When A Good Deal Stops Being One
For years, we’ve been banging the drum of marginal value as tenet of roster construction, using metrics like Wins Above Replacement to show the impact a player will actually have on the team and the associated cost that the team should be willing to pay for that performance. This is a building block of good roster management. If you don’t understand marginal value or have an incorrect idea about the baseline, you end up doing things like giving Carlos Silva $48 million dollars. During Bavasi’s tenure as GM, the organization continually paid premium prices for things they could have gotten for free. Not only were the talent evaluation methods off, but so too were the valuation techniques that are critical to building an optimal roster within a given budget constraint.
Watching the M’s operate under Zduriencik last winter, it was clear that the new management team understood the relationship between marginal value and cost. They didn’t just target players with undervalued skillsets, but also made a point of going after players who had less than three years of service time in the major leagues, which allowed the team to retain their services for multiple years at highly discounted salaries. The M’s value shopped better than any team in baseball last year, stockpiling players who were both of decent quality and basically free in terms of salary.
Given the success they had picking off young, interesting, low cost players last year, there’s a real expectation that the team will go back to the well this year and make similar types of moves to fill out the roster. That’s why you see fans bringing up names like Mike Fontenot, Kelly Johnson, Blake DeWitt, and Willy Aybar as potential acquisitions for the Mariners this off-season. They fit the profile of the type of player the M’s went after last year, and offer some upside beyond their present value.
The M’s may very well acquire one of those players, but I think we need to expect the M’s to have a different kind of off-season this year. In reality, the team was so good at dumpster diving over the last 12 months that they’ve put themselves in a position where the kinds of value buys they made last year aren’t worth doing this year.
Let’s use third base as an example. With Adrian Beltre expected to leave, the M’s could go look for a young third baseman who hasn’t established himself yet and hope to land another Franklin Gutierrez. However, due to some bargain shopping during the season, they already have Jack Hannahan and Bill Hall on the roster, with Matt Tuiasosopo in the picture as well. Hannahan and Hall can both pick it defensively at third and a platoon would produce enough offense to make the trio worth something like +1 to +1.5 wins at the position. Combined, the M’s will pay about $2.5 million for those three players next year (dependent on Hannahan’s arbitration award, which shouldn’t be particularly high). So, given the current players already on the roster, the M’s can get wins at about $1.75 million apiece at third base, and they can get one of their young players some at-bats in the process.
With that as the default option, there’s little to no incentive for the M’s to surrender talent or money for a third baseman who doesn’t project to be significantly above average, or at least have a real chance to be. While a guy like Blake DeWitt might fit the profile of a young, low cost player who hasn’t had a chance to prove himself in the majors yet, he doesn’t offer much that the team doesn’t already have, so the M’s won’t have much in the way of incentives to acquire a player of that sort.
This holds up pretty much across the board at any position you think the team may want to upgrade at. Why bring in a decent left fielder when you’ve got 90 percent of average for next to nothing in Ryan Langerhans and Michael Saunders? Why bring in an aging 1B/DH for a few million dollars when Mike Carp could put up similar numbers for the league minimum? Why pay the going rate for a starting pitcher only to take away an opportunity from Doug Fister or Jason Vargas?
In isolation, there is a case for inertia at practically every position on the roster. The team’s best dollar per win investment is already here in most cases. A strict adherence to marginal win/marginal cost analysis would suggest that the M’s do little to nothing this winter, as the costs of bringing new talent into the organization are almost certainly going to outweigh the marginal benefit of upgrading from the decent players already in place.
However, the end result of that kind of off-season would be a $70 million payroll and a 75 win team. That’s not what anyone wants. In reality, the question the team must ask isn’t “how do I maximize the return on this dollar?”, but rather “how do I get as many wins as I can for $95 million?”. The latter question will return a different answer than the former for several positions, and will require the team to make different kinds of moves than they made a year ago.
This was one of the points I was attempting to drive home in my off-season plan post. You may have noticed that there wasn’t much in the way of dumpster diving there. I didn’t fill out the roster with Fontenots and Aybars, both of whom really do deserve a shot somewhere and are good buy low opportunities for teams in the market for a young infielder, because the team has some cash to spend and limited positions to upgrade. Value shopping for a designated hitter or a starting pitcher is just going to lead to acquiring more players like Mike Carp and Jason Vargas. That’s not a problem in and of itself, but we already have those guys, and while you can acquire depth, you still only get 25 roster spots.
