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Jeff Weaver had a terrible 2006, but then had a couple of good games in the postseason and earned himself a contract for next year. Sound familiar?
Yes, it appears the M's are going to be the losers of the Jeff Weaver sweepstakes, signing a guy who had a 6.29 ERA in 16 American League starts last year. How bad was Weaver? Put it this way: the Mariners beat him three times.
At least it's only going to be a one-year deal, not the $30 million, five-year deal that Jerome James got. (James, who's making $5.4 million, has scored 40 points this year).
Assuming the signing goes through, here's your 2006 M's rotation:
King Felix
Jarrod Washburn
Jeff Weaver
Miguel Batista
Horacio Ramirez
The Weaver signing would give the M's three pitchers who lost 14 games last year. It also gives them their third pitcher who has started a World Series game, for what that's worth.
It's not an inspiring rotation, but then neither was Garcia, Moyer, Abbott, Sele, Halama, and the M's won 116 games with those guys.
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Look -- as you know, I'm a big fan of your writing on this site. But I really have to take you to task for repeatedly referencing the 2001 rotation as a reason to have hope for 2007.
Garcia is a great pitcher. An All-Star and a perennial 18-game winner.
Moyer is a 300-win career guy.
Halama and Sele were solid pitchers. Halama less so, admittedly.
And yes -- nothing will ever explain how Paul Abbott went 17-4 that year. God only knows.
But that's two great pitchers. We have nobody. Nobody. We are going to win 65 games. We had a decent team last year. If we'd done ANYTHING to improve the pitching staff -- we might have made some sort of run. This will be the most dismal M's year since Bill Plummer.
Hernandez is "nobody?" I don't think so. And remember that going into 2001, people thought Moyer was finished after his horrible August and then the broken leg he suffered (thanks, Chris Widger) in an intrasquad game. I remember that some web site--could it have been Baseball Prospectus?--didn't even list him among their candidates for the M's starting rotation. I'm not saying that the 2007 rotation will be as good as 2001, I'm just saying that going in to 2001, the rotation looked just as shaky.