After the storm
I avoided the blog yesterday. I didn’t post, didn’t comment, and didn’t read. It wasn’t for lack of things to say, but I decided I just wanted to take 24 hours and pretend like the Mariners didn’t exist. I don’t think avoidance is one of the approved twelve steps, but sometimes, you just need a break. I collected my thoughts, let the emotions simmer, and now, hopefully, can give you a rational take on what the Vidro trade really means for the Mariners.
This trade doesn’t hurt the Mariners that badly next year. Most of the positive things Jeff said the other day are still true. This move didn’t make Felix’s arm fall off or send Ichiro to a planet far far away. This was a .500-ish club on Wednesday morning, and it’s a .500-ish club today. Even if the prayers of the saints go for naught and Jose Vidro passes his physical, it will still be a .500-ish club tomorrow.
The visceral reaction we all had to this trade isn’t because we believe it ruined the 2007 season or that we had dreams of Doyle winning the MVP award and carrying the team on his back. In reality, the team with Vidro isn’t much different than the team with Snelling and Fruto. We understand that the team is making moves it believes need to be made to contend, and that Bavasi and Hargrove would rather not lose their jobs because they staked their career to the continued health of Doyle.
The series of moves the Mariners have completed in the past 10 days aren’t the end of the world from a talent-on-field perspective. The team’s future hasn’t been sacrificed beyond repair, and the core of an eventual contender is still in place. But, in the past week and a half, we have been given conclusive evidence of one indisputable conclusion that cannot be avoided, cannot be waved away with talk of the volcanic market, and is a depressing fact to have to face as a fan. This management team is best described with one word:
Incompetent. Literally, they are legally unqualified, inadequate to or unsuitable for a particular purpose, lacking the qualities needed for effective action, and unable to function properly.
I’m not using the word as an attack on their intelligence out of an emotional reaction or as an insult to try to make myself feel better. I’m describing the baseball operations department as incompetent because the dictionary definition of the word fits the organization to a tee.
They are not ignorant, as they don’t lack information. They have access to better research, data, and reports than any of us could dream about. They just don’t understand how to apply the knowledge they have at their fingertips. They have unlimited resources and, with their appealing geographic location, they could easily obtain help from some of the best and brightest minds in the baseball world. Instead, Bill Bavasi, Dan Evans, and the staff of consultants continue to evaluate players with the same tools their mentors used 20 or 30 years ago.
It’s physically impossible to use any kind of analytical thinking and arrive at the conclusion that Jose Vidro, as a designated hitter, is worth $6 million a year. Even if you assign no value to Chris Snelling and Emiliano Fruto, you still have to completely misunderstand the amount of talent available to fill a DH position to decide that Jose Vidro is your best option.
This isn’t an isolated incidence. It’s Carlos Guillen for Ramon Santiago. It’s a three year deal for Scott Spiezio, non-tendering Mike Cameron, a four year deal for Jarrod Washburn, settling on Carl Everett as your 2006 DH, trying to pass Francisco Cruceta through waivers, trading Rafael Soriano for Horacio Ramirez, and now, selecting Jose Vidro as the 2007-2008 DH and giving up actual talent for the right to overpay a below average player.
Incompetence – lacking the qualities needed for effective action. I like Bill Bavasi as a person (though after this post, I doubt the feeling will be mutual), but if he doesn’t like the label, take it up with Merriam Webster, because there’s not a better word in the English language to describe the abilities of those currently running the Seattle Mariners.
They all deserve to lose their jobs. Antonetti in ’08.
49, fair enough.
I don’t think this means what you think it means.
Posted my previous comment without seeing Dave’s thoughts at No. 47 … and I do agree that it’s pretty foolish to acquire a 2B in order to convert him to a DH.
Point taken.
Boo F-ing hoo.
1- Listen to what youre saying: Even if the Mariners are good you wont be able to watch them because you’ll still be pissed at Bavasi? Dude thats wack.
You want them to fail! You have made your feelings so personal towards Bavasi that you wouldnt even be happy if they were a great team! Seattle fans are fairweather fans…and maybe its because of your non-fair weather that you have such gloom and doom perspectives.
You are totally overblowing whats happened. They traded away oft-injured players for…well…other oft-injured players. Will they be better next year? Yeah, I bet they will. Will they be significantly better? Probably not.
Im sick of all this “Im not buying my season tickets” talk. SHUT UP! Its baseball man. Have a beer, mellow out, and enjoy your day at the ballpark.
