With pitchers and catchers having reported, the Super Bowl fading into dim, meat-and-booze addled memories, time to bring Slog reading Mariners fans some comment-fodder for a slow Sunday.
First, the good news: word in the internets is that new Mariners pitcher Cliff Lee is quite happy to be headed to pitcher-friendly Safeco. With the M’s defense—the best in baseball according to some—behind him, he could team with Felix Hernandez in an amazing 1-2 punch that makes the M’s real contenders against the Angels.
Now, the bad news: Milton Bradley. Hate to kick a guy when he’s down, but that’s when it’s easiest. Now that Bradley is no longer the Cubs’ problem, even more details emerge about his behavior and demeanor that don’t bode well. You don’t have Bradley’s numbers (though I say screw OPS: average, runs scored and rbi win ballgames—the apostles of Not Making Outs keep Not Winning Worlds Series. . . ) and end up on 8 teams in 9 years unless you are a seriously whacked out whack job.
Cubs Oughta-Be-HoFer Ron Santo, when asked if the Cubs were better off without Bradley and his clubhouse poison responds thusly:
”Oh, God, yeah,” legendary third baseman and broadcaster Ron Santo said. ”It was better when [general manager Jim Hendry] suspended him [at the end of last season]. It was obvious.
”I’m a very strong believer in chemistry, and there’s nobody better than Lou Piniella when it comes to the chemistry. But this was a tough situation. When you bring a man in, who, hopefully, was going to change, and he’s just … I couldn’t understand it, the way he is. He’s just not a happy man.”
“He was always kind of mad,” he said. “He wasn’t a happy man. He’d walk right by you and not even look at you. Several times he’d walk by Lou, and Lou would say something and he didn’t say anything. But that’s over with . . .
It’s over with in Chicago, just beginning in Seattle. How about a Slog contest? Post in the Comments thread here the date by which the following things that happened last year will happen in 2010. I’ll keep track and when I’m in Seattle for the last game of the Cubs series in June, will arrange liquid rewards for any winners. Dates can include Spring Training games.
The categories after the jump
First time that. . .
Bradley blames the umpires.
Bradley gets ejected from a game.
Bradley takes a one-out walk when a ground-out would advance a runner early in the game. (too many to link to)
Bradley trashes the dugout after called third strike.
Bradley accuses fans of racism.
Bradley accuses Seattle media of racism, refuses to speak to reporters.
Bradley accuses Seattle waiters of racism.
Bradley’s teammates make excuses for him, say he’s a great guy once you get to know him.
Bradley forgets how many outs there are.
Bradley has an invisible and unverifiable injury (extra points for specifying: strained calf, tight hamstring or back spasms).
Bradley gets benched by Wakamatsu.
Bradley blames the Mariners organization for negativity.
Bradley gets sued by his landlord for not paying rent.
A greatest hits run-down here.
And Chris De Luca, one of Chicago’s best baseball writers, on what you can look for in Seattle this summer.
Wow, I actually got a chance to comment before the “who cares about sports” crowd could strike.
Consider who the Mariners traded to get him. It doesn’t matter if Bradley’s attitude becomes intolerable and he is sent packing. The Mariners traded Carlos “The Venezuelan Buffalo” Silva for him. The money spent there was a sunk cost anyway. Milton Bradley also seems to behave a little better (at least with the team) when he can play outside the media glare. And his teammates will have more food left on the buffet table after Bradley hits it than if Silva was still around.
Wow, I actually got a chance to comment before the “who cares about sports” crowd could strike.
Consider who the Mariners traded to get him. It doesn’t matter if Bradley’s attitude becomes intolerable and he is sent packing. The Mariners traded Carlos “The Venezuelan Buffalo” Silva for him. The money spent there was a sunk cost anyway. Milton Bradley also seems to behave a little better (at least with the team) when he can play outside the media glare. And his teammates will have more food left on the buffet table after Bradley hits it than if Silva was still around.
Chemistry is more useful for making meth than winning baseball games.
If you had suffered through the Carlos Silva era of suck as a Mariner fan, you’d be overjoyed to be rid of him. Have fun with your new overpaid, overweight shitty pitcher. I think the fact that Bradley does not have to be an every day player in our current (projected) lineup is key. If he’s that bad while he’s here, 86’ing him during the season would not be a serious blow to this team.
It’s too hard to try and pin dates on the potential events in your list. I think I’ll say that he will get ejected, blame umpires, trash the dugout, make multiple accusations of racism (Seattle is pretty white when you get down to it), and have an “injury”. The rest I don’t necessarily see happening, given his situation and the new attitude of this organization.
