My Opinion on Mariners Part 1

In a mostly useless use of a blog post, I am going to write a paragraph about what I think about each Mariners player. This obviously is less than an exact science but I do know the team fairly well and have opinions about all of them. Plus it's fairly easy writing material. I'm going to just cover the 40-man roster for now, starting with the pitchers. Let's go alphabet!

Blake Beavan
Beavan is a righty who doesn't throw very hard and throws a lot of strikes. Mostly in the middle of the zone. As a result, he doesn't strike a lot of guys out but also doesn't walk very many either, one of which is good and the other not so much. It also means he gives up a lot of home runs. I basically expect him to be below average but above replacement level. He kind of looks like a giant, Southern douche. Giant because he's 6'7". Southern because he's from Texas and, well, look at him. Douche because look at him. I don't know if he actually is a douche because I haven't met him but it's probably a safe bet. I also feel sorry for him because his name constantly gets spelled wrong. That's what he gets for having it rhyme with heaven. I think I have higher expectations for him than most because I used him in some baseball simulation leagues I used to do when he was still regarded as good and he was always a highly rated player. I am a giant nerd.

Shawn Camp
We just signed him after he was with the Blue Jays for awhile. I always thought he was kind of bad but he's more kind of good. But not straight up good. He doesn't strike many guys out, especially for a reliever but he gets a lot of ground balls which is neat. His name sort of sounds like former Sonic great Shawn Kemp's. That's probably the only thing the 6' white relief pitcher from northern Virginia has in common with a former NBA power forward though. I get him confused with Nate Field who was another white-guy-first-name verb/noun-last-name relief pitcher who I associated with being bad.
I don't understand very well why Camp was signed but middle relief isn't something I worry about a lot so I'm cool with it.

Steve Delabar
Delabar has a good story in that he was a substitute teacher at this time last year. He came around when I was in Spain last season so I don't know a lot about him but he seems to have rejuvenated himself with some revolutionary rehab program which is nifty. He seems to have decent stuff from the few innings I remember of him. I hope he has success because holy crap would it be cool for his story to happen to anyone. I doubt he makes the team to start the year but he'll probably be up in the event of an injury/suck from another reliever.

Charlie Furbush
lol furbush. Okay now that that's out of the way, Furbush is exactly three days younger than Felix Hernandez, which I think is cool. Well, probably not exactly. I don't know what time they were born. But let's say exactly Furbush seems to have decent stuff for a lefty and has had decent stats. He just needs to stop giving up so many ding-danged home runs, which is easier said than done. He will always remind me of the similarly unfortunately named Doug Fister who we traded for him which will always be a bit of a bummer.

Felix Hernandez
Someone who's not a goofy looking white guy! Felix is the first Seattle superstar I have really watch grow into what he has become. I remember the excitement and success he had when he first came up in 2005 and then the struggles he had in the following three years. I remember watching his one hitter against the Red Sox in the second week of the '07 season and being so crushed when that hit trickled through the middle of the infield. I will always have an irrational love of Felix. He loves Seattle. He always seems to be having fun. He's ridiculously good. He hit a fucking grand slam against Johan Santana with his eyes closed. I will always have a spot in my heart for Felix and I hope he remains a Mariner for life. I could write more on him but it would all be lavish praise so I will move on.

Danny Hultzen
Hultzen was our first pick in the draft last season. A lot of people freaked the fuck out because he wasn't a hitter and pretty much no one had him projected to go to the Mariners. While it would have been snazzy to get Anthony Rendon or some great hitter, I am quite happy with Hultzen. He will probably be in the majors soon and he is a lefty with strong stuff which is pretty rare to find. There was a rumor that he would get a large inheritance if he went graduated from medical school by 25 and might not sign because of that but it turned out to be bullshit. Think about if you had to choose between playing baseball professionally for millions of dollars or becoming a doctor for millions of dollars. Ultimate first world problem.

Cesar Jimenez
I have no idea why he is still on the 40-man roster. He's 27 and a reliever and has never been particularly good in the majors. He's a lefty, which would normally be good, but his best pitch, and probably his only Major League pitch, is the change-up, which works best on righties. So essentially he's a righty with middling stuff who happens to throw with his left hand. His advantage against lefties and probably his only chance for success is mitigated by his only good pitch. Hopefully he's not taking up space on the roster soon. Not bad, just not that useful.

