yuniform
Apr 01, 2008 Feb 14, 2012 11 5787
Yuniesky Betancourt apologist currently transplanted to Boise, but a fan of everything Seattle.
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Roger Levesque, Mike Fucito in Seattle's "It Gets Better" video.
They're alongside several Mariners and Storm, plus BMW of the Seahawks. Given that the project was started by a Seattleite, it seems like it's taken the teams awhile to get on board.
Also, Brendan Ryan, greatest human, has the best facial hair in the video. (Lauren Jackson never had a chance.)
Another sign the Mariners and Angels can't stand one another
They can't tolerate one another long enough to stay on the phone to complete a trade. The last trade between the two teams was in 1996, when we got Ricky Jordan. The next oldest most recent trade with another team was 2003, when the Mariners needed Quinton McCracken and departed with valuable treasure Greg Colbrunn.
The Mariners have only made three trades with the Angels, none of which are interesting, except that there was a guy named Gary Gray once. (The M's only made the one trade with the D'backs.)
Yes, intradivision trades are rare, but Justin Smoak and Jack Hannahan came from AL West teams. The Mariners have made 7 trades with the A's (we gave them Bill Caudill and Dan Meyer a while ago) and 11 with Texas (how else could we get Tug Hulett, Rafael Bournigal or Ismael Valdez?),
The NY Cosmos/NASL movie is well done
As someone born in the 1980s, I appreciated the look at how the Cosmos and the NASL formed and imploded. The Sounders don't make much of an appearance (their logo flashes on the screen. The Whitecaps victory in 1979 gets some screen time. (Aside: I love the old NASL shootout format so much more than shots from the spot.)
ESPN Classic has aired it. The link is to Netflix, which says it will be streaming it starting June 1.
I can't verify any of the historical claims (like that the Cosmos' loss and the U.S. not getting the '84 World Cup led to the demise of the NASL), and I'd be interested in hearing anyone else's opinions.
The Mariners made $1.7 million last year
Says Greg Johns, MLB.com
Apparently the team will start sharing revenue with Washington state if they make more than $38 million by 2018, when the lease expires.
"He's not going anywhere,'' Zduriencik said. "We've got him. We'll keep him. We're not going to move him.''
GMZ, on Felix, to Heyman
Not earth-shattering, but heart-warming.
Aw, shucks I kinda miss Lou. From Flip Flop Fly Ballin': http://flipflopflyball.tumblr.com/
12 months ago
yuniform
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3 recs
The Sounders... is that a team?
The Onion's SportsCenter spoof skewers mainstream coverage of the MLS.
about 1 year ago
yuniform
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1 recs
No Gold Cup games within 1,000 miles of Qwest
But Charlotte, Miami and Tampa get games, which is okay, I guess.
FanGraphs' easy way to make an All-Decade team
by yuniform on Dec 13, 2010 1:58 PM EST
on Lookout Landing
The new team multiple seasons charts on FanGraphs makes it simple to figure out who the best/most important players for the Mariners have been since 2001. Behold, easy and not especially deep analysis.
Here are the links for position players and for pitchers for the Mariners from 2001-2010. Based solely of fWAR from the past 10 years, here are the players the Mariners would field if they wanted a team that contributed the most during the soon-to-be-over decade:
In the field
1B John Olerud
2B Bret Boone
LF Raul Ibanez
CF Mike Cameron
RF Ichiro!
DH: Edgar Martinez
Bench player possibilities: Franklin Gutierrez, Randy Winn, Richie Sexson, Jose Lopez, Mark McLemore, Dan Wilson
Wow, that list seems obvious. Extremely obvious. There's only one fabricated position battle, which would be whether you'd give Gutierrez the nod over Raul in LF. Otherwise, there's a sizable drop off from the top at one position to the next. The Mariners clearly haven't been able to swap out one quality position player with another.
To further poke at the Gutierrez/Raul debate, I also tried subtracting the replacement runs from runs above replacement. That should get rid of some of benefits of added playing time, I think. (I could divide by games or innings played, but that isn't on the FanGraphs page, and this whole thing isn't intended to be too substantive.)
If you do that, Franklin looks better than Raul (41.8 RAR-Replacement runs vs. 18.6). If you do that for the whole team, David Bell, Stan Javier, Russell Branyan, and Desi Relaford look like good bench players. Does anyone remember David Bell for anything besides almost starting the All-Star Game in 2001?
Toeing the rubber
Starters:
Relievers:
Gil Meche (I cheated here, sorry)
Kazuhiro Sasaki
(I don't like huge bullpens for "best of" lists, so I'm stopping here)
Honorable mentions: Cliff Lee, Doug Fister, Aaron Sele, Jason Vargas, Erik Bedard, Jeff Nelson (who you could sub for Meche, I guess, if it mattered)
This list, especially the starters, screams of piling up wins through extended playing time. I used to love Joel Pineiro (I remember him pitching remarkably well in his first game in 2000, when he was called up to start in a double header), but no one looks back at him fondly as one of the five best pitchers on the squad. The starters are three mostly-lovable pitchers and then "bleh"
My solution: divide runs above replacement by innings pitched. That should give you the best pitchers the Mariners sent out to the mound. It also produced chuckle-worthy results.
