Buyers Or Sellers – Why Choose?
The non-waiver trading deadline is now 10 days away. Teams have a week and a half to reshape their rosters, either for the stretch run, or for next year and beyond. The trading deadline is an annual exercise in hype with a lackluster payoff, as I don’t remember the last time the deadline came and went when we had a flurry of deals that could actually be classified as exciting.
The local angle, of course, is that the Mariners have 10 days to decide whether to be buyers or sellers. They’re only 5 games out of first place in a division where no one looks particularly good, and despite the recent losing road trip, they played highly competitive baseball with two of the better teams in the American League. Fans have set through several miserable seasons, and the team is wary of throwing in the towel on what still has the potential to be an exciting September that might just draw them back to Safeco Field.
The counter argument is pretty obvious, however. While the team is still not out of the race, they’re still in last place, trailing three teams, and are just 4-10 in July. They also have the toughest remaining schedule of any AL West team, playing Boston, Cleveland, and Toronto before they have to decide what to do with the roster. Considering the opponents, its unlikely the team goes on a 8-1 or 7-2 run that would catapult them right back into the thick of things, so the odds are that this team is sitting in a similar or worse position when the deadline rolls around.
Thus, Bill Bavasi and company are looking at having to decide to add players to a team in last place or remove players from a team within striking distance of a division title. The big question in the front office the next 10 days will be “buyers or sellers?”
In my opinion, this is a great chance for the Mariners to show some creativity for the first team in, well, ever, and steal a page from Billy Beane’s playbook. Don’t choose – be both buyers and sellers.
The team is too close to the division title to waive the white flag, and for all our opinions on the relative strengths of the teams in the division, absolutely anything can happen in a two month stretch of baseball. However, the team also has a strong core to build around, and the last thing the organization needs to be doing is to remove players from the roster who could be substantial parts of the ballclub in 2007. So, instead of taking the normal route of either unloading players or picking up marginal improvements at the cost of young talent, I suggest that the Mariners spend the next ten days rebuilding the guys around the core by both shipping out current players from the roster and bringing in new faces to help contribute right away.
I’d define the core group of players, who I’m not interested in moving, as Felix, Ichiro, Lopez, Betancourt, Johjima, Jones, Clement, Putz, Soriano, and Lowe. I also am willing to accept the fact that the Mariners will never trade Raul Ibanez, so he’s included in the core by default. He’s just not getting moved while the current management structure is in place.
That means I’m willing to move significant talent off the major league roster. Gil Meche, George Sherrill, Jeremy Reed, Adrian Beltre, and Richie Sexson will all draw interest from different ballclubs. However, the goal is not to simply unload these guys (well, not all of them, anyways), but to use their value (and some of the non-essentially minor league guys) to acquire players who fit the team’s needs down the stretch and next season. Easier said than done? Probably. It would take an epic series of moves and a willingness to change up a roster in mid-season, but in the end, I think the team could be better both now and going forward, if they’re willing to take a few chances. And yes, this is almost all 100% speculation. I’ve heard some backdoor rumblings about potential matches for some of our players, but don’t take any of this as legitimate possibilities.
Step 1: Send Adrian Beltre, Shin-Soo Choo, and Julio Mateo to San Diego for Ryan Klesko and Dave Roberts.
Step 2: Send Richie Sexson to San Francisco for Todd Linden and Steve Finley.
Step 3: Send Gil Meche and George Sherrill to the Atlanta Braves for Wilson Betemit
Step 4: Send Wladimir Balentien, Yung-Chi Chen, and Cesar Jimenez to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Sean Casey and Kip Wells
This would leave the M’s with the following line-up for the rest of 2006:
1. Ichiro, RF
2. Lopez, 2B
3. Ibanez, LF/DH
4. Betemit, 3B
5. Casey, 1B
6. Johjima, C
7. Snelling, LF/DH
8. Betancourt, SS
9. Roberts, CF
The bench would consist of Finley, Bloomquist, Perez, Quiroz, and Linden holding the job until Klesko gets healthy. Everett would be released, and Rivera and Jones would be returned to the minors.
The rotation would be Felix-Moyer-Washburn-Wells-Pineiro. The bullpen would be Putz-Soriano-Lowe-Cruceta-Fruto-Woods, and if Cruceta pitched well (read: threw strikes) out of the pen, he’d take Pineiro’s spot in the rotation.
This team isn’t significantly better than what the M’s are putting on the field right now. You could argue that they’re a little bit worse. Casey/Betemit are an improvement over what we’ve gotten from Sexson/Beltre, but the dropoff from Meche to Kip Wells is pretty staggering. The pitching is certainly worse, and Hargrove would hate a bullpen with only one lefty, but the offense would be significantly improved. Overall, I think the new roster would be about as competitive, if different in character, than the current roster.
So why make the moves? Financial freedom. At the end of the season, you’d lose the contracts of Sean Casey ($9 million), Steve Finley ($8 million), and Ryan Klesko ($10.5 million), who you essentially swapped out Beltre and Sexson’s deals for. That’s $27 million you wouldn’t have had available to play with had you kept the status quo. $27 million buys a lot of talent.
In the process, you’ve acquired a guy who you think can be your third baseman for the next several years and a stop-gap center fielder to allow Adam Jones to return to Tacoma.
Looking ahead to ’07, you’d have a complete offense minus first base, which is the easiest position in baseball to find a competant role player. Depending on what you wanted to do with Reed/Jones in center, you could try to retain Roberts or pick up another veteran CF to hold the job a bit longer, but that shouldn’t cost much money.
You’d have a rotation of Felix-Washburn-three holes, and a bullpen that lacked a lefty setup guy. But once you remove the salaries of Moyer, Everett, Pineiro, and Wells, in addition to the $27 million you saved by letting Klesko, Finley, and Casey walk, you’re staring at about $40-$45 million in available cash to fill out the pitching staff.
$40 to $45 million. I’m pretty sure the M’s could find three starting pitchers, a first baseman, and a lefty setup guy for $40 million.
It would take a bold series of moves to reshape the roster that dramatically, but this team is capable of making transactions that would both avoid waiving the white flag in 2006 and still allowing them to improve their chances of contending in 2007 and beyond.
Dobbs, Jones up, Choo, Oliveros down
In addition to the Jones move we told you about yesterday, the M’s have also swapped out Shin-Soo Choo for Greg Dobbs.
Basically, they’re not ready to kick Everett to the curb quite yet, so Dobbs gets the Petagine role of sitting on the bench and never playing, instead of Choo or Snelling. When seen through that perspective, it’s hard to argue with.
But man, they need to get rid of Everett already.
Game 46, Mariners at Padres
Justus Sheffield vs. Ryan Weathers, 5:40pm
The M’s sit at 21-24. They’re on a losing streak, culminating in last night’s 16-1 drubbing. So I’ll stipulate that it’s been a painful week, and the Covid drama of the past few days has definitely not helped. But this is about as pessimistic as I’ve seen the M’s fanbase in a long time, and…that’s odd. I mean, look: I’ve been pessimistic for years/decades. This team just *does* that to people. But as much as I found the over-the-top optimism of April to be misplaced, I’m not sure the burn-it-all-down feelings are warranted, either.
