Conversions to designated hitter and their applicability to Jose Vidro’s suckiness
I’ve been trying to find comps for Vidro’s conversion. Ideally there’d be a guy named Joe Victor, a good-hitting 32-year old shortstop who got banged up for a few years and converted to DH in 2004. Yeah. Turns out there aren’t. There are a couple of problems with this kind of exercise:
Survivor bias. Players who don’t hit don’t get to hit for too long. Even noted clubhouse leader Carl Everett got thrown off the team. So looking for guys who made a conversion, the only data worth looking at will be cases where they weren’t terrible.
Sample size. Turns out since the designated hitter sprang like Athena fully-formed from the leg of Bowie Kuhn, there haven’t been all that many full-time DHs. Going through team seasons, I found many cases where time was split between two or more players, and I wanted at least 100 games to try and figure splits.
DH composition. Teams have historically used the DH to hide their worst defensive player far more frequently than protect injury risks. The history of conversions is a long series of teams deciding “this lumbering ox is so horrible defensively we can’t even bear to see him play left field or first base”.
That Edgar Martinez converted to DH from third base after two injury-racked seasons at 32 doesn’t mean Vidro’s going to suddenly hit .356/.479/.628 and finish 3rd in the MVP voting. Or, even better, Paul Molitor converted to DH full-time at 34 in 1991 after playing sixty games at second the year before (of 103 total), and then reeled off three of his best seasons before starting to decline in 1994, at 37. Two Hall of Famers experiencing late-career resurgences at DH doesn’t make conversions to DH a guarantee of late-career resurgences.
And I could argue about the validity of the comparisons: Edgar, in those injury-hampered 92-94 seasons, hit about .309/.392/.501, while Vidro hit .287/.353/.423. The takeaway lesson there would be that Edgar could still hit, and Vidro, for whatever reason, has not been able to.
Because there aren’t really good, argument-ending examples of players who made this kind of move. There’s particularly no Joe Victors. I’m going to discard the quest for a second. There’s a larger assumption at play here, and that’s that moving to easier defensive positions, by reducing wear and tear on a player, help their offense, and that moving to DH, by removing that entirely and allowing them to focus on hitting, is the best of all moves. A counter argument is that moving to DH, by taking a player off fielding, hurts their concentration or strains their intangible gland or whatever.
If moving from first base or the outfield to designated hitter does help, you’d expect to see those conversions hit significantly better after moving.
These are testable propositions:
– Does moving to an easier position improve offense?
– Does moving from a fielding position to DH improve offense?
Now these, these we know something about. I’m trying to work out a much larger, serious study on this, but here’s an early cut:
Including 2002, here are all the players who played more than 100 games at DH in a season:
Carl Everett
David Ortiz
Edgar Martinez
Ellis Burks
Erubiel Durazo
Frank Thomas
Jonny Gomes
Josh Phelps
Raul Ibanez
Travis Hafner
See what I mean about the trouble finding an adequate sample? 10 guys in 5 years. In any event: for players who moved, how big was the bump in offense (measured using EQR to adjust for park, league but not position) the year they converted?
Carl Everett (2005, age 34, from OF). Played twice as many games, about doubled offensive contributions from injury-limited 04, but was still way off career highs.
Edgar Martinez. You know this one, or you should. (1995, from 3B). Had his first healthy season since 1993, was about 20 runs better than his 1992 position-playing peak.
Ellis Burks (2001, at 36, from OF). Nope. Dropped about ten runs from the previous season. Rate stats down.
Erubiel Durazo (2003, age 29, from 1b). Tough. His first full season, with over twice as many ABs as previous years, so his total contribution was way up… but his rate stats actually all went down, his power significantly.
Frank Thomas (1998, age 30, and the records say he played first base, thooough…). Dropped 26 runs from the previous year. Rate stats all dived.
Raul Ibanez (2005, age 33, from OF). Added about 18 runs to return to the level of the best seasons with KC (2002-2003). However, he converted back to LF the next year and got even better, at +14. Soooo.. yeah.
(David Ortiz, Jonny Gomes, Josh Phelps, Travis Hafner all drop because they didn’t play other positions full-time or a good chunk of the time before moving)(Even Thomas played 97 games at 1b vs 49 at DH the year before).
So for those six conversions, here’s their total line:
Year before: 2,233 at-bats, .309/.395/.529
Year converted: 3,176 at-bats, .281/.379/.489
That’s not a huge sample of players, no, but it doesn’t support the assertion that the DH revitalizes hitters. If they’re supposed to be converting and healthy off injury years, well, we do see the playing time jump, but their hitting doesn’t seem to improve. Do their performances decline because they’re simply a year older? If so, then we should at least acknowledge that their move to DH didn’t overcome that, and certainly didn’t put them back on age-27 career years.
