Thursday’s news, the Putz deal
This ended up going into yesterday’s Q & A bucket after I collapsed from exhaustion, but the big news is that JJ Putz got a three-year, $13m deal. It’s a good move in a couple of ways: as Dave’s noted, the bullpen’s been getting a lot shakier through this off-season, and it really does help to have someone who can get some outs on the staff. I don’t agree that if you have that guy you only pitch him in the ninth when you’re up 1-3 runs, obviously, but the M’s have the money and the stability gets them somewhere.
The problem I see, though, is that Putz is unlikely to repeat the performance we saw last year. I’m not trying to say that he’s not good, or that his late-blooming development isn’t for real, but sustaining that kind of performance is extremely difficult, and next year, when he’s just really good instead of crazy good, I wonder if we’re going to see people ragging on him for sucking it up once he got the money. That’d be sad.
Money-value wise, as much as I hate to make this kind of rough comparison, look at what the Orioles were paying for relievers this year. Putz at this price, even if you’d agree with us that closers aren’t all that hard to find and make, is still undervalued to a lot of teams, and you could move him if you had to.
I know, that’s not an amazing endorsement, and I’m mixing some pretty lame analysis, but in my defense, I’m a little swamped with work and I really want to sneak off and go skiing.
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Rotoworld says you guys are in the lead for Brian Lawrence.
Question: does anyone know how well pitchers usually return a year later from rotator cuff surgery and/or torn labrum surgeries?
With that being said, I think it’ll be a good move for you guys, I think he can be good.
Hey the Jays are paying BJ Ryan 10 million a year to close. I’d say you guys got a good deal considering how good Putz was…and that he’ll be at least GOOD next year, since he was amazingly good last year.
but Derek …. Lee Pelekoudas says “”There’s a theory going around now that the seventh and eighth inning are more important outs than the ninth inning, and that anybody can do the closer’s role. We don’t think so. The ninth inning are the toughest three outs in baseball, and whether it’s guts, or moxie, or makeup — J.J. has it.”
This must be where J.J. got his moxie.
If you believe that closers are fungible, and thus value/performance as a closer is about opportunity not skill, then any deal given to a closer is horrible.
OTOH, if you believe there’s value in a closer then this is a great deal. For $13M Putz only has to create 6-7 wins over the deal; last year he was 5+ (WXRL from BP). I don’t think he’ll be that good, but I can certainly see him being worth 3+ W/year. Of course the real question here isn’t salary vs. wins but how much they might have saved/spent by going to arbitration three times.
That said the $8.6M option for 2010 is pretty funny; I guess that must be his free agent year. No way that’s worth exercising.
I like this a lot better than picking up Guadardo’s option last year at this time.
I had forgotten about Guardado. It makes me smile to remember how that all came together for J.J.
Along those same lines, the nice part about the many players we salvaged after injuries is that the ones that really suck it up will probably hurt themselves (or will be hurt, causing the problems), and hopefully Grover will be forced to run somebody else out there in their place. To me that’s better than getting a suspect talent past his prime that, for whatever reason, stays healthy as an ox. Looking back, somebody should have constantly dropped banana peels next to C-Rex’s locker, and his car, and his bathroom, and . . well you get the point. A little Tanya Harding action might have saved us some grief.
ahem. Tonya.
Both Brad Lidge and Francisco Rodriguez are going into their second year of arbitration this season.
Brad Lidge
1st year arb: $3.98 million
2nd year arb: $5.35 million
Francisco Rodriguez
1st year arb: $3.78 M
2nd year arb: $7 million
J.J. Putz
1st year arb: $3.7 million (incl. signing bonus)
2nd year arb: $3.4 million
3rd year arb: $5.0 million
1st year FA: $8.6 million option (or $1 million buyout)
Even though relievers are unpredictable, Putz contract is a bargain.
Isn’t the argument about closers less about their ability to get outs in the ninth and more about the idea that often a guy with *closer stuff* would be used more effectively earlier…. i.e. don’t use your third option in a high leverage situation in the seventh because you want to save your second best option for the 8th where he can set up your best option to pitch in the ninth…
It’s an argument against the final three outs being considered the most important ones just because they come last…
Last year when Ms were featuring JJ during pregame, it seemed as though he had really started to take workouts to a different level. Hopefully he will keep those tough workouts now that he doesn’t have quite the incentive.
Putz is a Putz
Resigning JJ was a great deal for us. I think he will be fine in the closer role. I’m still smarting over loosing Rafael Soriano so at least Bavasi did something right.
This is a monumental moment, Bill Bavasi and the Mariners front office actually did something SMART!!
INCREDIBLE!!!!!
