Jeff Clement and the Mariners "Conundrum"

As a former Jeff Clement owner, I can feel rodger's pain:

Now that the Mariners have extended (Kenji) Johjima, does anyone believe we'll see Clement before the trading deadline?

Tom expressed similar frustration:

I'm also waiting for the brain trust in Seattle to see the light about Clement. With Johjima getting signed, why don't they just stick him at DH now?

I can definitely see why Clement owners are banging their heads against the wall. While he isn't an elite prospect, he's definitely a masher who could hit 20-25 HR, even if the batting average is poor. And he's destroying PCL pitching thus far this year, hitting a robust .397/5/20 in 78 AB with a 1.227 OPS. As a 24-year-old college trained hitter, the argument can be made that he's got little left to prove, and the Mariners should bring him up now.

Compounding the problem is the fact that the M's have Jose Vidro DHing for them on a nightly basis. Putting aside Vidro's putrid numbers to date in 2008, here is a DH who put up a 775 OPS in 2007. If Vidro were still playing 2B, those numbers would be acceptable. As a DH, they're not.

To answer rodger's question, I think we will see Clement in the majors sometime in late May or early June, particularly if Vidro continues to struggle. The Mariners do tend to keep goldbricking veterans longer than they should, but I believe that even if Clement tails off and "only" puts up a 1.050 OPS or something along those lines, the Mariners will relent.

To answer Tom's question, I think the issue here is one of organizational philosophy, and one we've seen many times before. If you look at the profile of the types of players that Bill Bavasi has either signed or brought into the organization via trades, many of them fit the profile of the 30+ veterans who are solid players but are on the wrong end of the career curve. A few of these players have defied the odds and continued to perform decently well into their 30s: Raul Ibanez springs to mind. Many others, though - Rich Aurilia, Richie Sexson, Jarrod Washburn, Horacio Ramirez and Matt Lawton, to mention a few - have predictably floundered after being acquired after career years.

It would make sense for the Mariners to quit futzing around with Vidro and Brad Wilkerson and go with Clement and Wladimier Balentien. This isn't to say that Clement and Balentien are world beaters. Both are flawed prospects who probably won't be elite power hitters in the majors, and profile more as solid but not spectacular major league regulars.

This could be where Bavasi's reluctance comes from. Since Wilkerson and Vidro have already performed at a certain level in the major leagues, Bavasi and his brain trust might feel that they are safer choices for an organization trying to win now than young players like Clement, whose gap between his ceiling and his floor is obviously wider.

I'm with the Clement boosters. Even if Clement isn't going to hit 35 HR, he may hit 20, and he'd probably be a better option right now than Vidro. Cutting Vidro or relegating him to a reduced role might be unpopular in the clubhouse for a brief time, but if Clement performed, it wouldn't matter in the long term.

Unfortunately, these are the kind of things we can bemoan but are ultimately out of our hands. All we can do when we evaluate minor league talent is to remember organizational philosophies when we're selecting minor leaguers or rookies and use this knowledge to adjust our bids - and our expectations - accordingly.

UPDATE: "No Rhubarb!", the blog for the Mariners Triple-A affiliate Tacoma Rainers, reports that both Clement and Balentien were held out of the Rainers starting line-up last night, and that Bavasi says that both will be in the majors "sooner rather than later." I guess we'll see what Bavasi's cryptic quote means soon enough.