M's Accused of Desperation
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Jemanji: Zduriencik looks kind of shrill this winter. And who could blame him. If he has decided it's time to stop playing for two years from now, it's okay by me.
Buster Olney, quoted by Grizzly: Olney says that "industry rivals" view the M's as desperate this winter. That's a little frightening - we saw what happened the last time the M's had a front office in "desperation" mode. Safe to say those "industry rivals" know a lot more about Jack's mindset and how frantic the club is than we netizens do.
Silentpadna: Grizzly, I don't think it's safe to say that at all. Industry rivals are known to say things specifically for public consumption. If I'm GM of the Rangers and I sense the M's are about to make any serious in-roads, I might plant a suggestion like that into the rumor mill. That's a big part of the game these days.
Jemanji: That's part of the game for sure, but I wonder whether savvy GM's aren't looking at Zunino, the Napoli visit, the calls the M's are making to everybody up to and including Randy Johnson, and seriously wondering whether Zduriencik's under the gun.
Zduriencik: quoted by Baker, trying (um, desperately) to defuse the situation.
“We have some money available, but we’ve also spent some money already,” Zduriencik said. “Some of our arbitration cases are going to take some of that away, the recent signing of (Hisashi) Iwakuma is going to take a little bit away, as well as Oliver Perez. And the other thing that ties into this, in a lot of these sigings that you do, somethimes there are incentives attached. So, you have to budget for the incentives that players could make as well. But just to do a singing to do a singing, I don’t think would be the right thing to do. If it makes sense and it’s what you’re looking for then certainly you have to entertain that and certainly go down every avenue that you can.
The Mariners are obligated to around $2M in potential incentives for 2013. The Mariners only have five veterans total who are owed anything whatsoever beyond arbitration awards. Felix can earn $350,000 if he wins EVERYTHING including Cy Young, Gold Glove, and playoff MVP. Gutierrez can win $50,000 for a Gold Glove. Ryan can earn $0.75M for 600 plate appearances. And Ackley's got some incentives. So yeah, maybe that $2M means that the budget is real cramped, despite what the team president just said about how he wants Josh Hamilton pretty bad.
The line about incentives blows the cover for my man Z. He's definitely doing damage control here.
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But I do think we’re kind of in a really unique spot here because I think that for the last several years we’ve been trying to put this whole thing together where we’re very young at the big league level, as you guys know. We’re now going to be sittig with — if some of these players don’t make our big league club — we’re going to be sitting with a lot of players on the AAA club a phone call away. And my guess would be several of them, if they don’t make the club out of spring training, we’re going to see another nice group of kids get to the big leagues.
Yeah, we like our kids. Don't assume we need your player over there in Kansas City or Miami.
Right. After four years of watching the current kids come up and struggle, Zduriencik's now going to want to re-rack with another set of kids who will come in with 0 AB's and 0 IP's?
Dr. D has nothing against damage control. He just doesn't expect rival GM's to have a lot of problems seeing through the protests. They are evidently taken aback by the full-court press that is being applied by a team that does not usually play full court.
Deal with it. A lot of teams are aggressive in the offseason. It's weird only in Seattle.
BABVA,
Dr D