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My son and I got into a food fight a coupla days ago.  Watching John get irate is sort of what you'd imagine it being like if you saw Blake Beavan throw a fastball by Troy Tulowitzki.

He was disgusted with the M's, jumped all over me why do you watch these guys, this is ridiculous, yada yada yada.  I go, if the Seahawks are going 6-10 but they got the rookie Tom Brady and stuff like that, do you watch?  He re-raises, gloating that nobody but Seager's any good, you make a fool out of yourself by thinking they're anything but a mortal lock to lose 100 games....   

He's bigger than me now, which instantly prevents me from offering him a graceful out ... what would you know about baseball, I sez, charmingly.  You know too much about baseball, he sez, which is why you think these guys could ever win.

We hurl 12 kinds of invective back and forth, hurl cushions and chips and salsa, and by the time we're both seeing way too much red to think straight he goes LOOK DAD.  THIS AT-BAT RIGHT HERE.  CARP'S GOING TO STRIKE OUT.  I'M TELLING YOU.  

I go, yeah, one at-bat decides it all, sarcastically.  He goes Yeah!  'cause it's the same thing every time.  You think Carp's good.  Everybody else in the world knows he's going to strike out right here.

As I recall, the count's three-and-one.  I shift my grip from my dance partner to my temper and we both stop to watch the pitch.  

Carp swings and BLASTS the pitch hard and far, over the center field fence.  My wife and daughter, heretofore enjoying the carnage, collapse into banging piles of rubble.

The curtain comes down on the rest of it.  If you haven't thrown hands with a younger, stronger and quicker version of yourself, you're definitely missing the finer things in life.  We've both received sufficient first aid to be able to talk and type and stuff.

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Q.  How many home runs did Carp hit, did you say, in his last 176 AAA games?

A.  He hit fifty.  That's not 15, John.  That's 50.  There's a whale of a lot of guys who didn't, especially in Cheney.  In fact somebody look that up, the last time somebody hit 50 in 176 in Cheney, or anything remotely comparable to that.

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Q.  What was Carp's line in 2011 after the callup?

A.  He hit .286/.325/.494.

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Q.  That was in 100 at-bats?

A.  No, it was in over 300 at-bats.  In Safeco.

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Q.  To whom would that be comparable?

A.  He spent three months hitting exactly like Nelson Cruz.  ... Cruz hit .260/.310/.510 ... in Texas; if you park-adjust, Carp outhit Nelson Cruz last year.

If you park adjust, Josh Hamilton's 2011 (.300/.345/.535) is a wash for Carp's 2011 Safeco performance.  In other words, Mike Carp posted 300+ AB's that a lot of Mariners would swim a piranha river to claim.

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Q.  What was the prospectus this winter?

A.  Ron Shandler said, if this guy's EYE rebounds (to his pre-2010, pre-slugging version) even a little, you've got a legit AL run producer.  

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Q.  Did Carp's EYE rebound?

A.  It did, yes.  The HAL-9000 all-seeing eye returns an I on the I/O scale.  But for your convenience, here are the plate discipline stats:

That is all in the world that we were hoping for.  That the 40-homer, .500-slugging Carp would see his EYE rebound to, say, 0.30 or 0.35.  Carp is doing far more than that.  He's studying the pitches like Drew Brees peering over his line into the secondary.  

He's now a blend of his pre-2010 strike zone incarnation and his 2010-11 tape measure reincarnation.  He is showing exactly what we wanted to see.  That's all.

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NEXT

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