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Ubaldo is crazy
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When Lyle Overbays corpse is traded.Originally Posted by Proshares
I thought Salty would be the ultimate steal in the Tex deal. Still has one of the ugliest/hottest tattoos ever
How long until we see Brett Wallace?
Originally Posted by Kiddin Like Jason
Aaron Hill clearly gave his steroids to Jose Bautista, Alex Gonzalez and John Buck this season.
i really feel for this dude and hope he pulls through, im a catcher and had about a 2 month span in high school where my throws were everywhere, you can't control your arm, its trippy and theres nothing really you can do but just keep chucking itOriginally Posted by Nowitness41Dirk
It sounds like he's finally getting good wood on the ball consistently... But the throwing stuff is a serious, serious issue.
Originally Posted by Paul Is On Tilt
I love watching MLB Network.
Originally Posted by Kiddin Like Jason
At least Vernon has been good before.
That ragtag group...
Scripting Griffey's final chapter
Mariners' dilemma is figuring out the right thing to do with the aging, unproductive icon
By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com
His average hovers around the Mendoza Line (.200). His slugging percentage (.225) looks way too much like his area code (206).
He's been outhomered by Yovani Gallardo (1-0). He has a lower OPS (.486) than Lou Marson (.497).
If the man compiling these gruesome numbers was almost anyone else besides a fellow named George Kenneth Griffey Jr., we know what would happen. Don't we?
The Mariners have already proved that if he was Eric Byrnes, he'd be pedaling his two-wheeler to the first tee by now. If he was Michael Saunders, he'd be back in Tacoma. If he was even Jim Edmonds, his team (the Milwaukee Brewers) would be thanking him for the memories and moving onward.
But this man is none of them. He's not just another name on the lineup card, not just another face on the program cover. Not on his team. Not in his town. Not in his sport.
He's Ken Griffey Jr. And because of who he is, the easy thing for the Seattle Mariners to do isn't necessarily the right thing to do.
The citizens of this continent have spent the week obsessing over Griffey's nap schedule. But you know what? That isn't the part of his story that matters a whole lot.
What matters -- what really matters -- is whether this guy can still be a productive member of his roster, and whether he can still be a leader on a team that needs leadership, not whether he can stay awake for all nine innings.
But even if the men who employ him decide the answer to those questions is no, that just leads to an even harder question:
How does everybody go about scripting a fitting final chapter to a saga as spectacular as Ken Griffey Jr.'s?
That wasn't a question that his general manager, Jack Zduriencik, had much interest in discussing with our Rumblings inquisitors. But he did say this -- and we agree with every word of it:
"One thing Ken will always get is the respect and dignity he deserves in this game," Zduriencik said. "And he'll always get that from this organization and this community, and he deserves that."
Unfortunately, there's no handy-dandy manual on how to deal with situations like this. We checked The New York Times' best-seller list. There's no "The Aging Superstar Cure." No "Switch: How to Change Legends When Change Is Hard." Not even a "Mike and Mike's Rules for Handling Icons and Heroes."
But there's also no spreadsheet, no computer program, no advanced sabermetric computation, that will tell Zduriencik and the Mariners what to do next, either. Sorry. If you think there is, you just don't get it.
If nothing mattered in this sport beyond VORP or WARP, this would be simple. In this case, though, we have a human being involved. And not just any human being. A human being who has been one of the greatest players of modern times. And he matters.
People like Griffey can't merely be crumpled up and fed to the waste-management trucks when they stop hitting. They deserve more. They've earned more. Clearly, the Mariners are wrestling with how to afford this particular human what he's earned. And that means he can't be just another name in the transactions column.
"This has got to be his call," said an executive who has a history with Griffey. "If it were me, I don't think I could even bring it up to him. He's got to bring it up to you. I wouldn't be comfortable doing anything like that with a player like him. It's got to be his call. It's got to be his terms. They committed to him. They brought him back. So because of his stature in the game and his legacy in the game, I think it has to be on his terms."
The same exec raises an interesting point, though. When his teammates carried Griffey off the field after the final game of last season, wouldn't that have made the perfect final scene in the future box-office hit, "Griffey Almighty"? If there was a tough call to be made, shouldn't the Mariners have made it after Griffey hit .214 last season?
But Zduriencik told Rumblings that the Mariners never really hesitated last fall. They signed him so quickly, in fact, he was actually their second transaction of the entire offseason. After a feel-good season for everybody, it just felt right -- at the time.
"Ken wanted to come back," Zduriencik said. "He was so excited by the way the year ended last year … he wanted to be part of the turnaround here. He had such a great time, he expressed interest in wanting to be back. So we talked, and we brought him back. That's all there was to it."
But once the Mariners made that decision, they essentially set themselves up for the uncomfortable situation that's engulfed them now. And what is going to make this especially difficult is that the people who know Griffey best can't even imagine he'll have any desire to quit. Not now.
