Mariners to add grit
Also, grime. Dust is a secondary priority, but if possible the team is also looking to increase the amount of gravel and clay on the roster…
“Mariners want to add true grit”
“We have some guys who lay it on the line every game and aren’t affected when things get a little hairy in a tight situation,” general manager Bill Bavasi said, “but we need more of those guys. We are looking for players with good makeup between the lines and finding good, tough guys will be an important part of what we do.”
This is the kind of thing all GMs say all the time, along with standard lines about improving situational hitting, so I’m not particularly concerned.
That said, one of the reasons the 2004 team caught fire and fell over was because they did exactly this, attempting to bring in veterans like Aurilia and Spiezio who’d been parts of championship teams and could add that kind of veteran leadership and clubhouse presence.
It didn’t work out then, and if you look at the free agents who are reputed to be that same kind of player, you can see that it wouldn’t work this year either.
Baylor named hitting coach
The Mariners have named Don Baylor hitting coach.
Analysis: It doesn’t matter. Hitting coaches are, for the most part, irrelevant.
Richie Sexson
Since he’s the target of a host of uncited rumors, here’s the mini-article on Richie Sexson.
Richie Sexson is perhaps the sluggingest of the sluggers in baseball right now. He’s a huge man, 6’8 and about 240 pounds of long ball launching power. He came up through the Indians system in the late 90’s, blocked by Jim Thome at first base. The Tribe sent him to Milwaukee for a host of mediocre, injured relievers in one of John Hart’s worst moves. He blossomed into an elite hitter in his prime with the Brewers, peaking at a huge .272/.379/.548 season in 2003. He also established himself as one of the premier defensive first baseman in the game, and the combination of offense and defense he brought to the table in 2003 made him a legitimate MVP candidate in the non-Bonds category.
The Brewers couldn’t afford him, so they sent him to Arizona for seven dwarves, a lucky rabbits foot, a partridge, and a pear tree. He promptly proceeded to tear his labrum on April 29th and miss three weeks. He came back, aggrivated the injury two days later, and spent the rest of the season on the disabled list.
The positives; a year ago, he was considered one of the premier players in the game at his position. I guess make that “positive”.
The negatives; he’s coming off a serious injury that has a long history of wearing down a players abilities quickly and few positive comebacks. He turns 30 years old next month, already possesses old player skills, and has an abnormally large frame. Even a healthy Sexson would be expected to begin his decline shortly. Coming off a serious injury, there’s legitimate question as to whether he’ll ever regain previous form.
Very high risk, moderately high reward. He’s not a long term answer like Adrian Beltre would be. At best, you’re hoping for 3-5 years before looking for his replacement, and you’ll be paying for decline years at a peak rate. Sexson reportedly turned down a contract from Arizona that would have paid him $30 million over 3 years if he hit playing time incentives, instead asking that all three years of the contract be guaranteed.
Folks, if the Diamondbacks don’t want to guarantee three years to Sexson a year after giving up Curt Schilling and Lyle Overbay to get him and coming off a PR disaster that was that managerial hiring process, that should be a huge red light. Arizona wants Sexson back, and are likely to offer him arbitration, but the fact that they’re concerned enough with his health to take a year-by-year approach is a sign that they don’t know what they have, either.
If Richie Sexson wants three years of guaranteed money, look elsewhere. If he’s willing to take an incentive laden contract with team options for the second and third years, its worth investigating. Overall, he’s a bit too high of a risk for my tastes, as I don’t think this team can afford to sink any more of its payroll into players who won’t be contributing in 2005.
Dates to know
Here’s a quick primer on some key dates to know for thoses of you getting confused by poorly written articles floating around.
November 11th: Teams can begin officially talking specific contracts with free agents. Up until Friday, teams are technically only allowed to say things like “Hey, I’m interested”, though the enforcement of tampering in MLB is a total joke.
