"The start after I hurt my hip, I felt discomfort in the last inning I pitched," Bedard said. "I know exactly when I did it. After that it got worse and worse"

Per John Hickey

Erik Bedard hurt his hip in this game also known as Opening Day, or better known now as the last day any single of us was ever happy with this loony bunch of retarded monkey bangers called a professional baseball team. Just in case this intolerable season has dulled your wits to the point where a ball of wax laying in the hot sun would be a sharper cutting instrument let me point out that this was the goddamn first start of the entire season! Erik Bedard has been experiencing shoulder discomfort, along with his myriad of other illnesses, plagues, epidemics, injuries and sympathy pains since THE FIRST START OF THE FECKIN SEASON!

But hey, none of that actually matters because Erik Bedard is a pussy right? He's so much of a pussy that's he thinks there's only 25 letters in the alphabet because he has no concept of the letter Y. That's how much of a weakling he is. At least, that's what the local media would have had you think up until today when I'm confident they will now backtrack and retroactively cover their asses. I would have liked to have every single word of that preceding sentence be a hot link to a piece showcasing the assbaggery that's occurred this season by the media in flaming Bedard for not pitching more, but lucky for them their words are so poorly archived so as to make finding where I left my last shred of happiness a more accomplishable task. Bravo.

Oh well, maybe it's for the best because you shouldn't have to be exposed to that trite a second time anyways because that would be akin to curiosity getting the better of you and deciding to investigate what the one mysterious light switch in your house actually controls only to find yourself opening a previously unknown door in some closet somewhere and being viciously attacked by scorpions wielding the sharded remains of blister packaging and then, once you finally escape from that surrealist nightmare, deciding, hey, you know what sounds fun? Doing that over again! 

But that's neither here nor there nor in that demon closet. What's pertinent here is that once again we have an exhibit of a pitcher gutting it out through pain beyond reasonable measures and not owning up to it. Now, as I've written before, I can empathize with Bedard here. Nobody wants to admit they're hurting. But what I find tragically hilarious in all this is that our grandly delusional ideals about gritting it out through pain always end up with said hero being worshiped for the sheer gargantuanism of his testicles while in this case all that Bedard got was heaping piles of shit thrown his way by critics who used their inside access to ascertain that he was nothing but a tight-lipped jackass who didn't want to do them any favors in the way of making their job easier with silly banal quotes and so in turn they slammed him while he sat around and stewed in what must have been agonizing pain and got blamed for it. 

I don't want to get into all the layers of blame that go into this because frankly everyone deserves blame and trying to figure out who deserves what proportions is ultimately more fruitless than trying to figure out why Jim Riggelman draws a salary while a collection of penguins with down's syndrome and a fetish for swimming into the mouths of killer whales would make a better manager. Suffice to say however that screw you Bill Bavasi for making that blindingly obviously stupid trade in the first place; screw you Mel Stottlemyre for being so bad at your job that you either didn't notice your ace pitcher was having shoulder pain or so negligent that you didn't care; and screw you media for questioning Bedard's heart while taking swipes at the blogging community when you knew as much of the complete story as we bloggers did.

Erik, I wish you would stay because I do have a raging inner lust for your curveball, but unlike when Adrian leaves is forced out, I will shed no tears for you because I will know that you will be better off somewhere that doesn't treat it's most talented players as pinatas for their wank sessions. Find health and happiness Erik. 

Brad Wilkerson, Texas 2007: 101 wOBA+, .786 OPS, 2.49 K per BB, 4.26 P/PA
Brad Wilkerson, Seattle 2008: 89 wOBA+, .652 OPS, 1.50 K per BB, 4.37 P/PA
Brad Wilkerson, Toronto 2008: 79 wOBA+, .621 OPS, 2.08 K per BB, 4.25 P/PA

You know why? Because people don't talk about players that suck very often.

This started as a game recap to take place of Jeff's usual recap and then I just kept going on my first bullet point to the extent that it morphed into its own feature-length post

Miguel Batista took the mound last night and immediately showed his renewed health by tossing fastballs in the high 80s. Last season, 14.9% of Miguel Batista's pitches had a start speed of 93 mph or higher. This season that number is down to 9.2%. Combined with his always troubling walk rates, Miguel Batista is either finished or injured (could be both) but one thing for sure is that for now he is ineffective.

