The 2010 Team, Quantified
After the first trade last week, I put up a post looking at the projected 2010 roster, given players under team control for next year, and the amount of payroll it would cost to put that team together. Based on that projection, we saw that the M’s would have to spend around $78 million or so to field that particular roster, which would give them a little less than $20 million to play with this winter, assuming the budget holds something close to constant.
One thing we didn’t get into that much was just how good that team would be – it certainly looks unimpressive on paper, after all. And today, Art Thiel put in his two cents on the matter, essentially laying out his reasons for why next year’s team may be worse than the current version.
I think he’s wrong, and here’s why – the continuing reliance on cliched definitions of certain types of players significantly underrates the kind of team the Mariners have built. You know the lingo by now – “big bat”, “innings eater”, “proven commodity”, “solid performer” – this is how baseball players are still described in some circles. I’m not trying to pick on Thiel here, whose work I genuinely like, but sentences like this one…
The upside is intriguing. But after Hernandez, the group also could end up being just a bunch of back-of-the-rotation guys.
… would also describe the Philadelphia Phillies rotation last year (Hamels and fluff), and they won the World Series. These vague categorizations of contributions often do more to hide the actual value of players than reveal it.
So, let’s get away from cliches, and actually look at what the 2010 Mariners, as currently assembled, can actually contribute, based on some back-of-the-envelope projections of the guys that the team already has.
That roster adds up to something like +29 wins above replacement, and remember, a replacement level team would be expected to win ~50 games over a full season. So, as hard as it may be to believe based on cliches about their player types, that team would project out to something like a 79-83 club, despite the fact that its filled with “back end starters”, “unproven youngsters”, and a bunch of “glove-first” position players.
You can quibble with some of the projections if you want, but not enough to get below ~75 wins. That’s really the floor of what you’d be looking at for a projection for the 2010 Mariners, as they stand right now, if you were fairly pessimistic about the talent currently in the organization.
And remember, we’ve already noted that the M’s should have about $15 to $20 million to spend on new player acquisitions this winter. The going rate for wins in free agency is between $4-$5 million per win, so even if Jack wasn’t a GM good at finding undervalued assets for pennies on the dollar, the room in the budget should be good for another 3-5 wins.
For instance, the M’s have the cash to bring back Beltre and Branyan, which would make Hannahan a quality reserve and put Nelson back in Tacoma. That’s probably a +4 win upgrade, just by bringing back those two. That 79 win team would then be an 83 win team, and that’s if those were the only moves the M’s made all winter. What if the M’s were able to squeeze a guy like Jim Thome or Carlos Delgado in along with Beltre/Branyan? Now, you’re looking at something more like an 85 win team.
As long as the M’s don’t take the $20 million or so they’ll have available this winter and light it on fire, the expectation for 2010 should be that the Mariners will be a better than .500 club. If you think the organization is capable of improving the roster by making moves that help the team without really increasing the payroll as well (like they did with Aardsma/Gutierrez/Branyan last winter), then you’re probably looking at a potential 87 or 88 win team.
In other words, the 2010 Mariners have a very real chance of being a contending club. It isn’t a finished product, but the idea that the team can’t win because Silva and Johjima are on the books for $20 million next year is a fallacy. Yes, Bill Bavasi left the organization in bad shape… but Zduriencik and crew have done astonishingly good work in picking up the pieces and putting the M’s back on the path to winning baseball.
They’re further down that path than folks like Thiel realize. The 2009 Mariners are okay – the 2010 Mariners should be even better.
What a nice synopsis of the current state of the franchise. I’ve been genuinely encouraged all season long, and this analysis puts some teeth into many of my hunches.
But that WS-winning Phillies rotation had Jaimie Moyer, who was a “proven commodity,†“innings eater,†and “solid performer†all rolled into one!
But I suppose Thiel sort of has a point (sort of) in as much as the ‘09 M’s are projecting out to 83 wins, more or less, so the ‘10 version as constituted right now could be worse than that. Of course, that’s not a valid comparison unless ownership decides to scale back the payroll considerably.
I certainly thought a .500 team this year was a long-shot, best-case scenario, and it’s not like the team lacks obvious areas to still upgrade, so I have a lot of confidence that Zduriencik and co can improve things further.
Dave,
What do you think it will cost to get Beltre back given the injury history and the offensive production decline from last contract?
Is it safe to say that his new cost per year could go down with teams overvaluing hitting and undervaluing defense?
