Official 2005 Mariner construction and free agent post
Your 2005 Seattle Mariners: Preview and Speculation
Brought to you by Scott Boras. Scott Boras thanks the Seattle Mariners for signing Adrian Beltre.
Last update:
12/20 (Derek update of everything)
Since every thread we seem to have is hijacked into this, I’m going to take Dave’s suggestion and start one large post, which we can update as things happen and we debate possibilities.
Pitching
Rotation
SP under contract: Moyer (~$7.5m), Franklin ($2.4m), Pineiro (~$4m), Madritsch ($ small)
SP who could return if taken to arbitration: Meche (DZ: the least he’ll get is $2m, I’m guessing he’ll come out at $3 or better)
Candidates: many others
We haven’t talked about Moyer’s struggles much in the face of the disaster of the season, but you have to wonder if he’s lost just enough that he’s not going to be able to fool major league hitters any more. I gotta believe this is a blip, a product of defense and uh, luck? But that’s just me, I’m an optimist about this stuff. Pineiro’s slated to come back for next year. If you figure they’re going to take Meche to arbitration and Meche’s arm doesn’t fall off between now and next season, we predict Madritsch is going to open the season in the rotation, for a full five. As a unit, you’re hoping for a comeback (Moyer), a return from injury/breakout year (Pineiro), an injury risk/USSM official lightening rod (Meche), a guy who’s average at best (Franklin), and Madritsch. If it all comes together, it’s good. If any of that comes apart, it’s the tilt-a-whirl we’ve been enduring this year again, and things get bad quickly.
And maybe, dare we say it… King Felix could crack this rotation and… I don’t want to say too much.
Upgradability: Large. A top-line FA starter to replace Franklin (or even Meche) would help a lot, allow one of those risks to not pan out, and also give a lot of aid to…
FA upgrade candidates:
RHP Kevin Millwood. Could his problems with the gopher ball be solved at Safeco? M’s rotation says: some balls just can’t be caught. Buzz is he’s the M’s #1 pitching target.
(signed) RHP Pedro Martinez. Oh baby, what a gamble.
RHP Carl Pavano
(signed) RHP Matt Clement
RHP Daisuke Matsuzaka
LHP Odalis Perez. Ask Jason about Odalis– I hear he’s never going to be more than a swingman, or so Jason was told. I’m interested.
RHP Derek Lowe. Extreme groundballer needs a defense, and his early-season woes concern me
RHP Brad Radke. 31 but if you’re looking to stuff an inning-eating vet in the rotation, he’s a good bet to get 200 above-average innings in a year… but as an upgrade, what’s that do for the team?
(signed) RHP Jaret Wright.
Bullpen
CL: ?
Under contract: Hasegawa ($3.5m)
Candidates: Putz, Baek, Thornton, Sherrill, Atchison, Mateo, Nageotte, Taylor, Williams
May be brought back over our protests: Villone
DL: Guardado ($4.5m), under contract but likely out next year, Blackley, who has shoulder tendinitis” (which is medical for “we don’t know”), Rafael Soriano, who had TJ surgery and will miss next year barring something crazy happening.
Guardado supposedly will be back at some point this year, but I don’t think we’ll see him return.
How do you assemble a bullpen out of this? I don’t think it’s that hard if Mateo’s back to his form of last year, but a lot of these guys up from Tacoma seem like candidates to be the long-middle relief guys and not fill in traditional set-up/closer roles. Like I wouldn’t mind seeing Thornton pitching in that kind of a long relief role, but as a LHP set-up guy, I don’t see it. One of the qualities the M’s should look for in a new manager is the ability to assemble effective bullpens out of interesting pieces, like we’ve seen Cox/Scioscia and others do.
Upgradability: Huge. They could spend on a couple servicable reliable veterans on short-term deals and help patch this thing up.
FA upgrade candidates: Many
Offense
Part of the problem we’re going to have here is that this is a lot like a puzzle, and sliding a guy over means that someone else has to move. So bear with me.
Infield
C: Olivo
1B: Sexson/Ibanez ($3.75m)/Spiezio ($3.1m)/Jacobsen
2B: Boone ($9m)
SS: ?
3B: Beltre! Wooot!!
DH: Jacobsen
FAs that could leave: Wilson, Cabrera
Arb decisions: Bloomquist
Candidates: 3B Dobbs, SS-IF Jose Lopez
It’s not a sure thing that Lopez starts the season as the shortstop, though you’d think he’d have the advantage of incumbency by now. Dave has a long post about Jose Lopez and 2005 that’s worth reading.
