Ryan Anderson cleared waivers and was outrighted to Tacoma today. Now, this may cause some confusion, because most players who are designated for assignment and clear waivers have the option to elect free agency over taking the outright assignment to Triple-A, but since this is the first time Anderson has been outrighted, he does not have that option. He will be placed on Tacoma’s roster and it will not use his final option year. All in all, this was a good move for the M’s, possibly saving Anderson’s last opportunity to contribute to the M’s by not using that option this year. If Anderson can start pitching again this year (and, at this point, its about as likely as Bill Bavasi having Moneyball turned into a life size bronze statue and placing it at the entrance of the team’s offices), the team will be able to keep him in the organization next year by placing him back on the 40 man roster, preventing him from walking as a minor league free agent, and still be able to send him to the minors next year.
A bit confusing, but in all, this is good news. Not that I’m expecting Ryan Anderson to ever pitch for the Mariners, but the slim chance remains.
Speaking of building a stadium in Oregon… for the four of you who are wondering what happened to “The Fix,” I was having a hard time keeping up while I was writing my Prospectus 2004 stuff and I wasn’t getting much response anyway, so I took it down for a while. I’m still working on it, it’ll return at some point. As always, if you like something here and don’t want to see it go away, let us know.
From an interview with Rob Neyer:
OSC: What’s your take on Bavasi getting the GM position in Seattle?
Neyer: I have a natural aversion to people that may have jobs because of who they are and not what they have done. You wonder if he would be where he is if his name wasn’t Bavasi. His father was a major league executive for many, many years.
I have never heard people say great things about Bavasi but maybe that’s just because I haven’t been listening to the right people. In all honesty, I’m not all that impressed so far. The Raul Ibanez contract is going to be a problem, and the M’s were apparently more than willing to spend way too much money on a season of Omar Vizquel.
This from the Oregon Stadium Campaign website. The interview is mostly about baseball in Portland, but there’s some other interesting stuff in there as well.
I know this isn’t going to do anything for our reputation for negativity, but — consider the team’s ability to handle injuries. Think for a minute about each of the M’s players and what happens if they’re knocked out for the season in the first week.
Olerud: tough because they’re without a replacement, but only a couple games
Boone: totally screwed, 5 games lost at least as Ugeuto replaces him, maybe up to 10, unless the team spends the farm system on a replacement
Aurilia: Santiago plays, 5 games lost
Spiezio: not really screwed, Leone/Bloomquist can play, but probably won’t hit as well. 2-3 games?
Edgar: totally screwed, 5 games or more lost
Ichiro: moderately screwed depending on McCracken’s performance, but 4-8 games lost
Winn: ditto, but more like 2-3 games lost
Ibanez: no big deal
Starters: the team’s got Soriano ready to replace anyone but Moyer and do well, so no worries, and a bunch of guys that can take back-end positions in the rotation
Relievers: lefties a problem, but there’s usually one or two floating on the waiver wire, and the farm system has a ton of righties, so I’m not worried here.
While I’ve penciled the team in for 85 wins and think they’ll come in on the low side of that, a serious injury to even one of a couple key players and this team drops under .500.
No news on the Soriano trade front, which is good news — if it doesn’t happen tomorrow it’s probably dead and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
One of the things I complained about last year was that the M’s were a two-dog sled team, and when Edgar and Boone weren’t hitting well, the whole offense tended to suck. Just as Dave mentioned the cascade effect of defense, the opposite is true, and while I’m unhappy with the state of the team, I must concede that I think they are much improved offensively and unlikely to go through the kind of run-scoring dry spells (requiring, say, Randy Winn to have 3-4 games with a HR and two walks in order to get a win) that they did last year.
You know, as much as I would like to, I just can’t buy the Rob Neyer Method of Predicting Standings, which is pretty similar to what Derek posited below:
1. Look at last years standings, then look at last years Pythag
2. Adjust +/- based on how valuable offseason acquisitions were in year prior.
3. Print total.
To me, the assumption that the 2004 Mariners are a 90+ win team because the 2003 Mariners were is based on a giant, untrue assumption that these teams are anything alike. There are some familiar names, especially on the pitching staff. But, this is an entirely different team, for one main reason: the defense now stinks.
