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Matty linked us to this from Lookout Landing, re King Leonydas' walk-off:

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Absolute pandemonium ensued. I've never seen anything like it before at Safeco. I've seen walk-offs of all sorts there, but I'm telling you, the sixteen-thousand still there, minus whoever made the trip from Oakland, nobody wanted to leave. We all just sort of stood there, hugging, wishing peace to one another. I think I stayed an extra half-hour. Sort of speechless, full of perfume and cologne from others I didn't know. Full of winning. Of belief and of knowing. There was no ritual, there was cacophony. Unbridled joy. The sort of stuff that if you could harness it, put it in a bottle, and share with the entire world, there would be peace on Earth and good will to all.

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No, I wasn't kidding about us leaving in the 7th, and no, you may not forward the above paragraph to Cindy.  As far as she knows, it was just a comeback win that we shoulda stayed for.

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Jason Churchill pointed out that Edgar has un-Peguero'ed the swing of Leonydas.  No need for Dr. D to repackage Jason's analysis in order to put SSI's fingerprints on the situation.  Jason's right.  Just read his.

... ok, Dr. D's resistance is half-hearted at this point, but he did independently check a few vids.  Such as this one of his May 22 four-hit game.  :: shakes head ::  Slap me silly if Leonys Martin and Edgar Martinez didn't completely overhaul his swing.  And this explains Martin getting to the high pitch, for reasons the Gentle Reader will find obvious.

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Contemplating life, love and the meaning of $150M contracts

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LEAVING US WHERE

This team didn't NEED Leonys to hit.  That's point A.  Talking about his bat, we are playing with house money from the get-go.

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How's he going to do?  I've never seen this Leonys Martin before, the one with the (1) NEW compact swing to complement the (2) OLD quick hands and 108-MPH authority.  So, no idea what he's going to hit in the future.  (Not that we had any idea before, obviously!)

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Guess here would be that it is QUITE PROBABLE that Leonys will OPS+ the 80 that was going to make him a 3+ WAR center fielder under club control.  That in turn means that we SSI denizens can regard the center field problem tentatively solved.  Even the platooning, if it turns out to be necessary after all, doesn't look like a big issue.  Lots of guys have LH-on-LH issues, and Martin is a glove-first player.

Which would mean we could kind of write off the 0.5 roster slot we had been talking about so much.

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It appears POSSIBLE that Edgar and Robby have unlocked the considerable physical potential.  Tough for Dr. D to PREDICT that Martin will continue to rake, but what's to say it won't occur?  There is no shortage of Brett Gardners, Rusty Greers, etc. who went from 4 homers a year their whole lives up to 17-24 once they jelled.  When Leonys barrels them up he's getting better launch velocity than Robinson Cano.  20+ homers, even 25+ homers, well ... he's shown us what it would look like, now hasn't he.

How many different roads did Jack Zduriencik drive down, in order to find some young player or other to give him 5 WAR for $500,000?  And how many times did he invest 1,000 or 1,500 at-bats to get there?  Now Jerry DiPoto throws a 4-walk reliever at a division rival and gets one for the cost of three weeks with Edgar?

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What's an Edgar worth?  :: show of hands ::

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DR's PROGNOSIS (prescribed from Tijuana)

I guess we can plan on the 3 WAR the next several years, the Cameron-Gutierrez heir apparent. And can watch with a wry smile to see if it becomes 5 or 6.  There are a few things breaking DiPoto's way this year.

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Be Afraid,

Jeff