Innings Eater Value
I know a lot of fans out there are holding out hope that the Mariners will be able to move one of Washburn, Silva, or Batista at some point this year. After all, it was only a few months ago that the Yankeees were willing to take Washburn’s entire salary, and even though the market has taken a big step backwards, the M’s should still be able to pawn off some of the salary due to one of these guys, right?
Maybe not. Tim Redding, the closest free agent resembling Washburn, has agreed to sign with the Mets for $2.5 million for 2009. Redding was worth about 0.9 wins over a replacement level starter last year, while Washburn was worth about 1.1 wins over replacement. Redding got 25% of what Washburn is owed for 2009.
You could make an argument that Washburn has a better health track record, was a little bit better, and is left-handed, so he’s worth a little bit more than a guy like Redding. But not much more. Really, the Redding signing probably caps Washburn’s market value at around $4 million or so. In other words, to move Washburn, we need to assume that the M’s would have to eat about $6 million of his contract right now. For Batista, it’s probably more like $8 million of the $9 million he’s owed, and Silva’s just not tradeable right now.
The team has an overflow of potential starting pitchers, but the ones they’d like to get rid of, no one is going to want. Right now, it’s pretty safe to say that Felix, Bedard, Morrow, Washburn, and Silva is going to be the starting rotation coming out of spring training. Ryan Rowland-Smith and Aaron Heilman should both be prepared to begin the season as relievers, because there’s just no room at the inn.
The first two months, comparatively
With light commentary
Bill Bavasi was hired 11/7/2003
11/18/2003 – Raul Ibanez signed as a free agent, a move all but done on his arrival. We didn’t like the signing, and spend the next five years saying “Pat Gillick was right about his swing and we were wrong”. The timing still stunk, costing the M’s a first-round pick.
12/7 – Hasegawa signed. Lucky season rewarded with two-year deal, Hasegawa didn’t maintain those results. Also, Mike Cameron officially non-tendered to make room for Ibanez in the outfield.
12/15 – Borders signed, Colbrunn dumped for McCracken
12/16 – Guardado signed. Provides a “proven closer” after Sasaki’s injury year and retirement. Contract works out great and then not as well.
12/19 – Spiezio signed to provide proven clubhouse leadership and grittiness. We know what happened.
1/6 – Cirillo dumped to the Padres.
1/8 – Aurilia signed to provide proven clubhouse leadership and grittiness. We know what happened.
Carlos Guillen traded to the Tigers. As Bavasi said, the organization was tired of him. Still, it’s the GM’s job to weigh the potential headache against benefit and get value. We know what happened.
What’s clear in two months of the new GM: huge value on roles like closer, on veteran leadership and proven ability. Some of those moves work out, some don’t matter, and a lot are terrible.
Jack Zduriencik was hired 10/22
…nothing happens for a while
12/3 signed Russ Branyan in a nice value pickup
12/9 signed Chris Shelton in a nice value pickup
12/10 traded JJ Putz, proven closer, in a 12-player, three-team deal that brought in a lot of outfield defense, an interesting pitching gamble in Heilman, and prospects.
12/11 picked up Reegie Corona in the Rule 5, bought Jose Lugo from the Royals
(and didn’t give new contracts to Raul Ibanez and Willie Bloomquist but offered Ibanez arbitration so he could reap the draft pick)
What’s clear in two months of the new GM: little value on roles like closer, on veteran leadership, and proven ability. Premium on defense, willingness to take on limited low-profile players.
The Jan 10 Recap of sorts
First off, at a high level: four M’s front office guys turned up to talk baseball with ~240 M’s fans on a rainy Saturday afternoon and stuck around for almost three and a half hours.
Three and a half hours. And they refused breaks. What do you say to that?
Besides thank you.
It’s interesting Tony Blengino’s as stat-savvy as anyone you’re likely to see in a major league front office, but he’s also as much about player makeup and work ethic as the other player development folks. Carmen Fusco, the director of pro scouting, goes way back, and he talked about how he came to accept and use statistics. One of the things Dave and I mentioned over and over in the GM search was the need to not get a stathead GM or a scouting GM but a hybrid (and holding up Antonetti or others as examples) that’ll take all the information they can get. Dave’s right — we got one.
I would have paid a lot to see Zduriencik’s presentation to Lincoln/Armstrong before, and now I have a lot better idea of what must have been in it, and would pay more to see him pull it off.
But I think, and forgive me if this is a little touchy-feely, the really interesting dynamic was that they weren’t really always in sync, or on message together. One of the things (again) Blengino discusses is the desire to have different opinions, and you could see that dissent wasn’t couched in “you’re wrong” but “well, also here’s this other side to that…”
I found that telling. One of the disturbing things about the previous regime was the too-frequent refrain that “everyone agreed that was a good move — who could have seen the disaster that ensued coming?” Everyone agreed it’d be great to sign this guy, and he sucked, so wow, that must have been unforseeable. Everyone agreed we’d win the division, and we sucked, so wow, misfortune befell us.
