Game 102, Mariners at Blue Jays
Batista vs. Parrish.
Sorry for the late game thread; then again, it might not be that fun to talk about.
Have at it, though.
The Washburn Rumors
You have probably read by now that the M’s reportedly asked for both Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner from the Yankees for Jarrod Washburn. There’s just no way that’s true – asking for either one is crazy enough, but both? Cashman would hang up on the phone and put call block on any number from 206 if Pelekoudas actually asked for Cabrera and Gardner.
Don’t worry about the no-trade clause – the M’s or Yankees will just pay him to make that go away.
2009 Position Players
One of the first tasks the new GM will have to do when taking over is do a real analysis of what he can expect going forward from the players already here. Since I’m a helpful kind of guy, I figured I’d just do it for him, using win values (as explained here) to gauge the true talent levels of each player on the roster and their relative value to the club. Also included is a comparison of their free market value compared to their current salary. Let’s just go right to the spreadsheet, with a tip of the hat to Colin Wyers for making this process much easier than the last time I did it.
To answer what should be the most popular questions ahead of time:
1. I included Ibanez in order to give context to whether the team should re-sign him or not. The answer is clearly no.
2. If you didn’t read the explanation in the linked post, here’s the short version: WAR is “Wins Above Replacement”, and tells how many wins that player would add over a theoretical league minimum Triple-A guy who could be acquired for free. A 25 man roster that equaled 0 WAR would finish something like 50-112, so you need about 40-45 WAR to be competitive.
3. WAR$ is our estimate of how much a player would get per season if he were a free agent and all 30 MLB teams valued him correctly, given that MLB as a whole is paying about $5 million per win in the free agent market right now. Actual is his real 2009 salary (or our estimate of that number) and the difference column is how much underpaid or overpaid he is relative to his free agent value. Obviously, guys who haven’t gotten to free agency yet will be underpaid – that’s how the system works.
4. Johjima and Morse work well enough as proxies for the bench players. This isn’t meant to be exact, and reserves don’t matter enough for anyone to flip out about the fact that I don’t have a full 13 or 14 player group here.
Okay, now, on to the Mariner specific points.
This group of position players is unbelievably horrible. As a group, they total about 11.5 wins above replacement. Beltre, Ichiro, and Clement are the only guys on the roster who would be starters for most contending clubs, and the Clement projection is pretty optimistic, honestly. LaHair doesn’t belong in the majors, so you can pick up ground by replacing him with a real first baseman, but there’s serious problems everywhere besides 3B and RF.
This team won’t win anything while hoping to get offense from all four of Lopez/Betancourt/Reed/Balentien. You might be able to get away with having one in your line-up, two if you surround them with a few all-stars. But if you give all four regular jobs, you might as well just punt the season.
Realistically, this team needs to replace one (or both) of Lopez and Betancourt with a +3 win infielder(s), acquire a +3 win outfielder, and find a +3 win first baseman, plus find a DH who doesn’t totally suck. Or, to put another way, the team needs about four more position players of Beltre/Ichiro quality.
I’ll do the pitching staff next. The news is a lot better there, thankfully, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that this group of position players is awful.
MLB.com takes different approach to covering team
Okay, okay, if I put this in a post, will everyone stop trying to hijack threads and emailing us?
The money quote:
“I’m astonished to tell you the truth when I look up and I see Vidro’s average is what it is, because I feel like every time he goes up there I’m very confident that he’s going to give us a good at-bat,” Riggleman said. “And for the at-bats that he has, he’s knocked in quite a few runs … he’s been fairly effective in the way we want to use him.
Generally speaking, I try not to post links to MLB.com inanity or Kelley’s occasional forays into baseball commentary (or inaccuracies in beat writer stories) — we’ve really gotten away from that since Finnigan took his leave. MLB.com is to baseball coverage what the game broadcasts are to the team — it’s a PR arm to promote the product. I just accept it at that. But for whatever reason, everyone loves this story, soo… have at it.
Game 101, Red Sox at Mariners
1:40. Buchholz vs Felix.
Happy Felix Day!
Why You Have To Move Washburn
I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but just in case anyone was buying the line about it potentially being wise to keep Washburn, here’s why you absolutely have to move him if you can.
M’s 2009 Committed Payroll:
Ichiro: $17 million
Beltre: $12 million
Silva: $11 million
Washburn: $10.35 million
Bedard: ~$10 million (arbitration eligible)
Batista: $9 million
Johjima: $8 million
Putz: $5 million
Felix: ~$4 million (arbitration eligible)
Betancourt: $2 million
Lopez: $1.6 million
Those M’s are on the hook for almost $90 million for those 11 players. I know, it’s brutal, but it’s true. They do have a decent group of pre-arbitration guys who will all be cheap (Morrow, Green, Lowe, Dickey, Rowland-Smith, Clement, Balentien, Reed) and will fill roles on the club, but this team needs to add five or six new players this winter, with at least three of them being starting quality.
