Projecting the 2008 Mariners team
Using random guesses, hunches, wishcasting, and general skullduggery. You can, as I frequently note, get extremely close to a good projection using a player’s three-year average. Therefore!
C-R: Johjima. No change. I still (as always) think he might outdo himself, but .285/.325/.435, no problem.
1B-R: Sexson. Ugh. Dead cat bounce. .245/.330/.460 … that looks high, now that I check it. Oh well.
2B-R: Lopez. I’m bullish on his 08 season. .275/.320/.400 on the low end. The more Cairo plays, the worse this gets.
SS-R: Betancourt. Last year’s about as well as you can expect him to hit without a change in what he’s doing up there. Step back a little, he’s still a .290/.315/.410 hitter. If he’s playing good defense, you take it.
3B-R: Beltre. Wooo! Beltreeeee! Call me a fan, but .275/.325/.460 is entirely realistic.
LF-L: Ibanez. .280/.350/.455.
CF-L: Ichiro. .330/.380/.420
RF-R: Jones. .270/.330/.440. I have no idea. OBP’s probably high, SLG might be low.
DH-B: Vidro. .280/.350/.380. Really. I realize I’m going to have to write up a long post on this at some point, but I’ve been spending a lot of time studying Vidro’s balls-in-play charts and I think he’s nearly done as a hitter, and if he doesn’t go off the cliff next year, we’ll still see a lot less. Now that I think about it, there will probably be two reactions to that post, and they’d run
- yeah, I see those same warning signs
- Vidro’s on fire! Revitalized! You hate him because of the Snelling trade!!!11!!oneone!!
which makes me wonder if it’s worth writing.
Bench: Burke/WFB/Cairo/?. They’ll drag down the line a bit.
So as a team, that’s a line of about .280/.340/.430, which is… drum roll please… about what they hit last year, when they scored 794 runs. No surprise there.
Defensively, it’s a step up. Replacing Guillen with Jones is a huge upgrade. Perhaps he and Ichiro can play left-center and right-center, and Ibanez can back up Sexson at first.
So to the pitching, then.
SP-R Felix Hernandez. Continues to progress.
SP-L Jarrod Washburn. Continues to be Jarrod.
SP-R Carlos Silva. Even if his fundamental stats don’t change, he’ll likely have an ERA of 4.50 or more.
SP-R Miguel Batista. Figure another year eats into his K rate a little, and he’ll still be pretty effective.
SP-? ?
That last one’s a pick-em: Baek, HoRam, Morrow, whoever you want. Who it is, and how they do, could make a huge difference. Hard to be worse than HoRam.
Just swapping out Weaver for someone decent is worth 20 runs, at least. And then if you replace HoRam with any decent pitcher, that’s another 20. They’re not going to have any trouble putting a dramatically improved rotation out there.
Bullpen: I don’t think they’ll have any problem throwing together an equally-effective bullpen for next year, even with Putz bound to come down a little.
Overall on the pitching side, let’s call it… fifty runs. Might be better than that, but that’s reasonable, especially considering the defense with Jones offset somewhat by Ibanez and Sexson both getting a little creakier, then Betancourt not making as many errors.
We’re at ~795 runs scored, and ~780 runs allowed. That’s an over-.500 team, though not by a lot.
You can immediately identify where this could go wrong on the scoring side (Sexson not hitting would kill that offensive number, as would Cairo playing) or right (Vidro somehow sustains his crazy hit rate, Lopez breaks out) and on the pitching side (Felix breaks out/Jarrod breaks down).
But I don’t see a team that’s ready to challenge the Angels, and I don’t understand why people think they might be competitive. A lot of things have to break the M’s way, while a lot of other things can’t go wrong (particularly, this is not a deep squad that could take any serious injury to… well, I won’t point out who, because I’m paranoid). The Angels are pretty easily a 90-win team, and the Mariners as presently constituted aren’t close. Luck can swing a season, certainly, but hoping both that the M’s get lucky and the Angels suffer a catastrophe seems unrealistic and, if that view leads to trades that hurt the team’s chances to compete for a championship in the long term, harmful.
