Talkin' Baseball: The MLB Draft and the Horrendous Mariners

49er16: The MLB Draft is tonight and I've read all the mock drafts and I gotta admit, I still have no idea who'll the Giants will select and who is the best player in the draft?

The Colonel: No one ever knows who the Giants are picking. They play everything close to the vest and they usually draft someone who isn't that high up on everyone else's boards (hello Joe Panik). What cracks me up about the draft is when they decide to hold it and the fact that the MLB Network never runs any pre-draft "hey these are the players to look out for" coverage.

49er16: They do but it's aired 2 minutes before the draft is aired. The MLB draft is such a weird endeavor in that most people have never heard of these guys being drafted and some of the guys that are drafted are still playing in the college baseball world series. Could you imagine if the NBA had their draft in the middle of the NCAA tournament.

The Colonel: "Congrats Justice Winslow on making it to the final 4. Also tell us what it's like being drafted by the New York Knicks?"

49er16: DJ Gallo had a fun post about what would happen if some current stars where drafted by different teams. Imagine Mike Trout on the Cardinals or Dustin Pedroia on the Yankees? The horror, the horror.

The Colonel: Man did a lot of team, including the Giants, whiff on Trout. The Mariners took Dustin Ackley at number 2 instead. Woof.


49er16: Speaking of the Mariners, we were discussing how bad they've been since 2001 and in my opinion they are the worst run team in sports since the start of the millennium. Yeah there are teams that have longer playoff droughts (Blue Jay, Bills) teams with racist/horrendous owners (Clippers, Marlins, Redskins) and teams that have had some just straight up shitty luck (Rockies) but the Mariners are the crap filet mignon.

The Colonel: Yeah I can see it. Hell even the Raiders have made the playoffs more recently (though not by much). Just looking at their draft record is really freaking depressing. Hell in the 05 draft alone they could have selected Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, or Troy Tulowitzki. They chose Jeff Clement instead.

49er16: What's depressing about this tweet is that besides Hultzen, all of these guys have made it the majors and not been sidetracked by any injury.

The Colonel: The Mariners are the full buffet of awful. Bad trades (Bedard for Adam Jones, trading Cliff Lee for Justin Smoak) bad managers (too many to count) and bad free agent signings (Chone Figgins). Hell even when they made a good signing (Adrian Beltre) it turned into a disaster. Beltre usually averages about a 5 WAR per season and besides one good year he was mostly a 3 WAR player for the Mariners.

49er16: Well when you're hiring a manager and you look at Lloyd McClendon and you say to yourself, "You know what? He'd make a good manager. Yeah he stunk in Pittsburgh but everyone stunk in Pittsburgh for 20 years" then you're going to be up shit creek without a paddle.

Would you hire this man?

The Colonel: I just love how Jack Z thought it'd be a good idea to hire McClendon 10 years after he'd been a disaster in Pittsburgh. "Hey that happened 10 years and in Pittsburgh. No one will notice." Kinda says everything about the Mariners.

49er16: I'd say they need to blow everything up and start over but Christ they've been doing that for 10 years now. They're a team that needs a whole new identity. Not just a new manager or GM but they need a new owner who doesn't just sit in Japan and shows no interest in the team.

The Colonel: Well that's been one of their problems. They have an absentee owner who has let the inmates run the asylum.

49er16: Poor Felix Hernandez. Wasting his entire career with them. He's the MLB version of Kevin Garnett. Now watch him get traded to the Dodgers.

The Colonel: Shut your fucking pie hole.

49er16: Have a good week folks.