So It’s Come To This, Again
Used to be that words came a lot easier. I remember one time sitting down to write something about baseball, and it was going to be something long, and in about three hours, I pounded out the equivalent of 25 pages double-spaced. Felt like a lot, felt like a lot in a hurry, and I was pleased with the result. It’s still somewhere online and no one ever said it was stupid. Things now don’t work like they used to. On my bad days, I take it as a sign of decline, of declining passion and declining capability. On my good days, I take it as a sign of evolution, since now there’s a lot more thought taking place before there’s a single word on an Internet page. I know that I’m a different writer now than I was years ago. I think most people are. I’m referring specifically to baseball analysts, but it probably applies more generally, too.
Willie Bloomquist was a Mariner when I was younger and more energetic. More invested, more quick and ready to express myself. Now he’s a Mariner again, for probably a couple of seasons, and I’ve changed. Somewhat remarkably, he hasn’t, despite his advancing age, but that’s a point in his favor. For me and for all of us, this is another chance with Willie, a chance after a years-long break. It’s not a chance I’m looking forward to, but I’m interested by the response.
This news was destined to be an Internet catastrophe. The Mariners didn’t just sign a utility player for $5.8 million — they signed Willie Ballgame for $5.8 million, and Willie’s been a mascot and punching bag for a decade. The old Baseball Prospectus used to rip on him without mercy, and that was greatly influential. Even to this very day, I think a lot of us responded in the same way: when news broke, people laughed and shook their heads and said “of course”. If everything were the same and his name were Pete Snorkel, it’d just be a weird signing for a bit too much money. But that’s not his name; his actual name makes it funnier. It’s easy to chuckle and point to this as the latest evidence of the Mariners being a laughingstock.
I wanted to just laugh at them, too. Still do. Still want to do nothing but just shred them on Twitter, like people do when a team signs Yuniesky Betancourt or Delmon Young. As for a blog post, 1000 words making fun of the Mariners for being stupid? Simple. Been there before. I think I have templates. It’s embarrassing, right? It’s something to laugh about, right, something that proves the front office is clueless?
I know exactly how I would’ve responded to this if I were still the same writer as before. These days, I can’t help but try to look for reason. It takes time and maybe it isn’t always necessary, but I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable assuming I know what I’m doing more than executives do. Even some of the worse executives. I am convinced the Mariners didn’t need to do this, I am convinced they’ve guaranteed too big of a commitment, but there’s some sense. I see this now as a move that’s not great or good, but I understand the thinking.
I’m responsible for covering the AL West in the FanGraphs team depth charts, and when I’ve worked on the Mariners, I’ve struggled with playing time for infield backups. Before today, the team simply didn’t have a utility infielder beyond Carlos Triunfel, and the starters up the middle are Brad Miller and Nick Franklin, unproven youths, the both of them. Every team needs to have depth, and every team needs to have some infield insurance. The Mariners didn’t have that in the organization, so they needed to get some.
Willie fills that hole. He’s worse than Nick Punto, but Punto’s from California and he signed with the A’s, and the A’s are good and the Mariners aren’t. Here are contracts that have gone to similar players of late:
- Willie Bloomquist: 2 years, $5.8 million
- Nick Punto: 1 year, $3 million, or 2 years, $5.5 million with vesting option
- Brendan Ryan: 2 years, $5 million
- Skip Schumaker: 2 years, $5 million
Technically, Punto was given just one guaranteed year, but his 2015 option vests if he doesn’t spend too much time next year on the disabled list, and he hasn’t been on the DL since 2011. Increasingly, utility sorts are getting multiple years, and Willie is just coming off of a two-year contract. He’ll be paid the most money of the guys above, but he also signed with the worst team, a team with more money to spend than it might be capable of spending.
Again, I don’t think there was any need for urgency. Bloomquist wasn’t the only available option. Jayson Nix just got non-tendered. There are guys like Ramon Santiago and Elliot Johnson. The Mariners might’ve been able to get a better value by holding out, or maybe at least they could’ve limited things to a one-year commitment. The way things look, it’s as if the Mariners were in a rush to sign Willie Bloomquist, which sounds hilarious to people who are not us. It fits with the current caricature of the people in charge, and everybody likes blending baseball with humor.
But you do have a pretty good idea what you get from Willie Bloomquist. He can post two-thirds of a half-decent slash line, he can play a lot of positions, even if not particularly well, and he knows and understands his role. He’s not the younger version of himself who wanted so desperately to be a starter. He might still want that, but by now he’s come to terms with the reality. Willie’s been around, on good teams and bad teams, and he brings a lot of experience to a team that’s presently incredibly young, and I’m trying so desperately to not say too much about his familiarity with the area. It doesn’t hurt that people will like having him back. More significantly, he’s being paid to be worth a win over two years, and futzing over the details and likelihoods overlooks the fact that that’s hardly any money. Willie’s contract isn’t going to prevent the Mariners from doing anything else. They were probably going to target some kind of veteran infield backup. Now that’s done and the actual important moves will follow in some order.
That’s where I’m actually worried. I already don’t trust this front office, and Bloomquist has nothing to do with that. As much fun as it is to say he’s an indicator of everything that’s wrong with the team, he’s getting paid less than $3 million a year at a time when money like $3 million means less than ever. It’s not the little mistakes, where the Mariners might pay a bit too much for veteran experience and leadership. What I don’t like are the links to guys like Nelson Cruz. What I don’t like are the links to proven free-agent closers. Teams get sunk by the big mistakes, not the bench players, and while you might’ve wanted a better bench player than Willie Bloomquist, there aren’t very many of those who are available and who aren’t starters. Bloomquist isn’t good, but players in his role usually aren’t. He doesn’t out-and-out suck, so, all right.
