Adam Jones on a playoff team
It’s the wonder of winter league baseball. In Venezuelan Professional Baseball League news, the Lara Cardinals will play the Aragua Tigers. The Cardinals have Jose Lopez (hitting .309) and Adam Jones.
Also on the Cardinals? LUIS UGUETO!! And their home page celebrates “1000 hits Luis Sojo”. Oh yeah.
Which brings up a question we’ve been emailed: Dave earlier advocated picking up Bartolo Colon as a good gamble on a one-year deal, and we haven’t written about it since. Word out of Venezuela is that Colon’s looked bad enough to warn teams off: he’s out of shape, laboring to get deep into games, and he’s not throwing well or fast. So he may not be entirely healthy, and if he is, he’s still not in any condition you’d want on the team unless you want to hope that he’ll shape up before and during spring training and get his stuff working.
So there’s that.
The mystery of the M’s new pricing scheme
Something’s been bugging me about the M’s ticket pricing scheme, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since it was announced without solving it. The M’s business side is great at making money off its fan base, so ‘m sure that there’s some reasoning here that I’m just not seeing. I hope that one of our readers with more of an economics background might have some insight.
Why does the M’s new ticket scheme attempt to get more money out of the most price-sensitive customers?
I understand variable pricing for games, in which they hike the cost of certain games to take advantage of demand for particular products people are willing to pay more for, like Opening Day or Yankee games. Makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. If you know there’s a huge additional demand for those games from people who want to only attend those games (a Yankee fan isn’t going to attend the M’s-Rangers game to cheer on his team even if the tickets are far less expensive). And since there are only a limited number of tickets, the M’s don’t have to figure out how to get those fans to self-identify and pay more while selling as many as possible (by offering a Seattle discount that’s unlikely to let the Yankees fans with money get in for cheap: half off for students of local colleges, for instance, or with purchase of another set of game tickets). Demand-based fleecing, I totally understand.
And I understand why season ticket holders, who pay for the full year, get a discount. If you make the season cheaper, they’re more likely to buy tickets they wouldn’t have if they bought individually, you reduce sticker shock a little and allow them to think of it as a savings, you bank the revenue early, and when you get fans to drag themselves to the park because they already bought tickets, those fans drop even more money on high-margin parking, food, and drink.
What doesn’t make sense to me is the advance-purchase discount. The Mariners draw from a spectrum of customers, which runs:
– rabid Mariner fans who greatly prefer seeing a game in person to any other form of entertainment
– Mariner fans who strongly prefer to see a game compared to other forms of entertainment
– Casual fans who like to see a few games a season
– Fans who go because the team’s winning, or it’s a beautiful day to be at Safeco Field, or there’s a Moose-related giveaway, or whatever
The further you go down the spectrum, the more likely a fan is to seek a different activity based on price. That’s obvious, right? The more interested you are, the more you’ll pay for that activity.
That’s what baffles me. The people who are interested in day-of-game tickets, who now pay a penalty compared to the people who book months in advance, are far less likely to be willing to pay a premium. Someone who isn’t a strong Mariner fan will look at the new ticket prices, compare them to bowling or seeing a movie or whatever their other options are for that weekend, or that night. That premium may be what pushes them towards a casino or wherever. The M’s are deliberately making themselves more expensive to the fans most likely to go for other choices, while the people who are more likely willing to pay a premium – after all, if you’re looking at the schedule this early and trying to find good matchups and dates, you’re at least informed and interested – escape the increase.
The only reason I’ve come up with is that they believe that fans will be willing to pay more later, during the season, than they are today. In which case, it’s a bet that the team will be competitive and that will create interest and demand in walk-up sales (and short-term advance purchases).
That seems unlikely, though — it’s a pretty huge gamble for the business, and they’ve traditionally acted pretty conservatively in their desire to maximize profits.
Can anyone offer any thoughts into what might be going on here?
Price of relief, 2008
One of the great things we’ve been able to see the M’s pull off over the last few years is their cheap, effective bullpens. They’ve tried to spend on veterans, or put Rick White into a role, but most of the work’s been done by Putz and a collection of farm system products for little money.
