Reminder:
The AFL Rising Stars Showcase is on right now at MLB.com. You can watch it live without paying or signing up for anything. Strasburg has been scratched and the West is down 7-0 in the first, but the good news is that Ackley led off with a walk and Fields got the final out of the top half of the first.
Recommended reading
Joe Posnanski on the frustration of the Yankees, a topic that leads people like me to only half -jokingly propose they be forced to eat other teams’ bad contracts. Check it out.
Hardy to Minnesota
You can officially cross J.J. Hardy off the list of possible options this winter. He was traded to the Minnesota Twins for Carlos Gomez.
Heck of a move for the Twins.
Getting to five hundred was hard too
To add something to Dave’s post on why the M’s approach this off-season will look different as involves different trade-offs, there’s something we should briefly touch on:
What just happened with the team is not common or easy. If we remember back to the start of this off-season, it’s obvious: all we really wanted is some forward progress. We should be overjoyed we got more than that. But there’s this perception that the first part of this, the rebound to respectability, is an easy first step, and sometimes it’s easier the worse the team did. It’s not, and it’s not. We should be heartened that the front office made it look like that.
Even excepting teams that are woefully underfunded by their ownership, look at how many teams stink and stink for long periods of time. The Pirates haven’t been over .500 since 1992, new stadium and all. The Orioles play in a tough division (but so do the M’s) and have a ton of cash, they haven’t been over .500 since 1997. Since 1996 (all the full-seasons post strike/lock-out), a quick rundown of teams who reached the depths the 2008 Mariners did:
Baltimore: bottomed out in 2001 at 63, then won 67, 71, 78… still haven’t made it to .500
Detroit won 53 (!) games in 1996, got to 79 the next year (+26) and then won 65, 69,79,65,69,79,66,55,43(!), 72 (+29!), 71, and finally 95 in 2006. And they had money.
The Royals have had 2008 Mariner-like win totals repeatedly and only once bounced back in 03, and immediately fell back.
The Twins won 63 in 1999, improved a little the next year and then won 85 in 2001.
Oakland won 65 in 1997 and steadily improved each year to their 103-win peak in 2002.
Tampa won 63 games or less five times and only turned it around in 2008.
Or just to take an example from our own recent history: the M’s won 63 games in 2004, and only improved 6 games the next year and 9 games the year after that.
If it’s so easy, why couldn’t the last bunch of guys do it? Why can’t various rotating crews of people, under cash constraints or not, do it? Why does it happen so infrequently?
Because it’s hard. Getting to .500 is hard. Building a championship team may be harder, and it certainly involves different tradeoffs. But last year’s roster rebuild was a huge victory, and one that we should value accordingly. Other franchises, you can be sure, wish they had had such success.
Griffey Decision Not Going To Drag Out
C. Trent Rosecrans, longtime sports writer in Cincinnati, passed along this story, where he basically just says that he talked to Brian Goldberg, Griffey’s agent, and he expects an announcement in a week or so. Rosecrans probably has the best relationship with Junior of any member of the media, so take this with fewer grains of salt than you usually would – this is about as close to from the source as we’re going to get.
The M’s potential free agents
For your discussion. They have to declare for FA in the next 15 days.
RP-R Miguel Batista
SP-L Erik Bedard
3B-R Adrian Beltre
1B-L Russ Branyan
OF-L Endy Chavez
DH-L Ken Griffey Jr.
DH-R Mike Sweeney
SS-R Jack Wilson
So expect extensions or FA announcements for all of those guys. Pravda doesn’t list Wilson, presumably because the M’s could pick up his option year so it’s out of his hands.
The Mistake Lottery
One of the greatest advantages the Yankees have is that they’re able to blithely make mistakes and move on from them. Their market advantage is so huge that they can afford to pay their players to play against them on other teams just so they can put someone even better in their place. And baseball’s ridiculous territory system protects the two New York teams’ unfairly huge revenue streams.
At the same time, the worst problem for teams trying to turn around their fortunes is that they’re saddled with massive salary drains the previous regime took on.
Therefore, I propose a new yearly draft. The Mistake Draft.
Here’s how it works for most teams. At the end of the year, you get to look over your roster and pick one contract (say, a terrible pitcher with 4y, $48m left). You submit that name to the Commissioner for Life’s office. Your team gets a number of ping-pong balls (because I love the classics), as follows:
(Number of losses in previous season + (17 – Population of team’s metro area in millions)) + Amount in millions remaining on deal
—
Number of seasons, partial and full, for current GM on that team if over 2 + (Number of years current ownership group in place/2) + Number of years remaining on that contract
Rounded up.
So Carlos! If the M’s had submitted him right off the back, it’d be 63 + 12 + 48 = 123, divided by 17 (Yamauchi bought the team in 1992, we’re not counting the transfer to Nintendo of America) + 4 = 21
123/21 = 5.8.. = 6 lotto numbers.