Pecota likes him much better than you do…. just scratching out some calculations on the back of my tie, Pecota projects Putz to have a FIP of 2.65… its not as insane as his FIP last year (1.81) but I’ll take it…
It’s an argument against the final three outs being considered the most important ones just because they come last…
Right. What Lee Pelekoudas seems to be missing is that those who’ve looked at the stats on this only lament that there are sometimes situations in the 7th or 8th innings that merit just as much attention as the 9th inning. Not that the 7th and 8th innings are always more important.
If you wanted a rule of thumb, then sure, best in the 9th, second-best in the 8th, and third-best in the 7th would be the way to go. So you could have a rule of thumb, but you should be able to do better than the rule of thumb by carefully considering each situation as it comes up. By not giving those non save situation high leverage situations the attention they deserve, teams sometimes miss out on opportunities to win ballgames.
(It’s interesting to see that even though Hargrove could’ve surely boosted Putz’s leverage last year by putting him into some tied ballgames where a save situation was no longer a possibility, he still wound up with a slightly higher leverage index than B.J. Ryan, who was used fairly aggressively (according to modern standards) by the Jays before the 9th inning.)
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to go “yeah, let’s see you do your Mariano Rivera impersonation again” before predicting that level of performance on an annual basis, but the good hard mid to upper 90’s fastball plus hard sinker combo historically works VERY well among pitchers, so I think JJ’s got a very good chance of being a good value and a top-tier closer for a while. He also has the bonus of (I think) no real injury history.
Could you trade him and get value? Yeah, and I suppose if we were flush with good bullpen arms and we had a Beane-style GM with an eye towards talent accumulation as opposed to believing baseball bromides (“You need a proven closer”) this would be a sensible option to examine at some point. The 2007 Mariners don’t strike me as having that particular set of characteristics, though.
Worse case scenario Putz would have won arb. at received about 3.5 for ‘07. Even if he pitches lights out in ‘07 isn’t he arbitration eligible again for ‘08? I don’t like what Bavasi did here. Putz had one great year and suddenly we throw 13 mil guaranteed at him? I would rather lose arbitration at 3.5 for ‘07 then have to pay 1.5 or so more (than the 3.4) in ‘08 (assuming he pitches at a ‘06 level) but at least know I am getting more of a sure thing. Ofcourse, Bavasi has never been to arbitration so we wouldn’t want to ruin his streak.
On a semi related Bavasi note: If M. Gonzalez is worth Adam LaRoche, isn’t R. Soriano worth a bit more than a Hispanic Jake Woods? Just asking…
If you believe that closers are fungible, and thus value/performance as a closer is about opportunity not skill, then any deal given to a closer is horrible.
I don’t think this necessarily has anything to do with being a “closer” so much as it has to do with being a “relief ace.” Merely good relief pitchers aren’t that hard to find, and often when teams present them with the opportunity, they do well in the situations they are given. But if you look past the merely good relief pitchers, it becomes pretty difficult to find relief aces. Putz had the second-best FIP amongst relief pitchers in the AL last year, behind only Joe Nathan. Even if Putz regresses to something like a 2.65 FIP next year, that would’ve made him about the 5th best relief pitcher in the AL last year.
So while it’s not necessarily that hard to find guys like, say, Gary Majewski and Bill Bray, you’re not going to find a J.J. Putz on any given street corner.
Just read that seattle is the front runner for lawrence…is this really gonna happen, and if so, what will BB do with seven starters? woods should go to the pen for long relief, but that would still leave us with felix, wash, bautista, ramirez, baek, and now lawrence…besides woods, who would probably be the odd man out?
Baek & Woods would be out. Bavasi likes “proven” major leaguers, even if they are proven to be bad.
so would baek go to the pen, be traded or sent to tacoma? we know woods is probably already going there, with or without lawrence…
When you look at injury and performance history of the Mariners starter candidates, it’s pretty clear they’re going to need 6 or 7 starters during the season. But I agree with ChrisK that if everyone is healthy, Baek and Woods are the odd men out to start the season.
And “being the front runner” doesn’t mean much until he signs unless you have a really, really credible source.
I don’t think 4.3 million is going to inflate people’s expectations. 4.3m is like Oliver Twist Money these days.
I think #8 says it all. If I had any worries that Putz was a fluke, I might think differently, but I feel like he deserves the money. Seems to me like if he keeps on the same basic track, even without pitching like he did last year ever again, he’s worth it. I’m probably being optimistic, but I just don’t see him taking a major step backwards. Seems like probably a great deal to me.
