Nice Timing, Jack
I just posted a long treatise on the rotation candidates, including Aaron Heilman, and now you’ve gone and are reportedly close to trading him to the Cubs.
From what I can gather, the M’s would be getting Ronny Cedeno + in return. If the M’s can get Cedeno and Rich Hill out of the deal, we should all send Zduriencik a valentine.
Edit: Ken Rosenthal confirms that we’re getting Cedeno and “a pitching prospect” for Heilman. No Rich Hill – we’ll talk about the prospect once he’s identified.
The Eight
One of my favorite things about how the M’s have handled this off-season is the willingness to accept uncertainty heading into spring training. In past years, the organization was all about plugging holes with Proven Veterans (TM) in order to establish a predictable 25-man roster where everyone knew their job heading into camp. This year, there are five position players and three pitchers who are basically guaranteed a starting job, and everyone else is fighting for the six other starting gigs and the reserve slots.
Being willing to deal with uncertainty leads to a lot more flexibility and higher potential returns. Simply through sheer quantity of talent, you have a better chance of finding a good rotation when you have eight potential starters rather than five. And that’s exactly what the M’s have – eight potential starting pitchers headed to spring training. Let’s take a look at the spots that probably aren’t available this spring.
#1 – Felix Hernandez. This job isn’t up for grabs.
#2 – Erik Bedard. Can’t trade him in this market until he re-establishes his value. If he’s healthy, he’s a lock.
#3 – Brandon Morrow. The M’s have made it very clear that they see Morrow as a starter.
That leaves five guys fighting for the #4 and #5 starter spots. The candidates:
Jarrod Washburn – $10 million salary makes him untradeable, and while the contract is horrible and they obviously should have moved him when they had the chance, that’s all in the past now. He’s coming to Peoria, so where does he fit on the roster? He’s clearly a below average starter with no future in Seattle, but that doesn’t make him useless. As a flyball pitch-to-contact left-hander, he’s the pitcher we’d expect to benefit the most from a Chavez/Gutierrez/Ichiro outfield. With an outstanding outfield defense behind him, it’s fairly reasonable to see the potential for him to run a ~4.00 ERA in the first half and the team be able to dump him during the summer, saving $5 million or so of the contract that he’s owed. If you put him in the pen, you’re eating the whole $10 million.
Carlos Silva – probably the most obvious regression-to-the-mean candidate in baseball. His 6.46 ERA was two full runs higher than his 4.63 FIP, and that’s as unsustainable as anything you’ll ever see. He’s the exact same guy he’s always been – a strike-throwing ultra high contact starter who relies heavily on his defense. The extreme hatred of Silva simply isn’t justified by what we should expect from him on the mound in 2009. Like Washburn, he’s a 4.7 FIP guy who could easily outperform that mark if the team puts a good defense behind him. Like Washburn, he’s a #5 starter with a hideous contract, but the best way to get him off the roster is to have him re-establish some value as an innings eater. He can’t do that from the bullpen.
Ryan Rowland-Smith – the 25-year-old Aussie is going to have a lot of support for a spot in the rotation from both the blogosphere and the local media (in case you didn’t notice, Geoff Baker is a big fan). He’s young, he’s under team control for several years, he’s also a left-handed flyball pitcher who should benefit greatly from improved outfield defense, and he put up good results after moving to the rotation to finish 2008. If you’re treating 2009 as a build-for-the-future season, it’s worth finding out if Rowland-Smith can establish himself as a back-end starter, allowing the team to potentially close one hole in it’s 2010 rotation. However, there’s other considerations here – RRS wasn’t all that good as a starter, despite the results – his K rate as a starter was lower than Washburn’s, and his command isn’t as good. His success out of the bullpen, and the team’s need for a lefty setup guy, also are factors in the decision.