Going to be tough to beat. And your window closes pretty quickly. And feel free to play around with the formula to come up with something better: I’m offering this as a starting point for something that doesn’t favor stagnant clueless teams (or at least not for long) and also has some small incorporation of the market size inequality. KC needs to get rid of a bad contract a lot more than the Cubs do.
The balls go into the tumbler and… tada! Carlos is a Yankee. He gets to pitch mop-up innings or clap the team to victory from the clubhouse rail or enjoy a long stay on the 60-day DL for acute inadequacy or whatever they decide to do with him. Unless he has a no-trade clause, in which case he gets to waive the no-trade clause or become a free agent. Next year the Mets get to pick up someone’s mistake.
Now you might be thinking that this encourages incompetent teams to change their front offices and/or ownership. Good!
And you might worry that this encourages smaller-payroll teams with new people in charge to take wild gambles in the hopes that they can compete, in the hopes that even if the player doesn’t work out they can still dump them on the Yankees. Also good!
Or that teams might even look at the formula and figure the thing to really do is sign someone sort of good to a 2y, $80m deal loaded $2m, $78m, hoping that they can tag the Yankees with that second year. Good! I mean, uh, given a decent formula teams are still so likely to get stuck with a player that they aren’t going to do anything too crazy.
This might all seem silly on first read. But what are your other options? More progressive revenue sharing? Reform of territory rules to let broke teams bathe in the revenue-rich New York waters? Now who’s being silly?
M’s Claim Yusmeiro Petit
The M’s continue to collect moderately interesting, low upside pitching without expending any resources. This time, they’ve claimed Yusmeiro Petit off waivers from the Diamondbacks. Petit is a Cha Seung Baek kind of pitcher – throws a lot of low velocity junk in the strike zone, gives up a ridiculous amount of fly balls (and correspondingly, home runs), but gets a decent amount of strikeouts because he’s willing to go upstairs with the fastball.
He’s not good, but he’s not horrible either. Safeco could help reduce his HR problem, which is his biggest issue, but as a right-hander with a minor league fastball, he’s kind of a worse version of Doug Fister. He’s certainly not one of the 11 or 12 best pitchers in the organization right now, and he’s out of options, so he can’t be stashed in Tacoma without clearing waivers.
He’s not a bad guy to have in spring training. If his change-up or breaking ball improves or he learns a two-seamer or something, he might turn out to be an okay back-end starter. Otherwise, he’s just a replacement level arm. But he was free, so the M’s have picked up a guy who might turn out to be useful for a few innings without paying anything to get him.
This is what freely available talent looks like.
The Upside And Risk Guys
So, I’ve laid out my case for why I think the M’s need to pursue a different kind of undervalued player this winter if they want to contend in 2010. They need to be on the right side of a few coin flips, but what coins should they be choosing? Here’s some guys they should kick the tires on.
Rich Harden, SP
His health problems are well known. In the six full seasons he’s spent in the majors, he’s thrown 675 innings, or about 112 per season. He’s thrown more than 150 innings once, and that came in 2004. After numerous arm problems, he got rid of his split-finger, which was a dominant pitch for him early in his career. His command is lousy, and it takes him so many pitches to get outs that he rarely can pitch past the sixth inning. And, to top it off, he just posted the worst results of his career.
That laundry list of drawbacks is why he’s not going to demand a long term, big money deal, despite still being one of the better pitchers in baseball. A significant part of his problem in 2009 was a 15.1% HR/FB rate that isn’t going to continue. And, despite his arm problems, he’s made 51 starts over the last two seasons. He may not be a workhorse, but he’s also not currently broken. So, a few of things that will discount his cost in the market aren’t as big a deal as they may seem. And the upside is certainly there.
Harden has averaged 11 strikeouts per nine innings over the last two years. Part of that was moving to the National League, but still, he was striking out hitters at a rate that Tim Lincecum would be jealous of. Even without the splitter (replaced by a change-up that has similar movement), he’s still capable of dominating opposing hitters on any given night. Over the last two years, he’s been worth a total +6.2 wins, even with his DL stints and control problems. A +4 or +5 win season is well within his range of possible outcomes. So is a +0 season, of course, but that downside risk is why the M’s will have a shot at a guy who has Cy Young stuff.
On top of all that, he’s a local kid from B.C., so the geography factor that comes into play with some free agents would be a reduced issue, if it not an outright benefit. There are more than enough positives to offset the obvious negatives. He’s certainly a risk, but he’s one that comes with significant upside.
Ben Sheets, SP
What I said above, only replace the local factor with a drafted-by-Zduriencik factor, so the management team is extremely familiar with Sheets’ health problems and will theoretically have better knowledge of the situation than any team besides Milwaukee. Okay, so Sheets and Harden aren’t exactly the same, as he sacrifices some strikeouts to pound the strikezone more and hasn’t pitched since 2008, but it’s the same basic story. Sheets should come a bit cheaper because of the questions about his present health, but he’s also less likely to be interested in the Mariners than Harden is.