You don’t have to fill all the holes through free agency, but having $36 million in budget room is a lot more appealing than having $25 million in budget room, especially when Washburn is so easily replaced by the Dickey/Rowland-Smith/Morrow group of cheap arms.
It doesn’t matter if the M’s get any talent back in return. For the health of the 2009 team, they need to get Jarrod Washburn’s salary off the books. If you get a player back who can help you, bonus, but the correct answer to any trade offer that involves the M’s unloading his entire 2009 salary is “yes”.
Game 100, Red Sox at Mariners
Matsuzaka versus Dickey.
Why Not Trading Ibanez Might Make Sense
As we head towards the trading deadline, the rumors will continue to push forward as the M’s take phone calls from contenders looking to improve themselves for the stretch run. The two free-agents-to-be (Ibanez and Rhodes) are the most likely to be moved, as most teams prefer the security of getting a name and a face in return for their walk year guys as opposed to the unknown potential draft picks that they would get if they leave as a free agent.
However, as I’ve noted in the past, it occasionally makes more sense to let a free agent leave during the winter than trading him at the deadline. For this to be the case, you basically need a case where you have a player who does things that the Elias Sports rankings consider highly valuable (plays a lot of games, racks up RBIs, gets Wins or Saves, posts low ERA) but, in general, isn’t all that helpful towards building a winning team. Because MLB teams have gotten smarter a lot faster than the free agent rankings system, there are often big disparities between what a team will offer in trade and how a team will be compensated if he leaves via free agency.
Ibanez is going to be one of these cases. He’s almost certainly going to be a Type A free agent at years end, thanks to the fact that he’s been in the line-up and racked up a lot of RBIs the last two years. The Elias Rankings love players like him. A Type A free agent, if offered arbitration and signing with another club, nets the team that lost him two high draft picks – a 16-30 first round pick (if the signing team finishes in the top half of MLB standings, otherwise, its a 1-15 second round pick) and a supplemental pick between the first and second rounds.
Those picks are quite valuable, and forfeiting the right to them by trading Ibanez away can’t be ignored. That is the baseline for what you have to receive in trade in order to justify the move. Would someone be willing to give up the equivalent of two high draft picks for Ibanez?
Not if they understand baseball, because despite what the local media around here thinks, Raul Ibanez is a below average baseball player. His .278/.343/.452 mark while playing half his games in Safeco translates to about +9 runs offensively over a league average hitter so far this year. Considering that an average LF is +5 over an average hitter in a full season, Ibanez is about +4 or +5 runs compared to the average AL left fielder offensively this year.
His defense is, of course, horrible. There’s no denying this – he’s one of the very worst defensive players still being allowed to carry a glove. Every advanced defensive metric shows this to be true. His Fielding Bible +/- is -14 plays (or about -12 runs) so far this year. His UZR is -18. This follows exactly in line with what we’d expect, considering how bad he’s been with the glove the last few years.
Even if you want to take a conservative estimate of his defensive value so far this year, the best you can claim is that he’s been 10 runs below average. It’s almost certainly more than that, but if you want to play devil’s advocate, you could argue for a 10 run defensive penalty and not be totally crazy.
+5 with the bat, -10 with the glove… you do the math. Raul Ibanez is less valuable than the average left fielder, and every good organization in baseball knows it. They aren’t giving up premium prospects for a below average player who, over the course of two months, won’t even add half a win over a replacement level player to a contender’s ledger.
That’s the predicament the M’s find themselves in. Raul Ibanez isn’t very good, and the smart teams in baseball realize that, but the free agent compensation system is so out of touch with reality that the M’s will be highly rewarded for letting him walk this winter. For what Ibanez is, you should expect at most a B- prospect in return, except that you’ll be getting the chance at something much better by just letting him leave via free agency.
The only way the M’s will get a real haul for Raul is if a team decided to take advantage of the system, trade a couple of solid prospects to get him, and then let him walk at years end in order to receive the draft picks to restock the farm. Oakland and Milwaukee have both done this well the last few years, but neither of them will be in the market for an LF in ten days, so I wouldn’t hold my breath that anyone will follow their footsteps.
M’s Jump To KIRO
The P-I makes it official – M’s to be back on KIRO starting next year, giving up about $4.5 million a year in what they were getting from KOMO for the rights.
Wow, did you see that?
I’m not sure you could ask more of a starting pitcher than to go up against that Red Sox offense and come away having only given up two runs. What an example for the rest of the rotation to live up to in this season. “We can challenge these guys and do well,” Washburn’s performance says.
All in all, another demonstration that Washburn is the foundation of this rotation and we’re lucky to have him. I hope that this performance helps prove that if he’s going to be traded, he should demand a high price indeed. This is exactly the kind of gutty start you’d want in a playoff contending rotation.