"I don't see that at all," said his close friend, and former Reds teammate, Adam Dunn. "This guy loves playing baseball … more than anyone I've ever been around in my life. It's not even close. If I were him, going through the [injury] stuff he's been through, I would have been done in '01 or '02. But not him -- because nobody loves baseball more than that guy."
Dunn says he spoke to Griffey this week after Nap-gate busted out -- and Griffey "told me what happened, and it's nothing like that. But if you know him, he's not going to come out and try to defend himself. I even said to him, 'Aren't you going to come out and defend it?' And he said, 'I don't have to.'"
But Dunn leaped to his buddy's defense anyway, saying there is "no chance" that Griffey -- or any player -- would be catching any Z's during the sixth inning of a game.
"In the first or second inning, I buy it," Dunn said. "That's different. You see that every night. It happens. But not in the sixth inning. No way."
Again, though, whether it happened or didn't happen, how much does that even matter? In some ways, it's more interesting that the story got out, that it got leaked, than whether it's accurate in every minute detail.
The reporter who wrote it -- Larry LaRue, of the Tacoma News Tribune -- is a longtime beat man, and a total pro. So the question shouldn't be, "Is it true?" The question should be, "Why did somebody want it to get out there at all?"
But that's a question for another time. The biggest question, for this time, is whether there's any reason to think Griffey can still play. And if that answer turns out to be "no," then the Mariners are stuck with a dilemma with no simple solutions:
What's the best way for everybody concerned to find a dignified end to a beautiful story?
"I want him to go out on his own terms," Dunn said. "Maybe hit a home run, round the bases and say, 'That's enough,' so people remember who he is and what he did -- not just for Seattle but for the game. … That's what I'd do. The last thing you'd want is for them to run him out. That would be a shame."
Asked if Griffey recognizes that The End is at least approaching, Dunn said: "Obviously. I think he realizes he's been playing for like 30 years or whatever. So he knows you can't play forever. But he also knows he's still having fun."
So while The End might be showing up on Griffey's viewfinder, there's no reason to think he's in any hurry to close this book. But meanwhile, on the other end of this scale, there's no reason to think the Mariners are in any hurry to force the issue, either.
They have five Griffey promotional extravaganzas scheduled just in the first half alone. And team president/CEO Chuck Armstrong is as close to Griffey as anyone in baseball. So clearly, they are going to tiptoe delicately down this path for as long as they can. But they also have big dreams, and an offense that's on pace to score 400 fewer runs than the Yankees. So they're not willing to promise it will be possible to tiptoe forever.
"Ken started here," Zduriencik said. "He's an icon player here. He's loved in this community, and he plays a tremendous role in this community and on this ballclub. He's with us now, and he's part of our club, and you just move forward. Ken wanted to be here to do what he could to turn this around. He's making the best contribution he can. And we'll see. We'll see what happens."
Yes, we will. Won't we? And we can promise you this: When, or if, anything ever does "happen," nobody in baseball will be sleeping through it when it does.
18 pitchers added at least 0.5 mph to their fastball this year:In turn, 27 pitchers lost at least 1.0 mph:
- Francisco Liriano - 1.7 mph increase
- Luke Hochevar - 1.7
- Tommy Hanson - 1.3
- James Shields - 1.2
- Kevin Slowey - 1.1
- Scott Olsen - 1.0
- Jered Weaver - 1.0
- Matt Garza - 0.9
- Joe Saunders - 0.8
- Tim Hudson - 0.8
- Ubaldo Jimenez - 0.7
- Tim Wakefield - 0.7
- Brett Myers - 0.6
- Jonathon Niese - 0.6
- Gio Gonzalez - 0.6
- Randy Wells - 0.5
- Cole Hamels - 0.5
- Aaron Harang - 0.5
- C.J. Wilson - 2.7 mph decrease
- John Maine - 2.4
- Zach Duke - 2.1
- David Bush - 2.0
- Rich Harden - 1.8
- Max Scherzer - 1.8
- Homer Bailey - 1.7
- Scott Feldman - 1.6
- Chris Carpenter - 1.6
- Randy Wolf - 1.4
- Paul Maholm - 1.4
- Matt Cain - 1.4
- Jonathan Sanchez - 1.3
- Zack Greinke - 1.3
- Kevin Millwood - 1.2
- Johan Santana -1.2
- Ricky Romero - 1.2
- Justin Masterson - 1.2
- Tim Lincecum - 1.2
- Mike Pelfrey - 1.2
- Phil Hughes - 1.1
- Ricky Nolasco - 1.1
- Kenshin Kawakami - 1.0
- Carl Pavano - 1.0
- C.C. Sabathia - 1.0
- Brandon Morrow - 1.0
- Brian Matusz - 1.0