Doing your baseball websurfing so you don't have to
Mariners foo:
Edgar signed on for another year! How cool! Guess he wants to be 300+ HR for a better chance at the HoF.
Speaking of HoF, it's a day or two old news now, but Holy shit, Paul Molitor is going to be a hitting coach for the Mariners next year. I'm betting that has something to do with Edgar's choice :)
We still have no GM. I'm betting they'll figure it out by Saturday though.
FOUR, COUNT EM, FOUR GOLD GLOVES GO TO THE MARINERS THIS YEAR. Olerud, Ichiro, Cammy, and Bret Boone. Yeah! We ARE the best defensive team in the American League, hands down, and this proves it. We have the record for lowest number of errors in a 162-game season, too.
Still older, Gil Meche wins Comeback Award. In addition to the errors thing, the 5-starting-pitchers-all-year-first-time-since-1966 thing is way fuckin' cool too. I loves me my Mariners.
Come on, guys, don't fuck up the team.
For the love of god, I hope they re-sign Shigetoshi Hasegawa, who is eligible for free agency this year and has filed. I can't imagine they won't try to get him, given his performance last year. Yes, he deserves a much larger salary. Give it to him, you dweebs.
Mike Cameron filed for free agency and it's unlikely he'll be staying in Seattle; I believe he wants to go to some Florida team or another. Shame, but it might put Randy Winn back in center field, which would also open up a spot for Chris Snelling to become a regular, and that would be fantastic, he'd give the team more youth and more hitting power. We'll miss Cammy, but even he admits his hitting has kinda sucked at Safeco.
Mark McLemore might be retiring, which also is unsurprising given that he's 39 years old now; I'm betting Willie Bloomquist would be taking his place as the top utility man in that case.
Ichiro's probably going to get a crazy salary hike, even after his slump at the end of last year.
The shortstop issue. This ties into a later link, but... we seem to have a few options right now.
1: We keep Rey Sanchez at shortstop and Carlos Guillen at 3B. It's the status quo and not necessarily a bad call, but we could improve on it, I think.
2: Rey Sanchez ends up a free agent, Guillen goes back to shortstop, promote Bloomquist to regular 3B. Also a not-bad idea in my mind, depending on how Willie does in winter league. But it's a weak idea because what do we do when Guillen ends up injured again?
3: Acquire Kazuo Matsui as shortstop, Rey goes free agent, Guillen goes to 3B with Bloomquist as a backup for when he gets injured.
4: Acquire Michihiro Ogasawara as 3B, Kazuo Matsui as SS... haha, shame Ogasawara won't be eligible for free agency for two more years and probably won't come to the MLB anyway. This option is a joke, incase you can't tell.
5: Look into some of the other possible SS free agents... Miguel Tejada's gonna be an interesting one, as is Rich Aurilia.
6: Trade Jeff Cirillo for Aaron Boone. I can dream, can't I? Heck, trade Jeff Cirillo for anyone...
Elsewhere in the MLB...
Don Mattingly's coming back to the Yankees as a hitting coach. I wonder, does that mean they have to un-retire his number?
Mike Schmidt's gonna go manage one of the farm teams for the Phillies! How exciting!
In other Phillies news, they just traded for one of the best closers in the National League right now, Billy Wagner. (sorry
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mdw.) That's good, considering most of their decent bullpen has filed for free agency, as has Kevin Millwood... hm. It'll be interesting to see how the Phillies pitching comes together for next year, I think.Oh ya, and I hear Rafael Palmeiro's becoming a free agent too. If only we actually *needed* a DH or first baseman, he'd be a great guy to pick up on the Mariners, considering he's hit more home runs in Safeco Field than almost any Mariner has!
Pro Yakyu.
First and foremost question on Japanese baseball fans' minds seems to be: "Hello, Daiei. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" Apparently they "traded" beloved veteran third baseman Hiroki Kokubo to Yomiuri for... nothing. zilch. People seem to be enraged over this, despite that Kokubo was in rehab for knee surgery for all of 2003 and did not play in a single game. (Somehow despite that he was elected to the all-star list. I do not understand this.)
After that stink, Tadahito Iguchi has asked Daiei to release him so he can seek employment in the MLB, further cutting into their established infield. He had a crazy good season this year (batted like .340) but overall he's posted some mediocre numbers, and it's unclear whether he could make it in the MLB.