This team wasn’t supposed to be good, and is not, in fact, good. I feel like there needs to be a mismatch between expectations and results to wring this much emotion out of a scarred fanbase. I think part of it must be the daily ledger of transaction that feeds the perception that the team wasn’t fully ready to go, that the roster had pretty massive holes – not to compete for a title, but to just go out and play in/complete a 162 game season. That’s warranted, and everything’s cascading down to Tacoma, who seem destined to beat their own record for most pitchers used in a season.
Part of it has been the slow starts for both Logan Gilbert and Jarred Kelenic. Gilbert’s struggled against two anemic offenses, and Jarred Kelenic’s shown flashes, but is 5 for his first 34. This frustration is understandable, to a point. I think the team built up these two – and especially Kelenic – as instant saviors, and they’re not. I think those of us who roasted the team for manipulating Kelenic’s service time probably fed into that, with the arguments that the M’s were making their current team worse by not bringing him up. Well, now he’s here, and the M’s have been no-hit and swept by the Detroit Tigers. This is an emotional response, though, not really a rational one. I’m still bullish on Kelenic and once his ~.150 BABIP corrects, he’ll be a solid MLB hitter; that process could start today.
Gilbert’s a bit more of a concern, just given how hard and how consistently he’s been hit by batters who haven’t done much hitting. The plane on his four-seam has resulted in an absolute ton of line drives and fly balls, and that’s just hard to do in today’s game, deadened ball or no. I still think that starting from a framework of really good control, 94 mph velo and some breaking stuff gives him a very, very high floor. I think with a few tweaks, he can be a more than serviceable mid-rotation piece.
The biggest unanswered question with all of this is: are the M’s the team that can make those tweaks? Are the M’s the team that can get the most out of Kelenic’s undeniable talent? Are they the team that plug roster holes intelligently? The M’s are in this position – really since about 2002 – because a series of front offices could neither reliably identify the talent *they already had* or build depth to support that talent through free agency and trades. The team has developed a few transcendent talents. The team’s brought in some amazing players in free agency. What they couldn’t do was fill in around that, and they had a number of chances to do so.
Part of the problem there’s been that different years have had different incentives and goals. At times, it was go all-in and win now, and that’s how you lose Shin-Soo Choo, Adam Jones, or, more recently, Pablo Lopez and Freddy Peralta. At other times, the club was content to build around high draft picks, but for a variety of reasons, that didn’t quite work out. There’s no doubt that the current rebuild has left the team with way more talent than they’ve had in years. I don’t think Kelenic’s the same as Dustin Ackley, as hyped as Ackley was. But it’s still not clear that the M’s are any closer to figuring out how to fill in around him.
This is strange. This FO has tried to build so many different TYPES of team, and has partially succeeded at it, but they still can’t make those teams great. I still remember the way Dipoto talked about building a 1970s style team in 2018, one led by Dee Strange-Gordon and designed to hit for high average. They…kind of did that, but it wasn’t enough. Now, they’ve got an extremely 2021 team with more power, plenty of patience, and a very low average, but that’s not exactly working either. I hope they know what they want, because they can’t waste an offseason: they need to bring in players this winter to help the new, Kelenic-led club compete. They need pitchers, a deeper bullpen (I know there are a lot of injuries, but it often feels like Graveman and some question marks), catching, IF help, etc. All of this is predicated, though, on figuring out what’s going on for players like Evan White and, to a lesser extent, JP Crawford: players at the early side of prime age who seem to be regressing.
Today’s starter for the Padres, Ryan Weathers, is interesting in that he has some slight similarities with Logan Gilbert, but has fashioned a very different approach. Weathers throws 60% four-seam fastballs at around 94. So far, so Gilbert. His primary breaking ball is a slider that doesn’t have much in the way of spin or spin efficiency, but it’s produced decent results. He’s got a third pitch – a change instead of Gilbert’s slow curve – but he’s primarily a four-seam/slider guy.
Gilbert approaches each PA like a power pitcher: he’s trying to strike you out, and his fastball’s a big part of that – both to get ahead, and to get whiffs at the top of the zone. His control and confidence mean he’s in the zone a lot, and thus gets a lot of swings. That’s helped keep walks low, but all of those swings on fastballs has meant that a few of them get hit really hard. Weathers throws the same pitches about the same percentage of the time, but seems to know – or has learned – he’s not going to overpower people with them. His fastball’s produced great results despite the fact that it has extremely low spin (lower than Gilbert’s below-average FB), and thus sinks quite a bit. He doesn’t always use it like a sinker – he’s fine throwing to the top of the zone – but it’s helped him run normal to above-average ground ball rates. You can’t give up HRs on grounders, so that’s clearly helped. His slider’s harder than Gilbert’s, but it’s equally low-ranked in terms of spin, and it’s used more like a cutter. Where Gilbert uses his to get swings out of the zone, Weathers keeps his *in* the zone, either to grab a called strike or to generate some balls in play, a little like Zach Plesac did. It’s possible that Weather has just gotten lucky and Gilbert unlucky, but Weathers’ transition to MLB has gone quite smoothly, despite the fact he’s only 21.
1: Kelenic, LF
2: Haniger, RF
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Nottingham, 1B
6: Crawford, SS
7: Murphy, C
8: Mayfield, 2B
9/SP: Sheffield
Today’s transaction report includes the news that the M’s just plucked Ty Kelly from the Long Island Ducks in the independent Atlantic League. Kelly was in the M’s org years before, having a great campaign in Tacoma before being traded for SP Sam Gaviglio in mid-2015. He went on to get some big league time with the Mets and Phillies, and played in the WBC for Team Israel. What’s notable here is that he retired from baseball, opened a food truck, and talks/writes about the game online. I had missed the part where he unretired to play in an indie league, and then it turns out he didn’t quite make it to the indie league, being pulled back to affiliated ball.
The M’s also traded the recently DFA’d Domingo Tapia to the Royals, and picked up RP Danial Zamora, who’d just been waived by the Mets. Zamora is a lefty slider-specialist, so figures to be used as a LOOGY. His fastball’s only 88, but he really pitches off of the slider – throwing it about 3/4 of his pitches. He’ll go reinforce Tacoma, as will Wyatt Mills and Aaron Fletcher, who’ve been optioned back as Anthony Misiewicz and Robert Dugger are back from the Covid/contact tracing IL.
In the minors, Tacoma’s coming off a win in Round Rock, as Darren McCaughan went 6 solid IP to help the R’s to a 6-1 win. Cal Raleigh homered and doubled, and Taylor Trammell, Dillon Thomas, and Jantzen Witte all doubled. That’s doubles in consecutive games for Raleigh. Jantzen Witte was back at 3B after being called in to pitch in the previous game, a 10-5 Express victory. Kind of shocked that was the first time a position player pitched for Tacoma, who’s churning their roster as much as Seattle. No word on the Tacoma starter tonight, but Round Rock starts the aforementioned Sam Gaviglio.
Arkansas swept a double-header in Corpus Christi on the 20th, with Ian McKinney pitching a (7IP) CG and striking out 11 in game 2. Last night, the Hooks won an extra inning contest 7-6. Jake Scheiner and Joe Rizzo both had two hits, including a double. McKinney seems like he’s due for a promotion, especially given the state of Tacoma’s rotation, and given the fact that he’s struck out 29 in just 17 excellent innings. Today, Devin Sweet gets the start for the Travelers.