Without giving examples, they talked about that a little, about different opinions and perspectives in the Winter Meetings. If nothing else, that there’s now more voices in the organization should be encouraging.
Generally: as you’d expect, they were a lot cagier about topics than Bavasi was. But then you have to figure the audiences are getting much larger, the M’s brass is aware of them, and the M’s had a dude there taking notes (Zach Taylor, Baseball Systems Coordinator, which they joked about). So no “I’m not going to tell you Carl Everett is misunderstood. Carl Everett is understood.â€
So I’m going to try and paraphrase and sum up as best I can. This is made more difficult because my notes on the questions got gleaned (or cleaned) off the podium.
No comments: free agents either way (so no Griffey), or possible transactions, generally no current roster composition/discussing players (so pretty much passing on Lopez-at-first). But kind of. The budget.
Fields: lines of communication are open, we’ll see (no comment, really)
Wakamatsu — they think Wakamatsu’s going to be tremendous. Raaaaaaaaaaved about Wakamatsu.
Changes in the way the team consults with their statheads, so the baseball research guys have an active part in discussions. The cultivation of reasonable dissent (which came up in the BP interview, if you read that) — they don’t want people to agree. Tango’s encouraged to push ideas and information up. There will be input into Wakamatsu’s strategies.
And on valuation: yeah, Tony’s up on this stuff. Like uh… yeah.
Defense is awesome. The potential to have a stellar defensive outfield again excites them. Probably be undervalued right now relative to offense, but you can see in the market for the no-field outfielders that more teams are catching on (obviously they didn’t say no-field, that’s me). They recognize Beltre’s value.
When’s the team going to be good? Didn’t say. They’re going to make all the good moves they can and push ahead.
Draft: draft the best guys. College/high school, pitcher/hitter, doesn’t matter. I asked about Bavasi’s “two sets of eyes on every prospect†and the massive investment in infrastructure the team’s made during his time. They’re pro-that.
On this draft: they didn’t say much. No hand-tipping.
Bullpen: less role-centric usage. No, really.
Player dev: sounds like it’s going to slow a little, and the push-until-dramatic-failure philosophy’s been at least relaxed. On position switches: as much as possible, they don’t want to move someone until it’s clear that they’ll be switching to the position they’ll be at long-term
On player dev and Felix and establishing the fastball: Iiiiiiiiiii… I’m not sure what to say about this. There’s both “establish the fastball†and “get the outsâ€. And I’m also not sure what to say about the view of Felix’s last year. Huh.
Anyway — yeah, they want pitchers to have a change and be able to throw a good mix of pitches. Talked about Morrow’s mix a little.
Player makeup: looooot of discussion about this. I think I would say “highly valued but they have to be able to play first and foremostâ€. Kind of. Yeah. Trying to find players that’ll reach their potential, all that good stuff.
Platooning: yayyy.
Clement: love the makeup, he’ll be a catcher until he can’t.
Orgs they respect: Twins came up w/r/t scouting and the continuity of philosophy. Atlanta and the continual reloading during contention.
I’ll have a much longer post soon about flying the “under new management” flag, but… yeah, at one point, I essentially said I’d sign up to build software, and I’m as deep a cynic as you’re likely to find without wandering the planet holding a lantern up to people one by one.
Yeah. Huge thanks to them, the Seattle Public Library for letting us rent their fine facility (and for being awesome), Cara and Chris for helping out, and Bill and Jeff for helping work the door.
Dudes
That was ridiculous.
Again, huge thanks to Tony Blengino, Tom McNamara, Pedro Grifol, and Carmen Fusco (in order from the podium view) for being so generous with their time today, and for their thoughtful and interesting answers to all our questions.
And the Seattle Public Library for hosting.
The auditorium! The big one!
To answer some common questions:
– we’re in the “Microsoft Auditorium”
– at the Seattle Public Library
– yes, the big glass and steel thing downtown
– we’re scheduled to go from 1:30-5:30
– I’ll be providing water
Last chance to get in on the event
Tomorrow I’ll be out running around and doing event prep, so if you don’t get your foot in the door by midnight, that’s it. No deal. If you show up and you’re not on the list and want to get in and cause a fuss about how you wanted to attend but you couldn’t and your firewall or whatever wouldn’t let you register, and behind you there are a ton of well-behaved reasonable people being inconvenienced, we’ll have a computer there so we can ban you from even reading USSM and LL ever from any computer.
If you’re having problems using Pledgie or whatever, email us and we’ll make other payment arrangements. We have some slots left. Pledge apparently ended the drive at midnight eastern time.
Bloomquist To KC
And Willie officially says goodbye. He got 2 years, $3 million from the Royals. Good for him. Good for the M’s not matching.
