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Prince Fielder, Free Agent Magnet?
Earlier today, the always-worth-reading Larry Stone weighed in on the subject of Seattle as an attractive destination for free agents. This comes up almost every winter, as some player the team may be interested in signs elsewhere and the reasons given are generally related to geography, weather, and the team’s overall travel schedule. The M’s are in the corner of the country, so getting non-locals to go to an inconvenient place to fly from is seen as a challenge, and when you combine those logistical issues with a bad team, it makes sense that the Mariners would have a hard time luring free agents to sign on the dotted line.
And, as with every discussion about anything this winter, the topic turned to Prince Fielder. An argument often levied in favor of signing him is that he’ll give the team credibility with other players, and the fact that they’d have Fielder under contract would make this a more desirable destination, allowing the team to sign more and better free agents.
It’s a story that makes sense, but one of the things we like to do around here is look at the evidence of things that seem to make sense and see if they actually play out that way in reality. So, to that end, here are the free agents that have signed with the Brewers since 2006, Fielder’s first full year in the Majors.
2006 – Jeff Suppan, 4 years/$42 million
2007 – Eric Gagne, 1 year/$10 million
2008 – Trevor Hoffman, 1 year/$6 million
2009 – Randy Wolf, 3 years/$30 million
2010 – None
Honestly, I had to stretch the word significant a bit to include Gagne and Hoffman in there, as the team basically paid a premium for the proven closer label and offered each guy the ninth inning role, which almost certainly had more to do with attracting them to Milwaukee than the idea of being able to play with Prince Fielder. We can probably throw Suppan out of the sample as well, since he signed with the team when Fielder had a whopping 62 plate appearances in the big leagues. Also, I don’t know that “attracts the likes of Jeff Suppan” is something you want to argue as a positive anyway.
Essentially, the only free agent signing of any noteworthiness during Fielder’s career in Milwaukee is Randy Wolf, and they didn’t get any kind of bargain on him either. And remember, the Brewers have been mostly decent and occasionally good during Fielder’s time there, so they didn’t have to overcome the come-play-on-a-bad-team-with-me thing. One somewhat overpaid back end starter in five years… that’s not much in the way of evidence that signing Fielder will attract other free agents to join him in Seattle.
But, hey, maybe there’s something about Milwaukee that makes Fielder’s previous situation a bad example? So, let’s look at the other teams in the Mariners situation who have made big investments to try and gain some respectability.
2010 – Nationals sign Jayson Werth for 7 years/$126 million.
Last year, Washington tried this same tactic in buying respect by outbidding everyone for Jayson Werth. The only other notable free agent they landed last winter was Adam LaRoche, who they had to overpay to sign and is now a player they couldn’t give away. This winter, they’ve signed no one of note, and lost out on Mark Buehrle despite a public and aggressive pursuit.
2009 – Cardinals sign Matt Holliday for 7 years/$120 million.
This move was widely seen as an attempt to convince Albert Pujols of their willingness to do what it takes to put a winning team on the field, and was a big investment for a team that knew they were also going to have to pony up big bucks to keep Pujols around. We know how this story ended. They did manage to land Lance Berkman and Jake Westbrook in free agency last year, but Berkman essentially took the highest offer he got from an NL team since he didn’t want to DH, and like Suppan with Fielder, adding Westbrook is not really a feather in Holliday’s cap.
2008 – Dodgers sign Manny Ramirez to a 2 year/$45 million contract.
The Dodgers went on a big spending spree that winter, with Ramirez as the center of the plan. They also added Rafael Furcal (3/$30), Casey Blake (3/$18), Randy Wolf (1/$5), and Orlando Hudson (1/$4). In year two of the deal, their big addition was Vicente Padilla ($1/5). There’s not much evidence that any of these guys took less than market value to join Manny, or that these are the kinds of contracts you want to be able to sign.
2006 – Giants sign Barry Zito to a 7 year/$126 million contract.
With Barry Bonds at the end of the line, the Giants shelled out big bucks to land the supposed premier pitcher of the winter. They also landed Dave Roberts ($3/19), Bengie Molina (3/$16), Ray Durham (2/$14), and Rich Aurilia (2/$8). The next winter, they were able to land Aaron Rowand (5/$60). The only one of those deals that wasn’t a total bust was Molina, and he wasn’t exactly fantastic.
