Add new comment

That for me is the big key.
Smoak, Pineda and Ackley are a huge part of the 2012 Mariners run, but first they need to start making an impact in 2011.    Smoak's tightened up his swing a bit - less hand load - and took off.  I look for good-but-not-great things from him in 2011, and him crushing the ball as the leader of the offense in 2012.
Ackley will start posting 105 ERA+ numbers from 2B almost immediately.  His OBP will demand it.  The curious thing for me will be if he hits enough doubles to make that number climb significantly higher.
Pineda should give us 170 innings of delicious talent while he learns on the job.  He has an accurate and filthy FB, and in a Curt Schilling sense that's all you need to be a star, but Schilling took a while to get it right (age 24 before his first full starting season, age 28 before he started striking out the world and making everyone look foolish).  He was still good out of the gate, he just hadn't perfected his game yet.  That's what I expect to see from Pineda:  good out of the gate, but a lot to work on especially with his off-speed stuff.  Being able to throw a strike whenever he wants with the heat will help, though.
If all three guys do what they CAN do we're set up very well for this year and future years, especially with the flood of internal bullpen help that Z has stockpiled (much of it due to trades).
We need a staff that can pitch consistent games (with some greatness at the top), an offense that can get that pitching some leads, and a pen that can hold those leads.
I still think we need a 90 OPS+ or greater catcher while Moore gets ready - we CANNOT run what we did out there, which is a 62 OPS+ relative to position (!!!).  In a league of mediocre catchers ours were THAT far below average.
1B was as below average, but Smoak is available to fix that.  3B was worse, but Chone will get better all on his own.  SS was that bad, but we're kinda stuck at the moment.  Personally I'd get a 2B/SS who wouldn't suffer TOO much at the position defensively and have him ready to plug in when Jack gets injured again or Ackley is called up in late May to play 2B.
But we need the C, and IMO we need to decide what we're doing about LF.  If we're keeping Saunders and his potential, fine.  If we move him we have somewhere in the neighborhood of half a dozen bats that can play there and others we could go get.  Most of them have worse D than Saunders, but with two CFs playing next to whoever is there we can make it work.
2B is fixed by Ackley, 1B is fixed by Smoak, the talent gap left by Lee is filled by Pineda and the bullpen mess should be fixed by adding a decent lefty and using the internal flamethrowers to make a scary pen.
But we can't ride out with SS, C and LF all as black holes again, not if we want to protect against another implosion by Chone or a slow start by Ackley or Smoak.  And riding just the rookies as our MOTO has always struck me as a bad idea, which is why I want a professional hitter as our DH.
DH should be fixable by any number of stone-gloved or injury-prone options from either league.  Hawpe or Glaus or Nick Johnson or whoever.  We need our Aubrey Huff rebound bat, and there are vets out there capable of giving us that rebound.  We just need the right one, and this is a key move for me.
It is a series of coin-flips.  No doubt there.  But Jack's job is to rig the game and come up heads more often than tails - and to keep rigging it.
We've got another VERY important draft coming up, and still have Paxton to sign from the previous one.
This year was abominable, and needs to never happen again, but the talent adds from drafts and trades are ready to make a difference for this team.
Let's hope the flips come up in our favor this year.  We're long overdue for some luck in all this process.
~G