.
Hot seat, in which Dr. D gives his scattergun reaction to news of the day. No thinking allowed.
It's like Lonnie of MC had a Skype podcast rollin' on us. Time to skip to the good stuff! No stats. No facts. No supporting evidence, especially none of that egghead F/X baloney. No wit and most importantly no wisdom. In fact: no baseball knowledge. Just the sound bytes.
This is the American Idol generation. It's got to pop Pop POP!
.
HOT SEAT: Blake Beavan throws two solid, and nobody squares up a thing. New angle, says Beavan. Watch me do what Fister did.
DR. D, KNEE JERK: We got this big round filing cabinet with the word "Noise" scrawled on the side of it in Sharpie. We crumple this type of newspaper clipping loosely, and flip it over there no-look. If it rims out, it stays on the carpet.
Beavan already had an average angle and average movement. Maybe this will change his angle to "slightly above average;" more likely it will just foul up his shoulder.
Yeah, that's P90X city baby: take your one good point and just work THAT. Forget about the weaknesses. Go with what brung ya.
Beavan's problem has never been his fastball. His problem is everything else.
Fister gets minimal, minimal, say it with me MIN..ani-MAL, benefit from the angle on his fastball as such. He's good because he's good -- changeup, yakker and all the trimmings -- and also because his release point is about two feet closer than batters think. He gets an invisible four feet on his heater.
Jeremy Bonderman gets insane movement on his fastball. A moving fastball doesn't make you a hard-case, dude.
The angle doesn't HURT none. But you're looking for love in all the wrong places. It's like saying hey, I'm gonna throw my changeup like Carter Capps throws his changeup. I'm a baaaad man.
Yer kinda missin' the point on your idol there.
.
HOT SEAT: Danny Hultzen blows away the mini-Padres with eight (reportedly) precision-located pitches.
Dr. D: We told you that you might hear this ANY morning. As it turned out, you heard it on the FIRST morning. Comparatively speaking, hearing it on the FIRST morning is preferable, as compared to if we'd heard it on the SEVENTH morning.
He's not a guarantee. He's now, ooohhhhhhhhhhhh .... say a 70% chance. Of being Deuce Blinkin' Hultzen.
.
HOT SEAT: Taijuan "hits upper 90's."
Dr. D: After one morning, we are feeling tremendous remorse over the Joe Saunders signing. At least we don't have to get all invested in Garland and Bonderman...
... Can you pull a wry face on a Skype audio?
Given another four sharp outings by Hultzen ... How 'bout you take Saunders, Garland, and Bonderman, Eric. I'll take Erasmo, Taijuan, and Hultzen. Play you a series for your paycheck?
.
Seriously. Baseball is so encumbered by tradition -- "tradition" in the worst sense of the word, doing things the wrong way, even though we KNOW it's the wrong way, for the reason that we've always done it that way.
.
HOT SEAT: Kameron Loe, according to Baker, "will make the team" if he throws like he did his first time out.
Dr. D: How many of these guys are Blake Beavan plus a million or six dollars in wages? Never has one man been passed up so fast by so many people for so little reason.
Well, the Seahawks are revolutionizing the NFL by creating competition at every position. I read it on the net.
May look like the mistake in a week? A month? I thought it was all along, so I'm asking how long it might take for that to be a more prevalent opinion. Not expecting average fans to see it that way though. They tend to only want veterans.
"How 'bout you take Saunders, Garland, and Bonderman, Eric. I'll take Erasmo, Taijuan, and Hultzen. Play you a series for your paycheck?"
Beautiful. Just perfect.
At least this team finally has some options. The lack of depth we've previously had was depressing. To me, it's a great problem to have. How many teams have kept the same 5 the whole season anyway?
Felix
Saunders
Iwakuma
Ramirez
Hultzen
Yes, please.
Charlie Gordon
To start out, in my opinion. I just would have preferred Beaven, Paxton, Walker, Maurer, Bonderman and Garland fighting for the spot you have Saunders in.
It's definitely a good problem unless Saunders isn't one of the 5 best, since they can't trade him until the end of June. The chances that he was going to be one of the 5 best never looked good to me.
Have a lot of nagging injuries in their recent history, obviously Bonderman and Garland are coming off big layoffs. Paxton had his hip problem. That's a big role of the dice.