There’s only one remaining argument for a revitalization of Vidro that isn’t undermined by a reasonable look at the evidence of DH shifts. Those guys were old? In their conversion years, those guys were 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, and 36. Coming off injury? So were they. A special hitter? So were they. They were distracted by the move from fielding? Vidro’s going to face the same problem, if you believe it exists. And so on, and so on.
It’s that 2B is way more taxing than 1B/OF, and that his offense was thus held down more than those guys. Accept the premise that a player’s defense holds down their offense for a minute. First, sure, the position may be more taxing – a second baseman might make 600-800 plays that result in an out being made over the course of a season, while a left fielder can get away with under 200 (though he has to be immobile) and 250-300 is more reasonable.
But players who shift to easier positions don’t see significant offensive increases, either. If 1B is less taxing than 2B and so on, we should see players who move from one position to an easier one spike their offense. And if the reason that there’s no spike from 1B/LF to DH is that those positions are so much easier that they’re like DHing already, then we should see players who move to 1B/LF spike. And that’s not there either.
Take Nomar Garciaparra, a good Vidro comp for this discussion though a shortstop: he’s a middle infielder who hit for a high average, didn’t take a lot of walks, with good power. After a long string of injuries, he moved to first base this year at age 32. He was healthy and experienced an offensive resurgence, but it was still 30-40 runs of offense off his best years in Boston which he racked up while playing shortstop.
There’s no reason to expect that Vidro, moved to DH, is going to have a good year, and it’s extremely improbable we’ll see a return to the performances of his best seasons.
I’ll have more on all this later.
USSM Q&A for January 3rd
If Hargrove’s head is indeed on the block, are the M’s more likely to look inward or outward for his replacement? Does the answer to that question depend on whether he’s canned mid-season or after the season? –pdb
This will depend entirely on who the GM is. Assuming there’s a new GM for a second – if they bring in someone from another organization, they’re going to want their own guy as the manager, someone with a philosophy and approach they’re comfortable with, who can be trusted.
Generally speaking, I don’t think it’ll be an internal candidate. The M’s minor league system has undergone dramatic changes in the last few years, to the point that there aren’t a series of obvious internal candidates you can look to in the way we’d talk about Rohn and Brundage a year ago.
Q. How does Jeff feel about “change-the-story†books? –msb
“Like the jailer leading the prisoner from his cell somewhere,” Jeff says. “Is it release? Parole? Execution? Only the jailer truly knows and controls the outcome.”
who exactly is it that would hold the proverbial ‘axe’ at Howard Lincoln’s throat if he were to be fired, since he himself stated he was on the hotseat. Also, theoretically, if USSM purchased the team, how would you set up your organization and why would you replace the people currently there? (e.g. president, gm, manager, director of scouting, etc) –mikelb420
Nintendo of America, as the majority owner, is presumably the axe-holder. But we don’t know what would cause a change. What their criteria for Lincoln’s performance, though, how willing they are to fire a guy who once led their company, how satisfied they are now… all of these things are unknown.
Now, say we purchased the team because someone donated $1bn to the site and we didn’t run off with it (also, that we could buy it and Selig would let us, and so on). I wouldn’t make any changes to the way the organization’s run immediately, but I’d start putting a lot of money into — well, I’ll get to that in a second.
As for personnel changes – I think a lot of people would quit before we had to make any cuts.
What are the chances that in the near future Nintendo will sell the M’s to somebody who actually gives a rats behind about baseball? –bigpoppa01
It seems unlikely. There doesn’t seem to be any pressing reason for them to sell. The team’s profitable and even if Nintendo isn’t able to milk money out of it like a media conglomerate would, they’re locally based and in good financial shape.
The Cardinals only won five more games than the Mariners did last season, yet they won the World Series. What is your take on the World Champs?
I’m of two minds. I didn’t think much of them all year, and I didn’t see a really good team in the playoffs, either. If you were around USSM for the playoff game threads, you saw how totally boring I found the NL games they played in.
But they really did whup up on the Tigers. There’s no getting around it. You’ve got to tip your cap to them. I don’t think it means you go searching through the season looking for a hot eight-game stretch to point as evidence of their true strength, but it turns out they matched up well against the AL Champs and took them down. Good work.
More than anything, though, there are important lessons for the Mariners in the way the Cardinals operate. The Mariners like to say their goal is to be competitive every year, and what they mean by that’s been analyzed up down and sideways, but it seems like it means “we’d like to be over .500 and compete for the division title”. They’ve said they don’t want to make a one-shot run at the World Series if it would be long-term costly which I think drives many of us crazy, because it’s crappy goal setting.
The Cardinals provide a really good example of how that philosophy can be applied productively, though. They intentionally built a team that was good but not great this year: they ran the projections, did a lot of arguing, and figured they were good for 90 wins and they’d get into the playoffs. They didn’t do what the Yankees might, and spend another $40m trying to lock up a World Series win, or make trades that would hurt the team long-term, or anything: they stuck to their guns, made moves during the season they thought were good, and it worked. They won a playoff berth, and from there, won the World Series. This year, they’re in good shape to go after 90 wins again.
