Free agent reviews: Alfonso Soriano
Rumor on the street is that Alfonso is looking for $17m/year. And in M’s fandom, some fans want the M’s to sign Soriano and Schmidt which is clearly insanity.
Soriano’s 30. He’s made five straight All Star teams. His conversion to left field started badly but I’d bet the good end-of-year defensive stats are going to show him at average or not much below average (he’s a weird case for the bad, traditional stats: his fielding percentage is bad, his zone rating good). BP’s got him at 9 runs above average, which… well, RAA isn’t a great fielding stat. I’d be shocked if that was borne out by UZR/etc.
Reasons to sign him:
– Add offense, hopefully
– Add a little bit of speed
Reasons not to sign him:
– What the hell happened to him this year?
– He’s right-handed and they’re not moving the fences
– They already have a big roster issue with too many LF/DH/1B guys
– Soriano doesn’t look like a guy you really, really want to be paying $17m when he’s 35
– The Phillies supposedly want him, and every horrible move Gillick makes us feel good about his departure
The first question is the really unsettling one. David Pinto at Baseball Musings touched on this last week, so I’ll quote him
If I’m a GM interested in signing Alfonso, I’ll want to know what changed. Why did he draw so many more walks than in 2006 than in previous seasons? Did the Washington coaches get him to change his approach? Was it that with a poor offense behind him, he got less to hit? If it was coaching, it this something that he’s absorbed, or does he constantly need to be reminded?
At .350, with his power, he’s a very productive player. At a .330 OBA, he’s more of an out machine and certainly not a good leadoff hitter. My guess is that the teams convinced 2006 is real are the teams that wind up bidding for Alfonso. The other will find the money offered too rich.
I entirely agree with Pinto on this. My thought is it’s likely a combination of factors: RFK suited him, for one, it was a contract year and (as we learn in “Baseball Between the Numbers”) the contract year effect is real. I don’t think this is a new level of performance for Soriano, though as a Mariners-obsessed writer I haven’t spent the kind of time researching this that a team thinking about plunking down $17m would.
Let someone else overpay. The M’s have more important needs and even if you want to upgrade the offense somehow, there should be better ways to spend that money.
Soriano’s deal, though, will still be better than whatever Carlos Lee gets.
Free Agency
With the World Series ending, players are now eligible to file for free agency. They have fifteen days to do so following the last game of the season, so the filing period will end November 12th. So, for the next couple of weeks, you’re going to see headlines of non-news stories such as “Alfonso Soriano files for free agency.” Of course, this is about as newsworthy as “Alfonso Soriano rises from bed and ponders navel.” Players who are eligible for free agency almost always file. They want to test their market value, and in most cases, if they wanted to stay with (or were wanted by) their original team, they’d have already signed an extension.
This is also the period where we begin to hear the rumors of what players are asking for, as teams begin to get a feel for what a player thinks their value should be. A lot of the early numbers are going to be bogus; Alfonso Soriano’s not going to get $18 million a year, but it’s in his agents best interest to get that number out there now as they attempt to get him as much money as humanly possible.
One of the other annual traditions of the beginning of the free agent passage is that people start hauling out the old incorrect cliche that a player “is worth what the market will bear.” In an efficient economic model, this is generally true, but MLB’s salary structure isn’t anything like an efficient economic model, and it’s not supposed to be. Because of the existance of a massive player pool whose salaries aren’t determined by a free market, a rationale floor is created for the value of a certain production level. 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.
In general, the free agent market in the last few years has been significantly overheated, as teams have failed to hold a rationale line on market valued salaries, instead chasing after pennants by throwing good money after bad. It’s going to happen again this winter, and this might be the ugliest winter yet in terms of amazingly bad contracts being handed out to mediocre players.
When Randy Wolf starts signing for $30 million over three years, the correct response is not that the Mariners are just going to have to buck it up and get in the game if they want to contend, but instead, a well run organization would see their competitors wasting money and look for values elsewhere. There will be values on the trade market. There are values to be found in minor league free agency. There are often values in the low-end of the free agent pool.
If someone offers Jason Schmidt more than 3 years, $30 million (and they will, by a long shot), the Mariners need to have the stones to walk away. It’s not fear, it’s not a lack of commitment to winning, and it’s not an inability to read the market. Free Agency is a wildly inefficient market and, in general, a terrible way to build a roster. The Mariners would do well to let other teams spend themselves into oblivion. This is the worst free agent crop in recent memory, and it comes at a time when teams are flush with cash.