This is all to say, I’m trying really hard to be open-minded. I’m trying really hard to give some of the benefit of the doubt to people I already don’t trust very much. I’m trying really hard to not just automatically laugh at Willie Bloomquist, because while the early days of baseball analysis were a lot of fun, people also sounded like self-important dicks. There’s always nuance, there’s always some reason a bad thing isn’t as bad as it initially seems. Willie fills a role for a bit too much money. A year ago, the brilliant Cardinals stupidly guaranteed two years and too much money to Ty Wigginton. I’m not saying the Mariners are run like the Cardinals are, but the things that matter aren’t found on the bench. This isn’t worth a freakout.
Save the freakouts for the real bad stuff. Real bad stuff like the Tigers’ trade of Doug Fister to the Nationals. Save the freakouts and hope you never have to dip into them. An organization that actually sucks will provide ample opportunity for you to lose your shit. There’s no need to force it, and it’s probably bad for you.
Mariners to Sign Willie Bloomquist
I’m not even going to bother with the commentary on this, because you can probably guess what I think of a guaranteed two-year deal for a replacement-level scrub. I’m just going to leave this here.
Nick Punto and Willie Bloomquist were born 19 days apart, back in 1977. Both of them are going into their age-36 seasons. Both have carved out nice long careers as utility infielders. Here are their career offensive numbers, side by side.
| Name | PA | BB% | K% | ISO | BABIP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | BsR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Punto | 3510 | 10% | 17% | 0.077 | 0.299 | 0.248 | 0.325 | 0.325 | 0.294 | 78 | 21.0 |
| Bloomquist | 2925 | 6% | 15% | 0.074 | 0.319 | 0.271 | 0.320 | 0.346 | 0.297 | 79 | 13.6 |
For all intents and purposes, they’re the same hitter. Punto walks a little more and Bloomquist has legged out a few more singles, but they’re both bad hitters who offset that a little bit with some baserunning value. You don’t hire either of these guys for their bats. They’re in the Major Leagues because of their ability to play multiple positions. But then there’s this.
| Name | Off | Def | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Punto | -76.0 | 105.1 | 14.8 |
| Bloomquist | -61.8 | -21.8 | 1.4 |
During the last 15 years, Punto has been one of baseball’s elite defensive players. In 2,500 innings at shortstop, he has a career UZR of +33. In 2,500 innings at third base, it’s +38. In 2,500 innings at second base, it’s +11. He’s split his time almost evenly between the three infield spots, and he’s been excellent at all three.
Bloomquist, in 2,000 innings at shortstop, has a -6 UZR. In 1,000 innings at third base, its -3. In 1,000 innings at second base, it’s -1. In 2,000 innings in the outfield, it’s -15. Bloomquist has been a below average defender at every position he’s played.
Willie Bloomquist is Nick Punto minus all the things that make Nick Punto valuable. A few weeks ago, the A’s signed Nick Punto to a one year, $3 million deal. The M’s are reportedly going to give Bloomquist between $5 and $6 million over two years. The Mariners are paying more money to get a worse player.
It’s a bench player spot. Bloomquist won’t be targeted for that many plate appearances — just like Raul Ibanez wasn’t supposed to play much last year — and its not like a two year deal at this kind of money is going to wreck the budget. But the transactions the team makes tell you something about the way the front office values performance, and their ability to understand that “bench players” become “regulars” when injuries occur, as they always do.
Judge for yourself if the Mariners have actually learned anything from their past mistakes. Judge for yourself if this organization has any idea how to actually build a baseball team.
The Nelson Cruz Inevitability
The previous time I went on a real, extended international vacation, I left the States feeling afraid that the Mariners would throw too much money at Barry Zito. They did try that very thing, but in true Mariners fashion, they lost, and Zito went to the Giants on an even bigger mistake. This time, I left the States feeling afraid again that the Mariners would screw up, even though these days I’m considerably less emotionally invested. A whole lot happened over two weeks, but none of it involved the Mariners, except for the Chuck Armstrong part. That was a surprising part, and probably an overall good part, although in truth it’s impossible to know. In my absence, the Mariners didn’t do anything with which I disagreed.
But it sure feels like they’re going to, because they just can’t stop getting linked to Nelson Cruz. In fairness, they also can’t stop getting linked to Carlos Beltran, but Beltran’s market is too big, with too many superior teams. Beltran is virtually certain to sign somewhere else for two or three years in pursuit of a championship. The Cruz sweepstakes, on the other hand, is just conveying that feeling. The feeling where it’s only a matter of time before Nelson Cruz signs a multi-year contract to fill a hole in a currently embarrassing outfield.
The most current rumor, from Buster Olney, assumes the Mariners will end up with one of Ubaldo Jimenez, Matt Garza, and Ervin Santana. But that was mostly speculation on Olney’s part, and those markets are difficult to read with the Tanaka situation still open. The Mariners are most definitely in search of a starter, but I don’t know where they’ll turn. Cruz is the guy who seems likely, so Cruz is the thing I’m writing about at the moment.
It’s funny the way some guys just seem like obvious mistakes from the beginning. Zito looked like a certain disaster. Cruz, likewise, isn’t very good now, and appears a good bet to break down in a hurry. These likelihoods are exaggerated, but as fans you wonder why your own team might not recognize the same truth. In this free-agent market, Cruz seems like one of the most probable busts. He also has the Mariners’ attention.
