Turning the page

The last couple of weeks haven't been great here in the confines of my chemistry-addled brain, but it's a new week now and the world keeps on turning.

Last night I had an umpiring shift, one of the final ones of the year as things wind down (I may get two or three more at most) and the final one that will involve some of my favorite players in the league. Bonus, I got to chat a little bit with Stephen, a guy that had been one of my favorite players to ump until he moved away last year, but who has now returned. Welcome back, dude! Hope to see you on the field next year. Also good to see Megan, Joel, Pat, Wyatt, Ray, and the rest of those folks yesterday for one final time until we convene again after New Year's. And Megan, thank you as always for the baked good samples. (Hey, I heard that, and they're not "special" baked goods. C'mon.)

I'm going to miss umping in the fall, but there'll be plenty of chaos to keep me occupied. Which is good, because the continual meltdown of the nation will undoubtedly pummel my psyche some more.

Meanwhile, there's three weeks of baseball left before the postseason and I've got tickets for three more Seattle Mariner games with the ever-present possibility of an extra or two. Despite their crappy last three weeks or so in which the M's went 6-15, they've decided to put some effort into it here at the end and have won their last three with 18 games to go. They're somehow only two games worse off in the standings since starting that 6-15 would-be collapse, going from tied for first place to, well, two behind, and two games is plenty surmountable with 18 left, especially since three of those 18 are against the team they're chasing. I say that, but I've also been a fan of Your Seattle Mariners for long enough to know that the most likely outcome is yet another missed-it-by-that-much end to the season.

This week also will see the season finale of Strange New Worlds, which has been really uneven in this third season of the series. After I have a chance to process Wednesday night's episode, I think a season recap/analysis post will be necessary since this show has been so frustrating to me—it has been so good in prior years, has the potential to be really great, and has shortchanged itself this season in some annoying ways.

Also, I watched Thunderbolts* the other night, having skipped it in the theaters. You know what? Pretty good. Certainly by the standard of recent efforts from Marvel Studios. I'd been forewarned by Erik's review that I probably ought to be in a decent headspace when I saw it, and I was. It is an interesting way to go, making depression the actual Big Bad of the film. Wielded by The Sentry, a character I was aware of in comicdom (a would-be Superman type created on purpose by nefarious experiments but that ends up being unstable) but never paid much attention to, I appreciate the way the depression was depicted, with Sentry's victims just poofing away leaving an ashy shadow behind; later we see what happens to them post-poof, they're trapped in a mindspace of sorts, reliving their traumatic or hurtful memories over and over. It's not a perfect representation, but damned if it isn't at least in the ballpark. The solution is for our reluctant (except for gung-ho Red Star, played to perfection by David Harbour) would-be heroes to coax Sentry out of his depressive episode and then after that restores everyone to normal keep working with him to manage his moods. There's also some absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely messaging here, which is good, but it is entirely unsatisfying to have the film end with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss' character Allegra de Fontaine slither out of trouble and manipulate things to her advantage again. Maybe that's appropriate given the real world we're living in, but that's also the main reason it's so irritating. Can't these criminal asshats even face justice in our comic-book movies??

Anyway, new week, new turn of the page, life goes on.

 

Tagged Umping, Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Star Trek, Movies, Posted on September 9, 2025 at 7:13PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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A not-blast from the past at the ballpark

What antiquated witchcraft is this?

I went to the ballyard last night to watch Your Seattle Mariners take on the fake rival San Diego Padres and was treated to a pretty interesting, if ultimately unsatisfying, game.

Unsatisfying because (a) the Mariners lost a game they could have won; (b) Seattle starting pitcher Luis Castillo was great—but in the way that George W. Bush kept us safe, you know, except that one time. Castillo was absolutely lit up in the first inning, needing about 35 pitches to retire the side after surrendering five runs, all before I had much chance to settle into my seat (thanks in part to the damned 6:40pm start time that necessitates an extra 30-40 minutes of travel time and even then count yourself lucky if you're not late).

Interesting because (a) it was a tightly contested affair, with the Padres ultimately winning by a single run; (b) the M's mounted a mid-game comeback with a bat-around, 6-run inning in the 5th with line drives scorched off of fake-Christian homophobic reliever Jason Adam, including a 3-run bomb by Geno Suárez, that couldn't have happened to a nicer relief pitcher; (c) the company was good as I got to catch up a little with some folks I hadn't seen in a long while; and (d) San Diego plated what would prove to be their winning run on one of my absolute favorite baseball strategems, a truly lost art in the game: the squeeze play.

