Adrian Beltre, Retrospective
Now that Adrian Beltre is scheduled for surgery tomorrow and is looking at a 6-8 week recovery time, there’s a legitimate chance that his season, and maybe his Mariner career, is over. A two month recovery estimate would theoretically get him back for the month of September, but there are all kinds of potential issues that could arise – the surgery could be more complicated than expected or the rehab could hit a snag, and if his returns gets pushed back even a week or two, the minor league season will be over before he has a chance to go out on a rehab assignment.
Let’s hope Adrian comes back for the final month of the season, but I wouldn’t advise counting on it. Given that he’s a free agent this winter, that his offensive skillset is a bad fit for Safeco Field, that his agent will almost certainly try to guide him to a spot that would be more conducive to putting up offensive numbers to re-establish his value, and that the M’s were pretty impressed with Matt Tuiasosopo in spring training, there are a lot of reasons to think that Beltre and the Mariners might decide to part ways after the season.
So, if this is it, and we’ve seen the last of Adrian Beltre as a Mariner, we need to make one thing perfectly clear – his signing was a complete success and he’s been worth every dime the Mariners paid him. He’s in the conversation for best free agent signing in franchise history. He’s been a terrific asset to the team and a shining light through some really rough seasons.
You’re not going to get that perspective from the mainstream media, however. The first thing that is always brought up when people talk about Beltre is the big contract signed and his 2004 numbers, and how he’s never been able to replicate that performance. Of course, lost in that ignorance is that no one expected Beltre to repeat that performance. His 2004 season was worth 10.0 wins – the only other guys to post a +10 win season since 2002 are named Bonds and Pujols. If people were expecting Beltre to perform at his 2004 levels going forward, he’d have signed for about $200 million more than he actually received.
The fact that Beltre’s 2005-2009 performance never got near his 2004 performance wasn’t a disappointment – that was totally expected. What the M’s were paying Beltre for were an average to above average bat combined with a great glove, and that is exactly what they got. Over at FanGraphs, we have a system for translating on field performance into deserved salary. Here’s Beltre’s Actual Value and Contract Value for each year as a Mariner.
2005: $8.6 million in value, $11.4 million in salary
2006: $17.2 million in value, $12.9 million in salary
2007: $12.4 million in value, $12.9 million in salary
2008: $18.5 million in value, $13.4 million in salary
2009: $5.7 million in value, $13.4 million in salary
Total: $62.4 million in value, $64 million in salary
After a tough adjustment year, Beltre’s been worth his salary and then some for each of the last three years. He was going to easily justify his paycheck again this year until this trip to the disabled list. Even with missing half a season due to an unpredictable injury, his total value is basically dead even with what the Mariners decided he was worth originally.
Beltre has been a rock for the Mariners since he got here. He’s been a consistent +3 to +4 win player, and the kind of guy that every championship club would love to have. If Adrian Beltre’s career with the Mariners is over, it should be remembered as a good one. We hope you come back, Adrian, but if you don’t, thanks for everything. You were awesome.
Minor League Wrap (6/22-28/09)
There are nine affiliates playing now that I’m having to keep track of through the dailies, but I’m only going to be keeping up with the top six here because summer league stuff, in Arizona or Latin America, is not something that’s worth paying a great deal of attention to. I’ll get rehab notes in from Peoria when I need to, but I’ve seen so many hitters/pitchers over the years do almost nothing after a tour of the Arizona League to put much stock in it.
To the jump!
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This Will Make You Laugh
The Mariners High-A affiliate in the California League, the High Desert Mavericks, have scored 14 runs tonight in the same game that center fielder James McOwen set the league record by getting a hit in his 36th consecutive game. McOwen also homered, as did two of his teammates, as the Mavericks lit up Lake Elsinore’s starter for 11 runs in 4 2/3 innings.
They’re losing by 18. I’m not kidding. Here’s the box score. Lake Elsinore is up 32-14 as I type this. Thirty-Two to Fourteen.
Gotta love baseball at altitude.
Update: They weren’t done – the final score was 33-18.
Game 75, Mariners at Dodgers
Olson vs Kuroda, 1:05 pm.
First, the news of the day. Mike Morse won’t be coming up to join the Mariners in place of Adrian Beltre, because they’ve traded him to the Washington Nationals for Ryan Langerhans. Yes, the same Ryan Langerhans I was publicly lobbying for a few days ago. I love our new front office.
Secondly, Beltre’s going to play today, so he’s in the line-up. He’ll go on the DL tomorrow, making room for Langerhans (or a pitcher, depending on Sean White’s health) on the roster. The team needed a LH outfielder more than they needed another infielder, with Carp/Wilson/Woodward already around as infield reserves.