Or should we just assume that Hanahan and Tui are third base for the future, that is until Truenfel (hope I spelled that right) or Liddi take over on a full time basis?
Probably a long shot, but I’ve been thinking of writing Bedard (as nicely as possible) asking him to do something radical and offer to take a below-market contract as a way to counterbalance the massive frustration (which wasn’t his fault) of the injuries combined with all we gave up for him.
I wonder if Silva would have any chance of listening to fans encouraging him to offer a buy-out so he could get out and start over. And if so, does anyone have a sense of how well he speaks English, or if it would be better for someone who speaks Spanish (which isn’t me) to write him. Odd are long, but these are human beings, who even at rock bottom are making more money than they’ll ever know what to do with. So while I’m not holding my breath, maybe appealing to generosity could help.
If we could only bring back one of Beltre or Bedard (and they would cost roughly a similar yearly amount), which one would you advocate bringing back?
Also, whatever happened to Ryan Feierabend? I know he was injured, but does he have a chance of making the 2010 roster?
Feierabend wouldn’t project to anything better than French, so whether you swap those names out really wouldn’t matter much to the analysis.
Thanks for the write-up, Dave.
I am not worried that next year’s team will crater. It might be a lot like this year’s version, but, the progress toward real improvement is still discernable.
The great thing about Zduriencik is that he will talk to the sports radio guys and writers who cling to the buzzwords cited in the post and speak to them as if he respects their thoughts, but, in practice, he obviously has little use for using the philosphy behind those buzz words as he constructs the Mariners.
He won’t tell the Art Thiels or Mitch Levys “Boy, is your thinking out of date and misguided,” but, by what he does, he thinks it is.
Can someone please provide some sort of mathematical equasian to figure out WAR? I mean it can’t be as advanced a furmula as the QB rating for the NFL. Can it? Also please explain it to me. I really have no idea what the hell it means. Call me a stat noob if you like.
I doubt the player’s union would allow Silva to change his contract in the way you describe. And why should he? Why should he bail out a bunch of guys far richer than him because they made a mistake in signing him? They can buy him out for $30M (or whatever the totally value of his contract is) and he can go pitch elsewhere. Otherwise he can just sit around and collect checks. The only way I see him motivated to do something is if he he really, really wants to pitch and he gets frustrated with sitting on the DL with bogus injuries or bumping around in the minors on “rehab” assignments (which may be The Plan as far as the front office is concerned based on the evidence so far). And while that might motivate to do something, that something might be to file a grievance.
I just don’t see a resolution to the Silva situation barring him rediscovering how to pitch; until his contract expires, he may just be this Mariners’ albatross neck-tie.
– lanternmanc
I don’t see why in the world you would consider giving Bedard another dime. Do you even offer him arbitration at this point? He just seems like a guy that’s going to spend at least half the year on the DL his whole career.
Link to calculating Wins above replacement (WAR)
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/how_to_calculate_war/
Ken
For additional explanation, visit the Fangraphs glossary. Scroll to the bottom, where you’ll find links to Dave’s two series explaining win values for both hitting and pitching.
Dave wrote a series of articles for fangraphs all about WAR:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
He also did the same for pitcher win values, but I’m too lazy to add all the links for those too. If you want just go to fangraphs.com, and search the blog for “Win Values Explained” and you will get all the articles.
Or, if you don’t want to do that much reading, just look at the examples in the team above. The M’s signed Brad Nelson to a minor league contract after he was released by the Brewers – he’s basically the definition of freely available talent. They gave up absolutely nothing to get him, and he’d make the league minimum if the team put him on the major league roster. Doesn’t get any more free than that.
So, you compare the value of all potential 1B/DH types by seeing what kind of performance boost you’d get from that player compared to Brad Nelson. If you think Nelson’s a .270/.330/.430 guy, then that’s your baseline for comparison. He’s a your replacement level, zero value guy.
So you pay for value above and beyond Brad Nelson’s production at 1B/DH.
Is $20M enough to sign Beltre / Branyan + Thome or Delgado? If Jack Z can pull that off, that’d be pretty awesome. Maybe if we can exersize Jack Wilson’s option and sign him to a lower $ amount than his 8.4M salary next year, then we have a chance to get those 3 guys.
I think Bedard’s long term future is in the pen. His arm can’t handle the workload of starting. He has too many tough high pitch count innings to stay healthy as a starter.