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Moreover, with at least two strong teams in each of the other two divisions (Indians, Tigers, Red Sox, Yankees) there’s zero chance for a wild card spot. And even if you somehow beat the Angels in the West, you still have to get past two of those to get to the WS.
OK, so what are the biggest pieces you could still upgrade? Trade Wlad+ to Tampa for a risky but high-upside 5th starter? Find some way to push Raul out of left and platoon him at first or DH or something?
I’m a pessimist; I don’t see Sexson or Vidro anywhere near that high, and I think Ibanez is going to be down, too. And his defensive deterioration in left is going to eat up some of the gain in right. I think people are going to be shocked by how poor we are, especially in light of how lucky we were last year — I think we’ll win as many games UNDER .500 as we were over it last year, purely on luck (we were outscored last year). 75-87.
I also expect the likes of Jones and Felix to (unfairly) bear the brunt of the blame, at the expense of those gritty veterans. And I expect to see at least one ten-game streak where both Bloomie and Cairo play every inning, as a desperation move, fighting the fire with gasoline.
Pessimists can only be pleasantly surprised.
I would love to see Sexson hit 35 bombs in his contract year (!!!) just to see somebody else overpay for him in his obvious decline years.
Please, oh please may next offseason bring is a solid lefty hitting, sleek gloving first basemen.
Boy, would Bedard look good in that rotation.
Problem is, boy would our offense look worse without Jones.
GOOD GRIEF MARINERS MANAGEMENT, DO SOMETHING!!! THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!!!
Its not the offense looking bad without Jones….the future looks bad without Jones….sticking it out with a young prospect sometimes can turn the tides of the franchise.
Id like to caution the statement that management should do something ….at least qualify that with do something GOOD. I said to a friend a few years back who is also a Mariners fan stuck in Kentucky that the Mariners mismanagement of Griffey, ARod, Randy Johnson, Jason Varitek, Derek Lowe….and the list goes on, makes the city unpalatable for free agents so the team has to over pay and in the. So knowing that they will have to give up the future or overpay a declining star I would stay pat and develop what is there, also using that scouting to diversify talent so theres situational hitters, guys willing to move a runner over and the things that make scrappy teams contenders
Derek made a good analysis here.
I am hoping not only is Richie is in his contract year, but so is WFB, Johjima and Rauuuuuuul Ibanez. (Is the USSM into the whole multiple U thing? If not I won’t do that again.) So maybe some slack will be picked up there. (Well, we don’t really expect much from WFB, but hopefully the other two can maybe tap into their potential for the desire a bigger paycheck, I am not sure if Joh needs to prove anything for an extension).
Is Vidro in his contract year too? I am hoping to see him, Cario, and HoRam DFA by June. Maybe I am hoping a little high, but I don’t see much production coming out of these guys. Maybe Sexson and Lopez too, but they both have some trade value, so that wouldn’t be too smart.
There is no way the M’s will DFA Lopez, Sexson, or Vidro next year. Cairo maybe, and HoRam hopefully.
Yeah, Bill Bavasi would never DFA a veteran like Sexson, Vidro, Olerud, Boone, um, never mind.
That doesn’t seem realistic to me. Improving over Weaver and Ramirez alone takes some of the “outscored” out of the equation. If you believe our Pythag had us as a below .500 team to begin with last season (79-83 IIRC), then the only realistic way even a pessimistic approach works is if nearly everything breaks the same way last year in terms of runs scored / runs allowed.
I don’t see that happening.
I’m not even seeing where you came up with a .340 OBP as a team. That lineup is severely deficient in terms of patience, and Ichiro is really the only true .300 hitter. Might make sense for the M’s to take a look at Hinske or Wilkerson. Both offer adequate defense at the corners have good on-basee skills (although their low BAs hampered those abilities last year.) They’re also both left-handed pull hitters which I believe are the type best suited to take advantage of Safeco.
