June 16, 2008
Mariners fire Bavasi
This isn't strictly "politics" but local baseball fans of all political stripes, ideological persuasions and party affiliations can rejoice in the news that the four-year long nightmare suffered by the Mariners faithful has come to an end.
It has been announced that Bill Bavasi has been relieved of his general manager duties. Here's hoping he's on a rail being shipped back to California at this moment.
In a franchise with a three-decade history of losing this season has probably been the worst in terms of fan expectations and on-field performance. This team has been even worse than the Bill Plummer managed Mariners of 1992 that lost 98 games. At least no one expected Plummer to win a division title.
Those pre-season projections by baseball analysts predicting a playoff run after picking up starting pitchers Erik Bedard and Carlos Silva make for fun reading now.
With $117 in payroll one wouldn't think your offensive power-hitting positions in right field, designated hitter and first base would be, well, so offensive to ones sensibilities every time Richie Sexson, Jose Vidro and Triple-A platoon strikeout victim of the day steps up to the plate.
Maybe acting GM and team Vice President Lee Pelekoudas can find a way to shed some dead wood off the roster before the trading deadline.
Posted by DonWard at June 16, 2008
01:11 PM | Email This
1. My only question is what took so long?
2. Independence Day has come early this year. Now trade Sexson for a bag of balls and some sunflower seeds, and it'll be a good day.
3. I knew the day they brought him on that he wouldn't be anywhere near as good as Pat Gillick. I just wonder why they hadn't figured that out.
4. Bavasi deserved to be fired, we can all agree on that. But the true culprits are Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong. No positive change will occur until they are replaced, or at least until a new GM negotiates an agreement that prevents those two clowns from meddling.
5. We should have hired the right Bavasi- Bob. That guy knows how to draw in the fans.
6. You know it is a beautiful thing when Ivan and Michelle agree on a subject...
7. Yep, Don--throw in a good sunny day like today to go with it, and you may even see me and Ivan holding hands and skipping around Greenlake. "-)
8. No one who seriously considers baseball thought the Mariners were going to contend this year. They won 88 games last year, but were outscored by 30 runs, meaning they were really a 75-win team. PECOTA at Baseball Prospectus projected the Ms to win 77 games, and another prominent data analyst at BP projected them at 72 wins. The terrible thing about Bavasi is his refusal to understand the poor quality of the team he had. He thought (mistakenly, to anyone who understands baseball) that his team was missing one piece, so he sold great young prospects for an ace. He failed to realize that the team needed about six players to contend. For that, he should have been fire long ago.
9. Well, you still had to pretend to keep Ichi happy.
Still, no game plan tells it all. But, you can still say that you can't bring NL'ers to the AL and expect the same production.
Also, they did a rotten job of building a big stadium team with little stadium sluggers. My favorite team was the Dodgers with Maury Wills, Drysdale, Perranoski, Koufax, Osteen, Sutton, LeFebvre, Fairly, Baker, et al. That is what Don Nelson would call "small ball".
10.
This team needs to build from the ground up. Sell off all the mature assets, bring in the farm team...see what happens.
11. Put the players on straight commission; they get paid only when they win. Should be a quick fix.
12. He needed to go the moment they passed up hometown star Tim Lincecum in the 2006 draft.
13. Get Bonds...pay him the league minimum, and watch everyone's batting averages improve as pitchers have to pitch around him. We could even stick him at first base and use it as an excuse to bench Sexson.
Even if Bonds gets convincted in his trial and goes to jail after say only a month or two of play, chances are we'd have already gotten more offensive production from him than we have from Richie in the last two seasons.
14. That just saved me some coin as I was looking at starting a "Bavasi must go" blog spot.
15. Sorry, I have to defend Sexson a bit, only because I have never seen any player in my life that gets as many bad strike calls as he does. The poor guy has to swing at pitches three inches below his knees or five inches off the plate because invariably the umpire calls those pitches strikes on him early in the game. This has been happening for the last two-and-a-half years. Sweet Lou would have never let the umps get away with that and I think it's cost Sexson 50 pts off his average and a dozen homeruns each year.
16. Go Sonics! And take the Mariners with you!
Pro sports are so overrated.
17. Doug, you are a brave man my friend.
18. I've been there Don, there is always an 'oops' moment as an ump when you get a better with a strike zone 7" different at the knees than the guy before. What was a thigh high meat pitch to the previous batter now is just barely a strike. Watch Sexson closely, early in the games if he gets pitches called on him below the knees, he's going to have a rough game.
Even with his bad avg. he is very similar to most good hitters, batting over .350 on first pitches (the last couple years that is higher than when he was hitting well)- he just falls off dramatically when he takes strikes, and my belief is that it's because he's forced to swing at more pitches than he should have to because of basically 'bad luck'.
His BB ratios are well down as well. If he had the confidence that he wouldn't have to swing at bad pitches and could lay off them, he'd be back up to .260 - .270.
19. the cupboard is pretty bare in tacoma, so i don't want to think about what it would look like if we dumped all the dead weight (sexson, vidro et al) and brought up a bunch of triple-a guys. on the the other hand what we have now is p a i n f u l to watch. firing bavasi, moving ichiro and playing willie didn't work -- who's next on the chopping block?
20. Now the Mariners and Seahawks have both learned expensive lessons on signing aging superstars on the wrong side of 30 to monster contracts. At least Sexson had two decent years. But unfortunately, these last two years of the contract were a complete bust, and they were guaranteed money.
The Johjima signing this year was a head scratcher too. Maybe that came from the Nintendo people, but you have a stud prospect in Jeff Clement, and you sign an aging catcher who is not good with picthers to a 3 year deal?
I hope Morrow ends up being a great starter next year too, because I was another one who didn't understand why they didn't take Lincecum.
21. I listened to Bavasi last conference and it sounded like all conferences. I almost fell asleep.
Some excitement would be good for the fans and for the players. Give them a sense of purpose. Yes, I know, they are pros and don't need those type of things, but, yet, they do.
22. Well, on the bright side folks, there's nowhere to go but up!