Mike Blowers brought up the matter in question on the post-game, calling Batista's continued pitching through adversity a good quality, one which is to be admired. He even named Batista as the star performer last night over someone more qualified (Beltre, Ichiro). To add to our dead horse pile here on Lookout Landing, this is total frak. Personally, I think it's a byproduct of trying to cross-apply traits from other sports to baseball. Gritting it through injury can be beneficial in more team-dependent sports where such behaviour can inspire teammates to give more effort. In a sport like football (either one) or hockey, that's useful because effort actually means something. In baseball? It's highly marginalized.

Furthermore, as Jeff has many times pointed out, it's damaging to the team's overall talent level. While a hitter can play through minor injuries without impacting the team too much, a pitcher is a lone representative on the mound. If he sucks, he makes the team worse and markedly so. People would like to hold it up as a virtue, that the player is mentally tough or that he wants to win so badly that he's willing to play through pain. But here's the thing, baseball is a team sport and if the player wants the team to win so much, then he should be looking for the best opportunity to help get those wins whenever possible and that means recognizing when you yourself are costing the team those wins.

Now, I don't deny that major league players want to win and want it badly, but at the same time, I'd like to propose a motivation for this behavior that I feel weighs on their actions as well: the fear of being replaced. Nobody wants to admit that they are slipping, that they are worse now than they used to be. People generally only grudgingly admit that there are people better qualified than themselves. I don't blame them for this, it's a survival instinct and it's rooted deep in our genetic profile.

I suspect that rooted in every top athlete's psyche has to be the fear that if they sit down for an injury and open up playing time to someone else, that someone else might prove to be better than he is and the athlete might lose his spot. It's an understandable fear, anyone who's played sports (which includes myself) can empathize with it, but let's call it for what it is at a base level, selfish. No matter the motivation (most players probably want to keep playing in order to contribute to the team's winning, a noble goal) the player is putting his own interests (continued playing) ahead of what might be best for the team overall.

Our culture seems to have a fetish for people that try valiantly against long odds, no matter the outcome. And we view players that don't exhibit that drive on the surface as weak-willed or uncaring. We hold up our Rudys and our Willie Bloomquists as examples of ideal work ethic while spending disproportionally little time acknowledging the greatness of the Alburt Pujols  or deriding the Erik Bedards for saying that they're hurt when people like Bedard and Pujols work just as hard as people like Willie Bloomquist. I don't propose to have a solution, or even to presume to call it a problem. I just want people to think more critically and not accept the media's portrayal at face value. Don't accept mine either. This is how I view it, nothing more or less.

It'd been a while since the last time this organization made me legitimately mad. If anything, until today they'd been taking strides forward, having ditched Bavasi, traded Rhodes, made room for Reed, and hung onto Ibanez. They weren't behaving themselves like the smartest organization in the world, but they didn't act incompetent, either, which was a step up, and enough to earn them the benefit of the doubt when they held onto Washburn through the July deadline. The way I figured, yeah, it would've been nice to unload him, but there wasn't much harm in calling anyone's bluff. If the Mariners just wanted to give him away, they could do it in August.

Well August is here. And so is Jarrod Washburn. For good. Because apparently myself and the Mariners don't see eye to eye.

The Twins were willing to take on Washburn’s contract, and Seattle could have dumped it on them. But the Mariners also wanted the Twins to throw in one of their current starters.

The Mets are interested, too, and the Mariners want Niese and/or Martinez or another top prospect, and New York doesn't have that many of those.

The Rockies also have expressed limited interest in Washburn, but they are in a little shock that the Mariners would ask for center fielder Dexter Fowler (.337, nine homers at Double-A) and right-handed reliever Casey Weathers (2-1, 3.15 ERA in 41 games of Double-A relief) in exchange.

The Jarrod Washburn talks between the Mariners and Yankees hit a standstill late Sunday afternoon. The Mariners want a solid prospect in return from the Yankees, in addition to having the Yankees assume the bulk of the $14 million owed to Washburn for the rest of this season and next.

It's no wonder we couldn't get rid of Jarrod Washburn. The only team that thinks he has any real value was the team trying to trade him.

Look at those four blockquotes and then try to convince me that Lee Pelekoudas and the rest of these guys aren't complete and utter idiots. Jarrod Washburn is not a good pitcher. Jarrod Washburn is not even a decent pitcher. Jarrod Washburn is a below-average pitcher set to earn more than ten million dollars next season. More than ten million dollars for a guy for whom the organization already has at least one cheap, equally effective in-house replacement. But as it turns out, this team either doesn't know or doesn't care. Or both. God knows they're stupid enough for it to be both.

