Another "You've Got To Be Kidding Me" Thread...

[JosephC]

June 28, 2009, Jack Zdureincik traded Michael Morse for Ryan Langerhans, which USS Mariner highly loved, as it was a player Dave Cameron had suggested for quite a while. Meanwhile since with the Mariners, Ryan Langerhans .218 and ..226 respectively.

On the other side of the United States, Michael Morse is tearing things up with the Nationals, hitting .327 with 7 home runs and a .944 OPS .

We got fleeced again and it looks like Mr. Cameron was wrong.

[TellItToTheDA]

I feel that if Langerhans had a bigger role than pinch hitter and occasional starter, he'd have better numbers.

As for Morse, let's see if the numbers he's put up hold as he tries to get a starting role with Nyjer Morgan heading to the DL. It's all about sample size.

[TellItToTheDA]

Ironic that this shows up on Lookout Landing today:

http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2010/8/7/1611092/ryan-langerhans


Ryan Langerhans
by Jeff Sullivan on Aug 7, 2010 11:39 AM PDT in Miscellaneous

He has a career batting line of .231/.336/.380.

Since 2008, he has a batting line of .226/.360/.394, with a modest .301 BABIP.

He's left-handed, there's little evidence that he has a giant platoon split, he's had excellent success in AAA, he's arguably one of the better defensive outfielders in baseball, and he's only 30 years old.

He needs to be a starter. Somewhere, for at least a year or three. He is a multi-million dollar player who's just been dying on the bench for far too long.


A couple of comments on the page, however, really piqued my interest:


There are 36 OFers in baseball this season with at least 250 PA and an OPS below Langerhans'.


He's accumulated 0.5 WAR in just 80 PA this year.

[JosephC]

That is funny and I know he has his fans but I am not one of them. He is more or less spaghetti on the wall. He's not the future, he doesn't have a bat and he can run down balls. Sound familiar? Yup, pretty much the rest of our team. I'm starting to really disagree with the Z plan. It looks like offense should come first and then the defense with a player. Our team is proving that. At the same time however, Kansas City is proving the exact opposite. Having such high averages and such a bad record proves that they lack the defense/pitching side of the game. There must be a fine line, and most people believe it makes up the Mendoza line. I personally think the Mendoza line is far too low of an average to keep as an every day player no matter how good your defense is. It's probably me just getting tired of not watching the M's score, but this defense>>offense thing which a lot of the Mariner Blogs (and front office) are trying to portray is getting pretty old in my opinion.

[clarknova]

I hadn't read this before I went all ape shit on the fire Jack Z deal. This makes the Dave Cameron clock tower comment a little clearer.... Point taken. I realized that I'm basically espousing a lot of the same ideals he does. Ironically after all that babble I wrote, I read this today:
http://www.ussmariner.com/2010/08/11/joe-posnanski-writes-a-bad-article/

I agree with pretty much everything in that post. I also hate Geoff Baker with the fire of a thousand suns. I don't want to be a bandwagon Dave Cameron apologist, and I do get annoyed with his nerd hubris on a pretty regular basis, but I think he's a smart guy. I think sometimes reading blogs and forums, people can get a little Twilight on it as far as choosing sides (myself included), I just try to gather up all the data I can and form opinions that make the most sense to me. Unfortunately for me, as of right now, I'm not really in the majority anymore.

[JosephC]

hey hey, the majority is not always right. Remember that!