Here’s the problem with Putz: he’s the one talent on the team that doesn’t get to play if the rest of them don’t show up. So, the upside of having him on the 2007 Mariners is that he isn’t going to get overworked and thus likely will remain healthy. The downside is that he won’t have much of an opportunity to help the team win. (This might depress his trade value, because he won’t have accumulated much in the way of counting stats by the trade deadline, but that doesn’t really matter because this FO is incapable of making astute trades anyway). So he will be overpaid for a 2007 season that he mostly spends on the bench or pitching in already-lost games just to get some work in. But locking him up for future years is a good deal — assuming our prayers come true and there’s a housecleaning in management that enables someone to build a team that can deliver save opportunities to him.
Mickey’s got it right in #23.
These are low figures to pay for a guy with this performance. In an open market he would have commandeered much, much more. If he flames out in a couple years, well, I think a lot of teams are going to be carrying dead weight at $4 million a year or more in the future.
Does anyone know how much the average price has gone up this off-season. What’s a major league average salary these days?
the source for the lawrence rumor was denverpost.com through mlbtraderumors.com (it would be another move on the positive side for BB if he pulls it off…not that there have been too many of those…)
Dave Sims is coming up on mlb.com radio
George Mitchell’s remarks yesterday at the owners meeting, and the story about the BALCO prosecutor stepping down.
#27 Certainly hope there is truth to this rumor. He is proven, struckout the side on 9 pitches in one inning. Seems like the type of pickup that has opportunity to workout well for Ms.
Of course wonder what Dave thinks.
28 – Whatever you think of the Mitchell investigation, you’ve gotta love his not-so-veiled threats to the owners on what might happen if they don’t cooperate…
only thing about lawrence is that he’s another guy coming off an injury…like almost all the pick-ups this off season…if all these guys perform like their career numbers and stay healthy, we can contend…if they get hurt or don’t produce…another long year…if i had to put money down…i’d bet on the latter…
#31 I hope we do get Lawrence because then we have one #1 and four #4s. And waiting in the wings are Woods, HoRam, Baek in case of injury or underperformance. I think our pitching staff is not all that good, but not all that bad either.
I don’t think being on a bad team affects a closer’s save situations and counting stats all that much. Just glancing at last year’s final number, some closers on sub-.500 teams are mixed in at the top with the closers on the playoff teams. What did surprise me was Putz having the most innings out of the bunch, only Saito with LAD tied him. The only thing that came to mind was that series with Toronto where we played extra innings and he never came out…I had thought he was rather underused last year.
This is John Heyman’s opinion of the M’s offseason from si.com
Seattle Mariners
They tried hard for Zito but settled for Horacio Ramirez and Miguel Batista, who once told his bosses he really wasn’t that into pitching. Jose Vidro can’t hurt, and in terms of temperament, I’d have to say Jose Guillen’s a bit of an upgrade over Carl Everett. Still a little short out West from here.
Grade: C+.
Isn’t mlbtraderumors a pretty bad source?
#35…i’ve found that the mlbtraderumors has had some stuff right on…and some stuff horribly wrong…that’s why i was throwing it out there in hopes someone else could refute it or confirm it…
traderumors is pretty hit-and-miss from what I’ve heard and experienced.
#37…me too…let’s just hope this one is accurate…lawrence could be money…
The downside is that he won’t have much of an opportunity to help the team win. (This might depress his trade value, because he won’t have accumulated much in the way of counting stats by the trade deadline, but that doesn’t really matter because this FO is incapable of making astute trades anyway).
Um, Putz had 36 saves on a team that was 78-84 last year. Eddie had 36 the year before on a team that won 69. Mike Schooler had 33 saves on a 73-89 Mariners team in 1989. That took me all of, oh, 2 minutes to look up on baseball-reference.com, ONLY looking up the Mariners.
With all due respect, that statement’s wrong.
Lawrence seems to be linked to the M’s in multiple places, I just hope that all the different reports aren’t stemming from on eincorrect source at somewhere like traderumors.
An aside… I’ve been wondering for a while – why do we still refer to starters as “fours†or “fivesâ€, or even “top of the rotation,†and the like? It implies that there is this prototypical rotation where all degrees of starting pitcher have a place. I mean, if you already have a “one†thru “fourâ€, should you be ok with a “five†for the last spot? Of course this isn’t an attack on anyone, I do it just as much as anyone else.
I move that we pick a statistic that will rank the quality of starting pitchers, because at this point I don’t even know what the hell a “four†really is.
Well, if we DO get Lawrence at a reasonable price, it would mean we’d have decent depth, with the rotation looking like:
King Felix
Washburn
Batista
and 2 of:
Lawrence/Ramirez/Baek/White/Woods
with some of the other candidates dropping to the ‘pen or Tacoma.
