Left field and Raul Ibanez: A review of peers
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Many have said to us “Guys, it’s not that much money to pay a LFer.” And yet, it is. Let’s look at the various LFers (200+ PAs as LFs) who signed (didn’t go to arb, weren’t under team control) in 2003 and their relative-to-Ibanez performance, ordered by their 2003 value:
Who, Offensive value over average, $, contract length
Mora, Melvin, 23.5, $1,725,000, 1 year
Floyd, Cliff, 13.7, $6,500,000, 4 years
McMillon, Billy, -0.2, $300,000, 1 year
Catalanotto, Frank -1.9, $2,200,000, 1 year
Payton, Jay, -3.5, $1,850,000, 1 year
Hollandsworth, Todd, -8, $1,500,000, 1 year
Spencer, Shane, -13.9, $600,000, 1 year
And Raul’s 2003 stats with 2004 contract?
Ibanez, Raul, -11.5, $4,300,000, 3 years
Eeeeeeeeeyup. By far, the worst contract of any left-fielder in baseball. Any of those other guys FAs again and lefties? Yup. McMillon, Hollandsworth, right off that list, plus (not to put too fine a point on it) any of dozens of other random guys floating around in minor league free agency who would sign for the minimum.
This contract has me totally depressed.
On a more light-hearted note, I was inspired by an ESPN.com article on taunting today:
Besides, a master taunter can make his or her point without running afoul of the authorities. In 1984, the Cameron Crazies welcomed Maryland’s Herman Veal — who allegedly had sexually assaulted another student — with a shower of more than 1,000 panties and a sign that read, “Hey Herm, Did You Send Her Flowers Afterward?”
Not surprisingly, university officials demanded that the students tone down their act. So in response, the Crazies turned Duke’s next home game, against rival North Carolina, into a taunting master class. Some held signs that read “A Warm and Hearty Welcome to Dean Smith” and “Welcome Fellow Scholars.” Others wore homemade halos. After questionable calls, fans chanted “We beg to differ” instead of “[expletive].” And during Carolina free-throw attempts, students under the basket didn’t go nuts — they just held up small signs reading, “Please Miss.”
Excessive politeness as taunting — that’s just brilliant. I’m going to think about other applications about this neglected area of heckling.
Awful, just awful.
There seems to be a sentiment out there that the Ibanez signing isn’t bad because:
1. He’s left-handed, and the M’s needed a left-handed hitter.
2. He’s hit well in Safeco Field.
3. He can platoon with Randy Winn and be part of a solid tandem attack in left field.
4. He can spot John Olerud at first base occassionally.
My responses:
1. He’s not anything close to the best left-handed bat on the market, nor did he sign as a bargain rate. There will be at least 4 available outfielders with the exact same skillset, who could produce even better than Ibanez, that will sign 1 year contracts for less than half of what Ibanez is going to get in 2004.
Jose Cruz Jr
Jeromy Burnitz
John Vander Wal
Matt Stairs
2. Sample size, folks. Ibanez’s numbers at Safeco Field mean nothing. They could also be interpreted that his dominance has come against Mariner pitching, which he will never get to face again, and thus could be expected to have worse numbers. That argument is lousy, too, but there’s no reasonable way to defend a contract on the basis of 42 at-bats.
3. Randy Winn is going to get at least $4 million in arbitration. If the Mariners really do keep Winn and Ibanez as an LF platoon, they’ll be paying $8.3 million to get league average production at a position that is remarkably easy to fill. That would be a giant waste of resources, something along the lines of the Wilson/Sasaki contracts.
4. Ibanez can’t hit lefties any better than Olerud can, so a platoon there is useless. Colbrunn should get all the 1B at-bats that don’t go to Johnny O, and Ibanez’s bat would be among the weakest in the American League at first base.
This is an awful, terrible, unbelievably bad contract, and there is no defending it. Toss in the fact that they’re throwing away a first round pick, considering KC has already announced their intention to not offer arbitration to their free agents, and this is bad management of Cam Bonifay type levels.