It supposedly isn’t just the Mariners. The Phillies have been linked, but they signed Marlon Byrd. The Mets have been linked, but they signed Chris Young. The Rangers have been linked, and their outfield is thin, but they got Prince Fielder and seem too smart to guarantee Cruz big money. The A’s have been linked, but that doesn’t make one bit of sense.
One major-league source told me that the A’s have “meaningful interest” in free agent outfielder Nelson Cruz, although there is nothing imminent.
You’d like to be encouraged by seeing the Mariners and the A’s connected to the same free agent, since the A’s are run extremely well. But the A’s have a pretty full roster, and they don’t make a lot of free-agent splashes. Yoenis Cespedes was one, but he was a potentially underrated international free agent. They went hard after Adrian Beltre, but Beltre has long been underrated by the market. Cruz is basically the anti-Beltre, so when you consider the A’s reputation, you automatically want to dismiss the rumor as nonsense. This is the power of reputations. See the A’s linked to Cruz, and you figure it’s either crap, or an attempt to raise his price. See the Mariners linked to Cruz, and you figure, yeah, makes sense. And they’ve been linked for weeks.
It’s all lined up. In the interest of honesty, I came into the offseason assuming the Giants would end up with Bronson Arroyo, and now that probably won’t happen, and I thought that was a lock. Nelson Cruz isn’t actually inevitable, for the Mariners. But he has a small rumored pool of suitors, and the others seem too smart or cash-strapped or both. The Mariners have a need, they have the money to spend, they have the desperation, and they have a demonstrated affection for Cruz’s skillset. Dave already wrote about the similarities between Cruz and Michael Morse, with whom the Mariners fell in love before, you know, the breakup. You have teams who might – might – like Cruz as a potential bargain, following a suspension. And you have a team that can’t seem to give its money away, a team that loves its dingers and runs-batted-initude. A team with Michael Saunders as its best current outfielder.
Offers being equal, the Mariners wouldn’t be the pick of many players. But there’s reason to believe that, with Cruz, the offers won’t be equal, and if the Mariners blow away the competition, Cruz would have to take a significant hit to go somewhere else. Before Byrd, maybe the Phillies would’ve been the team most likely to save the Mariners from themselves, but now they’ve already acquired an alternative and the coast is clear for the Mariners to put their best foot forward where other teams will be justifiably hesitant. I can’t imagine it would actually take the $75 million over four years that Cruz reportedly wants, but maybe four years is a real thing to fear, or $16-17 million a year over three. The Mariners want to spend more, and there’s only so much to buy. The Cruz sweepstakes might have the least competition, given how the Mariners probably value him.
At this point I’m just waiting for it. I’m waiting for it and I’m ready to not like it. There’s something to be said for spending money instead of pocketing it, because it’s not like the Mariners have infinite potential alternatives, but there are other courses, and Cruz could be a mistake from the beginning. My hope lies in the fact that I’ve been wrong about inevitabilities before. Nothing’s ever a lock until there’s a contract with a funny-looking signature. Maybe, somehow, the Mariners will be rescued from this.
And there’s also the Giants winning a pair of World Series toward the back end of the Barry Zito Era. From recent baseball history, that’s one of the very most important facts to remember. There are a lot of players on a baseball team, and a lot of things that happen because of them. The ultimate hope lies in the fact that either we don’t know what we’re doing, or baseball doesn’t.
Catching Up on Some News
Busy couple of days in Mariners-land, at least in terms of things related to the club. Let’s do a quick recap.
1. Chuck Armstrong is retiring as team president. I know a lot of people like to blame Armstrong (and Howard Lincoln) for the team’s failures, so for a portion of the fan base, this is going to be seen as great news. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, I don’t think there’s any way to know from this distance. I’ve never personally bought into the idea that the Mariners were more interested in profit than winning, or that they were simply a PR marketing firm masquerading as a baseball team, and I don’t have any real animosity towards the Mariners ownership or executives. I wish Mr. Armstrong the best in his retirement.
In terms of what it might mean for the Mariners future, I think the most significant factor is that Armstrong’s replacement will likely have a significant impact on whoever the next GM is, whenever there’s a next GM. Regardless of how optimistic you are about the 2014 Mariners, the reality is that the tenure of a Major League GM is rarely more than 10 years, and Jack Zduriencik is coming up on year six. There’s a pretty high chance that there will be a new GM hired at some point in the next few years, and potentially as early as next year.
More than “bringing respectability” or “lending credibility” or whatever other buzzwords people will use to talk up some celebrity president who they interviewed as a player/manager, the Mariners should be looking for someone who will push the organization towards a more analytical approach than they’ve used in the past. The trend in baseball is clearly moving in this direction, and this could be a chance for the Mariners to bring in someone with some newer ideas, and likely influence the organization to go a little more towards modern thinking when the inevitable front office overhaul happens. The Mariners should absolutely be looking to poach someone like Matthew Silverman from the Tampa Bay Rays, and I’d hope their list of candidates swings far more towards the analytical executive mold rather than a media spokesman type like Nolan Ryan was in Texas.
2. The Mariners announced their new coaching staff. Interestingly, Lloyd McClendon only brought in a couple of guys from outside the organization; Andy Van Slyke (McClendon’s teammate in Pittsburgh during his playing days) and Mike Rojas (Tigers bullpen coach during McClendon’s stint there), while everyone else was promoted from within the organization. Usually, a manager will bring in his own guys and surround himself with people he’s worked with in other organizations, but this at least has the appearance of McClendon not getting the final call on who joined him on the coaching staff. We can’t know exactly how much influence the team had in deciding who got each position, but it certainly looks like McClendon is not going to be given the kind of authority that Eric Wedge clearly coveted during his time in charge.
