With Beltre out the Mariners' IF goes from problem to disaster and I have no doubt the team is working on a solution. As Dave Cameron has pointed out several times, the team has pieces to trade in Bedard and Washburn, and sending those guys away hurts the team less than people think. But what kind of solutions are out there? I've spent a little time poking around ML rosters this afternoon trying to answer this question. What follows is by no means thorough, but is meant to be more of a jump off point where people can perhaps throw in their own suggestions.

In terms of players, I think basically any infielder except 1B can help the team. Since the team is already considering moving Lopez to third, then dealing for a 2B who is a significant improvement over Lopey and is under team control for a few years would be just as good as a 3B rent-a-player despite the higher cost. Similarly, finding a real ML shortstop would shift Yuni to 2B, where his range will play better, and Lopez to third. It's not that I'm a big fan of Lopez at third base, it's just that there aren't a lot of third basemen available and if the team is about to play Cedeno and Woodward at second base and move Lopez anyway.

Anyway, onto the trade-fantasies. By the way, in all these scenarios I'm figuring it's Washburn on the block on account of he's healthy and I don't really see Bedard getting much interest with Sheets hanging out waiting for a contract.

The first place to look, of course, is the Brewers; first place team, close race, loads of talent, and after Gallardo not much pitching to speak of. They have a few players who merit some attention. Craig Counsell, for one, is a lefty with an above average career OBP and gap power (sometimes). He's a GB hitter without the speed to make it really work, and some of his small sample success this season is on acocunt of a BABIP some forty points above career average. Still, ZiPS thinks he can hit for a .310 wOBA the reast of the way, and when that is combined his defense he's a valuable player. Oh, I forgot to mention, he's an excellent, excellent fielder. His career UZR/150 is in the 10< X <20 range at both 2B and 3B.

JJ Hardy is a little less tantalizing, if only because he's in the middle of a poor offensive year. Otherwise, he's a quality glove at SS, has above average power and a better eye than all but one of our current infielders. I'm not seriously considering him though because I don't think the Brewers can replace him as easily as Counsell. Bill Hall and Mat Gamel are also somewhat redundant, but I'm not that excited about either player, as one's not much of a hitter and the other's not much of a fielder.

The Phillies' rotation can use all the help they can get, so I spent a bit of time looking over their roster. Pedro Feliz is a great fielder whose bat will be a pretty good match for what Betlre had given us so far this season. But that's not a good thing. He's a righty with a below average OBP... I don't know why I even mention him.

Baker brought up Garett Atkins, and he has to be considered on account of he'd come real cheap. But he sports a career .730 OPS away from Coors comparet to over .900 at home, and he's a fuck-up fielder. One interesting thing about his splits is it's primarily his average that suffers away form Coors. His ISO is about the same, and he still has a pretty good eye. Anyway, he'd be better than Woodward and that's... actually that sums it up pretty well.

The best candidate, and of course the least likely, would be Willy Aybar. Tampa Bay is looking up at two excellent teams, has been getting poor performances out of Price, Kazmir, and Sonnastine, and could use some bullpen help on top of all that. In the meantime, with Longoria, Bartlett, Zobrist and Pena there isn't much room for Aybar in the infield, and while it's awesome to have a super sub like him, it's more awesome to have a starter who doesn't suck and use a guy like Brignac for your super sub. Aybar is a switch hitter with a good eye average power and a good enough glove. He's under a ridiculous contract through 2010 with a team option for '11 and his versatility would allow the team to be creative with the MIF situation in those years. I don't know how precious he is to the Rays' management, but right now he seems to me like the most desirable infielder in the majors who combines all the elements the Mariners need yet is not an essential cog in his team's machine.

According to some guy named Dan Walsh, Zduriencik has brought Brad Nelson back into the fold. This is kinda good news in the sense that he is a young, talented, USSM approved, lefty hitter with the kind of old player skills our roster desparately needs. The problem, as davidcameron points out is he has nowhere to play, even in the event of the long overdue release of Brian LaHair, which leads me to the speculative portion of my post.

