There's been a lot of hoopla recently over Barry Bonds' decision to drop out of the World Baseball Classic. But, you know what? I don’t care. Good for him! In fact, I think more players should follow his lead. I’m sure Brian Sabean, the Giants’ ownership, Barry’s teammates and all of San Francisco’s fans are absolutely thrilled about his decision. And, why shouldn’t they be? Who really cares about some trivial, over-hyped, money-grubbing event like the WBC? As a Mariners’ fan, I can assure you that I don’t want Ichiro playing (and heaven forbid if Felix is allowed to participate!). I mean, can you imagine the backlash if a MLB player gets hurt during this exaggerated advertisement disguised as “competition”? I know that WBC supporters are thinking, “What’s the difference between getting hurt at the WBC and getting hurt during Spring Training?” Well, I’m glad you asked! Spring Training is just that…training! Players are training for the toll that a 162-game season will take on their bodies. The WBC is supposed to be a competition. However, it’s flawed because MLB players won’t be playing at 100%. To me, any competition that wants to be taken seriously shouldn’t have any restrictions placed on its competitors (outside of the standard rules for the game taking place!). However, during the WBC, pitchers will have pitch-count limits. How competitive is it really going to be when Buck Martinez has to pull Brad Lidge because Lidge has reached his limit of 20 pitches. Furthermore, the goal of the WBC is to determine which country is “the best” at baseball. But, how can that be fairly determined when the best players are dropping out? And, why does it even matter in the first place? You’ve got players playing for countries they may have never even been to (Mike Piazza and Italy) and new American citizens playing for Latin countries (Manny Ramirez). Face it…the WBC is a joke. It’s worse than the All-Star Game. Yeah, I’ll probably end up watching some WBC games, just because I love baseball so much. However, I won’t be rooting for an individual country as much as I’ll be rooting for all of the players to stay healthy – so they’re able to play when the games really matter!

UPDATE: Uh...yeah. What he said! Jayson Stark is the man.

I just got home for working a 16-hour shift. See, I work at the Seattle Team Shop, right across from the Qwest Field Event Center, and people are going crazy getting their Super Bowl gear. At 7:45 am, we were selling people shirts that were still warm from the printers. Anyway...this post is to just warn everyone that posting will be erratic for the next two weeks - maybe longer. Things will certainly be chaotic! I know I'm going to the Mariners' FanFest on Saturday, so there will be a post and pictures from that...but other than that, I'm not sure how much blogging I will be doing. On top of my crazy work schedule, I'm also planning a wedding. So, needless to say, this is a very hectic time for me! It's probably going to be work>sleep>repeat until sometime after the Super Bowl. Not that there's anything to really write about - luckily this crazy time in my life is coming during the slowest point in baseball's off-season! However, when the Super Bowl insanity dies down, pitchers and catchers will start to report to Spring Training, I will have a minor surprise to unveil, and I will have more time to write. But, in the meantime...GO HAWKS!

About a year ago on the Grand Salami blog, I recommended the MLB.tv searchable video service to people. It costs $10 for the offseason, and you have unlimited access to MLB.tv’s video archive. I paid the $10 again this year and I’m pretty bummed out with the service. It’s just not very accurate at all. For example, alot of the clips are out of whack. I tried to look at some of Felix Hernandez’s strikeouts, but very few of them actually worked. Sure, I saw some video – but it wasn’t of Felix striking someone out. In fact, it was rarely of him even pitching! One time it was Ichiro hitting and another time it was a freaking Saturn commercial! WTF? I wanted to watch Jacque Jones grounding out to Yuniesky Betancout, but the clip was of Ryan Franklin pitching to Lew Ford. Sure, there are some really cool things. Want to watch Sexson crush balls out of Safeco Field? No problem. Want to look at all of the times Jeremy Reed was caught stealing, or check out Marcos Carvajal, the new M’s pitcher from the Rockies? You’re a few clicks away. However, if you want to watch Jeremy Hermida hit a grand slam in his first Major Leauge at-bat…you’re shit out of luck. Yeah, it’s fun when it works – but it’s always a toss up. You sit there while the video is buffering, wondering, “Is it going to work this time? Is it going to be the actual clip I’d like to see?” At this point in the off-season, I wouldn’t even recommend subscribing.You’d think that such a huge entity, like MLB, could get their shit together and put together a service that works properly.