2006 – Houston Astros sign Carlos Lee to a 6 year/$100 million contract.
This was the big expenditure by the Astros, who were trying to energize their fan base and get back to the World Series, where they’d been just a year prior. Their other free agent that winter was Woody Williams (2/$12), who was a bust just like Lee. The next year, they were able to land Kaz Matsui (3/$16), and then 2008 saw Doug Brocail (1/$3) as the most significant free agent addition. No real significant free agents joined Lee in Houston, and they were pretty smart to avoid the situation, because the team’s massive overpay on an overrated hitter prevented them from actually putting a good team on the field.
I’m not trying to stack the deck against Fielder here, but I simply can’t find any recent evidence of a team signing a big free agent and then reaping the rewards of having other quality players join the team as a result. If there’s an example I’m missing where a player clearly took less than the best overall offer in order to become teammates with a certain player, I’d love to hear it. We do see players choose where to play based on family preferences, league preferences, odds of being on a contender, potential for playing time, geography-related decisions, and of course the most common “they offered me more money than anyone else” factor, but I don’t see much in the way of evidence that having a name value player actually attracts other free agents.
It’s a nice theory, and I get why people buy into it, but right now I don’t think we can say that it’s one that is supported by the facts. After all, the Mariners problem hasn’t really been that they haven’t been able to get free agents to come here – Adrian Beltre, Richie Sexson, Miguel Batista, Carlos Silva, Jarrod Washburn, and Chone Figgins all took the team’s money – but that those free agent signings have generally worked out horribly for the franchise.
Signing Prince Fielder won’t move the team out of the corner of the country, won’t make it rain less, and won’t reduce the amount of time the team spends on airplanes. The only way Fielder will help attract future free agents is if he helps the team win, as we know that contenders attract free agents that losing teams do not. If you believe that Prince Fielder will make this team a winner, then yes, he might help bring other players here. But there’s just no reason to believe that anyone the organization will want to sign is going to join a 75 win team simply because Prince Fielder is on it.
If you want to sign Fielder, do it for baseball reasons. Don’t do it for PR and marketing reasons, because there’s just no evidence that those kinds of ancillary benefits actually follow the player.
M’s Non-Tender Dan Cortes and Chris Gimenez
Last night, the Mariners opened up two spots on the 40 man roster by declining to tender contracts to either Dan Cortes or Chris Gimenez. This was not a cost-savings maneuver, as neither were arbitration eligible and the team could have simply renewed their contracts at the league minimum for 2012. This was the team deciding that they’d rather have the open 40-man spots and determining that neither was worth a Major League contract for next year.
With Gimenez, that’s par for the course. He’s a replacement level catcher who has bounced between Triple-A and the Majors for most of his career. He’s the definition of freely available talent, and there’s no reason to use any resources to retain him. Cortes, though, is a young live arm, and those don’t really grow on trees. That the organization was willing to cut him loose despite his velocity and youth should tell you just how bad he was last year.
His command was bad, but that’s always been true, even when the Mariners plucked him out of the Royals system in the Yuniesky Betancourt deal. Hard throwers often struggle to find the zone, and some of them are able to succeed in spite of lingering problems throwing strikes, so the walks weren’t the reason Cortes was cut loose.
No, that would be the inexplicable fact that he was remarkably hittable in the big leagues. We’re dealing with a small sample since he only threw 191 pitches in the Majors last year, but of those 191 pitches, he only got 11 swinging strikes. Opposing batters swung and missed at Cortes’ stuff at the same rate (5.8%) as they did with Aaron Laffey and Blake Beaven. Even Anthony Vazquez generated more swinging strikes than Cortes did.
He threw hard, but he threw straight and in lousy locations, so opposing hitters simply had the option of watching a pitch soar out of the zone or taking a good solid swing at a hittable fastball. Cortes didn’t fool anyone, or show anything that resembled a Major League quality pitch. Cortes was the walking embodiment of why there’s more to pitching than straight up velocity.
