It’s finally opening day. The first three didn’t count, as there is no opening day until Dave Niehaus is saying “Let’s Play Ball”. I’ll be getting to the big league club later this afternoon, and yes, you can expect us to say something about Raul Ibanez occupying the cleanup spot.
For now, though, here are links to the rosters for the Inland Empire ’66ers and the San Antonio Missions. The rosters for Wisconsin and Tacoma should be up later today, though they are relatively easy to discern through process of elimination. One of the understated effects of the Cabrera trade is the extreme overcrowding of infielders now assigned to Tacoma. The original plan had Ugueto/Lopez sharing time up the middle for the Raniers, but Ramon Santiago is going to muck that up. Toss in Mickey Lopez, and the team has four middle infielders on the roster. Justin Leone has earned a shot at the everday third base job, but is likely to find himself splitting time with the gaggle of utility players. A.J. Zapp and Bucky Jacobson should provide the iron gloves typical of slugging minor league 1B/DH types. It will be interesting to see how the playing time sorts out.
Hey now — new Big Board. First one in nearly two months, I believe.
You know the drill… if something doesn’t look right, drop me a line. With the exception of a few guys who were specifically optioned to different levels (Greg Dobbs to AA, Ramon Santiago to AAA, etc.), I haven’t done any guessing as to which players will be where in the minors, even though it’s pretty obvious Travis Blackley won’t be repeating AA. So don’t email me about that sort of thing. But anything else, feel free.
Ahhhhhhhhhh… when I flew back into town early, early this morning (I think I spent 11-12 hours in transit getting back to town yesterday) my plane came right in over Safeco Field and I realized there would be baseball on today.
One thing I didn’t get to because I was out — Bavasi said he didn’t see what good statistical analysis did below the major league level. I imagine him shrugging while he says it, with a “what are you going to do?” expression. Minor league statistics for baseball players are outstanding indicators of a player’s talent and predictors of their future performance at higher levels. They have been since Bill James first looked at the issue, and they have remained ever since. There are very few players who have productive major league careers that you can’t look up minor league stats and find good lines there, too. There are very few players who have stellar minor league careers and flame out entirely (for reasons other than injury) — and in the latter case, scouting can tell you the reason (smart pitchers with decent control and stuff can often get A-level hitters to chase balls, racking up the Ks, but stall at higher levels).
But that Bavasi doesn’t know what minor league numbers can tell him? I… I don’t know what to say. It’s disappointing, for certain, and definately means that they’re not going to be able to run with state-of-the-art clubs like Oakland, etc, who employ minor league translations to find players who are doing well and masked by park effects, and try and get those players as toss-ins in trades… and it’s also a sign one of the reason the team’s going to continue to sign expensive veteran players over products of their own farm system is that they look at a player like Aurilia and see guaranteed production based on a long major-league career, and an equally-talented minor league player will be viewed as a risk because the team has no way to predict that player’s future production beyond licking their thumb and trying to gauge which way the wind is blowing.
Onwards, though —
Tom Tippett, the brain behind Diamond Mind Baseball published this year’s 2004 projected standings. In the past, the DMB projections have been among the best every season, and this year —
AL West W L Pct GB RF RA #DIV #WC
Oakland 92 70 .568 - 791 672 56.3 1.5
Seattle 87 75 .537 5 768 720 25.8 2.5
Anaheim 86 76 .531 6 758 700 16.8 6.5
Texas 72 90 .444 20 789 890 1.0
The M’s and Oakland are right about where PECOTA (BP’s prediction engine) had them, but Anaheim comes up a couple games ahead of others.
Which is to say — don’t give up hope. I could be dead-on right about everything I see wrong with the team and there’s still a better than 1-in-4 chance they’ll make the playoffs. We can predict and carp all we want, but this is why we play the games.
Here’s my in-a-nutshell prediction for the team as we head into the season: This is a 85-win team that can swing 5 games either way through your normal in-season luck, and could beat Oakland, who is clearly doesn’t look like a 100+ win team right now. But I don’t think any contending team is better poised for a total, utter collapse than the Mariners: this looks like a team that can win 90 if things break their way and might be scraping for 75 if they go break the other way.
Go M’s.
Hey all, I’m in Portland for the BP 2004 North American tour Wednesday:
Barnes & Noble @ 7:30 PM
1720 N Jantzen Beach
Portland, OR 97217
503-283-2800
I’d love to meet our Portland readers, and there’s free pizza.
