Pocket Lint
We’ve really laid off Bob Finnigan this year. We used to hammer him pretty regularly, but the decision was made to mostly ignore him and keep the blog focused on actual analysis, rather than reminding everyone how abysmal the guy was at his job.
Today, he’s decided to re-incarnate last year’s “M’s Caught in Numbers Crunch” article, where he claimed the team had about $13 million to spend on free agents (they spent about $24 million, in reality), and today has posted “No Easy Solution to M’s Problems”. Despite the fact that he’s run this bad-math-expectations-lowering pile of crap article every year since the beginning of time, he still feels the need to remind us all that he lacks basic logical skills, and attempts to share his depressing view of the world with his readers. Fortunately for us, his ramblings aren’t based in reality, so we don’t have to take his down-in-the-mouth approach to the offseason.
But man, how this thing gets published every year is beyond me. What a lousy paper the Times is. They should be embarrassed to put this thing in print.
So that would leave Millwood, the American League earned-run average champ, Kenny Rogers, or Jeff Suppan, a former American Leaguer, as the best choices.
When the right answer to your question is Kenny Rogers or Jeff Suppan, you’re asking the wrong question.
Suppan, who won 16 games for St. Louis, has AL experience. The problem is that his prior AL experience was nowhere near as successful as he has been with the St. Louis Cardinals. But then he was pitching for Kansas City…
So, we should pursue Suppan because he was once horrible in the American League?
Indications are that the payroll will be down some from the $96 million/$98 million, to $90 million/$92 million.
Of course, every real analysis of Mariner payroll puts the ’05 mark somewhere around $86-$89 million, nowhere near Finnigan’s numbers. But he’s the king of making up payroll, so this is nothing new.
This money still is not Cracker Jack, but it awaits the market to see how much it will bring. Based on existing contracts, Seattle has already used up about $49.5 million (all figures rounded off) of that money.
For that they get Sexson, Beltre, Ichiro, Joel Pineiro, Raul Ibanez, Miguel Ojeda and Eddie Guardado. (The club is unlikely to pick up Guardado’s option at $6.5 million, and he can opt out or come back at $4.25 million.)
About $50 million for that group is actually pretty accurate. Amazingly.
Add in buyouts of club options that might not be exercised  Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Pokey Reese, Wiki Gonzalez, Jeff Nelson and Spiezio  and you get another $4.5 million.
This is poor wording; Spiezio’s buyout is only $250,000, but his ’06 salary is $3.25. If that comes off the ’06 books (it probably will), then this number is accurate. If the M’s eat it on the ’05 payroll, this number goes way down.
Add in prorated signing bonuses (including that of departed Ron Villone) of about $6 million, and about $1 million still due on Jeff Cirillo, and you’ve got another $7 million.
And now we get into classic Finnigan. Villone’s signing bonus was $500,000. Prorating that over the two years of his contract, we get $250,000. Big whoop-de-doo. And here Finnigan uses prorated signing bonuses, assumed for every player on the roster who got one, but earlier in the article used actual 2006 payout to add up the salaries for the guys currently under contract. Consistency, Bob. Either use actual payout or annual average value. You don’t get to combine the two to make your bottom line as high as possible.
Add in other contracts  Hernandez, Yuniesky Betancourt, Jose Lopez, Greg Dobbs, Rene Rivera, Jeremy Reed, Bobby Madritsch, Rafael Soriano, J.J. Putz, George Sherrill, Mike Morse (and possibly Jeff Harris, Matt Thornton, Scott Atchison, Chris Snelling, Jamal Strong, Ramon Santiago) and you could reach another $4.5 million.
That’s 17 players, Bob. 17! If you think the M’s are going to give major league contracts to all those guys, you’re freaking insane. Chalk this group up to about $3 million.
Then there are arbitration eligibles  Gil Meche, Willie Bloomquist, Julio Mateo, Yorvit Torrealba, Ryan Franklin  and put down another $10 million, give or take.
Now the real fun begins. No comment on this for now. But you should note that, at the moment, Finnigan has the M’s carrying a 29 man roster.
The budget is so tight, it will almost certainly turn Franklin and Torrealba and other arbitration eligibles into non-tendered players, although it is tough to see Meche in this category. If they are not traded and don’t sign a deal by the Dec. 20 deadline, they might not be offered a contract, and will become free agents.
