The Meddler

By The Common Man

It’s not exactly a hatchet job that Jon Heyman did on Ichiro Suzuki yesterday, but it’s close. At least Heyman’s clear that Ichiro works hard and prepares himself well. But other than that, whoo boy. It’s an article that goes out of its way to essentially call Ichiro a meddling prima donna who maneuvers behind the scenes to get coaches reassigned, players he wants inked, and blows off reporters before games (guess which one is probably the reason Heyman wrote this column). However, to make his case that Ichiro is the great Seattle puppet master, Heyman has to stretch and distort facts wildly to fit his narrative, use remarkably vague unnamed sources, and dredge up something that may have been an issue years ago but, by Heyman’s own admission, isn’t a current problem.


Heyman writes that “Ichiro’s ‘absurd’ influence [over Mariners owner Hiroshi Yamauchi] was either unknown, underestimated, or deemed unimportant when Mariners longtime stars Ken Griffey Jr. and Jay Buhner were on the team.” Yet, Griffey was long gone by the time Ichiro debuted in 2001, and Buhner sat out most of the season before coming back and playing 19 games in September. How much influence could these “longtime stars” have had that kept Ichiro in check or allowed him to machinate unnoticed when neither was in the clubhouse? Sure, Griffey came back in 2009 and 2010 for a farewell tour with the Mariners, but that would mean that Ichiro’s influence or lack thereof has been a non-factor for the last three seasons. And if that’s the case, then why is this an issue even worth dredging up?

The Path to Respectability: Seattle Mariners

by Jason Wojciechowski

Where's the rain?
Photo by Michael Righi

You'll forgive the long layoff between Path to Respectability posts. I poisoned myself this week with peanut butter, so I was out of commission for some time. To catch up, the Orioles were covered here and I wrote about the Royals here. After the Mariners, I'll go on to do the A's, Astros, Pirates, and probably the Cubs. Arguably bad teams that I'm skipping are the Twins (because Bill covered there at Baseball Prospectus), the White Sox (because in the Central, as a team that PECOTA sees winning 77 games, 88 could result just via schedule and some luck), the Mets, Dodgers, and Padres (78-to-79-win teams per PECOTA, too close to my target of 88 to make this exercise much fun). This is a shift from my original idea to take the worst team in each division, because that's less fun than looking at the actual bad teams. Like I said, pushing the Mets or Padres to 88 wins is boring.

Onward!

The basics on Seattle: PECOTA has them at 70-92, last place even behind the A's in the West, a full seventeen games back of Texas, on the "strength" of the second-worst offense (by True Average, BP's offensive value stat, which is park-adjusted) in the American League. The only real bright spots on the roster are Jesus Montero (2.8 WARP projection despite nearly all his playing time coming at designated hitter) and Felix Hernandez (you've heard of him).

Tuesday Trade Tree: Rime of the Ancient Mariner

By The Common Man

Once upon a time, there was a man named Bill Stein who was drafted in the 4th round of the amateur draft out of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale by his hometown Cardinals back in 1969. Stein never did much in Cardinal red so after a couple partial seasons, the Cardinals dealt him to the White Sox for Jeff DaVanon's dad. The White Sox of the mid-1970s were a mess, so they had room to give a light-hitting infielder 400 plate appearances in 1976 at second and third base. Stein hit .268/.310/.347 (which was actually good for a 92 OPS+) and was worth 0.1 win above replacement. He was not viewed as a significant part of the Sox franchise.

But that’s not what the newborn Seattle Mariners saw. They saw the cornerstone upon which their franchise would be built. Bill Stein may have been a mediocre (at best) utility infielder who couldn’t handle shortstop, but when the Mariners took him in the 5th round of the 1977 expansion draft, they knew that Bill Stein would be the key to their franchise’s future. That he would be responsible, in part, for 16% of the Mariners’ 2012 Major League roster. Observe:

3 Questions: Seattle Mariners

By Bill

OK, so I was one of those people who thought the Mariners were in really, really good shape at about this time last year. Every single move they made made sense, at least in isolation. And in retrospect, they certainly needed to do more -- in particular, a first baseman who could do more than play defense would have helped -- but I still think it should have been pretty good. I never picked them to win the division (or at least I don't think I did...please don't look it up), but I certainly didn't see 61-101 coming, and I think anyone who says he or she did is a liar. Any reason to hope for anything more this year?

