M’s Sign Harden?
Buster Olney reports that Rich Harden is on the verge of signing. He doesn’t identify the team, but the Mariners have been the most active team in pursuing Harden, and it makes all kinds of sense, as we’ve laid out previously. It sounds like he’s backed off his demand for a multi-year deal, so if this gets done, the M’s will get a pretty significant upside pitcher while minimizing the long term risk. He’s always going to be a durability question mark, but on a one year, incentive laden deal, the move would be a great one for the M’s.
Get it done, Jack.
Craig Calcaterra reports that Harden is signing with the Rangers – $7.5 million for one year with a second year option. Lame. M’s should have beaten that, unless he just didn’t want to come here. T.R. Sullivan confirms.
New Name?
This is not a rumor. The source for this idea is me. I am not reporting anything.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let me throw this out there. Jon Paul Morosi has reported that the Dodgers and Tigers are looking for a third team with an expensive pitcher to send to LA, allowing those two teams to move Juan Pierre to Detroit and Carlos Guillen to that third team.
The Mariners should absolutely be trying to insert themselves into that conversation. Carlos Guillen would be a nice fit for what the Mariners are looking for, as a guy who could play LF or 1B, depending on how the roster shook out. Switch-hitter with the patient approach that the team is obviously emphasizing and some power in his bat. He’s coming off a bad year that is almost entirely BABIP driven (.267 in 2009 vs .325 career), which combined with his salary, should make him a decent option as a buy low candidate.
The salary is why he’d be available in the first palce. He’s due $13 million each of the next two years, so the M’s should only be interested in a scenario where payroll is going away – specifically, Carlos Silva. The paychecks due to Pierre, Silva, and Guillen are similar enough to where it wouldn’t require huge amounts of money changing hands to make everything balance out. The tough part would be trying to figure out what else the M’s would have to include to make this work, as Silva’s clearly the least valuable asset of the three.
It seems to me that there may be a deal to be made here, though. The Dodgers also need a second baseman, while the M’s are obviously shopping theirs. Some kind of deal where Lopez and Silva made their way to LA, Pierre went to Detroit, and Guillen and something came to Seattle makes a lot of sense.
Be involved in this one, Jack. Find out if there’s a good fit here. From my perspective, there may be.
Figgins deal official
The Chone Figgins deal that we’ve known about since Friday is now in the books and official.
Most interesting comment from Zduriencik at his meeting with the press, per Geoff Baker: Figgins is “an infielder” – won’t commit to him as a third baseman, but apparently will rule him out of left field. Still hard to see Beltre taking a big enough pay cut to make it worthwhile for the M’s after declining arbitration.
Jack then tells Mike Salk on 710 ESPN that Figgins “can play all over the field, but I don’t see that happening, I think he’ll settle in at one position.”
Goodbye, Adrian
I will miss your defense and the crazy antics. It was great having you here. Now go somewhere with a normal left field and remind people that you can still hit.
Day One Rumor Roundup
Here’s what I can gather, so far, mostly culled from the handy Mariner Writer twitter list.
Mike Salk says he hears the team likes Nick Johnson. Obviously, I’m a fan, as I’ve been trying to get the M’s to acquire him for years.
Geoff Baker suggests that Jason Bay would twist himself into a pretzel to play in Seattle. I suggest that the M’s offer him $10 million for one year and ask him to prove it. When he turns it down, tell him to enjoy Boston.
Buster Olney says the M’s aren’t in on Bay. Apparently Bay’s agent hasn’t given him the talking points memo yet, or Buster was smart enough to shred it.
Ken Rosenthal reported that the M’s offered Felix 4/45 as they begin negotiations for a long term deal. I hope its not true, because that’s not even a real offer. 4/45 offers to buy out Felix’s first two free agent years for about $10 million each. Unless you’re trying to offend him, there’s no point in making that offer. To even have a conversation, they need to come in at something like 4/65 and hope to settle in the 5/80 or 6/100 range.
Figgins deal should be announced late tonight or early tomorrow. Wak talks to the media at 1 pm, so expect a bunch of articles containing the words “belief system” at about 2:00.
Save Our Server: Use Twitter
In early December, 30 GMs converge on a hotel somewhere in America, while 40 bazillion Mariner fans converge on USSM and hit the refresh button until our server blows up, trying to find out if the Mariners have traded anyone yet. It’s an annual tradition at this point.
