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- Felix is implementing a scorched earth policy from the mound
- Vargas has looked arctic as far as his cool-factor goes
- Seager is everything I wanted attitude-wise and more talent-wise
- Wilhelmsen and League are two important and contributing pen parts
- Erasmo looks great, and, uh, we're keeping his innings down?
- Beavan keeps surprising, and I give up on kicking him out of the rotation
- Montero is two inches from becoming an offensive terror at C
- our bench bats are hitting
- The minors arms are rockin'
But we still have these problems:
- Team OPS+: 75
- Brendan Ryan leads the team with a 102 OPS+ and .703 OPS
- Spots 4&5 in the rotation have a combined ERA+ around 50
- Our minor league hitters are not hitting
- We don't use our productive bench enough
Our our 9 starters, only 2 have sat out 3 games so far. Those two? Our third and fourth most productive hitters. Our 3 worst / most-struggling hitters have missed 3 games combined.
It's still early, and I'm glad Wedge is coming around on giving guys days off and the IDEA of pinch-hitting. This can improve.
But the whole offense is struggling right now, which means our automatic losses in the rotation are hurting us badly. And you can't really just give the starting arms a night off and hope it helps them reset.
As I've said before, I'm surprised at how much these early collapses are hurting me. It's the product of HAVING so many bright spots that will contribute to the victories of the 2013 and 2014 Mariners. I want those victories in 2012, since a lot of the talent is already here.
This is gonna be a very hard year, I think - for the team too. Wedge has to get these guys ready to contribute. Smoak and Montero have to carry the RBI duties, and neither has been able to do that so far. Figgins and Olivo are not providing the sort of offensive performance we need from the vets. And neither the veteran pitcher nor the talented rookie in the rotation look like they're gonna stay there very long at this rate.
With the early hitting talent struggles in the minors (By OPS: Franklin .780, Chiang .609, Robinson .596, F-Mart .533, Catricala .426, Moore had another knee surgery...) we're not getting immediate offensive help from down there. The guys already on the 25 man are the guys who have to hit.
We COULD help the pitching staff, but unless Kelley or Ruffin are called up we have to make 40-man moves to do so. I agree with Sandy, we're not likely to do anything drastic (ie, reacting "too heavily" to early results) until sometime in May. So I'm hoping the staff can hang on until then, or the offense can perk up and get some wins even if the pitchers give up a few runs.
But nobody has the staff to win very many games with a 75 OPS+ offense. The bats have to warm up. We have some future All-Stars in the batting order - I need them to start swinging like it. Last year Smoak carried this offense for the first 6 weeks.
We need somebody(-bodies) to step up soon this year or we're definitely not making it to June as a competitive club. Knowing how fond I am of the talent we're putting together on this team, that's tough to swallow.
~G