As far as signing him, I doubt the M’s will as he’s only worth (4-5M IMO) half what the market will pay and I can’t see the M’s paying 8-9 million. He’s a big part of the Bavasi era and a reminder of losing Adam Jones so the marketing department would love him gone too.
You’re not going to see a huge market for guys like Thome or Delgado. They’ll get the Giambi-treatment – something like 1 year, $4 million.
Whether the M’s can afford that along with re-signing Beltre or Branyan is questionable. It depends on how the Johjima situation shakes out, plus what the eventual budget ends up at.
So, you’re assuming nothing will be done regarding signing Felix longer-term until winter of 2010?
Soulofacitizen:
The Mariners are not a charity. If Bedard and Silva are feeling all guilty, and feel a need to be generous there are lots of real charities out there that do real good, rather than just turn the money around and give it to other overpaid baseball players.
That was my question, Silva was on the list for next year, isn’t Kenji basically in the same situation of having a guaranteed contract for next season?
Are you assuming that the M’s are going to find a way to get rid of him that will be salary neutral?
So, you’re assuming nothing will be done regarding signing Felix longer-term until winter of 2010?
Read the post from last week. I already gave Felix ~$10 million in 2010 salary, which is about what he’ll get even if they sign him long term. The $15-$20 million they’ll have available is after they pay the arbitration eligible guys.
Are you assuming that the M’s are going to find a way to get rid of him that will be salary neutral?
Basically, yes. My guess is he goes back to Japan, but his salary will remain on the books.
That’s probably true… I actually write books on citizen involvement (Soul of a Citizen has the widest audience), and the millions they make would do more good in lots of other ways.
Still, the fan in me sets that aside. Probably more logic for Bedard to offer a discounted rate and stay to help a potentially winning team than for Silva to do it for a team he’d definitionally not be part of.
You’re pretty optimistic about Saunders, aren’t you, Dave? I mean, I’d love it if he came in and performed at league-average or thereabouts. Is that a realistic expectation?
I’d also note that you’re figuring roughly equal performance from Langerhans on a per-plate appearance basis. That means that (a) the Mariners have a backup plan for the outfield, and (b) the Morse-Langerhans trade was a steal for the M’s.
Oh, and why is Shelton considered, here? He’s not on the M’s roster anymore. (Or is that a “Shelton-like” player.)
Do the reading. It’ll seriously advance your knowledge of baseball, and relative valuation of players.
Speaking of relative valuation, I would not be surprised to see the M’s flip Aardsma this offseason for something shiny. Aardsma is now a “proven closer”, and thus an overvalued commodity in the market. Some team will be willing to pay through the nose for him. Zduriencik has already shown a willingness to deal overvalued commodities. If he pulls another Putz trade with Aardsma we’ll love him forever.
I just LOVE that chart of projected WAR for each player, thats the best chart I have seen for predicting the Mariners future, pretty much ever.
Its also good for seeing where we can get the most bang for our buck in an upgrade, such as at DH.
Is Aardsma really only 1 WAR? He is over 3 in WPA at fangraphs. I guess we have to expect him to not be as lucky in the future, but he is around 10.5 K per 9 innings, which is very impressive.
For the young players on the chart, what is there WAR likely to be for 2011 and 2012? I would imagine we will see improvement from guys like Carp, Moore, French, etc.
Is there a mechanism to post a player back to Japan?
I’d assume the M’s could move Johjima to an MLB team if they (the M’s) took on the rest of his contract minus league minimum while there’d likely be significantly more interest from J-league teams to bring him back.
Basically, seems like he’d be a lot more valuable to a Japanese team than a US team, if so is there a way for the M’s to recover more of his contract value if he goes to Japan?
WPA is heavily context-dependent. WAR is context independent. That accounts for a big difference there.
That said, Aardsma’s put up a 1.7 WAR this year, which is impressive for any reliever.
I’d think that Langerhans would get more AB’s, but that won’t matter in the analysis since you point out that Saunders and Langerhans are projected to be about equal.
As to b, yes!
I may be “mis-remembering” here, but didn’t Sasaki’s salary come of the books when he left the M’s to go back to Japan?
This question is somewhat related because it concerns Gutierrez’s projection for next year. I notice (from Fangraphs) he’s been at 3.5 WAR this year. Is that projected over a full season, as in WAR/150 or is it so far this year? I’m wondering if this year’s performance could be a sustainable improvement for him and that he might be a 4 win player next year.
This is a terrific analysis. I assume we’re leaving Endy Chavez out of the picture because of his injury/rehab prospects.
