A few followups on the Jr. post from yesterday.
1. The popular sentiment seems to be that he can take over as DH next year after Edgar retires, and that he’d be more healthy and effective as a full-time DH. First off, we have no evidence that this is true, as he’s incurred several injuries running the bases. We also have no knowledge of whether Jr. would even want to DH, and there’s not enough evidence of anyone improving as a hitter simply because they’re asked to put their glove away to believe that its an actual effect of becoming a DH.
2. I agree that PECOTA’s projections for Jr’s playing time is low. We can’t assume that there is no scenario in which he will stay healthy. The fact that injuries have shortened his last three seasons (which are what influence PECOTA the most) expose a flaw in the system.
3. How frustrating would it be to watch Carlos Beltran sign a 5 year, $65 million deal next winter, taking him through the prime of his career as one of the elite all around players in the game, while the M’s fail to get involved because of the millstone that is Griffey’s contract? When rationalizing a Griffey acquisition by saying that he’s the best available player now, realize that far superior players will be available in the not too distant future, and will almost certainly command less money.
In non-Griffey news, Jeff Shaw rebutted my critique of Ralph Wiley and launched his own offensive against the worst that ESPN.com has offered up recently. My main issue with Wiley is that he’s more of an advocate than a columnist. Nearly all of his offerings flow through the filter of a minority who feels oppressed by ‘the man’ (despite the fact that he’s employed by ‘the man’) and needs to defend his brothers, regardless of the circumstances. I’m expecting a Wiley piece in the near future explaining why Terrell Owens is being robbed of his “right to pick where he wants to play”, despite the fact that he’s not a free agent, thanks to the failings of his agent. Just another instance of the big mean white man holding down the brother, right Ralph?
And, after today’s piece (which I won’t link to, because I don’t want anyone subjecting themselves to it on my account), Ryder has built himself his own wing in the discussion. Forget Damon Stoudamire; I demand a drug test on Rob Ryder. And an apology from whoever green lighted his column. Just painful.
As for Easterbrook, I’m convinced that he’s only written one column in the history of TMQ. Each week, he simply updates his template with new names and scores and hits submit as an original entry. Stop me before I blitz again, indeed.
We now resume our regularly scheduled Mariners talk.
So, Bob Finnigan is rumor mongering about his favorite story again. With as many times as he’s tried to bring this thing back from the dead, you’d think he laid $1,000 on a 100-1 longshot in vegas that Jr finishes his career with the M’s. Or, perhaps, he just enjoys writing speculative columns with no real substance? Regardless of his motivation, he has drug up this same tired column one more time, which always leads to a lot of emails asking if we think trading for Griffey would be a good idea. In a word: no freaking way. Okay, that’s three words, but you get the point. Here’s the basics:
Griffey has five years and $66 million remaining on his contract. While over $6 million per year is deferred from 2009-2024, his salary would count against the budget at $12.94 million per season, while the actual payout would be around $7 million per year during the length of the contract. The contract will keep Jr playing from his age 34 through 38 seasons, also known as the precipitous decline phase of one’s career. Considering the current market, it should be clear to just about everyone that Ken Griffey Jr. would not have received a 5 year, $65 million contract if he was a free agent. Clearly, acquiring this salary would be overpaying for name recognition. However, this team is in a unique situation with a rapidly aging roster that is trying to squeeze one last grasp of air before the window slams shut and rebuilding becomes the term du jour in Seattle. So, overpaying now could be justifiable if the reward was great enough. So, let’s examine what Jr would bring to the club over the next five years, ignoring his albatross of a contract for a moment.
His performances since the trade to Cincinatti expressed in At-bats/BA/OBP/SLG:
2000: 520, .271/.387/.556
2001: 364, .286/.365/.533
2002: 197, .264/.358/.426
2003: 166, .247/.370/.566
He was still an elite player in 2000, though 2001 saw a pretty decent decline in both playing time and production. 2002 was the worst year of his career, as he was a league average player who only managed two months on the field. He played even less last year, though he was certainly a better player than the year before. The dwindling playing time is an obvious trend, and going into his age 34 season, it cannot be ignored. This is clearly a player that you can not depend on for a full season of play. To carry a player like this, you would have to have a capable backup whom you are comfortable giving 300-350 at-bats a year too. Quinton McCracken is not that player.
