Position Roundtables: Starting Second Baseman
Starting Second Baseman: Jose Lopez
Jeff
Since Dave has taken the initiative on the first few, I figured I’d start us off for number three, which is, fittingly, the second base roundtable.
Franz Kafka’s close friend Max Brod once asked the author whether, with his seemingly bleak literary worldview, he saw any cause for hope. The scribe gave a memorable reply: “Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope–but not for us.”
The application to Mariner fandom should be apparent. There’s a difference, though. In our world, hope manifests itself in promising young players like this year’s projected starting second baseman, Jose Lopez. In Kafka’s world, the best you could expect was to turn into an insect.
What to expect from Lopez? More, in three senses. More than we expected from him last year, more than the team received from the second base slot, and more than many fans seem to believe. We’ve talked about this before, doing some player comparisons that demonstrate the different standards people get attached to.
To be sure, there are worries. Lopez doesn’t get on base enough. There are questions about his defense. But he’s a young middle infielder with pop in his bat, PECOTA likes him a lot, and he can be an inexpensive building block for years to come.
Plus, he doesn’t turn 23 until November. There may not have been hope for Franz Kafka. But there is for Jose Lopez, and by extension, the hometown nine.
Dave
Can you believe Jose Lopez just turned 22 years old? It feels like I’ve been writing about him for a decade. In trying to kick off this roundtable, I stared at my email for a day trying to figure out exactly what part of his game I haven’t written about in ridiculous depth.
The answer? His defense at second base. When he was coming through the ranks as a shortstop, I wrote several articles suggesting his skills were more suited for second base, and that I was never that impressed with his long term prospects of staying at shortstop. Most of the public comments I’ve made about his defense were negative in nature and regarded his ability to play major league defense at SS. But, since his converstion to second base, I haven’t really written much about his glovework. So, here you go.
Jose Lopez, right now, is a solid defensive second baseman, and he has the skills to be well above average going forward. His footwork is still not the best and he doesn’t have the best hands around, but his lateral range is significantly better than most of his peers at second base. He also has a cannon arm, which matters less than it would at short, but is still an asset, especially on balls hit up the middle.
Due to the small samples, we don’t have reliable statistical information on his defense, though if you’re curious, the advanced metrics rank him somewhere from average to third best in baseball. You can’t find a defensive metric that thinks he played poorly in ’05 at second base. Again, massive small sample size caveats apply, and I’d give those numbers very little weight in the grand scheme of things, but I’m just throwing it out there.
So, does all this matter? I mean, really, how important can second base defense be, anyways?
More important than you’d think. Bret Boone, in half a season, cost the Mariners about 20 runs with his glove last year. Seriously, this is one of those times where every defensive metric out there is in agreement. Boone was awful. Smith’s ZR had him at -18, RANGE had him at -24, Dial’s ZR had him at -33, PMR had him at -36. All of those are prorated to a full season, by the way. But at the rate Boone was letting balls roll past him, he would have cost the M’s something like 20-30 runs over the course of the year just with his defense.
If we accept that Jose Lopez is an average defender, the M’s are going to get a significant bump in how well they turn groundballs into outs next year. If PMR is right and Lopez is well above average, the M’s could have one of the best defensive infields in the game. It’s clear that, either way, replacing the statue of Bret Boone and replacing him with an actual live body is going to have a positive impact.
And that’s not even discussing the breakout potentail his bat has, which we’ve noted many times. Lopez, at his worst, will still be better than Boone was last year, and if he takes a leap forward like is clearly possible for a player for his age and skillset, it could be a massive improvement. Just like with the catcher spot, the M’s have serious upgrade potential here, and almost no chance to be as bad as they were. And, to top it off, Lopez will cost 3.5 percent of what Boone made last year.
Jason
Is this the year we finally get to see real production out of Jose Lopez? My Magic 8-Ball says, “Signs point to yes.” The thing I like best about Lopez are the combination of his age and that he has 854 at-bats–nearly two seasons’ worth–above AA. Now, I know what you’re saying… “But Jason, in 398 major league at-bats he’s hit a measly .239 with no walks and just seven homers.”
I can’t help you with the walks, unfortunately, and he might never draw even 50 in a single season in the majors. However, of his 95 major league hits, a full 39 of them — that’s 41% — have gone for extra bases. That’s power for the position, folks, especially given his age.
If the Magic 8-Ball could give more than yes or no answers, it’d tell you to look for a .280/.330/.450 from Lopez next season along with the solid defense Dave mentions above.