I cannot remember the last time I saw a team successfully execute a squeeze bunt. I cannot recall if I've ever seen a team do it in person before. It's not quite a bigfoot sighting, but it's pretty damn rare in today's game.

Top of the 6th, San Diego's Gavin Sheets doubles to lead it off. Next batter is Ramon Laureano, who has always torched the Mariners for whatever reason (in 60 career games vs. Seattle, Laureano has 106 total bases including 11 homers), who also doubles, but good outfield play and cautious baserunning holds Sheets at 3rd. Then Jake Cronenworth singles to plate Sheets and tie the game, Laureano moving to 3rd base. Now one out, up comes 9th-place-batting catcher Freddy Fermín, who takes two pitches and then surprises us by squaring around for the third pitch as Laureano bolts home. Fermín lays down a textbook bunt and the Padres lead 7-6.

Absolutely f-ing brilliant play, beautifully executed. I tip my cap to Padre manager Mike Schildt.

Thanks to effective bullpen work by pitchers not named Jason Adam, that score held up. And despite Seattle reliever Carlos Vargas getting hammered—the guy pitched a harmless 9th, staying in due to a depleted Mariner ’pen, but in the 8th he was greeted with a hard lineout (Laureano again), a hard-hit infield single, a grounder that he tried to field himself when Suárez was ready to take it and thus ruined any chance of getting the out, and a rocket shot on the ground that took a nice play from shortstop J.P Crawford to snare and turn into a double-play—the score didn't get any worse.

Randy Arozarena nearly tied it in the 9th with a fly out to the wall in center, but that right there epitomized the game and, frankly, the Mariners as a whole of late: The Mariners need home runs to score. The Padres know other ways to do it too.

When the M's finally fired manager Scott Servais last year and gave the reins to Dan Wilson, the homer-reliance declined. A fuller mix of offensive methods took over to pretty good effect, and it's still there to some extent, but the boys are homer-happy again with old habits returning to the fore. Sadly, that's not unusual anymore, a lot of teams have the same issue, we live in a homer-happy era. 

But man, it was nice to see someone lay down a squeeze. Even if it was the Padres.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on August 27, 2025 at 6:33PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Celebrating the greats

Seattle's Hall of Fame #51s

This past weekend was Ichiro Suzuki weekend at the ballpark by Elliott Bay. The newly-inducted Hall of Famer had his jersey number 51 retired in a pregame ceremony on Saturday, which included a fine speech from the man itself, just two weeks after he gave a different speech at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He began his remarks by saying, "Who's idea was it to have me give two speeches in English in two weeks?" calling it "one of the toughest challenges of my career." This got the requisite laugh, and Ichiro demonstrated a more than competent command of the language, which he remains somewhat insecure about despite having greater fluency than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue demonstrates on a daily basis.

It was a nice speech, humble yet acknowledging of his merit in receiving the honor, and pointed in its advice to the current team of Seattle Mariners—seize this moment. "As Edgar [Martínez, Mariner batting coach and fellow Hall of Famer] and Dan [Wilson, the Mariners' manager] know, winning is tough.... The thing about winning is it is always tough and never comes without pressure," he said. "Accept the pressure and figure out how you can perform at your best." The other unexpected thing was the amount of time Ichiro devoted to the man who wore 51 before him, fellow Hall of Famer Randy Johnson. Randy will have his own number retirement next year, and the two of them seem to really enjoy each other. Johnson was among the several Mariner greats and luminaries in attendance and the two of them taking selfies and goofing around afterward was a fun cap on the event before the game began. Ichiro will attend Randy's ceremony as well and will no doubt engage on more clowning around then. (No word on whether or not Rey Quiñones will be invited.)

Yesterday the festivities continued in a way, with giveaway replica Hall of Fame plaques (I didn't get one despite arriving more than an hour early) and video tributes between innings and such, but aside form the Mariner victory—their seventh straight and a capper on a 9-1 homestand—the highlight was the ceremonial first pitch, thrown by Ichiro to Johnson, whose six-foot-ten frame was decked out in catcher Cal Raleigh's chest protector and shin guards, which looked like a grown man wearing the clothes of a six-year-old. Both wore Sunday-variant versions of Mariner jerseys with 51 on the back and posed for more goofy pictures.