Carl Pavano, SP
What I said above, only replace the incentives to sign here with a reduced value due to the market’s over-valuation of ERA. Pavano had a very good season, running a 4.00 FIP over 200 innings for the Indians and Twins, but a .335 batting average on balls in play pushed his ERA over 5.00. Combined with his long injury history, and Pavano simply isn’t going to be able to cash in this winter despite coming off a very impressive season. He’s a lower upside guy than either Harden or Sheets, but he’ll probably cost less than both and will project to throw more innings than either. He’s not an ace, but he’s a mid-rotation starter who won’t get paid like one.
Randy Johnson, SP
The old version of the first two guys above, with basically the same strengths and weaknesses, just everything reduced by a couple of degrees. Johnson’s at the very end of his career, but even without his legendary fastball, he’s still got the nasty slider and the ability to put hitters away. As an LHP, he’d benefit more from Safeco than either of the two younger guys. Oh, and he’s Randy Johnson, the best pitcher in the history of the franchise. If he’s going to give his career a final farewell, there’s no better spot to do it than Seattle.
Erik Bedard, SP
The left-handed version of Sheets, just with a pushed back time-frame of recovery. He probably won’t be ready to pitch effectively in the majors until around the all-star break, so he’s going to have to take some kind of incentive based one year deal that pays him based on how many innings he throws. Whether he wants to remain in Seattle is anyone’s guess, really. I’d bet on no, but it’s at least worth kicking the tires to find out. The reward is reduced due to the fact that he’ll probably only be potentially available for half the season, so he falls behind the rest of the group in terms of interest. But if the rest of the pitchers fall through, he’s worth exploring.
Nick Johnson, 1B
The hitting version of Rich Harden. At this point, explaining the risk and reward seems a bit redundant. Johnson’s really good when he’s healthy, but there’s always the chance that he’ll spend the whole year on the DL. A left-handed on base machine who could split time at 1B and DH is a great fit for what the M’s need, though. He’s very similar to a late career Edgar Martinez, just with the benefit of hitting from the side of the plate that Safeco favors.
Carlos Delgado, 1B
Rumors of Delgado’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. After a terrible beginning to the 2008 season, he spent the next year playing at a +4 win level. At 38, he’s more of a DH than a 1B, but he can still fill in on the field when necessary. As you’ve surely noticed, the idea I’m pitching is to go after talent that comes with reduced price tags due to injury concerns, so naturally, Delgado’s coming off a season where he spent the last five months on the DL. Hip issues aren’t the end of of the world, though – both Chase Utley and Alex Rodriguez had surgeries on their hips last winter and are doing just fine. Delgado is basically Russ Branyan with a few less strikeouts – the M’s could certainly use him in the line-up, and given his age and injuries, he won’t command more than a one year deal.
Of those six guys, I’d like to see the M’s sign two. My plan suggested Johnson and Sheets, but Harden and Delgado would work just fine as well. You probably can’t get both Harden and Johnson, as they’ll be the two most expensive players from the injury prone guys to sign, but some combination of one of the pitchers and either of the 1B/DH types should be worth exploring.
It’s a risky strategy, no doubt. Sinking $15 to $20 million of the payroll into two players with legitimate health concerns has a real chance of not paying off. However, it’s the M’s best path to contention in 2010. By doing a good job of picking up decent, cheap talent over the last year, the M’s have mitigated some of the risk that comes along with relying on injury prone players. They’ve already invested in raising the floor by picking up guys like Hannahan, Langerhans, Vargas, and Carp. Those guys represent something of a stoploss for the organization, and with a reduced cost in a worst case scenario, the value of guys like Harden and Johnson is higher for the M’s than it would be for some other organizations.
In some ways, this is the perfect free agent class for the Mariners. With the significant depth of talented-but-fragile players on the market, this winter is the baseball version of Ebay, where judicious buyers can accept some increased risk for a dramatic reduction from full retail cost. Those are exactly the kinds of players the M’s need to be pursuing given their roster, and that player type is the most commonly found this winter. There’s going to be a pretty decent supply of what the M’s should be demanding, and that will drive prices down and allow the M’s to value shop at a higher tier of player.
For teams that want to add certainty this winter, adding a couple of extra wins to help put themselves over the top, this free agent class is a massive disappointment. For a team like the M’s, however, this free agent class is perfect. We couldn’t have asked for a better year to go shopping. For once, it actually will make sense to throw some money around in free agency.
AFL Rising Stars Game On MLB Network
On Saturday, the Arizona Fall League will host its version of an All-Star Game, pitting the best prospects in the league up against each other. The M’s will be represented by Dustin Ackley, Phillippe Aumont, and Josh Fields, so if you want to watch them play, you can tune in to either MLB Network or MLB.com at 5:15 on Saturday.