Friday’s roundup
Terse headlines
A’s bench coach Geren steps up to manager
Frank Thomas signs 2y, $18m deal with Blue Jays
USSM still not supplied with Wii despite constant promotion of Nintendo-owned team
Even though they’re sending everyone else one and we’re local
And we promise we’d write an article
A’s talking to Bonds
MLB owners approve new TV deals worth $3 billion+
Meteor shower! Good thing we live in a city with near-total cloud cover for nine months a year.
Other good stuff
Over in an article at Baseball Prospectus, Nate Silver’s quoted saying the dollar cost teams are paying per win a player contributes looks like it’s jumped 30% or more this season. Teams have money to spend, labor peace, and there aren’t many free agents worth having.
I still can’t believe Scott Spiezio got 2y, $4.5m from the Cardinals and he’s trash talking about the M’s.
The M’s in Pinto’s defensive model
“I’d like to patronize your store, and by that I mean I’d like to buy something.”
“I know what it means! Don’t patronize me.”
— Sam & Max: Culture Shock
We’ve talked a lot about defense here at USSM lately, particularly with regards to Sexson the Albatross, and it always generates a lot of discussion about how we can, or can’t, measure defense. It’s true that defensive tools aren’t nearly as fine as offensive tools are perceived to be, but as we’ve learned in the last few years, those aren’t quite as good as we thought. And, in general, I agree with what Dave’s been trying to say: that while none of the defensive systems people are working on is as good as we’d like, you can look at the good ones and immediately get a reasonable idea of a player’s contributions, and by looking at several, you can get more confident. And when there are contradictions, it’s worth thinking about how those can arise, and what they reveal about the systems and the players.
But if you look at some player and various defensive systems rate him at +5 runs, +10 runs, +12 runs, and +8 runs, you can be reasonably assured he’s good with the glove.
All of which is a long introduction to this: David Pinto’s been working on “Probabilistic Model of Range” and he’s published some cool stuff at Baseball Musings.
Here’s his team breakdown by air/ground stats.
The M’s are the fourth-best on ground balls. Woo-hoo! Go Betancourt/Beltre!
They’re in the middle of the pack in fly balls. Boo Ibanez! Yay Ichiro and Snelling!
(Okay, so I’m clearly introducing unsupported allegations there)
Overall, the team came out sixth overall in total rankings.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in this yet – from early comments it appears that the numbers Dewan’s going to put in the Hardball Times annual will be a lot different, and moreover, the whole baseball community is only really starting to figure out how to use the better data, particularly play-by-play data with hit location and speed. Pinto’s model is based on 2002-2006. The systems will get better.
Defense rocks.
Thursday news
Devil Rays are top Iwamura bidder (mlb)
Frank Thomas may sign with Blue Jays (mlb)
Bonds, Giants spar
Also, because a reader emailed to point out we haven’t mentioned this beyond “the Missions left us”, the M’s had a whole affiliate shuffle.
AA swaps from San Antonio to the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx. The extra ‘X’ is for eXtra.
Their Cal League affiliate for A ball moves from Inland Empire to the High Desert Mavericks.
Wednesday’s news, tightly edited
From sensory deprivation tank, Mussina agrees to 2y, $22.5m contract with Yankees
NL Manager of the year is Marlins’ fired Girardi
Leyland wins AL Manager of the Year
Acta named new Nationals manager
100-year old Hernandez gets two year, $12m contract
Mark DeRosa gets 3y, $13m
M’s sign nine
Read all about it (scroll down, it’s at the bottom, notes-style).
The Mariners signed nine players to minor-league contracts Tuesday, including SS Rey Ordonez, who hasn’t played in the majors since 2004. Also signed to Class AAA contracts were pitchers Renee Cortez and Jesse Foppert, outfielder Tony Torcato and infielder Brant Ust. Signed to AA or A deals were pitchers Cibney Bello, Josh Kite, Michael Wagner and Jared Eichelberger.
Yes, that’s the Rey Ordonez. Gold Glove Winner Rey Ordonez. My buddy Seth over at Seattlest has a funny take on this one. This is the kind of signing people might get too worked up about, but it’s really not a big deal. He’s AAA insurance at best. He’s not taking Betancourt’s job.
The world has not ended
The announcement of the Daisuke posting bid sent columnists across the country to their keyboards, ready to crank out an easy day’s work wringing their hands about how this is the end of baseball.