Going just on memory, I think you are correct. But, if I recall correctly, didn’t Sasaki retire from the majors?
Ok, after reading the equasian and all that goes into WAR. I am left wondering, did Einstein come up with this stat as a side project to figuring out his “Theory of Reletivety?”
It’s still very weird to me, reading how happy you guys are with the M’s after so many seasons of “Bavasi must go!”
Nice. But weird. Go M’s!
No, Einstein was not involved.
Special relativity isn’t actually all that difficult in concept. It’s the interesting side cases that really start to bend your brain.
WAR isn’t all that complicated, either. It’s just a notion that certain players are at some “replacement level”, and that a player’s worth is dependent on his pitching, offensive, and defensive contributions beyond that replacement level. So, for every point of WAR you’re above the baseline, you add one win to your team.
Lorentz tensors are significantly more challenging than basic algebra though
Okay, don’t get into tensors with me. That’s a concept I’ve never been able to bend my brain around. (To be fair, I haven’t read heavily on them.) My math stopped at differential equations and linear algebra.
And that’s the thing. WAR isn’t really all that much more complicated than basic algebra. In fact, it’s just applied algebra. If you can do high school math, you should be able to walk your way through Wins Above Replacement.
The guy who created the WAR structure, by the way, is now employed by the Mariners.
We’re in good hands.
So what are the chances that, given the ~20-win improvement over last year, the ownership loosens the purse strings a bit and Zduriencik has more than that $20 million to play with this offseason?
Speculation, I know.
The trick to baseball stat analysis is not the mathematics, which is generally trivial. It’s figuring out what the stat is doing in physical terms and why.
In essence, sabremetrics uses maths like physics does. Except without any of the difficult stuff.
Oh, ok. I didn’t get that from the original post – original post just lumped Felix in with the $15-20 million for arbitration-eligible guys.
I didn’t realize that implied that you believe Felix would get $10 million per year in a long-term deal too, not just from 2010 arbitration.
Joser,
Basic point well taken, but I think you would find Bavasi, Armstrong, Lincoln and Z all lining up to take Silva’s compensation.
Ok, a bit of a side question here. Is there a simular all around stat for Football too? Because I want to try and see how many wins my Packers can be expected to win, and if they can duplicate their 13-3 season of two years ago.
Nevertheless, am I the only one that likes Johjima? After one bad season he was wrote off. He has perfromed well this year for the most part when he has played. 100,000,000,000x better then Johnson imo. If not for his offense then his defense. He has lead all of baseball in % of runners thrown out over the last couple of seasons with a higher then 50% clip. We should see about trading Rob Johnson and his CERA for some much needed middle relief help. We could also use some speed off the bench. Can’t wait till Tyson Gillies get’s to the majors. Any chance he could be up this September? If not for his bat, then for his speed?
Dave,
Are we going to see Halman, Wilson, Carrera, and/or Nick Hill get a cup of coffee this season?
Carrera has been impressive…when he hasn’t been on the DL.
Actually, I bet I can do WAR simplified in the space of one comment post:
(1) Replacement level talent is what happens when you put together a team of freely-available league-minimum guys. That’s around 50 games, with a payroll of $10M.
(2) Over the course of a season, every ten runs above or below average is worth one win.
(3) You can calculate component wins for a whole host of inputs, including offense and defense for position players, and components of pitching for starters and relievers.
(4) Put (2) together with (3), and baseline it as per (1), and you get WAR. And if you correlate WAR with team expenditures, you’ll find that most baseball teams pay about that price for wins on the free agent market.
Aside: Why baseline at replacement level? Because that’s what you’ll end up with out in the field if one of your players gets hurt.
and I guess Art missed the memo that Jack feels that Snell is an Innings Eater(R).
Hey, what do you guys think of Geoff Baker’s [ot].
I am curious about what they do with the catcher position. Obviously Jo has fallen out of favor with his pitching staff(which is basically the worst thing for a catcher), and I’m not sure how confident I am in Johnson yet.
Baseball offers a repeatable, neutral, mano y mano environment. Hitters are confined to a batter’s box and pitchers are confined to the rubber. There are external factors to consider, such as ballparks, league competition and teammates, but incorporating them back into a neutral projection is easy. Also, there is no running clock and the singular goal of scoring runs and preventing runs stays constant throughout each game, from start to finish.
