The Starting Nine
After a night to sleep on it and a chance to talk to some people and find out what the two lower level prospects bring to the table, I’m now of the opinion that this is a fantastic deal for the Mariners. This is best illustrated by looking at the roster as a whole, as it stands right now. The offense/defense numbers that follow are position adjusted projections for ’09, and remember, +2 is league average.
Line-Up:
1. Ichiro, RF, +5 offense, +5 defense, +20 replacement level: +3 wins
2. Lopez, 2B, -2.5 offense, -5 defense, +20 replacement level: +1.25 wins
3. OPEN, DH, -10 offense, +0 defense, +20 replacement level: + 1 win (this is a guess)
4. Beltre, 3B, +5 offense, +10 defense, +20 replacement level: +3.5 wins
5. Branyan, 1B, -5 offense, +0 defense, +20 replacement level: +1.5 wins
6. Gutierrez, CF, -5 offense, +10 defense, +20 replacement level: +2.5 wins
7. Clement, C, +5 offense, -10 defense, +20 replacement level: +1.5 wins
8. Balentien, LF, -10 offense, -10 defense, +20 replacement level: +0.0 wins
9. Betancourt, SS, -5 offense, -5 defense, +20 replacement level: +1.0 wins
Bench (this includes playing time projections based on their reserve status):
C: Johjima, -3 offense, +0 defense, +5 replacement level: +0.2 wins
IF: Shelton, +0 offense, +0 defense, +5 replacement level: +0.5 wins
IF: Hulett, -5 offense, +2 defense, +5 replacement level: +0.2 wins
OF: Chavez, -5 offense, +5 defense, +5 replacement level: +0.5 wins
Position Player Totals: -22.5 offense, -5 defense, +16.65 wins
There are some holes, obviously, but all those holes have legitimate upside. I’m not a big Balentien fan, as I have him performing at replacement level, but there’s definitely potential for him to get to something like a +1.5 win player this year if he makes some strides. I gave Clement a very harsh defensive rating, so maybe his work ethic allows him to improve faster than expected and he proves me wrong. I’m assuming the team is going to sign a stop-gap DH and get moderate production from that spot, but it’s pretty easy to find a guy who can mash and has some upside, and they could pick up another win there. Maybe Lopez doesn’t regress as much as I expect offensively or Betancourt finds his missing range somewhere. All of these won’t happen, but some could.
All told, I think it’s fair to expect the current crop of position players on the roster to be something like +15 to +20 wins above replacement. A contending team would get about +25 wins from their position players, so the pitching staff would have to be tremendous in order to get this group to the playoffs, but it’s a huge improvement over where this team finished 2008.
Yes, there are questions about where Heilman fits, how this affects Morrow, and how they sort out the pitching staff, but I’m pretty Zduriencik isn’t done, and we’ll look at the pitching staff once it’s settled. You build a franchise around position players, though, and Zduriencik has made sure that the starting nine that takes the field in 2009 is significantly better than the one that took the field in 2008.
Goodbye JJ, Hello Defense
Rosenthal says it’s a done deal. From the M’s perspective, this is what’s being reported:
M’s trade RHP J.J. Putz, RHP Sean Green, OF Jeremy Reed, and 2B Luis Valbuena for OF Franklin Gutierrez, RHP Aaron Heilman, OF Endy Chavez, 1B Mike Carp, and “minor leaguers” from Cleveland.
Z’s first significant trade is certainly a big one – probably the most interesting trade the M’s have pulled off in five years. Let’s break down the pieces by win value.
Putz (+2 wins), Green (+1 win), Reed (+0.5 wins), and Valbuena (+1 win) represent a net loss of about 4.5 wins over replacement level players. Combined, they’ll make about $7 million in 2009, so it’s definitely a valuable group of players – productive and cheap. Putz and Valbuena are the real pieces of value, though – Reed and Green are role players. Valbuena could be a league average second baseman pretty quickly, and the Indians did well to spot him as a guy who could help them long term. I hate giving up Valbuena, as I was hopeful the M’s would sell high on Lopez and keep Luis as his replacement.
However, the M’s aren’t getting a bunch of crap in return.
