They had some pretty young guys who were still learning the game. Jack Sikma played in a tiny college and probably faced nobody who went on to the NBA. Wilkens inserted this 22 year old kid at power forward. Marvin Webster was all potential. Dennis Johnson was in his second season. Gus Williams - I think he had a rep as a talented but rockheaded kid. He tended to disappear after the first quarter, but that first quarter - it set the tone and established that the Sonics had come to play. I see a similar nice mix between youth and experience in this Mariner team. I'd like to see a little more youth. Does anyone thinks that Sikma, Webster and Johnson played flawless ball during that stretch to climb out of the 5-17 hole Hopkins had them in when he left? Well, raw talent overshadowed a lot of youthful flaws. Montero hit a big home run in this recent good stretch. It was a "hard rbi". I expect to see more throughout the year.
People treat pessimism as "realism" and optimism as "unrealistic". But optimism is grounded in reality just as much as pessimism. It's funny when you have to be offer clear eyed reality to get people to climb out of their unrealistic pessimism regarding a player like Montero, or Brandon Maurer (3 quality starts in his first 6 ML starts as a 22 year old rookie who skipped AAA. Why aren't we comparing him to Mark Langston?) . Yeah, we'll find a reason. It'll be a good reason. But it wont be the whole story, and it will overlook something we are witnessing before our very eyes - that this guy is winning ball games against teams we have to beat if we are going to win a pennant.

Montero's DOWNSIDE is that he will be a guy who beats the snot out of LHP and he can catch decently. Will probably have a 1B glove, at some point, as well. If he's ONLY a guy who does that, then he has value, lots of it.
He's a career .320-.371-.456 vL guy. And that includes this year's .148-.233-.259 (.174 BABIP).
It looks like he's always going to have a significant split, that's just a fact of Montero life. But he's WAY better than not bad, and he's ours.
Go team

That's not the kind of player you want back for Pineda. Better than the returns for Fister and Morrow, but pretty disappointing especially when viewed in that sequence of trades.

Montero "owns" impressive hitting skills, as Jeff noted. It'll take time for them to coalesce. I am amazed at how quickly people both sign on and bail on a prospect. Expectations were indeed sky high on Montero, especially after those 69 PAs the Yankees gave him in September (.996 OPS!). As bsf noted, expectations were indeed sky high. We wanted at least an .800 OPS - I think we have to admit we were kinda hoping for that. It's not as easy to project a superstar as we want it to be. But again, I say look at Alex Gordon, the most major league ready hitter to come out of a draft, maybe ever. He didn't put it together until age 26.
I hope we give Zunino some room to grow. I can already read in my mind the articles quoting unknown scouts saying he can't catch up to a major league fastball, his footwork is subpar, etc. I certainly can see why a front office would be very reluctant to bring up a prospect. Look at Ackley. Two years ago, we were all so pumped for this guy. Less than a year later, Sully's wondering if we have another Jeremy Reed, people want to know where the power went, he's TOO selective, etc. Here I have to give Dr. D major props for calling, alone, for moving Ackley to second base. Turns out this was the easiest adjustment to make.
We handed Z a pretty impossible job, when you think about it. Rebuild a juggernaugt. You have a star pitcher, a star right fielder, a bevy of terrible contracts, and a barren farm system. Oh, and compete. Turns out, like Ackley, the one that looked hardest - compete - he did out of the gate. It's been a hard slog ever since.

of calling superstars early is Dave Cameron. He doesn't whip out the statistics when he does, because it's too early to use them. But Dave was a super early adopter of Felix, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Mike Trout. Some really astute scout has his ear. When Cameron gets all pumped about an 18 year old, I take note.

That's not the point at all.  My comment is directed at the idea that if Montero turns out "ok" then it was ok to trade Pineda for him.  At the time of the trade, Pineda was a young, cost controlled SP with both dominating stuff and command *and* also projectable improvement, a great pitchers body *and* proven in the AL. IOW, one of the most valuable assets in MLB. You would expect something like that to bring back a major asset in return. So it would be a major disappointment if we traded Pineda for a player that would top out at a lefty mashing backup C backup 1B. Eg something "not bad". If Montero turns out to be a more then that, then no problem. But we've traded away a lot of high level pitching (Fister, Morrow, Lee, Bedard) for very meager returns so far.  My point is that a role player is not the kind of player you want back from trading a player like Pineda (especially when a player like Campos is included). 
 
 

Well, he gave up four steals today and is now averaging one per start. That is not good. Drayer notes that he often drops to one knee as he receives the ball and supposes that he's been booked. She says that it was something that the M's wanted him to work on in the off season but he didn't, a refrain I've read before.

Here, for instance.
 

The major concern about Montero involves maturity. He does not turn 22 until November and -- among other items -- his work ethic and day-to-day concentration have been in question. There were Yankees officials who claimed Montero became bored with Triple-A and that his attention was only galvanized if he saw a reason essentially to show off. For example, with Cashman in attendance a few weeks back, Montero homered on a 97 mph fastball from Ryan Madson, who was on an injury rehab.
When Alex Rodriguez was recently on injury rehab, members of the Yankees' Triple-A affiliate suddenly noticed Montero was taking extra batting practice.

Now I remember Robinson Cano being "lazy" too in the minors. He found that ethic.  But it's something to keep in mind.
~G

I can't believe Ibanez hasn't fixed that for us yet.

I noticed that last year and commented on it, but it didn't seem to gain any traction as a problem to be concerned about.