.................................
=== A Little Parable ===
jemanji: Hey, the Seahawks are going to buy a pricey new offensive coordinator. Carroll wants SSI's recommendation, as you might expect.
Dr. D: I hear that Bill Parcells and Bruce Arians are available.
jemanji: Who'da thunk. Okay, I'm already very clear about the fact that this is not a literal passage. I'll call Pete back and tell him you want Parcells.
Dr. D: Huh? Arians got yards and points up the kazoo when he called plays for Pittsburgh. Tell him to grab Arians.
jemanji: C'mon. You can't tell me that Bruce Arians knows 10% as much about football as Bill Parcells does.
Dr. D: That's true, but we're not going to be asking them to take SAT's. We're going to be asking them to produce yards in a forward direction.
jemanji: Right. That's what we want Parcells' knowledge for. The man who knows more is going to be more effective calling plays.
Dr. D: Knowledge isn't the only factor that goes into effectiveness. Parcells is a crusty old curmudgeon who is way too conservative. I mean it in a good way.
jemanji: So?
Dr. D: So connect the dots. Sports history is full of guys who (1) had forgotten more about the game than you'll ever know, and (2) got stomped to raspberry jelly in the last years of their careers. They knew a lot, but the knowledge wasn't fresh. And knowledge isn't what produces yards. Attitude, orientation, aggressiveness, it factors in.
jemanji: Yards per game is an elusive idea. Maybe Parcells' last few teams had less talent than Arians' did. I've got lots of wiggle room here for saying that Olivo's CERA ... oops, I mean Parcells' yards per game ... isn't his fault.
Dr. D: You do have wiggle room. We couldn't prove in a court of law that Arians was a better OC than Bill Parcells is. It's just that you'd be an imbecile if you hadn't noticed the fact that Arians calls better plays than Parcells does.
jemanji: That was way harsh, dude. And I would maintain that there is still room for the belief that yards per game, and points per game, don't matter. Knowledge matters.
Dr. D: Okay, let me try it this way. Do you predict, this next year, that Parcells' teams will gain more yards than will Arians'? Do you predict that Olivo's CERA will beat Montero's, going forward?
jemanji: C'mon, one parable at a time here. And, well, no, yards are hard to predict; I can't predict you that Parcells will have more yards at the end of the year, any more than I can predict that the Mariners will allow few runs when Olivo catches. But even if he doesn't get more yards, Parcells still knows more. It's comforting to know that whatever situation comes up in a game, Parcells will know what to do.
Dr. D: So you don't hire your OC's to produce yards and points? You hire them for the feeling they give you?
jemanji: ...
Dr. D: If Parcells had OUTgained Arians by 100 yards a game, you'd have called Y/G important then, wouldn't you have? If Olivo had a 2.95 CERA and Montero a 5.02, you would blamed well be talking about that, wouldn't you?
jemanji: Nah. And besides, Olivo has caught only 12 of 18 games since he's been back, and he's hit two homers in that time. Granted, he's got 28 strikeouts and 2 walks this year, and a .178 OBP since he came off the DL. But he's the leader of this ballclub.
Dr. D: Leading it to ... what? They're -10 under in early June. I noticed that Hector Noesi got a whale of a lot of garbage swings last night with Jesus Montero catching. I could go for some more strikeout leadership.
jemanji: Montero's not exactly Bruce Arians.
Dr. D: So fill in the name of any other coordinator getting 100 yards a game more than Parcells is. The point is, knowledge is not equal to production. That's a false paradigm.
jemanji: CERA's aside, what do you think about their catching.
Dr. D: What do I?
jemanji: What do you?
Dr. D: a 4.65 CERA is about right for the talent Olivo's had. It's Montero's CERA that is low, not Olivo's that is high.
Olivo = good arm, bad blocking, bad framing (too nice). Montero = immature arm, good blocking, immature framing. Both are around -10 runs per year defensively.
Olivo has been a solid pitch-call man the last five years, but this year he's stale, calling the game too negatively, winds up calling a lot of "mistake pitches." Montero ... if you hadn't told me differently, I'd think he was a bright young pitch-caller. He's in tune with his pitcher, optimistic, not wrapped-around-the-axle in batter advance scouting.
I'll cheerfully predict Montero to run a lower CERA the rest of the year. I think his calls are fresh and optimistic. He may be naive about it, but that also means he's not calling the pitches from a negative, fearful, safety-first paradigm.
jemanji: You can't prove that Montero's better.
Dr. D: The burden of proof isn't on me. The Mariners are the ones delaying Montero's maturation -- and 5.0 WAR production -- for the sake of an ephemereal belief that Olivo is much superior. The Mariners only get Montero for six years. You'd think they'd want him to hit his defensive peak as soon as possible.
jemanji: What do you think they should do? Just walk up to Olivo and knee him in the man region? The man's a legend.
