Comments on: Dave’s long-term plan for 2004

By: stan

stan — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 07:31:13 +0000

Quantrill was an excellent set-up guy for the Dodgers, my favorite team in the National League. He messed up his knee in Japan during the opening of the season against the D-rays; by the time the 04 season ended he was about as effective as you could expect someone pitching on one leg to be. The one good decision that Gillick/Bavasi made last year was to not bring back Rhodes. The worst decision they made was to let Cammy leave when it was obvious that he wanted to stay.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 05:42:14 +0000

I actually agree with Aaron; we can’t take the 2004 performances of individuals and place them in the Mariners context and assume there wouldn’t be a change. Safeco could have had a major impact on Vladimir Guerrero. Guillen may have needed a change of scenery to break out. On the flip side, if Cameron had stuck around, the implosions of Franklin and Hasegawa probably wouldn’t have been as severe, and we wouldn’t have had to turn to the never-ending-ferris-wheel-of-crap. We just don’t know what might have been.

I’ll defend Quantrill, by the way. He was actually a pretty solid reliever in 2004 until Joe Torre ran him into the ground from overuse. Look at his splits:

Pre all-star: 56 innings(!), 62 H, 1 HR, 10 BB, 23 K, 3.05 ERA
Post all-star: 39 1/3 innings, 62 H, 4 HR, 10 BB, 14 K, 7.09 ERA

He basically threw a years worth of relief in the first half of the season and did quite well. The ridiculous usage patterns directly led to his collapse in the second half, I believe. Again, this is a case where we can’t assume that his 2004 NY performance would be translated to Seattle. In a non-New York environment, he probably doesn’t get ridden into the ground by July, and the M’s likely would have been very happy with the results.

By: HLS

HLS — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 02:01:10 +0000

Quantrill may have seemed more appealing to some but don’t forget that Hasegawa “proved” in ’03 (at least to the M’s) that he could be a solid closer (16 saves in 17 oppos). Even though we didn’t know Sasaki was going to bolt, there was a great bit of concern over his health (since he’d missed 1/2 the ’03 season). Hasegawa was re-signed before Guardado signed with the M’s as a free agent.

Another reason the M’s paid as much as they did for Hasegawa (besides the fact that he had other offers) is that he’s Japanese — I don’t mean that to sound like a racis statementt, but face it — the M’s do treat their Japanese players different than the other players (i.e. mid-season contract extension for Sasaki in ’02, which was against the club’s stated policy).

By: Eric Walkingshaw

Eric Walkingshaw — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 01:12:11 +0000

Ok, you caught me not doing my homework before I responded there. I assumed that Dave meant a one year deal and didn’t check to see what he actually got. The point still stands though, that at the end of last year Quantrill looked much more appealing than Hasegawa. So why did they get such similar contracts?

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 01:01:52 +0000

It’s got a few dumb mistakes, but this article captures everything I’ve heard from Carlos since the trade:
http://www.detnews.com/2004/tigers/0406/15/d05-184052.htm

What matters for the Tigers, way beyond his antagonism toward Seattle, is that Guillen likes playing for Detroit. He looks to his right, at Rodriguez sitting contentedly in front of his locker, and says the picture doesnâ€™t lie. On a team that is a long way from playoff-bound, players nonetheless feel like they can do their jobs, enjoy playing a baseball game, and not deal with undue stress.

â€œWe were always in first place when the trade deadline came, but they didnâ€™t want to compete,â€ he said, teeing off again at Seattle.

â€œHere they want to win.â€

Yes, I’m just focusing on one projection to nitpick on, but when it’s stated that Carlos was 6-7 games better than what the M’s trotted out there, there is an implication that the M’s would have been 6-7 games better if they’d kept him. Obviously, I don’t believe that at all.

By: HLS

HLS — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:45:58 +0000

Re: Quantrilll — you don’t really think that he would have signed a one year deal with the M’s? He signed a guaranteed two-year, $6 million deal with New York, with a club option for 2006 for $3.6 mil (which the Yankees had to decide on this year — they declined the ’06 option and paid him a $400K buyout). Why would he sign with Seattle for one year, even for $4 mil when he could be guaranteed $6.4 mil elsewhere?

I believe that the M’s also have an option for ’06 on Shiggy, so the deals signed by the two are pretty similar.

By: Conor Glassey

Conor Glassey — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:40:10 +0000

Aaron – How do you know that Guillen’s change was from moving to Detroit and not from getting away from Freddy Garcia? There are a lot of assumptions made, so to nitpick one of them seems kind of pointless since the whole thing is entirely hypothetical…

By: Eric Walkingshaw

Eric Walkingshaw — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:23:26 +0000

4) The difference between Shigetoshi Hasegawa and Paul Quantrill at the end of last season was that Shiggy had a career of mid-3 low-4 ERAs compared to four sub-3 (and one 3.04) seasons out of 7 for Quantrill. And, in Hasegawa’s one big season, his K-rate was actually the lowest of his career, suggesting that it had less to do with actual improvement than more balls finding fielder’s gloves. I agree that watching Quantrill suck it up for 4 million wouldn’t have been fun, but he’d be off the books now. Instead there’s three more million dollars tied up in Hasegawa this year.

By: earlweaver22

earlweaver22 — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:01:33 +0000

At least the Ms are finally going to get that 1st baseman they’ve been needing.

By: HLS

HLS — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 23:58:01 +0000

As Dave Cameron himself has written, middle relievers are an inconsistent bunch. I commented last year that $4 million per was a ridiculous amount of money to pay for Quantrill and it would have been a huge waste of money given the year he had in ’04 — Quantrill had about as bad a year, possibly worse(!) as Shiggy Hasegawa did in ’04, believe it or not. Hasegawa’s ERA was 5.16, Quantrill’s was 4.76, Quantrill’s WHIP was actually higher, 1.51 to 1.44 and finally, while Hasegawa held opposing hitters to a .260 BA, major league hitters teed off on Quantrill to the tune of a .316 batting average!

This is most interesting given that Dave has harped again and again and again about how badly the M’s misfired on re-signing Hasegawa after a career year when they “should have known” he was due for a big falloff. Give the M’s some credit — at least they didn’t sign Paul Quantrill for 4 million dollars…