My Thoughts on the 2013 Season
Opening Day is here. After a long winter and an even longer spring training, the season is finally about to begin. Here now are some thoughts I have about the upcoming 162 game stretch for the Mariners.
1. The Mariners philosophical change over the winter, and their subsequent roster makeover, are going to have the unfortunate effect of making the “stats versus chemistry” argument the defining narrative of the season. Because the organization decided to swap out their young depth guys for aging team leader types, you can basically guarantee that any improvement from the young players will be credited to the old guys. Dustin Ackley rebounds from a terrible year? Prepare for Raul Ibanez to get all the credit. Justin Smoak keeps hitting like he did at the end of last year? It’s because the team acquired Michael Morse and Kendrys Morales and allowed him to hit lower in the batting order.
I’m beyond tired of these arguments, and I’ll readily admit that I’m not at all looking forward to a season full of both sides using the teams performance to lob “I told you so” jabs at each other. There is no such thing as one season by one team that proves anything definitively. If the Mariners win, it doesn’t prove chemistry is the most important factor in team building. It the Mariners lose, it doesn’t prove that chemistry is bunk and leadership is useless. This season is not a litmus test for either side.
2. The other big change for 2013 is the expected home run output. The Mariners changed Safeco’s dimensions and prioritized power hitting in their offseason acquisitions, so odds are good that they’re going to hit more dingers than they have in a while. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that the Mariners offense is actually going to be a lot better than it was last year, once you adjust for park effects and measure offense by something other than home run total. While everyone keeps talking about the additional power, we seem to be omitting the fact that the team is headed into the season with Franklin Gutierrez and Michael Saunders hitting #1 and #2 in some order.
ZIPS projects a .296 OBP for Guti and a .303 OBP for Saunders. Even if Morse and Morales provide a significant power boost, they’re going to hit a lot of solo home runs until the organization develops a couple of guys who can get on base at a reasonable clip. Dustin Ackley and Kyle Seager have some potential to be those guys, so maybe this problem will resolve itself by the end of the season, but historically, the data shows that low OBP + dingers does not equal a lot of runs.
Last year, for instance, the Blue Jays hit 198 home runs — #6 in MLB — but only had a .309 on base percentage, so they posted a 94 wRC+ and only scored 716 runs despite playing in a very hitter friendly ballpark. Same deal with the Orioles, who hit 214 homers, but their .311 OBP contributed heavily to just 712 runs scored and a 96 wRC+. Really, you can even look at the Mariners performance last year. Despite all the talk about the lack of power, they hit 149 homers last year, tied for #20 in baseball despite playing with Safeco’s old dimensions and in a very cold year in the northwest. Their .296 OBP was last in the majors, though, so they only scored 619 runs.
Safeco’s new dimensions will increase HR output, but the results of adjusting the fences at other parks suggests that those extra home runs will come at the expense of fewer doubles and triples. Given that the Mariners have stocked their line-up with aggressive free swingers, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the team’s OBP actually went down from last year, and the team’s offense continued to look like a real problem. If Smoak, Ackley, and Montero take big steps forward and live up to their prospect billing, then the offense will likely be better, but without significant improvement from those three, I don’t think this line-up is actually all that much better than it was last year.
3. Pitching is much harder to project than offense and not just because of the frequency of injuries. So, I’d rather have a pitching staff with a bunch of question marks than a group of position players that I didn’t trust. That said, this pitching staff has some pretty serious problems. The post-Felix part of the rotation is one of the worst in baseball. The bullpen features a lot of guys who can struggle to throw strikes and need to be heavily matched-up to exploit platoon advantages. And, despite all the talk about The Big Three, the Mariners don’t really have a lot of depth in Triple-A to come up should things go poorly for the guys who made the staff out of spring training.
Safeco will still help the pitching look okay, most likely. It’s still cold in Seattle, after all, and the ball still isn’t going to fly very well in night games when the roof is open. People aren’t very good at mental park adjustments, so if Blake Beavan puts up a 4.50 ERA, they’re not going to see that as a huge problem, especially because that used to be a decent performance in MLB about 10 years ago. But, when it comes to actually outscoring your opponents, the low run environment of the northwest means that the bar is raised for Mariners pitchers, and giving up four or five runs in Safeco means that the team is probably going to lose. This is the worst pitching staff the Mariners have put together in quite a while, and if this team falls apart, it will probably be due to the lack of quality arms on the roster.
4. I realize these last few paragraphs sound pretty negative, so let me change the tone a bit. I don’t think this team is terrible, and the addition of the Astros to the AL West should give them a decent shot at finishing around .500. On true talent level, I’d peg this as a 75-77 win team, and then the schedule adjustment might push them up to 78-80 wins. Any team that projects as an 80ish win team heading into the season has a puncher’s chance at a playoff spot simply due to normal variance. If enough things break the Mariners way, they could win 90 and challenge a wild card spot. On the flip side, if enough things don’t break their way, they could win 70 games and we could be in for another season of same-old, same-old. The outcome isn’t written in stone. There’s enough young talent in place that things could legitimately go either way.
And, long term, there are reasons to think that this organization could be a winner. I’m very bullish on Mike Zunino, and wouldn’t be shocked if he was one of the Mariners best players by next season. The flawed veterans are all on short term deals, and if this season goes off the rails, they’re not going to be blocking better young players down the road. While a lot of the focus for 2013 is going to be on Morse, Morales, Saunders, and the rest of the rent-a-veterans, this franchise is still built around Ackley, Seager, Smoak, Montero, Zunino, and the rest. I don’t love the supporting cast, but I haven’t given up on the core group yet. With better role players around them, this organization could be a winner in the not-too-distant future. I just wouldn’t bet on that future manifesting itself in the first half of 2013.
And now, for just a few random predictions, based on things I think might happen this year.
Jesus Montero will spend at least a couple of months in Tacoma. With DH out of the picture for now, he’s only going to play as much as they’ll let him catch, and I don’t think the coaching staff is going to want him catching as much as he’s slated to right now. I think Kelly Shoppach may be the regular starter as early as mid-May, and Montero might end up in Triple-A in order to get regular playing time rather than sit and watch in the big leagues. If Zunino starts strongly in Tacoma, he might by up by mid-summer, but either way, I don’t expect the Montero-as-starting-catcher experiment to last that long.
Dustin Ackley is going to remind everyone why he’s the best young hitter in the organization. People are hurting themselves in an effort to get off his bandwagon, but Ackley’s hit tool is still well above average, and all of his numbers suggest that 2012 was a bit of a fluke. High contact, patient hitters with gap power succeed in the big leagues all the time. Ackley might not be a thumper, but I expect he’ll end the year back near the top of the batting order.
The Mariners will extend Michael Morse pretty soon. If he hits at all in the first few months of the season, I’d expect the team to approach him about a deal that keeps him from free agency. They’ve invested a lot into the Michael Morse Spectacle this spring, and with a complete void in outfield prospects in the pipeline, they’ll have extra motivation to keep him around. My wild guess is that he gets 3/45 before the All-Star break, and that I’ll write a long post explaining why the team just signed up for Richie Sexson 2.0.
The 8th inning proves to be a significant problem for the team this year. Charlie Furbush had a great year in 2013, but I can’t see him coming close to that performance again, and Carter Capps looks like a guy who is still best used situationally to me. Wilhelmsen is really the only guy down there I’d trust against batters from both sides of the plate, so there are going to be nights when the bullpen isn’t fresh enough to mix-and-match, and leads will be blown in the 8th inning because Wedge has to leave a pitcher out there to face an opposite handed batter in a high leverage situation. While focusing on bullpen development shouldn’t be a priority for a rebuilding team, this organization could really use one more shutdown reliever.
