Which of the following is not alike: .253, .264, .267, .312, .255, .259. If you do a google search for the word “outlier”, Rich Aurilia’s 2001 season comes up, right next to Brady Anderson’s 1996 campaign (okay, it doesn’t, but it should). Yet somehow, every article I read about this trade mentions that just two short years ago, Rich Aurilia was hitting .324 with 37 home runs. And, by God, Carlos Guillen only has 29 career home runs. This must be a big upgrade. Spare me.
However, as usual, the truth lies somewhere in between the local media spin (every move is great!) and the overall blog reactions (every move is a steaming pile of horsecrap). Aurilia is a decent player, and at $3.5 million for one year, is a decent little pickup. Now, keeping Carlos Guillen and spending that extra million intelligently would be more ideal, but lets be honest, that million bucks was going to be as useful as an oasis of salt in the Sahara. There’s a pretty good chance that Aurilia is going to be worth his contract, and in this offseason, that makes this a prime candidate for best move of Bavasi’s tenure.
I expect the team to be thoroughly mediocre next year, winning between 75-85 games, depending on how healthy Edgar stays (umm, name the guy who is going to take the 150 AB’s Edgar is invariably going to miss, by the way), but it really won’t have much to do with today’s moves. Yes, this acquisition further proves that Bill Bavasi has no ability to judge talent or balance a budget, but that case was rested long ago, and the prosecution is preparing its presentation for sentencing now. But it probably doesn’t cost the 2004 Mariners anything, and there’s no future commitment. In a year, Aurilia probably walks, Santiago gets non-tendered, and the Tigers won’t re-sign Guillen as a free agent. This is a basically meaningless trade between directionless franchises that won’t have any real impact on the future of either.
And yes, this likely brings the Mariners off-season to a near close. They need one more outfielder for the bench, but there’s no reason to not believe that Marvin Benard won’t be getting an NRI and a chance to make the team as a 5th outfielder in spring training. What we see is what we get. And man, what I see is an opportunity to be thankful that I live in North Carolina.
All hail the new Big Board! On second thought, don’t. I mean, look at some of those names. Just look at them! Oh, the humanity.
Before you shoot me an email, yes, I know they are currently 41 players listed as being on the 40-man. We still haven’t heard anything official about who’s being removed to make room for all these new craptastic players, though everything points to it being Ryan Anderson.
Line of the Day ™: “May I suggest Bavasi?” — Derek, when asked who he’d remove from the 40-man.
Aureate Aurilia addition accompanies au revior to Guillen. I still think it’d be dumb as a straight swap, but at $1m more it gets even dumber. Guillen nets us the execrable Ramon Santiago and SS-B Juan Gonazlez, who hit .249/.346/.338 for the West Michigan Whitecaps the A-ball Midwest League. Gonzalez can take a walk, interestingly (as can Hansen, now that I think about it) but can’t hit for power. He stole 24 bases last year and got caught 10 times.
I don’t know what’s left for Bavasi any more. It’s gotten so bad that if you told me that you’d heard Bavasi was driving over to my Haus Zumsteg, where he was going to glue the pages of my favorite baseball books together, terrorize my cat, run over my bike, steal my TiVo, and delete all my Knights of the Old Republic saved games, I’d get into my car right now and tear home.
Several people objected to having Luis Ugueto penciled in as the backup shortstop in my Bench of Doom post a few days ago. After all, the M’s were likely to acquire a better player, and send Ugueto packing to Tacoma.
It appears they were half-right. The M’s are going to replace Ugueto, though unfortunately, not with a better player. The Guillen-to-Detroit trade is rumored to net the Mariners shortstop Ramon Santiago, who spent last year as Detroit’s shortstop. Now, Santiago is young, which goes against what the M’s look for in acquring a player, but everything else fits to a tee:
1. He’s toolsy
2. He was once a decently regarded prospect for no particular reason
3. He’s completely unable to hit a baseball
Its a match made in heaven. If only Santiago was 34 instead of 24, they just might sign him to an extension.
Here’s a quick rundown of Santiago’s career to date. Those of you with weak stomachs should turn away now. For those of you hoping that he’s just gotten off to a slow start in his first two professional seasons, his numbers so far are nearly identical to the projections based on his minor league performance.
