I apologize deeply for the impromptu leave of absence. I'll be able to explain much more tomorrow. Hang with me, because I have a lot of thoughts about the Mariners heading into the second half of the season. It sure is a feel-good time to be an M's fan.
See you tomorrow.
For those of you looking for something "sinister" in the resignation of Mike Hargrove, I imagine you'll feel free to read plenty into these.
First, this one, told to the Japanese media and translated over at Detect-o-vision (courtesy of Enjoy The Enjoyment):
"There was a play (in the game) with a certain intention. A play we did not have for 2 years."He was speaking, according the site, of a specific play in the game that seemed to be a part of having a plan to win the game -- something Hargrove apparently was lacking.
"We don’t know what the future holds for manager John McLaren,” Ichiro said. “But to be part of his first victory was emotional for all of us. I want to help him win a lot of games in his career.”Wait. Did the guy who is an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year just say he wants to help the new manager win "a lot of games in his career"? I hope I'm not making too much of an assumption that McLaren's career will last more than half a season ...
I hope you're outside enjoying some sun instead of reading this.
But if you are reading this, perhaps you'd like to ponder how this guy:
Is going to coach this guy.
No, P.J., you will never out live this. Sorry.
We'll be checking in tomorrow. Hopefully the M's will have figured out how to beat the Royals by then.
The San Antonio Express-News is reporting tonight what we all widely assumed would happen when Clay Bennett hired Sam Presti as GM: That P.J. Carlesimo will be the next head coach of the SuperSonics.
While the city (rightly) has sentimental ties to Dwayne Casey, if the organization was looking for a guy to implement the San Antonio philosophy up here, who better to get than a guy who has been an assistant coach in San Antonio for five seasons? Besides, what did Casey do in Minnesota that has inspired you to believe he'd do anything much different as the head man up here?
And I don't view this as the typical retread situation. This guy was a heck of a coach at Seton Hall, and didn't do a half bad job in his three seasons in Portland, where he averaged 45.6 wins and was chased out of town mostly because the Blazers never could get out of the first round of the playoffs. It was that debacle in Golden State that did him in, but, really -- name a coach not named Don Nelson who has had success in the Bay Area in the last 30 years. Better yet, name a coach that didn't have a problem with Latrell Sprewell.
I think Carlesimo, who has been saddled with a bit of unfair criticism, could end up being a great hire. He's going to bring a defense-first mentality and also is a creative offensive mind. He's learned under one of the best in Gregg Popovich, and rather than hanging our hats on some unproven assistant who might or might not be able to handle an NBA team, we get a guy who was a coach for six years and has had some time to reflect on what might not have gone right the first time around and hopefully learn from it.
Then again, isn't that kind of what we all said about Bob Hill? Let's hope coming from a winning organization makes the difference for Carlesimo.
Seth over at Enjoy the Enjoyment reminds us.
Holy crap. We should be a lot more pissed about where this franchise is than we really are. What an unbelievable string of ineptitude.
ESPN.com's John Hollinger has (by far) this morning's best take on Rashard Lewis' agreement to sign a max contract with the Orlando Magic.
First off, he thinks this is a classic case of a guy being worth more at a certain price to one franchise than he is to another. In this case, it made sense for the Magic -- who believe they can contend quickly in the mediocre East -- to sign Lewis to a max deal, but not the rebuilding Sonics.
(B)y not maxing out Lewis right now, the Sonics are better poised to add players later. Removing Lewis' cap hold puts Seattle $3.8 million under the salary cap right now, if we assume a $56 million cap for this season (again, the final number won't be known until July 11).Of course, what's unstated there is that the Sonics will be able to spend that $20 million at a time when Durant and Green have two years under their belts, putting Seattle in a position to make the kind of "over-the-top" move that potentially puts them in position to contend for championships.
But the big splash is two years down the road. At that point, the expiring deals of Wally Szczerbiak and Chris Wilcox will take roughly $20 million off the Sonics' books. While extensions to Robert Swift and Delonte West are likely to eat up a portion of that, it still leaves Seattle with more than enough dough to chase a superstar in the summer of 2009.
The problem is making it work. Although Seattle and Orlando have eight days to work out a deal, there isn't a great chance of this happening. Seattle reportedly isn't enamored of anyone on the Orlando roster (well, except Howard), so at best it would need to be a three-way deal. Those types of swaps are notoriously complex and difficult to pull off, especially because other teams covet few of Orlando's assets.
