Previewing the ’09 Aquasox
The Aquasox will be opening up their season on Saturday in Vancouver (7:05 pm start time), so now is as good a time as any to preview the third local team, should anyone be curious enough to venture up to Everett Memorial this summer. The roster as constructed right now is especially not-reflective of who will be taking the field for the majority of the season. Not only are there just two ’09 draftees that have signed at this point, but a recent change in passport/visa rules for entering the U.S. has left the Aquasox with a limited roster, as not everyone has their papers squared away just yet. There are two pitchers listed as in the rotation, RHs Chris Kirkland and Taylor Stanton, that aren’t going to be with the team on the first roadtrip for this very reason. The players who you see on the team at this moment are the ones that are capable of going to Canada and back without issues, but there’s going to be a noticeable turnover come Tuesday.
Nevertheless, here is more information on the group than you ought to require.
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Is It Time To End The Ronny Cedeno Era?
When Jose Lopez returns from the bereavement list next week, the M’s will have to ship a middle infielder back to Tacoma. Chris Woodward is the obvious candidate, since he just came up from Triple-A. But, as I watched Ronny Cedeno take a few more ridiculous swings today, I have to wonder if he’s the guy who should head back to the minors. He just looks broken.
He walks as much as Lopez, strikes out as much as Branyan, and hits for power like Yuni. Maybe you could explain his .132 batting average as bad luck, but then you look at his batted ball profile and see a line drive percentage of 4.3%. Cedeno isn’t making contact very often, and even when he does, it’s a ground ball or a fly ball, giving him a high percentage of making an out and a very low percentage of doing anything useful.
He’s a solid defender, he’s only 26, and he has some history of being able to hit in the minors, but man, right now, he just looks lost at the plate. He’s out of options, so the team can’t send him back to Tacoma without passing him through waivers, but I doubt there’s going to be a stampede to claim a guy with a .190 wOBA. Playing once or twice a week isn’t working for him, and if he’s ever going to be a productive player for the M’s, he’s probably going to have to undergo some changes to his swing. That’s a lot easier to fix when you’re actually playing, and he simply hasn’t hit well enough to let Wak put him in the line-up with any regularity.
Chris Woodward certainly isn’t the answer to anything (nor is anyone else in the organization – please, Jack, get us a middle infielder or two!), but he can play SS/2B without being a total disaster and hit .200 at least. Sadly, that would be an upgrade over what we’re getting from Cedeno at the moment.
I’m not ready to give up on Ronny Cedeno entirely, but this isn’t working. When Lopez comes back, I’d like to see the team outright him to Tacoma – if someone else wants to claim him, so be it, but at least they’d have a shot at getting him to Triple-A where he can try to fix his problems.
Game 66, Mariners at Padres
Morrow vs Geer, 12:35 pm.
The Brandon Morrow Experience continues today with a start against the hapless Padres in a park perfectly suited for his skills. Seriously, if he can’t throw strikes today – in Petco, against a bad offense, with no designated hitter – then he’s just physically incapable of throwing strikes.
Wak didn’t do him the favor of sticking Endy Chavez in left field, though. Third straight game Junior is out in LF. Can’t say I’m a fan of that. Yes, the offense is a bit better with Griffey in there, but the defensive dropoff is larger. Especially on games when the flyball oriented pitchers are on the mound (which is basically everyone but Felix at this point), Griffey in LF is not a good choice.
Ichiro, RF
Carp, 1B
Beltre, 3B
Griffey, LF
Gutierrez, CF
Betancourt, SS
Cedeno, 2B
Burke, C
Morrow, P
What A Week
Larry Stone reports that the M’s have placed Jose Lopez on the bereavement list, becoming the third player to be away from the team this week due to a family emergency. No word on how long he’ll be gone for, but Chris Woodward has been recalled from Tacoma and will serve as the utility infielder, while Ronny Cedeno will play second base. Woodward was not on the 40 man roster, so the M’s will have to make a move to get him on there before they can activate him. With Rob Johnson due to return today, Quiroz or Burke will have to be DFA’d anyway.
