The Mariners at the 2007 winter meetings
With the real rock-em, sock-em winter meetings starting, it’s a good time to go through the off-season roster construction exercise and think about what’s yet to be done.
So for format, I’m grouping the guys, doing a little individual commentary, and then talking about the the group as a whole.
Rotation (5)
RHP Hernandez
LHP Washburn
RHP Thomson
SP4 ?
SP5 ?
We can assume that the 5th starter’s going to be available to Baek/Woods/whoever comes out of spring training. I still think the M’s lose the Schmidt bidding and land him for something ridiculous over four years. Or more. Don’t put it past them.
Winter meeting need: starters, any way they can get them. If they land Schmidt, they’re probably going to be shopping for cheap AAAA-type guys to make sure there’s something to throw into the 5th rotation and as insurance against injuries.
Relief (7)
RHP Lehr
RHP Mateo
RHP Putz
RHP Soriano
LHP O’Flaherty
LHP Sherrill
LHP Woods
The bullpen’s solid and cheap. There’s been no need for the team to go shopping for middle relievers. They may even be shopping Soriano, which makes sense: he’s getting expensive and if they don’t believe he can start, they may be able to get something they covet for him, and then fill his spot with a warm body.
Woods, or whoever finishes second in the race for the back-of-the-rotation spot, will be fine as the long relief/spot starter guy. Realistically, whoever has a hot hand in spring training is still likely to about as good as the rest of the options for that spot.
I hope Mateo, the veteran presence in middle relief, is going to come back from his 2006, but I wouldn’t bet on it. As long as Hargrove keeps him out of important situa.. oooooh. Right.
We’re quite fortunate in the strength of the bullpen. It’s strong, deep, and durable enough to absorb some innings if the team brings in a short-yard starter, if things come to that. Heck, they did well with last year’s rotation, this has to be an improvement, right? Right?
The bullpen could be improved, certainly, and maybe tailored a little more to the park and to vary the skillsets, but the cost to do so is pretty huge on the free agent market. I’m not going to carp about this unit.
We’re assuming here that Hargrove uses at least 12 pitchers. He’s been known to carry 13, because he’s not a good manager. That leaves us 13 position players:
Infield (5)
C-R Johjima
1B-R Sexson
2B-R Lopez
SS-R Betancourt
3B-R Beltre
Except for Sexson, this is a really good defensive infield, which means you don’t have to carry a glove specialist or two for lead-protection situations. It’s a nice situation to be in, from a roster construction standpoint.
Could use a left-handed bat for variety’s sake. But wait…
Outfield (4)
RF/LF-R Guillen
CF-L Ichiro
LF/DH-L Ibanez
RF/LF-L Snelling
Ideally, you get Snelling a day off at least once a week and DH him another day. You want him hitting as much as possible, but it’s entirely valid to be concerned about wearing his knees down and hope to keep him healthy by being smart about it.
The ideal defensive alignment clearly puts Ichiro/Snelling/Guillen out there, and pushes Ibanez somewhere else. Guillen’s likely to be unhappy in a 4th OFer role, and Snelling’s wasted. Hargrove’s likely to find some way to platoon with Snelling, even though it’s pointless.
The team’s backup centerfielder is playing for Tacoma. If Ichiro gets hurt, you can stick Bloomquist (or Snelling, for that matter) out there if you have to for a game, but they need a quality defensive centerfielder and besides Ichiro, they don’t have one on the short roster. If Ichiro’s hurt, they need to immediately fly Jones from wherever he is to wherever the team will be the next night even if it seems likely Ichiro’ll be able to play the next day.
That’s a reasonable solution, too. Earl Weaver used to say his backup shortstop was in Rocherster. Adam Jones needs his playing time more than the team needs him to sit on the bench in case something happens.
The rest (4)
DH/1B-L Broussard
Embarassing year at the plate. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Given the team’s general reliance on their eyes and their impressions of the player in front of them (even when visiting) it’s a little surprising they haven’t shown him the door already. (Bonus questions: will his struggles make him an even better musician, adding a little more angst and depth to his surprisingly good and catchy dude-strumming-guitar work?)
IF/OF-R Bloomquist
Plays decent defense around the diamond, hasn’t, can’t, and won’t ever hit.
IF/LF-R Morse
What do you say about Morse? He’s a failure at being an anti-Bloomquist. Anti-Bloomquist would at least hit a lot better (and left-handed). Morse hits a little and doesn’t play defense at your choice of positions. At least Bloomquist carries a decent glove around the diamond.
