Why Not Trading Ibanez Might Make Sense
As we head towards the trading deadline, the rumors will continue to push forward as the M’s take phone calls from contenders looking to improve themselves for the stretch run. The two free-agents-to-be (Ibanez and Rhodes) are the most likely to be moved, as most teams prefer the security of getting a name and a face in return for their walk year guys as opposed to the unknown potential draft picks that they would get if they leave as a free agent.
However, as I’ve noted in the past, it occasionally makes more sense to let a free agent leave during the winter than trading him at the deadline. For this to be the case, you basically need a case where you have a player who does things that the Elias Sports rankings consider highly valuable (plays a lot of games, racks up RBIs, gets Wins or Saves, posts low ERA) but, in general, isn’t all that helpful towards building a winning team. Because MLB teams have gotten smarter a lot faster than the free agent rankings system, there are often big disparities between what a team will offer in trade and how a team will be compensated if he leaves via free agency.
Ibanez is going to be one of these cases. He’s almost certainly going to be a Type A free agent at years end, thanks to the fact that he’s been in the line-up and racked up a lot of RBIs the last two years. The Elias Rankings love players like him. A Type A free agent, if offered arbitration and signing with another club, nets the team that lost him two high draft picks – a 16-30 first round pick (if the signing team finishes in the top half of MLB standings, otherwise, its a 1-15 second round pick) and a supplemental pick between the first and second rounds.
Those picks are quite valuable, and forfeiting the right to them by trading Ibanez away can’t be ignored. That is the baseline for what you have to receive in trade in order to justify the move. Would someone be willing to give up the equivalent of two high draft picks for Ibanez?
Not if they understand baseball, because despite what the local media around here thinks, Raul Ibanez is a below average baseball player. His .278/.343/.452 mark while playing half his games in Safeco translates to about +9 runs offensively over a league average hitter so far this year. Considering that an average LF is +5 over an average hitter in a full season, Ibanez is about +4 or +5 runs compared to the average AL left fielder offensively this year.
His defense is, of course, horrible. There’s no denying this – he’s one of the very worst defensive players still being allowed to carry a glove. Every advanced defensive metric shows this to be true. His Fielding Bible +/- is -14 plays (or about -12 runs) so far this year. His UZR is -18. This follows exactly in line with what we’d expect, considering how bad he’s been with the glove the last few years.
Even if you want to take a conservative estimate of his defensive value so far this year, the best you can claim is that he’s been 10 runs below average. It’s almost certainly more than that, but if you want to play devil’s advocate, you could argue for a 10 run defensive penalty and not be totally crazy.
+5 with the bat, -10 with the glove… you do the math. Raul Ibanez is less valuable than the average left fielder, and every good organization in baseball knows it. They aren’t giving up premium prospects for a below average player who, over the course of two months, won’t even add half a win over a replacement level player to a contender’s ledger.
That’s the predicament the M’s find themselves in. Raul Ibanez isn’t very good, and the smart teams in baseball realize that, but the free agent compensation system is so out of touch with reality that the M’s will be highly rewarded for letting him walk this winter. For what Ibanez is, you should expect at most a B- prospect in return, except that you’ll be getting the chance at something much better by just letting him leave via free agency.
The only way the M’s will get a real haul for Raul is if a team decided to take advantage of the system, trade a couple of solid prospects to get him, and then let him walk at years end in order to receive the draft picks to restock the farm. Oakland and Milwaukee have both done this well the last few years, but neither of them will be in the market for an LF in ten days, so I wouldn’t hold my breath that anyone will follow their footsteps.
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I’m assuming if Raul stays with the team he will be signed to a new deal, thus negating all our hopes and dreams of Type A compensation.
I think a lot of this depends on who is doing the drafting. Also, is there 0 chance he would agree to arbitration?
Yeah, I have the same fear as #1. If other teams are as savvy as you seem to think there won’t be much of a market for his services. I’m worried that he’ll go to arbitration with the Mariners if offered the chance and I’d really hate to see him in Mariner blue next year.
Chances he accepts arbitration? At this point you’d think he’d want to play for a winner. But maybe he also knows the M’s will allow him to play LF while pretty much no other team would.
This is a huge decision on the M’s part. Getting those picks for Ibanez would be huge, on top of at least a top 3 pick Seattle will be receiving for being completely horrible.
The decisions made this year/off-season will have a big impact on the future of this team. Simply re-signing Ibanez would be devastating. I’d rather have the picks.
