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.

A Cliff Lee Deal(s) Retrospective

Please be good.

Let's take a look back at what we sent, and what we got, for Cliff Lee, shall we?

So we dealt Phillippe Aumont, Tyson Gillies and J.C. Ramirez for Cliff Lee.  And there was great rejoicing. 

Aumont was probably considered the prize in that haul, and while the Mariners had decided he profiled better as a reliever, the Phillies were going to turn him into a starter and many of us gnashed our teeth and muttered "Brandon Morrow all over again".

Well, turns out the Mariners might have been right.  The starter experiment failed - in 11 starts he went 1-6 with a 7.43 ERA and 1.87 WHIP at Reading.  They demoted him to Clearwater (ahem, high A) where he went 2-5 with a 4.48 ERA and 1.607 WHIP and they ultimately turned him back into a reliever.  Yowsa.

Gillies was hurt most of last year and got in only 28 games, mostly at AA.  His totals were a .243 BA with .302 OBP and .336 SLG.  2 HR's and 2 stolen bases.  Yawn.  But he's way better than this, and a lot of listy-types put him in, or on the cusp, of the Phillies top 10 prospects.  He's probably still 2-3 years away though.

Ramirez split time at Clearwater (A) and Reading (AA) with a better line than Aumont, but probably not what the Phillies may have had in mind:  4.82 ERA 142 IP, 152 H, 115 SO, 1.359 WHIP.  He seems to appear in most top-30 lists, and as high as 17 overall Phil prospects.

We then dealt Lee and Lowe for Smoak, Beavan, Lueke, and Lawson.  I'll skip Lowe because I suppose most of you know his schtick.

Smoak: Well, we've already talked about him. He should be pretty good, but he has a lot to prove still.

Beavan usually gets ranked anywhere between 12th and 9th on the prospect list for the M's and will have a pretty legitimate shot at a rotation spot come 2011.  He made two stops in AA and one in AAA last year and overall he posted a 3.90 ERA, 1.158 WHIP, 168 IP, 174 H, 101 K's.  He only walked 21 batters over 168 innings pitched.  He's a strike throwing machine, doesn't miss many bats, and while he may never be a superstar in the league, it's very possible he could be a serviceable #4 starter on a competitive team.  I'll also add that he got hit awfully hard in his time at AAA.

Lueke last year:  63 IP, 48 H, 94 K's, 1.86 ERA with a 1.000 WHIP.  This includes stops at A, AA, and AAA - and he pretty much dominated at every level.  He should be in the bullpen to start the season, whether you think he's a nice guy or not.

Lawson: profiles as kind of a Brendan Ryan type with a tad more power (read - he's actually hit some home runs!).  Between Texas and Seattle AA squads last year, he hit .293/.372/.439 over 527 PA's. He's not afraid to draw a walk, he runs a tad, he also peppered in 9 dingers.  He's apparently quite gifted defensively (2b) as well.  He's 25 this year, so he's not a baby and it's kind of time for him to either do his business or get off the pot, if you will.  I could see him in some kind of utility role with the squad in 2012, and perhaps if things go either really well for him early on or really poorly for the M's early on, he might show up in 2011.

So, objectively, I have to say Cliff Lee was pretty well played for the M's.  Nice work, Jack.

The Milton Bradley Conundrum

So it turns out Milton Bradley is a bad guy.  Shocker of shockers. 

Yeah, we moved him to a friendly (or mildly retarded in some print cases...cough cough, Baker, cough cough) media in Seattle. 

We fans, for the most part gave him a big wet hug upon arrival as he was replacing the dead cow named Carlos Silva and at least Milton Bradley was in no way directly related to Bill Bavasi's ineptitude. 

We put him through the "belief system". 

We sent him to therapy.

We failed.

He failed.

He's busted, and there's not much that anyone can do about it.

The weird situation the M's find themselves in is whether or not they should pay him over $11 million dollars to play or if they should pay him over $11 million dollars to go away.  The questions the M's brass have to answer include a choose your own adventure kind of model:

Can he contribute in a unique way better than another player we currently have?  If no, cut him loose, cut your losses.  After all, what's the point?  If he can't contribute any better than anyone else, why keep the baggage?  If yes, then it creates new questions.

If he can contribute in a unique way, is it in a way that makes this team anywhere close to playoff contention?  The issue here is, if he is say, one win better than any other baby on the farm, or Jody Gerut for that matter, is that one win worth a damn?  Does that make the Mariners a 79 win team instead of 78?  If so, better to give the kids a shot.  If this makes the team an 85 win team versus 84, well then we have some teeth gnashing to do, because who the heck knows if 85 is enough for a wild card slot.

Milton Bradley has zero future in Seattle, and if he's only going to make this team as good, or perhaps a tick better, than any other player with a future in Seattle then it really doesn't make any good sense to keep him around if your team isn't playoff bound. 

Thus, if the answer is "no" I say you still cut your losses.  If yes, then it creates another set of questions.

If he can contribute in a unique way and if he can contribute in a way that makes this team anywhere close to playoff contention, does his presence hurt the public relations of the team?  If no, well, continue on.  If yes, well then it's a matter of degree that probably relates to the answer of #2.  Just how much does the team think he can help them get to the playoffs?

If he can contribute in a unique way and if it's in a way that makes the team close to playoff contenders and it isn't a public relations nightmare because the team is winning, is it worth waiting for the ticking time bomb that is Milton Bradley?  That is, he's going to have an episode.  He has just about everywhere he has been.  How bad that episode is, who knows - but it could be a massive distraction for the team as well as a public relations mess.

Honestly, if I have to look at his situation objectively, I say you keep him around for Spring Training because without question nobody else is going to take him right now and the #1 thing that Milton Bradley will provide in Spring Training is a distraction from Josh Lueke being invited to camp.  Lueke has a future with the Mariners and we've all read his police report a dozen times and you are either comfortable with Josh Lueke or not, but the fact remains that he's likely to make the team and probably be quite good. Having Bradley around will give the yellow journalists out there, and there are many, some fodder to sell rags in their traditional way instead of re-hashing the unfortunate case of Josh Lueke, which simply has not changed since it happened and therefore it's old news.  Bradley presents new news as he's just constantly reinventing himself as a shape-shifting asshole.  If that's how we spend our $11 million dollars, then maybe it's a fine investment for the Spring. 

If Bradley somehow has a monster Spring well then great, the M's can decide if they can move him, cut him,  or if they want to keep him at that time.  But cutting him before that seems like it's just trying to polish up an organizational image that really shouldn't be judged by Milton Bradley as he was the unfortunate answer to an albatross contract that Buzzie's kid should still be embarrassed by.

But my guess is they unload him in a couple weeks.  I guess we'll see.  If they do, I won't cry, but I think it's an opportunity missed.