I don’t think anyone (anyone being me in this case) will rip you for that Vidro projection Derek. It wouldn’t be a stretch for Vidro to have a higher OBP, but I think it will be close to impossible for him to get 100pts of Isolated power.
I think this is more reasonable an assessment than Nightengale’s in the USA Today, with comments like:
“Adrian Beltre, who signed a five-year, $64 million contract, finally started living up to expectations. He easily had his finest season since signing three years ago with the Mariners, hitting 26 home runs with 99 RBI. He also won his first Gold Glove. The Mariners have valuable depth in Willie Bloomquist, Miguel Cairo and Mike Morse.”
and
“The Mariners made a wise investment in Jose Vidro, who was everything they hoped last season when he stayed healthy and hit .314.”
The Miguel Cairo signing still baffles me.
Improving over Weaver and Ramirez alone takes some of the “outscored†out of the equation.
But we haven’t improved over Ramirez. We gave him a 3.8% raise. At nearly $3M for the year, I think you have to assume he’s the #1 candidate for the #5 slot. They may trade for someone, but at this point, I don’t think any trade they are likely to make will be a net improvement for the team. Morrow, or Baek, or someone else may beat out Ramirez in ST, but that didn’t happen last year, so I wouldn’t bet on it this year.
Given the team they’re likely to field, somewhere around .500 is probably the safest bet, but like DMZ mentioned, an injury could make a huge dent in that. A couple of guys struggling could too. I think a 75 win season is more likely than an 89 win season.
I saw on MLBtraderumors.com [deleted, off topic, knock it off]
The Pony Says:
Don’t believe anything you read on that site.
I’m not even seeing where you came up with a .340 OBP as a team.
It was pretty tricky: I took all those individual semi-projections and averaged them.
That bench looks awful. At least Mac likes to play his regulars every single day and never PH for batters late in a game.
I’m sorry, that came off wrong. But looking at those semi-projections, only three guys beat a .340 (with Vidro being one of those.) The ZiPS numbers for the M’s put most of the team at between .320 and .330, with only Suzuki, Ibanez, and Vidro (as above) beating .340.
So 2/3 of the team is between .320 and .340 and 1/3 of the team is between .350 and .370.
It’s not that weird to think that the average would be .340.
Derek, I think you’re underestimating the upgrade from HoRam/Weaver/Baek/Fear in ’08. Those four ate up 367 innings last year (roughly two full rotation spots) and sported something like 6.7 runs allowed. If Silva takes away 185 or so of those innings with a 4.7 runs allowed mark you’re at a 40 run improvement.
A 40 run improvement. Soooo, like
Just swapping out Weaver for someone decent is worth 20 runs, at least. And then if you replace HoRam with any decent pitcher, that’s another 20.
So 2/3 of the team is between .320 and .340 and 1/3 of the team is between .350 and .370.
It’s not that weird to think that the average would be .340.
That’s only taking into account the starting lineup. You’re forgetting all the at-bats that will be wasted on the likes of Cairo and Bloomquist.
So 2/3 of the team is between .320 and .340 and 1/3 of the team is between .350 and .370.
It’s not that weird to think that the average would be .340.
That’s only taking into account the starting lineup. You’re forgetting all the at-bats that will be wasted on the likes of Cairo and Bloomquist.
“I realize I’m going to have to write up a long post on this at some point, but I’ve been spending a lot of time studying Vidro’s balls-in-play charts and I think he’s nearly done as a hitter, and if he doesn’t go off the cliff next year, we’ll still see a lot less. Now that I think about it, there will probably be two reactions to that post, and they’d run
- yeah, I see those same warning signs
- Vidro’s on fire! Revitalized! You hate him because of the Snelling trade!!!11!!oneone!!
which makes me wonder if it’s worth writing.”
I’d certainly think this is worth writing. I don’t think the fact that the Vidro debate has been hashed over a thousand times means it’s not worth discussing him any more – he’s still on the team after all. Wherever there’s a lack of consensus it’s always worth making a substantive contribution. Likewise I’m sure there are legitimate reasons to disagree with the prediction other than employing a frenzy of exclamation marks.
