Projecting new Mariner Griffey’s offense
Some people sure are impatient. Here’s a reader email from today:
Subject: put your money where youre keyboard is
If your SO confident that Griffey is going to be a bust… why not
make your stat prediction on his 2009 season.. and when you’re
wrong… shut your negative “I know best” additude down, and start
writing about dog shows or something, ya hack!!I say this because I can see (just in the last 2 days from my reading)
your still bashing your forum members, calling them names, and
censoring their opinions just like you always have.. does your high
horse get tired from time to time?
As always, reader service is our #1 priority here at USSM.
Let me start with the obvious stuff, and then get into refinements. Over the last three years, Griffey’s averaged 132 games a season, 482 at-bats, and put up about a .260/.350/.470 line, which is a little over league average but not that good for a corner outfielder (2008 AL LFers hit .271/.350/.453, NL .267/.336/.430). His speed on the basepaths is entirely gone now, along with any remnant of defensive value. So the team’s not going to get any value out of sticking him left part-time.
And as we’ve mentioned before, left-handed pitchers have owned him for years. You really don’t want him out there against southpaws if there’s any way to avoid it (last year, he hit .202/.299/.350).
There’s good news there, though. Here’s his split v. RHP for the last three years
2006: .278/.346/.523
2007: .300/.402/.540
2008: .272/.379/.462
That’s where you want to get your value: 400 or so quality plate appearances against right-handed pitching.
The problem is Griffey’s been on a pretty steep decline these last few years, and headed into a year-39 season, there’s no reason to think that he’ll do much better. His 2005 was easily the best season he’d put up since 2000, and that performance is three years of injuries in the past. That was a .300/.369/.576, which is certainly impressive. But that’s it — his other seasons have been shortened when they weren’t generally unremarkable.
Now, I was going to present a whole series of small graphs on the decline of his power stats, but from the Ken Griffey player page, here’s the Fangraphs ISO chart, which is great:
The bat’s not coming back. A resurgence will only get you so far. Even when the knee was good, the offensive decline was trouble. Moving from a hitter-friendlier parks to Safeco Field isn’t going to help his raw stats, either.
Anyway, back to the point. Here’s what I’m hoping for: Griffey’s a pure DH against RHP. He gets 400 good plate appearances and is a solid contributor to the offense, hitting .270/.360/.465 or something along those lines — 15-20 home runs. I’ll point out too that it’s really, really hard to hit the 30+ home runs I’ve seen people want to get out of a healthy, happy Griffey without having play full time and hit lefties, and he hasn’t been able to do the former often and hasn’t done the latter for a long time.
That’s a pretty effective replacement for Ibanez’s bat (Raul hit .293/.358/.479 last year), and we’d all be happy with it.
Now to poke at the best case a bit. That plan requires Griffey to be healthy for a whole year, to be a part-time DH, not playing the outfield at all, and to only decline a little. To deal with these in order:
If Griffey’s not healthy and misses stretches or his performance is hampered, his value declines quickly because they’re already platooning for him. We’re also giving him the benefit of the knee story, and hoping that he’s 100% effective and the power comes back as much as it can. You can assign your own value to how likely the best-case-healthy-Griffey is.
If Griffey bats against left-handers, he’s probably going to stink (you never know, right, small sample sizes and everything) and those outs will take away from the value contributed the rest of the time. Plus, extra playing time might not be the best thing for keeping him healthy.
If he plays the outfield at all, he’ll be killing the team.
We’ve seen this, right? Griffey’s way out on the margins of player age already. Hitting is amazingly hard. But at his age, with that decline, with his injury history, collapse is a risk. There’s probably a 25% chance Griffey ends up sucking way more than I expect, grinding through the season hitting .250/.325/.410 with every game a little more painful to play and watch.
Now, what do you think the chance he hits the best-case numbers is? 25%-40% he hits .270/.360/.465, a 10% chance he does better, then 25%-40% he does somewhat worse, and a 25% chance he finishes out the ugly .250/.325/.410 year.
I really want to believe in the best-case.
