After working 80 hours between Sunday and Friday, Saturday was a much-needed day off from work! So, I spent it in the best way possible...I attended Mariners' FanFest at Safeco Field with my father. We woke up, got ready and drove through Starbucks on our way downtown. It was pouring rain and we got soaked walking a block to the stadium, but once we were inside I warmed up with the sight of the field, the smell of hot dogs and the thought that Opening Day is right around the corner. We headed straight to the first base line, where they were having the Dugout Dialogue series on top of the Mariners' dugout. Immediately, I spotted Deanna, who was already with Positive Paul and his brother-in-law, whom I actually knew vaguely as a customer from my store. I introduced myself to Positive Paul and we all chatted for a few minutes until a few guys started walking on top of the dugout. The first group in the Dugout Dialogue series included Jeremy Reed, Greg Dobbs and Felix Hernandez. Now, the questions for these things usually aren't too good. People asked Felix what's the fastest he's ever thrown, Kenji Johjima was asked if he's been eating American food yet and someone asked Jeff Pentland, the M's new hitting coach, why Ichiro pulls on his sleeve before he hits. I know I'm sleeping better knowing that the answers are: 99 MPH, Yes - I love Red Robin, and Rick Rizzs answering for Pentland, "Hitters are weird." Felix certainly won the award for "pimpest attire worn under his Mariners' jacket." Check it out...

Next up was Mr. Bill Bavasi. I really enjoyed listening to him speak at the USSM/BP event this summer, but he seemed to be more distant at FanFest, which is to be expected. Positive Paul asked Bavasi about the M's possibly acquiring Jeff Weaver. Bavasi said that the M's were basically tapped out financially, but added that he liked Weaver, noting that Weaver had grown up and "isn't such a goofball anymore." After Bavasi was done, our little crew packed up and decided to head out to the bullpen. On the way, I checked out some of the booths along the main concourse. I got some pamphlets and trivia cards from the SABR booth (I can't wait for the convention in Seattle!), got a Moyer Foundation bracelet, picked up an Aquasox schedule, and we took our pictures in one of those silly things where you stick your face through a wooden cutout before finally making our way downstairs to the bullpens. I had never been in the M's bullpen before, so it was a really neat experience to be able to throw a couple of pitches in there. I tried a knuckleball first, but I pick my nails too much to get a good grip on the thing and it sailed over the catcher's head. So, for the second pitch (everyone gets two), I went with a straight four-seamer and I think it was actually a strike.

After we all had our turn, Deanna and Positive Paul decided to head upstairs to get some autographs. I didn't want to wait in line, so my dad and I headed back over to the third base line and waited in line to catch a popup in the outfield. I was a little disappointed that when you were catching the pop flies, you were facing the outfield wall - not facing the infield, like you would be if you were actually catching fly balls at Safeco. However, it was still a fun experience to be on the field. I had been on the field before - the first time was when my dad and I attended "Play Catch in the Outfield" day at Safeco, and I have also been in foul territory several times - reporting for the Grand Salami and at my sister's high school graduation. But, it's always exciting being on the field and I caught both fly balls that were shot my direction. After my dad and I caught a couple pop flies, we headed back over to the Dugout Dialogue series. Now, the section by the M's dugout was really packed - this is because next up was Kenji Johjima and Jamie Moyer. I could tell from the press conference that fans are really going to love Johjima (or "Jo" as he says his teammates are already calling him) and the Dugout Dialogue just cemented that idea. When Johjima walked onto the dugout, I gave him a thumbs up, and he gave me one back. He was beaming the entire time and seemed genuinely happy to be in Seattle. He was very upbeat, he had everyone laughing, and you can already tell that the language barrier won't be a problem for him. Moyer said that his favorite place to pitch is Yankee Stadium, which made me throw up in my mouth a little bit since Moyer reportedly rejected a trade to the Yankees last season. For the record: As a Mariner, Moyer is 4-2 with a 5.10 ERA at Yankee Stadium. Whatever...

Anyway, people really cleared out after Johjima got off the dugout, so I moved to a better seat because I was really excited for the next group. Up next was Benny Looper, the Vice President of Player Development & Scouting, and Greg Hunter, the Director of Minor League Operations. They seemed really cool, but I felt bad for them because there were only about 25 people sitting in the section and the questions they were getting were pretty bad. I asked about Anthony Varvaro, and they said they're expecting him to pitch this summer. I think drafting him was a steal for the M's and I'm excited to see him this summer - presumably in Everett. If you're wondering, here is what Hunter and Looper look like (Aaron definitely got his father's ears!):

After those guys, Jeff Pentland, the M's new hitting coach came out to answer some questions. Reed and Dobbs had already raved about the guy earlier, and from listening to him talk, you could tell that they were being sincere. They both said that he was really easy to talk to and had a ton of knowledge. I don't doubt that he has a wealth of information (he said that he's now been coaching for 34 years), and it was apparent that he would be someone that is easy to approach. This is an important quality for a coach, especially if the team has a lot of younger players. Pentland said that his main expertise is power. He talked about helping Barry Bonds in college and about working with Sammy Sosa on the Cubs. He also said that he expects Jeremy Reed to improve a lot this season. I asked Pentland whether controlling the strike zone and patience is something that can be taught at this level, or if by the time guys get to the Majors, it's either something they have or they don't. He said that controlling the strike zone and patience were indeed two of the most important things he'll be working with players on during Spring Training. He said that he believes - and this is similar to what he told Doug Miller on the M's official site the other day - that a lot of times when players struggle, it's not because of something they're doing mechanically, it's because they lack confidence. Pentland made it almost seem that what a hitting coach does for its hitters is more psychological than physical. I hope he's right and I'm excited to see what he can do for the M's young hitters this season.

After that, Dad and I decided to call it a day. He was cold and I was tired and hungry. We decided to drive back to Redmond for some Thai food. As we were leaving, we stopped and looked at the Mariners Care Silent Auction. They had some crap that was being sold for way too much money, but what caught my eye was tucked back in the corner - the Mariners Garage Sale. Here, they had about 30 autographed balls that they were just trying to get rid of. You didn't have to bid, you just had to be willing to shell out $15 - $30 for autographed balls from crappy ex-Mariners. $15 for an Aaron Taylor ball? Ha! The funniest thing though was the chart that listed all the prices had more errors than Mike Morse. Miguel Olivio? Yorvealt Torrealba? Grerg Dobbs? I'm not making this up. But, that was that. I wish I hung around a little longer. I wouldn't have minded watching more Dugout Dialogue sessions - notably the one with Howard Lincoln and the one with Jarrod Washburn and J.J. Putz. I also would have liked to meet "msb" with Deanna, hit in the Mariners' batting cage and participate in the trivia contest, but as I'm sure I'll be saying in September...wait 'til next year!

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 %!