Time for Wlad to Go?
As you know, D-O-V is in favor of giving the cake a chance to bake. Prospect after prospect, we jazz all smooth about his callup, and then give him sixteen AB's to prove he's the real deal.
To me, that's almost the definition of talent judgment, though -- an Earl Weaver or Lou Piniella or Theo Epstein Pat Gillick can point his finger at a player and say, "THAT one" -- and then give the young player 400 or 800 or 1,200 at-bats to prove that he's the real deal.
This kind of judgment and decisiveness affords the luxury of time, because once a Dustin Pedroia comes up and hits 191/258/303 as a rookie, it creates pressure on the brass to be right about the talent.
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Wlad Balentien has put no pressure on the Mariners to be right, because he hasn't hurt the 2009 Mariners. Much, anyway. He was pretty much their best hitter in April, other than the mighty Bran-man. No other Mariner left fielder has been helping them much. Wlad has provided a mediocre-to-poor overall contribution, but then, so has every other LF.
The situation is the same going forward. The Mariners haven't traded for a Nick Swisher, and haven't called up a hot-hitting Rainier to give Griffey time in LF. So why *not* give Wlad more time in 2009 to show the goods?
Complicating that, is the fact that Wlad's out of options. If you replace him on the 25-man, you lose him out of your organization (check me on that, because roster issues bore me to tears). So replacing him this season, means you pull the plug on him as a Mariner.
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Why cut him now, even though he hasn't had fair time to develop? Because:
1) You don't project Wlad to be as good as you project other Rainiers to be;
2) There is a logjam of promising hitters behind him;
3) You badly need the offensive help right now.
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In other words, I believe in patience, sure. But Wlad is not going to be more than a Jose Guillen anyway. I expect that SOMEBODY out of that murderer's row in Tacoma is going to be more than Jose Guillen has been. The Mariners simply aren't losing anything, in the delta between Wlad Balentien, and the other guys who are behind him right now.
As well, once Wlad is gone, you get to try the Oakland A's turnstile, in which Michael Saunders and Prentice Redman and Chris Shelton get to try, consecutively, to provide the Mariners an offensive boost.
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You don't want to lose Wlad for nothing, of course; that's a waste of org resources. But you have 500 watts of resources at any given time, compared to the 100 watts that you're allowed to put on the 25-man, anyway. You are GOING to have to shed good players at times, if you're a good organization. It's the nature of the beast.
This is precisely why the 2007-08 Mariners had no business stiff-arming their developmental players, while Entitled Vets lounged in the cushy chairs of the clubhouse. It widens your 1" resource-leak pipe to 4" when you let the good minor leaguers rot down there until they're Rule 5'ed.
The M's would like to trade Wlad. But other orgs fight the same problem. That's why good ML talents change teams like they do. There's a lot of talent floating around baseball, and it's challenging to jam them into 25 slots while losing as few as possible.
Which is one more reason you play Stars & Scrubs -- it helps fight resource leak, if you've got 25 watts stashed in Erik Bedard and 25 watts stashed in Mark Teixeira and 25 watts stashed in Ichiro -- great players at the top of the roster. It's one more reason that roto-oriented analysts wanted Adam Dunn instead of Endy Chavez. You want your top six players to be as good as possible; it makes managing the next 19 much easier. Holliday to the A's, even with their limited budget, is an example of this.
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Anyway. :- ) I'm sure that Wlad will be a good player in the majors. The M's have even better than him available, and it's the right time to turn to them.
My $0.02,
Dr D