What have other players with similar skillset and health problems done from their age 34-38 seasons? Bring on the PECOTA projections. For 2004, its projecting a .264/.359/.499 season, good for a .291 EqA, but only expecting 218 at-bats. The best case scenario calls for a .301/.398/.595 season in 267 at-bats, and that is given only a 10 % chance of occurring. His five year forecast projects his EqA’s to hold steady for the next four years (.291, .285, .288, .285) before falling off a cliff in 2008 (.266). Considering a .260 EqA is league average, he’s expected to be a quality offensive contributor, but not a star, when he’s on the field. To put a ~.290 EqA in perspective, Randy Winn’s was .298 in 2002 and .283 in 2003. John Olerud posted a .284 EqA last year. While both players were nice hitters, acquiring another hitter with the value (even if it comes in a different package) of Winn or Olerud isn’t exactly the superstar acquisition fans have been clamoring for.
The rumor Finnigan floats is a straight up Winn for Griffey trade, which is insane financially, but we’re ignoring that part right now. Would this actually help the 2004 Mariners?
PECOTA hates Randy Winn, projecting a big dropoff this year, expecting a .275/.336/.413 season that would give him a .268 EqA in 471 at-bats. This would leave about 130 at-bats for Quinton McCracken in CF, who is projected at .259/.310/.366 for a .244 EqA. Combining their performance into a 600 at-bat tandem, the M’s could expect a .263 EqA from the duo in 2004. How many AB’s would Griffey have to take up to improve the team’s performance in CF?
300 AB’s for Griffey: .264 EqA from CF tandem
350 AB’s for Griffey: .271 EqA from CF tandem
400 AB’s for Griffey: .275 EqA from CF tandem
450 AB’s for Griffey: .279 EqA from CF tandem
500 AB’s for Griffey: .283 EqA from CF tandem
Realistically, Griffey would have to get at least 400 to 500 at-bats to make the move from Winn to Griffey a significant one when only factoring in their offensive contributions and completely ignoring the contract differences. While I’m certainly no fan of Randy Winn in center field, Griffey has lost enough range to be even worse, making the potential upgrade even harder to attain.
Essentially, the only way a Winn for Griffey trade would actually make the Mariners a better team in 2004 would be for Jr. to get at least 400 trips to the plate, something he hasn’t done since 2000. This analysis just takes into account this season, ignoring the fact that Griffey is likely to decline each of the last five years of his contract, and be a league average player by the time he’s off the books in 2008. Considering his vast health issues, he may have an earlier end than even the conservative forecasting systems project.
Bottom line: Ken Griffey Jr has some potential to improve the club this year, if he can finally stay healthy enough to play in at least 70 % of the team’s games. However, the improvement wouldn’t be nearly as significant as people assume, and there’s a strong chance that he won’t stay healthy. In return for taking on this potential one-year improvement, the M’s lock themselves into paying a declining player a superstar salary to watch him wither into a part-time asset.
If the Mariners traded Winn for Griffey straight up, and the Reds didn’t eat a humungous portion of his contract, this would go down as perhaps the worst trade in franchise history, crippling the club’s budget for four years while providing minimal hope of improving the team in 2004.
Just walk away.
I’m back from Arizona without much to report. The M’s lost both games I saw, including yesterday’s shelling (during which I got too much sun), but that’s not really a concern for me (the game, not the sun). It shouldn’t be for you either — spring training sample sizes are so small it’s not a good idea to get too excited or too down about them. That roster spots are decided every spring on the basis of ten innings pitched or 35 at-bats… it’s silly.
In other news, it appears BP ’04 hasn’t quite made it to the greater Phoenix area. Amazon.com, here I come.
I got my favorite bobblehead from one David Cameron, who is a fine fellow and highly recommended.
I didn’t ask my Barry Bonds bobblehead any other questions. I try not to bug him too much out of respect.
I got my copies of Baseball Prospectus 2004 today. Really good stuff, and if I may say so, I think our minor league coverage reflects the oustanding input of one David Cameron, who is a fine fellow and also does things like give me a Barry Bonds bobblehead doll for my desk. The Mariners chapter is really good, and I agree with the comments almost entirely.
An interesting point for M’s fans is that Dan Wilson makes an unlikely appearance as the best catcher at controlling the running game last year in an excellent back-of-the-book essay. I maintain that this is because he caught Jamie Moyer all year long, essentially making 40% or so of his catching duties a tandem with a crafty left-hander who controls the running game pretty well himself. I emailed Keith Woolner to note this, and Woolner pointed out that he had in fact already thought of that and noted that problem in his essay.
I tell you this only to point out that
a) I’m really dumb sometimes and
b) the book is 600 pages long, and it’s probably best to read it in small bites so you don’t miss something that’s right in front of you.
[Shameless plugging ahead]
It’s the best book we’ve ever put out: the essays are all good this year (whereas before, there’ve always been a couple I thought weren’t worth it) and even the boring teams get insightful essays.