Just like most of the blogging community, I'm irritated by the Mariners signing Willie Bloomquist for 2 more years. Granted, it's not a lot of money, but it just goes to show that the M's value certain things differently than an outsider might. It's no secret that the Mariners LOVE Bloomquist. They drafted him twice. He's local, he hustles ("local hustler" just didn't sound right) and he "plays" almost every position. But, c'mon...two years? For comparision's sake, there were 27 players who signed one-year deals yesterday. The only two players who got two-year deals were Mark Teixeira and Willie Bloomquist. Go figure...

“Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.”

-George Carlin in Baseball and Football

One thing that's not dying is the Seahawks popularity. As much as I hate to admit it, Seattle is a football town. There's no doubt about it. I've been working at a team shop right down between Safeco Field and Qwest Field and it's insane how much more popular the Seahawks are, compared to the Mariners. Sure, the Mariners have drawn extremely well over the past couple years, especially when you consider their horrendous records. However, in Seattle, the M's are (at-best) second rate. I realize that the Seahawks are extremely popular this season because of their success. In fact, I’ve even heard this year’s Seahawks season compared to the 1995 Mariners season, and I bet they are quite similar. Right now, the Seahawks have their flag flying over the Space Needle, a new song written about them and tickets to this year’s playoff game sold out in 10 minutes and are going on eBay for about $200 apiece. It’s easy to tell that, for the Seahawks, things are going well.

But, just for fun, let's look at a few of the differences I've noticed between the Seahawks’ fan base and the Mariners’ fan base...

-The amount of Seahawks fans who dress up for the games is outstanding. At an M’s game, the most dressed up someone will be is wearing a jersey AND a hat. For the Seahawks though, people wear wigs, masks, jerseys and blinking lights. They’re also carrying signs and some have their faces painted. Sure, it’s probably a little over the top…some diehard fans actually wear shoulder pads under their jerseys. When’s the last time you knew of a guy wearing a protective cup to a ballgame?

-Speaking of the fans…Mike Holmgren gave a game ball to the fans and their “12^th Man Advantage” after the Seahawks beat the New York Giants a few weeks ago. “It was loud,” Holmgren told the Tacoma News Tribune. “Our folks were in it from the get-go and they stayed in it until the very end. That was great. That is what you need for a home-field advantage.” The Mariners, on the other hand, had a night last season when fans were encouraged to knit at the ballpark during a game.

Enough said…

520 ballots were cast for this year's induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I always get a kick out of looking at the results each year. Not to see who gets in, mind you. No, I always like looking at the results to see which scrubs ended up getting one or two votes. This year it was Walt Weiss. His career numbers are .258/.351/.326. To me, that just screams Hall of Famer. Move over Willie, Mickey and Babe, here comes Walt! Honestly, this is why ballots should be made public. Who in their right mind voted for Walt Weiss, and why should he be allowed to vote next year? It's ridiculous!

As you can see, my New Year's resolution to "write more" hasn't been going so well. It's now January 10th and this is the first post of the new year. However, I have already read one book and I did floss that one time. But hey, January is a slow month anyway. I will hopefully be posting some pictures from FanFest and I will probably have a cool little thing to announce in the near future. As for the posting goes, I'll make up for it when the season rolls around. Anyway, on to the first post of 2006!

Of course you're familiar with the old saying, "You learn something new everyday." Well, I use that saying, but I ammend it a little bit. I find myself saying, "Wow, you learn something new everyday...on USSMariner.com!"

Yeah yeah, I know I probably sound like a broken record, or a secret USSM PR Machine. But, I'm not...I just speak the truth. It's no secret that I love that Web Site, but there was one really cool thing that I learned there the other day. It was from Dave, but it was burried in the comments to the post about Pat Gillick signing Ryan Franklin. Check it out...