As a unit, this is pretty weak. No matter where Spiezio plays, the team’s carrying a light bat. Ibanez doesn’t hit like a first baseban and fields like a bad one. But Leone at third isn’t a good solution — I don’t think Leone’s a bad one, if your alternative’s Spiezio, but he’s unlikely to be even a good 3B.
Did Boone get old in a hurry? Did he stop caring as much? Or is this just an off year? The Mariners will spend $8m to find out. If Boone turns in another HoF-style year, the unit’s redeemed, and if he stinks it up, it’s really bad.
Upgradability: huge, at SS and at 3B, but does Spiezio contract stop up the system?
FA upgrade candidates:
(signed — by the M’s!) 3B Adrian Beltre — young, will command a ton of money after this year, Dodgers seem committed to re-signing, and they’re rich
(signed) SS Edgar Renteria — 29, so not so old, premier shortstop talent
(signed) SS Nomar Garciaparra. NOMAHHHH!!! Would the M’s consider this? Even if the money was right? Even if he played for the minimum? Or is he too much of a clubhouse issue, which makes him unsignable? Nomar’s the kind of strange gamble the M’s need to look at if they’re going to return to winning before, say, 2006. 2007? Now I’m depressing myself.
(signed) SS Orlando Cabrera. Also 29, but I don’t see it.
(signed) 3B Troy Glaus. Same deal as Nomar, without the clubhouse baggage. Weird gambles, folks, let’s at least make this interesting.
(signed) 3B Corie Koskie. I’ve been convinced Koskie’s not a good buy by Dave’s arguments.
1B Carlos Delgado. Huge LH bat if he’s healthy, but he’s older, and these dudes don’t age well. Also makes the multi-headed LF/3B/1B problem worse unless the M’s pay someone to go away. I like him better than Sexson though.
(signed — by the M’s!) 1B Richie Sexson. Local boy, lots of power, right-handed pull-hitter not a good fit for Safeco. Injured.
C Jason Varitek. Team leader, catcher with pop, has great reputation. Also going to be 33. All downside.
Outfield
LF: Sexson/Ibanez/Winn
CF: Winn
RF: Ichiro!
FAs that could leave: Bocachica
Arb decisions: Bloomquist
Candidates: LF/CF Reed
Remote candidates: LF Snelling
I wanted to put Snelling in here somewhere.
Upgradability: High
FA upgrade candidates:
CF Carlos Beltran, in his prime, huge power/speed combination (which ages well), plays good defense, like Beltran likely to command top dollar on the market.
CO J.D. Drew, health and durability concerns dampen enthusiasm, but dude can hit. But the M’s have corner outfielders out the wazoo already
(added by Dave)
(signed) CO Richard Hidalgo. Inconsistent, but powerful bat and very underrated defender. A risk with huge upside.
(signed) CF Jacque Jones. Improves outfield defense significantly, offense is overrated, probably going to cost too much.
I don’t like Magglio Ordonez for health reasons, though cheap enough it’s worth trying.
Looking over that list, you can see that in many cases there are a couple ways the M’s can go: top-tier guy, wacky gamble, safe veteran. So here’re my predictions.
Mariners go into next season having done *nothing*: they get Pineiro back but it’s essentially the same team they’re fielding now: 70 wins.
Mariners fill the worst holes with Aurilia-style proven upgrades from the 2nd tier of talent and paying too much: 75 wins.
Mariners get creative, take strange flyers and risks: 70-85 wins.
Mariners spend like crazy for all the first-tier guys: 85+ wins.
That looks optimistic to me. But hey, I thought they’d win 85 this year.
Now, a caveat here: I didn’t look up a single projection to do this. That’s all eyeballing. All the FAs, all the rosters, I’ve typed this whole thing in 20 minutes, and to be frank, I’m tired, hungry, and my house is kind of cold. So be cool, and I’ll update this later.
Franklin
After last night’s complete game shutout, Ryan Franklin has his ERA back down to 5.03. He’s going to reach 200 innings for the second straight year, and if he can finish the season with an ERA under 5.00, the M’s might be able to deal him.
He’s got some pretty bizarre home/road splits, though. Take a look at this:
Split ERA IP H R ER HR BB SO Home 3.92 85.0 82 41 37 16 32 51 Away 6.01 97.1 122 66 65 15 26 39
Obviously, he’s getting a huge boost from Safeco Field, which masks the fact that he’s a replacement level pitcher. But at home, he’s a three true outcomes pitcher, giving up lots of walks, lots of homers, and posting a decent enough strikeout rate. On the road, he’s the antithesis, throwing strikes, not missing bats, and giving up less longballs.