Everett beat Spokane 8-6 thanks to HRs from Carter Bins and Jack Larsen. Bins also added a double. Stephen Kolek started and went 3 scoreless. The M’s giant Brazilian reliever Igor Januario gave up a run in relief, but I hadn’t heard much from him in years – glad to see he made a huge leap from the DSL team in 2019 all the way up to high A this year. Julio Rodriguez went 0-4, but had two walks. Brandon Williamson gets the start tonight. He’s yet to give up a run in 8 IP and has 17 Ks.
But if it’s impressive K rates you want, check out Modesto starter Taylor Dollard. He got the loss in last night’s 3-2 contest against Inland Empire, giving up 3 runs in 4 2/3. But he struck out 11, giving him 29 on the year in just 13 2/3 IP. He was a 5th round pick in the short 2020 draft out of Cal Poly. Noelvi Marte went 2-4. Tonight’s starter is TBD.
Game 39, Rangers at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Kyle Gibson, 6:10pm
After another win against the Rangers, the M’s are now 5-2 against Texas. There’s not a lot of mystery about why the Rangers are where they are: they have the worst group of position players in the game, and at least by Fangraphs’ metrics, it’s not even close. They’re the only group that’s racked up negative WAR, and they’re closing in on -3, so they’re not just fractionally into negative territory. The problems are widespread: nearly the entire starting line-up, from Shin-Soo Choo to Todd Frazier (since departed) to Rougned Odor was in negative territory. Veterans like Choo or Andrus, younger players like Willie Calhoun – it didn’t matter.
At the beginning of the year, league-wide BABIP was way down – lower than it had been in decades. That’s changed in recent weeks, and league BABIP is up around .290, just a couple of points lower than last year. The Rangers have not gotten the memo, as their team BABIP is still .257, by far the worst in the league. Optimists may point to this as a reason their offense hasn’t gotten going; they’re snakebit by BABIP luck. Their average exit velocity is middle of the pack, so there’s something to this theory, but it can’t explain all of it. They’ve hit for no power, have middling plate discipline, and this is what, the third year in four that Odor’s been nearly unplayable?
Kendall Graveman was electric out of the bullpen yesterday, averaging 97 on his sinker in a perfect inning. The M’s will have an interesting decision to make on him at year’s end. His contract’ll be up, and he may get some attention from other clubs, but his neck injury and arm issues the past few years will limit how much they bid. The M’s may want to bring him back as a bullpen arm.
Today, the M’s again face Kyle Gibson, the ex-Twins ground ball maven who’s been a regular punching bag in Texas. While the Rangers haven’t hit for power, opposing teams have done just fine against Gibson, who enters sporting a HR/9 rate of 2.13. The Rangers had done well in rehabilitating Mike Minor and especially Lance Lynn (who struggled a bit in Minnesota), but it hasn’t worked with Gibson, nor with Juan Nicasio. I think this year was always supposed to be a bridge year before their minor league pitching prospects could get their feet wet in the bigs, and ideally, swapping out vets like Minor or Lynn would help restock the farm system. I’m not sure any of that’s really going to happen now. They held on to Lance Lynn at the deadline, moved Mike Minor (whose ERA was 5.60), and made minor deals to move on from the disappointing Robinson Chirinos and Todd Frazier. That’s not exactly a big system restock, and without the minors, it’s hard to know how much progress their hurlers have made on the year.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Moore, LF
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: France, 2B
6: Marmolejos, DH
7: White, 1B
8: Ervin, RF
9: Torrens, C
SP: Sheffield
Game 19, Mariners at Rangers – Kyle’s House
Marco Gonzales vs. Mike Minor, 6:05pm
After a nice easy victory in the Rangers’ new park, the M’s are back at it with their ace facing veteran starter, Mike Minor. It was going to be interesting to see if Kyle Seager’s long-standing success in Arlington would follow him a few miles to the new Globe Life Field, and a grand slam would seem to settle the matter. Wherever it is, whatever you call it, the park the Rangers play in is Kyle’s House.
Minor’s been one of two remarkably good (cheap) free agent pick-ups by the Rangers. After years with the Braves and then a relief season with the Royals, the Rangers picked him up and converted him back to starting. He rewarded them with an above average season in only 157 innings, using good control and enough barrel-avoidance to run a .257 BABIP. Much of this is attributed to his very high-spin fastball, which he rode to a 6 (or 4) WAR season, depending on if you like RA9-based WAR or FIP-based WAR in 2019. The out-of-the-running Rangers thought about dealing him, but when their other FA pick-up, Lance Lynn, made a run at the Cy Young award, they thought they’d keep both and see where they stood in 2020.
Like a few pitchers we’ve seen – including Justin Dunn last night! – Minor’s velocity is down pretty noticeably this year. He averaged 92.8 last year on his fastball, but only 90.7 this year. Remember that velo is generally lowest in April and *peaks* in August with the warmer weather, and it’s got to be a bit of a concern. It’s coincided with an upward trend in his BABIP and two pretty poor starts his last two times taking the ball: he’s given 13 hits and 11 runs in 10 2/3 IP.
Minor also throws a change and slider, each at 27% of his pitches. He’s got a curve he’s used more in the past, so he does have a real four-pitch mix. The lefty has very even platoon splits in his lengthy career.
Justin Dunn worked around some wildness to have his best start yet last night, working 6 innings for his first big league W. As I alluded to above, though, he sat at 90 mph on his four-seam fastball, down significantly from previous starts. We’ve gone through worrying about velo in Arlington before, but it’s something to watch. Of course, what hitters do with the pitch is more important than its velocity, and it was fascinating to see how different the pitch played. I mentioned in yesterday’s post that his lack of command/control with the fastball meant that hitters didn’t swing at it. The Rangers broadcast made a big deal of the fact that he hadn’t given up a hit on the pitch, but that wasn’t because it’s some amazingly hard-to-hit offering: he just couldn’t find the zone, and batters just walked instead. Coming in, batters swung at about 30% of his fastballs. Last night, it was just about 50% (24 of 50), and since it was coming in with below-average oomph, they put a ton of those fastballs into play.
It worked last night, in part because Dunn was able to get two absolutely huge strikeouts after allowing the first two batters to reach in the 5th. But those were his only Ks; he’s sitting at 8 on the year, and has still walked more than he’s K’d. This is concerning, as nice as it was to see his fight in the 5th-6th. I’ll be curious to see if that FB velo was the result of a conscious decision to allow more balls in play/fewer walks, or just a one-game blip after what amounts to a long road trip for 2020 (the Seattle-to-Texas flights have to be about the longest travel in the Covid-sports-world).
1: Crawford, SS
2: Moore, RF
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Nola, C
6: Long, 2B
7: White, 1B
8: Gordon, LF
9: Lopes, DH
SP: Gonzales
Lots of moves around the league today. The M’s have picked up Seth Frankoff, who pitched a few games for the Cubs a few years back, and who spent 2018-2019 starting in Korea for the Doosan Bears. In his limited views in the bigs, Frankoff has a sinker and fourseamer around 92, a cutter at 88, and a curve. He didn’t show it for Chicago, but he’s also got a change-up with plenty of armside run.
