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We were without Cano and Hart last night.
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"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." - Dr. D's Epic File Folder of Thunderous Paradoxes, mostly plagiarized from obscure chess books
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GLS sez, "Two hitters are better than one ...
"... And three great hitters are better than two.
"In the latter half of the 90's, we had Griffey, A-Rod, and Edgar in the same lineup and yes, there were some good teams, but not what you would call great. Not great like the Tigers are this year. But we had a legit murderer's row, and not-great pitching.
"And for these Tigers, it isn't just about those two hitters. Note that they have Ian Kinsler batting leadoff and having a pretty darn good year, and Rajai Davis batting ninth as a second leadoff man. Davis would be leading off on most other teams instead of batting ninth. Then there's that starting rotation, which is just flat-out solid. My point is that, as a team, the Tigers are doing well because they're strong in multiple dimensions of the game.
"The Mariners are basically the opposite of the Tigers. I don't see the problem as the lack of that second big bat behind Cano. The problem is that they're young and as team, they don't have any areas of strength like the Tigers do. As a team, they aren't really awesome at anything.
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"There was the hope that Paxton and Walker would do that for the starting rotation and maybe that's what we'll see in the second half of the season that we can point to going into 2015.
"Now, if the Mariners did go out and get that second really good hitter, you could point to that as an area of strength. Nothing wrong with that. But there are a lot of areas where they can improve which will help them win games. And they are doing that I think. This team is better than last year's team, and in Miller, Franklin, Romero, and Zunino, we have three rookies or near-rookies that probably aren't the players now that they will be two years from now, or so we hope. But then, that's where talent evaluation comes in, especially with your own players.
Okay, I think I said what I needed to say."
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From a sabermetric standpoint, I couldn't agree more amigo.
Theoretically you can certainly build a pennant-winner off of one Straw That Stirs. That is our model in Tampa Bay, where they put Evan Longoria into the middle of the lineup and don't spend much $$$dinero except for him.
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Are the Tigers about two hitters? Hm ... let's save that debate. Certainly with the Cabrera-Prince-Verlander tripod -- evolving into the 2014 edition, with three #1 starting pitchers -- they are massively Stars & Scrubs oriented. That means, the Detroit Tigers believe that great players decide big games.
Bob Dutton had the right take this morning: Friday night's 10-pitch HR by Victor Martinez was just a great, great AB.
But the question stands: Which Mariner gives you that at-bat? Maybe Seager does, when he's at the top of his game.
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The opposite of "theoretically" is "in practice; in the real world." Business looks one way in the college classroom, and another way on the street.
It looked to me like the Mariners did not have enough "chest" for that staredown between Verlander and Iwakuma. It looked like the Tigers had a slight smile on their lips the whole time. Victor Martinez' at-bat looked like one of Edgar's, and you just had a feeling after the game that we didn't belong on the field with them.
It is to that issue, that ---> the import of a "Cano playing partner" would speak. The M's lineup lacks real swagger The M's lineup lacks any swagger whatsoever.
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Very true that the 2014 Mariners have had several "sucking chest wounds" to fix -- #5 SP, SS, etc. And it supposed to be easy to get better when you're just trying to upgrade from a 50 OPS+ to a 90 OPS+. Great point :- )
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Love your idea GLS that if you want to win, there needs to be Something You Do Good. If the Mariners want to make that "the starting rotation," great - you can still win like the 1970's Dodgers did, as Billy Beane is proving.
Problem is, the Detroit Tigers HAVE the rotation we seek -- they have three Cy Young aces, plus Rick Porcello and Drew Smyly (!), AND they have Miguel Cabrera (!), Victor Martinez, with Ian Kinsler making $16M this year, etc.
But the Mariners could not care less about Detroit's excellence. Their corporate philosophy is --- > very definitely that --- > it is NOT their job to compare themselves to Detroit in any way. It's just their job to win more than they lose.
Comments
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Against Verlander, these Cano-less Mariners actually scored runs... even though Verlander has been hit this year by several teams.
However, versus Price a couple weeks ago, and by many nameless lefties, these same guys have shown absolutely no heart, even when Hart was playing. I really fear what Smyly will do to us.
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What we've got so far is a #3 batter who hits one home run a month. When Cano does show up things will be quite different.
