25-Man Roster
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There's a scene in "Thor." Having been stripped of all innate power beyond that of, say, Albert Pujols or Steve Hutchinson, Thor uses a 300-lb. bench press and his godlike confidence to rip through a S.H.I.E.L.D. base camp, tossing the world's best operatives through the nylon walls left and right.
As he does this, Thor is unaware that he's scoped by a S.H.I.E.L.D. sniper who can, at any time, drop him like Didier Drogba faking a penalty in a Chelsea-Arsenal game. Thor tosses a couple more agents through the wall and the sniper drawls into his headset to Nick Fury: "You better make the call here. I'm startin' to like this guy."
Professional respect, transcending king and country. One of the finer things in life, wouldn't you say?
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Jason Churchill deduces that the M's will drop Alex Liddi, and either Lucas Lit-Key or Charlie Furbush, and either Steve Delabar or Erasmo Ramirez or "at least these are my best projections."
Jeff Sullivan opines that Liddi and Delabar are "pretty obvious demotions" and that some people are guessing Charlie Furbush, which he concedes makes sense because you don't usually have three lefthanders in the bullpen.
Larry Stone came up with the interesting suggestion that the M's could DL Hisashi Iwakuma.
My favorite blog saw that Noesi, Millwood, and Iwakuma have gone inactive ... and flatly informed its readers that "their spots for the first two games will go to Alex Liddi, Steve Delabar, and Charlie Furbush." They leave it to the imagination whether Chuck Armstrong called them to get the blog the information a few days early, or whether the blog is guessing like everybody else.
I personally don't believe that Armstrong, Zduriencik, and Wedge have even made these decisions yet, much less informed the M's worker bees what the final roster will be, much less disseminated this information outside the org. But I am honestly starting to like this paradigm that in each baseball decision there is a "correct" move and an "incorrect" move.
I don't like it in the sense that I would use it myself, but am honestly starting to relax and enjoy having a paradigm available to me, a place where I can see a published analysis that it is "correct" to send down Charlie Furbush and not Shawn Kelley, that it is "correct" to ignore Iwakuma's 29 hits in 16 games, that it is "sad" that people would consider other ways of looking at things, considering that all we have to do any more is click-through to Fangraphs for the necessary formulas.
We do this in chess all the time. "Perhaps Knight to d4 is correct? Hmmmm ...." Of course, chess is only a more complex form of Tic-Tac-Toe, and it can be totally captured by computer... we're solving a Sudoku puzzle. "Perhaps a 7 goes in cell Gb? Hmmmm...."
This morning, er, this afternoon, it feels fresh to me, to have somebody willing to put forward their suggestion as to a "correct solution," as though the M's 25-man roster were a Sudoku puzzle. After all, I'm not having as easy a time finding the correct words for this post.
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=== The World According to SSI ===
Jack Zduriencik is nothing if not outside the box. Incorrectly, I leave open the possibility that he could do something surprising. Here is his current 25-man roster, freshly updated just a few hours ago; three of these guys have to go* to make room for Noesi, Millwood and Iwakuma.
You notice that with the three pitchers coming in, that's 14. We suppose it's fair to take it as a given that the final roster won't have more than 12 pitchers, especially since the M's don't need a 5th starter until April 19th. Of the three players to go, we can figure that either two or three will be pitchers.
League and Wilhelmsen are the finishers. Sherrill has been treated as a lock and is making good money; call him a 90% chance to make it. Erasmo Ramirez just had his contract purchased and is freshly on the 40-man; that's a pretty good signal of intent. Give him an 80% chance, if you're trying to read Zduriencik's poker face. Of course, there are five starters. So 5 + 4 = 9.
Of the following five pitchers -- Delabar, Lit-Key, Furbush, Iwakuma, and Kelley, which two or three will Zduriencik keep? Remember that if you keep Lit-Key, you've got to keep him in Safeco allllllllll year in order to justify your March decision. Zduriencik is not known for ossifying a 10-11-12 slot in his bullpen.
I don't know which two or three he'll keep, and I don't much care. I'd probably release, not DL, Iwakuma and Kelley, and would lean toward demoting Steve Delabar, keeping 5 bench players. But I would do this in the melancholy realization that I'm probably going to burn the Luetge decision in a month or two anyway.
The resonating decisions have involved Jaso, Catricala, Saunders, especially Erasmo Ramirez, and Beavan, and Millwood. Which 2-3 of those 5 last pitchers? To me as a non-employee of the Seattle Mariners, it isn't that big a deal.
But I'd move on, past WBC-sama, if it were me. There are talented young men fighting for that slot, and you feel for them, and a huge slot has already been given to a pitcher (Millwood) who is not in your plans, and Ichiro already has his dinner partner. We wish the man well. What a career he's had.
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Jack could easily surprise us by keeping a 5-man bench, at least up to April 19th. He doesn't need many pitchers, with all the off days.
He could surprise us by keeping Liddi, and sending Seager down to play every day. It's not what I would do, but Zduriencik has done things far more unexpected than that.
He could trade for Lit-key (which would make possible a AAA assignment). He could decide that Lit-key is so good that he's going to cut Sherrill.
He could, conceivably, stun the blog-o-sphere by dealing John Jaso somewhere, or working some way for Jaso to play at Tacoma. Remember, a 3rd catcher is always only one game away, an easy callup from Tacoma.
Jay-Z could do a lot of things. Zduriencik's not a paint-by-numbers GM.
Will be interesting,
Dr D