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Is it not possible for you to filter external e-mails for grammar and other errors like your/you’re confusion and just autodelete them? I couldn’t deal with e-mails like that…it has to be mind-numbing, and I guess now I realize just how much restraint you guys actually show in your posts’ discussion threads. Truly impressive.
Irony at it’s finest. As if that email isn’t a negative “I know best” attitude complaint.
Thanks Derek. Reasonable fans will take the .270/.360/.465, but the more I talk with my friends about this, the more they wow me with their unrealistic expectations.
I heard 40 HR out of someone’s mouth today. I heard “leaping catch against the wall.” I’m as pumped as the next guy about getting Jr. for a final lap, but there are some delusional folks out there.
That having been said, EVERYONE in my family wants to buy tickets now. Here’s hoping hoping hoping that Z and his crew can frame this as the halfway productive farewell tour it needs to be.
I think I want to have a “can do” additude.
it has been interesting hearing callers talk about not attending games the last 3 years, but how now they will be buying opening day tickets. I haven’t heard ‘leaping catch’ projections, but I have heard ‘wouldn’t it be great to see him break Aaron’s record in a Mariner uniform’
Griffey’s at 600=something home runs at 39. At 30 homers a season, he doesn’t catch Aaron until his mid 40s. So that’s not a motivation. This is Reggie Jackson returning to the Oakland A’s for one final (limping) victory lap. But now that it’s inevitable, I’m kinda stoked. IF he doesn’t embarass himself and the team a la Franco Harris with the Seahawks. If he can be the equivalent of Pudge Rodriguez on that 2004 Marlins World Series squad and lead the M’s back to respectability before retiring, THAT will be a fitting end to a great career.
I’m afraid logic doesn’t enter into it.
Here’s my non-statistics based best case scenario.
Spring training discussion of the club is all Griffey-all the time. No one cares that Erik Bedard won’t give any interviews, and he comes out of the gate throwing the ball like his 2007 self. The rest of the club has no trouble listening to Wakamatsu’s lessons because all the pressure is off them because of Griffey’s return.
The M’s early on prove to be a monster club against right handed pitching, not because of Griffey, but because with Chavez playing left the M’s outfield defense is superb, Branyan mashes righties like he always has and Clement starts to hit the bejesus out of the ball. The result is that as the season goes on, the M’s start seeing more and more lefties, particularly in Safeco; for the first time in years, other teams are switching their rotations to put lower tier lefthanders on the mound against Seattle. As a result, Beltre, Lopez, Johjima and Wlad go hog wild.
The M’s finish with 80 wins and second place. September is “Farewell to Junior Month”, with packed promotions every game. The M’s attendance is the only one outside the new New York stadia to increase, allowing the team to re-sign Beltre and sign Felix to a long term extension.
Two years later, when Ken Griffey, Jr.’s return is just a pleasant memory, the M’s win the World Series behind the Big Three starters of Felix, Morrow and Strasburg, who finish 1-2-3 for the Cy Young Award. Junior, along with Edgar, Bone, Wilson, Randy and Boone, sit in front row seats for the finale, where they hoist a beer toward the broadcast booth at Dave Nieuhaus.
And this blog implodes out of sheer happiness.
Great post – I just hope that Junior’s lack of power (or much of anything) last year was due to his fluke knee injury.
But true, he’s never been able to hit lefties.
Wowsers even the mod que doesn’t kill the predictocariates. That’s a shame because they morph into the scoreboardcalliates after very small sample sizes feeding (not reading) upon reasoned arguments until they reach the adult form-resultsbasedanalites. Maybe some boric acid in the mod tank could help?
Jr has a good agent, bless his soul. But Jr’s problems against lefties ARE not knee-related. He looks lost and overpowered. Watch tape from last year.
Hey, I grew up watching Griff, he was a rookie when I was in JR High and my Baseball hero.
AND I’M GETTING SICK OF TALKING ABOUT HIM.
Am I going to go to a game because he’s back?
Well, yeah.
But I always go to at least 7 or 8 games a year anyways.
Heres what I hope for:
.260 BA/ 25 HR’S / 80 RBI’S
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This could be one of the first tests for Wakamatsu, or at least one of the early indicators of what kind of manager he is going to be.