If the Mariners didn’t sign one free agent this offseason, I wouldn’t cry. There are other ways to build a roster. Better ways.
M’s minor league transactions: Nageotte gone
From Baseball America, in a long list of recent transactions you’ll find this:
Seattle Mariners
Released IF Dean Zorn
Released LHP Jose Suriel
Released OF Donato Ruiz
Released RHP Juan Colon
RHP Clint Nageotte declared minor league free agent
I once argued that Nageotte should be included on the Baseball Prospectus top prospect list. My basic argument was “his stuff is electric, if he improves his control a little he’ll be amazing.” Nageotte didn’t improve his control enough, and he never got that change-up down. Now he’s a minor league free agent, and I’ll bet the M’s aren’t crying over it.
Jason adds, Here’s the full list of the club’s minor league free agents:
C Omar Falcon
C Luis Oliveros
C Guillermo Quiroz
2B Jason Bourgeois
2B Ismael Castro
SS Scott Youngbauer
RHP Scott Atchison
RHP Cibney Bello
RHP Rich Dorman
RHP Jared Eichelberger
RHP Mike Flannery
RHP Jeff Harris
RHP Justin Huisman
RHP Aaron Looper
RHP Natanael Mateo
RHP Clint Nageotte
The Ichiro walk year speculation starts
John Hickey, in the PI, writes that Ichiro will not ask for an extension, but will certainly be listening if the team comes to him.
Let the circus begin!
World Series Game Five
5:27, supposedly, Verlander v Weaver.
Rafael Soriano, Relief Pitcher
According to John Hickey, who gives Lee Pelekoudas as his source, the Mariners are not considering moving Rafael Soriano to the rotation for 2007.
Because, you know, that would make too much sense.
No Matsuzaka, but you may get another CO
Last week when Mariners baseball executives and scouts met in Arizona to map their strategy for improving the team, general manager Bill Bavasi asked for recommendations on potential free agents the M’s should pursue.
Nobody mentioned Matsuzaka’s name.
Hmm. Really? Technically he’s not a free agent. Maybe it just wasn’t in that discussion.
The bigger issue is whether Matsuzaka is worth the financial stretch it will take to get him. It may take a winning bid of $20 million or more just to gain the right to negotiate a contract with him and, with Scott Boras as his agent, it’s a good bet that he’ll get a deal worth millions over multiple years.
Bottom line is that Matsuzaka will get No. 1 starter money with no guarantee that he’ll become that kind of pitcher in the majors.
$20m, eh? Hmm. I love “millions over multiple years”. Ya think? Like $2m over 3 years? Plus, we just gave #1 starter money to Jarrod Washburn, and he sucks. At least Matsuzaka doesn’t suck. And really, if you get him for a cheap contract and a $20m fee, that’s not #1 money.
I would chalk this all up to the predicted mind-games. But here’s the jarring part:
And, like last year, spending what it will take to land Matsuzaka could severely hamper any other moves the Mariners need to make this offseason. Right now, the Mariners’ baseball people don’t seem interested in busting the 2007 payroll for one player, especially considering they need three more pitchers and, if there’s anything left, a corner outfielder.
Okay, first, Matsuzaka’s impact won’t be on payroll, it’ll be in the posting fee. But this is an interesting view, and continues the team’s long retreat from the “posting fees and foreign acquisitions are a separate account” position they espoused for a couple of years.
But here’s the really grating part — A corner outfielder. Really.
A corner outfielder.
This team needs another corner outfielder like they need to clone Mike Hargrove so he can occupy all the coaching positions at once. We keep pounding on this, but the team’s got a roster crunch already:
Ibanez LF (below average)/DH/1b (yech)
Broussard DH/1b (yech)
Sexson 1B (ergh)
Snelling LF/RF/DH, who for everyone’s sake he should probably play at least one game out of 3 or 4 at DH next year, just for safety
and that doesn’t include Reed, obviously. They shouldn’t be looking for free agent corner outfielders with any kind of substantial payroll impact right now, they should be moving Sexson, Broussard, or both of them, and then… you know all this, so I’ll skip on.