At this point in the offseason, the Mariners look to me to be somewhat improved over the team that was a wild card contender last year–the pitching is going to be better, and J. Guillen is no great loss. They are clearly superior to the As and Rangers, against whom the unbalanced schedule means they will play a lot of games.
On paper, the Mariners look lke 2nd in their division, and third in the wildcard race. One thing you can predict with compelte confidence about baseball, hwoever, is that there will be some major developments in the course of the season which no one at this point foresees (that opening day outfield collision between Guerrero and Hunter; the Tigers’ 7.50 team ERA . . .).
Now, if you plan on betting several thousand dollars on the outcome of the season, don’t pick the Mariners to win the World Series.
However, if you’re just a fan, there is room for catious optimism–after all, spring is coming . . .
Can someone please link me to an explanation of pythag? (in baseball terms obviously, I’ve been reading this blog for over a year now and have yet to encounter this terminology)
of course a simple google search gave me a perfect explanation. mods, please edit a snarky and cautionary message about unnecessary posting into my last two posts
Has there been a similar, reasonable projection for the Angels? I know that they look good considering they didn’t lose much and added Hunter to last year’s team, but would there be any reason to think that Vlad might decline a bit? Any reason to think the rotation won’t be as rock solid as last year? I take the general consensus at it’s word that they’ll win 90-100 games again, but I’m just curious what analysis is supporting that, or if it’s just conjecture from last year’s team.
Sounds like a team that will be fun to watch this year, but even more so the next. I think that late January must be the yearly high point of Jose Lopez optimism. The Jose Lopez Effect should enter the baseball psychology lexicon as a term for the recovery of confidence in a ne’er do well player as the winter goes on. Although who knows, he’s got plenty of talent and I’d love for this to be the year he proves his critics wrong and shows up in April fit and ready.
I was trying to find your projections for last year’s team, but I forgot the name of the post and my search terms were pulling up too many results to sift through. I wonder if you could link to them? This isn’t to look at them and say – ah see you were wrong here! No, it’s more idle curiosity as to just how close random hunches, wishcasting, etc did get you in one particular instance.
Here’s the first projections from January ’07. http://ussmariner.com/2007/01/01/sketching-out-the-2007-ms-season/
1B-R: Sexson. Ugh. Dead cat bounce. .245/.330/.460 … that looks high, now that I check it. Oh well.
3B-R: Beltre. Wooo! Beltreeeee! Call me a fan, but .275/.325/.460 is entirely realistic.
So, you’re fired up about Beltre and down on Sexson when they both project to the same OPS? I realize there is more defensive value in Beltre than Sexson, but is that all there is to it?
Yeah, I just don’t understand how they don’t sign someone the fans can be excited about, or at least put some faith into Adam Jones. Young fans love young players, why not market him that way?
JJD 32-
The expectation for a 3B is much lower than for 1B. The league average OPS at 3B in 06 (courtesy Jeff Sullivan) was ~50 points lower. Besides, I think by ‘dead cat bounce’ Derek means that he will have a minor peak between progressively lower troughs, but I’ve been wrong before.
Thanks for the link JasonB. So not getting into the details, Derek had them at 785 runs and they scored 795. Not bad. On the pitching side he was a bit overoptimistic (740-790 range, 813 actual)but that projection was before the Weaver signing (and I don’t think Weaver’s arch nemesis would have predicted his April).
The 2007 projection contained this gem WRT HoRam:
“Anything beats 06 Pineiro.”
I guess there are exceptions to any rule.
The expectation for a 3B is much lower than for 1B. The league average OPS at 3B in 06 (courtesy Jeff Sullivan) was ~50 points lower.
I figured it was something like that, but the way the statements were juxtaposed it appeared just as likely that Derek was on “Boo Sexson/Yay Beltre”-autopilot when the numbers were quite similar.
Since Richie’s April and May stats are annually his worst of the season, maybe he should go to Arizona NOW and try and fool his body-clock into thinking it’s May 15 on Opening Day.