3. In Mariners writer news, Ryan Divish has officially joined the Seattle Times as their lead beat writer, and had his first day at the paper yesterday. Ryan is a friend and I’m happy for him in his new gig; don’t worry, Ryan, we’ll get the link added to your new blog home shortly. To fill Ryan’s vacancy at the News Tribune, the TNT has hired Bob Dutton, a longtime beat writer for the Kansas City Star. I don’t know Bob personally, but he has a pretty good reputation, and I’m looking forward to reading him on a more regular basis.
The Problem With Only Focusing on Improvements
A few days ago, Shannon Drayer wrote a post about the Mariners potentially pursuing Robinson Cano, based on comments made by Jim Bowden. The Cano rumors don’t interest me much, because I don’t think there’s any reason to believe the Mariners should or will go after Cano, nor do I believe that Cano would have any interest in relocating to Seattle, and I think the idea of a big free agent signing turning around a franchise’s reputation is pretty much 100% BS. But in that piece, Shannon wrote another thing that was a little more interesting, and something I think is worth mentioning.
If you read my blog on a regular basis, you know I hate to make predictions. I will predict this, however: The Mariners’ No. 3, 4 and 5 starters will be significantly better next year. I know I am going out on a limb, but James Paxton and Taijuan Walker will be an upgrade from 3, 4 and 5 and most likely 6 on that list above. General manager Jack Zduriencik is planning on adding a starter from the outside as well. Great. Add a pitcher, do not trade Paxton or Walker and you can pencil in (I am done with my predictions so we are going with “pencil in” here) a 100-run swing.
Zduriencik has said that upgrading the defense is a priority as well and there is a lot of room for improvement. That translates to runs saved, which you can tack on to that 100-run swing. Go ahead and add a few more for an improved bullpen as well. That 754 runs allowed in 2013 should come down significantly in 2014.
She’s right that the back-end of the Mariners rotation last year was dreadful. Whether you’re looking at Joe Saunders, Aaron Harang, Brandon Maurer, Jeremy Bonderman, Blake Beavan, or even Erasmo Ramirez, the results were lousy. A lack of starting depth was one of the main reasons the 2013 Mariners were terrible. It should not be hard to improve upon what the team got from those three spots in the rotation. If Walker and Paxton are what some people think they are, and the team acquires a “legitimate #2” — or someone they’ll stick that label on, at least — then the 2014 rotation should project to be significantly better.
But Shannon makes a pretty common mistake that a lot of people make when projecting the future; she focuses only on the positive improvements from replacing lousy performances from the year before. When you do projections like this, and note that Awesome New Guy X is some number of runs better than Old Crappy Guy Y, you’re inherently treating everyone else on the roster like their performance is fixed from year to year. And that is simply not the case.
As great as Felix Hernandez is, and as good as Hisashi Iwakuma was last year, those two simply cannot be expected to repeat their 2013 performances again in 2014. It’s not that they couldn’t possibly throw another 423 innings while allowing just 143 runs (3.04 RA9, combined), but that their performance from last year represents something very close to the upper limit of their potential, and there’s a significant probability that the Mariners will get less from their top two next year. And you absolutely have to factor the expected regression from those two into any kind of forecast for runs allowed by the team in 2014.
For instance, right now, the Steamer projection system forecasts the Mariners rotation to post a combined 4.07 ERA in 969 innings, barely any improvement over the 4.18 ERA the Mariners got from their starters over 960 innings last year. Part of that lack of improvement is because there is no “#2 starter” included in the depth chart yet, so Shannon’s projecting some improvement from a pitcher the team doesn’t yet have, so you could go ahead and make some adjustments for adding that guy to the mix. And I’d imagine she’s probably more optimistic about the short-term performances from Walker and Paxton than Steamer is, since that system is forecasting something close to league average pitching from both. No one is saying the Steamer projections are the gospel truth and can’t be underselling the expected performances of the team’s 2014 rotation, and perhaps Shannon’s right to be more optimistic about the young kids than the numbers suggest.
However, I think we can say with near certainty that the Mariners rotation will not improve by 100 runs next year. In fact, we can basically prove that they won’t do it just through looking at the recent history of major league rotations.
The Mariners starters allowed 481 runs in 2013. Over the last 30 years, no American League team has allowed 381 runs over a full-season — a bunch of teams did it in 1994, when the season ended in mid-August — and in fact, no team has even come close. The fewest runs allowed by an AL starting rotation over the last 30 years? 412, by the 1990 Red Sox. That was a team that had Roger Clemens throw 230 innings with a 1.93 ERA, and a bunch of good hurlers behind him.
A few other teams have gotten close to that mark recently, including the 2012 Tampa Bay Rays (David Price, James Shields, and a bunch of good young arms) and the 2013 Tigers (Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Anibal Sanchez, and Doug Fister), but have maxed out around 415 runs allowed. Those are two of the best run prevention rotations we’ve seen any team run out in recent history, and they topped out at about 65 runs better than the 2013 Mariners. Realistically, it would be impossible to expect the Mariners rotation (and defense) to be better than any of the recent Rays teams, last year’s Tigers, or even the ’85 Blue Jays, ’89 A’s, or that 2002 Red Sox team that featured Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe.
Even if we narrow the timeline to the more recent years, as offense in baseball has declined and so comparing the current game to the one seeing 15 years ago is a little bit of apples and oranges, we still only find a handful of teams even getting under the 450 run barrier. Over the last three seasons, only seven different pitching rotations have allowed fewer than 450 runs, and five of those seven were between 432 and 442. If you were to look at the runs allowed totals by the best rotations (and defenses) we’ve seen in the last few years, we’d peg the expected upper limit around 435 or so. It’s possible to push it to 415, but it takes such a remarkable performance from so many elite talents that it’s basically impossible to expect anyone to match those levels.
