We're Almost There
by Jeff Sullivan on May 18, 2010 11:43 PM PDT
in Seattle Mariners Game Recaps
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Perhaps game #40 will be the one that finally makes everything feel all right.
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I can't wait for you and Matthew to unleash the full-bore cynicism. This could be one hell of a year.
I can't resist clicking "Rec" when I see a post with four [of them] already.
I got to indifferent tonight.
And damn, does it feel good.
I felt it coming in the seventh...
And then when the game ended, sweet, sweet release.
I'm way ahead of schedule.
"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett Mariners Minors
I'm reccing you for use of "Tropic of Cairo."
Charter Member: Dave Sims Sweet Hat Club
by Two Rs and Two Ls on May 18, 2010 11:49 PM PDT reply actions
When you reach the point of indifference
I hope you still have the motivation to make those podcasts. Because those are keeping me interested in the team.
by niceguysfinishlast on May 18, 2010 11:50 PM PDT reply actions
Volcanos will always be interesting.
Hard work never killed nobody, but I won't take my chances.
All I want is for someone to wake up the old man for one last HR
and let me slide blissfully into my sweet and sugary indifference.
I think when people are being funny, they are actually being serious and when people are being serious, it's actually really funny.
I think he means Cairo, Illinois because that is a much more logical possibility that would more accurately fit the context of this chart
Determined, Jonesing Commentor
by Corco on May 19, 2010 12:13 AM PDT up reply actions 3 recs
My world is rage and bile
You can't be a catcher if you can't catch. Rob Johnson will henceforth be listed as a traffic cone on the roster.
Also, why did my indifference
have to come on my birthday? Why?
by Cantu Easley Winn on May 19, 2010 12:18 AM PDT up reply actions
How sad is it that my wonderful GF has paid for season tix (since 97 no less)
yet even free tickets and time with her is not enough to make me want to watch this train wreck!
Heh - saw that coming
No, she’s been into Baseball a lot longer than she’s been dating me! I just wish I had the personality to be as casual of a fan as her – would make this easier!
She's a casual fan who's been paying for season tickets for 13 years?
I need an explanation on this.
Get off the dime NWade. That's a long time to be dating a basebase fan.
by TrustBaseball on May 19, 2010 12:25 AM PDT up reply actions
Hey, I tried to sell her on a proposal during opening day this year
So much hope, for the M’s and for us… sigh Was that only 6-7 weeks ago?
I broke up with the team a few days ago.
I will continue to go to games (I’ve got tickets for about 20 more) and check the site, etc. Emotionally I am done.
I believe in this FO to create a winning team. It just isn’t this team, this year.
I think the best blog writing occurs between Optimistic, Hopeful and Mad
Although I don’t think I’ve experienced anything above Optimistic, Hopeful while I’ve been around LL.
by Edgar for Pres on May 19, 2010 12:31 AM PDT reply actions
In case anyone's wondering, the other tropic (lying between confidence and overconfidence)
is the Tropic of Ugueto.
by marc w on May 19, 2010 12:33 AM PDT reply actions 1 recs
When were you overconfident about having Jimerson on the roster?
Lou hated young players, and seemed to hate Ugueto in particular, but hey, the team was coming off 116 wins.
I don't remember this Ugueto fellow.
I seem to remember a Rule 5 Kid.
"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett Mariners Minors
God.
Miguel Cairo would be an improvement over a particular few players right now. At least he can play multiple positions. How sad is that?
by Cantu Easley Winn on May 19, 2010 12:37 AM PDT reply actions
Don't worry.
You’ll pass through the mad soon enough. It’s all in the graph.
It's surprisingly accurate.
I was getting mad more at the fact that people will take the exact wrong message from all of this. People are going to use this team as ‘proof’ that we should’ve gotten a ‘big bopper’ or an ‘RBI guy’ or ‘lefty sock’ or some other annoying cliche.
And now I don't care so much about that, and in fact WANT people to take that lesson from 2010.
I want to go back to being ignored by the national media.
Unfortunately though
Everytime we win a game, or maybe even just hit a homerun, that trendline will be jumping from optimistic, hopeful to indifferent back and worth because we’ll be losing several straight more often…
I'd like some suggestions on a new team to root for.
Nats?
Reds?
Padres?
I’m thinking an NL team, preferably an up and coming club.
You can't root for the Padres. They're our rivals.
Pittsburgh!
by harkening on May 19, 2010 1:02 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Rooting for a Pittsburgh team has been forbidden since Super Bowl XL
"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett Mariners Minors
by JY on May 19, 2010 1:20 AM PDT up reply actions 3 recs
I had the same thought tonight
#PadresFever ?
Mariners/D Broncos/BSU Broncos fan in Seattle
The first rule of Lookout Landing is...
by appleshampoo on May 19, 2010 1:43 AM PDT up reply actions
Well ever since 98 the Diamondbacks have been my "NL team"
But only cause I was born in Phoenix.
