M’s Continue to Remake Bullpen, Acquire Evan Scribner
In my last post, I mentioned that recently-acquired bullpen arm Jonathan Aro looks a lot like Evan Scribner, then of the A’s, in terms of movement and approach. Pretty clearly, Jerry Dipoto doesn’t...
View ArticleMore Small Moves: Adam Lind Acquired, Jabari Blash Taken in Rule 5 Draft
Seriously can’t keep up with Jerry Dipoto this month, so I took a couple of days off of kvetching about minor M’s roster moves. Back at it, then. The biggest move of the past few days is the...
View ArticleSteve Cishek and the Framing Effect
Righty reliever Darren O’Day recently inked a four-year deal to remain with Baltimore which will earn him $31 million over four years. O’Day throws side-arm and often struggles to push his fastball...
View ArticleWelcome Back, Kuma
I suppose it’s a good reminder: most deals are contingent on a physical. We all expect that to be a formality, but they’re not, and when you’re talking about an older pitcher with a fairly extensive...
View ArticleMariners Send Passive-Aggressive Message to Their Exes
Post-Winter Meetings and pre-Spring Training represents a news lull where the only thing you might otherwise have to hope for are prospect lists and the ever-thrilling arbitration negotiations in which...
View ArticleTreatment and Control of the Zone
Jay did a great job summarizing the M’s PR video on a new, org-wide emphasis on the strike zone, but I had a few additional thoughts I wanted to throw out there. Essentially, my reaction to this...
View ArticleDave Henderson, RIP
The M’s had been a big-league team for a few months when it came time to make their initial pick in the amateur draft. Picking near the end of the first round, the new club selected a CF out of a...
View ArticleBA Remembers Names of Ten Mariners Prospects
Whether it’s diminishing returns on the player development front or merely that the PhD student lifestyle clamors for the lion’s share of my attention, I’ve found myself more tuned out from the minor...
View ArticleAnother Player Development Note
I don’t often post consecutively, but when I do, it concerns the minor leagues and those posts are ill-scheduled. A few days ago, I had a luxurious fifteen minutes to myself with which to do as I would...
View ArticleDae-Ho Lee and Roberto Petagine
I should wait and post this on February 22nd, but if I keep trying to find the time to post, I’ll just miss it and go another month without providing any baseballing opinions. So: *nearly* ten years...
View ArticleThe State of the AL West
Spring Training looms, and with the exception of the somewhat odd Khris Davis deal, the AL West clubs seem to have settled in on the rosters they’ll take to Arizona. We’ve also got some early...
View ArticleThe M’s Bullpen Bet
Perhaps the most striking trend in baseball this off-season has been the creation of super-bullpens: teams that already have one or two great relievers doubling down and getting another one. The...
View ArticleThe Limits of Projections: Nelson Cruz
In the post comparing a variety of projection systems and what they make of the M’s, I noted that the entire AL is clumped around 81 wins (see Jeff Sullivan’s fangraphs post on this today), and as a...
View ArticleThe Limits of Projections: Franklin Gutierrez
Yesterday, we talked about Nelson Cruz and how his frankly bizarre late-career surge makes him especially hard to project. If the historical similarity scores bring a bunch of players with only slight...
View ArticleThe Limits of Projections: The Bench
So far, we’ve talked about two 2016 Mariners who are uniquely resistant to forecasting. Today, we’ll turn to the bench, and some of the interesting positional battles – or at least, what the...
View ArticleTeam Defense and the AL West
August Fagerstrom has a great article at Fangraphs today on projections of team defense for 2016. As you might imagine, a few of the AL West clubs look pretty different heading into 2016 than they did...
View ArticleCharity Game – Mariners vs. Padres
James Paxton vs. Robbie Erlin, 12:10pm That snuck up on me. There’s an actual Mariners baseball game today, as the M’s and Padres play their annual charity game in Peoria. James Paxton gets the start...
View ArticleCombined M’s Top 10 Prospects
It’s the eve of the Cactus League, and the M’s minor leaguers are already flooding back fields and batting cages in Peoria. It’s March, so they’re all in better shape than expected, fortified with new...
View ArticleCactus League Game 1: Seattle Will Have Her Revenge on Philip Humber
Nate Karns vs. Philip Humber, 12:10pm Phil Humber’s had about as frustrating a career as one can have while being a #3 overall draft pick and tossing a perfect game. Aside from the pre-draft hype as a...
View ArticleCactus League Game 2, Battle of the Oddly Frustrating Young Fireballers
Taijuan Walker vs. Wily Peralta, 12:10pm Wily Peralta won’t turn 27 for several months, and has three MLB campaigns with at least 100 IP (he missed a few months last season due to an oblique strain,...
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