On Geoff Baker Live, one of his 8,000 listeners asked why Josh Bard isn't up yet (thanks Moe!). Geoff remarked, with a pleasant but weary air of indulging the hopelessly naive, that Chris Gimenez played in Cleveland for Wedge.
Oh.
Now, don't jump out of the blocks on "Ready;" let's wait for the blank to fire. 25th man Rudy Rostering is a common, accepted, and often useful blending of the politics-vs-production needs in a sports locker room. Coaches keep guys around who set the pace in the practice drills. Hey, you know that Coach K's 12th man is the best blinkin' 12th man in the ACC. No joke.
But what coaches don't do, is put Rudy into the middle LB slot on first-and-ten, opening drive, against USC. If they did, they wouldn't be scheduling USC for very long.
Gimenez has started 11 games, of which the Mariners have won 2 and lost 9.
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Saturday against the Rays, you might object, the M's only gave up 3 runs. Well, nobody is saying saying that Gimenez' very presence on the field causes radioactive destruction: we're talking about tendencies, about degrees of separation.
Just the same, though the M's roped and doped and got out with only 3 ... Doogie had sixteen kinds of trouble getting into rhythm, and you were left with the distinct impression that Fister's own experience solved the problem.
And we were interested to see that Gimenez did veer off the all-fastballs-all-the-time game that he has favored in the past. But the bigger issue is simply --- > calling what the hitters aren't looking for. The results aren't there. Well, they are there, but we don't think you're going to want to see them.
If you dare ... runs allowed by the Mariners in Gimenez' eleven starts:
As we all know, Bedard is particular about his catchers, and after Gimenez caught him once on April 10, Gimenez hasn't caught Bedard again.
Gimenez also caught Felix once, April 16, the KC screamout game. Like Joe Piscopo told Johnny Dangerously, my mother hung me on a hook once. ONCE.
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So that's 11 games, and --with this rotation-- Gimenez has had the SP knocked out 7 times? Give 'im a mulligan on the passed balls and I bet Voros McCracken could get 4 QS in 11 games with these guys.
I'm all for giving the manager a roster slot to keep one of his war buddies around ..... until it starts costing him. This is wayyyyyy past, "starts" costing him.
.........
As degrees of separation go, those 7 K.O.'s in 11 starts have hurt the Mariners a lot worse than any .188-hitting glove man coulda. Mess up your own hitting, but don't mess up my Juggernaut Rotation, wouldja please?
This can't be escaping his attention, especially after Olivo practically saved the team's rear yesterday. Wedge and Bard worked together in Cleveland, right? I wonder how they got along.
At any rate, loyalties aside, Wedge has a job to keep, and so does Z. This won't go on for much longer.
For some unknown reason, every time I click on a post here, Doc, I get redirected to a Yahoo! search screen for "I Help" (with an error saying request not found)..I can click the back button and it stays on the post, but I am just letting you and the admin staff at klat know that something is wonky with the blog software...not sure if I'm the only one experiencing this?
As for the subject matter of this e-mail...the game was blacked out because FOX is evil...but the radio guys during Fister's bad inning made mention of the fact that Fister shook off Giminez several times and after the second walk in the inning, appeared visibly frustrated. FWIW.
Not that is an undeserved, but Cameron takes a fair amount of crap for is jerky tone at times, I'm curious why ole' Geoffy isn't rubbing people the wrong way. Is it just that we're all still elated to no longer have pravda's mouthpiece covering the team?
I don't usually read him for the same reasons I don't often read Cameron, which are the same ones you mentioned.
And thanks for the patience on the site update, guys. It's being worked frenetically.Problem reports like the above are helpful.............VERY interesting about Doogie's frustration.
Without a doubt, Wedge has the data and has considered... only explanation is that he feels it's a hiccup in the data, as he did when Cust's slugging was .200+ for a month... sometimes they are right about it...Oh, did Bard work with Wedge in Cleveland? Then, yeah, it would seem like the only holdup would be if they chapped each others' hides...But if that be true, why is Josh Bard in the org...
There is progress all around Seattle in tone, it seems, including hopefully on my end :- ) ... on some sites, the previous unfortunate debate tones have been supplanted by the current "terse but measured", which is cool ...We hear this sometimes about Geoffy, but for whatever reason he just does not hit me that way... he has a horde of regulars, many of whom are similar to those you find on the P-I board, and he pays them all the respect of talking to them, and in a pretty even tone IMHO, though sometimes the laconic smile at the edge of the mouth is just about unavoidable...It's not many of our blogs on which a naive question would get answered in the first place... granted, this may be Geoffy's job to some extent...Not to downplay others' styles, but Baker (along with Sullivan) is a guy I could see shooting hoops with, and that's kinda the benchmark from my end...