State of the Mariners, Part II

Before I get started, I need to address two points:

1. To my good friend and loyal reader Troy, thank you for pointing out that Sony spells the name of its own product incorrectly. The “R” in “Blue-ray” should be capitalized, and I recommend a massive letter-writing campaign to get them to change it. I don’t care how expensive of a re-branding project it would be; I will continue to spell it “Blue-Ray” until Sony changes its ways.

2. Apparently, the Front Office of the Seattle Mariners are loyal readers of Hardly Worth Your Time, for a mere two days after posting my grumblings on the team, Jose Vidro was shown the door. The team also called up Wladimir Balentin and sent Brandon “Brenden” Marrow down to AAA to transition from Godly Bullpen Presence to Godlier Starting Pitcher. These moves would have totally been advocated in today’s piece, had the team not read my mind and beat me to the punch. So, I guess what I’m saying is, You’re Welcome, Mariners Fans.

In lieu of the recent roster moves, I’m scrapping my original plan. Instead, I'll use today's posting to give a cursory poo-pooing of the rotation, then I’ll hop in Doc Brown’s DeLorean and take a look at the future of the Mariners. There will be no Part III, which is good, because Part III is always the suckiest sequel (except for Rocky III, which is ten kinds of awesome.) For all my loyal nerd-readers who don’t give two hoots about Seattle baseball, I promise next week’s writings will be sufficiently geeky for you.

For starters, let’s talk about, um, the starters. This year, we’ve run out the following “pitchers:”

Felix “Woohoo” Hernandez: 136 IP, 3.04 ERA, 8.4 K/9
Erik “Special K” Bedard: 81 IP, 3.67 ERA, 8.0 K/9
Jarrod “Pride of the Yankees” Washburn: 128.2 IP, 4.76 ERA, 5.25 K/9
Carlos “Mas Tacos, Por Favor” Silva: 130.2 IP, 5.92 ERA, 3.86K/9
Miguel “Renaissance Man” Batista: 94 IP, 6.80 ERA, 5.65 K/9
RA “Butterfly” Dickey: 88.2 IP, 4.36 ERA, 4.87 K/9

Felix is the future, not just of the Mariners, but of all mankind. He is John Connor. He’ll give you 7 strong innings, give up one run on 3 hits, then take down the SkyNet complex and melt the T-1000, all in time hit the clubs in Pioneer Square and get his mack on. He leads the team in every relevant and irrelevant pitching statistic, he’s only 22, and I think he’s spearheading our nuclear proliferation negotiations with Iran. In short, I like Felix.

Special K, on the other hand, needs to eat his Wheaties. I want to go on the record as saying that I loved the Erik Bedard trade this off-season. I didn’t care that we were giving up too much; we needed to send a signal to both the players and the fans that this organization would no longer be a country club of under-achievers. We were going to win, and we were going to win now. Management was finally showing that they cared more about winning than marketing.

Boy, was I ever wrong. The players continued to treat the team like a country club for under-achievers, management foolishly jettisoned the manager instead of properly blaming the players, and the fans kept coming. The team pulls in 35,000 per game for every weekend series, no matter how often the team gets blown out. The casual Mariner fan keeps plopping down money to eat garlic fries, cheer for the Hydroplane Race, and watch losing baseball. I’m sure the fans would rather see winning baseball, but if losing doesn’t deter their interest, why should the team spend any money trying to compete?

But, let me get back to Bedard. He’s a talented pitcher, and a total head case. I know he doesn’t like the media, and that’s fine with me. I don’t like most of them either. But when someone as dominating as Bedard refuses to pitch with any discomfort or minor injury, and takes himself out of the game after 100 pitches, regardless of what inning it is or what the score is, I have to speak my mind. We gave away five players for Bedard, including two very good major leaguers, and in return we expected an Ace. What we got was a petulant, self-interested prima donna who has done nothing but tease us and disappoint us.

I’ll get back to Bedard in a second, but first I want to address the rest of the staff. Jarrod Washburn is a perennially mediocre pitcher who happens to be having an above-average year. He peaked last month, which would have been the perfect time to dump his salary on the Yankees in exchange for Melky Cabrerra. Instead, the M’s tried to bluff the Yanks into getting two major league talents, and the Yanks scoffed. Who can blame them? We’re talking about JARROD WASHBURN here. He’ll never be more than your #4 starter, and he’s making Ace money. The team has one hope—that Washburn clears waivers, and the M’s can dump him on the Yankees for a bag of balls and some pine tar.

Carlos Silva, unfortunately, is going nowhere. Not only is his massive contract unmovable, but he also exceeds the weight restrictions of most major airlines, making it very difficult to move him out of the Seattle area. Silva would be a decent #5 starter, if he had even an adequate defense behind him. He’s a ground ball pitcher, which means he’s only as good as his infield. Most of the year, his infield has consisted of the worst defensive 1B, 2B, and SS in the AL. So, yeah, his numbers aren’t good. Did I mention we gave him 4 years, $48 million?

