A Eulogy for Adrian
Yesterday, Adrian Beltre played his final game of the season, as he’s having surgery on both his thumb and his shoulder on Thursday. Because the Mariners seem resigned to a several year rebuilding process and Beltre’s a free agent at the end of next season, it seems likely that the M’s will trade him this winter, meaning Beltre has probably played his last game as a Mariner.
So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at what he’s given us since signing here four years ago.
2005-2008: 2,370 at-bats, 632 hits, 145 2B, 8 3B, 95 HR, 173 BB, 420 K, 36 SB, 10 CS
As a Mariner, Beltre has hit .267/.320/.455, which works out to about five percent better than a league average hitter would perform playing half his games in Safeco. Five percent may not sound like much, but a sustained advantage over four years adds up, and Beltre’s been worth about a total of 1.5 wins above an average hitter while wearing a Mariner jersey.
Of course, we all know that Beltre isn’t just a hitter – he’s also one of the best defensive third baseman alive, and he’s been a tremendous asset with the glove as well. According to the Fielding Bible’s +/- system, Beltre was 24 plays better than an average third baseman in ’06, 7 players better than average in ’07, and 28 plays better than average in ’08. We don’t have +/- available for 2005, but MGL’s UZR system is built similarly (they just use different datasets but the same basic idea), and he has Beltre at four runs above average (or about +6 plays to get it on the same scale as +/-) during the ’05 season.
So, if we just do some basic approximations, we could say that Beltre was something like +5 runs with the glove in ’05, +15 runs in ’06, +5 runs in ’07, and +20 runs in 2008, give or take a few runs each season. Overall, we’re estimating that Beltre saved about 40 runs with his defense during his time as a Mariner – 40 runs is about four wins.
So, we add Beltre’s +4 wins defensively to his +1.5 wins offensively, and we can say that Beltre’s been about 5.5 wins better than an average player over his four years as a Mariner. Comparisons to average are fairly easy, but there’s a problem – league average players aren’t just laying around, so we have to give Beltre credit for the gap between league average and replacement level as well. In general, a replacement level player is about two wins below average per season. Over four years, the difference between a replacement level player and a league average player would be about eight wins.
So, we add 8 wins to the 5.5 we’ve already credited to Beltre for being above average, and we can say that he’s been worth something like 13.5 wins above a replacement level third baseman during his four years as a Mariner.
The Mariners have paid Adrian Beltre about $50 million over the last four years, including annual salaries and a prorated portion of his signing bonus. $50 million for 13.5 wins works out to about $3.7 million per win – the going rate for a free agent the last few years has been between $4 and $5 million per win.
No matter how you slice it, Adrian Beltre has been a relative bargain for the Mariners – a high quality player signed to a below market contract. Often maligned for his contract by those who don’t understand how valuable he’s been, Beltre has been one of the shining lights in a stretch of dark seasons.
If we really have seen the last of Adrian Beltre, it’ll be a shame. The Mariners need more players like Beltre, not less. I’m afraid that Beltre is doomed, however, to be the next Mike Cameron – wildly underrated during his time here and highly valuable to the teams that employ him after the M’s cut him loose. The Mariners have never been able to replace Cameron in the outfield, and it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to replace Beltre at third anytime soon.
If this was it, Adrian, thanks for four great seasons. We’re sorry that some people don’t understand how good you are, and we hope to see you next spring. But if we don’t, it was fun having you here, and we’ll be worse off without you.
Game 148, Mariners at Angels
Felix versus Ervin Santana.
Giants decided to prove Morrow better pick by destroying theirs
For those of you tired of reading “M’s were amazingly stupid for drafting Morrow” comments that attempt to take over all conversation like so much kudzu, Tim Lincecum threw 138 pitches last night in a meaningless SF-SD game. 120 is about where you want to set the upper limit on how far a pitcher should be throwing: there’s a clear detrimental effect on their next start, and beyond that the injury risks are — well, they’re debatable, but there’s reason to believe throwing over 120 increases the chance a pitcher will go down. Individual results may vary, of course, and so on and so forth.
But if the Giants really are really going to grind him down in meaningless games, and that increases the chances he’ll get injured, we could well see him pick up the “fragile” and “not a game” labels soon, which would reduce the annoying chatter, but at the cost of his career. I have to hope the Giants come to their senses.
Trying Lopez out for 2009 first baseman
Over at the Times, the news that Lopez will play first tonight as the Mariners kick around the idea of playing him there next year.
Jose’s had an offensive bounce this year, hitting over his career average, and yet:
Jose this year: .292/.318/.431
AL first basement this year: .265/.345/.440
As a general comparison, he’d be a little worse offensively than Casey Kotchman. The average first baseman is… James Loney (90% of Loney?). He’d be better than throwing a total random cheap player out there, but not all that much. To get him up to being an average first baseman, Lopez would need to be ten runs better defensively than a Loney.
And that’s possible, but his play at second’s been bad this year (well, pick your metric). The difference between second to first gets him some of that back, but how much? Five runs? Ten?
The other issue is that it’s a lot easier to find a first baseman than a competent second baseman. If they move Lopez to first, where he’s average, that’s an improvement over what they had there this year, but then they’re either going to be paying for a free agent second baseman, trading for someone, or they’ll end up playing a scrub or organizational player like Tug — and if you’re lucky, we end up with an all-glove no-bat player, picked my an organization that’s done a really bad job over the last five years evaluating defense as a team much less for individuals.
If Lopez can play first, though, it certainly gives the team more options this off-season, and I’m all for that.
Game 147, Mariners at Angels
Feierabend v Garland
Mariner cupcakes
Weekend non-team linkage: We got a nice note from the Baseball Cupcakes blog about their Mariner Mousse Cupcakes. I was filled with gratitude that it didn’t use less appetizing ingredients to convey a sense of the season.
