Chris Jakubauskas claimed by Pirates

• Huh
• Wait, why?
• I guess Jak wasn't very good
• He's over his head as a starter and just a standard replaceable long reliever. He belongs in the NL
  
• Guess this opens the door a little wider for someone like Nick Hill, and increases Carlos Silva's chances of sticking as a long guy
• 

   

• But what's the point of clearing space when you already have so much space?
• Whatever

Robert Manuel claimed by Red Sox

• Whatever

Peculiar moves, both of them, but it's not like we gave away a Jason Vargas or a Ryan Langerhans (yet). As impersonal as it may be to reduce players to a numerical set of projections, neither Jak nor Manuel really mattered, and neither will likely be missed. Best wishes to the Jakubaustrich anyway, as if nothing else he's going somewhere where he has a few friends. Or acquaintances. Or just people he knows kind of. If the National League can turn Ronny :(edeno's frown upside-down, it can work for anyone.

Update: Manuel, of course, can go straight to hell, and take the rest of his new teammates with him

Reports surfacing that Chris Jakubauskas has been claimed off waivers by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Jakubauskas was a decent pitcher for us this season coming in roughly average. He's not a big loss.

And here's the official press release link.

Since this doesn't involve our team or division, let's be fairly brief:

The winner: Mark Teahen

The losers: Josh Fields (the other one), Chris Getz

Overview: Kenny Williams was so disappointed with Fields and Getz being unable to live up to their minor league numbers that he couldn't just non-tender the pair. Instead he paid $5 million to banish them to Kansas City. Harsh.

Moral: Do not disappoint Kenny Williams.

More photos » by Gene J. Puskar - AP

Yusmeiro Petit checks to see if he smells

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Major League Baseball has informed me that I'm free to talk about this now, so off we go. Also, congratulations, Alex.

Anyway, yeah, the Mariners picked up Yusmeiro Petit off waivers from the Diamondbacks today. Petit was made available because (A) he ran an ERA near six, (B) Arizona wanted to clear some roster space, and (C) he's out of minor league options. The M's, having just freed up a lot of room, decided, hey, why not? Nothing wrong with another warm body capable of starting a game.

Petit's name has long been in the middle of the neither-of-us-get-it-so-let's-try-maybe-shouting-really-loud stats vs. scouts debate, as his exceptional minor league numbers didn't match up with his middling repertoire. You see, Petit's the rare righty with a sub-90 fastball, but he's found a way to ride that, a change, and a breaking ball he likes to throw over a broad range of speeds all the way into the big leagues. The problem is that it hasn't exactly worked out for him against the highest level of competition, but he has still been able to have a little bit of success, proving that you don't always need to throw Major League stuff to retire Major League bats.

Petit's a guy that pounds the zone, mixes his pitches, and works up, with predictable results - he doesn't walk many, he gets his strikeouts, and he allows an obscene amount of fly balls and home runs. Despite a 2.5 career K/BB to date, the home runs have killed him. He's given up 50 through 229.1 innings with a HR/FB of 13.6%, which are just staggeringly bad numbers for a big league pitcher. His career 5.44 FIP reflects this inability to keep the ball in the yard and makes Petit out to be little more than a replacement-level pitcher.

However, there are two ways of thinking about that. One way is to look at Petit's four partial Major League seasons, see a ton of home runs in each of them, and conclude that hitters just pound his hittable arsenal. He throws 87, right? Of course he's going to be an exception to the law of HR/FB.

That way is wrong. The proper way of thinking about Petit's home runs is that he's accumulated his numbers over just 36 starts and 71 total appearances, the equivalent of maybe a season and a half. Do we expect HR/FB to be stable after a year and a half? Braden Looper just posted a 15.8% rate over 34 starts. You have to assume that a guy will perform normally until proven otherwise, and with Petit, he has a long way to go before he's proven otherwise. If you look at his Hit Tracker numbers, it's not like the home runs hit against him are taking off. It's luck until it's not, and as such, we should expect Petit's HR/FB to behave going forward.

Regress Petit's home runs and all of a sudden you're looking at a more useful pitcher, a pitcher capable of doing enough to have some success in a big park like Safeco. He'll always give up his dingers, but an above-average K/BB cures a lot of ills.

The only problem, then, is trying to account for the league switch. For his career, he's struck the pitcher out 28 times without walking him once. Take those away and his K/BB drops to 2.1 (I know K/BB isn't great, but it's simple, so bear with me), which is a bit more alarming. Remove the pitcher and add in the DH and you're back to having a guy who's likely to run an ERA north of 5 based on his track record, and then he's a fringey #5/6 who you're hoping either gets lucky or builds on some of his potential.

