MVN - Most Valuable Network

Right Decision, Wrong Players

    The Mariners today cut Brad Wilkerson and Greg Norton in order to call up their two best offensive prospects, Jeff Clement and Wladimir Balentien. While there is no question that Clement and Balentien needed to come up, McLaren and Bavasi made the wrong choice on who to get rid of to make room for them.

Wilkerson was off to a slow start, no question. However, he had a minor injury that was slowing him down, he had been misused by McLaren (this will most likely be the last time I can say this… He can hit lefties) and he is fairly versatile. Plus, with Morse out for the season, we are just a little thinner in the outfield. And finally, Wilkerson was coming around–and I say that before considering the monster game he had last night.

Norton didn’t do that much for the M’s–just hit .438 in his limited time. There was nothing for him to do, so he never had a role on the Mariner team. He was a bench player, and McLaren does not like to use them, so no surprise that nothing was ever going to become of that. One possibility there that I don’t think exists with Wilkerson–he may accept an assignment to the minors.

So who were the right players to let go? Miguel Cairo for one. He is purely surplus. He is 0-5 in nine games, basically doing nothing. Anything he can do, Willie Bloomquist can do better, and Willie is the one getting the playing time. The only reason to keep them both around is if we need to put Willie in the outfield–which we may need to do now that Wilkerson is gone.

The other is Jose Vidro. He is doing nothing, and at his best will not do much. By keeping him, all we are doing is robbing Clement of playing time, and if we decide to bench him and play Clement more at DH, we have Vidro on the bench–one more utility infielder, only this time one with no defensive ability whatsoever. On the other hand, he can pinch hit–but then again, so could Greg Norton, and Norton was doing a better job.

So maybe we need to think about a couple more roster moves. Maybe it’s about time we designate Bavasi and McLaren for assignment.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.