Have A Hot Dog With Me, Don Wakamatsu
Kirby Arnold talks with Don Wakamatsu. It’s worth reading, but one sentence sticks out:
But even long at-bats aren’t necessarily good at-bats. Both Jose Lopez and Adrian Beltre had at-bats when they fouled off several pitches.
“There would be an 11-pitch at-bat and a lot of guys would say, ‘Hey, great at-bat. Way to battle,’†Wakamatsu said. “But we’d go back and look at it on video and not one of the pitches they swung at was a strike.â€
YES! YES! A THOUSAND TIMES YES!
You’ve heard me rant about this before. It is not a good at-bat when you foul off 10 pitches that were out of the strike zone. That is a stupid at-bat that demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the value of a walk. Jose Lopez probably had four or five of these at-bats last year. Every single time, the announcers would praise him for hanging in there, battling, refusing to give in, blah blah blah. And every single time, he could have been standing on first base, but instead, he insisted on swinging at crap that wasn’t even close.
A good at-bat does not teach the opposing pitcher that he never has to throw you a strike. If its ten inches outside, don’t swing*. I don’t care if you think you can hit it. I don’t care if you can hit it. Don’t swing at pitches over your head. Don’t swing at pitches that bounce in the dirt. Don’t swing at a 3-0 change-up on the inside corner at the knees.
That Wak gets this is awesome. I love our manager.
* Ichiro has earned the right to do whatever he wants. He’s the exception.
’09 40-man Preview Extravaganza
We’re heavy into the award season now, but in the midst of that we also have a Nov. 20th deadline by which players must be added to the roster or risk being picked in the Rule 5 draft. The rules relate to the age a player was when they signed and what season their first contract was for. This year, we’re looking at HS draftees and the younger (eighteen or below) international players that were signed to 2005 contracts or college-aged or older players that were signed to 2006 contracts. The Mariners already brought on the big names like Moore and Saunders over the course of the season, so there really aren’t that many players left. Even so, they might hold off on bringing too many on board as next year looks to be a big one, with prospects like Triunfel, Liddi, Pineda, J.C. Ramirez (these last three signing contracts in ’05, but for the ’06 season) Gillies, Hill, Robles, and others needing to come aboard. Here is an inexhaustive list of who we might be looking at in the way of additions:
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Zack Greinke Is Awesome
The next time that you try to sell someone on FIP and that they tell you that its a load of crap reserved for nerds who have never played the game, tell them Zack Greinke disagrees.
Bannister, a right-handed starter, is known for his appreciation of modern pitching metrics, which emphasize the factors for which pitchers are essentially responsible: walks, strikeouts, home runs and hit batters. In Greinke, he found a like mind.
“He’s extremely bright, and he’s really picked up on using all the information out there to make his game better,†Bannister said by telephone. “He’s always had the talent. His confidence level, which is extremely high, combined with his knowledge of the numbers behind the game now, definitely makes him one of the best pitchers in the world.â€
Bannister said Greinke has learned to adjust his pitching based on the advanced defensive statistics. Because of the size of the outfield at Kauffman Stadium and the strength of the Royals’ outfielders, relative to their infielders, it sometimes made more sense to induce fly balls.
“David DeJesus had our best zone rating,†Bannister said, referring to the Royals’ left fielder. “So a lot of times, Zack would pitch for a fly ball at our park instead of a ground ball, just because the zone rating was better in our outfield and it was a big park.â€
To that end, Bannister introduced Greinke to FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, the statistic Greinke named Tuesday as his favorite. It is a formula that measures how well a pitcher performed, regardless of his fielders. According to fangraphs.com, Greinke had the best FIP in the majors.
“That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible,†Greinke said.
The reigning AL Cy Young winner, quoting FIP in the interview after he won the award. Welcome to the 21st century of baseball. This isn’t some kind of weird math for the lunatic fringe anymore.
This And That
Felix didn’t win the Cy Young. I don’t particularly care about the BBWAA awards that much, but I know some other people do. For those people, you should be happy. The BBWAA is getting better at this award voting thing. Greinke was the obviously correct candidate, and he won in a landslide. That probably wouldn’t have happened five years ago.