Gutierrez is a +2 win OF (yes, even with a questionable bat, he’s a league average player) who instantly solves the center field problem. Heilman is a +1 win reliever with an undefined role. He wants to start but isn’t good enough to, so if they can convince him to close, that’s in everyone’s best interests. Chavez is a +1 win OF who will probably share time with Wlad (like Gutierrez, his defense is other worldly), and Carp is a +0 win prospect with moderate upside – think Lyle Overbay if he develops well.
The M’s ship off about +4.5 wins and get back +4 wins, so you could call it a big push overall, but that’s where the nuances come in. Here are the reasons I like this deal:
1. The +2 win player the M’s are getting back is much younger than the +2 win player they’re giving up, and they have him under team control for a lot longer. For where this team is, Gutierrez is more valuable than Putz.
2. One of Valbuena or Lopez had to go, because there was no way for them to coexist at full value. In that sense, the M’s swapped a prospect at a position of depth for a prospect at a position where they have a gaping hole. I like Valbuena better than Carp, but Carp has a much clearer road to a job in Seattle.
3. By acquiring Gutierrez and Chavez, the M’s just have given themselves the ability to run out one of the best outfield defenses in baseball on days where they send a contact pitcher to the hill. A Chavez/Gutierrez/Ichiro outfield will make Silva and Washburn look significantly better than they really are, and by investing in the defense, the M’s have made it possible that they could salvage some value from a pair of bad contracts.
To me, those three things swing this trade into the plus column for the M’s. That doesn’t make it a total home run – Heilman’s desire to start and the loss of Putz and Green make it much more likely that Morrow’s going to remain in the bullpen, Chavez is only under team control for one year, and Gutierrez’s right-handed bat isn’t a great fit for Safeco.
But in this case, I’d say the positives outweigh the negatives. It’s not an outright fleecing like Putz for Joyce would have been (and if that was on the table, I’d have done that before I did this, but it’s quite possible that was never offered), but I’d say that the Mariners are better right now than they were yesterday and they have a brighter future, and that makes this a good trade.
Franklin Gutierrez Is Really, Really Good At Defense
The trade’s not official yet, but I wanted to get this out there before the instant reactions come in and people think we screwed the pooch by trading for a RH outfielder who posted a sub .700 OPS last year.
Franklin Gutierrez is something like one of the top 5-10 defensive outfielders in baseball. Not corner outfielders – outfielders.
In 1,773 innings in RF/LF, he’s racked up a UZR of +29.6. Those are crazy, Carl Crawford, “why aren’t you playing center field?” kind of numbers. Not surprisingly, in the 159 innings he has played CF (the Indians have this Sizemore kid you may have heard of), Gutierrez was +2.6, which translates to +17 runs over a full season.
Now, he’s probably not that good. The only guys who have really, truly been +20 or better in full time center field action are the early decade versions of Mike Cameron and Darin Erstad. So maybe he’s really more like a +10 CF or a +20 RF/LF (the average CF is 10 runs better than the average corner OF, so Gutierrez’s numbers are right in line with what we’d expect).
That puts him up there with the best of the best in terms of defensive outfielders. He’s better than Ichiro, better than guys like Torii Hunter or Vernon Wells, better than Jacoby Ellsbury. Franklin Gutierrez can run down fly balls in the outfield with the best of him.
The bat has question marks, there’s no doubt about it. And we’ll talk about all that when the trade becomes official. But don’t get caught up in thinking that Gutierrez is just a decent glove like Reed was. Gutierrez is a defensive monster.
Putz trade close
According to Baker, Zduriencik believes that a deal for Putz is close. That goes along with this from Ken Rosenthal:
The Mets are working to acquire a setup man for new closer Francisco Rodriguez — and that setup man would be another closer from the American League West.
J.J. Putz could be headed to the Mets in a three-team trade with the Mariners and Indians, according to major-league sources.
Mets right-hander Aaron Heilman, outfielder Endy Chavez and first-base prospect Mike Carp would be in the deal, as would Indians outfielder Franklin Gutierrez.
The deal also would include one or more prospects, but it is not yet clear which players are headed where.
It’s a pretty crazy rumor with a lot of details missing. If it comes into clearer view, we’ll update the post. I will say this, though – Franklin Gutierrez is one of the very best defensive outfielders in the game (think Mike Cameron with a few less walks), and if the Mariners are really targeting him after going after Matt Joyce, it should be clear that he understands the value of good gloves in the outfield.