The chance he accepts arbitration is slim to none. 36-year-olds who think they are good want multiyear deals, and are willing to take less on a per year basis in order to get that security. There are still enough teams out there that value RBIs that will give Ibanez something like 3 years, $24-$27 million, and he won’t accept arbitration and try to get $11 or $12 million for one year instead.
Sweet mercy, I get buried by work for a week, come back to the blogs, and the comments can be edited! This is the best thing since… well since baseball blogs. Great work.
Oh, and uh… hhm.. I hear next year’s draft class is very top heavy so those high draft picks sure are going to be valuable this year.
So if you keep him and he agrees to arbitration, what would a smart Mariner GM do?
What I’d do is make sure it is very clear that his time in the outfield is over, but if he wants to come back to the Mariners, he’d still be valuable (in comparison to Vidro) as a DH. I think that’s your worst case scenario there with a good GM – that he comes back as the DH.
I just hope they don’t try to pull what they did with Jose Guillen.
I just don’t see them letting him walk, though, unless they really do something wacky like hiring a GM who knows something.
If Raul would be willing to move to DH or 1B next year, I would be fine with the M’s keeping him on a cheap 1-2 year deal. We have nothing in the system at 1B and Teixieria is going to be grossly overpaid.
I agree that Raul is a horrible OF but if he would DH then he could be of value to the M’s.
Dave, do you think Raul would be willing to DH? He did a few years back but seems very opposed to it now.
There’s no reason to pay Ibanez a lot of money to DH. He’s not very good.
Like I said, a cheap deal would be fine but I agree, I would not overpay him to stay here.
Who are some possible 1B/DH candidates for next year that will be free agents?
I think the only spot for Raul is 1B. With Clement and Johjima, that sort of eliminates the DH/C spots. That’s how the M’s will do it anyways.
I’d just rather get the picks and cut payroll.
[guess what, it's off-topic!]
Why is it difficult to imagine what a decent front office would do? With Bavasi I’d advocate offering Ibanez arbitration just so that they end up spending money on something a little useful rather than the piles of trash like Silva and Batista that do more harm to the team than Ibanez could do with his bat alone.
Ibanez at first has the same problem he has in left: he’s terrible defensively. His trials there in KC went amazingly badly by all accounts.
Now, even if you want to make some allowance for an adjustment period, he’s not going to be any good, and then you’ve got the same problem you have with him in left. Why not look for more?
Bat (+5)
Glove (-10)
Cuddliness (+10)
Fan Favoritivity (+15)
Media Friendliness (+13.5)
Clubhouse Influence Positivity (+17.5)
That’s sabermetrics “the Mariner Way”
Why would the M’s want to trade such a valuable piece of their team? Raul is a guaranteed 20/100 HR/RBI and his fielding percentage is pretty decent. In fact, early in his carreer, he used to be a late innings defensive replacement. It’s not like you forget how to play defense. He makes spectacular plays all the time. Not to mention that he’s paid peanuts while putting up spectacular numbers! It would be difficult to replace those numbers in the M’s offense! Any team that wants to pick up Raul from me better come to the table with something substantial to get my attention!
Right Derek?
Part of me expects them to trade him for a couple of marginal reliever prospects and turn around and give away their 2009 second round pick by re-signing him to play LF.
We are talking about the Mariners.
I don’t really want Raul, it’s just if the M’s think they desperately need him(they don’t), then the best thing for the M’s and most logical thing to do would be to play him at 1B. Putting him at DH would probably cut into Clement’s PT, which would be beyond ridiculous.
Hopefully the M’s aren’t in this situation, because while I like Ibanez, he doesn’t really need to be here next season.
Good post, Dave.
I think the only team that would look at Raul Ibanez and says “yeah, that’s a guy we’ll give up two good prospects for” already has him on the roster.
You can do much better at LF/1B/DH than Ibanez in a variety of ways, so let him walk and laugh your way all the way to the bank with the draft picks knowing that you successfully worked the system.
ChrisK – by glove (-10) when you’re talking about the Mariner way, I’m sure you mean the coolness of the glove, like for example Ichiro has a really cool glove (+20) and Ibanez not so much (-10)?
Your formula would require the team to actually know what they are giving up with Ibanez in the field to gain cuddliness and favoritivity.
If a team were to trade for Ibanez and let him walk in Free Agency would they receive the compensatory draft picks? If so, how much does that boost Raul’s trade value?
