Will Dustin Ackley and Michael Pineda make the Opening Day roster?
We’ve alluded to it here and there, but check out these links for more on how Super 2 status, the arbitration process and free agency eligibility figures into the Seattle Mariners decision to add their two finest prospects to the Opening Day roster.
Jeff Sullivan: The Likely-To-Be-Cited Reasons Why Dustin Ackley And Michael Pineda Will Probably Start In Tacoma
I don’t think we’ll see either Ackley or Pineda right away, and I think it’s in large part because of the whole service time issue with which fans are growing increasingly familiar. Keep Ackley and Pineda on the roster all season and they’re under team control through 2016. Start them in Tacoma and bring them up as early as the middle of April and they’re under team control through 2017. There’s also an additional Super Two concern that comes into play and pushes the preferred call-up date closer to June, but that has to do with future salary, and future salary is less important than future control.
Larry Stone: “Super 2″ status could impact Mariners’ two super prospects
Of course, the exact service time necessary to be a Super 2 fluctuates from year to year, but teams now have enough history to know that the magic cutoff date is around May 20. Any player brought up before then is likely to be a Super 2 down the road. Anyone brought up afterwards is unlikely to qualify. Sometimes it’s a bit later, however, so just to be safe teams usually hold their Super 2 candidates back until early June.
Jason Churchill: Ackley, Pineda and service time
But there is the issue of service time, and it does matter. It just matters more for Ackley than it does for Pineda.
Ackley, as a Scott Boras client, is more unlikely to sign a long-term extension, therefore making the service time issue an important one for the player and his tenure with the Seattle Mariners. Boras clients are generally headed for free agency unless a can’t-refuse offer is made, i.e. Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies.
Pineda is not a client of Scott Boras and as a pitcher with some elbow problems in his past the club could see more value in getting Pineda’s pitches in the majors.
Hungry Michael Pineda makes strides in quest for roster spot
Greg Johns on what Seattle’s top pitching prospect is doing to be the next big thing.
The big right-hander said he’s been talking to Hernandez as much as possible this spring, and took advantage of Monday’s bullpen session for a little extra homework.
“I want to watch him because I want to have a changeup like Felix, you know? And a slider, too,” said Pineda, who is learning English, along with the Major League routine.
The Paxton deal is official and he is in big league camp as an NRI. Jason Churchill:
Expecting Paxton, 22, to move quickly is probably asking too much at this stage, but after a year back in the saddle to build up arm strength — and it really could take most of the year to get it back to where it needs to be — there is no reason to think he’ll remain in the minors for an extended period of time.
I imagine the Mariners would ultimately like Paxton to start, but his floor is as a left-handed setup type whose stuff could play up into closing games if he improves his command and overall control.
The upside sits somewhere in the neighborhood of a No. 2 starter, but a lot of good things would have to occur for that to come to fruition.
Stats don’t tell the whole story of who Bill James is
Derrick Goold with a wonderful profile of the legendary sabermetrician.
“Every morning when I wake up I always remember dreams, and I always have,” James said. “Seven days out of 10, I remember a dream about baseball. Baseball is central to how my view of the world is organized, and I tend — to my detriment — to see the rest of the world as an extension of the principles that I look for in the study of baseball.
“I don’t think you could take baseball out of it for me at all.”
In a week filled with tributes to the late Duke Snider, Joe Posnanski predictably produces one of the best.
Duke Snider was an outsized character — this should not be lost in death. He was flesh and blood, beloved beyond reason and booed beyond logic. As Bill James has written, “Sport Magazine in the 1950s used to alternate between two types of Duke Snider articles, the ‘Why is Duke Snider Such A Dog’ article and the ‘Why Doesn’t Duke Snider Get The Respect He Deserves” article. Phillip Roth (as Alexander Portnoy) called Snider “my king of kings, the Lord my God.” Others called him loafer.
More great links
- Mike Curto has photos of the nearly finished Cheney Stadium. Fantastic!
- Jeff Sullivan explores baseball’s history of human good luck charms.
- Jerry Crasnik examines three former “can’t miss” prospects who are struggling to hold roster spots in what should be the primes of their careers.
- Justin Bopp offers up a baseball stat acronym pronunciation guide.
- Joe Posnanski followed up the above post with some digging to provide a better explanation as to why Snider fell short of winning the 1955 MVP.
In case you missed it
- Friend of the site Mac Vernon offered up perspective rarely found in the blogosphere in discussing his Brooklyn Dodgers.
- I will be doing some writing for USS Mariner in the near future.
- Conor and I got a turn at the SweetSpot mothership a while back. I wrote about the potential impact NCAA’s new bat regulations could have on the game at all levels, while Conor cautioned against getting too attached to top prospects.
Original Story:
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