Management Review
We talk a lot about player performance, their values, their worth relative to salary, and the context in which they help the team win. Through the conversation on player value, we infer a lot of things about our beliefs of the team’s management, though, I realize, we rarely state those things outright. So, since it’s a pretty slow period in Mariner-land, I figured now would be a good time to lay out my personal feelings on the Mariner front office, how they operate, what they do well, and what they could do better. Keep in mind, this is my opinion, and Derek, Jeff, and Jason may not agree with anything or everything that I write. So, try not to take this as the USSM decree on the organization. This is Dave’s opinion, for better or worse.
M’s Payroll
Art Thiel has a piece in the P-I this morning about the Mariners 2005 Payroll. Apparently, the team was pretty pissed off by the numbers released last week by the AP that calculated “Final Payroll” as of August 31st. And, really, they have a right to be upset, because that’s a pretty terrible way to calculate real payroll.
So, in an effort to show everyone that they really did spend money last year, the M’s gave Thiel their numbers, or what they are claiming their actual 2005 payroll was. It’s a rare moment of transparency from an organization that has attempted to mislead the public on payroll information every chance they get. You can read Thiel’s articles for the specific numbers, but the club claims they paid $99.042 million on players during the 2005 season, and for once, the math works. There are no noticable gaping flaws in this calculation, as there always are in the annual Bob Finnigan “we have no money left to spend” spin pieces.
Interesting to note, the Mariners claimed all of Spiezio’s ’06 salary and the buyout on his ’07 option against the ’05 payroll. However, they didn’t claim the buyout of the ’06 options for Pokey Reese, Wiki Gonzalez, or Shigetoshi Hasegawa, which apparently will count against next years payroll. So, apparently, if they release you during the season, everything they owe you in the future counts on current payroll, but if they release you after the season, it goes towards next years payroll.
What does this mean to us? Well, for once, the club is being truthful with its fans, which is good news. And they have a few million more to spend this year than we originally thought, since we had assumed the Spiezio contract would remain on the books this year.
But, mostly, it just reinforces how much money was summarily wasted last year. The club spent $16.46 million on Scott Spiezio, Ryan Franklin, Shigeotshi Hasegawa, Gil Meche, Wiki Gonzalez, Dan Wilson, and Aaron Sele. The average VORP for that group was 2.22. It’s basically a group of replacement level players who provided similar performance to what a league minimum minor leaguer could have done. That’s a $14 million dollar hole right there.
You’d hope that the M’s could look at that and see that what killed them was consistently overpaying by a little bit for what they considered to be mid-level talent. The signings of Jarrod Washburn and Carl Everett do little to reassure me that they learned any lessons from last years debacle.
Portland mayor scoffs at stadium for Marlins
Tom Potter got into the headlines on a slow news day by stating (again) that he and Portland have no interest in helping to build a ballpark for the Marlins.
The Marlins are on a ridiculous tour of possible new locations for their franchise, and team reps met with him yesterday.
So good news and bad news: no local competition, which would have been cool, also means the M’s continue to enjoy their massive regional media deals, so they’ll keep making tons of money.
Marlins president David Samson said:
“Governments do make decisions when they attract businesses to the community,” Samson said. “Baseball is not the only industry, by any stretch, to ask for government help when deciding where to have its corporate headquarters.”
That’s true, but that doesn’t make it a good deal. Long-time readers will recognize this from Jeff’s logical fallacy post as “Argumentum ad numerum” — the appeal to numbers (“everyone else is doing it, so it must be right”).
Left Handed Sock, Free to Good Home
442 at bats. .249/.366/.518 line. 110 hits, 60 (!) of them going for extra bases. 79 walks and 169 strikeouts.
Ladies and Gentleman, that’s Russell Branyan, the past three years, against right-handed pitching.
He was designated for assignment by the Brewers, and they’re “attempting to find him a big league job”. He’s already signed for 2006 for the grand total of $800,000 – and the contract is not guaranteed.
The guy has some serious flaws in his game. He’s basically a DH who shouldn’t play the field. He has no business ever facing a left-handed pitcher (.181/.233/.319 vs lefties last 3 years, 1-20 against them last year). He strikes out at an historic rate because of gaping flaws in his swing.
But replace “strikes out” in the last sentance with “makes outs” and that paragraph describes Greg Dobbs as well. And Greg Dobbs is never going to hit 30 homers and draw 80 walks in 500 at-bats.