Top 12 RAR/IP pitchers
Arthur Rhodes
Cliff Lee
Kazuhiro Sasaki
Felix Hernandez
Norm Charlton*
Rafael Soriano
Erik Bedard
*small sample size (less than 50 innings)
**RIDICULOUSLY small sample size (less than 6 innings)
Jamie Burke: better than any Mariners closer of the past decade. Somehow Burke got +.3 RAR for giving up a run to lose a game in 2008. Well, reviewing the Mariners teams of the past decade isn't complete without mentioning Burke, Madritsch, or Jon Huber. Also, it isn't necessary.
Next in line to replace Burke and Cortes would be Freddy Garcia and David Aardsma.
The other main use of the FanGraphs team links would be to look at players who contributed a negative WAR during their run the past decade. Garrett Olson and Matt Tuiasosopo tie for being the crummiest Mariners to somehow get playing time in the past decade. Other amusing sub-luminaries/sub-Mariners include Shin Soo-Choo, Carl Everett, Miguel Olivo, and Ken Griffey, Jr. for position players, and Matt Thornton, Brian Fuentes, and Jose Paniagua for pitchers.
Not on the negative WAR list: Yuniesky Betancourt. Thanks, replacement value!
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Beltre's finally worth the money
by yuniform on Aug 13, 2009 6:11 PM EDT
on Lookout Landing
Back when everyone thought Adrian Beltre was hobbled for the year, Dave at USSM wrote a great post reaffirming that Beltre was totally worth his $64 million contract. The key points were this chart (based on FanGraphs and, oh, how about Cot's):
2005: $8.6 million in value, $11.4 million in salary
2006: $17.2 million in value, $12.9 million in salary
2007: $12.4 million in value, $12.9 million in salary
2008: $18.5 million in value, $13.4 million in salary
2009: $5.7 million in value, $13.4 million in salaryTotal: $62.4 million in value, $64 million in salary
and this line:
He was going to easily justify his paycheck again this year until this trip to the disabled list.
Now we can take out all the qualifiers on those justifiers. Thanks to his awesome week, Beltre's value this year transposed from $5.7 million to $7.5 million, which switches the digits in his total value during his contract from $62.4 million to $64.2. So the rest of Adrian Beltre's production this year is free to Mariners fans. Unless you actually buy a ticket.
Caveat #1: Beltre will actually make $64.1 million, according to Cot's. The only incentive he's getting is $50,000 for each of his Gold Gloves. (Too bad he wasn't the MVP of the LCS.)
Caveat #2: Beltre may have eclipsed the $64 million mark in value a while ago if you use Statcorner's wOBA or wOBA* rather than Fangraphs wOBA. Side-by-side comparison:
Year: Fangraphs wOBA/StatCorner wOBA/wOBA*
2005: .308 / .329 / .334
2006: .338 / .355/ .360
2007: .346 / .349 / .354
2008: .336 / .339 / .344
2009: .304 / .316 / .321
It's not quite so clear, though. Dave wrote specifically about Beltre when saying that Fangraph park-adjusts their wRAA to get their batting value. When both stat sites correct for Safeco's drag, StatCorner's bRAA for Beltre ends up being lower than Fangraphs batting value.
Year: Fangraphs Batting Value/StatCorner bRAA
2005: -6.9 / -3.8
2006: 7.0 / 6.2
2007: 10.9 / 7.1
2008: 6.6 / 2.6
2009: -5.9 / -6.4
Total: 11.7 / 5.7
I'm not quite sure where I'm messing up the maths. Are these not comparable stats? Is is a difference in park factors?
Still, group of Mariners fans who already know Beltre's underrated, valuable, and awesome, you remain correct.
Lucas French grew up a Mariners fan
...according to Jim Street.
I know these stories are written to endear fans to the new guys (Ian Snell has family in Portland!), but it's working on me.
Key quotes: "When the Tigers told me I'd been traded to Seattle, my first thought was, 'Awesome!'" he said.
...
"When I was in the fifth grade," the Colorado native said, "I made a time line about where you want to be in the future and it was on my time line that I wanted to play for the Mariners. So this is pretty cool. The Mariners were my favorite team."
...
French received an autographed jersey from Griffey last month when the Mariners played the Tigers in Detroit, and on Saturday received a typical Griffey "welcome" to the Mariners.
"Mike Sweeney and I were talking when he walked up and stood there near us," Griffey said. "We knew he wanted to introduce himself, so when we were done talking, both of us turned and started to walk away.
"Luke had his hand out and he just stared. Then I turned around and said, 'I'm just messin' with you."
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