AB BA OBP SLG EqA
2002 222 0.243 0.306 0.365 0.245
2003 444 0.225 0.292 0.284 0.217
The Times is reporting that the Guillen-for-Aurilia swap is all but done. Blah, blah, blah, we’ve heard that for two weeks now. What’s interesting, though, is the speculation that if the M’s need to make room on their 40-man roster — which they would, if the Tigers send a major league player in exchange for Guillen — the player they’ll drop is one Ryan Anderson. Dave and I have thought for a year that Anderson’s (and Ryan Christianson’s, for that matter) spot on the 40-man was somewhat in doubt, and it appears it may finally come to pass.
Meanwhile, the P-I reports that Guillen will be traded for minor leaguers, making a 40-man roster move unneccessary. Hickey also notes that the deal(s) might have been announced Wednesday, if not for Winter Storm ’04 ™ keeping Aurilia from flying to Seattle for his physical.
Once this all goes down I’ll upload an updated Big Board.
Couple of things — first, Baseball Prospectus 2004 edition is available for pre-sale at Barnes and Noble online (Amazon has a bad listing, don’t buy there — seriously, they’ve listed the wrong publisher and price, I don’t know what they’re going to do about everyone who ordered already). We’re in the top ten best-sellers, which is amazing. Last I looked we were at #7, directly ahead of the annoying Dr. Phil, Laura and… wait for it… Pete Rose.
Anyway, it’s a shocking $12.36 — twelve dollars and change! — and I did some nice work on this, and have great faith in my cohorts, though I haven’t gotten to see what the final product looks like yet. Plus, this year’s edition includes the background influence of Dave here, so you should see some extra prospect-y goodness. When we shopped for publishers one of the things we wanted was to lower the cover price severely to make it more affordable, and we got it. Seriously, for $12, that’s an insanely good deal.
And I’m not kidding about that, either: we authors make
diddly
——-
squat
in profits from the book, and for the investment of time we might as well donate the money to charity. I know there are many out there that think BP sold out, but I wouldn’t sell out for so little money.
I was thrilled when I got to join BP a couple of years ago and work with some of the best baseball minds out there. And after some initial struggles, I think I’m a much better writer and baseball thinker for having done it. There’s a quote from SportsNight I love:
“If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”
That’s been BP for me.
Second, Officially Endorsed Reader Aditya Sood emailed us with a possible use for Kevin Jarvis: harvest his tendons for other pitchers. You heard it here first.
Third, what the hell?
I mean seriously, what the hell?
Let’s say for argument’s sake that I go out and buy a used Lexus, for no reason. It turns out to be a lemon: the Toyota robots were watching Tron (mmmm…) and cheering for the MCP, or whatever. I paid $35,000 for the piece of crap, and that money’s lost whether I drive it or not. I need a car that’ll get me around, though, and I have a couple choices I think might meet my needs: the Leone, an inexpensive car that might be decent or really suck, or the Volvo, which is expensive but will do what I need.
Now, it doesn’t matter what I do with the Lexus: that money’s gone no matter what happens. If I only had $50k to start, I’m going to roll the dice on the Leone. If I had $100k, I might go with the Volvo. What to do with the Lexus, though? It has no value but I’ve just wasted $35k on it.
My inclination is to have it crushed into a cube for $50 and leave it in the garage as a constant reminder to myself to make better decisions.
But no! Someone comes to me and says “Hey, I’ll take that Lexus off your hands. What I’ll give you is a Yugo worth $5,000, it’s got a few issues, and a Pontiac Fiero, new paint job, worth $7,000 easy, and this classic Vespa, worth $10,000, it’s been in a couple of accidents and you can really only identify it by looking at the nameplate, which I’ll give you in a separate envelope…. and these 12 barrels of toxic waste worth $12,000 easily to your local terrorist cell.”
Is that a good deal for me?
Fourth, I’ve been snowed-and-iced in here at Haus Zumsteg (in a remote location where the county doesn’t care enough to sand and the hills are killer), and I’m currently finishing the last beer in the house. If anyone wants to airdrop me a 12-pack of Redhook ESB, I would really appreciate it. Otherwise I’m cutting tequila with Squirt (which is, side note, deeeelish) and I’m really more of a beer drinker.
And… things have gone official.
To San Diego: 3B Jeff Cirillo, RHP Brian Sweeney, tons o’ cash
To Seattle: RHP Kevin Jarvis, C Wiki Gonzalez, “IF” Dave Hansen, OF Vince Faison
Faison, a lefty-hitting outfielder, hit a mere .230/.318/.298 at AA last season in 392 at-bats. No, that SLG isn’t a typo — the M’s have acquired an outfielder with even less power than their own Jamal Strong.
Terrible, terrible trade. But what’s new?
