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G-Moneyball, in this profound article, looks at the 2009-11 drafts and extracts an essential piece of information.  That the current Mariners organization puts a thumb on the scale -- a huge 2-foot foam rubber thumb -- for ballplayers who like to play ball.  Don't all ballplayers like baseball?  ... some more than others, pokey.

This Grand Theme you mention G ... taking athletes that love the game they play ... this is a Theme that comes up again and again in all sports, especially in reaction to a 5-year period of corruption, a period in which a sports org loses and the players don't mind.

You remember Pat Riley just before he quit the Miami Heat, finally sat down at a press conference and said, "They play, they lose, and they ... um .. .go out into the night."  Code for, it isn't the game they're into; it's the NBA lifestyle they're into.  Joe Sheehan, who is not an athlete, argues strenuously that all athletes have the same love for the game.  Pat Riley, Jack Zduriencik, and Dr. D, have opinions that are diametrically opposed to that.

Anyway:  sitting through five years' worth of watching NBA players lose by 20, yuk it up, and go hit the party life ... that is the moment when most sports execs wake up and say, hey, let's go get a Steve Nash.  We need to get back to real basketball here.  The attitude lasts them for a few years.

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Zduriencik is evidently a believer in "players who like the game, who like to compete, who like baseball more than they like the hotels on the road" and for Jay-Z it obviously goes beyond a reaction to any 3-year corruption.   Zduriencik is a dyed in the wool hardball fan, and he wants people around him who are into hardball.   

I can root for that.  And thanks for tracing the general principle to specific ammy decisions on such a detail level.

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I take Felix Hernandez as one such.  He doesn't get phased by lack of run support, he doesn't get phased by bad breaks (like the weird 3rd and 4th innings on Friday), and he doesn't get phased by lack of recognition in the Pacific Northwest.  He has the heart of a samurai.  He does.

And by the way, his velo ticked up again, a bit, on Friday.  92.0 MPH was the average fastball, up from 89.9 just two starts ago.

(It gets old saying it.  But Bartolo Colon threw a great, great ballgame on Friday, the best he is capable of.  And the Mariners' BABIP was again unlucky - what, 3-for-20 or what was it?.  It's when the Mariners swing badly, against average pitching, that I'll start fretting.  Drive home safely.)

Mike Cameron was a man who loved baseball, who came to play every night.  Dustin Ackley, obviously.  Kyle Seager, obviously.  Chone Figgins, obviously not.  Brendan Ryan?  One look at his wiffleball vid on the net tells you all you need to know.  Ackley and Seager are ballplayers who, AFTER they are rich, will still have a first-year player's razor edge to their games.

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Wedge pushes Olivo and Ryan, in an attempt to underline the All In strategy.  SSI admires this.  Wedge will not erase the Wussy Mariners rep by half measures.  Half measures avail us nothing.

Ture, he could accomplish the same, playing his no-hit captains for 125-130 games, rather than 155.  But 'net rats should not minimize the need to powerflush the Wussy Mariners rep that we have had.  

Major League Baseball has been smirking at the Mariners since about 2006.  That's gotta go.  When Olivo takes the field for 25 games in May, factor it all in.  An incomprehensible event is a chance to learn something.  It's easy for us to sit behind our monitors, and tell samurai how to swing their swords and how to die with honor.

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By the way, Olivo is an 0.0 WAR replacement level catcher per Fangraphs' own paradigm.  That's a stoploss, certainly no tragedy to pay $3M for a reliable RLP catcher.  He has a lot of passed balls on the downside, but he also contains the running game on the upside.  The overally D-stats are okay with Olivo.

Now think about something else, something much more important than PB's and SB's.  It's hard to think when you're sneering, so don't.  Just take a breath and think for 60 seconds about this next question.

Q.  How much CERA would Olivo need to be a good 2.0 WAR catcher?  

A.  About 0.15 runs' worth of ERA per ballgame.  Only -0.15 to the pitchers' ERA and that's two wins!  

Miguel Olivo has had a better CERA than his backup, in every season since he returned to the AL in 2008.  Last year, his CERA was over a run better than Gimenez'.  Maybe there's something going on there that we haven't learned about yet.

Think of your catcher as the 13th pitcher.  ERA is what Olivo is there for, managing the pitching staff, getting Blake Beavan onto the right track, and ensuring that Beavan has a "surprisingly" good year.  .. that, and getting rid of the Wussy Mariner Syndrome that was our reality from 2006-10.

Bill James says, after 40 years in sabermetrics, that you will NEVER, not in the year 3012, capture what causes a Blake Beavan to have an UP year.  Zduriencik and Wedge believe that Miguel Olivo, as opposed to John Jaso or Jesus Montero, is probably part of an UP season for Blake Beavan.  Who am I to sneer at that belief?

Me?  I'd put more bats in the lineup, especially Jaso and Montero, C and Kawasaki.  It's just that I'm also going to try to show respect for alternative ways of looking at things.  Wedge has played catcher and I have not.

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In G's article, I especially liked his point that Zduriencik will even go to bullpen arms, Pryor, Snow, Capps, whoever, over college starters, if that's what it takes to glom onto real gym rats.

A shot-caller needs real conviction.  Nobody ever graded Jack down on that subject.

BABVA,

Dr D