Street Reporter's Seattle Mariners fan blog

A few relatively minor items to cover with the moves made by a few teams recently. What might they mean in the second half? I’ll try and puzzle this out.

Tony Clark, who experienced a career resurgence the day he put on an Arizona Diamondbacks uniform back in 2005, hs returned to the cozy confines of Chase Field. Petco, where hitting a homer is as hard as hitting the lottery, wasn’t as kind to the aging Clark as Chase has been, so he’ll certainly improve on his 2008 line of .239/.374/.307. His 32:19 K:BB ratio, as well as hs 165-point difference between BA and OBP, will tell you his batting eye is fine, and some power should follow.

This moves Conor Jackson full-time into the outfield, in the absence of Eric Byrnes (who’s likely done for the season) and the possible absence of Justin Upton (who’s struggling and nursing a strained oblique). The switch-hitting Clark should spell Chad Tracy at first base against lefties, with the outside possibility of a full-blown platoon, since Clark’s numbers from the right side aren’t that much better than Tracy’s. Tony will also provide the bench power he brought before, when he always seemed to be the one to deliver the game-changing dinger.

Continue reading "Roster Tinkering: What's it Mean?"

As I expected, Richie Sexson was signed by the one team in major league baseball who signs every single castoff, just in case he might turn it around in pinstripes: the Yankees. The temptation of that short porch in Yankee Stadium right field, combined with Sexson’s power potential, was too tempting to the team that claimed Jose Canseco off waivers in 2000, just to be sure he didn’t go to a division rival.

It’s not likely that the Red Sox (with an ailing Papi) or the Rays (with a struggling Carlos Pena) would have taken Big Sexy (If big strikeouts are still sexy. If they ever were sexy). But the Yanks give themselves both a power threat off the bench and someone to spell Giambi against lefties.

Anything’s possible for someone in pinstripes, though Canseco’s numbers in pinstripes actually declined from his moderately respectable .257/.383/.450 line with Tampa Bay. Me, I’m not predicting much more than an occasional home run from Richie (but not in a close game; his 2008 hitting stats got better the bigger the lead was) and a whole lot of bleacher-cooling whiffs.

Continue reading "Sexson a Yankee; LaHair a Mariner"

The whole “make the All-Star Game meaningful” movement started in 2002, when Bud Selig had to call a tied, extra-inning game when the bullpens were too depleted to continue. In an effort to give each pitcher his one or two innings of work, nobody had anticipated the consequences.

Calling the game tied was indubitably a better choice than either breaking baseball’s rules and allowing a pitcher to re-enter the game (which they wouldn’t have done anyway), blowing out some poor guy’s arm by forcing him to stay out on the hill too long, or reverting to that time-honored desperation move of putting a position player on the bump. After all, the game “didn’t mean anything,” right?

Well, we may see the demise of the “meaningful” All-Star game after another extra-inning matchup. In only the sixth annual All-Star Game to determine home-field advantage in the World Series, the game went on far longer than expected, as it dragged into fifteen marathon innings. In the process, Clint Hurdle had Phillies closer Brad Lidge warming up six different times before he finally came in and gave up the game on Michael Young’s sacrifice fly.

Continue reading "Six Extra Innings of Meaning"

One of the All-Star Break traditions: Reassessing our predictions from the first half of the season. Some of mine have changed, some have stayed the same—and some were just damn wrong. Living in the West, I will take the contrarian position and roll from west to east in my choices.

AL West: That I chose Seattle to take this division (and I wasn’t alone) is both laughable and an indication of the hometown favoritism I try and avoid. That Anaheim is well in first place, in spite of injuries and age, is an indication both of the smarts of manager Mike Scoscia and a very weak division. Texas will continue to pound the ball as the summer months heat up, but so will their opponents, meaning that Anaheim wins this one going away. And Oakland will continue their tradition of contention without a championship, scrapping with Texas for second.

Continue reading "Second Half Predictions"

It’s the All-Star Break once again, that mythical halfway point in the season (I say “mythical” because most teams have played 95-96 games, more than the 81 that’s the true midway mark). Traditionally, it’s time for the teams to take a breath, collect themselves and iron out any kinks in their batting stroke or the pitching rotation—several starters made relief appearances or threw out of turn in the past game or two, knowing that three or four days of rest was coming for all of them.

For spectators and commentators like me, it’s also a time to pause and reassess, make second-half pronouncements, and try and find something to do with our afternoons and evenings.

Oh, yeah, there’s that All-Star game, around which this entire break is built. As much of an avid baseball as I am, I rarely watch it. Possibly because I’ve grown up during the era when it didn’t mean much, when hard Pete Rose slides were derided as somehow offensive to the concept of this showcase of talent. Pitchers would throw their honorary inning or two, and batters were rotated to give everyone a chance to get a hit, just like in Little League.

Continue reading "Gimme A Break!"