I umpired Friday night, missed an opportunity to attend Saturday night, and did attend yesterday afternoon before again umpiring last night. But I watched all three games and enjoyed them all, bookended by umping shifts that were fun and included plenty of appreciation from players. Pretty decent weekend, well timed and needed given the continuing state of the world.

It wasn't worth taking the time to come home after the M's game and then turn around an hour later to go back to Cap Hill to ump, so I spent the intervening time at Elliott Bay Books, where I ran into one of the softball players I've become vaguely acquainted with over the years (and who I would see later in the evening on the field). She recommended to me a sci-fi novel called The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which I purchased and read the first few chapters of while awaiting the start of my shift. So far so good.

 

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Ichiro, Umping, Books, Posted on August 11, 2025 at 5:14PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Navigating the new normal

Every day there's a new outrage in the news surrounding the regime occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Every. Damn. Day. It just doesn't let up, except maybe during the weekends when the wannabe king is off cheating at golf.

Whether it's relocating his buddy the convicted child sex-trafficker from a high-security facility to a cushy "Club Fed" prison, human rights abuses at his Florida concentration camp, his HHS secretary setting back vaccine research and development by decades, his open declaration that he needs states to further gerrymander their congressional districts because he feels "entitled"—seriously, he said "entitled"—to five additional Republican seats in the House from Texas, or opening up bullshit investigations into the perfectly legal activities of Democratic officeholders, every day there's more crime committed by the alleged President of the United States and his regime of sycophantic neo-Nazis.

It's overwhelming.

Once again, our friend Craig Calcaterra has put something into words that is more eloquent than what I feel like I could articulate at the moment:

I honestly think something has happened in the past six months that has prevented me from ever truly understanding and, possibly, caring about most of the nonsense afoot in this country. Like, I lack the energy to mock or critique on most days. I just stare into the middle distance and offer an accepting nod. The acceptance is not substantive, of course. It's just acceptance of the fact that, yes, this is how people are now and it's doubtful that anything is going to break the fever of insanity which has overtaken so, so many of them.

This is how I've been feeling, though I don't think "acceptance" is quite the right word. Close. Not sure what would be better.

But a significant percentage of people in this country—including, importantly, people in Congress, who could put a stop to all this tomorrow if they wanted to—embrace this "fever of insanity," as Craig put it, and the rest of us suffer for it while we watch the end of the Republic barrel along at ludicrous speed.

I'm certainly not one to advocate tuning out. We can't fight the authoritarian takeover if we're not aware of what's going down. But for personal mental health reasons, I have been allowing life outside of politics to kind of pretend things are normal and just try to enjoy things that, so far, have not collapsed into nightmare fuel.

I've been watching some good TV—"Upload," "Platonic," ST:SNW—reading Enterprise fanfiction, even getting in a little bicycling. And, naturally, baseball and softball.

I had an umpiring shift tonight, championship games, which tend to bring out the worst in people. But tonight was almost entirely positive, with only one player giving me grief for a strike call that he had no business being mouthy about. Otherwise it was good spirits all around and general fun, plus some ego boosts for me when, upon my arrival, several players from the adjacent field objected that Laz was umping their games and not me (hey, Laz is a good dude, cut him a break); players in games I did officiate went out of their way to compliment my style and declare me "best ump we've ever had," which I will take given the state of my head lately.

The other night I attended the Mariner game with my friend Dave, and clearly I had a good time talking with him throughout the game because my scorebook has a number of scribbles in it where I had to cross things out and correct because I had lost track of who was batting or whathaveyou. Too busy conversing with Dave to have a clean scorebook. (Good game, too, went from what looked like a blowout in the making to a close one at the end, with the M's prevailing.) Sunday I have both another M's game and an ump shift to look forward to, a rare Sunday night shift of three games at Cap Hill. Hopefully those will also be engaging, fun, and leave me in a good mood.

'Cause the news sure isn't going to help me.

Tagged Politics, Umping, Seattle Mariners, Posted on August 9, 2025 at 12:02AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Laugh when you can while depression abounds

Hiya, netizens. It's been a few weeks. I've had a couple of folks check in with me to see if all was well, given my brain chemistry issues, so I figured a new post was in order.

The lack of posts hasn't entirely been black-hole related, but I have been fighting the gravity a bit. Not in a really dark, can't-get-out-of-bed sort of way, more in a mild ennui kind of way. Weary. Lethargic. Spurred on by the continual descent of the country into dictatorship and the corresponding frustration and anger with all the idiots who voted Republican despite having seen the sneak preview version of this play from 2017-2021.

