By Blaidd Drwg

That is the question. I decided to take a look to see how much of a home road split there has been for the Mariners over the last few seasons; seasons that are stringing together one of the most inept offensive streaks in baseball history (we are talking dead ball era bad).

The first thing I noticed today was the park factor for Safeco this season is 100, which means that the most historically pitcher friendly park in the league is playing neutral this season, which is a huge surprise. Here are the splits for the Mariners between home and road over the last few seasons:

I picked 2004 as the starting point for this since that was the year I became a season ticket holder (has it really been that long) and I wanted to see if my memories of these teams fit the reality of the numbers. Looking at these numbers, the team was pretty consistent between 2004 and 2009 – they were about 12 – 17 % below league average hitting at home and hovering right around league average on the road, then they fall off a cliff offensively; interestingly enough in years 2 and 3 of the Z-era (he can’t take any credit or blame for year 1, those were mostly Bavasi’s players). The numbers indicate that there is a significant enough split between the home and road stats that maybe the Mariners should consider moving the fences in a few feet to try to generate more offense, although I doubt that it would at all help the current offense – they just can’t hit regardless of where they play. I also think that the honeymoon period for Z is long over – he came to Seattle with the reputation of being a great evaluator of talent. His Evaluation has driven the Mariners offense directly into the ground and produced a season and a half of the worst offense since WW2.

To answer the question, should the fences come in, I would say yes!

By Blaidd Drwg

It is all over the news in Seattle – for the second time in 8 games, the Mariners had an opposing hitter take a base on balls with just 3 balls. Ok, as a former umpire, I wanted to put my 2 cents in on this one.

It happens. You occasionally make a mistake on the count – every umpire has done it. You have a ball/strike indicator in your hand and you occasionally advance it too far or not enough or just forget on a pitch and you have the wrong count. It has happened to me multiple times but only once do I believe that a runner took a walk with less than 4 balls. In that case, I was the only umpire, it was a long at bat and the opposing coach did question it, but didn’t put up any argument when I said I had ball 4. In this case, I find the mistake excusable.

What is not excusable is the situation that happened twice to the Mariners, I am just trying to figure out who is more at fault – the umpires or the Mariners bench.

There are 4 umpires in a MLB game. They all have a ball/strike indicator which they keep independently. You generally have to look at it to reset it for the next batter. How the heck did none of them notice that the hitter only had 3 balls, not 4? In both cases, the home plate umpire had 3 balls on his indicator and assumed it was a mistake after looking at the scoreboard. NEVER LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD. You are paid to get it right, the scoreboard is there for the fans. If you think the count is wrong, consult with the other umpires. Seeing the umpires blatantly miss a call like that twice in the span of a week drives me nuts. They will consult on home run calls, they will consult on close plays, why not on the count? Are they afraid of looking stupid?

While the umps are supposed to get it right, the Mariners bench coaches should be fired for what I see is a lack of attention to detail. Every MLB has someone on the bench charting pitches. That person should have noticed it. There are at least 10 guys on that bench who are supposed to be watching the game. One of them should have noticed. I am even more disturbed by Wedge’s comments about the 3 ball walk to Abreu:

“I was OK with that,” Wedge said. “I figured it worked against us last time, let it work for us this time. … I was fine with (Abreu) not being up there 3-1 with the next two guys coming. I felt good about Felix facing those next two guys. I was hoping for a double play, but we got a strikeout and a popup.”

Does this mean he noticed and just didn’t care? If that is the case, he shouldn’t be managing a MLB team. Baserunners are bad if you are on defense, even with Felix pitching. It changes the dynamic of how a pitcher approaches a hitter and that could lead to trouble. Is it any wonder why the Mariners are sinking quicker than a deflating balloon*?

* I almost used the Indianapolis, but I pulled it back since I did not want to make light of the deaths of 900 US sailors in the worst single naval disaster (and probably failure in military intelligence) in American history. You probably only know the Indianapolis from “Jaws”, so if you don’t know the whole story, read about it here.

By Blaidd Drwg

A quick question: Which of these fine hitters would you want in your lineup?

It would be pretty easy to eliminate Player C from this list – the OBP is awful, despite having one of the “better” slugging percentages on the list (and that is still pretty lousy). Player B wouldn’t be the worst choice and player E does not have enough plate appearances to make a call on. Players A and D would be the logical choices, but I would be cautious of Player D – small sample size. I have also intentionally left out Batting Average. You might say that Player A is the no-brainer when I add that he has 44 walks in those 245 PA and Player D only has 3 in 52 PA.

The list of players (in order of appearance): Jack Cust, Milton Bradley, Carlos Peguero, Greg Halman and Mike Carp.

The Mariners recently announced that Cust and Chone Figgins would see reduced playing time. It is funn, because it is hard to lose playing time when you are only in the lineup maybe twice a week anyway. I can’t make the argument for that being a bad thing for Figgins, but it does not make any sense to me to reduce Cust’s playing time if you are trying to win.

