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.

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.

Milton's Montage

With Spring Training upon us, and Milton reporting with happiness and ready-for-fresh-startiness in the air, let's go ahead and celebrate his colorful background with this handy little collection of images.

 

  

 

  

 

 

just for fun...

...and the biggest Milton Bradley explosions can be found here:

Griffey's Playing Time: Paper vs. Grass

Believe Big is the new M's slogan going into 2010.  Just don't believe everything you read when it comes to Ken Griffey Jr.

2/21/09 - USA Today: "When Griffey met with Wakamatsu and general manager Jack Zduriencik last Sunday night, they discussed how Griffey's 39-year-old legs, and a knee that had arthroscopic surgery on it four months ago, fit into Seattle's lineup. They decided Griffey will be in left field when his legs feel fine. When baseball's active leader with 611 home runs says he needs a break, he'll be the designated hitter.

Yet Wakamatsu keeps getting asked how much Griffey will play in the field. And the manager keeps saying the same thing. "We are going to try to sustain him for the whole year," Wakamatsu said Saturday morning, before Griffey arrived at training camp here. "I'm not going to project anything."

The Mariners signed Griffey to a one-year, $2 million deal, plus incentives, presumably believing he's as healthy as he's been since 2007. That season, he had 30 home runs and 93 RBIs with Cincinnati.

And if he's healthy, he's going to play primarily in left field

Recently acquired Endy Chavez had been the presumed left fielder. When asked a few days ago what Griffey's return means to Chavez, Wakamatsu said Chavez's value is in his defense and speed. So he now fits as a late-game substitution and fill-in starter for Griffey."

And you know this already, but...

11 games played in the OF, a total of 8 in LF.  Made a total of 13 put outs. 

Yesterday, Seattle Times:

"I think we are going to go similar to what we did last year . Let's ease him into it, but when he can play he is going be in there."

Look, I get it - he's the darling of the franchise. You treat him with respect. But don't try to tell me we're going to see 450 AB's at DH this year from Junior. Or even 350. My bet is about 275. If he sees more than 2 games in the field, I'll be pretty amazed.

Milton Bradley is going to DH a fair amount. Our mythical right handed bat that we're all crossing our fingers about is going to DH a fair amount - perhaps a lot depending on their skill at a position. Griffey is cuddly and tickley and all that, but if you buy tickets to a Mariner game and you want to see Ken Griffey Jr. play, you should be damned sure there's a right hander on the hill and that he hasn't played in a couple of days.

Getting "Abreu'd": Johnny Damon

I like it when Scott Boras is wrong.

Boras so horribly gauged the market for Damon that the guy is looking at having to take a bargain-basement contract to return to the team he clearly wants to play for (NYY). Once talking about a 3-year $33 million dollar deal, Damon is looking at a reported $3 million, one year deal to return to the Bombers.

This situation, at the Log at least, is affectionately referred to as "getting Abreu'd": when your agent screws you so badly that you sign a massively under market deal just because you'd rather not be unemployed.

From everything I've read, the Braves, A's, Nats, Giants may all have mild interest in Damon, but none of them are going to give him a multi-year deal and none of them are likely to go past a few million bucks either.

Which makes me wonder, relative to the Mariners situation, when does organizational need get trumped by price?

Here's a guy who was 3.0 WAR last year, 3.6 WAR the year before. He would have been third on the M's in HR with 24. He has scored over 100 runs in 10 of the last 12 years. His defense is pretty miserable, but if you can get a 3.0 WAR outfielder/dh for $5 million bucks on a one year contract, you're doing awfully well for yourself. Can you expect him to hit 24 HR's in 2010? No. But if he produces what CHONE projects - .270/17/66/95 with a .355 OBP and 16 steals - that's pretty damn valuable. I'm laughing out loud as I say this, but he could very well be the Mariner cleanup hitter.

He doesn't fit at all with what the M's are needing right now. He's not right handed, he doesn't have plus skills in the outfield, he has no positional versatility. But I'm beginning to wonder when you just take the best deal off the board because it's kind of stupid not to and hang your hat on Jack Hannahan to pull a McLemore for us in 2010. We have a cripple for a LH DH, Milton Bradley has played more than 125 games exactly once in his career, and who knows if Saunders is going to hit at this level. Damon could even spell Guti and his bum knees in center 10 or 12 times (rock paper scissor by the staff on who gets stuck with him).

Does it make any sense to sign Damon? Not really. But he has become such a ridiculous bargain, that it wouldn't surprise me to see Jack pick him up.

He certainly would add to the league's most irritating offense.

Biggest Assholes, An Incomplete Mariner History

Kevin Mitchell - he reportedly cut the head off of his girlfriend's cat.

Carl Everett - headbutting an umpire and publicly embarrassing Jamie Moyer are probably enough.

Jose Paniagua - reportedly beats women. Not nice.

Jose Mesa - I don't know, he threw at little O every time he came to the plate.

Sterling Hitchcock - you don't question Lou Piniella when he comes to take you out of the game and then whine about being traded later.

Randy Johnson - he kills birds.

Scott Spiezio - you can't hit .064 for 30 games and then criticize the organization for dumping you. And you're a terrible musician, by the way.

Jeff Cirillo - unapologetic about collecting his paycheck after falling to pieces as a Mariner.

Milton Bradley - TBA.

Frankie Rodriguez - he did something, I just don't remember.

Ken Griffey Jr., version 1.0 - bent the M's over the table when he painted them into a corner, only allowed to negotiate with Reds. Now he's older, wiser, and a better tickler.

***updated***

Great suggestion of Al Martin. See Paniagua. Don't hit girls. It's not nice. Bonus to Al Martin for having two wives, of course.

On Milton

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a little bit excited for the first tantrum.