Shawn Kelley
Probably one of the better tweeting athletes out there, which is like saying bean sprouts are one of the better kinds of sprouts. He is outclassed by Brandon McCarthy but then again so is almost everyone on the internet. I remember him being good, being injured and bad, being injured and not playing and then being pretty good. I like Kelley and think he is going to be one of the Mariners' better relievers for at least a couple of years. Then he'll probably get hurt or start to be bad because that's what relievers usually do (Mark Lowe, David Aardsma, etc.). But hopefully not!

Hong-Chih Kuo
Another new signing, Kuo was really good for about three years with the Dodgers and then had a combination of injuries and anxiety attack(s) and has been bad since. The hope is that he can get over his anxiety and injuries and get back to being the reliever he was when he posted a 1.20 ERA. He is known for hitting a home run and then doing a bat flip afterward that would put Bret Boone to shame. He's Taiwanese, which is cool because there have only been 6 players ever born in Taiwan and I like seeing players from new baseball countries have success.

Brandon League
Brandon is the reliever we got back in the questionable Brandon Morrow trade. He was our closer last year and, besides a nasty four game stretch of blown games, did fairly well. He seems to be kind of dumb, however, because he throws his fastball way too often when he has a splitter that some consider to be the best pitch in baseball. He threw fewer fastballs last year, which is why he was able to succeed more last year than in 2010 so maybe it's getting through to him that throwing bendy pitches makes it harder for him to be hit than throwing straight pitches. Also he's kind of dumb because he tattooed his name and jersey number on his back from when he was with the Blue Jays.

Lucas Luetge
I know next to nothing about Luetge. He has a cool name I guess. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. The Mariners took him in the Rule 5 draft the same day the Angels signed Albert Pujols and CJ Wilson, which takes away any luster he had. I don't see the point of him because he wasn't particularly good in the minors and the team already has more than enough lefties. I assume he will be a forgotten Mariner soon, going the way of Pokey Reese and Matt White.

Yoervis Medina
He is bad.

Hector Noesi
Acquired in the famed Jesus Montero for Michael Pineda trade, Noesi has grown on me since they trade occurred. Figuratively. Literally would be gross. He has decent stuff, throwing in the mid 90s and has been pretty good in the minors. He looks to compete for the fifth starter spot. Smarter people than me have written about him but I have hopes that he can be a decent middle of the rotation starter for the Mariners for the foreseeable future. He's no Pineda though :(

Mauricio Robles
I will always like him because we got him back for Jarrod Washburn. He was a combination of injured and bad for most of last year, walking a man an inning. He has always had decent stuff but his M.O. is that he unravels after about five innings. So probably not an ace or anything, barring something surprising happening. But it's possible that he's a serviceable reliever in the future. Whatever he is, he will be not-Jarrod-Washburn, which is better than the opposite of that.

Chance Ruffin
Another part of the Doug Fister trade :( Fairly highly acclaimed relief prospect, which apparently exist. Strikes out a lot of guys and walks not-a-lot-but-not-a-little guys. Was decent, if not a little walk happy last year in the majors. I haven't seen him pitch much because of Spain and him only being on the team for two months but he is supposed to be a decent reliever, maybe a set up man of the future if that's possible. It's hard for me to get excited about relief prospects because of Josh Fields but hopefully he bucks the trend. His name kind of annoys me, especially since his middle name is Kraig with a K and since it seems easily punnable, but I'll get over it if he's good.

George Sherrill
Much like Bob Dylan with Judaism, George Sherrill was a Mariner, then he wasn't, but now he's back. I really liked him the first time around but then he was traded to the Orioles in the terrible Erik Bedard (I love Bedard but good lord that was a misguided trade) and I lost track of him. He seems to have been an effective reliever since then and is a typical lefty specialist: tough on lefties, terrible versus righties. I imagine him being on the team will lead to a lot of mid-inning pitching changes, which I love because it leads to more commercial breaks. Everyone loves commercials!

Jason Vargas
Vargas is quietly average to above average. He looks like the most depressed person in the world a large percentage of the time but he gets the job done effectively a lot too. He's one of the more all-or-nothing pitchers I've encountered; he had 4 complete games and 3 shutouts last year but also had 5 starts where he gave up 6 or more runs. Mostly, Vargas is kind of boring but the good kind of boring where he generally does well enough to get a win. My hope is that he can be more consistently good this year and have fewer short, bad outings. He might end up being the most valuable guy the Mariners got in the Putz trade if Gutierrez keeps being sick/injured/unlucky/bad which is both cool and depressing.

