King Felix on the picture-box
Super-reader Jeffrey Wood points out that Felix Hernandez is scheduled to pitch in tonight’s televised split-squad game… and it’s televised (Fox Sports Northwest).
Now, I’m not promising that he’s going to be super-amazing. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that your jaw will drop, and swoon like we do.
But he’s super-amazing, and your jaw will drop, and you’ll be back here later, swooning like we do. Unless you’ve got a hot date or something, check it out. And if you have a hot date, and they’re Mariner fans, maybe you can pitch the game to them– because it’s never too early to test a relationship’s strength.
Matt Thornton
Matt Thornton is out of options. He is not necessarily out of a job.
The hard-throwing lefty hasn’t exactly forced his way onto the major league roster, to put it mildly. But as the above piece by John Hickey demonstrates, the Mariners are loath to just cut him loose. He can’t be sent to the minors without clearing waivers, and if you’re left-handed and throw 95 miles per hour, someone will claim you.
Thornton’s career minor league numbers are underwhelming. Though control problems are often cited — with good reason — as his main bugaboo, he also gave up more than a hit an inning at AAA last year as a 28 year old. So it isn’t like he is wild but totally dominant; he needs improvement before he’s a consistent big-league contributor.
The hope is that Thornton harnesses his control issues and becomes an effective lefty specialist. But for an arguably competitive team, does it really make sense to wait for a 28 year old potential lefty one out guy (LOOGY) to develop — especially when you have George Sherrill? Pretty much any way you slice it, George Sherrill was better last year and is more ready to miss bats this year. Sherrill is also a not quite a year younger than Thornton. Since Sherrill’s spring ERA is about a decimal point removed from Thornton’s (1.80 to 11.47!), you have to think Sherrill is ahead on the depth chart. He certainly deserves to be.
When Bill Bavasi says you’ve been his biggest disappointment of the spring, that’s probably not a good sign for Thornton, either.
With Eddie Guardado and Ron Villone (I know, I know) locks for the bullpen, there would be virtually no chance for both Sherrill and Thornton to break camp together. Since Joel Pineiro is injured, though, there’s a solid chance he’ll be sent to the DL to forestall a roster move. When Pineiro comes back, someone will be on the bubble, and it will be interesting to see what — if anything — they do to keep Thornton.
Future Forty 2.0
If you look over in the left nav bar, you’ll see that I’ve updated the Future Forty. However, I wouldn’t really characterize this as an update. More like an overhaul.
Basically, I’ve never been very happy with the concept of prospect lists. Everyone does them because, well, everyone else does them. Baseball America has been doing their Top 100 since the fall of Rome, seemingly. So, everyone else who wants to come across as a legitimate authority on prospect analysis makes something that they can compare to BA; mainly, a list. So, analyst after anlayst contribute their thoughts, and we get hundreds of prospect lists. And they tell us… nothing.
Seriously, a numerical list is probably the worst way to communicate information. What does it really tell us? That the #13 prospect is any more likely to contribute than the #14 prospect? Not in the slightest. For the most part, we mentally just organize the rankings into tiers. The top ten in the game are elite prospects, the next ten to twenty are good prospects with some flaws, and so on and so forth. Unless we really just want to argue, we don’t really spend any time trying to discern the miniscule differences between guys ranked next to each other. So what’s the point?
Of course, it’s pretty hypocritcal for me to sit here and bash prospect lists when I put one out every month, isn’t it? So, I’ve torn the Future Forty down and rebuilt it from scratch. What you see now is only barely similar to what you used to see. Here’s a rundown of the changes and an overview of what the new and improved Future Forty should mean to you:
Gone are the numerical rankings. There is no #1 prospect, nor #40 prospect. There are still 40 players, but the numbers next to their names are no more. The Future Forty is now a tier based system. It is made up of eight levels, so to speak, of different kinds of prospects: elite, good, solid, future, marginal, projects, suspects, and injured. I’ve included a short definition of each level in the Future Forty itself, and hopefully they are fairly understandable.
