2K24: Seattle Mariners

[Bodhizefa]

I think a lot of that depends on how much you think 2013 was a fluke for Butler. And, he's 3 yrs younger than Kendrys, too. I tend to think Butler is quite a bit more valuable of an offensive player.

He's probably a better offensive player, but he's also right-handed, which, while not being quite the kiss of death it used to be in Safeco, is still a tougher side to hit from in Seattle's ballpark. Put both guys in Safeco, and they may be equal just because of the handed difference.

[Bodhizefa]

Okay, eldiablo, now that Cano is official, here's a better plan (I've been reinvigorated):

Sign Corey Hart to play OF/1B
Sign Carlos Beltran to play OF/DH
Sign Bartolo Colon as a third starter
Trade Nick Franklin and a low level arm for Billy Butler
Sign a cheap closer at the end of the free agent season (maybe Benoit)

The M's would have to increase payroll above $100 million for the first time in a few years to make this happen, but I'm willing to wager they're about to do just that.

Lineup:
Brad Miller, SS
Carlos Beltran, RF
Robinson Cano, 2B
Billy Butler, DH
Kyle Seager, 3B
Corey Hart, 1B
Dustin Ackley, LF
Mike Zunino, C
Michael Saunders, CF

Rotation:
Felix Hernandez
Hisashi Iwakuma
Bartolo Colon
Taijuan Walker
James Paxton

Bullpen:
Joaquin Benoit
Danny Fahrquar

It's a team I could at least get excited to watch, that's for sure.

[chancellor]

Anything more than Walker is pretty stupid if you're the M's. Besides, I think Franklin will soon be on his way to KC for Billy Butler.

Agree on Franklin, but Montero might be addition by subtraction in that deal.

[Bodhizefa]

Agree on Franklin, but Montero might be addition by subtraction in that deal.

Something in me thinks the M's need to just stash Montero at Triple-A for the next 18 months and see what the hell he's got in him. If he ends up being able to hit, then that's good -- he can take over at DH in a couple years. If not, then whatever. I'm not willing to give up on him as a random throw-in for a trade and then have him turn out to be good. We have other guys who we could toss into a trade as a sweetener, but not Montero. I'm keeping him locked up in the minors to see if he can ever be worth a damn.

[chancellor]

Something in me thinks the M's need to just stash Montero at Triple-A for the next 18 months and see what the hell he's got in him. If he ends up being able to hit, then that's good -- he can take over at DH in a couple years. If not, then whatever. I'm not willing to give up on him as a random throw-in for a trade and then have him turn out to be good. We have other guys who we could toss into a trade as a sweetener, but not Montero. I'm keeping him locked up in the minors to see if he can ever be worth a damn.

I'm admittedly nowhere near as optimistic as you concerning Montero. If I were in Jack Z's shoes and I were willing to give up Walker to get Price, I sure as heck wouldn't let Montero stand in the way of completing the deal. As DQ likes to say, your mileage may vary.

[Hornsby]

Holy Crap...this is as good an investigative piece as I've seen in a long time, and a SCATHING indictment of how piss poor the M's have been run...poor Bod.

Eric Wedge sat simmering in a Safeco Field conference room as his bosses laid into him.

It was 14 months ago, two days after the 2012 season, and Mariners president Chuck Armstrong unleashed what Wedge calls “a ferocious, venom-filled tirade” about the team, coaches and players. Armstrong told him the club “sickened” him and was “disgusting” and “disturbing,” while Mariners CEO Howard Lincoln agreed and added choice barbs of his own.

Wedge said general manager Jack Zduriencik had assured him earlier that the duo was pleased with the 75-87 team, winners of eight more games than in 2011 and 14 more than in 2010.

Now, he felt blindsided and let down by Zduriencik. He waited until Lincoln was done, then, unable to hold back, let him and Armstrong know how he felt.

“It got real heated,” Wedge said. “I started fighting back with Chuck and Howard and it got loud.”

Wedge chided them for their dugout meddling, poor leadership and lack of faith in struggling young players. He argued the Mariners had revamped their foundation and won more despite a roster full of rookies, millions in payroll cuts and an upper management that never fully bought into its own rebuilding plan.

He says he told them: “All I’ve done is exactly what I said I was going to do and all you’ve done is the exact opposite.”

Things got so heated, Lincoln walked out.

“I think,” Wedge said, “that was the beginning of the end.”

Just more than a year later, the Mariners have lost another 91 games and hired Lloyd McClendon as Zduriencik’s third manager, the team’s seventh since 2007. They are trying — rather desperately, some have suggested — to counter a wave of negative public perception after years of losing, turnover, turmoil and reluctance to raise their payroll beyond the $100 million mark of previous seasons.

The team now has reportedly opened its pocketbook for a 10-year, $240 million deal with free-agent second baseman Robinson Cano and heads to the annual baseball winter meetings in Orlando this week hoping for additional deals to make them relevant again.

But for Wedge and others no longer with the team, the dramatic financial splash comes too late. It also doesn’t change problems at the very top of the organization — problems they say got the team to this point in the first place.

Wedge left at season’s end, fleeing what he describes as “total dysfunction and a lack of leadership.”

The sentiment is echoed by current and past Mariners baseball operations employees beyond Wedge, who has remained silent since leaving and only reluctantly agreed to talk. More than two dozen people who spoke to The Times say any manager — and the players under him — will fall short of success without a halt to ongoing interference from Lincoln and whomever succeeds Armstrong, who will retire Jan. 31.