Tom Wilhelmsen
Another cool comeback story. Wilhelmsen was a top prospect for the Milwaukee Brewers then got busted and suspended for testing positive for marijuana then retired and wound up tending bar for a few years. In 2010, GM Jack Zduriencik (who used to be scouting director for the Brewers) signed him and he had just as good, if not better, stuff as he had before. He started last year as a reliever in the majors and was bad. Then he went to AA and was ~okay as a starter. Then he was called up again and did well. He stopped walking people and struck out a guy an inning. He is a good story and hopefully he's the low-walk, high-strikeout guy we saw in August and September and not the walk the world guy we saw in April.

Favorite Words/Phrases

This is a (n incomplete) list of my favorite words and phrases. I cannot say tangibly why they are my favorites but hopefully there is some sort of pattern.

juxtaposition
pigeonhole
bastion
mutually exclusive
thinly veiled
asshat/clown (really any ass+other noun combination)
atrophy
skirmish
spat
raconteur
clandestine
dovetail
markedly

A Resumption of Posting

Howdy, y'all. It has been almost a year since I've written anything on this blog. I had a blog about my study abroad experience but that was also scarcely updated. I don't know why I haven't written other than that I haven't had much inspiration for writing something long and I have written about other thing instead. Anyway, I'm giving myself a goal. I want to write a blog post every day in March. Or at least write a blog post for every day in March. So have 31 blogs posts written in March that more or less come daily or within 24 hours increments. Who knows if I'll actually do this but hopefully this completely non-binding commitment motivates me.

So what has happened in the last 11 months that I haven't been writing about? Here are the main bits:

I apparently wrote about getting a new job last time but now I've actually worked there. It is a lot better than Target was for a few reasons. Part of it is that I only work for 6 months of the year (which is also bad because money but it's not impossible to work around). Part of it is that I get weekends off when the Mariners aren't in town which was a rarity at Target. I also know a lot about the stuff we sell. That wasn't always the case before and I looked like a dipshit a lot of the time because I wasn't able to remember all 10,000 or whatever items we sold. The main reason it's nice is that a lot of the time I get paid to watch baseball. A lot of times it's slow during the game because people are watching or no one is there because Mariners so I can pretty much stand there and watch the game or watch it while looking busy with other things.

There are downsides though. Like I can't really ask for time off when the Mariners are in town. This usually isn't a problem but sometimes things happen that conflict with work. But that's the reality of having a job. I have become a worse fan at times because often I root for the game to end more than I root for the Mariners to win. At the end of a long homestand, I often just want to go home and it's often more likely that they lose before the game goes into multiple extra innings than that they win in extra innings. I feel guilty for this and in the long run the game going longer means more money for me but I there are only so many times I can organize the clearance hat bins before I start to get restless. Moral of the story: Win quickly Mariners. Or shop during the game fans.

Outside of work, Model UN has become a major part of my life. Being president of the school's club is more work than I had anticipated. It's good to be busy and have an extra curricular activity that I'm a major part of. I learn a lot from the club and have met a lot of great people through it. It will be nice to take a break after the conference I'm going to in LA in April though. I thought I would have more to say about this. Oh well, moving on.

I went to Spain over the summer, as you may have gleaned from my Facebook page or from the fact that I mentioned it in the first paragraph of what you are reading now. Or were you not paying attention? Commit to what you choose to read, guys! Anyway that was a great experience. Having to speak Spanish wherever you go (besides among the other Americans studying with you) definitely helped me learn Spanish more quickly out of necessity. While I still wasn't excellent at speaking or understanding, I was a ton better in September than I was in June. My skills have atrophied quite a bit since I haven't taken Spanish in a couple of months but I still like knowing most of a language and feel like I could still converse with people in Spanish if need be.

If your stereotype of Americans studying abroad is a lot of drinking and not a lot of school work, you are for the most part correct. Overall, my Spanish classes were much easier than any class I've taken in college besides maybe college writing. Except for the literature class which was brutal at times. Looking back on that whole trip it was amazing how much more drinking I did there and how much later I stayed out than I do here. Which makes sense because that's the culture there. I miss certain aspects of the country. The Scuba Steve walk signs. The cheaper drinks. Having mostly delicious meals made for me. Having a summer weather wise. Realizing the camaraderie I have with Americans when I go abroad (and also the shame I have for some). My blog about that experience is here. Well sort of.

Academically I feel comfortable with the direction I'm heading. Fall quarter was pretty brutal, mainly because of intermediate microeconomics, but I made it through getting good grades. I'm really excited for the Econ classes I'm going to be taking from now on and am happy with the major I've chosen. I for the most part like the classes I'm taking now, if not some of the professors. I'm still mildly terrified for what I'm going to do after school as far as work but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

Anyway, that's a catch up on me for people who care. The posts won't be about me for the most part from now on but this seemed like a good start.