Community Projection: Richie Sexson
140 of you guys have chimed in so far, and there was far more agreement in the projections than I expected. Let’s go to the numbers:
Community Projection: .260/.344/.512, 548 AB, 34 2B, 0 3B, 34 HR, 65 BB, 4 HBP, 153 K
Low Projection: .220/.297/.411
High Projection: .281/.378/.606
Dave Projection: .260/.327/.474
Jeff will provide you with all the gritty details in cool graph form, I’m sure, but I find it interesting how close the absolute best case projection is to the overall assessment – basically, the community thinks there’s a really good chance that Richie’s going to have the same year he had last year, and has almost no upside beyond that. There’s a few people that foresee a major collapse, but no one has him performing at an MVP-type level. Basically, Mariner fans think that ’07 Richie Sexson is essentially going to be a repeat of ’06 Richie Sexson with some real chance to underperform and not much of a chance to overperform.
The .850 OPS he’s projected to have in Safeco Field is a pretty good offensive performance, but even with that line, he’s still a bad defensive first baseman making $14 million a year with significant downside. They should have dumped him when they had the chance.
Coming tomorrow – the Jose Lopez projection opens its doors.
M’s make meaningless trade
The M’s have traded Yorman Bazardo to the Detroit Tigers for Jeff Frazier, a 24-year-old outfielder who is a longshot to be a major leaguer. Frazier was a 3rd round pick in the 2004 draft out of Rutgers University, and wasn’t horrible in his first two years of professional baseball, but didn’t exactly light the world on fire either. When given an assignment to the high-A Florida State League last year, he hit about as poorly as anyone in baseball not named Tuiasasopo. His .228/.279/.346 line, as a 24-year-old in A ball, is horrible, even for the pitching friendly environs of the FSL.
Now, one bad year doesn’t end a career, and scouts have always liked Frazier, so maybe he’s a late bloomer who just needs to get out of a pitcher’s park to remember how to hit. But, it’s not likely. The M’s made this deal after designating Bazardo for assignment last week (to make room for Jeff Weaver), as they figure Frazier is better than losing him on waivers. Bazardo had never impressed them after coming over from the Marlins, so they’d have taken anything they could get for him.
In this case, what they got is a 24-year-old outfielder who couldn’t hit A-ball pitching. You’re unlikely to ever care about this trade again.
Sexson projection sent out
The community projection for Richie Sexson has been emailed to those on the list. It will be open until tomorrow afternoon. If you’re having problems editing the sheet and find yourself in “view only” mode, make sure you are signed into Google Accounts – you don’t have to use a gmail address to receive the spreadsheet, but you must be logged into Google to perform edits.
Also, if you’re interested in helping the guy who runs Hit Tracker Online, he’s looking for some extra eyeballs this year. Here’s his blurb to attract volunteers:
So, here’s how a volunteer could help. First of all, to become a volunteer, a person has to be willing and capable to accurately make “observations†of batted balls. This involves having access to MLB video (via MLB.TV and/or MLB EI, Directv says hello), owning a stopwatch and some spare time. Needless to say, it also helps if you are a baseball and sabermetric fanatic…
To the volunteers I have provided an observation program (in Excel), and then checked them out on some homers to make sure they were doing an acceptable job of timing and spotting. Closer to the start of the season I am going to provide each volunteer with some additional programs to pull weather and box score data, and to put the observation data in the right format for upload to the site. Once the season starts we’ll figure out who’s going to cover which games, and hopefully we’ll all be able to take time off when we need it .
I would be delighted to have anyone who’s interested contact me about volunteering! You don’t have to do any set amount of games; if you’re able to make solid observations, I’ll be happy for any contribution you can provide.
If anyone has suggestions, questions or comments about Hit Tracker, please send them to grybar@hittrackeronline.com
Mid-week news bonanza, feed reminder
First, a straight repeat reminder:
Come on out to sunny Peoria and meet two major league GMs March 3rd. Seattle Mariners GM Bill Bavasi and San Diego Padres GM Kevin Towers will talk and take questions from fans for a good 45 minutes, before seeing the two interleague rivals face off in a fierce spring training game at the Peoria Sports Complex. Afterwards, you can buy a signed copy of the newly updated, paperback version of Baseball Prospectus’ Baseball Between the Numbers
and chat with editor/co-author Jonah Keri or receive some kind of The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball promotional item from USSM author Derek Zumsteg. Game time is 1:05 p.m., and guests should plan to arrive NO LATER than 11:30 a.m. for pre-game festivities, to be held in the section where we’ll be sitting.
Cost is $21, which includes your ticket to the game and the money we have to pay TicketMaster to mail them to us so we can distribute them early.
RSVP by emailing to seattlefeed@yahoo.com. Please specify your full name and how many tickets you need. To ensure that we can secure/order a group of tickets all together, deadline to RSVP and pay for tickets will be Friday, Feb. 9. Once we’ve confirmed your RSVP by email, you can PayPal the funds, by no later than Friday, Feb. 9, to: derek@ussmariner.com
What else?
Lew Burdette passed away at 80. In The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball, I wrote
Lew Burdette was the greatest spitballer of the 1950s. He debuted in 1950 but didn’t start pitching regularly until 1952 at the age of 23. Everyone accused Burdette of throwing the spitball because of the dramatic downward break he could get on a pitch, but he always denied it. When he hung up the spikes in 1967, he had won 203 games, gone to two All-Star games in 1957 and 1959, and in 1958 finished third in Cy Young voting.
