My goodness, Doc, we're showcasing Jack Wilson by not playing him, basically. And beyond that there is a very weird mojo to trying to "showcase" J. Wilson, anyway. Every GM in the game knows what you get out of him, there is no need to "showcase" him.
If you were Earl Weaver and this were 1975 and you needed to trade Mark Belanger, would you need to showcase him?
Not a chance! Every baseball fan on the planet would know what skill set Belanger would bring. Ditto Wilson.
I'm not buying into the idea that Z is dong the honorable thing by holding on to him as he tries to move him. Nope, this is about saving pennies on Ackley.
Were Z that much of a gentle soul who wanted to treat Wilson with kid gloves, then he could move Saunders down for a bit and tell him, "Condor, you'll be back soon." Or he could create a bad wheel for Cust (actually I like this idea) and DL him for a week.
Nope...this is about pocket change.
I hate it.
And winning 2-1 games probably just reinforces the idea.
I am depressed.
Some kind of a Pete Rose/Lou Whitaker/Willie Randolph is waiting in the wings...and we can't get him into a line up that is currently fairly pathetic at putting runs across the plate.
Something is amiss.
Q. Wedge played Kennedy and LRod for the third time in four days!
A. I'm probably being stubborn to give our DP duo credit, when they went 1-7 off Haren, but ... in fact the M's did get two precious runs, one of which was LRod's.
Luis led off the 5th by pounding a double into the corner. Peguero then bounced a grounder to the right side, and Gimenez lifted a fly ball to CF, tying the game. Our shortstop created the tying run today.
That's three games for the DP combo, and three wins, if I'm not mistaken. Baker, Weaver, and Haren.
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Q. Wedge has the go-ahead from Zduriencik to sit Jack Wilson?
A. Well, that's the last 3-of-4 games they were the DP combo.
Geoff Baker's prophecy is that some other team gets a shortstop injured, has a need, and then very possibly could give the M's a real nice prospect for Wilson, taking his salary too.
In this variation, the M's don't "create value" by "showcasing" Jack Wilson. They're simply hoping for an emergent need somewhere.
Ghost should try to calculate the probability that some team would have a dire SS problem emerge in any given 30 days' time. Seriously. The M's saber team should certainly be delivering that guesstimate to Zduriencik.
Is it 10% that some team will need Jack Wilson? Is it 60%? What is it?
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You can probably guess how optimistic Dr. D is about it :- ) It sounds like grasping at straws to him. But maybe the right estimate of The Wilson chance is high.
Supposing even that the gamble hits, and you get Mauricio Robles and $2M on July 20. What's worth more, a Grade B prospect and $2M .... or two months' worth of Dustin Ackley?
Maybe even if you win, you lose. You're losing out on Ackley's transition, probably worth more than the Wilson return.
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Q. Why wasn't Cust pinch-run for in the 9th?
A. Wedge has an inkling for the idea that these games go 11, 12 innings, and that you want to win the next time around...
Still, you got 5 outfielders on this team. I hated to see Cust do his own running in the 9th. As a leadoff runner! You can manufacture that run.
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Q. How about Peguero hitting against the lefty?
A. Wedge was way ahead of me there. He figured, Wilson hits? and with the winning run 90 feet away, they simply walk two guys to get to Michael Saunders.
He combined that with the fact that Peguero was dialed in today -- Wedge examined Peguero's last at-bat and liked his concentration.
Where is that in a macro, year-long saber stat on Peguero's hitting? Way too many times, we see saberdudes gripe about Hitter X vs Hitter Y and not even use the pitcher/batter histories, much less the question of whether a guy's hung over, or dialed in, or whatever.
A grandmaster has to use intuition. You can't process things like "Peguero is dialed in right now" with a computer. The human brain is far more complex than a computer.
If there were such a thing as a grandmaster who refused to process things subconsciously... he wouldn't be a grandmaster. He'd be a putz.
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Of course, in this case, Peguero hit into an out. But we're talking about the appropriate role of a field manager.
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By the way, Peguero's first HR was 451 feet - off a breaking ball. Yowza.
His second HR was 350 feet -- and left the bat faster, 112 mph to 109 mph. It was 4 stories off the ground, compared to 10 stories off the ground for the 450-footer.
I heard that Peguero swings 80% because they go out anyway. Now that is an eye-opening thought, isn't it?
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Q. How's the mainframe feeling about the offense?
A. It should be easy to replace 50 OPS+ batters with 90 OPS+ batters and -- with this juggernaut rotation -- take your place among the AL's contenders.
Problem is, where in the world do you find mediocre players to replace the terrible ones? OH WAIT THEY ARE ON YOUR 25-MAN ROSTER.
It would be one thing if you had to go scour the land, identify a guy you believed in, ask for the budget tweak, negotiate a trade...
OR what if you just had to decide to place the ballplayer into that game's lineup.
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The offense should be very easy to fix. The last four games, they have elected to fix the middle infield. They're trying to fix LF and CF. ... Ackley is in the wings.
It's a theoretically easy job to go from terrible to okay, and they are working it hard. You can kinda feel the groundswell. It ain't going to take much, with this rotation, before they hit critical mass and get good.
That's my feel for it, anyway.
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