M’s Sign Four To Minor League Deals
The M’s have announced the signings of four players to minor league contracts with invites to spring training. Those four are Ryan Langerhans, Denny Bautista, Chris Gimenez, and Royce Ring. They are actually more interesting than you might think.
Langerhans, you know. He probably won’t make the team out of spring training unless Saunders fails to make the club for one reason or another. Most likely, he’ll hang out in Tacoma and come up when Milton Bradley lands on the DL. He gives the team a legitimate reserve outfielder who can play all three spots.
Gimenez is basically Rob Johnson 2.0. Eric Wedge reportedly loved him in Cleveland, and if Moore flops in spring training, he could end up as the backup catcher. Otherwise, he’ll head to Tacoma and serve as organizational depth. He strikes out a lot and doesn’t have much power, but he will take a walk or two.
The two pitchers actually have an outside chance of making this club. Bautista is a hard-thrower with no command, kind of an older version of Dan Cortes. His fastball averages 95 MPH and he gets a lot of strikeouts, but his walk rate was a horrendous 7.22 BB/9 last year. If you enjoyed Jesus Colome, you’ll love Bautista, who is basically the same idea – big arm, no command, could be good if he ever figures it out, but at 30, don’t count on it. A good spring training could land him on the team, however.
Ring is a classic LOOGY, and has been one of the best lefty specialists in Triple-A for several years. He’s completely worthless against RHBs, however, so his only role on a team is as a one or two batter situational reliever. Given that the M’s don’t really have a guy who is good at left-on-left match-ups, Ring could be an attractive bullpen option in March. His lack of versatility will work against him, however.
As far as minor league signings go, these are pretty decent ones. All four guys could end up playing for the M’s and contributing in their own way. They aren’t big additions, but they’re decent depth at no real cost.
Rob Johnson DFA’d
The Mariners needed to clear a spot on the 40 man roster for Jack Cust today, and they’ve announced the move that will open a spot for him – they’ve designated Rob Johnson for assignment. This means the team has 10 days to trade or waive Johnson, but it gets him off the 40 man right now.
No matter how frustrating he was to watch at times, he’s nowhere near the most useless player on the 40 man – hello, Cesar Jimenez! – so I’m going to read between the lines and assume that this means the M’s are working on a deal to ship Johnson to another team. If they know they can get something done in the next few days, this just extends their window and keeps them from having to dump someone else off the 40 man before that trade is complete. With Miguel Olivo in the fold and Adam Moore still around, Johnson was ticketed for Tacoma in 2011. Perhaps another team felt they would be willing to give up a minor piece to get Johnson as a backup catcher, and the M’s and that team are simply trying to figure out what minor piece that should be.
I could be wrong. Maybe they’ll just end up waiving Johnson in a few days, but I doubt they really viewed him as the most expendable guy on the 40 man. He certainly wasn’t our favorite player, but he’s also not totally useless, especially for an organization that doesn’t have much in the way of high level catching depth in the minors.
The Current Roster
After adding Jack Cust, Miguel Olivo, and Brendan Ryan, here’s a snapshot of what the M’s projected Opening Day roster looks like at the moment.
1. Ichiro Suzuki, RF
2. Chone Figgins, 3B
3. Jack Cust, DH
4. Justin Smoak, 1B
5. Miguel Olivo, C
6. Franklin Gutierrez, CF
7. Michael Saunders, LF
8. Jack Wilson, SS
9. Brendan Ryan, 2B
Bench: Adam Moore (C), Milton Bradley (OF/DH), Josh Wilson (INF), Matt Tuiasosopo (UT)
Pitching Staff:
1. Felix Hernandez, RHP
2. Jason Vargas, LHP
3. Doug Fister, RHP
4. Michael Pineda, RHP
5. David Pauley, RHP
Long – Chris Seddon, LHP
Long – Jose Flores, RHP
Middle – Luke French, LHP
Middle – Dan Cortes, RHP
Setup – Garrett Olson, LHP
Setup – Brandon League, RHP
Closer – David Aardsma, RHP
There are still some holes to be filled, obviously.
