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Charity game next Friday!
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Bill James-style free association piece on society follows. Sports Is Life. Feel Free to skip it if you're so inclined.
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Sheryl Ring writes the Commissioner a piece of hate mail on Fangraphs. In it, she points out a quote of his:
“[d]rawing a line in the sand based on a perception that [their] market value is different than what the market is telling you your value is,” and that doing so “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
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In Eric Longenhangen's piece on the M's top 14 prospects ... why 14, you might ask?! ... why not, said the barkeep; maybe that's all the 40's we got ... he's got all the M's prospects at the 40-45 "FV" level. Dr. D isn't too sure what "FV" means but he's pretty sure it would have something to do with estimated future value.
(PSA: Emilio Pagan was not in the M's top 30 last year, before being dealt for an HQ-35 starting major leaguer. Casual discussion is one thing, security-hedging against Hawaiian ICBM warning a different thing.)
On the other hand, he's got 33 prospects for the Yankees :- ) and 8 of them are above the vaunted 45 level.
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TJM responded adroitly to my quip about the 86 wins two years ago:
. . . true, but even if we get normal injury luck this year rather than that tsunami of bad juju from last summer. Then we, what, reboud to 86 wins. The problem with that plan is the Astros, Yankees and Angeles, all ahead of us, all got better. So did Toronto behind us. So will Boston once Martinez signs. We're playing for the wild card, probably the second wild card, before the season even opens. That is such a narrow opening to success.
This looks like the US mission in Afghanistan. We keep doing the same thing and expect the outcome to be different because we hope something good happens. Hope is not a plan. Or at least not a very good one.
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Thus endeth the most boring winter in 40 years' worth of Mariner offseasons. Can I get a witness here?
So opening Real Week has buried us all in an avalanance of Felix articles:
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1) A Times article fixated on the King's spring mantra "I'm Different." Different ... than in his '17 and '18 injury years? Different ... as in, I accept that I'm a quality innings eater and not a superstar? Different... "than everybody else," in his own words. Dr. D's guess is that this is his version of Hillary's big red plastic re-set button. The article sez,
he process to do that started at the end of last season and stretched into the offseason, when Hernandez finally was free of shoulder discomfort. It was an unexpected injury.
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So Ryon Healy just had surgery, and though the doctor says "4-6 weeks" the bubbly coaches expect less. Maybe 3 weeks. Maybe 3 days, who's ta say?
That 4-6 weeks would be "until you can start playing at 100 MPH" and the 4-6 weeks, let's just say 6 weeks for giggles' sake, puts us at April 6th. Before real work on hitting can begin for Healy.
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There are two nice little Lookout Landing posts that are worth your while this morning. The first one, "Solving the logjam in the Seattle Mariners starting rotation," would Exec Sum about like this:
1) For ANY Mariners starter to "take a step forward" -- as Dipoto believes they can do -- would create more of the staple peanut butter-type youth that Dipoto has pinned your (nay, our) hopes on. For ANY M's starter, whether it be Erasmo, Moore, Povse, Miranda, Gonzales, whoever -- to chip in 2.0, 2.5 WAR would be big, because in Dipoto's mind he's got dozens of these players.
2) This is questionable. (Remember, we are Exec Sum'ming LL.)
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Just another week or two before we get some material to hash over. Dr. D thinks he can say without fear of contradiction that it has been a tepid offseason, this 2017-18 winter, and he thinks he can follow that up by saying it's even more so in Marinerland. It's been a long, cold, boring winter in Seattle. Once the game start, we can start ping-pong'ing our impressions as to whether:
1) "Wolf Pack" pitching is going to leave the Mariners ahead of the (100-year) curve on more relief pitching rather than less
2) Whether Mitch Haniger is going to become a .530-SLG'ing beast in right field
3) Whether Scott Servais is going to make a 7-WAR impact by yanking BOR starters three games earlier or later, whether he deploys his RP's to advantage, and so forth
4) Whether Dee Gordon's speed is going to translate into mediocrity in CF, into apparent whizbangery in the popcorn-popper air current, or what
5) etc
With Spring Training almost here, but large numbers of MLB(tm) players unsigned, I propose a little exercise amongst the denizens.
RULES:
1. Among the unsigned Free Agents with MLB-experience, pick two or three to add to the M's roster.
My dear aunt and Godmother Sister Laura Michels, known by myself and and my family as Aunt Janice, has gone to heaven after a extended battle with brain tumors and complications.
http://www.gozags.com/genrel/020818aaa.html
http://www.zagsonline.org/s/829/17-match/index.aspx?sid=829&gid=1&pgid=5821
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SYMMETRY, Dept.
There is a nice symmetry between these numbers: 26 and 13. Why do they matter? Well, they matter here because 26 represents the bases gained by Dee Gordon last year, in millions of dollars, and 13 represents what the team has to actually pay him for those bases.
So, yeah, that's one good way for JeDi to spend his free agent money, by coughing up a few prospects and then using a FA buck to buy a fiver. (Gordon was out in part of 2017, but in his full seasons of 2016 and 2015 were $25M and $39M, respectively. I believe he led the NL in steals, all three seasons 18-16-15.)