Dobbs might get the call instead of Morse as a left-handed bat, but that seems less likely.
C-R Rivera
Rivera’s on the 40m right now, which gives him an advantage over Rob Johnson, but it’s likely either way the M’s aren’t going to try and squeeze much production out of the spot. A better backup option, combined with a better manager, might get Johjima more regular rest and possibly help Kenji’s offense.
What’s that all mean for the winter meetings and the rest of the off-season?
They need to sign a pitcher, a middle-rotation-or-better guy they can pencil in for 200 innings. This will almost certainly be Jason Schmidt.
For the rest of the roster, it’s surprising when you look at it this way: they don’t scream out for much. I don’t look at this set of guys and think “oh, they’re dying for a switch-hitting middle infield backup who can steal 15 bases.” There are, for a decent manager, a pretty varied set of tools that don’t require a lot of caddies or substitutions, which is good, because there’s no evidence Hargrove still knows, if he has ever known, how to do those things anyway.
You can immediately see the problem we’ve been waving our hands and screaming about all year: the team’s got too many corner outfield/1B/DH guys.
That’s the second big thing that is probably on Bavasi’s agenda: clear a spot. They need to punt Sexson, preferably, but it still seems more likely to be Broussard. Then they can push Ibanez to DH, Broussard to first, or whatever they work out. Even if they signed or traded for some weird first base piece – a defensive specialist first baseman, heck – they could still work them in with the rest of the mix. But as it stands, they’ve got an excess on the corners and 1B, and they’d be well-off to fix it.
We all know they’re going into the winter meetings looking for at least one pitcher. The interesting question is whether they’re looking to solve their other problem, and if they’re looking to move Sexson to one of the few teams that could take him (do it! do it!), if they’re going to try to move the less-expensive Broussard to the larger pool of teams that could take him, and which direction they end up going.
Don Carman is in your house, autographing your things
Slate has a cool story about former Phillies pitcher Don Carman answering his fan mail a decade-and-a-half later. It’s not what you think: he didn’t just procrastinate. Apparently the box of cards was misplaced while Carman was being traded, and he happened upon it again years after the fact.
There are amusing stories here — would you expect to get a signed card back now, years after 12-year-old you had sent it out with high hopes? — and one touching, sad one.
All of the tales bring back my bitterness at Ryne Sandberg, who kept the rookie card I sent him back in the 1980s. Maybe Ryno’s just waiting to clean out the garage before he returns that sucker.
M’s close to signing Jose Guillen
Looks like the Mariners have gotten the memo – one year gambles are a good way to go in a market when everyone else is committing away a roster spot for half a decade or more.
Both the Nationals writer for MLB.com and Corey Brock are reporting that the Mariners are nearing a one year deal for Jose Guillen, who would replace Eduardo Perez on the roster. In anticipation of this signing, the Nationals offered Jose Guillen, a type B free agent, arbitration last night. This means the Nats will receive a compensatory first round pick (but not from the Mariners) if Guillen signs elsewhere. They clearly believe he will sign elsewhere, as they have no interest in bringing him back for 2007.
So, what does Guillen bring to the M’s? An interesting package. He’s one of the most tools-laden outfielders in the game when healthy, mixing power, speed, and a rocket arm. However, he’s got a lot of flaws; his plate discipline is horrible, he’s feuded with almost every manager he’s had, and he’s coming off Tommy John surgery that ended a 2006 season that was shaping up to be a massive disappointment anyways.
Guillen claims he’ll be ready for spring training, and if that’s true, he’s a good bet to post a .270/.330/.460 line (adjusted for Safeco) while playing solid defense in a corner outfield role. That’s easily worth the $3 to $4 million they’re expected to pay him, and having a RH outfielder on the roster is a necessity.
Questions abound, however.
Is he healthy enough to throw? If he’s not, then he’s a platoon DH, and not a great one at that.
Will Hargrove acknowledge that Snelling needs to play and use this to shift Ibanez to DH, or more likely, does this make Snelling a fourth outfielder?
Does this end their pursuit of a veteran left-handed outfielder? Let’s all hope so.
Would Guillen’s addition give them the courage to move Richie Sexson? Unlikely, and with the Giants signing 142 players in the past two days, they’re running out of suitors.
Overall, I like the deal. It’s another short contract that has the ability to become a bargain, and the M’s did need a RH outfielder on the roster. However, it comes with a metric ton of baggage, and there’s a decent chance that the M’s could get a similar performance from Adam Jones for the league minimum. However, depth is valuable, and so is allowing Jones to start 2007 in Tacoma.
