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Here's an article asking, Is Beckham's One Start Enough To Impress? Plot spoiler: sure, if we were drafting midsummer roto pickups in 2009. (Pretty sure the BABVA Boyz actually did buy in on him pretty hard as a multi-IF guy back then.)
Most of us already feel embarrassed enough about buying into Taylor Motter, even Fangraphs which compared him to Brian Dozier. But the MLB.com article does base its speculation on Beckham's Org Man persona. Anybody here who thinks Motter can adjust back in 2018? Anybody? nnnnnah
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Anybody heard anything lately about Launch Angles? Kain't cheat this game, or so sez the Boston VP.
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James Paxton finished 6th in the league in WAR, but what a waste it was to bet on the guy. He wound up on the DL. [enemy scout laugh track]
It sounds weird after the fact, but I've always personally liked "Ferrari" starters who were atmospheric nukes during their 23 starts a year. Would love to read a saber piece on Ferrari starters, super powerful but often in the shop. Not that Dr. D is betting on James Paxton to have fewer starts in 2018 than Masahiro Tanaka or Luis Severino. Bet you a baseball cap he gets more starts than ONE of the two :: evil grin ::
6th in WAR. Same contribution in 23 starts that Chris Archer made in 33 starts. (Then you would have the "gain" from the replacement SP's in the other 10 starts, if there was any.)
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No other Mariner pitcher had more than 0.8 WAR.
Well, by "no other" we mean nobody except Mike Leake, who had 1.3 in his time here. And the setup reliever with the 89 fastball had two war.
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Marco Gonzalez had a slash line of 7.5 / 2.5 / 1.1 going into the season finale. Pretty blinkin' good for a changeup pitcher working without his changeup.
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Yovani would up with a slash line of 6.5 / 4.1 / 1.7 in 130 innings. Who coulda EVER seen that coming. ... well, since you ask, the Mainframe is immodest enough to remind you that it choked on its own tongue in January, ran screaming out of the server farm after watching 5 pitches in spring training, and then quadrupled down after Gallardo's second ST start. It wrote this funeral on March 26. But we're sure the April losses after 5-0 leads had little to do with the September questions about this team's resiliency. Bah humbug.
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After Boomstick and Zeus, you know which Mariner had the most WAR? Mike Zunino at 3.3, a tad more than Robinson Cano and Kyle Seager. And that doesn't rate the defense fully, IMHO. If the M's developed their own Salvador Perez-type catching asset that would be pretty cool. I always thought of Salvador Perez as a real franchise playa.
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With the season over, why'd the M's go with Valencia and Yonder Alonso when they coulda given a AAA grinder ('Bach) a few games? Worst case: Skip's politics. Best case: they want in on Alonso for 2018.
BABVA,
Dr D
ReL Vogelbach...I don't think the best and worst case scenarios capture it. Vogelbach is a scouting call. I think they think he's not a major leaguer. I agree with them if that's what they think.
I'm kicking myself for getting swept up in the hype re: Motter...because my scouting impression of him originally was "ew no"...but I don't get to take credit for that. You don't get to say you're right about something if you had the right call and then changed it.
Vogelbach still could put up numbers in the realm of Olerud or even Ortiz (admittedly unlikely). Could be that he doesn't even approach Smoak, but how do you know that in 28 MLB AB? Smoak had more than 100x that in Seattle and became a first time AS this year at 30. Not to be confused with MVP or anything, but still more than just useful.
I'd still like to see him hit his first MLB HR so that he can maybe relax a bit. Either way, 40 PA split between 4 different stretches isn't anything close to a sample worthy of evaluation. If they don't believe in his ability to put it together based on working with him in AAA I just hope they're right.
The M's could not afford another personnel "failure" .... and that woulda popped up if he hit nothing but air and had d lapses at 1B ... which would be an up and extra for a coat of primer without hope of shine.
Valencia and Alonso safe choices as they could pack their bags and few would check the contents.
I'm guessing one of them will be back.
Add persecultion in the off-season when the Ohtani / Darvish hope glows.
Motter needs a concentration specialist, or perhaps his hair is fogging his brain depending on which way the flip flops as if that is true of most of us (who have hair).
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