December 7th: Deadline for a team to offer a free agent arbitration. Any free agents signed before this date will automatically be offered arbitration and the team who loses them will be compensated by the signing team, depending on type of free agent and where the signing team’s pick lies in the draft. Free agents who are not offered arbitration by this date will bring no compensation to their original club, regardless of classification.
December 10th-13th: The annual winter meetings, where most of the big trades/free agent signings are officially announced. This is when a large majority of the impact moves take place, as well as the Rule 5 draft.
December 19th: Last day for free agent to accept arbitration from team. If a player declines the offer of arbitration, he cannot sign with his original team until May 1st. If a player accepts, he is under contract for the 2005 season and is off the free agent market.
December 20th: Last day to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players who are not free agents. A large group of players will be “non-tendered” on this day, leading to a whole host of new free agents flooding the market. Non-tendered players can re-sign with their original club.
GM Meetings
Since the General Manager meetings started yesterday, we’re going to see a proliferation of rumors starting to hit the ‘net. Any time you gather a group of executives, things will be discussed, most of which are just feelers and groundwork. I’d encourage you to take everything you read the next few days with large grains of salt. Historically, the GM meetings are a place of much talk, little action. If the M’s make a move this week, I’ll be surprised.
In other news, we’ll be putting out some final information on the second annual USSM pizza feed in the next day or two, including place, time, and cost. The date is set for December 18th, so if you’re interested in going, mark your calendars now. Keep your eye out for more information later tonight or tomorrow.
Interview with Bavasi
Larry Larue conducted an interview with our GM last week. It’s a pretty nondescript Q&A with blase answers for the most part. There was one question that made my skin crawl, however:
Q: Do the free-agent signings of last winter – Spiezio, (Rich) Aurilia, (Eddie) Guardado, (Raul) Ibanez – carry any lessons?
A: Nothing we didn’t know going in. On Aurilia, we were trying to get by until the kid (Jose Lopez) was ready. Spiezio? That should have worked. I don’t find what he did last season indicative of what he can or should do. Scott has issues he needs to take care of before we can see the real Spiezio. Guardado? I feel fine. If he’d stayed healthy, he’d have had his usual numbers. Ibanez did what we expected, but we can’t expect him to carry the club. The only one that was a real shock was Spiezio. Aurilia we rolled the dice with, and it didn’t work.
If the M’s were trying to “get by” until Lopez was ready, they’ve still failed, as he’s clearly not major league ready heading into the 2005 campaign. And, of course, there’s little explanation for why they couldn’t have simply kept Guillen, the cheaper, younger, better alternative.
Spiezio obviously underperformed even the most pessimistic expectation, but to say that the signing “should have worked” again shows a lack of ability to read market value. Even if he had performed at his previous levels, he would not have been worth the 3 year, $9 million contract the M’s signed him to.
The signings I wish LaRue would have asked about, though, were the extensions offered to Franklin, Hasegawa, and Winn. Those are contracts the M’s really should be learning from.
Rumoring and spending
Gammons, most prominently, is pushing the line that Richie Sexson is all but a done deal. He also mentioned that the Montreal Expos (Washington Unnamed Team?) may be shopping Vidro and Nick Johnson, to which I would say: man, I’d love to have Nick Johnson. Oh, sure, there’s the health issue, but what crazy potential, and he’d be a better defensive 1B than Ibanez or Bucky. Or you could DH him if you were really worried about health…
Anyway, to a larger point, beyond the long-term deals to younger, star free agents like Beltre/Beltran, should the Mariners spend on short-term, expensive fixes? What if they bring in Delgado and Glaus on two, three-year deals that are really rich?
I say go for it. As along as they don’t block the development path of legitimate, ready prospects, there’s no reason not to spend a ton of money. I like seeing the team win, and if the Mariners don’t spend that money they just pocket it (see: previous years) so why not spend it on random passer-by that make waiting for the team to rebuild more bearable?
And sometimes, if you’re smart about it, you can luck into the playoffs with a team like that.