So, the arbitration group knocks $10 million off the payroll… but they’re likely to be non-tendered. Wait, what? Did Bob even bother to read these two paragraphs. And who are these “other arbitration eligibles”? He already said Franklin and Torrealba would be, and Meche wouldn’t be (he’s wrong about the last two), so that leaves Bloomquist and Mateo. Anyone here really expect either of those to be non-tendered? Does anyone see any situation, ever, where that would happen?
In reality, Franklin is a certain non-tender, Meche is a very likely non-tender (or trade for peanuts), and Torrealba, Bloomquist, and Mateo will combine for about $3 million in salaries for next year. So you can immediately lump $7 million off of Finnigan’s bottom line, despite the fact that he wants you to believe that the M’s are broke.
Finnigan wants you to believe that the M’s have about $10 million to spend. In reality, they have about $25 million. Last year, he threw out a $13 million figure and wrote several articles ridiculing everyone who expected big changes. When the M’s ended up signing Beltre, Sexson, Reese, Villone, Campillo, Betancourt, Sele, and Nelson, blowing Finnigan’s numbers out of the water, we never saw any kind of retraction. Or even an article explaining how the M’s fit these contracts into his little $13 million window.
Now, a year later, we get the same thing. Apparently he hopes that everyone who reads today’s piece forgets the hatchet job he did last year and gives him a mulligan.
Sorry Bob, but you don’t get any more chances. You’ve earned the nickname Pocket Lint.
Research Project
One thing we get in our inbox fairly frequently are comments like “hey, love the site, if you guys ever need anything, let me know.” Well, I’m taking you guys up on it.
Baseball America has relaunched their player finder feature, which allows you to search for a player by name and pull up his 2005 statline. It’s a very nifty tool that they made so unbelievably cool by adding the hardest-to-get-meaningful-stat in the minors in groundout/flyout ratio. This is a pretty important part of evaluating a pitcher, and until now, we had to jump through hoops to find out what a minor leaguers G/F rate was.
Here’s the catch, though. It’s only available through the player search pages. They aren’t listed on the team by team statistics or the league statistics. So, while we now know that Clint Nageotte was a groundballing machine (2.82 G/F rate) in Tacoma, we have no idea what that means, in context. He was definitely more of a groundball pitcher than Felix was in Tacoma, but that might be sample size. We don’t even know where Nageotte stands among his peers in the PCL. Or where the PCL stands in regards to the Cal League. Basically, we lack context.
I don’t want to lack context, so I’m making a request; if anyone is really bored, has a ton of free time, and wants to help, you can claim a league or half a league in the comments section and start knocking it out, player by player. You can get the rosters from a multitude of sources and just start using the player finder feature. Drop the players statline from his BA team stats page in an excel spreadsheet and add a column for G/F rate. Then, add the numbers to the spreadsheet from the player search page. When you’re finished, you can send it to me, and when I get enough of them, I’ll start creating league averages and leaderboards, and we can have some kind of idea of where these guys stand in relation to the other players in their leagues.
In other words, we’ll have context.
So, claim away in the comments. You can claim the Midwest League. You can claim the Cal League. You can claim the PCL North. You can claim the whole PCL. Just pick more than one team. Pick as many as you think you can handle. And then get to work. I’d love to have, say, 12 guys (or girls) chip in and each claim a league, which would cover the 10 full season leagues and the 2 short season leagues. I don’t care too much about the rookie leagues or at all about the complex leagues – those stats are worthless anyways. But I’ll take what I can get.
Knock yourselves out. When this gets done, it’ll be darn cool and we’ll have created a resource for the rest of the baseball fan community to share. And we’ll know just how excited to get about Nageotte’s G/F rate, and what it might mean for his future.
Bryan Price to resign
According to Finnigan, Bryan Price has resigned as the Mariners pitching coach.
Rather than rehash the good and bad of Price here, I’ll simply point you to the back and forth discussion Derek and I had about him a few weeks ago. Basically, I don’t expect this to be a huge deal either way.
Dempster, as in “dumpster”
A week ago, Dave speculated on the myriad of quality relievers who’ll be on the market this winter, and specifically how that relates to Eddie Guardado’s team/player option situation. The prevailing wisdom was that the M’s should decline their $6.5M option, and if Eddie picks up his (cheaper) option, so be it. If not, there’s always the FA market.