The sources also raised serious doubts about the GM tasked with reversing years of futility in one offseason, saying Zduriencik has kept his job only because Lincoln and Armstrong won’t admit another critical hiring mistake. The sources question Zduriencik’s credentials to properly build a roster, saying he sold Lincoln and Armstrong on hiring him five years ago with a job application package prepared not by him, but by recently dismissed Mariners special assistant Tony Blengino.

Lincoln, Armstrong and Zduriencik were invited to respond to these accusations. Armstrong declined. Lincoln and Zduriencik issued general responses.

“Eric has mischaracterized much of what occurred over the past three baseball seasons,” Lincoln said of Wedge. “I am not going to try to recite private conversations from the past.”

Zduriencik declined to address specifics raised by Wedge and former team officials.

“I am aware of some of the comments of former members of our baseball operations group, and I find them unjust, misleading and one-sided,” Zduriencik said. “I don’t believe the airing of ‘dirty laundry’ should take place in the public arena, so I am not going to talk about internal meetings, daily conversations and personnel decisions.”

One of those speaking out is Blengino, the former No. 2 in Zduriencik’s front office. Blengino, who was working for the Milwaukee Brewers with Zduriencik at the time, said he authored virtually the entire job application package Zduriencik gave the Mariners in 2008, depicting a dual-threat candidate melding traditional scouting with advanced statistical analysis.

Blengino said he prepared the package because he was versed in the hot trend of using advanced stats for team decisions.

“Jack portrayed himself as a scouting/stats hybrid because that’s what he needed to get the job,” Blengino said. “But Jack never has understood one iota about statistical analysis. To this day, he evaluates hitters by homers, RBI and batting average and pitchers by wins and ERA. Statistical analysis was foreign to him. But he knew he needed it to get in the door.”

The Seattle Times obtained a copy of the package, which talks of rebuilding with minimal pain through shrewd drafts, undervalued free agents and a “vast pipeline of young, homegrown star-caliber talent.” Advanced stats charts ranked every major-leaguer and top minor-leaguers, while computer spreadsheets depicted each team’s positional depth and payroll commitments.

Zduriencik declined to speak about his stats knowledge or Blengino’s role in the package.

It’s hardly unusual in the corporate world for trusted assistants to design job applications. But after initial success, Zduriencik had a slew of failed player moves — coinciding with his eventual decision to push Blengino out.

“Jack tried to destroy me,” Blengino said.

http://seattletimes.com/html/mariners/2022420240_mariners08xml.html

[Bodhizefa]

Holy Crap...this is as good an investigative piece as I've seen in a long time, and a SCATHING indictment of how piss poor the M's have been run...poor Bod.



http://seattletimes.com/html/mariner...ners08xml.html

A good buddy of mine texted this to me last night as my wife and I were throwing a Christmas party. I had to take an extra glass of the spiked eggnog after catching a glimpse.

The Blengino part about Zduriencik not knowing a thing about statistics is damning, too. This should make for some fodder in what I thought was going to be a boring Winter Meetings. My God, I just want the whole front office burned to the ground.

I hope like hell that Zduriencik is fired within the next year. Dear God, I hope.

[Bodhizefa]

I really really hate being a Mariners fan. My plan for the off-season? Fire Jack Zduriencik and Howard Lincoln. Screw those guys. Screw Zduriencik for posing like he understood statistics. He's ruined the franchise just as much as Bavasi did, and at least Bavasi was a decent guy.

I can't believe I'd ever like Bavasi more than another Seattle GM, but Zduriencik has dropped below him at this point in my mind. What an asshat.

[Moonlight J]

I'm just stunned people went on the record for that. I can't recall the last time I saw people that were trying to get back into a FO go on record to blast a previous employer like that.

[Bodhizefa]

I'm just stunned people went on the record for that. I can't recall the last time I saw people that were trying to get back into a FO go on record to blast a previous employer like that.

Look at what Zduriencik's done in the last few years, though. He's taken all his underlings and scapegoated them to save his own neck. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. And it turns out that his underlings were also apparently much much smarter than him, too, making it all the worse. At some point, if you're that horrible to people, those people start wanting to open up about it.

Kudos to Geoff Baker, though. He wasn't a very good analyst, but he's an excellent investigative reporter. The Seattle Times made a sage maneuver by pushing him into a different role so he could utilize his strengths. This story is balls to the wall incredible.

[Hornsby]

I'm just stunned people went on the record for that. I can't recall the last time I saw people that were trying to get back into a FO go on record to blast a previous employer like that.

Yeah, to a man last night on Twitter, the "pros" said the same thing...it's easy to get people to talk as long as they're anonymous, but going on the record like this is pretty well unprecedented. Good thing for the M's they got Cano signed before this thing came out...

[Bodhizefa]

Yeah, to a man last night on Twitter, the "pros" said the same thing...it's easy to get people to talk as long as they're anonymous, but going on the record like this is pretty well unprecedented. Good thing for the M's they got Cano signed before this thing came out...

Again, you have to give all the credit in the world to Geoff Baker for his skills to get all those parties to talk to him on the record like that. It's an astounding bit of reporting, that's for sure.

[Moonlight J]

Yeah, to a man last night on Twitter, the "pros" said the same thing...it's easy to get people to talk as long as they're anonymous, but going on the record like this is pretty well unprecedented. Good thing for the M's they got Cano signed before this thing came out...

I've been told the Mariners knew this story was coming out as much as a week ago.

[Erik]

Cano has 240 million reasons not to care.

[Bodhizefa]

I've been told the Mariners knew this story was coming out as much as a week ago.

I think it was like ten days ago if I heard correctly. In any case, it will be verrrrry interesting to see how they spin this at the Winter Meetings since they've had a bit of time to prepare. There's no way Zduriencik gets through the meetings unscathed by the media, but will he even be able to get anything done there now?