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Is during a Mike and Mitch charity gold event. No Haniger in lineup? After Healy? No way.
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NEWS TICKER - Fangraphs reports ;- ) that the Rockies signed Wade Davis. The amount? 3 years, $52M, which by the old math used to be $17M per year or something. This sets a record for RP salary, and --- > should cause us all to take up a moment of silence for Edwin Diaz.
I mean, it's not even like Diaz is going to be gone after NEXT year. Or the next year... Dipoto complains, nobody gives him credit for his club-controls guys. He's got some traction there.
The going rate for "elite setup men" is $8M per year and let us all reflect on the idea that Juan Nicasio is spoken of as an Elite. Setup. Man. Do you buy that? Enter comment in form provided below.
Speaking of club-controlled impact players:
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NEWS TICKER - Greg Johns has an Inbox up, which is obviously required reading for SSI Denizens. However, the quote below contains a glaring mistake, which Zuumball fans might spot quickly:
Who is most likely to have the leadoff spot, Dee Gordon or Jean Segura?
-- Elliot C., Seattle
Manager Scott Servais has already said his initial plan heading into Spring Training will be to have Gordon hit first and Segura second. With his elite speed, Gordon is a classic leadoff batter and has hit first almost his entire six-year career (605 of his 651 starts with the Dodgers and Marlins). Segura has led off in 335 of his 739 career starts, and hit in the No. 2 spot in 160 games.
Gordon led the National League in stolen bases three of the last four years, and he can impact a game with his speed, so it's natural to hit him in front of Segura. Additionally, that sets Seattle up to alternate Gordon (left), Segura (right), Robinson Cano (left), Nelson Cruz (right), Kyle Seager (left) and Ryon Healy (right) atop the lineup.
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I think that for at least a few more weeks, the little SSI island is the only place in possession of the precious knowledge that is Mike Zunino's slugging percentage. At .575 he's going to be baseball's number one 8 hitter ....
On another point: it hadn't hit me that Dee Gordon would push Juan Segura back into our clutch of 3-4-5 RBI men, either. And Johns IS right, either way, about the uncanny L-R-L metronome. Pretty cool, I'd say.
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NEWS TICKER - Dave Cameron has this analysis - excellent as usual - on Manny Machado's trade value. It's worth the read for the WAR/$ perspective alone. However, Dr. D was amused to note this comment buried below the lead:
And yes, I know, it’s easy to justify offers like this by talking about how wins now matter more than wins in the future, and that there’s more to deciding trades than calculating surplus value. Of course that’s true. There are team-specific circumstances that can and should move the needle enough to rationally make inefficient deals at times. But those on-the-margin factors are basically never large enough to justify this kind of unbalanced transfer of value.
Guess Dr. D's work is done here, what?
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NEWS TICKER - It seems we need Cam Newton to win this week, if we're going to keep Russell Wilson's perfect playoff streak alive. (Sorry to bring up such a sore subject, Jerry.) Looks like Atlanta is 3-4 point faves at home. Any of you NFL-first Denizens have anything edifying for us baseball geeks?
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NEWS TICKER - Fangraphs has an interesting piece up on the way MLB's "salary cap" is jelling. What used to be a fairly meaningless soft tax has now become a harder line that rich teams are reluctant to cross. Just this last week, the Yankees (!) and Dodgers (!) made moves to control costs.
Intersect that with Scott Boras' list of unsigned stars, including J.D. Martinez and Eric Hosmer as well as Jake Arrieta. Well, well, well....
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Enjoy,
jemanji
Comments
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And I guess Ben Gamer is the auxiliary leadoff man at 9. What an embarrassment of riches, huh.
Now if we can just get Nicasio and Vincent to hold those 6-6 games even...
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Just might be the #3 spot....when you compare Cano to a league full of #3's. Weird, huh.
Haniger 6, Zunino 7, Healy 8, Gamel 9
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I think there's a decent chance of that proving true. Split by place in the order in 2017, by OPS it goes 3,4,2,5,1,6,7,8,9 with only incremental drops until 8th @ .707 to 9th @ .581.
Numbers on the left are 2017 mlb avg OPS+ by batting position, on right are that players actual 2017.
102 Gordon 94
110 Segura 110
120 Cano 112
114 Cruz 146
107 Seager 107
99 Haniger 126
96 Zunino 123
89 Healey 102
56 Gamel 98
Cano and Gordon are the 2 most suspect by the 2017 numbers. I like those numbers.
I liked Heredias .734 OPS through the 23rd of August, when the injury...Beaned in the forearm multiple times in a week? This is a thing now? OK. Then he played the final 28 straight games amassing .377 OPS of futility. .734 to .652 in a month. Now everyone sees a much lesser player than he was every time they see his 2017 line. Hoping for a swift recovery. He's still going to be my 2018 jersey.
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Well done Wish, I see we both thought this thread needed a projected lineup with 2017 OPS+ and another number by it. I love your contrast though: that's exactly what I was getting at, but cleaner. If everyone just does what they did last year or bounces back to 95% of career norms, we've got a lineup that is better than average, often by a lot, at literally every spot. That's kind of awesome.