The question this raises, obviously, is “why can’t the M’s do that?” They would have us believe they’re in a much similar situation, with the ability to spend – but not too much – and the need to always keep the eye on the long-term. The Cardinals are able to do this, but the M’s suck at it. Why? Are they smarter? What are they doing differently? Sure, they have Pujols, but beyond that, how are they solving this problem? Why are the Cardinals doing interesting, innovative things while the M’s don’t? How can that change?
Who is (was) the most important Mariner of all time? –waldo rojas
Ken Griffey Jr. He was the first superstar to play on the team, he was young, amazingly talented, exciting and charismatic, and people loved coming to see him in a way that – as much as I love Alvin Davis – we’d never seen before. He played on the first winning Mariner team, the first team to go to the playoffs. Griffey brought baseball in Seattle to life.
Bavasi hires USS Mariner Consulting to review the baseball operations under his control and make up to three realistic recommendations on how to improve them (e.g., Bavasi is not going to get $100 million from ownership to build baseball academies around the world, he cannot replace Rick Rizzs with Mike Curto, he is not going to fire Hargrove or himself, he cannot bend time and undo the Snelling and Soriano deals, etc.). What are your three recommendations? -Grizz
1. Spend whatever it takes to catch and surpass Cleveland’s technology lead, and commit to using those resources. There is no reason a baseball team in Seattle shouldn’t have the best information systems in the baseball, and be able to apply them to better decision making. This project will be long and expensive, and absolutely worth it.
2. Hire contrary voices. Even if you don’t want to give out veto power or dilute decision-making responsibility, put smart people with opposing viewpoints into discussions, listen to them, and if they’re right consistently, re-consider not giving them veto power or decision-making authority.
3. Stop the aggressive promotion of offensive prospects. It’s building a generation of ineffectual hackers in the minors. I know they want them to struggle before they hit the majors, but there are better ways to do it.
Who would be the best manager to complement Chis Antonetti? Would it be in the teams best interest to keep Bob Fontaine as scouting director? Or would Mr Fontaine be looking to try the GM position much like his Father did (SF Giants)? — pensive
I’d have to ask Antonetti. Presumably, someone open to input from the front office, able to work with young players, a decent talent evaluator who isn’t going to decide after a game that they hate Adam Jones and refuse to play him. Glad-handing the press will be important coming in after five years of stagnation: they’ll need to get good coverage to try and change the discussions around the team.
I don’t see Fontaine staying if Bavasi leaves. I don’t know where he’d go, but the job he’s in allows him to do what he excels at with none of the BS a general manager has to cope with, and I can’t see that he’d want that. The hours would be worse, the pay probably not all that much better, and the work wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying.
That said, I don’t know what jobs he’d consider. There may well be GM jobs where he could be comfortable, though I don’t know how you’d make that possible for him.
How much do you guys know about non-traditional performance data that some teams collect? I’m talking about things like assigning landing zones and trajectory levels to balls struck. I’d love to hear a little about what the smart organizations are measuring and keeping track of. — Manzanillos Cup
Beyond subscribing to Baseball Information Solutions and their ilk, I know good teams are working on this stuff. One of the interesting advances has been computerizing defensive video, so you can go through and say “show me every play where Jeter has to go to his left” and watch them all. I don’t think anyone’s to the point yet where they can do a Bohr model of a player’s defense and say “on a ball hit at 80 miles an hour that will come within ten feet there’s a 80% chance he gets there and makes the stop”… but just the ability to easily reference and watch that much video of a player is a huge step up from editing tapes.
Is Bavasi aware that he is getting universally ripped by the mainstream press (forget the blogosphere) for his deals this offseason? If so, do you think such negative reaction will have any impact (direct or indirect) on his subsequent moves this offseason? — ChrisK
Yes. No (no and no). He’s going to do what he thinks is the right move. Unless ownership gives him some overarching direction, like “the fans are really mad about trading kids away, try to avoid that if you can” (which is unlikely) it’s not going to affect his decisions at all.
If Hargrove and Bavasi are indeed “allowed to pursue other interestsâ€, sometime during the season, who will likely inherit the reins? –ira
They’ll hire the GM first. Given their history and what we know about them, it’s almost certain to be a long-time baseball guy with a familiar name and long resume who carries some kind of weight. Dallas Green, say. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But there’s going to have to be some serious arm-twisting to get someone risky in that job. The organization’s not about taking risks, and if they make a change they’re going to want someone who oozes stability and confidence, because it’ll mean they’ve gone through another unsuccessful season.’
