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.

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.

Justin Smoak and Expectations

"Five-Star Prospect"
"Switch Hitting Justin Morneau"
"Top Ten Hitting Prospect in all of Baseball"
"Best Hitting Prospect in the Rangers Organization"

All these things have been said about Justin Smoak.  Makes you kind of excited as a Mariner fan, doesn't it?

The inevitable problem are the expectations by fans.  Will Justin Smoak be an All-Star first baseman in 2011?  Probably not.  But there's a good chance that he will be in the future.  So let's just get to know Justin Smoak real quick and perhaps toss a few projections out there...

Smoak was a monster in college.  Playing for South Carolina, he averaged a .333 batting average over three seasons, with better than 20 home runs and 70 RBI.  Note that he had no more than 260 AB's in any of his three seasons.  That's pretty staggering.  Of course, there have been many a college player who looked like Babe Ruth that turned out more like Babe the pig, so take college stats with a salt lick rather than just a grain. 

The more important part might be his walk to strikeout ratio which stood at roughly 150/100 over three years, suggesting an awfully good eye at the dish.  And just to put things in perspective, his on base percentage over 758 plate appearances in three years in the minors is .404.  Ichiro's OBP was .359 last season.  The guy can get on base.

The college AB's are important, by the way, because he's relatively "old" for a newbie in the MLB since he gave South Carolina three of his formative years.  He's much like Ackley in that way - he's not just some 16 year old that we plunked into the rookie league to see if something would stick.  Smoak is 24 and he's had the rough equivalent of one full year of games in the minors after his signing.

In that time, he has demonstrated an excellent batting eye, an ability to hit for good average and excellent power.  He doesn't strike out like a classic power hitter, he can hit for power from both sides of the plate and he has a plus glove at first base (but perhaps not the gold-glove label that followed him throughout the minors).

Most expect him to hit for good average, good to great power, and be a staple run producing bat in the Mariners lineup for years to come.  Many predict 30+ home runs as an average as a major leaguer.

And here's the big but. 

But it's probably not this year.  Maybe not next year. 

Projections for Smoak look like this: 

ZiPS projects .228 with 16 HR's and 61 RBI.  Excuse my French, but that's just a big dick in the mouth.  He's not going to be that bad this year, he's just not. 

Bill James says .249 with 19 HR's and 70 RBI.  This, I can accept.  Although if they let Smoak hit in the middle of the order (3-5) all season long and he winds up with 70 measly runs batted in, this is going to be the most painful Mariners season quite possibly ever. 

The "fans" over at Fangraphs have projected .266/22/85, which I have to admit seems not only more palatable than any other projection I've seen but perhaps far more realistic, save perhaps the batting average which very well may suffer this season as he continues to adjust to major league pitching.

But I will say this, even if Smoak turns out to be a .250 hitter with an OBP of .350, hits 20 home runs and drives in 80 while playing an above average first base, he's going to be one of the more exciting Mariners to watch certainly this year, if not for the past several seasons.

So temper your expectations, and just hope that he blows you away.  Smoak is one of the best things the Mariners have had in a long, long time.