The second half roster will look very little like the opening day roster. Whether due to injuries or trades, I’d expect Michael Saunders to finish the year in center field and Brad Miller to begin manning shortstop in the second half of the year, while the rotation will likely include Erasmo Ramirez and Danny Hultzen. The Mariners are veteran heavy coming out of spring training, but I think they’ll end the year with a very young roster once again.
And, finally, I expect everyone will be back for one more run next year. I think the young guys will show enough to keep anyone from getting fired, though the team won’t win enough to earn long term extensions for everyone in charge either. They’ll get one more shot to win with the young players they’ve acquired. 2014 is the make-or-break year. 2013 is another building-for-the-future season, or will be seen that way in retrospect, at least.
Gun to my head, I’ll peg the 2013 Mariners for 79 wins, +/- 10 wins in any direction. But like the rest of the recent years, this season will be judged more on the individual performance of young players than the final record.
If It Goes Right
Just yesterday, for most teams in baseball, the 2013 season ended. It ended for some on a higher note than for others, but the highest notes — those are still to come. They’re going to come in the playoffs, and in a short while, for the Mariners, the 2013 season will continue, in October. Go back to March and tell yourself you’d be reading this paragraph and you’d swear it was nothing but Seattle Mariners fan-fiction. Some fantasy by some blogger both under-occupied and over-imaginative. It still reads like a fantasy today, but that’s not because of the 2013 Mariners. That’s because of many of the Mariners teams that came before them.
I’m writing this post to try to make sense of how we got here. I mean, we’ve been on the ride all six months long, living day by day by day, but it’s helpful to look at the bigger picture, and just half of one year ago, remember how certain we were of how things would end up? The Angels, the Rangers, and the Athletics would feud for first place. We couldn’t be sure of the order, but we were sure of the participants. The Mariners were to be locked into fourth. The Astros were to be locked into fifth. We accepted this as fact, or at least as much as fact as one can before the actual season begins. The Mariners, even as the ideally improved Mariners, were going to be a fourth-place team, and we’d keep ourselves interested by watching for dingers and development. You remember when “D&D” was a fan rallying cry. It feels like ages ago. It was.
What the hell is “first”? How did the Mariners pull this off? Even as a team people projected as a potential surprise, they only qualified as a potential surprise because they weren’t supposed to actually be good. People also projected the Padres as a potential surprise. You saw what happened to them. It doesn’t make any sense that the Mariners did what they did, but if you widen your scope, the clues were there. Maybe more people should’ve seen this coming, by which I mean maybe some people should’ve seen this coming.
Go back to 2009. That wasn’t that long ago. Felix was the runner-up for the American League Cy Young. Franklin Gutierrez was among the game’s premier everyday center fielders. That following offseason, Jesus Montero was Baseball America’s No. 4 prospect. Justin Smoak was BA’s No. 13 prospect. Dustin Ackley was BA’s No. 11 prospect. Michael Saunders was BA’s No. 30 prospect. Note also that Kendrys Morales finished fifth in AL MVP voting. This team didn’t come into the season short on talent, and I haven’t even yet noted guys like Michael Morse or Kyle Seager or Hisashi Iwakuma or Erasmo Ramirez. Christ, and I nearly forgot that, in 2009, Jason Bay smashed 36 dingers. I’m not saying the key to success is to assemble a bunch of players who were big deals years ago, but this had all the makings of a hell of a core, and a hell of a roster. And look what just developed, before our eyes.
I remember, during the offseason, a few of us came to know a little more about how the Mariners’ front office worked. We weren’t fond of the changes, in personnel or in process, and I had more than a few conversations about whether or not it would be best to root for a crash and burn season. Something to allow the executives to clean house and start over. There was an argument in favor of it, even if we couldn’t be certain the front office would be replaced by a better front office. Remember, we fell madly in love with this front office a few years ago. Some of the decision-making stung. The John Jaso trade stung. The Jason Bay decision stung. Signing Raul Ibanez was weird, and so on and so forth. There was reason to believe the Mariners were no longer going down the right path.
But, a few things. For one, crash and burn seasons suck. They suck to witness, as all the enjoyment just gets ripped out of the game all summer long. For two, what would be necessary for a crash and burn season? It stands to reason that would involve a lot of young players not taking steps forward. Maybe some of them take steps back. Maybe some of them get injured. Had the Mariners done poorly, maybe the people in charge would’ve been replaced, but the talent would’ve performed at such a level that the overall team did poorly. That would be a long-term concern. And for three, there’s been method to the front office’s perceived madness.
They’ve remained committed to building from within and accumulating cost-controlled talent. They’ve drafted well, scouted well, developed pretty well. Look at the young players in the system. Look at the young players in the system before these guys took over. It’s night and day. This team has a present and a future, where those old Mariners had neither. And then as much as we made fun of the pursuit of experience and the pursuit of dingers…I mean, I’m not saying things worked out this way because of that formula, but there was that formula, and then things worked out this way. There might be something there.
To hell with lineup protection. Nobody’s ever found evidence of helpful lineup protection. But mentorship? Reduced pressure? Who’s to say? With some experienced blocks in the middle of the order, some of the Mariners’ other young hitters improved. Maybe, before, they were trying to do too much. Maybe, this way, they could stay within themselves, which means everything and nothing depending on how you think about it. When there’s pressure on you to perform, you can feel stressed, and then you can spiral. When there’s less pressure, you can relax a little more, and it’s funny how much better a relaxed mind is than an anxious mind. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, maybe I’m giving the plan too much credit, but I’m feeling positive and I’m feeling like giving some people the benefit of the doubt. At least, we don’t know that adding dingers didn’t help. Michael Morse slugged like he was supposed to. Kendrys Morales slugged like he was supposed to. Jason Bay bounced back. Practically everyone but Brendan Ryan contributed to the offense, making this a very different sort of Mariners team. A successful, watchable, enjoyable Mariners team!
So those conversations about replacing the front office look kind of silly today. This outcome is a lot better than that other outcome. I don’t even think the front office saw this coming. How could they have, and why would they have, given the competition? I think they just wanted the team to be okay, to take a step toward competing in 2014. But this is why it pays to upgrade even an ordinary team over an offseason. This is why there’s value in adding pieces to what you think might be a .500 ballclub. We can’t actually project that well, and every win projection comes with significant error bars. It’s seldom a bad idea to increase one’s odds of making the playoffs, because sometimes the playoffs are more within reach than they seem. The Mariners put themselves in position to surprise, and lo and behold, I get to write this post.
It’s funny how many more “moments” there are in a competitive season. It’s funny how there are so many heroes. In 2012, we had that combined no-hitter and we had the Felix perfect game, and those were amazing, but they were also two of the only moments to stand the test of time. The Mariners had some big hits and some dramatic wins, but the leverage was low since the team wasn’t going to the postseason. Low leverage reduces memorability. Increase the stakes and all of a sudden almost everyone on the roster has a critical season highlight. Everyone on the roster helped the Mariners get to where they are. Were it not for this specific equation of players and plays, where might things be instead?