It’s not. This is ridiculous.
He’s not an everyday player.
Starting pitchers don’t play everyday. But they’re involved in far more outcomes each game than position players. We might as well say that Alex Rodriguez doesn’t deserve his money because he only has a chance to affect the outcome of a game four or five times each day.
The Red Sox are paying more for the right to talk to Daisuke than great players make in a year
So what? The posting process is strange. MLB’s arrangement with Japanese baseball is weird, and it produces results like this. It results in crazy one-time payments that don’t have an equivalent in domestic baseball.
But this is a lot like the wailing about draft pick signing bonuses, or international signings of young undrafted players. “Oh, how can some Felix Hernandez kid get a million dollars when he hasn’t even thrown an inning of minor league baseball?”
Baseball is not a free market. Teams are constantly trying to keep their labor costs down and where they can’t control it, we get these kind of extremely strange values.
This changes everything
Dogs and cats living together!
No it doesn’t, any more than Ichiro’s posting did. It’s true this is unprecedented, but so was Ichiro’s posting, and that didn’t destroy baseball.
Teams are flush with cash and crazy!
Yup. Baseball’s been doing quite well for itself, and good teams spend that money improving the quality of their product. So be it. The fans win when baseball is a more lucrative option for athletes who have choices between sports.
Other athletes get paid far less!
Boo hoo. Football and basketball both broke their unions and, because they went through near-death experiences, are a lot more… socialist? in their structure, where revenue comes from national sources and gets evenly distributed (though, as always, this wavers).
Should we really be celebrating that Peyton Manning is underpaid in the NFL because their ownership groups control labor costs and are able to pocket more money?
We should be celebrating. That smart teams are willing to spend so much on a Japanese player, no matter what the circumstances or how foolish the system may be, is a sign of baseball’s great health, its increasing international reach. It’s an endorsement of the talent in NPB, and how far that league has come.
Yesterday was shocking, but if you’re a baseball fan it should also be a bit thrilling. How many people are going to follow Matsuzaka’s starts this year? How can that be a bad thing?
Matsuzaka winning bid: Red Sox, $51.1m
I know, but please, close your mouth before the flies get in.
This is, by the way, approximately 1/4th the value of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays franchise.
Ask USSM: How to fill the void?
What am I supposed to do with my free time? Read more
Today’s news, tightly edited
$42m Red Sox bid wins Matsuzaka posting (link)
Verlander wins AL RoY, Johjima places fourth
NL RoY announced
Teams flatter Meche
Karim Garcia courted by M’s, others
Webb wins NL Cy Young
M’s sign scrubs
Read more
Random Monday Musings
The GM winter meetings start. Rumors a-flurry! We’ll see if the M’s look to make any moves, or if they sign Jason Schmidt this week (which, if I may, seems likely).
We find out Tuesday whether the Seibu Lions accepted the highest bid, whatever it may be, for Daisuke Matsuzaka. The Hardball Times has a piece today worth reading (“When Will Daisuke Matsuzaka’s Arm Fall Off?“) as food for thought. The summary contains this gem.
I am surprised that so many baseball fans are worried about how Matsuzaka threw over 200 pitches in a high school playoff game. That kind of stress on an arm probably isn’t a good thing, but it isn’t a death sentence either. Strenuous 150-plus pitch outings for high school and college pitchers happen, even in the United States.
I’m surprised that people are frightened of playing Russian Roulette. Many people play and are not killed…
We find out Thursday (or earlier) whether the Yakult Swallows accepted the highest bid for 3B Akinori Iwamura, who we haven’t discussed here at all since the M’s aren’t in the market for a 3B.
The interesting news is that the Yankees, rather than pay $4m to opt out of Jaret Wright’s contract, agreed to pay $3m of it so they could ship him to the Orioles, re-uniting him with Leo Mazzone, who is guy who managed to last wring a nice season out of Wright.
Also interesting is the M’s are converting some suites into one large super-suite (thanks to eponymous coward for the pointer). Sounds kind of like the Diamond Club, only higher. This is a really weird thing to do. You’ve seen the team push the bizarre press box seats before, but this means that the team’s been unable to get any companies to bite, aaand didn’t have much success selling them for individual games, either. Look forward to having Dave Valle pimp these seats endlessly during broadcasts.