The Mariners announced a series of roster moves today, including the activation of reliever Steve Cishek from the 15-day DL. Fellow right-hander Joe Wieland was optioned to create active roster space.
Seattle also made a swap of right-handed power bats, optioning veteran Korean slugger and MLB rookie Dae-Ho Lee. He’ll be replaced by Stefen Romero, at least for the time being, though expanded rosters could spur a return.
[Related: Updated Mariners Depth Chart]
Cishek ended up needing only a brief stint on the disabled list for a hip issue that wasn’t as serious as it initially sounded. His return further bolsters a pen that has some rather compelling arms.
As for Lee, 34, the demotion serves as a chance to get back on track before the stretch run. Though it’s not typical for players of his age to be optionable, Lee only just came over to North America after spending his entire career playing in Korea and Japan.
Lee, who has been used mostly against left-handed pitching, owned an .850+ OPS as recently as July 15th. But he has fallen off since, leaving him with a .246/.308/.440 overall batting line with 13 total home runs over his first 253 MLB plate appearances.
The 27-year-old Romero will now get a shot at carving out his own role for the M’s. Though he has struggled in rather limited major league time over the last three seasons, Romero owns a .314/.371/.551 slash on the year at Triple-A, where he has launched 19 long balls in 418 plate appearances.
It’s a very difficult assignment for Dae Ho Lee when he’s been getting in between 400-566 AB’s per year since he was 22 years old to all of a sudden only be getting half of that, the guy would have been better off in a side where he was playing day in & day out, it’s too much of a change at his age, however I think he’s done a pretty good job. If you have a look at his stats against R/H pitching it isn’t all that bad. He has 6 hr and a .259 ave against RHP, and a .233 ave with 7hr v LHP with 112 and 120 AB’s respectively. I detest the platoon, you can either hit at MLB level or you can’t.. It’s just utter rubbish this philosophy of L/H pitching against L/H batting and vice versa. When you’re only playing every few days it definitely affects your hitting mechanics and timing.
I agree. Dae Ho needs more playing time and consistently.
Despite his age, Dae Ho Lee is an exciting addition to the M’s and deserves more playing time. He fields his position smoothly (.996 with 2 miscues) and, as Sid Bream points out, is actually hitting right-handed pitching better than lefties. With daily insertion in the line-up, his production would be excellent and, likely, his batting average would rise.
Take his offense to date and multiply by 2.5 times (232 AB X 2.5 equals 570 AB for a season). Now take his key numbers: 13 homers become 32 and 41 RBI’s translate to 102. Playing every day should spur his .246 average closer to his early season production (.280-ish) and his .440 slugging percentage should also rise.
Adam Lind has been helpful to the Mariner cause as well but I hope Dae-Ho Lee gets a shot at playing MLB every day after he helps the M’s to the 2016 playoffs. (Pardon the optimism.)
If you take away the last month or so of Lind he was awful. Lee on the other hand was very good over that time. When Lind started hitting better Lee’s ABs went down as did his stats. We would have been better off sticking to one of them instead of the platoon I would like most Ms fans preferred Lee. Now we have Lind everyday and Romero who is an AAAA player just really hasn’t been able to cut it in the majors. This is one of the holes we need to fill in the off season if it is Peterson Vogelbach or someone else we need a full time 1stbm the platoon wastes a bench spot.
Edwin Diaz is a lot better than Steve cishek ! They need to put Edwin Diaz in MLB the show 16