Watson turns down DC, Gillick to GM?

DMZ · October 28, 2004 · Filed Under Mariners

So the fat rumor today is that after Bob Watson turned down a chance to take the Expos job, Pat Gillick is now the leading candidate. It seems weird that instead of leaving a barren wasteland of a franchise, he’d be taking one over, but maybe guilt over his work with Toronto, Baltimore, et cetera finally overcame his reluctance to take such a difficult assignment.

Minor League Free Agents

DMZ · October 28, 2004 · Filed Under Mariners

This year’s minor leauge free agents posted at Baseball America.

As predicted by Dave, AJ Zapp’s off to greener pastures.

One of the ways good teams build their rosters is through minor league free agents: the A’s, for example, spend quality time building a roster in Sacramento that can help the major league roster if things go wrong.

Note that Jack Cust is available to be re-united with Hargrove, who gave him all of what, 10? 20? at-bats when Hargrove had the chance.

Champs

Dave · October 27, 2004 · Filed Under Mariners

Congratulations to the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox.

BP to stay

Dave · October 27, 2004 · Filed Under Mariners

Mike Hargrove has retained Bryan Price as pitching coach for the 2005 season, choosing the organization’s recommendation over his friend, Mark Wiley. However, Price is entering the final year of his contract, and I’d imagine that this is probably his last season as Mariner pitching coach. If the team’s pitching struggles, Hargrove will likely look to replace him with his own man. If the team turns it around, Price will have suitors elsewhere, and the cost of keeping him could be prohibitive.

Carl Pavano

Dave · October 26, 2004 · Filed Under Mariners

At the beginning of the 2004 season, you could have given me 30 or 40 chances to name the most coveted free agent starter on the upcoming market, and I’m still not sure I would have gotten around to mentioning Carl Pavano. A prized Red Sox prospect coming up through the farm system (he was the main player given up in the Pedro Martinez trade), he had never lived up to expectations. His performance record consisted of three and a half below average seasons in Montreal and a year and a half of league average production in Florida. In just over 700 career innings of work, he had posted a 4.59 ERA with peripheral stats that supported the assertion that he was an innings eater at best.

2004 saw him post an ERA of 3.00, 37 percent better than league average, and post an 18-8 record and a VORP of 64.4, fourth highest among major league starters. Seemingly out of nowhere, Pavano became a legitimate Cy Young contender, mixing both durability and excellence at the age or 28. What changed to cause him to go from back end starter to ace? Look at his ratios for the past three seasons:

 	H/9IP	K/BB	HR/9IP	K/9IP
2002	1.28	2.04	1.25	6.09
2003	1.01	2.71	0.85	5.96
2004	0.95	2.84	0.65	5.63  

His walk rate has remained fairly steady, but he’s been able to cut his hits and home runs allowed. Usually, this would be accompanied by a higher strikeout rate, but Pavano is actually missing less bats now than he was during his mediocre years. Peripherally, there is very little difference between his average 2003 and superb 2004 seasons. So what the heck happened?

Honestly, it was probably luck. Based on his peripherals and an average defensive support, he should have posted a 3.57 ERA; still solid, but a big step down from his actual performance. It appears that a good percentage of the steps forward he took this year aren’t repeatable talent, but more good fortune.

Pavano’s skillset is one that can succeed, but much like Brad Radke, whom we profiled earlier, he’s going to be prone to inconsistency. As a ball-in-play starter, he will be more susceptible to the ups and downs of random variation than a three true outcomes starter like Matt Clement. 2004 was the peak of what one could expect from Pavano, given his stuff and command. Whoever signs him will pay the premium value for a pitcher who cannot reasonably be expected to pitch any better than he did last year, and should be expected to return closer to performances matching his career lines.

In all the talk about Adrian Beltre’s breakout season (or fluke, depending on your point of view), Carl Pavano’s leap from mediocrity to stardom appears to have the least potential to continue. Pavano, while coming off a tremendous year, is going to price himself into a market that will almost certainly make him a bad investment. He’s a great player to avoid.