Football is the opposite of baseball. There is nothing repeatable or neutral about it. It’s orchestrated chaos, and both the orchestration and the chaos are subject to major change at any moment. The performance of each player is tied directly to the performance of the other 21 players on the field, all of whom are dealing with constant change on an individual basis in an infinite number of ways in very short periods of time. And while scoring points and preventing points is the goal, how a team goes about doing those two things (run/pass, short/long, inside/outside, speed/power, zone/man, blitz/contain, etc.) can change at any given moment based on the score, individual matchups, down/yards-to-go, game plan adjustments, injuries, the weather, whatever.
I find this post both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. On the one hand, yes, it’s a pretty good bet that next year’s team will be better than this year’s, but on the other it looks like the 2010 M’s will still only have an outside shot at the playoffs at best.
Dave’s projections show an 83 win team at a “competent GM” baseline, with maybe 88 if Zduriencik turns in a SuperGM offseason. I still think you’d better have 92+ projected wins to be a real playoff contender, so I’m resigned to another season of “hope we play above our heads” even if our new GM pulls a couple more Gutierrezes out of his hat.
But, looking at the glass half-full, if they do play above their heads, they could make the playoffs this time, instead of just getting everyone ecited for a couple of months. It’s progress, just not as fast as I’d like, though I’m probably being a tad unrealistic considering the shape the team was in at the end of last year.
And on the gripping hand, next years team should have more upside potential than any we’ve had recently. Morrow and Snell could each be a win (or two!) better than projected without causing a rip in Time-Space, and Tui, Saunders, Carp and French all have more upside than downside.
Better than Bedard who is a native francophone who didn’t start learning English until his late teens. There’s a reason (or two) why he’s not a big fan of interviews.
So what he’s saying, essentially, is no. With everything that goes on in football the sample sizes of each event would be almost infinitessimal and therefore subject to too much “noise” to be accurate.
This is certainly true, but there has been some progress made in developing useful “advanced” stats for football. To avoid going too far off topic in this thread, I’ll just link you to Football Outsiders and let you do your own reading on things like DVOA, DYAR, etc.
Yes, after a few of the easy improvements at DH and 1B, it got tougher. I’m amazed at the quality of the team this year considering the steaming pile that was the 2008 roster.
What needs to happen now is for the farm system to produce a couple of star players.
NICE Niven reference.
Are you going to be talking about this stuff at the feed next Saturday, Dave et al? I would be very interesting to hear their take on these type of things that you bring up here and at Fangaphs.
This is the best news I’ve heard in, well, ever. I didn’t think I could get more impressed with Z and the new regime… I just did.
Jimmie
While there aren’t a ton of 3B options to upgrade over Hannahan, the M’s do have Tuiasosopo in AA ready to push Hannahan, even if they don’t re-sign Beltre or go after another vet like Crede or Glaus (aka the “broke back twins”), they at least have more than just Hannahan as an internal option.
In addition to the free agent crop, I think there are some potentially interesting trade options for a stop-gap at 3B. The Padres are cutting costs and Kevin Kouzmanoff is arbitration eligible. He’s probably not in line for a huge pay day, as his bat has slid 3 years in a row and his defense is generally maligned in the scouting community (despite being around league average for the past 3 years according to UZR). He’d easily be worth the money he gets through arbitration and I’d certainly be willing to roll the dice on his bat rebounding if he can be had for cheap.
The Rays will probably be looking to shed some salary too and I wonder what it would cost to get Iwamura from them. They have an in-house upgrade and he’d be a nice upgrade over Hannahan. Other guys they might move include Crawford, Pena, and Kazmir. I’m not too interested in Kazmir, but Crawford would be a great coup for 2010 and the 2011 draft picks would be useful. I imagine his price would be pretty high though. Carlos Pena would be a lot cheaper to acquire. His BABIP is down this year and I be he’d be at least a 3 WAR player in 2010.
My real, true, (pretty please) hope is that the M’s can somehow upgrade the team by swapping Johjima’s contract with another team. If Varitek doesn’t come back, maybe the Red Sox would part with Lowell and shift Youk to 3rd. The M’s would have to pray for a rebound on defense, but Lowell could still be a very good player if the defense returns (presumably it will if he is healthier). JD Drew might be another option, though I don’t know how he’d feel about moving to LF (or getting traded).
On a different note, is it me, or are Langerhans and Hannahan the same player? Good defense, lefty bat, same age within about a month of each other. One has a career .233/.334/.380 batting line, one has a career .226/.314/.352 batting line. I’d tell you which was which, but does it matter?
