The open stance
Sexson, up to May 26th: .200/.277/.413
Sexson, since returning to the lineup with that new, open stance: .263/.349/.263
Assuming for a second that his performance coming back is entirely representative and a reflection only of his open stance change, that’s +72 OBP, -150 SLG.
Yup.
Another fine WP/Apache post
Below the fold to avoid inducing insomnia in most of our readership Read more
Using marginal wins to evaluate the Mariners
Sooooooooo, I’ve seen comments that ask “isn’t there some way to measure how much money the M’s are wasting?” or “Can’t we use salary to evaluate GMs?” and so on.
Yes. Fortunately, the heavy lifting on this has already been done for us, probably best by Doug Pappas, who in 2004 wrote a great essay in that year’s Baseball Prospectus. He proposed that we look at how much each additional win cost a team, compared to a team made up of league-minimum players, who would go about .300 on the season. That team wins 49 games and costs $10.5m to field (I know… I’ll get to that). So if you spend another $10m and get 10 wins, you’re paying $1m/win.
Pretty easy.
Right now, the M’s are on track to win 57 games and pay $118m (rounded!) to do it, for a cost of $13m/marginal win.
The next-highest is the Yankees at $5.6m, followed by the Tigers at $5m, the Dodgers at $4m, the Mets at $3.8m… and at the other extreme, you have the Marlins, paying only $.3m/marginal win, the Rays, at $.7m, and the Athletics, at $1m. The average is about $3m.
The Mariners are on track to pay more than twice as much for a win as any other team in baseball, and four times what the average team pays.
But if you’re skeptical that you could field a team on a $11m payroll budget, I understand entirely. You have to spend on minor league free agents, and bringing non-roster guys into camp, and so on.
Assume then that the Marlins’ budget of $22m is the least you can possibly spend to get a team on the field, and that team would go .300. The Marlins then have to be dropped from the chart, because they’re getting an infinite return on their marginal dollar.
The M’s would then spend $11.7m/win, still over twice as much as the Yankees, and about five times as much as the league average.
That’s an amazingly bad return on their investment, and if the ownership group only looks at one metric, I recommend that: the M’s get half as much for their payroll dollar as any other team, and the people who did it can’t tell you what happened, except to say that they got unlucky. Again.
Game 68, Nationals at Mariners
Clippard vs. The Interview, 7:10.
Here’s a fun game: before you look at the lineups, try and name as many Nationals starting today as you can.
Game 67, Nationals at Mariners
Hill v. Dickey, 7:10.
Dickey’s starting! Woo-hoo!
A USSM milestone
We had our first direct “I’ll donate if you’ll do x” email today. Read more
Yeah, so Putz is injured
“hyperextended elbow”…. yup. He’s on the 15-day DL. Corcoran’s up. He’s been getting smacked around in Tacoma since being sent down, annnnnd here he is, back up.
Clearly, something was wrong with Putz before the incident that got him on the DL. Here’s hoping the two weeks helps them figure out what’s up, as well as heal this particular injury.
All-Time All-Mariner Roster: Catcher
Dave and I have decided to write about something fun this year, and since the 2008 Mariners won’t give us anything good to write about, we’re finding it ourselves. So, today, we launch out on a 25 part series where we build the All-Time roster for the organization, going from the starting catcher all the way down to the long man in the bullpen, picking the best single season at each position. In most spots, there are arguments for more than one season, so we’ll talk through our thoughts before coming to a conclusion.
Today we discuss the catcher: Kenji Johjima 2006 or Dan Wilson 1996?
Dave:
When we talk about the best seasons in franchise history, I think there’s an immediate expectation that the performances we’re going to be talking about are obvious, huge offensive years. However, we have to remember that value is relative, and that the scale for a quality season for a catcher is vastly different than at other positions. So, while Kenji’s 2006 batting line of .291/.332/.451 might not jump off the page, it’s actually a very valuable performance, especially considering the context. There isn’t a park on earth worse suited to Johjima’s offensive skillset than Safeco Field, and he still managed to perform well while transitioning to Major League Baseball.
In fact, his OPS+ for 2006 was 103, meaning that he was a better than league average hitter. Not better than average hitting catcher – better than average hitter period. This isn’t a regular accomplishment for a full-time catcher. This decade, there have only been 42 seasons where a catcher has accumulated 500 or more plate appearances and had an OPS+ of 100 or higher. That’s an average of six catcher seasons per year. 2006 Kenji Johjima is part of that class.
