1
when I looked at the lineups. My first thought was I wonder why all the starters are on the first team listed. Then I looked at the 2nd team and was like wow they have a lot of starters themselves, cool.
Doin' the Twist
................. A sense of depth can be very aesthetically satisfying
Geoff Baker with a video of Ackley's two-run shot in the Saturday intrasquad. Ichiro's necessarily standing on deck, watching Ack! hinge the wrists and send the missile over the RF fence.
This is the second time in a row it's happened: I skim down to the lineups and I go, oh, the Mariners' starting lineup on team 1. Guess it must be a varsity vs jayvee type game, huh?:
Team 1
3B Chone Figgins
2B Dustin Ackley
RF Ichiro
1B Justin Smoak
C Miguel Olivo
CF Casper Wells
DH Adam Moore
LF Trayvon Robinson
SS Munenori KawasakiRHP Felix Hernandez
Then I skim down to the second lineup and I go, oh, the M's starting lineup is on team 2. Guess this is the real varsity.
Team 2
CF Franklin Gutierrez
DH Brendan Ryan
LF Mike Carp
C Jesus Montero
3B Kyle Seager
1B Alex Liddi
RF Michael Saunders
2B Luis Rodriguez
SS Nick FranklinRHP Kevin Millwood
Am trying to think of precedents for this situation - you've got legitimately 15 different players and 9 starting pitchers that I, for one, could perhaps be comfortable with starting on Opening Day. I mean, there were precedents in 1977, because you had 24 different useless players.
But 24-to-make-14 -- that's not including the bullpen or bench -- and they're all dynamic, intriguing major league (or ML-ready) players? I've never seen that. Have. never. seen it.
Like, John Jaso is an intriguing ML starter, right? 2010, he OBP'ed .370 and led off for the Rays. Jason Kendall scored a real big contract at one point. Jaso isn't on the varsity OR jayvee.
Split squad in 2012 means something very different now. Thank you, Jack Zduriencik.
.
=== Oh Yeah! ===
In 5-card stud, a "twist" is when you've had your five cards but you pay extra to trade one in for a "twist" card. It's a lot easier to get a good hand, with 6-to-make-5, than it is with 5-to-make-5. Your odds go up exponentially with every twist. If you had nine twists like Eric Wedge does on his roster right now, if you could swap Casper Wells in for a struggling Franklin Gutierrez, then the hand to beat would be like, four of a kind.
Big smile ghost'a, DaddyO :- )
Oh yeah, better clarify ... since we're having Spell It Out Friday, the "Oh Yeah!"s are a good-natured satire of me, not of you. One time we had a non-baseball Klat editor check out our site and say, very sincerely, "I don't understand one word on this site." Which was a great relief. If anybody understood this shtick I'd be in dire peril.
...............
Franklin Gutierrez hit a ball over the fence real early here, and that against Felix - SSI grades that "significant." Significant in the dictionary sense of the word. Franklin Gutierrez in 2011 would not have hit any ball over any fence, and I'll take it.
Chone Figgins is seeking to get on base via the walk; we look forward to this coherency in his plate approach. A confused athlete is a losing athlete. If the vapors of his brain fog are dissipating, that's fine by Aiki-Doc.
Munenori Kawasaki tripled; remember, he has a big swing, and he's liable to play 80 games this year. The over/under on Brendan Ryan's 2012 games played total is "a miniscule amount."
Kevin Millwood, who we presume to be a dead man walking at this point, is kicking Felix' keister.
Comments
2
A few years ago Curtis Granderson was asked if he'd change his approach if he was moved down in the lineup. His response was that it didn't matter where he batted, what's important is the specific situtation when he goes up to the plate. That's the right mind set because thinking "I'm batting 3rd so I have to hit for power" is a sure way to mess up your game. Ichiro echoed this view when he was asked about his changing lineup spot which was good to hear.