Anyway. I won't turn this into a political rant today, at least not yet, because coherence when thinking about it is elusive. There's too much. Which atrocity to focus on? What can be said that hasn't been said already elsewhere? So I'll save that for later.

Instead, I'll just share something that amused me greatly when watching the baseball game from last Saturday between Your Seattle Mariners and the visiting Texas Rangers. There were two outs in the inning, M's at bat, Julio Rodríguez on 2nd base. Batter Josh Naylor taps a comebacker to the pitcher, who has a brain cramp and throws to third base trying to get the lead runner out even though he had an easy play at first which would have ended the inning. The throw gets past the third baseman because he wasn't expecting to be thrown to, Julio scores the tying run, Naylor safe at first, the inning continues.

This is something I had never seen in a big-league game but see all the frickin' time as a softball umpire. It has become kind of an inside joke just for me, one that I have stated out loud on occasion to the next batter in such a softball game, that one day, sometime before the heat death of the universe, I will be umpiring a game wherein the score is tight in a late inning and the defensive team takes the easy out at first to end an inning rather than attempt to get a lead runner instead. (To be fair, teams do take the easy out now and then, but never in a tense situation.) So when seven-year Major League veteran Merrill Kelly of the Texas Rangers did it I laughed very hard.

The M's still lost, though. Oh well.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, The Black Hole, Politics, Umping, Posted on August 5, 2025 at 8:58PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Civil disobedience (baseball edition)

I have new respect for Jorge Polanco.

The infielder/DH of this year's Seattle Mariners has had a Jeckyll-and-Hyde kind of season, with a scalding-hot .395/.434/.816 line in the first five weeks or so, then .173/.236/.240 over the next two months, then .333/.375/.733 in the last week. He's been a questionable presence in the lineup, to say the least.

But in today's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Jorge showed me something.

Not with the bat, though he did notch his 1,000th career hit today (congrats). But with his sleeve.

One of Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred's goals in life, apparently, is to put advertising on as much space as he can within the game of baseball. It's truly disgusting how much ad space has proliferated since he assumed the role of Commissioner from the previous guy to hold the title of Worst Commissioner Ever. Ads on the outfield walls are as old as outfield walls, ads on stadium deck facings are somehow not terribly obtrusive. But since Manfred they're everywhere, including on the field itself and the ballplayers' uniforms.

The Mariners were slow to adopt the sleeve ads—this is the first year we've been subject to them—but there they are, bright orange to make them difficult to ignore, on the sleeve facing the center-field camera when one is up to bat (right sleeve for left-hand batters, left sleeve for righty batters).

Today Jorge rolled up his sleeve, obscuring the ad from view.

And why not? I don't know for sure that Polanco was defying the practice for philosophical or political reasons, or indeed making a statement of any kind, but I assume he was. He likely doesn't have anything against the sponsor company, which I will not name because, among other reasons, they aren't paying me anything.

Maybe Polanco figured they weren't paying him anything either, so why show the logo? Except they are paying him something indirectly, sort of, as his employer pays him out of revenue they collect from whatever sources, including sleeve ads. Which is perhaps why he rolled the sleeve down later in the game. Someone probably told him he was going to get in trouble with the team or the Commissioner or something.

What the Mariners get from the sponsor company for this defacement isn't widely known, but it's likely similar to the fee [other sponsor] paid for the naming rights to the ballpark, which is less than the typical salary of a middle reliever. (Most are undisclosed, but the top payment for a team is evidently the $25 million paid annually to the Yankees by their sleeve sponsor. The Cincinnati Reds and Miami Marlins each get $5 million a year for theirs. The average is reportedly around $8 million.) It's peanuts in the grand scheme of things for a Major League club's revenue, making the whole endeavor seem even pettier. Not even counting ad sponsorships, merchandise sales, or any other revenue, the Mariners—a middle-tier club in this regard—reportedly took in $70 million last year in ticket sales + TV and broadcast fees – player payroll. (What do you want to bet Manfred and the team owners start crying poor despite this when it's time to negotiate with the players' union again next year.)

I don't know what Polanco's thinking was either way, on rolling up the sleeve or rolling it down again later, but I was both amused and supportive when I saw the blocking of the ad.

Good on you, Jorge Polanco. Stick it to the Man(fred).

