Seattle Sports Insider

Strawwwberry Fieeelds for-evahBaseballHQ.com's MLBA available here. Their first six M's prospects being:

• 1 Ackley, cf/1b :- )
• 2 Triunfel, ss
• 3 Liddi, 3b
• 4 Morban, cf
• 5 Pineda, sp
• 6 Moore, c

We've covered 1-5, I think.  Did we do #7?  Quick recap:

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Fill in the next barQ.  Love the site.  Philosophy over numbers, right?

A.   :daps: good to meetcha, mate.

As the information proliferates in the internet age, the challenge is to extract the essential information. 

That's true in baseball, sales, climate change, political polling or anything else.  99% of the information is noise and 1% helps you understand reality -- and then control your life.

Stats are necessary but backwards-looking by their nature.  August 12, 2009 is completely irrelevant to your life and mine. Read more

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=== Bryned or Rewarded? ===

In the Byrnes POTD, for example... everybody knows what Byrnes' numbers have been.  He was an All-Star in '07 and he was injured the last two years.  We could noodle around all day discussing his RAR in past years, and come up with the same thing everybody else does.

The question is what Byrnes will be in 2010...

The answer being, a very good 3-position platoon OF with a 30% chance of rebounding to his 2003-04 vintage.  As far as we can tell, anyway. Read more

Step riiiight upQ.  Do the Mariners have the coin to bid against Boston?

A.  My answer is always the same.  Every org in baseball has dozens of attractive prospects. 

In practical terms, almost any team could trade for Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, or Adrian Gonzalez -- if it could pay the superstar after it acquired him.

If Zduriencik had given them a week to argue about it ... the pundits would guaranteed us, no way did Seattle have the wherewithal to trade for Cliff Lee.  Am I right? Read more

Let s get a Cy from the no. 4(Plot spoiler) No.

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Q.  Do you need another pitcher after Bedard?

A.  Understand and agree about Bedard being a wild card -- that you want to build your staff without him, and take his stretch-run and playoff wins as gravy.

But I would definitely not overstate Bedard's risk.  He was great in June-July 2009 with the torn labrum.  If he can get the ball up to 90 mph at all, he's an All-Star Game starter; he just proved that last summer.

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Step riiiight up=== Adrian Gonzalez ===

Larry Stone, following Tim Sullivan, has an insightful article that alertly catches big "poker tells" from the Padres' brain trust.

Padres' CEO Jeff Moorad issued the following quote.  Now, imagine if Lincoln/Zduriencik had, in December, said this about Felix Hernandez: Read more

Hey, everybody needs a rehab tank now and thenAmigos are justifiably complaining that much of the media seems to be holding a last-ditch campaign to make Erikkkk drink at a different water fountain.  Part of this is the claim that Erikkk "made $8m last year and gave the Mariners nothing."

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=== Services Rendered, Dept. ====

Bedard in 2009 threw 82 innings at a 2.82 ERA (yeah, I know), which statgeeked out to normalized performance, equals .... $8.2m of value, per fangraphs.

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=== Services Not Rendered, Dept. === Read more

Hey, everybody needs a rehab tank now and thenI know nobody axed us, but if anybody did...

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Q.  Does Erik Bedard have a high pain tolerance?

A.  In 2009, he fanned 10 hitters -- American League (TM) hitters -- per game with a trashed labrum.

I've slightly injured my labrums doing bench flyes and it is a deep, down bone-in ache in addition to the electric pain when you bend an injured labrum the wrong way.

Bedard got a rep for phantom pain because the doctors couldn't find the problemo.  Picture yourself in that situation... Read more

Julio MorbanWe had a bit of fun last week with BaseballHQ's Seattle Top 15.  Local minors conoisseurs went through a fair amount of candy-unwrapping, before coming up with HQ's "9E" Wonka gold ticket draw at a future ML All-Star.

Dominican Julio Morban, 16 when he hauled in $1.1 mills from the M's in 2008, is now 18.

Other authorities have Morban at 16, 19, 22, not on the M's list.  HQ, which rates the M's minors hitters the best in O.B., pegged Morban at a preposterous #4, ahead of Moore, Saunders, Tuiasosopo and... well, everybody, except UNC-Mariner Ackley and Carlos Triunfel.  (Liddi doesn't actually exist; he's an urban myth.) Read more

Julio Morban

=== Reconciliation Dept. ===

If the world is right and HQ wrong, the explanation is simple:  HQ just got it wrong.   If HQ wrote the above, after watching the player that Baseball America saw, their file folder needs kerosene and a match.

Or, if HQ is right and the world is way wrong, the explanation is a bit more nuanced:  the world fell in love with Morban's gorgeous swing and mis-interpreted the beauty of the swing motion as professionalism at the plate.

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=== First Feedback Dept. === Read more