A quick perusal of lesser blogs reveals a constant drumbeat to trade Ichiro, usually because of his perceived shortcomings and the size of his contract. This is NOT one of those posts. Rather, my question is whether Ichiro has earned the right to be traded, and if so, whether it would make sense for the Mariners to do it. My personal opinion is that the answers are Yes and Yes.

Ichiro has provided the Mariners with ten stellar seasons. In addition to his well-above average defensive skills, he has provided nine consecutive years of over 200 hits (and is on track for the tenth) a career .333 batting average and an average .117 OPS+. The Mariners, by any metric I can think of, have certainly gotten their money's worth. Hell, just getting to watch him play for ten years has been a joy.

Having said all that, hasn't he earned his ticket out of baseball hell?  Especially since there is no reason to believe that the Mariners will seriously contend until at least 2012, and possibly not then. From a purely humanitarian perspective, he's certainly earned a trade to a contender. And lord knows the Mariners have done that for other players over the years. Keeping him on this team is cruelty, pure and simple. Of course the Mariners, like any other organization, are not in the philanthropy business. Trading Ichiro would be a HUGE white flag, that's a fact. But he'll be 37 in October, and even with his phenomenal conditioning program, at some point he will begin to decline. And there's the question of whether the Mariners would want to resign him after this contract (assuming he would be willing to.)  Remember, a player who decides to retire doesn't even bring you draft picks, and I can easily see Ichiro deciding to retire after this contract.

The issue then is whether you could get a decent prospect package for him over the winter. I suspect you could, but of course there is no way to predict what it would be. All in all, I think it's time to let him go and use the haul to build the farm system, but I'd love to hear the arguments against.

So now we have Milton Bradley who, barring injury,  can play LF everyday. And Langerhans has been resigned to a split major/minor contract, even though there is currentlly no real spot for him.  With  Hall and Langerhans  available to spell Bradley in left field, Saunders is not only much less important, he's essentially blocked. Another year at AAA isn't going to really improve him much. Since Cliff Lee didn't cost us any of the top trade bait, does this make a Saunders/Morrow/ Triunfel trade for Adrian Gonzalez more likely? And if that happens, how awesome would it be?

So we have a pitcher on the 60 day DL with an "inflamed shoulder".  Whether the inflammation is in his shoulder or his ERA is almost beside the point now. The question is, what are they going to do with him? He's apparently not going for surgery. He's travelling with the team as far as I can tell, so he's not getting heavy physical therapy. He hasn't been sent for a rehab assignment. Is the plan to let him sit all this year and start fresh next spring? Taking essentially a year off doesn't seem likely to improve his pitching. Are the M's just done with him? If so, why not just release him and be done with it?

I realize this probably isn't the most burning question at this point in the season, but if anyone has any insight I'm really curious.

We need a bat, preferably one with some ability to play the outfield, if not on a regular basis. We have an overpriced, durable, underperforming pitcher (well, 3, but I'll only talk about 1), whom we can't give away

The White Sox need someone to plug into the back of the rotation. They have an overpriced, defensively challenged outfielder who still puts up a good OPS whom they can't give away.

Washburn is 10.5 million this year.

Jermaine Dye is 11.5 million this year.

As a hitter, Dye is a right-handed Abreu. Not ideal, but with this trade he would be essentially a freebie. His defense would probably still be better than Ibanez's and his hitting would a big help.

As a straight-up trade it looks interesting. And if they'd rather have Silva..Hey, no problem.

Just because I'm bored, and tired of the drama around the Jones-Bedard clusterf**k, I thought I'd look at cheap outfield options. And stir up memories a bit.

How about Doyle? He's cheap, maybe he's had enough time off for his knees to settle down a bit, and we know he can hit.

300 character question--superglue is used in surgery. Maybe we could inject extra glue into Doyle's knees?

What is it with the "fastball fascination."  Kenji gets ripped in the paper today.

"With catcher Rene Rivera trying hard to establish Hernandez's considerable fastball (one problem regular catcher Kenji Johjima has had is calling too many off-speed pitches), the youngster's first 16 pitches were all heaters."

And, IMAO, that was precisely his problem. Felix' fastball is a "show me" pitch. The dangerous parts of his arsenal are his curve and slider. He'd be a much more effective pitcher if they'd quit trying to "establish" that farking fastball.

"It's nice to be able to come in here and put some zeros up on the board and get some run support," Moyer said. "Compared to the situation I just left, there's a lot more fun involved with this."

That about says it all.                                                                                                                      

and 52 remaining (I'm very proud of my math skills).

If the M's can play .500 ball for the rest of the season they end up at 79-83. It could very easily the be the inverse of that, given the way they've played lately against everyone besides Oakland. Given the last two years, and the predictions at the beginning of the season, that really isn't too awful. Certainly it's a move in the right direction, and all in all I can't say I'm terribly disappointed with the season. The line-up and bullpen for next year are solid; which allows the off-season maneuvering to be focussed entirely on starting pitching.

As I'm sure you all read, Buck O'Neill was trotted out in the recent minor league All-Star game. The article I read stated;

   "The T-Bones signed O'Neil to a one-day contract, making him the oldest man ever to play professional baseball."

Now, the question is...does the five year waiting period for Hall of Fame eligibility restart because he was technically on a team for one day?