435 runs allowed isn’t even a 50 run improvement over what the Mariners rotation put up in 2013, less than half of the 100 run improvement that Shannon wrote about. And that’s the level reached by the best starting staffs in the AL over the last few years, which it isn’t entirely clear that we should expect the 2014 Mariners to be. Yeah, Walker is a great prospect, and Paxton had a nice final start to his season, but the performance range of young pitchers is all over the map. Pitching prospects are as flakey as anything in baseball, and it’s not like either Walker or Paxton destroyed Triple-A in a way that suggests that the inconsistencies of young pitchers shouldn’t be expected to apply to them. There’s as good a chance that one or both of them just fall on their face — as Brandon Maurer did a year ago after winning everyone over in spring training — and get shipped back to Triple-A as there is that they pull a Michael Pineda and dominate from day one. The reason we were all impressed with Pineda is because that kind of performance from the start was unusual. You can’t expect that from every young kid who throws 95.
And even if you could, you’d still have to expect less from Felix and Iwakuma. They might stay perfectly healthy and make 64 starts between them again, but there’s basically no room for upside beyond that, and even short DL stints from either one could really cut into their overall production levels. And, realistically, a 2.66 ERA for Iwakuma is almost certainly not happening again. He needed absurdly low rates of hits on balls in play and stranding runners in order to post that mark last year, and those numbers fluctuate greatly from year to year. Even if he pitched the same in terms of walks, strikeouts, and home runs, you’d expect his ERA to go up significantly just due to different timing of events.
It’s fine to expect the Mariners 2014 rotation to be better. It might even be a lot better. But, in reality, a lot better is a 30 run improvement, not a 100 run improvement. If the Mariners really do commit to upgrading the defense, and the bullpen gets some positive regression as well, maybe the overall staff can be 50 or 60 runs better than they were last year. But anything beyond that is really pushing it. 100 runs just isn’t realistic.
M’s 40-man moves, Winter Leagues, and a Fairly Large Trade
So today’s been interesting.
1: The M’s, like all clubs, protected four players from the looming Rule 5 draft by placing them on the 40-man roster. They’ve selected Logan Bawcom, Ji-Man Choi, James Jones and Stefen Romero, leaving two open spots on the 40-man. JY talked about all four, and the two guys most are talking about as potential Rule 5 losses, in his preview the other day. That means there are a few marginal high-minors big-tent “prospects” who won’t be protected – Brian Moran was in this situation last year, and he went unselected despite a remarkable, eye-popping year in 2012. He’s the same guy, pitching off an 85-86mph fastball and striking out tons of hitters, but he sprouted some platoon splits this year and yielded a few more home runs. The sheen is off somewhat, but he’s still a guy who’s pitched very effectively in the Pacific Coast League for nearly two seasons and could presumably help someone as a back-of-the-bullpen arm, but there’s not much projection. I’ll admit that I still hope Moran makes his MLB debut in an M’s uniform, just because there’s something cool about a fly-ball/strikeout lefty throwing 85 and somehow making it work. As JY mentioned, Moran’s got an odd delivery, but it’s not one that’s really conducive to the LOOGY role – it’s very over-the-top, which helps explain the lack of splits in 2012. Sounds nice and all, but it’s probably keeping him out of a big league role, as a drop in arm-angle and a slider would make him much more of a traditional, Lucas-Luetge-esque LOOGY. I think the obsession with defined roles for non-closers is often hard to jusify, but in this case, we’re asking a big league manager to give the ball to a mid-80s lefty and NOT play match-ups with him. Someone may, someday, but I don’t think it’s that surprising that no one’s bit yet. Here’s hoping he has a bounce-back year and gets a look with the M’s in the late summer.
The other “snub” was IF Ty Kelly, the former Orioles farmhand the M’s got for Eric Thames in a waiver deal last summer. Between the IL and PCL, Kelly racked up 100 walks despite minimal power (his career OBP> his career SLG%). He’s a good utility-man candidate, so could conceivably stick with someone, but without power, above-average defense or good speed (3 SBs for Tacoma, but 7 caught-stealing), it’s not clear how any team would use him at the big league level next year. That’s not to say he’s worthless – with Stefen Romero moving to the OF and with a raft of IF promotions the past few years, the M’s could use some IF depth in the high minors, and a bench guy with some patience probably sounds better than it ought to for the OBP-starved M’s.
Congratulations to Bawcom, Choi, Jones and Romero – I haven’t said as much about them, as Jay covered it already, but it’s a testament to some hard work by each player and by the M’s player development staff. Bawcom struggled a bit when he first came to the org (in the Brandon League deal), and wasn’t great in the Arizona Fall League. But a solid season for Tacoma and good stuff make him a good choice to protect. Choi’s defensive limitations and voluminous injury history don’t change the fact that he can hit. If he’s healthy, he could put up decent numbers for Tacoma. Stefen Romero is one of those great draft bargains that Tom McNamara comes up with from time to time – a 12th round pick after an injury-shortened career at Oregon State. He had an up and down AFL this year, but has some pop (a HR in Arizona registered as the hardest-hit ball of the circuit, according to Trackman data. The HR left Romero’s bat at 110mph); as I mentioned recently, his success against Michael Wacha (1-2, with two well-stroked line drives) looks much better in retrospect than it did at the time. He’s got a ways to go, but given his potential and the open slots, this move makes perfect sense.