There has been a lot of informative disscusion about Replacement Level Players. I don’t know a lot about players on other teams and I don’t have a good idea of who a RLP would be on the Mariners. It would help me understand the concept better if I had a player that I’m familiar with, so I can more easily follow the discussions about roster management (especially the Sexson talks). Can you write a little about the M’s current roster and how they relate to RLP’s? — Jed C
This is probably a longer and tougher question than I can handle here. First: there are many ways to define how you set replacement level. It’s often described as “who can I get for very little cost?” (I need a backup catcher right now, who’s out there I can buy for a chunk of cash, like when they brought Pat Borders back mid-season) or “who’s hanging around the Pacific Coast League?” (if your second baseman goes down with a hamstring injury, you call up the 35-year old guy from Tacoma). I’ve heard it described as “the worst regular player in the majors” but that’s not particularly useful, for reasons that probably already occur to you.
I generally think about it like this: if before the season I had to put together a team while paying no one more than $500,000 on a one-year contract, what would those players look like? No draftees, nothing: it’s minor league free agents, declining veterans no one else wants to give $1m to but don’t want to retire, injury rehab gambles, those guys.
Yeah, it’s pretty ugly, and field the worst team in the league. But you should never pay more than that for someone who’s that bad. So if you have a DH who is a horrible hitter, well, there are a ton of guys you could find who can only hit horribly, and you wouldn’t have to pay them anything. The extra money you’re paying is wasted. So if Jose Vidro can’t hit at all, that’s millions (and two good players) wasted.
Or a utility guy – there are many guys who can steal a base and play infield defense while not hitting. There’s no point in paying Bloomquist $1m.
I hope that helps.
Does the career of Willie P. Bloomquist mirror a post-modernist rejection of absolutist hierarchical thinking, or does he objectively suck? — bergamot
I have often wondered if Bloomquist is some kind of Dada prank myself.
In the last few years, what were percevied or projected to be the 5 worst trades or Free Agent Acquisitions that actually turned out OK.
On the Mariners? Let’s call the last few years as “5” so I get one/offseason
Signing Ibanez looked like it was crazy, worked out.
Extending Ibanez looked like it was crazy, it’s worked out so far.
Beltre’s contract is widely derided as insane, it’s really not. The gap between Beltre’s actual value and the wide perception of his contract might be the largest of any active player.
Piniella for Randy Winn? That turned out okay, rather than the end of the universe.
I’m scraping for a fifth – Villone seems like a good choice.
Given that Dusty Baker is available to be hired, how can you even mention the idea of Mike Hargrove getting canned? — Johnny Slick
I don’t see them hiring a manager who might criticize the GM/ownership in public. They don’t want controversy or finger-pointing, especially if things are bad enough that they fire Hagrove mid-season. Unless the team’s 0-20 or something and they’re desperate to demonstrate they’re serious.
What is the worst move or non-move of the M’s since 2000? –induced entropy
Since 2000?
It’s always a tough question, because I think we operate on the outside with imperfect information. We don’t really know how close any particular rumored trade was, or how serious an offer was or even if it was on the table long enough to be snapped up. So I’m going to pass on what might have been.
And I don’t want to think about things that we couldn’t see at the time, where they made a trade that looked great at the time and then didn’t work out (like the Garcia trade, for instance).
So I’m going to have to go with Fruto-Snelling for Vidro. Older, way more expensive, worse, plus they threw in Fruto. This trade’s indefensible. Also, I can’t think of “bad move” without fixating on this for a while. Ask me again in a couple months when I’ve calmed down a little.
Will Bavasi survive the season without getting fired? Hargrove? –dw
Yup. Unless the team starts out 0-20, and then they’re gone. That could happen, too – they’re a pitching injury away from being able to go into deep funks where they give up 8 runs a game, the bullpen’s pitching tired and everyone checks out. But they’re not that bad of a team.
Which non-Mariners do you enjoy watching most? — conor
In no particular order:
Clemens
Pujols
Vlad
Johan Santana
Webb
Mussina
What baseball web sites do you read on a regular basis? — conor, again
Besides news sources and team blogs, I’m always looking at Baseball Prospectus, Hardball Times, the Inside the Book Blog even though it hasn’t been updated in forever and I constantly disagree with Tango, Baseball Musings, Baseball Analysts, BTF sometimes. I’m probably forgetting a bunch.
If my vote counted, my Hall of Fame ballot would include the following players: — conor, again again
Of 2007 candidates: Bert Blyleven, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken Jr.,
I’m actually starting to come around to the McGwire doesn’t get in on stats argument lately. I’d have to think about that.
What additional moves could the Mariners make this off-season to give them a fighting chance in their weak division? Are there any free agents left that could help? –scott47a
and
Okay, we can all agree that Bavasi, Hargrove et al screwed up the offseason to this point, but there are still almost three months left until the season starts. If you were at the helm of the Mariners and not just USSM, what would you do in the interim to improve the team—assuming for now that you can’t just fire Bavasi and Hargrove? -# bat guano
It depends on how far you can go. If you can blow payroll out of the water, there are pitchers on the market who will be better than Ramirez and probably Batista. There are players who’ll hit better than Vidro. There are still some guys who might help the bullpen, and a lot of people you could sign to improve the team’s depth to guard against injury.