Tagged Baseball, Rob Manfred, Seattle Mariners, Posted on July 6, 2025 at 9:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Signal to noise ratio

This post's headline could easily apply to other things going on in the world, some of which I've been meaning to write about but haven't yet, but right now I'm just on about a smaller-scale annoyance than the unfolding destruction of the United States.

This is about the slow destruction of our eardrums.

I've been to a couple of Mariner games this past week, and for whatever reason, I was even more irritated by the inexcusably high volume used by the stadium sound system.

I wish this was something unique to the Mariners and the ballpark by Elliott Bay, but it isn't; pretty much any large-scale PA system is like this, and I don't remember it being this way back in the Kingdome days. Maybe I'm wrong and it was just as bad, but I don't think so; almost nothing about the Kingdome was superior to the current facility, but the one thing I can think of was is the ability to hold a conversation with your seatmates. You just can't do it in the current place without shouting unless you're seated in the first few rows near the field. Even out in the bleachers the speakers drown out normal conversation.

Between innings is the natural point in the game to focus on your conversations, but that's also the point when the PA blasts music, goofy scoreboard antics, and so on. Which would be fine—if it was at a volume that didn't feel like an assault. It's so loud that it even drowns out the PA announcer him/herself—without fail, any announcement made at the beginning of a half-inning cannot be understood because it is made while music is still blasting. During the action, there will sometimes be sound effects, implorations from Pavlov's Scoreboard to "get loud," or other gimcrackery that is at the same level of attack that between-inning music is.

Makes me crazy.

It's always been like this for things like rock concerts, at least if we confine "always" to the last four or five decades (no way for me to know about earlier, but I suspect you could go back further), and that may be the reason everything is too fucking loud now.

The generation of kids in the ’70s and ’80s that not only went to lots of concerts and music clubs wherein the standard operating procedure was to deafen the audience, that pioneered headphones and used them to drown out arguments their parents were having or ambient noise on the bus, that made big hits out of album tracks with titles like "Come on Feel the Noize" and "Bring the Noise" and "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" that are designed to be overwhelmingly loud are today running the facilities that use these sound systems. And those habits as kids means they have hearing loss as adults.

That's my working theory, anyway, that we have to endure these ridiculously loud sound systems in arenas, stadiums, anywhere really, because they're run by people who don't understand how terrible it is because they themselves have already significantly damaged their hearing. Not being able to converse with the person sitting next to them because the sound system is drowning them out is just life to them.

So now we're all subjected to the assaults, we're all at risk for hearing damage, because of what came before in our society. Which, not for the first time, makes me wonder:

Who originally thought, in their infinite wisdom, that when setting up a venue for an event to be mainly enjoyed as an auditory experience, such as a concert in a club or arena, that best practice would be to make it so loud that the audience would be expected to bring and use earplugs? That's the way it is, and why I have never enjoyed such shows, regardless of the band. My first such concert was the band Yes, at the Tucson Community Center Arena (admittedly not a good accoustical venue), which I came away from absolutely befuddled because the whole setup made it impossible to enjoy the band's performance. I saw the Jayhawks in a club once; couldn't wait to get out of the place. Even when I went to see/hear one of my favorite bands, Fountains of Wayne (RIP Adam Schlessinger), I absolutely hated it, both with and without earplugs, because though the assault might be lessened with the earplugs, so is the ability to discern the music. Makes. Zero. Sense.

I've had tinnitus for as long as I can remember, I don't know if there was some event that caused it or not. But I do know it feels worse when I come out of a baseball game, which is a damn shame because I love going to baseball games. And apparently society is going to continue like this in perpetuity since the half-deaf folks are running the systems which will in turn encourage more people to go half-deaf and so on and so on.

Yay.

Rant over. Go M's.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Society, Health, Posted on May 1, 2025 at 8:45PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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野球を見ます

As mentioned the other day, I've been under the weather for a while. Today was the first day in over a week that I've felt relatively normal, that after losing most of yesterday to sleep. I mean, I know I'm wont to stay up late and sleep late, but going to bed at 1:00am and sleeping until 5:00pm is a bit much even for me. I guess I needed it, though "sleep-deprived" is not something I'd ever claim to be these days. It's likely that I set my fight against this whatever virus back a ways by trying to work three games Monday night.

Anyway, the upshot of that for these purposes is that I've spent even more time than usual watching TV. Handmaid's Tale is back, Black Mirror did a follow-up to their great USS Callister episode, and I'm going to do a whole post on Daredevil: Born Again at some point. But mostly it's been more Japanese shows and, of course, baseball. (Hence the title above.)