Does your logic for not moving Ibanez also apply to Rhodes? Is another team likely to sign him away for 2009 and would his numbers net us any draft picks for the trouble? I tried looking up the Elias criteria for relievers briefly and didn’t have much luck.
The only way I can see an Ibanez trade making sense is if we were to trade with a team that thinks his bat would be enough to push them over the top (presumably at DH, so an AL team) in the playoff race, but recognizes that he isn’t worth re-signing and makes the trade taking into account that they’ll let him walk at the end of the season.
Who would be a fit for that, though, that has prospects we’d want?
Yeah I don’t suppose the Rangers would give up Elvis Andrus for Ibanez, and it’s not like Ibanez could bring in Kershaw or Vitters or Moustakas or any other such big time prospect. Maybe Pelekoudas will trade him for Tony Pena Jr. so that we can have two inept shortstops.
If we trade Ibanez away the only thing we’ll be left with is a bunch of U’s.
I’ll go on my first records as predicting that they do re-sign Raul as a DH.
The question is, does Premise A (teams in baseball are getting smarter and are now too smart to give us the equivalent of two high picks for him) really fit with Premise B (there are teams dumb enough to sign him as a FA and give him the kind of contract that would beat accepting arbitration)? I’m not quite sure about that. Taken all in all, I’d rather see us keep him and offer him arbitration this winter, but . . . well, I guess I’m just too used to watching Mariner moves backfire.
His .278/.343/.452 mark while playing half his games in Safeco translates to about +9 runs offensively over a league average hitter so far this year.
Does this mean that at his current pace Ibanez would end up at +13 runs offensively (over league average hitter) for the whole year? I got hung up on the math as it seems his partial year is being compared with the full year of an average LF.
Considering that an average LF is +5 over an average hitter in a full season,…
So without Ibanez in left, presuming we dont somehow manage to get a major league capable left fielder in return, who plays out there? And who plays first? It’s pretty obvious LaHair isn’t ready.
I guess my point is, Ibanez may not be a great left fielder, but I’m pretty sure he’s the best one we have right now. How do you solve that problem by getting draft picks?
You still need someone to play on the major league team. Are we going to fill all of the gaps through free agency in the off season?
By accounts we need to fill at the very least;
Left Field (Wlad maybe?)
First Base (Free Agent?)
Center Field (presumably not Jeremy Reed, so who then?)
Designated Hitter (Please don’t say Johjima)
Short Stop (depending on who you ask)
Several starting pitching slots
Several bull-pen slots (if Morrow and/or R-RS become starters, and Rhodes leaves, and Green’s arm falls off)
As far as I know, at least as far as the position players are concerned mentioned, we don’t really have anyone in Tacoma ready to play left field full time, unless Wlad is your man. I’m pretty sure LaHair is not ready, so who plays first? Center? Everyone want Washburn and Batista gone.. if both leave, who starts? If we move the relievers to the rotation, who is in the bull ben? Kenji for DH?
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…
Man we have a lot of holes to fill…..
People need to get away from this idea that you have to “replace” a player before you can get rid of him.
Raul Ibanez in left field in 2008 is only marginally above replacement level when offense and defense are looked at together (heck, he might even be replacement level or below, depending on how bad you think his glove is).
So you can plug in replacement-level talent (which by definition is freely available) and not lose very much, if anything.
If you have a gap in production after that’s done, you don’t have to make it up in LF; you can make another position better by utilizing the resources you’ve freed up.
“Replacing” a player just shouldn’t ever be something you worry about.
Particularly at 1B/DH/etc. Um, hello? Replacement level players?
You start with replacement level players. Those folks are ALWAYS available. And if you note….we currently have folks performing BELOW replacement level at more than a few spots…
That’s a good question, Ancient Mariner.
Guillen was younger than Ibanez, though he had the same defensive issues. I just don’t see Raul getting a Jose Guillen-type offer in FA. I know, there’s plenty of room btwn 1 year/$11m and 3yr/$36, but it might be closer than we think.
Second, Jeff – yes, I think there are some teams that might be interested in Raul and might be dumb enough to offer value. First, the White Sox are in a real dogfight, and have a LF that most metrics think is clearly WORSE in LF defensively (Quentin). The Phillies too have demonstrated the willingness to trade value for average-y players, and they TOO have a LF who’s worse than Raul (Burrell). Yeah, they’re in the NL, but again – Burrell’s RZR has been waaay worse than Ibanez (esp. when you consider out-of-zone plays). Ibanez would be a defensive UPgrade, if you can imagine it.