Safeco rates per 9 IP:
HR: 1.69
BB: 3.38
K: 5.40
BABIP: .268Road rates per 9 IP:
HR: 1.39
BB: 2.41
K: 3.61
BABIP: .305
These are pretty bizarre splits. It doesn’t appear that he’s getting a boost from Safeco as much as he is from his defense at Safeco. The league average batting average on balls in play is about .300, so Franklin’s essentially getting a 3 % boost in not allowing hits at home. Whether that’s a park factor or the defense simply having a home field advantage, I have no idea.
Last year, Franklin was the beneficiary of tremendous defense behind him. This year, he’s gotten similar benefits but only while playing at home. When the team leaves Seattle, the defense has been league average, and he’s been exposed as a pitcher who relies completely on the contributions of his teammates.
In reality, the huge splits are probably explained away by sample size noise that would filter out over time, but it’s still interesting to me.
All Ichiro, All the Times
It’s Ichiro day over at the Times. Larry Stone, officially U.S.S. Mariner endorsed columnist, has a piece on Ichiro’s unlikely rise and a piece on how he does it. Stone’s the best thing going in Seattle sports writing, so enjoy the doubleheader of good content.
Aquasox sold
The Aquasox were sold to a lawyer from Ohio today. The Sperandios wish to be closer to their family. That’s a pretty popular reason for when baseball folks leave town around here. If they end up in Tampa, we’ll know something is amiss.
Fan Culture
Art Thiel takes on the notion that the Mariner fan base is still made up of more casual than normal fans and challenges management to change their organizational philosophy this offseason. It’s a good column, one that I’d expect most of you guys to nod and agree with. USSM readers have shown themselves to be in the 99th percentile of Mariner fans in dedication, knowledge, and interest. Linking to this column is essentially preaching to the choir.
But I’m not totally sure Thiel is right. Certainly, there are more fans invested in the teams success now than there were a few years ago and the explosion of the internet has allowed us all to congregate and unify, rather than seeming like outcasts in a sea of soccer moms. But I’m not sure we have the correct perspective to analyze the overall tenor of the fan base. Despite the team’s miserable collapse, they’re still drawing well enough to be the envy of most teams in baseball. I don’t think the M’s fanbase has sent the strong message to the M’s this year that Thiel’s column implies. There are certainly some disgruntled rebels in the mix, but they are far from the majority, or even a strong minority.
The M’s are one big free agent signing away from being back in the good graces of this city and they know it. Seattle wants to root for the Mariners. They want to believe. The organizaiton knows that bringing in Adrian Beltre or Carlos Beltran will give them the chip they need to sell hope to those sitting on the fence. They’re going to make a big splash in free agency, as much for the positive public relations as the ability to improve the club. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the M’s were this year’s Angels, buying several all-star players by simply outbidding the market.
But I don’t think the insuing assumption that there’s been an organizational shift will be correct. The M’s organizational philosophy has always been to cultivate a permanent hope in the casual fan, and those fans have not needed a big ticket acquisition to have that hope the past years. Now that it’s required to avoid alienating a part of that fanbase, the M’s will respond in turn. But the underlying organizational philosophies of fiscal responsibility and competitiveness every year aren’t changing (and I’m one of the few who feel this is a good thing). The M’s aren’t going to become the Baltimore Orioles, trying to spend their way to a pennant. But they will do what it takes to keep the majority of fans interested in the team, and that will entail a big free agent signing this winter.
If you’re in the “ownership will never spend what it takes” camp, expect to be pleasantly surprised, probably several times, the next few months. This is going to be the most fun offseason a Mariner fan has had in a decade.
Workloads
A bunch of commentors picked up on this in the previous Madritsch post and they’re dead on. Bob Melvin is managing the pitching staff like he knows he’s going to be fired. After tonight’s 123 pitch effort, coming on the heels of a 126 pitch effort, Madritsch is averaging 114.8 pitches per start. That leads the majors, folks. Here’s the list:
1. Bobby Madritsch, 114.8
2. Jason Schmidt, 114.4
3. Livan Hernandez, 111.5
4. Carlos Zambrano, 111.0
5. Barry Zito, 108.0
6. Joel Pineiro, 107.00
Now, it’s only over 8 starts and pitch counts in and of themselves aren’t evidence of overwork, but this is clearly not exercising any sort of caution. There’s absolutely no reason Bobby Madritsch should be leading the majors in pitches per start. None.
Everyone knows Melvin is gone at the end of the year. He knows it. If he’s going to manage the team with no interest in protecting the 2005 Mariners, he should be removed immediately.