I mean, obviously, we probably would’ve long remembered Guti’s three-dinger outburst. Regardless of the context, it’s not every day someone drives in nine runs with 14 total bases. But, geez, Robert Andino beating Mariano Rivera? The Jason Bay pinch-hit? Mike Zunino’s walk-off in his second-ever start? The four-game sweep of the Angels with the 11 home runs? Lucas Luetge nullifying that suicide squeeze? Luke Gregerson striking out the side after the bases were walked full? These are just the things I’m pulling off the top of my head. There have been so many moments, so many of them still vivid, so many of them still electrifying when I pull up the highlights on MLB.com. Every season, from the best year to the worst one, has special moments, but when they really matter, when they actually make a difference, they’re glued into your mental scrapbook. Everybody was a hero. Everybody did something we haven’t forgotten.
People talk about destiny like destiny exists. Google “team of destiny” and look at the number of results. Consider how many of those teams didn’t win the championship, or even make the playoffs. The Mariners aren’t riding the wave of destiny, just as the White Sox aren’t, either. But there have been those moments that made it feel like they were. There have been those moments where it seemed like something, somewhere, didn’t want to allow the Mariners to lose. The improbable three consecutive July walk-offs. The eight-run rally in Tampa Bay. That Bay pinch-hit, again. Felix, with the King’s Court at his back, giving the Royals absolutely no chance to do anything, abruptly halting their ten-game winning streak. In retrospect, that looks like the day the Royals were broken. Felix did that to them. The Mariners did that to them. In a clash of Cinderellas, the Mariners emerged decisively victorious.
I guess the last thing you need is more of a 2013 season recap. The 2013 season, after all, isn’t over, and we’re just now getting to the games of the greatest consequence. We all want to think about the playoffs, and the Mariners playing in them. But I think it’s been worth pausing to smell the roses, because it should be appreciated how we’ve gotten to this point. Don’t take this for granted. Even if the Mariners get wiped out, don’t take this season for granted. Every season is a learning experience, but this one’s been a treat. A treat we didn’t expect, but a treat for which we had a voracious appetite.
Is it crazy that Felix pitched like an ace? Is it crazy that talented young hitters hit like talented young hitters? Is it crazy that Guti didn’t have another freak accident or disease? Is it crazy that the veterans did what they were supposed to? Is it crazy that the rotation bent without breaking, and that the bullpen turned out the lights? Is it crazy that the baseball fans in Seattle didn’t disappear, that they just needed a team to want to come support? Is it crazy that the Mariners worked out? Is it actually, when you consider how it all happened? I’ll admit it’s a little crazy that the Mariners were the best. But the right error bars overlapped. There was always some probability of this, which means in some universes, it was going to happen. This happened to be one of them.
I remember wondering aloud whether seeing Felix throw a perfect game at home was better than watching the Mariners win the World Series. I wondered that seriously, when it seemed like the Mariners weren’t particularly close to contention. I don’t know if a few weeks from now I’m going to find out, but I know there still exists that chance. For all but a few teams, that chance is dead. What’s one more long shot? This team has overcome a longer shot.
The Most Photographed Cactus League Game in America: Mariners at Reds
Brandon Maurer vs. Homer Bailey, 1:05pm
I don’t know, but it’d be a better choice than photographing yesterday’s ugly affair against the D-Backs. Sure, Salt River Fields is the jewel of Arizona complexes, but Joe Saunders and a still-recovering Wade Miley? No, much better to focus on this match-up between the most intriguing prospect of 2012 and Homer Bailey, the guy who now acts as an object lesson in not giving up on pitching prospects. Maybe there’s no such thing as a pitching prospect, but Bailey teaches us that there’s no such thing as an ex-pitching prospect. There’s lots of philosophical work to be done here, but Bailey’s is a strong and important critique of the dominant theory.
Maurer’s path to the starting rotation obviously got a bit easier with the release of Jon Garland and the growing consensus that Erasmo Ramirez won’t start the year in the rotation. We learned a little something about the fallibility of growing consensii over the weekend, but still: why would you have a guy start making short relief appearances a week before the season? Anyway, the competition behind Felix, Iwakuma and Saunders seems like it’s down to Bonderman, Maurer, and Beavan. Maurer’s certainly had consistent results, though his velocity dropped a bit in his last start. That may have been because he threw a lot more two-seam fastballs (he reported he didn’t have a good feel for the four-seamer), but it’d be nice to hear that he’s back up in the 92-93 range today.
Jesus Montero returns to the starting line-up at catcher – it’s nice to see that scary bat-to-the-head incident hasn’t sidelined him, and that the M’s were able to rule out a concussion so quickly.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Andino, 3B
3: Ibanez, DH
4: Smoak, 1B
5: Seager, 2B
6: Montero, C
7: Bay, RF
8: Wells, LF
9: Ryan, SS
SP: Maurer
Reviewing The 2013 Seattle Mariners Commercials
The big news surrounding the Seattle Mariners right now is nothing. The lesser news is that Kameron Loe and Jon Garland are probably going to make the team, and Jason Bay is also going to make the team, and Casper Wells is going to make some other team. That last bit is probably good for Casper Wells but it’s probably bad for us on account of reasons I don’t need to go into. There’s plenty of discussion right now about what the Mariners ought to do, and how the Mariners ought to play. The regular season is actually just around the corner, and then there will be one hundred and sixty-two baseball games. But I thought I’d provide a break from the analysis and roster consideration by turning an eye to this year’s crop of commercials. The commercials came out a week and a half ago, so by Internet standards they’re old news, but they were released the day after I left Lookout Landing and the day I traveled to Arizona so I haven’t had a chance to review them yet. Below you may review them with me, if you’re interested in amateur reviews of baseball team commercials. If you’re interested in that, you might also be interested in other things, but you won’t find any of those other things here. Just amateur reviews of baseball team commercials.
Here is a link to all of the commercials. We go in the order in which the commercials are presented.
The Wise Ol’ Buffalo
Here we have a commercial featuring Brendan Ryan and a buffalo. Not just that — a commercial featuring Brendan Ryan and a buffalo that takes Ryan by surprise, given that the commercial begins with Ryan suddenly turning around. “Hey wise ol’ buffalo” is immediately one of my favorite lines in the history of these team commercials, owing both to its absurdity and its enthusiastic, casual delivery. The concept is brilliant specifically because it doesn’t make any sense. But I’ve an analytical mind, and I have to wonder about a few things. For one, why does Ryan appear to be alone on the field? How did he not notice the buffalo looming behind him? Why would the Mariners be okay with players teasing another player with a big live buffalo? I remember chatting with a friend some years back who was in a cabin in North Dakota, and he couldn’t leave the cabin because it was surrounded by buffalo, and they didn’t want to let him out. Buffalo are strong and unpredictable.
More, Ryan basically just invites the buffalo to go into the Mariners’ clubhouse to have some cookies. I can’t imagine a buffalo would even fit through a door, but Ryan talks as if this has been going on for a while. Tom Wilhelmsen confirms as much to Jesus Montero, saying he’s been pranking Ryan for six months. The spot takes place during spring training, meaning Wilhelmsen followed Brendan Ryan with a magical buffalo for the duration of the offseason. I’m not saying it’s impossible; I’m just saying it…requires a hell of a commitment to a joke, all for the sake of getting some free cookies from a guy who isn’t a professional cookie-baker. What did Ryan’s family think of the buffalo? I have even more questions.
Hottest Thing In Town
Though shy of spectacular, this works for me, and while I don’t know how many times I’ll be able to tolerate it, the answer’s probably higher than the number of Mariners games I’ve been able to tolerate the last few years. I don’t think it works if Felix isn’t Felix. By which I mean, Felix’s accent sells it. This commercial probably wouldn’t be that funny at all with Justin Verlander. But skip ahead to 0:16. “And sport drinks!” Or, “ann SPOR drinks!” Felix nailed it with his delivery of “I’m Larry”, and he nailed it again with his delivery here. One’s reminded that Felix has a superstar personality to go with superstar talent. My only quibble is with the guy reaching for bubble gum right as the teammate beside him grimaces and takes out his bubble gum.