It seems the popular sentiment is that the Indians gave Milton Bradley to the Dodgers on the cheap, including a comment by Steve Nelson equating what the Indians received for him to what the Mariners gave up for Jolbert Cabrera. Steve’s a smart guy, but in this case, he’s not on target. Looper and Ketchner, as discussed below, are fringe prospects. Gutierrez is an upper-tier prospect, similar to Clint Nageotte, in the high-risk, high-reward category. He put up ridiculous power numbers for a 20-year-old in the toughest hitters league in minor league baseball, has showed improved plate discipline, and is athletic enough to be an excellent defensive corner outfielder. Depending on who the player to be named later is, and Mark Shapiro claims it will be “a very good prospect”, the Dodgers likely gave up a better package than if we had offered Nageotte for Bradley. The Indians likely would have been more interested in an arm than an outfielder, of which they have plenty, but getting Gutierrez is a far superior return than Looper or Ketchner. The Indians made a solid move, considering their situation, and I can’t fault Bavasi for not matching the deal the Dodgers made.
I have a slightly different take on the Cabrera trade than most others. I believe there are two different statements, both true, that intertwine through this deal. Most people focus on the first one, but the second one is likely why the Mariners made the trade, and why I don’t really mind it.
1. The Mariners value the wrong type of player and do not understand the principles of freely available talent. They care little for established performance, instead valuing players based on tools-oriented scouting reports, mixing in near-worthless statistics like clutch hitting or saves, and believing that career years demonstrate a players potential rather than an unrepeatable outlier. Cabrera fits all these criteria, as a tools fiend who can play anywhere on the field, but has a long history of being a miserable hitter. He had an obvious career year last year, but the odds of it being repeated are between slim and none. Giving up a cheap arm like Looper and an interesting performer like Ketchner for this type of player simply shows that the team didn’t have the forsight to acquire this type of talent in the offseason, when the price was significantly lower. This constant overpaying for underperformance is going to hurt the Mariners in the long haul.
2. Jolbert Cabrera is now the best player on the Mariners’ bench. As sad as this is to hear, this trade legitimately makes the M’s better. PECOTA’s weighted mean projection for Cabrera is .254/.317/.370. That isn’t a good player, but compare it to the options the M’s were looking at. Bloomquist was tabbed for a .247/.303/.341 line. Ramon Santiago is projected at .248/.317/.339. PECOTA expects McCracken at .259/.310/.366. Cabrera is also a legitimately tremendous defensive outfielder with great range. Ideally, I’d like to see Cabrera platoon with Ibanez against southpaws, with Jolbert taking CF and Winn moving to LF. Against southpaws the past three years, Jolbert has hit .282/.321/.411, which isn’t a great line, but beats the tar out of Ibanez’s .253/.294/.399 line, and he’ll add a significant defensive upgrade.
Cabrera’s strengths — hitting southpaws, defensive prowess in the outfield — were glaring weaknesses for the M’s. If properly used, Cabrera should make the M’s a better team in 2004. Even if Melvin refuses to platoon Ibanez against lefties, we have to assume that any playing time Cabrera receives is going to be taken away from inferior players, and that in and of itself is a good thing. There is always the possibility, however slight, that last years improvement was more sustainable than we think, and if Cabrera can come close to anything resembling his 2003 numbers, he’s going to be a very nice addition to the team.
Also, there’s been quite a bit of hand wringing over the decision to trade Aaron Looper and Ryan Ketchner. Looper is being described as a major league ready arm, and Ketchner’s tremendous performance last year in the California League is causing others to claim we traded away a legitimate top prospect. In reality, both of these players are easily replaceable parts with suspect value on the trade market. Ketchner was ranked 19th on the most recent Future Forty, while Looper was right behind him at number 20. Ketchner’s stuff is so underwhelming that even the most optimistic supporters compare him to Craig Anderson, who posted similar numbers in class-A ball before turning into a pumpkin against better hitters. Looper, likewise, lacks an outpitch and has posted ERA’s not matched by his peripheral numbers. He’s a decent option for a team looking for a long reliever at the league minimum, but he’s also a member of the biggest club in baseball; The Below Average Right-Handed Relief Pitcher. You’ll find card carrying members of this club on street corners asking for handouts. You’ll run into six of them at the grocery store. You’ve probably been mugged by one. These guys are everywhere. Losing one isn’t that big of a deal. There are approximately 2.4 million more where he came from.