2: Speaking of the Winter Leagues, it’s been something of a disappointing campaign for the M’s. Danny Hultzen’s injury meant that the M’s lacked a really high-ceiling guy, as Jesus Montero’s the guy with the best prospect resume actually playing, and that resume’s only worth looking at if you pretend his big league tenure never happened, something many M’s fans are actively trying to do. Carson Smith (another guy who looked great in both pitch FX and Trackman) is still a very good relief prospect despite so-so numbers (obligatory small sample warning) which just goes to show that Smith didn’t really have much to gain this fall. Of the guys who did, a few took a step forward – Dominic Leone hit 97mph fairly regularly, and showed solid control in his innings for Peoria. His very hard cutter at around 90mph looks like a good pitch, and though he made some mistakes, Arizona’s a place that punishes missed location a bit more severely than most. He had scouts talking throughout the year, and he backed it up on a bigger stage this fall. Chris Taylor had a brilliant first few weeks in Peoria, and while he faded a bit down the stretch, he showed that his presumed ceiling of a glove-first utility IF was too low. Splitting time at 2B/SS and with great speed, he could add value as a bench player, but could work his way to a starting role as well. On the other end of the spectrum, we find Patrick Kivlehan, the guy I said had the most to gain from his AFL experience as any player on Peoria’s roster. He slugged .213 in 61 AB with a K:BB ratio of 17:3. It…it could’ve gone better.
3: The Alex Rodriguez saga has been a thoroughly ugly affair, pitting two towering ego with limitless resources against each other in a battle to discredit the other. It’s easy to hope they both succeed and get back to watching the Seahawks, but the NY Times story on the case a few weeks ago was absolutely riveting. Today, A-Rod walked out of an arbitration hearing when a judge refused to compel Bud Selig to testify. MLB clearly won that particular battle, but as Wendy Thurm’s great recap for Fangraphs makes clear, the Arb hearing (despite being ‘binding’ and the final step in adjudicating discipline according to the CBA) won’t end the matter. Rodriguez will certainly appeal to the federal courts, and even if he loses both in Arbitration and the courts, this is shaping up as a very Pyrrhic victory for MLB.
The conduct outlined in the Times article, and repeated by Rodriguez’s attorneys is pretty shocking, and while MLB can constrain the Players’ Association’s response for now, it’s probably going to be an issue when the CBA’s renegotiated. As today’s hearing showed, the Commissioner’s office sometimes sits above the arbitrator, and the anti-trust exemption means it’s really tough for players to seek any sort of remedy outside of the CBA. None of this mattered before, and it’s amazing the lengths to which Selig’s willing to go to ensure it matters in the A-Rod case. It’s not like Congress ever seriously debates the anti-trust exemption, and no, Congress isn’t going to be moved by A-Rod’s pleas that he’s being railroaded, but we’ve got an absolute trainwreck of a case (buying evidence, witnesses switching sides, etc.) that show that, in this specific instance, the fruits of that exemption have been put to, well, questionable use. You don’t have to feel sorry for A-Rod, but this has gone about as poorly as it could’ve for both sides.
4: So, there was a trade today. Dave’s got a couple of posts on the deal at FG. The deal can certainly work out well for both teams; both are contenders, and both fixed a weakness for 2014 through this swap. It allows the Rangers to make a space for one of baseball’s biggest prospects in Jurickson Profar, while it may allow the tigers to extend Max Scherzer and replace Omar Infante. You can make a case that Detroit “wins” thanks to that flexibility, and I think it’s a great argument, but that doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to seeing Prince Fielder in Arlington next year.
Still, I find it incredible how quickly Fielder’s contract turned ugly. The statheads would say it was obviously too high from the day it was signed, and I’m patting myself on the back for that a bit, truth be told. But Fielder was young, he’s incredibly durable, and had a very good 2012 before slumping a bit in 2013. It was self-evidently not an anchor, and while the Tigers threw some money in, Prince Fielder had a market, even with a lot of money and a lot of years remaining. Still, I wonder if we’ll come to see the Fielder deal as some sort of peak in the value of pure power hitters on the open market. The Pujols deal may end up looking worse in time, and the Ryan Howard contract is still so bad it’s basically in a separate category, but throw in Mark Teixeira and you’re looking at a lot of dead money for 1Bs. As Dave’s mentioned, this is part of a trend where contracts have lengthened, showing that teams are holding the line on single-year salary and stretching their commitment over time instead. But while Fielder’s deal isn’t going to seriously impact Robinson Cano’s negotiations, I wonder if we may not see many deals like, say, Joey Votto’s extension for a while. We won’t really be able to see for a while, not until the very reasonable extensions for young players like Arizona’s Paul Goldshmidt run out, but the fact that the Reds will be paying Votto $25m in 2023 looks odd, and Votto’s a much better hitter than Fielder. Basically, will this lead to a re-valuation of good-not-historically-great ballplayers?
These things seem to go in cycles. The Mike Hampton contract haunted owners dreams, and thus frustrated agents of free agent pitchers, for years. The rising tide of revenue, extensions buying out some pre-arb years as well as free agencies, and the corresponding willingness of teams to “eat” some bad years on the back end of contracts changed all of that, and so long term deals for guys like Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez raise fewer eyebrows. Hampton, Darren Dreifort and, to a lesser extent, Kevin Brown, seemed to be the poster children for the baseball truism that pitchers are simply far more risky investments. But as you survey the baseball landscape, it certainly seems less true than it once was. Barry Zito’s contract was silly, but it’s nothing compared to the Ryan Howard extension, and you can make a case that the Carl Crawford and Matt Kemp deals would be more damaging to a team (er, as long as that team isn’t the hyper-wealthy Dodgers). That’s kind of a separate issue from the very healthy and still youngish Prince Fielder, but I wonder to what extent teams would say that pitchers really are more risky for these 8-figure contracts. It’s possible I’m still scarred by Franklin Gutierrez’s collapse, and Chone Figgins…whatever the hell that was. Still, just as some of the received wisdom of sabermetric studies of the draft (HS pitchers are terrible, college 1Bs are awesome, college>>>>HS players) slowly became less and less predictive, I wonder if this (or 2010-2012) marks another inflection point, or if cable deals will make all of it irrelevant for a few more years.