Thirdly, wooo. It’s so awesome having a GM who knows what he’s doing.
Ichiro, RF
Branyan, 1B
Beltre, 3B
Griffey, LF
Lopez, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Johjima, C
Cedeno, SS
Olson, P
Game 74, Mariners at Dodgers
Hernandez vs Milton, 7:05 pm.
Happy Felix Day, sort of. Because….
Larry LaRue delivers the bad news – Adrian Beltre will have surgery on his shoulder in the next week or so, which will put him on the shelf for 6-8 weeks. That puts him out until September, realistically, and even his performance then would be a question mark, given the missed time.
This, obviously, is a huge blow to the M’s. Even with his offense struggling, he’s still an elite defensive player who has been playing at a +3 win level so far this year. The M’s don’t have a capable replacement in the organization, and the options for how the team will replace Beltre range from bad (Mike Morse) to experimental (Branyan to third, Carp at first).
And, obviously, this eliminates any chance of the team trading Beltre at the deadline. This also should push the M’s heavily towards sell mode, as the team had a slim chance of winning the division with their star third baseman, but this puts a pretty serious crimp in those plans. Minus Beltre, and with Bedard’s health a question mark, this team just isn’t that good.
Zduriencik confirms, via Baker, that tonight is Beltre’s last game. Jack mentioned Chris Woodward and Jose Lopez as options to replace Beltre, but not Branyan. If Lopez moved to third, Cedeno/Wilson would probably share second base after Yuni came back, which would make the dropoff from Beltre to his replacement probably something like two wins over the rest of the season. Those are two wins the M’s couldn’t afford to lose. Sell, sell, sell.
Time To Say Goodbye To Roy Corcoran
Last year, the Mariners got 73 good innings out of Roy Corcoran. He was a poor man’s Sean Green, throwing a nasty sinker that got a ton of groundballs and allowed him to pitch his way around some command problems. However, very few pitchers can survive a pitch to contact strategy if they don’t have the ability to pound the strike zone, and Corcoran is feeling the swift kick of regression to the mean.
After last night’s struggles, his season line now stands at 13 2/3 IP, 22 H, 15 BB, and 5 K. His FIP is 6.79. The M’s hoped that a trip to the DL would solve his early season command problems, but he’s been just as bad since coming back a few weeks ago – 6 walks and 1 strikeout in 5 innings of work. Groundballs are great, but if you can’t throw strikes or miss bats, you’re in trouble. Corcoran is in trouble.
Shawn Kelley should be back off the disabled list in a week or two, and Corcoran is the obvious candidate to lose his roster spot when that happens. I’d suggest they not even wait that long, however. There are other options – the Rays just designated Winston Abreu for assignment, so he’ll on waivers shortly and could be had for nothing. The M’s are already giving themselves the short end of the stick by playing with a bunch of Triple-A backups as they head out for their toughest stretch of the season. They don’t need to take Corcoran to Boston and New York and let him continue to prove that he’s incapable of getting major league hitters out.
The upside of Corcoran pitching this badly is he’d almost certainly clear waivers, so the M’s could send him to Tacoma and see if he gets himself straightened out. He’s not helping the team, or himself, turning deficits into blowouts. It’s time for a change.
Game 73, Mariners at Dodgers
Art Thiel had a piece today – well, I suppose I should say last night, since that’s the timestamp and now that the P-I’s only online, it’s not like there’s “today’s edition” of the paper to talk about – on how Ichiro is getting no media attention. Selfish Ichiro, waiting until the media have other things to focus on (Griffey!) before giving them something to write about.
Really, I’d argue that based on performance so far, it could even be his best season ever. The hitting is up there with hit-record-breaking 2004, except it’s not all singles all the time like it was then. If you want to find fault, though, he’s not walking (at all – only 5 unintentional) and his base-stealing has been subpar.
There’s also a peculiar sequence in which Thiel gives Ichiro’s responses to some apparently uninspired reporter questioning. The frequent cliche-ness of interview questions is really a shame with somebody like Ichiro, because we know he has interesting (insightful, quirky, quasi-literary) things to say, not just the stock answers you usually see. But what caught my eye was this comment, about how he feels compared to last year:
“I don’t remember how I felt last June.”
Maybe it’s because he was drowning his sorrows. And if you imagine that time as an employee, which he is, and your company is in the toilet, people around you getting laid off, others making veiled threats, your bosses being fired, that’s a pretty traumatic numbing experience. Anyway, apparently things are much happier now by all accounts. As nice as it would be for Ichiro to put the team on his back and carry it while being a clubhouse leader and catering to the media, can we get him some help?