Is this really the best Slog can do for sports coverage? An idiotic Cubs fan? Not understanding that OBP is more important than average pretty much makes this mouthbreather the sports equivalent of a young earth creationist. Pathetic.
How could Bradley accuse the Mariners organization, fans, or media of racism, given the backgrounds of the manager and team leaders and their experience in Seattle? Or am I asking silly questions again?
You’re full of crap. OPS (to say nothing of more advanced measures like WAR and FIP) causes runs to be scored, and tells you how they are scored as well. Runs and RBI tell you NOTHING about about a hitter, only about his teammates. And average? Pshaw, batting average is a laughable statistic. This isn’t merely an opinion; it’s borne out in simple observation, if you know where to look. And pretty much every team in baseball agrees with me, finally; it’s only a handful of cave-dwellers who don’t understand, the same sorts who try to use an axe to set the time on their watches.
Seriously: you’re just wrong. Especially if you think the brain trust behind the success of, say, the Yankees and the Phillies rely on BA/R/RBI to determine anything at all.
I’m sure it’s true of the Cubbies, but the Cubbies suck. Always have, always will. Ron Santo DOES belong in the Hall of Fame, but he’s an idiot, and you are too if you pay any attention at all to the opinions of announcers.
Bradley? Meh. Don’t really care one way or the other. Not getting along with the boobs in Wrigley is a plus in my book, and I hope he plays decently for us, but he’s not a major figure in our plans. All that other crap? Don’t care, don’t care at all. He’s being paid to run and hit and field, not scatter rose petals.
I just want to savor the sentence “there’s nobody better than Lou Piniella when it comes to the chemistry.” It’s a little like “there’s nothing better than highly-enriched uranium when it comes to the physics.”
Screw OPS? Last I checked, it served the Red Sox pretty well.
Fnarf: he’s not only an expert on sports; he’s more of an expert than you and YOU SHALL KNOW IT.
PS — taking a one-out walk when a ground-out would advance a runner early in the game increases your chances of scoring a run. It greatly increases your chances of scoring a lot of runs. And it increases your chances of winning the game. Every time.
Note that of course a walk advances the runner sometimes, if the runner is on first. Still, even assuming you’re talking about a runner on second. OK, runner on third, two outs has a run expectancy of 0.387. That’s the average number of runs that are scored in that situation in MLB. The run expectancy of runners on first and second, one out is 0.971 — you’ll score almost three times as many runs in that situation as in the former. This isn’t theory; it’s actual observable fact.
Look at the value of that batter action. In Chicago Fan’s dream scenario, that sanctified ground out that advances the runner, our selfless batter changes the run expectancy from 0.725 (runner on second, one out) to 0.387 — he’s cut the likelihood of a run by more than half. Nice going, sacrificin’ white guy! In contrast, Bradley’s “selfish” walk changes the run expectancy from that same 0.725 to 0.971 — he’s ADDED VALUE.
Sacrificing early in the game is by far the stupidest play in baseball.
Oh, and for the record, the reason you can’t name how many times Bradley allegedly refused to perform this gloriously stupid, run-killing act is not because there’s “too many to link to”; it’s because you have no idea how often it actually happened. You REMEMBER it happening a lot, but human memory is terrible at recalling facts like this. That’s why we write things down.
Slight correction: 0.725 to 0.387 isn’t “cut by more than half”. It’s cut by almost half.
Forget your meaningless little Bradley pool, Chicago Fan … How much do you want to bet that the M’s finish with a better record than your Cubs?
@7 , 8 , and 11, what Fnarf and Nathaniel Irons said.
Plus @5 nothing is better than something sometimes.
I think Chicago-Fan is the sports-hating editors’ way of punishing sports fans in Seattle!!!
I hate anyone who uses “rbi” instead of “RBIs”. It may be grammatically correct, but it makes you sound like a pompous blowhard.
I’d happily put $50 on the fact that Bradley won’t be a disaster here. Yes, he’ll get pissed here and there and get thrown out, but in 6 months, people will be talking about what a turn around Bradley had.
Bradley has had really successful years without blowups in smaller media markets like Seattle and Chicago was a perfect storm for Milton. Huge contract, huge expectations, huge media circus. Being that we got Milton in exchange for a big fat bag of suck, we could cut him in July and still be a roster spot ahead of where we were.
Good news for me is that M’s will suck yet another season, meaning I can easily grab DoG bleacher seats whenever the sun is high in the sky and the air is warm…
I couldn’t possibly be any more excited for this Mariners season.