Before getting to my early-season take on Your Seattle Mariners, a few random observations from around MLB:

• Jon Miller is the best. When you're feeling listless and doped up on NyQuil and just want to escape into a ballfield, I recommend tuning into a San Francisco Giants game. Giants play-by-play man Miller makes even the dullest game interesting and enjoyable. I had the Giants-Yankees game on the other day when it was pouring rain at Yankee Stadium and the Giants were winning handily, but Miller gave us drama by creating tension around the rain and whether the game would get enough innings to be official before the umpires stopped play. Doesn't really matter what the circumstance, Jon Miller is the best in the business in the post-Vin Scully broadcaster world.
• When watching games I like to sample the various teams' broadcasters, but now that many of the teams that used to be on the now-defunct Diamond Sports Group cable stations are on the now-rebranded FanDuel networks, it isn't worth it. I'd like to check out the Cincinnati Reds' announcers, but when the on-screen graphics are inundating us with gambling odds and prompts to throw away your money on bets I'll take any other option, even if it's Joe Buck and drunk Harry Caray.
• How have the Dodgers lost six games? They're on a pace to end the year with a record of 113-49, a whole three wins shy of the big-league record for victories in a season. I mean, I thought they were supposed to be good. (That was sarcasm, for those who missed it.)
• How have the White Sox won four games? Yeah, sure, they're still on a pace to lose more games than they did in their record-breaking 2024 campaign, but come on, the Rockies are outdoing you guys for futility! Where's that Chicago pride? (Only some sarcasm there.)
• Those same Colorado Rockies have a run differential of -51, and they've only played six games so far at altitude. The White Sox are really going to have to work hard to repeat as worst of the worst.

OK, the M's. At this moment, the Mariners are 10-9 after taking two of three in Cincinnati (and doing it in very entertaining fashion, at that). They may have started out in the first week looking like the 2023-early 2024 version of the Mariners, but maybe we can chalk that up to rust in the opening week. March is too early to start the season anyway, right?

It's still super early and no definitive conclusions can be reached yet, but new manager Dan Wilson has changed the character of this team and I am here for it, y'all. This bunch still clouts homers, yes, but the home runs are coming incidentally—I'm not seeing anyone step into the box looking to hit one out, I'm not seeing the Joaquin Andujar school of hitting ("swing hard in case you hit it") from them anymore. I see guys going with the pitch, using the opposite field, taking their walks, making productive outs. It's so refreshing after years and years of Scott Servais-led lineups going for optimal "launch angles" and crap like that.

I'm also seeing small ball when it makes sense. The M's have more sacrifice bunts three weeks into the season than I'd bet they had in an entire Scott Servais year (pause while I check that on baseball-reference ... almost: in 2023 the M's had four successful sac bunts, the same number they have so far in 2025). And my favorite thing, Dan Wilson has a running game.

The Seattle Mariners are second only to the Chicago Cubs in stolen bases thus far this year, and that's because the Cubs have played three more games. By steals per game, the M's lead the big leagues! This time last year, only two Mariners, Dylan Moore and Julio Rodríguez, had any stolen bases. This year almost everyone has one, even the catchers have four between them. The M's are on pace to steal 264 bags as a team for the year. They're a long way from being my 1985 Cardinals (that team had 314, with three guys combining for 200 bags all by themselves), but by modern standards this is awesome.

The ’25 Mariners are fun, even when they lose, because they're never out of it. The only game they've played so far that was a snoozer happens to be the only one I've been to in person, game two of the season, which they dropped 7-0. Otherwise, it's been exciting. The starting pitchers continue to be terrific, Luis M. Castillo's bad inning the other day notwithstanding, and Dan's making things happen at bat. It's only the bullpen that seems shaky: The middle relievers have been pretty sad, save for Principal Snider and maybe Gabe Speier. We've already had increasing traffic on the Tacoma Shuttle and there figures to be a lot more as more relievers get tried out. That worries me more than the low batting averages do; the averages will tick up, particularly for Julio, Luke Raley, and Randy Arozarena. Arozarena especially looks like a new man in the early season, that .212 average is not telling the story.

It's a good year for the M's to be fun. We need something to balance out the nightmare of the rest of the news.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on April 17, 2025 at 11:26PM   |   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 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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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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