Bearish on Taylor Motter
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From Hey Bill, trying to access his comprehensive understanding of the library of baseball players since (and before!) 1900:
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Rob Whalen and Dan Vogelbach
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Finally, at long last, there is noise coming out of the M's camp that Dan Vogelbach has a shot to break camp. In this article, credit is given to him as well as to Rob Whalen. Dipoto sez,
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Was Dee Gordon "Out of Position" Winning GG's at 2B?
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Travis Sawchik is one of my fave Fangraphs writers, and today he's got one that has earned a place in FG's "most popular" articles. Here's the piece.
Getting a few things out of the way here :- ) Gordon states a belief that we have batted around at SSI:
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Diderot on "Whistling Past the Graveyard"
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Our good buddy Diderot sez,
Seems like there's a lot of whistling past the graveyard on this. Didn't we hire some wonder woman who was supposed to put us on the cutting edge of all this?
I understand why the M's announcers aren't allowed to refer to this...but I sure hope JD is talking to her.
Here's my overall concern: JD spends a whale of a lot of time assessing baseball players, and acquiring the ones he likes. I give him no grief on this--anyone is going to have winners and losers. He's getting his share of the winners.
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Thursday Morning Tazoberry, 3.15.17.
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ROB WHALEN
They did an extended convo with Mr. Whalen during the ballgame on Wednesday, during which they established several things worth eyes slideways:
(1) The Mariners catchers claimed that Whalen's curve ball had easily the best, most deceptive break that they had seen in the M's camp. Maybe they were talking about his power slider, which was the pitch SSI had been admiring without the benefit of F/X. The results for both pitches:
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NEWZ or NOIZ
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The M's site has a long article claiming that Ariel Miranda has, at last, come up with an arm-side slider. If you just joined us, Miranda has spent his baseball career with three pitches:
1. A plus 92+ fastball that breaks gloveside, as do almost all fastballs.
2. A "splitfinger" pitch at 80 mph that breaks almost exactly the same way.
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All-Time M's
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At Slack they've got a roundtable going on the current Ms' best chances to set franchise records. One point I hadn't noticed was that Ichiro's OBP was that Bone has a higher lifetime OBP than Ichiro, .359 to .355. Considering the homers are 34 and RBI 106 per 162 games, to Ichiro's 7 HR and 46 RBI, it's hard to imagine just how the "intangibles' get Ichiro anywhere near Buhner.
Intangibles or not, Bone was a 2.5 WAR player (touching 3+ once or twice) and Ichiro racked up 5+ WAR like clockwork for 10 years. That's because Ichiro chipped in +1.4 WAR per year defensively and on the bases.
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BREAKING - Arrieta to Philadelphia (huge collective sigh)
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I think if there was one thing the M's fan was looking for right now, other than a Stanton-for-Motter deal, was for Jake Arrieta to go someplace other than to the pesky rodent Anaheim Angels.
Word has it that he and Philly agreed to a THREE (3) year deal at $25 mill per, which was precisely what we'd hoped Dipoto would dangle. Quite remarkable to Dr. D that Arrieta would come all the way down to 3 years after an initial (report that he) demanded 7 years and that 6 would represent the "cave-in" on his camp's side.
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Does Jerry Dipoto Want to Lose This Year?
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First, a PSA. Remember what we do here. :- ) We don't attempt to be Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus or even USSM. This is by no means an attempt to codify Baseball Truth as it unravels through history.
It's much more an attempt to simulate a Seattle-area Bill James Online, the attempts of an old fogey (who has seen 1,000,000 pitches +, as many of you have) to offer a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down on what seems to be happening this week. This BEGINS a conversation which helps us enjoy a team that is most of the time (but not all of the time!) hard to enjoy.
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M's 5, Reds 2
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Quickly, because Dr. D is kinda tired, but the Reds game had lotsa innerestin' stuff:
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MIKE FORD laced two ringing doubles, one down the LF line the other way against the shift. Ford's play this spring COULD add a bit of credibility to the Mariners' "threat" to start the season with him at 1B, and then to platoon him at 1B with Ryon Healy. The point, of course, would be to get the Yankees (who have absolutely no use for him) to accept a minimal return so we can stash him in AAA.
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