As Derek humorously pointed out this morning, you’re going to read a lot of rumors over the next few weeks, linking the M’s to various players. There’s no reason to take any of these too seriously. The Mariners have a lot of open roster spots and a decent amount of money to spend, so they’re in a position where due diligence requires them to call just about everyone. They’re in information gathering mode. It would be negligent for them not to talk to the agent for John Lackey, but that conversation doesn’t mean that you should begin to expect the M’s to sign him.
Once free agency starts on Friday, we’ll get better information beyond speculation about what teams may do. Until then, pretty much everything written is fluff.
M’s rumored to be interested in signing, trading for, players
It’s true.
Weekend meta: new user registrations
During the Griffey days this week, we had an average of 20 new user registrations a day. Of these: ~3 were Russian comment spammers, ~5 did nothing at all, and ~10 took a run at immediately getting banned (that is, first comment is “You’re all a bunch of stathead whiners in moms basement waaaaaah waaaaaaaaah go cry to mom whois basebment you live in!” and then either: second comment is the same one repeated because they don’t read the little explanatory note, followed by 3-10 repeat comments/complaints about censorship oorrr they ignore the moderation and post more bannable comments until their enthusiasm wanes). And then sometimes, as you probably saw, their first comment’s argumentative but reasonable, so it’s waved in, and then they descend quickly into telling us how gay we all are*.
10 abusive people a day doesn’t seem so bad. But consider we have six people who go through comments as they can, including the three volunteer mods, and through Thursday I could log in at any time during the day and see in the comment queue a sea of yellow to-be-moderated abuse. When someone decides they want to sign up for USSM and be a jerk, there’s no way to expect someone’s going to be by to police a thread for an hour or even really four hours, much as we might try. That’s a long time, and new-user moderation this week was the only thing between us and insanity.
But we’re the only people who see this, I wanted to offer it up as some kind of explanation. If we seemed (and I certainly was) exasperated and curt with some of the more pointed pro-Griffey and anti-Griffey commentary, sorry. It’s because whenever these things happen, we end up coping with a wave of abuse that we all as unpaid volunteers have a hard time dealing with.
And again — we don’t have any problem with discussing this stuff. But no one gets to call Griffey signing-supporters brainless ass-kissers (to pick one) and no one gets to call Griffey signing-detractors heartless robots who’ve never played team sports.
Thanks to everyone who conducted themselves well through this. We really do appreciate it.
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M’s Sign Jack Wilson
To the surprise of no one, the M’s announced that they have signed Jack Wilson to a two year contract. Terms not disclosed, but I’d guess it’s around $10 million or so.
Wilson is a +1 to +2 win player who derives almost all of his value from his glove. For ~$5 million per season, that’s not a bad deal. He’ll help fill a hole for a couple of years. He’s not a star, but he’s a nice enough role player, and he didn’t cost a lot. There’s value in that.
Update: Dejan Kovacevic suggets that I’m a good guesser.
M’s Help Fans Split Season Tickets
The Mariners have announced a new feature that facilitates the splitting of season tickets across multiple owners. This is something that people have been doing on their own forever, but the organization has decided to step in and use their site as a central hub to connect buyers and sellers.
This is a small thing – the kind of gesture that is often waived off by fans with a comment about the M’s just attempting to maximize profit or just looking out for their bottom line. But, to me, it is the continuation of an organizational change that has been pretty remarkable. It is a pro-fan approach that simply hasn’t existed in years past. The Mariners, as an organization, have worked hard (and are continuing to do so) to re-establish some trust with their fan base. And I think it’s time they got some credit for it.
Over the last year, I’ve had a decent amount of interactions with a wide spectrum of people in the organization. From organizing the library event last winter and the Safeco event in August, I’ve had the opportunity to deal with a variety of team officials. And, to a person, they’ve all been great in a way that you simply wouldn’t expect. After all, we spent about five years lambasting the organization at almost every turn, and I don’t think its an exaggeration to say that there was some hostility on both sides towards the others. We were fans of the team, but not of the organization, and they weren’t big fans of us either. There were times when it became clear that rooting for the team to fail was our best option, because things weren’t getting better without hitting rock bottom.