Last year, everything Jack did was an upside play – if the guy they acquired didn’t perform well, it was okay, because the cost was so low that it didn’t matter. To put together a roster that has a chance to win in 2010, however, the M’s have to make some moves with real downside, because that risk is coupled with greater reward.
Whether that’s giving significant dollars to an injury prone player or two (i.e. Rich Harden, Ben Sheets, or Nick Johnson) or trading a young player who hasn’t lived up to his potential yet (Morrow, Lopez, Lowe), the M’s best path to acquiring the kind of impact talent they need is by assuming some real risk. It’s not the strategy they pursued last winter, but value shopping only takes you so far. At some point, you reach a point where there simply isn’t enough upside in dumpster diving, and a collection of good individual deals adds up to less than the sum of its parts.
So, yes, expect the Mariners to try to find some undervalued players this winter, but they may not look much like the undervalued players of last winter. Instead, the M’s will be trying to find a used BMW for a Honda price, when last year they were buying up Hyundais for the price of a razor scooter.
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Brandon Wood wants to finally get to finish a cup of coffee!
He seems like a BMW attainable at a Honda price.
Or you stick a BMW engine in a Honda. Has there been any talk on working with Bill Hall this off season to find his stroke again or was that just a fluke year and what you see is what you get[?] Makes me nervous when Lopez is mentioned as trading material just because there hasn[']t been much offense on this team for several years and it would seem two people would be needed to upgrade – the Lopez replacement and an additional bat[!] Simply said can we give up anymore offense to improve defense without a negative return[?]
Dave what would it take to get a heavy hitting 1B like Adrian Gonzalez from SD? Is he worth it?
Gonzalez would be a nice addition, but way too costly. You can’t just trade for him, you would also have to sign him to a longer deal. He is signed for 2010 and 2011 – at 10.25 million total, but you would need to lock him up for 4 or 5 more years to justify what yo will have to give up to get him.
As GMZ has stated he wants a veteran catcher to back up the boys (or just replace them if they don’t pan out I presume) wouldn’t that be worth kicking some Hyundai tires? Having checked out the FA, non-tender and trade bait markets there doesn’t seem to be a BNW on the lot.
Doesn’t look like there’s any BMWs either. (The Sox will take Martinez back for 2010.)
On the Gonzalez situation, I guess there are other ways to acquire something close to his 1B production level without giving up tons of talent.
Nick Johnson? Even Carp comes somewhat close for practically nothing.
Wow, it’s like you’re describing the law of diminishing marginal utility.
Brandon Wood wants to finally get to finish a cup of coffee!
The Angels aren’t going to trade him to an AL West team. He’s also a bad fit for Safeco.
Has there been any talk on working with Bill Hall this off season to find his stroke again or was that just a fluke year and what you see is what you get?
He’s never hitting like he did in 2006 again. He’s a useful platoon player – that’s it.
Dave what would it take to get a heavy hitting 1B like Adrian Gonzalez from SD? Is he worth it?
A lot. No.
As GMZ has stated he wants a veteran catcher to back up the boys (or just replace them if they don’t pan out I presume) wouldn’t that be worth kicking some Hyundai tires?
We just talked about this the other day.
Nick Johnson? Even Carp comes somewhat close for practically nothing.
I’m sad that you could read the post and then make this comment.
Wow, it’s like you’re describing the law of diminishing marginal utility.
I figured putting an indifference curve up would be a bit much.
Dave,
I’m really impressed with your writing, and this post is just one example of many I could choose. You present a well-thought argument in an organized manner that is easy to read and thought-provoking.
Thanks for the great work!
Too bad the free agent market is so terrible this year. I know free agents are not usually good targets but in this economy there would be deals to be had if there were players worth paying. Yeah, Harden and Sheets are interesting, but it would nice if Nick Johnson weren’t the only option for OBP out there.
He’s not. This free agent class is way better than people are giving it credit for. The top tier isn’t good, but there’s a lot of interesting depth, and the non-tenders will just add to that.