Will he platoon Griffey?
If they do sign him…I’m just hoping he doesn’t embarrass himself and the team. Let him finish out with respect and retire with dignity next year. I’m in my early 40’s now and understand how difficult it is to play as you get older. Your mind works at the same speed as it used to but your body just doesn’t react the same any more.
Yep…Junior 2009 = Doesn’t embarrass himself…would be a good year!
When I first read this, I thought for a second you were suggesting all those guys be put back on the roster, too. Makes about as much sense.
He will.
(you’re) (projection) (you’re) (this is not a forum)
Yeah, I think if I had to filter through that much lunacy every day my head would explode. Keep up the good work, guys.
Breadbaker – I enjoyed your dream. May it be so.
Breadbaker,
Very cool image! It made me smile.
DMZ,
Well thought out preseason post.
We are all rooting for the best outcome.
Go Mariner’s. Go Mariner’s indeed!
First off, don’t believe everyone that said they would buy tickets because Griffey is back in town. Many of those people ultimately won’t do that. I’m sure Griffey will sell tickets, and assuming we’re paying about $2M for him, there’s no other signing that would forseeably produce more money for the club. But let’s not take the word of the masses that they’re going to fill safeco for the entire season.
Second, while this was certainly the most precise Griffey projection y’all have given, how do you tollerate this:
Uhm, the USSM has been making projections of Griffey for the last year at least. It goes like this: Griffey is an oft injured player in decline who should not be expected to exceed the average of his last three seasons. More likely, he will decline from that average. If he’s a left fielder, his defense returns more runs than his offense produces and a major league average hitter can be acquired for about $500k–Griffey is only as valuable as his production above that performance, which won’t be much (if at all.)
By the way, I tried to google this question but I couldn’t figure out the proper search string: How much difference should we expect switching leagues to have?
The M’s would sell more tickets if Griffey signed with the A’s, Rangers, or Angels. They could sell out every time he came to visit Seattle. The pressure would be on the other team’s manager to play the kid in front of his old home crowd. Many ticket buyers wouldn’t know until it was too late that Griffey had tweeked his hamstring and would be on the bench.
I loved him when he was here. I fear his ability to platoon as DH and smile about it.
Unless you were already planning on posting this projection anyway, it’s really too bad you feel you need to respond to belligerent emails. I’ve emailed various civil questions over several years, and never gotten my own post. Of course, that doesn’t allow for the possibility that my questions are less than worthy.
anyway, I want to voice my support for griffey, but like everyone else, I hope the “victory lap” does not tarry. as his output degrades, it sours the reunion. I hope we don’t regret this.
Minor, if anything, bump at the turnstiles. Modest bump in TV ratings (which do count). Might spill over and generate interest in the new kids if they do OK.
Oh, were we talking about ON THE FIELD projections?….
LOL. I knew I forgot someone who deserves to be there: Olerud. Give him a front row rocker, too. And if Jamie isn’t still playing, he’s welcome, too.
I blame Bush for this. Guys like Lincoln and Armstrong and the rest of the ownership cadre have taken big hits on those CDO’s and funny money investment vehicles. Some of them are down to their last yacht. It’s hardly surprising that if you dangle the prospect of a few extra million of gate receipts from an already mediocre team in a rebuilding year in front of them, they’d go for it like a starving pit bull loose in an orphanage.
Whatever. But, I too, am already sick unto death of the Griffey phenomenon. It’s not like I haven’t already had ample opportunity to watch aging stars hit rock bottom at Safeco so one more isn’t going to kill me.
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Breadbaker: I love your fantasy; let’s hope it becomes at least a little more than that (though I’d like to know a little more about what happens in during the “two years later” part).
Not just platoon him, but pinch hit for him when the other team brings in tough RH relievers in close games, and hold him back from playing in the field more often than every full moon. Even if Wakamatsu understands the wisdom of this, even if Griffey whole-heartedly agrees with it, will the fans accept it? Will the team be able to resist the pressure if they don’t?
