Miguel Olivo and Chone Figgins Both Gone, What Now?

The Mariners haven't been a good team in close to ten years and they haven't made the playoffs since 2001. This chronic failure on the baseball field has brought down the interest levels of many fans. Those fans that still exist have grown frustrated and pessimistic. Well now, the main targets for the mariner fanbase's collective frustration have now been let go. This offseason the team announced that both Miguel Olivo and Chone Figgins will not be back next year. 

This is great news for the team's chances of actually winning games. Removing Olivo from the roster keeps Eric Wedge from playing the offensively limited and defensive liable Olivo over the much more talented John Jaso. Removing Chone Figgins from the ends the self inflicted handicap the Mariners were playing with last year. In 2013 they will actually have 25 men on the roster that they can use, instead of wasting a spot to let Figgins say he is a major leaguer. It will be hard, although not impossible, for the Mariners to not find upgrades for these two roster spots.

The question that must now be answered is what will we as fans do with all our frustration? We will have to find a new outlet for venting. My guess is we chose a new player to target, most likely Justin Smoak. The Smoakamotive has been a huge disappointment since he was acquired from Texas for Cliff Lee. In his two plus season he has hit .227/.304/.382 good for a about a 90 wRC+. As a first basemen he has been a detriment to the team, far from the potential allstar the M's thought they were getting. That right there is enough to warrant fan frustration  However, there is more, the stellar defense that we were promised has also been absent during his Seattle career. For his fragile psyche's sake I hope the fans go a little easy on him; he is only 26.

Before we throw too much of our disgruntled comments in Smoak's directions, let's remember the important thing, Miguel Olivo and Chone Figgins are gone. We wont have to watch endless K, passed balls and frowny donkey faces (at least from those two) ever again. Celebrate the change and try not to worry about the future.

Miguel Olivo Shittiness Tracker Entry #1

Mariner's catchers have a long proud/disgraceful tradition of complete and total ineptitude on offense. This tradition includes such offensively lifeless Mariners as Rob Johnson, Ben Davis and Dave Valle. Current starting catcher Miguel Olivo is continuing the tradition. He currently has  wRC+ of -15. You read that right he has a negative fifteen wRC+. I didn't even know wRC+ went into the negatives. That means he is 115% worse than the league average offensive player. Additionally, Olivo has also continued the tradition started by Rob Johnson of not being able to catch any pitched not thrown directly into his glove.

As you can imagine this complete terribleness exhibited by Miguel Olivo has drawn the ire of large part of the Mariner's internet fan base, myself included (USS Mariner and Lookout Landing). To celebrate/criticize Olivo complete and total failure at offense I have decided to start the Miguel Olivo Shittiness Tracker (MOST). On this tracker I will keep track of the most annoyingly bad things Olivo does to help the Mariners loose. I plan on keep the MOST up to date until Olivo is cut, traded or the season ends. This will give us a place to rant and rage about his failures and maybe find some catharsis. So, for the first entry...

... On 4/19/12 (I wrote this up on friday but forgot to click post, oops) in the 2nd inning against the Indians the Mariners started to threaten with runner on 1st and 3rd Miguel Olivo came to the plate. In a great opportunity for the Mariners to score some runs Olivo grounded into a double play and killed the Mariners rally before it could even get going. The Mariners ended up losing the game 2-1 and could have really used a run in that situation. Total suckiness by Miguel Olivo.