Update — Ryan Divish says it’s Silva to the 60-day DL to free up the roster spot.
Carp’s Debut
Want to know how to get the M’s blogopshere on your side in your major league debut? Do this:
That’s Mike Carp’s first at-bat as a major leaguer. He saw five pitches, staring at all four out of the strike zone. He swung once and tried to hit it to the moon. He missed, but the at-bat continued and he took his walk.
So, in his first plate appearance as a major leaguer, he showed better pitch selection than everyone on the roster besides Branyan/Griffey, he showed a willingness to swing for the fences when he thinks he’s getting a fastball, and he showed the patience to take a walk in the at-bat where he had more nerves than he’ll ever have again. Not bad.
He’ll get the start at first base today, then probably go back to Tacoma tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what he does today – either way, I think he earned himself a fan or two last night.
Game 65, Mariners at Padres
The natural rivalry as declared by Bud Selig before the false idol of interleague play continues! Olson vs Gaudin (not Gaudi, famous Spanish architect). I often find that when I’m talking to non-fans about baseball that the absurdities of the game are revealed to me. I (seriously) do like talking to random people about some of this stuff, though yeah, it gets a little bit annoying when everyone at work who knows I write here wants to drop by and ask “hey what do you think about the Griffey signing, pretty awesome, huh?”
Which I know sounds a little bit petty, but it’s like… when I shared a season ticket package I found these kids in my seats all the time (I think they must have attended somewhere nearby), and as a long-time seat jumper myself I started off pretty polite about it until it got to the point where I’d get there, they’d look over, and I’d shrug and say “Come on now” or something similarly curt. And then people would get on me for being rude (ie, w/r/t my jersey, “Snelling? More like Asshole”) because they hadn’t found the same kids out of the same seats a dozen times. So I try and give the tenth person the complete, sociable answer like the first one.
This all leads to questions like “Why are the Mariners playing San Diego again? Don’t they always play them?” and I have by now a little set speech, which goes:
When Bud Selig set up interleague play, he wanted to make sure that some teams would be able to play every year because they’d be really high attendance games. Think Yankees-Mets, White Sox Cubs, right? The problem is not every club had anything like that, so the leftovers got matched up and declared natural rivals, and the Mariners and Padres got each other, and they play every year, while the rest of interleague games are on a kind of rotation system between divisions.
And I swear to Ichiro! that every time I’ve given that speech, the reaction has been a half-second pause followed by “Well that’s stupid.”
Every time.
R.J. Anderson wrote a little bit about whether Brian Giles is the worst regular in baseball. Giles is out of the lineup today, but Betancourt, who I’d like to argue is certainly the worst regular in baseball if you ignore salary, is in the lineup again, and again, he’s inexplicably batting behind the fearsome #5 Lopez, who is rapidly acquiring a totally undeserved reputation as a hitter based on his RBI total, which as you’d expect drives me up the f’ing wall every time it’s mentioned. And Gutierrez bats #8, ahead of an automatic out, for reasons no one’s been able to explain to me.
7:05.
Also, the Sagrada Familia is both amazingly impressive and abominably kitsch. If everyone could just not tell my dad that I wrote that, I’d appreciate it. He’s a Gaudi fan. So am I. It’s just for all the amazing engineering and design work, all that cathedral needs to be sold on QVC is a paired set of Precious Moments worshiper dolls.
Carp’s in San Diego with the team
Initially you would think the move was to replace Branyan who’s going to leave for his grandfather’s funeral on Thursday. But Wakamatsu said Branyan would be placed on the bereavement list.
(Update — Baker’s run it too)
There are other possibilities, if he’s activated: Sweeney, for all his good character and supposed clubhouse-osity, has done very little for the team so far this year on the field, and seems the obvious positional drop if they’re making moves.
Dave adds the actual move: Bedard to the DL. I hate to say I told you so, but, this is why they should have traded him two weeks ago.
