Should The Team Do The Unthinkable?
On Monday, my latest piece for the Wall Street Journal went up, and it dealt with whether four organizations should consider trading the guys who have been the face of their franchise. David Ortiz, Scott Kazmir, and Travis Hafner were all great players in the recent past, but all of them have pretty significant problems right now – Ortiz has gotten old very quickly, while Kazmir and Hafner have seen their abilities reduced by injuries. All three of them come with significant contracts, and their trade value has plummeted in the past twelve months. They’re bordering on becoming liabilities who wouldn’t be claimed on waivers, given the financial obligations and their performances.
Those weren’t the only three I mentioned in the article, though. Ichiro was also included, though he’s in a different situation from the other three. Unlike Ortiz, Kazmir, and Hafner, Ichiro isn’t broken. He isn’t a guy who is underperforming his contract. Over the last three years, Ichiro’s on field value has been worth $18.2 million, $23.6 million, and $18.8 million. Since 2002, he’s been worth $118.2 million and been paid $69.5 million. Ichiro has been one of the best return on investments the M’s have ever made.
On average, he’s been a +5 win player for the M’s since arriving in the states, which makes him one of the top 10 or 15 players in the game. Consistent +5 win players are really hard to find, and Ichiro’s been a steady, excellent player since he got here. We’ve constantly defended Ichiro against the ignorance of those who claim that he’s overrated, because those people were massively wrong. Ichiro is a really, really good baseball player.
However, if there was ever going to be a time to trade Ichiro, this summer might be it.
As much as we love the guy and what he’s given to the team, there are signs of decline. In his first five seasons in the U.S., Ichiro posted an Isolated Slugging percentage of .100 or higher four times. He hasn’t done it since, going four straight seasons with essentially no power. He’s drawn three unintentional walks so far this year, putting him on pace to draw ~16 for the season. He usually draws between 25 and 35. He’s been caught stealing three times in eight attempts so far this year after being thrown out four times in 47 attempts last year.
During his first four years in the majors, he posted a wOBA of .360, making him a significantly above average hitter. During the last 3 seasons and the start of this year, he’s posted a wOBA of .348, making him a good but not great hitter. 12 points of wOBA adds up to around six runs over the course of a full season, so that offensive dropoff is equal to a loss of about half a win per year.
The 35 year old Ichiro isn’t quite as good as the 28 year old Ichiro. That shouldn’t be a big surprise, honestly. He’s still very good, one of the best right fielders in the game, but we haven’t seen the MVP caliber Ichiro since 2004, and it’s probably not a very good bet that we’ll ever see him perform at that level again.
So, the Mariners new management faces a summer of transition, where they continue to try to remake the roster to eliminate the errors of the past regime. During this transition, they’ll have to evaluate how each player fits on the roster going forward. That process needs to include the understanding that Ichiro is probably more like a +3.5 to +4 win player going forward than the +5 win player he’s been historically. For this team, right now, should they hang onto a 35-year-old +4 win outfielder?
I think there’s an argument to be made that perhaps they should not. The organization is absolutely swimming in outfielders. Besides Gutierrez and Balentien (who are under team control through 2012 and 2014 respectively), Michael Saunders is a 22-year-old left-handed bat with average or better tools across the board. You could go into 2010 with those three as your starting outfield and feel fairly comfortable in their abilities. The team is likely to draft Dustin Ackley, a polished left-handed hitter who should transition to CF or LF as a professional, with the #2 pick in about three weeks. The team also can count Gregory Halman, Ezequiel Carrera, Tyson Gillies, and Denny Almonte among the better prospects currently in the organization.
Assuming the team drafts Ackley, the M’s will have a remarkable surplus of upper level outfield talent. Not all of the prospects will pan out, but when you have this kind of sheer quantity of talent on hand, it’s a pretty good bet that you’ll get two or three decent players. Maybe it won’t be Ackley-Gutierrez-Saunders, but instead it turns out to be Carrera-Gillies-Halman. Or Balentien-Ackley-Saunders. The best way to get a couple of good major leaguers is to get a bunch of good minor leaguers, and that’s what the M’s have done in the outfield.
So, where does that leave Ichiro? If the ownership mandates that he’s untouchable, then you probably go into 2010 with Gutierrez in CF, Saunders and Balentien platooning in LF, and Ackley waiting for one of those spots to open up for 2011. Given that depth, you’re probably trading away guys like Halman for infield or pitching help. But, the question should be asked, is the team better off trading away Ichiro for those pieces and going younger in the outfield?