That velocity will allow him to catch on with another team, and who knows, maybe he’ll harness his stuff one day and turn into a decent reliever. But, if you want to stay on the 40 man roster, you need to show some reason for hope, and just throwing hard isn’t enough. It’s pretty telling that the organization chose to keep Steve Delabar around and not Cortes, even though the skillset is similar. In his brief tryout, Delabar showed that he could get hitters to swing through his fastball. That’s a good place to start, and until Cortes starts throwing his fastball by Major League hitters, he won’t be of much use.
Casey McGehee Is Now Very Available
The Brewers spent their remaining pile of money on Aramis Ramirez today, locking him into a three year, $36ish million deal to take over at third base for the club. While most people will see this move as evidence that the Brewers are out on Prince Fielder, I think there’s another Seattle tie-in here that should be more aggressively pursued. In part one of my offseason plan post, I advocated that the Mariners acquire Casey McGehee from the Brewers. Well, if his poor 2011 season and arbitration eligibility didn’t make him available, the Ramirez signing almost certainly does.
With Ramirez in the fold, McGehee’s only role with the Brewers is as a part-time first baseman, and with left-handed Mat Gamel penciled in at the position, McGehee would likely get the short end of the playing time stick in that job share. Even if he spells Ramirez at third occasionally and shares first base with Gamel, the Brewers probably don’t have more than about 250 plate appearances to offer him next year, and for a team on a budget, spending a couple of million on a reserve corner infielder is probably not a great use of resources.
So, the Brewers should be somewhat motivated to move McGehee, and the Mariners should be interested in acquiring his services. We’ve talked about the team needing a part-time third baseman, preferably a right-handed one, who could give the team a potential job share option with Kyle Seager at third base but could also step into the everyday role if Seager proves to need more time in Triple-A. We’ve also talked about what Safeco does to right-handed hitters, and the need for the right kind of RH bats in this stadium.
Well, McGehee is the right kind of right-handed hitter for Safeco Field. Here are his career splits, broken up by part of the field that he’s hit the ball to:
Left Field: 486 PA, .334/.333/.567
Center Field: 426 PA, .303/.296/.464
Right Field: 363 PA, .337/.328/.527
28.5% of all of McGehee’s balls in play have been hit to right field, and he’s been almost as productive when he goes the other way as when he pulls the ball to left field. In stark contrast to a guy like Willingham, McGehee has shown that he can use the whole field and be productive when he hits the ball to right, which would mitigate some of the effects of Safeco on his performance.
McGehee isn’t going to revolutionize the offense, but he checks a lot of boxes on what the team should be looking for in a third baseman – low cost, right-handed, potential role player with upside for more if need be. Between 3B, 1B, and DH, the Mariners could easily find 400+ plate appearances for McGehee even if he didn’t end up beating out Seager for the 3B job, and could provide some power from the right side that wouldn’t necessarily be neutralized by the team’s home park.
It’s hard to find a better fit for the role the M’s need to fill than McGehee, and with Ramirez’s signing, he just became highly expendable for the Brewers. It shouldn’t cost too terribly much to acquire him, and he’d be a great fit for 2012 team and potentially beyond. This is a move I’d like to see the organization make sooner than later.
Should The Mariners Extend Michael Pineda Now?
Last week, the Tampa Bay Rays continued their strategy of aggressively locking up their young talents even before they’ve established themselves in the big leagues, signing Matt Moore to a five year, $14 million contract (followed by three team options) despite the fact that he’s pitched a total of 19 1/3 innings in the Major Leagues. This deal follows in the footsteps of contracts the team has previous given Wade Davis, James Shields, and Evan Longoria, all of whom were locked up extremely early in their careers. By signing these deals with players who have a year or less of service time, the team has avoided paying some huge raises through the arbitration process, creating significant cost savings for the franchise overall.
Other teams have also begun to look to lock up their best young talents early as well. The A’s gave early career extensions to both Brett Anderson and Trevor Cahill, while the Blue Jays locked up Ricky Romero in the middle of his second big league season. Anderson is a pretty good example of why the players are willing to take these types of deals – he blew out his elbow last year, but was already set for life and doesn’t have to worry about the injury limiting his future paychecks. Essentially, the team absorbs the injury risk that is usually carried by the player, but if the player stays healthy, the team is likely to come out way ahead.