They hit rock bottom in 2008. And things have gotten significantly better since then, and not just in the decision making that goes into putting the roster together. When Derek raised the issue about the bus shuttle law, Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong put us in touch with Bart Waldman, the team’s general counsel, who offered assistance in understanding their perspective on the issue. When I invited Jack Zduriencik to the library event last winter and he couldn’t make it due to a scheduling conflict, he sent his top four guys in his place. When I talked to the M’s about hosting an event at Safeco, they gave us everything we asked for and tossed in free food for 300 people.
It doesn’t matter who I dealt with – they were all really great, and continue to be whenever I get in touch with them. This is not how it used to be.
I’ve always loved the team. It is nice to now be able to love the organization as well.
Kudus to the M’s for yet another fan friendly project, the latest in a move towards developing a mutual respect with their fans.
More on the Yankees payroll arguments
Khoi Vinh on the Yankees and Payroll
For almost a decade, the Yankees have consistently maintained the highest payroll in Major League Baseball while failing to bring home a World Series title, and during that time the grousing took the form of ridicule. What Yankees fans heard then was: “See? You Yankees can’t buy championships, even with all of your money.†What we hear today is: “See? You Yankees just buy championships with all of your money.â€
This is not a coherent line of argument, but then again it would be naïve to look for any motivation here other than envy, because the logic at work is so suspect. It’s pretty safe to say that a good number of those who hate the Yankees because of their payroll are unabashed capitalists, too; they’d be very unlikely to begrudge the fact that the highest valued, best performing organization in any given market also led that market. That’s not just capitalism, it’s the way capitalism is practiced in America.
I always find this kind of argument sweet. It’s like when people born in to rich families who attend private prep schools and are legacy-admitted into the finest universities in the country wonder why people in abject poverty don’t just, en masse, pull themselves up into prosperity.
Baseball-wise, that was me for a long time. The guy who owns the Twins is worth billions, why doesn’t he just spend a billion instead of bleating about how poor his stadium revenues are?
And that’s actually a valid case — many of the teams in baseball are never-full ticks sucking blood out of the sport, and baseball (and Selig-as-commissioner-with-bajillions-in-his-fund) should be ashamed about it.
But here’s where that whole argument goes wrong: let’s say that the Yankees devote more of their revenue to payroll than any other team. That’s admirable, and they should indeed be lauded for it.
Except… it costs every team, no matter how cheap, about forty million just to keep the lights on and the minor leagues running, and so on, and it’s more like sixty million. Then it’s another thirty million to pay a cheapo major league team.
So let’s say there are three teams:
Team Lamprey plays in a market of 1m people and have a cheap owner, and take in $60m in operating revenue.
Team Modest plays in a market of 1m and tries to compete, and they take in $90m in operating revenue.
Team Rich plays in a good but not New York market and tries to compete. They take in $175m in operating revenue.
Team Yankees… they take in $250m in operating revenue.
You see the problem already. The lights-on-and-field-a-team pays 50% of their revenue to keep the lights on. Team Modest, 30%. Team Rich, 17%. Team Yankees, 10%.
Now that’s an exaggeration to make a point (the Yankees end up paying more to keep the lights on), but that’s how it sorts out. I happened to have Pappas’ numbers from 2002 up (here) and the two teams with the lowest non-player expense:operating revenue ratio were the Yankees and Red Sox (check out the Mariners, by the way, and that massive non-player expenses line. I believe that’s us buying Ichiro).
Beyond which, when teams like the Yankees and Red Sox who are big enough to have their own cable networks they can move revenue off the books do so, they really shouldn’t get credit for that against teams that have to account for their Fox Sportsnets payments normally.