Focused & Relaxed
I mean, the players all get dressed in the same place, right? They don’t just show up at the ballpark in full baseball uniform? It would be possible for no one to notice Michael Saunders’ feet. It would be possible for no one to really notice or care about Michael Morse’s t-shirt. But there’d be no hiding Kyle Seager’s full-body silk pajamas. Seager would be wearing his pajamas, and teammates would be like, “what’s up with the pajamas?” People would talk about the pajamas, so no one would be taken by surprise by the pajamas. It would be probably the least conspicuous thing in the clubhouse. And how long has Seager been wearing a breakaway uniform? Is that a breakaway belt? What if the uniform broke away while Seager was diving? No, no, it doesn’t make any sense at all. What’s going to allow this commercial to survive and even be thought fondly of is that there are going to be context-free .gifs of Kyle Seager stripping off his uniform. As a standalone image, it’s hilarious. As part of a story, the story is weak.
Fan Mail
If Dustin Ackley gets all those letters, just imagine how many letters the Mariners’ good players must get. On the other hand, maybe Ackley was just letting the mail pile up for a while — Eric Wedge seems surprised by Ackley’s behavior, as if this hasn’t happened before. But then, Ackley says he can’t let his fans down, implying that he wouldn’t wait to open a package. It’s a nice gag to have Ackley put everything on and then make a play in the field. Apparently I still remember that scene from Friends where Joey puts on all of Chandler’s clothes, so it can make for a memorable image. But I’m worried that this might turn out like the Justin Smoak commercial a year ago, where Smoak was billed as some big strong dinger hitter before he was established as such. What if Dustin Ackley is bad again? Then it’d look weird for Ackley to be sold as a regional fan favorite. It’s not like people love him for his personality.
One Wish
The weird thing A weird thing about “One Wish” is that it features a Mariners fan making several different wishes. And all within seconds or minutes of one another, apparently, making you wonder whether he’s just like this all the time. That would make him so annoying. How does he have property? Something I definitely don’t get is why every wish isn’t just about the World Series. Isn’t that the whole thing? Wouldn’t that work better with the name of the spot, too, if the fan just made the same wish over and over, about the Mariners winning the championship? Why would his first wish (that we see) be about just a winning season, where the Mariners might not even make the playoffs? Most bizarrely of all, the genie lamp works! Raul Ibanez shows up in the guy’s house! Because the guy wished for Raul Ibanez, of all things and people. The first time we see the genie lamp, the guy is wishing for a World Series. Did the Mariners effectively just guarantee that they will win the World Series? That strikes me as bold. To me, the main selling point here is Raul Ibanez saying “I have no idea how I got here” while looking around, bewildered. Tell me about it, Raul.
The Lineup
Names of children:
- Raul
- Felix
- Guti
- Michael
- Kyle
- Dustina
- Justina
- Wilhelmsen
- Hisashi
Picture of children:
So I’m terrible at estimating the ages of children, mainly because I don’t have any of my own, nor do I hang out with them. But don’t most of those children look about the same age? How would that have been physically possible for the wife? We know we’re not dealing with an adoption situation, given that at the end of the commercial the man is preparing for sex. Even though for some reason the wife is apparently cuttings things off at nine instead of ten. Someone has a lot of explaining to do. I’d say that, for the Mariners, it’s somewhat daring to include sexual overtones when advertising a family-friendly product, and I appreciate that, but for me the commercial just doesn’t work because the joke isn’t good enough to have me ignore the logical holes. Honestly I would’ve been more interested in 30 seconds of the husband philosophically exploring what it actually means to be a diehard fan. Should we consider it a positive or negative character quality?
Overall
We can probably expect “The Lineup” to go away after a few months, if and when the Mariners trade Kendrys Morales. The others seem like they have lasting power, but as a crop overall, I’m going to choose “mediocre” as my adjective. I’ll admit that I don’t know what other teams are putting out there, and you can’t expect the Mariners to come up with six segments of brilliance. They’re a baseball team and they have far bigger priorities. And there are some memorable images, like Brendan Ryan talking to a buffalo, Kyle Seager ripping off his uniform, and Dustin Ackley wearing a Goodwill donation bin. I’m going to chuckle every time Felix says “sport drinks!” But if the old Mariners commercials were actually as good as people remember them being, then these don’t measure up. More likely, people remember the good and forget about the lame, because the past typically tends to be overrated, but I think here there’s room for improvement. And we’re the people who have to sit through hundreds of airings of these things. We should want for them to be as tolerable as repetitive commercials can ever be. Maybe that’s an impossibility. Maybe my standards are impossible.
Bonus! Slogan
Our progression of Mariners team slogans:
- 2010: believe big
- 2011: ready to play
- 2012: get after it
- 2013: true to the blue
I don’t know what it actually means to be true to the blue. If I had to guess, the Mariners wear blue, and this year’s Mariners intend to adequately represent the Mariners franchise and all of the attendant organizational principles. What would it be for the Mariners to defy the blue? What principles would they disobey? Would they win? The blue hasn’t done very much winning. Maybe they’re going to be true to some other blue, like Dodger blue. Points for ambiguity.
Cactus League Game 18, Mariners at Royals
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Ervin Santana, 1:05pm
I’d talk about this match-up between Cactus League heavyweights, but when you get right down to it, this is practice baseball in which Jason Bay bats leadoff (again) and where Robert Andino starts. It’s not nothing, but there’s no Felix and it doesn’t involve any of the pitchers battling for the final rotation spot.
So if you’ll indulge me, I wanted to talk about this. Jeff Sullivan’s leaving Lookout Landing, and while he’ll be writing here from time to time (woohoo), I’m going through withdrawal symptoms right now and it’s the early morning the day after his announcement. For many, Jeff’s writing kept them attached to this star-crossed team, especially if you’d moved away from the Northwest, or if you had a natural aversion to emotional investments in failing enterprises. I’m too far gone for that – if you could stay a fan through the Argyros years, a decade or so of futility almost felt familiar and comfortable, like a well-worn pair of the worst hiking boots ever sold. But it would’ve been worse – immeasurably worse.
The community he created and shaped was unlike anything I’ve ever seen on the internet. I’m still stunned that hundreds of people would come to together and essentially create and enforce an ethos and mores the way they did. Sure, it wasn’t for everyone, but it was pretty close to unique and it wasn’t dependent on any cabal of commenters to keep it going – new people would step forward and maintain the same basic system. At this point, there are only a handful of people there who were commenting in Lookout Landing’s first days (and from Sullivan’s first blog, Leone for Third), but it didn’t matter. The whole thing reflected Jeff’s idea of what a baseball community could be, and very early on, he didn’t have do too much to keep it in line. People just found it, people who didn’t just want to emote or make psychological judgements about ballplayers. People who care a lot about proper grammar, evidently.