What Seattle might find more alluring is the prospect of a trade like Indiana made a year ago with the Hornets when Peja Stojakovic left. That swap gave the Pacers a $7.5 million trade exception that they turned around to acquire Al Harrington. In this case, the Sonics would get a $9.35 million trade exception (again, assuming a final cap number of $56 million) if they took nothing back from Orlando.Let's hope GM Sam Presti can figure out a way to make this happen. Letting Rashard walk doesn't net the Sonics the $15 million or so he would have been making here -- remember, they would have been using their Bird rights to sign him, so it would only leave them $3 million or so under the cap. It's a number unlikely to result in the Sonics landing much help for this upcoming year.
But this works only if Seattle can offer Orlando a little something for the trouble -- a draft pick being the most likely bait. And the trade exception might not mean as much to the Sonics as a draft choice at this point in their rebuilding process -- especially because trade exceptions can be difficult to use and expire in 12 months.
This doesn't exactly break my heart. I would have liked to keep Lewis, but I'm not convinced he's a max player -- he's got one All-Star selection under his belt, and even that was tenuous, brought about mostly because the team was having success.
He's a nice player, but not a superstar. I don't want to see the Sonics handcuffed by a bad contract, the way the Wolves were when they gave Wally Szczerbiak his fat deal. A max deal to Lewis probably would have done that.
Now, we'll see how good Presti is. The one thing the Sonics had going for them was that they could offer him a six-year contract; the most Orlando can offer is five. Let's see if Presti can really earn his money by negotiating a sign-and-trade with the Magic, where Lewis gets his six-year deal and the Sonics get some kind of return on him. That also would be best for the Magic, who still have designs on signing Darko Milicic. A sign-and-trade would give them enough cap space to still sign him, which they wouldn't be able to do otherwise.
I don't know exactly what the Sonics might get in return, but I know there are other people out there way smarter than me who break that stuff down. When I run across it, I'll pass it along.
That said, I think there are some things worth noting in this, his first game as manager.
The thing that obviously sticks out above all others was his use of the pitching staff tonight, which probably cost the M's the game. It just seemed like a classic case of overmanaging, which might be expected given that the guy hasn't managed his own baseball team in about 20 years.
It started with his decision to pull Felix after eight innings, but just 92 pitches. Following a rocky first inning, Felix was on cruise control most of the rest of the way, and there was no real reason to pull him from a tie game. I haven't seen anything from McLaren yet on his decision to pull Felix, but I presume it was because David DeJesus -- he of the two hits, including a home run, off Hernandez -- was leading off the ninth. (UPDATE: Felix says he was gassed from the humidity.)
But ... who knew how long the game was going to last? Seems logical to ride that horse as long as he'll let you ride him. Especially since pulling Hernandez opened a can of worms McLaren wasn't prepared to deal with. It resulted in him burning through three relievers -- Eric O'Flaherty, Sean Green and George Sherrill -- to get three outs in the ninth inning of a tie game.
Of course, O'Flaherty put him in a bad spot by giving up two quick hits, but turning to Green was a bad option to begin with. McLaren clearly had no intention of letting Green pitch past Emil Brown, given Green's horrendous .364/.511/.455 line against lefties. My guess is McLaren was hoping for a DP out of Green, but when he didn't get it, he was left with no choice but to turn to Sherrill. The better option would have been to turn to Sherrill in the first place -- he's been equally effective against both righties and lefties.
Three relievers. Three outs. A game that could have gone on indefinitely with just three relievers remaining.
Saddled with an offense that couldn't get a hit with runners in scoring position, McLaren had no choice but to turn to Brandon Morrow for as long as he could go, because he only had two other pitchers left: Rookie Ryan Rowland-Smith (he of the 2 1/3 career major league innings) and J.J. Putz (who presumably was being held back for a save situation). (UPDATE: Putz was unavailable tonight.)
It backfired, as Morrow proved once again that his command simply isn't yet good enough for extended appearances.
I won't crucify McLaren for what looks like a pretty bad bit of bullpen management tonight. After all, it was only game one, and one has figure he's going to learn from it. But for those who say managers tend to have a relatively negligent impact on teams, McLaren deserves a fair share of the blame for tonight's loss.
That said, I feel good about the next two days, even if the eight-game winning streak is now over. As Bill Kruger said tonight on FSN, this was the very best the Royals have to throw at us, and you have to believe that a team that has hit nearly .300 with runners in scoring position this year won't be stranding nine runners again.
So, here's to taking the next two from the Royals and moving on to Oakland to finish the first half out strong. Let's hope McLaren's bullpen shenanigans don't have a lasting effect.
