I don’t think there’s anything shocking about the decision they made on Cameron.
So what’s a bigger surprise — that they offered arbitration to Borders, or that they didn’t offer to Rhodes? Nary an article went by this off-season without a final line something like, “The Mariners are not expected to offer arbitration to their other free agents: Pat Borders, Mark McLemore, Armando Benitez and John Mabry.”
In any event, I’m disappointed about Rhodes. I pegged him as something of a bargain for next season, as his injury last year would likely hold his price tag down somewhat.
Recap of the Bill Bavasi era to date:
Sign Raul Ibanez. Bad move.
Re-sign Shigetoshi Hasegawa. Questionable move.
Fail to offer arbitration to Arthur Rhodes. Bad move.
Fail to offer arbitration to Mike Cameron. Bad move.
You never know how much you’ll miss something until it is gone. Mike Cameron, thanks for the great years. Good luck with your future team. Hopefully a better ballpark and an organization not obsessed with strikeouts will lead to a year that allows folks to realize the value you have to a club.
Oh, and the Mariners offered arbitration to Pat Borders “due to the special relationship he has with this club.” I am unable to rationally comment on this tonight, and will now proceed to go to bed.
Matsui to the Mets, Gammons reports, 3y $6.7m/year. Reyes moves to second as the Mets fix a problem (no one to play 2nd) by giving up of their strengths (Reyes as a future star SS). Of SS candidates the M’s are said to be interested in, Tejada’s it.
Also, off-topic even for those of you in Seattle, I’d like to point out that that dumb million-dollar contest that KUBE tries to pass off as their own (“Santa Kube”) is, in fact, one prize for many, many stations, which is why KUBE has that ‘be the 50th nationwide caller’ blurb, though they don’t fully disclose anywhere (even on their site, which I have to think is illegal) the full nature of this contest, and in fact pretend that someone on (DJ name)’s show won $x dollars, even though that person could be anywhere in the country, and a listner to KUBE or not. This is why when they play the blurbs from the winners, it never contains regional or station branding tags — which should register on your suspicion-o-meter too, since if KUBE was running a contest they’d make every contestant yell the station’s ad line to play on the air.
Shiggy is back. Too much money (reportedly $6.3 million for 2 years), but I’m glad its not a 3 year deal. Not good news, but not a completely awful signing.
To follow-up on my constant harping on the $92m lie. This is going to get annoying and technical, so if a lot of financials-related math isn’t your thing, this isn’t going to be your post.
The M’s payroll as total salaries was reported on Opening Day as $87,184,500 by the AP and is listed as being $86,959,167 for the 2003 season by USA Today.
Article XXIII, C. “Determination of Actual Club Payroll” says that “Actual Club Payroll” is the sum of:
a 1/30th share of player benefits (the pensions, etc) aaaand the sum of yearly salaries. Which as calculated pursuant to E, is “value of total compensastion” and includes average value, so signing bonuses are in there, too.
Benefits cost each team $7.7m in 2002, which is the year I dug up. I can’t imagine that went down in 2003. So if the M’s calculation of payroll-as-dispensed-to-local-media includes that, they should have been using a figure of $95m… which is what Lincoln claims was the team’s total expenditures on players last year, but that’s a coincidence, because then it can’t include pro-rated signing bonuses and incentives.
Obvious signing bonuses and stuff (signing, bonus)
Ichiro, 5m on a 3 year deal = 1.7m rated, bonus of 3m possible (achieved?)
Moyer, 1.5m on 3 year deal = .5m rated,
Edgar, 3.5m in incentives last year
Cameron, 1.25m on a 3 year deal = .4m rated
Rhodes, 1m on 4 y deal = .25m rated
Total obvious incentive/signing-type costs: $9.6m total
If you want to argue that the M’s include bonuses and pro-rated signing bonuses, but not benefit costs, they should be claiming $97-98m dollars (unless Ichiro somehow missed his bonuses, which I can’t imagine happened, since bonuses are always tied to playing time and are not performance-based).
The only way the M’s get to their $92m in “payroll” and $95m in “total costs” is if you figure they’re selectively picking chosing which things they include to get to those figures, because there’s no way you can.
There’s really only one way to get to the Mariners’ number, and it’s like this:
$87m in player salary costs
$5m in magic number costs (food and hotel incidentals, or something)
——–
$92m
How can we be the only people saying there’s no way to make the numbers work, that any way you add them up the Mariners aren’t telling the truth?
If you weren’t angered by LaRue’s weird column, today’s Pocket Lint piece at the Seattle Times will test your tolerance. Here:
As such, the Seattle club is in the midst of its annual offseason split-personality mode to uphold: a) its standard as a contender and b) its payroll budget.
This year, team officials have kept that figure private, but it is almost certain to be about $95 million. Team president Chuck Armstrong said it would be no less than the 2003 budget of $92 million, and CEO Howard Lincoln said it would be no less than the $95 million expenditure of 2003.
The $92m is a lie. It’s always been a lie, and it’s a telling stain on the local media that they continually regurgitate it when even in pre-season puff pieces the Times couldn’t get the number up to $92m, a fact we pointed out here. No one has ever been able to explain how the Mariners get to a $92m payroll last year without including expenses no other team (or accounting method w/r/t the salary cap, etc) includes in their calculation. It’s a lie, and they push it because it looks good to say they spent over $90m — it’s a big, generous figure that compares well with other teams.
