Sports Illustrated latest to join in Seattle lovefest

Sports Illustrated has an article up about GM Jack Zduriencik, Franklin Gutierrez and the Seattle Mariners leading the charge in exploiting baseball’s newest Moneyball inefficiency, defense.  It’s a nice read, though there probably isn’t much new info there if you regularly surf around the Seattle blogosphere.  It’s always kind of fun to see Seattle getting some publicity, though.

That said, Seattle is getting A LOT of publicity this offseason, to the point where the pressure is mounting a little bit.  There is a reason why Dave Cameron has been running around with the disclaimer that if Seattle falls on their face this year it doesn’t mean that Zduriencik’s team building philosophies have failed, or more importantly that putting a premium on defense doesn’t help make a winner.  For the sake of moving the game forward and avoiding a lot of annoying articles from dumb columnists and comments from dumb fans, pray that Seattle can find some success in 2010.

Yes, the team rebounded in a big way last year and made some high profile acquisitions this offseason, but we all should realize that this team is far from a sure-fire winner.

Russell Branyan to start for the Cleveland Indians

We weren’t sure just how much playing time the Muscle would get upon landing in Cleveland, but manager Manny Acta has already announced that he’ll be the primary starter at first base.  Glad to hear it.

Jack Wilson calls the shots

Jack Wilson will be calling out defensive alignments for the Seattle Mariners infield, according to Geoff Baker.  Baker notes that Adrian Beltre held these duties previously, and that it’s almost unheard of for a middle infielder to get the gig.  Is this another clue as to how serious Seattle is about moving Chone Figgins, a veteran of the game and an experienced third baseman, to second?

Wilson talks Fielding Bible and defensive metrics

Wilson recently received his Fielding Bible award, and discussed it and defensive stats with Baker in the above linked post.

“It’s actually a pretty big deal, I think, for players,” Wilson said. “Because it’s not something like a Gold Glove that’s voted on by managers and stuff. It’s more of an award that’s by the numbers. They’re trying to come up with a formula to where this is almost like a batting average. It’s, I guess, the truest defensive award you could get numbers-wise. So, to me, it’s a pretty big deal. Since it started about four or five years ago, I’ve always looked at that, took a lot of information from that, having the book, reading through the players and stuff like that.”

Wilson is an avid follower of more modern defensive metrics like Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) and the Plus/Minus system invented by Dewan.

“When it came out, being a defensive player, we can actually use this in salary negotiations and stuff because finally there is almost a set value for defense when there never was before.

“You couldn’t compare defensive players, but now you have the UZR and all these different defensive ratings where you actually could almost compare two players defensively. Which for a guy like me is pretty important because the biggest thing I bring to the table is defense.”

Ichiro to lead off, Figgins to hit second

Baker writes that manager Don Wakamatsu has announced that Ichiro will indeed lead off.  This was expected, though there was some debate around the interwebs about whether or not it should be that simple.  I haven’t followed the conversation given that I didn’t think it would matter in the end, but I think one of the arguments was centered around how the duo obtained their high OBPs.  Ichiro, of course, rarely walks but hits for a high average, while Figgins walks a ton.

Would you rather have the hits guy first and walks guy second, or the other way around?  I think one of the main arguments for Ichiro hitting second was that you can’t move a guy from first to third or second to home on a walk, but can on a single.  On the other hand, some might say that Ichiro is more likely to hit into a fielder’s choice if he were to hit second.

Either way, Seattle is going to have a productive top of the lineup.  I can’t say I’ll be complaining if Ichiro starts the game off with a single and Figgins follows with a walk.

Dr. Elliot’s reach extends to big leaguers

A while ago I wrote about Seattle’s plan to have the famed Dr. Marcus Elliot work with Mariner minor leaguers.  Baker concludes his very long post saying that Elliot will be working with the big league club as well, and that all of the free weights are being jettisoned from the facilities in favor of Elliot’s equipment.  Glad to hear it.

From White Sox camp, but this was awesome

From Buster Olney’s blog:

Andruw Jones showed up to the White Sox camp weighing about 220 pounds, or roughly 25 pounds lighter than last year, and is committed to proving the doubters wrong. It’s early, but so far, so good. In the clubhouse yesterday, Andruw declared to a couple of coaches: “I am the best center fielder you guys have in camp.”

To which Joey Cora replied, “You should be. Only pitchers and catchers have reported.”

*rimshot

Why couldn’t we have heard this last year?

From Shannon Drayer

When we were talking to Wak in his office after workouts today I noticed behind him sitting on his mini fridge was a black Ken Griffey Jr. glove. I asked if he took Junior’s glove away from him.

“No he left it out there, so in a sense now it is mine,” he answered matter of factly.

So does he have to come ask for it back?

“He’s not getting it back. The first day he asked me if he was going to play any outfield this year and I said you didn’t even bring a glove this spring. He said oh yeah, I brought two. Well give me one and give Tinsley one I told him. I got mine.”

Given the outfield situation this year and the toll playing in the outfield took on Junior Griffey’s knees last year, this isn’t surprising.  It would have been nice if Junior was confined to the bench last year, though.  Maybe Seattle could have eeked out a little more production if his knees didn’t take on that extra wear and tear.

It’s also nice to see Griffey can accept not being an outfielder to the point where the manager is cracking jokes about taking his gloves away.  Good stuff.

Lopez can’t run, so he’ll try to walk

Drayer also writes that one of Jose Lopez’s goals for 2010 is to walk more.  Specifically, he wants to earn at least 40-50 free passes.

I’ll believe it when I see it.  Going from one of the biggest hackers in the league to someone who walks at an average clip doesn’t seem likely over the course of one year, especially without a big increase in power or moving to the eighth spot in the National League, or something.

I’m concerned that trying to draw walks could throw him off his game a little bit.  We all saw what happened when John McLaren and company decided Lopez needed to see more pitches.  Lopez started taking the first pitch and once pitchers caught on he was down 0-1 an awful lot.

Hopefully it goes better this time, whether he has decided this is something that needs to happen on his own or got a nudge from Wak.  Assuming that Lopez won’t be in Seattle longer than his current contract, I might opt to let him swing away rather than trying to get him to do something he isn’t wired to do (if I was in charge, that is).  But if it works out and Lopez can miraculously boost his walk rate to something like 5-7% without finding himself in 0-2 counts all the time, then it can only help.

It’ll be something to monitor.

The human Ichiro

Drayer has a bunch of quotes from Ichiro.  As we all saw, the human Ichiro is so much more fun to watch and read about than the robotic Ichiro we knew for so long.