Aaron Heilman – He’s made no secret out of his desire to be a starter, which is one of the reasons the Mets shipped him off to Seattle in the first place. With a lot of competition, though, he’s going to have to really show improved command and bite on his slider to earn a starting job. His successful years as a reliever, he was a two-pitch guy, and the addition of the slider to his repertoire last year didn’t go so well. He’s not going to succeed as a starter without that breaking ball, though. However, the Ryan Dempster comparisons just won’t go away, and indeed, there are similarities. The Cubs hit the jackpot by moving Dempster to the rotation and finding a high quality starter, and with Heilman under team control through 2010, there’s a good amount of upside to be had if that would repeat itself in Seattle. The best case scenario for the M’s involves Heilman pulling a Dempster, but the question of how likely that is hangs over the rest of the discussion.
Miguel Batista – He’s the guy who really doesn’t have much of a chance unless the team bus crashes into a ditch or something. Coming off a disastrous ’08 season, 38 years old, in the final year of a contract that makes him untradeable, and with prior experience and success a reliever, he’s almost certainly heading to the bullpen. He’s an emergency option if Bedard gets hurt again, the team manages to trade Washburn, and someone else goes down in spring training, but the odds of him breaking camp as one of the team’s five starters are not very good. I expect that he’ll actually be a decently useful reliever, but for all intents and purposes, he’s only marginally involved in this conversation.
So, how should this all shake out? If the season started tomorrow, I’d go with Washburn and Silva as the #4 and #5 starters, but with Heilman and Rowland-Smith both working multi-inning reliever roles. Yes, I know, this will make a lot of you upset, but the team has a limited window of opportunity to get some value back from the Washburn/Silva contracts, and there’s real value in getting some ROI out of those two rather than just eating their entire contracts.
The goal, of course, would be to move Washburn as soon as possible. If he strings together five good starts to begin the season and someone calls him about him in May, you give him away and throw a party. At that point, you move either Heilman or Rowland-Smith into the rotation and give them a chance to show what they’ve got. Both of them are unlikely to be able to handle a full season starters’ workload anyway, so letting them start the year in the ‘pen will help keep their innings down while the team puts out marketing pamphlets selling Washburn to anyone who will listen.
By June or July, the team should have an idea of whether they have a real shot at winning a weak division or not as well as seeing if Bedard is going to pitch well enough to establish some trade value. If the team is out of contention and he’s pitching well and healthy, trading him is a no-brainer, which then opens up a slot in the rotation for the other Heilman/Rowland-Smith starter to join and finish out the year as a starter. If the team is contending and he’s pitching well, you probably keep him and make a run at a playoff spot. And, of course, if he’s injured again, then the rotation spot for Heilman/Rowland-Smith has already been created.
If you start the year with Rowland-Smith or Heilman in the rotation at the expense of Washburn or Silva, you’re not significantly upgrading the roster and you’re passing on the opportunity to rebuild some value from those two while you still can. I know those two are pariahs in the blogosphere, and they stand for everything that was wrong with the last administration, but those aren’t good reasons to make decisions on who should be pitching for the 2009 Mariners coming out of spring training.
The team has seven arms (and Batista) for five spots, but two of them are likely to be traded during the season, so there should be enough innings for everyone.
A brief distraction for some of you
Last year, I sat down and started to work on a Mariner text adventure game. In March, I briefly posted it here for feedback, but I never got back to finishing it for a variety of boring reasons. Thanks to events of the last year, it’s no longer as applicable. Or at all, really.
Here, then, for your momentary enjoyment, if you are both a Mariner fan and someone who knows what happens if you say “plugh” and why an “elvish sword of great antiquity” glows, I offer to you: A Fine Day in Peoria. It’s a .z5 file. It comes with no warranty of any kind. No tech support, nothing. It costs nothing, and you are guaranteed to get your money’s worth. If you get a laugh out of it, that’s good enough.
One-horse town
I’ve been chewing on this since Hickey posted about the PI’s looming closure.
Any reasonable observer knew that having a one-paper town was inevitable when they signed the Joint Operating Agreement. Sharing functions meant it would be extremely hard to break away. Having the Seattle Times Company run the parent web presence (nwsource) probably didn’t help, either. If you followed Baker, you’ve seen him pushing the Times blog into different media forms with audio and video snippets in his posts, while the PI has… blogs. One of those two had a budget (though, in fairness, it’s worth noting that the Times cut costs by not sending Baker or a Times reporter on the road for some series late in the year, which is inexcusable).