Based on the other pitchers who have signed deals in this general service time range, it would likely cost the Mariners something in the range of $20-$25 million guaranteed to buy out the next remaining five years of Pineda’s team control, and they’d probably be able to get team options on his first few years of free agency in exchange for guaranteeing him decent paydays this early.
If he stays healthy and develops into a quality starting pitcher, Pineda will make a lot more than that through arbitration, so the team could certainly put themselves in a position to keep his long term costs down. However, pitchers are notoriously risky, and Pineda does have a history of arm problems. You could make an argument that the team should want to see him endure a legitimately full Major League season before they hand him a long term deal, but that comes with the caveat that he’ll be a lot more expensive to lock up next winter if he has a strong second season in the big leagues.
There’s also the trade value aspect of cost certainty – Pineda may very well be a more valuable asset in potential trade talks if the M’s are able to get him signed to one of these extensions that buys out a few free agent years, even if he doesn’t develop into the pitcher the team is hoping for. For instance, Wade Davis has gotten worse each year since arriving in the big leagues, but because the Rays were able to sign him to a deal that pays him peanuts, he still has some trade value despite mediocre performances. If the M’s do decide that they need to move Pineda in order to improve the offense, he could be a more marketable piece if teams knew exactly how long they’d be able to control his rights.
It’s possible that Pineda and his agent may not be interested in signing some free agent years away at this point, but I’d hope the M’s have at least explored the option. As Tampa Bay has shown, being aggressive with signing premium talents early in their careers can create massive long term cost savings and is often worth taking on an additional bit of risk.
A Quick Note About Josh Willingham
Over the last 12 hours or so, two different people – Nick Camino, a beat writer for the Indians, and Jim Bowden, former GM and current ESPN analyst – have reported that the Mariners are among the finalists for Josh Willingham. Bowden even put the same “front runner” tag on the team that he applied to his Prince Fielder rumor from Dallas, which should probably call into question how much you buy into these reports, as the M’s clearly aren’t going to end up with both players. Signing Willingham would be an alternative to signing Fielder, so I don’t really see how the team could actually be front runners for both at the same time.
But, let’s focus on Willingham for a second. He’s certainly a good hitter, as his wRC+ of 128 over the last three years ties him with David Ortiz and Justin Upton for the 35th best mark in baseball over since 2009. Other players with similar offensive performances over this stretch of time include Mark Teixeira, Ryan Howard, and Victor Martinez, so Willingham has clearly provided a level of offense that puts him in pretty good company. These aren’t the very best of the best at the plate, but they’re all quality hitters, and Willingham has performed at their standard.
However, I just don’t see him being a particularly good fit for the Mariners. While Willingham owns a pretty solid resume, it’s almost certain that his best days are behind him. He turns 33 in February, and given that he is the owner of a skillset that generally doesn’t age all that well, the question of how much longer he’ll be a productive big league hitter is a legitimate one. In fact, the effects of aging appear to already be setting in on Willingham.
From 2005 to 2010, Willingham posted a walk rate of 11.6% and a strikeout rate of 19.7%. Last year, he posted a walk rate of 9.9% and a strikeout rate of 26.6%. His power remained steady, so he’s probably not headed for a cliff-dive next year, but the significant uptick in whiffs has to be a concern, and it’s supported by a corresponding drop in his contact rate. He didn’t just rung up a lot by bad umpiring – his strikeout rate jumped because he had trouble putting the bat on the ball with the same regularity that he had shown in previous years.
If the deterioration in contact abilities holds, Willingham will have to be a monster when he does hit the ball in order to sustain his value at the plate. And, well, we probably don’t have to talk too much about the odds of success in Safeco Field for an extreme flyball right-handed pull power hitter. Willingham’s skillset is the one most harmed by the park the Mariners play in, as 105 of his career 132 home runs have been to left field, and he’s basically useless when he hits the ball the other way.