Beltre's availability has been much discussed, and while his hitting so far is not going to keep Zduriencik's pager buzzing, his talent is undeniable and his defense has been as advertised. Trading Beltre is a reasonable move both in terms of profit for the team and feasablility. In the event of a Beltre trade, Branyan can potentially cross the diamond to play third base, making room for one of the Tacoma LH 1B/DH clusterfuck and adding balance to the lineup. Again, as Dave Allen pointed out in yesterday's USSM post, replacing one of our free swinging righties with a league average LH bat would add a half a run per game on average against the likes of Weaver, Feldman, and Colon. This would be a good thing.

Naturally, the team takes a significant defensive hit, going from AB's stellar defense to Branyan's average at absolute best, which mitigates the upside. But with the added production, as well as the presumed infusion of talent into the system, it seems like an overall win for the team both in terms of 09 and beyond. I'm not entirely convinced it makes a lot of sense, and Branyan may not be able to play a convincing 3B at all. Additionally, playing 3B may take away from his hitting. Who knows. But the thought has occurred to me a few times and I wanted to toss it out there for general discussion.

Mike Salk on Shannon Drayer's blog:

-If you're wondering what Don Wakamatsu values, you might want to start with defense. He will be faced with some difficult decisions regarding playing time and he told me he'll give defense its due weight. That will probably come up in battles at catcher, first base, shortstop, and left field. Not sure it means good news for Jeff Clement, Ken Griffey Jr. or Yuniesky Betancourt.

DW seems to be truly pained by having to play Griffey in the outfield, but seems conscious of how badly Griffey wants to be out there. If Wak was a real bastard (in a good way) he could play Griffey in the outfield for a week and a half straight, and when the knees start to flare up come to him and say "see, we'll never get to 2 million in attendance this way, why don't you DH after they drain that joint again".

And Baker:

Betancourt saw just six pitches tonight in his four at-bats... Wakamatsu said that unless he sees a change in Betancourt's approach... "And if he doesn't produce, then we'll look to go in a different direction.'

Later Baker quotes Wak saying that after Yuni's no-out double play they sent Cedeno to talk to him right away. I'm not sure what that means, or what Cedeno could have said.

YB 'Hola, como estas?"

RC /kicks Yuni right in the babymaker

YB "Ai, mis santos cojones!"

In the audio Wak talks about how Ronny laid down another nice bunt and does all the small things they do to manufacture runs, which sounds like standard spring training fare - we're going to do the fundamentals and so on. I hate hearing about doing the little things because the little things don't usually involve hitting the ball well. Bunts are nice and all, but getting the ball past the infielders is nicer.

On the other hand, we have an annoyingly Angel-like lineup, and Wakamatsu may well be serious about playing Scoscia ball this year. With plus defense, a lot of speed on the basepaths and a solid bullpen you don't need a bunch of homerun hitters to win games. Of course, we don't necessarily have a solid bullpen but you never know with these things.

With all the recent talk about value, WAR, and (new Mariner!*) Tango's positional adjustments I had a mind to see how current players at each position hit, on average. I set about this in maybe not the most idiotic way possible, but as my Excel skills are pretty poor the methodology was... shall we say rudimentary?

Anyhow, what I did was to average the wRAA of each team at each position over the 2008 season. This allowed me to not have to adjust for plate appearances and so forth at the cost of including September callups, stopgap replacements and other players who are listed as getting at bats at a certain position who in no way represent the talent available at it. Nevertheless, I think that these data will skew the results only slightly, the only notable exception being catcher where perhaps a distinction should be drawn between starters and backups.

Another issue is that for different teams various positions accrued somewhat different numbers of at-bats depending on where their players hit in the lineup. However I think the sum PA for each position cannot be much more than, oh, 75+/- the average overall, which won't make much difference. I also thought that if all SS see less time at the plate then there's no reason not to have the averages reflect that.