Having Josh Wilson as your primary reserve infielder is a problem, as he simply isn’t qualified for anything more than a 25th man/pinch-runner role. Having him move into the starting line-up whenever anyone (read: Jack Wilson) gets hurt is simply not a good idea, and even with Dustin Ackley‘s likely arrival in the summer potentially solving that problem, the team should not be willing to go with Wilson as their primary reserve infielder for two months. With Brendan Ryan around to act as a backup SS, the team can go with a reserve IF who doesn’t need to be able to play SS, allowing them to get a better bat on the bench. That would push Wilson into Tui’s role and Tui off the roster, both of which are good things. A guy like Willy Aybar would make a lot of sense for that role.
The pitching staff still needs work as well. Pauley is probably best off in a long relief/spot starter role, and moving him to the pen would allow the team to not have to push Seddon to the majors, allowing him to serve as additional depth down in Tacoma. Relying on the hope that Erik Bedard is healthy enough to hold down the #5 spot isn’t a great idea, so the M’s should still be in the market for another back-end starter. Jeff Francis is still my ideal choice, but if he’s too pricey, Kevin Millwood would be worth kicking the tires on.
Speaking of price, the bullpen is still somewhat in flux while the club decides what to do with David Aardsma. Trading him saves around $4 million in salary which could be used to sign a guy like Francis for the rotation, so it’s worth doing even if they can’t land a big return for him. However, moving him also opens up a hole in an already thin bullpen, so the M’s will have to be on the lookout for a cheap reliever or two that they could bring in to bridge the gap in the middle innings if League and Cortes were promoted after Aardsma was dealt. Alternately, they could use Josh Lueke to fill one of those spots, but whether that happens is still up in the air.
So, that leaves the shopping list for the rest of the winter looking something like this – #5 starter, corner infielder with some offensive upside, and potentially decent middle reliever, and if he’s a lefty, that’s a bonus. If they don’t trade Aardsma, they probably only have $2 or $3 million left in the budget, depending on how Olivo’s contract is structured and what Brendan Ryan, Jason Vargas, and Brandon League end up getting to avoid arbitration. If they trade Aardsma, they have a little more flexibility and could probably expand their search a bit.
My preference? Deal Aardsma, and then sign Francis, Aybar, and Mark Hendrickson. That would give the team a better back-end starter, a deeper bullpen, and a better bench, plus whatever prospect they could get in return for Aardsma. They aren’t sexy moves, but they’re the kind of low-cost acquisitions that can fill some holes and give the team a chance to be not-terrible next year. Of course, the offense is essentially predicated on Justin Smoak and Michael Saunders living up to their minor league potential, so it could go badly wrong anyway, but that’s a risk the team has to take. They can minimize problems elsewhere in the hope that, if those guys hit, the team could actually be okay.
Brendan Ryan
Last week, I started writing up a post on why the Mariners should acquire Brendan Ryan from St. Louis. Because of the craziness of the winter meetings and being totally whipped on Friday, I didn’t finish it. Today, the Mariners acquired Brendan Ryan. I guess you’ll have to take my word for it that I would have endorsed this deal even before it went through.
So, let’s talk about Ryan. The first thing people are going to notice is just how bad he hit last year, and I’m sure we’ll hear moaning from the “we need offense!” crowd, as Ryan is nothing like a big bat kind of player. Like Jack Wilson, most of his value comes from his abilities in the field, and you live with the bat in order to get the glove in the line-up. Unlike Jack Wilson, Ryan can actually stay on the field for more than a few days in a row. And, despite his miserable offensive season last year, there actually is some reason for optimism about his abilities at the plate.
In February of last year, Ryan had surgery on his right wrist, and while he was able to make it back on the field for opening day, wrist problems are among the worst any hitter can have. They are notorious power-sappers, and they can linger for months even after a player is back on the field. It is quite common for a player to hit far below his normal levels when returning from a wrist problem. And that’s exactly what we saw with Ryan, whose offense took a big step back from 2009. He should be totally healthy this year, and it will be interesting to see what a full-strength Ryan looks like again. In addition, there are some statistical suggestions that Ryan’s offense is better than his 2010 numbers.