Update: Now the rumors have expanded to include us giving up Luis Valbuena, and apparently the Rays read the blog, realized Matt Joyce was both good and available, and are about to pick him up for Edwin Jackson. The Rays are what we absolutely should be aspiring to.
Second Update: Apparently, the M’s are going to give up Putz, Reed, and Luis Valbuena and get Gutierrez, Aaron Heilman, and Mike Carp, with various assorted pieces ending up in Cleveland and New York. It’s a remarkably interesting deal on a lot of levels. I love Gutierrez’s glove, but would have preferred Joyce as a better fit for Safeco. Heilman demanded a trade because he wants to start, and we’ve already got too many starters. And I hate giving up Valbuena, but Carp could be a legit 1B of the future. We’ll break it all down once it becomes official.
Congrats to Rob, Keith…
…and some other internet writers at my alma mater.
The Base Ball Writers of America (I’d link to their website but it will burn your eyeballs) admitted two more ESPN writers, Rob Neyer and Keith Law, along with BP’s Christina Kahrl and Will Carroll. They all now get to vote on awards and Hall of Fame ballots, which hopefully will continue to drag those awards towards rationality, if not outright respectability.
Neyer is particularly satisfying to me. Neyer, more than any other writer, is responsible for me being the fan I am today. He was the first to demonstrate that quality baseball analysis could come from the internet, bringing the insight and statistical analysis of Bill James to the unwashed internet masses in a way that everyone could understand, with humor and sometimes a lot of mustard on his arguments. He often focused on the common-sense application of statistics in looking at baseball problems, showing how to reason through a problem. That stats didn’t have to be about arguing about a .1 run difference in setting replacement level offense but about how teams won and lost games and seasons.
Last year was the first year that the BBWAA waved in any internet-only writers, and I was so incensed that Rob didn’t get in that if I’d written about it you wouldn’t have been able to pick out the point from the swearing.
It makes me glad to see him get in today.
To move to Keith, it should be clear from his ESPN pieces there’s an enormous amount of work behind the improvement in their draft coverage (to pick one), and I’m happy his contributions have been recognized.
And congrats to the BP crew. I feel in writing this I risk starting the standard flame war, but allow me to be entirely positive: as much of a roster construction geek as I’ve become, I owe a huge debt to Christina Kahrl, who was the first to get me thinking about how small transactions make up a large season, and player skill sets complement each other in building a roster. And there’s a reason everyone reads Will’s stuff since he started doing injury analysis on BP.
Off-Season Analysis
We got an email yesterday from someone wanting to know what I thought of the Francisco Rodriguez signing, and that made me realize that some of you may not know that I’m doing my non-Mariner writing over at FanGraphs now. It’s the same kind of analysis we do here, just on a league wide scale. Here’s some links to my take on the moves we’ve seen so far this winter:
Sabathia to NY – also includes notes about how this is a big time buyer’s market.
Tigers sign Adam Everett and trade for Gerald Laird, as well as folllow up piece on value of role players.
Stay away from Dunn, Ramirez, Abreu, Ibanez, and Burrell
Cubs sign Dempster and trade for Kevin Gregg
Scott Olsen and Josh Willingham to Washington
Mike Jacobs to KC – the comments thread on this is the worst in the history of the internet.
Really, if it’s happening in baseball, we’re writing about it at FanGraphs. The site is also the best resource on the internet for the kinds of statistics we favor, including wOBA, WPA/LI, and UZR. And it’s only getting better. If you’re not reading FanGraphs, you’re missing out.
Joyce, Larish analyzed
So, as Jason (!) noted below, and Baker blogged about the last couple of days, the Mariners and Tigers are almost certainly talking about a deal that would send J.J. Putz to Detroit. Speculation has the Mariners wanting some combination of prospects that would include Matt Joyce or Jeff Larish, as both are left-handed hitters with some power, and Zduriencik has made it no secret that his goal is to add some LH power to the roster.
Now, because both are guys that most non-Detroit fans will know little about, it’s easy to lump them together as similar prospects. They aren’t. Joyce is the far superior talent, and it’s not even close.