"The spreadsheet I’m working from doesn’t have BB/9 or K/9, but instead has batted ball percentages. These are better, anyways, because per-nine percentages have flaws that reward pitchers who face more batters in an inning.

K/9, for instance, treats double-strikeout-walk-walk-strikeout-flyball to be equally dominant to groundball-strikeout-strikeout, when the second performance is clearly superior. That’s why I prefer to use BB% and K%. If I ever quote extrapolated rates, it will be BB/G or K/G, which come from the Hardball Times site and use the BB/K percentages to adjust to average baserunner totals...."

I never thought of it like that and for such a long time, I've been using K/9 and not realizing its flaws. But, it certainly does make sense.

So, since I wasted hours of my life a few weeks ago looking at the top pitchers based on K/9, let's see how the list looks for pitchers based on K%, shall we?

Rembember, here are the top 10 qualified pitchers, in order, based on K/9: Mark Prior, Jake Peavy, Johan Santana, Brett Myers, Jason Schmidt, Pedro Martinez, John Lackey, A.J. Burnett, Scott Kazmir and Doug Davis.

Now, here are the top 10 qualified pitchers, in order, based on the percentage of batters faced that they fanned: Mark Prior, Jake Peavy, Johan Santana, Pedro Martinez, Brett Myers, Randy Johnson, Josh Beckett, A.J. Burnett, John Patterson and Chris Carpenter.

Wow, that's quite a difference! 4 guys who weren't on the top 10 K/9 list make it to the top 10 list based on K%. I'm not going to do the non-qualified guys because it's more work, I'm tired and face it...you get the point.

Next up...another stat the guys at USSM toss around: Extra Base Hit %!

Here are my resolutions for 2006…

* Write more. Not only do I want to write more for this blog, I would also like to start writing some fiction and stand up comedy.

* Read more. I always joke that I’m much better at buying books than I am at reading them. This year, I would like to lessen the gap. There are many great books on my near-future reading list that I would like to get to in 2006. Starting a book club with Deanna would be fun and would certainly help cross off some of the baseball books on the list. Realistically, if I could read 25 books next year, I would be happy.

* Floss. Yeah, I think this is one of them every year, but this is the year that I will start doing it on a regular basis.

* Watch more baseball. If my fiancé reads this, the wedding might be called off. However, I would like to watch more baseball. We get the baseball package on Direct TV at my house, but I don’t feel like I use it enough. Now that I have TiVo, I will certainly record more games and match-ups I would like to see. Also, I would really like to go to more high school, college and minor league games.

* Interrupt less. This is one of my worst traits and one that frustrates my fiancé the most. I will try my best to not interrupt people so much.

* Lose weight. I need to start working off the 50 pounds I gained during my freshman year of college. My incentive will be to look good at my wedding!

That’s about it. I hope that posting them here will help me stick to them and will make 2006 another great year!

Reading through the comments in some of the latest threads on USSMariner have left me shaking my head. Too often, it seems as though people take what they're getting there for granted. Remember folks, you're getting the best Mariners' information and analysis several times a day, for free! Personally, I read USSMariner so much more frequently than the local fishwrap or the M's official site. Not only do I rely on USSMariner for my M's news and rumors, but I also get interesting insight and powerful statistical analysis. So, everytime someone acts like a douchebag in the comments, I feel bad for the authors. Don't these people realize that it's is a labor of love for the five guys running the site? I do, and therefore I would like to take a second and thank Derek, Dave, Jason, Jeff and Peter for all of the hard work they do to keep the good ship USSMariner afloat. It's the first site I check every morning and the last one I read before I go to sleep at night. My days just wouldn't be the same without it. That being said, I present you with...

*Please note that these are in no particular order and I would also like to note that I'm probably missing some of my favorites. Some of these are ones that stand out to me and others are ones I found sifting through the archives and saying, "Oh yeah...that was a great one!"

1) Derek's Attrition War series