Mariners Prospects Day at FanGraphs
Over at FanGraphs, we’re rolling out our off-season prospect lists, with some additional content as well. Today is the Mariners turn, and we’ve got four pieces up that may be of interest to you:
The Top 10 Prospects, by Marc Hulet.
A Q&A with Austin Wilson, by David Laurila.
DJ Peterson and the Wisdom of First Round First Baseman, by Al Skorupa.
Steamer Projects the Mariners Prospects, by Carson Cistulli.
It’s a veritable cornucopia of content, and hopefully you’ll enjoy the pieces.
Excerpt
I don’t have much to say about this — I just found it an interesting paragraph. Not long ago, I mistakenly identified the Cardinals as less of a sabermetric organization. In doing so, I casually cited outdated reputation instead of really thinking about it, and the truth of the matter is that the Cardinals have long been one of the more forward-thinking organizations in baseball. That was just a stupid error on my part, as my fingers got ahead of my brain. Someone who worked for the Cardinals for a long time is Jeff Luhnow, the current general manager of the Astros. Luhnow recently had something to say about the process of hiring a manager. The Mariners recently hired a new manager in Lloyd McClendon. All right, that’s the connection. This is the excerpt:
Luhnow, a former CEO who leans on analytics perhaps more than any other general manager, called hiring a manager the most important job of a front office. In hiring Porter, the Astros were “not looking for someone we could dictate how to do their job,” he said. But he demanded a candidate “curious enough to listen and bright enough” to be open to new ideas.
It’s funny how a word, or the absence of a couple words, can change everything. If Luhnow called hiring a manager one of the most important jobs of a front office, it would be an easy paragraph to ignore. That would just be interpreted as a statement of little substance. Instead, it’s very matter-of-fact: hiring a manager is the most important job of a front office, according to Jeff Luhnow. He didn’t give himself any wiggle room. He made a statement, asserting it as fact, and Jeff Luhnow is very smart and good at baseball.
And, you know, okay, maybe he’s wrong. Nobody’s right all of the time. But my inclination is to give baseball people the benefit of the doubt with most baseball questions, and Luhnow’s a hell of a baseball person. This is something he’s thought about before, at length. And while it’s obviously important to hire the right manager, it’s an interesting situation to have a manager be considered this important, when fans by and large don’t know and don’t care. Fans care about the roster. Fans care about the manager only when they have reason to complain about him.
Two points, to summarize what we’ve got here:
(1) according to at least one smart GM, there’s nothing more important for a front office than hiring the right manager
(2) we might not ever have any idea how well or poorly a given manager did with a given team in a given year
It’s maybe the most important thing, and we know nothing about it. Even when we think we do, we don’t for sure, but if Luhnow is to be believed, the Mariners just made a very significant decision in bringing on Lloyd McClendon. Of course, I don’t know if that’s a good decision or a bad decision, and there’s little sense in analyzing the quotes since McClendon’s just making a first impression and everybody’s positive, but let it not be suggested that the Mariners’ offseason isn’t underway. McClendon’s here now, and he’s going to try to develop a new and better team culture. For all I know that’ll be the biggest thing of all. Never underestimate what might be hidden in your blind spots.
As for the end of the excerpted paragraph? We’ll see about McClendon’s curiosity, and we’ll see if he’s provided with new ideas. Or, probably, we won’t see that, directly. But we’ll see if the team looks different. The person who knows the most about Lloyd McClendon is Lloyd McClendon. The people who know a lot are the Mariners. The people who know nothing, aside from what they’ve been fed, are us. We might never know whether the Mariners made a good move or a bad move, but I sure would welcome good moves. I’d like for this to be one.
’13 40-Man Preview Extravaganza
We’re presently in one of the offseason doldrums that precedes the winter meetings, a time of frenzied anticipation when we pretend as though things are going to happen and then they usually don’t. That means it’s time for me to step in and talk a bit about other forms of anticipation, namely prospects, and who we might see get added to the 40-man in preparation for the deadline, which is I think a week from now. Given that the M’s keep promoting these guys, I don’t know that it’s more or less interesting, given the obscurity of the players in the eyes of most.
The name of the game this year is last year’s game’s name moved up a digit: ’09 high school draftees and early international signings and ’10 college draftees need to be on the 40-man lest they be kidnapped by other organizations. The international portion of this is always the most dicey as players can “debut” in instructs the year they sign, but as I’m not seeing that from the media guide, I’m guessing that Guillermo Pimentel and Alexy Palma are not on the list, which is great because I don’t want to write about them now, or unless they’re doing things worth writing about. All advanced metrics are courtesy of StatCorner, your Corner for Stats (and nB%, if unfamiliar, is unintentional walks plus HBP)
Because Of Course They Are
#Mariners are ambitious: Heard they'd like to find a way to add both Nelson Cruz and Carlos Beltran. Hey, they're trying.
— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) November 12, 2013
Let’s put aside the Carlos Beltran stuff for now. The Yankees want Beltran, the Rangers want Beltran, the Cardinals want Beltran back; barring some kind of unreported desire to have access to fresh caught salmon, there’s little reason to think that Carlos Beltran is going to be particularly excited about playing for the Mariners. The Mariners are interested in Carlos Beltran the same way that most 18 year old males are interested in taking a swimsuit model to the prom.
