I Don’t Get It
Marc’s got the details on the Branyan trade below, so read that. Nuts and bolts, M’s gave up two fringe prospects who probably max out as bench players long term, so don’t freak out about them giving up the farm, but I still don’t get it.
The Mariners are 14 games out of first place. The time to try to add some offense to this roster was six weeks ago. Branyan is better than Carp and Kotchman, but not enough to matter. Hell, at this point, Albert Pujols might not be enough to matter. The Mariners are not catching the Rangers – not with this roster, and certainly not with this roster minus Cliff Lee, which is where we should be in a week or two.
Branyan makes the team marginally better, and the M’s didn’t give up much in prospects, but they’re now going to pay an opportunity cost. As we talked about a few weeks ago, the big benefit to being out of the race in June is that you can take flyers on young kids who need a shot to show what they can do. The M’s just eliminated a chance to do that at first base, a position that is an organizational hole for 2011. Rather than giving a shot to a guy like Kila Ka’aihue (.313/.481/.577 in Triple-A, age 26, completely buried in KC), the M’s are now going to use a few hundred at-bats on a guy who turns 35 this winter and has a serious back problem.
Yeah, the team needed power, but they needed power when it mattered. It doesn’t matter anymore. Now, they need to be looking to 2011. And, as much as I like watching The Muscle hit home runs, if he’s the 2011 starting first baseman, this team probably isn’t a contender. This isn’t a move for the future – it’s a move to make the present team less painful to watch hit. This is a move they should have made on May 1st, not June 26th.
M’s Re-Acquire Russell Branyan
According to Shannon Drayer (and Mike Curto), the M’s have traded two minor leaguers for 1b Russell Branyan. The M’s players are apparently Ezequiel Carrera and Juan Diaz.
Branyan missed most of April with the same back injury that forced him out late in 2009, but recovered to post a .353 wOBA this year for the Indians. His ZiPS projection the rest of the way is just shy of that, at .348 (which, it should go without saying, would be a massive improvement on Kotchman/Carp/Sweeney).
Carrera led the Southern League in BA and OBP last year, but some scouts questioned whether he’d ever be more than a 4th OF in the majors. A brilliant spring capped by a homer off of Felix in an intra-squad game led many to believe that the scouts were wrong. However, from April on, Carrera’s played like a dictionary definition of a 4th OF – a poor man’s Endy Chavez – and picked up a few injuries on the way. He’d been on the Rainiers’ 7-day DL, but it obviously wasn’t serious enough to delay this move.
Juan Diaz was a moderately promising SS in a system without many middle infield ‘spects. Until this year, when Nick Franklin made him 100% expendable. Diaz hit the Cal League last year with the reputation of a glove-first guy, but put up a .346 despite never coming close to .300 previously. He wasn’t able to force his way to AA this year (a guy named Triunfel mans SS for West Tennessee), and he’s regressed a bit at High Desert thanks to his BABIP coming back to earth. .
All in all, it’s tough to be upset about what we’re sending to Cleveland. I’d been excited to see Carrera in Tacoma, but he quickly showed that he was a fairly limited slap hitter (I’m still trying to envision him hitting a homer off of Felix and I can’t quite do it). And if anyone thought Diaz’s offensive outbreak was ‘real’ in 2009, 2010 is getting really hard to explain.
With all of that said, this is a rather odd move to make now, around the first of July, with the team way back of Texas (and the .500 mark). There’s no question Branyan improves the team, and we didn’t give up another Shin-Soo Choo. But why acquire a guy of Branyan’s age and injury history at all? This’d be a great move for a contending team, but I’m struggling a bit to figure this one out. It’s clear the M’s don’t think Mike Carp’s a long-term answer at 1B, and that’s a fair conclusion to come to. But why do they need Branyan right now?
Brian Sweeney
I didn’t see the game, so I don’t have much to add about how he looked, but here’s the thing that stands out from the statline during Sweeney’s impressive season debut – he threw 44 pitches and twelve of them were fastballs. He basically lived off his change-up, throwing 18 of them, and mixed in some sliders and a few curves for good measure. Here’s his Pitch F/x plot:
No one will ever confuse him for a stuff guy, as his velocity never got over 90, but he showed that he can keep hitters off balance with a variety of off-speed pitches. I’ll have to go back and watch the archive, but from a first glance, I’m already impressed with his pitching smarts.
Game 74, Mariners at Brewers
Fister vs Wolf, 1:10 pm.
Shawn Kelley went on the DL to make room for Fister on the roster, and David Aardsma has left the team to be with his wife for the birth of their child. Fister went four innings in his only rehab start. This could be a complete disaster. If he’s limited to less than 5 innings – a real possibility against a Brewers team that can hit – we’re looking at a lot of mound time for Brian Sweeney, Sean White, and Garrett Olson, because League is the defacto “closer” for the next few days and Chad Cordero is likely unavailable after pitching yesterday. So, yeah, the M’s probably need to score 10+ runs to win today.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 3B
Sweeney, 1B
Bradley, LF
Josh Wilson, SS
Johnson, C
Fister, P