You know, I think you’ll get your wish but you’ll have to wait for Spring Training to start. Lowe has publicly campaigned for the closer job, but there are a couple of other candidates (and now one more with the Fields signing). “Horserace” is the kind of story that writes itself, so you’re bound to see two or three whenever the sportswriters want to spend the other 23.5 hours of their day swapping drunken lies or lying passed out under a golf cart.
I’ve emailed various civil questions over several years, and never gotten my own post.
Nate, grow up. You’re a whiner. Sorry guys. Delete it, but it was just bugging me.
Now there’s a guy with a truthiness problem.
I got that far into his email before shaking my head.
It’s not that he’s going to be a “bust.” A bust would mean X is expected of him, and we got let down and received Y.
X just isn’t possible anymore. He’s not that 19 year old kid anymore. He’s not even that 30 year old anymore.
At this stage, we’re just hoping to at least get Y.
This is absolutely not true. He had 3 seasons with an OPS above 1000 against LHP, and 3 more in the 900’s. He’s had 4 seasons where his OPS against LHP was equal to or better than against RHP. He had very little platoon split in his prime.
His career OPS is 954 against RHP and 846 against LHP, and those numbers must have been a lot closer before the platoon splits of the last 3 seasons got factored in.
Can we maybe try for at least one Griffey thread to focus on the specific question of his potential offensive contributions? We’ve had a million comments on a thousand posts on the other stuff.
Point taken, but I’m curious as to how recently this was.
But at least Junior’s defense will be sharp.
I’d definitely buy a hot dog from him.
Pat – Thanks for the link…too funny!
While cloning is definitely out of the question, I wonder if they can stem cell together some knee cartilege for Grif so that he can at least get some of his range back…
Fangraphs is now apparently getting data from the future (though they have his position wrong… but perhaps that’s just a figleaf?)
It looks like 2003 was the last time he had equal platoon splits.
You don’t have to believe the best case scenario will happen. All you have to do to see that Griffey can help is recognize that he will most likely hit about the same as he did last year against lefties. That should not be too hard considering the most pessimistic of the projections, CHONE & Marcel, make that prediction.
Not really.
Oops, actually that looks like data from past. Forgot about dad
Joser – Thanks…after I’d posted that, I actually found that splits link on BR. It looks like ‘03 was about the last time he was fairly even (albeit sucky) against both righties and lefties, and that ‘05 was the last time he had anything even remotely close to respectability against LHP (going back for aeons before that, of course).
BTW, I wonder if they can bring Sr. back next year as well?
Huh. The never-to-be-doubted baseball sources say that Atlanta wants Griffey to platoon in left field with Matt Diaz.
Really. If Griff maintains his same distribution of hitting against lefties vs righties, then both CHONE & Marcel are basically implying that Griff will put up a wOBA of .350-360 against righties. That would help the team as long as Griff is not hitting against righties in significant situations or playing in the field. If Bill James is right then we should see Griff put up a .380-385 wOBA, which would be marvelous for what Griff is likely to get paid.
The problem with running a fan blog, is that quite a few fans are subjective “homeâ€rs. If you don’t agree with their “fanâ€atical views, then you are a hack with a “negative additude[sic]â€. They’ll demand you believe them, and that they are right and you’re wrong, and that you should admit it when you’re finally “proven†wrong, though like true hypocrites they won’t do the same if you’re proven right (Bedard trade, 2007 being a fluke, Washburn, Silva, etc).
It doesn’t matter how many stats, how much data, how objective or unbiased you are. Your “facts†can’t reason with their faith because you’ve already failed their litmus test of being an uncompromising, subjective, “real fan†with your logic and fancy numbers.
If Griffey does the above like you describe, I’ll be ok with this. It seems a bit optimistic though.
(I actually wish you guys had a section for hate mail to be posted. I bet you get some real winners.)
Two things about those Bill James projections though;
1. They’re wildly optimistic.
2. They predict a greatly inflated offensive environment league wide, which means Griffey’s value, according to the James projections, isn’t all that much different than it is according to CHONE.
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When properly adjusted so you are comparing apples against apples (only major leaguers with at least 300 PAs), Bill James’ wOBA projections are about .005 higher than CHONE. That was the conclusion of the most sensible analysis done by commentors on Fangraphs. So I would still be thrilled to see Griff put up a .375-.380 wOBA.