Raul Ibanez, post-Mariners
2001 .280/.353/.495
2002 .294/.346/.537
2003 .294/.345/.454
Ibanez is now 31. Kaufman played severely pro-hitter, too, which is worth keeping in mind. Splits:
2001: .200/.333/.450 v LHP, .286/.354/.498 v RHP (only 20 AB v LHP)
2002: .274/.291/.403 v LHP, .300/.363/.582 v RHP
2003: .245/.291/.392 v LHP, .319/.371/.485 v RHP
Ibanez sucks against lefties, to the point where he’s really only a league-average left fielder against righties. Overall, Ibanez put up a .268 EqA in 2003, which was 11.5 runs *less* over the course of the season than an average left-fielder.
If you paid full price for Raul Ibanez, you paid too much. The Mariners will be paying a cost that’s far too high, in both money and a draft pick, for an easily replacable commodity.
As a first move for Bavasi, this is a real stinker. That it also looks like the M’s are committed to blowing off outfield defense while not improving their offensive unit is scary.
By the way, Mike Thompson laid things out perfectly at the P-I blog yesterday. There is simply no reason to pay Ibanez this much money, because he isn’t any better than what we already had. If the plan is to move Winn to center and go with an Ibanez/Winn/Ichiro outfield, then the 2004 season is already in the toilet.
Bad, bad news. Not only have the Mariners decided to flush $13 million down the drain on Raul Ibanez, they’re going to do so before the deadline to offer arbitration, meaning that we are voluntarily giving our first round pick to the Royals for the right to throw our money away.
Awful deal. Just pure crap. Bill Bavasi starts his tenure where the previous management left off. Way to squash all the optimism we’d managed to accumulate with one single move Bill. Just tremendous.
Can we start endorsing Chris Antonetti as Bavasi’s replacement yet?
This is what I get for not buying a calendar. I totally missed out on the fact that November 18th is “Trade With Your Sabermetrically Inclined General Manager Buddy” day. Theo Epstein apparently bought the same calendar I did. But, have no fear, Billy Beane, J.P. Ricciardi, and Kevin Towers all remembered, and they swapped major league players, contracts, cash, players to be named, and Terrance Long.
Deal #1: Oakland shipped All-Star Catcher (TM) Ramon Hernandez and Terrance Long to San Diego for Mark Kotsay.
This trade isn’t official yet, which means we could see something thrown in on either side before it gets confirmed. Usually, I’d say the sign of a fair trade is when you can see a valid reason for both teams making the move. I’m not sure what it says when I don’t really understand this trade for either team.
Oakland unloads their Jeff Cirillo, but has to give up their starting catcher coming off a career year in order to get anyone to take him. They also receive Mark Kotsay, whose contract runs an extra year and is worth more money than the two players they gave up will make combined. Now, Kotsay is the most talented player of the trio and could be the answer to their center field problem, but he’s been a disappointment thus far in his career, and has missed a lot of time with injury. A back problem turned him into a pretty lousy player last year, so the A’s are praying for a comeback or they’ve just inherited an even worse contract than Long’s.
I like this deal even less for San Diego. Ramon Hernandez isn’t the answer to any question except “which player had an age-27 inspired career year in 2003 and will revert to his previous mediocre form next year?” The Padres got nothing from their catchers this year, but I wouldn’t bank on that changing in 2004. Ramon Hernandez just isn’t that good. Terrance Long isn’t a major league player, but he’s going to be collecting millions of dollars from the Padres for the next two years. The Padres already awful outfield defense just got worse, and if they’re serious about a Klesko/Giles/Nady outfield next year, I’m putting the over/under on team ERA around 14.00. They didn’t save any money, acquire any players who will really help them win, or improve the team’s biggest weakness (defense). In fact, they took their best defensive player and shipped him off. This trade could be salvaged if they throw some money at a major league CF (like Mike Cameron), move Giles back to a corner, and tell Terrance Long to send them a forwarding address for his paycheck, but I’m not holding my breath.
Winner: San Diego fans who like extra base hits and don’t mind which team is hitting them.
Deal #2: Oakland sends Ted Lilly to Toronto for Bobby Kielty and cash or a player to be named later.
