.

I/O:  Spec posts his 2012 prospects board.  Archaeologists demand to see the documentation proving that it was not written after-the-fact.

CRUNCH:  Everybody used to ax Chuck Knox, "So.  How do you like the fact that everybody has you finishing third?"  Chuck would look into the camera like Dirty Harry watching somebody eat a hot dog with triple ketchup.  ... "Nobody ever goes and checks those predictions later."

So the 2012 Spec66 Update is an upper-deck shot, just for the fact that Jim bares his chest to the machine guns and publishes it, three years on.  But!  Dr. D also notices that all the black "hits" are on the top half of the chart and all the red "washouts" are on the bottom half.

:: ahem :: Dr. Dilaudid has always prop'ped G-Money and JFro as the local (uber-) Jim Callises.  He's been derelict not to throw Speckster into that mix.

You think I'm kiddin, huh.  Then YOU publish your three-years-on rankings and show a better result.  Thought not.

......

A coupla fave lines from Spec's spreadsheet:

2012 M's busher	Spec	Dr. D
8A.  Carter Capps	Traded for starting 1B	Like dealing Luiz Gohara for ... 80 RBI
20.  Brandon Maurer	Traded straight-up for starting RF	Ahhh...
4.  Nick Franklin	Traded straight-up for starting CF	Wait, what
Low.  Elias	"At least I had him on the radar"	I didn't
Low.  "Sharkie" Unsworth	"Still on track" eventually	This is supposed to be the big 2015 sleeper, right?

.

In Dr. D's youth, this used to be what sent everybody screaming into the night about Yankee domination.  They'd take hyped-up minor leaguers and cash them in for serious contributors at the ML level, usually to the Kansas City Royals.

Logan Morrison, Seth Smith, and Austin Jackson are not Chavez-level roster adds.  Those three guys are major contributors, and Jack Z has reeled them in paying little more than org depth.  As a player development czar ... he's livin' the dream, babe.

.

I/O:  Mojician with a few thoughts on PWN-ership ... Samardzija's of ?, Vlad Guerrero's over the M's, Kyle Seager's PWN-ership of the Rangers.

CRUNCH:  Mojo continues,

PWNership starts subconsciously, with a vague uneasy feeling that bad things are going to happen when a certain player is about to take action.  In advanced stages, a team believes that it is destined to lose to that player.  Both the PWNER and the PWNEE begin to play out their scripts of how the contest should go.  Then it does and no one is surprised by the outcome.  If the PWNEE ever wins, it is through outrageous luck and happenstance.  If the PWNER wins, all is as it should be. - See more at: http://seattlesportsinsider.com/article/pwned#sthash.GPeVWdd7.dpuf

.

Just so!  

In order to deny the force of Mojo's idea -- that some athletes do have "customers" they beat like drums -- you might just as well deny the existence of the subconscious mind itself.

Wiki states, in its entry on the subconscious mind,

A precise example of the subconscious mind at work and related phenomena can be found in a book written by psychoanalyst Gavin De Becker, "The Gift of Fear". He describes how a victim "knew something was wrong", but initially discredited her own instinct/subconscious mind, opting instead to respond to the perceived threat in a normal, "socially acceptable" manner, completely ignoring that the subconscious mind tried to tell the conscious mind "that something is wrong." De Becker tapped into the mind of the victim regarding her "prior awareness by the subconscious mind that caused her to act instinctively" allowing her to realize that the perpetrator was going to kill her. The analyst brought her conscious mind to recognize how her subconscious was working on her conscious mind, by eliciting her original "inner thoughts/voice" through a series of events to which her subconscious mind ultimately drove her conscious mind to behave in such a manner as to protect her from being killed. Gavin was able to elicit her subconscious mind's recognition of a dangerous situation that compelled her conscious mind to act to save her through its basic survival instinct, bringing to the victim's conscious mind that it was the "subtle signal that warned her." The victim describes this as an unrecognized fear that drove her to act, still unaware consciously of precisely why she was afraid. Her conscious mind had heard the words, "I promise I won't hurt you, while her subconscious mind was calculating the situation much faster than the conscious mind could make sense out of WHY the fear was there. The victim stated that "the animal inside her took over."

...

Where are the 2015 Mariners, subconsciously?  Dr. D would argue this:

• In 2014, the -1 game finish was virtually dictated by their collective subconscious
• In 2015, a +2 games finish is now well-enabled by the collective subconscious

You see this syndrome again and again and again in sports, the "pre-championship run."  Not always, but a whale of a lot of the time.  

Michael Jordan tells himself he can beat the Bully Boy Pistons, the Seahawks tell themselves they can beat the Atlanta Falcons, the Mariners (and Lloyd McClendon) tell themselves they can finish ahead of the Angels.

But that breakthrough is elusive.  Once it does happen, a team might then win six championships, but the first one is the hardest.  Before it does win, before it has shaken off the resume of losing that has piled up against it, a team does not subconsciously believe that things will go well.

...

Psych models come, and psych models go.  Dr. D's own world view -- his best understanding of what the Truth is -- is easy.  "The light of the body is the eye."  We choose what we pay attention to.  That's almost the only thing we choose.

That conscious attention, slowly and over the course of time, changes our subconscious programming.  We become what we continually do and see.  Our "automatic" minds are meant to be a gift to us, simplifying and speeding up the process of living fruitful lives.  

We position ourselves to gain or lose from our "automatic minds."  We react as we have come to believe we should.  Michael Jordan came to believe that he "should" win.  But only after years of attending to the problem.

Vlad's domination of the Mariners may have happened easily, automatically, almost by happenstance.  The point is, if you're then going to reverse it, you've got a mountain to climb.

....

Felix Hernandez?  He might have to learn to relax into a high-stakes playoff game.  (Seems to me he did, mostly, in 2014.)

The 2015 M's look, from here, like a team that has paid its psychological dues.  Maybe.  You can compare their 2014 to the Seahawks' 2012.

Or not,

Dr D