Happy Opening Day and Fearless Seattle Mariner Predictions

I'll call today the real opening day for two reasons:  One, because our beloved Mariners finally take the field of course.  Two, because MLB just doesn't know how to throw a party, and they do this every year, scheduling just a handful of games to roll out the season.

Don't get me wrong, yesterday was exciting, but just not "dazzling" in the way that it could be, uniting baseball fans across the nation(s). And despite the fact that the M's are projected by most prognosticators to finish last in the division, it's still an exciting day.  I'm excited. Are you excited? I know you are.

So with all this excitement welling up in my cockles - even the sub-cockles - I give to you my fearless Seattle Mariner Predictions:

Standings: Mariners will finish 1st in the division, that's right, FIRST - but with just 85 wins. All AL West teams struggle to stay over .500 and no single team has a strangle hold on the division until the last week of the season.  Texas becomes the 1996 version of the Seattle Mariners where they're all bat, no pitch, and while they get chicks all aflutter with the longball, Texas winds up leading the league in runs allowed. Anaheim can't complete the Scott Kazmir reclamation project and Fernando Rodney is out as closer by mid-year due to his Bobby Ayala impersonation. Jered Weaver and Dan Haren both are dominant, but their secondary pitching options just don't materialize and injuries to Toriiiiiii Hunter, Bobby Abreu and Kendrys Morales are too difficult to overcome. The Athletics actually finish 2nd and I don't want to talk about them any more than I have to.

Eric Bedard wins comeback player of the year, managing 28 starts, winning 14 of them, and having an ERA just north of 3.  He signs multi-year contract with Yankees in the offseason (ahem...sorry).

Felix Hernandez goes on to win 18 games but is bested by Justin Verlander in the Cy Young voting.

Justin Smoak will post a line of .268/28/84 and there will be much rejoicing. He finally shows more than just flashes of that on-base percentage and power machine that everyone was hoping for, and he plays a plus defense at first as well, all adding up to a 4 wins above replacement season.  Girls in the right field bleachers called "Smoakies" come dressed as cigarettes with his number on the filter and the Safeco staff has their first family-friendly controversy on their hand.

Chone Figgins will hit .296 with 85 runs scored and steal 41 bases, play great defense at 3rd, and make everyone happy he'll be around for two more years.

Milton Bradley will play in 142 games, batting .278 with 19 HR and 82 RBI. There's not a single off-field incident to report, although he is thrown out of two games and actually suspended for three for making fun of Tim Tschida's man-boobs.

Adam Moore will emerge as the preferred catcher by the end of May, ultimately hitting .265 with 14 HR and 52 RBI and the M's are fielding offers for Miguel Olivo at the deadline.

Jack Cust will be Jack Cust, and benefit nicely from the right field at SafeCo and post a .245/26/85 line despite striking out 38% of the time.

David Aardsma returns from hip surgery to save 30 games.

Tom Wilhelmsen is lights-out and sells the rights to Warner Bros. to make a movie out of his life for $3 million. Charlie Sheen asks to play Wilhelmsen, but is turned down.

Ichiro has his first season batting under .300, but makes up for it by hitting 18 home runs and stealing 35 bases.

Lastly, Eric Wedge shaves his mustache, honoring the wager that if the Mariners win the division, he'll get rid of that ugly thing.  Ichiro does the honors.  When the Mariners lose in the ALDS to the Twins, everyone will cite the lucky mustache.

Here we go, folks.  Go Mariners.

Seattle Mariners Spring Update

I'm all therapy'd up and ready to roll

So our beloved Mariners are now 13-7, the bats have started to rattle a bit, and the pitching staff is starting to come together. I don't know about you, but this has been the fastest Spring Training in recent memory - perhaps that's just because I'm so busy. But damn if these M's don't look like they're ready to not lose 90-plus games again! Hopefully those aren't the words that Wedge uses to inspire. 

Anyway, with that in mind, let's take a quick peek at what we have headed into the final stretch before the big April Fools Day where Felix shuts down the Athletics.

• Ichiro: Awesome
• Figgins, hitting .361 with a pair of doubles, 7 RBI and 4 stolen bases.  
• Bradley, hitting .355 with a home run, 10 RBI, 4 doubles, and only 6 strikeouts in 31 AB's.
• Cust, hitting .255 with 3 HR's, 9 RBI and a whopping 19 K's in 47 AB's.  Yep, that's about what we expected.
• Adam Moore, .381 with two doubles, a triple, and 7 walks in 21 AB's. This is encouraging.