The Rangers picked up ex-Reds slugger Derek Dietrich a few days ago, assigning him to their alternate site. But they’ve called him up for tonight’s game, which perhaps makes some sense, as many Rangers starters like Rougned Odor, are really struggling at the plate. They’ve also brought up pitcher Wes Benjamin, optioning Jimmy Herget, who pitches last night, along with rookie Anderson Tejeda.
The biggest news of the day was M’s prospect Austin Shenton taking a George Kirby pitch *over Cheney’s CF wall*. This is such a rare, improbable feat that I wouldn’t have believed it had News Tribune writer Lauren Smith not got the video. Rainiers’ radio guy Mike Curto’s done a lot of sleuthing over the years about batters who’ve homered over the tall wall that rises at 425 feet at Cheney. The first absolute no-doubt HR over the wall was hit by AJ Zapp, the R’s first baseman, in 2004. The very next year, M’s prospect Shin-Soo Choo hit another one, in a game attended by your humble scribe, because King Felix was the R’s starting pitcher. That game was played with a powerful wind blowing directly out, a factor that helped Choo’s drive immensely, and which contributed to an off-night by Felix standards (he gave up 2 wind-aided HRs, and walked 3 to just 2 Ks in 7 IP).
Other than those two in-game bombs, Curto mentions that just two players have done it *in BP/practice*. The first was Jose Canseco of the old Tacoma Tigers, and Jay Buhner in 2001, when he was on a rehab assignment. Shenton’s bomb didn’t have wind assistance, and while it wasn’t in a real game environment, it was a hell of a lot closer to it than batting practice. Given the height of the wall, that’s gotta be nearing the 460′ foot or so HR that the Nats Juan Soto hit in New York the other night. Amazing.
Game 80, Orioles at Mariners – Counterfactuals
Mike Leake vs. Paul Fry/Sean Gilmartin, 7:10pm
A few days ago, some folks were musing on what the Mariners would look like if they somehow missed out on Felix. Take away one of the only redeeming qualities of some painful M’s teams, and what do you have? Is it even really baseball at that point? Living through 2010-2014 was tough, but at least Felix was a light in the darkness. We also fell hard for some prospects who didn’t quite pan out, so presumably in addition to the near-term hopelessness, we’d have had our medium-to-long-term hopes dashed repeatedly enough to be as cynical as…well, as cynical as I am now.
But wait, said PNW Vagabond: maybe the team would’ve been better. Heresy! I thought, but then he pointed out that without Felix in 2006, the M’s may not have felt close enough to the division lead to perform their two-step, self-inflicted disaster of trading Shin-Soo Choo and Asdrubal Cabrera for nothing much. And without that, they probably don’t pull the trigger on the Bedard deal a year later. What would the team look like in 2010 if none of that had happened? You can quibble with any individual element (at the time of the trades in 2006, Felix was 9-9 with and an ERA of 4.60; it was just starting to come down after a brutal April and May), and you can quibble with the entire counterfactual process, and what possible value it has. I get it: there’s not really a point to imagining an M’s team without Felix, because thankfully, we got Felix. But it’s interesting to think about what decisions would’ve changed and why.
Today’s game against the Orioles is meaningless in isolation, so weird flights of fancy are all we can really do while checking Jarred Kelenic box scores. And thankfully, today’s pitching match-up gives us a chance to counterfactual one of the most minor trades of the Jerry Dipoto era: the trade that sent today’s starter/opener Paul Fry to Baltimore. In 2015, Fry – a late draft steal by the M’s out of a Michigan JC – struck out 113 in 80 relief innings across high-A and AA. He hit the AFL and struggled mightily with his control – a problem that persisted the next year in Tacoma, and then again in early 2017. In April of that year, the M’s flipped him to Baltimore for an international bonus pool slot. Baltimore hardly ever utilized their pool, and thus had a cottage industry of selling it off in exchange for so-so prospects. Just days before acquiring Fry, they got former Milwaukee SP prospect Damien Magnifico, another veteran of the 2015 Arizona Fall League with Fry. Magnifico was more of a known commodity, and thus the “slot value” that Milwaukee picked up was over $800,000. Fry, as a not-particularly-hard-throwing reliever, went for a later slot valued under $150,000. But still: the Orioles had a plan, the M’s valued that pool value, and a deal was struck.
At the time, I was pretty unimpressed. I know some of the prospect shine was off of Fry by 2017, but he seemed like a perfectly decent lefty reliever, one with a really good slider that – at least in the minors – was effective against lefties AND righties. Plus, he had an intriguing sinker that would make him into a big-time ground ball pitcher. Dipoto had picked up James Pazos, though, and there was Marc Rzepczynski on a two-year deal. Would Fry even get a shot? Moreover, what we didn’t know at the time was what the M’s would do in that year’s J2 signing period. Presumably, they had worked out deals with a bunch of prospects, and maybe they needed the flexibility to work something out with a kid they were really high on.
There’s definitely no one-to-one accounting for where this particular slot went in the M’s J2 spending spree, but we do know this: the M’s signed a kid who’s now one of their very best prospects, and one of the best players in the Sally League: Julio Rodriguez. Does that change our appraisal of the Fry trade? On the one hand, the M’s already had nearly $5 million to spend, and gave Rodriguez less than $2M. They signed Juan Querecuto and several other players on July 2nd itself, and still didn’t spend their pool. I presume they signed some players a bit later, so maybe it helped sign one of them. But who knows, maybe it helped them as they negotiated with not one but two of the top-30 international prospects. Or maybe it never got spent at all. It’s really hard to say. All I know is that in the most tenuous, perhaps dubious way, I kind of connect Julio Rodriguez, teenage phenom, and Paul Fry, lefty reliever on one of the worst teams in recent memory, and one-time M’s relief prospect. Would the M’s still have Julio without this trade? I think the odds are overwhelmingly high, but I wasn’t in the room, so I can’t say for sure.
The primary pitcher for the O’s is Sean Gilmartin, the one-time 10th overall pick by the Braves out of Florida State. This was a classic high-ceiling pick, as Gilmartin didn’t throw hard, but mixed his pitches and just looked like someone who’d be a solid, unremarkable 4th starter for a decade. He stalled out in the Atlanta system, but got a chance out of the Mets bullpen after he was popped in the Rule 5 draft. He was very effective in 2015, but then when the M’s wanted to move him back to the rotation, the wheels sort of fell off. He’s been a well-traveled guy since, without finding a lot of success. He was decent in AAA this year, so the O’s will call him up and see what he looks like in a longer stint. Gilmartin throws 88-89, and uses a change and slider (both in the high-70s) quite frequently. There’s nothing much in his movement profile that looks all that amazing, but that’s what you’d expect from looking at his stats.
Fry, for his part, sits in the low-90s with a sinking four-seamer that’s arrow-straight but with less rise than most. His best pitch is his slider, a fairly hard pitch at 84 MPH that gets tremendous sink and gloveside movement. Despite the low arm-slot and the repertoire that screams LOOGY, he didn’t exhibit big platoon splits last year (he’s doing so this year, though). The slider’s generally been an equal-opportunity pitch, and he’s struggled to miss bats more against lefties; this makes me think he’s got a deceptive delivery. But then, you can have deception and not take full advantage if your pure stuff isn’t good enough. I think Fry can be a perfectly cromulent bullpen piece, but I don’t think he’ll be much more than that.