Depending on if they’re interested and who they’re offering, a trade MAY be better. Who knows…Egbert would be nice from Chicago, I don’t really know from Philadelphia (Naylor? Marson?).
It may not be wise to trade Ibanez, but it would still be wise to trade Washburn. Unfortunately, I think with the recent Randy Wolf-for-Chad Reineke deal really hurt what we might possibly attain for Jarrod.
Wolf is 31 (vs. Washburn almost 34), and is only signed for $4.75 mil. He’ll be a free agent at the end of this year. The have the exact same ERA this year, they’re both lefties, they both have a losing record, and a close-to-.500 career record.
Reineke I don’t think is anything more than a “at best #5″ rotation guy. Please tell me I’m wrong.
The fact that Raúl will be a type A FA is begging to be exploited. Raúl esta chupatastic! I gather from the post that the only real question is whether there’s more value in the compensatory picks or in the potential players we’d get in return for a trade. Since we seem to specialize in the franchise-crippling, grab-your-ankles type of trade, I would prefer the picks. But, you know, if Tampa calls offering Longoria, obviously then you’d have to at least entertain it, right?
I think that if we could possibly trade Ibanez for a close to major league ready prospect, it might be worth it.
I say this because I think that with some good moves and some of our younger players taking a step forward, we might be able to get back into contention by next year(although 2010 is the much more likely scenario). This year is nothing like 2004, where our only good player was Ichiro. If we could get someone in a trade that could come in and play next year, that would be great.
But then again, if we can’t do something like that, it would be much better to let Ibanez walk and then collect the picks.
We could also run Wlad out into left and then stick Ibanez at DH. That could tchnically kill two birds with one stone.
I would manage to make my peace with that trade, somehow.
As far as Ibanez at DH goes; even at DH, he isn’t a very good player. The only reason it should ever be discussed is because he’d suck slightly less if he wasn’t asked to play defense; but you can do better than Ibanez even at DH.
I just read a rumor that the yankees are interested in washburn
praetore said:
I just read a rumor that the yankees are interested in washburn
Let’s hope; the Yankees picked up Sexson as a power hitting first baseman, so Wash must be a fireballer with a killer outpitch.
Ibanez as a lefty power bat is okay in SafeCo. I’d overpay a little for him, if he was going to DH (but then, as has been pointed out, what to do about Clement/Johjima?). Jeff’s right that we could do better at LF/1B/DH, but as things stand, we’ll be needing to do better at all three of those positions, so, er, ah…
Crap. DH is the only one of those that Raul should be playing next year, and that’s the easiest of the three to fill. I was going to say we might as well use him to plug one of the holes and move on to the other two, but it’s the easiest to fill.
I like Ibanez and respect his work ethic, and think he’s a good fit for SafeCo. But the M’s have a long, long way to go, and he doesn’t move the needle far enough. Sigh. Hopefully he brings a good haul, either in the next few days or at next year’s draft.
Just curious – Might Raul be more attractive as an outfielder to a team that plays in a stadium with a small left field? Isn’t one of the things that accentuates his poor fielding the fact that Safeco has a huge left field that he can’t move well enough to cover? If he were traded to, say Philadelphia, would his immobility be less of a factor?
Can you really separate out the offensive and defensive components, and then add them together to get a picture of what kind of player he is? The offense and defense of any specific player is tied together. For example, imagine there are five LFs.
Andy is +20 Off, +10 Def = +30 total
Brian is +10 Off, +15 Def = +25 total
Raul is +5 Off, -10 Def = -5 total
Scott is -15 Off, -10 Def = -25 total
Victor is -20 Off, -5 Def = -25 total
So our numbers work out in terms of average. Raul is “below average” in terms of raw numbers. But he is clearly the third best choice here out of five. Now this is just a median/mean distinction, but I guess my question is what exactly does “average player” in our context mean, here? Is scarcity involved? What’s “replacement level”? etc. It seems to me that a player who is in the negative runs area can still be above average simply because of a couple superstars skew the distribution of runs so far in one direction. For LFs, I imagine Barry Bonds was skewing up what “average” was in terms of offense.
Ibanez might be our best internal option for DH.
True, compared to most of the other 14 DHs, Ibanez isn’t great.