Regarding football, the best thing I have found from a statistical analysis perspective is the DVOA (Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average), at http://www.footballoutsiders.com
Even then, its still in its infancy and isnt anywhere near as advanced as baseball. It is much harder to separate individual contributions in football than it is in baseball, so at this point they are mostly looking at things on a team basis.
Foodball statistical analysis isnt nearly as advanced as it is in baseball.
Ummmm??? His stay in Seattle has been frustrating but his injuries have not always been due to the fact he can handle starting every season previous to this. As a strikeout pitcher 100 pitches can give you 4-5 innings with a lot of strikeouts or sometimes 7+ innings with a lot o strikeouts. If he doesn’t have control of his pitches he’s not gonna go far into the game as has been the case lately. He’s a frontline starter but he isn’t exactly a workhorse or innings eater either.
Did Tangotiger invent WAR, or is there another awesome person that they hired that I should know about?
that’s what I’d like to know as well. Seems like we cut payroll this year (is the number 19mill?) and only dropped about 1000 in average attendance from last year, so I’m thinking the M’s should be back in the black.
What is Johjima worth on the market? Fangraphs has .3 WAR… wouldn’t SOME team want him even if they had to pay SOME of the salary?
Dave –
You’d mentioned before that MLB teams en masse fared better through the crisis than many had predicted. Do you know anything about how the Mariners fared in particular, and whether there is any chance they are willing to raise payroll next year? I know they play their cards close, I jsut wonder if there are any rumors about their planned payroll budget after the ~20% cut last year.
Reason I ask is Jack has shown that he can do a lot with very little, and I don’t doubt that the team can be decent even as it stands. However, it seems unfair for a team flush with money to bring in a new guy and give him so little room to maneuver. If I were Zduriencik I’d be very frustrated at this point unless the payroll budget had been made clear at the time of hiring.
Well, if the Seahawks made a nice run and the city got all caught up for sports again, I could see them expanding the payroll a bit. The garlic fries certainly aren’t getting any cheaper.
I like the idea of Iwamura. I bet our ownership has eyes for him too. Wonder what he statistically pans out to be WAR wise?
Too, you’d think you got a lot of material to work with in the marketing department—some interesting faces and an above expected outcome this year. Any competent marketer could produce some excitement with that…
Has Johjima actually improved his throwing accuracy or release time in throwing out runners this year, or is it all small sample? I read the post about Rob Johnson and why it’s best to give him the playing time, but Johjima completely shutting down opposing base stealing is one of the pleasant surprises of watching this team.
Yeah, I think that’s hurting the team even worse than the lingering Johjima/Silva contracts. Looking at the list above, of the 15 or so guys allocated the most playing time, we have exactly one above average player to come out of our farm system. Add to that a handful of guys at or just below league-average, and it’s a pretty pathetic performance, a legacy of both Gillick and Bavasi.
Speaking of our one above average farm product, does anyone think that the delay of real contention to 2011 changes how we approach the question of extending Felix?
Iwamura is 30, right handed, only average defensively, and completely tore up his leg this year…I’ll pass.
Iwamura is 30, right handed . . .
He’s a left-handed hitter.
I don’t really understand the Comparison that Art Theil was attempting. He believes that we will take a step back next year because he is comparing this years team at the beginning of the year to the Current team after the trading deadline? Wouldn’t it be more relevant to Compare Last years remaining players to this years remaining players? Something like this:
C- Johjima/Burke – Johjima/ Johnson
1B- Bryan LaHair – Mike Carp
2B- Jose Lopez – Jose Lopez
SS- Yuniesky Betancourt – Jack Wilson
3B- Adrian Beltre – Matt Tuiasosopo
RF- Ichiro Suzuki – Ichiro Suzuki
CF- Wladimir Balentien – Franklin Gutierrez
LF- Prentice Redman – Michael Saunders
DH- Jeff Clement – Brad Nelson
SP- Felix Hernandez – Felix Hernandez
SP- Erik Bedard – Ian Snell
SP- Jarrod Washburn – Ryan Rowland- Smith
SP- Carlos Silva – Lucas French
SP- Ryan Rowland-Smith – Brandon Morrow
So the differences include:
Beltre, Washburn, Bedard, Silva, Clement, Balentien, Lahair, Redman, Betancourt & $8mil
or
Gutierrez, Wilson, Snell, French, Morrow, Carp, Saunders, Tuiasosopo, Nelson & around $20mil
It looks to me like a team with better stop gaps should we need them, more money to spend, and better talent at the core positions. I think we are headed in the right direction.
