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Out of curiosity…

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AFL rosters out, M’s sending some dudes for additional sun

Perkins v Feierabend.

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Game 133, Twins at Mariners

A rotation of Felix, Bedard, Silva, Morrow, and Rowland-Smith is solid. Yes, there are question marks surrounding Bedard’s health, Silva’s talent, and how Morrow and Rowland-Smith convert from the bullpen, but there’s risks with any pitching staff, and there’s actual upside to that rotation. Rowland-Smith fills the Washburn role as the back-end flyball lefty who pitches well in Safeco, while Silva should regress back toward his mean (he’s not this bad) and be just mediocre instead of awful, while Morrow joins Bedard and Felix as the guys who miss a lot of bats and get outs by themselves.

The bullpen could use another good lefty, but Putz/Green/Lowe/Corcoran/Dickey gives the team lots of right-handed options. Bring in a guy like Jeremy Affeldt and all of the sudden you’ve got a contention-worthy bullpen.

When was the last time a team lost 100 games and still went into the following season with a complete pitching staff that didn’t need an overhaul to contend? Realistically, if the M’s are going to improve their roster this winter (and that’s TBD, of course, depending on the GM), they just need to overhaul the position players. The pitching staff isn’t a big problem, and for once, we can look forward to a winter where we’re not throwing ridiculous money at back-end starting pitchers.

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The ‘09 Pitching Staff

I’m getting tired of this race to the bottom/Strasburg sweepstakes shit. Cheering against your team is — purely in my opinion — sucky behavior even if it results in a long-term benefit. But it goes beyond that.

Look:
1. The Nationals are a way worse team (hard as that is to believe) and they have a much harder schedule over the remaining weeks. The M’s are not going to catch them at the bottom.
2. Even with first pick, the Nationals might not bust slot to pick Strasburg
3. Even if the M’s have first pick, or the Nat’s do but pass on Strasburg, the M’s may not bust slot to pick him either.
4. Even if the M’s do end up with Strasburg, he may never see the majors (Ryan Christianson ring a bell?) or he may end up not being anything special (Jeff Austin? Tim Stauffer?) or he might blow up his arm (too many to list).

All of this means that talking about Strasburg all the time makes you sound like the guy who insists he’s going to move to California where Angelina Jolie will divorce Brad Pitt and marry him. Yeah, it’s possible but it’s unlikely, and even if it happens it’s still getting annoying to listen to. I realize there’s essentially no reason left to watch the team except the pure love of baseball, but tedious and repetitive is tedious and repetitive, no matter how likely (or not). You’re being worse than a bad fan. You’re being boring. Don’t be boring.

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Comment of the day

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Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh

Woah…
RF-L Ichiro!
CF-L Reed
3B-R Beltre
LF-L Ibanez
DH-R Lopez
C-L Clement
SS-R Betancourt
1B-L LaHair
2B-L Hulett

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Game 132, Twins at Mariners

Once rosters expand, it is on. I would love to see a Joba v Morrow matchup just for the “here’s a couple guys who’ll be facing off in the 2012 ALCS” angle.

Hilarious quote from that article:

”He’s a great late-inning reliever,” one AL scout said this week. ”Why would you risk that to make him a starter? I don’t see it.”

You don’t, really?

Of the top, say, thirty pitchers in terms of value contributed to their teams last year, how many were starters? I count thirty.

But maybe this AL scout has a point. Babe Ruth was a pretty decent pitcher. I still don’t understand why they converted him to a full-time position player.

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Morrow to start next week versus Yankees

Not during spring training, not to be tested during the Arizona Fall League, not put in place over the All-Star break… Thursday. Right in the middle of the season. It’s unclear to me from these stories how much testing has taken place. I hope it’s a least a little bit, because starting something like this on a random day in the middle of the season seems, well, like something only MLB would do.

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Mid-season? Really?

It could, of course, be a fine pitching matchup. But I can’t be the only one who looks at tonight’s game with some degree of dread. Batista facing a good-hitting Twins team? Ugh.

Mark Lowe was optioned to Tacoma, and Randy Messenger is up in his stead. Lowe’s foot is injured after taking that liner off it Saturday, and he was reportedly on crutches yesterday, so there you are.

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Game 131, Twins at Mariners