I simply can’t imagine what it was like for Jeff to do this essentially every day for nine years. I can’t imagine staying up to write game recaps with win-expectancy charts for another 8-3 loss to the Angels or whoever. I can’t imagine trying to be creative as you watch one front office implode, and then watch another stumble a bit in the face of the sky-high (maybe too high) expectations we all put on them. I can’t imagine cranking out that much content and have it remain readable and funny. People talk about how amazing it is to see something like Barry Bonds stats from 2000-2003, or Pedro Martinez’s 1999-2000 peak, or maybe Bob Gibson/Sandy Koufax’s great years in the 1960s. The analogy isn’t perfect, and I get that, but after writing a tiny bit these past few years I feel like I have a better sense of how apposite it is: Jeff Sullivan has been Koufax level for years. I’ll miss the daily dose of it, but I’m thrilled that he’ll be posting here, and I’m thrilled I can still read plenty of Sullivania at Fangraphs. Koufax was the product of a time when easing back on innings or workload was the sign of weakness. I’m really glad Jeff’s backing off before he got too burned out to do this at all anymore.
If you look at the starting line-up here, scroll down to the pitchers – the guys eligible to come in and work an inning after Iwakuma. There’s righty Dominic Leone, who pitched for Everett last year and, predictably, hasn’t made an appearance in big-league camp this year. I just…wonder what it was that caused the M’s to pluck him from the back fields today. I know it’s too much to hope he’s the third pitcher used today, but I’m going to hope for it anyway. C’mon Leone, we believe in you.
The line-up:
1: Bay, LF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morse, 1B
4: Ibanez, DH
5: Saunders, CF (Welcome back, Michael)
6: Shoppach, C
7: Peguero, RF
8: Andino, SS
9: Triunfel, 2B
SP: Iwakuma
Cactus League Game 9, Dodgers at Mariners
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Chris Capuano, 12:05pm
“They said it wouldn’t count, and then they count it anyway. Bush league stuff. What have you got when your word means nothing?” asked the old man to his distracted grandson. The young boy continued playing with a smartphone, but mouthed the word “nothing” as his grandfather repeated the word emphatically. “Nothing! That’s right! They said it was a charity game!”
The boy loved coming to his grandparents to play to but didn’t know what to make of his grandfather’s old-fashioned obsession with Cactus League baseball. “None of it counts, grandpa. Can we make sandwiches?” “I know none of it counts, but you can still learn if you pay attention. That’s why we always pay extra attention when they play in Peoria or Surprise.”
“Pappy, was that a change-up?”
“Let’s see…NO, no it wasn’t! Ha! The algorithm’s messed it up again.” The old man’s voice was excited, as he opened another browser window.
“What now, pappy?” “I’ve got to tell people.” “Who, pappy?” “Everyone! I mean, people are going to think…that….they’re going to.. make…judgments..they’re…and they’re…I’ve got to type this.”
“It’s March 2nd, pappy. Don’t you think people are doing other things?”
“Some of them aren’t. The fans aren’t . The people who *know* what they’re doing. I mean, this rotation is taking shape here, and we’ve got data to compare now for Iwakuma. This is big stuff, here.”
“But….”
“Look, Sam, you may not appreciate it right now, but there’s a long tradition involved. For decades moms and dads have hunched over gameday, or way back when they’d just look at the raw XML. Fathers joking with sons about the best horizontal movement on a change-up he’d ever seen. Moms piping in about the time Felix through a 93mph change against Texas, kids learning to differentiate sliders and curves from the data alone. And then the community beyond that – integrating these conversations with hundreds of others through sports radio, blogs, twitter. It’s a way of engaging with the baseballing world! And it’s just about the same today as it was when my grandpa first showed me a reverse-slider of Trevor Bauer’s in a Spring Training game years and years ago. And then we went on a blog together and called some other fans rubes and morons…it’s…I still hear his laugh when I look at these data.”
“Can I have a sandwich now, pappy?”
“Just…a…hold on.” He read over his comment quickly, occasionally quietly saying the words out loud. He gave the word “narrative” a mocking, sing-song cadence, and a big grin spread over his wrinkled face. “Heh. Yeah, let’s go make a sandwich. Who makes the best grilled cheese in the entire world?”
Line-up:
1: Gutierrez, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Ibanez, LF
4: Smoak, 1B
5: Wells, RF
6: Paulino, DH
7: Zunino, C
8: Andino, SS
9: Triunfel, 2B
SP: Hisashi Iwakuma
“Paulino DHing? What’s the point? He’s not there to hit, the whole point was to be a back-up who handled the staff! You’ve only got so much time to figure out some of the key battles, and that means getting at-bats for the guys on the bubble! You can’t…he’s a…slow…I mean, what does it tell you? Nothing! There’s no…why not DH Thames or Liddi or literally anyone, I just”
“I think the sandwich is burning, pappy.”
Spring Training Results
I put up a version of this post every year. For those who have been reading for a while, I apologize for the redundancy, but it unfortunately remains necessary.
As you are no doubt aware, Cactus League games began over the weekend. The good news is that means that we can stop hearing about who looked good jogging and stretching. The bad news is that now we have to hear who looked good because they put together a nice week or two against minor league pitching in a minor league ballpark in games that don’t count.
The usefulness of spring training statistics have been examined a couple hundred ways, and the result is always the same – they hold no information of value. Whether a guy has a good spring (Munenori Kawasaki hit .455 in Arizona last year) or a bad spring (John Jaso didn’t get a hit until the final week in March), the data has no predictive value. It is completely worthless, for all the reasons Jeff laid out a few weeks ago.
Every year, though, decisions are made based on how players do in March. The decisions are justified by claiming that it they aren’t based on the results, but on how the players look to experienced coaches and scouts who are paid to evaluate players in an up-close-and-personal atmosphere. The problem is that human beings — even experienced scouts and coaches — are pretty terrible at evaluating the difference between “how a guy looks” and what his results are.
In other words, it’s really hard to look bad if you’re hitting a bunch of home runs. It’s really hard to look good if every pitch you throw ends up as a rocket off the bat. Our opinion of how a player looks is informed by the outcome of the plays he is directly involved in. Yes, even trained MLB coaches. Despite the appeal to authority that people like to make, they are simply not immune to the biases that are inherent in our human reaction to watching people perform.
Last year, Eric Wedge watched John Jaso do poorly at absolutely everything, and his evaluation was that Jaso couldn’t help the team in any real capacity, so he stuck him at the end of the bench and never used him. He watched Hisashi Iwakuma give up a bunch of hits and decided that he wasn’t ready to pitch in the Majors, so he made him the backup long reliever and never let him pitch either. Meanwhile, Blake Beavan and Hector Noesi locked up their rotation jobs with strong springs. Alex Liddi played himself onto the team by showing a significantly improved approach at the plate, edging out Carlos Peguero for the final roster spot, despite the fact that Peguero was also deemed to be quite impressive in March.
When the games started counting, it became clear that Noesi and Beavan didn’t belong in the rotation, Jaso was the team’s best catcher, Iwakuma was being completely wasted in the bullpen, and Liddi still had no business in the Major Leagues. Of course, neither did Peguero. Pretty much every decision about playing time that was influenced by what the coaches saw last March turned out to be incorrect. And those decisions haunted the Mariners all year long. It wasn’t until the second half of the year that Jaso and Iwakuma finally got the roles they deserved, and half a season of good performances weren’t enough to change the coaches predetermined minds about what kind of skills Jaso possessed.
It wasn’t just the fringe guys either. The biggest story coming out of spring training last year was Ichiro’s rebirth as a #3 hitter, as he hit .415/.479/.634 in Cacus League play. A close second was how strong Dustin Ackley looked, as 10 of his 13 hits went for extra bases and he only struck out five times in 45 at-bats. You know what happened to those two once April rolled around.
There were basically two stories from last spring that turned out to contain real grains of truth: Michael Saunders‘ revamped swing and Erasmo Ramirez‘s stuff taking a step forward.