1: Smith, CF
2: Crawford, SS
3: Santana, RF
4: Vogelbach, 1B
5: Murphy, C
6: Narvaez, DH
7: Seager, 3B
8: Moore, 2B
9: Williamson, LF
SP: Leake
“Openers” certainly haven’t worked for the M’s, with Tayler Scott having a rough go yesterday. The M’s openers now have a collective ERA of 19.50, which isn’t great (thanks to Ryan Divish for the stat), but it’s not that the strategy itself is bad – it may just be the M’s personnel/implementation. That said, I’m always kind of confused when a team chooses to go lefty/lefty or righty/righty with their opener and primary pitcher. That’s exactly what the O’s are doing here, with two soft-tossing lefties. The M’s used hard-throwing righty Tayler Scott to open for classic lefty junkballer Wade LeBlanc, and while Scott scuffled, LeBlanc was great. The whole strategy seemed to start when the Rays used Sergio Romo – a righty specialist – to start games against the Angels to get the first PA against Mike Trout and maybe Andrelton Simmons out of the way before a lefty like Ryan Yarbrough pitched the next 5-6 IP. I’m not sure what the O’s are doing here.
Game 72, Mariners at Athletics – And Opening Day in the Northwest League
Marco Gonzales vs. Chris Bassitt, 6:37pm NOT 7:05 as I had previously posted!
There are not a lot of surface similarities between tonight’s two starters. Bassitt’s a righty, Gonzales a lefty. Bassitt throws 94 with a lollypop curve that may be the game’s slowest non-knuckleball pitch. Gonzales throws 88 with a change-up that was once a true weapon, or at least projected to be. And that made Gonzales a first-round draft pick, while Bassitt lasted until the 16th round out of a non-power-conference school.
All of that said, I think it can be kind of interesting to view them as two sides of the same coin, or maybe as a couple of different pathways through a pitching career in the modern game. Both debuted in 2014, at the tail end of the little batting ice age, when run scoring and home runs were way down. Both posted ERAs right around 4 that year, with Bassitt’s mediocre K:BB offset by the fact he didn’t allow any dingers. Gonzales missed more bats, but missed the strike zone too much, leading to a surfeit of walks. He also allowed a few HRs, but his fly-ball ways and a good defense behind him limited BABIP and runs-allowed. Gonzales’ injury woes kicked off the next year, and he was lost to TJ surgery until 2017. Bassitt had a fine 2015, as it marked his highest IP total, split between AAA and Oakland, the team the White Sox traded him to in the Jeff Samardzija deal.* His line was again helped by HR-avoidance, and his K:BB and overall stuff weren’t much to look at, but he produced. And then he, too, followed Marco into TJ surgery and rehab.
At this point, Bassitt’s 30 years old, three years older than Gonzales. His velo’s finally back up to the 94 he sat at in 2014-15, and he’s made some subtle changes – like taking some velo off of his curve, using a few more four-seamers, and turning his slider into more of a cutter – but he’s now pitching better than ever. His whiff rates are up to career highs on essentially all of his pitches, and that’s pushed his K rate way up as well. He’s stopped walking so many batters, so his K-BB% is 4 percentage points higher than last year, and about 9 percentage points higher than when he broke in in 2014. We’ve learned so much about player development since 2014, and Bassitt may be a great example – a non-prospect, or minor prospect, late-bloomer with lots of time missed due to injury and no real stand-out pitch becomes a serviceable middle-rotation guy thanks to velo development/maintenance and a new plan of attack. Meanwhile, Gonzales, who’s further from his surgery, younger, and more of a heralded prospect, is stuck in neutral, with an RA/9 over 6 (thanks defense!), and a velocity down at least 2 MPH from 2017. His last start was encouraging – as was Yusei Kikuchi’s – but you can’t keep looking at opponents like Bassitt and feeling good about what’s going on with the M’s. Gonzales (and Kikuchi) are flat-out better than they’ve pitched this year, and I expect they’ll climb out of this slide at some point. But when his velocity, K%, BB%, and GB% all decline, and when there’s no recognizable sense that things are changing, you tend to adjust where you think he’ll regress towards once he does pull out of this tailspin. This doesn’t look like a #2 starter, any more than Kikuchi does. And while there was considerable marketing puffery from the M’s in making Marco out to be more of an ace than he realistically is, it’s undeniable that some team could get solid #3 production from him. I hope the M’s can one day.
In happier news, the Everett AquaSox open the Northwest League season today. The Sox start with a series in the Tri-Cities to face the Dust Devils, a Padres affiliate. Everett’s roster’s worth watching, largely due to the pitching infusion the draft’s brought the org. #1 and #2 picks George Kirby and Brandon Williamson will suit up for Everett, as will Bellingham-native and 5th-rounder Austin Shenton. Today’s game’s started by Juan Mercedes, who’ll face off against Dust Devils’ Nick Thwaites, a 19-year-old 2018 draft pick who was solid in the AZL last year. Mercedes is 19 as well, but only got a handful of AZL innings last year. He had more of a track record in the DSL, where he pitched the previous two seasons.
Speaking of teenage hurlers, Deivy Florido gets the start for West Virginia today against Hagerstown.
The biggest story of the minor leagues today involves the Rainiers, who’ll start Felix Hernandez (Happy Felix Day) against new AAA team, the San Antonio Missions. Old heads remember the M’s had San Antonio as an affiliate back when they were a AA Texas League franchise, and they were one of the stops Felix made on his way up to Seattle, pitching for them in 2004. The 2003 Missions was one of the better MiLB teams the M’s had; they went 88-51, posted nearly a +200 run differential, and featured a young Jose Lopez and Chris Snelling. Aussie lefty Travis Blackley went 17-3 with a 2.61 ERA in 160+ IP, Clint Nageotte was a huge prospect, Cha-Seung Baek was solid in 50 IP, Bobby Madritsch came out of the indie leagues to dominate on his way to the majors, and their second indie league steal, George Sherrill, started his ascent by being essentially untouchable in 27 IP (his ERA was 0.33). Shin-Soo Choo was around with Felix in 2004, and 2005 brought Adam Jones and Ryan Rowland-Smith, and then 2006 saw Jeff Clement, Wlad Balentien, and Matt Tuiasosopo (Asdrubal Cabrera skipped AA and went right to Tacoma). Fun times!
1: Smith, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Santana, RF
4: Vogelbach, 1B
5: Narvaez, C
6: Beckham, DH
7: Crawford, SS
8: Gordon, 2B
9: Williamson, LF
SP: Gonzales
Welcome back, JP Crawford! He’ll take the 25-man spot of Brandon Brennan, who hits the 10-day IL with a sore shoulder. Felix starts his rehab assignment, and Shed Long’s been optioned back to Tacoma in exchange for Matt Festa.
Every time Edwin Encarnacion’s not in the starting line-up from here on out, we’ll all frantically search twitter to see if a deal’s announced. Nothing yet.