This is going to suck. I mean no offense to the guys at the PI, but strictly in terms of game coverage there’s not a lot of difference between the papers, ESPN, the wire services. This is an opportunity lost. One of the things I see blogs doing a lot better than print is following season-long developments in more depth than papers can (or are willing to do). Anyway.
The problem is first, the columnists. The print columnists do a lot more to drive discussion and define the common views of fans than almost anyone outside of the people who broadcast the games (“Oh, no question…”).
Art Thiel’s a better sports columnist than anyone at the Seattle Times. He’ll be out of a job soon, while Steve Kelley inexplicably continues to collect paychecks. Thiel wrote a must-read book for M’s fans, Out of Left Field. Thiel’s the only person to repeatedly put the screws to the M’s ownership representatives and ask them difficult questions.
Second, though, it’s the competition. I’m sure that on the Times side, this will be met with howls of protest at their intention to continue to cover all issues with integrity and professionalism. I’ll skip my side rant on the Times’ spotty record on those counts for now. But the equation now becomes
value of running story in potential papers/page views and increased reputation
vs.
damage to relationships, future access (and so on)
Here’s an example from our own experience. When the M’s were throwing up their crappy bleachers in the beer garden and hoping no one would notice, I screamed and hollered until my throat was hoarse. USSM readers wrote letters and called the M’s. Only the PI picked up the story, covering it a couple of times. The M’s backed down (mostly). The Times never covered it.
It’s a lot easier to run a story if you can say “if I don’t, Bob over there on the other paper will…” And while it’s easier for someone to favor one side over the other in terms of access, information, and so on, it’s also a lot easier to get something quashed if there’s only one person who has to be convinced.
Take payroll. Every year the M’s have made a huge deal about how they’re spending a bazillion dollars, and it’s so awful for them, so painful, but they’re willing to make the sacrifice for us, the fans. And it’s the most transparent malarkey.
Or instead, look at the team’s deal with the city, and the PFD. How is the coverage of Mariner finances, and especially complicated issues like the revenue-sharing agreement, going to get better with fewer people covering this? Jim Street’s not going to put on a fedora with a little “press” card in the band and go start knocking on doors to see if the M’s are cooking the books to avoid giving money back to the city. Who will?
Last year we also saw the benefit of competition, particularly in Felix-related coverage, where relying on one source would paint a very different picture than if you read several. The fewer perspectives we have, the more one account determines how a player or event is perceived.
I’m (obviously) a huge proponent of blog coverage, but there’s no way it fills the gap of a major paper. We don’t get press access. We can’t go talk to Wakamatsu or anyone on the team unless we know them personally. We don’t have the ability to spend eight hours interviewing people about a breaking issue and turning around something insightful for the next day. The research and analysis done here or on Lookout Landing or anywhere is done essentially for free (well, not Lookout Landing, obviously, as they get to bathe in a hot tub of Kos’ money every night). There’s a lot you can’t do as a writer when your budget is zero.
So here’s where that leaves us, press-coverage-wise:
* Times: unless the go the SF Chronicle route and bulk up post-PI, more of the same.
* Tacoma News Tribune: same. Particularly good Rainiers coverage, Times coverage.
* KIRO: Shannon Drayer’s hiring is great news, especially if they let her do some more of the KOMO-style blogging we saw last year.
* Pravada: MLB.com doesn’t break news, doesn’t say anything negative about players or teams, and the M’s team site prints what are possibly the laziest Q&A mailbags of any media outlet anywhere. Pretty much worthless.
* FSN: not a lot of value add here unless Senior Key Analyst Bill Krueger starts providing actual analysis of any kind, or something similarly crazy happens.
And then of course there’s the national press. You know how that goes.
As enthusiastic as we’ve been about the upcoming season and the prospects for the M’s future, this is bad for fandom, especially if Thiel winds up leaving town.
If you haven’t read about today’s Luncheon already…
…what are you waiting for? I’m not going to just copy and paste all the beautiful quotes and nuggets of information but, trust me, it’s worth your time.
• Recap on Ryan Divish’s blogÂ
Tired of waiting…
Pitchers and catchers report in 22 days (wait…Friday the 13th?!?! I thought baseball players were supposed to be a superstitious bunch!)