Last year, the M’s had, by most any metric, the best defensive team in baseball, and one of the best in recent history. They didn’t just not make errors, but they gobbled up fly balls at astounding rates, turned extra base hits into singles, and essentially surrounded the pitching mound with six ball-sucking vacuums and Carlos Guillen. The effect this had on the pitching staff has been greatly underestimated, in my opinion.
Last year, the M’s turned 73 % of all balls in play into outs. The league average was 71 percent. Now, 2 extra outs out of every 100 may not sound like much, but by facing ~6,000 batters per season, thats going to add up to approximately 120 outs. In reality, the number is probably higher, as those outs will extend rallies, in turn lengthening pitch counts and innings, causing overall pitcher effectiveness to decline and causing a multiplication type effect. By the end of the year, I wouldn’t be surprised if the number was closer to 150 outs that are now being replaced by hits, and in turn, lots of runs.
Those numbers are based on the assumption that the M’s will be a league average defensive team. And, you know what, I think that might be optimistic. They have established below average defensive players in LF, CF, 3B, and SS. They have declining mid-30’s veterans at 2B and 1B. The only player who you can reasonably count on as an above average defender is Ichiro, and his abilities are even overstated by most. As it stands now, this could be one of the worst defensive teams in the American League, and they’ll be fielding balls for one of the most defense-dependant pitching staffs around. While everyone not born in Spiro, Oklahoma is expecting Ryan Franklin to regress this year, I’m not sure anyone is prepared for the precipitous, Jose Lima-style decline he may be headed for.
In the next few days, I’ll put together some numbers to back this up, but my expectation is that the downgrades this team has taken in preventing outs is far more severe that most people expect. Plugging Win Shares, or VORP, or even WARP into last years standings and doing a little subtraction does not account for the cascading effect that placing this sieve of a defense behind the pitching staff will have on the team.
The Angels’ signing of Vlad is official. For all the raw blasting of negativity I do here, though, the M’s are probably as good as the Angels right now (and the Angels have some sorting to do between their outfield and first that may affect how this turns out). Someone emailed us today and wanted to bet $100 they’d win more than 84 games (85, maybe). I think the M’s are an 85-win team right now, but… last year they dramatically underperformed their expected record. Which is to say that given a team with x runs scored and y runs given up, you’d have expected the M’s to win z games… and they won z-6.
This is frequently used as a barometer of managerial effectiveness, though I’ve never seen a strong enough effect to hang my hat on. What you can see though is the M’s lost a lot more close games than they should have, and it’s not hard to trace that to Melvin’s early bullpen insanity (good relievers, pitch the bad innings, bad relievers, you’ll be coming in in tight games) and the problems with Rhodes/Nelson all year long.
If the team had the same players, average luck and avoided have those kind of issues this year, you’d expect to see them gain six games over the course of a year. This would inevitably be attributed to improved chemistry or the contributions of the new hitting coach or something silly.
All of that’s a long away around to saying this: despite being a significantly worse team (and a tremendously worse team than they could have been), the Mariners may finish as with as many wins or more than they did last year, and compete for the AL West pennant all year long.
And if luck breaks their way all year long, they could win it all, and have a chance at the World Series.
As much as I’d love to see that, if you gave me the choice between 90 wins this year and a first-round playoff defeat or 75 wins and a third-place AL West finish, I don’t know what I’d take, because the latter might result in the team firing Bavasi and bringing in the kind of state-of-the-art GM they should have hired this year to clean up this mess and start fielding competitive teams for years to come. And yet I can’t say that I actually want to see that happen. I’m a fan, and when I go to games I like to see good baseball and the team win.
Personally, my favorite part of the article was this: “But while Seattle may have afforded the ex-Expos slugger if it had put the combined $11 million that Ibanez, Spiezio and Randy Winn will make toward Guerrero, it chose instead to spread its money around. What the Mariners didn’t want to do was sign Guerrero and surround him with the likes of Jose Cruz Jr. in left, Denny Hocking at third and Deivi Cruz at short.”
Uh, no. First off, Jose Cruz Jr. is not a bad player. Second, Denny Hocking would not have had to play third — there was still Cirillo, and there’s always Justin Leone. Third, you already had Carlos Guillen at short. Hell, you could have dumped Cirillo (and by “dump” I mean “release,” not “traded for crap”) moved Guillen to third and signed Rey Sanchez for peanuts to play shortstop. Signing Guerrero would not have meant surrounding him with marginal players.
