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So - irrespective of whether Z was right about Ibanez and Bay having something left in the tank, or trading for Morse and Morales to help the offense, or calling up Medina and other to patch holes in the boat that were not of his making... is he too slow in moving off of his original decisions (Ryan, Ackley, Smoak, Montero) when those players are struggling or, let's be honest, just flat out failing when it comes to hitting the ball and providing offense we desperately need?  If this team would be a contender without black holes in it, and knowing that trade pieces or draftees make up most of those holes (NOT free agents) does that mean that Jack is simply too wedded to the idea that he can't be wrong and refuses to take steps toward Plan B when Plan A is in ashes?  Not every ash pile breeds a phoenix, after all.

 

I still maintain that if Smoak and Ackley were doing what Seager and Saunders have done we wouldn’t be talking about the issues that creates at 3rd or in center nearly as much.  Nick Franklin would be moved to the hot corner to replace the incompetent place-holder Seager and Endy would take over for Saunders while we planned to trade for another OF at the deadline.  Easy peasy.  Because it’s easy to replace non-headline-prospects.  Dustin Ackley, struggling, has been worth 7 WAR in 283 games (1.75 seasons basically). Do you fire a 3 WAR/season infielder?  We’re talking about it with Ryan because his offense is dragging down his glove contributions to basically nil, so he’s not worth 2-3 WAR any more.  Ackley is.  He’s become quite a decent second baseman.  He looks weird with his “muffle the ball” slide into the hole, but it's incredibly effective.  He doesn’t have all those cute flips and twirls that you expect from a water-bug infielder, but he’s been quite good defensively by most metrics.  He just gets the job done.

 

How long until he hits?  How valuable will he be when he does finally hit? Next year is his age 26 season, aka The Breakout Year.  If we bail on him now and he gets it together, then somebody is getting 3 years of Chase Utley for nothing.  Which is why the organization looks paralyzed when it comes to Franklin (whom they do not believe is a full-time SS): if they bring him up they believe that will require an imminent move of one of them, since Franklin is “not a SS” and Ackley is a good 2B.  Both have bat upside, though Ackley is taking a long time to remember where he left his.  He does appear to be sinking back into the muck after a promising few weeks.   I would use Franklin as an offensive SS with Ryan around for the late innings as a glove guy, but apparently that’s a tough call.  If you are unwilling to go that route, how do you resolve this without ditching the 3 WAR/year college-hitter-of-the-decade who is in the process of remaking his swing?

 

Unlike the Franklin situation, we don’t have an in-house replacement for Smoak unless you want to count Morales, and then we need some extra DH at-bats (more Raul against lefties, yay!).  But Smoak was 4th in the league in walks just a couple of days ago, and has hit several for extra bases in the last week.  His last 28 days: .286/.423/.508/.931, 15BB/17K.  The strikeouts are high, but when he’s walking that much how can you argue with it?  Now he’s not playing every day, so we’re helping him out by keeping his LHP appearances low.  That’s fine.  That’s how you should use an asset.  As a lefty bat he’s hitting .293/.407/.444 on the season, so is now really the time to replace him?  SHOULDN’T we wait? A .850 OPS bat against righties is incredibly helpful.  If Montero would hit…

 

Ah yes, Montero.  Well, we drafted his replacement at catcher already, and the dude is in AAA – struggling to get pitches he can hit after burning down the league Atlanta-style upon entering it this season.  AAA pitchers immediately stopped throwing him ANYthing he could get a bat on, and he’s expanded his strike zone accordingly, to poor results.  That’s where I want him learning this lesson: at AAA.  So he shouldn’t be called up until he gets it under his belt.  Which leaves us with Montero and Shoppach.  Montero is not getting a ton of at-bats.  He’s not in every game, and is barely in every other game.  If pulling him from the lineup more often is the “reasonable response” so that he can’t hurt us with his inability to hit or throw runners out, then we’re doing that.  We’ve made that adjustment.

 

When Smoak is hitting at a bat position with no internal option to push him out, and Ackley is still a net positive at a glove position, how do you move either?  Maybe you can demote Ackley to let him work on his corrections there, but to replace him with a rookie who will go through potentially similar adjustment periods and can barely hit lefties for his career?  Tough call.

 

Yes, Jack is paid to make tough calls.  He’s making them.  His call is to let Ackley work on it in the bigs.  To let Smoak continue to take walks while he tries to find and maintain power. To let Montero struggle… but not in every possible game.

 

Those might be the wrong calls, but if he trades them and they go all Carlos Guillen / As-Cab / Choo / Morse / Jones / whatever for some other team then THAT would be his fault also, in the eyes of many.  How many would like to have “can’t hit lefties” Choo back, or “bad attitude” Guillen, or “no power for a bat position” Morse?  The calls made on those players were wrong, and their in-house assistance failed.  Maybe our in-house assistance is failing now and the kids will have to go elsewhere to reach their potential.  Or maybe they won’t reach it.

 

But right now the only player being held down who is ready to help and is healthy is Nick Franklin.  All the other players have extra hurdles left to clear.  Ackley and Smoak and Montero aren’t blocking anyone, and they still have the chance to be impact players.  So Jack is giving them one last year to try and work it out.  Maybe that’s too long, or maybe it’ll turn out to be just long enough and we’ll be glad that we were “too patient” and “not agile enough.”  It might get Jack fired.  It might provide us with a losing season.

 

Or it might jump-start us as legit contenders.  That’s the hard call, and when “decisive action” might be to sit on your hands and pray.  Brian Sabean was worthless until he won some World Series with his methodology in San Fran.  Let’s hope Jack can do the same with his hand-picked top tier players.

 

If not, let’s hope the next guy can pick the right guys to trade and the right ones to keep, because the system is as deep with talented players as it has ever been, so there’s a lot to work with if the current goods are, in fact, rotten.

 

Plan B shouldn’t look like the last decade of Mariners "baseball," regardless of who is in charge if and when the time comes to move to plan B.  And for that alone I’m grateful.  That is certainly a member of the plus column.

 

~G