But it’s going to be really expensive, and they’re not going to spend the money. And as long as we’re constrained by the realities of ownership, you can’t trade Ibanez, so you’re trying to trade Sexson, which I’d try to do desperately, punt Mateo somewhere so Hargrove can’t use him, and other similar tweaks.
What’s the deal with Reed and Jones? Odds that one or both become legit major league outfielders? Likelihood of them staying in the organization? Value as prospects? — sparky
I’m a huge fan of Jones, that’s no secret, since I shout about him all the time. His value’s really high right now, and if the progression he showed in Tacoma last year holds up, his bat’s ready soon, and he’ll be a minor star in a few seasons. Woo!
Reed — what are you going to say? His value’s extremely low. We can hope it was the wrist that sapped his ability to hit last year. The M’s are in a bad position to try and get him enough playing time to work his way into a trade for value, too, with Ichiro in center and Ibanez in left. I still think he gets punted somewhere before the season starts for very little in return.
My gut feeling is that the Mariner front office instinctively goes for people who subtract from joy. Would love to see some speculation about this. — Cedalus
Nah. It’s that their perception of joy is different. They think Ichiro’s an exciting, great player, and I agree, but they also think the scrappiness of Bloomquist makes him a fan favorite and that’s worth rewarding, and Ibanez being a great guy is joyful, and worth spending on. I’m a little surprised they traded Snelling in part because I know Bavasi was a fan, and liked him a lot. They’re not making these moves because they want to spite me, much as this off-season seems to suggest. They think it improves the team, which is in a way, worse, because at least the spite explanation means they’re competent.
Are there any good baseball podcasts? — Paul B
I don’t know. I haven’t found any. Jeff and I were talking about doing one, and it never came to be. That would have been good fun. Damn you Jeff!
Anyway, that’s a fair chunk o’ questions. If you thought this was at all amusing or interesting, cool, it might be something we do more of in the future. Or never again. You never know here at USSM Labs. We’re crazy.
ZIPS projects the M’s
In the spirit of Derek’s recent look at the team, Dan Szymborski takes a crack with his ZIPS projection system. Like all projection systems, it has its quirks, but it holds its own with more notable systems like PECOTA, and it has the added benefit of being free and currently available, so it gets its own thread.
It’s not the gospel truth, but there are some interesting things here. Keep in mind that it doesn’t attempt to project playing time, so all the statlines are based on the assumption of the player playing a full season. Obviously, Yung-Chi Chen won’t get 488 at-bats in the majors this year and we’re not giving Cibney Bello 137 innings to work with.
Richie Sexson: .246/.336/.478. For $14 million. Ugh.
Jose Vidro: .279/.344/.382. As a DH.
Jose Guillen: .260/.327/.449. With good defense in right field, this makes him a good deal.
Felix Hernandez: 199 IP, 3.71 ERA, 64 BB, 175 K.
Horacio Ramirez: 142 IP, 5.13 ERA, 50 BB, 59 K
Robert Rohrbaugh: 138 IP, 5.15 ERA, 42 BB, 76 K
ZIPS agrees with the general outrage on the blog lately – the two offseason trades have been total disasters, and this team isn’t any better than it was last year, despite being older, more expensive, and cashing in multiple young players.
Yay Mariner FanFest yay
Scheduled to appear:
JJ Putz
Felix Hernandez
Yuniesky Betancourt
Not scheduled to appear: Chris Snelling.
Note to fans: please do not bring delicious nachos near Felix. The Seattle Mariners are not responsible for loss of food or injuries to your hand including ingestion of hand by Felix, in the event that you disregard this warning and bring food near Felix.
Dugout Dialogue – Q&A session with Mariners players & coaches, Mariner Legends and front office staff, hosted by Mariners broadcasters Dave Niehaus and Rick Rizzs.
Q: Where’s Snelling?
A: Uh, we found a home for him… on a farm! A big farm, where he can run and play and…
Q: Please explain how Jose Vidro, a busted-up hitter in severe decline, is an improvement over playing Snelling.
A: He’s a veteran presence, a professional hitter, uh… look! The Moose!
NEW – Raul Ibanez Skills Challenge – A series of fun, interactive activities for kids of all ages; see if you have what it takes to be a big leaguer like Mariners left-fielder Raul Ibanez!
Can you:
– be good-looking and likable?
– give consistently good post-game interviews?
– accept contract extensions every time you run into M’s president Chuck Armstrong?
– arrange direct deposit for your increasingly large paychecks?
History of Baseball in the Northwest exhibit – Baseball in Seattle goes back further than the Mariners’ 30 seasons, see how baseball in the Northwest began and how far it’s come in this fun and educational exhibit.
No it doesn’t. Willie Bloomquist isn’t thirty yet. How dare you. Evidence of baseball before Bloomquist is a test of our faith in Willie.