One of the first things I started doing after we rolled out splits leaderboards over on FanGraphs was to look at how different players performed over the last few years on different batted ball types. We’ve all seen guys hit line drives right at people and say “man, that’s unlucky”, and I was curious if there was any actual year to year correlation in a stat like batting average on line drives. So, I pulled all the numbers from 2007 to 2010 and ran some correlations, finding that – as you might expect – there seems to be almost no year to year predictive ability from a guy’s BA on line drives. The actual correlation was .15, so it’s not completely random, but it’s close. With very few exceptions, almost everyone gravitates back towards an average of about .725 on line drives. Guys who get “lucky” hit as high as .850 in any given season, and guys who got “unlucky” hit closer to .600, but they almost always regress right back to normal the next year.
Brendan Ryan was one of the “unlucky” guys last year, hitting just .627 on line drives, third worst in baseball among full time players. Only Carlos Lee and Alcides Escobar were worse, and before you scream that this is just evidence that these guys suck, other underachievers on line drives include Buster Posey, Ryan Ludwick, and Andre Ethier. Oh, and there’s the fact that Ryan hit .778 on line drives in 2009, so it’s not like this is a yearly problem for him. I’d argue that it was almost certainly a fluke, and we should expect his line drives to find more gaps next year, leading to expectations for a bounce back season.
He probably won’t hit .292/.340/.400 like he did in 2009 again. That was out of the norm that he’s established over the rest of his career, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised by a .270/.320/.380 line from him. That isn’t world-beating offense, but given that he’s an elite defensive middle infielder, it would make him a pretty useful piece. Keep in mind that Ryan’s UZR at shortstop in nearly 2,400 major league innings is +23.1. Even regressing that number to account for the sample size and imperfections in UZR, he’s still likely +5 to +10 runs better than an average defensive major league shortstop, and if you put him at second base, he’d probably be among the best defenders in the game at the position.
If his bat rebounds at all, he’s something like a league average player. Even if it doesn’t, he’s a pretty solid utility infielder and part-time player off the bench. He also gives the Mariners the flexibility to use him as the starting second baseman to open the year, then shift him into a different role once Dustin Ackley proves he’s ready for the big leagues. If Jack Wilson gets hurt and/or traded, Ryan is an easy fit for the starting shortstop gig, basically giving you the same skillset with better health for a fraction of the salary. If Wilson is playing well and is actually able to take the field when Ackley forces a promotion, Ryan can become the primary reserve infielder, giving Ackley days off against tough LHPs and Wilson days off when his (whatever) hurts.
There’s also the added bonus that Ryan is cheap. He’s arbitration eligible for the first time this winter, and the M’s will control his rights through 2013. Given his miserable offensive season last year, he’s not going to get more than $2 million in arbitration, and he might not even get that. He’s a low cost guy who won’t eat up the rest of the team’s payroll, but fills their most glaring need on the roster.
Avoid the temptation to look at Ryan as another no-hit infielder. He’s a quality player, and the Mariners are instantly better for having made this move. He probably won’t have the same breakout that Franklin Gutierrez had after coming over, but he’s got the chance to have a similar impact on the pitching staff if he plays regularly. This is a good move for the team.
Mariners Trade for Brendan Ryan
I am sure Dave will give a more detailed writeup, but in the interest of timeliness, the Mariners just traded RHP Maikel Cleto to the Cardinals in exchange for SS Brendan Ryan.
Ryan is a very good defensive shortstop who has been inconsistent offensively since earning the regular SS job with the Cardinals in 2009. He is coming off of a dismal 2010 which saw him put up a .256 wOBA. In 2009 he was a good deal better, posting a .324 mark. There is pretty good reason to think that neither 2009 or 2010 represent his true talent level. He had an unsustainably low BABIP in 2010 and an unsustainably high mark in ’09, despite little change in his underlying skills. Still just 29, Ryan has a good chance to become a more durable version of Jack Wilson. Good defensive SS (11.4 UZR/150 at the position over parts of four seasons) who will be comfortably below average offensively but might not be a total black hole at the plate. Ryan can either step in for Wilson if the team tries to jettison him to clear salary, or serve as a placeholder for Dustin Ackley and then slide over to SS when Wilson inevitably gets hurt.
In return, we say farewell to Maikel Cleto, the piece of the J.J. Putz trade that offered the most upside when the deal went down. Cleto came to the organization as a fireballer who did not have a good idea of how to harness his power arsenal, and two years later, that’s still pretty much all he is. He has struggled with visa issues, command, secondary stuff, and elbow soreness in his two years in the system, and he is a pretty solid bet to end up in the ‘pen.