Opening Day is 74 days away. (Damn, that seems like so long!)
M’s home opener is 82 days away.
The Aardsma Trade
Seriously, I think Jack is trying to do whatever possible to make sure we write as many positive things about him as we can. When the Red Sox DFA’d Aardsma a few days ago, I wrote a post about how the M’s should make a deal for him, then said “ehh, screw it, it’s a few hundred words on something that isn’t going to happen.”
I even lobbied last March for the M’s to pickup Aardsma, as I think he’s got potential to be a pretty decent reliever. This is the kind of buying low on a guy with a big arm that can pay off in significant ways.
Yet another move where we can just sit back and say “yep, our new GM is awesome.”
Tuesday news
Real quick…
• The Mariners avoided arbitration with Erik Bedard today, agreeing to a base contract of $7.75 million. The deal can be worth $8.35 million if Bedard pitches 205 innings this season.Â
• They also pulled off a trade with the Red Sox. According to the News Tribune’s Ryan Divish, the Mariners sent minor league lefthander Fabian Williamson to Boston for righthander David Aardsma. This fills the M’s 40-man roster and adds another arm to the already overflowing fight for bullpen spots. As they say, you can never have too many pitchers and perhaps this is just the first piece of a bigger puzzle.
Williamson has a good arm, but has never been considered one of the M’s top prospects. The 19-year-old spent last season with rookie-level Pulaski. Over 11 starts, Williamson pitched 52.2 innings, striking out 67, walking 27 and maintaining a 4.10 ERA.
And, yes, Aardsma’s sister is an actress.
One More Bat
With spring training a few weeks away, we have a pretty good sense about most of the roster.
Johjima and Clement are going to split time behind the plate. Depending on how much Clement shows defensively, the M’s may or may not carry Jamie Burke as a third catcher.
Beltre is at third, Betancourt is at short, and Lopez is at second. Branyan is penciled in as the first baseman, and Chris Shelton will fight Mike Morse for the right to be his platoon partner. Reegie Corona is currently the reserve middle infielder/pinch runner, but the team is looking to upgrade and might bring in a better player to unseat him.
In the outfield, Gutierrez is the center fielder and Ichiro is in right. Endy Chavez and Wladimir Balentien are the current candidates for the LF job.
However, Zduriencik has made it clear that his preference would be to add one more good major league hitter, preferably a lefty, before the club gets to Arizona. With the other six spots essentially taken, the new player will have to come from the LF/1B/DH pool. Here are a few of the more popular options, as they currently stand, if we allocate approximately 2000 plate appearances and 2,900 defensive innings to those three positions.
Stand Pat
In this scenario, the M’s would likely run different platoons with Chavez and Balentien in LF, Branyan and Shelton/Morse at first, and a rotating wheel of DH’s that would look something like this:
LF PA Innings wOBA UZR Chavez 300 850 0.304 10 Wlad 300 600 0.313 -5 1B PA Innings wOBA UZR Branyan 400 850 0.337 -3 Shelton 275 600 0.335 3 DH PA Innings wOBA UZR Clement 300 0.338 Wlad 150 0.313 Branyan 100 0.337 Shelton 75 0.335 Johjima 50 0.304 Lopez 30 0.324 Beltre 10 0.338 Ichiro 10 0.338 Total 2000 2900 0.325 5
The wOBA projections come from Sean Smith’s CHONE projection system – I put in the defensive projections. The offense would be -8 runs over 2,000 PA, the defense is +5 runs, the position adjustment for these three is a total of -35 runs, and the replacement level adjustment is +67 runs. Add it all up, and you get +28 runs above replacement, or +2.8 wins. That’s the status quo.
Trade for Nick Swisher
Here’s my preferred alternative – trading for Nick Swisher and giving him all of the PA’s that would have gone to Wlad (he’d either go away in the Swisher deal or in a separate trade) plus some of the PA’s that would have gone to Chavez.