Bavasi’s comment about other clubs flush with money is a joke. We were flush with money until we tied big long contracts to Sexson and Washburn and probably over paid Beltre. Now we’ve added Batista and Vidro, gee Bill, why is it others are flush with money??? Oh, resigning Ichiro for less than $15M leave us with what now?? Incompetent is correct.
The demons of ambitions continue to haunt Seattle. There is, here in our town, a quality that inspires pathos.
True, the offseason is already a failure, and that’s before the inevitable Ichiro extension/robbery and the yearly San Diego trade. What kind of garbage are the Padres going to dump in our ballpark this year?
Bavasi is full of it. “Inside information”, yeah, right. There is NO INFORMATION IN THE WORLD that makes Vidro a good player to acquire. Leaving alone the question of giving up Snelling and Fruto: Vidro would have been a bad acquisition for this club at the major-league minimum. Period.
At $6 million, he’s a joke. The Mariners are a laughingstock. This is like 1984 all over again.
I don’t consider Hansen for Huber a bad deal that dumped garbage in our ballpark.
Dave, great quote in comment 13…So, Bavasi basically said: “I’m the decider. I get to decide, not you…”
Seems as if I’ve heard that somewhere.
#61: seriously though….it works best that way….
This may sound harsh, but “You can’t critique me, because you don’t know what I’m working with†is a loser excuse in every walk of life. The elite in any field tend to succeed; no matter what cards they are dealt, always taking responsibility for their actions. I’m into corny motivation stuff like this since I’m a salesman, so it pisses my off to no end when people in positions of, oh, say general manager of a half billion-dollar corporation can just be so amateurish.
The Mariners have been in last place for three straight years, and we annually get our ass handed to us by a team with far fewer resources. The fruits of Bill Bavasi’s “labors†are a testament to his incompetence. Him calling us ignorant is sooooooooo ironic.
P-I:
From the horse’s mouth…
The worst part about this is that the team got worse this off-season, even though we moved Ichiro to CF. In CF, Ichiro’s conceivably top 10 in the AL in VORP. Ichiro in CF makes the team better.
And yet, somehow the rest of the team got damaged badly enough to erase that and more.
The M’s had two perceived needs to address this off-season: front-line pitching and a bonafide OPS. That was nearly unanimous. There were various theories about how to acquire it and how to spend for it. Pet players were slotted (Snelling) and pet peeves dealt (Sexson), all hypothetically. In the real world, the team’s needs never changed. Nor were they addressed.
The M’s swung-and-missed at every player who legitimately fit either description, for reasons related to what I think we all accept was an incredibly difficult market to operate in (rationally, especially).
In the effort to get SOMETHING/ANYTHING, the F.O. began acquiring players who nobody really thinks adequately address either need. In the process, they bartered away players most on this board esteemed (as cheap for their skill sets), and maybe created new needs (in the bullpen, e.g.).
Some on this board have begun to ask, I think reasonably, “Wouldn’t it have just been easier to go overspend for two players who obviously addressed the major needs — say, Schmidt and Alfonso Soriano?” Even if it cost us $40M/yr, we would A) have them, B) not have Guillen, Batista, Ramirez, and Vidro, C) still have Soriano, Snelling, and Fruto for cheap.
Obviously — to Bavasi’s point — this was easier said than done. But let’s not forget that the M’s have autonomy in the market and could have adjusted to the crazy market at any time in myriad ways. They did so in ways that nearly everyone finds inadequate. Shocked at the inflationary price of bread, they starved. There’s not much virtue in that.
Guess I don’t fall into the *some* category…
The scenario in the quotation would be about as distasteful to me as the reality of last couple weeks.
At this point, all I’m asking is that someone in a power position somewhere within the organisation just display evidence of a brain…
Look at it this way: if Bavasi was shopping an old, broken-down 2B whose only remaining skill, hitting, was fading away, and snookered somebody into taking him and his huge salary, we’d all be ecstatic. If they threw in a couple of warm bodies, we’d be even happier. If one of those warm bodies was Chris Snelling, we’d be partying in the streets, and if there was a 22 year old kid with a live arm too, our hangover would last three days. Bavasi could be mayor.
Ah, to be a Nationals fan….
I’m just stunned at the stupid that quote reveals. Clubs that take dramatic leaps forward usually do so BECAUSE they add young talent via kids. Even the 2000-2003 Mariners had players like Freddy Garcia, Joel Piñeiro, Carlos Guillen and “rookies” like Ichiro Suzuki and Kazuhiro Sasaki- who weren’t properly free agents.