Beane acquires another outfielder, attempting to improve on the suckfest that was the A’s offense in 2003. Kielty has become a stathead favorite through his rise up the Minnesota Twins system after signing as an undrafted free agent. He draws walks, has flashed power, can be spotted in any of the three outfield positions, and works hard. Scouts don’t like his tools, so that endears him even more to the statistical community. When he was traded for Jayson Stark’s MVP candidate Shannon Stewart in July, people proclaimed Ricciardi a genuis for getting a cheap young outfielder for two months of an expensive, not-so-young outfielder. Kielty will likely be handed an everyday job for the first time in his career, and A’s fans will likely expect him to have a breakout year. But I’m not expecting stardom from Kielty. He’s gotten regular playing time in each of the last 12 months of the baseball season, and posted the following lines:
2002:
April: .278/.381/.611
May: .345/.472/.397
June: .341/.471/.659
July: .328/.463/.516
August: .173/.279/.231
September: .263/.310/.605
2003:
April: .324/.425/.588
May: .214/.371/.400
June: .218/.306/.327
July: .260/.366/.375
August: .164/.325/.284
September: .268/.337/.423
He was awesome for the first 4 months of 2002, than turned to crap for a month, before being okay in September. He started 2003 with a bang, than became a pretty useless player for the rest of the year. In the past 8 months of baseball, Bobby Kielty has been a good hitter in exactly one of them.
He also hit a dreadful .216/.328/.328 vs right-handers in 2003, though that could be a sample size anomoly, as he did fine against them in 2002. But, for 2003, he was basically a platoon outfielder who could mash lefties. Adam Piatt with better defense, in other words. Kielty hasn’t exactly been a model of consistency and there are questions surrounding his ability to play effectively every day. To me, it looks like the A’s may have just acquired another Eric Byrnes.
Toronto, on the other hand, traded an outfielder they did not need for a pitcher who could win 20 games next year. Now, as Esteban Loaiza shows us, every pitcher could win 20 games next year, and the odds of Ted Lilly doing it aren’t very high. But Lilly has nasty stuff and looked like he was finally coming into his own to finish 2003. He made 10 starts in August and September, compiling the following line: 54 innings, 52 hits, 3 HR, 16 BB, 52 K, 3.00 ERA. His strikeout-to-walk ratio for the season was nearly 3 to 1. He did benefit from his home park, which won’t be so kind to him in Toronto, but Ted Lilly’s a solid pitcher with the potential to be downright awesome. The Jays make out like bandits, flipping a spare part for a guy who should throw 180 quality innings next year and has all-star potential at age 27.
This trade defines what I believe the sabermetric community is doing incorrectly; putting market value prices on players who should be considered freely available talent. The lesson that should be learned from Bobby Kielty’s success isn’t that Bobby Kielty is a player you need on your roster, but rather that there are a lot of marginally useful major league outfielders who can be had for little to no cost. The minor leagues are littered with platoon outfielders who can mash lefthanders for the league minimum. The A’s waived one (Adam Piatt) earlier this year. The Rule 5 draft is a perfect opportunity to find such a player (hello Jay Gibbons). There’s no reason to give up players of value in exchange for this type of player. The A’s built their roster through realizing that they could rotate through Olmaedo Saenz/Matt Stairs/John Jaha/Ron Gant/Billy McMillon type players. Rather than finding another spare part on the scrap heap, they’ve given up one of the better young left handed pitchers in the American League so that they can find out if Bobby Kielty’s problems with right-handers are legitimate.
You improve your roster by obtaining bargains. As an undrafted free agent, Bobby Kielty was a bargain to the Twins. For 2 months of Shannon Stewart, he was a bargain for the Blue Jays. For Ted Lilly, he’s an example of a team overpaying for something they could have had a lot cheaper had they done some bargain shopping.
Winner: Blue Jays in a landslide
Maybe Billy Beane ran out of Pixie Dust. Overall, it was a good day to be a Mariner fan, as the most threatening competitor for the division in 2004 made themselves worse.
Kim Ng interview on Baseball Prospectus
Jonah Keri has a cool Kim Ng interview on Baseball Prospectus today. Apptly she didn’t interview for the M’s job (which doesn’t necc. rule out the reported phone conversation, if it wasn’t an “interview” interview)
And that’s a really nice dinner, too — that money goes straight to the food!