The last thing I'd like to point out that I don't mean to propose these as true positional adjustments, which I'm not qualified to make at all. This is just something I did which may or may not have any value or meaning. But hey, look - numbers!

C   -10.4

1B  15

2B  2

SS -6.7

3B 5.2

RF  11.4

CF  2.2

LF  11

DH  4.4

*I know Tango is not a Mariner. Yet.

So I just saw on Rotoworld that bobby Crosby's been placed on waivers by the A's, meaning that him and his 1yr 5 million dollar contract are up for grabs. He's not the MVP Gammons used to see in him anymore, but he's a useful player for a team like Seattle and I think it'd be worth picking him up.

His bat of course is a big concern, but even if it remains the same shitty bat it's been for the last several years, his wOBA is the same as Yuni's. Unlike Yuni, however,  there's some potential for growth there as he used to have some genuine power before the surgeries and can take a few walks. His low BA from the last couple of years was largely the result of him swinging at more out of zone pitches and consequently making more bad contact (reflected by a lower LD rate and slightly lower walk rate). I'm not sure why he's been doing it - maybe he's pushing or whatever they call it when they try too hard - but it's out of line with his career stats and seems fixable.

But of course the main reason to pick him up would be his defense. Based on UZR, he's a 0< x <+10 SS over his career, and PMR consistently places him in the top 50% of shortstops, in the neighborhood of guys like JJ Hardy, Yunel Escobar, and Gold Glover(!) Jimmy Rollins. So with the leather alone he'll be adding something like a win to the team total, with potentially more coming from his bat if he can get back on track a bit.

To recap, picking up Crosby means a little money, above average defense, the same or better offensive production, plus whatever return could be got from shipping Yuni to a team that uses the same scouts Raul Ibanez talks to about his defense. I like it.

Team officials have made it officially official. It's LaPorta, Zach Jackson, Rob Bryson and a PTBNL.

LaPorta is well known enough. Jackson is a former 1st rounder who came to the Brewers (with Dave Bush) in the increasingly hilarious Overbay trade. Can't say much else about him except that his AAA numbers are underwhelming and that at 25, he's at the age when good prospects become farm-system filler.

Bryson is a minor league reliever with strikeout stuff and good control. But he's a 20 year old reliever pitching in an A league, so. There's also a PTBNL... overall, it's hard to say who screwed whom here. LaPorta is nice, but Sabathia would have garnered two nice picks next June.

Just tried to check in on USS mariner and got what looks like a 403 error message which quickly rerouted me to Baker's Blog. I found this irritating, and tried a few more times to load USSM, until I noticed that Baker's latest entry is regarding Johnny Mac and his just announced canning. So there it is folks. Just to forestall any unwarranted celebration, I'd like to remind people about last July, when Grover left the team and we all thought 'Whew, he sure sucked at his job".

I know that conventional wisdom and research (no refs, sorry, but we all read the same stuff more or less) show that managers don't really have a great deal of on-field impact. Mac, it seems is the exception to that. His lineup construction, as discussed at length, has been consistently close to worst possible - he would have done better by randomizing it every day, I'm sure. He has devoted himself to protecting the psyches of players who are either done or were never true major leaguers. He called for bunts and steals in silly situations, as if it were spring training still... The list goes on. 

But the thing that really stands out to me, maybe because it is easiest to apply numbers here, is his total lack of understanding of his pitchers' skill sets. How many games have been lost because a side-arming righty was left in to face a lefty slugger with runners on? How many times was Washburn allowed to 'finish what he started' because he had lucked his way through 6 one-run innings? What did the outfield look like when Washburn started? We all know his sins, and I can only hope that there is a special baseball hell awaiting him.

I've gotta say though, considering how bad this team is it's been a pretty exciting season so far.