“Adjusting to the reality of the market” is a different issue than this. The market does not excuse Vidro’s acquisition. First of all, he’s not cheap. And most importantly, he’s NOT GOOD. There are equal or better players available all over the place for free.
The marketplace argument goes like this: “all these other teams have made incredibly stupid deals this winter; why shouldn’t we?” It’s as if we’re competing for LAST place. If the Angels sign Mathews to a retarded contract, that’s an opportunity to move AHEAD of them, not seek out a like deal (though nowhere near as bad).
Antonelli in ’08?
What are we waiting for?
Nepotism to die and egalitarianism to take its rightful place.
thank you for deleting those. There is a thread at BTF for this topic. Cameron is there now.
I don’t think avoidance is one of the approved twelve steps…
Maybe not, but denial is the first step in the grieving process, followed by anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I cycle through these stages about thrice daily being a Mariners fan.
Mariners ’07, the Bavasi/Hargrove Farewell tour
Snelling, a HUGE fan favorite? Give me a freakin’ break. He’s a big BLOG favorite. More legend, than reality. But PLEASE, give it a rest that somehow the very reason for coming to a game has been stripped from the team.
I’m a huge Snelling fan, but unlike some here, you don’t get that this board is in the VAST minority of the total fan base. Ma Kettle, in Ravensdale, who buys her 20 game plan every year, wouldn’t know Snelling from Snailing.
I’m a little disappointed, but as big a fan of Chris’ as I am, I KNOW he can’t be relied upon to hold down RF for a full season.
I’m a little disappointed, but as big a fan of Chris’ as I am, I KNOW he can’t be relied upon to hold down RF for a full season.
Knowing what you can’t know is just as important as knowing what you can know. And, since none of us can predict the future, there’s no way for you to know that Chris Snelling can’t play a full season in 2007.
We can deal in probabilities, and we can say it’s likely that Snelling would get injured next year, and that the attached risk brings down his value. We’ll all agree with that.
There’s risk and reward associated with every player. The point of roster construction is to build a team with as much reward as possible and minimal risk. Sometimes, it makes sense to take a little less reward in exchange for lower risk.
That’s what the Mariners tried to do here. Unfortunately, they don’t understand player evaluation, and they took on about the same amount of risk, lowered the potential reward, and paid an extra $12 million over the next two years and gave away a live armed reliever for the right to make a lateral move.
Well said.
If he has one, is Bavasi’s forte restocking the minor league system?
Edman, moreover, since I think it’s my comment that you’re referring to…
I guess you’re right that I don’t really know how big of a fan favorite Snelling actually is. I don’t live on the West Coast now, and I haven’t for a while, so I could be totally missing the boat on that. I do know that he’s a great story and extremely marketable, so I don’t think my comment is too far off either way, though.
But as far as saying some huge reason for attending games has been washed away, I suppose you’re mostly talking about a cumulative effect of posting, because I don’t actually really feel that way. The point I was trying to make is that I think from a marketing standpoint it was a foolish trade, as well as from a talent-on-the-field standpoint. I may not be exactly right, in that regard, but I don’t see the point in trading away a player with a large fanbase for someone who is no better and has no local fanbase.
I still think it’s bad on both counts, regardless of whether or not he’s much more popular among bloggers and statheads, or whatever, than among the general Mariners fanbase. He’s still young, charismatic, has overcome a tough injury history, has been in the organization forever so he has name recognition… I don’t think this was smart no matter what rationale you apply to it. Not a disaster either, but definitely not smart.
Gosh Dave…..can you tell us how you really feel? Excellent post, and why this is the best baseball blog….period!
It is hard to be a fan of any team, in any sport, when that team is run by incompetent idiots. Probably the same feeling I get when thinking about the current administration in the other Washington.
Besides the Mariners I have become a big fan of the Oakland A’s, because you count on Billy Beane to make moves to actually improve his ball club. It is certainly more fun to follow a team that is doing interesting things then to wallow in the incompetence of the Mariners.
#76: I think another factor to consider is Bavasi’s apparent desire to trade a young player when he’s blocked, even if it means sacrificing value.
It’s not good for the club, to be sure, but just in terms of letting guys find a way to get on the field when they’re ready, it’s noble, in a self-flagellating kind of way.
