Future Forty Updated
So, I know it’s been too long, but the Future Forty has been updated once again. You can find the link over on the left hand side. As always, I’ve tinkered some.
The graphs from last time have gone away – sorry. They were, at this point, too much work and not enough reward. They might come back eventually. We’ll see.
I got rid of the somewhat ambiguous categories of prospect types and replaced them with affiliation level. Between the WAR/ETA columns listed for each player, you should be able to infer more information than a placement of “projected regular, a few years away”, and categorizing the prospects by level of play should give you a pretty good idea of how far from the majors a particular prospect is anyway. Plus, this makes the Future Forty a better reference guide for those who are looking at it to figure out who to watch when going to a minor league game, which is a nice side benefit.
The minor league rosters haven’t been decided on yet, by the way, so some of the placements are guesses. Triunfel could start out in High Desert, for instance. We’ll update these once the rosters become public.
Don’t worry about not having any prospects listed for the Aquasox – most of their prospects come from the draft, so it will start to fill out in June.
Some basic overall thoughts – the M’s probably have more prospects ticketed for Triple-A than any other club in baseball. For the most part, they aren’t high upside types, but the M’s have pretty significant depth at the highest level. If nothing else, the Rainiers should be pretty good this year, especially when you factor in some of the roster filler types are useful Triple-A players.
If Triunfel starts off in High Desert, that West Tennessee team is going to be barren.
Four of the best young pitching prospects in the system are ticketed for High Desert. Can’t wait until we get out of that place. On the bright side, Raben should have lots of fun there.
Overall, I think the M’s system is average-ish, compared to the rest of MLB. They probably won’t graduate many players this year, and they’ll have four picks in the top 50 during the draft this summer, so if the young arms stay healthy and progress, the M’s are easily looking at a top 10 system next year.
Commercials out
Ahhhh, let us begin our yearly ritual of complaining about how this year’s commercials aren’t as good as the classics.
Recommended topics for discussion:
– What do these commercials say the M’s believe about this series?
– And what is the advertising intended to assuage us about?
– Which players are apparently out of favor and likely to be traded?
– What’s the Moose’s current standing in the M’s universe?
If I were in charge of the M’s commercials, I’d make them all Ichiro-centric. Random 30s slices of Ichiro’s world would be awesome, and probably sell the team as well as anything else could. Like him making fun of Lasorda:
Tommy Lasorda, the tournament’s official mascot, held court during batting practice with several Japanese players.
Ichiro Suzuki stopped by and spoke passable English with Lasorda, who in turn spoke passable English with Suzuki. Ichiro kept pointing to Lasorda’s circumferentially-challenged midsection and saying, “How many months?â€
Clearly unfamiliar with certain idioms, Lasorda answered, “I’m 82 years old.â€
Random Marinerosity
I’ve been tinkering with Mariner sim seasons in preperation for my traditional giant post on the topic, and some interesting things have emerged.
– If you don’t think Betancourt’s going to play decent defense, Ronny Cedeno doesn’t look so bad. The difference in their offense isn’t projected to be so great that you’d tolerate more than a couple runs drop defensively, and Betancourt’s defense needs to come way, way back for it to be close
– I totally dig the potential Shelton/Branyan platoon. It’s just awesome.
– Griffey essentially resolves the question of whether you want to carry a third catcher (no) but the choice between Burke and Rob Johnson’s interesting.
– Here’s the rotation I’ve been using, in the interests of realism: Felix, Bedard, Morrow, Jarrod, Silva.
– Here’s the rotation I’ve been using when I want to win: Felix, Bedard, Morrow, Jarrod, Rowland-Smith.
– Bullpen’s like picking names out of a hat, really. In real life, it’s awesome that the only Mariner pitchers not to issue a walk are Shawn Kelley and Randy Freaking Messenger. And, I guess, the Newer Slimmer Carlos Silva.
– When I play the season out game-by-game, it’s remarkably more fun than last year’s version
– Especially when Felix, Morrow, or Bedard starts.
So what else is going on?
Johjima got ejected in Japan’s WBC loss to Korea. Ejected! Johjima! And tomorrow we get Japan v Cuba @ 8pm and US vs Venezuela at… four? And if you think you’ve seen incoherent internet commentary, I’d like to point you to the comments sections on those game posts.
WOW! I love this. Red Sox fans and Yankee fans TEAMING UP ON SOME PUERTO RICO FREAKIN Azz!! Think if Yankee fans Merged with Red Sox fans in the same stadium rooting for team USA… They would make the other country cry because we were so loud haha
Or how about
japan got luck in the previous game with Cuba, but this time, they’ll never get a luck again i think. Korea and Cuba will likely in semi. japanese showed a typical loser today. they have no power to recover. btw, who got the biggest luck in the 1st WBC? neddless to say it was japan
Of course it’s all fixed so the US will win (allowing the WBC to survive), but it’s good to see people worked up about baseball.
Spring training game at 6, when the M’s play a split squad game against their road squad from 2007… wait, that’s the Royals!
I’m sick and tired of Dave’s East Coast bias. I’m sure in his continuing Fangraphs series he’ll rate the M’s #16 or something because he hates us so much. Have you noticed that so far only one east coast team (the Nationals) appears in the bottom half? Unless you want to count the Reds or the Marlins, pfffft.
First day without the PI.
Can’t Alex Rodriguez afford handlers who run in arms waving to interrupt, for example, staggeringly embarrassing photo shoots? Or afterwards get the photos back before they’re distributed? I just… wow. What was the photographer saying to get him to do that?