This is important because the bullpen’s one of the places smart teams can save money and still be productive, allowing them to spend money elsewhere. The Padres are notorious for this: they probably scout for relief pitchers harder than everyone, and then pick up a collection of rebound candidates, post-injury comebacks, and pitchers with good stuff who got unlucky, or played in front of a bad defense, or whatever. They pay them all peanuts, juggle them through the season, flipping or dumping them, and then repeat the process.
I mention this because Octavio Dotel just signed a two year, $11m deal with the White Sox. The M’s have a host of guys who are good bets to outperform Dotel this year for under a million dollars. That’s a good position to be in, even if we might disagree about where they spend the savings.
Here’s the thing about that article
We’ve gone out of our way here at USSM in the last couple of years to talk about how our beef is not with Bloomquist, who we’ve over and over said is a decent use of a back-end roster spot, particularly on a team that can use his defensive versatility and base-stealing ability, and where a team doesn’t need a bat off the bench. He’s proven in extended trials of regular playing time that he can’t hit, and there’s no evidence at all that he would be a useful starting player at any position. Even then, I acknowledge that means he’s hugely talented among the population at large. I couldn’t hit .200 in the major leagues.
Our beef was with Hargrove for running him out there so often, for using him in ways that didn’t help the team, and more generally, it’s been with the unjustified media adoration for his scrappiness and having his praises exaggerated and pushed down our throats (Rick Rizzs being the most guilty of this among the broadcasters). And sometimes, annoyance when Bloomquist comments that he thinks he should be starting, but even then, I’ve said I understood that that kind of self-confidence is what got him to the major leagues, and it’s understandable any player would want to play a larger role.
I don’t have any disdain for Bloomquist. I don’t know him. He’s a good enough 25th man on the roster and though that skill set is pretty easy to find, I understand why the Mariners have been willing to throw him a little money for the local connection and a known quantity.
The thing that bugs me is that it conflates a realistic view of Bloomquist (he’s not a very good player) with a negative view of Bloomquist, when that’s exactly the kind of thing we constantly argue against.
There’s no connection between being more or less gifted athletically and being more or less of a person. Bad pitchers aren’t always lazy jerks, and great players don’t always have good work ethics and don’t send their mother cards on her birthday. Our evaluation of his abilities doesn’t carry with it any judgement about Bloomquist himself.
Intentionally or not, it’s a misrepresentation of what we’ve written about Bloomquist to paint it as “disdain” for him.
Kitsap Sun on Bloomquist
On the flip side, he’s disdained by a very active Mariner blogging community, which pokes fun at Bloomquist because of his lack of power and overall offensive production. Among his nicknames: “Ballgame,” “The Ignitor,” “Princess Willie” and “Willie Boom-Boom.”
Willie Ballgame might not be a favorite of those number-loving cybergeeks, but he’s earned the respect of those who count.
“disdained by”?
Isn’t “Willie Boom-Boom” a Rick Rizzs creation?
Nice name-calling. That’s some quality journalism. Way to cover the story.
Projecting the 2008 Mariners team
Using random guesses, hunches, wishcasting, and general skullduggery. You can, as I frequently note, get extremely close to a good projection using a player’s three-year average. Therefore!
C-R: Johjima. No change. I still (as always) think he might outdo himself, but .285/.325/.435, no problem.
1B-R: Sexson. Ugh. Dead cat bounce. .245/.330/.460 … that looks high, now that I check it. Oh well.
2B-R: Lopez. I’m bullish on his 08 season. .275/.320/.400 on the low end. The more Cairo plays, the worse this gets.
SS-R: Betancourt. Last year’s about as well as you can expect him to hit without a change in what he’s doing up there. Step back a little, he’s still a .290/.315/.410 hitter. If he’s playing good defense, you take it.
3B-R: Beltre. Wooo! Beltreeeee! Call me a fan, but .275/.325/.460 is entirely realistic.
LF-L: Ibanez. .280/.350/.455.
CF-L: Ichiro. .330/.380/.420
RF-R: Jones. .270/.330/.440. I have no idea. OBP’s probably high, SLG might be low.
DH-B: Vidro. .280/.350/.380. Really. I realize I’m going to have to write up a long post on this at some point, but I’ve been spending a lot of time studying Vidro’s balls-in-play charts and I think he’s nearly done as a hitter, and if he doesn’t go off the cliff next year, we’ll still see a lot less. Now that I think about it, there will probably be two reactions to that post, and they’d run
– yeah, I see those same warning signs
– Vidro’s on fire! Revitalized! You hate him because of the Snelling trade!!!11!!oneone!!
which makes me wonder if it’s worth writing.
