Wait, wait, what just happened?
I see as if in a fog. My head is… it’s swimming. I… I’m disoriented. I thought he had turned a corner. Didn’t he? I saw it, I became a believer. He’d made improvements… hadn’t he? He had this new pitch, and had made adjustments that stuck, he’d put it all together and turned a corner, the evidence was incontrovertible by any weight of evidence or argumentation.
And then the game… I’ve been staring at the box score hoping that my memory was false, that I’d seen something besides another terrifying meltdown by Washburn, the improved Washburn no less. But no, there it waited until I was ready to accept it.
Washburn (L, 5-13), 4.1 IP, 7 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 2 HR.
Woe! Woe is me! Woe is all of fandom! Stolen from us is Washburn the valuable commodity, so precious the M’s were right to hold onto, and now he is gone, replaced by another one of the endless prancing talentless fools that come streaming out of the clown car of the rotation — how did this happen? He was so good since May! Since May!
And then, reaching out for some kind of sanity, I find out that he’s sucked in August. How did we not see this? Why weren’t we informed? Once we sliced the season into the first ten starts and the rest, were we all so blind that the last few were so worthless? Was his splitter so split, his new changeup grip so gripping that it entranced us even as we had crossed another boundary zone, the nebulous post-trade-deadline wasteland where no hope resides?
August: 0-4, 22 IP, 28 H, 22 R, 18 ER, 9 BB, 11 K, 4 HR. 104 batters faced.
That’s a 7.38 ERA! O cruel Fates! Why do you torture us so?
I am lashed, lashed from side to side by the gusting monthly vagaries of Washburn’s successes and failures, I twist in pain as he struggles and exalt in his success, and now — how long will this new, retroactively bad Washburn last? A month? And then what, another roll of the dice to see how he’ll perform for the next thirty days? What kind of sadistic god metes out such punishment?
Is this our penance for some unknown offense to the baseball deities, to watch this month-by-month horror unfold before us, each lash of the whip spaced by four games to nearly heal, powerless to change the outcome, forced to watch other teams pay less and get so, so much more? Is this cruel fleeting talent of Jarrod only intended to torment us more, to give us hope, and let us savor and nurture it long enough that when it is taken from us our hearts are rent anew, and the pain returns to us fresh?
What is it? What did we do?
Yeah, we’re stuck with Jarrod
So I followed up on some of the info from today’s open call, and yeah… we’re hosed.
Major League Rule 10 (c) (4): unless you’re releasing them unconditionally (essentially) you can’t request waivers on a player for 30 days after you withdraw a request. So it’s not just 30 days, it’s 30 days from when when negotiations fell through and the M’s pulled him back.
Game 124, Mariners at White Sox
Washburn v Buehrle, 5:11
I’m tired of everyone hating on Jarrod Washburn just because he’s bad.
Did you know that if you drop starts where he didn’t go six innings pitched while giving up three or fewer earned runs, he has a 100% quality start percentage? Like the win and the save, the quality start should be your arbitrary statistical measure of choice in evaluating pitchers.
Speaking of arbitrary measures, you may have not noticed that Washburn’s been doing quite nicely lately. Despite not doing anything at all differently — his pitches are the same, he’s slinging them right over the plate as usual (see that great Lookout Landing coverage) and yet the results have changed. The answer is obvious: Jarrod’s doing better in a way we just can’t see in the way he throws, the way the pitches move, or in any other way — so he must be doing something different that we can’t quantify, and that non-quantifiable difference is resulting in quantifiable results. Sometimes analysis has to bow down to analysis, and this is one of those cases.
Furthermore, did you know he’s now throwing a splitter? Yup. Just like Silva was and then wasn’t, it’s a key reason why Jarrod’s success is sustainable, a fact now recognized by others).
How good is his splitter? It’s that good. Look through the pitch logs and check it out. It’s crazy. It’s seemingly logged as a changeup, a cutter, and a slider! It’s so deceptive that it has essentially the same characteristics as other pitches. That’s what’s putting the fear into batters. How can they know if a pitch that looks the same has one of two different names? That’s messing with their heads.
9″ of break on that splitter — that’s more than a fastball!