LF PA Innings wOBA UZR Swisher 600 1100 0.360 5 Chavez 150 350 0.304 4 1B PA Innings wOBA UZR Branyan 400 850 0.337 -3 Shelton 275 600 0.335 3 DH PA Innings wOBA UZR Clement 300 0.338 Branyan 100 0.337 Shelton 75 0.335 Johjima 50 0.304 Lopez 30 0.324 Beltre 10 0.338 Ichiro 10 0.338 Total 2000 2900 0.340 9
The new wOBA from these three positions is .340, which translates to a 26 run offensive increase. There’s also a 4 run defensive increase, so the group goes from 28 runs above replacement to 58 runs above replacement, or +5.8 wins. Using Nick Swisher to replace Wladimir Balentien and cut Endy Chavez’s at-bats gives the Mariners a +3.0 win surge for 2009.
The other fun thing about Swisher is that his experience as a 1B gives you some serious flexibility. In late game situations with the lead, you could move Swisher to first and use Endy as a defensive replacement in the outfield, maximizing his defensive innings without giving him that many at-bats. You could also use Swisher as Branyan’s platoon partner instead of Shelton/Morse. Lots of options with Swisher on the roster.
Sign Adam Dunn
For those of you who are salivating over Adam Dunn sitting out there without a real contract offer, here’s the same analysis, except we sub in Dunn for Swisher.
LF PA Innings wOBA UZR Dunn 500 1000 0.373 -12 Chavez 150 450 0.304 5 1B PA Innings wOBA UZR Branyan 400 850 0.337 -3 Shelton 275 600 0.335 3 DH PA Innings wOBA UZR Clement 300 0.338 Dunn 100 0.373 Branyan 100 0.337 Shelton 75 0.335 Johjima 50 0.304 Lopez 30 0.324 Beltre 10 0.338 Ichiro 10 0.338 Total 2000 2900 0.344 -7
Instead of a .340 wOBA and a +8 defense, the team gets a .344 wOBA and -7 defense. That’s a seven run offensive increase and a 15 run defensive decrease. Instead of being +5.8 wins, the team would get +5.0 wins from these three spots. That makes Dunn a +2.1 win increase over the status quo and a -0.8 win decrease over trading for Nick Swisher. Considering Swisher’s contract (3 years, $22 million with a club option that could make it 4 years and $31 million) and Dunn’s reported demands (4 years, $56 million), in order for Dunn to make sense, he’d have to either cut his asking price in half or the Yankees would have to be demanding the moon for Swisher. Neither of those seem likely. As long as Swisher’s a possibility, Dunn doesn’t make sense.
And finally…
Sign Ken Griffey Jr
It won’t help the team. I promise.
LF PA Innings wOBA UZR Chavez 300 600 0.304 8 Wlad 250 500 0.313 -4 Griffey 150 350 0.332 -4 1B PA Innings wOBA UZR Branyan 400 850 0.337 -3 Shelton 275 600 0.335 3 DH PA Innings wOBA UZR Griffey 250 0.332 Clement 150 0.338 Wlad 100 0.313 Shelton 50 0.335 Johjima 30 0.304 Lopez 25 0.324 Beltre 10 0.338 Ichiro 10 0.338 Total 2000 2900 0.326 0
The team would get an extra run on offense and lose 5 runs on defense compared to the status quo. Yep, that’s a downgrade. They’d be a half win better by not adding Griffey. Whatever money you’d spend on Griffey would be wasted, both in terms of improving the club on the field and in limiting the playing time of players with some career ahead of them past 2009. Toss in the opportunity cost of not acquiring a real hitter to fill the void, and it’s a move that doesn’t make any sense at all.
So, to sum this up:
Make no more moves, platoon Wlad/Chavez in LF: +2.8 wins
Trade for Swisher: +5.8 wins
Sign Dunn: +5.0 wins
Sign Griffey: +2.4 wins
One of these options is clearly superior to the rest of them. Nick Swisher please.
M’s Luncheon On Friday
If you haven’t seen the ad over on the left hand side, there’s a luncheon on Friday from 11:30 to 1:30 at the SeaTac Doubletree Inn. It’s a fundraiser for the Boy Scouts of America. Guests include Edgar Martinez, Jack Zduriencik, and Don Wakamatsu among others, and they’re auctioning off some pretty cool stuff.
The flyer for the event is linked here. Sounds like it should be a fun time.