Quick note
There’s a note in the latest Peter Gammons column that I want to clarify:
In Wally Backman, we’ve had the first embarrassment for the new Arizona ownership. Next, Richie Sexson is expected to move to Seattle.
No mention of who expects Sexson to move to Seattle, but I’ll tell you that it isn’t the M’s front office. He’s not even their top choice at first base, and they’re very unlikely to guarantee him all three years of the contract he’s seeking. Things could fall into place that would lead to Sexson being a Mariner next spring, but to say that it should be “expected” is a vast overstatement.
The Year in U.S.S. Mariner
I’m not sure if we’re going to do Official Endorsements this year or not, (probably, if they can be funny enough), but I wanted to talk a little about where we are and what’s ahead.
This year, we remodeled and moved to new digs. This meant new functionality and a huge upgrade in reliability over blogger, both on your side on ours. It also means I get a lot more frustrated when it doesn’t work, but it’s worth recognizing that the state of things is far better than it was.
Which brings us to another point. I don’t do a lot of trumpeting our traffic statistics, but we’re reaching a huge number of people for being a modest, three-person, team-specific site that doesn’t pay for bandwith or hosting with ad or subscription revenues. Our traffic’s a rounding error compared to, say, ESPN, but every year twice as many people visit us daily. I frequently think we’ve reached the ceiling, and then a week later more people keep coming.
I’m not sure how we reach out to people who haven’t seen us, but I’d love to know. I want the Mariners fan base to be the most informed and active in all of baseball, and if that means I have to go door-to-door, well, I’m too lazy to do that. But I had you go going there for a second.
It’s my hope that if we continue to try our best to provide quality commentary and analysis, and to above all strive to get things right, even if it means we turn out to be wrong, we’ll keep winning readers and everything will work itself out.
This year we turned on comments, and I’ve been constantly impressed with the quality and civility of discussion at large. I like to think that this is due largely to the quality of our readership, which is amazingly cool, and a little to do with me banning the morons quickly.
It’s been a bad year to be a Mariner fan. There were nights I would wait for my bus to Safeco Field and think “Do I really want to go through with this tonight?” But it’s been a great year to write for the U.S.S. Mariner, and I hope it’s been a good year to be a reader.
So thanks, everybody. You’ve been a great crowd.
A closing anecdote:
During this season, I was driving into Seattle in the middle of the day, listening to a sports talk show, and I heard a caller read — almost word for word — something I had posted the night before as if it was some insight they’d just had. The host said it was an excellent point, and went on… but I started to laugh despite myself.
We’ve been pilfered before in order to make someone seem funny. That was the first time I’d ever heard someone use the U.S.S. Mariner to make themselves seem smart.
That’s pretty cool, when you think about it.
Melvin and single-paying
I talked to someone in baseball and it turns out I’m wrong. There’s a thing attached to staff contracts as standard procedure called the Major League Offset Policy, and it says that if you’re fired from your job and get another job within baseball, the team that fired you only has to pay the difference, if any, between the salaries. If you take a lower job, like a coaching gig, same deal.
Further, there’s a mechanism to prevent abuse — if you’re the Yankees GM and you’re fired, the M’s can’t hire you for $1 because the Yankees are paying you $500,000/year. Staff contracts get approved by the Commish and a team could complain about a contract even then.
If you want to sit at home and play Halo 2, you get paid. If you take a job as a cook, like Jason, the team still pays you the full amount. Take a job within baseball, though — ding!
I hope this clears that up. Now, we don’t know for sure whether or not that was in Melvin’s deal, but knowing that this is pretty much standard for every staff contract, I have to believe it was.
It turns out that Bavasi may indeed have had an ulterior motive in pushing Melvin to Arizona, though I really don’t believe he made the recommendation he did because he thought he’d save some money. Baseball’s a small sport, and it’s not worth poisoning the wells, so to speak. Not that some GMs don’t try.