* It’s never going to get as much attention as one of those huge, franchise-making deals, but holy crap has this deal turned into a massive steal for the A’s. Samardzija was in his last arb year, meaning the Sox were only paying for one year. The A’s got a so-so 2B in Marcus Semien, who went from nearly-unplayable SS to defensive ace and lead-off hitter. They got C Josh Phegley, who’s (finally) putting it together, with a batting line north of league average as the A’s primary backstop, and they got Bassitt, who’s showing that he’s perhaps more than rotation depth. The Sox got a down year, and then watched Samardzija leave in free agency in the off-season before 2016, one marked by open feuding between players and management, and a hastily-organized rebuild that continues to this day.
Game 153 Mariners at Rangers
Erasmo Ramirez vs. Connor Sadzeck, 5:10pm
It’s been a rough year for the Rangers. It’s hard to believe it was only a couple of years ago that the Rangers occasioned a bunch of “Can teams beat their run differential consistently?” articles by winning 95 games despite a run differential of just +8 (and which was negative for most of the season). A pretty clear rebuild started last year, when the Rangers swapped FA-to-be Yu Darvish for today’s #9 hitter, Willie Calhoun. They’d spent lavishly on FAs like Adrian Beltre, Shin-Soo Choo; they’d extended Darvish and Elvis Andrus, and they’d taken on Prince Fielder’s and Cole Hamels’ salaries. Injuries to many of this crew meant that some salaries weren’t movable, while Fielder’s injury forced him into retirement. Hamels and Darvish were traded, and at this point it’s clear that the Rangers aren’t trying to add more veteran presence.
All of that means they’re in a very different position than they were back in late 2014 when they hired manager Jeff Bannister to try to coax another run out of an aging core. Bannister did that to a degree, but after a meeting with team ownership, the Rangers fired him, seemingly out of nowhere, this morning. Old M’s manager Don Wakamatsu will now manage about 10 games. It’s a weird situation, albeit quite different from the one that saw long-time manager Ron Washington fired near the end of 2014 – the move that opened the door for Bannister. The Rangers are bad, and were bad last year. I’m not sure that anyone really had high expectations for the club, but I’m still pretty surprised to see a manager canned this close to the end of the season. Like Scott Servais, Bannister came in with the idea that he’d be the bridge between the analytics department and the players, but I wonder if the GM/owners wanted to get a bit more avant garde in the dying days of a lost season that Banny was comfortable with.
It’s sort of fitting that the first game of the post-Banny Rangers will feature a Rays-style “Opener” in right-handed reliever Connor Sadzeck. Sadzeck was a Rangers draft pick back when they were coming off an AL pennant, and he’s racked up solid K numbers in the minors, but couldn’t avoid walks or dingers. He’s got great velocity from a 6’7″ frame, but he could never put everything together as a starter, so the Rangers moved him to the pen. Even there, he never quite pitched up to the level his stuff suggested, but pitchers can often live by the BABIP as often as they die by it. After getting BABIP’d to death in AAA, he’s pitching around too many walks in his first few MLB innings by giving up essentially no hits on balls in play. He’s walked 5 and K’d 5, and there’s nothing in his performance record that gets you too worried about things, but then he’s averaging 97+ with a straight, almost sinker-y fastball, and he’s got a hard slider at 88 and a big breaking curveball at 79 that could be a real weapon some day. The fastball isn’t fooling anyone, but the slider sure is. This is a classic specialist profile, at least at this stage; he’s struggled with lefties for a while, but he can often give righties problems.
Since moving to the leadoff spot, Mitch Haniger’s been absolutely great, hitting for average and power and racking up key at-bats. This *should* have more of an impact on run scoring, but much of the team has scuffled just as their lead-off man got hot. With Jean Segura back, the M’s have the best 1-2 line-up positions they’ve had all season… and you can understand why the Rangers might want to use Sadzeck in the first inning to see if he can get past these two plus Nellie Cruz before handing it over to someone who could pitch a bit longer. For all of the potential the whole “opener” thing has to artificially suppress salaries, it really seems like it’s working. The Rays give up surprisingly few runs employing the strategy, and they only use it when Blake Snell isn’t pitching. They’re making the back of their “rotation” – guys like ex-M’s prospect Ryan Yarbrough – into legitimate MLB pitchers by putting them in positions to succeed. Remember it was the Angels’ righty-heavy top of the line-up (anchored by that Trout guy) that brought about this experiment in the first place, when the Rays used ex-closer and current ROOGY Sergio Romo to “start.” It’s weird, and I get why a lot of people don’t like it, but just like the shift, if you’ve got a lefty 4th or 5th starter and you’re facing a line-up with 2-3 tough righties at the top…doesn’t it make sense?
1: Haniger, CF
2: Segura, SS
3: Cano, 1B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Span, LF
7: Gamel, RF
8: Zunino, C
9: Gordon, 2B
SP: Ramirez
The top of the line-up is still righty-heavy, but the M’s may have overcompensated in making the bottom of the line-up so lefty dominant. It’s not a bad line-up – it’s probably the M’s best possible line-up overall – but the lefties are bunched up together starting with Kyle, and a lefty reliever may get a couple of innings in to deal with it.
Can the M’s Upgrade Their Rotation?
Yes, I mean, the answer to that is pretty straightforward. WILL they is a bit trickier, and doesn’t lend itself to clear, definitive answers. And after years of doing this, I’m drawn to definitive answers, as nothing else in this forward-looking, saber-y, projections-and-stuff blog leads to them.
But we can’t just leave the post there; we’re going to have to wallow around in the much of “will they?” and laugh about it in a few weeks once the definitive answer comes. The past two to four weeks have helped to shake things out, not just the teams who might be vying with the M’s to buy talent (welcome, Oakland), but the types of players each team may want to acquire. The shift in the way they acquire players is clearer now, too. The M’s have traded just about everyone save for their last two first-rounders, and without marquee names to move, the M’s strategy has been more about taking on salary. That’s not a critique, by the way. The M’s have a barrier, and they’ve been creative in surmounting it. The M’s got Mike Leake and cash for a so-so prospect because St. Louis, flush with a bunch of prospect arms, wanted the payroll flexibility. When the M’s wanted to acquire a set up man, they got Alex Colome in part by giving up Andrew Moore, but also by taking on Denard Span’s contract (and have watched Span outperform Colome quite handily). The M’s big names – especially Kyle Lewis – have red flags now, so setting aside the fact that the M’s would be loath to trade away a potential star for a rental, Kyle Lewis might not get it done. But the team has money, and if they’re serious about giving themselves the best chance to win in 2018, they could spend it. With Manny Machado finally moving (to the Dodgers), Deadline season is well and truly upon us. Will they M’s be a part of it, or did they shoot their shot back in May?
There’s a problem here, though. The M’s – like most teams – would like to stay below the self-imposed luxury tax threshold, which is at $197 million this year, and rises to $206 million next year. The M’s aren’t in serious danger of exceeding it this year, but they’ve actually committed more money than any team in the division for 2019. That is, they start planning for 2019 with over $125 million in guaranteed expenses, way more than the Astros (under $80 M), the A’s (of course), and more than the Angels, the team with Albert Pujols on a back-loaded deal through 2021. This has given the M’s stability; with the exception of Nelson Cruz, a big chunk of the M’s talent is under contract for years to come. But it means the M’s may see constraints on how much they can add in future years.* All of that to say that, just as the M’s have limitations in marketable prospects, they have limitations (perhaps self-imposed) on the kinds of multi-year contracts they can take on, too.