Also, that should be ” see how baseball in the Northwest began and how far it’s fallen in this fun and educational exhibit”
Kids’ Zone – Photos with the Mariner Moose, face painting, kids bouncer, wiffle ball batting cage and much more, all for kids!
isn’t it “whiffle” ball?
There’s a bouncer just to keep kids under control? Is he the kid with the glandular problem who takes out his anger on his peers?
Annnnd much, much more.
M’s feel they’re much better
“Our lineup is better,” Bavasi said. “Our rotation is different. I’m not sure it’s better, but it’s different and it’s certainly not worse. We have a rotation that might have a different approach to the game, and maybe that’s an upgrade. But we certainly think we’re as good and possibly better. We know our lineup is much better.”
Anyone want to guess what he means by “a different approach to the game”?
How would Miguel Batista and Horacio Ramirez approach the game that would be different than Moyer/Meche/Pineiro (and the rotation’s patches)?
Sketching out the 2007 M’s season
Sooooo I did some more sketching today, and I’m going to share.
The M’s are going to be a better offensive team than they were last year, but I don’t think it’s going to be as dramatic as we’re supposed to believe. Given some basic assumptions, using the blunt-force instrument of 3-year averages and then bludgeoning them up or down on my own biases, I’ve got the M’s scoring ~780-790 runs. My notes on where I bludgeoned the stats:
Assumptions, in order:
DH: Vidro sucks. The move to DH does nothing for his crappy hitting.
C: Johjima’s about the same. I – and I have no basis for this at all – think Johjima’s in good position to have a better 2007, but I am concerned about his no-walking ways. We’ll see, I guess.
1B: Sexson hits like Sexson
2B: Lopez hits like the crappy ground-ball machine Hargrove loves. If Lopez can get them to let him loose, he’ll hit a small batch of home runs and be a much more productive hitter. I’m betting on Hargrove’s incompetence here.
SS: Betancourt’s about the same. Dave’s written a lot about how we think last year was close to the top of his offensive potential. Dave’s a smart guy and I agree with his reasoning. I don’t think Betancourt’ll collapse, but he’s unlikely to be much more productive without doing something we haven’t seen from him yet (like hit line drives, or take walks)
3B: I’ve got Beltre down for a 2006 repeat. I still think he could do better. Call me crazy.
LF: Ibanez. I don’t think I’ve been as consistently wrong about a Mariner as I’ve been about Ibanez. I thought his original contract was nutty, but the M’s were right, his swing fit perfectly and he rocked out. I thought his extension was pointless and annoying, and last year he makes me look stupid again. At this point, I’m just putting him down for the 3-year average and calling it good. May he defy the expectations of aging again.
CF: Ichiro!
RF: Guillen’s a weird case. There’s a fair chance he’s done. Seriously. You’re hoping you get the 04/05 Guillen, the .290/.345/.490 hitter… but when he underwent surgery, the Nationals said the recovery timetable was 8-16m, and then 3m later he was supposedly taking batting practice. I know the M’s did the whole physical workup, but until he’s hitting against live pitching we don’t know. The difference between done Guillen and a live, productive Guillen is 20 runs easily.
I also assume the bench doesn’t help, which it won’t.
~785 runs.
The big variables: Guillen, obviously. Lopez. Does Ibanez defy age? Does Beltre break out again, or even manage a repeat of 2005? Can Vidro make a comeback, and can I set aside my hatred of that trade to rationally evaluate the chances of it happening?
The low end — Vidro sucks, Lopez is Hargrove’s happy groundout machine, Guillen’s done, Ibanez finally loses some bat speed – is still 765-770 runs. Probably less, actually, if all those things happen. The high end – Vidro mounts a comeback, Guillen’s 04/05 Guillen, Ibanez maintains, Lopez hits 20 HR, etc — they score 800.
That’s not that bad. Even the low end is about a repeat of last season.
What about the pitching?
SP Felix. Does Felix work out the pitch selection problems with his manager/coaches? Even a repeat of last year should produce better results.
SP Washburn. I expect Washburn to be Washburn.
SP Batista. I have low expectations for Batista’s performance this year. I figure he’ll be Meche Light. Yes, I just wrote that.
SP Ramirez. I have even lower expectations for Ramirez. Still, anything beats the 06 Pineiro.
SP Baek/Woods. How low? I think if Baek makes the rotation out of spring training, it’ll be a coin flip whether he’s better than Ramirez. I’m starting to think Woods might be pretty well-suited for Safeco starts, actually, if only for his left-handedness, deep fences, and the M’s ability to deploy a forgiving defense behind him. But anyway, that’s a whole other discussion.
The rotation, on balance, should be improved, even if they’re stepping back from Moyer and Meche.
The bullpen of Putz et al might be better than last year, even with Soriano gone. I like O’Flaherty a lot, and they can put together a really good unit. If they trade Reed/Broussard for more relief pitching, it could improve even more.