He isn’t the greatest guy at blocking the ball in the dirt, and when compared with Dan Wilson, he’s going to come up short defensively, but there’s no doubt that Johjima’s 2006 season was the best offensive performance the Mariners have ever gotten from behind the plate. With our ability to evaluate catcher defense still a work in progress, I think we have to acknowledge that Johjima’s performance as a rookie was the best we’ve seen from a backstop since the franchise began in 1977.
Derek:
Kenji’s 2006 is right up there, but Wilson’s 1996 is better. We may not know how to evaluate catcher defense nearly as well as other positions, but we know enough to establish that Wilson is superior, enough that it overcomes any differences in offense.
Having seen Dan Wilson’s long decline into awfulness, we forget just how good he was at his peak, and 1996 was absolutely primo Wilson: he was 27, had a great offensive year, and he played outstanding defense.
Johjima hit .291/.332/.451 in 2006, for an OPS+ of 103.
Wilson hit .285/.330/.444 in 1996, for an OPS+ of 94.
That’s a significant difference, but it’s not all that huge. And it’s the Kingdome, yes, but the Kingdome was never the offense-crazy haven it’s been made out to be. Looking at b-r, I see that in 1996, it rated out as 96, favoring pitchers, and the multi-year factor ran about even. That’s not a great park factor number.
Now compare defensive lines. First, the obvious: runners caught. Wilson allowed 61 stolen bases and caught 39, which works out neatly to a 39% thrown out rate (see how considerate Wilson was? He made sure the percentages were super-easy to calculate).
Johjima allowed 57 stolen bases and caught 29 runners, a 34% thrown out rate.
Wilson allows 4 more and nails 10 more in fewer innings. Using my handy run values from The Book, that’s about four runs worth of difference.
The difference isn’t in the staff, either — in 1996 the M’s got 66 starts out of left-handed starters, who generally dampen the running game, while the 2006 Mariners got 67 (as I count it – it’s Hitchcock + Mulholland + Moyer + 8 by Johnson against Washburn + Moyer + 8 Woods starts + 2 Feierabend + 1 Jimenez).
And that’s just with the running game. What about their ability as a backstop?
Wilson: caught 1130 innings, allowed 5 passed balls, 29 wild pitches, and made four errors.
Johjima: caught 1172 2/3 innings, allowed 10 passed balls and 39 wild pitches, and made seven errors.
I’m going to ignore the errors for a second. The run value of a passed ball or a wild pitch is about ~.285 runs (btw, not to plug Tango too often, but this chart is awesome). If we can credit those passed balls and wild pitches to Wilson, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t, that’s another four runs in his favor.
Already, not counting any mobility, foul-catching, pouncing-on-punt kind of more traditional defensive measures, you get +8 runs to Wilson. Was a 27-year old Wilson a better fielder than a 30-year old Kenji? It’s hard to make defensive comparisons, but yes.
Unfortunately, here the evidence fails me: I don’t want to get into separating out how many foul balls they caught, and when I look at the assists, plays where the catchers fielded the ball and then threw somewhere else to get the out He had 57 of them in 1996, while Kenji had 59 in 20 more innings caught. I wish I could get UZRs or PMRs or something useful for 1996 v 2006, but we don’t. I’ll throw my hands up here and call it even, but I suspect that if I really tried to suss an answer from the stats we can know, we’d find Wilson the more mobile and effective fielding catcher as well.
The eight runs saved we can easily grant Wilson make up for the offensive gap between them and more, and make his 1996 the better season.
Dave:
You know, when I was writing the pro-Johjima part, I had a feeling that I was arguing a losing position. Reading that, I know that feeling was right. 2006 Kenji was good, but 1996 Wilson was better.
Video is up of Sutcliffe’s crazy sexist chatter
w/r/t my rant about Rick Sutcliffe making all kinds of weird, inappropriate remarks about Erin Andrews
There’s video up now:
Someone’s already emailed to claim it wasn’t Sutcliffe but the other guy, but I went through the game thread on Atlanta Chop and one of the Cubs blogs, and they agreed with me at the time, so I think it’s correct — but now you can judge for yourself
Update: ESPN is wildly trying to suppress commentary on this by sending take-down notices whenever anyone posts video, which is a reprehensible use of copyright power to keep a story down. Fair use, folks, fair use.
Mariners Foibles
I wrote a guest post for The Baseball Analysts dealing with the roots of the failures of the 2008 team. Re-reading it, I think I might be a little bit frustrated with this organization.