Apologies for being scarce of late, but on the good side, if you’re in Spain or the Netherlands, flights now cost less. I’ve been pretty much working on that and sleeping the last two weeks or so.
This is going to make some portion of you immediately spend $50. After finally breaking down and buying one after years of gadget envy, I found out that Amazon’s got the Leatherman Skeletool CX
Mmm… skeletool.
Reading tea leaves for Griffey’s role
Sooooo I’m not sure what to make of Jim Street’s latest. It reads like he’s going to be playing as much left field as he wants and can, but also like the M’s are just getting him time out there now while trying to establish why he won’t be a regular:
“The biggest thing is how much Junior wants to play left field,” Wakamatsu said. “I know how effective he can play there, but his health will dictate it as much as anything. We have talked to him about doing whatever we can to get as much production out of him while keeping him healthy all year.
“We don’t want that [left] knee flaring up on him, forcing him to play hurt the way he did last year. I think he’s all for that.”
There’s a lot of commentary, which we’ll discard, and then this indirect quote
Wakamatsu said that several factors would be taken into account when determining how much playing time Griffey gets in the field and how much time he spends in the DH role.
Endy Chavez — currently playing for Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic — probably would get the majority of starts in left field against right-handed pitchers. Griffey would handle the DH duties in most of those games.
Of course, being the pessimist I am, because pessimism is tomorrow’s status reports delivered early, I immediately jumped to wondering how much “most” and “majority” is.
Still, I have faith — the team’s been making smart moves all off-season. Until we see Griffey out there three days a week I’m going to assume they’re just seeing what they’ve got and how much of liability he’d be if he did play.
Ryan Franklin 2.0
Chris Jakubauskas pitched well again down in Arizona, and on a roster full of pitchers with lousy command, he’s starting to stand out. So, I figured I’d just toss this out there, since we haven’t really written about Jakubauskas much.
No, the numbers aren’t exactly the same, but if you want to know what Jakubauskas’ potential is, Franklin is your answer (those are his minor league numbers, by the way). A strike-throwing guy with decent movement and no knockout pitch that can swing between starting or relieving and counts on good defense to get outs… we’ve seen this before. With a great defense and Safeco Field offering aid, this pitcher type can actually look alright, especially if Jakbauskas could replicate Franklin’s rubber arm.
But, as we mentioned in the post this morning, this is the opposite of the pitcher type that the M’s have been acquiring. There’s practically no upside here – he could be a decent enough low leverage mopup reliever/swing guy, but the organization isn’t really in a position to try to squeeze out the maximum value of a guy whose upside is +5 runs above replacement.
He’s a nice story, and it’s good to see someone in the organization throw strikes and give the beat writers a break from horrible pitching in Peoria, but there’s too many good arms fighting for major league roster spots, and Jakubauskas just doesn’t have enough potential to justify giving him one of those spots in lieu of an arm who could actually turn into something.
Felix Day in the W-Bay-Cayyyyy
Though not for the M’s it’s still Felix Day.
And that’s it for the PI as a paper
See Hickey’s latest (and last, it seems) entry over there.
It’s an unjust world where Jim Street’s employed writing puff pieces for MLB.com while Hickey looks for a job. Art Thiel’s one of the few remaining on to try and make it as a pure online-only play.
Zduriencik’s Pitcher Type
Since Zduriencik took over as GM, the Mariners have added five relievers to the organization who require spots on the 40 man roster. Those five are listed below, along with their 2008 walk rate, strikeout rate, and groundball rate
Jose Lugo, 10.5% BB%, 24.2% K%, 56% GB%
David Aardsma, 15.4% BB%, 21.5% K%, 44% GB%
Tyler Walker, 9% BB%, 21.6% K%, 46% GB%
Luis Pena, 19.3% BB%, 20.2% K%, 47% GB%
Jesus Delgado, 12.9% BB%, 21.7% K%, 52% GB%
You should notice a trend. These guys all got a ton of strikeouts, all of them had above average groundball rates, and all of them suck eggs at throwing strikes. Okay, lumping Walker in with the other four in that regard is a little unfair, because while he doesn’t have great command, he looks like Greg Maddux next to these guys.
The M’s have basically spent the winter collecting raw, unpolished arms for the bullpen. Velocity and movement matter, command not so much. And this is, honestly, a great way to build a really good bullpen. If we look at the relievers in MLB last year who posted the 10 lowest FIPs, you get the usual collection of Rivera/Papelbon/Lidge, but there are three names relevant to the discussion:
Hong-Chih Kuo
Grant Balfour
Matt Thornton
Kuo was the best left-handed reliever in the game last year. Coming into the ’08 season, he was a guy with good stuff and no command.
Balfour was an elite setup man, probably the best in the game, for the Rays a year after posting a 7.30 BB/9 in the majors.
Thornton, who you’ll remember for his good stuff/horrible command days with the M’s, had the best year of his career after seeing his command regress in ’07.
These three guys were on the level of the best relievers in baseball. Their teams got all-star value from these three live armed/bad command guys, all of whom were recently available for practically nothing.
The M’s aren’t going to get good work from all five of these guys. But the M’s are simply taking the right approach here, going with quantity over quality, and then waiting to see which one turns into a relief ace. Odds are, when you collect this many good arms, one of them is going to.
Site info: logins
Hey all, I’ve been collecting scattered reports of login issues, and I’m working on it.
Ichiro on the tv today!
More hot WBC action.
Japan v Cuba at 1pm! ESPN2. Ichiro Ichiro Ichiro. Japan’s continued success keeps those “Ichiro meets Griffey” stories on ice. Remember, reporters: they’ve already met!
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