The 2010 Team, Quantified
After the first trade last week, I put up a post looking at the projected 2010 roster, given players under team control for next year, and the amount of payroll it would cost to put that team together. Based on that projection, we saw that the M’s would have to spend around $78 million or so to field that particular roster, which would give them a little less than $20 million to play with this winter, assuming the budget holds something close to constant.
One thing we didn’t get into that much was just how good that team would be – it certainly looks unimpressive on paper, after all. And today, Art Thiel put in his two cents on the matter, essentially laying out his reasons for why next year’s team may be worse than the current version.
I think he’s wrong, and here’s why – the continuing reliance on cliched definitions of certain types of players significantly underrates the kind of team the Mariners have built. You know the lingo by now – “big bat”, “innings eater”, “proven commodity”, “solid performer” – this is how baseball players are still described in some circles. I’m not trying to pick on Thiel here, whose work I genuinely like, but sentences like this one…
The upside is intriguing. But after Hernandez, the group also could end up being just a bunch of back-of-the-rotation guys.
… would also describe the Philadelphia Phillies rotation last year (Hamels and fluff), and they won the World Series. These vague categorizations of contributions often do more to hide the actual value of players than reveal it.
So, let’s get away from cliches, and actually look at what the 2010 Mariners, as currently assembled, can actually contribute, based on some back-of-the-envelope projections of the guys that the team already has.
That roster adds up to something like +29 wins above replacement, and remember, a replacement level team would be expected to win ~50 games over a full season. So, as hard as it may be to believe based on cliches about their player types, that team would project out to something like a 79-83 club, despite the fact that its filled with “back end starters”, “unproven youngsters”, and a bunch of “glove-first” position players.
You can quibble with some of the projections if you want, but not enough to get below ~75 wins. That’s really the floor of what you’d be looking at for a projection for the 2010 Mariners, as they stand right now, if you were fairly pessimistic about the talent currently in the organization.
And remember, we’ve already noted that the M’s should have about $15 to $20 million to spend on new player acquisitions this winter. The going rate for wins in free agency is between $4-$5 million per win, so even if Jack wasn’t a GM good at finding undervalued assets for pennies on the dollar, the room in the budget should be good for another 3-5 wins.
For instance, the M’s have the cash to bring back Beltre and Branyan, which would make Hannahan a quality reserve and put Nelson back in Tacoma. That’s probably a +4 win upgrade, just by bringing back those two. That 79 win team would then be an 83 win team, and that’s if those were the only moves the M’s made all winter. What if the M’s were able to squeeze a guy like Jim Thome or Carlos Delgado in along with Beltre/Branyan? Now, you’re looking at something more like an 85 win team.
As long as the M’s don’t take the $20 million or so they’ll have available this winter and light it on fire, the expectation for 2010 should be that the Mariners will be a better than .500 club. If you think the organization is capable of improving the roster by making moves that help the team without really increasing the payroll as well (like they did with Aardsma/Gutierrez/Branyan last winter), then you’re probably looking at a potential 87 or 88 win team.
In other words, the 2010 Mariners have a very real chance of being a contending club. It isn’t a finished product, but the idea that the team can’t win because Silva and Johjima are on the books for $20 million next year is a fallacy. Yes, Bill Bavasi left the organization in bad shape… but Zduriencik and crew have done astonishingly good work in picking up the pieces and putting the M’s back on the path to winning baseball.
They’re further down that path than folks like Thiel realize. The 2009 Mariners are okay – the 2010 Mariners should be even better.
Minor League Wrap (7/27-8/2/09)
I don’t have much of an intro going as I spent most of Sunday at CitiField, about two hours of which was in rain delay. It was worth it for the field level tickets though, which a friend of mine scored. If you ever happen to be in that part of the country, I’d recommend giving it a look. It’s cheaper than Yankees Stadium, obviously, and plays better too, if you can get past the issue of planes taking off at LaGuardia every few minutes.
To the jump!
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Game 105, Mariners at Rangers
Get excited!
RF-L Ichiro!