Derek:
You completely missed the boat on Jones. I see him more as a .273/.335/.447 guy…..
Seriously, if the Ms stand pat, it looks like the bullpen to the rescue again.
A 40 run improvement. Soooo, like
Just swapping out Weaver for someone decent is worth 20 runs, at least. And then if you replace HoRam with any decent pitcher, that’s another 20.
No, because that’s 40 runs out of both SP slots. I’m saying Silva himself is probably worth a 40 run improvement over ’07. If you then replace the other slot with a replacement-level pitcher, that’s another 20. So 60 in total.
Speaking of projections…Derek, or anyone else for that matter, have you noticed a sorta loose correlation between LD% and batting performance? I know we’ve only got data since ’04 from THT, but it seems that when a guy’s offensive output takes a dive so does his LD% (based against his career rate). Most of the other stats stay around the same. BABIP changes, but I’d imagine if you’re hitting fewer line drives you’re hitting more flys and/or grounders. For Richie, it was grounders and he ain’t runnin’ those out.
Richie’s LD% last year was 14.9%. It was 17.9% in ’06 and 19.3% in ’05. Also, his OF/HR% was down to 16.8% from being at 20% and 25% the two previous years. I have NO idea if any of this matters honestly. It’s just that I’ve found it really interesting. Maybe it points towards an injury that kept him from driving the ball? Thoughts? Injury or is it simply skill degradation?
Galazieboi, the following quote from Dave’s Evaluating Pitching Talent article (on the left sidebar) should answer your question:
An outfield fly becomes an out 77.7% of the time. A groundball becomes an out 74.8% of the time. A line drive becomes an out only 26.4% of the time, which is why it’s the worst possible outcome for a pitcher.
With line drives becoming hits almost 75% of the time, a hitter’s performance will suffer when his LD% drops.
Grizz, thanks. I’ve only read that a dozen times and shoulda remembered. It’s been a rough few weeks on my end. I’m an idiot.
Than I guess I’m curious on people’s thoughts on why Richie’s LD% fell so badly. If it really was an injury (which is what I’ve heard from the person I know close to the organization) than if he’s healed can we expect a better bounce from our dead cat?
That’s why LD% is such an important factor in BABIP. Hitters with a higher LD% will consistently produce a higher BABIP, thus dramatically increasing their value.
If Richie’s LD% bounces back to the 18-19% range, we should be ecstatic.
I cannot believe we’re about to embark on another season of watching Richie Sexson at the plate. When do we cut our losses with this guy and start getting some production out of that position?
And Raul was hurt last year, who’s to say he won’t get injured again? Then who do we put in there, WFB?
I just can’t believe we wasted all this time on trying to give away one of our best young players to Baltimore when we had all this dead weight to try to cut. We could have done a lot of addition by subtraction this offseason. Another blown opportunity in my mind.
’07 offseason was a series of stupid moves we made; ’08 was the offseason of good moves we didn’t make. Generating some excitement from casual fans off a win-loss record that was way beyond what it should have been given the numbers, and then trying to recapture that magic and get lightning to strike in the same place again.
*Sigh*
Don’t forget Sexson gives up a bunch of runs on defense too. Double whammy of awfulness.
Going over the Vidro situation again is a lot like kicking a dead horse. Kicking it won’t remove the stink or improve the situation, but it certainly makes you feel a lot better and relieve some frustration. Besides, there may be some new readers that haven’t read an analysis of his hitting; and discussion of his hit charts could be interesting.
I’m hopeful that Sexson has a dead cat bounce, but fearful that if he rebounds too much that we’ll end up signing him for another 3 years.
Either way, I can’t wait for spring training and the season to start; even if there isn’t much to look forward to; at least there is Felix and Jones (currently).
I dunno, kicking dead things really shouldn’t have any therapeutic value….
How about blowing your pent up frustration into a “letting go” balloon and watching them sail away instead?
I dunno, kicking dead things really shouldn’t have any therapeutic value….
Regardless of whether or not it should, my experience has been that it does have therapeutic value.