An idea I have been kicking around is, if Beltre doesn’t come back, moving Jose Lopez to third and signing Felipe Lopez to a short-term contract (2y/$8m) to play second. Felipe is a better defender than Jose at 2B, while having Jose at 3B means a better bat at the hot corner than Hannahan. Meanwhile, there should still be $6-8 million that would not be there if we re-sign Beltre to get someone like Delgado to DH and bring back Branyan. Ichiro/ F. Lopez/ Delgado/ Gutierrez/ Branyan/ J. Lopez/ Saunders/ Wilson/ Johnson is a lineup with handed balance, some pop, and should play decent enough defense.
Obviously, I wouldn’t be in favor of an Iwamura acquisition unless the M’s felt his leg was healthy enough for him to perform at the 2.5 WAR level he established in 2007 and 2008. Not sure whether _David_’s “tore up his leg” comment was a reminder or because you think I am clueless (I knew about his knee).
A healthy Iwamura is clearly an upgrade over Hannahan, and his higher salary is roughly equal to the expected increase in WAR. The Rays do not need him and will probably be looking to move at least 1 or 2 of their veteran contracts. That was my point.
If healthy, he would upgrade the M’s. Because the Rays have cheaper internal options (Aybar and Zobrist) and because everyone knows they want to move some salary, the Rays don’t have a ton of leverage.
I want Ackley now! (Or late 2011 would be acceptable as well)
Isn’t hockey the same thing? I know Mr. Tango has done some work for a number of hockey teams. I’d be really interested to know what he’s come up with, but couldn’t find anything when I searched.
Why is 10 the magic number? Is there some analysis to back this up or was it basically picked out of a hat? Not looking for anything in-depth, just curious.
[off-topic]
stevie_j13 – I had similar thoughts after Beltre went on the DL and the M’s started running out Woodward. While I think it is a good idea conceptually, there are 2 problems to which I do not know the answer:
(1) Can Lopez play good enough defense at 3rd to justify moving him? If he is even worse at 3rd, then no sense moving him unless the upgrade from Hannahan really justifies it. Looking at Fangraphs, one of the areas he gains (a small amount) of value is turning double plays, which he would largely lose moving from 2nd to 3rd.
(2) Is (Felipe) Lopez really the guy we want to “upgrade” the M’s? Sure, he’s been worth 2.2 WAR so far this year, but he’s been highly inconsistent on offense and defense, with 4.6, 1.6, 0.4, 0.8, and 2.2 WAR over the last 5 years. And does his inconsistency really justify a 2-year contract?
If (Jose) Lopez really can handle 3rd defensively, I like the flexibility it gives the front office to pursue and upgrade over Hannahan. And there are other guys that the M’s could sign for 2B instead of Lopez that could provide similar value. Adam Kennedy (not much of an upgrade over Hannahan), Placido Polanco (unlucky BABIP masks the fact that he is the exact same hitter as ever, and his defense remains very good), Orlando Hudson (though his defense is clearly below average at this point).
Depending on salaries, Placido Polanco is actually a guy that interests me a lot for 2010 if the M’s either move Lopez to 3rd or trade him. His BABIP might really deflate his value and on a 1-year deal, he could put up 3 WAR (WAR from 2002-2009: 3.1, 4.6, 2.6, 5.2, 1.2, 5.3, 3.1, 1.7*). If you want to offer any of the free agent 2nd baseman a 2-year contract for $4-5 million per year, this is the guy I’d target. Maybe he commands more, but he’s turning 34 and hitting .263/.317/.392 (with a .270 BABIP), so I think he’ll be a bargain. UZR/150 of 15.4, 7.7, 12.0, 3.6, and 7.7 since 2005!
Polanco is another interesting candidate, and if you are right that his BABIP would artificially deflate his value, then I would be for signing him. However, signing a 34 year-old to two year deal scares me more than signing a 30 year-old to a two-year deal, especially since Lopez has averaged 150 games from 2005-08, while Polanco has only two 140+ seasons since 2003.
Polanco’s BABIP also might not be so artificial. His O-Swing% has been steadily increasing the last four years, while his O-Contact% has dropped almost 5% from 2007. Lopez’s stats are frankly a little tougher to decipher. Polanco is a better defensive 2B, but I think I would prefer the younger, more durable Lopez.