The Mariners had their chance to dump Washburn's contract on Minnesota today and wipe their hands clean. A chance to just give him away, no questions asked. A chance to give themselves ten million more dollars to spend this offseason on a team that badly needs fixing. And they passed on the chance, because Minnesota wouldn't trade one of its current starters in return.

What kind of thought process even goes into making that request? How do people capable of being so unfathomably irrational and dense ever end up running a Major League Baseball team? There are 30 teams in Major League Baseball. Give each one, I dunno, ten guys who know their shit when it comes to player evaluation, and you should be talking about the ~300 smartest player evaluation minds in the world. The top 300. The cream of the crop. There's so much demand for these positions that in theory every team should be run by some of the brightest baseball minds on the planet. But we know that's not how it actually works, because one of those 30 teams tried to get value back for Jarrod Washburn. I can't believe it. I can't believe these people are in charge of the Mariners. It's a wonder they can even tie their shoes in the morning without accidentally setting themselves ablaze.

The Mariners are living alone in a market that doesn't exist. To them, Jarrod Washburn is a heck of a pitcher who'd be a boon to any rotation, but then this is an organization that can't evaluate pitching, and hasn't ever been able to evaluate pitching for as long as I've been a blogger. Things don't work the way they think they work anymore. It's not an accident that we outbid the competition for Carlos Silva. It's not an accident that we outbid the competition for Miguel Batista. And it's not an accident that we outbid the competition for Jarrod Washburn. Even a few years ago, when Washburn first became a free agent, the Angels laughed at his desire for a long-term contract. And since then the league has only gotten more intelligent. Every team but ours has come to realize that you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a #5 starter. The Cardinals grabbed Kyle Lohse for $4.25m/1yr on March 14th. The Nationals grabbed Odalis Perez on a minor league contract in the middle of February. The Padres landed Randy Wolf for $4.75m/1yr and traded filler for Cha Baek. And so on and so forth. Teams aren't paying the kind of price for mediocre starters that they used to anymore because teams have come to realize that they're lousy investments.

It's not that guys like Washburn are devoid of any value. They do serve a purpose. It's just that giving them eight figures is such a gross and unwarranted overpayment that you end up doing yourself far more harm than good.

Steve: This sandwich is delicious.
Bill: It cost you eighty dollars.
Steve: But it tastes good.
Bill: You paid eighty dollars for a sandwich.

For some reason the Twins generously granted the Mariners a glorious opportunity to at least partially undo one of their greatest recent mistakes, and they passed it up. In so doing, they only confirmed that, while Bavasi may be gone, his legacy remains, and that this is an organization that doesn't understand the first, most fundamental thing about building a baseball team. This was a gimme. This was some higher power saying "hey you guys have been through enough, here, let me give you a break." And the Mariners didn't care. They just didn't care. Were this a college exam, the exam consisted of one question, and the question was "Spell the word 'blue'," and the multiple choice answers were (A) blue, (B) green, (C) yellow, (D) black, and the Mariners wrote "6" on their Scantron. This was the easiest test you could imagine, and the Mariners failed.

They failed.

Listen, Mariners. I know you're reading this. Fuck you. Fuck each and every one of you who either executed or stood idly by while somebody else executed any of the countless unforgivable decisions this team has made at the Major League level over the past several years. You don't deserve us. You don't deserve people who for negligible return pour their blood, sweat and tears into following your organization and writing about it every God damn day of the year. And while I'm sure you probably think there's nothing you could possibly do to jilt your most loyal and hardcore of supporters, keep pushing it. Keep pushing it and see. Before long there won't be anyone left.

TEAM EYES ONLY

The following information is property of the Baseball Club of Seattle, LLC and may not be republished or redistributed without the express written consent of the Seattle Mariners. This information is confidential and any violated of that pact is grounds for dismissal.

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ADVANCED REPORT - WES BANKSTON

Wes's middle name is Wade and he is 24 years old. He was born in Dallas which means he was probably a Rangers fan growing up. Ha. How funny is that? You think he hates playing against the Rangers?

Wes was a darling outfielder and QB in high school and he was going to go to the University of Texas before he was drafted by those pesky Devil Rays. That's just like them to draft young people. Did you know they barely have anyone over 30 on that team? How do they win? I wonder if Bankston would have been the starting QB at Texas. Wouldn't Vince Young have been there too? Awkward!

