Mariner Central: Mariner Central Portal

Does anyone think that shortstop is a position of concern in the Mariners system? Please, let's have a show of hands...

Really? No one?

Ya, I know that we have Nick Franklin in the system and that the kid is the shizzle (do people use that word anymore? Did they ever?), but who else is there in the system, and is there anyone who could push Franklin for the coveted top-spot? Let's take a look at things with a bit of detail and maybe we will all learn something in the process.

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Got a moment or two? You really should give this podcast a listen because... well, because it's keen! This one is just shy of 22 minutes in length (it was 35 minutes before I edited out all of my stupid giggles and "ummm"s.

Enjoy!

Sometimes it just boggles my mind when I think on how our world has shrunk over the last 50 years...

I contacted Harrison Crow a few days ago and asked him about joining me on a podcast. Being the good fellow that he is, Harrison readily agreed and we got together on Wednesday (Dec 21st). Now, what most of you probably don't know is that Harrison is currently in the US Air Force and is deployed to Djibouti in Eastern Africa (hence the reference to our shrinking planet... duh...). While perhaps not the most dangerous of assignments, Harrison's duty in Djibouti has taken him a long ways from home and he will miss Christmas with his wife and rugrat. Think of him a bit when (if) you sit down for your Christmas dinner prayer.

Anyway, the end result was just a bit over an hour of prime baseball talk with Harrison carrying my weak-ass. As usual, I've broken it up into two bite-sized pieces.

Enjoy!

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When I first sat down to write this article I intended to structure it around a "Where's Waldo?" type of theme, but after a few attempts I had to ditch the approach. Unlike Waldo, who gets lost within the chaos of his life (assumed), I, on the otherhand, have been hiding rather than engaging my environment. It's a bit complicated, but I'll try to explain...

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I promised you something cool, and I think I actually came through for you all. Yep, I got Geoff Baker to agree to join me in a wee MC podcast. Actually, it wasn't all that hard, $ometimes $imply $aying plea$e work$...

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We all have something in mind of what we would like to see the Mariners do this off-season, but the central focus is to get better. This is going to be a rather tough thing to do because of the tidal wave of rookies that hit the field for the Mariners in 2011. Because of a very small sample size, no one can say with true surety what Kyle Seager, Alex Liddi, Mike Carp, Justin Smoak, Caspar Wells, Trayvon Robinson, or any of the horde of outfielders that debuted in 2011 will do in 2012.

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Good news folks! The iguana projectile vomited the heads of the army men and seems to be feeling better, so the Rube Goldberg Stat Machine is back in business. The komodo dragon just didn't work out I'm afraid to say.

Today I want to see what there is to see concerning 2nd base. I think that we all feel comfortable now with Dustin Ackley manning the spot, but should we be? I mean, with has the putrid production from the position in the year+ prior to his debut lowered our expectations? Let's take a look. First, let's pour the stats from the last five years into the hopper of the RGSM and drop the piece of cheese.

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The iguana that had chomped the heads off of the plastic army men is on the DL with an upset stomach. I'm not entirely sure how the Komodo Dragon will work out in the Rube Goldberg Stat Machine, but when I think on it, the conclusion that I keep coming to is that it really doesn't matter.

As far as replacing the decapitated army men, I had two options: 1) Follow the iguana around and collect up the heads as they "appeared" and glue them back on, or, 2) Buy another bag of army men. I decided to go with option 3, which was to replace the army men with Lego figures instead. Had I known that this would increase the coefficient of Rube Goldberginess of the Rube Goldberg Stat Machine I might have fed the army men to the iguana several weeks ago...

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