But that’s not who I was talking about. Armstrong, Lincoln and Z are (and Bavasi was) employees of the same rich guys who employ Silva. Silva may be the more highly compensated than the middle managers above him, but ultimately it is the Baseball Club of Seattle who is signing those checks, and when Silva sits on his wide ass and collects them it is their pockets he is picking, not Zduriencik’s or Lincoln’s or even Bavasi’s (though in a perfect world….)
Endy is a free agent next year. He’s a better fielder than Saunders/Langerhans, but he was also geting paid $2M vs $400K. He might be willing to take a cheap deal to re-establish himself after the injury, but in at the level of detail Dave is doing this that doesn’t really make much difference (swap the names and tack on another $1M)
Well, you could figure that this level of explanation was provided in the links that hae already been listed and look there. It’s derived from the Pythagorean formula, which itself is based on runs scored and allowed, and while it teams regularly over and under perform it to some degree, it has been shown empirically to be have a lot of predictive value. (In fact it’s a little more complicated, because it’s not exactly 10 and there are adjustments for the run environment, which means it varies a little from one year/league to the next, but “10″ is close enough for most purposes and is obviously convenient).
Baseball attendance overall is down over 5% so far, or more than 2.6m paying customers. Mariners are a little better, down about 3.6%. But in any case that doesn’t seem to suggest an increase in payroll.
More to the point: if we decided NOT to spend money on people currently on our roster, who’s more attractive and available given our needs? I can’t see a better bet than Beltre.
Dave- Great piece of work here. Love it! Really helping me to feel good about the future – a feeling I haven’t had as a M’s fan in a while. The Mariners PR department need to have u on staff so they can sell a few more tickets and bring a better brand of fan to the ballpark. Keep up the good work.
So the thing that caught my eye in the comments was the Iwamura thing. The Red Sox don’t need a catcher after Martinez(although he isn’t too durable); but the Rays have been shopping for one. Any likelyhood at all they were take a waiver on Joh? I bet Aki is a lot more valueable, but coming off injury maybe hurts that. Acquiring Johjima would prevent the cutting cost, and probably isn’t the answer the Rays want, but if this has any real chance of happening I think GMZ has to go for it.
I’m worried about Felix, I’m really starting to think with all these new revelations that we won’t keep him.
We couldn’t keep Junior, A-Rod and Randy while they were in their primes.
So it almost makes you wonder why it would be any different with Felix?
Btw, the minute Felix says he wants out, that’s the minute you fire Chuck Armstrong.
Another note: 3 most obvious free agent signings to add to that 2010 list. . .
1. Nick Johnson
2. George Sherrill
3. Omar Vizquel (as a backup)
Interesting piece. So what you’re saying is that the 2010 M’s will be a little more mediocre. Boy I can’t wait for next season.
You are getting awfully close to troll status.
Nope.
Yup.
Why should it be? Sooner or later he’s going somewhere with deeper pockets. If any of Baker’s rumors are close to accurate, and Zduriencik could get a package like that this offseason, I’d be ok with it. I love Felix, and I love that every 5 days there’s a reason to watch even when nothing else is going right, but I also recognize that sometimes you have to say good-bye to the things you love to make progress. Sometimes.
I take it you’re kidding.
Willful ignorance is one thing. Deliberately misconstruing things just so you can leave a little turd on the front step is something else.
joser,
So if we trade Felix and keep on doing business in the absolutely cheapest way possible, when are we going to get to the playoffs and win a World Series? When are we going to catch up to the Angels? Yes, I know about the Florida Marlins but we are in the AL and we are trying to build a team that will make the playoffs every year and the only way the Angels will get to the playoffs will be via the Wild Card. I am fine with getting cheap players with great upside but to catch up to and pass the Angels we have to make some bold moves and invest some money in some good players. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want the Ms to overpay for any players but they need to pay players like Fleix what they are worth to stay here long-term. The Ms are not poor. They can pay Felix as much as he needs to get paid. It is up to Zduriencik to convince Armstrong, Lincoln, and the owner in Japan to spend some money. He has his work cut out for him but it is not an impossible mission.
TomTuttle,
I only want Nick Johnson from your list to share 1B/DH with Branyan next year. We don’t need Sherrill and Vizquel.
My guess is that the Mariners will win less games next year, but their run differential will be better. Individuals like Thiel will then claim “I told you so” and we’ll have to read arguments about how the lack of veterans makes the Mariners vulnerable in close games.