Your Thoughts Exactly

Bob Sherwin has an article today in the Seattle Times about the Mariners’ success in drafting/signing and developing pitching talent. He discusses the Mariners changing their approach to the draft in order to get more and better pitching, quoting Brian Price

“I know that back in the early 1990s when the pitching here really struggled…the scouting department and the front office decided we were going to focus on pitching”

Sherwin mentions that of the M’s first 10 picks each year from ’91 – ’00, 64 were pitchers – a pretty heavy ratio. He also points out that during those 10 years the M’s used their first pick a whopping 6 times on pitchers. Wow. What a strong focus on pitching. He also lists those picks – a couple of them haven’t yet had a shot in the majors, but its still damning to know that out of those first-pick pitchers, Shawn Estes has had the best career.

Regardless of that useless tidbit thrown our way, the focus of the article is on the Mariners organizational plan to go after pitching pitching pitching. And yet, the article ends with this from VP of player development and scouting Benny Looper:

“I don’t think our depth is quite as good as it was, but we have more guys closer to the big leagues.”

Huh? This whole article is built on praise for the Mariners’ decade-long focus on pitching, on how they have horded as many hurlers as possible, yet we’re not deeper than we were. Does this mean our scouts are terrible and can’t find pitchers talented enough to stick around, despite drafting 2/3 of our top ten picks each year to pitchers? More likely, the arm injuries seemingly inherent in the M’s farm system have depleted the stockpile, and only due to sheer force of numbers do we have a bunch of nearly Major League ready talent. Shouldn’t they notice this? If a columnist contacts Looper and says, “hey, I’m writing a story on the M’s farm-groomed pitching talent and how you have drafted many more pitchers in the last decade than you used to,” and Looper responds, “I don’t think our depth is quite as good as it was,” I hope he notices and is as stunned by this contradiction as I am and tries to figure out why this is so. Also, the M’s position player talent throughout the minors is mightily lacking. It may be a good idea to focus heavily on pitching – especially since young arms are very tradeable – but it comes at a sacrifice of hitting depth, eminently noticeable in the M’s organization. And now our VP of player development says we are not very deep in arms? It is fun to be a Mariners fan!

In other news, the Mariners are in Milwaukee. Maybe a foul ball will catch Bud Selig off-guard, and in an awe-inspiring move the owners select our own Marmar as the new commissioner, who quickly implements his fixes to the game. (he then appoints me as a deputy and i fix his fixes)