Larish is a 26-year-old with the classic first baseman skillset – significant raw pull power, a patient approach at the plate, and contact problems. He swings for the fences and his value lies in hitting the ball really far, hoping that it makes up for his lack of contact. His career minor league K% is around 25%, so he’s not Russ Branyan, but he’s going to strike out a lot. That lack of contact will keep his average in the .250 to .270 range, and even though he draws his fair share of walks and has power, that limits his absolute upside to something like a .260/.350/.500 player, and he’s only got about a 10% chance of being that good. Unless he developed into a plus defender (unlikely), that makes him an average player at best, and more likely he ends up having something like Eric Hinske’s career.
Joyce, on the other hand, has less power but a better spread of skills. Like Larish, he swings and misses a lot, and he won’t be a high average guy, but his significantly better athleticism allows him to provide real defensive value and a skill set that has room for growth. Tigers fans thought he was a pretty terrific defensive outfielder, and while the sample is way too small for it to have strong meaning, UZR agrees with their assessment. In many ways, he’s similar to Jayson Werth – an athletic OF with good defense, gap power, and enough walks to offset the strikeouts.
Honestly, I think Joyce has a better long term future than Wladimir Balentien, who I know many of you are still quite high on. The fact that he’s left-handed makes him a much better fit for Safeco, and his significantly better defense would be a welcome sight running around left field.
Honestly, I’d trade Putz for Joyce straight up, one for one. He’s probably something close to a league average corner outfielder right now (assuming that Tigers fans are right about his defense), at 24, with upside to get to a +3 or +3.5 win level. He’d also be under team control through 2014.
If the Tigers want to give the Mariners a package that includes Joyce and other stuff, it’s going to be a massive steal for the M’s. If it’s just Joyce, it’s still a great trade. If it’s Larish and stuff, then I’m less excited, but would still listen depending on what the other stuff was.
Tigers target Putz, Wood for closer vacancy
From the Detroit Free Press:
The team has shown interest in free agent Kerry Wood in recent days and had preliminary trade discussions with the Seattle Mariners about J.J. Putz.
Both right-handers have been targeted by the New York Mets, so Detroit officials may need to move quickly in order to have their pick.
Putz, 31, would certainly make for a compelling storyline if he were to become the Tigers’ closer: He grew up in Trenton and pitched at the University of Michigan.Â
Now, obviously there’d be a bit of a “selling low” factor with Putz, as last year wasn’t his best. At the same time, though, if you’re interesting in moving him–and he’s certainly one of the team’s most valuable trade parts–the time might be right. Putz makes a mere $5.5M next season, followed by a $9.1M club option (or $1M buyout) in 2010.
GIven what we’ve seen from Zduriencik so far with respect to building a cheap 1B platoon, I have little doubt he could cobble together an effective bullpen–closer included–without plunking down $14.6M over two years for a proverbial “proven” closer.
I’m certainly not looking to trade him, but if you can turn Putz into a young position player and give yourself $14.6M to spend while at the same time not hurting the bullpen too much, more power to you.
Oh and Ibanez is gone
Declined arb, says the PI, Times, and everyone else.
We knew he would, and if he didn’t, he’d be a nice enough fit at DH next year (though they’d have to work out the playing time issues) etc.
Still, Ibanez was one of the best pickups Gillick made. At the time, we carped about signing him ahead of the arbitration deadline, giving up a pick when the Royals had no intention of offering it (but then, Gillick didn’t like his high picks and wanted to punt them, soooooo…). Gillick & Company said he had a swing tailor-made for Safeco Field, that he was going to hit great, and I was skeptical. I thought they were wrong, more properly. It’s turned out the M’s were absolutely right and I got to admit I was wrong over and over and over (and I couldn’t have been happier about that).
What the team does to replace his production will be one of the most interesting tests of the new leadership. Given their work on patching first base, though, you have to be optimistic right now.
M’s sign Chris Shelton
Seriously, I think Jack Z understands how to build a pretty sweet 1B platoon for no money. The M’s have inked Chris Shelton, and he now becomes the frontrunner to be Branyan’s platoon partner at first base. That should be a productive duo for basically $2 million bucks.
Go Jack Go.