The production problems were strange: Amazon had the wrong listing (as if we were with our old publisher, at the old, higher price) for a long time, and then B&N canceled everyone’s preorders for no good reason, so everyone went to Amazon and ordered through there… and then what actually happened as it rolled off the presses was even weirder: a week ago the first people got a hold of their copies (the first Amazon reviews went up on Feb 26th), some people got their books w/o Amazon sending a shipping notification. Some distributors were shipping it out w/24 hour delivery a week before my Amazon order got to me (today). I saw 3 copies on the shelves of a local Barnes and Noble this morning, but a Borders told my friend they wouldn’t have it for a month. So our Amazon reviews have one guy complaining he didn’t have it, and another accusing us writing shill reviews..
I don’t understand book distribution at all.
The best part though is that it’s $12.57 at Amazon — that’s almost nutty-cheap. When we switched publishers we wanted to lower the cover price, and now it’s 600+ pages of baseball goodness for twelve bucks and change… that’s pretty freaking cool.
Now, Derek, where’d you get said bobblehead again?
Intriguingly, my Joe Crede bobblehead (don’t ask) has much the same response when I ask him if he’s clean, on the juice, or knows where the weapons of mass destruction are hidden. He’s quite the agreeable fellow.
Ralph Wiley is insane, by the way. He and Rob Ryder are in a dead heat for worst columnist in the history of ESPN.
Two things —
I recommend Ralph Wiley’s column on Barry Bonds and the steroids controversly over on ESPN.com. Except, obviously, when he makes the bizarre statement about statheads turning on Bonds, which is.. I don’t get what Wiley has against statheads, but he needs to get over it. Reading someone when they make such an obviously dumb statement is like watching them drive a stake into the ground and pound a sign that says “my knowledge stops here” into the stake.
I asked my beloved Barry Bonds bobblehead if he was clean and he nodded enthusiastically. You can take that as you will.
Hey everybody. I’m off to spring training this evening, so don’t worry if I don’t post (though Derek and Dave have quite the entertaining discussion going right now). On the other hand, I might have some ‘net access while I’m down in Arizona so you never know. In any event, if I see anything interesting/cool/noteworthy I’ll try to pass it along. Just as a preview, I’m sure Saturday afternoon will be spent trying to find a place to watch the Stanford-Washington game (go Dawgs).
Don’t make me come over there. The team didn’t hire Bavasi because he presented them some kind of rationale, they hired him because he’s like the players they’re signing — he’s a team character guy with experience, has a scouting and player development focus, and he’s an organization man in the Gillick mold. He’s also pliable. Bavasi didn’t make the kind of presentation that got Riccardi the Toronto job. Bavasi went through some interviews and they said “good enough”. They chose not to pursue innovative or interesting candidates who might have blown them away, because they didn’t want that kind of GM. They wanted Bavasi.
In other news, check out this article on Cameron’s defense. It’s cool to read about the “how” of Cameron’s ball-catching.
Sorry Derek, but I just can’t agree. Just because they have a plan that we think makes little sense and is doomed to failure doesn’t equate to not having one at all. The odds of Bill Bavasi convincing a successful businessman like Howard Lincoln to give him a position of this kind of importance without laying out any kind of firm rationale is beyond unlikely. As much as we rail on management, they aren’t stupid people unable to get a high school diploma because they lack basic understanding. They simply subscribe to archaic principles that are clearly wrong. There’s a big difference. Bill Bavasi isn’t stupid, and I’m certain the team has laid out and executed a plan that they believe will work. The problem is, they’re just wrong.
In other news, Jeff Shaw over at the tremendously underrated San Shin blog points out that the Mariners were calculated as one of the five richest sports franchises in the U.S.. The only baseball teams ahead of them were New York and Boston. Make no mistake about it; the M’s are a cash cow, making humungous profits, and plowing only a percentage of what other teams spend back into their product. The Mariners have limited themselves to a $95 million budget to maximize their financial rewards. This team could easily have a payroll $20 million higher without even thinking about budget constraints.
I won’t concede any of this. The M’s don’t have a plan, and Bavasi doesn’t have a plan. They didn’t sit down this winter and say “where are we as a team, and how can we best put together a team for next year?” They said “Man, let’s fix left field while we’re hiring a GM. Hey Bavasi, finish up this Ibanez signing. Um, let’s see… let’s dump Cirillo and… wait, that didn’t quite… no, let’s.. whoops (bang bang) ow, I hit my thumb with the hammer. Jeez that hurts. Uh, we need a backup shortstop now. Let’s… oof…”
Their *method* is to patch holes with the things you’ve identified: athletic players they know with good scouting pedigrees with certain characteristics.
But take Freddy. Bavasi’s argument on retaining Freddy is that if you threw him back into the market he’d be the best pitcher out there, so they resigned him. This is silly on several fronts:
First, if the team’s looking for a good pitcher, they could have gotten Miguel Batista, a free agent, 33, who quietly has been very effective for the last three years. His K totals aren’t quite as impressive as Garcia’s overall, but his rates are excellent, his walk rates are comperable, and he was pitching in Bank One Ballpark, which played as as a huge hitter’s park the last couple of years. Batista signed a 3-year deal with Toronto for $12m, far below what Garcia will come back as.