I’ve never believed that you get to “choose” what team you root for, it seems like cheating in a way. and rooting for an up-and-coming team is just a hair better than being a simple bandwagon fan.
in my opinion, San Diego (rivals!) and Pittsburgh (superbowl) are immediately on the “no way not ever” list. If I wasn’t already a semi-Dbacks fan, I’d probably choose the Nats. They’re a new team, but technically they’ve still got that Montreal history, with 1994 and all. Good underdogs. And Strasburg!
by Karma Police on May 19, 2010 1:49 AM PDT up reply actions
Apparently they do a poor (non-existent?) job
of acknowledging the ’spos; nevertheless, that whole winning + Strasburg thing is quite appealing.
by Omerta on May 19, 2010 2:43 AM PDT via mobile up reply actions
Given that I've been in LA almost a decade
I think I qualify for life long Dodgers fandom. Hell I was rooting for them before I moved here, thanks to Beltre.
[DELETED ZOMG NO POLITICS]
I wonder what the organization really thinks of this team?
They seem to approach this situation as if the season is already over. Dave Cameron is demanding wholesale changes tomorrow but is anyone expecting anything more than Griffey sitting on the bench for a little while?
I don't see WHAT they can actually change to make any dramatic improvement, with Bradley still on the RL.
by EnglishMariner on May 19, 2010 1:25 AM PDT up reply actions
They did say during the game today that they were going to talk to him when they get back.
"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett Mariners Minors
by JY on May 19, 2010 1:27 AM PDT up reply actions
To be fair no one predicted we would be this bad/unlucky, on paper the team looked fairly strong.
by EnglishMariner on May 19, 2010 1:51 AM PDT up reply actions
Except Ken Rosenthal
which makes me believe he had insider information about which teams the MLB decided to screw this year, and which ones they decided to instill false hope into. I can’t believe all these bad umpire calls are coincidence. We’re definitely victims of a league-wide conspiracy.
Apathy remains strangely out of reach
which is odd considering the only notion of joy I can attach to Mariners baseball was not buying season tickets.
by Omerta on May 19, 2010 2:45 AM PDT via mobile reply actions
Forget sports.
Forget sports. Forget any teams that I love ever accomplishing anything. Screw it. It’s pointless. From now on I only champion dead authors and blues musicians. The rest of you are on your own.
--Shrug
Field Gulls - The SBN Seattle Seahawks Blog
Tolstoyevsky!
War and Punishment was my favorite
De Gutibus non disputandum est
by Bearskin Rugburn on May 19, 2010 1:04 PM PDT up reply actions
Mississippi Fred MacDowell!!
De Gutibus non disputandum est
by Bearskin Rugburn on May 19, 2010 1:03 PM PDT up reply actions
Indifference.
I remember a story my dad told me about the early 90’s Seahawks. He had two tickets to a game and didn’t want to go so he kept trying to sell them to his co-workers but nobody wanted them. So he said screw it, I’ll give them away. He put them up on the bulletin board at work and just walked away. When he came back at the end of the day… there were two more tickets on the board.
I like baseball
so I will continue to go to games, because I like sitting in the sun, drinking beer, eating peanuts, and watching ridiculously overpaid men play a kid’s game. I also like the fact that at this point I’m as emotionally invested in the outcome as I am in the Guatemalan electoral process. It’s freeing to be able to go to a game and just enjoy it on a completely different level than “MY TEAM LOST THIS SUCKS”.
Yes, at this point, I’m becoming the dreaded Casual Fan for the season. I’m OK with this.
The worst part about this season
Is that our team has sucked but isn’t actually bad. Sure we can complain about being unlucky but this team should be at least a 75 win team even if you are pessimistic. 2004, 2005 and 2008 were legitimately bad teams. If we are going to lose so many games at least let me properly complain about it.
I want to believe this.
And I know that the M’s have faced their share of bad luck. But they are pushing me over the edge. Ken Griffey Jr, Rob Johnson, and Sean White aren’t bad luck – they are bad players. Stupid baserunning mistakes aren’t bad luck, they are bad decisions made by bad players. To a certain extent a team makes its own “luck” by not sucking. A well-managed, disciplined team with this 40-man roster would have 4+ more wins.
Yes, they are often a few key plays away from winning a good number of their games this year, but good teams win those games. They were better last year by more than just a margin of luck.
by Kenneth Arthur on May 19, 2010 9:45 AM PDT up reply actions
There are some shitty players here!
We’re pretty bad if you’re really down on guys like Lopez, Kotchman, Wilson, and Figgins.
by Jeff Sullivan on May 19, 2010 9:48 AM PDT up reply actions
Yeah we are currently bad
But I can’t complain too much about some of those guys because we all know they aren’t nearly as bad as they are playing right now.
by Edgar for Pres on May 19, 2010 9:53 AM PDT up reply actions
Or at least I still have a shread of hope that they will do better.
by Edgar for Pres on May 19, 2010 9:54 AM PDT up reply actions
Although that's kind of how I felt in 2008 too
by Edgar for Pres on May 19, 2010 9:55 AM PDT up reply actions
Bingo
I expect the positive regression to begin any day now, but I’m beaten down to the point at which I’d no longer be surprised if it didn’t happen. And if it doesn’t happen, we blow.
by Jeff Sullivan on May 19, 2010 9:57 AM PDT up reply actions
Exactly.