It’s a medium risk, medium reward move, but I certainly prefer Jose Guillen for one year over any of the potential left-handed outfielders that have been discussed.
The weekend in USSM Labs enhancements
First, on the music, here’s that post:
Corco made us do it. It was either that or Comet Cursor. I’m sorry. Hopefully he relents soon.Update: that was enough of that.
You’ll note this is a particularly frisky weekend for USSM Labs, which usually does its work on weekends.
So far:
-caching up and running
-related posts
-quicktags for comments
– and some other backend stuff
If you see anything you particularly like, please, or if something’s gone wrong, let us know.
John Thomson
Okay, the news is out. Corey Brock has the scoop at the M’s official site.
The Mariners are on the verge of signing John Thomson to a one year contract, reportedly with an option for a second year. I’ve expressed my preference for one year deals for pitchers repeatedly, and Thomson is the kind of pitcher that is often undervalued.
By no means is he a great pitcher, but when he’s healthy, he’s an average innings eater. He gets groundballs, throws strikes, keeps the ball in the yard, and even misses bats occassionally. The big knock against him is health – he’s logged less than 100 innings each of the last two seasons due to various problems. He’s not the most durable guy, and at age 33, he’s entering the twilight of his career.
But, given the escalating costs of mediocrity, a short term deal for Thomson is a bargain. He’s basically Jeff Suppan’s less durable twin. They have the same skillset and similar stuff. They get their results the same way. Suppan is asking for $40 million over 4 years. The Mariners found a similar talent for a fraction of that amount.
This is how you assemble the back-end of a rotation. Sign John Thomson and Justin Lehr to give competition to the young pitchers, and use the money saved by not paying for experience to spend on position players.
John Thomson can help the Mariners, and for the price, it’s a good buy. Kudos to Bill Bavasi for finding one of the better deals in a crazy free agent market.
Friday’s news
Okay, soooo…. Zito’s talking to the Rangers, goood, the Diamondbacks are talking to Mulder, good, and Bud Selig, Commissioner of Baseball, says he’ll retire when his contract ends in three years. Uh huh. We’ve heard that before.
So what else is going on? Uh, Eaton did go to Philly, LHP Okajima agreed to terms with the Red Sox…
M’s add a pitcher – really!
This isn’t going to show up in the local dailies, and no one in town is going to care, but the M’s have signed a pitcher who has a legitimate chance to help them in 2007.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking – he’s 29 and has a career 5.31 ERA in 83 innings in the majors. To which I respond, so what? It’s 83 innings.
Justin Lehr is a guy who deserves a shot and has never gotten one. He’s never going to be an all-star, but he’s got a skillset that works in the major leagues; groundballs and strikeouts.
He threw 112 innings in the rotation for Nashville this year and had a GB rate of 50.1%. His Triple-A G/F rate is the same as Felix’s was when he was in Tacoma. This wasn’t a one time thing, either, as Lehr has a long tradition as a groundball guy. However, he’s not a one tricky pony like Sean Green – Lehr’s got decent enough secondary stuff and solid command, allowing him to post a 31/90 walk to strikeout ratio. His walk rate and strikeout rates were better than average in the Pacific Coast League, and for a heavy ground ball pitcher, that’s rare.
Lehr lacks an outpitch and he’s spent most of his career in the bullpen, but the Brewers were onto something when they decided to stretch him out in their Triple-A rotation. He doesn’t have the dominant stuff to be an end-game reliever, but his sinkerball has enough movement to get him through 5 or 6 innings a game. If you want to see the prototype of this type of pitcher, check out Clay Hensley, who gave the Padres 200 good innings in the rotation last year by just throwing his sinker over and over.
Justin Lehr, on a minor league contract, is a terrific signing. He’s better than Cha Baek or Jake Woods, and as a non-guaranteed invite to spring training, there’s no risk here, and a decent amount of upside.
Whenever someone tells you that there’s no pitching to be had on the cheap, point to Justin Lehr. Bargains can be found if you look in the right places. The Mariners found one, and now we just have to hope they use him.
A short discussion of McGwire and the Hall of Fame
Two names are on the Hall of Fame ballot this year that have sparked controversy:
Mark McGwire
Jose Canseco
There’s already a media frenzy over McGwire: ESPN’s running an article on their baseball page that says “Time Will Tell” and has an article on how a survey of voters says many won’t voter for McGwire. Jayson Stark’s article is linked as “Sad start to process”. Buster Olney’s link is “Hall enters ‘Roids Era”.