But his OPS+ of 116 is better than who we’ve had at DH so far.
That’s not the distribution of major league players. MLB talent is a bell curve.
And being the best internal option doesn’t mean anything. The M’s can get a better DH than Ibanez by acquiring someone from another organization. They should
There’s no reason to retain Raul. Take the draft picks and run.
41- As far as hitting goes Raul has a VORP of 17.3 so far this year. But that number would probably be lowered if he moved to DH.
Let Ibanez go and get the draft picks so we can stock the farm system. Why not have Mike Morse, when off the DL, play first base?
Definition of replacement level is here, but to quote:
“We define a replacement level player as one who hits as far below the league positional average as the league backups do relative to league average, who plays average defense for the position, and is a breakeven base-stealer and baserunner.”
Using that defintion very roughly, Ibanez only matches up to one of those three qualities (the first) and falls behind on the second and third.
How close he is to replacement level depends on how much you think defense matters: VORP is a flawed stat (among other reasons) because it makes no effort to incorporate defense.
His VORP for this year is 17.3, and his defense is bad enough to at least mostly, if not completely, eliminate the value that stat represents from his bat.
Again, the Mariners’ poor roster construction doesn’t eliminate the fact that you can come pretty darn close to replacing Ibanez’s production with replacement level talent, which again (by definition) is freely available.
Being better than Vidro does not equal good.
“There’s no reason to retain Raul. Take the draft picks and run.”
That’d be the smart play … so given that this is the Mariners I expect a 3-year, $35 mil extension will be announced soon.
You just can’t replace that veteran grit.
Edit: I edited all by myself! Whee!!!
Lopez has that nifty blue one.
Jeff-
Not to be snippy, but I never said Ibanez was good. The line before the one that you quoted said that Ibanez would be a below average DH.
All I said that Ibanez is better than any of our current options within the orginization.
And assuming that the Mariners re-sign Ibanez(Which I think is highly likely), DH would be the best fit for him.
I think my date pick in the extension pool has long past.
OMG! I just realized that Willie Bloomquist will be a free agent next year!
If only we could get him … [sigh]
Oh, certainly the talent has a normal distribution. What i am asking is whether or not you get the same distribution if you look at the overall production, vs adding the offensive and defensive ones together to get the overall production. I don’t think you do. You’ll have the players in the same order relative to each other, but the bell curve itself might move left or right.
Now that I read this again, I don’t think I make sense. Alas.
You do – you just realize that a few MLB teams are really horrible at understanding how to evaluate defense, and are playing guys out of position to where their talent indicates they should be playing.
But the bell curve still works, even with offense+defense.
I will answer this quote, with a quote from Dave!
There’s no reason not to look at the very large pool of people in other organizations (who you can get very easily) that can provide better production at the DH spot than Ibanez can.
Yes, if you’re committed to having Ibanez on the roster, DH is probably the best place to put him, and he may be the best option for the position that we have in the organization right now; that doesn’t mean we should just stick him at DH and not try to get better production from the position.
So the Sox and Phils are going to bench their .920 OPSing and 1.000 OPSing left fielders for the defensive upgrade that Ibanez would provide?
It’s been said, but it bears repeating. Knowing this front office, and its infatuation with Ibanez, it would not surprise me at all to see them trade him for marginal prospects that they overvalue, then re-sign him in the offseason, losing the compensatory picks, and ending up a net loser over all.
Speaking of draft picks, there’s a pretty good reason to watch the US Olympic team this year… Strasburg!!!
55 – no, the point is that they could move those guys to different positions if they wanted. Or not.
The point is, as bad as Ibanez is, there are worse defensive LFs out there *right now*. And they’re playing for teams in a playoff chase, and play for GMs who’ve made questionable moves – in Philly’s case, within the week. The Sox are more set at 1b/DH than others, so maybe it doesn’t work. That situation changes, however, if Jermaine Dye’s out for more than a few days.
You mean we still have one yet? I thought the IOC snobs already kicked baseball and softball out of the Summer Games so they could give more time to such thrilling events as syncronized swimming and equestrian horse jumping.
Where does Burrell go?
Pfft Strasburg.
The US has excellent medal chances in several fencing events this year; THAT is the best reason to watch the Olympics.
>.>
Quentin is not worse than Ibanez. You’re putting way too much stock in RZR.
