Monday, March 01, 2004
The Ibanez Landscape
Surprise! I am the only M's blogger remotely optimistic about the chances of a Raul Ibanez being a good signing for the M's.
Bill Bavasi's defense of the Ibanez signing at Baseball Prospectus has brought out the Bavasi-bashers in droves. The optimism of Spring lived for approximately eight days. Apparently, the Mariner faithful can't bite their pens and allow us to enjoy a second week of Spring Training optimism. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, and never fear, I will remain steadfastly optimistic about the Mariners winning the World Series in 2004. Its our year, and don't let the press or the blogs convince you otherwise. If nothing else its fun to see how the "other half" lives, so lets review the latest anti-Mariner-front-office entries...
We've already covered the Wheelhouse cries of Bavasistiltskin and my response.
DMZ at USS Mariner helped phrase the BP questions (setting him up nicely, I might add) for Bavasi, and says that the responses are like "watching a train wreck. If I was an M's fan, I'd subscribe to this and read it periodically instead of renting horror movies." Interestingly, I think Bavasi was trying to throw a bone to the BP guys, but did not realize he was just setting himself up for ridicule from the statarazzi.
I will say that the M's front office really needs a good PR guy to prep Bavasi and Lincoln before allowing them to speak in public. Interviews with BP require you to praise Moneyball, and regurgitate stats if you want to be admired by their premium subscribers. And continually referring to Cameon's strikeout problem is in poor taste. Lincoln & Bavasi should just let the results speak for themselves, because, as I know, you can't win over the statarazzi unless you've mathematically modeled baseball and actuarily dissected the players until they are reduced to a set of numbers, rather than a guy breaking down and reworking his swing (Go Big Ben!), or trying out a new pitch (Rock On, Jamie - you sweet ol' statistical outlier, you) - those things have no effect, c'mon, only your age and past results matter... Sorry, where was I?
Fire Bavasi is not nearly as upset as I had hoped, summing his reaction to the Q&A with "Not really the kind of stuff I'd like to hear from someone who should theoretically be one of the 30 smartest baseball men in the world, but nothing he said took me by surprise, either. "
John at Sodo Oh No actually thinks that the Baseball Prospectus boys come out sounding a little bitter in their latest "Triple Play" bit on the Mariners, and fears he may be "channelling the Mariner Optimist." Don't worry John, by season's end, everyone will be channelling the Optimist. Uh oh, that sounds a little dirty.
Peter White's perfectly titled Beating a Dead Horse Unconscious has him crying "God, I’m embarrassed" to be a Mariner fan because of the Raul Ibanez signing.
Even the new blog on the sphere, Edgar Is God, has a pessimistic Ibanez take.
Bill Bavasi's defense of the Ibanez signing at Baseball Prospectus has brought out the Bavasi-bashers in droves. The optimism of Spring lived for approximately eight days. Apparently, the Mariner faithful can't bite their pens and allow us to enjoy a second week of Spring Training optimism. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, and never fear, I will remain steadfastly optimistic about the Mariners winning the World Series in 2004. Its our year, and don't let the press or the blogs convince you otherwise. If nothing else its fun to see how the "other half" lives, so lets review the latest anti-Mariner-front-office entries...
We've already covered the Wheelhouse cries of Bavasistiltskin and my response.
DMZ at USS Mariner helped phrase the BP questions (setting him up nicely, I might add) for Bavasi, and says that the responses are like "watching a train wreck. If I was an M's fan, I'd subscribe to this and read it periodically instead of renting horror movies." Interestingly, I think Bavasi was trying to throw a bone to the BP guys, but did not realize he was just setting himself up for ridicule from the statarazzi.
I will say that the M's front office really needs a good PR guy to prep Bavasi and Lincoln before allowing them to speak in public. Interviews with BP require you to praise Moneyball, and regurgitate stats if you want to be admired by their premium subscribers. And continually referring to Cameon's strikeout problem is in poor taste. Lincoln & Bavasi should just let the results speak for themselves, because, as I know, you can't win over the statarazzi unless you've mathematically modeled baseball and actuarily dissected the players until they are reduced to a set of numbers, rather than a guy breaking down and reworking his swing (Go Big Ben!), or trying out a new pitch (Rock On, Jamie - you sweet ol' statistical outlier, you) - those things have no effect, c'mon, only your age and past results matter... Sorry, where was I?
Fire Bavasi is not nearly as upset as I had hoped, summing his reaction to the Q&A with "Not really the kind of stuff I'd like to hear from someone who should theoretically be one of the 30 smartest baseball men in the world, but nothing he said took me by surprise, either. "
John at Sodo Oh No actually thinks that the Baseball Prospectus boys come out sounding a little bitter in their latest "Triple Play" bit on the Mariners, and fears he may be "channelling the Mariner Optimist." Don't worry John, by season's end, everyone will be channelling the Optimist. Uh oh, that sounds a little dirty.
Peter White's perfectly titled Beating a Dead Horse Unconscious has him crying "God, I’m embarrassed" to be a Mariner fan because of the Raul Ibanez signing.
Even the new blog on the sphere, Edgar Is God, has a pessimistic Ibanez take.
Expecting Ibanez to have a breakout season that somehow prolongs through his mid-thirties like he's some Superhero that defies human logic, speaks volumes for the stupidity that is Mariners management. So is expecting Winn to somehow magically transform into a defensive player of Erstad's caliber. The fact that this is what its going to take to justify Ibanez’ contract, seriously scares me.Amazingly, my favorite pessimists at Sports and Bremertonians have not chimed in on the Bavasi Q&A which tells me that they are not premium subscribers. They instead are set off by the Larry Stone article that fans the flames of offseason angst by doing an article on how Michael Tejada really wanted to be in Seattle. There was not one bit of new news in this article, but Larry has sensed where the tides of the Mariner fanbase are heading, and he's riding the wave of pessimisim. Well, of course Tejada would rather be with a team that's gonna win the World Series instead of being with the Orioles who will be lucky to finish 4th in the AL East. But in the end, Miguel wanted the bigger paycheck and the longer term sentence to Purgatory, ahem, I mean deal, and the M's are not going there. They don't need to.