And that's why the Diamondbacks cut him loose - though Petit has his upside, he just doesn't project to be that useful without a little luck or improvement. Yeah, he had a 6.3 K/BB in the high minors five years ago, but as we've learned from Doug Fister, awesome minor league K/BB ratios don't translate that well when you don't have good stuff. The hitters up here are smarter. They're smarter, and they're better.

Petit, I imagine, is here to serve as insurance and as a Spring Training trial. As insurance, he's a warm body that makes it a little easier to dangle one of the starters we already have in the system. And as a trial, the M's could see how he looks in Peoria, with some good pitching maybe earning him a roster spot since we have tons of starters who I think could go back to Tacoma. Petit's nothing spectacular, but he's also not bad, and who knows, maybe a big park would give him the confidence to trust his stuff a little more.

It's not a groundbreaking move. I don't know why I've spent so long talking about this. I guess it's just cool to have the M's do something again, and plus Petit's got a neat little story. But just because it's a minor pick-up doesn't mean you should forget about him as quickly as you forgot about Reegie Corona. Petit has a shot. And a guy with a shot, I suppose, is a guy worth discussing.

Every so often I'll have a little debate with myself over what I want this blog to be. Do I just write about what I find interesting or relevant, or do I try to make this sort of a one-stop shop for everything any Mariners fan could care about? In other words, where do I set the threshold of significance above which I write, but below which I ignore? I started thinking about this again most recently after the Bruce Hines story came out. I don't care that we fired our third base coach, and I don't think it really matters, but a lot of fans like to be aware of what's going on with the coaching staff, so how do I react? I didn't write anything about Hines, but I still go back and forth.

No matter which way I'm leaning, though, I still wouldn't write about this.

Bryan LaHair, Randy Messenger, Cesar Jimenez, Marwin Vega, and Justin Thomas have been outrighted off the 40-man roster. The first three are minor league free agents. Vega's sticking around. Thomas got claimed by the Pirates. LaHair's nothing, Messenger's nothing, Jimenez is a lefty that struggles against lefties, Vega's nothing, and if Justin Thomas tries really hard he could be the new Randy Keisler. The only reason this is the least bit notable is that the Mariners are now way less smelly. Which, hey, all right.

Baker, Twitters...

But Brandon Morrow is being recalled from Class AAA and will start for the Mariners on Friday in Texas.

Luke French goes to the bullpen.

Most of the time, sportswriters react to hot news by racing to their computers and trying to hammer out a story faster than the competition so they can get credit for breaking it. I have to think that Brandon Morrow's 2009 is some elaborate practical joke at their expense.

Starting in Morrow's place in Tacoma is Andy Baldwin, which, well, Garrett Olson's starting tomorrow, so the organization has rather clearly decided that if the Rainiers are to win the title, they're gonna earn it.

From Baker's blog and a bevy of Twitters, the M's have kicked off September by adding Mike Carp, Jason Vargas, and Adrian Beltre back on to the big league roster. Those aren't the only players you're going to see added this month, but Tacoma's still gunning for the playoffs, so in the interest of maintaining a pleasant relationship with their highest affiliate, the Mariners have for the time being elected to only take its best pitcher and one of its best hitters. Rooting for a minor league team seems fulfilling.

Carp's here to both get some playing time and fill in for Russell Branyan, who may be done for the year with a funny back. On the plus side, Branyan's back issue helps explain his second half and lower his price in the offseason, but then it also serves as a chilling reminder that he's a 33 year old slugging first baseman who's had old player skills his entire life. Going forward he is by no means a sure thing, which is why it'd be nice if we could depend on Carp to provide a little productivity as a fallback. He's no star in the making, as Dave talked about earlier today, but guys have done more with less, so there's some reason for optimism.

Vargas...well I don't know why so many people seem to have written him off already. Granted, little can be expected of him over the course of this final month, since the team is in theory still trying to limit his innings, but considering he didn't throw a single meaningful pitch all of 2008 due to injury, I'm more than happy with his strong changeup and ability to induce swings at balls out of the zone. Vargas has been good in AAA and okay in the Majors, and though he's not RRS, he's not Garrett Olson, either, and it's nice to have him back. Despite the crowded picture, he may very well be a part of our future rotation.

Beltre's back for what will likely be his final five weeks in a Mariner uniform. His time in Seattle has been marked by several long fly balls at home dying on the track, relentless fan criticism, and a contused right testicle. I wonder what's the opposite of a home town discount.

Drayer's Tweet.

Chris Jakubauskas was sent down to Tacoma, possibly because of his minor shoulder impingement? Either way, Randy Messenger is back. This really means nothing.