Gratuitous Mariners Shtick
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Here's an article asking, Is Beckham's One Start Enough To Impress? Plot spoiler: sure, if we were drafting midsummer roto pickups in 2009. (Pretty sure the BABVA Boyz actually did buy in on him pretty hard as a multi-IF guy back then.)
Most of us already feel embarrassed enough about buying into Taylor Motter, even Fangraphs which compared him to Brian Dozier. But the MLB.com article does base its speculation on Beckham's Org Man persona. Anybody here who thinks Motter can adjust back in 2018? Anybody? nnnnnah
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Anybody heard anything lately about Launch Angles? Kain't cheat this game, or so sez the Boston VP.
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James Paxton finished 6th in the league in WAR, but what a waste it was to bet on the guy. He wound up on the DL. [enemy scout laugh track]
It sounds weird after the fact, but I've always personally liked "Ferrari" starters who were atmospheric nukes during their 23 starts a year. Would love to read a saber piece on Ferrari starters, super powerful but often in the shop. Not that Dr. D is betting on James Paxton to have fewer starts in 2018 than Masahiro Tanaka or Luis Severino. Bet you a baseball cap he gets more starts than ONE of the two :: evil grin ::
6th in WAR. Same contribution in 23 starts that Chris Archer made in 33 starts. (Then you would have the "gain" from the replacement SP's in the other 10 starts, if there was any.)
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No other Mariner pitcher had more than 0.8 WAR.
Well, by "no other" we mean nobody except Mike Leake, who had 1.3 in his time here. And the setup reliever with the 89 fastball had two war.
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Marco Gonzalez had a slash line of 7.5 / 2.5 / 1.1 going into the season finale. Pretty blinkin' good for a changeup pitcher working without his changeup.
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Yovani would up with a slash line of 6.5 / 4.1 / 1.7 in 130 innings. Who coulda EVER seen that coming. ... well, since you ask, the Mainframe is immodest enough to remind you that it choked on its own tongue in January, ran screaming out of the server farm after watching 5 pitches in spring training, and then quadrupled down after Gallardo's second ST start. It wrote this funeral on March 26. But we're sure the April losses after 5-0 leads had little to do with the September questions about this team's resiliency. Bah humbug.
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After Boomstick and Zeus, you know which Mariner had the most WAR? Mike Zunino at 3.3, a tad more than Robinson Cano and Kyle Seager. And that doesn't rate the defense fully, IMHO. If the M's developed their own Salvador Perez-type catching asset that would be pretty cool. I always thought of Salvador Perez as a real franchise playa.
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With the season over, why'd the M's go with Valencia and Yonder Alonso when they coulda given a AAA grinder ('Bach) a few games? Worst case: Skip's politics. Best case: they want in on Alonso for 2018.
BABVA,
Dr D