Add new comment

1

ESPN's Depth Chart Lists Michael Saunders as 3rd in line in Center and 5th in Left.  Now, ESPN's Depth Chart leaves a lot to be desired (it lists Wells 3rd in line in Left and Trayvon First and the recently DFA'd Mike Wilson as the only backup to Ichiro in Right) but as far as Michael Saunders goes, most people that read this blog, or Lookout Landing, or USS Mariner, or just the newspaper would probably agree that's about where Saunders belongs, there or out of the organization. 
I know it's easy to scoff at his latest swing iteration, but here's the thing, Zduriencik hasn't given up.  He hasn't DFA'd him like Wilson and Gimenez, but then, they're both older without any significant defensive skills and Saunders is still just 25 with the ability to play a quality Center Field, sot there's still trade value there right?  But there were reasonable change of scenery guys like Drew Butera or Reid Brignac, he didn't get packaged in with or instead of Lueke to acquire Jaso, and he wasn't moved in the trade that brought Trayvon here, he didn't sell him to Japan.  So obviously Jack sees some value in a left handed hitter with some power that can handle Center, but virtually the entire blogging community (and honestly I had all but forgotten he existed) has edited him out of the Major League picture and securely labeled him AAAA quality emergency depth.  Among players who have been as bad as Michael Saunders has been in extended opportunities, I can find only Willie Harris who eventually overcame it and turned out as a quality 3.5th outfielder.  Maybe that's Saunders eventual plateu, but that's still useful, especially to this season's Mariners that have a Right Handed Center and Left Fielder, Mike Carp as a defensively awkward alternerative, and Trayvon Robinson who struck out 30% of the time in a hitter's park in AAA with glasses instead of inferior contacts.
I know the pitcher level batting line posted last year is hard to forget, and the static swing and the terrible splits at the ML level and how often he's been hurt, and it's hard to get behind a guy who's overhauled his swing half a dozen times on the 7th try, but Michael Saunders hasn't given up.  He's a physically gifted athlete with the tenacity to go with yet another off-season trying to make drastic changes to his game and work to impress his team.  Jack Zduriencik likes baseball rats that never stop working.  I think that might be why Saunders is one of the last Bavasi-era hold overs.

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.