Another limitation in this year where parity up and died is supply. There are a *lot* of downright awful teams out there, but the problem is that these teams already shed tradeable talent; it’s why they’re awful! Teams like, say, the Marlins don’t have pitchers (or hitters) under long-term contracts now. They shed their biggest over the winter in the Giancarlo Stanton trade. They can get a mint for JT Realmuto now, and the M’s could probably use him, but they’re not going to be serious players for guys with multiple arb years remaining. That’s why the M’s haven’t been connected with Michael Fulmer, the Tigers hurler who may net Detroit a big prospect haul: the rebuilding Tigers want premium prospects for a guy like that. The same may be true for teams like the Twins who have a couple of starting pitchers on one-year pillow contracts. The lack of long term commitments mean the contract itself is affordable to every team in MLB, meaning it may be harder (but not impossible) for the M’s to compete. The M’s best shot at acquiring a starter or impact reliever is to take on a big free agent contract, but that’s hard to find on teams that are already well out of the race.
Learning from the most recent Rays trade, the M’s could compete for one player by taking on another’s contract, too. That would push their offer up the list with many teams, but that runs into another constraint. I’m assuming here that the M’s want to at least explore an extension for Nelson Cruz. He’s been, by just about any measure, one of the most important, successful free agent acquisitions the M’s have ever made. If he’d sign a two-year deal here, I think the M’s would try to move heaven and earth to make it work – he’s been instrumental in fostering the team’s positive culture as well as hitting loads of dingers. But taking on too many contracts now would make that more difficult. I don’t think it’s impossible, but it’s a constraint that the M’s are no doubt aware of.
So what to do?
1: Get Cole Hamels+
Hamels will be a free agent at the end of the year, and while Ryan Divish pooh-poohs the idea here, he’d be a good fit. He’d be a huge boost to the M’s rotation in a playoff series, especially if James Paxton pitches in the wild card game. He wouldn’t imperil any deal for Nellie, as his 2019 option is only $6 M. And without years and years of club control, the Rangers can’t really expect big-time prospects in exchange for Hamels, who’s currently having a so-so season.
But if Hamels won’t get MUCH, he’ll still drive a decent return. I can’t imagine the M’s would give up Evan White/Kyle Lewis for two months+ of Hamels, but then, I don’t know the M’s thinking on what the proper balance is between “win at all costs in 2018” and “we can be good in 2019, too.” There’s a way to get Hamels without giving up too much, though. Get Shin-Soo Choo, too. Choo’s having a great year, but is owed another $42 million through 2020. I imagine the Rangers wouldn’t mind off-loading that commitment, and that Choo would waive his limited no-trade deal (not sure if Seattle’s on his list of blocked teams) to come back to the area he lived in for years. A year ago, Choo’s salary looked like dead money. This year, that’s much less true. As such, taking on an aging Choo for ~$50 million may not be seen as such a big offer. But the Rangers are now in a full-on rebuild, as Hamels and Beltre could both by free agents this winter. Where would the M’s play Choo? They already have an All-Star at DH *and* RF, Choo’s two positions. Moving him to 1B would block the one spot the M’s could use Robinson Cano at, especially if they don’t want to yo-yo Dee Gordon back to CF. But hey, that’s for Scott Servais to figure out.
Cost in talent: Moderate
Cost in 2019-2021 contracts: $6M option buy-out; $20 M 2019 option.
Likelihood: 10%
2: Take on Jordan Zimmermann’s deal
It made so much sense at the time. Jordan Zimmermann had been remarkably consistent as a National, and thus his 5 year, $110 million deal with Detroit seemed a good fit for the win-now Tigers. Almost immediately, everything fell apart: Miguel Cabrera faltered, Victor Martinez got hurt/fell off a cliff, and Zimmermann himself started to struggle at the big league level. His K rate plunged, and with it his strand rate. It had been above 74% in every full year in DC, but it’s never been terribly close to 70% in Detroit. Despite their commitment to Cabrera, the Tigers seem set to selling everything off, including Michael Fulmer, who won’t even reach arbitration until next season. If they’d rather have prospects than pay Fulmer a comparative pittance, then they’d probably love to escape the last two-plus years of their commitment to Zimmermann.
Importantly for the M’s, Zimmermann is actually starting to pitch well again. His strikeouts are back, and his command’s improved. The problem is that he’s been hit hard by injuries over the past few years, and apparently got a “nerve-blocking injection” in his neck over the All-Star break, which sounds like fun. Still, we’re talking about an All-Star caliber pitcher who probably won’t command a lot in trade as long as the M’s are willing to take on most/all of his deal. He’s owed more than Choo, so this could interfere with their pursuit not only of Cruz, but several other players who’ll become available in the 2018-19 off-season – guys like Hamels, JA Happ, and the one-year contract folks like Jake Odorizzi.
More importantly, this would require some serious input from the M’s coaching AND training staff. Can Mel Jr. help Zimmermann continue to do whatever it is that enabled these promising 2018 results? Can the M’s keep him relatively healthy through 2020? Unless the M’s know exactly what changes he’s made and how to help coach him, I think they stay away. If they see something they could work with, this would be an interesting move, and it wouldn’t be a rental contract of the sort Divish reports the M’s owners hate.
Cost in talent: Moderate/low
Cost in 2019-2021 contracts: Moderate/high
Likelihood: 15%
3: It’s Happ-ening dot gif
Since last we saw JA Happ, he’s enjoyed a remarkable late-career renaissance, first in Pittsburgh immediately after leaving the M’s, and then again in Toronto. Happ started his career as a fairly average pitcher in terms of strikeouts, but he always had some annoying control issues. Towards the end of his first stint in Toronto, something seemed to click, like he was poised to unlock some bat-missing strategy, but we never really saw that in Seattle. Instead, he settled back in as a perfectly reasonable (if boring) low K middle of the rotation guy. Traded at the deadline, he went to Pittsburgh and instantly struck out more than a batter an inning while cutting his walk rate. After being in the high teens/low 20s in K%, he shot up to 27%+ in what was admittedly a small sample. It was large enough that the Blue Jays signed him to a three year deal, though, and while his K rate fell back to earth initially, it’s over 26% for 2018, good for a K/9 of 9.99, which is stunning even taking into account the whiff-prone era we’re in. Happ is no longer a bottom-of-the-rotation guy.
That’s a blessing and, if you’re an M’s fan, something of a curse. Happ’s in the last few months of his three year deal; he can walk away at the end of the year. Because of that, his contract is cheap enough for any team to take on. That’s going to make talent in terms of prospects the key determinant of where Happ finishes the year. Who can offer more? Well, the Yankees apparently want pitching, and they’ve got more brand-name prospects to offer Toronto. So too could one of the NL contenders, like Philadelphia, who lost out on the Machado sweepstakes. It’s too bad, because Happ makes a lot of sense in Seattle, which is why he’s been linked to the M’s in trade chatter. It just seems like other teams could fit better, especially if the M’s don’t want to give up one of their few premium prospects for a rental.
Cost in talent: Moderate
Cost in 2019-2021 contracts: 0
Likelihood: 10%
4: Nate Eovaldi? Nate Eovaldi.