On the pitching side:

• Jamey Wright has unfortunately been impossible to hit, so he probably makes the team
• Josh Lueke has been very, very good - likely makes the team
• Vargas and Fister both still oddly effective in their how-did-they-do-that way
• Bedard appears really ready to go with a 1.69 ERA over 10 2/3 IP with 10K's and 3 BB.  Please oh please give us half a season to trade you, Erik.  
• Laffey has zero strikeouts over 6 IP since coming over from Cleveland. I don't know about you, but I want the M's to trade for Kevin Slowey so we can have Laffey and Slowey on the same team.  We could market some kind of Mariner Smurf bobblehead "Laffey Smurf" "Slowey Smurf" "Figgy Smurf" "Grumpy Smurf" (Bradley, of course). And the two smurfs that nobody wants to party with, "Fister Smurf" and "Frenchy Smurf".
• Luke French and David Pauley are battling for the best AAAA starter in camp, with Frenchy currently leading 1.13 ERA to 1.29.

Oh, and you've likely read that Jack Wilson moves to 2B and Ryan is our starting SS. Look for that tandem to turn some sweet double plays and combine for 6 HR's. One wonders if having Wilson at 2B provides the team a nice excuse to rush Ackley once Wilson goes down with a (insert body part) injury in May. We'll see.

Watch what happens on the whole Ring, Wilhelmsen, Delcarmen front... that ought to be an interesting narrative down the stretch here.  Geoff Baker has a pretty good rundown of the complexities of roster building for the M's right now relative to who has options, who is on the 40-man roster, etc.

Go M's.

Seattle Mariners and Addition by Subtraction

You may have read where Miguel Olivo has a strained abductor and is undergoing therapy and there's currently no timetable for his return, but Olivo says he'll be ready for opening day.  If you didn't read that, you can get it here or here or here.

What I find particularly ironic about this development is that if he winds up on the shelf for a significant amount of time, the Mariners will be one of the first franchises in recent memory to be better for losing their big offseason acquisition.

Triple-slash projections for our two catchers (BA/OBP/SLG) from the venerable Bill James:

Adam Moore: .256/.303/.379
Miguel Olivo: .229/.271/.382

How about ZiPS?

Adam Moore: .243/.290/.349
Miguel Olivo: .228/.270/.413

In the James projection, Moore is superior to Olivo and in the ZiPS, they're about a wash.  What I think you can hang your hat on is that we know Olivo is probably going to suck while Moore still occupies that purgatory of "prospect" status while we wait for him to prove he's either Dan Wilson or just a slightly better version of Miguel Olivo.

So from where I'm sitting, I really don't care too much about Olivo's injury.  In fact, take your time Miguel.

The More You Know: Olivo's Impact

News is a little thin right now, so I figured I would highlight something that we can all start to get used to in 2011 from our big offseason acquisition, Miguel Olivo. 

Over the last three seasons, Miguel Olivo is slightly better than Jeff Mathis and Rod Barajas in On Base Percentage at .296.  Yeah, Mathis and Barajas are widely panned for being black hole's of OBP.

Two.  Ninety.  Six. 

As in, gets on base less than 3 out of 10 times coming to the plate in any possible variation of ways of getting on base, of which there are many. 

Every other catcher with at least 800 plate appearances got on base more frequently than Miguel Olivo.

Next Sunday, when you may be at Church, light a candle or something and pray that Adam Moore finds his stroke.  Pray to whatever God will listen to you. 

Miguel Olivo is Jose Lopez

Career stats:

Player A:  .246/.283/.427  BB% 4.1%
Player B:  .266/.297/.400  BB% 3.7%

No, it's not fair to really compare the two since one is a catcher and one is a second baseman, but these two players are free swingers, they hardly ever walk, hardly ever get on base without the benefit of a well struck ball, which turns out to be roughly once every 4 trips to the plate, and it's typically a single.

Player A is Miguel Olivo, our new catcher.  Player B is Jose Lopez, who we were all thrilled to get rid of.

Well, it turns out, he's baaaaa-ack!

$7 mil is a lot to give a guy who is going to struggle to be league average, but I guess what's done is done.  There's not much of anything at all in free agency next year at C, so maybe Jack Z wants to just check the position off his list and move on.

Silver lining?  Rob Johnson is probably finished in Seattle, barring injury.  And Adam Moore has just been put on notice to get his shit together.