sounds younger than I would have guessed, not saying he is old or anything but he sounds young.

The problem is NOT, I repeat for the thousandth time, that you said Elvis isn’t the next Hanley Ramirez. No one thinks he is.

Good listen, though.

They’re right that the Mariners would rather be a “complete team” than a “pitching and defense” team. But it’s NOT making an excuse for flawed roster construction. I thought the Ms were overrated coming in, but I do think they had a smart off-season. Kicking that approach down as an excuse for flawed roster construction is like kicking down the A’s for going after players who get on base and ignoring conventional skills.

It’s about finding market inefficiencies. It’s looking for a Player C who puts up as much value as Player B, but does it in under-valued ways, like fielding well instead of hitting for power. Now, on-base skills are more predictable than defensive performance, so it’s a riskier moneyball-esque approach, but it also has helped them build what I think is at least a solid organization pretty quickly from one that was absolutely putrid not long ago.

But, yes, the people lauding them as destined for greatness just because they had a smart, “new” approach were silly.