Imagine being a Kansas City fan this winter. Your team has now spent $11.5 million of the 2009 budget to acquire Kyle Farnsworth, Mike Jacobs, Horacio Ramirez, and Willie Bloomquist. That’s a replacement level reliever, a replacement level first baseman, a replacement level reliever, and a replacement level utility player. Even if you give them extremely optimistic forecasts, you’re looking at something like +1 win over what it could have cost to grab guys for the league minimum.
The Royals have spent about $11 million on free agents, and they might not even get one win out of it. Toss in Jose Guillen’s big salary from last year to be slightly above replacement level, and the Royals are tossing about $25 million down the drain. Nice job, fellas.
Last Minute Q&A Stuff
Here’s a few last minute notes about the Q&A tomorrow.
The library will be providing coupons at the event for $5 parking if you park in the garage. So, if you’re driving to the event and don’t know where to park, you can park there for $5. The garage is on Spring St between 4th and 5th.
Also, while there’s going to be an open Q&A where you guys get to fire questions at our guests, Derek and the LL boys are going to be asking some questions as well that they feel will be of interest to everyone. If you leave a question in the comments, they will pick what they feel are the best ones, and those will get asked tomorrow.
And, for those who don’t know, here’s a short bio of each of our guests for tomorrow:
Tony Blengino: Asst. GM, head of Department of Baseball Research. Jack’s right-hand guy, member of SABR, heavily involved with pushing the organization forward in the use of statistical analysis and technology, the guy who hired Tango. Came with Zduriencik from Milwaukee.
Tom McNamara: Director of Amateur Scouting. The guy in charge of the amateur draft and all the scouting related to draft-eligible prospects for the organization. Came with Zduriencik from Milwaukee.
Carmen Fusco: Director of Pro Scouting. The guy in charge of the team’s scouting of professional players, from the minor leagues all the way up through the majors. Ran his own academy in Pennsylvania after leaving the Mets in 2002, where he’d worked as scouting director and Asst. GM. Played college ball with Zduriencik at Austin Peay.
Tango Answers Questions About His Job
Here.
The best quote:
Q: Does this really maan anything to a Mariners fan?
A: I don’t have as much insight into answering that question as you might think. Think of me as Tony B’s big toe (reference: Stripes). The front office has a bunch of beacons in the sky, and I try make mine as bright as possible. While I can’t force Tony B to look in that direction, I can use the power of my big toe as much as that can work. Tony has Z’s ear, so we’ll see what kind of impact I have, if any. So far, I am happy with the direction.
So are we, Tom, so are we.
The Budget
When John Hickey wrote about the Tyler Walker signing, he used the column to make a larger point about the M’s payroll, including dropping this tidbit that hadn’t been published before:
But there likely won’t be much more free-agency action because the team has a goal of trimming last year’s $117 million payroll by about 20 percent.
To support this claim, he includes the following quote from Zduriencik:
“I don’t think we are going to be enormously active in free agency,” Zduriencik said. “If the fit is right there, maybe, but we’re not in position to break the bank.”
If the M’s really do want to cut 20% off of their payroll from last year, that would put the 2009 budget at around $93.6 million. If you add up the salaries for the projected 25 man roster as it stands right now, you get $93.2 million. He’s not kidding when he says they’re not in a position to break the bank.
Now, there’s some wiggle room there. Ichiro is going to earn $17 million this season, but $5 million of his salary is deferred at 5.5% interest until after he retires, so they’re only going to physically pay him $12 million. However, they need to account for the deferred payments as a liability against this year, but thanks to the time value of money, the cost of those payments won’t total $5 million – instead, it’s more like $3.5 to $4 million. So, the expense of having Ichiro on the roster for 2009 is more like $15.5 to $16 million.
Also, we can’t really do anything but guess at the salaries for Bedard, Hernandez, and Heilman, since they’re arbitration eligible. I put in $8 million, $3 million, and $2 million respectively, and would imagine all the deals will end up in that vicinity, but variation from those numbers would push the remaining room left in the budget up or down a bit.
No matter how you look at it, though, if the M’s target payroll is around $95 million, then they are pretty close to being out of money. That would push them towards the trade market, where they could match salaries in deals to move pieces around. It makes things tougher, but not impossible.
Looking ahead to 2010, the team has about $55 million committed to 17 roster spots (again, guessing at arb salaries for Hernandez, Heilman, and Morrow, who will be arb eligible after 2009). The expiration of contracts for Beltre, Washburn, Batista, Bedard, Chavez, Branyan, and Walker would give the team something like $40-$45 million in budget room next winter, but would also create some pretty substantial holes in the roster. Beltre, especially, isn’t going to be cheap to re-sign or replace, so a good chunk of that money would go to keeping him in Seattle or trying to recoup the wins lost by watching him go elsewhere.
I know signings like Russ Branyan and Tyler Walker aren’t the kind of moves that are going to get people excited, but given the roster that he was left with by his predecessor, if a 20% budget decrease was really ordered, then Zduriencik should get a few gold stars for how well he’s been able to re-make this team without having much capital to spend.