Bench: Burke/WFB/Cairo/?. They’ll drag down the line a bit.
So as a team, that’s a line of about .280/.340/.430, which is… drum roll please… about what they hit last year, when they scored 794 runs. No surprise there.
Defensively, it’s a step up. Replacing Guillen with Jones is a huge upgrade. Perhaps he and Ichiro can play left-center and right-center, and Ibanez can back up Sexson at first.
So to the pitching, then.
SP-R Felix Hernandez. Continues to progress.
SP-L Jarrod Washburn. Continues to be Jarrod.
SP-R Carlos Silva. Even if his fundamental stats don’t change, he’ll likely have an ERA of 4.50 or more.
SP-R Miguel Batista. Figure another year eats into his K rate a little, and he’ll still be pretty effective.
SP-? ?
That last one’s a pick-em: Baek, HoRam, Morrow, whoever you want. Who it is, and how they do, could make a huge difference. Hard to be worse than HoRam.
Just swapping out Weaver for someone decent is worth 20 runs, at least. And then if you replace HoRam with any decent pitcher, that’s another 20. They’re not going to have any trouble putting a dramatically improved rotation out there.
Bullpen: I don’t think they’ll have any problem throwing together an equally-effective bullpen for next year, even with Putz bound to come down a little.
Overall on the pitching side, let’s call it… fifty runs. Might be better than that, but that’s reasonable, especially considering the defense with Jones offset somewhat by Ibanez and Sexson both getting a little creakier, then Betancourt not making as many errors.
We’re at ~795 runs scored, and ~780 runs allowed. That’s an over-.500 team, though not by a lot.
You can immediately identify where this could go wrong on the scoring side (Sexson not hitting would kill that offensive number, as would Cairo playing) or right (Vidro somehow sustains his crazy hit rate, Lopez breaks out) and on the pitching side (Felix breaks out/Jarrod breaks down).
But I don’t see a team that’s ready to challenge the Angels, and I don’t understand why people think they might be competitive. A lot of things have to break the M’s way, while a lot of other things can’t go wrong (particularly, this is not a deep squad that could take any serious injury to… well, I won’t point out who, because I’m paranoid). The Angels are pretty easily a 90-win team, and the Mariners as presently constituted aren’t close. Luck can swing a season, certainly, but hoping both that the M’s get lucky and the Angels suffer a catastrophe seems unrealistic and, if that view leads to trades that hurt the team’s chances to compete for a championship in the long term, harmful.
Stone’s argument for Bedard
Larry Stone’s not as pro-Bedard-trade as some advocates, but he’d still give up Jones… with a lot of caveats. Caveats that in practice make him anti-Bedard-trade.
(updated to fix date: I thought this ran in the Sunday edition for some reason)
USSM fantasy interest ping
Hey folks — with the collapse of my long-running Diamond Mind sim league, I’ve been thinking of cooking up something on one of the free services (ESPN/Yahoo/?), using some more realistic measures (no defense, unfortunately) to set up something fairly light-weight… who’d be up for it? Any thoughts on what we should use if it happens?
(and don’t worry if we get like 9k responses — if this happens, participation would be a whole different issue)
Reset the counter
Fortunately it’s not a Jones trade. The M’s signed HoRam to a one-year, $2.75m deal to avoid arbitration.
Pick your reason why it’s a bad deal:
– Taking a historically bad pitcher to arbitration after seeing him suck all year.
– The deal itself
– The fact that they’re in this situation at all after bringing HoRam in believing he was potentially a top-of-the-rotation guy despite there being no reason to think that was true
Ugh.
Prediction contest: Bloomquist’s new contract
Like fellow Mariner-for-life Raul Ibanez, Willie Bloomquist’s contract is up after this season. Make your predictions in a comment, including
* date contract is announced (Mariner press release or press conference, whichever comes first). Last extension was announced November of 2006
* years
* salary only — don’t worry about signing bonuses, incentives, or anything
Speaking of incentives, fun fact about Willie’s last contract, from CoT:
award bonuses: $0.15M for MVP, $0.1M for WS MVP, $50,000 each for LCS MVP, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove, All Star ($25,000 for AS selection)