The Dodgers trash their image as the country descends into chaos

A disgusting image of Clayton Kershaw (left) and Dodger owner Fred Wilpon flanking the most dangerous person in the world and having a blast doing it

The Los Angeles nee Brooklyn Dodgers are a revered franchise in professional sports in no small part because of their association with civil rights. By adding Jackie Robinson to their team in 1947, the Dodgers gave a metaphorical middle finger to the racist mores of the day and began integrating Major League Baseball, and for that the organization deserves accolades. Yesterday, however, the Dodgers spat on that reputation and honorable history by visiting the White House and allowing themselves to be used as propaganda by a hateful fascist white supremacist who likely thinks Dodger manager Dave Roberts doesn't deserve his job and was merely a "DEI hire."

This shameful decision made by the Dodgers not only angers their fan base and brands the team with a staggering hypocrisy, it was also a big swing and a miss on an opportunity to solidify their previous reputation and reach out to new fans and tie "America's pastime" to American idealism.

Imagine if, instead of doing the customary thing of accepting the invitation traditionally given by the White House to the prior year's World Series winners, the Dodgers respectfully declined but then used the time to record a short video of the team visiting other significances in DC.

Picture the video: Members of the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers in front of the White House, with someone—Roberts or Mookie Betts or Tyler Glasnow or whomever—talking to the camera. "We're here at the White House in Washington, DC. We were invited to visit the president, but instead we're choosing to visit some of the things that actually make America great."

The camera then follows the team around, maybe on one of those open-air tour buses, to the Lincoln Memorial, where we see Betts or Teoscar Hernández reading aloud from the emancipation proclamation engraved there. Other players are seen paying their respects to relatives whose names are on the Vietnam and/or Korean war memorials. A stop at the Capitol building with a brief conversation between a Dodger or three and maybe Senator Adam Schiff or Congressman Jimmy Gomez or Ted Lieu who explain the separation of powers and how they represent the Los Angeles area. Maybe Roberts and some players stroll through the FDR memorial while Roberts talks of his mixed African-American/Japanese parentage and how his existence is a consequence of FDR (and then Truman) winning World War II and that base where his parents met existing in Okinawa. Some other Dodgers recount some personal/family history at the MLK memorial.

We see Chris Taylor and Enrique Hernández and Shohei in the Museum of American History checking out the baseball exhibit and maybe the presidential timeline. A scene with Betts at the African-American History museum. Arlington National Cemetery, maybe the JFK grave; the U.S. Mint, where the players can joke about their contracts; a humorous drive-by of the Watergate hotel; a stop at the steps of the Supreme Court, maybe the Dodger manager makes an offhand remark about how sometimes it sucks to have the same surname as someone else; and a stop at the National Archives—while at the White House, Roberts commented that he was thrilled to get a photo in front of the Declaration of Independence; how much better an image would it be for Max Muncy to show the founding documents to Yoshi Yamamoto and Miguel Rojas but apologize about not being able to see the Declaration of Independence because it's no longer available for public viewing since President Convicted Felon had it moved to the Oval Office because reasons.

Cap it off with the team arriving at Nationals Park for their series against the Nationals and someone else—Clayton Kershaw, Will Smith, maybe Shohei if his English can handle it—summing up the experience with a bit of patriotism and recounting what really makes America great: governance of, by, and for the people, where everyone is equal under the law and all have freedoms under the Constitution. "It's why we can all be here, enjoying baseball together in a free country."

You wouldn't have to even mention POTUS47 if you wanted to avoid "controversy," though I think a brief note that the White House invitation was declined because of who currently lives there and the note about the Declaration of Independence are warranted. Noting at the outset that the team chose to do the video rather than the White House visit might be enough to communicate by implication that it was in protest, but history would look kindly on calling POTUS47 out by name (or title). Especially if they included some LA-centric remarks about the recent fires and the stupid magic water spigot thing and climate change policy.

Anyway, that's what I would have done if I were the Dodgers head honcho.

Instead we have photos and video of Kershaw and Betts and Ohtani and Roberts and others just beaming as they shake the hand of someone who is perhaps the most hated person in the world.

Enrique Hernández said of Dodger fans who were upset with the team's choice to visit this president, "they have the right to an opinion," not quite understanding that the man whose hand he shook would prefer they did not have that right.

Betts said of those fans that it was another instance of being Black in America: "No matter what I choose, somebody is gonna be pissed." I realize that I am not Black in America (or anywhere else) and cannot comment on that greater context with any validity, but I think it's safe to say that in such cases it would be helpful to consider which somebodies would be pissed with which decision; I mean, how concerned are you with pissing off Nazis? Maybe in this climate it's a real concern, maybe you'd rather be on the side fighting the Nazis regardless.

Kershaw was unmoved by criticisms, saying, "At the end of the day, getting to go to the White House, getting to see the Oval Office, getting to meet the President of the United States, that’s stuff that you can’t lose sight of, no matter what you believe." I would argue to the pitching great that what you can't lose sight of is what those things—the White House, the Oval Office, the presidency—represent, and agreeing to visit this President, this autocrat, this fascist wannabe-dictator that stands opposed to those very things, shows that you have indeed lost sight of that.

 

Tagged Baseball, MLB, President VonClownstick, Posted on April 8, 2025 at 5:48PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Odds and ends

Cory Booker, giving his party a 25-hour kick in the ass

Just a post to catch up on a few disparate things over the past week or two. I'm a bit scatterbrained, have been for a few days, and am having some trouble keeping a train of thought going long enough for a coherent topic-focused post. Usually this sort of foggy-brain stuff is an indication of a Black Hole episode looming or in progress, but by 2025 standards—read: in the midst of existential dread from the fascist takeover of the government—it's been relatively OK of late. Still, being aware of this is sometimes half the battle, so I'm on my guard.

Anyway, onward with a hodgepodge of stuff:

• Hats off to Cory Booker. His marathon speech, disrupting the usual business of the Senate for over 25 hours, was something all prior filibuster-like holding-the-floor events were not: completely substantive. And while holding the floor for 25 hours plus—on his feet, no breaks, no food, talking continuously except for brief periods colleagues asked questions—was undeniably difficult, coming up with 25 hours' worth of substantive material to speak on was not, because this speech was about the abuses and corruption and illegality and treachery of the POTUS47 regime. There was no recitation of "Green Eggs and Ham" (Ted Cruz) or apple pie recipes (the fictional Howard Stackhouse) or aloud readings of Alexis de Tocqueville (Strom Thurmond). No need, the litany of POTUS47 crimes and destruction could fill twice that time or more.

  Naysayers have downplayed Booker's speech as meaningless, wholly performative, and a "stunt," but they're wrong. I mean, yes, it was a stunt, but stunts are cool, that's why we have action movies. In this case, the stunt was meaningful and the performance purposeful—it served to galvanize Booker's Democratic colleagues into actually doing shit.

  It's been just over ten weeks since President Convicted Felon took office again, which to be fair, is usually about how long DC pols take to move on anything, but in this case we all knew before those ten weeks even began that a clusterfuck was coming and staunch opposition was required. Thus, for ten weeks plus, we the greater public have been pleading for Congress to act and instead the Republican majority of both houses chose to abdicate their authority and suck up to the fascists while the Democratic leadership, while outraged, did very little.

  That's changing now. Is that all thanks to Booker's stunt? No, not entirely, but Booker has spurred his fellow Dems on by commanding attention. The reaction to Booker, added to the increasing action in the streets with the Tesla Takedown protests and the large turnout in special elections, has seemingly done more than all the letters constituents have sent to their representatives put together in prompting action. Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego have declared they'll be throwing as much sand in the gears as they can to block destructive nominees to the Justice department and Veterans Administration. Schiff and Jamie Raskin are convening "shadow hearings"—with Republicans in the majority, these aren't official Congressional hearings that come with subpoena power, but they'll still serve to get information and put it on the record and in front of the public—regarding the decimation of the Justice Department.

  It's not impeachment, but it's a start.

• I sure am glad I converted all my meager investments in the stock market to a simple money market account last month, because look what happened today. Again, this was predictable. In fact, it was predicted. Repeatedly. All through the 2024 election campaign. But the American voter is, in the aggregate, willfully ignorant and so here we are.

  It is truly astonishing that the Republican party is not only allowing this to happen but championing it. This is the party that supposedly supports free markets and free enterprise and yet here they are taking a blowtorch to the global economy. Why? Because their leader is an imbecile that does not know and cannot be bothered to learn that a tariff is not what he thinks it is, that "trade deficit" is a term of art and not actual debt, that recklessly pissing off every nation in the world except Russia and North Korea is not a sign of strength, that making it impossible to import raw materials does not in fact help American manufacturing, and that driving inflation through the roof is actually a political loser. And they support their leader no matter how stupid and destructive and treasonous he is.

  Here's how our old friend Craig Calcaterra put it using clearer phrasing than I did: "Trump did this because he's a big stupid fucking idiot who doesn't know anything and because he has surrounded himself with cowards and idiots who are afraid to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear and who refuse to exercise their considerable power to rein him in."

• Yet, the economic catastrophe isn't the worst thing in the news. It's not even close. Jockeying for the top spot in the ranks of Worst Thing Happening Right Now is the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE has always been a problematic agency, but now, under this regime, it is essentially the Gestapo. Not a joke, as our former president (the good and decent one of just three months ago) might say. ICE, sometimes identified as such and sometimes not, is kidnapping people off the street and sometimes interning them at for-profit domestic detention hellholes and sometimes rendering them to a Salvadoran hellhole, all with no due process whatsoever (or, as of today, interrupted due process). This is being done under the pretense of an "invasion" of the U.S. by a Venezuelan gang and the separate pretense of removing anti-Semitic troublemakers.

  Via Mary Trump, at least six people rendered to the El Salvador gulag have been definitively identified as having no ties to any gang, Venezuelan or otherwise, and that doesn't count the Maryland resident that ICE admits it sent to El Salvador due to "an administrative error" but has no intention of bringing back. It's not just brown people with tattoos or hijabs being swept up, either. This chaos even puts Canadians at risk of abuse and disappearance.

  This cannot stand. President Convicted Felon's American Gestapo must be stopped, and god bless the courts for doing their job in trying to right these wrongs, but without support from Congress I fear that isn't going to matter.

• Let's move on from the disasters sweeping the nation and by extension the world and talk baseball.

  Despite opening the season against the better-than-you-think-but-still-not-very-good formerly-Oakland A's, Your Seattle Mariners are just 3-4 after a week of play. Sadly, their performance thus far, even in the wins, resembles early 2024 far more than it does late 2024—good starting pitching, but anemic hitting and a whole lot of striking out. On the other hand, the sac fly rate is already double what it was under Scott Servais last year, so there's that. Anyway, early days, one week is hardly an adequate sample size to draw any conclusions from. I mean, the Padres are 7-0 and I figure they're going to end up around .500; Atlanta is 0-7 and they'll be in the thick of things.

  Some observations: The M's now have an ad on their sleeves, which sucks but isn't a surprise. Aesthetically it looks worse than the ads on some other teams' sleeves because it's bright orange. Come on, you couldn't get [video game company] to agree to use a navy or silver background, it has to be orange? On the other hand, the terrible uniforms from last year are history and the jerseys are much more professional looking again, with actual silver instead of dull gray and more standard lettering on the nameplates and heavy enough that you can't see what's being worn underneath.

• Softball has continued for me as an umpire and is approaching as a player, with my Smiling Potatoes of Death team readying to start a season next month. This is in two different leagues, obviously, and there are loads of differences between them. I much prefer the rules and setup of the league I ump for to the one I play in, I can't think of a single thing the latter does better than the former. I got drafted into a co-captain role with the Spuds this year, so I was on the conference call with the league and other team reps earlier this week talking about rules and such, and I was disappointed to learn that a lot of what I don't like is mandated by the organization the parks department contracts with so there's not much room for variation: it's mandatory to start with a 1-1 count, it's mandatory to have that stupid-ass no plays at the plate rule. Where there was argument over things we do have a say in was in roster and lineup construction, something again my umpiring league does much better than the other one, but at least there's small positive change there—we'll no longer have the alternating one-lineup-for-men, one-lineup-for-women thing in the city league, which wasn't exactly smooth.

  This week's ump shifts didn't provide much in the way of good stories to tell, I'd say six of the eight games I did were pretty standard. Though Sunday was a five-gamer, and those are brutal. By the time the fourth game is going I'm ready for it all to be over with and I've got no patience left for any tomfoolery. Fortunately, the fifth game was drama-free and ended early. Still, I had to do three more the next night and I wasn't in the mood for it. Plus, the first game on that schedule was between teams that have a history of, let's call it antagonism, so I was going in thinking more about how to deal with potential trouble than keeping my head in the game itself and it showed. There was some trouble to deal with, but it was minimal and came rather late; before that I was off my game a bit but really only made one mistake (prematurely calling a foul pop out of play that turned out not to be, and sadly when one of the few people on that team that annoys me sometimes was up so I got lip from him about it and a later call that properly went against him). Still, it wasn't fun and I was glad when that game ended and those teams—whom I usually quite enjoy when they aren't playing each other—got the hell off the field. Fortunately, the night ended with a palate cleanser game played by people with mostly excellent attitudes and good cheer.

  One thing about that Monday night, though—if I'd had a Capitol Hill Softball bingo card it would have been pretty full. Lots of, let's say, environmental color. I'm there again on Sunday, we'll see if I can get a bingo then.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Softball, Umping, Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on April 3, 2025 at 6:49PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Baseball is coming

It's getting closer to Julio Time again!

Lots more chaos and catastrophe to talk about over the past couple of days, but let's take a break from that, ever so briefly, and talk about baseball broadly and Your Seattle Mariners in particular. Because spring training has begun, my season ticket group is prepping for our draft, and even the bad stuff on this subject is so, so much happier than anything occurring in our ongoing POTUS47 national nightmare. So to take my mind off our new fascist FBI director, our new pro-measles HHS secretary, our pro-plane-crash DOT head, the fact that the president is owned by the Kremlin, and that Phony Stark (h/t Joanne Carducci) is now sabotaging Social Security and the IRS, I dove into stats, quotes from camp, and other such frivolities. Here goes.

 

As always happens at the start of spring camps, people in the sports press act like they know what will happen and predict final MLB season standings. Most of these prognosticators seem to be pegging the 2025 Mariners as an 85-win team. ZiPS gives them 86. But these forecasters have not been paying attention and don't understand that the M's were massive underachievers the past four years because of their field manager, their approach to batting, and their alleged "hitting coach," who was so useless that any player wanting help with a slump or a mechanical issue or anything, really, had to seek outside aid on their own time—which there isn't a lot of during a season. People don't seem to get this, even after a way-too-late regime change in the dugout last August exposed it to the world.

The other day I did a little I-told-you-soing in regards to former Mariner infielder Ty France, now with the Minnesota Twins, who told reporters without naming any names that his last two seasons were ruined by the former Mariner "braintrust." Today I see similar remarks from Julio Rodríguez.

Julio, talking about the Mariners' disappointing 2024, said, "The beginning of the year was like, ‘It is what it is.’ But I feel I definitely took with me those last six weeks, what we did as a team, what we did as an organization and just kind of how we continued to push forward." I readily admit that I may be reading too much into this with some confirmation bias, but what I get from that is, Julio and the rest of the lineup were doing precisely what the team's manager and alleged hitting coach had asked of them, it wasn't working, and therefore "it is what it is" and complacency reigned as it had for years—the entirety of Julio's big-league career, in fact. Then with six weeks left in the season, upper management belatedly realized they had a crap field manager and an even crappier batting coach and philosophy. Those people were fired and actual smart people, namely former Seattle players Dan Wilson and Edgar Martínez, took their places and the team took off.

The M's were a .500 club before the changeover, a .618 club after. (The World Series champion Dodgers had an overall .605 winning percentage.)

The M's as a team batted .216/.301/.365 before, .255/.347/.417 after, with little difference in personnel. (MLB average: .243/.312/.399; champion Dodgers: .258/.335/.446.)

If this team could win 90, 90, and 88 games the prior three seasons (2021-2023) under their former utter garbage manager and batting instructor, they should be able to do at least that well in 2025 under Dan Wilson and the batting team of Edgar Martínez and Kevin Seitzer.

Yes, the M's completely whiffed on improving their infield. Yes, depending on Jorge Polanco to be an everyday presence is anxiety-inducing. Yes, first base is not a position where you typically find a platoon situation. Yes, the term "designated hitter" could quickly become a laugh line in the Seattle lineup.

Still.

I mean, I'm looking at the guys the M's will be counting on the most this year and noting the difference pre-changeover to post-changeover:

Top line: before regime change Bottom line: after regime change
	BA/OBP/SLG	K%	BB%	HR%	RBI%
Randy Arozarena	.214/.331/.383	25.3	12.1	3.2	8.3
	.236/.336/.407	28.7	8.4	2.8	12.6
Cal Raleigh	.212/.302/.436	29.4	10.8	5.6	16.3
	.246/.345/.437	23.6	12.2	4.7	14.8
Luke Raley	.233/.307/.426	30.6	5.4	4.2	11.0
	.276/.366/.598	26.5	7.8	6.9	18.6
Victor Robles	.256/.330/.369	20.9	7.3	1.6	6.8
	.407/.475/.558	12.5	6.7	1.0	14.4
Julio Rodriguez	.260/.310/.364	27.1	5.5	2.4	8.4
	.313/.364/.537	21.0	8.0	5.6	18.6

Aside from Arozarena, those are massive changes. A couple of guys—J.P. Crawford, Polanco—didn't improve, and others didn't have enough at-bats to give a decent sample. But then I look at guys that had terrible ’24s that were good in ’23 in Crawford (.266/.380/.438 in ’23) and Mitch Garver (.270/.370/.500 in ’23 playing about half-time). Throw Arozarena, who was a ’23 All-Star, in with that group too. It's actually a pretty good lineup. Nobody expects Victor Robles to bat .400 or Julio to carry a .360+ on-base all season long, but without spending all their time fretting about barrel rates and exit velocity these guys will put up good numbers.

That said, if they can find some more depth for third base, I wouldn't complain. Polanco doesn't inspire any confidence in me, even after his having knee surgery over the offseason to deal with injuries that hampered him last year, but he's the best available option and this club can carry him even if he turns out to just be an adequate-glove-no-hit type at this point. But it'd be nice to have someone on the bench to step in once in a while besides Dylan Moore. Maybe Donovan Solano can be that guy? Occasionally? When he isn't needed at first base?

Oddly, my biggest concern with the Mariners right now is relief pitching. Once can always hope that Dan Wilson will trend a little more old-school and use his starters for 6-7-8 innings on the regular, but assuming he doesn't things are fairly iffy beyond fireballing Andres Muñoz. On the other hand, the pitching side of things has been quite competent even when the batting sucked, so perhaps they'll do well with another crop of who's-that-guy and never-heard-of-hims alongside Muñoz and maybe Matt Brash.

Will they be good enough to win the division? Well, that one's hard to say. Houston isn't as good as they have been, which helps. The Rangers have a decent offense but, as usual, very questionable pitching. The A's and Angels will stink. It'll be a three-team race, and at this point there's no reason to think the M's can't finish atop the pile.

 

Meanwhile, Commissioner Rob Manfred managed to insult ESPN while announcing MLB was breaking its contract with them after this season. The league issued a statement that read, in part, "in recent years, we have seen ESPN scale back their baseball coverage and investment in a way that is not consistent with the sport’s appeal or performance on their platform." Really? That seems to be outside of MLB's authority to declare. And probably irrelevant. ESPN is a cable station, and cable as a business model is dying an ever-quickening death. As such, ESPN requested a renegotiation of some of the terms of the deal and MLB threw a hissy fit. "Given that MLB provides strong viewership, valuable demographics, and the exclusive right to cover unique events like the Home Run Derby, ESPN’s demand to reduce rights fees is simply unacceptable," the statement continued, before basically saying they'd take their business to other services in a manner that reminded me of Eric Cartman from South Park whining "Screw you guys, I'm going home."

If Manfred and company can recover from their little tantrum, they should recognize that this is probably for the good—getting away from the cable model is a necessity, as if the ongoing problems with regional sports networks going bankrupt hasn't made that clear already. Short term, they'll have to take less money from more distribution models to replace ESPN's playoff coverage and, if anyone continues to care, Home Run Derby/All-Star Week programming. Losing the ESPN exclusive Game of the Week is a financial hit, sure, but get creative. MLB already has smaller deals with streamers Apple TV+ and Roku for games throughout the season. Maybe investigate going back to a broadcast TV Game of the Week beyond the Saturday Fox game; broadcast TV is losing out to streamers, they might want back into the mix, and for years MLB had shared broadcast rights between ABC and NBC. Maybe don't try to replace the ESPN weekly game at all, maybe investigate a whole new system that fully embraces streaming options for every viewer wanting to watch their teams.

But no, that would require admitting the cable model is doomed and being proactive with individual teams about jettisoning their cable contracts.

Clearly the league will be dragged kicking and screaming into the future as more cable arrangements bite the dust from RSN bankruptcies or the staving off of such ruin, as ESPN seems to be doing here.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on February 20, 2025 at 11:44PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The world sucks, and other observations

Quality TV as an escape from the world crumbling around us

It's been a rough week. Following a rough few weeks. I mean, in the world. I've already mentioned how it's been influencing my state of mind, and it continues to. But there is life beyond the chaos and destruction raging all around us. For now, anyway.

Some stray items and thoughts on the past week or so:

• I had some folks over the other night for food and conversation and general socializing, which was good. It was good in that some of these folks I hadn't seen in a long time and it's always good to catch up a bit; it was good that some people got to meet some other people that had only existed as faceless anecdotes before; it was good in the very base sense that human interaction is necessary. I've not had as much of that as I'd like of late.
• Some of the human interactions of late weren't good, though, including a near-fistfight at one of my umpiring shifts the other day. It made no sense to me, was based entirely, it seems, on some machismo bullshit carried over from prior seasons—the sort of Phil Nevin/Anthony Rendon/Jesse Winker-type posturing I have no patience for even on the best of days—and it ruined an otherwise decent afternoon/evening. I had to stop being Fun Umpire Guy on a dime and immediately shift into Guy In Charge With Authority, warn players, and was a hair's breadth from ejecting multiple men and women (!! it's almost never the women, but this time...) before one of the team captains settled his crew down a literal instant under the wire. There are on occasion days when I half-expect some sort of nonsense to occur during a shift, but never in the winter time. The teams that sign up for winter league are the die-hards that play all the time, that are so familiar to each other and to we the umpires that it's generally easy-going. (The real assholery tends to happen in the summer, when guys that are bitter about not making their JV teams in college sign up for a slot and ruin things with uber-competitiveness.) Fortunately, my relationship with the involved teams is good enough that when I saw a bunch of the players the next night everyone was cool and ready to play a conflict-free game, but hoo-boy was I not receptive to being told by rec-league softball players in a stakes-less environment that I needed to abide by some macho code of utter crapola because they were pissed off about a guy on the other team lining one back through the box. Half a dozen f-ing Phil Nevins in my face at the end of that game. Get a grip.
• Apple TV has some really good programming. If you've got budget for only one streaming service, that's probably the one you want—not just the best-of-the-best Ted Lassos and For All Mankinds, but there's great stuff in Severance, Silo, Shrinking, The Big Door Prize, The Morning Show, Sunny, Dark Matter, and the two shows I binged through in the past week: Constellation and Shining Girls. Both are just single-season, eight-episode series; the former deserves a renewal and more but won't get it, the latter wrapped up at an end point. Constellation—I had to watch it with that name, right?—is a mind-bending story following an astronaut who survives a massive accident on the ISS and returns to Earth to find things not as she left them; we learn over the course of things that two other former astronauts experienced much the same thing in years past and it's a WTF sort of mystery and psycho-thriller sci-fi exploration with quantum physics. Shining Girls is a more gritty, Earthbound murder-mystery sort of thing that also hinges on mind-bending quantum physics weirdness that stars Elisabeth Moss and only disappoints a little bit when it gets to the end and the source of the mind-bendiness is located but remains unexplained. Ambitious and well-done, both of them.
• Ty France has a job again. The former Seattle Mariner first baseman signed for the upcoming season with the Minnesota Twins and explained to reporters why he's coming off of some bad seasons. Spoiler warning: I was right. France had some smallish injury issues last year, but as he said to the press, it wasn't really the injury. He doesn't name-drop former Mariners manager Scott Servais or former Mariner "batting coach" Jarret DeHart, but he said that after he hit a rough patch early in 2023, he focused on analytics—Stacast-type nonsense like launch angles and barrel rates—which are the only things DeHart seemed to know anything about or care at all about. “There was a lot of it—the analytical side—where I tried to tap into, that I shouldn't tap into,” he said. “I should just worry about being a baseball player and hitting the ball.” After leaving the Mariners and the Servais/DeHart school of not-hitting, France started coming back into his own with Cincinnati. “When I’m at my best, I’m not focused on analytics. I’m just simplifying hitting ... the last year or two hasn’t been fun baseball for me. I think my time in Cincinnati last year, having that reset, I found that joy again." Do I still think Ty France is going to win a batting title or two? Well, I'm not as sure as I was when he first came to the M's, but if he can stay away from Jarret DeHart and keep from getting hurt too much, then...yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
• And, back to the collapse of the nation, I thought last night's "A" block form Rachel Maddow was worth passing around. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and though it's not like Hanford is in my back yard, it is in my state. And similar issues are rampant across the country now that POTUS47 and his boss Elon are taking a blowtorch to the government. It just astounds me that this is allowed to happen—every single elected Republican, it seems, is on board with destroying the United States. The Senators just confirm these dangerously unqualified and destructive cabinet officers without objection, the Representatives in the House have the power to impeach all of these agents of chaos and disaster but don't see any need. They've all got to go. All of them.

Tagged Politics, TV, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Rachel Maddow, Umping, Posted on February 19, 2025 at 2:21AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The offseason of suck

He's baaaaaack...

The atrocities of the POTUS47 administration continue today, of course, that's just a given now, but we'll talk about those later. For the moment I turn my attention to the failures of the Jerry Dipoto regime with Your Seattle Mariners.

The Mariners, who have finished three of the last four seasons no more than two games out of the playoffs and made it in by the skin of their teeth in the fourth, have severely underachieved in this, the alleged "window" for contention envisioned by Dipoto when he began tearing down and remaking the roster after the 2018 campaign, and it's not hard to see why: the offense has been obsessed with launch angles, exit velocities, and other Statcast-era nonsense and neglected the basics. Had they been even just a little bit more competent with fundamental offensive tactics (e.g. scoring a runner from third base with 0/1 out), they would have won anywhere from three to ten more games in each season, plenty to score a playoff berth.

Finally, finally, moves were made late last season to replace manager Scott Servais and alleged batting coach Jarred DeHart and results were positive (.618 winning percentage post-change); but it was too little, too late for that year and hopes were placed on a carryover from the new guys and some roster improvements for 2025.

Following the ’24 season, a decision was made to cut loose three quarters of the infield. Only shortstop J.P. Crawford would remain, the other spots would be upgraded. Not a bad idea, as Josh Rojas (though inexpensive and versatile, letting him go was slightly iffy), Jorge Polanco, and Ty France all had poor years, combining for an on-base mark of just .303 and a 26% K rate. (France's replacement late last year was Justin Turner, who did well enough, but he wasn't brought back either.) France I still believe will produce, for whatever team he ends up with, now that he's out from under the yoke of the useless DeHart, but regardless there were three holes to fill.

Then nothing happened.

Attempts were clearly made to acquire upgrades at the infield corners, at least, but all failed. Ownership has hamstrung Dipoto with a strict budget, so free agent options were nearly nil; dreams of landing Pete Alonso or Christian Walker were never viable. Trade offers, like one for Phillies 3B Alec Bohm or another rumored to have been for the Cubs' Nico Hoerner, were all countered with requests that were unreasonable and/or unaffordable. And now we're just a couple weeks away from the start of Spring Training and have to take what's left in the remainders bin.

As one of the softball players I was umpiring last week put it, this has been the "offseason of suck."

Today came what reads to me like an official declaration of surrender, as instead of getting any sort of upgrade the M's re-signed Polanco—whom no other team really wanted (marginal interest from the Yankees and Astros in a kick-the-tires kind of way)—for another year with a vesting option for 2026. Polanco's 2024 line of .213/.296/.355 hardly seems to justify his 1.3 WAR rating (I will never fully accept/understand Wins Above Replacement as a legitimate stat given its inherent subjectivity) and there is no split for which he put up decent numbers unless you count "ahead in the count," which is a split that favors everyone.

But Polanco was apparently the best Dipoto could do at this point with his limited financial flexibility. The hope now is that last year was a down season for him because of nagging minor injuries he was playing through and that he's over them now. And, of course, having Kevin Seitzer as batting coach instead of negative-impact-DeHart won't hurt.

The M's are also moving Polanco to third base, a position he has played for just 2% of his time as a big-leaguer. That seems like a dubious choice, but again, who else is there? (And he might be OK there defensively as the M's have the god of infield coaches in Perry Hill, he who turned error machine Eugenio Suárez into a stellar defender at third.)

So, here is your likely Mariner lineup for 2025, at least to start:

1. Victor Robles, RF
2. Julio Rodríguez, CF
3. Randy Arozarena, LF
4. Cal Raleigh, C
5. Mitch Haniger/Dom Canzone, DH platoon/OF rotation
6. Donovan Solano/Luke Raley, 1B platoon
7. Jorge Polanco, 3B
8. Ryan Bliss, 2B
9. J.P. Crawford, SS
   Dylan Moore, Mitch Garver on the bench with the non-starting platoon partners

I'm not saying this is terrible. It actually has the potential to be a solid group, but only if Seitzer works some coaching magic and manager Dan Wilson continues to get his guys to play as a team rather than as swing-for-the-fences solo artists. But it is a failure in that the goal was to upgrade the roster, and what we have is exactly the same group minus Rojas & Turner and plus Solano.

Is this another failed gambit by Dipoto or is it fairer to put the blame on tight-fisted ownership that wouldn't open their wallets? Or will it pan out that the restrictions were fine and this group turns everything around thanks to Wilson and Seitzer being that much better than Servais and DeHart?

I'm optimistic. But not as much as I'd have been if the M's landed a third baseman with a consistent record of getting on base more than 30% of the time.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on January 30, 2025 at 8:59PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Miscellany

Weird but fun, Interior Chinatown is worth a watch

Today's post: A random assortment of disjointed stuff!

• The dishwasher saga is over, with a new one purchased, delivered, and installed and the old one carted away to whatever scrap heap such things are taken to. I hadn't initially planned to replace the broken one so quickly, but holiday sales at Lowe's convinced me I was better off spending $600 now, on a good one on sale, than later on a cheaper one at regular price. It works, it's quiet, and most importantly, it doesn't leak into Rachel's kitchen downstairs.
• I've spent a chunk of time doing maintenance on this here website, including recreating the sketches page and beginning to populate it with stuff readily available, i.e. mostly stuff from the last few years that was either already scanned into my computer or at hand in my currently in-use sketchbook. There's other stuff in my hard drive already digitized, things that were on prior versions of my blog, but they were posted in the olden days of the Internet when nobody had a screen resolution bigger than 800 pixels and are thus pretty lousy scans. I'll have to find the originals and rescan them at some point. Anyway, the current format has clickable icons that produce a fullscreen image and a button to continue to "notes and comments" that takes you to a page for that individual sketch and any blathering I may have done about it, plus a commenting form just like a blog post. Click anywhere other than the button to close the fullscreen image and return to the sketch menu.
• I had my Christmas the other night at K&E's place, enjoying delicious food and talking about the world and also TV. All three of us love the Hulu show Interior Chinatown, starring Jimmy Yang and Chloe Bennett. It's a wacky comedic sendup of action movies, the Law & Order franchise, and meta-storytelling that takes place both within a Law & Order-style TV show and around a mild-mannered Chinese-American's family in a fictional Chinatown neighborhood. Recommended. We also agree on the greatness of Michael Schur's A Man on the Inside (Netflix), which I discussed briefly earlier but deserves a second recommend. The Diplomat (Netflix) also works for all of us, and we commented on the overlap of cast and crew from The West Wing on it (even though neither of them have ever really watched West Wing, which is really a bummer for them). Shrinking (Apple TV+) wasn't something they'd seen but which I think is terrific; they liked Slow Horses, which I've not sampled to this point. I'm very much into Silo (Apple TV+) and, naturally, the just-concluded (boo) Star Trek: Lower Decks, but know better than to try to convince K&E to watch those.
• I was gifted the book What's Next on that early-Christmas evening, and though I've yet to start into it, I am anticipating some great West Wing reflections and truly wonder how it will feel to revisit the details of the fictional Bartlet Administration while living in the impending nightmare of Trump 2.0, Now With More Oligarchy.
• I just learned that baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson died today. One of the all-time greats, Rickey was a fantastic character with is arrogant self-assuredness, his speaking in the third person, and his generosity to others. Despite being exactly my kind of ballplayer—the stolen base king! Consistently walked more than struck out!—he was never one of my favorites, maybe because he took the steals record away from one of my faves, Lou Brock, or maybe because he spent his career primarily with the Oakland A's and the hated New York Yankees. He did spend part of one season in Seattle as a Mariner, in 2000, in the waning days of his very long career, and was always fun to watch no matter who he played for. My two favorite Rickey Henderson anecdotes come from other players. One, from former Seattle Mariner Harold Reynolds, who won the stolen base crown in 1987 with 66 steals (because Henderson was injured that year) and got a postseason call from Rickey congratulating him but also containing Rickey-style mockery, with Henderson ending the call with "Rickey would have had 66 by the All-Star break." Two, from fellow Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, who was Rickey's teammate with the New York Mets; Piazza recounted how Rickey voted when teams would be divvying up the postseason bonuses among the support staff. “Rickey was the most generous guy I ever played with, and whenever the discussion came around to what we should give one of the fringe people—whether it was a minor leaguer who came up for a few days or the parking lot attendant—Rickey would shout out 'Full share!' We’d argue for a while and he’d say, 'Fuck that! You can change somebody’s life!'” Apparently Rickey died from pneumonia, less than a week shy of 66 years old. Bummer.
• Earlier this week, Craig Calcaterra referenced a Washington Post article called "America's Best Decade" in his newsletter. The article analyzes results from polling 2,000 American adults on which decade was best for 20 different things, like best movies, best economy, best music, best reporting, and so on. There are some interesting (though not surprising) things, like Republicans are twice as likely to think the 1950s were awesome as other people are (hey, Republicans, that being the case, let's go back to the 90% marginal tax rate that existed then, which made for a lot of the circumstances you say you want!), or that people think the "best music" is the music they listened to in their formative years. But Craig's takeaway was surprise at the generational consistency of people liking their own youth (not just the music, but everything). "Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age," says the article. "The good old days when America was 'great' aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices." There's a handy graph to illustrate:
  

  

  
  If they'd polled me, I might have skewed the results just a smidge. I mean, if I followed the pattern, I'd have my bests coming in the 1980s, and frankly there was a lot about the ’80s that wasn't all that. I mean, sure, those years were largely good for me (well, not ’89), but thinking big picture not so much. I'd say... Best Music? 1970s. Best Movies? I'm not really big into movies like some people, so I don't have a real feeling on this, but I guess the 2000s? Best Fashion? Hell if I know, but certainly not the ’80s; maybe the ’60s, since it spanned a lot of stuff. Happiest Families? Again, WTF do I know, but I'd say maybe 1990s since (a) women had far more agency than in prior decades, and (b) economically things were stable and good throughout. Most Moral Society is a question that inevitably tracks one's politics and I'd be tempted to say the 2020s if not for what happened last month to show us how many millions of Americans are still racist, misogynist, cruel asshats. Most Reliable News Reporting? 1970s again, though it really depends on how you quantify; there's a lot of fine reportage more recently, but also increasingly widespread BS from the dawn of cable TV forward. Best Economy? 1990s. Best Radio? I've no proper context for this, but given how much more radio was a thing the further back you go, maybe the 1940s or ’50s? For me, again the ’70s. Best TV? Right now, man. So much great TV being made even as the TV delivery system is transmogrifying. Least Political Division? Um...never? I mean, now is the worst in ages, but there's always been a lot; maybe the ’40s, what with the war being a unifying purpose. Best Sporting Events? For me, that's limited to baseball, really, and in this area I fit the trend—1980s baseball was great and I wish we could exhume Bart Giamatti to be Commissioner again. Best Cuisine seems like a dumb category, as food doesn't change, really, it's how we eat that changes. I like good food whenever it's eaten. Anyway, kind of an interesting survey.

Tagged Site issues, Politics, West Wing, Baseball, TV, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on December 21, 2024 at 8:37PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Little of this, little of that

“We’ve been in the Void for over a decade, Kamiko.”
“Maybe it’s for the best, Ted, things might be a shitshow out there.”

I'm not coherent enough this evening to put together a "real" post, so I'm figuring to do a kind of potpourri of fragmented thoughts about whatever. Because getting some stuff out of my head seems helpful even when it's scatterbrained.

• First, a brief update on my headspace: The crash-and-burn of the previous post isn't quite in the rear view yet; I'm still climbing out and it's a slower process than I thought it was going to be. I think this is one of those circumstances where it hurts me not to have a day job. Maybe. Anyway, getting going in any given day is still a challenge and sometimes doesn't happen until it's safe outside for vampires and then my tendency to be awake all night reinforces the pattern. Work in progress.
• We had a "bomb cyclone" come through the area the other day and I was without power for not quite 24 hours or so. This also did not help my headspace because without electricity there wasn't much to do during the nocturnal hours I tend to find myself most awake. There's only so much reading one can do by candle illumination and awkwardly-held flashlights. No other inconveniences for me personally, but some folks in the (not-immediate) area had a lot of damage to contend with from wind and toppled trees and such. The rain's been pretty steady ever since, though, and whenever I go out to get the mail I half-expect to see someone building an ark in their driveway.
• Michael Schur is good at TV. I mean, we knew this already, he's not only half of the great PosCast about sports and nonsense, he's also the brains behind The Good Place, Parks and Recreation, and other such things that step up the level of quality and thoughtful humor on television. His latest show is called A Man on the Inside, and it's delightful. Ted Danson stars (with small roles for a couple of other Good Place alums and another for Eugene Cordero) as a widower in need of something to do who gets hired by a private detective to infiltrate a retirement home and be the "man on the inside" in an effort to catch a thief. It's only eight episodes, I watched them all last night. Charming, witty, poignant . . . you know, a Michael Schur joint.
• The Seattle Mariners are cutting ties with a couple of players I'd rather not see them cut ties with. Makes me wonder what they think their doing or if they have any sort of plan. Anyway, today they non-tendered (and thus cast to the free agent winds) both Josh Rojas and Sam Haggerty, two of the only bright spots in the non-pitching portion of the 2024 team. Haggs is recovering from a bad ACL injury and this seems an especially heartless thing to do to him since being with an organization when rehabbing and such can make a huge difference, both in terms of available facilities and financial security (though unless he's squandered it, he's made plenty of money by regular-people standards the last few years even though he's a pauper by professional athlete standards). Haggerty can play seven positions on the field and switch-hits and is the best baserunner in baseball right now (well, not right now, but when he has two working ACLs). And he's inexpensive. Why let him go, just to save a tiny-by-MLB-payroll-standards amount of money? Hard disapprove, Mariners. Rojas surprised me last year by being actually pretty good both as a third baseman and as a batter, though the bar was low; I'd thought of him as the least valuable piece received in the Paul Sewald trade the year before and he proved to be capable. Rojas isn't a key piece of the puzzle, granted, but still sad to see him go. And, this creates a new vacancy to fill—before today, Rojas figured to be at least a platoon partner at one of two infield positions; now, both the second base and third base positions have no one ready to step into them. Unless they're counting on Dylan Moore to fill one, which, ugh. No, thank you. (Or they think Ryan Bliss is ready to be an everyday big-leaguer? Mmmmmayyybe? I mean, good on-base chops in the minors, but all we saw of him with the M's was during the Scott Servais/Jarred deHart reign of error, so who knows.) Dropping these two is another cost-cutting maneuver, saves them maybe $6M in player payroll, but to what end? I guess we'll wait and see.
• Including those Cloud Five strips in my last post (and, yes, I know the C5 site is broken, it's been so for a while now, I just haven't been motivated to fix it) has made me think seriously of reviving it, but if I do I'm not sure what to do about the intervening 11 years or so. I mean, a lot of shit's gone down. Do I age the characters up and just drop into today? Do I pick up where I left off and pull a Newsroom and treat the now of the strip as 2014? Do I do both, do any picking-up-from-before in flashback? Or is it better to just start form scratch on a new thing? Or am I not willing to do that format again? I don't know. It's a big thing to take it up again in any form. Meanwhile I'm just doing some unrelated sketching, which is better than nothing.

Tagged The Black Hole, Baseball, TV, Seattle Mariners, Posted on November 22, 2024 at 9:58PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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World Series notes

How stereotypes are made

The New York Yankees staved off elimination for a day by winning World Series Game Four last night. They did so despite falling behind early on yet another home run from Captain Marvel Jr. and with no help from two guys in the right field seats that stole a foul ball out of the glove of Dodger right fielder Mookie Betts.

You will occasionally see a fan reach into the field of play to catch a ball; you will occasionally see fans and players both angling for a catch once a ball clears the wall and enters the "out of play" territory. You never, until last night, expect to see fans grab a players arm and pry a ball out of his glove. Only in the Bronx, man.

Those guys, who have been banned from attending the remainder of the World Series, give form and substance to the generalized image of the Yankee Fan: Obnoxious, rude, hostile, selfish, and all that is wrong with humanity. Well played, asshats. From The Athletic's account of the theft:

Austin Capobianco, 38, from Connecticut, was ejected after the incident in the first inning of the Yankees’ 11-4 win in Game 4 on Tuesday night. Another fan, who ESPN identified as John Peter, was ejected alongside Capobianco.

...

Darren Capobianco said his brother, Austin, is a Yankees season ticket holder. A team spokesman said that it has not been determined what — if any — further action will be taken regarding the future of their tickets. Austin Capobianco didn’t respond to text messages from The Athletic seeking comment Wednesday morning.

After the play, Capobianco tried arguing with stadium security that Betts’ glove had reached into foul territory.

It's that last bit that was really the chef's kiss of Yankee fan assholery, visibly arguing with stadium security that because Betts had reached into the seating area to catch the ball, he as a fan was entitled to forcibly pry Betts' glove open and steal the baseball. I looked for a still photo of the argument but couldn't find one; it was only on the Fox TV broadcast for a second or so, because Fox is terrible at broadcasting baseball.

Several times in this World Series has there been something of relative import happening on the field that the Fox crew—including the announcers, Joe Davis and John Smoltz, and either the director or the camera operators—failed to notice or acknowledge. Game One had the catch-and-throw by the Yankee outfielder that resulted in runners being awarded a base that you'd only be aware of if you (a) knew the rule about having to reenter the field of play before throwing the ball, and (b) saw the gesticulations of the third base umpire in the background of the camera shot in the second or so it was onscreen. Game Two had something I now don't remember the details of but commented on in real time, Game Three had a defensive replacement we weren't made aware of, and last night there was several seconds in which the home plate umpire was having a confrontation with someone about something, but damned if anyone watching the broadcast knows what it was about or who the confrontation was with because the Fox director chose to keep the closeup shot of Garret Cole in the dugout onscreen for the entire time.

Also, Smoltz is ridiculously bad at this. It is fun when the players will do something 180° from what Smoltz said would happen a second prior, but really, dude, finish a thought rather than just let things hang there and maybe be less oblique when you reference something from your pitching career. Or just keep quiet, that'd be fine.

I am rooting for the Dodgers in the Series, but kind of glad the Yankees won last night because (a) more baseball is always good; and (b) the Dodgers went in with a planned bullpen game, and bullpen games when they are not necessitated by immediate circumstance are stupid and any team that deliberately plans to have one—or several!—in the postseason deserves to have it bite them in the butt.

LA is heavily favored tonight despite the fact that Cole will be pitching for New York because history decrees it to be so. Never, in 122 years of World Series (two years there was no Series played), has a team that lost the first three games come back to even force a Game 6, let alone brought it to the maximum length, let alone come back to win. They just became only the third such team to win Game 4. Still, to quote Mr. Spock, "for everything there is a first time," so all hope is not lost for those jerks in right field.

Tagged Baseball, Yankee fans, Posted on October 30, 2024 at 3:36PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Game One

This was one for the ages.

For the first time in a good many years [checks baseball-reference.com—just since 2013, not counting the mini-season of 2020, not as long as I thought] the World Series is between the teams with the best regular season record in each league, the first time in Commissioner Rob Manfred's even-more-playoff-teams era that no Wild Card teams are involved, and the first time since 1981 that the TV network got their dream matchup of bicoastal big market clubs the Dodgers and Yankees.

That last point is only important to marketers and Manfred (who is nothing but a money-grubbing shill of the highest Ferengi order), but the others are good indicators that we were going to get a solidly competitive Series, and, boy, did Game One deliver.

Scoreless through four and a half innings, Los Angeles finally broke through with a triple by postseason god Enrique Hernández and a sacrifice fly from Will Smith. Then the Yankees immediately came back when ALCS MVP Giancarlo Stanton crushed a two-run homer in the 6th off an inside-half-of-the-plate curveball with little to no break, no doubt causing Michael Schur—the great TV writer and co-host of The Poscast—to unleash a torrent of screamed obscenities at Dodger pitcher Jack Flaherty, who blithely ignored Schur's scouting report. That report has helpfully been transcribed by my friend and fellow Poscast listener Erik, please to enjoy and perhaps forward to Dodger manager Dave Roberts.

Mookie Betts drove in Shohei Ohtani with another sac fly to tie it in the 8th, and we went to extra innings at 2-2. New York took the lead in the top of the 10th thanks to a single, steal of 2nd, steal of 3rd, and hard grounder to short that was oh-so-close to being an inning-ending double-play. Then in the home 10th the magic happened.

Flyout. Walk. Single. Yankee manager Aaron Boone makes a pitching change, opting to bring in one Nestor Cortes. Cortes, the onetime truly awful Seattle Mariner but somehow great starter for two years in the Bronx before reverting to the mean, was fresh off the injured list, having had a flexor tendon issue and was appearing in a game for the first time in a month. Curious choice. Cortes' first pitch was a hanger he got away with, as Ohtani fouled out thanks to a fine catch after tumbling into the seats by New York left fielder Alex Verdugo—which still went marginally against the Yankees because Verdugo threw the ball back before returning to the field of play, which is illegal and awarded the runners an extra base, not that anyone watching the telecast knew that unless they were very keen-eyed and caught third-base umpire Mark Ripperger's gestures upon Verdugo's throw since Fox broadcasters Joe Davis and John Smoltz were blissfully unaware and said nothing about it and the broadcast's director chose to stay with closeup camera shots that excluded the baserunners and the onscreen graphic didn't change from showing runners first and second to runners second and third. The Yanks then intentionally walked Mookie Betts to load the bases for Freddie Freeman with two out (a questionable move, but I agreed with it from the New York point of view; the mistake had already been made by bringing in Cortes, first base was vacant thanks to Verdugo throwing the ball back from the stands on Ohtani's foulout, and bypassing Mookie for a lefty-lefty matchup and a slower batter-runner made sense). Cortes' second pitch was a midrange fastball to the lower-inside portion of the zone, aka the lefty happy zone. Belted into the right field bleachers for a game-ending grand slam homer. Pandemonium ensued at Chavez Ravine.

While reminiscent of 1988 Game One, with the iconic Kirk Gibson walkoff homer, this one was probably more exciting all the way from start to finish. Classic.

Game Two tonight. Rodon vs. Yamamoto. Advantage LA.

Tagged Baseball, Posted on October 26, 2024 at 11:08AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Karen's ex-Mariner playoff post

Teoscar Hernandez

My friend Karen is a relatively new baseball fan. She's always been interested enough to occasionally accompany me to Seattle Mariners games and such, but in earlier years she'd bring reading material and ask things like, "which ones are the Mariners?" Nowadays, she's into it. Hell, she might even understand the infield fly rule better than a lot of the softball players I ump games for. It's a wonder to behold and I love her for it, among other reasons.

Every postseason, though, the newly-minted Mariner fan is almost always on the outside looking in (2022's brief foray as a Wild Card entrant aside) and may not have a rooting interest. Karen's requests have often been to know who in the playoffs used to play for Seattle, so here now is the 2024 rundown of ex-M's still playing in the post (teams already eliminated in the Manfred WC Round have been skipped).

New York Yankees (2/4)

The evil empire does not deserve your support, but they nonetheless have two active and two inactive former Mariners:

• Luke Weaver (RHP): Weaver appeared in five games for Seattle last season and was terrible. He'd been cut by Cincinnati, where he'd also been terrible, then after his five game audition here was waived and claimed by the Yankees. He has been unaccountably splendid in pinstripes, posting a sub-3.00 ERA and a sub-1.000 WHIP out of the bullpen this year.
• Nestor Cortes (LHP): You may remember Nestor from the abbreviated 2020 mini-season, when he suited up for the M's and was abysmal in just 8 innings of play, posting an ERA of 15.26. A Yankees draftee, he had been taken by Baltimore in the Rule 5 draft in 2018, debuted for them and was bad, then had to be sent back to the Yankees when the Orioles cut him. He was bad for the Yankees too, so they traded him to Seattle for the ever-popular "cash considerations." After his dismal mini-season here, he went back to New York as a free agent and was somehow awesome for two years before regressing a bit to be a fair-to-middling starting pitcher.
• Not on the active roster are LHP Anthony Misiewicz, who debuted with the M's in 2020 and left in 2022, traded to Kansas City for those cash considerations again; and OF Taylor Trammell, a former top prospect who hasn't managed to stick in the bigs either in Seattle, where he broke in in 2021, or with the Dodgers or Yankees, each of which claimed him off the waiver wire.

Cleveland Guardians (1)

Not counting manager Steven Vogt, who served as a coach for Seattle last year, Cleveland has but one ex-M and you'd be forgiven for thinking there were none:

• Matthew Boyd (LHP): Boyd spent the bulk of his career in Detroit, but had two forgettable months as a Mariner in 2022, arriving in a trade with San Francisco. He pitched well, appeared in ten games in relief down the stretch and then went back to Detroit as a free agent.

Kansas City Royals (1/2)

I'm making a supposition about there being one active former M here, it's entirely possible both will be left off the roster:

• Adam Frazier (IF/OF): Once a highly-coveted All-Star second baseman, now a struggling utility player in sharp decline, a decline that, of course, started when he came to Seattle in 2022. After his one season here he went to Baltimore, where he continued to underwhelm, and this year to KC, where he barely managed to crack a .200 batting average.
• In the minors most of the year was RHP Dan Altavilla, who was a cog in the Seattle bullpen from 2016-2020, when he was dumped on the Padres in a get-him-off-of-Scott-Servais'-relief-menu-before-he-loses-more-games move. He's been mostly injured since then, but the Royals took a flier on him and he did sort of OK for them in Triple-A.

Detroit Tigers (1)

The mostly-anonymous Tigers are almost entirely guys nobody outside the state of Michigan has ever heard of, excepting pitcher Kenta Maeda, who is known from Hiroshima to Minneapolis. But there is this guy:

• Will Vest (RHP): Not just a contractual pun, this reliever came to Seattle as a Rule 5 draftee from Detroit in 2021. But the M's couldn't keep him on the roster and he had to be offered back to Detroit, where for the past two seasons he's been a more than serviceable option out of the bullpen.

Philadelphia Phillies (1)

Other than the Mariner-adjacent Aaron Nola (brother of Austin), there's little to link the Phils and M's. Except:

• Taijuan Walker (LHP): Traded away from Seattle in a deal that ended up having four All-Stars in it (Walker and Ketel Marte to the Diamondbacks for Jean Segura and Mitch Haniger), Walker was hurt for most of his time in Phoenix, briefly went to the Blue Jays, came back to Seattle for part of the 2020 mini-season, and then had success in Queens with the Mets. This is his second year with the Phillies and he's been splitting time between the starting rotation and the ’pen.

New York Mets (4)

The Metropolitans have the most former Mariners in the tournament right now with these guys:

• Edwin Díaz (RHP): Electric Eddie, the pehnom closer that was dealt to New York as the price of getting out from under Robinson Canó's contract after the 2018 campaign, has been pretty good this year after missing all of 2023 on the injured list. Not elite-level good, but still pretty good.
• Jesse Winker (OF): Making friends everywhere he goes, Winker was by some accounts a toxic presence in the Mariner clubhouse after coming here with Eugenio Suárez from the Reds in 2022. He lasted just that one year here and was traded to the Brewers, where he hit all of .199 and was soundly booed by the Milwaukee faithful. This year he started in DC with the Nationals and then got himself shipped out to the Mets in July. His OBP for the year is respectable, but most of that came in Washington; as a Met he's gotten aboard at just a .318 clip.
• Luis Torrens (C): After arriving in a big trade with San Diego in 2020, Luis saw a lot of action as a backup catcher with the M's in ’21, a bit less in ’22, then left town for ’23, when he played for three teams before finding himself back in Seattle's system for a couple of months. This season he started off at Triple-A with the Yankees before getting picked up by the Mets, for whom he's played sparingly as catching insurance.
• Ryne Stanek (RHP): "Panic," as he's affectionately known here at StarshipTim, started this season in Seattle and was... let's say, unpredictable. He'd often be called upon in key situations and would as often as not blow things up. He was thankfully traded to the Mets in July, and he's been even worse for them (6.06 ERA in 17 games).

Los Angeles Dodgers (2)

Just two? Somehow I thought there'd be more, but no, just these guys:

• Teoscar Hernández (OF): Not asked back after he struck out 211 times for the M's last year, Teo was an All-Star in LA this season. He was even better after the All-Star break and really poured it on down the stretch, posting a line of  .329/.407/.605 since September 1st.
• Chris Taylor (IF/OF): Yeah, he's still there. A useful but not flashy cog for the M's in 2014 and ’15, Taylor was shipped off to the Dodgers in early 2016 for a used rosin bag or some such return; he went on to become a key part of several Dodger teams as a super-utility guy playing six positions and holding his own at the plate.

San Diego Padres (0)

This is just weird—you'd think with all the wheeling and dealing that has gone on between the Padres and Mariners over the past few years that there'd be someone here, but there's not. Carl Edwards Jr., who had a very brief Mariner tenure in 2020, appeared in one game for San Diego this year. That's it.

 

So there you have it. Factor it into your rooting interests however you like, but I think I'm just going to be rooting for individual players. Shohei. Steven Kwan. Bobby Witt Jr. Maeda. Anyone with Kansas City that can take down the Yankees.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on October 4, 2024 at 11:19PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The Veep Debate and Wild Card Playoffs

Left: Literal evil. Right: Metaphorical evil.

I really tried to watch the whole thing.

Well, "really tried?" I mean, I could have pushed through. I chose not to for the sake of my blood pressure and my downstairs neighbor, who was probably sick of my screaming "go to hell you lying son of a bitch/smarmy troll/piece of excrement" etc. every two minutes or so.

But I turned it off, "it" being the so-called debate between Vice-Presidential nominees Tim Walz and J.D. Vance. Had I kept on, I would have seen Walz be better; early on he was obviously nervous and appeared out of his depth, but I know from post-debate analysis and the slew of clips that made it around the Internet and cable news that he improved markedly in the second half. Had I kept on, I would also, however, continued to see Vance pour on the bullshit in such a slick, phony faith-healer way, with an abundance of the sort of charm you might find in a sociopathic used car dealer determined to have you drive this lemon off the lot and be happy you did it.

Vance is like a lot of modern-day Republicans in that he can seemingly get away with saying the vilest, most repugnant things so long as he says it in a calm, thoughtful-sounding tone. The film Vice captured this in its portrayal of Dick Cheney, but it's the same schtick you hear form Bill Barr, Kevin McCarthy, even Steve Bannon (though his weird triple-shirts get in the way of seeming sane). But there was Vance, claiming in a calm tone with as straight a face as he could muster that Donald Trump saved the Affordable Care Act (when he actually tried his damnedest to destroy it), peacefully left office (when he actually incited an insurrection to try to stay in power), and didn't crash the economy (when he in fact presided over a massive manufacturing recession, waged a trade war that cost taxpayers billions, and so botched a global health crisis that everything went into the tank not to mention cost hundreds of thousands of lives). The smarmy, lying, weasel. And there were the alleged journalists acting as "moderators," treating a 35-year-old misstatement on a matter of no importance by Governor Walz with the same heft and importance—greater heft, arguably—than the mountain of deceit, lies, gaslighting, and revisionist history being spouted by the opposing campaign on a daily, nay, hourly basis.

Fortunately, it seems the public saw through Vance's facade of crap and credit Walz with authenticity from the event. I admit to being a little surprised at that, given how easily manipulated 70+ million people were in the 2020 campaign. The stakes being what they are, it's no wonder Governor Walz was nervous stepping onto that stage and thank god/fate/whatever he was able to hold his own against Weasel McPantsonfire.

Anyway, I couldn't take it, so I switched over to baseball.

This is now the third year of the "Wild Card Series" in the Major League Baseball postseason and I remain against it. We did have, for the first time, one series go the distance of three games, with the New York Mets pulling out a come-from-behind win to move on earlier this evening; meaning in the 12 WC series to date, the team that did not advance has won one game and the team that lost the first game has advanced zero times. You might say the sample size is still too small, but I say that pretty much negates the argument some had been making about the previous one-and-done Wild Card game setup being somehow less fair than a best-of-three, like we have now. And, illustrating another glaring flaw in the system, the division winners forced to play on the same level as the Wild Card teams were both ousted, meaning that now a division winner has been eliminated before the Division Series 2/3 of the time. (Not that I'm sad to see Houston lose, though. That's a silver lining this year.)

I've gone on at length before about how this is a dumb system that Commissioner Manfred has saddled us with and how it could be better, so I'll go on here only briefly. But it stinks for the fans in Milwaukee to see their team, which dominated its division all year long, bounced out in consecutive years by teams that won nothing in the regular season. Finishing first needs to actually matter. Advancing as a Wild Card team needs to be harder. Again, briefly, if we must have these stupid expanded playoffs, I want to see (for practical reasons only) four WC teams per league instead of three; all division winners skip the WC series; and no offdays for WC teams. Play the day after the regular season to winnow four WC teams to two, survivors play the next day to determine who gets the single WC berth in the Division Series, then straight in to the DS without any rest, meaning any WC team to advance to an LCS needs a deep starting rotation and a capable bench. Also, as a side benefit, this shortens the arguably-disadvantageous layoff for the "bye teams" (division winners) by three days. 

Too obvious?

Anyway, it is what it is this year, and we get an 8-team bracket of finalists with no obvious rooting interest for your's truly. Do I support Detroit as the upstart come-from-nowhere surprise club? The loaded lineup and battered pitching staff of the Dodgers? Cleveland's a possibility now that they've rebranded away from racism; rookie manager Steven Vogt and star power in José Ramírez and Steven Kwan are certainly appealing. KC has Bobby Witt Jr. and a lot of moxie. I don't know, I guess it'll take shape in my head as the series get underway. But I do agree 100% with Michael Schur of The Poscast: No matter how "appropriate" it may seem for the World Series to feature two megastars against each other in Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers) and Aaron Judge (Yankees), there is no universe in which the Yankees deserve another pennant, not for decades to come.

Tagged Politics, Baseball, Posted on October 4, 2024 at 2:25AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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State of the M's

Tonight was the last Friday of the baseball season, and thus Fan Appreciation Night down at the ol' ballpark. Many prizes are given away at Fan Appreciation Nights, but in decades of attendance I have yet to get one. (Though my seats did get one some years back, but it wasn't the one I was sitting in, Bill got it, winning a suite for a game the following April. I and some mutual friends went with him, so it's sort of like winning a prize, I suppose.) I didn't win anything tonight, either, but the Mariners did eke out a victory over the Oakland-for-two-more-days Athletics.

Not that it mattered, as the M's were eliminated from postseason contention yesterday. The entire American League playoff field was set before tonight's first pitch, and most of the National League field as well (the remainder there may well still be in flux after Sunday's games are done as the currently-in-a-three-way-tie-with-Arizona-for-two-slots Mets and Braves have a makeup doubleheader to play on Monday). Still, it was a nice evening and Bryan Woo pitched a great game.

But as we come to the end of the 2024 campaign, some thoughts on the state of the Mariners:

Much was made about the Mariners' rebuild following the 2018 season having the goal of contention within three years. Despite the COVID-truncated season of 2020, they basically achieved that, winning 90 games in ’21 and then again in ’22, making the ’22 postseason thanks to the dumb expanded Wild Card system we're now stuck with. Last year the M's were alive until the final day of the season, finishing one game back of the last WC berth with 88 wins. All of which was utterly astounding when you think about it; how they won that many games with lineups that put up truly atrocious numbers not just once, but three years running, is downright weird.

Then-manager Scott Servais got a lot of credit—undeservedly—for those win totals. The thinking seemed to be, "wow, how good is Servais, look what he did with an offense that was at or near the bottom of the league rankings." But that was backwards. You look at those teams in the preseasons and you'd figure them to be far better than they turned out to be; maybe not World Series-caliber lineups, but certainly playoff quality in today's expanded-postseason universe. The real evaluations should have been, "wow, how bad is Servais, look how few runs his teams scored despite that group of players. If not for that incredible pitching staff he'd be lucky to sniff .500." It took until three-quarters of the way through this season for the club's top brass to figure out that the way Servais ran things was never going to work. You can't get a lineup to hit when you essentially tell all your batters to emulate the late Joaquin Andujar—an All-Star pitcher in the 1980s who's approach with the bat was "swing hard in case you hit it"—and make your goals about "launch angles" and "barrel rates." Good pitching can take you a long ways, but you still have to score more runs than the other guys.

The post-’18 rebuild, which went on through the short 2020 season, was supposed to form a core of players who would mature into a contending team with a solid window of opportunity lasting at least five years, after which time some or all of that core will have become financially burdensome. That window might be starting to close now, but some of those supposedly core players are already gone, given up for failures after underachieving with the broken Servais regime: Ty France is a Cincinnati Red and was doing quite well until going into a slump in the last two weeks (.312/.358/.475 as a Red through Sept. 10th, 7-for-50 since then). Jarred Kelenic, who may have been forever ruined by the Mariners' handling and rushing of his development time or might have been a bust regardless, is an Atlanta Brave relegated to their bench. Injury-plagued Kyle Lewis might never play in the bigs again, but if he does it'll be with the Diamondbacks. Lewis was just one of those prospects that couldn't get healthy. Kelenic may or may not be one of those personalities that just wouldn't ever succeed in the Majors. Cutting bait with them is understandable. Losing France was just plain stupid, but I wonder if that move was requested by Servais or a misstep by the higher-ups based on a performance that they didn't understand was being hampered by Servais and his alleged hitting coach, Jarret DeHart.

Anyway, there's still plenty of talent on the club to continue and even expand the window of opportunity. President of Baseball Ops Jerry Dipoto has, aside from dealing France away, done fairly well in adjusting personnel as needed, and with a young starting rotation that could remain together for another few years (possibly sans Luis Castillo) even an average lineup should be able to contend. Most importantly, Servais and DeHart were finally shown the door, which if nothing else is addition by subtraction. Things actually look better than they have in 20+ years for the Seattle Mariners going into 2025.

Biggest offseason questions for the M's: 

1. Does Edgar stay? Edgar Martínez only agreed to return as batting coach for the remainder of 2024. Can manager Dan Wilson talk him into staying on? If not, who becomes the batting coach? The four-plus years of DeHart showed how unequivocally necessary a competent batting coach is, so if Edgar does not choose to stick around, this is their biggest "free agent" need. They need someone with a lot of pro hitting experience, preferably someone who had to work for his successes over a long career. I don't know if Terry Pendleton would be interested, he is in his 60s now, but he'd be an interesting ask. Ditto Milt Thompson. Raúl Ibañez seems more interested in front-office gigs than coaching, but I wonder if he'd be a good batting coach? I mean, so long as he doesn't take up that disgusting chewing tobacco habit again.
2. Who's on first? Having thrown Ty France away for whatever dumb reasons, first base is now essentially vacant, having been manned down the stretch this year by rental player Justin Turner and outfielder Luke Raley. Raley could potentially transition into a regular fixture at 1B, but defense would be lacking in that case. Is young Tyler Locklear a viable option? He flopped in a short stint with the M's this year, but has OK-to-decent numbers at Triple-A, especially on-base percentage (.371, 70 games), after great ones at Double-A (.291/.401/.532, 41 games). Seems to me a full year at Triple-A would be in order, but the M's do like to rush guys.
3. Jorge Polanco: Cut or don't cut? The second baseman's contract has a team option for 2024 at his same $12M salary, or that option can be bought out for $750k. Personally, I'd choose to buy out the option and use the money elsewhere, then use Spring Training as a tryout camp for the position. If he's healed up from his Achilles injury, try switch-hitting Sam Haggerty there. He can compete with Ryan Bliss, Leo Rivas, and the somehow-still-in-the-mix Dylan Moore and maybe some non-roster invitees from the big-league scrap pile.
4. OF logjam: You know Jerry Dipoto is going to trade somebody, he always does. Seems likely that someone from the outfield mix will be dealt somewhere as there's a surplus with Julio Rodríguez, Randy Arozarena, Victor Robles, Mitch Haniger, and Raley on the big-league roster and Dom Canzone, Cade Marlowe, and Samad Taylor at Triple-A. Julio and Victor aren't going anywhere, so Haniger and Arozarena appear to be the likeliest to move; Arozarena would have the most value despite his down year in ’24. A return could be sought in a first- or third-baseman or prospects.

Just having a real batting coach and a manager that doesn't leave his brain in the clubhouse for an entire season will elevate the M's considerably from their disappointing 2024. They could make no moves at all and that would be enough to contend. But moves will be made, a budget will be dictated, some things will change. I just expect them to be relatively minor.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on September 28, 2024 at 2:17AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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