Now, we all realize that Looper is better than Kevin Jarvis, and in an ideal world, the team would have dumped Jarvis months ago. But this isn’t an ideal world, and we have to realize that this organization was not going to do that. So, in the context of the M’s and the people making the decisions, they traded two bit parts not likely to make an impact in ’04, and only moderately likely to have future value, for someone who instantly became their best reserve and a passable option as a platoon partner for two players who badly need platooning.
Does this trade continue to signal that the Mariners are unable to correctly assess the market for talent and place value on things that aren’t valuable? Sure it does. Does throwing a million dollars at Jolbert Cabrera strike of fiscal irresponsibility on a team that complains over every bonus earned by their stars? Absolutely. But in the end, this trade makes the Mariners better this year, and we have sorely lacked transactions where that was the bottom line. We should be grateful that the M’s improved their chances of winning the division, no matter how slight, because we haven’t had an opportunity to say that after many of the transactions this year.
And so it begins. Billy Beane protege Paul DePodesta — who, I might add, the M’s didn’t even talk to about their vacant GM job despite the fact that he wasn’t under contract at the time — first fleeces the M’s out of two pitchers for Jolbert Cabrera and now adds an All-Star caliber center fielder. In Franklin Gutierrez, DePodesta traded away exactly the sort of prospect you might expect he would — a toolsy outfielder with poor plate discipline.
This isn’t to say he’s not a good prospect, but it’s not as if the Dodgers traded away a can’t miss, top-shelf sort of talent. In any event, the M’s could/should have been in on this one.
Rounding out the weekend’s news, if you haven’t already heard: Bloomquist and Cabrera both make the team, Santiago sent to Tacoma. As expected, Myers gets the last bullpen spot and Mulholland gets released. I’ll have a new Big Board up to reflect all these moves in the next day or so.
What sort of a bad joke is this?!
(I’d provide a link, but there doesn’t appear to be one yet.)
To Los Angeles: RHP Aaron Looper, LHP Ryan Ketchner
To Seattle: UT Jolbert Cabrera
You don’t trade two young pitchers for 31-year old no-hit utility players. Cabrera is the kind of guy you pick up off the waiver wire, or sign to a minor league contract after the season if you really want him around. He’s a .253/.303/.353 career hitter in 932 major league at-bats. He doesn’t draw walks. He has no power. He’s not a good base stealer. But hey, he played every position but pitcher and catcher last season and hit an empty .282, so he’s just our sort of player!
Gimme a break.
Look, it’s not that it’s that big a deal to lose Looper and Ketcher. Looper’s a decent middle relief prospect, but not much more, though on some teams he probably would have made the major league club this year. I’m biased in Ketchner’s favor because he’s deaf and and has posted great ratios in the minors, but he doesn’t exactly have the blazing stuff scouts get excited about.
It’s the principle of the thing, though. You don’t have to trade for guys like Jolbert Cabrera; they’re freely available. And you certainly don’t trade two young arms to get him.
More Spiezio… this PI article says Bloomquist will start opening day. That’s nothing big, but it also says he (Bloomquist) wasn’t going to make the team if not for Spiezio’s injury. I don’t know that I believe that, but it’s certainly nice to hear. Also, given their plan to carry 12 pitchers — I’m still not sold on this, by the way — it sounds like he’ll (Spiezio now) start the year on the DL, because otherwise the bench would be too thin.
Back to this Bloomquist-Santiago thing — the Times article Derek linked below says Spiezio’s injury means Santiago makes the team, while the PI article I linked above says it means Bloomquist makes it. Interesting; you’d figure they’d have a consensus, since these beat reporters are more than likely talking to the same people.
Everything we’ve all read said that Mike Myers had to be notified by yesterday afternoon whether or not he’d made the team, but I heard yesterday that he actually had the right to ask the M’s if he had made it (and if not, he’s allowed out of his contract). In any event, nothing definitive has been accomplished on that front, though with him pitching so well this spring (no earned runs in eight appearances) I have to figure he thinks he’s made it.
OK, one last thing — this MLB.com article, which is a bit more recent than the Times or PI, says it’s more than likely that Spiezio will be placed on the DL retroactive to March 28. It also says Kevin Jarvis is going to make the team; ick.
The opening day roster must be set by 9pm tonight.
Spiezio is out with back spasms, I hear (and I found that link just now — I’m actually not even on the continent, so news is spotty). I don’t think Spiezio’s any great shakes, but I’m interested to see how Bavasi and Melvin work around this if it’s a long-term problem on and off (as back issues are prone to be). If it would tie down Bloomquist to third, thus limiting his utility as a multi-position scrub, would they entertain bringing Leone up to keep Bloomquist as a floater?