With the draft Monday, I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t spent more time talking about draft philosophies and such, but really, we don’t pick until the third round, and I’m having a hard time getting excited about what the M’s might do with the 93rd pick. But I still find the draft itself fascinating, and have spent a good amount of time the past few years discussing the merits of traditional drafting vs a more statistical approach, especially since Moneyball took over the world. While I don’t have time to go into everything right now, here’s a few brief snippets of beliefs that I hold about the draft, and some of them might surprise you.
1. The A’s “college-only” philosophy is wrong, flat out. Ignoring high school players as an entity because of their risk fails to allow you to recognize the times when the reward does indeed outweigh the risk. Putting yourself in a box and refusing to see the limitations of a hard-and-fast set of evaluation techniques raises your likelyhood of making a mistake. And, this isn’t retrospective piling on, as I wrote a column about this last year, but the famed Moneyball draft was basically a disaster for the A’s.
2. That said, college players are significantly safer picks, and should make up the majority of early selections. The long range potential of college stars is not any lower than that of high school stars, and the reduced risk makes selecting a college player with your top pick usually the intelligent way to go. There have been numerous studies on the draft in the past year, none more thorough than the work done by a poster at Sons of Sam Horn, with a lot of interesting stuff revealed through his conclusions.
3. Repeatedly giving away first round picks is insane. As the research linked above shows, a huge percentage of major league stars come from the first round, and tossing away the opportunity to pick in one of the top 30 spots reduces your chance of getting one of these players down to nearly nil. Not surprisingly, since the Gillick regime started intentionally throwing away draft choices, the farm system has gone to hell in a handbasket.
While we’re basically branded as statheads here, this is one area where I think the sabermetric teams have been mislead by outdated information. Bill James work on the draft was good 20 years ago, but times change, and the newer research does not support his conclusions. Attempting to imitate the A’s or Blue Jays simply to be in tune with the statistical crowd would be akin to the blind following the blind. Hopefully, on Monday, the M’s draft the best players available. Just as they need to not focus solely on athletic bodies, speed, arm strength, and physical projection, they also need to not focus on college walk rates and on base percentage. Just as a team of nine Neifi Perez’ won’t get you far, neither will a team of nine Jeremy Browns.
Ahhh, I worked up a good head of steam over this at the game only to find Dave had already covered it admirably.
Probability of scoring 3 runs for the tie:
Runners on first and second, no outs — 11%
Runners on second and third, one out — 9.9%
Probability of scoring 4 runs for the win:
1,2 no outs — 5.9%
2,3 no outs — 6%
Tie or win, no sac– 17%
Tie or win, sac– 16%
I’m as surprised as anyone that it’s even that close. Thaaaaaat said, sacrificing’s still a stupid move, as James Click showed in the research he did for Baseball Prospectus, especially considering that sacrificing means that the other team can pitch around Ichiro if they choose in order to get to Randy Winn for the second out, where your best-case scenario is probably that he gets a sac fly and you’re two runs down, two outs, men on 1,2 and your chances of scoring two runs is 5% and three runs for the win is 4%
Aaaand particularly considering that despite his reputation, Wilson’s not a good bunter, and the sacrifice means the White Sox make a pitching move.
Get this; the M’s are down by 3 runs heading into the 8th inning. Rich Aurilia walks, Jolbert Cabrera follows with a single, and the M’s bring the tying run to the plate. They have 6 outs to get 3 runs.
And Bob Melvin bunts. Amazing. He uses Wilson to move runners up so that the White Sox can bring Ichiro to the plate. We’ve demonstrated before how stupid Melvin’s obsession with playing for one run is, but when you’re down 3 with only 6 outs to go, it’s insane.
Why do I care? The M’s have the worst record in the AL, the season is in the tubes, and this game really doesn’t matter. But this still drives me nuts. Bunting Bob has no business making the decisions on in-game strategy. He’s just abysmal at it.
Randy Winn is just a freaking terrible center fielder. Leading off the 7th, Jose Valentin hits a fly ball into the left center field gap. Using our limited blogger abilities, here’s a drawing of Winn’s route to the ball:
Ball
| CF
|_____|
|
---|
|---
Winn
LF RF
Freddy just shakes his head, muttering “Donde Esta Mike Cameron?”