1. Have they improved at all?
Last year, Jack Zduriencik was the busiest GM of the offseason, pretty much from start to finish. This offseason, you barely heard anything from the M's at all...which is what tends to happen with 100-loss teams who don't have a superstar to sell off. Moves were made, though. Jack Cust is in, Russell Branyan is out. Jose Lopez is gone, with Brendan Ryan, however temporarily, taking his place.

So that's not much, but on the other hand, there are a lot of guys who really can't be as bad as they were in 2010. Figgins, in particular (assuming he isn't traded), isn't the near-MVP candidate he was in 2009, but he had the worst year of his career in 2010, and he's not that guy either. Ryan certainly isn't quite the offensive zero he was in 2010, it's unlikely Milton Bradley has completely forgotten to hit, and so on. If the M's hadn't done anything at all, they'd very likely be better, just through regression and better luck.

And it's not just the dreadful offense that sunk them last year. The defense took a big step back, too, from close to the best in the game in 2009 to something like the middle of the pack in '10. Moving Figgins from second back to third, where he seems to perform much better, a healthy Jack Wilson, and plugging in the excellent Ryan for the plodding Lopez should all help. People will tell you that they need offense, not defense, to win. I don't buy it; until the point where their defense and pitching combine to allow 0.0 runs per game, permitting fewer runs will help them win roughly as much as scoring more runs will.

Baseball Prospectus' AL West preview went up yesterday, and PECOTA sees the Mariners going 68-94 (with some really dryly funny commentary from Mr. Wyers). For the second post in a row, I just can't buy that. That's a seven-game improvement over 2010 (and a nine-game improvement over their 2010 Pythagorean record), but between their being better and the Rangers and Angels being worse, 75 or so wins seems to me like a better bet.

Good News, and Bad

Thank God. You want even better news? Games start in just twelve days.


Sadly, it's not good news all around today. As Jason at It Is About the Money, Stupid, pointed out on Monday, the Japanese World Baseball team was working out Ichiro as a pitcher to use in emergency situations. Jason had high hopes for Pitchiro, saying "I have no doubt that this guy could do anything he wants on a ballfield, including hitting for power, if he put his mind to it. If he wants to become a pitcher once he hits 40, he could last another 10 years and it wouldn't surprise me the least. Of course, if he blows out his elbow Canseco-style, then prepare for the last WBC game you will ever watch!" Frankly, The Common Man can't imagine a more awesome development to come out of the World Baseball Classic. But it was not to be. According to this MLB.com report, joyless bastards running the Mariners have put the kabosh on the greatest baseball phenomenon since Fernandomania. According to the same article, those killjoys, GM Jack Zdurniencik and manager Don Wakamatsu respectively, explicitly told the Seattle Times, "He's not going to pitch," and that the idea was more "propaganda than real."

"I don't think it's a good idea," Wakamatsu said. "I just don't think it is a very good idea after the career he has built. It wouldn't be worth hurting his elbow."

But The Common Man's joy, and that of millions of American and Japanese fans might be worth that much, boys, and might actually breath some excitement into what may be an otherwise dreadful summer for Mariners fans. This is how Bill Veeck used to pack them in, Seattle. Stop being such sticks in the proverbial mud and have some fun for God's sake. And see, you made this boy cry:


and this one:


and you made this one comically mad:


Way to go. Keep it up, Seattle. The Common Man can post adorable pictures of sad or crying children all day. There is a veritable world of children you can disappoint out here on teh interwebs, and The Common Man doesn't think you want that on your consciences.

Anyway, until the Seattle braintrust gets their collective heads out of their posteriors, this is all the Pitchiro the world is likely to get: