Q. [Malcontent] Is a Bill Mueller career too much to hope for?
A. Interesting suggestion. Mueller was a player I was fond of, too ... Let's tick off the defining attributes of Bill Mueller and whether they match up to those of Kyle Seager:
Obviously if Kyle Seager were to post Bill Mueller's first six seasons, he'd be a player the Mariners could win a pennant with.
Editing out his decline seasons, Mueller hit .300'ish with 70-80 walks (.380 OBP) and decent gap power. At 2B/3B, with a club-controls contract ... in terms of pure value to the club, that's the kind of young franchise player the M's hoped they had with Franklin Gutierrez.
Mueller was a guy who was much more valuable early than late. He was as good as a rookie as he was later on, making the long green. This could be true of Seager as well: that in his first six years, he's more valuable than the purest gold, but then once he hits the free-agent market, he becomes sort of overvalued.
Some underrated guys become overrated, Yogi. But Seager, if everything pans out, could become the young-Mueller underrated type.
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For some reason -- I don't know why, not having seen him live -- Kyle Seager hits for distinctively more power than Bill Mueller did, and his minors career is more impressive.
Mueller came out of CWS stardom to OBP .400 in the minors, but he also only slugged .400 the whole time he was in the minors ... Seager's SLG is .466, even at a more accelerated arc. Seager slugged a hard .600 at UNC, and showed the flashes again at High Desert and Tacoma.
I'm not saying that Seager will hit 20 homers, but he probably stings the ball better than the pure put-it-in-play types like Mueller.
TheBaseballCube.com shows Mueller's PWR at 27, Seager's at 55.
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The interesting thing is that Bill Mueller landed in the big leagues with a splash. He hit .330 with a .401 OBP in his first callup, second half of 1996.
Granted, Mueller had an extra 400 AB's in the minors, and these were AAA at-bats.
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MoeTheDog suggested Pete Rose as the upper bound for players in the Chris Snelling KBIZLT template.
I think this is valid. Rose was a boyhood hero of mine, and he was the personification of a big guy with a thick stomach who preferred to bang out line-drive singles. They used to always say, Rose could finish top-20 in homers if he wanted to, but Rose was infatuated with 200 hits...
He probably weighed 225 lbs. in his 30's, short arms, and Keep the Bat In the Zone a Long Time? He was the ultimate. He actually crouched down in part to get the bat started out on the plane of the pitch.
Rose came up playing 2B, later moved to LF and then 3B. He had excellent gap power, adjusted for era, so his OPS+ was 120'ish, compared to Bill Mueller's 110'ish. That's exactly what Kyle Seager fans would be hoping for -- Mueller with a little dollop of extra power, which equals Pete Rose.
Needless to say, a lot of Rose's epic value was in his extreme longevity. If you edit out Rose's glamor years at ages 27-28, and edit out his years past age 35, then Rose's bread-and-butter performance in other years (.300, 80 walks, 40 doubles, no homers) is probably the ceiling for Chris Snelling-type players.
It wasn't unreasonable to hope for (shorter-term) Rose-type play from Chris Snelling if he'd stayed healthy. Starting tonight, we'll get to see whether Seager shares Yoda's (1) desire and joy in the game, and (2) his gift for staying back on offspeed stuff and hitting it hard.
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I would think that lefty KBIZLT players have the best chance at a quick start in the big leagues. Seager's teammates call him Ackley Junior, and if he could prove that early on, then Zduriencik won't be trading Seager at the deadline. He'll be using Seager for the next six to ten years.
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BABVA,
Dr D
His comp was the same as mine, although I hope that Seager will surpass him. The comp is Ken Oberkfell from the Cardinals in the early 80's. Oberkefell was a 2nd baseman by nature and trade but the Cards had Tommy Herr blocking his path. They took Oberkfell and switched him to 3rd. Left handed stick, not much power but what power he did have was of the doubles variety. Not a great player but they did win a title with him in 1982.
Landed with a splash, posting a .396 OBP as a rookie...
Then in Y3, began consistently stalking mediocrity, but the early impression fixed his label as an excellent "supporting cast" championship-level player...
One of several bearded Cardinal "dirt dogs" of that era. There are any number of these bats-left, throws-right, dirt dogs who post high OBP's, work hard at improving their defenses, and carve out careers as fine ballplayers...
Interestingly, b-ref.com lists Oberkfell as the #818 position player of all time, which is nothing to sneeze at -- he's sandwiched between Bernard Gilkey, Rick Burleson, Shane Mack and Ron LeFlore.
Guess who is #819? Chone Figgins.
Amusingly, Bill Mueller is the #714 :- )
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If Seager becomes one more in that file folder, let's say the #750 ballplayer ever, then ja vunderbar ... here's hoping that there's a specialness to his game that boosts him a notch higher, at least for six-and-a-half years ...
I've been out of the country for several weeks, so the the first thing I did upon my return, naturally, was to look at all the Ackley at-bats I had missed. You know what? If they flopped him and Seager position-wise everybody would be talking about George Brett comps. I ain't kidding. Go look at the video.
I watched Brett in AAA for the year-and-a-half he spent there and it was obvious the guy could kill at the plate, but it was all singles and doubles and he slugged under .400. Couldn't field a lick. Same body, too, as a youngster.
Does anybody doubt Kyle Seager will overwhelm Frank White's numbers? It doesn't matter which of them is at second and which at third.
I'm with Doc on the fun-o-meter. If rooting for a team isn't fun, what's the point? This could be fun. Lots of it.
Seager walked less, struck out more, and attempted (thought did not succeed at a higher percentage than Mueller) stealing bases more than Mueller. So my guess is that Seager learns to hit to his environment a bit (if I remember correctly, most of his homeruns were in the second half on something of the order of 4/10 in 2009, and the same I believe was true of his K/BB ratio with it being somethin like 1.0 in the first half and more like .85 in the second) and didn't mind taking chances on the basepaths to see what he could get away with on the basepaths (generally, I can see a ballplayer being emparrassed of "caught stealing" stats racking up, but maybe Seager was forward thinking enough to experiment where no one would really care?). Despite his 2 strike outs against a top-5 pitcher (and getting to face 1 riding on talent, 1 pushing himself to the max, and another who's probably top 10 in a series) I'm still excited to see Seager perform over this series, I've liked him since draft day.
By the way, though it won't matter for Seager until 2017, Bill Mueller's first 6 years offensively, he sported a .773 OPS, his last 5 he ran an .827. That's not to say he didn't degrade in overall value, (UZR has him several negative very negative seasons in that span.).
With the M's infield and rotation I'd always thought of the 70's Dodgers as the target, but had completely forgotten about the 80's Royals.
A lot of great Royals teams had Brett, a bunch of average-mediocre regulars, and great rotations, such as the 1985 champs -- a huge year from Brett, and basically everybody else hit 90-100 OPS+.
Very cool thought on Brett/White/flipped TJM. Not outlandish at all for Ackley to aim at having some seasons that could fit onto a Brett baseball card. I think it's the Brett target that's going to be the one to stick in my head for Ackley.
to watch how fast and in detail a rookie is compared and projected long term even before he takes his first major league AB. I realize that's amusement and I like it and still I feel myself unprepared to all that. Nice job indeed.
Are Jack Zduriencik and Tom McNamara. They've got to choose between a Kyle Seager and an Alex Liddi, before either take their first at-bats ... same with Blake Beavan and the alternatives at Cheney...
Thanks for the attaboy Paracorto... no doubt some lurkers will find the situation a bit ironic, but they might consider that if they ever got their sought-after placement with an ML org, and they got the GM's ear, then that's indeed what they could be required to do...
We-all do it for fun, but the Grifols and McNamaras do it with their jobs on the line...