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Projected Mariners 2018 lineup, with OPS+ and Bref WAR from 2017
CF Flash Gordon 94 OPS+, 3.1 WAR
SS Jean Segura 110, 3.1
2B Robbie Cano 112, 3.4
DH Boomstick 146, 4.1
3B K-Swag 107, 2.5
C Zuumball 123, 3.3
RF Maniger 126, 3.0
1B Healy 102, 1.0
LF Gamel 1.0, 98
Next year's lineup is looking really good, due mostly to the utter lack of holes. When Healy and Gamel are your weak hitters, you've come a long way from the days of Brendan Ryan and Rob Johnson. Look at all those 3 WAR players! Assuming a minor Seager bounceback, spots 1-7 are solidly all above average players! Doc loves to talk about the tall/skinny talent pyramid of the late 90s teams... well I got yer short, corpulent talent pyramid right here. And it might not be all that short: spots 1-5 have all demonstrated All-star UPside, and Haniger/Zunino could make that leap without surprising anyone. They're gonna be a very fun unit to watch, that's for sure.
As for the Panthers/Falcons game, I think that will be far more worrisome than the Hawks/Cards. We should maul Drew Stanton pretty easily, because he's Drew Stanton and we're still 75% of the best defense of the decade. I'm bullish on the Panthers, even on the road, because of last week's Falcons game. They lost 23-13 to the Saints, and it wasn't even as close as the score. The Panthers have a lot in common with the Saints: same division, same record, and defenses good enough (ranked 7 and 8 in DVOA respectively) to take on the Falcons 8th ranked offense (again by DVOA, the wOBA of football). Meanwhile ATLs 23rd ranked D will hope that playing at home allows them match up with the Panthers' 15th ranked O. And I'm giving the Panthers the mental edge, because the Falcons failed this exact test one week ago, and did so resoundingly. I'd gingerly give the Panthers 60-40 odds, maybe a bit worse, and that's only because road games are tough.
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You know I was looking over the 2001 roster the other day. Who would have thought that a rotation of Garcia, Moyer, Sele, Abbott plus the fifth spot filled by Halama, Piniero Tomko and Stark could pull off a 116 win season. The team was merely solid at every position in the rotation and was blessed with unbelievably good health. They only used 15 pitchers the entire season.
What they had was a very good line up and very good bull pen that was deployed expertly by Lou. They also stole bases and had solid defense, especially in the outfield.
I believe this team still needs one more quality starter but if someone like Gonzalez or Moore surprises, the bullpen could be deployed just right and make the rotation look better than it seems as we sit here in December.
This team won't win 100 games but if players like Hanger, Zunino, Segura and maybe Ford show what they can do as they are coming into their prime; with a little help from the health gods this team could win 90 plus games.
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We all know that the team set a new team record using 38 pitchers, plus 2 position players on the mound for 40 total. 40 tied the ML record. It also led the majors with 61 total players used. 23 position players wasn't anything close to a plan either.
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In fairness to the rest of the teams in MLB, probably of half of them one could make the statement, "If ... , ... , ... , then 90 wins."
In fairness to the recent history of the M's, of more than half of the seasons one could have said the same (and many of us did).
After a certain point it becomes not "could they?" but "will they?" The M's have a recent history of great gaps between hope and results.
That said, the glass is half full until it isn't. Hope remains heading into spring training. If enough question marks in the rotation become exclamation points, sure, the M's could win 90 games.
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In my opinion this 2018 team is unusually worth an IF.
:- )
Very true that we M's fans have been IF'fing since Michael Phelps made the big time at the '04 Olympics. And the Chuck Armstrong fog in the stadium has caused crash after crash. But to a certain extent you gotta remember that dice don't remember their last ten rolls. What happens next roll, isn't driven by what happened last rolls.
Seattle's culture and the LincStrong legacy were not random dice rolls, we both know. :- ) But Haniger, Zunino, Paxton, Segura, those guys ain't Jose Vidro.
Or so it sez here....
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DaddyO being DaddyO, and Doc being Doc.
DaddyO: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me for sixteen years in a row, shame is hardly the word!"
Doc (me putting words in your mouth, shame on ME!): "Yes, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then, and Jerry DiPoto's Mariners have much greater odds than a blind squirrel. Besides, what good is it to go through life ranting about the blind squirrel?! If he gets kissed by his squirrel-friend he might turn into a handsome prince who can have his servants bring him as many acorns as he wants, and his previous blind years don't matter!"
(This was all done totally tongue-in-cheek and for fun.)
I totally get where you're coming from. The M's lineup has the potential to be among the top five in baseball. For that matter it hast the potential to be one of the best of that top five. And if we catch a few breaks on the pitching front, there truly is no reason this team can't be very good. Whatever else we might say, we are not in the hapless Bavasi or Zduriencik years. Lengthened lineup? Absolutely, and one of the most frustrating things about this long playoff-less era has been the presence of multiple black holes in the lineup that suck the life out of overall team production. A healthy season and we should be quite happy with the lineup.
If I'm honest, even the most talent-laden, well-rounded teams need some things to break right to make it deep into the playoffs.
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That shows a pinstriped perspective of M's futility since 2009.
www.google.com/amp/s/yanksgoyard.com/2017/12/30/yankees-avoid-missteps-r...
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Thanks for the link, Wishhiker. The article accurately portrays the hope in 2013 for an outstanding young core and a gifted rotation with a couple of young studs on the way. I'm sure most all of us remember it vividly. I remember in that spring stitching together the photos of Ackley, Smoak, Montero, and Seager and posting them on SportSpot as the long sought-for MOTO M's fans had dreamed of since Griffey-Edgar-ARod left. In my mind there would be no stopping them. I was sure they would produce as advertised. Like visions of sugarplums dancing, I had visions of a return to offensive glory.