I haven’t seen Vidro’s hit charts, so I’d be interested to see that. With the hit charts, the conclusion may be the same, but the perspective would be new.
#30 – I think you should also consider the “Sexson Effect” which is optimism that a player will trend back to his career averages. This optimism is usually reinforced with an Opening Day HR.
Sexson Effect or not, I actually do think that he’s due for a bounce this contract year. He’s simply not as bad as he showed last year — that was his first year with SLG below .500, and the last time his OBP was this low he bounced back with a solid .350 OBP season. As such, I think that .250/.330/.500 is completely realistic, along with 30+HR and 90+ RBI (assuming someone’s on base for him to knock in).
I think the rest of the projections are completely realistic, with the exception of A. Jones, which is probably a bit optimistic — especially on OBP.
The problem with venting by kicking dead things is that the stink caused by kicking dead things gets vented into the nostrils of those who may not need similar therapy…
Anyway, Richie’s line drives haven’t disappeared, they’ve just been much shorter, often skidding on the infield grass….
I think you can look at the projected lineup–without even bothering to look at numbers–and realize this is a pretty mediocre team. There just isn’t too much to get excited about, is there?
So you have Beltre declining from his previous two years?
I am really excited for AB this year. I’d like him to have an .810ish OPS and see him extended and finish as a mariner. It is not out of the realm of possibility given the weaker rotations he’ll face in Oakland and Texas. Although, he did kill Danny Haren quite often. SSS aside, I think he can put up his second best year before a decline phase.
I understand and agree with the forcasts. I think the evaluation is a bit on the pessimistic side, but not overly. You guys seem to tend that way and it seems safer to do so. There’s always things that turn out different than anyone could guess at, but I certainly don’t think I could predict any better than this.
Mere Tantalisers #30 ~ Lopez optimism hits it’s peak towards the end of May when he is hitting well and has been for over a month. Only a couple years to go on, but that’s how those went.
I’m always hopeful that Lopez will continue hitting the way he starts, but things have changed a couple months in to each season so far. I agree with sentiments that he should be given most of this year to prove he can keep it together more. I don’t like the idea of any other options the team has right now for starting.
NBarnes #13 ~ Defensively Cairo is a better option than any other bench player on the team at 1B, 2B and SS, he can also play 3B fairly well. St. L. might have played him in LF, but I wouldn’t. Bloomquist and Morse are not good defensive options at positions up the middle. Chen missed a lot of time last year and probably needs to get regular time somewhere to get back in the swing. Chen still looks like a good replacement for Bloomquist next year (if he’s not re-signed) and Cairo was only signed for 1 year. I like Cairo better as a stopgap starter than anyone on the team other than Lopez, but unless Lopez gets injured I like him better than Cairo. They’ve had some recent ‘injuries’ to players who need re-instruction, so maybe that’s the backup plan if Lopez doesn’t put together consistent approaches from March through September.
I understand that there may be better options than Cairo among FA’s, but I’ve gotten used to the team not getting the best FA options. I can’t say that it’s merely because they haven’t tried. Every year I hear about more players not wanting to play in Seattle, whatever their reasons may be.
You know, I can picture it now two weeks into the season as Richie Sexson crawls to a .150 batting average. . .
Desperate and confused Mariners fans looking for hope will stand up and start chanting:
“Dil-fer! Dil-fer! Dil-fer! Dil-Fer!”
[rosterbation, you've been warned about this before]
#54 — I cannot imagine Mac platooning Chen with someone if Lopez struggles. Cairo or WFB will get the ABs and playing time, and that is bad news for everyone, minus Cairo and WFB of course.
believe if the M’s had packaged Sexson and say one of the AA level SS prospects with a cash consideration of $8 mil for salary.
I’m positive the Giants would of parted with P Noah Lowry.
You are flat out wrong about this.
I actually like to think of it this way too…The signing of Cairo may show that the team realizes putting Vidro at 2nd base is a bad idea. At least we shouldn’t have to see that again. (I hope…)