And what about keeping hitters off balance? Since June, they’ve put up a .271/.332/412 line, where before they were hitting .318/.363/.528. That’s crazy improvement! Sure, you’re going to hear from some people who want to tell you that pitchers don’t have that much control over what happens when opposing hitters make contact, and point you to studies by some Voros guy, or Woolner, or whoever, but I’m going to point you to this:
.318/.363/.528
versus
.271/.332/.412
The results don’t lie: when you look at the season in which the first ten starts are weighed against the second part, Washburn has obviously learned how to control the game. You can make up a theory to explain away whatever, but given two theories: Jarrod’s better since a selected date and now because of reasons, and Jarrod’s better for no reason at all, the view brokered by all those people who hate Jarrod for personal or statistical reasons, well, it’s pretty obvious that the first one’s the right one.
The supposed 30-day waiver rule
Hi — I’ve seen this restriction mentioned but cannot find evidence that the M’s couldn’t put Washburn back on waivers within 30 days of their first (now withdrawn) attempt. If this restriction does exist, this obviously means he’s much less likely to be claimed, as he couldn’t be put on a team’s playoff roster (and you know how valuable Washburn is in the playoffs). But while there are two waiver periods (essentially it’s up to Aug 1 and then Aug 1 onwards) I can’t find anything that would have prevented a second (irrevocable) waiver request within 30 days.
If anyone who can cite the actual rule — not a story about the rule, not someone claiming the rule exists — could help with a comment, that’d be much appreciated.
Free Agent Compensation
Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard a lot of talk about free agent compensation draft picks, especially as they pertain to Raul Ibanez. The Mariners (correctly) decided that they wouldn’t take less than two good prospects for him at the deadline, since they’ll receive two high compensation picks if he leaves as a free agent this winter. They could get two good prospects by not trading him, so there’s no reason to trade him for less than that. By in large, the media has caught on, and we rarely see any more references to a player being traded or “lost for nothing” during the winter. Most people get it – free agent compensation picks are valuable.
However, they don’t make any sense. Seriously, when you stop and think about how the system works and the results it provides, everyone loses. They’re bad for everyone, and it’s pretty remarkable that they still exist. Let’s look at what they’re supposed to do and what they actually do.
Goal #1: Promote parity by allowing teams to recoup talent lost when big market teams steal their players
This clearly doesn’t happen. Go through the list of who gets compensation picks every year, and it’s not the Marlins, Rays, and Royals. It’s the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers, plus other similar big payroll teams. There’s a couple of reasons for this:
1. Type A and Type B free agents are generally good players. Good players make a lot of money, so they are more likely to be on teams with big payrolls. When their contracts expire and they sign with a new team, they’re generally just going from one big payroll team to another, and so the big boys who certainly don’t need extra picks for competitive balance reasons end up with an advantage in the draft anyway.
2. The system requires you to take a financial risk in order to get the draft pick. Teams on strict budgets can’t always afford to take the risk that a player will accept arbitration and eat up a big chunk of their payroll, but it’s just not a big deal to the Yankees if Damaso Marte makes a couple million more than they were counting on. The big payroll teams are more able to take the risk, and thus, more likely to get the reward.
Goal #2: Provide a disincentive for teams to sign free agents away from other clubs, making it more likely for players to stay with their original franchise.
Again, it clearly doesn’t work this way. If you lose a Type A free agent (and you offer them arbitration), you get two high draft picks. If you sign a Type A free agent that another team had offered arbitration to, you lose one high draft pick. In many cases, you actually get rewarded for letting your player leave and bringing in someone else’s exact equal. For instance, if the Mariners were to have to decide between re-signing Raul Ibanez this winter or offering the exact same contract to say, Pat Burrell, then they’d gain an extra pick from signing Burrell and letting Ibanez leave. In fact, we’ve seen teams essentially swap free agents at the same position and both teams have come out with +1 draft picks – the Orioles and Rangers did this in 1994 with Rafael Palmeiro and Will Clark.
Those are basically the two overriding goals of free agent compensation, at least in theory. The current system fails spectacularly at both, and just for good measure, has even more flaws as a byproduct of the system.
Some players are less marketable, and have to sign for less money, after being classified as Type A free agents when they shouldn’t really have been. This is especially true of relief pitchers – rack up the saves and you’ll climb the Elias rankings pretty quickly, even if you’re not particularly good. Most teams have figured out that surrendering a draft pick to sign a mediocre reliever who just happened to notch a lot of 9th inning finishes isn’t a good idea, and they’ll shy away from signing undeserving Type A players who get offered arbitration. For a subset of major league players, they’d be better off getting a worse ranking in the Elias system, because if they become Type As, it will cost them money.