This is a great winter to go shopping.
The problem is that impact players are always in high demand, and this year in particular–With its weak free agent class, means that teams will be paying exponentially more in both dollars and trade talent for any player who isn’t an inherantly risky proposition.
This puts the Mariners in a particularly delicate position.
They need to improve upon last year, but there aren’t any reliable elite ( >4WAR ) free agents, and that scarcity is going to be reflected by the talent demands teams place upon their potential trade candidates.
Add that to the fact that while the M’s are dealing with an abundance of low-risk supporting players, they have very little talent depth to deal from, and the prognosis is that they’re just going to be more lucky then good this offseason if they are to improve, and that’s never an enviable situation to be in as a front office.
This is a great winter to go shopping.
What kind of shopping, though? Not Jason-Bay-shopping, we know. But since you’re not going to do a free agent land mines post, maybe it would be good to have a free agent bargains post, to consider an overview of the options in one place. After non-tenders come out, if that works better. Clearly people are interested in who this year’s Russell Branyan will be.
The problem is that impact players are always in high demand, and this year in particular–With its weak free agent class, means that teams will be paying exponentially more in both dollars and trade talent for any player who isn’t an inherantly risky proposition.
I’m just not convinced this is true. Holliday and Lackey will get paid, and Bay will probably get a bit more than he’s worth. Figgins may as well. After that, I think we’re going to see significant discounting.
There are a lot of teams out there with little to no money to spend, and this is a very deep free agent class. Once the Yankees and Red Sox are done shopping, the other 28 clubs are going to be racing to the bottom.
Yeah, maybe. I’m not finding a good comprehensive list of free agents online at the moment. I do feel like when you start to talk about depth, you run into precisely the problem you’re addressing in the post. The M’s don’t need depth so much right now… they need concentrated value. We’ll see. It certainly is a good time to be a buyer in general.
Depth in the free agent class is not the same thing as roster depth.
So the strategy of wisdom is likely to target the second-tier guys from the start and steal a march on the teams who still think they have a shot at the premiere names, yes?
Results-based analysis makes it look like that strategy worked out pretty well for the Phillies with Ibanez last offseason, even if he falls off the table the rest of his contract.
Not sure Raul looked–last November–like he had the same kind of risk-reward distribution you’re talking about, though.
Not the same, but related.
If the M’s are looking to concentrate value at one or two positions, what they need is to add a top tier, or at least mid/top tier free agent (I’m thinking a 3-4 WAR player). The fact there are a lot of decent, but not great, free agents, does not address the M’s need to add a lot of value at one position. Guys like Orlando Hudson, while nice, are probably not going to put the M’s over the top. They need big upside like you would find in Johnson, Harden or Sheets. And I’m not seeing a lot of that. But again, I’m not sure I’m looking in the right places.
Great post, Dave. It’s going to be a little hard for the folks who only just got their heads around the marginal value approach to now switch gears to risk/reward shopping (even though that was implicit in the bang-for-buck approach earlier, when the risks are low they’re easy to overlook). And of course it will open this FO to more criticism because while not all risks work out, all observers have 20-20 hindsight that makes them certain that was a risk they would not have taken. But to move the team on to the next stage of recovery it’s what has to be done.
You know, during the frenzy for Prince Fielder a couple of weeks ago, that was the player I kept thinking about. If you’re going to pluck a 1B from an NL team, I’d rather have Gonzales. Sure, Fielder is a couple of years younger, but he has the kind of Mo Vaughn body type that makes me worry about sudden cliff plunges to premature obsolescence. And otherwise, they’re pretty similar — including salaries.
But the time to strike was probably last off-season, when the Padres’ ownership kerfuffle made them most interested in getting payroll off the books (and possibly most vulnerable to underpayment in a trade). With (former agent) Moorad in charge over there now, the price in players would, as Dave notes, almost certainly be too high. If you’re going to pay a lot for offense, you should be doing it to get a player at a more premium defensive position than 1B.
This year, it’s the other SoCal NL team that’s going through a messy ownership divorce, but alas I kind of doubt that will lead to an exploitable opportunity. Never hurts to sniff around, of course….
Dave, please correct me if this is wrong, but this post appears to be an argument for re-signing Beltre.