This year, I’m providing this handy post in an effort to save our poor site from you relentless rumor mongerers. For as weird as it may sound, Twitter has officially become the place where 99.9 percent of all news stories break, and there’s no reason to pound our servers when you can pound theirs instead. You will find out about M’s news from various writers on twitter faster than you will find it from us. So, I have created a Twitter list of Mariner writers for you to follow.
Even if you don’t use twitter, just go to the link above, and every message sent by Shannon Drayer, Geoff Baker, Larry Stone, Ryan Divish, Mike Salk, and us will appear in one single page. Refresh the crap out of that page all you want, I don’t care.
When news does break, you’ll get it there first. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll let us survive through the winter meetings without going down. Please.
Open question for discussion: value of need
I don’t understand something in the current discussion and the many many comments about how the M’s “need” more power. I’m hoping someone can enlighten me on the theory at least, if not on the practice.
Say there’s an average team with no first baseman and no internal options. They have two options in free agency for exactly the same price: Doug the Defensive Guy, who would be five runs below average hitting and a wondrous +15 above average on defense. And they could sign Mike the Masher, to get a +15 on offense, -5 defense guy.
Everyone would argue it’s a coin flip in value, right? You’d start to look again for extremely fine differences like whether the team’s pitchers would particularly benefit (or cover for Mike), or if the park suits one or the other. But say you do all of that and those numbers are indeed the same. The average team picks whoever’ll sign first, or knows the manager from the minor leagues, or whatever.
Now what if the team is average by way of sucking defensively and good offensively. The return on both those guys is still +10. Is the theory that they should sign the defensive specialist for balance? How much extra value is that?
And conversely, if the team’s average by way of being terrible offensively and good defensively, does the reverse hold true? How much is that guy worth?
That’s one question: does improving something the team is bad at offer greater gains than improving elsewhere, and if so, how much?
And does it matter how bad they are? Is the return on improving defense more than 10 runs if they’re league-worst? Is there a kind of elasticity to returns, where only the average team values players based on overall contribution?
Because if that’s true, and there’s a value, then we could actually start to discuss this. Say Doug and Mike aren’t asking for the same price. Defense is so highly valued that Doug already has 4 offers on the hood of his gold Land Rover for $20m/year, while Mike is looking at $10m for the next year.
Does the defensively challenged team still want Doug at that price? Or are they better off picking up Mike?
We’ve laid out my (and I’d say Dave’s, to a different extent) view on this — I think all runs are created more or less equally, and you’re as well-advised to take them off the board as put them on, so improving on pitching, defensive prowess, and offense are all equally good. I don’t know of any evidence that if a team needs a first baseman, regardless of how they did last year and how they did it, that they shouldn’t take the player who is so undervalued.
There’s a big caveat to that, which is that (and I know I mention this over and over) in constructing a team you want to get into and through the playoffs there are some things you want to have in place and should think about paying for. But in general, for teams who aren’t budgeting for 85 wins, does valuation change?
What’s the opposing theory, and what’s the evidence for it?
Please do not panic about Figgins not signing yet
It’s a weekend. The contract could be signed and waiting on him to wander up here and take a physical. The team might want a Monday morning press conference with all the brass up front and smiling. Maybe he wants a no-tickle clause in his contract. I don’t know.
But until we hear that it’s off, that the Angels called him at the last minute offering a 6-year deal or something, we should assume everything’s cool. Like Seattle. Holy mackeral is it cold out here. When the high is predicted to be below freezing. Maybe they’re waiting for the weather to get to something temperate before they fly Figgins to Seattle so they don’t freak him out.
The Template
With the Figgins signing basically done, the M’s have made their direction pretty clear, I think. Despite calls for a big power bat from sections of the fan base, the Mariners have gone the other way entirely, signing a guy who has hit nine home runs in the last three years combined. This continues the trend from a year ago, when they replaced Raul Ibanez with Endy Chavez, despite cries that left field was a position where you had to have a power hitter.
The Mariners clearly do not subscribe to the traditional model of needing power at the corners. They have a different template for building a team – the 1985 St. Louis Cardinals. That team is the model for what the organization hopes the 2010 Mariners can become.
They hit 87 home runs, fewer than every other National League team besides the Pirates. Their left fielder hit one home run. Their third baseman hit five (and had a .591 OPS). Jack Clark led the team with 22 home runs, Andy Van Slyke was second with 13, and two other players hit 10. Everyone else was in the single digits. In terms of home run power, they didn’t really have much. Or any.
