Okay, I suck… no preview this series. I should have put one together but my boss has been all up in my koolaid and it just didn’t happen. My apologies, but if you really want to know whats going on Lookout Landing is as always on the ball.
I wonder if i will get any spam feedback on this one?

http://ussmariner.com/2009/09/28/the-indistinguishable-wilsons/
Read it and be amazed.  The planets have aligned.
I take this to be a sign of the apocalypse.

There’s absolutely no way I would have made a claim like this, say, a month ago, but I’m starting to think it could happen. The current catching situation looks like this:
Kenji Johjima/Rob Johnson splitting time, with Adam Moore getting some big league experience and being groomed to be the catcher of the future.
Rob Johnson is bad – we know this. He has a .629 OPS, he has a ridiculous amount of trouble blocking anything in the dirt, and he is worse at holding on to the baseball than any other catcher I’ve ever seen. However, he is still quite young, [...]

So there are a couple of different forums I like to look through. I rarely comment but I enjoy some of the witty banter that goes on there between several of the users. It’s also where I like to get some ideas for my posts as well as it makes me do research on things that I normally wouldn’t even think about.
Recently on one of the forums I was going through, there was a comment about how much Jack Hannahan has no place on this team next year. I would rebuttal that with “and Bill Hall does???” … but I’m [...]

As a budding sabermetrician, I prefer to look to tRA, FIP, and swinging strike percentage as opposed to stats like wins, losses, and ERA when evaluating the effectiveness of a starting pitcher.  But the people voting for the Cy Young Award Winner are (sadly) not me.  These people are decidedly “old-school.”  Not to be judgmental, but these guys aren’t thinking about the fact that wins are arbitrary and awarded due in large part to the pitcher’s team’s offensive output that game.
But, unfortunately for Mariners fans, these systematic problems won’t matter this year.  The numbers just don’t compare.  I put Sabathia [...]

Hey guys – I just thought I should share that I’ll be taking a stab at a weekly column about sabermetrics over at Baseball Reflections, which is a general baseball blog run by a guy named Peter Schiller. This is definitely going to be an interesting, new experience for me, so if you’re interested I’d really appreciate it if some of you checked it out. I’ll have a piece over there every Monday, so just feel free to read/give me feedback any time.
You can follow me on Twitter here

Human beings are, regrettably, imperfect.  For this reason, they built machines in an attempt to achieve a higher degree of perfection.
Umpires are part of baseball tradition.  The image of the slightly overweight, friendly, grunting guy hunched behind the plate (no, I’m not talking about Jose Molina) is infused into the very idea of baseball.  The emphatic upward arm thrust for a called third strike.  The moment of anticipation we experience the split-second before the umpire calls a bang-bang play at first base.  And there’s a line drive base hit to center field! The runner rounding third, heading home!  Here’s the [...]

With the 2009 season winding down, and the long, cold off season approaching, as Mariners fans we are yet again forced to take solace in what the future brings. This was no ordinary dreary Mariners season, though, there were probably more bright spots in 2009 than there have been in the last 5 years combined.  The Mariners aren’t going to the playoffs this year, but we have nothing to be sad about – there are countless positives to take away from this season, and here are a few of them.
5. Felix is the ace we hoped he would be.
We’ve been [...]

<Insert here some clever quip about Toronto>
Blah, blah, blah blah,
Seriously as hard as I try I can’t get myself up for the series. Although I’m looking forward to the final home stand, other than it being the end of a long season. Oakland and Texas are always fun teams to play regardless of the situation.
Being mathematically eliminated the other day just drove the final stake into the coffin.
Rosters

Pos
Mariners
WAR
wOBA

Pos
Blue Jays
WAR
wOBA

Catchers

Catchers

C
Rob Johnson
0.4
0.274

C
Rod Barajas
0.8
0.287

C
Kenji Johjima
0.7
0.293

C
Raul Chavez
0.3
0.284

C
Adam Moore
-0.1
0.099

C
Kyle Phillips
-0.1
0.195

Infielders

Infielders

2b
Jose Lopez
2.2
0.324

2b
Aaron Hill
3.7
0.353

3b
Jack Hannahan
0.8
0.304

3b
Edwin Encarnacion
0.9
0.317

SS
Jack Wilson
0.1
0.253

SS
John McDonald
0
0.261

Josh Wilson
0.4
0.269

1b
Kevin Millar
-0.8
0.289

ANY
Bill Hall
0
0.263

1b
Lyle Overbay
1.8
0.365

1b
Mike Carp
0.2
0.354

SS
Marco Scutaro
4.3
0.354

3b
Adrian Beltre
1.9
0.299

3b
Matt Tuiasosopo
0.1
0.296

Outfielders

Of
Jose Bautista
0.8
0.333

Outfielders

Of
Joe Inglett
0
0.317

of
Ichiro Suzuki
4.9
0.372

Of

Adam Lind

3
0.385

of
Franklin Gutierrez
5
0.33

Of
Travis Snider
-0.2
0.326

of
Michael Saunders
0
0.259

Of
Vernon Wells
-0.4
0.316

of
Ryan [...]

It’s fairly unclear as to what voters take into consideration when choosing winners of the gold glove award – the one stat that has consistently been used to determine a players fielding ability, has been fielding percentage. Fielding percentage basically takes the player’s total number of chances converted into outs (assists/put outs), then takes the total number of errors, and uses a simple equation to figure out what percentage of the time the particular player makes the plays.
Fielding percentage does a fine job of determining how well the player makes routine defensive plays, but it leaves much to be desired. [...]