Re-signing in Seattle would be a bad career move for Beltre.
Yeah, maybe. I’m not finding a good comprehensive list of free agents online at the moment.
Cot’s Contracts.
So the strategy of wisdom is likely to target the second-tier guys from the start and steal a march on the teams who still think they have a shot at the premiere names, yes?
I think the M’s will probably end up in the waiting game with everyone else. Harden or Sheets aren’t going to sign a one year deal quickly – they’ll let Lackey sign and pitch themselves as the next best option. The M’s will have to use patience, but as we saw with Abreu and Hudson last year, that can pay off in late January.
Great post, Dave. It’s going to be a little hard for the folks who only just got their heads around the marginal value approach to now switch gears to risk/reward shopping.
It’s not so much a switch, as they are still operating under a marginal value principle. However, they’re at a point on the curve where they should be substituting into risk and away from cost.
Dave, please correct me if this is wrong, but this post appears to be an argument for re-signing Beltre.
That wasn’t the intent of the post. I’d love to have Adrian return if he would come back, but I don’t think he will. I think he ends up in Boston, where the Green Monster will help him re-establish his value as one of the games better third baseman.
This is a brilliant post and something it’s going to take people a while to wrap their heads around. The summation is spot on. The M’s have passed their dumpster diving stage and picked off the low hanging fruit.
This is where the front office is really going to need to show their stuff. It’s easy for the Red Sox & Yankees to get over this hump in development because they have virtually limitless resources. They can get the needed WAR on a position by position basis by overpaying in multiple ways (yearly salary, length of contract, incentives). The M’s are going to need to take a couple of bets and hope they pay off.
They are in a classic risk/reward scenario that can make a front office look brilliant or stupid (I’m thinking the M’s group has shown enough that the downside is average and the upside is brilliant).
This is going to be a fun off season.
But if it’s still fair to call Willy Aybar “probably a true talent +2.5 to +3.0 win player with upside,” and one who’s signed to a very team-friendly contract, wouldn’t it make sense to pick him up, deal Lopez, and go with the Hall/Hannahan/Tuiasosopo collection instead? I guess I don’t really see Aybar as dumpster-diving, but rather as an above-average starter stuck in the most amazing roster logjam the majors have seen in a while.
I think you’ve tried to convey this, Dave, but the circumstances of this offseason make the moves much more interesting to me than what we saw last year.
Yes, Z was impressive, he took some risks, but getting the team to 75 or 80 wins would have been a success and we all knew it. As you’ve recited before, those extra wins that take you from a .500 team to a real contender are harder to come by. That’s where we learn the most about what a GM is made of, I think. I have high hopes that we are going to enjoy the ride.
Sure – this isn’t a don’t-trade-for-value proposition. If the M’s go get Aybar or Fontenot or DeWitt, it will probably be a good move.
The point, however, was that the M’s can’t just have an off-season full of moves like that. They can still value shop to some degree, but they also have to go after some higher upside guys.
I think Orlando Hudson would be a good target and fit the type of move you are talking about Dave. He would be a switch hitting 2B and better defensively than Lopez.
It then gives the M’s the option to move Lopez to 3B or trade him.
Hudson makes sense as a *replacement* for Lopie, but he’s not a significant *improvement* on Lopie. He might be a half-win better but that’s not the type of high-upside improvement Dave’s talking about.
I completely agree with Dave’s post, but I think it’s worth reiterating that what the M’s are going to have to try to accomplish this off-season is much harder than what they did last year. Getting 3+ WAR out of a single player is tough.
Yeah great post … it’s also a good response to the fans who say “who cares about getting maximum wins per dollar, we want a team that wins, not an efficient bottom feeder a la the Oakland As”. Efficient spending is indeed a means and not an end, at a certain point (and I agree that the Mariners have now reached that point), one has to find other ways to increase the win total: efficiency is still important, but the team will have to start taking more risks (and quite possibly spend more money, although the gradual loss of the high-salaried deadwood might make that unnecessary).
me:Nick Johnson? Even Carp comes somewhat close for practically nothing.
Dave:I’m sad that you could read the post and then make this comment.