Life To Flying Things
Franklin Gutierrez has been one of the best things about the Mariners this year. He’s legitimately in the conversation for the best defensive outfielder in baseball, and he might even win the argument. As he showed again last night, he gets a phenomenal jump on balls and takes great routes, making plays that most outfielders wouldn’t even dream of getting to. He’s a tremendous defender and a not-terrible hitter, making him an above average player overall. If you’re trying to figure out how the M’s are hanging around .500 with a miserable offense, Gutierrez is one of your answers. He’s been a great pickup for the team.
However, he’s also something of an enigma to me. If you didn’t see the home run he hit last night, go check it out. That thing was destroyed. That’s the kind of home run you expect Branyan or Beltre hit – an absolute no doubt bomb as soon as it leaves the bat.
For Gutierrez, though, it was just his fourth home run of the season, and pushed his isolated slugging up to .102. For comparison, Yuniesky Betancourt’s career isolated slugging percentage is .114. Gutierrez’s power output so far this year is akin to what you’d expect from a guy who is in the line-up for his glove. But those guys don’t hit 425 foot moonshots at Petco Park.
This isn’t the first time Gutierrez has destroyed a fastball either. In 2007, he hit a 429 foot bomb off Justin Verlander, a 422 foot home run off Joel Peralta, a 406 foot shot of Josh Beckett, and a 401 foot dinger (I’m running out of synonyms) off Kason Gabbard. Last year, he hit a 419 foot home run off Alberto Castillo and a 416 foot home run off Andy Pettitte. Earlier this year, he hit a 409 foot shot off Francisco Liriano.
Gutierrez has power. It’s in there. After all, he hit 70 home runs in 2,591 career minor league plate appearances, which averages out to around 16 HR per full season. Most players will hit home runs at a higher rate in the majors than they did in the minors, as they get stronger as they age. Sure enough, Gutierrez hit 13 home runs (and posted an ISO of .207) in 301 plate appearances in 2007, showing the kind of power you’d expect based on his minor league track record.
It’s not just the numbers, either. From a physical standpoint, there’s no reason he shouldn’t hit 15-25 home runs a year. He’s 6’2, lean, but with some upper body strength, offering a physical package similar to players like B.J. Upton. His swing has some lift to it, so he’s not constantly beating the ball into the ground. He’s got solid bat speed, and he doesn’t have any problems catching up to major league fastballs. He works the count, gets himself into spots where he can sit on a certain pitch, and doesn’t chase too many pitches out of the zone.
So why isn’t he driving the ball with any regularity? Honestly, I don’t have any answers. The opportunities are there. The swing is there. The power is in there. He can hit a baseball a long way, but why he doesn’t do it with more regularity, I don’t know.
It will be interesting to see how Gutierrez finishes the year offensively. He’s so good defensively that he doesn’t have to get any better with the bat to justify his spot in the line-up. He’s a +2 to +3 win player as is, even posting a .300 wOBA. But, he’s not a finished product. There’s upside in there. If Alan Cockrell can get him to start driving the ball again, like he’s done for most of his professional career, Gutierrez goes from a really nice piece to an all-star. He’s just 26, so let’s hope the power surge is coming. We get glimpses of it, but I’d love to see it regularly.
Game 64, Mariners at Padres
Felix Day! Yayyyy! Against our hated natural rivals the Extremely Boring San Diego Padres. During the draft, I was bugging Dave (because he didn’t have enough to do and I was watching my super-fortified version of USSM do pretty well against the unwashed internet hordes (you)), and we both kept cracking up when Harold Reynolds would go off on the Padres, who he insisted needed to draft an athlete because they were boring.
Because
a) draft coverage is amazingly hilarious (why do they have charts if all the players are off the charts? Can’t they just get larger charts? of course the guy just drafted is a ballplayer, that’s why they don’t draft mascots, though that might help the boring Padres)
b) he was totally right. You think the M’s are boring? The Padres are super-boring. They’re the unwatchable Mariner teams of recent years boring except they don’t have Ichiro, who I guess is a clubhouse cancer after all now that the team’s swooning, though he wasn’t holding them back when they were doing well… I’m confused again. Anyway.