The thing that I find interesting is that players have to remain in the NPB for like 9-10 years before they become free agents, meaning that most of them are around 32-33 years old by the time that happens, except anomalies like Ichiro, Matsui, etc, superstars that start in Pro Yakyu at the age of 18 or so. So there's all these great all-star players with free agency this year.. Atsuya Furuta, best catcher in Japanese baseball right now, 38 years old... Kazuhiro Kiyohara, super power hitter for the Yomiuri Giants, 36 years old... the Carp's Kenjiro Nomura, 37 years old, known for being one of the few Japanese ballplayers to have a 3-3-3 season (.300-30HR-30SB) ever... etc.
On the other hand, given the stink over Ichiro, and then Hideki Matsui, and now Kazuo Matsui, I can't help but think that maybe it's a better thing if we DON'T get more Japanese baseball players over here. A hundred years ago, the minor leagues were just as serious as the major leagues, and now they're basically all just slaves to the majors, wherein players get shifted up and down between rosters as the major league teams see fit, picking the best players to "come up". It would suck if the Japan leagues became essentially farm teams for the MLB, wherein we'd basically take out all the super-talented players and move them here, and give them our mediocre players in return, who do much better there and become power hitters relatively. (I mean, come on. Tuffy Rhodes is a superstar in Japan. He hits 40-50 home runs a year. Same for Alex Cabrera. Angel Echevarria.)
Anyway, I can't make heads or tails out of all the rumours about Kazuo Matsui coming to America. I might just have to start crazymatsuirumors.com or something. As far as I can tell the Seibu Lions have infact announced that he's a free agent and looking to go to the MLB. But Yomiuri's going to try to bid on him as well, it seems.
Rumours abound from "The Mets have saved up a ton of money to acquire him" to "Was he at the Yankees ALCS just visiting Hideki, or is he already signed in secret?" to "His best buddies are all on the Dodgers" to "The Angels know he'd be the perfect replacement for Eckstein" to "The Mariners have a greater Japanese presence than the rest of 'em" to "Baltimore wants their own Japanese superstar too..." yeesh.
If I had to bet, I would say Matsui's gonna end up on the west coast somewhere. I kinda hope it's with the Mariners, of course, but who knows. Depends on what the offers are like... some teams have money to waste and some don't. It's a given fact. But seriously, I even saw a rumor of "The Mariners are going to trade Ichiro so they can afford Kazuo Matsui." And all I can say to that is... WTF?
And there you have it. Now I should write a real entry.
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Consensus is that the Mets aren't interested in Matsui unless he'll move to 3B. I hope they sign Cameron; Shea needs that freshly golded glove in center.
FWIW, you now have half of 1999's "best infield ever (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/news/1999/09/01/mets_infield/)".
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Damn you, underachieving ex-met shortstops named Rey! Your kind has plagued me for the last time!
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I don't think it's really a question of Baltimore wanting a "Japanese superstar" as much as it is a question of wanting "someone who can handle himself at the plate for once", despite what Peter Angelos [Vader theme goes here] may litigate his way into making you believe.
Sincerely,
A Baltimoron
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At any rate, there's no way they'll get Kazuo Matsui. It's just not going to happen. I think the only non-west-coast team he'd play for is the Yankees. (Which would be really annoying. The Yankees don't need him, they already have one of the best shortstops in the MLB.)
What's yer team where you are? Chunichi Dragons? I don't really have a good concept of the location of Gifu except "somewhere kinda between Tokyo and Kyoto". And I don't really know much about the Dragons aside from maybe Fukudome, Sakai, and Ibata. Yar.
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2) The Yankees don't need Kazuo Matsui, but then again, who knows what Steinbrenner's going to do this offseason. Going by news reports I'm reading, it sounds like he's going to put a team of robots on the field next season, because he's tired of dealing with human beings who (GASP!) lose sometimes.
3) Dragons, yeah. Gifu is just north of Nagoya, a half-hour drive (although I live in the Butt F#$% part of town, which ends up saddling me with a 90-minute commute to my job in Nagoya and back). The Dragons have stepped back into obscurity since the departure of Hoshino to the Tigers; most of my favorite players have left or retired by now. Hmm. Sounds kinda like the Orioles.
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How do people feel about Yomiuri anyway? It's hard to gauge that. I think of them as being the Japanese Yankees, but I'm betting their fans aren't as rude and they don't have quite the same rep for being the evil overlords or anything.
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Case in point: they're the only team for which regular television programming is pre-empted. Every other game, like the Dragons', gets cut off promptly at 9 pm, regardless of whether they're right in the middle of a two-strike pitch. It's the favoritism that grates on me, a one-sidedness not even seen in the major leagues. Then again, there are what, 32 teams in MLB now, aren't there?
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