Me: you are correct, Dave, this comment was not given much thought and did not deserve to follow up your well thought out post, sorry
Carp doesn’t come anywhere near close to A-Gon. Not only was that comment completely the opposite idea of what this post was about, but it was extremely off-base. It’s like saying Lopez is close to Utley.
What kind of discount would someone like delgado take? Seems like a reasonable rental possibility with big upside.
“maybe it would be good to have a free agent bargains post, to consider an overview of the options in one place. After non-tenders come out, if that works better.”
I second that!!! C’mon Dave!
Riiight. Cuz it’s easy to pull the low and outside pitch. Beltre hasn’t shown the ability to adjust to the true and tried way that teams pitch him. He’s over as a hitter.
You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
I get it. You can stockpile all of the free, somewhat useful Hannahan types, but you’re only going to have a 75-win team. Eventually you’re going to need to acquire some 3-4 WAR guys who may cost a bit.
How does the quote you presented have anything to do with your response…..?
I keep thinking Beltre makes more money here than elsewhere. Beltre going to Boston may get a 3 year deal. But I have a hard time seeing him not getting more money accepting arbitration from the M’s, having a decent/healthy year, then getting 2 years + the following year for more money per year than he would get on a three year contract this year. The only question is, do the M’s offer Beltre arbitration?
But it is true in the sense that after Holliday, Bay, Lackey and Figgons you’re dealing with a lot of high-risk injury guys (Harden, Sheets, Johnson, etc.) and guys who in a trade could potentially cost the M’s an arm and a leg they don’t have.
In a vacuum you can argue that trades such as the ones Dave proposed in his “2010 Mariners” roster are more or less reasonable, well thought out, and could very well happen (Though I still have personal doubts about a Danks for Lopez/Lowe swap.) The problem is, that the reality of baseball operations very rarely go according to what seems most logical in the neat columns and rows of a paper prediction.
So if the Mariners offer Jose Lopez and Mark Lowe for Jonathon Danks, why wouldn’t a team with better pieces not trump the Mariners offer in pursuit of such an obviously valuable player?
I don’t mean to just be a devils advocate here, my basic point is that while the Mariners could very well pull off some astounding off-season acrobatics, and come away with the impact players they desperately need to contend, I just don’t feel it’s anywhere near the slam dunk much more optimistic members of this community seem to think.
With that said, I have far more hope of someone with Zduriencik’s track record pulling it off, then I’ve had with anyone else in recent memory, and I would love to have my doubts put to rest in the next couple of months.
Yes, they do. If he declines, we get a decent pick for him. If he accepts, the two sides will probably agree to a reasonable number and we’ll have his services for another year.
Seems like Delgado would be a high high risk now after 2009 and being 38 next year. He would have been perfect back when Sexson was signed instead but now may only be a one year stop gap for who??
Ackley if Saunders pans out??? Carp if Saunders doesnt?? Be kind of funny to watch whos body wears out first if they resign Branyan and Griffey!!!!!!!!!
What has always confused me about the Mariners choice of players is the lack of speed that is added. If you dont have homerun hitters then it seems logical you will need to manufacture runs and speed plays a big role in achieving that. Other than Ichiro and previously Bloomquist this team never has had much in the way of base stealers. That said – Figgins is my choice to fill the 2 hole and provide much needed speed.
Figgins just isn’t worth what he’s going to be paid.
Should the Mariners have tried to pick up Akinori Iwamura? Seems like a good asset, that should out perform his contract in 2010, could replace Lopez at 2B if he’s traded, or fill in at third?
Iwamura is exactly the kind of player this post was designed to show that the M’s don’t need. They already have Aki Iwamura – his name is Jack Hannahan.
So is Carlos Delgado “done, stick a fork in him”?
He’s ancient, and has been injured and unproductive, but it wasn’t very long ago that he was mashing with the best of them.
I’d think he’s be more productive than Griffey as a DH.
He’s not likely to take a three year deal somewhere. No one is going to give him the kind of money that his agent will look for on that long term of a deal.
He’s likely to sign for one year in a place like Boston, as Dave suggested, where his offensive numbers can raise based on the park. Add in the stellar defense and some east coast media attention and then you see him sign a 2-3 deal for bigger money in 2011.