Game 146, Mariners at Angels
RRS vs Saunders.
For all of the hoopla around K-Rod and his record for most vulture saves in a year, it’s not actually that great of a season, even for him. I thought about this: how would the two highest Mariner save seasons compare:
Putz 2007: 40 saves in 68 appearances, 10.3 K/9, 1.63 BB/9, 0.75 HR/9
Sasaki 2001: 45 saves in 69 appearances, 8.37 K/9, 1.49 BB/9, 0.81 HR/9
K-Rod 2008: 57 saves in 69 appearances, 10.2 K/9, 4.41 BB/9, .57 HR/9
The thing is, you can’t really do the same thing with Putz as K-Rod this year: the 2007 M’s went 88-74, and of those, you can tell they’re just not as close: 47 were one-run games, while 53 were blowouts (5 or more runs in either directions). 29% close, 33% blowout.
For the Angels this year with 146 games in the book, they’re running a much tighter distribution you can see even just looking at the outliers: 48 have been one run games (33%) and 37 (25%) blowouts.
I’m curious, though — I don’t have time to look at this right now, but if you went through all the game logs and looked for situations where McLaren could have found vulture saves for Putz, how high could you get his season total?
Don’t Worry About Felix
After reading Jeff Sullivan’s Hey Felix, Do Better post the other day, I got thinking – certainly, there’s been a few pitchers who have come up early to exceeding amounts of hype, had some early success, but never developed into the Cy Young pitchers that people thought they could become. After all, young pitchers are unpredictable, so clearly there’d be some busts along with some booms.
So I checked, using Baseball Reference’s invaluable Play Index. I told the query to give me every pitcher who had thrown at least 540 innings from ages 20 to 22 in the majors with a strikeout rate of at least 7 K/9 IP. Basically, I just wanted a list of all the guys who pitched three full years before they turned 23 and had strikeout stuff at that age.
From 1901 to 2008, here’s the entire list.
Dwight Gooden
Bob Feller
Bert Blyleven
Frank Tanana
Dennis Eckersley
Felix Hernandez
CC Sabathia
Out of the seven guys on the list, there’s a couple of hall of famers, a guy who should be in the hall of fame, a guy who would have been had he avoided cocaine, Frank Tanana, and the two active pitchers. Tanana is clearly the worst guy on the list, and he racked up 240 wins as a slightly better than average pitcher who spent 21 years in the majors.
Sabathia’s a pretty good guy to look at the next time you find yourself frustrated with Felix’s development. In his age 20 to 22 seasons, he was significantly worse than Felix has been, and I’d say he’s turned out just fine.
I don’t really disagree with that much of what Jeff said, but there’s also the other hand – he’s the best young pitcher we’ve seen in 20 years. It’s okay to be frustrated with his inconsistency, but in the end, the accurate perspective is that Felix is off to a Hall Of Fame start to his career.
Game 146, Mariners at Angels
7:05. Morrow v Weaver. Wooo! Morrow!
Dave and I have both argued here that the M’s don’t need to totally tear down, throwing out everyone to go entirely with the young and talented supplemented by the really cheap and readily available. I still see a lot of “tear it down! I’d rather see crappy youngsters play than this lot!” which assumes, first, that if you tear down there are prospects with long-term upside to play and their struggles will help the team out in future years.
But even these last few games, where the M’s have run out teams that a good PCL team could put a scare into, demonstrate that that’s not really true — now there are complaints about the horrible quality of these teams, the minor-league level starters pitching, and so on. It’s pretty clear that despite the sincere desire to see the team suck towards a purpose rather than just suck, no one’s happy seeing a game featuring a Mariner lineup this painful.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way — and hopefully the new GM can give us something better than these September lineups made everyday.
Still no lineup posted? What is the scoop?
Update: Ah! Yup, LaHair at first, Valbuena at 2nd. Lopez DHs.
The AL West-clinched Angels — ugh. Yeah.
The ’09 Staff
Despite the fact that the M’s 2008 pitching staff has been horrible, there are plenty of reasons to think that it will be significantly better next year, even if they don’t make any real changes to the roster. Since I’m running into some time constraints, I won’t go through all the machinations behind these numbers, but here’s a quick-and-dirty projection for the team’s pitching staff for next year. And yes, I’m assuming whoever comes aboard will have the common sense to dump Washburn on whoever will take the biggest chunk of his contract.
Pitcher Innings FIP 1 Felix 200 3.40 2 Bedard 140 3.60 3 Morrow 130 4.00 4 Silva 180 5.00 5 RRS 150 5.25 6 Feier. 100 5.25 7 Batista 100 5.00 Long Dickey 80 4.50 Long Jimenez 70 4.50 Middle Corco 70 4.00 Middle Lowe 60 5.00 ROOGY Green 70 3.50 LOOGY Thomas 40 4.50 Closer Putz 70 3.50
We’re not being outlandish with anything – no predicted ace-dom for Felix, no miraculous health for Bedard, not asking Morrow to take the ball every five days, not expecting Putz to return to ’07 form – there’s a basic regression analysis and not much else. It’s crude, but since we’re not trying to be extremely precise, it’s good enough.
That group adds up to 1,460 innings (1,458 is 162 nine inning games) and has a combined FIP of 4.34. That’s pretty much a league average pitching staff.
Yep, league average. With no big additions, no big surges, but just some regression from Silva and Batista (neither are as bad as they’ve been this year) and a bit more health from Bedard and Putz, and you’ve got a league average pitching staff without even trying. Add a real lefty setup man and you could do even better.
The idea that this team has to lose 90 games next year while going through a painful rebuilding process is bunk.