Bankston started pretty well in baseball and then didn't do pretty well for some time. He made a Triple-A All-Star team though so that's really impressive. He's been designated for assignment three times in the past year though. He really needs to get cracking on that assignment lol.

Anyways, he's on the A's now so he probably never swings at anything and loves drawing walks and then standing on the base waiting for the next hitter to walk. Or hit a home run. Whatever. He might start some games this series because Poorland (get it? lol) has all these, injuries and stuff. So retarded.

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"I'd never faced the guy before. I didn't really know how to approach him. Usually, Oakland guys are really patient and take some pitches. I thought I'd get a nice little strike one right there, and he was on it.'' Yes, Washburn had read scouting reports on Bankston. But no, he added, those don't really help. Won't tell you the guy is going to hack at a first-pitch breaking ball.

Link

I'm not totally convinced my above scouting report is 100% accurate, but if a scouting report isn't going to have information like the percentage of times a hitter swung at a first-pitch breaking ball, then what does it have? And you cannot even claim this is hard information to get. If I wanted to, using information like this, I could generate all sorts of stats on Wes Bankston's tendencies in about 15 minutes.

Either the Mariners know this and think it's not important because they're stupid, they know and do this but somehow don't get the information to their pitchers because they're incompetent or they don't know this is possible because they're ignorant. If it's the latter, hey Mariners! Look at me! I can do this for you!

Over here!

Hey!

...goddammit.

It's no secret that Penny's shoulder has been a problem off and on all year. Apparently, it was worse than ever today. "In the bullpen today, I knew I probably shouldn't have went out there," Penny said. "But that would have put the team in a horrible position."

Source: Rotoworld

Penny got shelled and is now undergoing an MRI on his shoulder. When will athletes learn that, in a majority of cases, playing through pain is stupid? I know it must be incredibly hard for them to sit games out, but come on guys, eventually you have to see the pattern here right? Missing 30 games now is always better than missing 100 games later.

If it feels like we're losing is extraordinary fashion a lot more often this year, it's because we have been.

April 1: WE = 87.2%
Done 3-1 entering the bottom of the 8th, the Mariners gain three runs thanks to errors by the best middle infield in baseball Michael Young and Ian Kinsler and got the lead run across thanks to a wild pitch. They had the bases loaded with 2 outs too but a Brad Wilkerson pop out ended the threat for further runs. Never the less, it seemed safe with J.J. coming up. Nope. A single and a Josh Hamilton homerun put the Ms to bed with a 5-4 loss.

April 6: 94.9%
Felix tossed 8 shutout innings in his second start of the year, giving way to the pen in the 9th with a 2-0 lead. The M's had 2 outs in the ninth with the bases empty, albeit down to a one-run lead when single, single, walk, wild pitch, single ended the game.

April 18: N/A
Torii Hunter

April 23: 82.6%
The Ms put a couple runs up early against Daniel Cabrera while Carlos Silva cruised through five. Silva hadn't allowed a hit through the first four frames than escaped massive danger in the fifth when Aubrey Huff couldn't figure out how to run. It felt like we had been granted a reprieve. Then the sixth inning rolled around. Single, triple, RBI groundout. Bam, game tied, except we already knew it was over. A Nick Markakis first pitch HR off RRS in the 8th sealed the deal.

April 24: 92.4%
Ms race out to 5-0 lead. Give up trying to score. Let Orioles climb back in. Orioles take lead. Ichiro ties game back up with 2-run bomb! Three batters later Brian Roberts no-doubts Sean Green in the 8th.

April 25: N/A
Batista is wild, hurt, puts us in early 3-0 hole and departs in the 2nd. Baek comes on and tosses 6+ innings of 1-hit relief while the Ms gasp to get back into the game. They climb within one run and load the bases with one out for Yuniesky Betancourt who takes a 1-0 pitch off the plate away at below his knees, and bounced into a 6-4-3 double play.

April 27: 88.2%
Ms grab an early 2-0 lead, Felix looks uncredible through 3 and settles into a groove through 7. Then; walk, double, walk, single, walk, single, K, single and it's 4-2 A's.

May 1: 83.2%
J.J.'s clearly not healthy. Fuck this season.
I even thought this just felt like a win. I smiled knowingly when Richie hit it out in the 10th. I had felt confident the entire later innings. I was confident with J.J. I was sure he was going to come up and put the fears instilled in that Oakland game to rest. And for one batter he did. Kudos to Batista, Rhodes, Morrow, Richie and Ichiro.