RHP Overload: Bleeding Blue & Teal points out that the M's have about 14-to-make-5 in the bullpen. Their take is to expect some wheelin' and dealin'.
D-O-V crunch: As mentioned in the Aardsma POTD, it is one thing to bring eight Entitled Vets in, and another thing to bring in eight Serious Talents With Something to Prove.
You're giving yourself a real shot at hearing good news, from some angle or other, come March 20th. The pundits might say, "Who could have predicted Tyler Walker to become Bob Wickman?" or "When did Aardsma learn to land on his toe instead of his heel?", but the point is, you're buying tickets that have nice numbers on them.
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BB&T also links us to Clement's defiant "I'm a catcher" thing. Which again reminds us of Craig Wright's HBT article on the young Piazza.
Again we remind that (1) catchers have knee surgeries, such as Alomar Jr's 10 of them, and (2) the fact that picturesque technical defense is far over-talked by good buddies who, after all, are paid to go watch it.
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Two bucks a month for random inside intel from Jason at Prospect Insider. C'mon, an hour of our time is worth $10 or $30 or $50 or whatever. And it's the inside news that's the best stuff. The fact is, Jason's notepad is worth a lot more than $2 a month.
There is only one reason we say that: because that's the case, and nobody else said it, which is the situation that we can never resist. :- )
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JFromSeattle runs down the M's in the WBC for us at Mariners Minors. The M's represented in 10 countries, and it should have been 12.
D-O-V Crunch: Before you look, can you name our guys from Italy, Panama and South Africa? At this stage of the WBC, there are some seeerrrrrrrrrrrious mismatches. Alex Liddi vs. Daisuke Matsuzaka.
Anybody for the Mercy Rule? :- ) Or for reducing the ammy draft to three rounds?
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Jason going all tweety on us at MOM. He reminds us that the WBC situation is a 25-mph gust in Clement's sails.
D-O-V Crunch: Big league managers don't like to spend 30 days working with somebody, and then feel like it's wasted when they're done...
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Jeff Sullivan at Lookout Landing with the usual data-rich environment on the usual subject ;- ), that being Felix.
D-O-V Crunch: As we've been saying since early 2007, the hitters are squaring up Felix' fastball BIZARRELY often.
There is just no way that Felix, with that heater, should be getting swing-and-miss figures that low. But he does, and he always has, since his 2006 late-season debut.
His deception is part of the problem, but the biggest thing is that the hitters just cheat. Too blasted much. There is exactly one (1) way to get the hitters to stop cheating fastball.
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Exacerbating the problemo is that Felix' FB sinks, and you get FB swings-and-misses under the ball. So the bat dives down into the bats. Kevin Brown threw knee-high, and low-away (where the hitters can't see the ball as well) to get swings over the top of FB's. But Felix likes high sinking FB's.
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The day will come. I'd like to be Felix, and go pitch a game of yellow-hammer strike ones and 96 FB's below the knees. Anybody for Wii?
Cheers,
Dr D