A "Shandler pitcher" is a guy:

1.  Who is or could be a starting pitcher in the major leagues 

2.  With real good "skills" (command, control, dominance, mistake avoidance, stamina)

3.  Who has not YET been noticed (due to unlucky ERA, or youth, or both)

4.  You can get late in your fantasy draft or auction

5.  Allowing you to sweep hitting by taking 9 hitters in the first 11 picks

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=== View From The Field Dept. ===

In comment #19, Black added a comment which makes all kinds of sense to me… and it explains why CWS teams can play so tough, despite the fact that half their players are non-prospects.

Black sez:

Long time reader, first time poster …

And this would be where I had to chime in, as a former college player (actually at Rice, Mariner Optimist … when were you there? I was there 2000-2003). College baseball, in my mind, is at its highest level equivalent to High-A or AA, as has been said here. But I think the distinction is that minor leaguers play with more raw talent, whereas college players play with good coaching. The talent level at AA is higher than in college baseball, but a lot of college teams would beat many AA teams, simply because they play smarter. College players are not as talented on the whole (there are many exceptions), but they are more polished. Many of my former teammates (the “average” starters, not the premier stars) have gone on to do immediately very well in low and high A ball, but then struggled upon getting to AA. I think that is the point where both exceptional talent and polish are needed. Just my $.02.

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Mister Jonez sez,

I’m willing to chalk this all up to pre-season giddiness, but I can’t help thinking that this really does feel a little different than previous years, as Doc and Matt are saying.

Let’s get an imperative to win going here in this town. Enough with the ho-hum attitude, let’s get PASSIONATE about baseball as a town. Nothing like a corporate exec demanding success to get his crew on edge, which is exactly where he wants them.

Silentpadna and Dr. D were the ones who shouted FIRE in a crowded theater, way back in August 2001, that the Mariners' front office priorities were different from those of every other rich team in baseball.

Lincoln and Armstrong conceived major league baseball as a “consumer product,” like going to the movies, having popcorn, watching a good old dependable formulaic romantic comedy.

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=== I/O ===

Raul Ibanez' .911 spring SLG.  He has 5 homers and 6 doubles in about 1/12 of a season, with a good eye ratio.

No I can't stop rockin' no matter what they d-d-d-d-d-DO orrrrr sayyyyyy :: ZZ Top :: … 

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=== D-O-V Crunch ===

Ibanez opened up his swing in 2006.  Big time.

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ALTERNATE TITLE DEPT.

When You ASSUME, You Make (heh) of U and ME

I had a plan all worked out for how to rate baserunning in the play by play era.  The topic seems especially germaine these days what with the discussion over whether Hargrove's offensive strategy is hurting the Mariners' chances of scoring.  Are the Mariners too aggressive on the bases?  Not aggressive enough?  Are they doing better than we think?  The PBP database is filled with all kinds of nifty information that can help us understand the relative skill of individual players and teams when it comes to taking that extra base consistently without wasting runners and outs.  I have a roughly complete outline of how I would like to approach the rating of baserunning, but I've run into a bit of a snag.

The central idea behind a strong analysis of baserunning ni the PBP era is the direct comparison of the results of each play to the results we would expect if the baserunners were average.  I won't go into the complexities of multiple-baserunner plays just yet (that's a whole 'nother article unto itself) or the nitty gritty of my planned analysis method.  The important point for today is that in order to compare any one play to average, you need to know the common result of that play.  To show what I mean, I'll use a very simple play:

Runner at first with no one out - Batter hits a single.

A careful study of the skill of the runner at first starts with finding what the probability is that an average runner will reach second, third, or home or be thrown out on a set of plays with matching initial conditions (the batting event and starting base/out state are the same).

My initial plan was to use league average probabilities as my refernece point, but even at the league level, you start running into small sample sizes for rare combinations of base/out states and batting events (bases loaded, two outs, line drive extra base hit, for example) which makes it difficult to trust any findings.  The problem is greatly magnified when you start dealing with multiple runners and using conditional probabilities to account for the fact that lead runners have a limiting impact on the possible movements of trail runners.

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Dr. Naka pointed out a very simple way for the Mariners to score more runs — to score more runs by simply choosing to do so.

It was the kind of thing where you'd never have noticed it in a million years, or I wouldn't have, but the moment it's pointed out, you slap your forehead, D'OH! 

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DrNaka: I think Ichiro could have 10 to 20 SB more if the #2 and #3 would have been more intelligent

DrNaka: What do you think about bashing Ichiro not to SB more?  

DrDetecto:  Focus Your Frustrations On Your Best Players syndrome… classic sign of a dysfunctional team, though in this case it's the city rather than the org… yell at your 3 good players to do more, because they're your only hope :- )

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Dr. Naka pointed out a tremendous website.  We'll 'promote' the mini-discussion to its own thread, a public thread of course, since it emphasizes Rybarczyk's dazzling work.

HitTracker not only gives a scatterplot for each player's HR's, but also links you up with a video to each one, speed off bat, exact apex, wind conditions, and in an important advance of 'net technology, the site serves you dippin' dots out the DVD tray. 

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DrNaka:  Nice new article about Yubet but comments are off so I will comment here.
1. I agree about the turn swing of Ichiro Yubet and I think Johjima has it too. On the other hand Sexson has a linear power swing.
2. The problem here for Yubet as power (home-run) hitter with his swing is that he must pull the ball to have a home-run.
Here are the Home-runs of Ichiro Yubet Johjima and Sexson with link to Hit Tracker which is a great site. Kudos to Greg Rybarczyk-san for his excellent work.

Ichiro
Yubet
Johjima
Sexson

So Ichiro hits homeruns to right, Yubet and Johjima to left. Sexson hit it to all directions. But with Safeco as home-park Yubet and Johjima are handicapped.
Please note also the “Speed Off Bat”. You will see how much raw power Sexson has.

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Mariner management evidently believes it has come up with a new way to run spring training as per this morning's PI article:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/308984_mari26.html

Veteran bullclubs frequently complain about spring training being "too long."  We've heard comments to this effect from Jarrod Washburn, Richie Sexson, and Miguel Batista this spring for example.  Seattle's theory is that if they shorten the spring for the guys on the 25 man roster by giving more playing time to scrubs and minor leaguers in the first two weeks, the vets will be peaking into form right on opening day instead of wasting energy in the last two weeks of spring.  I'd be interested in comments from the peanut gallery on this concept.  Is it new? Have other teams tried it?  Is the theory sound?

Either way, the Mariners' history suggests that starting slow and picking up momentum late in ST is a good thing for the club.  In 2001, the Mariners started the spring 3-9 and finished 13-19-1 thanks to winning five of their last six.  In 2000, they started 2-6 and 8-15 before finishing 14-16 (someone may want to check that final W-L…I'm going off of memory here since I don't know of a website that shows ST results through history).  Compared to 2004 when the club actually started off by winning some games the first couple of weeks and then stagnating.  Or 2005 when we never really had a winning streak in ST.

I don't have a comprehensive historical spring training reference so I can't test for correlations to see whether an improving March record leads to regular season success, but my intuition tells me it's a very good sign that Seattle went 2-10 the first twelve games and 10-5 since game 13.

Comments?