Things I'm Thinking About Today
Written by Bill   
Monday, 01 February 2010 13:11

Five of them:

  • There's a somewhat interesting discussion of my 1985 AL MVP piece over on Baseball Think Factory. (Always very grateful to Repoz for the pub.) Others there, like Lar did in the comments here, brought up Wade Boggs, and he certainly belongs in the discussion (more than Mattingly did), but I'd definitely still give it to Henderson.
  • Mike and I drove up to TwinsFest this weekend -- two days of it, Saturday and Sunday, and we were there for basically the full allotted time both days -- and it was awesome. I'll have some pictures, probably tomorrow. Unlike most bloggers who attend these things, I am (and am not at all ashamed to admit I am) an autograph collector -- mostly baseballs, I just like the way a clean baseball with a signature on the sweet spot looks, got a couple display cases on my wall...and it's fun having those few seconds to directly interact with the players -- and it was certainly a good weekend for that, but also just to wander around, see the sights, chat a bit with other fans. If your team has one of those, you should check it out.
  • I was a bit taken aback to get home and find out that the Mariners had signed Eric Byrnes. At first blush, it just doesn't seem like the Zduriencik way. But because he was DFA'ed by the Diamondbacks, they're on the hook for his crazy $11 million salary, and he becomes the Mariners' for just the league minimum. Byrnes is one of those fairly rare righties who has a huge platoon split; he's a career .284/.345/.511 hitter against lefties (though that's down, as is his career generally, over the last couple years), yielding an OPS almost 140 points higher than vs. righties. As Dave Cameron points out, this move gives the M's what could be a very good defensive and passable offensive platoon (between Byrnes and Ryan Longerhans) for a total cost of $900,000. What this proves, yet again, is that Jack Zduriencik is smarter than I am.
  • Speaking of the Mariners and the amazing Jack Z., I'm a little concerned. Every move he's made has been somewhere between "very good" and "brilliant." There are really no two ways about it. Yet you've already got some bloggers (I won't link because they're otherwise excellent and I think they have just a bit of GM envy) who are questioning whether he's really all he's cracked up to be, or if it's an "emperor's new clothes" type of situation. What I'm concerned about is this: the Mariners won 85 games last year, but were very lucky to do so; their pythagorean record, based on runs scored and allowed, was 75-87 (which still would've been a 14-W improvement over 2008). It's possible, then, that they could be a vastly improved team (in fact, it's almost hard to imagine that they won't be) and still struggle to even match their 85 wins from 2009. Jack Z will have succeeded, but luck will have made him look like a failure. If that happens, what kind of backlash will we see among the fans and blogosphere?
  • It's obvious that any team that signs Orlando Cabrera to play shortstop doesn't have a front office with a metrics department. But do the Reds just not have scouts, either? Any engaged observer who watched him with the Twins last year would be able to tell you that his going from a +14 UZR in 2008 to a -15.3 in 2009 wasn't a fluke or a flaw in the stat; he just got old fast. He now plays shortstop like Adam Dunn plays first base. I don't often give fantasy advice (nor am I remotely qualified to do so), but if you're holding on to any Reds pitchers right now -- especially Bronson Arroyo, whose moderate success the last two years has depended on getting a lot of ground balls -- a trade inquiry might be in order.


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