Seattle Sports Insider

Monday Afternoon Machiatto

pictured below: the alternative to O'Neill, Lewis, Gohara and Edgar

Posted by

12/26/16

I/O: Last week, HBT did an All-Time Mariners Team.

CRUNCH: Two of the greatest losses in baseball "history" -- for the purposes of this article -- were Randy Johnson and Alex Rodriguez. Dr. D will not take this opportunity to write his 9,007th jeremiad on the Big Unit. But never underestimate the attritive power of a front office that feels its fans are lucky to have a team at all.

Also: note that the "Mount Rushmore" 25 deep includes --- > Felix, Seager, Tom Wilhelmsen (?!) and the current hitting coach. Hey, just driving by here with a wave, do any of YOU guys have any GUESSES as to why Tom Wilhelmsen is not brought in as a SP wannabe?

Just a guess? Mine would have been his personality. That would have been a guess, but happy circumstances later this morning corrected me. Hey, is this winter baseball chat becoming a bit too fine-grain in its desperation for "fake news"? Maybe we should screen-cap and transcribe some lipreads from Wilhemsen the way the Hobbitons do with Bilbo's dwarven contract?

I/O: An article from Jeff Sullivan, demonstrating that "pitch framing" was never a growth industry.

CRUNCH: By the logic of this article, stats analysis itself was never a growth industry. And the logic was sound. Anyone on the internet has access to everything important about a player. As Dr. B. Kelly pointed out once, the hip SSI denizen tired of the WAR paradigm about five years ago. Everybody knows what a player did done. Question is what a player gonna do.

Jim Bowden, in the 1990's, sneered at a Baseball Prospectus smart aleck --- > "there isn't a dime's worth of difference between you guys." The day has come when he became right. Like Das Boot, the Fangraphs dialogue is the richer for the fact that the real actors have been imprisoned 200' below ground. Since Bowden.

But! There's great news for US. Wait for it ..... . Stats are backwards-looking. Projecting a player's trendline FROM THIS POINT FORWARD requires human intuition. Which brings us back, full circle, to Seattle Sports Insider, James Paxton, Mitch Haniger and Jean Segura. Here's to you guys.

I/O: Greg Johns does another fine mailbag.

CRUNCH: Thusly ...

Johns on Ben Gamel: he has to get his shot now, because he is utterly finished with AAA. He does everything fairly well, especially LH-on-LH hitting. Dr. D: Everybody deserves a shot at a career, as Bill Bavasi acidly said when forced to give away Shin-Soo Choo.

There's a problem with Gamel because he's more of a Chone Figgins type of "soft skills" WAR player than he is a specialized weapon. And that kind of player needs to play daily, needs to let the percentages fall in his favor. So the landscape isn't ideal, but for you the hip Denizen, he represents a fourth pull at the top of the deck. Heredia turns up a four of clubs, you've got Gamel yet to go.

Hey, ten years from now you might not be purchasing a Ben Gamel Lego at a garage sale, the way you will be Haniger. But an extra 2-WAR player here and there can make a big difference in a knife fight.

Johns on Tom Wilhelmsen: He and the M's get along fine. The issue is a discount contract. Dr. D: good to know. Now somebody mail Johns as to why the deuce a pitcher with a 6'6" overhand delivery, a starter's rhythm, a mid-90's fastball and a 12-6 curve never gets any chance whatsoever to start.

Johns on Cruz at 1B: No need. He'll still play some OF. Dr. D. Well, the need is if anything whatsoever goes wrong with Danny Valencia, on or off the field. Bring a glove to Arizona, boom.

I/O: The Times quoted Dipoto on a rotation add. (You can google it if so inclined.)

CRUNCH: Relax, amigo, Jerry Dipoto is much more worried about "wasting" his 2017 offense than you are. ... :- )

He was quoted as wanting either (1) a young club-controls impact pitcher or (2) an expensive guy for one year. The market is silly right now; five valuable assets for Archer and not much less for Odorizzi, for example. Hence Dipoto waiting for the market to come to its senses. But in either case (1) or case (2) we are not talking about Doug Fister and calling it good.

Dipoto has clearly signalled his lust for a TOR. Now, whether he's got the chops to Make It So, that's another subject.