The problem is not that the Yankees spend, or that their fans live in a bubble of privileged and can’t seem to grasp that they’re the beneficiaries of a broken system. It’s that because of the way MLB is set up, the Yankees and the Mets operate like government-sanctioned monopolies. In any equitable world, the New York metro market supports three, maybe four teams. And we can talk about how you manage that, or how you might start one of those teams, but the result of having only two teams is exactly what Posnanski pointed out: both New York teams get to operate as if they’re two franchises. They can, year in and year out, spend vastly more on everything, compete consistently, and when they’re weak, they can add a team’s worth of payroll in one off-season to shore up a few positions and then go on happily.
That’s insane.
And crowing about how the Yankees once sucked doesn’t obviate any of that. They’re like some scion born to a super-wealthy family that gets into Yale, stumbles around life for a while making a jerk of themselves… yayyyy, education can’t overcome everything. And then they decide to go into, I don’t know, golf course ownership, and of course they’ve got a ton of backers from family friends, effectively unlimited capital to work with, even after they blow up the first few tries and they’re mysteriously let off the hook for some bookkeeping shenanigans during that time, and ta da! Fourth time’s a charm, they’re golf course moguls!
Is it envy to look at that and wonder if perhaps there were many more people who couldn’t have done better and more important things with the same advantages, as we are to think with the Yankees? Sure. Maybe.
That’s the point. I’m a fan of a relatively wealthy team that spends a lot of money on payroll, having long been a fan of a really poor team that spent nothing, and for all my carping about their constant inflation of how much they’re spending on payroll for PR purposes, this is way better. But my team would have to absorb the A’s (or better yet, our hated interleague rivals the Padres) for us to enjoy the kind of advantages the Yankees and Mets do.
And I don’t see that the presence of bloodsucker teams makes it okay for the Yankees and Mets to enjoy such crazy unbalance. In an ideal world, a good ownership group would sense opportunity and buy one of those teams, move them to New York, and we’d have some competition. That the system is broken and rewards both established geographical monopolies and cheapskates doesn’t mean that either is in the right, or that no action should be taken with regard to both.
And as long as baseball lets those two grow endlessly fat on their geographical advantage, everyone is going to take rightful glee when they fail to make anything of it, and they’re going to rightfully throw rotten fruit when they do.
Griffey’s Return, What It Means
It’s official – Junior is coming back for another victory lap, signing a one year deal to fill an unspecified, reduced role on the 2010 team. The casual fan will be thrilled. We are a bit less so. But, the should he return arguments are now moot. He’s on the team next year, so let’s look at the implications of what this actually means in terms of the roster.
If we assume that the M’s are going to carry 12 pitchers again, that leaves them with a four man bench. One of those spots is reserved for the back-up catcher, and now Junior occupies another. That means the final two bench spots have to serve as the reserves for the other eight spots on the field. The in-house candidates for those spots are currently Jack Hannahan, Bill Hall, Matt Tuiasosopo, and Ryan Langerhans.
One of those players just lost their jobs. There isn’t room for all of them in Seattle anymore. If we say that Tui is the likely starter at third base (and I’d say that’s probably the most likely scenario, given the current roster), then Hannahan makes the team as the default reserve infielder. He’s the only one of the four who can play shortstop, so he’s got a more secure role here than the rest.
After that, it would come down to Hall versus Langerhans. Langerhans is the better player, but Hall is probably going to win out. The M’s are on the hook for $1.3 million of his 2010 salary, while Langerhans can be non-tendered without a cost. Hall also offers a RH platoon option for Saunders, plus the ability to play 2B/3B if need be. While Langerhans is a better outfielder, he doesn’t offer the same positional flexibility that Hall does, and with a roster spot now being reserved for a part-time pinch hitter, that becomes a deal-breaker.
So, unless the M’s decide to go with 11 pitchers next year, this probably ends the Ryan Langerhans era in Seattle. The M’s have essentially traded in about half a win worth of value (the difference between Langerhans/Griffey in on-field value as a reserve) for the expectation of better team chemistry.
We wouldn’t have made this move. That should be obvious by now. It won’t destroy the franchise, but it’s an inefficient use of resources, and exposes the team to some real problems if Gutierrez gets hurt. The M’s just became a little less likely to win in 2010.