Derek
I don’t have anything particularly to add to this, except that I really like Lopez, and he’s got a fair shot at being a huge contributor to the team for a long time. I hope they plunk him down at second and work with him. Fortunately for him, it’s not as if there’s a replacement pushing him for playing time.
Jason
I do worry about Hargrove getting attached to “veteran leader and bat-control artist” Fernando Vina during spring training, leading to Lopez starting the year in Tacoma again.
Dave
That’s a legitimate concern. Lopez has a questionable work ethic, no doubt, and he has a tendancy to get on a coaches bad side fairly quickly. Grover’s the kind of coach who values hustle over talent, and since Jose hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire in his major league trials, he can’t afford to dog it in spring training. Let’s hope he shows up motivated enough to keep Grover from going with another plucky white guy.
Two pairs of eyes, every guy they draft
From Jonah Keri’s Q&A with the Yankees’ Mark Newman over at Baseball Prospectus
If there are 50 rounds in the draft, you need to focus on a usable number of rounds, since the players in the late rounds are long shots. So you can look at the top three rounds for the cross-checker, since that’s the focus of his job. Then you might look at the top five or six rounds for area scouts, where there’s still a reasonable chance that prospects will emerge.
To quote myself, writing about the massive buildup of the Bavasi-Fontaine group operation:
By putting more people on the ground, investing heavily in area scouts, cross-checkers, and so on, they know more about every person they’re looking at in the draft than their opposition. That’s amazingly valuable information. We can talk a little about the depth/breadth distinction at some point (Rob Neyer wrote a really good column about this I’d like to dig up and revisit). It makes your picks more valuable than another team’s. If you’re drafting a junior college guy in the 10th round that three good eyes have seen, you’re much more likely to turn that into a player than essentially flipping a coin between single-scout reports.
I’ve been way down on the off-season, but it’s worth remembering that there are good reasons to be happy in the long-term. Advantages like this aren’t going to start showing up for another two years, but it should happen, and it should be sweet.
First batch of USSM swag available
Makes a great uh… Valentine’s Day gift! Yeah! That’s it! Anyway, check it out, we’ve got a bunch of versions of the freaking awesome JoelE designs, and a couple of limited-edition shirts — every month, we’re going to try tossing out a couple of random cool shirts, and at the end of the month we pull the plug.
The shop
The February limited-edition shirts
I know we’d intended to try the logos on dark blue, but CafePress doesn’t have navy shirts we can use. Sorry.
We should have the Ambivalent Maybe designs up as soon as I figure out why CafePress refuses to accept the images.
And anyone wishing to take a crack at a better version of the limited edition Felix shirt and are willing to accept our standard pay rate ($0 forever but I do pay your way into a USSM feed), drop us a line.
All proceeds go to support our continuing efforts to censor open discussion and further our plans for world domination.
Super Bowl XL MVP
I don’t watch a ton of football. I have trouble picking a 4-3 defensive alignment out, for instance, though I understand what’s going on. Even I can’t believe that game. The MVP was clearly the officials, who made more game-changing plays than any player on either team, almost all against the Seahawks (“Touchdown? Let’s toss a flag.”). I haven’t seen bad umping like this since the Indy-Pittsburgh game. Maaaaaaaaaaaaan. This sucks.
SI on defensive metrics
Attempts to answer the question “Is Jeter any good defensively?” Includes a really good, long, early quote by this really smart baseball guy I know, “Dave Cameron”.
One thing the article seems to omit, though, is that Jeter’s long-term numbers have been much worse. There’s a lot of speculation that Alex’s presence at third has allowed him to play farther up the middle, which suits Jeter’s skill set much better. But all in all, it’s a nice article about new stat methods and what they offer.
Position Roundtables: Starting First Baseman
Starting First Baseman: Richie Sexson
Dave
Richie Sexson in a nutshell:
He’s tall.
He’s a local boy.
He strikes out a lot.
He’s going to hit .270/.370/.530 unless his shoulder falls apart.
Seriously, there’s almost no variance in his year to year numbers. Even PECOTA picks up on this, basically pegging him for an exact repeat of his 2005 season despite being 31 years old, an age when projection systems start throwing red flags everywhere and forecasting doom and despair. After a full year of taking hacks, we can hope that his shoulder is again at full strength, and barring a relapse, there’s basically no reason to expect Sexson to decline dramatically. When healthy, he’s put up the same line over and over. And, considering that he’s good enough to overcome the Safeco Curse on Righties, that makes him a darn good player.