Edgar pre-game

DMZ · October 26, 2004 · Filed Under Mariners

According to reports in both the PI and Times, Edgar will win the 2004 Roberto Clemente Award, which recognizes “the player who best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual’s contribution to his team.” (from MLB.com)

If that’s the case, we should see a pre-game ceremony before tonight’s Game 3 of the World Series.

AOL commenting

DMZ · October 26, 2004 · Filed Under Site information

Real quick — because of the way AOL routes its traffic, getting rid of some particularly heinous trollers has meant that other AOL users have seen their comments delayed, so they get seen by a USSM person before they go live. So if you’re cool, and post a comment that doesn’t immediately appear, don’t sweat it, it’ll show up soon enough. I’m working on trying to figure out how to more specifically target offenders, but in the meantime, sorry for the inconvenience.

USSMariner Feed #2

Dave · October 25, 2004 · Filed Under Mariners

Last winter, we held the first ever U.S.S. Mariner pizza feed, with about 50 of you showing up to hang out for several hours and talk about the M’s. So, back by popular demand, we’re going to host another pizza feed this year. Thanks to the pretty dramatic increase in readership we’ve experienced in the past twelve months, Piecora’s isn’t going to be large enough to handle us this time around. We’re looking into renting meeting halls capable of holding a couple hundred people. This feed may be a bit more like a conference than last years gathering, so before we get too far into the planning, I’d like to get some feedback from you guys on a few topics.

1. Tentative date is Saturday, December 18th. No real feedback on this necessary, as I doubt this date changes.

2. There is a moderate chance that we could get Bill Bavasi to attend, at least for a portion of the time, depending on his schedule. This is going to be the weekend after the winter meetings, so the big transactions of the offseason will likely be done by the feed. Obviously, having him (or any member of the front office) there presents a completely different dynamic than if he’s not. We had Chris Antonetti and Neil Huntington, assistant GMs for the Indians, come and speak to the 30 or so fans that attended the BP Cleveland feed last year, and they were remarkably candid and added a great deal to the feed. However, the entire atmosphere of the crowd changed when they arrived, and I’m not sure which you guys would prefer; a chance to have a Q&A with our GM or a chance to hang out with a few hundred fans and say whatever you want about the offseason moves. If Bavasi or another member of the front office does come, we’re going to demand that you treat them with respect and realize they’re giving up some valuable time to be there, and this would not be your opportunity to call Bill all the names in person that you’ve yelled at home for the past year. So, yay or nay to inviting a front office type to the feed?

3. Odds are we won’t be serving alcohol this year, so my theory was to hold the feed in the early afternoon (say, 2-6), which gives time for those of you that want to visit a nearby watering hole and drink the night away with fellow readers a chance to do so. Depending on how many special guests we get (right now, I’ve got two lined up, and am aiming for five), we might make the feed a bit longer, as well. So, what I’m wondering is what ratio of people talking at you vs you mingling with other readers you’d be happiest with. Should we cap the Q&A/us talking time to a couple hours so that you all can hang out with each other, or would you prefer more scheduled time given to people addressing the whole group?

4. On a similar vein, there’s a good chance that a friend of mine who is an area scout for a National League team is going to attend. I realize that not everyone is as big of a minor league geek as I am, and might not be as interested in talking scouting theory/mechanics breakdowns with a pro scout. Since his opinion on current minor leaguers is proprietary information to his club, he probably won’t be real forthcoming in his evaluation of guys in the M’s farm system, so the topic would center more on the role of scouting and what he looks for in general. Would you guys enjoy something like that?

5. Also, if you have any connections with meeting hall/conference centers that would give us a good deal and allow us to bring our own food, feel free to email us. One of our readers was willing to do a lot of the legwork for this feed (you rock, Conor), but if we have any inside connections, might as well use them. In a similar vein, if you’d like to help with the administrative side of planning this thing, let me know, and I’ll gladly put you to work.

M’s and rumor mongers, Alex’s a jerk

DMZ · October 25, 2004 · Filed Under Mariners

I’m back again, again — I spent the weekend hanging out with my brother, which included being hit by The Worst Beat Ever in my poker-playing life (but nobody likes bad beat stories, so I’ll spare everyone). And there was no Mariner news to write about. I was a little disappointed.

