Even if it ended badly for the Mariners, and for Willie Bloomquist in particular, last night's game against first-place Tampa Bay showed that the Mariners still have some fight in them. Though they blew a four-run lead on errors by Jose Lopez and failed to drive home a run in what should have been an easy game-winning situation, Seattle provided some excitement and refused to give up, even with an utterly depleted bench that had them giving up the DH in order to have enough position players. And we got another glimpse of the Mariners' future, at least on the mound.
Jeremy Reed
10 August 2008
9 August 2008
The Mariners announced today that Jarrod Washburn has cleared waivers, meaning he can now be freely traded to whatever team wants to take on his massive salary. There's no real surprise here, as it's doubtful any other team would want to take on his bloated $9.85M salary. So the failure of Seattle to deal him before the deadline isn't so awful, except that his value seemed to have peaked at that point for a couple of reasons: (1) he'd pitched really well to that point (4 ER in 19.2 IP in the three starts before the deadline, (2) his value diminishes with each day that passes, since that means less time he can spend with a contending team (e.g., the Yanks) starved for starters, which leads to (3) the team in question being more likely to go in another direction.
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17 July 2008
Let’s hope that the Mariners give him the chance they haven’t given Jeremy Reed: to see if he can become a complete hitter at the major-league level.
As I ranted in one of my earlier posts, the idea of platooning a young player like Reed (or LaHair) is admitting defeat during a season when we should be trying out players in different spots and situations. Yes, the Reed/Bloomquist platoon is “working,” in the sense that they’re producing well, but at what cost? Reed will now be branded as a permanent platooner, which not only sucks up a roster spot, it adds some instability into the lineup, as there will be a different guy in center, and in the batting order, every few games. Does production for this year matter, when weighed against the long-term development of
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28 June 2008
ave a good thing in Lind and, instead of relegating him to platoon duties as the Mariners have with Jeremy Reed, he wanted to see if the kid could learn. After all, he’s only 24, which is the same year that Seattle’s management apparently decided that Reed was through trying to hit lefties (he’s only had 27 at-bats since, out of 304 total). Lind has done well in his brief time under Gaston’s confidence-building regime, going 5-17 with 2 home runs so far, and—no matter what happens—will at least feel like he’s being given a shot to prove himself.
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27 June 2008
o hard or ruining Balentien's confidence altogether.
Who replaces Ichiro in center? Well, there's Jeremy Reed, who occupied that spot before Ichiro took over in 2006, and who has had trouble hitting lefties. A team looking to win might put him in a platoon, giving up on him ever hitting lefties. A team looking to the future rather than the present would go ahead and put him out there full-time to see if he can figure out lefties. Who cares if he flails for a while? Let the guy try and prove himself in a season that no longer matters.
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18 June 2008
Without Ichiro, Jeremy Reed and Willie Bloomquist will fill in at center, although neither is adequate defensively. The move was made in part because the Ms sent down struggling right fielder Wladimir Balentien, whose .196/.265/.346 line, with 35 K against only 10 walks in 107 ABs wasn’t helping the offense any.
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