Figgins is very different. When he moved to the second spot, he felt he had to be more aggressive swinging the bat because he thought his role was now to move the runner over as opposed to getting on base. That really hurt him because he wasn't playing his game but trying to fit a mold. Using him at leadoff has seemed to get him back to his optimal approach.
I don't like him and he doesn't have much upside at his age, but Chone could very well be a decent hitter this year. And if he provides good defense then he could be a league average player which is all we really need if the other guys produce.
3
Be a really effective leadoff man, as I said in my article regarding him. The only thing he has to do is get on base, and if he can get his walk rate up to his career 10% and bat about .250, then it won't matter if he doesn't hit a single home run. In 1991, the Braves added Otis Nixon to the roster, who's career batting line to that point was .228/.302/.277. He had two skills, walking (9.5% BB rate to that point) and stealing bases (192 SB with a 75% success rate, 78% over the previous 3 years. He was 32 in '91 and over the next 3 years he would bat 1st for the Braves in 309 games. During his tenure with the Braves, when he was on base, he would score runs 45% of the time compared to a league average of 30% while batting .286/.356/.329.
I don't particularly like Chone Figgins the player, and I don't like the attitude that comes off in his interviews. But his ability to score runs when on base in front of a decent offense is as good as anyone in the game.
4
I thought this post was going to beabout Vargas...
Looks like he's carrying the Bedard twist over from last year into this spring in that video on Baker's site. Possibly bodes well.
5
HR and double in 2 ABs.
Off scrub pitchers, but still.
Drayer: "There is a lot of excitement about his bat and he is off to a good start. He could force his way into the conversation."
He's earned an early shot with his bat. It will be really interesting to see how much progress he's made with the glove.
6
Some of the best world champions in the history of this sport had a depth of mediocre platers to back up their handful of stud-muffins. That is the 2012 Mariners if indeed we get a bounceback from F-Gutz and Figgins. Gutierrez last year would directly cream a ball right in the center of the barrel with a nice 35 degree angle and the ball would land about 100 feet short of the wall. If he's able to hit home runs, even in Arizona, that's a really good sign. And Figgins had his best years hitting for contact when he was literally trying to walk in every at bat. Which he seems to again be doing. Sometimes trying not to hit the ball is the best way to hit the ball.
The pitching will be there...let's see if we can find a line-up out of this depth of mediocrity.
7
I never understood why Figgins felt he had to change. If the object batting second is to move the runner up from first to second, a walk is just as good as a single and better than a sacrifice or groundout to second. I mean, men on first and second with none out is better than man on second with one out. It's not rocket science; you learn stuff like that when you're 8 years old. It doesn't matter how it gets done, just get it done. If you are good at doing it one way, why on earth would you think you had to change to doing it a different way?
I will be as happy as heck for him to have a really good April -June so he can be traded for something more than a box of doughnuts at the deadline.
8
Yeah... I am actually pretty optimistic about this year. At least this will be a fun to watch team, and a team on the way up.
9
The talent on this team is approaching silly. Really? The #3, #11 and #13 prospects, all hitters (Montero, Ackley and Smoak in their highest rating) on the same team? Ackley the 80 hit, Montero the 80 power, Smoak with 70 of each, and that doesn't even touch on the supporting cast of Carp (who was the only comfortable hitter in the 4-hole last year) or a 200 lb Guti who could be half of his 2009 self and be worth 2.7 WAR or Wells who slugged 500+ before being hit in the face, etc, etc, etc.
Which is why I looveeee the fact that almost without fail every national/3rd party blogger writing of the M's lineup this year (usually in the vein of "too bad Montero is joining the M's lineup) scoffs and moves on. [They blew in 2010 + they blew in 2011] = [they'll blow in 2012 because I don't have the time to take an in depth look that would actually show me that they'll at the very least be a league average offense with the chance for more].
Nothing groundbreaking here, I'm just excited and I finally don't think I have to apologize for it.
-Nick