Maybe.
$17 million is a pretty significant chunk of the M’s budget. While Ichiro is worth $17 million a season, there’s a decent argument to be made that he’d have more on field value to a team that isn’t swimming in young outfielders and in the midst of a transition rebuild. Working on the assumption that the M’s are going to be sellers this summer, it’s at least worth considering whether the organization should consider moving Ichiro. He’s an All-Star player and one of the best in the game, but for where this organization is, the club might be better off trading him for help at SS/2B/SP, where the cupboard is basically empty.
I’m not advocating giving him away, and there’s obviously significant off the field considerations given the team’s ownership situation. But, for the first time since he’s been a Mariner, there’s actually an argument to be made that the team could survive without Ichiro.
Time To Panic
Felix is 88-92 with his fastball, his curve is flat as anything, and he’s throwing a ton of junk early in the game. There’s no way he’s healthy.
Okay, so, pretty much everyone who pitched in this game had lower velocity readings than usual, so we’ll assume that something was wrong with the Pitch F/x data.
Also, ugh.
Game 35, Mariners at Rangers
Hernandez vs Harrison, 11:05 am.
Felix Day is going to suck eggs if we lose. With Bedard getting scratched for Saturday, we’re throwing Jakubauskas-Olson-Vargas at the Red Sox this weekend. Lose today, and you’re staring at a pretty good chance of being losers of six in a row when the Angels roll into town on Monday. The M’s have to win today. They have to. Felix vs an LHP – we couldn’t ask for a better matchup. We lose today, the season is basically over.
Ichiro, RF
Lopez, 2B
Sweeney, DH
Beltre, 3B
Branyan, 1B
Balentien, LF
Johnson, C
Gutierrez, CF (argh!)
Cedeno, SS
Wak gives us another Yuni-free day, which is a blessing. Hopefully Cedeno can play well enough to convince the staff that he should be at SS more often.
As far as the line-up goes, does anyone have an explanation for Rob Johnson hitting in front of Gutierrez? Death To Flying Things is hitting .273/.360/.591 against southpaws this year, and it’s not luck – he’s killing the ball against them. That’s a .951 OPS vs LHPs with a .211 batting average on balls in play. This isn’t some bloopers falling in. He’s struck out once in 22 plate appearances against them, and three of his six hits have gone for extra bases. He should be hitting 2nd, not 8th. Hitting him behind Johnson is just nutty.
Acid In The Wounds
Were you sitting around and thinking “man, you know what this team could use – an injury to Erik Bedard. That would just make this stretch of baseball perfect.” If so, I have good news.
Larry Stone informs us that Bedard will miss his start on Saturday against the Red Sox with tightness in his hamstring. Garrett Olson will get the start in his place.
Remember what I said the other day about Bedard and Washburn being extremely volatile assets? Yea. Please get healthy quickly, Erik, so that we can trade you as soon as possible.
On umps and strike zones
I was going to put up a big, picture-heavy post on how Marvin Hudson’s inability to call a decent strike hosed the game up, but two things:
1) he didn’t do that bad on Washburn and Aardsma, and McCarthy made out decently, though there were some bad calls. And overall, check out the normalized strikezone graph. He wasn’t calling the low strike for beans.
2) humans shouldn’t be calling balls and strikes. A guy squatting behind a plate can’t adequately determine if a 90mph pitch crossed a three-dimensional strike zone. The sooner the swap’s made, the better for the game.
To pre-empt the standard “you can’t be serious” comments I get: I am. That anyone should be trying to judge balls and strikes by eyeballing it is absurd. We know it doesn’t work: we’ve got all of baseball history to show that. If you want the strikezone called consistently, especially if you want it called by the rulebook, you’re on my side.
Arguing that umps should be doing this is saying “I support preventable errors affecting the outcome of games.” And then why not just have whatever system you implement make errors, say, 50% as often as human umpires? Or heck, if you like the errors, have them call 25% of pitches randomly.
Or re-write the rule book, and define the strike zone to be whatever the guy behind the plate thinks it should be, and have that day’s home plate ump give a quick talk about his artistic interpretation during the lineup exchange so both managers can brief their teams on what to expect. Acknowledge and celebrate the flaws.
Backbreaker
That’s a tough loss. Just like with Vargas last night, Washburn should get a medal for surviving Texas’ offense and ballpark. The offense was able to get a few longballs off of McCarthy, whose up-in-the-zone pitching style makes him the kind of righty we can actually score runs against, but the flaws of the offense got exposed late in the game.