Guys like Choo, Snelling, and Fruto are going to get a chance to play full time in the majors on their new teams. That’s awesome for them.
I sometimes think Bavasi does it just so he can rub Hargrove’s nose in the “what an awful trade” articles, as if he were a bad puppy that had wet the carpet. Kinda a “hey, dumbass, maybe we shoulda played that guy” type move.
MOVING SNELLING – In an earlier column [Winter Meetings Predictions, 12/3/06], USS MARINER suspected that JEREMY REED might be traded because BAVASI has a heart of gold, and wants Reed to have an MLB career–which Reed wouldn’t have in Seattle.
(“One of Bill Bavasi’s personal beliefs is that players deserve a chance to have a career, and he’s consistently bent over backwards to trade players in an effort to give them a better opportunity than he can offer.” ]
Maybe it’s the same with Snelling and the VIDRO trade.
Well, if you hold on to them too long, without using or trading, you DO sacrifice value.
That said, I still think this was a bad trade.
I simply can’t justify the latest trade, so I won’t even try. However, I do appreciate the fact that Bavasi had an incredibly difficult job this offseason and if were going to bash his brains out we should at least acknowledge he was running a double black diamond. We overpaid for Ramirez, but adding a pitcher like Ramirez made sense. Ditto for Batista. Signing Guillen made a lot of sense. Vidro would have made a lot of sense 3-4 years ago, but on the bright side, he’s a proven 350+ OBP guy that can fill our #2 hole, and to be bluntly honest, on paper he’s a safer bet to play 140+ games in 2007 and thats why the move was made. Doesn’t mean its not a terrible trade, but I “get it.”
Edman,
Take Snelling (and Fruto) out of the equation. If Vidro were completely free it would be a stupid move:
Lets see the Ms need a DH. Does anyone actually think the way to fill DH is to find a 32 year old 2Bman with little to no power, one who has been hurt the last 3 years (with basically the same injury recurring each time) Let alone paying him 6 mil/per for 2 (or 3 years unclear about the option)? How many DHs get paid more than 6 mil? Ortiz, Thomas, Thome, probably a couple more that I can’t think of off the top of my head. Of course they all have the common trait of being among the best hitters in baseball. Even if Vidro miraculous bounces back to be the player he was 4 years ago, that isn’t a plus bat at DH, at 2B, yeah, but DH’s are truly a dime a dozen. Finding a Petagine or a Bucky Jacobson isn’t that hard, and that is a worst case scenario.
And Salty, even if Snelling was never gonna play for the Ms (which I debate, Hargrove played him in all but 6 games after his call-up) He is still an asset and part of a GM’s job is to maximize the return. Vidro was a salary dump that the Nats couldn’t give away.
But he blocked Snelling in the first place…
How is he a safe bet to play 140 games? IIRC he’s done it 4 times in a 10 year career, guys with chronic knee problems don’t generally miraculously get healthy as they hit their mid 30s
Hargrove blocked Snelling.
Hargrove will continue to block Snelling in 2007.
Bavasi isn’t allowed to fire Hargrove.
Barasi trades Snelling.
All figured out?
I agree with you Dave that Bavasi is incompetent. I have held that view from the first self-inflicted wound to the present.
Everyone can, I suppose, argue the merits of trades. But nobody could argue that throwing away something of value, i.e., Bobby Livingstone, is anything but gross incompetence. It took the Devil Rays (of all clubs) about all of a nanosecond to see that there was a market for Mr. Livingstone’s services. You’d think the self-proclaimed market nomad, Bill Bavasi, might have picked that up. In the world of corporations, giving away an asset for no value is called waste and establishes a breach of fiduciary duty.
Mike Hargrove never blocked Snelling. I don’t know why so many people believe this to be true.
# 37 “Dave is right-on. I actually feel pretty good about the future, because Bavasi has been able to reconstruct the minor league system.”
This is really the big lie about Bavasi and Fontaine. There maybe new bodies down there, but its not loaded with high quality prospects. BaseballAmerica rates the Ms farm system as the worst in Baseball.
90 – Hey, the M’s aren’t ALONE at the bottom of the farm heap (ew)…there’s healthy competition for that spot right now. We’re only the worst in the American League.
How about the Cardinals, Pirates, Phillies, Nationals, or Padres? Mmmm, empty farm systems!
Still, the current regime inspires very little confidence even in terms of its handling of restocking the minors, and thus I would agree with your overall point.