He was injured last year, to be certain, but to say he’s been unproductive when healthy isn’t really all that accurate. He was a 3 WAR player in 2008 and had a .394 wOBA (in only 112 PA, of course) before going down. It’s true that he was mediocre in 2007, but if you look at his numbers one of the things that really sticks out is a big drop in his BB%, which seems a bit fluke-ish to me.
I don’t know if he’d be my first choice at DH next season, but unless his hip is a huge problem he’s almost certain to be a better DH than Griffey.
Thanks Dave. I most not be properly valuing Hannahan’s defense.
Surely one can set a higher bar than that. Almost any decent AAAA hitter would be more productive than Griffey (Bryan LaHair, to name a ridiculous example).
The single most important factor for scoring runs is getting on base. That’s more important than hitting home runs. If you don’t have sluggers getting on base is even more important.
Speed is so much less important than getting on base that it’s hardly worth worrying about. Willie Bloomquist could be the best base stealer currently in baseball, but even so giving Bloomquist 600 plate appearances would still be a net loss because his speed will never make up for his simple inability to get on base.
Dave,
Nice post. The M’s do have to roll the dice a bit in the FA market…if they want to get to the 90-95 win level.
Part of those calculated gambles will be calculated gambles on which current M’s to give significant playing time, too.
If a left field combo that includes Saunders is less of a risk than Carp…then you’ll see the M’s go for a 1B/DH type in the FA market; a Johnson type. If Carp is less of a risk than the LF combo..then I think they’ll persue a leftfield FA (Is there a a good glove/good stick guy…a 3.5+ WAR guy… out there?) or trade for one.
Is Tui ready for 600+PA’s and a bunch of fielding chances? If so, then perhaps you don’t chase a FA 3b guy, or you package Lopez and others for a #2 starter. Assessing whether Lopez has maxed out as a hitter is a bit of a risk, too.
So part of the risk is in evaluating the young talent on hand; Who will mature into a +WAR guy, and who will be just a replacement level player?
There is some risk in resigning Branyan, too…although we haven’t mentioned that. Was 2009 the norm he will return to or a quirk? Throw in a balky back and you have to roll the dice with him, too.
Pesonally I think Tui starts somewhere in the IF (2b or 3b), Carp gets the 1b assignment and they spend money on a LF guy and on the arm.
Hard to see more than two significant (in terms of $) FA or trade pickups.
Keith
I’m curious how much money you’re looking at for Chone Figgins, what do ya’ll think? It seems like he’s been just dismissed as too expensive.
I’m also curious if anyone is aware of any really good Japanese free agents that might be a good fit for our situation.
Re Beltre:
If he’s not getting a 3 year deal and the M’s offer arbitration, I don’t see how anyone pays him half as much as he gets in arbitration. He needs one more year in Seattle to prove he’s healthy. And we need one more year of Beltre so 3B is not another issue.
What would the argument against Matsui be?
With his injury problems the last few years and his age, he comes cheap. Might take a “hometown” discount to play in Seattle.
Left handed power-ish hitter with very solid OB skills. You can count on a 120+ OPS when he’s healthy…
Is there a valid reason the player has to be Japanese?
The fact that he can’t field might be an issue on a team that can’t afford to waste a roster spot on that type of player.
How exactly would Seattle get a “hometown” discount for a player that has never played on the team?
Also, why is it that people seem to think that every player from Japan needs to be a Mariner at some point in their MLB career? Are the Mariners now the general consensus NPB catchall team?
If we were to add up, say, the cumulative Wins Above Replacement or some such measure that the Mariners have received from their Japanese players, between Sasaki, Ichiro, and Johjima, I think it’s possible that the Mariners have gotten more production from their Japanese players than any other team has.
Or maybe a simpler measure would be the cumulative plate appearances and innings pitched (although since Sasaki was a closer we’d probably want to weight by leverage or something like that).
Maybe I’m mistaken, but I thought the Ms have a need for a DH, and are already jammed with OF. Would it be nice to have a DH that would offer SOME flexibility defensively? Sure. But, I’d rather just have one that can hit, with his fielding ability a distant consideration.
If they re-sign Branyan at 1B, you can no longer afford to have a gloveless DH. If they get a 1B with less injury concern, they probably sign Branyan an put him at DH.