1B-L Branyan
2B-R Lopez
DH-L Griffey
3B-L Hannahan
SS-R Wilson
CF-L Langerhans
C-R Bloomquist II: The Catchinator
LF-L Saunders
2B-R Omar
3B-R Young
DH-L Murphy
LF-R Byrd
1B-L Blalock
RF-R Cruz
CF-L Hamilton
C-B Saltalamacchia
SS-R Andrus
The Yankees and lying and the Yankees lying
Hi!
Since Washburn was traded (wooooo) many of you fine readers have decided, in relevant threads or not, to post links to stories coming out of the New York media machine (or national baseball writers) about how the Mariners were willing to trade Washburn to the Yankees but they asked for Joba and Cano and $90,000,000 in small non-sequential used bills or what-the-hell-ever.
Please stop. Here’s what’s going on: there are 15 billion trillion people who cover the Yankees, and the Yankees use this hive mind to promote themselves. This is why every Yankee prospect gets hyped to the skies until they’re traded and discovered to be players with all the baseball talent of an ox and the work ethic of Yuni. Why their crappy-ass stadium before this one was revered as the House that Ruth Built though it wasn’t, and as a hallowed baseball treasure until it had to be torn down and rebuilt for the good of all humanity.
So allllllll of these various stories about the M’s having only one phone call, or having many phone calls, asking for Joba or Joba and Hughes or Austin Jackson, and not being willing to talk sense, they’re bunk. Hokum. They’re lies. Liiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeesssssssssssss.
The Yankees want the story out there that they tried to get Washburn but the M’s were unreasonable. Then later, if it turns out a veteran left-handed starter was the difference between making the playoffs and not, or winning the World Series or not, they’re covered. “We wanted to get one, but Seattle’s crazy!” they can say, and it’ll be lapped up by that vast media mind and injected directly into the skull of every Yankee fan, who will scowl and curse the Mariners for their unreasonable demands.
The M’s front office leaks nothing. Like zippo. They’re possibly the tightest-lipped bunch of people in baseball. But they’re smart. Does it really seem likely to anyone that the team called New York, asked for Joba and Hughes, was refused, and then instead of trying to work something else out or see what New York would offer, just hung up, called Detroit, and made a much worse deal? Or that they repeated the demands a couple times first? Why in the world would they do that? Who seriously believes that that’s how any major league front office enters negotiations heading towards the trade deadline?
Please, stop posting this garbage. You’re just helping them. Don’t help the Yankees.
Anticipating Snell
With the team’s playoff chances down the drain, we now get reacquainted with the age old Seattle summer tradition – finding interest in things outside of wins and losses. Over the past few years, we’ve gotten pretty good at learning how to enjoy a ballgame without being overly invested in the final result. If they win, great, but even if they don’t, at least Young Guy X or New Pitch Y looked good.
So, we’re probably all a little extra excited for Ian Snell’s Mariner debut tonight. Even if they lose, at least we’ll have something besides a flyball lefty on the mound for once. So, what should we look for from Snell?
For starters, he has a fairly typical three pitch repertoire. He throws a four seam fastball at 89-93, and he pitches up in the zone with it, leading to a decent amount of swinging strikes and fly balls. He has a slider that’s 80-85 and is a weapon against right-handed bats, and has traditionally been his best pitch. He also throws an 82-84 MPH change-up that could use some work against left-handed hitters, who have hit him well over his career.
Looking at his walk rates, you’d think command was a big problem for Snell, but for the most part, it’s not. He can spot his pitches fairly well, and repeats his delivery without much effort. His walk problems come from a lack of an out pitch against lefties. Since his change is below average and his slider dives into their wheelhouse, he’s left to nibble with his fastball. That’s why he has a career 13% BB% against LH batters and only 7% against RH hitters.
In some ways, the best way to think of Snell is like Brandon Morrow with less velocity. The strengths and weaknesses are similar, and like Morrow, the key for Snell will be to get his secondary stuff up to the point where he can throw it in the strike zone with confidence. The Rangers have some good LH bats and the ball is obviously traveling well in Texas right now, so try not to judge Snell by his results tonight.
The key will be to watch the change-up against lefties. That’s going to be the pitch that makes or breaks him as a starting pitcher, and if he can use it effectively tonight, it’s a great sign for the future.
Game 104, Mariners at Rangers
Happy Felix Day! Hernandez v. Hunter, 5:05.