The other big trade that happened recently was the Cubs’ acquisition of the oft-injured Rich Harden from Oakland. This move is typical of Oakland’s business model, which involves shedding young stars before they get too expensive, often in exchange for other young or undervalued stars. In this way, they’re similar to the Florida Marlins, except that the Marlins tend to load up for concentrated runs at the championship (they have as many championships in the last decade as big-market Boston, and more than the Cubs have in the past hundred years), while the A’s tend towards consistent competitiveness.

Likewise, Chicago’s move is typical of a big-market club looking for that last piece to take them over the top—or, in this case, more like the big-market club trying to respond to a big move made by a competitor. When Milwaukee traded for the half-season rental of C.C. Sabathia, Chicago likely felt it had to pull the trigger on a deal, too. It’s hard to delve into the minds of baseball execs, since this deal may have been cooking for some time and the timing is coincidental, but it’s hard to read this any other way. And Buster Olney breaks down the trade at ESPN  showing how both the need for a Sabathia response and a desire for greater depth led to this trade.

Continue reading "NL Central Trade Analysis, Part Two"

Still playing ketchup here, trying to make up for a four-day absence from the blog, so I want to start with the big trade of last week, the CC Sabathia swap. The usefulness of this deal to the Brewers is a little dubious, as CC is likely to be a half-season rental, but let’s break it down:

Milwaukee gets the portly lefty Sabathia, who is one year removed from a Cy Young season that not only saw him strike out 209 (versus only 37 walks) and give up just 238 hits in 241 innings. And as impressive as the other numbers are, it’s that last one that should give teams pause. That’s a lot of innigns to hang on any young arm, especially one attached to a body that pushes 300 pounds.

In recent seasons, Sabathia’s been a slow starter, reversing the typical trend among young pitchers, who tend to start strong, then fade down the stretch, their arms unaccustomed to a full season’s workload. He had those sort of splits early in his career, but as he aged (and his weight ballooned out) he started to change directions.

Continue reading "NL Central Trade Analysis, Part One"

For my loyal readers, sorry for the hiatus, as I was out of town at a trade show.

So much to cover from while I was gone, including the two big NL Central pitcher trades (you might be surprised as to which one I think will have the bigger impact) and Tampa Bay suddenly falling into the tank (are Rays fans scared yet?). But I want to start with something near and dear to Mariners fans, especially those on this blog.

Sometimes in sports, you feel like Someone Out There is Listening. I've been howling for the head of Bill Bavasi since before I started hollering for it on this blog--and last month, he got the sack from ownership. Even more than Bavasi, though, I've been hollering about the Big Mistake that was Richie Sexson, a ballplayer with declining skills who, even at the height of his high-strikeout longball powers, was a poor fit for Safeco. 

Continue reading "Sexson Becomes Ex-Son"

Don’t look now, but the Mariners have suddenly won two series in a row, sparked by Jeff Clement’s two-dinger performance last night. They’ve got a huge hike just to get back to respectability and avoid the specter of being the first team with a $100M+ payroll to lose 100 games—hey, I’d take $1M to lose a game, wouldn’t you? —but the signs are there. Some of them, anyway.

Clement had been scuffling of late, 0-8 in his past two games, and his average sat at .170/.282/.295 as he muddled around at the bottom half of the lineup. OF course, starting at DH last night and hitting fourth was Jose Vidro, with a comparatively robust .220/.268/.322—in the 2008 Mariners lineup, twenty-eight points of slugging is evidently the difference between fourth and eighth in the batting order. Superstinker Richie Sexson, hitting seventh, went into the night with a .222/.313/.377 line (which only looks awful until you note that his OPS is almost thirty points higher than it was two weeks ago), while the best slugger on the team, Adrian Beltre, had a swell-looking .253/.324/.449, and was hitting fifth.

Continue reading "Clement and M’s Show Some Life"

After yesterday’s game, the Yankees held a closed-door meeting among coaches and players—reportedly, manager Joe Girardi spoke, followed by Johnny Damon and captain Derek Jeter. In a postgame news conference, Girardi repeatedly (and sometimes heatedly) refused to reveal what was said in the meeting, although the gist of the discussion was obvious: the can’t-lose Yankees have been losing.

Dinged up by multiple injuries, especially to their starting pitchers, the Yankees have been hovering around the .500 mark, only climbing out of the cellar recently. But they’re still looking up at the Rays and Red Sox, eight games out of first and five games out of second. It’s not a place that the Yankees, or their fans, are used to occupying.

Last night’s game was even more unsettling, as Jon Lester tossed a complete-game, 7-0 shutout. It wasn’t just the shutout—after all, Lester had a no-hitter earlier this year, so his stuff is clearly good—as the way they were shut out. Andy Pettitte, who had been doing better of late and always dependable at home, was chased after four-and-two-thirds innings, having given up five runs on nine hits, with three walks and two strikeouts. Boston jumped on him early, scoring two runs in each of the first two innings, and the Yankees seemed to have given up the game after that.

Continue reading "More Bad Yankee Luck"