His power numbers are way down this season, but Cust has the highest OBP on the team, leads the team in walks (one ahead of Justin Smoak, who has roughly 100 more PA) and really is better than his .215 BA. Besides, the only Mariner with more than 100 PA and a higher OPS+ is Smoak. Adam Kennedy figures to take the bulk of the AB from Cust at this point.

Considering Bradley is gone, Carp is back in Tacoma and the Halman/Peguero platoon should produce somewhere around 20 walks this season and, if we are lucky, hit over .220, why not play Cust on a regular basis?

It seems to me that the team is adopting a “let’s play the kids and if we win, great, if not, we will call it a rebuilding year” mentality, which is fine, but let Jack Cust go to someplace where he can produce.

By Blaidd Drwg

Dave Cameron recently suggested that the Mariners should consider trading Michael Pineda. While I don’t necessarily disagree with him, I do think that his expectations on the players in return are a little, how would you say it, generous. Cameron writes:

The Reds have an excess prospect at nearly every position the Mariners have a massive hole, and could offer something like a package built around a switch-hitting catcher with power (Yasmani Grandal), a line-drive hitting first baseman who might be able to play left field or could DH (Yonder Alonso), a third baseman with legitimate power (Todd Frazier), and throw in a decent back-end starter (Travis Wood) to help the M’s compensate for losing a member of their rotation.

Of the guys he lists, John Sickles ranks Alonso as the Reds #3 prospect, Grandal as their #5 prospect and Frazier as their #7 prospect. As much as I think this would be a windfall for the Mariners, I seriously doubt that the Reds would be insane enough to move 3 of their top 7 prospects for a guy who, while he has the makings of a great pitcher, has thrown just over 100 innings in the majors. I would think that the Mariners would have to move at least one prospect in addition to Pineda in a deal like that.

Something else that Cameron writes bothers me a little:

Alonso, Frazier, and Wood could step right onto the big league roster, and given who they’d be replacing, the M’s might actually be better this year even after trading Pineda away.

Lets look at these players individually:
Alonso – He has a 298/363/476 slash line with 1 1/2 seasons under his belt in AAA. He doesn’t hit for much power (despite being 6’ 2” and 240 lbs) and doesn’t have great command of the strike zone. He would replace the revolving door that is at DH for the Mariners, but I doubt that he would be significantly better than Cust/Carp/whoever else. The one red flag for me, he is from Cuba and his “listed” age is 24. He might really be 24 and have some room for improvement, but if history holds for Cuban defectors, we could be looking at him at his career peak right now.

Grandal – Another Cuban (the Reds sure do like them, there is a bit of irony in them constantly taking Cubans and that can be found here, just scroll down to the newspaper article) who has put up some impressive numbers in the minors (897 career OPS). I would temper my expectations about being able to plug him in the lineup right now (and Cameron admits that) – he has exactly 27 plate appearances at AA (and only 1 walk in those 27 appearances) and his MiLB stats last season came from playing in Arizona and Bakersfield – 2 places the ball travels a bit. I really doubt that a guy with 300 PA in the minors and very limited experience at AA would be able to out produce the hack Miguel Olivo they are putting out there most days (and I am not a great fan of Olivo). I would guess he is probably 2 years away from the majors at the earliest.

Frazier – He is 25, has some mid range power, has improved his walk rate dramatically so far this year, but looks like he might be a slightly above average MLB hitter based on his stats in AAA. There are some health concerns on Frazier, but the biggest concern to me would be his fielding – he is a bit of a butcher with the glove, sporting a .950 fielding percentage at 3B in his AAA career. I have a feeling he is probably destined for the OF if he makes it to the majors. That being said, his bat is probably better than Chone Figgins or Adam Kennedy at this point, but how much would defense suffer if he was plugged into 3B right now? Besides, the Mariners have Alex Liddi in AAA right now and he basically would be Frazier with more power and a slightly better glove, so why bother at this point.

Wood – He is a relatively young, power arm who is better than anyone the M’s currently have in AAA, so he probably would be roughly equivalent to Jason Vargas with more strikeouts.

I know this is just one suggestion for a deal that could be made, but if you were Z, would you make it?

By Blaidd Drwg

On June 16th, the AL West Standings looked like this:

As of June 30th, they look like this:

Thanks to a decent win streak by the Rangers and a 4 – 8 stretch by the Mariners, the Puget Sound Plunkers have slipped into 3rd, are below .500 and closer to last than they are first. How bad have the last 12 games been for the M’s? They have scored 30 runs and given up 35, It isn’t easy to win only 33% of your games averaging giving up 3 runs a game in the process. Well, unless you have the worst offense in baseball that is. I honestly think the M’s will be out of contention by late July, if not sooner, unless they get at least 2 bats in that lineup.

In the more interesting division in the AL, here is what it looked like on 6/16:

As of 6/30, we now have this:

We would like to thank the Jays and O’s for playing and we will see you next year. The Sox have dropped thanks to a less than stellar performance against the Pirates and Padres and you have to feel bad for the Rays. Third place in their division and the 3rd best record in the AL. Heck they would be leading either the Central or the West by at least 3 games if they played either place. Sadly, they probably won’t even win the wild card without the Yankees or Sox choking.