You've got a point, but I see Beaven as entirely adequate without any improvement to a pitch. We're talking about 13 options to start, not the usual 7 or 8. There's way more depth than I can recall ever seeing any team have in the rotation. One more didn't change there being depth, that was already the position. The only thing it added was a mediocre proven MLB veteran. You can argue that there's a need for that, but starting options we already had aplenty.
If Taijuan looks great, as he did first time, and Deuce Hultzen looks fixed, as he did first time, and Paxton looks good, as he apparently did ... well, it's only one game* but it's one game that Z wasn't able to see when making his offseason decisions.
Not busting his chops over offseason hedge bets.
If he STICKS WITH the meatballs, after he sees that he's got lasagna primavera, we'll bust his chops at that point, b'lee DAT
Unlikely that GMZ abandons J Saunders until the 1/2 way point. But the wookies looking good hopefully prevents GMZ from carrying either Bonderman or Garland into the season. Jack is all about quality back-up and lots of depth this year -- he got burned last year with offensive holes at 1B, DH, OF due to lack of quality depth & it is not going to happen again.
If Saunders is running a 100 ERA+ and is on a 1-year deal Terry then --- > you'd think for sure that they could get a piece of some value, right?
LOVING the fact that we're talking about shedding Saunders before he ever appears in a spring game. HEH
..............
What's PHX stand for Terry?
Love to see Hultzen open the year in the five hole, and then see Saunders cashed at the trade deadline and the next kid brought up. Whoever heard of having more than enough qualified starting pitchers? Do the Royals have problems like this? What do they do with Beaven? He's a pretty good pitcher. They can't just give him away.
Phoenix
Pinpoint fastball, breaking ball for strikes, and aggressive beyond belief. He's easily the most polished prospect in the system. I don't think he should start the season though, too much at stake to ignore his potential delivery issues. A month or two in Tacoma making sure he's (mostly) consistent start to start is all he really needs at this point, and get the extra year too.
Walker showed why his upside is so high, but he's still "throwing" too much vs. "pitching." He doesn't know where his stuff is going, and he seems to lack an elite strike-out pitch, especially when he can't control the curve. His new cutter isn't a K pitch, and his change-up isn't MLB ready. He's too young to go back to his slider. He's still a good year away, at least, he needs to get that curve working and build confidence in his change-up.
Paxton...what's up with his arm? 89-90 mph? Hopefully just early Spring issues. He still has command issues, but his 3 pitch mix is good enough to play in the MLB, as long as he can control his fastball. I see him coming up after Saunders gets shipped off at the deadline, or after the 1st injury after Hultzen goes up, if he learns to control a bit better.
Maurer...what a revelation. Easy 94, touch 96, his arm is as good as Walker's, but his stuff is too hit-able. A sub 8 K/9 in AA is not going to translate, I don't care how hard you throw it. He needs to take a big step forward this year before he becomes anything more than a potential MOR guy.
The buzz from Baker and the Mariner personnel is that the club thinks Maurer is the closest to being a finished product, not Hultzen/Paxton who they believe can still learn something in AAA.
I expect to see the big three all in Tacoma this year pitching together just as they were all in AA last year pitching together in the first half. If I had a guess, I'd say we are going to go with Felix/Iwakuma/Saunders/Ramirez/Maurer and Beavan will be the first fall-back to Maurer if he struggles.
It's all about the innings. There isn't a single one of the big four that will throw 200 innings in 2013. The big 3 might not get more than 150. Nobody knows how Iwakuma will handle the FTE pitching load come August. And that means Saunders is a virtual lock to spend the entire season in Seattle.
Doc can vent his frustration with the slow pace that Z uses to develop pitchers he doesn't intend on trading, but, to me, it's perfectly legitimate to take care of your talents even if it sacrifices a little bit from the current season...so long as you're building toward something real in the very near future.
then there's Beaven, Noesi, Garland and Bonderman to pick from in a rotation headed by Felix, Iwakuma and Ramirez. 2 of those guys to maybe cover 4-8 starts to close out the season unless it's a year for postseason play too. Sure Iwakuma and Ramirez were under 140 IP last year too, there's no way to be sure how it will all play out. So go to a 6 man rotation with Felix skipping around to stay on 5 days. Him, Saunders and Beaven were all well over 140 innings last year. The way they've added depth maybe it should be an 8 man rotation.