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Against Smyly, the Pencil spit out a lineup that was waving the white flag. Young pitched well, Willie was the batting hero, and Rodney got another high stress save. We won against all odds. Those things can happen in any given game, but can't be sustained. We still need some better players, or current players playing better. If that means getting another bat and a better #5 starter, then get with it. Maybe it's just promoting Montero and Walker.
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"But the Mariners could not care less about Detroit's excellence. Their corporate philosophy is --- > very definitely that --- > it is NOT their job to compare themselves to Detroit in any way. It's just their job to win more than they lose."
It's easy to think these sorts of thoughts. My own view is similar. The problem is that if I try to write about it or even think about it much, I start to feel this ball of anger and frustration in my gut and this dark cloud of negative emotion descends and engulfs my brain, and then my thoughts become jumbled and only semi-coherent.
But it goes something like this: the Mariners want to win, but they aren't really serious about it. Nintendo owns the majority interest in the team, but Nintendo isn't in the baseball business and so they leave the M's in the care of Howard Lincoln, who is semi-retired, but who does care to some extent, but mostly he views himself as sort of a steward of the majority owner's investment, and that's important to him because Nintendo is where he spent the majority of his professional career and had his greatest success.
That's one spin on the situation and by itself isn't the worst thing in the world. What's scary and frustrating is that we don't really know how that impacts the dynamics of the front office, particularly with regard to major roster construction decisions. There seems to be some sort of trickle down impact though, and we have numerous examples of that, the most glaring and recent being the intended Ichiro extension before the guy had the decency to go to them and request a trade.
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... was to enable a team that places winning at around 7th on the priority list (after a fun family day at the park, being profitable, being good community citizens, being applauded for keeping the Ms in Seattle, re-living the glory year of 1995, etc) to LUCK into competitiveness.
If you can't outspend other people (Detroit, Yankees, Bo Sox, Texas, LAAAA, etc) and you don't want to outwork them (As and such) then you'd better be sooo good at drafting that you simply cannot be stopped by upper management indifference.
If you draft Mike freaking Trout, and back him up with some other guys then you have a few years where you might be able to make a difference and be competitive.
But our young, talented hitters have been Moron-Level learners at the pro level so far. Lots of talent, but slooow to provide impact. And our pitchers have been as snake-bitten as you could expect young arms to be with injuries. It's only been 5 years - gotta have time to get that many guys through the system, but it IS the way the Mariners could win with this front office.
Without being able to train up the kids to harness their skills, though, and being miserable at adding vets in around them, just how good can we possibly be?
I'm hoping something breaks soon. I still enjoy watching these Mariners (and we're trying to take a series from those mighty Tigers fair and square), but we REALLY need this to be the year the kids step up and help before the Ms sink back into the muck and mire again. We have a lot of talent, and a lot of options, but no true direction yet. I want to see at least the embryo of a playoff chase from these kids.
In lieu of that, I guess I'd take a fascinating trade for an All-Star to get to that point...
~G
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How bizarre is it that the team won't get one good hitter out of Smoak, Montero and Ackley? Is there a single analyst anywhere that predicted that? It's just depressingly odd and frustrating that, save Seager and maybe Saunders, Jack's first wave of hitters is failing en masse.
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I don't think that how much Howard Lincoln wants or doesn't want to win is the most relevant issue. It seems very clear that he is under strict orders to maintain a positive or neutral annual cash flow, to ensure that no further capital investment is needed by ownership. That is the first principle of the Mariners, from which all others flow. It's really as simple as that, Nintendo is not willing to invest into the team. Not their business, and they are really just serving as a tax shelter for Mr. Yamauchi's family asset anyway.
If you look at this as the one ironclad rule of Marinerdom...and realize they are effectively a ship without a captain...everything else makes a lot more sense. If we had a great front office to spend our limited payroll wisely we could compete, but it seems we don't have that. So as is we are left hoping, as Gordon noted, that our GM is able to assemble enough free talent from our past failures, that we luck into some success.
Until the team is sold to a real baseball ownership group, there is no chance that this financial dynamic will change. To me, I may as well accept it and get on with being a Mariner fan and hoping for some good bounces of the ball our way for a change. Maybe Elias and James Jones are going to be two of them...
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On the plus side, just the 2009 draft has brought us Ackley, Seager, Franklin AND James Jones in the first four rounds. If the #2 pick in the draft is gonna be a 1-WAR player going forward, at least he's not the best player we drafted that year. Let us get Brian Moran back after his arm surgery once his Rule 5 is rescinded and that'll be 5 useful dudes from that draft...
~G