You can’t have Lopez bunt Ichiro to second in the 8th inning with Junior coming up against a lefty. You just can’t do it. The odds of Lopez whacking a Guardado pitch are a lot better than Junior getting a base hit against a lefty or Beltre getting a base hit against a side-arming righty. I know Wak likes small ball, and Derek showed he’s been mostly doing an effective job of utilizing the bunt this year, but that was bad. It’s okay to play for one run in a tie game in the 8th inning, but bunting there doesn’t make sense. Not with Lopez at the plate against a lefty, Junior coming up, and a righty specialist warming up to go after Beltre.
Morrow… what can you say? His command sucks and he’s heavily dependent on the fastball. That doesn’t work against good hitting lefties, and the Rangers have a lot of good hitting lefties.
16-18, 3 1/2 out of first place. If they can’t beat Texas with Felix on the hill and an LHP starting for the Rangers… well, let’s just say they need to win tomorrow.
Game 34, Mariners at Rangers
Cy Young contender Washburn v. McCarthy.
A brief call for optimism
In this year’s off-season, with all the trades and small pickups, the front office only really spent a small amount of money on their new lineup.
Last offseason’s acquisitions:
Aardsma, $420k
Branyan costs $1.4m
Cedeno, $1m.
Chavez’s ’09 costs $2m
Griffey costs $2m (+incentives)
Gutierrez, $455k
Olson, $400k
Sweeney, $500k
Vargas, $400k
All their retooling required some talent swaps too, but focus just on that for a second: the new regime’s share of the payroll, if you will, comes in at around $10m.
Next season, between Batista, Washburn, and assume Beltre leaving too, another $31m in payroll will roll off the books.
The Bright Side
Yea, that sucked, but it wasn’t all that hard to see coming. As we’ve noted repeatedly, the Mariners roster is structured incorrectly, which leaves them essentially incapable of hitting pitchers like Scott Feldman. Sending the M’s line-up against RH sinker-slider guys is just going to result in failure. This isn’t going to get better until they make changes. The team will hit fine against lefties and hold their own against righties who pitch up in the zone (McCarthy tomorrow, for instance, they should do okay against), but they can’t hit this pitcher type. So, pretty much any time you see the M’s going against a Bartolo Colon/Sidney Ponson/Nick Blackburn/Shane Loux/Scott Feldman type, you can forget scoring a bunch of runs. Until this team tosses one or two of Yuni/Lopez/Johjima overboard and adds a couple of left-handed bats, this is what you’ll see.
But, at least we had Jason Vargas’ effort tonight. Expectations were understandably low, and while 400 foot outs are not a recipe for success, the M’s couldn’t have asked for any more from him than they got tonight. I loved the gameplan he took to the mound.
Look at all those change-ups. He threw 22 of them, and mostly did a good job of locating them. He knew the Rangers are a great fastball hitting team, and he has a below average fastball, so he didn’t even bother trying the whole “establish the fastball” crap. He went with his off-speed stuff, disrupted timing, mixed speeds and locations, and used the fastball as a complementary pitch. Against offenses with less power and more left-handed bats, he can throw the fastball a little more, but that wasn’t going to work tonight and he knew it. Just a smart, well pitched game by a guy who really had no business succeeding in that environment.
Game 33, Mariners at Rangers
Vargas vs Feldman, 5:05 pm.
Ichiro, RF
Lopez, 2B
Griffey, DH
Beltre, 3B
Branyan, 1B
Gutierrez, CF
Johjima, C
Betancourt, SS
Chavez, LF
As I mentioned in the piece this morning, this is a brutal situation for Vargas to try to stake out a claim to a rotation spot. The Rangers are going to throw a line-up of seven right-handed hitters, Josh Hamilton, and Chris Davis at him. There’s simply no soft spots to let him work around guys who can hurt him. Everyone in this line-up can hurt him. Plus, it’s Texas, where the air is not exactly known for knocking down fly balls.
So, the M’s are going to have to put up runs tonight. Unfortunately, they’re facing yet another right-handed sinker ball guy, and this pitcher type is the one the M’s are least suited to hit. Just like Padilla, Colon, Ponson, Blackburn, and all the other right-handed starters of this ilk that have shut down the M’s, Feldman’s sinker is a pretty good pitch against righties and a meatball against lefties. The offense is going to have to come from Ichiro, Griffey, Branyan, and Chavez. Hopefully, they can get a couple home runs early and get into the Rangers bullpen.