Early on, it became clear that Saunders was hitting for power to to the opposite field, which he had never really been able to do before. I wrote about that last March 15th, for instance, as we followed with some amazement as Saunders drove double after double to left and center in Arizona. While he was still a pull-heavy hitter during the regular season, he took a big step forward in his results on hitting to center field, which was one of the primary reasons he had a breakthrough 2012 season.
That said, Saunders didn’t exactly have a monstrous Spring Training from a results perspective. He hit .356/.396/.533, which is pretty good until you remember that everyone hits well in Arizona. Of the 10 guys who got at least 40 at-bats in spring training last year, Saunders’ .929 OPS ranked seventh, just barely ahead of Jesus Montero (.923). The only guys who got regular playing time and didn’t hit as well as Saunders last year were Chone Figgins and Casper Wells. If we expand the list to guys with 30 or more at-bats, Saunders also falls behind Justin Smoak.
So, yeah, Saunders showed something last spring that was worth paying attention to, but it wasn’t a results thing – it was a change in mechanics and a display of a skill he did not previously have. Likewise, Erasmo Ramirez showed an average fastball speed of 94 MPH in games at Peoria (where PITCHF/x cameras are installed), which is well above what he’d shown previously in the minors. Like with Saunders, the results weren’t overly spectacular — one walk, four strikeouts in 10 innings — but the stuff was significantly better than had been seen in the minors, and Ramirez’s uptick in velocity allowed him to move from being a suspect to a real prospect.
Saunders and Ramirez exemplified the kinds of changes that actually matter in March. Big changes in velocity can matter, though as Felix showed, velocity loss can also not really matter, so don’t read too much into guys working to get their fastballs up to normal speed over the next few weeks. I’d say a velocity spike — recorded by a PITCHF/x camera, not a radar gun, and adjusted for the readings other pitchers were getting that day — is more important than velocity loss in March. For hitters, we don’t have such an easily recordable skill measurement, so there’s going to be a lot more of the BS fluff stories about so-and-so changing his swing. With Saunders, it was real, but it also resulted in a pretty obvious change in the direction and trajectory of the ball coming off his bat.
The rest of it, though, was total garbage. And pretty much 90% of what you’re going to read and hear over the next month is going to be total garbage. Jason Bay is going to “look good” when he hits home runs, and he’s going to “look old” when he strikes out. Unfortunately, the organization and the coaching staff have shown that they’re going to make decisions based on how guys look in Arizona, and so as long as Jason Bay stays healthy and hits a few more home runs, he’s probably going to make the team, while Casper Wells will be shipped off to someone who has a better grasp of Wells’ skills. This is an unfortunately predictable outcome, and I’m preparing myself for the inevitable dump of Wells at the end of camp, while we read about how Bay’s rejuvenation just pushed him off the squad. It’s going to be annoying, and it’s going to happen because the Mariners put a value on how players “look” in spring training.
That doesn’t mean you have to. Ignore the BS that filters down over the next five weeks. Whatever you think about the players today, you should think that about them on April 1st. Spring training performances simply don’t matter. We’d all be better off if they just had the entire exhibition season in private. What matters is what happens when the games count. None of these games count, and none of what happens actually matters.
If there’s a Saunders or Ramirez situation that suggests that further evaluation is required, we’ll talk about it, as we did with those two last spring. Those are the exceptions that prove the rule, however. By and large, you can basically ignore everything that happens between now and Opening Day and you’ll be no worse off for having skipped all of it.
Pitcher Health and Team Wins
Pitcher attrition is on everyone’s mind after the Mariners committed the GDP of a small country to right-handed pitcher/demigod Felix Hernandez. Two articles today examined pitcher injury from different angles.
The first is a statistical look at risk factors for pitcher injuries. You’ve probably all heard of the “Verducci Effect” wherein increasing the innings for a young pitcher portends ineffectiveness or injury, but this hypothesis turns out to be (oft-repeated) bunk.* Instead, the biggest predictor of injury is, erm, *injury*. That is, a trip to the DL in year 1 makes a pitcher much, much more likely to see the DL again in year 2. That’s not exactly a mind-blowing conclusion, particularly for fans of a team that employed Erik Bedard and Franklin Gutierrez at the same time. But the extent of that correlation is much stronger than I would’ve guessed. 43.7% of pitchers who were on the DL in one season went on the DL in the following season – but among those hurlers who WEREN’T injured in one year, less than 5% landed on the DL the next year. Call it the Erik Bedard principle: pitcher injuries cluster over time.
The pattern extends beyond just one year, of course. If a pitcher had any injury in some season (even if it didn’t require a DL trip), 55.6% of them had another injury 2 seasons later. But if those who made it through the season unscathed, only 2.7% were hurt two years later. 2.7%! That’s incredible, given what we normally think about the random, merciless arm of fate, dispassionately doling out labrum tears and tendon snaps to workhorses and DL-regulars alike and putting Frank Jobe’s descendents through college in perpetuity. You can probably guess where I’m going with this: the fact that Felix has been so durable in recent years really does have an impact on his chances of staying healthy for a while. It’s not a guarantee, and no one is counting on him to be completely healthy for seven years, but it’s the kind of data the M’s may have looked at before deciding that a contract of this magnitude and length made sense. That, and the fact that Felix is amazing.
The flip side is that the M’s have a few question marks in their rotation behind El Cartelua. Joe Saunders, Erasmo Ramirez and Hisashi Iwakuma have all made DL trips in the past two years (OK, Iwakuma’s took place in Japan and thus wasn’t an MLB DL trip per se). Extending that to any injury, and not just DL trips, picks up Blake Beavan as well, making four out of five. That’s somewhat worrying, though the impact is probably not as severe for the M’s considering the state of their high-minors pitching depth and based on what four-fifths of the rotation cost to acquire.
The second piece is Dave’s great article at Fangraphs about the White Sox ability to outperform their PECOTA projection.** One big piece of the puzzle appears to be, once again, pitcher injuries. Looking at DL databases going back 10 years, the White Sox have been the best in baseball at keeping their pitchers healthy. This means that they’ve needed fewer replacement-level fill-ins, and it’s allowed them to better the projection systems’ estimate of their playing time. Dave’s back-of-the-envelope estimate is that this, coupled with pitching coach Don Cooper’s excellent work with his pitchers, has added 2-3 wins *per year* to the Sox. They haven’t always been a great – or even good – team, but it really is shocking how few legitimately bad pitchers have suited up for Chicago, and how perfectly Mariners it is that Seattle managed to allow one of them to throw a perfect game against them.
Keeping pitchers healthy, or at least healthier than the competition, has meant a lot to the White Sox. It’s also something the M’s front office talked about when Jack Zduriencik was hired in 2009. So how’ve they done? Fairly well, actually. The M’s lost three players to the DL in 2012 – Ramirez, Charlie Furbush and George Sherrill. Ramirez and Furbush were on for relatively minor things, and pitched effectively after returning. Sherrill played a grand total of 5 minutes in an M’s uniform, and, technically, his second stint in Seattle ended before spring training did. In 2011, the M’s had six members of the 40-man hit the DL, the same number they had in 2011. Sure, this doesn’t prove much, as they had Erik Bedard in 2010-11 and not in 2012, but they lost very few starts to the DL in 2012, and it’s possible that the organization’s coaching and strength/conditioning/flexibility group has had a hand in that. The cynic would argue that the M’s were simply lucky in 2012, and that regression to the mean (along with the injury history stuff I mentioned earlier) indicates that the M’s are likely to fare worse than they did last year. But as the White Sox example shows, you can’t simply assume that every team regresses towards league average. There is skill mixed in with luck,*** and good teams are working very hard to identify and apply the skill portion of this equation.