The goal, really, was to provide more information to the reader. A lot of the questions used to revolve around things like “why is Justin Leone ranked ahead of Matt Tuiasasopo”, because there wasn’t an explanation attached. Now, instead of saying one is better than the other, I’ve grouped them into seperate categories to help explain the vast differences between the two. Leone is a marginal prospect, close to the majors, while Tuiasasopo is a future prospect who needs several years of development. If you happen to like long term projects, than you’ll probably prefer Tui. If you want someone who can contribute right now, Leone’s your guy. The list wouldn’t give you any information other than “Dave isn’t as high on Tui as everyone else”. Now, rather than giving you my opinion, I’m showing my work, and letting you decide what type of prospects you prefer.
Also gone are the comments, which rarely provided a lot of insight, and were honestly a pain in the butt to write. They’ve been replaced by four categories: reward, risk, stock, and ETA. The reward category measures a players potential, while risk simply measures the chance that the player will not live up to that potential. Stock measures whether a player is improving, declining, or staying neutral in my eyes. ETA is the year that I estimate the player will arrive in the majors if he develops as expected. Obviously, not everyone will, and attrition will knock a lot of these guys off the organizational ladder before they reach the show. ETA is not a prediction of when I think they will make the Mariners 25 man roster, but rather a guage to show how many more years I think they need in the minors before they’ll be ready.
So, there’s the basic guide. Rather than looking at Asdrubal Cabrera as “the #8 prospect”, the Future Forty now tells you that he’s a Future Prospect, needs several years to develop, but has comparable potential to guys like Jeremy Reed and Shin-Soo Choo (the top position players in the system), but is also one of the highest risk prospects in the organization. Based on his expected evelopment, I wouldn’t expect him in Seattle before 2007.
You still get my opinion of the players, only now its broken down into parts rather than a whole. This should make it significantly better for the readers to ascertain what kind of player a prospect is and why he’s in the tier that he is. Obviously, as time goes on, players will move from tier to tier, though I expect movement to be minimal and slow. I’m not going to be moving Adam Jones or Oswaldo Navarro up to Good Prospect status if they start off 20 for 50 in April.
Also, you’ll note that the players are sorted within each tier first by Reward ranking, than by Risk. High Risk, High Reward players will rank ahead of Low Risk, Low Reward players in the same tier, because I believe that potential is more important than attrition in valuing prospects, though both are obviously crucial.
I hope you guys find the Future Forty 2.0 to be a huge improvement over the list style, and for the prospect mavens out there, I’d encourage you to take a look at revamping the way we present information going forward. Just because everyone else presents their data in a list doesn’t mean we have to. After all, everyone else use to evaluate players by batting average too.
Ichiro! Ichiro!
He’s on fire! Also, some standard-issue quotes from Hargrove for your amusement.
I know spring training stats are meaningless and all, but man, Ichiro! is cool.
So Ichiro’s hitting .579 with a .610 OBP, if Jim Street’s article is to believed. We then get this gem:
Asked if he’s ready for the regular season to start, Ichiro said, “I’m not sure yet.”
Ichiro cracks me up.
Dobbs and BP Premium articles
Two quick hits:
* If you can, please help Dave with his computer problem. He will need the peace of mind after he sees John Levesque’s latest effort, a love letter to Greg Dobbs, who has “intensity” and is “feisty.”
After reading his column about Mariners clubhouse guy Ted Walsh, there seemed cause for hope that Levesque would put together what Ron Fairly might call a “two game writing streak.” Perhaps he had even read some wise counsel about stepping off the well-trodden road for ideas.
But no, we’re back to elevating the gritty, bad player. Pity.
* Interested in the Mariners’ prospects for injury? Of course you are. Heard of Will Carroll? Of course you have. Subscribe to Baseball Prospectus? Maybe you do. Meet all three criteria? Check out Will’s take on the M’s, especially the Aaron Sele zinger.
* While I’m linking to BP Premium content, scope Nate Silver’s PECOTA system’s projections for the American League. The system expects the A’s to win the division by five games over the Angels, with the M’s finishing last, just behind Texas.
Don’t worry: my spreadsheet can beat up Nate’s spreadsheet.
The Success of Jeff Nelson and other urban legends
The Mariners’ most vexing dilemma in spring training so far? They have too many solid pitchers, quoth the Sunday Everett Herald.
Given that too many good players is always a pleasant problem, I was pleased to read an article with this premise. I was even more pleased to read the sub-headline, “The success of Jeff Nelson and Aaron Sele gives Seattle 16 pitchers for 12 spots,” because I had thought Nelson was struggling. Eagerly, I dove into the article, anxious to get some positive news.