It’s interesting that the Padres hit a little better than the M’s, but the M’s play vastly better defense and have better pitching. Imagine the 2004-2005 Mariners with one more hitter and two fewer pitchers. Actually don’t, it’ll only hurt your brain. So Betancourt’s back in the lineup too, which is… behind Lopez? And Gutierrez is eighth?
I don’t understand. If anyone can explain why Gutierrez, who with no bat is still somehow hitting better than our middle infielders, doesn’t get moved up the order, can you please let the rest of us in on the secret?
Buying And Selling
Larry Stone has a good piece in the Times this morning, discussing the timing of when the Mariners need to decide whether they’re buyers or sellers. As you guys know, I advocated for an early selling position on Bedard and Washburn, calling them “volatile assets” whose value could drop precipitously with an injury or a regression in performance. With both of them nursing health problems and Washburn coming off a bad start in Coors Field, hopefully you can see what I was talking about – it would be harder for the M’s to get a good deal for either of them right now than it would have been 10 days ago.
So, now, the M’s have to wait and let those two re-establish their health, which they’ll hopefully do this weekend. In Bedard’s case, he probably has to string together several good outings in a row, showing he can handle a regular workload without having to skip starts every few weeks. Washburn has to continue to show that his two-seamer has given him an extra weapon to handle lefties, and his uptick in strikeout rate isn’t a fluke.
For today, I agree with Larry. The market for these two will grow if they can prove that last weekend was an aberration and pitch well for the next couple of weeks. For now, we probably need to wait before moving those two.
However, as I talked about a bit yesterday on 710/ESPN with Mike Salk, I am convinced that there is an option here beyond the normal “trade prospects for veterans to make a run” or “give up on the season and go with the kids”. Yes, historically, teams have divided themselves into those two camps after the July 31st deadline, but I think the M’s are in a unique situation, in a unique economic environment, and that they have a chance to do things differently this trading season.
The AL West isn’t good. The Rangers have stopped hitting of late, and despite their improved run prevention, they aren’t getting to the playoffs on the backs of their pitching and defense. The Angels were supposed to get a boost from the return of their walking wounded, but Kelvim Escobar just needed one start to prove he couldn’t handle a regular rotation spot anymore, while Ervin Santana hasn’t found his fastball and is going to miss his start tonight with forearm tightness. John Lackey hasn’t exactly been an all-star, either. The Angels still have issues, both offensively and on the pitching side of things.
So, despite the flaws on this M’s roster, I think the front office would be wise to make moves that would help keep the 2009 team afloat and potentially able to capitalize in the second half if Texas and Anaheim continue to struggle. However, at the same time, I think Bedard and Washburn fit the mold of overvalued assets in the mid-season trade market. Teams always overvalue pitching, especially left-handed pitching, as they gear up to make a playoff race. It’s the one thing that’s constantly in demand from multiple clubs and could bring a significant return in trade.
As Mike Salk pointed out yesterday, though, the common belief is that if you trade Bedard and Washburn, you’re done. You’ve just punted two starting pitchers who have been critical to your early season success, there’s no way this team can with without them. I disagree. I think the team can take a buy-and-sell approach to this deadline that would help them build for the future but also keep the 2009 team from going in the tank.
Here’s my suggestion.
The M’s badly need a shortstop. We all know that. The M’s rank 29th in wOBA (.242!) and 30th in UZR (-9.8!) from the SS position. The performances they’ve gotten from Betancourt/Cedeno have been worth about -1.5 wins less than a replacement level shortstop in about 40% of a season. That’s incredibly awful, the kind of gaping hole that no team can really overcome.
The M’s also need another left-handed hitter in the line-up, which we’ve covered ad nauseam here on the blog. The line-up is too right-handed, so when they face a righty with two-seam fastball (the pitch with the largest platoon split), they lack the left-handed bats to punish the opposing pitcher and they get shut down.
What the M’s need more than anything else is a left-handed hitting shortstop with some ability to hit and field. They need a stop-loss to prevent the massive sucking hole at shortstop from taking wins off the board. Upgrading from Betancourt/Cedeno to even a below average SS would be a massive improvement over what the M’s have gotten from the position this year. Where would they find such a player?