Miguel Batista might be our most consistent pitcher. He’s giving up a .312BAA against lefties, and a .310BAA against righties. That’s the model of consistency. In Safeco, a pitcher’s paradise, opponents are hitting .331 against him, and his home ERA is 8.93. From these numbers, it’s safe to conclude that Miggy is not a good pitcher at Safeco, which is kind of an important thing to be good at if you’re going to be a pitcher for the Seattle Mariners. Maybe we should trade him… oh, that’s right, he’s making $9.5 million this year. Never mind.

What we can do, and have done, is send Batista to the bullpen and start the neatly-bearded knuckleballer RA Dickey. Dickey has pitched well of late, and I could stomach him as our number five guy in the future. Unfortunately, we’ve got three or four AAA guys, plus the Notorious S.I.L.V.A, who can all fill the #5 spot. Plus, Dickey is inconsistent (as are all knuckleballers not named Wakefield or Niekro.) Maybe RA has a future in the ‘pen, with Batista. Or, with a name like RA, maybe he can find work organizing Wing Events and enforcing Quiet Hours.

All this carping about the rotation doesn’t really do any good, so let’s get this blog up to 88 mph and talk about the future. Felix is in—we need to sign this kid to a 20 year contract and pay him the GDP of Guam. After the Guamese see him pitch, I’m sure they won’t mind.

If all goes according to plan, we can slot “Brenden” Morrow into the two hole. I have every confidence that Morrow will be a dominate force in the rotation. And yes, I am knocking furiously on wood as I type this. (A quick note on the “Brenden” thing; Morrow’s first name is Brandon. Everyone in the world recognizes this, and pronounces it accordingly. Everyone, that is, except the one man who spends the most time saying Morrow’s name, Mariners announcer Dave Sims. He insists on saying “Brenden,” and while it’s probably just an east-coast accent thing, I still find it more than a little annoying. Like, really, really annoying. Like, “where is the mute button” annoying. Ok, Diatribe over.)

After Felix and Morrow, I’m fine with slotting Bedard into the #3 spot. If he puts up good numbers in a low pressure situation next year, we can trade him to some team that thinks it can make a run, and is willing to mortgage the future to chase its dream. Kind of like the Mariners did, when they traded for him. So, cross your fingers and hope that KC, Cincinnati, or some other horribly mismanaged franchise gets off to a good start next year.

Fourth in the rotation would be a perfect spot for Washburn, but GOD DAMMIT he should be a Yankee by then. We need to dump his salary, and due to injuries, the Yankee rotation right now consists of Mike Mussina and the East Rutherford Intramural Softball All-Stars. So, assuming that deal gets done, we can put Silva in the 4 spot and pray the defense improves around him.

Number 5 would be a good place to stick a AAA guy, like Ryan Roland-Smith. When we eventually trade Bedard, we can move everyone up and slot in either RA Dickey or another AAA guy, like Jared Wells or Ryan Fierabend. We’ll have plenty of guys on stand-by for the eventual Silva injury (if he puts on any more weight, his femurs may actually collapse under the stress. It’d be a grotesque and fantastic sight.) By September of next year, we may be ready to call up Phillipe Aumont (the Canadian Randy Johnson, currently developing in the minors.) We’ll be all set to make a run in 2010.

That is, of course, if we can fix the lineup woes. We are a bad team, offensively and defensively. Ichiro will be good forever, but by having him in the outfield, we sacrifice a typical “power position” in the lineup. We need to address this in free agency by signing a masher to play 1B. Mark Texieria will be a free agent this off-season, and as much as I hate his name, his face, and every other irrelevant thing about him, he’d be a great fit for the team. We need to throw money at him. Vlad Guerrero will be a free agent as well, and if we can get him to DH for us, we need to make that happen. If not, we can always re-sign Raul and make him DH.

Wladimir Balentin will be a serviceable LF with some pop, and we probably can’t do better than Jeremy Reed in center. Beltre can stay at 3B, and hopefully Beatancourt can figure out how to take a walk now and then and stop showboating at SS. Lopez is progressing nicely at the plate, but he needs to consult Jenny Craig about getting his range back in the field. Clement will be a perennial all-star behind the plate, maybe as soon as next year. So, next year’s lineup may look something like this:

RF Ichiro
2B Lopez
1B Texierierierieriaiaia
DH Grrrrrrrrruerrero or Rauuuuul
C Clement
3B Beltre
LF Balentin
CF Reed
SS Beatancourt

That has the potential to be a solid lineup, 1-9 (or, at least 1-6.) Throw in Mark Lowe and Sean Green setting the table for JJ, and that roster has 82-82 written all over it. After a sub-.400 record this year, I’ll take it. All we can ask for is improvement.