But they led the league in singles, triples, walks, and stolen bases, all while hitting into the fewest amount of double plays. They were great at all the things that didn’t involve hitting for power, and they ended up leading the league in wOBA. Which, naturally, led to them leading the league in runs scored.
That speed paid off in the field as well, providing the best defensive team in the league. They held opponents to just a .272 batting average on balls in play, allowing a decent but unspectacular pitching staff to allow fewer runs than every other team in the NL besides the Dodgers (who bested them by a grand total of four runs). Having a bunch of elite defenders made life easy for John Tudor and Joaquin Andujar, who finished second and fourth in the league in innings pitched respectively. Danny Cox, the #3 starter, finished 9th.
Minimal power, a ton of speed, patient hitters who get on base, an elite defense, and a few starting pitchers who carry the load for the pitching staff. That formula added up to 101 wins and a trip to the World Series.
You do not have to hit for power to win baseball games. It helps, certainly, but good players are good players. Chone Figgins is a good player. Do not get wrapped up in worrying if the M’s have the type of team you’ve been told is the right kind. You can win with a whole bunch of slap hitters who get on base and run like the wind. The 1985 Cardinals did.
M’s To Sign Figgins?
The Mariners are reportedly really close to signing Chone Figgins to a 4 year, ~$35 million contract. I’m pushing this out now because, while the deal isn’t done, I may not be around much this weekend, and the details aren’t likely to change much by the time it becomes official. Unless, of course, it doesn’t become official, in which case, BOOOOO.
There’s going to be a lot of discussion about this move as we go forward, and I know people will have different views of the signing. Here’s my quick take – we’ll do a full analysis at some point next week, when I have a bit more time.
Figgins projects as a +3 to +4 win player for 2010. Like signing Beltre, this will have the appearance of paying for a career year, but you don’t need him to come anywhere close to his 2009 numbers to justify the contract. At this price, the M’s have built in a lot of regression from his performance last year. $9 million a year is about what an average player signs for, and Figgins is a better than average player. The M’s are not paying Figgins like they expect him to have another +6 win season. So don’t get too upset about the fact that he just had a career year. They know that, and he’s not being paid like that performance is sustainable.
In terms of dollars per win, this is not the most efficient move they could have made. No matter what position he ends up playing, they had a younger player who could have produced 50-75 percent of the value for 5 percent of the cost. Given how much time we have spent over the years arguing for efficient spending, I get that it may be seen as a bit confusing that we are now in favor of a move that does not maximize dollars per win.
However, as we talked about earlier this off-season, the M’s are in a position where they have to consolidate value. They have a ton of decent, cheap, role players, but by going with those players at each spot, they limit the team’s upside to the point that a playoff berth becomes unlikely. Figgins consolidates value into one line-up spot, raising the upside of the team and increasing their odds of playing in October. This provides tangible value.
At the same time, Figgins versatility also significantly decreases the risk. He is the human form of diversification, offering the ability to play third, second, or left field, giving the team the ability to let Tui, Saunders, Lopez, Hannahan, and Hall earn playing time with improved performances. The ability to handle multiple positions makes all of the young players more valuable, because the risk of any of them killing the team with a terrible performance is mitigated – Figgins could replace any of them, giving the team options if Tui hits and Saunders doesn’t or vice versa.
When you get a guy who can simultaneously increase the upside and decrease the risk, you’ve got a valuable asset. As a player, Figgins is a great fit for this roster and ballpark. He’s coming at a price below what you would generally expect to pay for a +3 win player, and the wins he adds are more important in helping the M’s push toward a playoff spot, raising the marginal value of those wins (wins 80-90 are more important than 70-79 or 91-100).
He also has the type of skillset that ages well (despite claims to the contrary, fast guys are effective later into their careers than slow guys), and gives the M’s a significant offensive boost while maintaining their elite defense.
Overall, this is a good deal. It makes the team better at a below market price, increases the options the team has going forward, and allows them to give the young kids a shot to prove themselves without exposing the team to too much risk. Losing the first round pick is a blow, but it’s not a big enough one to offset the value Figgins is providing at this price.
This a good move for the M’s. Welcome to Seattle, Chone. (Assuming this gets done.)