So I have two things, then:

If you’re following the free agent speculation, you’ll note that Carlos Beltran is frequently mentioned as a future Yankee. Possibly a Cub, or a Met, or an Astros. Sometimes the Red Sox, Angels, even the Dodgers. Not, though, a Mariner.

I think this reflects two things: first, in general, sports media (like all mass media) often fixates on the easy story. Every outlet has individual people who look at all the stuff they could fill their column-inch quota or word count with, and those people often look at possible topics and think “which of these is easiest to write something that my readers will look at and, possibly, react to?” I know: writing columns at BP I often sat down at keyboard with two or three topics, tried to work on the most interesting ones, ran up on the deadline, and ended up having to do the easy-to-write one and after that got back to the other topic.

The Yankees are eaaaaaaaaaaasy. Will they be able to continue their huge spending as the “tax rate” on payroll increases to 40%? Will they be able to take on Beltre, and does that mean Alex moves to short and Jeter to second? Or center? And then what about Beltran — does Bernie stay there? Are they looking to dump someone?

Easy column, guaranteed to generate response, because the Yankees are always controversial.

Moreover, and this is going to sound bad no matter how I write it, sports media in general is hugely East Coast-centric. ESPN, the big networks, they’re all out east, and it shows. Great West Coast performances rarely get national play because the games air at ten in New York, and nobody’s watching. This is more subjective, but coverage of some teams often seems to be an afterthought. I find many more factual errors in team and game stories the farther west they’re filed. In general it seems that only LA, also in a media center, gets the kind of press attention that the Phillies do. They certainly don’t cover the kind of in-depth backroom dealings that those east franchises do. If you want to get rumors out of the Mariners in a mainstream publication, you’re looking to Gammons pretty much.

So the fact that the Mariners are a huge revenue-generating team — I don’t think that’s well-known. That they’re interested in spending on a top-tier free agent… I don’t think that’s well-known either, and as a story it doesn’t lend itself to an easy column as well as the Yankees do. And then when people write about “speculation is that he’ll be courted by x, y, and, z” there’s no buzz about it.

There is also the fact that these teams are known to pursue and sign big names, while the Mariners are not. We could talk about whether the perception that the Mariners have never signed a top-tier free agent is justified, but it’s absolutely true that this belief is widespread, and it’s not going to go away until the team signs someone great to a truly monster deal. No one cares that the Mariners were bidding on Tejeda, or whoever — it’s going to take a signing to change this perception, and until then people aren’t going to buzz about how they’re rumored to be after this top guy or that top guy unless the team’s actually in the running.

I expect that once the free agent season has started and the team is out bidding, we’ll know about it. I don’t think this is a case where the lack of whispering about what they’re up to means they’re not up to anything.

And in the things-that-generate-hate-mail category, I’ve always stuck up for Alex. The money, even the contract, isn’t an issue for me, because I think he was worth it, and Texas’ whining about payroll flexibility rang false to me. He’s always been sort of… personality-less to me, someone who knows what he’s supposed to say, and says it. I’ve also seen Alex flash genuine warmth before kids while doing random promo appearances at schools and stuff when he was here, so I’ve always figured

But man, seeing his hand-slap thing in the ALCS, followed by his subsequent whining to the umpires and everyone else… what a jerk. There’s a certain amount of uh… latitude I’m willing to give players in trying to do what it takes to win, but between the move itself, the argument with the umps that he was just running — which was obviously not true — and then his bleating about the call, I was thinking “dude, don’t be a jerk about this, please…”

No such luck.

Payroll

Dave · October 22, 2004 · Filed Under Mariners

The always solid Jeff Sullivan lays out some good information about the Mariners payroll relative to revenue the past few years. Even as we encourage optimsm that the M’s will actually spend money this offseason, it is important that we keep pointing out just how often the Mariners have lied about their economic standing in the game. The team is a cash cow, and will still be a cash cow even if they drop $30 million on the roster this winter.

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