That FA market got an early boost today when Ryan Dempster — who has essentially never pitched well in his life before this season — signed a three-year, $15.5M deal with the Chicago Cubs. A former starter, Dempster has served as the Cubbies’ closer for most of the year and has done well, coverting 33 of 35 chances including 19 straight at one point.
I applaud the Cubs for taking a guy who never cut it as a starter — he was released by the Reds just two years ago — and making him a closer. More clubs should take marginal starters and make them into relievers, as there’s generally pretty good success with this sort of thing, and it can be a cheap way to fill out your bullpen. But after you’ve made a smart move like this, turning freely available talent into something useful, you don’t turn around and give the guy $15.5M.
When the M’s are forced to pay some closer $21M over four years this winter, they’ll have the Cubs to blame. OK, so they’ll really have themselves to blame. But it’s always nice to blame the Cubs for something.
Week #27 in Review
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends…
–T.S. Eliot, 1925
Vital Signs
Wins: 68. Losses: 91. Games out of first place: 24.
The Angels clinch the division title for the second consecutive year, and the AL West repeats its same finish as 2004. And yes, that’s the Mariners in last place, again. This week they coasted another 2.5 games down the standings. But what’s another 2.5 games at this point, really? The slipped further away from the Rangers and third place, which is now an 11-game gap. According the third order wins, the M’s are 5.6 games below their expected wins. Interestingly, only the Mariners have fewer W3 than the Angels in the division, which will be something to watch in the playoffs.
Runs Scored: 689 (13th in the American League). Batting average: .256 (last). On-base percentage: .318 (last). Slugging percentage: .392 (13th). Home runs: 128 (13th). Bases on balls: 458 (8th). EqA: .258 (13th). The American league average is .268/.329/.425.
Runs allowed: 738 (7th). Staff ERA: 4.49 (8th, tied with Yankees). DIPS ERA: 4.66 (12th). Strikeouts: 875 (last). Bases on balls: 493 (9th). Home runs allowed: 178 (10th, tied with Baltimore). Starters ERA: 4.97 (11th). Relievers ERA: 3.49 (5th, tied with Los Angeles). Defensive efficiency: 70.2% (5th).
It was a run starved week as the Mariners drop four in row for the second time in two weeks. In their six games, they scored 4 runs only once and no more than 2 in four of their games. They went 2-4 against the Tigers and Rangers as they were outscored by a landslide 29-13. The Mariners drew more bases-on-balls than their opponents 23-17, but that’s the only positive in a week where the offense embarrassed itself to the tune of .214/.300/.286 and was out-homered 7-1.
Heroes
Well, Rene Rivera hit 5 singles in 10 at bats (.500/.500/.500). Seriously, that’s the kind of week it was at the plate for the M’s. Richie Sexson hit the lone home run and went 4-for-15 (.263/.450/.533), drawing 5 walks on the week. Adrian Beltre also drew 5 walks in 24 plate appearances. Jose Lopez continued is double barrage with four more, bringing his double total to 11 on the month, tops in the AL for September.
As revenge for the dishonor of the previous week, King Felix demanded tribute from the boastful Rangers and held them to 2 runs on 5 hits and 4 walks as he finished the ninth inning for the first time of his career. He also struck out 7. Unfortunately, the Mariners similarly scored only 2 runs and lost the game in 11 innings.
Few Yankee Fans Down Under
I’ve seen three Yankee hats so far in Australia. As you can imagine, that’s amazingly cool to not constantly be needled by the brand of a hated rival franchise. The three:
1. Brisbane, guy carrying a pizza away from “NY Slice” pizza restaurant, suspected delivery man.
2. Port Douglas, German tourist.
3. Uluru (Ayer’s Rock), Spanish tourist.
The Yankee fans I have found so far are Japanese tourists who are Hideki Matsui fans. the guy I met yesterday noted with a big smile that Ichiro “is having a minus year” after my wife and I tried to argue the merits of Seattle’s finest.
Those three Yankee caps are the only MLB team caps I’ve seen since I got here.
No Doyle sightings yet.
Game 159, Rangers at Mariners
Good news folks, it’s Ryan Franklin’s last ever appearance as a Seattle Mariner.
Adios, cowboy.
Guest Post At Baseball Analysts
I’ve got a guest post today at Rich Lederer and Bryan Smith’s fine Baseball Analysts site. It’s about why I love baseball, and why I keep doing this.
It kind of follows in the footsteps of Dave’s post from a few weeks back where he took a trip down nostalgia lane and wrote: “‘Why do you love baseball?’ is a pretty common question for me. I’m never really sure what to say. I just do.” My post tries to figure out what I should say when asked that question.