Then there’s this, which we’ve been over before but still strikes me as stupid logic: “The anticipated loss of Mike Cameron required someone to play center field. Melvin’s call was to have Ichiro remain in right, and how could anyone argue with the manager’s extreme reluctance ‘to move the best right fielder in the league, if not in the game.’ ”
Overall, you can tell Derek and I aren’t big fans of the article.
Jason thinks they’re going to try and get a catcher for Soriano, rather than a first baseman. Also possible, I hadn’t considered that: put Davis in the deal and get a backstop who can hit, then Wilson turns into Moyer’s personal catcher and team backup. Anyway, if we find out anything else, we’ll post it.
Also, I don’t know what everyone’s opinion on this is, so feel free to drop us a line about it. In a case like this — I’m talking to someone and I find out a nugget like this, should I drop it? Personally, I’m inclined to: I think we’re a good enough judge of this stuff to know when it’s credible or not. But if I can’t cite sources, it goes out into the world as a rumor and sparks random discussion, and if they don’t get the deal done, it passes.
The question then is: sit on this stuff or post what can be posted?
If you’ve got a thought on it, email us.
Pocket Lint ran a long piece today o’er at the Seattle Times (“Paper of Quality”) titled “Mariners makeover: Team swaps defense for extra offense” an at-best uncritical look at the disastrous off-season. My favorite quote is this gem:
“There are two distinct ways to analyze this winter’s work by the team: first, looking at Ibanez, Spiezio and Aurilia as a trade for Cameron, Cirillo and Guillen; second, as a swap of some defense for some offense.”
Uh… except that that’s grossly simplistic and wrong, sure, you could look at it that way. And as to the second, sure, except by “some defense” you mean “a lot of defense” and by “some offense” you mean “some offense”.
Seriously: if you want to look at it like a trade, here you go:
Winn for Cameron: huge defensive downgrade, but a couple runs back on offense
Ibanez for Winn+millions: modest defensive downgrade, modest offensive downgrade (there, I said it)
Spiezio and Hansen for Cirillo+many millions: offensive upgrade
McCracken for Colbrunn: pointless move, sets the bench back
Aurilia and Santiago for Guillen+1 million: depending on which of us you talk to, slight downgrade to slight upgrade, plus another wasted roster spot
Rhodes for Guardado: enh
So to simplify: Cameron, LF Winn, Cirillo, Colbrunn, Guillen and enough cash to sign any free agent on the market for Ibanez, CF Winn, Spiezio, McCracken, Aurilia, and Santiago.
“With Tejada gone and a determination to bring more determination to the clubhouse, general manager Bill Bavasi looked for men of character as well as talent.”
Uh huh.
Anyway, Boone likes the moves. He’s quoted over and over in the article saying — and I like Boone, I really do — amazingly dumb things, like Ibanez is worth at least four games in the standings because he was so good against the M’s last year.
But folks, here’s the capper. If you wanted a single quote that demonstrated that Bavasi has utterly no clue, at all, in any way, that he is twelve eggs short of a dozen and possesses as much insight as a discarded Jolly Rancher wrapper into the way teams are built in 2004, here you go:
“The guys we got are used to late-game pressure situations, guys who want the ball hit to them in the eighth and ninth innings of a one-run game, who know what to do with it when that happens. Have we a bit less defense? Probably. But I don’t think a lot less.”
One, he’s stupid. Two, he’s wrong. And three, if you can’t have good reasons and the best information you could get behind your decisions, you shouldn’t be making them. I would have more respect for Bavasi if he’d come out and said “Our scouts think Winn’s going to be just as good in center as Cameron and Ibanez will play left field as well as Winn did.” Then at least he’d have some kind of reasoning behind it. Right now, it’s like they’re a bunch of old geezers sitting around a stove passing a pot labeled “XXX” between them, offering stupid random insights to anyone who’ll listen.
“Ahhh, my knee’s acting up. We need to get rid of that Guillen kid. He’s got a shifty look about him, back in my day, a kid like that, why we’d teach him some manners. Oh, but nowadays you can’t hit kids in the minors. Congress! Bah!”
For those of you who don’t want to register for the LA Times, here’s the gist of things from ESPN. It doesn’t sound 100% final yet, though it’s pretty darned close — Vlad Guerrero to the Angels, $70M over five seasons. Guerrero only turns 28 next month; in my opinion, this is going to wind up looking like a huge bargain a few years from now. Heck of a signing for Anaheim.