Looks like a pretty nice low-impact move. Cleto is not a huge loss, and Ryan will not cost much as a 1st-year arbitration eligible player coming off a bad year.
Candid Jack
It’s no secret that Jack Z is fairly cautious with what he says publicly. He almost always plays things close to the (sweater) vest, and that’s why it was so surprising to hear his aggressive tone in an interview with Mike Salk on Wednesday. If you missed the audio, Salk has a write-up with some quotes and his thoughts, including a link to the full interview.
The obvious takeaway is that Jack was unimpressed with the effort that some of the younger guys on the team put in last year. Given that they just acquired Miguel Olivo to start at catcher, he was even sufficiently annoyed by their performances to take away their jobs. This is probably the most open and honest Jack has been with the media since he was hired, and it wasn’t really positive honesty. He was frustrated, and it showed.
If you missed it, I highly encourage you to check out the link and listen to the audio.
M’s Sign Miguel Olivo
I spent the last couple of days making it clear that I was not a big fan of this move. Safeco is a terrible park for Olivo, and this move essentially ends Adam Moore’s chances at turning into something in Seattle. Maybe he never would have developed, but this seems like a premature end to his chance to prove himself as a big leaguer, and Olivo is not likely to make a significant impact on the Mariners. At best, you’re hoping for something like a +1 win upgrade in a year where that win probably won’t mean anything.
Even worse, it’s a two year deal, so we’re not only punting Moore’s future, but we’re taking away potentially needed payroll space next winter. The team has a lot of cash coming off the books after 2011, but has now committed a part of that to an aging catcher who has never hit outside of Colorado. He’s simply not very good, and now the team has less money next winter to throw at someone who might be.
Olivo might only make $3.5 million, but the cost of this move is significantly higher. I’m not a fan of this at all.
Mariners Add Jose Flores In Rule 5
The Mariners used the second pick in the Rule 5 draft on relief pitcher Jose Flores out of Cleveland’s system. He was so highly thought of that John Manuel didn’t even write him up in his Baseball America Rule 5 preview. Ben Badler, also of BA, called it a “strange decision” on twitter a few minutes ago. Apparently, he has a decent fastball but no secondary stuff, and he’s only pitched in A-ball. He did have a nifty 51/7 K/BB ratio last year, but again, it’s A-ball.
We’ll see if the M’s find a spot for him at the end of spring training. I’d bet on no.
Miguel Olivo – Blech
Reportedly for two years and $7.5 million. Not a fan of this at all. More analysis coming later, but I would consider this Jack’s worst move since giving Brandon Morrow away.
Apparently, this one might be bunk. Word in Orlando is that could all be smoke. Shannon Drayer says talkings are ongoing but nothing is done.
Cust’s HRs
While Jack Cust is going to benefit from Safeco to an extent as a left-handed flyball hitter, he may not get the boost that might be expected. Here’s Cut’s HR chart from last year:
That’s not an aberration; Cust has more power to left-center field than anywhere else. His career splits when he makes contact:
Pull: .382 BA, .679 SLG
Center: .468 BA, .841 SLG
Opposite: .358 BA, .787 SLG
He has pull power, so he will be able to take advantage of Safeco at times, but he doesn’t pound the ball down the right field line like, say, Michael Saunders. He’s going to hit some balls to left center that would have been out of other parks and get run down in Seattle. He’s still worth $2.5 million, but when you hear him described as a “left-handed power bat”, perhaps temper your expectations a bit. He’s not going to be a guy who hits 35 bombs into the right field seats.
Also, just because it’s kind of funny, the list of pitchers that Cust hit a home run off last year.
Manny Delcarmen
Trevor Bell
Joel Pineiro
Jered Weaver
Victor Marte
Clay Buchholz
Scott Linebrink
Tony Pena
Jeremy Hellickson
Tony Sipp
Bryan Bullington
Nick Blackburn
David Pauley
There’s a lot of arms who throw 88 on that list. Hopefully, he turns around a few 95 MPH fastballs in April and shows that he’s still got some bat speed left.