Bavasi’s reasoning only makes sense if they only considered the Freddy question as late as they possibly could, when it was arbitrate/resign or let go. Had they been in the market earlier for alternatives, Freddy would not ever have been the best pitcher on the market — and even then, we’ve seen that a pitcher of Freddy’s qualifications might not even get that kind of annual value as a free agent, so the team might have overspent (seriously: who out there would have been willing to sign Garcia to a long-term deal for 6+m/year?)
I’m not going to argue that being a good interviewer has much to do with being good at your job. I’ve felt for years that the modern crush of media on a manager has made that role more about glad-handing and post-game conferences than about who’s best-qualified to do a job, and has probably kept some good managers with bad press skills away from jobs.
I’ve read O’Dowd’s interviews and yeah, he comes off as smart, and no, he doesn’t act smart, but I know other smart people are stupid and what you can draw from reading O’Dowd for any length of time is not that he doesn’t have a plan but that he doesn’t do any follow-through. It’s like he’s a cook who only mixes the ingredients and then gets bored because he doesn’t have a delicious French onion soup, and moves on to making extreme fajitas, which he’ll abandon before the chicken’s done frying.
It’s possible to come off as dumb in an interview and be smart. Bobby Cox does this intentionally as a manager: I can’t remember hearing him criticize even his worst players in front of the press, even when everyone knows he’d love to, and so he falls back on the same worn phrases that cause insomniacs to lapse into comas from boredom. That’s not what’s going on here.
The scary thing about the Bavasi interview isn’t that he didn’t come off charmingly, it’s that it confirms my worst fears about the team: they don’t have much of an idea about what happens replacing Cameron with Winn, they’re just kind of guessing. They believe Ibanez is going to hit like he did in KC and not decline with age, but they don’t really have any reason why they think that.
I can’t express how frustrated I am with this. I shouldn’t be able to come up with a better answer about how good Winn’s going to be in center field compared to Cameron than the entire Mariners organization than the general manager.
A Hypothetical Conversation Between Derek and Bill Bavasi
Bavasi: We think Winn’s athletic and fast and will play better regularly out there than he did in spot duties.
Derek: I’ll grant you that players may improve defensively if they play a position regularly, though I think we don’t have a lot of evidence to back that up. Using BP’s defensive metrics, we see that Winn’s been about average at every defensive outfield position he’s ever played at the major league level, and his AAA translations look about the same. 2002 is particularly relevant. He played a whole season, almost all of it in center field, and we’ve got him pegged at two runs above average.
Bavasi: That’s good, right?
Derek: Mike Cameron was worth 21 runs above an average center fielder last season.
Bavasi: That’s a lot.
Derek: One of the best defensive seasons in all of baseball, yes. So you’re of the opinion that Winn, having shown in a couple of seasons that he’s an average center fielder, and having shown when backing up Cameron to be an average center fielder, will suddenly become one of the best defenders in baseball.
Bavasi: I didn’t say he was going to be that good.
Derek: Sure, that’s true. You’ve said that Winn is athletic and fast — do you see Ibanez as being a better defensive left-fielder than Winn?
Bavasi: We think he’ll be fine out there.
Derek: Overall, would you agree that the team’s defense in the outfield will be worse than it was last year, ignoring for a second whether the outfield is overall a better one?
Bavasi: It would seem obvious that that is true.
Derek: Which pitchers do you think would be most affected by a lesser outfield defense?
Bavasi: I had not given that much thought.
Derek: Would you say that pitchers who don’t get many strikeouts and put the ball into play are more dependent on their defense then a pitcher who gets more strikeouts?
Bavasi: Yes.
Derek: Would you also say that pitchers who tend to be groundball pitchers would be more dependent on the infield….
and so on. I could do this for hours.
The point is that when insightful or interesting questions are asked of Bavasi, or really anyone in the organization, their answer isn’t up to the task. They’re frequently surprised by the question and don’t have a good answer not because they’re bad communicators but because it never occurred to them before.
I worked with someone in my IT days who reminds me of the Mariners. They never asked the second-level questions. Let’s buy a server based on my estimates for $125k. Is that the right server? Didn’t know. Is that expandable if our load estimates are off? Didn’t know. Is it particularly well-suited for the kind of super-high input/output work it would be doing? No idea.
The lack of depth in the Mariners bench and organization reflects the lack of depth in thinking and planning we’ve seen in the front office for years. They don’t know, and have never cared to know, the answer to the follow-up questions.