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Moe Dog sez,

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Sorry guys, I can not buy the theory that our only way to the promised land is through Ohtani.

Say we sign Darvish, but don’t get Ohtani.  Then we get a Bradley Jr. or Grichuk.

Darvish, Paxton, Leake, Ramirez, Gonzo, Miranda, Moore isn’t enough rotation to grab a wild card?  Haven’t even included Felix.

Get a Bradley Jr. and you’ve addressed weaknesses at 1B and CF.  

Goodness knows I lust for Ohtani, but we can skin the WC cat in other ways.

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Right.  And to reinforce the point.  There's no *guarantee,* exactly, that Ohtani is a Cy contender in 2018.  Real good possibility that Darvish outpitches him next year, certainly that Darvish and a good DH outperform him in a two-way context.

There's obviously a lot of disappointment in our 78-84 record, considering the widespread sentiment "We need Darvish and Ohtani to have any chance," etc.  I tend to agree with Dipoto, that we underperformed.  Could see a lot of scenarios in which this team *unchanged* makes a run at the playoffs, as it did in 2016.

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BEST BETS 2018, Dept.

We all know that you can have dropoffs just like you can have pleasant surprises.  Nelson Cruz had 3.8 WAR last year; it's easy to imagine 1.5 next year.  (Not that this is a given, either; he's had between 3.7 and 4.8 WAR four years in a row, and guess what he hit from Aug. 1 to the end of the season?  .314/.402/.644!)

But if we had an office pool going, and Dr. D was going to plump for the spots in which the (current) 2017 Mariners had the best chances to gain 1, 2 WAR, they might go something like this:

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1.  Guillermo Heredia, 0.0 WAR.  Here's the easiest 2 WAR on offense.  Now, it's true that Jarrod Dyson got 2.1 WAR for us last year.  But the M's are going to put in a new RF/LF as the M's jobshare their young three outfielders.  That new acquisition is likely to be paid for 3 WAR -- while the current 3 OF's do at least as well as their combined 4.1 WAR from last year.

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2.  SP2.  The M's second-best WAR figure in 2017 (rotation-wise) was from Mike Leake at 1.3.

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3.  SP3.  The M's third-best WAR figure was Erasmo at 0.5.

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4.  SP4.  The M's fourth-best figure was Andrew Albers, at 0.5.

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5.  Mitch Haniger, 2.5 WAR.  Mitch played 96 games.  I see him as 3+ WAR tossing the ball in training camp, mostly because with his speed and defense he doesn't even need to hit much to give you 3 WAR.  But if he plays a whole season and slugs .491 he's going to get more like 6 WAR.

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6.  SP5.  The M's fifth-best rotation figure last year was Felix Hernandez, at 0.4.  If King Felix throws 4.0 WAR on the board next year, you are going to see exactly nobody remark about the oddity of it - not after the season's over.  But you understand we're not really slotting Felix in as "SP5"; whoever gets the 2nd-best WAR next year is SP2.

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7.  Jean Segura, 2.9 WAR.  Segura missed almost 40 games last year, as his WAR dropped from 5.0 to 2.9.

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8.  James Paxton, 4.6 WAR.  And you can cheerfully list this #1 if you want.  Dr. D knows all about "regression to the mean" and how nonsensical it seems to set a pitcher's WAR over/under at 4.6.  But as we all know, (1) Paxton threw only 136 innings -- many of them out of sync, because freshly off the DL -- and (2) when Paxton executes his pitches, you get a long string of shutouts.

What is "realistic" from a starter like Paxton if he stays healthy?  Oh, 6.0 to 8.0.  Like Kershaw, Sale, and Scherzer get every year they go 200 innings.

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9.  Robinson Cano, 3.3 WAR.  Robby dropped to 3.3 from guess what in 2016?  From 5.9 WAR.  Big thing was, his SLG went from .533 to .453 as his batting average dropped 20 points also.  Cano isn't the type of HOF'er who is lucky to get 3 WAR.

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10.  Mike Zunino, 3.3 WAR.  It's also "regression to the mean" weird to slate a catcher above 3 WAR.  But this guy did 3 WAR in half a season.  There's a chance, a real nice chance, that Mike Zunino is a major star going forward.

Edit to add, the guy hit .250/.330/.500 with a 123 OPS+ on the season, including the April flailing about that got him demoted.  Was curious.  From his callup in late May to the end of the year he hit .270/.350/.570.  That is a long, LONG time to slug nearly six hundred.

In the second half, which is to say -AFTER- teams "booked" his red-hot June, Mikey countered with a .281/.376/.568 performance, one that Nelson Cruz would be thrilled to post.  The best news: a completely reasonable 24:73 EYE.

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Dr. D just thought it would be fun to get specific about the places the 2018 M's could make advances, even without FA adds.  The 2017 M's really were snakebitten in their rotation.  There is nothing unusual at all in baseball for any given club to get LUCKY with its rotation -- in fact, every year you look up at the ASB and SOME couple of teams have four starters going gangbusters.  In fact every year there is some couple of teams for whom "everything comes together" and, after the fact, nobody calls it luck.  That's often what it is, though.

... for the record, this is not a recommendation against Yu Darvish ;- ) 

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POTATO IN THE POT

It would be kinda cool to see Denizens' opinions as to likeliest and least-likely from the above list (or from their own list).  Do keep in mind, however:  the 2016 M's won +9 more games than last year's did.  And it wasn't caus'a Leonys or Yu.

BABVA,

jemanji