It’s not just how many home runs Safeco might take away from him either – among qualified hitters last year, only three players hit the ball in the air more often than Willingham: Alfonso Soriano, Chris Young, and Vernon Wells. Even when he’s not launching the ball over the wall, Willingham is putting the ball in the air with great frequency, and he needs a decent amount of those balls to fall in for base hits. There is perhaps no park in baseball where it is harder to get a fly ball to left field to land for a base hit than the one the Mariners play half their games in.
This isn’t to say that the team should entirely avoid right-handed hitters, or that every fly ball RH bat should instantly be eliminated from consideration. However, if you’re buying a 33-year-old DH on the free agent market, you better know that the bat is going to play in Safeco, and with Willingham, there are plenty of reasons to think it very well may not. If the park does to him what it’s done to so many similar hitters before him, he’d basically be a replacement level player for half of the team’s games, and there’s virtually no way he’d hit well enough on the road to justify a salary earned through free agency.
If the Mariners wanted to add an aging DH to their line-up, they should have gone after David Ortiz or step into the race for Carlos Beltran. There are decent arguments to be made in favor of going with a shorter contract to an older player in order to improve the offense this winter, but Willingham is the wrong target. There are a lot better ways for the franchise to spend money than to spend it on Willingham hoping that he’s the exception who can overcome both the park and Father Time.
One Thing Did Happen In Dallas
I’m not really much of a toot-my-own-horn kind of guy, so I considered not posting about this here, but in the end I decided that it’s probably something that I should share with those of you who have been so supportive over the last few months. So, I’m putting it up on a weekend, and then we’ll get back to talking about the Mariners on Monday.
Every year at the winter meetings, the Baseball Writer’s Association of America has an annual meeting where they vote on in-house business stuff. For instance, this year they voted to add a few shows on MLB Network that will highlight the finalists for the postseason awards. At these meetings, they also vote on whether to approve new organizations and members.
On Tuesday morning, the BBWAA took a vote on whether FanGraphs should be accepted as an approved organization, and more specifically, whether I should be voted in as a new member. Both measures passed, and so beginning next season, I’ll officially be a member of the Baseball Writer’s Association of America.
While the association has earned their share of derision over the years, they’re clearly working towards a more inclusive approach that allows somewhat untraditional baseball writers to join the club and receive the privileges that go along with being recognized as an official member. I’m proud to be a member, and look forward to using the responsibility I’ve been given to improve my writing overall.
When I started writing about baseball back in, I don’t know, 1998 or so, I never imagined it would turn into a career or that I’d ever be considered an Official Baseball Writer. The world is full of interesting twists and turns, though, and I’m happy to be able to walk through this newest open door.
Horse First, Then Cart
I’m a bit sleep deprived after a long week in Dallas, but I wanted to make one quick point before heading to bed. I know that the Angels decision to spend big on Pujols and Wilson has caused a lot of people to turn their attention back to the size of the Mariners payroll, and calls are getting louder for the team to spend more money in order to compete in the AL West. I’m not against the team spending more money, but I do believe that we need to understand the actual causation that drives the correlation between a team’s payroll and their record.
It’s easy enough to look at a chart that includes total payroll and total wins and see that there’s a relationship. Teams that spend more generally win more – not always, but usually. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why this is.
However, that’s a correlation. That the two things are related does not mean that increasing payroll will increase your win total to the degree that the correlation would suggest – that conclusion requires causation, and you have to dig deeper to see the actual effects of increasing payroll on team wins.
In reality, there’s causation that goes both ways. Increasing your payroll does increase your expected winning percentage, but raising your expected winning percentage also raises your payroll. In order to win, you need good players, and good players demand more and more money as they get older. A team that has managed to successfully draft and develop a nice young crop of home-grown stars is going to win first, then see their payroll rise as a result of the success of those players. In that situation, the increase in team salary occurs as a result of the acquisition of talent, rather than the increase in salary causing the acquisition of talent.
This is why you have to be very careful concluding that the Mariners failures of late are because of the team’s decreasing payroll relative to the rest of the league. In reality, the poor decision making of the front office over the last decade has actually had more to do with the payroll going down than ownership getting “cheap”. Because the team drafted poorly and traded away most of the young talent they did manage to develop, the franchise simply hasn’t had many players worth locking up to long term deals that escalate the payroll organically.