Nate Eovaldi of the Rays is like Happ, but with the risk and reward amped up. The oft-injured fireballer has thrown 51 IP this year, and none in 2017 as he rehabbed from surgery. He tantalizes with plus velocity and a four-pitch mix, but the results have always lagged behind the scouting reports. Still, what he’s shown in very limited duty this year make him intriguing as a short-term boost to a rotation. He’s throwing more of his secondaries and relying less on his straight-but-speedy fastball, and his K:BB ratio has never been better.
All of that’s true, but his overall season line (again, 51 IP) is right in line with his frustrating career marks. Sure, much of that has to do with his last start, a 2 2/3 IP disaster that saw him give up 8 runs to the Twins, of all people. But on the other hand, the hot streak that saw him shoot up trade target boards was really based on just his three starts before *that*. Small samples are always intriguing, but his career numbers don’t scream “maybe trade your top prospect for this?”
Again, this is the type of pitcher who would be an interesting risk if the bidding comes in lower than expected (8 runs to the Twins?) AND if the M’s coaches have some sort of a plan to improve upon the intriguing raw material that Eovaldi represents. If there’s a mechanical or repertoire change to make, or a change in his delivery to amp his deception, sure, maybe you go for it. Failing that, it seems like a massive risk to ask a frustratingly inconsistent starter to add consistency to your rotation. That hasn’t stopped the M’s from exploring the idea, and I’m glad they’re doing so. I just don’t see it happening, despite the history of deals between these two clubs.
Cost in talent: Moderate
Cost on 2019-2021 contracts: 0
Likelihood: 15%
I get that it feels gross to even worry about contracts. I get that it’s silly to get too fixated on prospects at the expense of putting the best possible team on the field right now. But while there has to be some sort of balance, the M’s are very clearly in win-now mode. They can make a splash in this market if they want to give up Lewis plus some of their relief arms, but given the returns we’ve seen for Machado and now Brad Hand/Adam Cimber (a big-time, high-minors, top-50 hitting prospect+), sprinkling Warrens and Festas over the proposal may not be enough. The question is are they willing to give up Kyle Lewis?
* The M’s CAN exceed the threshold, of course. Depending on exactly how the hypothetical contracts worked out, it might make sense to blow past it for one year, without triggering the larger penalties meted out to teams who exceed it three straight years.
It’s International Signing Day
It’s July 2nd, the beginning of the big international free agent signing period, wherein fans dream of the next Vlad Guerrero Jr., Ronald Acuña, or Juan Soto, and try not to think too hard about the bizarre and often lawless process that leads up to their signing. It’s a day that changes lives and brings in some of the biggest talents in the game, but because teams are dealing with 16-17 year olds, that talent is even harder to project that in the June amateur draft.
It’s been quite a while, but at one point, international free agent signings were the lifeblood of the Mariners player development system. With Bob Engle at the helm of their international group, the M’s signed Shin-Soo Choo, Asdrubal Cabrera, Rafael Soriano, and some chunky kid out of Venezuela named Felix Hernandez. There were role players, too, and organizational depth. They were active in Australia (Ryan Rowland-Smith and Travis Blackley), East Asia, and especially Venezuela, and in the old pre-bonus pool world, they were always big players for top international talent.
And then, seemingly without warning, it all started to dry up. Not that the M’s stopped signing big-ticket players – they didn’t. It’s just that they stopped making an impact in the minors, let alone on the big club. After whiffing on the likes of Esteilon/Martin Peguero and Guillermo Pimentel, Bob Engle was shown the door. I think the perception’s been that they pulled way back in international signings, but that’s not really true: they’ve signed at least one of the top 20 guys most years since Engle left in 2012, including Hersin Martinez, Luiz Gohara, Carlos Vargas, Brayan Hernandez, Juan Querecuto, and continuing with top-10 guy Julio Rodriguez last year. They’re by no means as active as the Yankees or Astros, and haven’t attempted a big blow-past-the-budget-in-one-year move the way New York and Atlanta have done, signing a team’s worth of prospects all at once. While they haven’t seriously pursued the top echelon players like Guerrero Jr., Kevin Maitan, Luis Robert, but they’ve continued to make $1 M+ signings most years.
But while they’ve still signed guys, they haven’t had a big-time signing make the high minors. To be fair, a lot of this is due to the fact that Jerry Dipoto’s aggressively shopped the international signings when making minor trades. Adam Lind came to Seattle in exchange for three international pitchers, while Vargas went to the Rays in the Drew Smyly deal. Hernandez and Pablo Lopez* went to Miami for David Phelps. The real development problems predate Dipoto, but as with other players, I’m curious to see if the new development team might get more out of these players if any of them stick around long enough to tell.
In Anaheim, Jerry Dipoto and crew were bit players on the international market. They were one of the clubs that spent the least, and when you’re getting *outspent* by the Oakland A’s, it’s pretty clear that it’s not an area of focus. Like with the M’s, that shift was a 180 degree turn from prior front offices, where the Angels were consistently turning up talent like Erick Aybar, Ervin Santana, and a young SS named Jean Segura. But their international director was being investigated by the FBI (again, don’t look too closely at the J2 world) and was then fired by Dipoto’s predecessor, and Jerry used talent like Segura to bolster the big league roster, as in his trade for Zack Greinke.
That changed a bit in 2014-15 when, instead of throwing money at a 16-year old in the DR, Dipoto and the Angels spent $8 M to sign Cuban IF Roberto Baldoquin, thinking the soon-to-be-21 year old would move quickly. They started him in High A and watched as he struggled to a miserable, powerless line in 2015, and while he’s been better this year, the signing’s still a sore point with Angels fans.
That high profile miss hasn’t led Dipoto to pull out of the international market as GM in Seattle. In fact, the M’s have been more active this past year, signing an Aussie pitcher for the first time in years, and a Taiwanese lefty last year – spending a portion of the bonus pool surplus they’d built up.** Today, they’ve signed another top-10 talent, Dominican SS Noelvi Marte, for $1.55 M. Marte sounds like a bat-first/power-hitting infielder who many think may move to 3B, but whose bat profiles there quite well. Like last year’s top prize, Julio Rodriguez (one of the M’s top 5 prospects), if he sticks around, he could be an impact player one day. But to do that, the M’s player development group is going to need to show what they can do. This is insanely difficult; you’re taking teenagers and somewhat quickly throwing them into a completely different culture, with different foods, a different language, and different training methods.
It’s still early to tell how much Dipoto’s drafts will transform the talent pipeline, but it’s a good sign that the M’s are still active internationally. We still don’t really know if the problems that may have contributed to the struggles of guys like Pimentel and Peguero have been fixed, but I’m still glad that the M’s are bringing in more talent to a system that could use some. While the biggest names in the 2018-19 signing period will come off the board soon, the M’s will presumably continue to find additional players throughout the year (as they did last month).
To get a look at video of Marte and to get a bit of a scouting report, check out this post at LL. To follow the signings, Baseball America and MLB.com both have trackers. The latter’s free. Cuban OF Victor Victor Mesa is generally seen as the prize of the year, not only because of his prodigious talent, but because he’s 21, and much more of a known commodity. No word where he’ll sign at this point.
* Lopez always seemed like a great kid, and an easy guy to root for, so congrats to him for getting a win in his big league debut the other day.
** They used some of it to acquire PCL All Star Shawn Armstrong in a deal with Cleveland, too. Bonus pool slots – like competitive balance picks – are tradeable commodities.