That the team claims their payroll was $92m and their actual expenditure was $95m makes their lies even more obvious, if that was possible: because in saying that, the team acknowledges that there’s payroll and then incentives etc, and that they’re not counting those as part of payroll. The most convoluted method we ever managed to come up with for getting the team to their claimed payroll was to count everything they’re not supposed to count: incentives, pro-rated signing bonuses, meal per diem allowances, the whole thing.
I’m continually disappointed with local press’ failure to analyze or even report on front-office moves (as Dave did yesterday), but their continual complicity in putting out the stories the Mariners want them to cover, in the way the Mariners want them to cover, is shameful and a disgrace to any journalistic principles these papers might claim to honor. The sports section should not be a refuge for editorial compromise and printing lies in the service of those your press pass depends on.
The Mariners have made some front office moves, including the hiring of a new scouting director, Bob Fontaine Jr. The other moves were in-house promotions and a slight reorganization to help ease Roger Jongewaard into retirement and redistribute some of his responsibilities. A quick rundown:
Jongewaard: From Asst. GM to consultant. He’ll be more active than Gillick, but more of a part-time employee.
Looper: From director of player development to VP of player development and scouting. More say on major league side of scouting, less involvement in the farm system.
Frank Mattox: From scouting director to director of player development. Now in charge of farm system administration, player promotions, and the minor leagues in general.
Greg Hunter: Named director of minor league operations. A fancier job title and more responsibility for the rising star in the organization’s front office.
Bob Fontaine: Named director of scouting. Will be in charge of amateur signings and the June draft.
It isn’t a big surprise that Bavasi brought in his own guy to be the scouting director, though Frank Mattox staying on with the organization wasn’t guaranteed. Fontaine and Bavasi are friends from their days with the Angels, and both are long time baseball men. This continues the organizational trend towards hiring people with experience who believe in the tried-and-no-so-true methods of old school analysis. It has its place, but the last thing this organization needed was another old-school thinker.
Bob Fontaine is a pretty intense individual with a very strong set of beliefs. You won’t be seeing a drastic change in the way the M’s draft, though Fontaine will likely draft more college players than Mattox did. The focus will still be on athletes over players, however. Hiring a new scouting director should help alleviate some of the tension that has been created between the Mariners organizations and agents during the Gililck/Mattox regime, but don’t look for wide ranging improvement in the M’s ability to turn draft picks into useful players.
All in all, it is a continuance of the old-school philosophy that relies heavily on subjective analysis. While I’m certainly a fan of scouting (to the point of being labeled an anti-stathead recently), good organizations have balance, and the Mariners currently lack an understanding of the value of objective analysis. As they continue to bring in like-minded thinkers, they fall further into the trap of not seeing their own flaws and repeating the mistakes of history.
According to this from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the M’s have called the Pirates to ask about catcher Jason Kendall. That’s interesting, given the seemingly never ending presence of Dan Wilson on the roster, as well as that of Ben Davis. Kendall is owed a boatload of cash ($42M) over the next four seasons, and at age 29 isn’t getting any younger. More importantly, his power has dipped to scary levels the past three years — SLGs of .358, .356, .416 beginning with 2001. While I have no doubt that he’d be a big improvement over Wilson, I don’t see picking up that sort of salary for a soon-to-be 30-year old catcher being a good idea. If the M’s are looking to throw $10M+ a year at someone, it should be Vladimir Guerrero.
Huge moves brewing as the M’s contemplate offering arb to their players. Given the spin they’re putting on this through local media, of the big four, I predict they’re going to let Freddy walk, Guillen walk, Cameron walk (booooooo), and may offer arb to Hasegawa and Rhodes both. The first batch of decisions (potential FAs) has a Sunday deadline.
Reports on Tejeda’s contract demands vary: I’ve heard both that he wants a super-long deal and that he doesn’t. I guess we’ll see how this shakes out.
There’s quite a bit about Miguel Tejada to like, as much as you’re probably expecting us/me to rip him. For starters, he’s extremely durable — he’s played in all 162 of Oakland’s games each of the past three seasons, and in 150 and 159 games the two seasons before that. Offensively he has good pop for his position, and while his walk totals have been erratic, he has at least shown the willingness to exceed the 10% threshold (66 walks against 607 at-bats in 2000). I don’t have an opinion on his defense one way or the other, though it’s not as if he’d be replacing Ozzie Smith or Omar Vizquel out there.
Clubhouse chemistry? Team leader? I generally don’t put much stock in such things, though all things being equal (they never are), I’d certainly rather have a player who’s known for his leadership than for being a dreaded clubhouse cancer.
There’s also reason to like the M’s offer to Tejada. Whether it’s a three, four or five year deal, the fact remains that Tejada only turns 28 next May — a contract of that length covers his prime years without extending too far into his likely decline years. This isn’t like offering a 32-year old player a three year deal.
That the M’s are able to make such an offer is amazing for two reasons: One, it just doesn’t seem like them. And two, a year ago it looked like Tejada would get something like a seven-year, $100M deal on the open market thanks to his career year in 2002 and subsequent MVP award. Now, not only did his batting average drop off by 30 points last season, but those sorts of contracts just aren’t being given out anymore.
This article in today’s News Tribune suggests that “Tejada wants a deal twice as long as the four- to five-year contract Seattle offered,” perhaps throwing all my comments out the window. That said, is anyone going to give him an eight- or ten-year deal? No, they’re not.