If the M’s are willing to get past their hatred of strikeouts, they could have a quality bench player for nothing.
Random Mariner news
Kevin Appier’s in on a standard minor-league contract. In the MLB.com Mariners Mailbag, there’s a discussion of Snelling’s rehab (short version: return to playing around the All Star Break… we’d hope), among the standard fluff we’ve come to expect from those features (though this one, as far as I could see, did not contain any huge, obvious errors, which is nice).
Chuck Armstrong Interview
Maury Brown, the head of the northwest chapter of SABR, conducted an interview with Chuck Armstrong on his Business of Baseball website. It’s an interesting read for the most part. A few of the chunks that jumped out at me:
BizBall: Forbes wrote an article in April this year entitled, “Best-Kept Secret“, which went on to mention that the Mariners have been the most profitable of all the clubs the last five years, with an average revenue of $163 million. The operating income of the Mariners for 2004 was $10.8 million. By comparison, the Yankees had an operating loss of $37.8 million for the same period.
Running the club is a business, and even when there are profits in hand, at what point do the Mariners say, “We’re not going any higher,†in relation to player payroll when weighed against the need to be competitive in a free-agent market?
Armstrong: We do that all the time. We set a budget and we don’t exceed that budget. We don’t necessarily have to spend up to it if we don’t find values. Right now, with the signing of Washburn and what we anticipate we’re going to be paying our other guys in arbitration and putting together our roster, we’re right up against our 2006 player payroll budget.
Generally, when a question like this is asked, the M’s get all defensive and take shots at Forbes numbers. Interesting that Armstrong did not do that here.ÂÂ
BizBall: The last question I have. You know, SABR is planning on having their National Convention just up the street at the Madison Renaissance Hotel–just a short walk from Safeco. Do you plan on being there at all this year?
Armstrong: I would like to be there. I’m keenly interested in all the work that SABR does. You know, Tal [Smith]–when I first got into this game–put me onto the work SABR does.
He taught me that in games, teams shouldn’t sacrifice as much. I’m one of these guys, if I had a criticism of most major league managers, I think they sacrifice too often and too early in the game. The out is the most precious thing in baseball. You only get 27 of them, and if you give one up, even when you try to sacrifice, over time at best, you’re only successful somewhere between 65% and 70% of the time. The work that SABR has done also shows that you have a greater chance of scoring if you don’t sacrifice with a runner on first and nobody out than if you do, but you can also avoid the double play, which counters that. It depends on the situation. So, to answer your question, yes, I would like to come up [to the Convention].
Maybe we can get Chuck and Hargrove together for lunch? Not a great sign that the president of the M’s understands a fairly basic concept of on field strategy that the manager of the M’s does not. ÂÂ
USSM Endorsements
First in a series
Game of the year: Felix’s second home start.
Google Ad: Ben Broussard, Musician! Is he better than Sandfrog? You make the call.
Ridiculously Expensive Restaurant: Canlis
Ridiculous Cheap Restaurant: Chick-Fil-A. ( I love Chick-Fil-A,” says Dave)
Free agent acquisition: Kenji Johjima (obviously)
M’s final 2005 payroll: $71m
The AP’s story is all over the place. The “commisioner’s numbers” are out — they include salaries and pro-rated signing bonuses, along with players on the DL. It’s a useful baseline because while many teams announce and count their payrolls differently, and they wall want to appear at their best locally, any uniform accounting means we can make comparisons. There are some issues with the way MLB does this, but really, any method used seems to manage to distort something, so we roll with it.
Seattle was 14th, with $70,513,167. That’s a little behind the World Champion White Sox ($73m) and ahead of Detroit ($69m).
Atlanta readers?
This post has nothing to do with baseball.
If any of our fine readers happen to live in the Atlanta, Georgia region and might be interested in doing me a favor, please email us and I’ll fill you in with the details.
Opening day starter: not Felix
From the Everett Herald:
“To keep him healthy, we’re going to have to monitor his innings,” Hargrove said. “I can tell you he will not be the opening-day starter. If he were 23 years old, he probably would be.”
Okay, sure, then… who?
“We have some legitimate candidates,” Hargrove said, being as vague as usual. “Jamie Moyer, Jarrod Washburn, Joel Pineiro. I’ll probably have a pretty good idea who it will be the second week of camp, but I won’t announce anything until the last week.”
Washburn… sure. If you’re going to pay a #4 guy #1 money, why not pitch him #1, right? Take that beater to the car show, whatever.
But Pineiro? What?