So let’s talk about the first part of that tweet. Jerry Crasnick suggests that the Mariners would like to sign free agent outfielder Nelson Cruz. Because most of us have been busy speculating about how many dollars the Mariners will throw at Jacoby Ellsbury this winter, we haven’t talked too much about Cruz here, but it makes perfect sense that the Mariners would be interested in Nelson Cruz. Because we know that this front office places a very high value on this particular skillset. For your reference, below are Nelson Cruz’s core offensive numbers over the last three seasons, compared to the same numbers that Michael Morse put up in the three seasons prior to be acquired by the Mariners last winter.
| Name | Team | BB% | K% | ISO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Morse | Nationals | 6% | 22% | 0.220 |
| Nelson Cruz | Rangers | 7% | 23% | 0.226 |
Morse’s overall offensive totals from 2010 to 2012 were better than Cruz’s from 2011 to 2013, but that was entirely due to the fact that Morse had one of the highest rates of hits on balls in play, a number that has a lot less predictive value than things like walk rate, strikeout rate, and isolated power. In these core numbers, Cruz and Morse are basically identical twins.
The similarities don’t end there, of course. Both are physically built like linebackers. Both are right-handed power hitters, which the Mariners believe they need to add to their line-up for balance and to help against left-handed pitching. Both are injury prone, spending parts of nearly every season of their career on the disabled list. Neither are particularly good defenders or baserunners, and accumulate almost all of their damage at the plate. Both have been suspended for using PEDs. Both are on the wrong side of 30 and are headed to the decline phase of their careers.
Their overall performances aren’t exactly equal. 2010 to 2012 Morse was a slightly better hitter (thanks to the aforementioned BABIP) and worse fielder than 2011 to 2013 Cruz has been. Over those three seasons, Morse averaged +12 runs of offense and -15 runs of defense compared to an average player, while Cruz was +6/-11. Cruz is a little less bat and a little more glove, but it’s basically the exact same player type. There are few players in baseball more similar than Cruz and Morse.
The Mariners, of course, were thrilled to acquire Michael Morse last winter. They made a big deal about how he was going to revolutionize their line-up, and how he was the kind of Big Bat they’d been missing for years. He was considered a vital cog of the 2013 plan, and if you ask them what went wrong last year, they will frequently point to his early season injury as a big reason for why the plan didn’t work.
At no point has the organization ever suggested that they think perhaps it wasn’t a very good plan, however. They love players like this. It’s why they’ve kept non-prospects like Carlos Peguero hanging around and acquired a thousand low rent versions of this same player type. The list of low walk, high strikeout, one dimensional sluggers the Mariners have stockpiled over the last few years is getting absurdly long; no one likes this player type more than Jack Zduriencik’s Mariners. Of course they’re interested in Nelson Cruz.
But they really shouldn’t be. Cruz is Texas’ Kendrys Morales, a mediocre player with an outsized reputation based on irrelevant HR/RBI numbers. While Morales is a “professional hitter”, Cruz is “right-handed power”, and in both cases, the talking points are about how scarce these things are in the “post Steroid Era”. Like with Morales, what is not mentioned is that the “power” isn’t exactly that amazing to begin with, it comes with weak on base percentages, and Cruz does nothing else to add any value to a big league team. The Rangers made Cruz a qualifying offer which he turned down, so he’s now a compensation attached free agent, and he turned the offer down because he’s expecting to land a multi-year deal this winter.
The FanGraphs Crowd projected Cruz’s contract to come in at $32 million over three years, while former GM (and recent successful prognosticator of free agent contracts) Jim Bowden projected $48 million over those same three years. The guys over at MLBTradeRumors guessed three years and $39 million. Everyone’s in the same ballpark, basically, so let’s just take the average of the three guesses and say Cruz will cost $40 million over three years.
To live up to that contract, Cruz would have to be a league average player over the life of the deal, or maybe slightly above average. $40 million over three years should buy you something like +6 or +7 WAR from 2014 to 2016.
From 2011 to 2013, Nelson Cruz produced +3.9 WAR. From 30-32, he was 2/3 of the player he’d need to be from 33-35 in order to justify the expected cost of signing him, and that’s not even including the loss of the draft pick in the calculation. In reality, Cruz projects to be about a +1.5 WAR player next year, and then probably a +1.0 WAR player in 2015, and probably a +0.5 WAR player in 2016. A team signing him should expect to get roughly +3 WAR over the next three years. In a rational market, Cruz would probably land a deal roughly similar to the one David DeJesus signed with Tampa Bay, which paid him $5 million per year for two years with a team option for the third year.
DeJesus, while being wildly different than Cruz, is basically as valuable. This is what a slightly below average outfielder heading into his decline phase should cost. But teams have decided to pay ridiculous prices for power hitters while undervaluing performance in things that are not home runs, so players like Cruz cost way too much to acquire and hardly ever provide a positive return on investment. And that’s why I ranked Nelson Cruz as the #1 land mine of the 2014 free agent class. There is no player available this winter who has a bigger gap between his perceived abilities and his actual value.
And there’s no player who fits the mold of the player the Mariners overvalue more than Nelson Cruz. So, yeah, maybe we should have all seen this coming. Maybe instead of expecting the Mariners to throw a lot of money at a very good speed-and-defense player, we should have expected the Mariners to throw a little bit less money at a mediocre dingers-and-ribbies player. After last off-season, expecting anything else was probably wish-casting.