Seattle Sports Insider

M's 7, Royals 5 ... und in zee TV? Vot Next?

Posted by

3/10/16

What the hey. There were two major league teams, if not five, onsite Wednesday. All with cameras blazing and clipboards scrawling at each player's every move. No reason Dr. D can't publish the chicken scratch on his legal pad.

No, of course he doesn't really use a legal pad. ... Granted, the Mainframe Cluster may grok a few dozen motherboards, a few Tb of RAM, and a coupla hundred Intel cores. But even Dr. D's worst enemy will concede that he doesn't take baseball seriously enough to waste viewing time on notes.

RIGHT HAND LINEUP

The M's spent three innings making the lefty Matt Strahm look very, verrrrry lefty. Which was a bit melancholy, seeing as once the season starts, the enemy will not be subbing out starting pitchers who are mowin us down.

CODY MARTIN

Was out there for three full innings (?) and sixty pitches (!!). I guess we better watch out for this guy Opening Day ... in Cheney, of course. Slingy delivery. Disguises and mixes three pitches pretty well. What he has to separate him from other AAA pitches, we haven't the foggiest. (Cha Seung Baek rule: every AAA pitcher is absolutely excellent. The question is what do you do Special.)

STEFEN ROMERO

Is getting a loonnnnnnger look at the ball than he used to - even routinely falls out over the plate Jim Thome-style. We expect him to get a thousand ML at-bats if not three thousand. Has an option left, right... er, has an option left, doesn't he? Is definitely on the "extended roster."

DAE-HO LEE, DARIO PIZZANO, ED LUCAS

Wow! A cornucopia of brand-new M sightings! A veritable glam eyefest for the :: snap, snap :: eyes. Watching spring training can be a lot better than it's given credit for.

If you want Dr. D's impressions of these completely identical players, check out his second site, the D-O-V Mainframe. :: acknowledges applause as if he were a card shark who just lucked into a 1-in-52 miracle ::

SEAGER, CANO, CRUZ

All of 'em looked like it was November. No, that's not fair. Cano looked like it was March 10th; Seager looked like it was February. Cruz looked like it was December. Which, I don't imagine that any of them are fighting for their spots on the varsity. After all, Felix is on some back field getting a rematch against Tyler O'Neill. (Yes, really, and he struck him out. And here you thought Felix might conceivably have moved beyond that a couple of Cy Young smackdowns ago? Nuh-uh.)

JAMES PAXTON vs NATE KARNS

Dave Valle has the impression that --- > basically, James Paxton is the type of big ol' country boy who just needs some motivation. If Nate Karns can push him, and James can respond the right way, it's pretty much his job to lose.

Music to Dr. D's ears, in the sense that he's K-Pax' biggest fan. Not music, in the sense that we hate to see technical problems (lack of command, release point) attributed to character flaws. Like, I find my release point and throw strikes, and now you think I'm a better human being than I used to be, more gutsy, more focused, more determined, when really it was a mechanical fix.

But! Dave Valle was a big league catcher and he has access.

So take it all for what it's worth.

JESUS MONTERO

Dave Sims aptly called it a "loop" in his swing; back in the day, RockiesJeff, MoeDawg and I used to call it a simple "hitch." He bobs his hands up and down, rocks the bat, and lengthens the swing path after the ball is in the air. Not good. NOT good. And he's late on the ball.

No, we didn't just make a roster decision and write it in blood on a strip of ash bark under the light of a full moon. These are crib notes on a yellow pad, 'member?

CHRIS IANNETTA

Looked like July. The year 2014, that is. .370 OBP standin' still. Saw the ball absolutely great, was quick, had bat acceleration .. an impressive walk out of an 0-1 and 2-2 count, to go with a crisply-clicked single to his pull field. Niiiiiice.

See the final paragraph under Montero, Jesus.

LEONYS MARTIN

Reminds me of Carlos Peguero at the plate. Trust us, this is not a good thing. And Peguero at least had the 1/4-ton flatbed trailer to compensate.

See the final paragraph under Iannetta, Chris.

GET A LIFE, Dept.

Three cuppas' worth of material this morning, right? Amazing how much easier "a baseball game" makes it to do this blog :- )

What'll they think of next,

Dr D

Blog:

Postgame

Tags:

Jesus Montero

Comments

Icky uck!

Icky and uck are both words, right?

Martin at a sub 80 OPS+ is just about Ackley in '15: .215-.270-.366. Well, make it .240-.300-.335 in our new guy's case.

That is Icky uck. And Martin was worse than that (injured) last year.

At sub-80 OPS+ he BETTER be getting to an extra ball in CF every game.

BTW, Montero isn't making this team. Man, even I'm waffling on him (despite his vL capabilities):

Cutting bait,

Moe

Appreciate the report on my next to favorite paisano, btw. He's trailing only Sinatra. Frank, not Matt. ;) (I know)

I like Martin. He doesn't seem as lost at the plate as expected

It's probably just spring hope but I like him. I'm also getting to like Lee, I think he might make the team out of spring training. He's not a total disaster at 1b. I also like how they are keeping Seager, Marte and Cano together and having them all play or none play.

I've definitely got the spring hope going on this year, the more I hear Service and Dipoto the more hope I have.

Hitches!

Doc, thanks for the thoughts. Moe, waffling on Montero? I saw some of the stats and was wondering what was going on with him. So appreciate your words. Small sample obviously but when he needed to be hot, he is not. The hitch Jeff? Funny, I was at my son's game a couple of weeks ago and watching a young bench player working on his swing. Very long swing. I told my wife he would probably be a quick K. That might work for some of the greats in golf but you are not trying to hit a moving ball that changes both speed and location. All the bat speed and athletic ability can be negated very fast but one thing.....a long, untimely load that never gives you a chance to recover. Too bad! Some guys even get away with that....but not most!

Glad to see Romero come right back after the huge knot on the knee!

Montero!

And just when I say something negative about the guy....he comes through today. Want to make serious money? Be a total contrarian and do the opposite of whatever I say or do!