My concern, though, is that there’s literally no contingency plan. If Sexson gets hurt, the starting first baseman is… Raul Ibanez or Carl Everett, probably. And then you’re shifting things around defensively at two positions while replacing Sexson’s bat in the line-up with Matt Lawton’s. As much as we think Lawton was a nice value pickup, that’s a massive downgrade.
Sexson has to stay healthy and play 150 games. The M’s can’t contend without him. They don’t have any real options if he goes down. His health isn’t an option.
Jeff
The most chilling three-word English phrases, in order:
1. “Let’s be friends.”
2. “That’s not mayonnaise.”
3. “If he’s healthy …”
The battery of tests and blue-ribbon panel of doctors gave Sexson’s shoulder a clean bill of health, and it didn’t fly out of it’s socket at all last year. This is a salve for some of my concerns.
For more salve, here’s a positive thought: Sexson had a fantastic year last year. But here’s a sobering counterpoint: he’s not likely to improve upon it — and if he’s injured or falls off, that’s a significant power gap in the team’s offense. As Dave says, the available alternatives are enough to make a man with mononucleosis go on a Nyquil bender.
Okay, Dave didn’t say that, but still. When the next-best solution is a brutal downgrade both at bat and in the field, signs point to trouble.
For the M’s, the best-case scenario is essentially Sexson repeating last year. For the worst-case scenario, well … let’s just say it ends with a Nyquil bender.
Derek
Sexson to Ibanez: a little more contact, less OBP, a ton less power
Sexson to Everett: even worse
I don’t actually think Lawton in the lineup more often is so bad. Lawton
likely to be just as good as Everett, though with his injury and last
year’s drug saga… but we’ll get to that. It’s Lawton in the lineup and
one of those dudes at first. That’s just ugliness. And both those guys
would be huge defensive downgrades. Sexson is the foundation of this
offense.
There is no other power threat in the lineup. After Sexson, we’re back
to a 2004 singles-only offense.You’re hoping for a rebound from Beltre,
or a development leap from Jose Lopez. Or, if you’ll pardon this plug,
the Return of the Return of Doyle.
This isn’t just about the team being able to score runs. If you’re a fan
of team balance, a team without power should rankle you. If you’re a fan
of exciting baseball, that Sexson is the only power hitter should scare
you. The singles-and-outs offense is amazingly boring. That’s great if
you want to fall asleep at the ballpark or watching the game at home,
but if you want to see this team winning, well… keep Sexson in your
thoughts and prayers.
Dave
I’m not sure I’d say Sexson repeating his ’05 is the best case scenario. His weighted mean PECOTA projection is basically a repeat of last year, so it sees that as a middle ground with potential for a better season. I think its unlikely that Sexson hits .300/.400/.600, but I would have said the same thing about Derrek Lee last year.
Just putting wild guesses into percentages, I’d say that Sexson has about a 50 percent chance to approximate last years performance, a 30 percent chance of declining with injury making up a big chunk of that, and a 20 percent chance of actually having a better year in ’06 than he did last year. The career year is the least likely of the three scenarios, but the possibility isn’t zero, I don’t think.
Derek
PECOTA thinks there’s a 15% chance his performance spikes up, a whopping
43% chance next year’s an improvement on this year. 43%. Wow.
Jason
Last year, in discussing the tallest Mariner, we seemed to focus on two possibilities: Sexson gets hurt early and only plays in a handful of games, or Sexson stays healthy all year. Fotunately for everyone, the latter was reality. Richie Sexson is the only hitter from last year’s team about whom I’d say “He had a good year” — he led the club in OPS by a ridiculous margin, and no, I don’t think Ichiro had a good year given what he’s done in the past.
Looking at his games played over the past six years, 2004’s “23” is clearly the abberation — throw that out, and he’s averaged 156 games played over five seasons. I’m not nearly as worried about his shoulder as I was this time a year ago, and given the power he displayed last season it seems unlikely we’re looking at another Shawn Green situation.
That said, the M’s certainly can’t afford to lose him for any significant stretch of time if they’re going to be respectable next season… unless you think spring training invitee Todd Sears can duplicate in the majors the .321/.394/.499 line he posted in the minors last year.
Mariners hike ticket prices
I just noted that they finally posted single game prices.
With 2005 single-game prices in ()s
Lower box: $55 ($50)
Field: $38 ($35)
Horribly overpriced Terrace Club Infield: $60 ($55)
Horribly overpriced Terrace Club Outfield: $45 ($43)
View Box: $25 ($24)
Lower Outfield Reserved: $25 ($24)
View Reserved: $18 ($17)
Left Field Bleachers: $14 ($13)
Center Field Bleachers: $7 ($7)
Not as bad as it could have been. And yet, still…