Ibanez to the DL, Ramon Santiago comes back up. Seriously. The M’s lose their cleanup hitting left fielder and decide that the best replacement is a banjo-hitting backup middle infielder, when the team is already carrying a plethora of (f)utility players. With Ibanez on the DL, you know which of the now regular starters has the highest slugging percentage? Ichiro. I’m not joking. His .411 mark edges Scott Spiezio’s .400 SLG for the team lead. Just for fun, here’s the likely M’s lineup for the next few weeks with OPS in parentheses.
1. Ichiro, RF (.794)
2. Winn, CF (.645)
3. Martinez, DH (.730)
4. Boone, 2B (.671)
5. Olerud, 1B (.742)
6. Spiezio, 3B (.692)
7. Wilson, C (.725)
8. Cabrera, LF (.711)
9. Aurilia, SS (.629)
Of course, the logical thing would be to move John Olerud and his .382 on base percentage up in the order, since he’s one of the few guys on the team capable of reaching base. Remember, the guy with the second highest OBP on the team was also the guy who got a “pep talk” and took a good share of the blame for the M’s offensive struggles early on. I don’t see anyone talking about releasing Jolbert Cabrera, and despite the announcers affection for Hole-Bear, he’s been far more of a drain on the team offensively than Olerud.
The league average hitter in the AL this year has a .767 OPS. So, for the next two weeks, the M’s will be sporting a line-up that consists of exactly one above average hitter, and Ichiro is perfectly capable of having a patented off-month where he hits .250/.300/.300. And oh, the bench, let us not forget that group of winners:
Hansen, 1B/DH (.864). Note he can only replace our second and third best hitters.
Bocachica, OF (.628 career mark, since no 2004 numbers to show)
Bloomquist, UT (.605)
Borders, C (.286, 2-14). Seriously.
Santiago (.609 career)
I mean, how do you justify a roster that contains that many below replacement level players? 80 percent of the bench belongs in Triple-A. The only major league player not in the everyday line-up can only fill in for two of your better players. The awful starters are backed up by players even more awful. This is perhaps the worst roster management, factoring in available revenues and desire to be competitive, that baseball has seen in years.
New York Times is reporting that the M’s are sniffing around Jose Contreras. Jose Contreras folks. The team’s got more pitching than we can shake a stick at, and we’re looking at… bleah.
On the other hand, the New York Times has been a pretty bad paper lately, so take what you will from that.
Also, I’m having some weird computer issues that are keeping me off the Internet, so if you’ve gotten used to seeing what, a thousand or more words a day from me on this team, I’m sorry.
Chicago White Sox at Seattle Mariners
Folks, if you liked the Mariners anemic singles-based offense before, you’ll love new Ibanez-free Mariners offense!
Friday, 7:05, RHP Freddy Garcia v RHP John Garland
Saturday, 1:05, RHP Ryan Franklin v LHP Scot Schoenweis
Sunday, 5:05, LHP Jamie Moyer v RHP Estaban Loaiza
Then it’s the wonder of interleague play as Houston comes to town. Please, contain your hatred as our long-time rivals visit. I know emotions always run high when these two teams get together, but we should conduct ourselves as fans with the kind of dignity that becomes our city.
Ibanez is out for at least 15 days. For one, that doesn’t seem like the slight hamstring pull I heard it was, and for two, ow, ow, ow.
Right now, Bloomquist, Cabrera, and Bocachica are circling each other in the clubhouse, switchblades drawn, eyes flicking between each of the two. Only one can win Melvin’s favor this night.
Jack McKeon of the Marlins just pinch-hit Dontrelle Willis, a pitcher, for a pitcher in with two outs in a one-run situation in the 5th.
This is part of why McKeon has done well, while other… less flexible or inspired managers do not. If Willis, who’s a good hitter for a pitcher, gets on, the lineup turns over and maybe they make something of it. If not, no loss, he’s got his bench intact to use if he gets spotted better odds later.
How cool.
Watching Cameron make tough plays look routine in Shea makes me sad. He just fielded a ball that required him to run two, three miles to make a jumping catch at the wall — speed, jump, a perfect guess at where it would end up, then timing… sigh.
Please note we’ve moved our email off to ussmariner@gmail.com to hopefully get away from some of the problems hotmail presents (like not working). I’d like to say we’re going to be better about responding to email, but.. we get soooo much email I don’t think as a percentage of mails we respond to is going to get a ton better.
Please know that we do read them all, though, even if we can’t get back to them. If anyone out there wants to pay us to write about the Mariners and respond to emails full time, well, you’ve got our email address.