Dr. D: Couldn't tell you what they should do about the PT. But I'd start with acknowledging that Jesus Montero, like many rookie catchers the last ten years, is good behind the plate. The "Jesus has a lot to learn" shtick is embarrassing. Have Olivo get Felix through a start with the Mariners in the lead maybe, and then SSI will take the org's word for it that Olivo has the magic sparkle dust.
Get Olivo's CERA under Montero's, and then talk ancient wisdom.
Your friend,
Jeff
Olivo ain't the guy.
Tell that to Wedge, though. You won't get much traction.
It's almost beyond figuring out. Olivo won't be here next year, Montero will be here for decades. So catching Olivo 66% of the time after he returns and after he wasn't missed, in a pitch calling/receiving/backstop sense (and he certainly wan't missed in an offensive sense) remains absurd to me. Don't get it. Isn't prudent.
Redonkulous.
moe
So we save a run a game from the pitchers with Montero catching, plus Montero bats exceedingly better as C vs DH, .355/.390/.570 as C vs. .200/.239/.296 as DH. What is not to like about that?
... one third less production ... in one third the playing time.
Ichiro, Olivo, Ryan, Figgins and Kawasaki literally have 1/3 of all the plate appearances for the Mariners this year. Four of those guys have an OPS that begins with '5'. Ichiro, bucking the trend at .671 is forcing Kawaski to double down in an attempt to get to .4-something.
What all of these guys have in common is they are over 30.
These guys are NOT helping the youngsters in any way shape or form.
The GM puts together a roster that is as minimalist on veteran talent as is comprehensible and the current manager STILL manages to hold onto his world view that the kids cannot succeed without "veteran leadership" to the extent that he's willing to just piss away 1/3 of the PAs for the team on the Easter Bunny belief that somehow Olivo & company are somehow making things better.
Once, I thought, for a brief bit, that, just perhaps, Jack Z was pushing playing time for Olivo and Figgins (and now Guti in CF) just because it could "showcase" their talents for the ususpecting....er....needy MLB teams.
But it keeps coming back to me that who in the baseball world doesn't know the skill-set (or lack of) that those guys bring to the park? There are little kids in Bolivia who know Olivo is a "grizzled vet" who brings a lousy bat, a passed ball glove, a decent arm and a dirt dog attitude....and another lousy bat. Little old ladies in Latvia know that Figgy is a Punch and Judy player with an anemic bat who, if he doesn't walk 90 pts is an offensive blackhole. He is somewhat versatile on defense, however, when he doesn't sulk after rolling balls. Sherpas living in the Himalayas know that Guti has a reputation (us initiates suspect it is way overblown by Safeco) for being the best flycatcher in the universe, but a bat that has become hollow, or worse.
All in baseball know all of that. Jack Z is not stupid enough to assume he can inflate their value much by rolling them out there day after day. He risks reducing their value, in fact, by doing such. Makes it harder to fool folks.
Ryan? He was a 40 game experiment worth doing. No longer.
Figgins still had value when he threw his Wak induced snit fit. That's when we should have ridded ourself of him.
So if Jack isn't making a front-office decision to try to bring a little trade luster to these guys, who, then, is responsible for rolling them out every day?
Easy peezy lemon squeezy: That would be The Sarge.
Wedge is making these playing-time decisions and The Sarge seems to be all about accountability, well he's accountable, too.
If you're going to credit Wedge for "developing" guys like Seager tehn you should also consider if his approach is regressing guys like Ackley.
We have a ton of young talent in the pipeline, all of us agree. Raise your hand if you think Wedge is the right guy to develop and deploy that talent.
Not many hands up.
Z gave Figgins too long of contract, obviously. He's in a similar boat with Wedge. He's going to have to bite a $4M bullet (IIRC) to let him go by the All-Star game. I said a month ago that that was the Over/Under date. I may miss it by a bit, but Wedge will go.
10 days ago, when we were riding the high of a successful road trip, I said the M's were a six game winning streak from being in the hunt, but a six game losing streak from major collapse.
One of those happened.
We all love the image of John Wayne as Sgt. Stryker in "Sands of Iwo Jima" or Clint Eastwood as the Gunny Sarge in "Heartbreak Ridge," but that isn't MLB baseball. Wedge's job is to put guys in the right place at the right time. It isn't happening. I don't see it doing so.
Give it to Chambliss.
moe
Miggy seems to have the respect of the league as well. Check out #2 in SI's Players Poll of toughest catcher to run on:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/1206/mlb.poll....
Don't get me wrong, if I'm the boss, Jesus and Jaso are my only two catchers. But its interesting to me to see how at least one aspect of Olivo's defense is perceived by those who would seemingly know best.
The three easiest components of catcher defense to measure are SB's, WP/PB's, and framing.
Olivo should get paid for 10 runs a year saved with his arm, but based on the measurements of the last few years, he also drops 10 runs with passed balls and probably drops 10 runs with pitch framing. The framing issue could be only because the teams he plays for get no respect.
None of that captures the most important catcher responsibility, CERA, at which Olivo has been very good the last five years.