Looks like all the ‘pumping up’ of Washburn on this site is working. The Yankees are looking at him. Unfortunately, the rumor is that the Yankees want to dump Kei Igawa on us. So I wrote Kei an email warning him that if he was traded to the Mariners that Carlos Silva would probably eat him.
That should help.
You’re welcome.
Kei Igawa – $4 Million a year through 2011
Jarrod Washburn $10.35 Million in 2009
If the Yankees throw in their #10 prospect from the low minors, I’d consider that deal because Igawa is undervalued right now and Washburn is overvalued.
That is if the Mariners think they can salvage Igawa to some extent.
As far as replacement for Ibanez goes, how about Victor Diaz? He isn’t old yet, and he’s shown flashes of an ability to hit baseballs in the past at the major league level.
On Depodesta’s blog he talked about how offering arb to a player is a lot riskier than people think (or something like that), I understand that you have to be prepared for the possiblity of the player signing with you but what else is there?
RE: Joe C’s comment in #64: Kei Igawa cost the Yankees that posting fee, too, so in reality he cost the Yanks about the same as Washburn has cost the Mariners.
Kei Igawa has been considered to be a failure as a Yankee pitcher practically from the get-go, and has been sent down twice (I believe) to S-WB to “iron out” his problems. Basically, he’s a Triple-A pitcher. He shouldn’t even be in MLB. It’d be a kindness to send him back to Japan, were it not for the “face” factor.
Yeah, that sounds like the kind of guy the Mariners would trade for. They took pity on Horacio Ramirez for a time, too.
It just makes me gag a little to think that the rumor Buster Olney is spreading calls for Washburn AND MONEY to go to the Yanks, who really don’t need to fleece any other clubs out of money, and the Mariners get a third-rate failure of a pitcher and a second-rate…er, second-tier prospect (who’s probably already touted beyond his minor league talent, as most Yankee prospects are).
If the M’s had a history of salvaging pitchers it might be worth talking about Kei Igawa. But to that I say: Jeff Weaver.
equestrian horse jumping.
As opposed to… non-equestrian horse jumping?
I could go off on an Olympics rant here but I don’t want to be off-topic. I will just mention that by a decision in July ‘05 both baseball and softball were “non-included” for the 2012 games, but remain in the 2008 games. There was a vote to substitute two other sports, but none received the 2/3rds majority needed to become “Olympic sports.” Since Softball and Baseball remain “Olympic sports” albeit non-included ones (like Polo), they could come back in 2016 or beyond.
The Mariners do have a history of having their pitchers salvaged by Dave Duncan if that counts.
But I think the Mariners should buy low rather than high on a guy like Igawa. I think the deals they’ve given over the past couple years to Jeff Weaver, Jose Guillen and Brad Wilkerson were all good ideas. Low risk (one-year deals) and potential rewards. With Igawa, if he were able to magically turn it around, that contract is at least reasonable, but I’m not sending any cash to the Yankees in such a deal.
equestrian horse jumping
no more tautological than saying horse-back riding, which is pretty common hereabouts.
I’d love to see someone try horse-belly riding.
Well, 12 years after they ripped Tino and Nellie off Woody for Deputy Dawg Davis and Six-Inning Sterling, I think the M’s are probably overdue to call that marker in on the Yanks by graciously donating them the services of some of their “gritty, seasoned” veterans.
I agree with the premise of the article, assuming that the new GM is actually someone competent at the draft. If the job stays with Pelokoudas, what’s the point? We’d blow the draft picks, or trade them for the second coming of Erik Bedard.
If you tried to ride on any other part of the horse than the back, it would probably be pretty upset…
I certainly hope they do. It’d be a
shameno, actually, travesty if they wound up having the games in Chicago without baseball and softball as medal sports.He isn’t getting any younger or better than he is now. He is having some luck this year against LHP, but thats’ all it is. His numbers the last couple years suggest the lurking specter of Regression to the Mean! Some guys can’t mentally transition to DHing and their hitting suffers. He may well be such a guy.
Those of you that rightfully complain about his defense in LF really don’t want to see him at 1B…think Piazza with worse hands. A poor first baseman weakens the whole infield. Don’t bring him back.
If we can get real value from some desperate contender, by all means unload him. If not, let him walk and collect those draft picks.
DH and 1B are the two easiest positions (by far) to find serviceable bats at reasonable cost.
We must also accept the grim reality of being saddled with Kenji’s apparently rotting corpse for three more years. What the hell are we going to with him? If he caught less, perhaps his fresher body would hit more. We best figure something out, and keeping Rauuuuuuul just compounds the roster problems.
