It gets a bad name in the press.  Teams that are caught with their hand in the free agent equivalent of Wal-Mart rummaging around in the trash cans looking for placeholders and coupons are said to be "desperate for warm bodies."  GMs know better.  It's a problem when you're the Royals and you're dumpster diving for your starting second baseman or your second starting pitcher, but if you're in the market for spare lefties, fourth benchies and fifth starter candidates, there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing a little bargain hunting.

Bavasi may be seen as a terrible free agent talent evaluator by some, but when it comes to taking fliers…he seems to have the knack.  I hope he doesn't quit with a few spare arms.  We need a back-up catcher and a right handed benchy with pop to compliment Broussard!

Arthur Rhodes is a classic grab for the second lefty - the Holy Grail of bullpen construction on pennant winning teams (the ability to mix and match in the late innings).  A pox on trading Reed or Broussard for that reliever when you can sign a guy who's still whiffing 9.5 per game and holding RIGHTIES (!) to a microscopic .322 SLG even in a bad year.  Granted, he's got a mac daddy of a reverse platoon split which means Grover will horribly mismanage him and probably use him as a elfty one-out guy who never gets those outs…LOL  But the dude is still tough to make contact off of.  His BABIP is rising fast, meaning when they do hit his pitches, they tend to be squared up better, but if he can get his walk rate back down (might have been caused by elbow soreness), he's a heck of a 6th inning option.

Jeff Weaver on a one guaranteed year contract that is light on base salary and heavy on incentives (and a possible option year) is a nice reach for a MOR pitcher who we don't need to be in the middle of the rotation. :)  Doc hates Weaver…we get that…but I don't.  I think he's a solid fourth starter and he buys Feierabend time in AAA to hone his mechanics for not that much money.

Sandy Alomar is older than dirt but he would be a nice pick-up to give the Mariners some kind of experience to back up Kenji Johjima.  Alomar would at least have a prayer of hitting that round white thing that routinely goes buzzing past Rene Rivera while he looks on in confusion.

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=== Earning Your Paycheck Dept. ===

Bavasi's paycheck, that is.  Not Putz'.

JJ Putz:  3 x $4.4m

BJ Ryan: 5 x $9.4m

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Wolf-man, you still out there somewhere?  :- )  Does Peru still have internet access and traffic lights and all that or did Argentina finally storm across the Andes?

Haven't heard from Wolfy in a month or something … no e-mail replies… don't see new entries on his blog. 

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Gratuitous drive-by sports opinion of the day:  the 2006 Seattle Seahawks weren't the best team in the league, didn't merit a championship, and so it causes us little pain that they didn't get a trophy.

Aside from Hutch being gone, Tobeck was almost useless, Jones way off, and Hass didn't adapt well to the lack of protection… they just weren't the same team.  Next year they might be.

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Love what you've done with the place…

Matt's series is the bomb and the rest of our staff is hot on his heels for quality D-O-V info-tainment … :- ) knock yerselves out fer a few weeks won'cha please …

Bidness in other areas is hoppin' and Wolfy's still workin' the renovation.  January could be kinda sorta slow for hardball but come February, spring training ramps everything up again… what Dr. D sees laying on the slab in Bavasi's dungeon is a strange creation indeed, but not nearly as dead as we might think…

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An offer to Brian Lawrence?!   We rotodweebs have been guilty of the spaghetti-against-the-wall approach to the early season, but as Mr. Baseball says, the M's are trying to corner the market on cadavers with new arms sewn on… Lawrence was never interesting even when he had his own arm.

We don't say this often, but Darin Erstad is definitely worse than a Replacement Level Player (RLP), and that is true WHATEVER definition of RLP that you use. 

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Photo from TV Asahi.

For the last two years, Ichiro has taken part in a show called Ichi-ryu, which roughly translates to "The Way of the Ichiro". Here are some tidbits for your consumption. 

On 200 Hits

"You'd think it get easier, year after year. But it doesn't. Around 180 or 190, it starts to eat at me. And that psychological nagging starts to affect my game. But what I continue to look for is a batting technique that is beyond psychological and physical boundries. A technique that wouldn't be affected by my feelings or emotions."

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I'm going to make my final comments in this post, but I'll save the grand conclusions for the end.  Let's turn our attention to the bulk of the bullpen.  The overarcing problem as you'll quickly discover is that the Mariners don't presently have a replacement for Rafael Soriano or Mark Lowe, and so guys are being asked to do jobs they're not really capable of doing well.

—— THE CLOSER ——

J.J. PUTZ

The happy place.  Ah, joy.  The Mariners produced a bonafide stud closer for the first time in club history in 2006 (no, Sasaki wasn't a stud) and they found one that rivals later-day Mariano Rivera (not 1996 Rivera, he is unrivaled in the history of baseball), which bodes well for the end of ballgames if we can get the ball to him.

I will caution Mariner fans however that it is very difficult (and statistically unlikely) for a closer to maintain Putz '06 performance two years in a row.  A partial return to earth is probably in store for the kid this year.  Even so, he'll compete for Rolaids Relief honors.

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So we return to our regularly scheduled Internet and just in time for me to post about the newest article from Weekly Playboy and Sports Graphic Number.

Eye Candy Here -> Beware, Same as Last Time!

As mentioned in the previous entry of this series (I think), Weekly Playboy has its own series of interviews with Our Man Ichiro. This week featured Matsuzaka as the main topic and also has an interview with Matsuzaka himself (another article, another post). The WPB interviews also seem more candid than the SGN ones too.

So what's the big deal this time?

A Return to 2005

As broken here first, there was an article in Sports Graphic Number 640 that was considered rather controversial. Ichiro spoke of the damp atmosphere in the clubhouse and the philosophical differences in the clubhouse.

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Here's where things start to get a little hairy for the Mariners.  The maddening thing here again is that there are still things the team could theoretically do to bolster the back of the rotation for essentially no cost.  They're needlessly settling for less and it's going to haunt them if they aren't careful and very lucky.

—— FOURTH STARTERS ——

HORACIO RAMIREZ

It doesn't start off looking so horrid.  Put aside your hatred of the HoRam for Soriano trade for a moment.  Although I think we traded down to get Horacio, I don't think it's terribly helpful to mourn the loss of a set-up man we trusted.  Not yet anyway.  That's coming up in the next installment.

Ramirez is a low ceiling pitcher with injury history and a tendency toward streakiness.  He has to have the perfect feel for his sinker and two-seamer to be at all effective, and you can bet that the instant he starts to get hit around in any start, he's as good as done.  Hargrove had better learn real quick to have that hook ready at the first sign of trouble, because a Ramirez start can move from great to awful in one inning.

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