Tuesday Morning Tazoberry
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Wow! Easily the best column I ever saw from Shannon Drayer. That's not meant as a back-handed compliment. In fact am going to keep this post short in order to focus the Denizens over to MYNW, over to Shannon's 6-for-6 night. The first paragraph and the last are just solid/routine, but the six paragraphs in the middle ... any one of them could have headlined some other MyNorthwest baseball page. Way to hit the ground runnin' there amiga.
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Paragraph 1, we wuz gonna say. The last week hasn't been a hot streak only. It's an indication of how well this team is CAPABLE of playing. Recall that it is missing two of the best players in baseball and missing three men in its rotation. And still it was two baseball levels above the AL.
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Paragraph 2, my bad on Zuumball. We no sooner finished saying that he'd fanned 15 of 30 trips since Tacoma, a phenomenon which [under the circumstances] was all but dismissive. Funny thing, right after Dr. D's yap flap'd, Zuumball started slashing the ball to right-center AND ... that kind of back-wall PWR gives you a lot to work with. If your goal is merely an 80 OPS+. It's not often that two or three games turn around your estimation of a player.
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Paragraph 3, give it up for Jerry Dipoto and Ariel Miranda. This is looking REAL good. The get. The coaching. The price. The 2017 Mariners aren't rebuilding, as Matty has also correctly pointed out. They do got a few old pricey guys. But they've REBUILT ALREADY. They got more talented cost-controlled players than you even shoot for in a rebuild.
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Paragraph 4, it was interesting today at BJOL. James leveled his Glock and shot around the corner with SABRMatt, as to this concept that a jump on the ball is equal in weight to footspeed. Perhaps Guillermo Heredia is a bigger find than we thought. Consider what we were willing to endure to get Leonys Martin's defense. And this Heredia guy might be a hitter. Tip o' the kelly to Bat571 who was heavier IN on Heredia than anybody.
(Lemme throw in something that's actually original here. If you stop and think about it ... does Ben Gamel give you, at all, a kinda-sorta type of faster Seth Smith out there? A skosh less power, three skoshes more speed, an "athletic outfield" version of the Seth-ster. The extreme pro AB's with huge C the Z factor ... who's wit me on this?)
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Paragraphs 5-6. If the rotation jells, 's OK with me.
Even a good picture to go with Drayer's story. LOL.
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Enjoy,
Dr D