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... or so Dipoto told this youngster at LL. Eminently readable fanpost after Dipoto chatted with an LL fan at a mall appearance. Apparently JeDi never got to that age where you morph from the LL-aged "jumping at any sound coming from your phone" mode into the SSI-aged "screen the call through slits in your fingers" mode.
And do not doubt the fact that we Denizens are grateful. Jack Zduriencik used to treat the Rainiers' depth chart as if it were a Russian hack target; Jerry Dipoto laughs "the Red Sox aren't trading Pomeranz to us" to random fans at the mall. Also:
(2) Segura bats #1, not #2, 'cause he can run
(3) King Leonydas is who is he is and always will be :: sung to the tune of My Way ::
(4) Boomstick has been phased in to pure DH
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Salvo'ing on this target-rich environment, freely and at will:
(4) Had you noticed that Cruz played 107 games at DH last year compared to 48 in the outfield? And slugged .594 at DH, compared to .466 when playing the field. Nelson's "Big Man On Campus" swagger was none the worse for his spending game evenings in the hitting cage ... while his teammates experienced the crowd's roar without the filter of 10 yards of concrete. So the M's will be the better club for a 130:25 ratio next year.
Fans tend to assume that the DH role is about as appetizing as a cat eating last night's floor ham. They'll point out 42 cases where a guy slugged 200 points lower in his DH splits, but will step around the Nelson Cruz 2016 situations. We mean it in a good way.
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(3) Leonydas King of Spalding, thanks to Edgar, capped out last year. (.245/.300/.380 with an 88 OPS+). Saying that another way: the great and glorious Edgar Martinez, by getting more top hand into Leonydas' swing, pretty close to recaptured Leonys' 2013 and 2014. This was an upset in Dr. D's book, and will again be an upset if we see a reprisal of the 90 OPS+ in 2017.
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(2) Jean Segura had >100 runs scored last year. and <65 runs batted in. This despite a .500 SLG.
Michael Saunders used to be in this category, where you didn't quite know whether to use him to knock in runs or to score them. This is kind of a fun player template; either you get "plus" running from your #6 hitter, or you get "plus" power from your leadoff guy.
The 2017 Mariners will be using Segura's talents to SCORE runs. Which is okay. He doesn't have to slug .600 that way, as he did last* month; Jean Segura can slug .447 for the 2017 Mariners and function as designed. Two players who last year batted .270, slugged .440, ran like the wind and scored 85-100 runs: Dexter Fowler and Wil Myers. That is looking like the DOWNside scenario here.
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(1) We've got a rare consensus at SSI, that being the idea that Mitch Haniger Rox.
Here is a John Sickels article. The idea is that --- > baseball had pegged Haniger as having maxed out. It has since decided to re-think.
Enjoy,
Dr D