* – in fact, Carleton’s model showed that a large increase in batters faced was correlated with a *lower* risk of injury in the next two seasons.
** – For what it’s worth, the M’s PECOTA projection is the most optimistic I’ve seen, pegging them just barely under .500 and within the margin of error not only of the Athletics, but of the Rangers as well.
*** – Holy crap, Texas. Kansas City’s been famous for poor handling of pitchers, but seriously, Texas’ 10 year history is mind-blowing. I understand that Thoracic Outlet Syndrome could be credibly renamed Texas Rangers’ disease. Also, as good as the White Sox have been, they stumbled in 2012, losing six pitchers to the DL, including three starters – one for the year (Danks) and one twice (Floyd).
A Hypothetical Alternative Off-Season
I know pitchers and catchers report today. Starting tomorrow, we’ll talk about the future of the roster the team actually put together. For today, one final off-season what-could-have-been.
In December, the Mariners put their cards on the table, going after Josh Hamilton with an aggressive pursuit that resulted in a reported offer of $100 million guaranteed over four years, with two vesting options that could have pushed the total value of the deal to $150 million. They wanted to improve the offense, and focused primarily on doing that by adding one slugging corner outfielder. Because of that offer, we can be reasonably sure that the Mariners had the money in the budget to spend $25 million per year on offensive upgrades, and were willing to commit that money through 2016, with the chance of also spending that money in 2017 and 2018 as well.
That offer wasn’t good enough to land Hamilton, and we know what the organization went after for Plan B. But, now that the last of the interesting free agent outfielders has signed, I think it’s worth thinking about what might have been had the team pursued a different strategy with the same money.
The Indians signed Michael Bourn yesterday to a four year, $48 million contract. This comes in addition to the $56 million they gave Nick Swisher over the next four years. That’s $104 million guaranteed, but both deals contain a vesting option for a fifth year, and if the options vest, they could push the total commitment over five years to $130 million. In other words, the Indians signed Bourn and Swisher for almost the exact same contract the Mariners offered Hamilton, only without the extra sixth year vesting option.
We don’t know for certain that Bourn and Swisher would have chosen Seattle over Cleveland had the money been equal, but of course most of the negative things people say about playing in Seattle — losing team, cold weather, not a city athletes want to live in — are also true of Cleveland. I think it’s safe to assume that neither Bourn nor Swisher went into the market looking to play for the Indians, but settled on Cleveland’s offer because it was the best — and maybe only, depending on what you think of the Mets conditional bid for Bourn — deal on the table when they signed. Even if you assume that the Mariners would have had to outbid the Indians in order to secure their services, the differences likely would have been minor.
So for fun, let’s just say that the Mariners had signed Bourn for 4/52 and Swisher for 4/60 — both players get $1 million more in AAV than what they took from Cleveland — with both getting that fifth year vesting option. At $112 million guaranteed, it’s slightly higher than what they offered Hamilton, but then again, they didn’t get Hamilton, so perhaps this is more in line with what an offer that is likely to be accepted would have cost. Since they offered Hamilton 4/100 with two vesting options, I think it’s fair to say that they could have figured out how to make 4/112 with one vesting option work.
Let’s just say for fun that the Mariners had pursued that plan instead. Spending $28 million per year — though the contracts likely would have been slightly backloaded, as is the norm — on those two would have precluded them from making several of the other moves they did make, but it wouldn’t have been too difficult to fit them in even at the current payroll level. Don’t take on Morse’s $6.75 million salary, instead keeping Jaso at $1.8 million. You can still swap Vargas for Morales and sign Joe Saunders as his replacement, since that series of moves only added a few million to the payroll, which can be offset by not signing Raul Ibanez. To pinch pennies, they could have skipped out on the $500,000 they guaranteed Jason Bay for a chance to come to spring training, and if they needed a few million in flexibility, they could have asked Felix to reduce his 2013 salary as part of the long term extension they’re going to announce any minute.
What would that roster have looked like?
Catchers: John Jaso, Jesus Montero, Kelly Shoppach
Infielders: Kendrys Morales, Dustin Ackley, Brendan Ryan, Kyle Seager, Robert Andino, Reserve 3B
Outfielders: Michael Bourn, Michael Saunders, Nick Swisher, Franklin Gutierrez
Starting Pitching: Felix Hernandez, Hisashi Iwakuma, Joe Saunders, Erasmo Ramirez, Grab Bag
Bullpen: Tom Wilhelmsen, Charlie Furbush, Carter Capps, Oliver Perez, Stephen Pryor, Josh Kinney, Lucas Luetge
Against RHPs:
1. Bourn, CF
2. Ackley, 2B
3. Swisher, RF
4. Morales, 1B
5. Seager, 3B
6. Montero, C
7. Jaso, DH
8. Saunders, LF
9. Ryan, SS
Against LHPs:
1. Bourn, CF
2. Gutierrez, RF
3. Swisher, 1B
4. Montero, DH
5. Seager, 3B
6. Shoppach, C
7. Saunders, LF
8. Ackley, 2B
9. Ryan, SS
In this scenario, John Jaso never even has to catch a game, since his defense is apparently so deplorable to Eric Wedge that he couldn’t stand the sight of Jaso crouching behind the plate ever again. You simply keep him as a cheap platoon DH and emergency catcher, so that Montero can DH against RHPs and allow Morales to take days off against left-handers. It’s essentially the same catching alignment as the team is going forward with now, so that gets rid of one talking point that’s not worth discussing. Guti ends up as an expensive fourth outfielder, but if he’s healthy and playing well, they could always work him in against right-handers as they rotate off-days for Saunders, Bourn, Swisher, Morales, and Jaso. Due to the positional flexibility, Gutierrez could actually replace any of them in the line-up on any given day. There would be enough playing time to go around for everyone except Casper Wells — who gets squeezed out and would have had to be traded for a better #5 starter than the team currently has — and Justin Smoak, who can hang out in Triple-A while establishing that September was or was not a fluke.
Yes, it would have required a little more flexibility than “full time player” or “part time player”, but this is basically the strategy the Indians are going to deploy this year, so it’s not an absurd construct that MLB teams can’t implement. And, with Bourn and Swisher under contract through 2016, the M’s would have actually set themselves up to have solid role players in place even beyond this season, and still had the flexibility to let Jaso/Montero/Morales/Smoak fight over the 1B/DH jobs going forward. The outfield defense would have been among the best in baseball, the team would have had a comparable offense to the one that will actually take the field this year, and they would enter the future with more pieces in place to make a competitive run as the kids grow.
Bourn and Swisher might not have been the “power” bats that the team coveted, but it’s hard to argue that the team wouldn’t have been better off with both of them rather than simply having one Josh Hamilton. That they were willing to extend something in the range of 4/100 for Hamilton but not for the Bourn/Swisher pair is regrettable, as the Mariners certainly had options available to make substantial upgrades to their team.
But, what’s done is done. The Indians were the beneficiaries of the Swisher and Bourn markets, and they’ll be the ones using positional flexibility and platoons to maximize the value of a roster that still has some holes. The Mariners are betting on dingers and veteran presence instead. Let’s hope it works.
