No word yet on who's coming up. The best-case scenario is Jeremy Reed at LF and Raul Ibanez at DH, while the worst case scenario is Bryan Lahair at anything.

Bavasi had his reasons for promoting Clement when he did, but he was striking out entirely too often and just didn't look very comfortable, so he's heading down to AAA for more seasoning. Which will give us that additional year of team control we feared we had lost a few weeks ago. And I think that has to be considered good news.

See you soon, Jeff.

Update: sounds like Reed, although we don't know what his role would be. Presumably something stupid.

Update #2: Something stupid indeed.

Nay, a mandate.

Could we drop the whole "Jeff Clement bat speed" thing? Forever?

The whole issue took on a life of its own that has persisted to this day. What started as "a scout thinks Jeff Clement has a slower bat than he used to" turned into "a scout thinks Jeff Clement sucks" which turned into "Dave Cameron thinks Jeff Clement sucks" which turned into "Dave Cameron and Jeff Sullivan think Jeff Clement sucks".  I don't even know what the current incarnation of the story is now but I imagine it probably has something to do with Dave sending anthrax to congressmen and me designing an engine that runs on the blood of kittens and infants.

Look, I get that there are two factors in play here. One, most people can't read. And two, most people lack the ability to understand the subtleties and nuances of an argument and prefer instead to stick to extremes. But still, read these articles. I mean really read them. Look at the points. Look at the qualifiers. Look at the evidence. And most of all, look at the conclusion (which I will copy and paste right here for those who're too lazy to click a link):

Now, I’m not presenting this post as any kind of reason to jump off the Jeff Clement bandwagon. He was the #3 pick in the draft two years ago, so this isn’t some guy who scouts universally hated. He hit at USC, he hit in the Texas League, and now he’s hitting in the PCL. There’s too much history that says Jeff Clement can hit for me to buy the idea that he’s just a guy with marginal batspeed and his success won’t translate to the majors.

But I do find the entire conversation extremely interesting. I think it’s relevant information that Clement is loading up on Triple-A junkballers and struggling against pitchers with major league fastballs. I’m not sure what it means, but I don’t think it’s something we should ignore.

So, to be honest, I don’t know what to think about Jeff Clement. The numbers say I should be a fan - he’s a power and patience left-handed guy that looks like a perfect fit for Safeco Field, and after a long struggle, no one has been able to get him out for the last month and a half. But, traditional scouting can still see a lot of things that statistical analysis cannot, and in this case, there’s valid evidence of the scouting claim.

Is Jeff Clement going to hit in the majors? I don’t know. I think so, but I’ll be a lot more confident if he starts whacking the ball against some high velocity right-handers.

Do you understand what's being said? Do you understand that Dave was simply passing along the opinion of a scout (that is, an opinion that wasn't Dave's) that he found to be interesting? If you don't, congratulations, you're stupid. I'm surprised you made it this far.

And if you do, awesome. Now may this please be the last time this ever comes up.

The Impossible Dream, yesterday morning:

C: Clement
1B: Teixeira
DH: Griffey
LF: Someone awesome

The Impossible Dream, today:

C: Johjima
1B: Clement
DH: Griffey
LF: Someone awesome

This extension even made my fantasy world worse. I can no longer dream as big as I could a day ago. That's...really depressing. But you know what? I found out about this at 1:55 and was over it by 2. I don't like what this organization has done to me as a person, but I suppose there's a certain resilience in being in being spiritually and emotionally dead.

For the record, this isn't as bad as a lot of people think it is (that being "one of the worst moves ever"). Not in isolation, as Kenji's still a decent catcher. It's the context and the way this fits so perfectly into the front office's established pattern of behavior that makes this dumb. A move like this just reinforces the impression that no one upstairs understands aging curves or the benefits of cheap young talent. So instead of being able to look forward to an offseason of potential awesome, now we've been shaken right back into awaiting the Ibanez extension and Clement trade for Octavio Dotel. Because, why wouldn't those happen? What reason do we have to expect otherwise?

We weren't born pessimistic. We were made this way.

Onward, broken soldiers.

Why put them all in a bunch of individual posts if you don't have to? At this point I'm just in a rush to get them done and out of the way so we can officially put the offseason behind us. Onward!

ICHIRO:

AB: 673 (678)
2B: 24 (22)
3B: 7 (7)
HR: 9 (6)
HBP: 4 (3)
BB:  48 (49)
K: 72 (77)
SB: 41 (37)
CS: 9 (8)
GB%: 54 (56)

BA: .337 (.351)
OBP: .385 (.396)
SLG: .434 (.431)
IsoPa: .048 (.045)
IsoPo: .097 (.080)

Technically a bit of a drop-off, but not much of one. Ichiro compensates for a small dip in average by hitting for a little more power, meaning that - once again - the team's best hitter will be batting leadoff, coming to the plate several more times than anyone else on the roster.

Of note is that the community projection is the most optimistic Ichiro forecast of anything out there. It's higher than Bill James, higher than ZiPS, higher than Marcel, higher than CHONE, higher than MINER, higher than THT, and so much higher than PECOTA that it's looking down on PECOTA from above and smushing its tiny body between its fingers. I don't know how meaningful this is, but once again, given what our lineup's going to look like, this is a case where we could really stand to be right. If Ichiro reverted to, say, 2005 form, then that would be really bad news. For us.

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