Mere days after Nick’s delightful post compiling our staff’s collective hoping/coping levels regarding the postseason chances for the Seattle Mariners, the team was decisively swept in Toronto by a team that is not in contention. Our staff was decidedly optimistic as of last Thursday after a week of improved play. Then, Canada. The Mariners played as badly or worse as we’ve seen them play this season, with multiple mental errors and sloppy plays to boot. The discussion that follows was prompted by the conclusion
of the sweep on Sunday, and this was even before the team’s failure to hold a 3-run lead in Boston on Monday and finally finding some offense again. Additional commentary will be in italics by me, Eric. It’s very possible this discussion gets rendered irrelevant before this gets posted, but oh well, let’s send it!
(1:07 PM PT on Sunday, August 30. The Mariners have just finished getting blanked by 42-year-old Max Scherzer 7-0, completing a sweep by the Blue Jays, who are in last place in the AL East. John gets things started with a bang.)
John Trupin: That is… not a series people keep their jobs over.
(the chat rumbles with general, spiteful agreement)
Nick Tucker: It simply cannot be.
Ryan Blake: Fire me, first of all.
Evan James: Dan should have been fired in June. Now would also be a good time.
John: Not really any decisions Dan made this series that were upsetting, in my opinion. Just an amazingly poor lack of showing up or performing.
Ryan: Is it a bad look (ageism) to emphasize Scherzer’s age in this recap?
Eric Sanford: Not at all, they got their asses whipped by a mf who grew up with a rotary phone.
(the chat roils in approval and laughing emojis, I may have done this after posting my zinger that also applies to me)
(sorry for gloating, but the wins are so few and far between these days, I must savor them)
Kate Preusser: They just looked so lifeless.
Ryan: Yeah, John, I think (Wilson) is done. I hope the rest are done too. But, I think his ticket from Boston says Mexico or outer space or something.
Nick T: God, I hope so. “The guys like him,” well they don’t play like it!
(great point here, Nicky)
Connor Donovan: I say fire him if only so we are finally free from Dan discourse every minute of every day.
(also a great point)
John: This game today especially had just a sort of laughable number of mental errors and sloppy plays.
Connor: That ball skipping under J.P.’s glove was so rough.
Ryan: So bad. I mean also, why I think Dan doesn’t deserve any of this shit, that JP is playing short. But yeah. Bad bad bad.
John: Right, it’s also the consequence of being so player-friendly and so reluctant to IL people fully. If you portray everyone as healthy enough to play, we can only assume they are underperforming expectations in part due to your poor preparation as a manager.
Jake Mailhot: That’s where I’m at. The roster has talent. The projections think the Mariners will have the third best win record in baseball in September. Some of that is due to the weak schedule, but the projections have always seen this roster as well constructed. Players gotta play better, but also, the whole team underperforming tells me there’s something more systemic going on. Poor preparation, bad chemistry, underselling injuries, bad in-game management. It’s all dragging the talent on the roster down. Maybe the team would still be underperforming under a different manager/coaching staff, but you definitely can’t say this current staff is helping the team play better.
Zach Mason: My thing is, how does Humpy still have a job? The vibes being bad are all because they let him win a second time, and his on-field performance is consistently a disaster. It sets a terrible tone.
(ZAM dropping in with yet another devastatingly accurate take)
Grant Bronsdon: Time to Old Yeller him
(TOO FAR, GRANT)
Ryan: I mean the projections are largely because FGDC thinks Cal and Julio are the best batter duo in the majors. And if we’re saying Dan is causing them to underperform, then I think we’re also saying Dan got them to the 15-combined WAR last year? I don’t know. I see the mismanagement as coming from above Dan’s head, and that’ll be my argument (again) when he gets fired and Dipoto doesn’t. I am on team fire Dan though just because I think it’s become a distraction.
Kate: Yeah I am pretty firmly on the “managers don’t do anything” train. I thought firing Servais was stupid and I think firing Dan will be stupid. Although, I don’t think they’ll fire him, he will step away to spend more time with his family.
Connor: Yeah I said this earlier, but I think it will definitely be framed as Dan stepping down or a mutual parting of ways.
Jake: FGDC has the M’s ranked in the top 10 in baseball ROS WAR at the following non C/CF positions: 1B (8th), 2B (7th), LF (3rd), RF (9th), DH (7th), SP (6th). I do not believe their actual ROS WAR will reach those projections, and that, to me, is a systemic issue beyond Cal and Julio aren’t hitting.
John: I agree, Jake.
Kate: The continued absence of Bringo Dingo (AKA Brendan Donovan, John coined this back in May and it infected all of us) is just the thing they can’t get over with Cal and Julio both sucking wind (likely not their faults entirely but they have both sucked wind)
Jake: You can pin the systemic issue on Jerry or Dan, but as I said above, you absolutely cannot argue that this coaching staff is helping the team win.
Connor: Cal at least has gotten his shit together in August, but Julio has been godawful. I really wonder if any concussion symptoms have started creeping back for him.
Kate: I am willing to entertain it because it’s easier to believe there’s something underpinning his awful swing decisions. But, they’re all in desperation mode. And if there’s an argument to be made against the coaching staff it’s that apparently no one can get them out of it.
John: Managers are not inherently crucial from one to the next at the big league level, but I do think poor managing can harm a team. So far as I’ve been able to ascertain, Seattle has been pretty light touch in terms of pushing players to be on “their program” vs. letting guys follow their own approach and methodology so long as it’s worked. Especially for hitters.
Ryan: Are you giving Dan credit for last year and the end of 2024 though? That’s a big issue I have with a lot of this. If Dan matters, then up until tow months ago he was a top five manager in the majors!
Grant: This is a reasonable pushback, but in my opinion, sometimes a certain voice stops resonating with the team, it basically goes in one ear and out the other. So I think you can say “Dan’s schtick worked last year” and also believe “the players aren’t responding to him and he has not come close to getting the most out of this year’s team.“
Ryan: That’s entirely fair. Maybe he’s just in a bit of a slump like the rest of the team. If managers matter, then we’re not cutting Dan loose any more than we’re cutting Julio loose, right? Managers are there to be fired and keep their players from fist fighting. My issues with the team are far closer to JP Crawford playing shortstop on August 30 in a must win series.
Kate: They really have been so fantastically injured. There’s what, one functioning wrist on the infield and it belongs to Cole Young? Who is himself just a finely ground paste contained by a good grooming routine at this point.
(Kate definitely meant that endearingly to be clear, she loves dear Coleseph)
John: I mean certainly, but that again is back to the team’s choices to manage injuries and their ability to accurately gauge player health or accurately elicit player health reports honestly from the players themselves. Which is, again, very much in the category of the manager/coaching staff’s job.
Kate: A reminder that teams cannot force players to go on the IL.
John: I don’t think that’s true, Kate.
Kate: It definitely is. My sense is the pitching staff is much less hesitant to report anything
(hate it when mom and dad fight, ugh!)
John: If the medical staff evaluates them as injured, they can be placed on the IL.
Connor: Yeah the union would go into conniptions.
Kate: They can but teams cannot force a player to go on the IL. Hollander has said this.
Ryan: I think regardless the issue of playing while injured long predated Wilson.
Connor: It long predates the Mariners as a franchise.
(Connor with the 50,000 foot view TRUTH BOMB)
Some assorted back and forth continued about injuries and how they should be reported, but then we got distracted by other things like Lazaro Montes being called up and so on.
So, LL community! Given the recent streak of very poor play, what is your take on the whole situation and feel free to sound off on players playing hurt and how much we all freaking hate it. Happy Tuesday(?).