In the next-to-last paragraph, here’s what I found:
Nelson, who pitched for the Mariners from 2001-2003, has an unimpressive 7.20 ERA but has allowed one run in his past three outings and has three strikeouts in his past two innings. The swings and misses tell Nelson that his best pitch, his slider, is working.
Holy Small Sample Size, Batman! He’s got three strikeouts in his last two innings! Quick, lock him up to a multi-year deal, like we did with Shiggy and Villone.
Most importantly: I am shocked that I just read an article about the outstanding spring a guy with a 7.20 ERA is having. Really puts all those “Aaron Sele has pitched nine straight scoreless innings” stories in perpective.
But wait! There’s more. The Herald’s Kirby Arnold continues by saying that just about every pitcher offers something that will make it hard to keep him off the team. For example, “Shigetoshi Hasegawa, J.J. Putz, Scott Atchison, Julio Mateo, George Sherrill and Nathan Bland all are pitching well … and Matt Thornton is a rare power left-hander who the M’s believe will dominate left-handed hitters if he solves control issues”
But check out the following quote from the Sunday TNT, where Mike Hargrove says that “Nathan Bland, Matt Thornton and George Sherrill have not yet pitched well enough to make the team.” This seems to blow up Arnold’s theory that every pitcher is wowing management. And for those keeping score at home, yes, these may be the first unflattering remarks Hargrove has said about anyone in spring training. I’m sure Bland, Thornton and Sherrill feel special.
Speaking of small sample size, this Nathan Bland Arnold praises is the same Nathan Bland that “turned heads” with four early scoreless innings. Yes, four. Then he got shelled, but that seems to be unimportant. Like Nelson’s impressive last two innings, it’s the impressive small sample that Arnold wants to focus on, not the gnarly small sample.
First upshot: From my perspective, the problem isn’t too many good arms — it’s too many undistinguished arms, pitchers that are promising in some ways but flawed in others.
Second upshot: it’s silly for ballclubs to make important roster decisions based only on spring training performances. It’s even sillier for media folks to project roster decisions based on the parts of spring performances they like.
Melvin on Melvin
Pulling a new thread from eponymous coward’s comment:
As ever, Melvin was quick, affable, yet guarded in his comments, which was smart and sensible.
“You learn things in any job,†he said. “I’m not going to go into those things. I hadn’t managed before. There’s a lot of things I didn’t know then that I do now.â€Â
While Melvin never shied from his task with the Mariners, he had been thrown into a tougher situation than anyone realized, a rookie manager with a team largely comprised of experienced players.
After acknowledging he prefers the National League game, he was specific in one area, recalling that in 2003 Seattle had put together a good bench.
“In the National League you use those guys for substitutions, pinch-hitting. But we weren’t able to use it enough in the American League to keep them ready.â€Â
Anyone want to guess what Mariner pinch hitters in 2003 with that good bench?
Try .154, with an OPS of .519. Yeah, awesome bench, alright.
Oh, wait, you mean to tell me Greg Colbrunn would have been the only bench player on that team to have an OPS over .700 (and he spent most of the year on the DL)?
And blaming the DH for not being able to get action for your bench is, well, just showing that when your strategy crutch is taken away (the option to PH for the pitcher) you don’t have the flexibility to think differently. I’ve never seen LaRussa, Anderson or Piniella say they couldn’t use their bench when they managed in the AL… but if you are a strictly by tne book sheep^H^H^H^H^H^Hmanager, I could understand why you’d be confused when part of the book is taken away.
Stone, trapped
U.S.S. Mariner-endorsed columnist Larry Stone falls into exactly the same easy trap I blasted Bayless for earlier this week, implying that McGwire took steroids, et cetera, because McGwire didn’t come out blasting with fiesty-enough angry denials when faced with questions in a Congressional hearing (which, while I’m at it, accords too much respect to those proceedings, but anyway):
But Thursday, under oath, facing perjury, he all but came clean, damning himself with faint refutation. Contrasted with a finger-pointing, insistent Rafael Palmeiro, McGwire was the epitome of impotence (and no, that’s not a Viagra joke).