I spent a lot of time thinking about steroids (and, indirectly, my own culpability in same) while writing my book “The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball” and I have mixed feelings about this.
Not just because the writers who are saying they won’t vote for him acted badly during the whole era, ignoring use by home-town players, making suggestions about the other guys rarely, but doing little to agitate for rule changes. The people closest and most able to write about the problem didn’t, because their jobs were compromised. We only got “Game of Shadows” because the San Francisco Chronicle put reporters from off the sports side on the story. And baseball people once removed (like me) engaged in hysteria or shrugged and said “look, I can’t tell who is and isn’t, so without better evidence, I’m not saying anything,” both equally unhelpful. Now the same people who let baseball’s slide into widespread steroid abuse from the late 80s on get to throw rocks at McGwire? Does their earlier failure as baseball writers now demand they act as vigilantes, enforcers for rules that didn’t exist at the time?
McGwire’s being punished without evidence. There are no positive drug tests. The andro bottle was legal and baseball allowed its use at the time (see the reaction when other players failed international testing for its use). McGwire’s admitted nothing as far as I know, under oath or otherwise. Unlike Canseco, who cheerfully talks (and writes) about advocating and spreading steroid use, McGwire is at best an indirect motivator. When I agree that players shouldn’t have to make a choice between their health and keeping up with the Joneses, it’s guys like McGwire we suspect are the Joneses.
But we don’t know. There was no drug policy for steroids, except the thinnest coverage if they were controlled substances. There was no testing. It was tacitly encouraged by owners and MLB in the wake of the 1994 strike.
Is the suspicion standard really going to be the writers look at this? Will players be judged on the checklist of symptoms, their chances determined by the vehemence of their denials? Did Rafael Palmeiro really teach them nothing?
Edgar Martinez is going to be a tough case for the hall in a few years. He’s a DH, one of the best right-handed hitters ever, but a DH who got a late start on his career. And, like many of the hitters who have fingers pointed at him, you could check off the boxes on the “suspected steroid user” list. He kept hitting past 30. He got bigger and bulkier through his career. He suffered a lot of hamstring injuries.
He’s already likely going to be a borderline Hall of Famer, if the partisans can make a decent case in the press. Is their consideration of possible steroid use going to make the difference between election and refusal? With or without testing, can the question of a player’s steroid use ever be settled definitively?
And what happens to current sluggers when the next batch of secret designer drugs are uncovered in 2010, and again, and again? In the Hall of Fame elections of 2025, are voters going to ding Pujols becaause they suspect he might have been using NGR-4, the super-steroid that baseball found a testing for in 2021? Where does this stop?
The Hall of Fame rightly provides voters wide latitude to consider a player’s contributions to the game off the field. There can and should be no statistical test for a plaque on the wall. But there are really no analogs in the history of the Hall of Fame for excluding a player of McGwire’s accomplishments on the basis of things he may have done while playing, for which there is no evidence, and his possible association with a larger, greater baseball scandal.
This may indeed be the start of a new era for the Hall of Fame voting. It’s a sad moment.
Wednesday chilling
(hah!)
The Blue Jays “rolled out the red carpet” for Gil Meche.
Nick Lachey has joined the Tacoma Rainiers ownership group. I’m not sure why everyone wants us to post about this, but let it never be said we’re not about customer service.
The good:
Mariners general manager Bill Bavasi said Tuesday, “I wouldn’t say we’re close” to adding the help the club is looking for, and he is perfectly willing to trade if free agency prices the Mariners out.
The bad: Hickey quickly goes into a strange digression about trading for Freddy Garcia. Did the team drop a hint he should pursue it, or is he just speculating?
But in the current environment, it seems Garcia, who has one year left on his contract at about $9 million, is beginning to look good to the Mariners as the pool of free agent pitchers dries up. For one thing, Mariners starter Felix Hernandez idolizes Garcia, a good friend. For another, Garcia was a steady winner during his time in Seattle.
Speculating! Please, speculating!
Also, Garcia was not a steady winner during his time in Seattle. Come on, John, you were around, you know that’s just not true by any reasonable definition of “steady”.
Igawa to Yanks for $25m, rumor has it
ESPN purports posted pitcher to put on pinstripes.
And you thought Daisuke’s bid was high. Remaining options for the M’s include…uh… yeagh.