Front Office Changes
In October of 2008, Jack Zduriencik was hired by the Mariners to take over the team’s open GM position and essentially fix a broken organization. In order to help facilitate a new direction, Jack filled the front office with his own guys. From Milwaukee, he brought Tony Blengino to be his assistant and serve as the analytical voice as a complement to his scouting background. He also brought Tom McNamara from the Brewers to take over amateur scouting and run the draft. As part of an agreement with the Brewers, he agreed to only hire two front office members from his old organization, so Pedro Grifol was promoted from within to fill the job of director of minor league operations, and Carmen Fusco was hired to run the professional scouting ranks.
In part to familiarize ourselves with the new guys, we decided to host a USSM/LL event in early January of 2009, a few months after they all joined the staff. We booked the auditorium at the Seattle Central Library, and invited a bunch of you guys to come hang out and talk baseball on a Saturday in the middle of winter.
I invited Jack to come to the event, but because of a prior commitment to do an extended radio interview at the same time, he wasn’t able to make it. To make it up to us, he offered to send essentially the entire front office as his replacement, so representing the Mariners were the four executives just mentioned: Blengino, McNamara, Grifol, and Fusco. Here’s some photographic evidence, if you want to see pictures.
That’s the only event I’ve ever not been able to make it out to Seattle to attend, but from what I gathered from those who were there, it went off like a giant four hour celebration. Fusco went through so many bottles of water that people were legitimately amazed at his capacity to retain liquids — I only learned later that he did the entire event while suffering from two kidney stones, which he passed only after the event was over. With that kind of dedication, no wonder spirits were high. Everyone was enthused. While Jack himself wasn’t able to make it, his employees inspired a great deal of confidence in the organization, and reflected extremely well upon his decision to hire them to begin with.
Which brings to one of the most common questions I’ve been asked this winter: how it is possible that a front office that saw so much value in Franklin Gutierrez, Endy Chavez, and Brendan Ryan — among others — could spend the winter pursuing the likes of Raul Ibanez, Jason Bay, and Michael Morse. The shift in the type of players acquired this winter has been so stark that it is hard to reconcile the idea that it’s the same front office making these decisions. But, therein lies the rub; the current front office is not the same one that was in place in the winter of 2008.
Fusco was relieved of his duties in September of 2010 for reasons that are another post entirely. Grifol was removed from his front office position last year, and was replaced by Chris Gwynn as the head of minor league operations; he just officially left the organization after spending 2012 managing High Desert in the California League. And this winter, the Mariners have made one more front office adjustment, as Tony Blengino is no longer working out of the Seattle office but has moved into an advisory role that involves him having conversations with Jack from his home in Milwaukee. He is still under the employ of the organization, but the official comment that I was given by the M’s PR department is that Tony is going to focus more on analytical research and be less involved in decisions relating to player personnel. Of the four men who made up something like Jack’s inner circle during that first off-season, Tom McNamara is the only one who is still serving in that same function.
It’s not that those positions got eliminated, of course, and Jack still has a group of folks that he trusts advising him on talent acquisition decisions. Jeff Kingston was hired by the Mariners as an Assistant GM in September of 2009, and he oversees the analytical department in the organization now. Ted Simmons was hired as the Senior Advisor to the GM in 2010. Last winter, the team added three Special Assistants, bringing in Pete Vuckovich and Joe McIlvaine, as well as promoting Roger Hansen, with all three currently listed on the organization’s front office page as “Special Assistant to GM, Player Procurement”, notably differentiating them from Blengino, who does not have those final two words in his title. Ken Madeja, who previously had held that role, moved into a pro scouting job. John Boles, who also held that position, left the organization after last season.
And, we can’t forget the one other major change, as there was the complete turnover of the field staff as well, with Don Wakamatsu and his crew being replaced by Eric Wedge‘s coaching staff after the 2010 season.
Blengino represented one of the few remaining holdovers from the initial group brought on by Zduriencik during his initial winter as GM. And now, with his reassignment, the structure of the analytical department is changing as well.
Tom Tango noted on his blog a few days ago that he was now exclusively providing his services to the Chicago Cubs. Tango, as you probably know, is one of the most well known statistical analysts in our community, and was hired by the Mariners as a consultant back during that first winter. According to the organization, Tango left for an exclusive position with the Cubs approximately three months ago, and Tango himself confirmed that publicly when asked how long he’d been working with Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer in Chicago.
The Mariners stress that they still value analytical decision making higher than ever, and do not see Tango’s departure or Blengino’s new role as a sign of a change in philosophical approach. Indeed, they’ve just brought on several new interns to serve in the baseball operations department, and guys like Andrew Percival and Casey Brett remain in the organization, working in their respective roles within Kingston’s group. The names and titles may be changing, but the Mariners suggest that this is simply part of the natural turnover of the game, and not any kind of organizational shift in decision making process.
That said, there’s no question that different people have different ideas, and it seems pretty clear that the current front office has some different ideas than the 2009 front office had. We’re not privy to the inner workings of each decision, so we don’t know how much each kind of acquisition was influenced by which individuals, but the results of the current roster construction methods speak to a pretty significant shift at some point along the line. Whether that shift is a reaction to the failures of players like Chone Figgins and Milton Bradley, or whether it’s simply a reflection of the preferences of the current front office decision makers, we have no idea. Maybe it’s not either of those things, and there’s no connection between the front office turnover and the shift in the type of players the Mariners have acquired this winter. Without being in the room when those decisions are made, we simply can’t know what has changed, if anything.
But from an outsider’s perspective, it sure appears that things have changed, and changed pretty significantly. For a large portion of the fan base, that’s probably a good thing, as I know many of you are tired of seeing a low scoring offense with no power. You won’t be seeing that again any time soon, and with Blengino mostly out of the mix on player acquisitions — and Tango totally gone — that’s probably a change that’s here to stay. If there’s one thing we can clearly deduce from the organization’s maneuvers over the last few months, it’s that the Mariners are putting a premium on power hitting again. Maybe that’s a coincidence, but it seems like it’s probably not.
The moves the team is making are different. Why? We don’t know for sure, but we do know that besides Jack Zduriencik and Tom McNamara, the front office now is entirely different than the front office that was in place back in the first few years of the new regime. I’d guess that those two things are related. Whether this new direction is for better or worse remains to be seen, but it’s hard for me to see how losing Tom Tango is beneficial to an organization, and I’m clearly not the biggest fan of the moves the team has made this winter.
But, I’m reminded of something Jack said during his first few days as GM of the team, as recorded by Larry Stone on October 25th, 2008.
“I’d love to have guys with good makeup and good character, committed to the city and the ballclub. But when all is said and done, talent wins.”
I’d love to have a front office that values the same things I value, and employs people that think similarly to the way I think, but when all is said and done, talent does win. Dustin Ackley doesn’t have any less talent now than he did when Tango worked for the Mariners. Felix Hernandez didn’t relocate to Milwaukee with Tony Blengino. The Mariners have never fired Kyle Seager. Teams without nerdy consultants win too. Letting Tango leave doesn’t mean the Mariners can’t win, or that the hard work done during the last few years won’t pay off in the future. Or, maybe things break right for the organization and they pay off in 2013. Who knows?
This post isn’t about predicting what all these changes will do to the organization. It’s more about attempting to explain why the moves seem so different now. We don’t have enough information to make any kind of firm conclusions, but there’s definitely some correlation between the front office turnover and the apparent change in team building approach we’ve seen this winter. Just because the GM hasn’t changed doesn’t mean nothing has changed. The group around Jack now is a lot different now than it was a few years ago. The group around Jack now is apparently are big fans of home runs.