Does the team that signs a FA still give up draft picks? I thought MLB changed it a few years ago so that the team losing the FA got extra picks, but the team signing him still retained all of theirs. Or am I confused?
BTW, Ken Rosenthal thinks it’s likely we may see more of our old friend George Sherrill in the near future. Unfortunately it would be wearing the red jersey of the Los Anaheim Rally Monkeys of Angleland.
I though Raul had decent hands. He never really misplays a ball that he gets to. It’s the “getting to” part that he has so much trouble with.
I’m absolutely positive that, unless they hire a smart GM beforehand, which I don’t think they will do, the M’s will resign Ibanez to a multi-year deal to play LF and only LF. I think Armstrong, Lincoln, and Pelekoudas all firmly believe that Raul is an outstanding LF on both offense and defense and a cornerstone of the team. There will be no trade and there will be no draft picks.
Oooh, I just love Rosenthal’s Angel-Wagon rosterbation (rolleyes)!
Too bad most of their “fans” would never get to see GS pitch, since he won’t be in the game ’til the 7th or 8th inning most of the time — after most of Barbies and Kens have already started heading back toward the beach to throw some tri-tips on the grill.
Under the new CBA, teams that lose a Type A free agent (Top 20% at their position per Elias rankings) still receive the signing team’s 1st round pick (if picking No. 16 or lower in the 1st round) or its 2nd round pick (if picking No. 15 or higher in the 1st round), plus a supplemental pick between the 1st and 2nd rounds.
Teams that lose a Type B free agent (ranked between 21% to 40%) only receive the supplemental pick.
Teams that lose a free agent who fails to qualify as a Type A or B receive no compensation. (Under the old rules, there were Type C free agents who brought back a lower round supplemental pick.)
Grizz, muy bien! The smart teams must absolutely love Elias and the Mariners for valuing the same things, which gives them so much opportunity to pillage and plunder.
Anyone got a best recent example of a team letting a Type A player who is obviously not that good go sign a big FA contract with a dumb team, then taking the picks and laughing while the FA tanks with his new team?
Not Silva, right, because wasn’t Silva neither A nor B? I seem to remember the Twins not getting any compensatory pick when he signed with us, yet we still managed to give $12/yr to a guy who gave up over a run per K recorded in his first four years as a starter. Hot damn, the Mariners are actually much worse than Elias in that example.
Show jumping, btw.
“Equestrian” in this case is its category, not a description, and implies jumping with a very specific set of rules & regs.
–Pedants-R-Us
Some of you clearly need to widen your education to include trick riding of both the western and eastern (or pseudo-eastern) varieties.
It’d be a shame no, actually, travesty if they wound up having the games in Chicago without baseball and softball as medal sports.
It’d be travesty if they wound up having the games in Chicago, period. Or any other American city. Let the cities in other countries spend stupid amounts of money in pathetic attempts to look “world class.”
Meanwhile, back to Ibanez: how much rope do we think Lee P. has? Can he really trade a fan favorite if the deal looks rich enough? Or will ownership worry about the last straw that leaves even the most die-hard fan with no reason left to come out to the park?
I don’t disagree on that…and of course, Chicago hasn’t won the bid yet, either. The only thing I’m saying is, if you’re actually going to have the Summer Games in the U.S. these days, it only seems right to bring baseball and softball back in given: (a) their growing popularity on an international scale; & (b) the fact that they were invented here in the first place — with all due respect, of course, to the numerous nations around the world now playing them competitively/professionally.
Yeah, I agree, if they have the games in the US those sports should be included. Of course, it adds ~300 extra athletes plus associated personnel, which will add something like $50 Million to the security cost for the games (based on the Athens numbers… we may never know what the Beijing security costs are, since having them in a police state gives you some security for free, and the total economic cost of shutting down a large chunk of Beijing for several weeks is hard to measure).
However, a trade may bring in more MLB ready prospects. The question becomes, do you think we can contend next year? With the right moves/payroll I think we can. Therefore trading him becomes important.
Also removing Ibanez from the organization gives them a chance to play Wlad everyday. So we can get MLB ready prospects, plus give Wlad some consistent playing time or let him walk as a FA. I think the benefits of trading outweigh the benefits of waiting.
How is it possible for 14 plays to be worth 12 runs?
Also, how is it possible for any leftfielder to be -18 runs defensively?