It also, as we saw with Ibanez, keeps non-contending teams from trading quality players at the deadline, making the stretch run and post-season less interesting. Instead of playing for a winning team and potentially getting to play in October, Ibanez has to play out the string for a horrible team because it was in the best interests of the organization not to trade him because they’ll get more for him if he leaves as a free agent.
Overall, it’s hard to find a redeeming quality about the system as currently structured. It doesn’t help small market teams – it does just the opposite, in fact. It doesn’t convince teams to keep their home grown stars, but again, rewards a team for letting their guys walk and replacing them with an equal player from another franchise. It dissuades teams from making deadline trades to help contenders strengthen their clubs, and in some cases, it costs players a chance at a better contract.
If this system does anything right, I have yet to find it. It fails on so many levels and helps no one, but because it has to be collectively bargained (due to how it affects player salaries, which is a big union issue), it’s unlikely to go away anytime soon. So we’re stuck with a failing system that does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do and adds a few lemons on top of that.
Owners, Players Union, I know this isn’t a sexy issue, but when you guys sit down to renegotiate the CBA, can you do us a favor and just rip up the current free agent compensation system? Thanks.
Stating The Obvious
Ryan Feierabend better figure out why his fastball didn’t make the flight to Minnesota, because he’s not a major league pitcher when his fastball averages 86 MPH. He needs to get it back to the 88-90 range with some regularity, because otherwise, he’s just Horacio Ramirez with a hard to spell last name.
Game 123, Mariners at Twins
Feierabend vs. Perkins, 11:10.
Silva to DL, Feierabend up
As you can probably tell from the lack of a game thread (sorry!), it looks like everyone is out enjoying the summer weather. After the game, the news is that the Chef has “triceps tendinitis,” so Silva going on the DL is the long-expected roster move that allows Ryan Feierabend to start Sunday.
Remember last year, when Jeff Weaver went on the disabled list because his pitching simply wasn’t cutting it in the majors anymore? Just imagine, what if the Mariners hadn’t done the prudent thing and signed Weaver to a one-year flyer, but instead had given him a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract based on his reputation and veteran experience? Never mind, no imagination needed now.
Here’s the bet
In considering whether the M’s should have dumped Washburn for nothing, the issue of whether the team could better use the money comes up again and again.
This off-season, at least one free agent pitcher who has superior numbers to Washburn will sign a one-year deal for under Washburn’s 2010 salary of $10m. And here, I mean numbers indicative of a pitcher’s ability:
* Strikeout rate
* Walk rate
* Line drive rate (and HR rate)
* Ground ball/fly ball split
I predict this year we’ll see at least one pitcher who is clearly superior enough to Washburn to make arguing moot, but here’s our specific criteria: at least 180 IP in 2008, K rate equal or better than Washburn’s, walk rate equal or better than Washburn, LD/HR rate equal or better than Washburn’s. They will sign a deal for one year for less than $10m. Bonus points for 2y under $10m.
I’ll make an additional secondary prediction: there will be at least one free agent hitter who signs a one-year deal for under $10m who would provide a +20 run overall upgrade at a Mariner position from this year, with offense measured by any reasonable advanced metric and defense by UZR, PMR, +/-, or any like decent defensive stat.
Rotating stats
K/9
—
BEST ~9
Felix 8.34
Bedard 8
RRS 6.97
LEAGUE AVERAGE ~6
Batista 5.72
Dickey 5.19
Washburn 5.17
Silva 3.89
WORST ~3.5
BB/9
—
BEST ~1
Silva 1.65
Washburn 2.72
Felix 3.46
LEAGUE AVERAGE ~4
RRS 4.01
Dickey 4.04
Bedard 4.11
Batista 6.09
WORST ~8 (actually, more like 7, 7.5 — at eight you have to be a short reliever who throws 100)
HR/9
—
BEST ~.4
Felix 0.6
RRS 0.74
LEAGUE AVERAGE ~1
Bedard 1
Washburn 1.06
Silva 1.12
Dickey 1.15
Batista 1.5
WORST ~1.6
LD%
—
BEST ~14%
Bedard 16.7
Dickey 18.3
Felix 18.5
Batista 21.5
Silva 22.2
Washburn 22.8
RRS 23
WORST ~25%
GB%
—
RRS 30.6
LOW ~33%
Washburn 36.2
Bedard 40.3
Batista 43
Silva 44.2
Dickey 46.8
Felix 51.5
HIGH ~65.6% (for Webb… mortals aspire to 60%)