Good luck to Robert Morris in his battle against the Quinnipiac today at 4:00 for the NEC title and a birth in the NCAA tourney. It’s a rough go for one man to face an entire Native American nation, but we don’t really know how good the Quinnipiac are at basketball, now do we? We expect Mr. Morris to defend his honor well. He sounds like a good guy, although the Quinnipiac sound like a nation of good guys, so who knows what’s going to happen. Tune in to find out!
-Matthew
Filed under Uncategorized
Good Guys Sports, where you go to read more thoughts about spring training that mean absolutely nothing and will probably be rendered irrelevant in about three days!
-Matthew
Filed under Mariners
I just bought a copy of the Maple Street Press Mariners Annual, edited by USS Mariner’s Dave Cameron and featuring a whole bunch of writers from local blogs and newspapers. Everything I’ve read so far is great, and it’s fun having all my favorite local writers under the same cover and hopefully making a little bit of money. Art Thiel has a piece on Griffey in particular that was excellent.
Jon Shields of Pro Ball NW has a long piece in the annual detailing the Mariners’ struggles to develop a good catcher. Trading Varitek and striking out on Ryan Christianson and Jeff Clement and a myriad of others has led to the probability of Rob Johnson as your 2010 starting catcher. Catcher is a tough position to project and understand, so a lot of analysts just write it off a little bit. Determining how important catcher defense is and how to calculate who is good on defense seems to be outside the realm of most metrics so far, at least that I know of. And yet, teams are willing to take a catcher who can’t hit if he’s good on defense. Further complicating things is the pitch calling issue. It’s confusing. And so we end up with Rob Johnson.
Rob Johnson starting means I’m cheering hard for Adam Moore. Moore reportedly has solid, if unspectacular, defense, and unlike Johnson, he can hit. Not like Joe Mauer, but like one of those catchers you hear about and go, “Hey, he’s a pretty good hitter,” and maybe you see them in an all-star game or two, but you don’t really know that much about him because mostly he’s a good hitter for a catcher but not if he were playing somewhere else. Maybe he won’t hit much at all. And maybe he’ll still be a good catcher without hitting. I don’t really know. All I know is he’s the Mariners only hope for a catcher who can hit without going outside of the organization, which means he could be one of the most important players on the roster for next five years. A good hitting catcher who plays solid defense is a huge step toward a pennant.
-Matthew
I, like many other Mariner fans and writers, don’t really understand the enigma that is Rob Johnson. He’s lauded for his defense, and yet he drops pitches and can’t block them and generally seems like a fairly bad defensive catcher. Save for about two weeks last summer, he’s given no indication that he’ll be even an average offensive catcher. His one skill that draws raves from teammates and coaches is his pitch calling, but it’s hard to know how true that is and how much it helps. Talk radio show hosts point to catcher ERA, and maybe there is something to that, but I have a hard time believing there’s anything to that stat (I’m sure I’ll have a good rant on that sometime in the next few months).
Then we went to Mariners Fan Fest and saw a little Q & A session with Johnson and David Aardsma and I think Tui, and I understood the attraction a little better. He just inspires confidence. He acts like he’s supposed to be there and appears to be one of those take charge types who everybody loves because he’s just a cool guy. Which is admittedly what I’d want in my catcher if I were a pitcher. And yet, he’s not really good at most other baseball skills. He’s also coming off surgery on both hips, which can’t be good for a catcher.
So, what are we to do? I’m hoping, save some crazy improvement from out of nowhere by Johnson, that Adam Moore hits so well at some point early in the season that they have to start him, making Johnson the backup, and a surprisingly good one at that.
-Matthew
You know what sounds nice for when I get home from work tonight? Watching some curling. You would think that if FSN isn’t going to show the Husky game tonight, they could at least put on some occasional curling instead of the steady stream of shows no one cares about that is their regular programming.
Take it to the house!!
-Matthew
Filed under Uncategorized
Kind of a strange game. Just a few quick thoughts:
Two more games. The Huskies need to keep at least their third seed for the tournament so they’ll only face Cal in the title game, if at all. That would be their only chance of an at-large bid, and even that is a tiny chance. Go Dawgs!
-Matthew
Filed under Huskies Basketball
I frequently read a Mariners blog called Seattle Sports Insider whose primary author likes to ask a simple question when talking about building a roster: Can I win my next pennant with this player? It’s really the only question that matters. It’s also fairly subjective. Two intelligent people can always disagree about how good a player is or will become, and different people have different ideas on how to put together a team. Still, I thought I’d run through the Mariners’ roster and give my opinions on where they stand here. I’ll cover what I expect the 25 man roster to be, along with a few players who might figure prominently in the near future.
Position Players
C Rob Johnson- Yes as a backup. No as a starter without an incredible amount of improvement.
C Adam Moore- Yes. Here’s where it get tricky. Some people might always answer no to all prospects. I’m looking at what we can reasonably expect them to develop into. If the M’s next pennant is this year, he might be a weak link; in the future, I think he’ll be a solid starter. Continue reading
Filed under Mariners
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