep promoting these guys, I don’t know that it’s more or less interesting, given the obscurity of the players in the eyes of most.
The name of the game this year is last year’s game’s name moved up a digit: ’09 high school draftees and early international signings and ’10 college draftees need to be on the 40-man lest they be kidnapped by other organizations. The international portion of this is always the most dicey as players can “debut” in instructs the year they sign, but as I’m not seeing that from the media guide, I’m guessing that Guillermo Pimentel and Alexy Palma are not on the list, which is great because I don’t want to write about them now, or unless they’re doing things worth writing about. All advanced metrics are courtesy of StatCorner, your Corner for Stats (and nB%, if unfamiliar, is unintentional walks plus HBP)
Dissecting a Box Score
Yesterday was probably not an important day to many of you unless it’s your birthday in which case, oh gosh, I’m sorry. Or it may be if you’re a history buff, considering we have the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Treaty of Versailles, and the beginning of the Irish Civil War all happening on the same day in various years. Man, that is some history. But for me, today marks the four-year anniversary of one of the most bizarre minor league box scores I’ve ever had to talk about, which was the defeat of the High Desert Mavericks at home against the Lake Elsinore Storm by a final score of 33-18 in a game that lasted four hours and ten minutes.
Every few months, I go back and look this one up and each time I seem to uncover something new. Its depths likely aren’t endless, but that such a box score would have certain eccentricities goes without saying. This time around, I’ve decided to report on my findings on this particular trip down the rabbit hole. What follows is going to be a lot of fragments pertaining to what happened and, to a lesser extent, how it came about and what happened next for the players involved. I’m not going to try to re-construct a narrative from it because, for one thing, you can just follow the game log, and for another I would imagine that to be even more tedious. I’m also not trying to write “well” about this box score so much as relish in its oddities.
June 28th 2009 was a Sunday. A crowd of 1,054 was enduring a gametime temperature of one hundred degrees and the wind was blowing out to left at seven miles an hour. We certainly never expected what happened next.
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2013 Everett Aquasox Preview
Even though I don’t write often here anymore, I still write a lot, and with the Aquasox being the team of local interest for me, I really can’t avoid this one.
I’ve seen a lot of Aquasox teams over the years and made various predictions based on roster composition and performance. This one, I just don’t have a good feel for. To broadly characterize the team, it’s composed of a lot of players who had high billing or showed elite physical abilities or flashes of potential at some point in the past, but who have yet to put it together or haven’t had the chance yet. This means a lot of potential for volatility. The team could have a bunch of breakthroughs and turn out to be amazing! It could also have a blend of good and lackluster performance and come out with a middling record. It could also continue along what has been more or less the status quo and just frustrate all of us. This is the scenario I least prefer.
To summarize what you’ll be seeing below, the bullpen arms are live and oft troubled, the catchers can catch and little else, the infield has a fair amount of hitting potential from a lot of the guys that we’re waiting to see in action, the outfield seems to be a mix of power guys and speed/defense guys, and the rotation is some sort of UN council.
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Names for the First-Round, 2013 Edition
Since I started blogging about this possibly-not-stupid stuff, I’ve been able to set aside draft day to sit down, analyze, and more often than not wait for a rather long time between picks because the Mariners are disinclined towards acquiring supplemental round selections and the early part of the draft is unbearably long. This year, however, the first day of the draft coincides with my most recent graduation (UW, MFA, poetry), and if the process starts up at 4 pm PDT and the ceremonies start at 5 pm, it’s hard to see me sticking around to cover any of this. [I also might not be at my cognitive best the next morning, when more draft happens.]
What I’ve tried to do here is profile some of the names I see floating around. Picking twelfth is in some respects easier and some respects more taxing: easier because the investment is not quite so large, more taxing in that there are more names that should be known, what with the vagaries of the draft. Something weird could easily happen and one of the two top prep outfielders, Austin Meadows and Clint Frazier, could land in our hands simply because other teams think they need pitching more. Or we could see the Mariners pick someone not on the public radar, as they did when they picked Taijuan Walker [after being rumored to the end to be looking at Marcus Littlewood with the same pick]. A not-infinite number of things could happen and undoubtedly one of them will.
I won’t take it personally if anything I say here does not come to fruition. I’m not really in the business of casting baseballs into the fire and then reading how they pop along their seams. I’m only here to apprise you of certain possibilities and leave the rest the results-based analysis. Certainly, someone will come in posting after me once the pick actually happens. Here are ten names in no particular order, not even the one that they were written in.
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Questions for a New Minor League Season
Marc posted his own minor league introduction last week while I was busily filling out paperwork that had nothing to do with baseball, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I can’t also post something of my own that I will actively tell myself won’t go on for too long, but then will totally go on for way too long, you guys. Editor’s note: oh it went on all right
Here are some narratives that I’m looking at in the upcoming minor league season, translated as three questions for each team. Some of the questions are related to the development of actual prospects, but some are just things of general minor league interest. I’ve tried throughout to avoid certain things like “If Zunino wants to continue catching then he should improve on the things that the catching job entails”-type analyses, but in some cases it seemed pertinent to address some specifics. I write a lot, but prefer not to be wasteful, or to fail at being somewhat thorough. Here come nearly five thousand words written mostly yesterday.
JUMP CUT
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