Madritsch
I talked about his spectacular home run rate last week, but he’s just pitching lights out across the board right now. Take a look at his game log. After facing some pretty easy competition in August, he’s faced the White Sox on the road, the Red Sox, and now the Angels, and he’s going through them like butter.
He’s locked up a rotation spot for 2005. For all the talk about the upside Gil Meche has, I’ll take Madritsch as the most likely Mariners starter to pitch in the all-star game next year.
Ibanez to 1B
Good news from the Times.
After making his 2004 debut at first base Sunday, Raul Ibanez was back in left field last night, but he will see more playing at first in the final three weeks of the season.
Really, this is the right move. This opens up more playing time for Jeremy Reed and should mean less time for Spiezio and Bloomquist. I’m of the opinion that Ibanez should play first base for the remainder of his contract (assuming the M’s couldn’t unload him), and I’d prefer this to be a permanent move.
Ichiro! in paper of record
An Artist Who Makes the Field His Canvas. Talks about Ichiro’s unique swings and style.
They also have this photo about “the left-handed advantage” which says that lefties are closer to first and so have an easier time getting hits… which isn’t actually true. You can look up overall splits and see that they’re within a point or two of each other.
The good one is the “Suzuki’s Swings: Unorthodox and Unstoppable” graphic.
Anyway, check it out. NYT is registration-required, but… Bug Me Not.
Vindication comes, mostly
“Pete Rose and Major League Baseball have reached an agreement that would allow him to return to baseball in 2004, and includes no admission of wrongdoing by Rose, Baseball Prospectus has learned.”
— Return of the Hit King, Baseball Prospectus, August 12, 2003
At the time, MLB and Rose both denied that the story had any merit. Rose slid off that story in the next year, especially after his book was released and he was widely criticized for taking attention away from the Hall of Fame inductees that week, and Commissioner Selig made it clear he wasn’t even considering Rose any more. He, and Mike Schmidt, and others all made statements that implied first that there had been side agreements (keep your nose clean for a year first, try to stay out of casinos and certainly don’t gamble) and later hinted at a larger deal between Rose and Selig.
During this time, my response to questions has been “we had several sources, they were excellent, we believe we met any reasonable standard for printing the story, and in time we’ll be proven right.”
On July 19th, 2004, WKNR 850 Cleveland had an interview with Pete Rose in which he states that he and Selig had come to terms and that they drew up an “unsigned agreement”. Unfortunately for Rose, after the book problems, Selig ended their ongoing negotiations.
Unfortunately for me, their archives only show the last couple shows, and because I can’t seem to get to their server, I can’t guess out the URL. Hopefully I’ll be able to update this post with a link to the interview itself later today. You can, however, find references on the Net that mention the contents of the interview, so don’t just take my word for it.
Slowly, Rose has parceled out the truth about what happened. We’re up to almost entirely confirming the story-as-reported, requiring only the conditions. And for total clearance, we need a copy or we need someone in the know to tell who signed off on the agreement from each camp on behalf of Rose and MLB, providing both Rose and Selig with the ability to deny that they’d personally agreed to anything, or in Selig’s case, that he’d come to a decision about what he’d be doing.
I don’t think we’ll get it at this point — while Rose may offer at some point a version of the story that includes the conditions, it seems unlikely he’d ever get around to naming names, unless he ever decides to take this to court.
I wrote a series of articles at Baseball Prospectus examining Rose and the Dowd Report before he admitted that he bet on baseball (while still denying damning evidence that he bet from the clubhouse, another example of his truth-in-its-own-time thing), which meant that I was the logical person to author the article with Will.
At the time, I got chewed out by Rich Levin, MLB’s executive vice president for public relations. Bob DuPuy and Bud Selig both implied that we made the whole thing up out of spun sugar and air. DuPuy in particular had some choice words about how this was a great example of “irresponsible journalism.” Many more people believed that we’d invented it as some kind of publicity stunt for the site. I spent much of the time since then regretting the mistakes we made working on the story that cost us the chance at the magic evidence bullet.
No more. I waited on someone mainstream to pick up this story for too long, and it hasn’t happened. Now that I’ve written this up, I feel relieved, and hope that I’ll never have to write about Pete Rose again. It may take another year for everything we wrote and said to be proven entirely true, and it may never come. I’m all right with that.
I hope too that even the people who believed baseball entirely will come around to acknowledge that we didn’t make this up, that if nothing else, the foundation of our story, that Rose had reached an agreement with baseball — was true.
Derek