Assuming for the moment that Andriesen is being serious, and the team’s enormous will to win not withstanding, does anyone care if we lose 100 games this season?
Absent a shocking turn of events (say, hiring Antonetti), I wonâ€™t be renewing my season tickets this year. I considered it last year, but decided to stick it out one more year. Done. Iâ€™ve had it. This is sheer incompetence. The handful of good moves this team has made over the last several years are clearly the result of random luck (blind squirrels, stopped clocks, and the like).
I bailed this year. I told them when I talked to them on the phone that if John McLaren was retained as manager there was zero chance I’d pony up for more than a handful of single game tickets.
The guy wanted me to put down a deposit. When I asked him if I could have the money back if McLaren was retained, he said no. So, I hung up and never called back. I sure hope there isn’t a huge waiting list when I’m ready to buy again.
The guy wanted me to put down a deposit. When I asked him if I could have the money back if McLaren was retained, he said no. So, I hung up and never called back. I sure hope there isnâ€™t a huge waiting list when Iâ€™m ready to buy again.
Of course, here’s hoping this will happen before you hit old age….
Just because the deal didn’t go down this time, that doesn’t mean its over. Wash will go back on waivers, the Twins will re-claim him, and the Mariners will (well, you never know with these M’s) lower their asking price.
They were originally asking the Twins for a player off the 40-man roster. They will probably not ask that again.
Wash will go back on waivers, the Twins will re-claim him, and the Mariners will (well, you never know with these Mâ€™s) lower their asking price.
If Washburn goes back on waivers and the Twins claim him, then don’t they get him without having to necessarily make any deal at all (from DMZ’s “How Waivers Work” post)?
From Bakers column. He knows more about this than we do.
If the Mariners put Washburn back on waivers, they’ll have no leverage with the Twins. Even if the Mariners ask for a player, the Twins wouldn’t have to do anything to get Washburn other than make the claim. The only way the Twins give up anything is to dump a player they don’t want on the Mariners (that could happen irregardless of the Washburn situation. Really, with irrevocable waivers next time, the Mariners will get nothing. But they could get rid of Washburn. Could. And that would be great.
I haven’t agreed with Baker in a while on anything.
How about a post making a case for the best run teams that aren’t in Boston that we can consider as our new surrogate team……?
I nominate Minn and TB.
Here’s one problem w/that scenario: presumably, the Twins put the other person on waivers, the M’s claim them, it’s a quid pro quo. And if you’re the Twins, you’re on scout’s honor that you’re not going to claim Washburn and back out of the deal and keep your player, hoping that a future Mariner org of fresh faces doesn’t care.
It’s that if you couldn’t get a deal done in the window, and dumping Washburn for nothing would have been a great move for your team, that’s a pretty attractive fallback position. You’re guaranteed to be rid of him.
Now, unless the Twins promised that they absolutely would trade the M’s someone and it was just a matter of making up the list and agreeing to a name (which couldn’t be done in 2 days for some reason) the M’s are now in a situation where they’ve given up their pretty attractive guaranteed fallback option in exchange for nothing, and now have no guarantee of anything. They put Washburn out again, maybe someone bites and maybe they don’t. Maybe it’s the Twins, and maybe it’s someone else and they get nothing. Maybe the Twins don’t put in a claim at all.
Washburn for nothing would have been a good move. Take the available good move, rather than risk having Washburn sucking up payroll next year.
Maybe it’s the beer, but I think I (gulp) understand what Pelekoudas is doing.
Lee Pelekoudas wants to get a player of value in exchange for Washburn. He may or may not understand how valueless Washburn is in trade given his contract. But the best way to leverage what value Washburn has, is not to cave in to a salary dump deal if you don’t have to. Yes, at the last second, Lee could have dumped Washburn on Minnesota since they refused to give up a player. I agree he should have. But I think the point was to insist upon the deal he wanted, and not cave in order to have the best shot at getting a player. If it had worked, we’d all think he was a genius.
Which is the whole point. Lee only gets this job if he does something special. Just dumping salary doesn’t stand out as a brilliant move. He needs to make a splash and he’s playing a risky game with the team’s future to do it. Maybe they should just tell him he’s not getting the job, and he’ll be fired if he does anything dumb. Might be safer.
I’m thinking we should fire everyone, change our logo, change half of our name (if possible?), and change our colors slightly, and then we have the complete recipe to go from worst to first!
I’ll drop back regularly only when the rubbish at the top goes, as there is no hope before that – the latest inexplicable idiocy served, in rubbing its hew-and-improved super-radium salt into you sad, still-faithful fans of the team, to prove that proven beyond doubt fact.
After sleeping on it, I’m left with the conclusion that the Mariner FO stuck to their demand of a player from the Twins 40 man roster because of their stunning player evaluation abilitites.
After all, if someone is paying a player @ $10 million a year, then that means the player is really really good. Right?
They blew it on evaluating Washburn’s talent when they gave him the contract they did, and since there hasn’t been any significant difference in who’s running the ship (LP was stalking the halls somewhere during this time) they overestimate him now.
The Twins should look almost as dumb in all of this as the Mariners. Why the hell would a low payroll team with boatloads of young, talented pitching want a below-average starting pitcher that’s overpaid? If the Mariners had dumped Washburn on them, what do they do with him?
As I said when Bavasi was fired, I believe the LincStrong era is coming to a close. The embarassment is simply too great NOT to be dealt with by the board of directors.
Lincoln would need to be fired by Nintendo — the minority owners have 0 say in how the team runs. There’s no coup possible as things stand now.
It’s fun to think these people could be embarrassed by failure, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Zeroes is this: nothing bad that results from the actions of the rich and powerful in this country is ever their fault. There’s always someone else to blame. The buck can always be passed. Even if these jokers do get fired, they’ll land somewhere else and keep doing what they’re doing. Look at Bavasi – dude didn’t exactly have to pound the pavement looking for a new gig.
He doesn’t need to be “fired,” and there doesn’t need to be a “coup.” High executives with a long record of dedicated service are not subject to such ugly circumstances, especially in a business environment influenced by Japanese culture.
Now after this post, do you know why FA don’t want to come to this organization?