(Dave disagrees that the bullpen’s going to be better – he thinks it might be much worse. I can’t bring myself to believe they’ll come out of spring training with Woods/Huber over O’Flaherty/Green, but if it happens, he’s right)
Total, they give up… 770 runs. Potentially it’s much better than that if Felix breaks out and Batista/Ramirez are as advertised – it could be 740 on the low end. The worst-case isn’t that bad. I don’t think Felix is going to suck, Washburn might be a little worse, but I’m already pessimistic on Batista/Ramirez, and if they’re much worse than that, the M’s will sub in… oooooooooooh. Right. That’s it for starters. Soooo 790? 800
So my guess at realistic totals is
785 runs scored
770 runs allowed
Using pythag, we get 82 wins, more or less.
Assuming the high end on both sides (they score 800, give up 740), that’s a 87 win team. Assuming the ugly case on both sides, that’s 79 wins.
However, chewing this over… I’m not sure how I feel about this. If Vidro/Guillen sucks that badly, won’t they do something, like they did for Everett? But then what options do they have any more — going to Jones? The team’s also highly vulnerable to injury: their depth just sucks. There’s no way any regular goes down for any length of time without hugely hurting the offense. Any serious injury to Felix or even Washburn cripples the rotation.
We’ve said the 2007 M’s are about a .500 team with a high risk of collapse (which, really, is what we’ve been saying in different forms for a while), and looking at it today, it looks like that’s about right.
And the sad part about that is that if the 2007 team isn’t any closer to competing now than they were when they started this off-season, and they haven’t helped themselves compete for a pennant in 2008 or 2009 or whenever, well, you can see why that sucks.
USSM Year-end Best-of: December 2006
I hope you’ve enjoyed these year-end posts. I know the off-season tends to drag, and it means sometimes we’re talking about music and doing USSM Endorsements or whatever, so I thought this might be cool. After all, we wrote 785 articles this year, not including this one, and there were 75,286 comments. It’s easy to forget the highlights, and I wanted to give some recognition of how many totally amazing articles Dave wrote. He was on fire, folks.
The Vidro Debacle: Initial reaction to the report. I tilt at windmills and pledge continuing Doyle support in “I will not hang up my High Epopt hat” It’s Official
12-15: Dave summarizes the M’s management in “After the storm“:
Incompetent.
We endorse Chris Antonetti as the next GM. We offer Antonetti for GM stickers and buttons for angry fans.
Other than that, what happened?
12-1: The M’s almost sign John Thomson, which we liked as a move.
This is how you assemble the back-end of a rotation. Sign John Thomson and Justin Lehr to give competition to the young pitchers, and use the money saved by not paying for experience to spend on position players.
John Thomson can help the Mariners, and for the price, it’s a good buy. Kudos to Bill Bavasi for finding one of the better deals in a crazy free agent market.
Later it turns out they agreed to terms if the team’s pursuit of other options failed, after which they… well, they managed to get other guys. I can’t help but think Thomson would make a better option than at least one, but anyway.
12-2: I look at where the M’s stood, and what they needed to do heading into the meetings. Dave made Winter Meetings predictions. If only it had gone like this.
12-11: Miguel Batista signs.
12-12: Future Hall of Fame denials, in the vein of McGwire’s troubles.
11-22: Sean Burroughs provides me the chance to get overly-detailed about a minor signing. Hee hee hee.
12-26: Free agent market and the boom and bust cycle
12-27: Why trading for Randy Johnson would help the rotation
12-28: Dave reviews the 2006 Free Agent Signings (pre-Zito)
USSM Year-end Best-of: November 2006
11-6: Discussion of reasons teams supposedly didn’t bid on Matsuzaka
Also: the a review of the Nationals’ amazing haul of almost unnoticed signings, an example of what you can find if you go fishing.
11-8 What the A’s move to Fremont might mean for the M’s.
11-9: Dave on the concept of budgeting wins, not money, and how it changes your perspective.
11-13: Richie Sexson’s contract is an albatross.
11-22 Offseason Adventure
Wayne Krivsky signs Alex Gonzalez.
> examine Gonzalez signing
Alex Gonzalez signed for $14,000,000 over 3 years.
> examine Gonzalez signing
No, you read that right.
Also on the 22nd: graphs on Willie Bloomquist’s offensive performance charted against AL averages and NL pitchers.
Other graphs:
Mariners total payroll and rank among MLB teams
Player previous season contribution to new contract value. I should update this.
11-23: Gil Meche’s Thanksgiving List, by Jeff.
11-25: Bloomquist gets an inexplicable extension, and in response, we offer A very brief reiteration of our position on Mr. Bloomquist
11-27: Jeff on “Collecting Ichiro”
11-29: “A short discussion of McGwire and the Hall of Fame”
11-30: Why Justin Lehr’s a nice little signing for the M’s.