Here’s the list of meaningful contract extensions handed out by the Mariners over the last 10 years:
Ichiro Suzuki – 5 years, $90 million
Felix Hernandez – 5 years, $78 million
Kenji Johjima – 3 years, $24 million
Bret Boone – 3 years, $24 million
Franklin Gutierrez – 4 years, $20 million
Mike Cameron – 3 years, $15 million
That’s it – that’s the list. In over a decade, the M’s have only given out a half dozen contract extensions to players they wanted to retain due to their quality performances. What young talent did make it to the big leagues generally failed to develop into players that the team wanted to keep around, and thus, the team has entered into very few payroll-raising contract extensions to keep talent on hand.
Put simply, the Mariners lack of talent has had a significant impact on their payroll – there simply haven’t been good enough players to pay to keep around to keep the team’s overall budget going up organically. And so, without good players to retain, the team was forced to hunt for talent in the free agent market, and we all know how well that has worked out for the organization.
Having a $150 million payroll simply shouldn’t be anyone’s goal. The goal is to accumulate so much talent that you need to raise your payroll to that kind of level in order to keep it all. Not every piece of the roster has to be homegrown, and there’s certainly a spot for acquiring veterans from other organizations through free agency or trade, but history shows that teams who increase their payrolls by trying to buy wins in those markets generally don’t succeed. The winners are the franchises who develop talent through the farm and then invest in long term contracts in order to keep those players around.
The correlation between wins and payroll is real, but don’t make the mistake of believing that the relationship between the two means that raising payroll will lead to substantially more wins. For sustained success, the winning comes first, and then the rising payroll follows.
M’s Draft Reliever, Pujols and Wilson Go To Anaheim
A big morning here in Dallas, and not because anyone really cares about the Rule 5 draft anymore. The Mariners selected LHP Lucas Leutge from the Brewers (shockingly!) with the third pick in the Rule 5, but that’s not what anyone really wants to talk about.
No, everyone’s buzzing about the Angels, who signed both Albert Pujols (10 years, $250ish million) and C.J. Wilson (5 years, $75ish million) to significant contracts this morning. This clearly pushes the Angels up into the tier with the Rangers at the top of the AL West, and means the Mariners can pretty much give up hope on making some miracle run in 2012 that might let them steal the division. You can concoct scenarios where one team struggles and leaves the door open, but the Angels and Rangers are both so much better now that it’s hard to see both teams falling apart enough to let the M’s sneak in with a division title. Contending next year was already a long shot, but these moves basically close that door now.
For the future, I don’t like this as much from the Angels perspective. They’ve made a huge bet on a guy with significant risk factors, and there’s a pretty decent chance that having Pujols on the books is going to force them to let other talented players walk, perhaps leaving them in a worse long term position than if they had simply used this money to retain the good players they already had in-house.
I know people will look at this and say that the Mariners now need to sign Prince Fielder to keep up with the Joneses, but I’d argue that this probably makes that kind of move even less necessary now. The Angels decision to go for it in the next few years means that the added value from having a guy like Prince Fielder on the roster is lessened, as adding him is less likely to result in a near term playoff run and revenue boost. Instead, the team should be focused on maximizing their chances of contention in 2013, and they can do better by setting up the roster with quality players at multiple positions than by betting the house on one player who could easily be untradeable in a year.
This move isn’t any kind of death knell for the Mariners, nor is it a sign that they need to buck up and spend like crazy just because their division rivals have decided to do so. The Mariners simply need to continue to make smart decisions, add talent to the organization, and exercise some rational decision making rather than panicking and making an emotional response.
Not Expecting Much Today
On the national front, it seems likely that we’re going to get resolution to the Albert Pujols situation today, but in terms of the Mariners, I don’t know that we’re going to see much happen today. The M’s are basically in a holding pattern while they flirt with Prince Fielder, and that’s not going to get resolved today or this week, in all likelihood. Since signing Fielder would take all of their available dollars (and then some), they essentially can’t do anything that costs money until they get a decision on him one way or another.
It’s possible Jack has a trade up his sleeve that we’re not expecting, but my guess is this holding patterns going to go on for another week or two, and we’re not going to see the M’s do anything today.