Saying it had become harder and harder to bring daily the effort and energy he demands of his players, Hargrove resigned today as manager of the Mariners, effective after the Sunday matinée with the Toronto Blue Jays.
He insisted the decision was his and his alone.
"There are no dark sinister reasons for this decision," Hargrove said at a hastily called press conference this morning. "This is my decision.
"It’s not a problem with players, not a problem with Bill (Bavasi), not a problem with clubhouse manager, not a problem with my wife. It’s an accumulation of 35 years. That’s a long time. It’s just an accumulation of things. It's not one thing – I was not forced into this decision. There was a strong, credible job done by everyone to talk me out of it.
"But this is the right thing to do for Mike Hargrove and the Seattle Mariners."
Hargrove's always been a straight shooter, as is his nature as a native Texan, so it's hard not to take him at his word. But it's also hard not to wonder if there's another story, although any thoughts along those lines would be pure speculation at this point. And there will be plenty of that over the next 24 hours.
For now, I'll choose to accept his reasons, especially given that so much of what he said seems to be centered around his family. Family is unbelievably important to me, and I can't imagine what it would be like to be away from my wife and child for the extended periods demanded of a major league manager. This is a guy who's done it for 35 years. And when a guy says he's talked more to his wife in the past 10 days than he has in 10 years, well, that's pretty telling to me.
What to think of Hargrove's tenure?
For all the shots the guy has taken about his over reliance on veterans and ridiculous insistence on generally ignoring platoon splits, he did lead the team to heights I don't think any of us expected this year. Raise your hand if you thought this team would be 11 games over .500 at any point in 2007, let alone in June. That's what I thought.
And in many ways, this is the best possible scenario for Hargrove. He leaves with the team probably overachieving a bit, having overseen what appears to be an organization that has turned the corner from irrelevance to relevance once again. Even if interim manager John McLaren -- the guy we wanted to take over a long time ago -- comes in and leads the team to a playoff appearance, Hargrove will get a lot of the credit. If McLaren doesn't? If the team crumbles? It will be on him, even if such a fall would have been inevitable under Hargrove.
Will this team succeed under McLaren? The reality is nobody really knows how he's going to manage. I think we all suspect he'll be a little more prone to do some of the things we criticized Hargrove for not doing, given his seemingly more analytical nature. It'll be interesting to see how he forges out his own managing style, given all the years he spent hanging out with Lou Piniella, a manager notorious for his lack of patience with young players.
Will he be more open to Adam Jones playing everyday, as Jones should be? Will he fight for Jones' call-up if Bavasi doesn't want it? Will he be smart enough to make sure Jose Vidro never sees the top two-thirds of the batting order ever again? Will he have a better relationship with Ichiro, to the point that the team's lone superstar wants to stay in Seattle after this season? How will he manage the bullpen, which is going to have about three guys with arms fall off at this pace? Will he be more or less afraid to step on veterans' toes to make the right moves, given his interim status?
All will be things to keep an eye on, as this team tries to continue its current momentum. And we will keep an eye on it, starting tomorrow at Kansas City.
Until then, let's hope Hargrove goes out with a bang by sweeping the Blue Jays to finish a 10-2 homestand.
My buddy Mike, who works for the Sonics, commented on this post that Seattle was the only place where the Ray Allen trade wasn't being hailed as a success -- that it was roundly being praised around the country.
In my response, I tried to make the argument that it's just not that simple. That people "around the country" aren't worried about losing this team the way we are, and that colors how we see everything. Frank Hughes at The News Tribune gets it.
"(S)adly, nothing can be taken in the context of 'purely basketball' with this organization, not now and probably not for the next nine months to a year.He goes on to tell of why he believes the Allen trade was a smart basketball deal -- a stance I'm beginning to agree with -- and explains that the consensus among NBA writers was that the Sonics got the best of that one.
"There is an overarching fog of uncertainty about the team’s future that never seems to dissipate, infusing itself into any discussion about the team and choking the excitement and optimism out of even the smallest scintilla of hope."
"It’s a good start to the reshaping of a roster that doesn’t need to be completely razed to achieve success. ... But how can an increasingly apathetic and alienated fan base generate the type of fervor that usually accompanies such dramatic decisions with the sneaking suspicion that it is intended for the benefit of another community? ...
"It’s a shame, really. These should be the best of times for this organization. New GM. Fresh perspectives. Innovative ideas.
"But there is one idea that never can be forgotten: In its current state, nothing with this franchise is purely basketball."