Any of you readers NEW to this feeling of rooting for accidental good moves by a completely clueless (or Dave’s word, “incompetent”) organization with problematic management, you now have a hard-earned glimpse into the collective consciousness of we Mariners’ fans during George Argyros’s and Jeff Smulyan’s time as owners. It’s like we’ve gone back in time. In a bad way.
#66- Right on. The FO committed +- 22$M annual salary on Vidro, Ramirez, Guillen and Batista. If they would have spent 3/48 on Schmidt and even get Huff(OF,1B,3B and DH) for 3/24 we would have genuinely improved the club for 24M annual committed. Then you can trade Sexson’s contract for another starter and pocket some change in the process(then move Ibanez to 1B, DH or whatever shifting you wanted).
There’s been so many examples… Bavasi and Hargrove think one thing (e.g., C-Rex will be a good DH, Vidro will be a good DH) when almost everyone here can see it’s completely wrong simply by looking at a few numbers.
And yet, there are posters like #55 that rant against strawmen in order to get an excuse to state the M’s have improved and are going to be better. As long as there are enough #55’s, the Lincoln’s of the world will prosper.
This is really the big lie about Bavasi and Fontaine. There maybe new bodies down there, but its not loaded with high quality prospects. BaseballAmerica rates the Ms farm system as the worst in Baseball.
Farm system rankings are like attendance – they don’t show up until after a few years of hard work. The M’s system is poor, compared to most others, because the few talented players acquired during the Gillick regime are already in the majors and no longer considered prospects, and the guys the Bavasi regime have acquired haven’t had time to develop into notable prospects on the national scale. You can’t ignore the talent brought into the organization, from the big names like Clement and Morrow to the lesser guys like Butler, Lowe, and Triunfel, just because they’re not classified as elite prospects.
And yet, there are posters like #55 that rant against strawmen in order to get an excuse to state the M’s have improved and are going to be better. As long as there are enough #55’s, the Lincoln’s of the world will prosper.
Depends on what you mean by “prosper”. The Mariners are going to spend $90 million in salary on a roster that’s probably going to win 75-85 games (barring a bunch of career years or catasrophic injuries/setbacks). That probably doesn’t increase attendance very much. This is a point I’m getting very tired of making, but Lincoln knows the difference between 3.4 million attendance (2001-2002) and 2.4 million attendance (2006), and those are real dollars taken off the bottom line.
My guess is that based on the increased revenues in baseball that are driving things like Gil Meche’s signing by the sad-sack Royals, the M’s will make money- but they’ll also leave a HUGE amount of money on the table by not being a competently run organization, because you can’t sell out in Seattle by being a “eh” club, as the Sonics and Seahawks (and Mariners) have amply demonstrated. This isn’t the Cubs at Wrigley, where they’ll pack them in even if the team’s terrible.
Lincoln et al are not stupid. They know quite well that you need to win to make money.
It’s just that they are, as Dave says, incompetent in knowing how to win. Knowing how to evaluate players. Knowing what risks are smart and which are dumb. Knowing when to pay $1.10 on the dollar to get that last piece to get over the top.
I agree with this, the problem as I see it is that the other teams in the division are doing just as good if not a better job of drafting and adding players to their systems. Oakland, Anaheim and to a lesser degree Texas all garnered praise from various sources on their drafts last year.
Things are definitely getting better but it’s not like the Ms exist in a vacuum, the other teams are getting better too.
I don’t know that M’s management is good at making money from this franchise. One hopes of course that they’re good at something; it’s even more discouraging to think that they might be bad at winning and at making money (notwithstanding that the best way, by far, for a sports franchise to make money is to win); if they make bad baseball decisions, it some small solace to be able to say “well, they’re businessmen, making business decisions,” as though it follows that they must be good businessmen making good business decisions. Outside of their apparently successful exploitation of the Japanese market, though, I can’t see any reason to think they know what they’re doing as businessmen, either. It just takes a while to tarnish a product as good as this team was. They’re one more disappointing season away from a precipitous attendance plunge, I’d guess.
With the moves this last week, let the Ichiro jumping ship articles begin!
I think that’s an interesting argument to make. One could argue that there are two main drivers of the Ms revenues. One is SAFECO. The other is that they happened to luck onto 116 wins, at the time when they were renegotiating TV contracts. And once could argue that the latter factor helped the former.
I think that if the Ms continue a mediocre season, then it’s going to depress revenues even futher and make people skeptical even when the team actually is doing well.