On Matsuzaka, though – if I were the Mariners, and I’m not, I would absolutely play a game that would appear identical to what we’re seeing from the team:
– personally talk to Lincoln/etc and get permission to pursue him
– with two, three people you know are absolutely leak-proof, figure out a posting number to bid
– internally, tell everyone else you’re not interested. Have them work on the backup plan in the guise of it being the real plan
– leak that you’re not interested, have other priorities, are concerned about his health, don’t think there’s any additional marketing benefit from having another Japanese player, Ichiro doesn’t like him, whatever
– submit the bid
Hopefully you’ve lowered the posting price, because the Yankees drop way down thinking you’re out of it. Then if you win, surprise! Everyone’s happy, and you’ve done a masterful fake-out. If you lose, no big deal, you’ve been prepping the public for it for ages, and you’ve got this great backup plan.
There’s really no way the M’s don’t bid, and make – if not a $20m-30+m bid – a serious offer.
New CBA rules
Well, the new CBA was announced today. Most importantly, we get five more years of uninterrupted baseball, a much welcome break from the 90s when labor struggles were too often the headlines. So, hooray for both sides for coming to an agreement on how to split their massive profits without complaining. Good job, fellows.
As far as the rule changes, there are some interesting and important wins. In no particular order:
- Free agent compensation is changing, but not going away, contrary to multiple reports from different sources. Not a big surprise, honestly. The percentages for how Type A and B free agents will be calculated differently now, and compensation for a Type B free agent will now come from the league instead of the signing team, but the system’s structure remains in tact. This means the Mariners will still get compensation for Gil Meche this winter.
- Perhaps getting the least attention of the important rule changes, amateur draft picks must now sign by August 15th. This will put an end to the long, protracted holdouts we’ve seen by high draftees recently, but more importantly, also puts an end to the draft-and-follow process that teams have used to evaluate a player’s development during a year at a junior college and still be able to sign the player. The DFE process, as it was known, was a boon for JC baseball, and the elimination of the DFE process isn’t a good thing, in my opinion.
- Also draft related, compensation for not signing a player is now given at the same slot as the pick used on the unsigned player. In other words, if the Royals had not signed Luke Hochevar this summer, under the new rules, they would get the #1 pick next summer, and everyone else would slide back a pick. This is a big deal; it gives teams all kinds of incentives to hold the line on signing bonuses and creates a massive potential for abuse.
For instance, if the Mariners desired last summer, they could have looked at the crop of available talent, decided they weren’t big fans of the guys available at #5, and drafted a HS senior who was essentially a lock to go to college, made him an offer they knew he wouldn’t accept, and then take the #5 pick in next year’s draft as compensation for “losing” their draftee. Essentially, teams are now given the ability to “trade” one year’s draft selection for the next year’s, if they so desire. The Reds actually did something similar to this a few years ago, when they were having budget issues, and now teams will have significantly more motivation to pull the same trick. On the surface, it seems like a good idea, but it’s really relying on a lot of integrity from the teams themselves to work. I’m not sure putting these guys on the honor system is a great idea.
- The league minimum salary gets a significant bump, from $327,000 to $380,000 next year, $390,000 in 2008, and then $400,000 for the rest of the agreement. That’s a 22% raise in the minimum salary. Depending on how the free agent market responds to the new CBA, this could potentially serve to make mid-tier players more attractive than previous, as the cost of replacement level is going up, lowering the value of low-end talent in the process. Mid-tier players have been significantly overpriced the past few years; this may begin to shift. We’ll see.
- All the previous offseason deadlines are being eliminated, such as the date for players to accept an arbitration offer or the May 1st date they had to wait to re-sign with a club who failed to reach a new contract with them after a certain offseason date. This should hopefully eliminate that annoying offseason lag we had every year, where teams waited around to sign players until the non-tenders began, and essentially make everything flow a little better. I hope.
All in all, some changes I’m not so fond of, but some good ones too, and in the end, labor peace = woohoo!
Evaluating Managers, Again
For those of you interested in research in trying to quantify a manager’s effect on a team’s won-loss record, you’ll enjoy this article by Chris Jaffe, the third part in a series of extremely long articles he’s written on the subject. Building off work by Phil Birnbaum, he’s taken steps to try to evaluate managers in historical context, and today’s piece takes a shot at attempting to evaluate active managers.
His methods are a bit crude, but probably in the ballpark of being useful. Essentially, he’s taken a huge sample of statistical simulations from three different projection systems and compared expected team performance to actual team performance. Now, there’s a lot of reasons a team can underachieve or overachieve a statistical projection, with injuries and flaws in the projection systems being two of the big ones. But managerial impact is at least part of the difference, and Chris is right that the noise should begin to be filtered out when looking at a decent sample. He’s using six years of data for this piece, which may not be as much as we’d like, but is enough to avoid cries of small sample size.