I looked at the 2008 roster and I know the 2010 is better but its a little tough to convince myself of that right now.
by Edgar for Pres on May 19, 2010 10:06 AM PDT up reply actions
We're wallowing in it! Our offense is currently regressing to the mean, and we're still losing. Wheeeee!
It’s not merely that our offense or bullpen has been unlucky, it’s that the sequencing of unlucky events has been, in itself, unlucky. For those of us south of the Tropic of Cairo, it’s actually sort of an interesting philosophical thing to think about.
It doesn’t hurt once you turn your hurt into an abstract concept and poke it with a stick a bit.
by marc w on May 19, 2010 10:06 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
I think we have been 1 part unlucky and 2 parts fucking bad
The 1 part unlucky should regress like normal and we shouldn’t be this bad but that is going to take players simply playing better. I have my doubts about this happening.
by Edgar for Pres on May 19, 2010 10:07 AM PDT up reply actions
I'm not convinced that all these players are really that much better than they are playing.
Casey Kotchman hit .085 in the 16 games prior to last night. Is he a sub-.100 hitter? No. But is he showing that he might hit .230 this year? Yes. That’s more likely than him hitting .300 the rest of the season.
How good has Jose Lopez ever been? Chone Figgins is on pace to draw more walks this year (108) than Lopez has drawn in the last 4 years combined (97) Lopez is having his worst year so far, but as Yuniesky showed it is possible to get worse when you hit your peak years. (Lopez was hitting .176 in the 18 games prior to the Oakland series) I’m just waiting for him to be traded so he can become Carlos Guillen.
Jack Wilson was doing about as good as he does, which isn’t good with the bat. And he drew 1 walk in 25 games, which makes our double play combination about the least prolific in drawing free passes ever. He has yet to show any offense in a Mariner uniform.
Figgins hit .156 in 24 games prior to the Oakland series. Let’s not forget that as good as Figgins can be, he has hit over .300 once, he has drawn all of those crazy amount of walks once, he has hit 30 doubles once, he’s on a new team, playing 2B regularly for the first time in his major league career. He’s a wild card, we can’t be certain what he will do.
We also know that this might be as good as Rob Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr, and Mike Sweeney will be all year.
Based on all of that we can conclude that, A.) over the last 17+ games when the M’s have absolutely sucked, they’ve been about as bad as they’re going to get. but also B.) The four mentioned players are either with the M’s for the first time or playing a new position for the first time – they aren’t quite as easy to judge as a Gutierrez or an Ichiro. The “how much better will they get” question is not so easy to answer.
by Kenneth Arthur on May 19, 2010 10:23 AM PDT up reply actions
While I don't disagree that these players are not playing very well right now
to base an analysis of a player’s performance solely on batting average is akin to basing an analysis of the current Dutch economy on the price of tulips. There’s far better ways to show that the M’s are not good right now.
I know that batting average isn't the end-all, be-all like it used to be but its not ERA.
And to say that it can’t even be mentioned (I’m just throwing some numbers out there) is just too far. If a player gets 4 hits in 45 at bats, that means something. BABIP doesn’t have that much control over a players batting average.
Jeff himself mentioned bating average in the game-thoughts. It can be mentioned and let’s not overhype the dissention of an argument (without posting a valid rebuttle instead of a comical allegory) just for the sake of doing it.
by Kenneth Arthur on May 19, 2010 10:30 AM PDT up reply actions
I didn't say it couldn't be mentioned
all I said was that it’s a bad thing to solely base an analysis on.
I think it's okay to question our preseason projections
but the numbers put up by Kotchman, Lopez, and Figgins so far are unfathomably bad. Re-evaluation of the projections would still put them a good deal above where they are now (as you can see with rest-of-season ZiPS).
by Jeff Sullivan on May 19, 2010 10:34 AM PDT up reply actions
And what would "First 39 games of season" ZiPS have predicted?
I don’t think they are this bad… but they could be much worse than ros ZIPS
by Kenneth Arthur on May 19, 2010 10:37 AM PDT up reply actions
This is wrong about Kotchman at least.
He’s hitting .194 with a .198 babip. He’ll hit well north of .230 when that regresses towards his career average in the .270 area. Matthew has him unlucky to the tune abut 8 runs, while he’s been abut 4.6 runs below average in actual results, there’s reason for optimism with him.
These two losses in Oakland just pushed me over the line.
I wish I could keep believing we have a chance, but I dont think we do anymore. We are too far behind and not good enough to overcome it. I know we arent THIS bad, but we arent good either, and 7.5 games is a LOT.
Especially when you consider that Texas just got Cruz back and finally added Derek Holland.
And Justin Smoak is still doing better than Casey Kotchman and will get better, etc… the hill is too far to climb.
by Kenneth Arthur on May 19, 2010 10:27 AM PDT up reply actions
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