Burdette would get good hitters to come up to the plate and stare at him, waiting for the spitball, watching strike after strike go past them, right over the plate, and then they’d go sit down, angry they hadn’t seen a spitter.
Burdette, like other great cheaters, helped force a rule change that prohibited pitchers from going to their mouth while on the mound. Burdette, like some of the other great trick pitchers, eventually did admit he’d been putting something on the ball, but not what he was accused of: “I wet my fingers by bringing them to my mouth once in a while like a lot of other pitchers do. It’s a nervous habit. But I go to my eyebrows a lot more, and that’s when my fingers get real wet. I’m a pretty good perspirer, one of the best, and the sweat runs down my forehead and soaks my eyebrows.â€
Aaron Harang signed a four-year, $36.5m deal with the Reds, avoiding arbitration.
Eric Byrnes got a one-year deal.
John D in comments pointed out that “What about some love for ex-M FELIX FERMIN? He just managed the DR to his 3rd Caribbean title.” Nice.
Community Projection: Kenji Johjima
The results of the first community projection are in, as we had 142 people contribute their estimates for Johjima’s performance. Here are the results, and those of you on the email list can expect to receive the spreadsheet for Richie Sexson tomorrow.
Overall Projection: .291/.344/.468, 492 AB, 26 2B, 1 3B, 20 HR, 31 BB, 9 HBP, 51 K
High Projection: Mark S: .347/.429/.565
Low Projection: Natebracy: .268/.306/.403
Dave Projection: .276/.320/.434
PECOTA: .294/.351/.453
Besides Mark S, the projections were all fairly neutral, with no one projecting an OBP over .400 or an OBP under .300. The overall projection is extremely close to the PECOTA projection and maybe a tad bit optimistic on the power end of the spectrum.
Overall, though, I think it’s a good representation of what we can expect from Kenji this year. This kind of performance should again make him one of the best catchers in the American League.
Monday’s news in short
Guardado takes the Reds up on their offer, Sanchez and the Pirates avoid arbitration, Myers and the Phillies agree to a $26m deal.
On the fresh and (for now) extremely ugly Cheater’s Guide to Baseball blog, my first entry’s on the possibility of a valid HGH test.
Community Projection #1 Released
If you signed up to be part of the community projections, you should be receiving the invitation to edit the Google Spreadsheet for Kenji Johjima in the next few minutes. When adding people to the contacts list, I missed a few, so a couple of you guys aren’t going to get this initial email – drop us a line and we’ll get it out to you.
If you missed the announcement on Friday, you can read this post and send us an email to join the fun.
Imagine Sisyphus a Mariner
“Sisyphus is a professional rock-roller, who provides strength going up both sides of the mountain. He’s a big, strong kid who rolls the boulder real hard.” — press release
This off-season, I’d get up in the morning and check through the news sites quickly to see that there was no new disaster. No Mariner-related headline was the best news I could reasonably hope for. I am as much hostage as fan, the powerful able to inflict pain great and small on me at their whim, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I have no say in their decisions, but their decisions make a great difference in how my life’s going to go.
Every day. Did they trade Adam Jones for Jon Switzer? Manage to lose Jose Lopez on waivers somehow? No fear or rumor was too irrational to dismiss entirely. Would the Mariners really be crazy enough to give Jeff Weaver a five year, $50m deal? I’d think “there’s no way, that’s insane”. But that’s what I’ve thought year after year, move after move, and I’d feel my pulse quicken. It could happen: Jeff Weaver, $10m a year for five years. Run away, run away now.
I’m too much a fan to stop following baseball, I can’t move from Seattle. I don’t know how well-imprinted I am at this point but I know I won’t ever be a Yankees fan, and you’d have to hold me down to get me to put on a Dodgers cap. I don’t have any choice. I can’t escape this.
What’s worse, the good, small moves didn’t help. Arthur Rhodes on a minor league invite? That’s a nice little contract. That’s the kind of smart deal the team should be making. Clearly there’s a pulse controlling the organization. But if they’re smart at all, if there’s even the dimmest bulb lit, then there’s no explanation for other moves.
Every day for months, I worry I’m going to wake up and see that the Mariners signed Tomo Ohka to a three-year, $54m deal to provide stability in the rotation, and I’ll glance up at the byline and see that oh, of course, it’s 2009 and he’s just come off a 12-10 season with the surprising Devil Rays.
Why not? Why wouldn’t that happen?
What evidence is there, at all, that the Mariners are any smarter than they were the year before? Or the year before that? Rats running mazes don’t keep charging in to find the same blank dead end because it’s comfortable. Eventually they find a food pellet, and the next time in, they’re a little faster through the maze.
Not the Mariners. This is an abjectly stupid franchise, from top on down. No lesson is written too large for them to ignore, no problem too obvious not to fix. Drop them into the box and they run for the electric shock panel, because they’re convinced that once, they shocked themselves and it worked out great. Read more
All about elbows
An article from the North County (CA) Times. I’m sure some of you would have found this interesting regardless, but for those who might not have otherwise, there’s a Mark Lowe reference at the very end.
Yes, this probably counts as being even more news-starved than the Parque signing.
Jim Parque signs
Man, you dudes are staaarved for news. Jim Parque’s this year’s “injured former player now hopefully healed and dreams of making it back” story. Injuries destroyed his career: after a nice 2000 with the White Sox, he never started more than five games in a season and hasn’t put on a major league uniform since 2003. There’s really no projections or analysis to be done here – the health of his arm determines entirely how well he can pitch, and at this point only the teams that have talked to him and Parque have any idea what his condition is.