Game 158, Rangers at Mariners
Joel Pineiro vs Chris Young.
1. Ichiro, RF
2. Betancourt, SS
3. Ibanez, DH
4. Sexson, 1B
5. Beltre, 3B
6. Dobbs, LF – yuck
7. Lopez, 2B
8. Choo, CF
9. Rivera, C
Half the line-up was in Tacoma in July.
Offseason Planning
All three local dailies check in with a story about the M’s convening meetings, starting today, to plan their offseason. The difference in quality between those stories is astonishing.
Bob Finnigan launches the Times six-part season retrospective with a piece on the outfield. Because we’re trying to be nice to Finnigan, I’ll just point to the link and leave it at that. If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, right?
John Hickey pens a story for the P-I that points out the M’s glaring need for help in the rotation, and discusses the M’s preparation for next year with Mike Hargrove and Ron Hassey. He makes a few uncited assertions that raise eyebrows, mainly the possibility of a Morse/Dobbs platoon in left field, which would be something you’d expect of the Devil Rays or the Royals. But overall, it’s a solid piece.
Then Larry Larue kicks the crap out of both of them with a terrific piece at the News Tribune. He gets a great attributable quote from Pat Gillick–““That first offseason was a mess for Bill,†Gillick said. “I saddled him with a lot.‖and gets a straight answer, on the record, from Bavasi on every relevant question you could think of.
Can Bavasi see an infield of Sexson, Jose Lopez, Beltre and Betancourt returning next April intact?
“Yes,†he said.
Good news. That’s the best plan, I believe. And no mention of Willie Bloomquist to be seen.
What about an outfield of Ibañez, Reed and Ichiro Suzuki?
“Yes, although I’m not sure whether Raul will be the left fielder or the designated hitter,†Bavasi said. “That might be a place to add more left-handed power, or we might use both Mike Morse and Chris Snelling out there. Left field gives us options.â€Â
He mentioned previously in the article that the #2 priority was adding “left-handed sock”. Basically, that sock is going to come from the LF position, whether it be through the new hitter playing left or DH’ing and pushing Ibanez back to left field. But I don’t think there’s any way they go to camp with a Morse/Snelling platoon as their starting left field plan.
“I don’t think we’ll need to put a lot of money into the bullpen, which means our money can go into our rotation,†Bavasi said.
More good news.
“How many of our starting pitchers will be back for sure?†Bavasi asked, then laughed. “I know one, for sure. Probably two or three.â€Â
That’s Felix, Joel, and probably Moyer. In other words, the decision has been made on Gil Meche. The team knows they need two new starting pitchers, at least. Even more good news.
“I don’t know that we have any players in the minor league system who are a year away now from helping us, but I said the same thing a year ago,†Bavasi said. “ (Infielder) Adam Jones is probably the closest, and he could be two years away.â€Â
Jones’ days as an infielder are probably over, but LaRue can be forgiven for not knowing that. It’s interesting to see that the M’s aren’t looking at Foppert, Cruceta, Nageotte, or Livingston as guys who could help next year. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of that group actually contributed to the ’06 roster, but I’m glad to see the M’s won’t build the roster counting on it.
“What can we expect (from Beltre) next season? I think if you take the three years prior to his MVP-level season and average them out, then find the midway point between those numbers and his numbers from 2004, you’ll be close,†Bavasi said.
Interestingly enough, that’s basically what every sabermetric analyst worth their salt said at the time of the signing. That’s the kind of comment you would expect to be published at Baseball Prospectus.
“He did a great job. We’re on the same page. We always will be,†Bavasi said. “He’s due a lot of credit for handling so many young players and being positive about it. His approach is very rare. Most managers want nothing to do with young guys because they see them as a serious delay in their chance to win. Mike doesn’t.â€Â
All the Fire Hargrove people can officially go nuts. Of course, all the Fire Hargrove folks are the same people who were screaming Fire Melvin, and that didn’t exactly lead us to the promised land. Maybe, eventually, people will realize that nearly all managers are basically non-factors, and getting so bent out of shape about Hargrove isn’t worth the time or the energy.
Truly terrific piece by LaRue, though, and a lot of good news contained in that article. The Bavasi Plan sounds an awful lot like the USSM plan. Now we’ll just have to see which players they decide to throw their money at.