Don’t these new metrics dramatically overstate the value of defense especially when they suggest that defense is worth more than a player’s offense?
Basically, UZR suggests that Raul is a replacement level player despite him being almost .04 OPS better than league average for a LFer.
This was about my only real concern. I’m not sure why, but somehow I’ve got it in my head that Raul might actually accept arbitration to stay with the Mariners. Why? Well who the hell knows. I’ve seen weirder and stupider things happen in this business.
No.
86- Well, you have to remember that missed plays in the outfield tend to go for extra bases. It’s quite believable for 14 plays to amount to 12 runs.
How is it possible for 14 plays to be worth 12 runs?
An out is worth about -0.3 runs, a single is worth about .5 runs, a double is worth about .8 runs, and a triple is worth about 1.05 runs. Turning a flyball that should be an out into a hit yields a run value equal to loss of the out plus the distribution of the probability of the hit types.
Also, how is it possible for any leftfielder to be -18 runs defensively?
Defense matters.
Don’t these new metrics dramatically overstate the value of defense especially when they suggest that defense is worth more than a player’s offense?
Well, they don’t do that, so no.
Basically, UZR suggests that Raul is a replacement level player despite him being almost .04 OPS better than league average for a LFer.
Yep. Ibanez is closer to replacement level than he is to being good. His offense is just okay and his defense is disastrous.
By being really, really, really bad?
I don’t have any trouble with waiting for draft picks or taking the right deal for Raul but I still have trouble with the Ibanez sucks part of the argument.
Why is RZR a poor tool and UZR a good tool. Yes, I know Raul needs to leave LF in Safeco.
What am I supposed to make of Raul’s ‘win shares’ and ‘win shares above bench’ which seem to indicate he is better than a Crawford, Granderson, Anderson, Ordonez, etc. His good WS total comes despite having his defense contribute less than any other outfielder – this tells me I should want to keep his bat.
Is a (lefthanded) OPS+ of 116 really that easy to come by in a DH? It seems comparable or better than the OPS+ of most of the DH’s the rest of the league is trotting out there (non Bradley/Thome division) -Floyd, Kubel, Stairs, Sheffield, Huff, etc. Also his salary seems kind of reasonable compared to most in this group.
If teams were behaving logically/sabremetrically, major league talent should not follow a bell curve!
Baseball talent should follow a bell curve, and the teams should apply a cutoff to the talent they have, taking all the players above that cutoff point in the majors and everyone below in the minors (or out of baseball). Then major league talent distribution would look something like the top end of the bell curve with a sudden cutoff well before one reached the middle part of the curve.
There would be some exceptions to this: teams can’t, of course, substitute a catcher for a pitcher, etc., there are some restrictions on the flow of talent between teams, and there may be some sense in bringing up a young player for experience before he reaches that cutoff. Still, if the major league distribution truly is a bell curve it means there’s still lots of space for a savvy GM to improve a team on the cheap.
Why is RZR a poor tool and UZR a good tool.
RZR uses estimates of batted ball types, not play-by-play data. It’s like using frozen ground beef instead of a fresh patty. Why is your favorite restaurant better than Wendy’s? Better ingredients, even if they both sell hamburgers.
What am I supposed to make of Raul’s ‘win shares’ and ‘win shares above bench’…
Nothing – don’t use win shares.
Is a (lefthanded) OPS+ of 116 really that easy to come by in a DH?
Yes. DH is the easiest position on earth to fill.
Also his salary seems kind of reasonable compared to most in this group.
It won’t seem reasonable once he signs his new deal.
Still, if the major league distribution truly is a bell curve it means there’s still lots of space for a savvy GM to improve a team on the cheap.
Yea, it’s not exactly a bell curve – it’s more of a pyramid, with a huge base that narrows as you get to the top. But for the purposes of answering the question asked in the thread, the bell curve answer is close enough to being true.
Grizz, thanks for the CBA clarification.
Dave, if you’re ever stuck looking for a topic to write about (either here or at Fangraphs), a walkthrough of modern methods to evaluate defense would be fantastic.
You mean something like this?
Cunningly concealed under the “Stuff we reference all the time” title.
See, that’s what’s so great about this site. You guys anticipate everything.
Jeez, my eyes must really be going.
But Wendy’s uses never frozen fresh beef patties! =O!
Although Wendy’s, by far, still has the best fries of any big burger chain, IMO.