What an awful deal. I know people are going to be excited because they finally managed to dump Cirillo… but in the process, they’ve made themselves worse by acquiring players who both: 1. Suck, and 2. Will be on the roster. Considering the M’s are paying Cirillo’s salary anyway, they would have been better off simply releasing him.
A Padres beat writer was just on KJR, saying that Wiki Gonzalez might be the laziest player in all of baseball.
If we assume that the pending transactions (Aurilia signs, Guillen to Detroit, Cirillo to San Diego, Davis given away) all take place, the Mariners will have the biggest collection of stiffs on their bench this side of a mortuary. A look at this group as a whole:
The Bench of Doom
Backup Catcher: Wiki Gonzalez
Backup Corner Infielder: Dave Hansen
Backup Middle Infielder: Luis Ugueto
Fourth Outfielder: Quinton McCracken
Utility Player: Willie Bloomquist
To put into perspective just how badly these guys suck, below are their EqA’s for 2003:
Gonzalez: .196
Hansen: .261
Ugueto: .191 (MjEqA based on numbers with San Antonio)
McCracken: .189
Bloomquist: .238
Now, here are the numbers for last years bench, which everyone agreed was awful, and a big source of the M’s problems:
Ben Davis: .237
Greg Colbrunn: .273
Mark McLemore: .233
John Mabry: .251
Rey Sanchez: .245
Willie Bloomquist: .238
Keep in mind that a .260 EqA is considered average. Anything under .240 is bad, and anything over .280 is pretty good, though positional adjustments are still necessary. Right now, the 2004 Mariners bench projects to have a corner infielder who hits like a middle infielder, a utility player with a weak bat for even that role, and three guys who have no business trying to hit major league pitching. Jeff Cirillo’s miserable 2003 season still earned him a .203 EqA, which would place him ahead of 3 guys currently projected to make the opening day roster, including two of which we have traded for. We’re trading for hitters worse than Jeff Cirillo.
Oh, but we’re not done yet. A bench is supposed to complement your starters weaknesses, especially in creating platoons. The Mariners have two obvious positions that will require a platoon in 2004; left field and first base, where neither Raul Ibanez or John Olerud can hit left-handed pitching. If Scott Spiezio’s problems against southpaws in 2003 were real, then he could be a potential platoonee as well. So, it would make sense for the M’s to stock up on players who can at least hit left-handed pitching well, right?
Dave Hansen, who bats left-handed, has been so good against southpaws in his major league career that he’s been allowed to amass all of 24 at-bats against them in the past 3 years. Combined.
Willie Bloomquist, a righty, posted dead-even splits against lefties and righties last year. His .242/.307/.330 line against southpaws is just as ugly as his .257/.325/.314 line against righties.
Quinton McCracken, a switch hitter, was miserable last year, but was even worse against lefties. His .215/.247/.241 line from the right side of the plate wouldn’t even make him a good hitting pitcher. His 3 year numbers vs LHP’s (.266/.320/.342) are worse than his line against righties (.277/.333/.406).
We don’t have left/right splits for Luis Ugueto, but its safe to say that he won’t be seeing a lot of action in left field or at first-base next year, and based on his numbers in San Antonio, we can safely say that he’s not a viable option as a major league hitter.
But wait, all is not lost. The M’s do have a lefty masher on the bench! Wiki Gonzalez, who has amassed 114 AB’s against southpaws the past 3 years, has beaten them to the tune of a .316/.415/.544 line. Woo! Now, if we just platoon him and Wilson… Wait, Wilson is also right-handed, and also performs significantly better against lefties than righties. So, the Mariners have managed to build a platoon… but done so with two players of the same strength.
Now, I know the offseason isn’t over, but of the aforementioned players, only Ugueto does not have a guaranteed contract for 2004, and it is quite likely that the bench we see today is going to be the bench we see on Opening Day. And it is quite possible that this will be the worst bench any living person has ever seen.
OF-R Marvin Bernard agent’s saying the Mariners are interested in signing him. Initially you’re thinking that doesn’t makes sense (the M’s having four OFs already) but it actually does:
1) Bernard stinks. If you thought Boone swung at too many bad pitches, Bernard’s going to drive you nuts.
2) He comes from the Giants, which is an athletics-and-character organization, so he must have both
3) His lines the last three years, in scarcer and scarcer playing time: .265/.320/.438, .276/.321/.407, .197/.237/.268
4) His defense might charitably be called ‘okay’
He’s like… McCracken except he doesn’t switch hit. There’s no need for the team to pursue him, which is why it makes perfect sense that they would.