BABVA,

Dr D

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Dr's R/X

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Jake Odorizzi

Comments

Market coming to its senses

I'm not sure it will. The Archers/Odorizzis will be valuable next July, as well. I'm not sure teams will discount now, which is why I wanted us to buy one pretty early....before the price had been set.

If you're trading now, and not buying a one year guy, then Quintana for a boatload makes as much sense.

But I think there are some bargains to be had: I'm beginning to think about Travis Wood: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/woodtr01.shtml

He was a 30 start guy in '12, '13 and '14 ..and decently good (well, he was down in '14). He was a swing man (just 9 starts) two years ago, and decently good. He was a high-use BP guy last season (77 appearances) and decently good. Only once in the past 5 seasons has he run a WHIP above 1.24.

He's decently good....and reports are that he wants to be given a shot at starting again. Is he any better than the field bet on Moore/Povse/Whalen/Hester (especially Moore and Povse)? Likely not. But that is likely true with an -non-elite FA starter we pick up.

He's going to sign for a bargain, I think. He's not a 1-3, but he's versatile. I could live with him, and we keep all our assets. He's not a splashy signing, however. I think we will try to splash, if we're buying, anyway.

Mariners...

I find it interesting that the M's rarely have those 1 year wonders like Esteban Loaiza or Jon Garland on the 2000s ChiSox.

As much as the M's develop TOR or All-Star talent, the M's are terrible at developing stoploss talent.

It seems they either end up with what floats to the top or all the garbage at the bottom.

The M's have had a few FA stopgap hitters come in and contribute

Russell Branyan and Jose Guillen come to mind as pretty terrific stopgaps that were either at or near the end of their careers when the strolled through Seattle. Having a hard time coming up with others, but that's primarily because I haven't watched but a handful of games in the last seven or eight years.

But in the rotation my memory seems to suport your thesis. Washburn held his own throughout his contract, but his was a four year contract and not a stopgap. We bailed on Gil Meche just before he got into a multi-year boerderline TOR groove. Carlos Silva was a mid-tier disaster but, again, was brought in as a long-term piece ala Washburn. We held onto a bunch of fizzlers like Nageotte, Anderson, Blackley and others when it sounded like significant offers were made for some of them.

It seems like the risk-aversion of the organization has led them to make too few trades, resulting in either a magnification of their unlucky mistakes OR resulting in them making genuinely bad trades when good-for-the-M's trades were up on the board but failed to get consummated for whatever reason. It seems to me that you either have to basically stick to your guns re: prospects, in effect keeping ALL of them, or you need to be far more active than the M's were to get the Law of Averages on your side and spread out your risk.

Agreed, to an extent.

Branyan, Guillen, these guys were pretty much consensus "not bad" signings, not 500K freebies off the junk pile (Like Loaiza).

(Upon checking, Garland was a 1R pick who gelled about when you'd expect.)

M's prospects either end up total garbage (1R straight to to DFA like Ackley, numerous Catcher McCatcherfaces, Doctor LHP, etc.) or top of the line (3R, IFA, etc. to All-Star, like Seager, Felix, even Iwakuma, et cetera).

I would suggest that the issue, for even since 1993, is that the M's are very bad at stocking the middle of the cabinet from both free agency and the minors.

Mike Montgomery.

To counter your point...this is a different set of Mariners...Dipoto is relying on different player development teams and a different organizational philosophy...and he immediately got Mike Montgomery to flourish.

But so much poop too.

Totally chuffed and looking forward to the new crew, but that said...

Lind, poop.
Miley, poop.
Karns, poop.
Marte, poop. Poopier after Mano.
Iannetta, poop.
O'Malley, poop.
Rotating door of OFs, all poop.

Gonna need a lot less poop across the roster to make it fly.

You bring a proper balance to

You bring a proper balance to the DiPoto conversation, Ice. Results have so far been mixed.

DiPoto's initial years in Seattle will be judged on whether he is able to leverage the current window of opportunity into the playoffs in both 2017 and 2018, with one of those years getting past the opening rounds. All the accounting of this guy vs. that guy will be overtaken by this larger context. We can put up with some poop if the DiPoto achieves that which he said was his task when he took over, filling in better around his outstanding core of players, and doing so before their production declines significantly.