Those fans still clinging to the belief that McGwire was clean all along, the victim of innuendo and mud-slinging, don’t have one thread to cling to. Not after McGwire’s repeated refusal to answer any questions related to his use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Here’s the thing, for me. There’s no more, or less, evidence that McGwire used steroids than there is evidence that Rafael Palmeiro did.
And if you want to believe that steroids increase power, well, Palmeiro’s career certainly has more of a weird, sustained, late career power spike than McGwire or even Barry Bonds — and my point here is not to imply that Palmeiro used steroids, or did not.
We don’t know. And all of the noise this week over “loopholes” in the MLB drug testing policy (which amount to a typo that’ll get fixed), and who denied it with enough anger and who didn’t… none of this amounts to anything.
I’m disappointed in Stone, but I’m disappointed with almost everything I’ve read on the topic.
So… Go Huskies! Wooooooo!!
The new crusade
Courtesy of Skip Bayless’ latest at ESPN. It’s not enough to not take steroids.. you have to convince Skip.
McGwire failed to acknowledge his third option: Telling the truth, if he was as steroid-free as he has always said he was. Apparently, McGwire didn’t take that option because, under oath, he couldn’t.
I don’t know if McGwire took steroids. But this assumption-of-guilt thing is a load of crap. Especially given this:
To McGwire’s right on the five-player panel, Sammy Sosa had already said he has “never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs.” To McGwire’s left, Rafael Palmeiro would soon shake a finger at the congressmen and cameras and say, “I have never used steroids. Period. Never.”
I’m not sure I believe Sosa – though his body language and facial expressions did little, if anything, to damage his credibility. Yet Palmeiro spoke with such angry conviction that he certainly came across as convincing.
Has Skip seriously never met a convincing liar? No, seriously. Never confronted someone trying to steal his girlfriend and had the guy get all huffy and go into a rage that you’d even think such a thing?
Maybe Raffy took steroids. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe McGwire did, or didn’t. But to pronounce McGwire guilty because he didn’t act in a certain manner, wasn’t angry enough to “come across as convincing…”
I’ll remember that baseball was caught deceiving the public about the few teeth its new testing program does have.
What — random testing for a wide range of these drugs, with not only penalties but disclosure of those who test positive for them? Did he mean “had” since he’s so down on McGwire, or doesn’t he know that there was a new deal struck with pretty good testing?
I’m disgusted that this is what baseball coverage has come to. It’s as if the long rumor-churning of are they/aren’t they wasn’t awful enough, last year’s testing, where only 12 players tested positive, didn’t catch those rotten users people are convinced were out htere, and now we’re to the point where denials or admissions aren’t good enough either. We’re going to have to torture all professional athletes until they give us an answer we like. If they drown before they confess, well, they must have been guilty.
Baseball has drug testing now, like everyone wanted. Even if you want instant lifetime bans on first time offenses, we know that it has already eliminated almost entirely abuse of the targeted substances in the sport, so it’s achieved its goal. Can we please stop fighting this battle and get back to enjoying the game?
Lopez to stick and start?
From Bob Finnigan’s roster construction story today spring a few intriguing matters, greatest of which is speculation that Jose Lopez may start at shortstop.
But a seismic shift appears to be happening at shortstop. With Pokey Reese’s spring affected by an ankle problem and, more lately, personal matters that took him out of camp for several days, Jose Lopez has used the opportunity and shown far better play at short than he did when he was called up for the last half of last season  in addition to hitting .308 this spring with some big late-game, run-producing hits.
Though this is “far from decided,” Finnigan reports that if Lopez stays in the majors, he’ll start.
Our thoughts on why this isn’t good for him or for the team have been repeated quite a bit. Even if you don’t buy those arguments, though, this would have a domino effect on big-league jobs.
Mike Hargrove appears adamant about starting the year with 12 pitchers, so if Lopez breaks camp with the big club, then there is no open spot on the bench — Pokey Reese would slide into a backup role. That leaves your reserves as Dan Wilson, Scott Spiezio, Willie Bloomquist and Pokey. If this happens, I guess we won’t be pinch-hitting a lot early in the season. At least, I hope not.
If Lopez starts the season in Tacoma, there will be an extra spot on the bench, which the article implies would be filled by Jamal Strong or (eek!) Greg Dobbs. Bucky Jacobsen would presumably get that spot if and when he is healthy.