Free agency reaction tracking:
Aramis Ramirez: Dave takes the opportunity to compare him to Beltre
Carlos Lee: a comparison to Emil Brown
Deluccia: nice
Baez: head-shaking
Gary Mathews: more insanity
USSM Year-end Best-of: October 2006
10-1: The first version of Dave’s 2006 off-season plan. Manny the DH! Edmonds in left field!
10-3: Jeff semi-live-blogs from the Twins playoff game.
10-8: A preview of what would happen if this Daisuke Matsuzaka guy posted.
The only thing we can know for certain is that if he posts, it’s going to get crazy.
10-11: Why losing Cruceta is not only bad, but symptomatic.
10-13: Unethical!!!!!
10-18: Dave offers recommended blogs for other teams.
10-20: I go through the matchups and write about why the Tigers should win the World Series. Heh.
during the playoff posts and comment threads I repeatedly said that I figured whoever came out of the NL was likely to be cannon fodder to the AL, and I’ve kept at it, writing that either the Cardinals or Mets were going to be mowed down by the Tigers.
Why, in a short series, would I be so certain about that? That’s a good point – in seven games, the chances the better team wins aren’t all that great anyway. I was being cavalier about it. But here’s my thinking.
Then, weirdly, it’s just a line that says “DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR”
Anyway, having written some Playoff Prospectus articles at BP, I know how the drill works: you make a call and if you’re wrong, you get the mockery, even if you show your work and your reasoning was good. So be it.
10-23: A brief essay on Kenny Rogers cheating with pine tar in the World Series, by the author of “The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball“.
10-22: How the way the new CBA’s negotiations went is good news. Then, Dave on the new CBA’s rules.
10-26: Why the M’s decision not to pursue Matsuzaka but go after a corner outfielder doesn’t make sense.
A brief discussion of how to best arrange the Tigers rotation. The solution differs greatly from Leyland’s.
10/28 Roster Management and why it’s important
10-30: the first post on free-agency insanity.
If a few general managers get together and decide that a 4 win player like Alfonso Soriano is worth $16 million per season, that doesn’t establish his actual value – it establishes that they suck at their jobs.
We’ll return to this topic, as you’ll see.
USSM Year-end Best-of: September 2006
September was all Dave, all the time.
9-1: In a pointer to a really great article about Ichiro and Johjima. Dave:
Ichiro is disliked by most of the American media who follows the team around on a regular basis. Perhaps they should all spend more time with Brad Lefton and learn about why he does some of the things he does, rather than ascribing arrogance and aloofness to him because he’s not like the kids from Texas.
9-8: Generally, I’ve skipped the Big Board/Future Forty updates, but Dave’s post here talks about how the M’s aggressive promotion policy for hitters is hurting their development.
9-10: Are long-term contracts to pitchers ever worth it? Dave reviews recent signings with interesting results. I’m going to quote part of the ending, because it’s awesome:
It’s easy to look at what a pitcher like Barry Zito or Jason Schmidt is right now and say “do whatever it takes to sign himâ€, thinking you’re getting a pitcher who will anchor your rotation for years to come. We have to remember, though, that guys like Mike Hampton, Tim Hudson, Javier Vazquez, Carl Pavano, Chan Ho Park, and Bartolo Colon were looked at the same way. These guys were Cy Young winners, established playoff heroes, perenniel all-stars, and the best pitchers of their time.
By the years you hit free agency, however, your time is usually running short, and your best days are often behind you. Making a 4+ year commitment to a starting pitcher who has already been worked hard is rarely a good idea.
9-12: Dave, in one of the more succinct bits of analysis all year, compares Washburn 05 and 06.
9-14: Game 146’s intro includes a really good writeup about Odalis Perez.
9-18: Dave reviews his own offseason plan, using the “Dave’s a Genius” and “Dave’s an Idiot” classifications
9-20: Steve Kelley, awful sportswriter, taken apart by Dave, annoyed USSM author.
9-21: Jake Woods, Litmus Test.
Jake Woods is a litmus test. An organization that understands pitching would trade him this offseason. We’ll see if the Mariners are up to the challenge.
9-23: Your guide to Everett alternatives, revisited. I always like to return to previous discussions and see what we can learn from them. Here, it’s interesting to look back at the names being thrown around were and see who did well and who didn’t.
9-24: Dave talks about the cost of the team, and how payroll restrictions meant the M’s certainly weren’t going to sign two quality starters.
9-26: Is the lack of criticism of Carlos Garcia a sign that he’s really good, or that the team’s horrible and we’re focused on other issues?
9-27: In talking about the PI’s Andriesen’s off-season plan, Dave looks ahead to the off-season.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want Daisuke Matsuzaka. It’s like asking kids if they want pie.
9-28: The extra-snarky commentary on the M’s after-season letter to season ticket holders.
Dave points to Angel Guzman as a potential undervalued pitcher.
9-30: what were the strong positives of the season?