The Mariners, as you well know, recently dealt young fireballer Brandon Morrow to the Blue Jays for a reliever and Wladimir Balentien lookalike. This move has been questioned by everyone from bloggers to the media to Jack Zduriencik’s own mother, and why not?  Z dealt one of the Mariners’ top pitching prospects to the Jays for, well, an underwhelming return.  Griffin didn’t understand the rationale behind it, Harrison didn’t like it, and I absolutely loathed it.  Initially.
For the last few days, I went back to my notes.  I could tell something was wrong with my premise – that a top [...]

The Mariners secured what has to be assumed as Rob Johnson insurance. They signed Josh Bard to a minor league contract and gave him an invitation to spring training.
Bard is not going to bring much if anything at all to the table offensively. At the very best he could present “match-up” problems.
Defensively, he doesn’t really look to be any improvement over Johnson.  Although, it’s hard to quantify what a catcher does. Matt Klaassen (aka devil_fingers) over at drive line mechanics wrote up a post on catching statistics and quantifying defensive abilities at the hardest position to do so. In the post Bard finished [...]

The Mariners signed Corey Patterson earlier this past month and there were not a lot of things made of it, aside from a complete blogosphere roll of the eyes.
Lets face it. Patterson’s career is on very thin ice if it’s not already over. Furthermore, him signing a minor league contract tells me he concedes to that fact.
Patterson, while he had some (not a lot) offensive abilities coming up through the Cubs system, was mainly coveted for his glove. He really has been very good at covering ground through out the outfield. He still shows that he can retain his defensive abilities.
In fact just a month ago R.J. Anderson put up [...]

I’ve been thinking about the first base situation. Of course there are a lot of different solutions that can be applied to solve our problem.
Prerequisites of what I would like to think we are looking for:
The ability to show some power – Someone that has shown a past tendency to hit an ISO of +.170. Power is a good thing. Having someone that intermediates pitchers because at any time he could hit a pitch out of the park is a great asset. It changes a pitchers approach to a line-up and that is something we just simply don’t have.
Maintains a consistent weighted on base [...]

I’m hoping for a life-sized Billy Butler to play first base, and maybe another solid starting pitcher.
What’s your baseball-related Christmas list look like?
Griffin’s note: Just wanted to pop in and say Merry Christmas and happy holiday’s to all of you, and thanks a ton for reading over the last ~8 months. All 3 of us really appreciate it as we try to keep this blog growing. Stay safe, and here’s to a bright 2010!

Everyone is always excited about the big news that sometimes little moves like this get missed. Today the Mariners signed David Pauley to a Minor League deal.
Nothing huge or ground breaking. Pauley has been a starting pitcher for the majority of his time in both the minors and majors. Which leads to the observation that it’s more spaghetti for the wall.
Here is a scouting report at soxprospects.com, baseball cube and a piece from the Baltimore Sun when he was acquired from Boston last off-season.
Interesting low key move, live arm, kind of move Jack Zduriencik liked to make last off-season. Shouldn’t amount to much, [...]

Let me first preface this with the following. I am a huge Brandon Morrow fan. I’m really sorry to see him go and I still think he has a ton of upside that one day hopefully he’ll have a chance to figure out. I hate to be a Morrow fan and have to post this the day (or two or maybe even three) after he has been traded.
I absolutely loved the spin that was published at Lookout Landing and written by Matthew Carruth. As I said I am a big Morrow supporter, but I understood what we have and completely expected this [...]

WORTH NOTING: All of this is assuming that the trade, as it currently is being reported, is completely accurate. If there’s a missing piece that we don’t know about yet, my opinion on it is sure to change.
Well, it was bound to happen. There was absolutely no chance that Jack Zduriencik was going to be able to continue making nothing but outstanding moves. There just wasn’t. He’s a great general manager, but nobody’s perfect. As for why this trade happened, I really don’t know. It could be that we’ve just been grossly overestimating Brandon Morrow’s trade value all this time, [...]

Word from Ken Rosenthal is that Brandon Morrow has been traded to the Blue Jays for RHP Brandon League and an unknown prospect. League is a good late innings guy, so he should be nice to have, but there’s absolutely no way to make any real judgments on this deal until we have an inkling as to who the prospect is.  More info as it becomes available.
Edit, 9:26 PM: The name being thrown around right now is JP Arencibia. He’s a 23 year old catcher, and he’s not all that special. If it is just him and League for Morrow, [...]

I’ll make this quick.

Carlos Silva was worth 1.4 WAR in his Mariners career.
Carlos Silva posted a 5.63 tRA, a 4.05 K/9, and 4.63 FIP in 2008.
Carlos Silva allowed opposing hitters to hit 22 percent line drives (of all fair batted balls) against him in his Mariners career.
Carlos Silva allowed 25 home runs in ~180 innings as a Mariner.
Carlos Silva was going to be released by the Mariners eventually anyway.

On the other hand….

Milton Bradley has a career .371 OBP (typo-catching credit to Ben).
Milton Bradley is projected (optimistically) to hit 18 homers and 25 doubles in 130+ games by the man himself, [...]