RF-L Ichiro
1B-L Branyan
2B-R Lopez
DH-L Griffey
CF-R Gutierrez
3B-L Hannahan
SS-R Wilson
LF-L Langerhans
C-R Johnson
Minor changes in batting order don’t matter that much, but the one thing that does is you want your best hitters at the top (so they bat more often) and your worst hitters at the bottom. You could just rank your hitters that way, use it as your lineup order, and hardly go wrong.
With that in mind, this is the first time all year that Rob Johnson has batted ninth. He’s batted as high as sixth six times.
Shelton gets DFAd
In one sense, Chris Shelton is freed.
In another, more real sense, it’s inexplicable why Mike Sweeney is taking a roster spot while Shelton is punted.
Rotation comparison
The rotation that started 2008, with salaries:
Erik Bedard $7,000,000
Felix Hernandez $540,000
Carlos Silva $12,000,000
Jarrod Washburn $9,850,000
Miguel Batista, $9,000,000
I’m counting Silva’s signing bonus in the year he signed, if you’re wondering, since the three free agents all had contracts with a low(er) first-year salary number, then mostly level for the remaining years.
The current rotation, with salaries:
Felix Hernandez $3,800,000
Ian Snell $3,000,000
Ryan Rowland-Smith $420,000
Luke French $400,000
Jason Vargas $405,000
In case you need another illustration of why spending money on free agent pitchers is generally a bad idea – yes, the rotation now costs less combined than any of Silva, Batista, or Washburn did individually, and will perform just as well if not better. You wouldn’t equal any of their salaries even if you tack on Garrett Olson and Brandon Morrow to make fill-in starts as necessary. That’s a lot of money left over that can go toward (another bat/Ackley’s signing bonus/a long-term contract for Felix/resigning Beltre) whatever good use Zduriencik finds for it. Unfortunately, we’re still paying Silva and Batista. No, we shouldn’t try to sign Washburn again after the season.
Game 103, Mariners at Rangers
Vargas vs. Padilla, 5:05 pm PDT
It looks like the other “major” announcement of the deadline is that RHP Ian Snell is due up in the rotation after Felix, which would put him on pace to start for the USSM/LL gathering at Safeco on August 8th. After Snell, we’ll have Hyphen again and then either French or Olson.
The lesser thing that was not “announced” exactly but is good news no less is that Branyan is back in the lineup, having not played since the 25th. Gutierrez continues to bat second while Branyan moves to third.
Lineup:
RF Ichiro!
CF Gutierrez
1B Branyan
2B Lopez
DH Griffey
C Johjima
SS Wilson
3B Hannahan
LF Saunders
Luke French
It’s no secret that we wanted Washburn traded and had little to no interest in retaining him for 2010. So, if the M’s moved him, we were going to be happy, even if the guys they got back weren’t much to write home about. But should you be excited about Luke French?
Depends on your expectations. He has extremely low ceiling for a 23-year-old – as a guy with an 87 MPH fastball who pitches up in the zone and depends on his breaking ball to get outs, he’s not that much different than Garrett Olson in terms of raw stuff. And I know that most of you are sick and tired of watching Garrett Olson take the mound, so that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.
However, there’s a pretty big difference between the two – French can actually get right-handed hitters out. Olson’s problem as a starter is that he gets destroyed by RHBs, and opposing managers can just stack the line-up with them when he’s in the rotation. French, however, uses his change-up effectively to keep RHBs off balance – he actually ran a better BB/9 and K/9 against righties than lefties in Triple-A this year.
That won’t continue in the majors (and it hasn’t during his first few appearances), but he’s not totally hopeless against RHBs. As an exteme flyball lefty, he’s going to get the same bump from Safeco and the outfield defense that Washburn did, and while he doesn’t have as varied of an arsenal, there are reasons to expect French and Washburn to be near equals going forward.
Between French, Rowland-Smith, Vargas, and Olson, the M’s now have four LHPs who all take advantage of the cavernous left field area in Safeco Field. Odds are they’ll be able to get two quality starters out of that group, and with Felix/Snell/Morrow around, the team has options for the front of the rotation as well.
French will probably never be an all-star, but as more depth for the back-end of the rotation, and a guy who should benefit greatly from the context he’s coming to, you should be quite happy with the return.