Chuck Armstrong Interview
Maury Brown, the head of the northwest chapter of SABR, conducted an interview with Chuck Armstrong on his Business of Baseball website. It’s an interesting read for the most part. A few of the chunks that jumped out at me:
BizBall: Forbes wrote an article in April this year entitled, “Best-Kept Secret“, which went on to mention that the Mariners have been the most profitable of all the clubs the last five years, with an average revenue of $163 million. The operating income of the Mariners for 2004 was $10.8 million. By comparison, the Yankees had an operating loss of $37.8 million for the same period.
Running the club is a business, and even when there are profits in hand, at what point do the Mariners say, “We’re not going any higher,†in relation to player payroll when weighed against the need to be competitive in a free-agent market?
Armstrong: We do that all the time. We set a budget and we don’t exceed that budget. We don’t necessarily have to spend up to it if we don’t find values. Right now, with the signing of Washburn and what we anticipate we’re going to be paying our other guys in arbitration and putting together our roster, we’re right up against our 2006 player payroll budget.
Generally, when a question like this is asked, the M’s get all defensive and take shots at Forbes numbers. Interesting that Armstrong did not do that here.ÂÂ
BizBall: The last question I have. You know, SABR is planning on having their National Convention just up the street at the Madison Renaissance Hotel–just a short walk from Safeco. Do you plan on being there at all this year?
Armstrong: I would like to be there. I’m keenly interested in all the work that SABR does. You know, Tal [Smith]–when I first got into this game–put me onto the work SABR does.
He taught me that in games, teams shouldn’t sacrifice as much. I’m one of these guys, if I had a criticism of most major league managers, I think they sacrifice too often and too early in the game. The out is the most precious thing in baseball. You only get 27 of them, and if you give one up, even when you try to sacrifice, over time at best, you’re only successful somewhere between 65% and 70% of the time. The work that SABR has done also shows that you have a greater chance of scoring if you don’t sacrifice with a runner on first and nobody out than if you do, but you can also avoid the double play, which counters that. It depends on the situation. So, to answer your question, yes, I would like to come up [to the Convention].
Maybe we can get Chuck and Hargrove together for lunch? Not a great sign that the president of the M’s understands a fairly basic concept of on field strategy that the manager of the M’s does not. ÂÂ
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First in a series
Game of the year: Felix’s second home start.
Google Ad: Ben Broussard, Musician! Is he better than Sandfrog? You make the call.
Ridiculously Expensive Restaurant: Canlis
Ridiculous Cheap Restaurant: Chick-Fil-A. ( I love Chick-Fil-A,” says Dave)
Free agent acquisition: Kenji Johjima (obviously)
M’s final 2005 payroll: $71m
The AP’s story is all over the place. The “commisioner’s numbers” are out — they include salaries and pro-rated signing bonuses, along with players on the DL. It’s a useful baseline because while many teams announce and count their payrolls differently, and they wall want to appear at their best locally, any uniform accounting means we can make comparisons. There are some issues with the way MLB does this, but really, any method used seems to manage to distort something, so we roll with it.
Seattle was 14th, with $70,513,167. That’s a little behind the World Champion White Sox ($73m) and ahead of Detroit ($69m).
Atlanta readers?
This post has nothing to do with baseball.
If any of our fine readers happen to live in the Atlanta, Georgia region and might be interested in doing me a favor, please email us and I’ll fill you in with the details.
Opening day starter: not Felix
From the Everett Herald:
“To keep him healthy, we’re going to have to monitor his innings,” Hargrove said. “I can tell you he will not be the opening-day starter. If he were 23 years old, he probably would be.”
Okay, sure, then… who?
“We have some legitimate candidates,” Hargrove said, being as vague as usual. “Jamie Moyer, Jarrod Washburn, Joel Pineiro. I’ll probably have a pretty good idea who it will be the second week of camp, but I won’t announce anything until the last week.”
Washburn… sure. If you’re going to pay a #4 guy #1 money, why not pitch him #1, right? Take that beater to the car show, whatever.
But Pineiro? What?
Kelley Owes Times Readers Better.
Some months ago, Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times wrote an article entitled “Bavasi Owes M’s Fans Better.”
While sympathetic to the column’s premise, I couldn’t help but wonder whether this was the best way for Kelley to frame the issue. After all, doesn’t this particular scribe have his own vocal critics? Might not some see a piece arguing that a prominent figure in the local sports community is underserving his constituents as, well, ironic?
What if one of the column were written from a different perspective? Cue the dream sequence:
—–
The office window was open. Softly, a breeze moved the clouds into soothing patterns. The sun shone on the verdant grass. And Steve Kelley sat down to write his latest cure for insomnia.
This was one of those hackneyed introductory devices we see all too often in Seattle.
Even now, a month into the New Year, reading The Seattle Times felt like the best decision. There was energy in the coffee mug beside the paper. An anticipation that this morning, this column might be different.
No.
We have always said this, but Seattle loves having a two newspaper town. More specifically, Seattle loves its Times, one of the few family-owned major dailies left.
But newsprint belongs on the page, not on the face of a formerly eager reader who has fallen asleep on top of a loosely-linked series of one-sentence paragraphs. Too many sleepy-eyed sports junkies have turned to Steve Kelley.
And these readers deserve better.
—–
Okay, end dream sequence. Cue next a post from Deadspin.com’s “Why Your Hometown Sports Columnist Sucks” series.
Guess who it’s about. Then guess who inspired the post. You won’t be shocked at the first answer, and might (or might not) be surprised at the second.
Addendum: to adhere to our collective New Year’s Resolution of being nicer and promoting cuteness, here is — for balance — a link to the Times’ fine piece on Finnegan the squirrel. Be sure to check out the photo gallery for extra cute power. Also note that Finnegan the squirrel’s name is spelled differently from Bob Finnigan’s. Because that’s important.
Chiba Lotte Marines beat Chicago White Sox in Game One
Baseball Prospectus is using Diamond Mind Baseball and translated Japanese baseball statistics to simulate a real World Series. It’s really quite interesting.
Here’s the preview which talks about what they’re doing, and why.
And in Game One, the Marines beat the White Sox 10-1.
Newsflash: Pat Gillick still bad at job
The Phillies have signed Ryan Franklin to a 1 year, $2.6 million dollar contract.ÂÂ
Sorry Deanna.ÂÂ
Site outage, immediately
She’ll be up when she’s up. Emergency ship maintenence required.
Update: we’re up. If you see anything odd afoot, email us.
Short version is that black hats found a WordPress exploit and beat us up for a while. We look to be cool now.
Rafael Soriano signs for 2006
There’s news! Yay! The M’s agreed to a one-year, $450k deal with Rafael Soriano.
We’re all huge Rafael Soriano fans here, and I have high hopes that he’ll decide to start this year and have a huge year that helps the M’s compete for the pennant. That would be sweet.
Also, as Dave points out in the comments below, Jae Seo’s been traded to the Dodgers in a nice little deal.