=== RIP Dept. ===
Have seen more than enough of Monsieur French, merci beaucoup. :- )
The stuff (or lack thereof) aside, Saturday's A's game was vintage. Staked to a comfortable 3-0 lead against a 91 OPS+ offense -- that is playing backups -- Msr. French promptly walked a leadoff hitter, and then fired an 86-mph "fastball" that was no-doubtly tatered for 2 runs.
By a shortstop who had 8 RBI on the season.
Went on to get smashed for 5 runs, 10 baserunners, and 0 strikeouts in 3+ innings. By a lineup that would, from hitter 1 through hitter 9, be completely at home in the Pacific Coast League.
This is not the a-mi you want defending your honor against the Angels and Rangers.
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=== Read It Before It Happens, Dept. ===
The Washburn deal (for French and a low-minors arm) was greeted with enthusiastic applause in every corner other than D-O-V's, seeing as Washburn was flipped for ... ahem ... a minimum-wage Washburn.
Nay verily, quoth we. About 9,000 times, seeing as it was one of our most hectic ping-pong matches of the year... :- )
Garret Olson is firmly ahead of Luke French on my depth chart for 2010. And Jason Vargas is way ahead of both of them. And Jason Vargas isn't a major-league caliber starting pitcher, either.
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=== I Got Yer Manager of the Year Right Here ===
To borrow a fave Jason Churchill line. He thinks Wok is the best thing that ever happened to the M's, and it's hard to argue much with the man on that one...
Don Wakamatsu, to his credit IMHO, has been both (1) respectful to his boss and (2) respectful to his own good judgment, when watching French.
To my eye, anyway, Wok has been skeptical from the outset. He talks about what French has to change, in order to compete -- as opposed to talking about what he likes in French's performances.
The Mariners are in evaluation mode. That's great. If they want to send French out there the rest of the year, to absolutely nail down the fact that he's not the guy they want, that's fine. It means 0 losses in 2010 spent on the same thing.
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=== Gotta Wear Shades Dept. ===
Bill James once said that MOST starting pitchers, if they stayed healthy long enough, could eventually figure out a way to get some guys out. I think that if Luke French went to the minors, and worked on his very promising slider, and developed a game completely around that pitch (in Zito, Henry, McGregor style), he'd have a path to an ML rotation.
...............
The good news is, the Mariners have an embarrassment of riches for their Safeco rotation in 2010 -- Felix, (Bedard), RRS, Morrow, Fister, Snell, plus we have no doubt that Jack will add two more quality arms between now and then. :- )
................
Ya, the jury's in here. Maybe Msr. French will come back and stuff our eulogy down our throats. But in the immortal words of The Round Mound of Rebound...
I doubt it,
Dr D
Note: the abbreviation for "Monsieur" is just "M." and not "Msr." I don't know where you got that from, but it just seems weird to me, as a guy who has spent quite some time in France.
No insult intended, of course. I just felt compelled to correct that... oddity(?)
On topic, though, you are right about French. People have been likening him to Washburn since the trade and it has, in my opinion, been mostly unwarranted.
I'm not going to say it was a bad deal for Seattle if the context was that Zduriencik felt he couldn't resign him for a price he wanted, but it is unfair for fans to believe that French is going to be the same as Washburn.
Of course... throwing him to the trash heap because of a couple/ few bad starts isn't fair, either...
Thus far-bad deal and it matters little what Washburn has done since. Trading a savvy but short-stuffed pitcher for a hack (and I mean it, ZERO projectible offerings) makes sense only in a salary dump. Locals will compare and crow though that attitude is at the least hypocritical. They don't allow for small samples, different defense, parks etc. when describing anyone else, but its fine when trashing Washburn. Same with Lopez, compare remarks about his batting line to Beltre's, compare where his hr's go over the fence to Ichiro, its ridiculous. Yet very few people call out this extremly biased "analysis" for what it is: selective homerism.
My wild guess at the abbreviation blew up like a 2005 Mariner trade ...
Say hello to BRANDON MORROW in the Mariner rotation...effective immediately...say goodbye to Luke French...he slides over the mop-up bullpen role where he can be quickly forgotten, thank goodness.
What happened to the slider he had in Detroit? Jorge Campillo without the changeup is a meatball, French without that slider is similarly a meatball.
I'm not writing him off like Dr.D, but he needs to get that pitch back before hes a legitimate option anywhere.
He probably starts '10 in AAA to work on his problems.