Anyways, that’s enough talk about the methods. What you guys care about are the results, right? Thirty four managers worked in at least three seasons, qualifying them for the study. I won’t put the whole list here (you should read Chris’ piece anyways), but here are the parts Mariner fans care about:
#1: Lou Piniella, +49
#28: Bob Melvin, -13
#34: Mike Hargrove, -28
This data needs to be taken with a grain of salt or ten, but according to the data, the Mariners replaced the best manager over the last six years with the 7th worst, then replaced him with the worst of all. In addition to the numbers, Chris wrote a little blurb on each manager. Again, the relevant parts for Mariner fans:
Mike Hargrove.
Well, someone’s got to come in last. His only really bad year was 2005 when the Mariners were 13 games under their projection. From 2000-6, exactly 60% have scored at least a –2 in their projections. Hargrove’s been –3 or worse four times in six years. Only one of his six clubs have exceeded expectations. That was 1992 when the O’s scored a big +2. He was –12 with the Orioles, and –16 with the Mariners. I’m glad he’s not managing my favorite team. The Birnbaum database likes him through 2001 putting him around +175 runs, which was almost entirely built up by his Pythagoras W/L record.
Bob Melvin:
He actually scores well in three of his four seasons, but the 2004 Mariners were 21 games under projection. All four of their main starting pitchers fell apart. Most disturbingly, both their young studs, Gil Meche and Joel Pineiro, collapsed. I don’t know if he overworked them the year before of if there’s something else going on. Looking at it, Meche wore down considerably in the second half of 2003, and Pineiro couldn’t get anyone out that August. Now in Arizona, history’s not repeating itself with Brandon Webb. In fact, ChadBradfordWannabe thinks Webb’s mechanics have improved since 2004.
Lou Piniella:
I can’t believe he’s as good as this system claims he is if for no other reason than I have too much respect for some of the other managers to think Piniella could dominate them so much. Then again, I think enough of this system that I have to think he’s done a real wing-dinger of a job over the last couple years. As mentioned earlier, he’s the best at orchestrating immediate dramatic improvement since the death of Billy Martin. His score of +49 wins here is off the charts. How the hell did he do that good? Well, the 2001 Mariners didn’t hurt his mark. They’re the biggest overachieving team under study here, at +29 games. They’re also the biggest overachievers in the Birnbaum database. Take that away from him and he’s “only” sixth best. That’s not a fair comparison, however. Let’s take everyone’s best season away from them and see how they compare. Here’s the top five without their best season:
1. Lou Piniella +20
2. Ron Gardenhire +17
3. Mike Scioscia +13
4. Ozzie Guilen +11
5. Bobby Cox +10He’s still the king, and only one man is within two-thirds of him. Piniella’s aided by only having one negative year, a mere –3 in 2005. Guillen has no negative years, but he’s only been around 3 years. Gardy has two. Granted, they’re only –2, and –1, but he hasn’t managed as much.
The Birnbaum database didn’t like Piniella at all. In part two I explained why I disagreed. Anyone who can capture a ring with the 1990 Reds and win 116 wins in Seattle has to have something going for him. I’m amazed how much this system likes him, though.Piniella scores +36 with Seattle and +13 with Tampa Bay. Maybe it’s easier to exceed projections when you’re supposed to win as few games as the Rays are always calculated at, but the other Tampa managers are a combined –19 wins. Perhaps he’s not as good as he once was. The aging patterns info works against him, but he’s earned the right to show if he still has it.
Anyways, like I said, the idea is interesting, but the methods are so blunt that you can’t take the results with any kind of precision, and even the general conclusions reached have to be tempered a bit. Lou Piniella comes out looking great, but 2001 was obviously a huge part of his big positive addition, and while he certainly deserves some credit for that season, I’d imagine this system is overestimating his abilities quite a bit.
So, yea, even the projection systems think Mike Hargrove is pretty lousy.
Moyer re-signs with Philadelphia
Well, the talk of Jamie Moyer returning to Seattle in the offseason can officially end; he signed a two year extension with the Phillies today, with the total value being $10.5 million.
Leave it to Pat Gillick to sign a guy to a two year deal that will expire after his age fourty-five season. Jamie was still an effective enough pitcher last year, but man, 2 years, $10 million for an 82 MPH fastball in that park?
Good luck, Jamie. And Philly fans, you have my sympathies. At least you know that Gillick won’t stick around very long once the team starts showing it’s not that good.