Seattle Mariners Fan

Posts Tagged ‘Baseball’

Today was an early morning, as I’m on a train bound from New York to Boston. It’s an early trip so I can arrive in time for an 11 a.m. ET panel discussion on sports beat writing that I’ll be giving with Pete Thamel of the New York Times and Scott Lauber of the Boston Herald at the Associated Press Sports Editors regional conference at the Boston Globe offices.

I’m sure we’ll cover plenty of topics on the challenges facing modern beat writers but one of the ones I’m finding increasingly difficult is relaying to fans exactly why teams behave the way they do in regards to certain player moves and strategy. Part of the reason is the subtlety involved in managing a ballclub, both from a field and front office level. We’ve gone over this before, but I think it bears repeating: there is a difference between running a baseball team that spends close to $100 million annually on player payroll versus running one in a Roto League.

While some will say that, of course, they understand there’s a difference, I’m not sure many realize that the arguments being pushed forward on myriad issues do tend to take the Roto angle versus the actual real life one.

In Seattle, it’s leading to confusion about what the team has done with players on multiple levels, largely because of faux debates and controversies surrounding a “Veterans versus Young Guys” dynamic. Now, I don’t think fans are totally to blame for this. The Mariners, after all, set themselves up for this phony controversy by proclaiming that it’s all about the young guys now as they continue to cut payroll and wait for the bigger contracts of some veterans to run out.

So, what you have now is a confusing situation where it really hasn’t been all about the young guys. At least, not yet. But the reality is, it will never be entirely about the young guys, which is why the average age of every baseball team tends to hover in the late-20s and not the early-to-mid 20s.

No team goes entirely young. Never has been that way and never will be.

When you’re charging big league ticket prices, you need to put a professional product out there and that would be tough to do with 25 different 22-24-year-olds all breaking in at the same time. Think about the growing pains associated with Michael Saunders over parts of two seasons prior to this one. About Jeff Clement. Think of the ups-and-downs of Felix Hernandez in 2006, 2007 and 2008, as dynamic a pitcher as he has become.

There is a learning curve and growth period associated with every young player and it will vary on an individual basis. And while they are growing, they will need to be spelled occasionally — or the majority of the time — by somebody who has already been there and done that.

This really is pretty elementary stuff when you think about it, and yet, it has often gone missing in some of the hysteria surrounding the Chone Figgins and Miguel Olivo “controversies” that have been allowed to frame much of the discussion surrounding the team’s moves. But that’s what happens when you frame everything as a “Veterans versus Young Guys” scenario.

Again, the subtleties of MLB baseball come into play. And thinking about them first will often eliminate much of the mystery involved in understanding why things keep happening as they have. I’ve been among the harshest critics of this franchise, the speed of its current rebuilding plan, its true financial motives and a bunch of other stuff.

But on a daily baseball level, I honestly don’t see that big a mystery as to why things have happened the way they have. Probably because I understand that in baseball, things are rarely black and white. There is often a whole lot of gray involved.

Take the false Olivo and Figgins controversies.

First off, they are two completely different animals. Figgins is on a deal twice as long as Olivo’s and for three times the annual money.

He was playing because teams can’t simply eat $18 million in remaining salary without trying to do all they can to salvage a contract. Just because the Giants, or some other club once did that, or folks toss around economic terms like “sunk cost” doesn’t change all of that. If the Mariners can salvage some trade value for Figgins and get a team to take them off the hook for $9 million in remaining money, then the full $18 million isn’t really “sunk” is it?

No, it isn’t.

Which is why the Mariners played Figgins for a month at the leadoff spot. They gave him time to demonstrate he could handle the role and certainly, when he started to work counts and hit the ball more squarely, they were encouraged. When he began striking out too much, they gave him time to see whether he could work out of it. Players go into slumps all the time. You don’t chuck them after a week or two. But Figgins continued to struggle and — very importantly — the Mariners had a guy in Dustin Ackley that they felt could take his place.

So, after a month — a reasonable chance — he was dropped as a full-timer. What happens now is largely a question mark, but he’s done as the leadoff guy. He may have started off well, but the situation changed and that was it.

No controversy there. It’s just how things played out. The team tried something, it worked for a bit and then it did not.

On to the more complicated Olivo situation.

Read more…

View full post on The Seattle Times: Mariners Blog

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