For me this was not so much about getting Bradley as it was about getting rid of Silva, who has just reported to Cubs’ spring training after being towed by the Pequod.
Or you could give him a chance, show him some support and see what happens. But great job on spreading the pessimism.
@20 Some players give you sufficient reason to make certain assumptions, and Bradley is one of those players. The fact of the matter is, Silva was dead weight, and even if we’d only received a small pool of brown liquid in the trade, we’d still come out ahead. A bit of apprehension preceding Milton Bradley’s arrival is no big deal.
Okay – let’s call it a drink each on the two racism bets, by your June visit. Seattle is not Texas, and it’s not fucking Chicago. Let me know if you want odds.
@15
Technically, it’s R’sBI. And yes, it is a completely stupid stat. “Old-school” baseball heads are pretty much equivalent to Creationists/Unintelligent Designers now.
That said, OPS is not the be-all end-all of stats. The Angels have their own metrics that value speed and defense, and indeed, that might be the current undervalued asset. The M’s certainly have a leg up with their speedy outfield.
Re: Milton Bradley. He will be ok as long as the team is winning, but if the season goes south, be prepared for the unfounded racism whining. This guy has had three or four second chances, and he’s destroyed goodwill every single time.
As an erstwhile M’s fan (Ichiro!) and a longtime Brewers fan, anything that has to do with the cubs and their Babbling Brook of an announcer makes me itch. Ergo, I hope Bradley puts up all-star numbers just to annoy every bleacher d-bag in the Addison and Clark landfill. I like to think of wrigley field as the Chump Hellmouth, and I am glad when Slayers emerge every year to stick a stake in the heart of what can be called cub fan vamplosers.
Carlos Silva showed up to camp over weight and out of shape. Hendry said he has a lot of work to do to get into shape. Hendry added, “He is carrying himself around the clubhouse rather well … no pun intended.”
I took the above quote from chicagocubsonline.com on Saturday. Ouch. Silva is a fantastic guy, just a horrible baseball player. Milton bradley might be the exact opposite–fantastic baseball player, horrible person. Which would you rather have on your team? The M’s made it clear they would rather get some value out of Silva’s lost contract (still owed $24 million! over the next two years), which is why they traded him for Bradley. Bradley has the chance to provide some value, while Silva could only be hidden on the dl for so long without totally giving up on him and releasing him outright and getting nothing in return. Zduriencik is a genius for getting any value at all for Silva. Silva might not even make it out of spring training with the Cubs. I bet you Milton makes it out of spring training with the M’s and has a way better season than Silva.
If the runner was on first, Bradley’s walk would advance the runner just as effectively as a ground out and there’d be one less out.
Don’t forget that Silva also has had his streak of being a clubhouse cancer:
http://ussmariner.com/2008/08/11/silva-a…
I am tickled to see the smart commentary above. But no surprise as we clearly have a contingent of USSM readers here…
This season is going to be awesome.
I’m happy to have Bradley. He’s a good player with some upside. Same can’t be said for Silva. And your flat rejection of OPS makes you look like a stubborn fool.
This is the best the Stranger can give us for a Mariners post? Don’t bother.
Big market, small market…Bradley has been trouble everywhere he’s gone. And this is Seattle, where we expect our players to be Boy Scouts and never step out of line.
There’s a reason the Mariners were the only team willing to take a risk on him. Just as there was a reason the Cubs were willing to accept the useless Silva in return. Both just wanted to be rid of their baggage.
I’ll be shocked if Bradley’s still here by the end of year.
@20: If all you want is optimism you’ll have plenty of opportunities to listen to Rick Rizzs: “And the Mariners have the best batboys (grounds crew, beer vendors, clubhouse attendants, batting-practice pitcher, etc.) in all of baseball!!!!!”
Quit trolling, Chicago Fan. Your team made a shitty signing and a shittier trade. [Suspending him last year was pretty dumb too.] Bradley’s ten times the player Silva is. Enjoy third place.
I’ll drop some optimism.
Maybe the M’s will, as they say, kill him with kindness and/or then teach him a little zen philosophy.
And now for the not so optimistic – if Bradley were to go all zen would his numbers suffer? Maybe his anger at the world is why he’s good at baseball. Not in an everyone would be better at baseball if they were angry kind of way, because everyone is different, I’m just saying maybe he, specifically wouldn’t be as good at the game if he were less angry. Do we really have to take the good with the bad (are those really the facts of life)?