Unintended consequences

Before launching into today's post, a comment is in order about yesterday's discussion of regression effects in baseball.  Vogie must have seen what I wrote and thought, "regession?  No way... aggression!"  Two homers, a bases clearing double, six ribbies.  The beat goes on as the Mariners club the White Sox 12 to 5.

...........

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of D-Day and, by contemporary standards, a great President, is claimed to have said, "all plans are good until the first bullet flies."  And my experience in almsot forty years of planning matches up with Ike's.

All this is to revist Jerry DiPoto's plan to reinvent the Mariners.  It just could be that some miscalculations early on have produced some very positive unintended consequences Jerry never imagined.  But, it's Monday, what the hell, let's give him credit for the team’s 9 and 2 start.

Here's what happened.  During his off-season trading frenzy, DiPoto acquired some veteran "extra" players he planned to use as bait for more trades to load up on young talent to be groomed for a championship run in 2020.  There was one problem in his strategy: as free agency movement slowed, all deals started to dry up mid-winter and his ability to move his extra pieces stalled.

He ended up coming out of spring training with four firstbasemen, any of them capable of starting.  Jerry's overall plan was to alternate Ryon Healy and Daniel Vogelbach at firstbase and DH.  Along the way he had picked up sluggers Edwin Encarnacion and Jay Bruce to be traded before the season started.  They were the bait, but the fish weren't biting.

Part of DiPoto's reasoning in keeping Healy and Vogie was that both were young and, as of yet, not performing at anticpated and necessary levels... Healy, powerful but inconsistent at the plate, Vogie untested.  Make no mistake EE and Bruce were not liabilities, but they just didn't fit.

The injury that put Kyle Seager on the Injured List for a couple of months, helped break the logjam... Healy can play a servicable thirdbase until Seager returns.  The big news has bern the explosion in the M's offense and the significant contribution the four firstbasemen are making.  In 11 games the four of them together have hit 14 home runs and driven in 34.  Except for Bruce they're all batting over .250.  Healy is consistent and, despite my continued skepticism, Vogie is showing what he can do day-to-day and it is jaw-dropping and eye-opening all at once.

Take those four out of the line-up and it's unlikely the M's win nine of their first eleven games.  But going forward, DiPoto is still going to have to unjam the logs, especially when Seager returns.  Already, manager Scott Servais has struggled getting all of them in the starting line-up at the same time... so yesterday, Bruce, who hit two homers the day before, sat out for Encarnacion.  EE didn't let him down, going 3 for 5, with a homer and 4 rbi's.  Just imagine what might have happened if Bruce had played?

On top of this, any of those four are still trade-bait.  What will DiPoto do if the M's are surprise contenders as the July 31 trade deadline approaches?