The problem is that 2/3 are awfully, awfully weak compared to, well, almost anyone (to be honest, they’re about 10% better than 4/5). I guess the idea is to hope the right side of the infield and Safeco makes a couple guys into legit 2/3, 15 win, 200 IP, high 3 ERA starters, and Felix duly ascends his throne and lords it over the rest of the AL.
FWIW, John Hickey today:
“The Mariners appear to be the front-runners in the competition to sign right-handed free agent pitcher Brian Lawrence. Lawrence, 31, has offers from Pittsburgh, Colorado, San Diego and Seattle, and the Rockies and the Mariners appear to be the finalists. Three sources, two from outside the Seattle organization, suggested Wednesday that Lawrence was leaning toward signing with the Mariners.
“Of the (free agent) pitchers who are out there, the Mariners seem to like Lawrence the most,” one source said. “He’d get a chance to be a starter there, and that’s what he wants.”
Well Lawrence is a far cry from an exciting signing….he’s a 30 year old, soft tossing righty coming off of a lost year due to shoulder surgery who besides his average stuff (i.e. his stuff basically amounts to he throws strikes), he has a history of being a tee for lefties…
Pecota thinks he has a reasonable chance to give league average innings (their projections calculate to a FIP=4.64). So his true value is as an innings eater. That would be a pretty valuable thing at league average depending upon the price tag (which figures to be reasonable). Therein lies the rub though…. how comfortable should Bavasi be penciling him in for 200 innings?
I think EC is correct…he’s more depth than savior…
Let’s face it, the Mariners are signing any “saviors” this off-season.
They are just identifying a problem and throwing as many arms at it as possible.
Any upside from Lawrence is likely to help considering the alternatives, or lack thereof.
Best case, he wins some games and eats some innings. Worst case he stinks, they throw him into the bullpen and pitch Baek or another AAA guy instead.
Frankly it seems like a no-brainer given the options.
I’m fairly pumped about a possible Brian Lawrence signing, as long as he’s healthy. This is the kind of move that gets you to the playoffs, and I think Lawrence is a clear upgrade over Baek or Woods. Not only can he be reasonably expected to have a better season but he isn’t a huge risk (again provided he’s healthy).
While Baek/Woods/Blackley/Feierband/White/Lehr could do a decent job as the no. 5 there is a very real possibility that it could take several months of really bad starts to find out which pitcher is a decent 5.
BP 2006 didn’t like Lawrence at all describing him “as a pitcher on the way out” and saying, in possibly the most baroque metaphor to be found in the entire volume, “he was [in 2005] lit up like a Parisian sedan by hitters all over the league.”
Of course, medical science performs miracles these days.
i think that if we keep assigning “numbers” to pitchers, we’d have a pretty solid rotation if lawrence signs and is healthy…and if the guys perform as they have in the past…it’s not too bad…things might be looking up…
Felix (1)
Wash (3)
Ramirez (3)
Lawrence (3)
Bautista (4)
The problem is that 2/3 are awfully, awfully weak compared to, well, almost anyone (to be honest, they’re about 10% better than 4/5). I guess the idea is to hope the right side of the infield and Safeco makes a couple guys into legit 2/3, 15 win, 200 IP, high 3 ERA starters, and Felix duly ascends his throne and lords it over the rest of the AL.
This certainly isn’t a great rotation, with a #1 starter, two #4s, and a bevy of #5s. OTOH, it ain’t the Royals.
It all hinges on King Felix. If sometime over the winter someone got into his head the idea that he could be making Johan money if he’d lay off the potato chips, he’ll be Johan-ing the team into contention. If he comes out as he did last year, the M’s will be middling.
#48–How do you get three number 3 staters out of Washburn, Ramirez and Lawrence? Washburn maybe, though he’s more like a number 4. The other two would be lucky to be a 5 on any good team.
#50…basing it on what they’ve done in the past…and assuming they are healthy enough to do it again…they’ve all notched double digit wins in their careers more than once when healthy…
What’s the latest on Foppert? What realistic expectations can we have for him?
#52…great question! he was supposed to be a star, but has languished in the minors…what’s up?
True Lawrence is not a saviour,but much better than Ramirez. Plus the acquasition other than money is so much better. Soriano for Ramirez who is not as good as Lawrence was just can’t describe how awful it was.
Lawrence can help our staff .
The problem with this team is that our #2 and #3 guys would be 4’s and 5’s on a good team. Not just this year, but for awhile now. Even with the lure of Safeco, we can’t attract the good ones. And then people wonder why we can’t beat Oakland?
The good news about this deal is that we have a guy that can get the last 3 outs.
The bad news is Bavasi didn’t get anybody that can help out in getting the first 24.
Repeat question from yesterday’s thread but never got answered. Does anyone know the current status of Foppert and if we can realistically expect him to contribute anytime in the future?