Bill Bavasi's Inept Mariners Provide Excellent Tonic for Yanks

Bill Bavasi's Inept Mariners Provide Excellent Tonic for Yanks

Phil Allard Reporting
The 10th Inning Journal

PhilAllard27@hotmail.com

Thanks largely to an inept Seattle roster slapped together by GM Bill Bavasi, the Yanks' bats have suddenly come alive.  There's nothing like a sub par pitching staff to feast on in order to right the offensive ship.

The question in most Yankee fans' minds is will this be a carbon copy of the last few years? Will the Yanks shake off the early season malaise and make a strong run to the playoffs?

Perhaps, but I wouldn't save up for playoff tickets just yet. For one thing, against teams other than the Mariners, the Yanks are just 19-25. Also, it's bound to be harder for the Yanks this year is because the A.L. East is much stronger. If all five team remain competitive, they will beat each other up, resulting in no team running up a 90 win season (except the Red Sox, of course).

Still, now that the Yanks have Alex Rodriguez back in the lineup, it appears that some pressure has been alleviated from the other hitters. Girardi is also able to stagger the lineup more to break up the lefties. No small thing there.

The awakening of Robby Cano's bat is a positive sign as well. Just like last year, he's getting hot as June approaches. He's raised his average from the .150s to the .230s. Rather than constantly pulling the outside pitch and hitting those cursed grounders to second that we've all become accustomed to seeing, he's taking the ball the other way. To my eye, he also seems to be standing a little closer to the plate. Cano has proven that he's a .300 hitter over the past two years, so expect his numbers to improve drastically in the remaining 2/3s of a season.  In time, he may even become more selective at the plate, driving his on base percentage up.

Perhaps the most interesting Yankee this year is Jason Giambi.  It's easy to examine him in a cursory way and decide that he is inept due to his lack of defense and low batting average. But he's actually been quite productive. Despite all the troubles Giambi has had over the years in New York, he's never let it affect his ability to get on base.

Going into Monday's game, Giambi is 10 of 21 with six runs scored, four RBI and four extra-base hits in the last six games. His batting average has gone from .181 to .230. In Saturday's game, he actually had two hits to left field. If Jason decides to work against the shift from time to time, he can keep the fielders honest and his production could skyrocket even more. Back in his Oakland A's days, he had that opposite field stroke down to a science.

Jason Giambi leads the team in:

Slugging Percentage .508
OPS                        .895
Adjusted OPS           +145
Home Runs                9
Walks                        27
HBP                            7
Sac Flies                    3
ABs per HR                14

"It's exciting to turn the corner," Giambi told reporters, "and get some of those hits to fall."

Here's where the Yanks stand at RCAA (Runs Created Above Average) in 2008. (Courtesy Lee Sinins' Baseball Encyclopedia.)

YANKEES
Hideki Matsui        10
Jason Giambi          8
Alex Rodriguez        5
Johnny Damon        3
Bobby Abreu           2
Wilson Betemit        0
Jorge Posada          -1
Chris Stewart         -1
Chad Moeller          -1
Derek Jeter            -3
Shelley Duncan      -4
Alberto Gonzalez    -4
Melky Cabrera        -5
Morgan Ensberg     -8
Robinson Cano       -10
Jose Molina           -11

Winless in Seattle

In case you missed it, Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle's All-star hit machine, had this entertaining take on the Mariners' horrible season:

Playing on this team and seeing what is happening around me, I feel that something is beginning to fall apart," Ichiro said, through a translator. "But, if I was not in this situation, and I was objectively watching what just happened this week, I would probably be drinking a lot of beers and booing."

"Usually I enjoy Japanese beer, but given the situation, if I was objectively watching the game, I wouldn't care if it was Japanese beer, American beer or beer from Papua New Guinea," he said.

Indeed, the Yanks owe the Mariners, and in particular their GM Bill Bavasi, a debt of gratitude. They've provided the Yanks with six wins this month, as the kind schedule makers saw fit to fly the M's in for two weekend series this May.

I remember reading a lot this winter about how Seattle was going to walk through the Western Division, thanks largely to their revamped pitching staff. Most of those predictions came from mainstream writers, of course. Most of the sabermetric analysts saw the M's as no better than .500, and some worse than that.

So Saturday, while watching the Yanks pummel Carlos Silva (again) I wandered over to USS Mariner to see what the brilliant blogger Dave Cameron had to say: I certainly chose the right day to check out the vibes in Mariner land. Cameron was breathing fire, and a righteous piece it was as he picked apart Bavasi:

"Lots of people had "the nerve" to tell you that you did a horrible job building this roster, Bill. Lots of people pointed out that this team wasn't a contender. Lots of people told you that you that you had a roster setup for failure, with collapse potential everywhere. You just don't listen to those people, because they're nerds with computers who don't understand baseball. Or something.

But you don't get to rewrite history. We knew this team wasn't good, and we spent the entire offseason trying to tell you that. You ignored us at your own peril, and you built a terrible baseball team for $117 million. That's your fault.

And now, rather than learning from your mistakes, admitting that you have absolutely no idea how to evaluate pitching talent, you're completely ignorant of how to value defense, you don't know what kinds of hitters work in your own park, and realizing that there's an entire school of analysis that could help improve the decision making of the club, you're once again focusing on things like clubhouse leadership and character.

This is ridiculous. Build a good baseball team, and you won't have to talk about all this psycho babble crap that you guys invent to try to justify your horrible decisions. Learn more about baseball than a blogger who lives 2,500 miles from Safeco Field and covers the team as a freaking hobby. I shouldn't know more about how to build a baseball team than you, but I do, and that's why you and your entire staff deserve to be fired."

Wow. If I were a Mariner fan, I'd want Dave Cameron to run the team.