How much difference should we expect switching leagues to have?
Well, I don’t know about hitters, but it’s apparently half a win over a season for pitchers so for a hitter I’d have to say “not much.” And he’s not switching leagues: he did that last season when he went to the White Sox (and his OPS+ dropped from 103 to 95, though small sample caveats apply). Anyway, I think batting in a different stadium for 81 games (or whatever fraction involves games against a RH starter) is going to have a much bigger effect than the leagues.
Looking at just right field, Safeco would appear to be about 7% more favorable than Great American for hitting HRs. Over a season’s worth of home games that’s maybe one additional HR (assuming he pulls all of them into RF) but the noise from other factors (like the health of his knees, or one mediocre right fielder not snatching one off the top of the wall) is going to swamp that.
On the other hand, Safeco makes hitters strikeout more than most other parks (for reasons no one really understands), and that looks to be about a 7% increase in Seattle over Cinci as well, which works out to about 3 extra Ks (200 home ABs for a lifetime 20% strikeout guy). When he does make solid contact, I figure late-career Jr will be a lot like late-career Edgar, where we’ll see hardly any IF singles, no triples and only a few doubles (which would be triples for the young and healthy); but Safeco also suppresses OF singles by about 10% over Great American, which is pretty significant. Griffey can overcome all that — they’re still small factors, after all — but at least a few of the oft-overlooked “little things” aren’t working in his favor either and that has to reign in (or rain on) some of the more optimistic scenarios. Which is of course what Derek was referring to when he mentioned moving from “hitter friendlier” parks.
(The comparison of Safeco vs US Cellular works out even less in Griffey’s favor, but given last year’s small sample size and known health issues I don’t think it’s meaningful)
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Unfortunately you don’t determine the actual value of major league baseball players by comparing apples to apples, you do so by comparing them to the rest of the league. And the fact of the matter is, in the 2009 Bill James Projection Universe, Griffey’s value is negligibly higher than it is in the 2009 CHONE Projection Universe.
You are going to have to show me a reasonable analysis that shows that, aaron c. Maybe I missed something, but that was not the conclusion of the Fangraphs discussion that I saw on this topic.
Really? We’re back to this?
Ah, I just realized who you are. n/m
Griffey should only play day games. Seriously, look at his splits since 2005.
Is this an eyesight thing? His OPS is more than 150 points higher with a decent sample size.
It’s a ’small sample size’ thing. I hope he just goes to Atlanta anyway…
Here’s Jr over the last three seasons:
vs Righties: PA=1105; .284/.382/.508; OPS=.890; ISO= .224; K%= 14.8; BB%= 13.4; XBH%= 39.2; wOBA=.383;
vs Lefties: PA=565; .216/.297/.395; OPS=.692; ISO= .182; K%= 18.2; BB%= 9.6; XBH%= 41.7; wOBA=.301;
Except it’s really not a small sample size thing with the day vs. night splits.
It’s a season’s worth of statistics. A 35 homer, 110 RBI season.
As far as I know, he started using the Nike contact lenses in 2005, but (I can’t find a link to confirm this) only in day games. Maybe we should just get him to wear those at night and then we’ll have old Junior at the plate all the time.
Your day sample is 50 games, 194 at-bats. That’s not huge. You want multi-year at least.
I advocate for day-night splits to be taken into account. The opportunity to do so isn’t great (Sundays and getaway games, for instance), but even with small sample size, why not use the data? It would also be a great reason to say “Griff, I’m saving you for tomorrow when we’re outside under the sun.”
From 2005-2008, Griffey has an OPS of .958 over 543 ABs.
From 2005-2008 during day games, Griffey has an OPS of .958 over 543 ABs.
Related to this — what does Griffey have to do to get 1 WAR in 2009?
For the sake of argument, let’s say that the time he spends in the field is negligible — insignificant w/r/t the fielding hit he’d take in the field — and is DH for 95-99% of his playing time. I realize that there’s positional adjustments that he needs to overcome, but again presuming he’s the DH, I’d really like to know what it will take for him to get to 1 WAR. Or even .5 WAR
I’m really curious.