Can you remember how you felt about the team back then? Has it changed? Should we be happy now or still frustrated?
The Litmus Test
So, as you’ve probably heard once or ten thousand times, the M’s upcoming road trip is going to be a challenge. The Dodgers sport the best record in baseball, and if they aren’t the best team in baseball, then that honor probably belongs to the Red Sox or Yankees, who we just happen to play after we finish up this weekend. You won’t be seeing Josh Geer or Wade LeBlanc anymore.
It sounds like hyperbole, but this road trip, followed by a seven game homestand that finishes with four games against Texas before the All-Star break, will essentially determine the rest of the M’s season. They play 16 games in 17 days against four teams who would make the playoffs if the season ended today, and they have to fly across the country a couple of times in order to do it. This isn’t just the hardest stretch of schedule for the M’s – this is about as tough of a 2 1/2 weeks of baseball as you could possibly have to play.
So, the M’s did well to load up on wins against San Diego and Arizona, as they’re about to get much tougher to come by. Realistically, 8-8 would be a huge accomplishment and send the team into the all-star break at 45-43, presumably still without shouting distance of the lead in the A.L. West. At that point, if Bedard actually has made a couple of starts without breaking down again and the team had just finished holding their own against the best teams in baseball, Zduriencik would have some reason to try to add pieces to help this team win this year. Anything better than 8-8 (assuming that LA/Texas don’t go nuts over the same stretch) will make it very easy for the M’s to keep the roster intact and make a run at it this year.
However, we also have to acknowledge that there’s a real chance that the M’s just get their butts handed to them between now and then. Honestly, 4-12 or something wouldn’t shock me. They could easily get steamrolled by this stretch of schedule. This isn’t the kind of pitching staff that you want to throw at Boston or New York on the road – the flyball oriented nature of most of these guys means we could see a lot of home runs allowed on the road trip, and the M’s don’t have the offense to play big ball with those boys.
Really, over the next couple of weeks, we have to change our expectations of what success is. If they can win as many as they lose, the team should have a party. This is one of those times where you just try to survive.
Game 72, Padres at Mariners
Betancourt to the DL, Lopez is back to take his spot on the roster. Washburn v. LeBlanc, 1:40.
RF-L Ichiro
1B-L Branyan
3B-R Beltre
DH-R Sweeney
2B-R Lopez
CF-R Gutierrez
C-R Johnson
SS-R Cedeno
LF-R Balentien
So, Balentien ninth? Maybe he hasn’t exactly been tearing the cover off the ball, but he’s at least hit better than Johnson (I’m looking forward to having Johjima back), to say nothing of Cedeno. I remember Betancourt was saying he couldn’t fix his approach because he had to bat in front of Ichiro, maybe Cedeno has a similar issue? It doesn’t make any sense to me, but that’s selfish Ichiro for you. If only things were that simple.
Two M’s to Futures, Int’l Signings a Week Away
Cheers to 3B Alex Liddi and CF Tyson Gillies, two current High Desert Mavericks who will be headed to the Futures Game during the All-Star Break next month. Liddi, who will be twenty-one in August, logged nearly 1200 at-bats in the minors with the M’s, most of which came in Wisconsin, before breaking out this year. While any gaudy numbers produced in the California League should rightly be met with some suspicion, he’s shown improvements in his batting eye off and on throughout the season and may be legitimately improving. The darling of the Mariners spring training camp this year, Gillies has handled the jump from Everett quite well and continues to show off solid defensive tools (despite being legally deaf) and the hitting potential of a future lead-off man. He hails from the Vancouver B.C. area and, after the season ends, he will also turn twenty-one.
If you’re fond of world baseball, you might also want to note that the international signing period opens a week from today. Currently, the M’s are rumored to be hot after Dominican OF Guillermo Pimentel, a sixteen-year-old outfielder who has plus power from the left side. The Rangers were originally the frontrunner for Pimentel’s services, but the M’s recently pulled away and have been keeping him active at their facilities for the past few weeks. The Mariners are also said to be scouting a Venezuelan outfielder pretty heavily, who is known to have impressive physical tools that haven’t transferred to games yet. I feel like we’ve heard that profile a few times before.
More information will come in as players begin to sign, but the M’s are expected to be big spenders yet again, likely eclipsing last season’s totals given to the likes of Julio Morban, Francisco Valdivia, Jose Martinez, Bertin Sanon, and Junior Nunez.