Meet Reid Brignac. He’s a 23-year-old left-handed hitting shortstop in the Tampa Bay Rays system. He spent the last few weeks filling in for Jason Bartlett while the Rays starting SS was on the DL, but now that Bartlett is back, it’s off to Durham again for some more time in Triple-A. With Bartlett ahead of him at SS and Ben Zobrist/Willy Aybar holding down second base (and then some) in Akinori Iwamura’s absence, Brignac doesn’t have a role with the Rays. He’s depth for them, an insurance policy in case Bartlett gets hurt again, but not a piece of their core now or going forward.
Now, maybe you look at his .271/.295/.390 mark that he posted over the last few weeks for the Rays and say “meh, another low OBP hacker”. However, look closer. In fact, look at his L/R splits.
Vs RHP: .357/.386/.524, 44 PA, 2 BB, 5 K
Vs LHP: .059/.059/.059, 17 PA, 0 BB, 7 K
To say that Brignac had problems with left-handed pitching would be a bit of an understatement. There’s definitely need for improvement there, and he’s not ready for an every day role in the majors. However, that performance versus lefties hides the fact that he hit the crap out of the ball against right-handed pitching during the last couple of weeks. This isn’t new, either. Here’s his minor league splits from Durham this year.
Vs RHP: .300/.370/.491, 124 PA, 14 BB, 17 K
Vs LHP: .258/.303/.355, 33 PA, 1 BB, 4 K
Brignac hasn’t figured out how to hit lefties yet. That’s okay – he’s 23. That can be improved upon later, and hidden now. The M’s could hide Brignac against lefties, platooning him with Cedeno in order to give both of them the best chance to succeed offensively. He won’t put up a .900 OPS against RHP all year, but he doesn’t have to. If he hits .270/.320/.400 and plays league average defense, the upgrade from Betancourt to Brignac would be larger than the downgrade from Bedard to Rowland-Smith/Jakubauskas/whoever.
Seriously, if the M’s swapped Erik Bedard for Reid Brignac, there’s a pretty good chance they wouldn’t see a significant drop-off in 2009 performance as a team. When you couple the magnitude of the problem that SS has been for the M’s this year with the general overrating of the impact of starting pitchers, you get a situation like this where a decent position player can be worth as much as a good starting pitcher.
Now, there’s a pretty good chance that the Rays wouldn’t swap Brignac for Bedard straight up. They don’t have a ton of budget flexibility, and they’re notoriously reluctant to trade young talent. That’s okay – the M’s have the pieces to make a deal work. They have the financial ability to pay Bedard’s contract through the end of ’09, eliminating the need for the Rays to increase their payroll. They have extraneous players like Jeff Clement, who would appeal to a Rays front office that likes that kind of player type, that could be added into a multi-player deal.
The pieces are there to make this work. Even if you can’t find a perfect fit with the Rays (maybe they don’t want to deal with Bedard’s health problems), the team should still pursue Brignac as a target. As we saw Jack do in the Putz deal, it’s quite possible to use players to acquire talent that another team wants in order to get the guy you’re after. If the Phillies are willing to overpay for Bedard (and it sounds like they probably are), then the M’s can target a player in that deal who would appeal to Tampa Bay in a Brignac trade.
Because they’ll be in demand this trading season, the M’s have the flexibility to use Bedard and Washburn as bait to pick up pieces that won’t just help them in the future, but can help them right now. There are players out there, like Brignac, who would be an immediate upgrade for the Mariners, while also providing some long term value. These are the kinds of players the M’s should be targeting.
Don’t get caught up thinking that it’s a trade-prospects or trade-for-prospects decision. The M’s are in the position to do both. Deal Bedard and Washburn to the highest bidder, or for the pieces that will allow you to go out and get guys like Brignac. Sell, yes, on those two players, but then buy us a left-handed hitting shortstop who can help the team right now and going forward.
This isn’t an either/or situation. Buy and sell, not buy or sell.