Tacoma Rain sez,
So Doc, if Liddi is the next Presley... the question is who is the next Edgar from your list?
Meet Dustin Ackley. He's got the best chance of any player to come through the M's system since 1977, at least, to do what Edgar did. That is, to single-handedly gun the M's offensive engine, and to make all the moving parts around him better.
Edgar posted season after season in the index-150 to 160 range: even after Safeco he hit .300+ with 100 walks, 40 doubles and 25-35 homers.
If nothing goes wrong for Ackley, we can pencil in .300+, 80 BB's, 40 doubles/triples and 15-20 homers ... somewhere in the 135-150 OPS+ range.
That would be game-in, game-out production in the Edgar Martinez style: a painful collection of bases gained, from every angle and direction, in each and every series the Mariners play.
135-150 sounds like a lot, especially if G-Money decides to start going down his historicals list again, but we're talking about Ackley's youthful prime.
In their 30's, these guys pile on bulk numbers towards 3000 hits, but their OPS+ stats sink year-by-year later on. It says here that with Ackley, you're talking an offensive machine in the Fred Lynn category, once his age-arc hits its apex.
.........
Nobody hits AS good as Edgar, except Frank Thomas and Lou Gehrig. But OTOH Dustin Ackley is a second baseman. If you take player-pairs, like this:
Then Dustin Ackley, functionally, does indeed give you 100% of the successor to the man who inspired Edgar Martinez Drive. What Ackley gives up to Edgar with the bat, his DH player-pair fully makes up.
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=== I'm Seein' Three of Him! .. Hit the One In the Middle, Dept. ===
Dustin Ackley has faded the last month or two, with a 10:30 EYE (??) in the last month, and only 1 homer in his last 50 games.
He has looked thinner, weaker, just flat out of gas. Several times lately he has lined up his pitch, smacked it with all his might .... and left it in front of the warning track.
Dr. D mourns to see Pedro Martinez out there in the 8th, lobbing jelloballs up the plate, getting beaten by athletes who wouldn't ordinarily be worthy to wash his socks.
In all of the talk of the offense's late-season fade, you'd have thought somebody would have noticed that the AAA season is long over. These kids are in the 500th yard of a 440-yard dash. Cut them some slack.
C'mon, just a short time ago, Dustin Ackley was playing 3 games a week.
Next season's fade will, to a large extent, take care of itself, Because Ackley, Trayvon, Pineda & Co. will be acclimated. They've had a lot of Tacoma Rainiers out there in 2011.
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Righto, a 140OPS+ 2B is worth more to the offense than a 155OPS+ DH just because finding a DH bat is much easier than finding the 2B bat.
Ackley become Edgar IF we hold onto him as the/a face of the franchise.
6 years of Ackley isn't enough.
Bavasi used to wrap guys like Ackley up well past year 6, right? Even with Boras clients a couple of times, I think.
I'll bet you could slap Ackley's arb awards down on the table, buy his years 7-10 at about $18M per, and wind up with a second Edgar from an icon standpoint...
In the NBA they don't see a lot of risk in that approach, so how business-crazy could it be...
But we have several years yet to figure out which one or two. For my money, Smoak is gone - 1B is far easier to fill than 2B. He and Ackley are both Boras clients, too, so there's no discount to be had there with either.
I think eventually we pick Ackley as the Face, extend him, and call it a day. I like him better aging at 2B than Smoak at 1B anyway, and Ackley's younger (not much).
Still a LONG way off from that. We have a World Series to win before that happens. First things first. ;)
And yeah, a theoretical Ackley + Fielder combo is likely to be as good as Edgar plus...almost anyone, positionally. Maybe not Edgar/A-Rod, but it'll still be pretty. The second base thing is huge for adding additional plus bats.
We just have to actually ADD one - I don't see a lot of DH/1B bats in the minors, so thankfully we already have Smoak for 1B, Carp for LF, and a tailor-made DH hole.
I'm very, verrrry curious about this offseason. Do we plan to be contenders, or to roll our young kids over one more time in the high-yield CD and hope the market doesn't crash?
Ackley / Fielder / Smoak / Carp (with Trayvon, Wells and co as supporting cast) fronted by a rotation of Felix / Pineda / Paxton / Furbush / Vargas and an improved bullpen could make for some dynamic games.
Especially after Ackley gets some rest - remember, he's been going since 2009. College baseball followed by AFL, with a bare few weeks off around Thanksgiving before extended Spring Training (he lived in AZ that year), followed by a full minor league season, then AFL AGAIN, then another full-ER season of pro ball til October.
This will be his first extended rest in a while. He's earned it, and he'll be better for it.
~G
Doc... Thanks for the plug, and Ackley should be awesome. I fully agree that all these young guys do deserve some slack for the long grind this year, BUT Z needs some results next year... so we can not cut them too much slack.
Back on mt original point though, if Ackley is Gar... then I guess we need someone to be Boonie - hopefully at 3B, LF or C.
Smoak should come close to Olerud, and maybe a healthy Guti is close to Cammy, but... we need someone who hits for both average and power... and I just do not see it yet in Liddi, Seager, Truinfel... I do not know enough about Catricala, Franklin, Martinez (any of them) and etc... so maybe Boonie will show up.
Not to detract from the important, and insightful, main point...
What if some of those players are Gutierrez-level, with Gutierrez-level extensions? You mean that no more than 1-2 of those players get big bucks, right?
He'd have to get through the TSA chemical scanners IMHO :- )
For Bret Boone to put up the performance he did, from 2B, right handed in Safeco, well ... that was the kind of thing that happens when 116 wins happen...
We could move Carp to 3B, maybe. Oh, wait...
Doc,
I am not trying to be Mr. Negative here with this banter... and really I am hoping for the best. Spec and G-Money and Moe do a nice job with the updates on the farm boys, but I just do not have a feel for any of them yet... even after a couple other sites as well.
I am just hoping that Jack Z is hiring all these assistants in order to make this the craziest off season ever... cuz' I think he needs to make 2 or 3 EARTH-SHAKING trades, and I do think there are plenty of pieces on our farm to do it!! I just have no idea who on the farm I should be really sad to see go, or if it really does not matter as long as we get 2 or 3 Stars at Scrub prices.
Reasonable extensions can be had if they're there, but superstar money is only going to one guy, maybe 2 depending.
We're watching the Twins situation with Mauer and Morneau very closely after they got their money, make no mistake. No way do we want to front all that cash to Ackley and Smoak and have our team picking #2 in the draft shortly thereafter. Our Risk Aversion Alarms (tm) are going into hyperdrive over that already...
~G