Old Time Hockey
Before the final game the Charlestown Chiefs play in “Slap Shot,” Paul Newman’s Reg Dunlop tells his thuggish players that he wants to change. To go out clean. Reg instructs his top goons, the bespectacled Hanson Brothers, to quit fighting and instead play “old time hockey,” like greats Toe Blake, Dit Clapper and Eddie Shore.
But their opponents are a squad of ringers, tough guys who whallop the Chiefs into submission — until Regs takes the shackles off the Hansons, that is.
The Mariners shouldn’t try to go all Hanson Brothers on other teams — no, not even A-Rod and the Yankees — but neither should they uncritically accept traditional strategy if it alters what certain players do best. Yet in two stories today, Jim Street rings the bell for “quality” or “productive” outs. Excerpts:
New batting coach Don Baylor has the task of getting the hitters to buy into the “quality out” theory, advancing runners and driving them in from third base with less than two outs. Seattle’s situational hitting in ’04 was lackluster and was a huge factor in the team finishing last in the league in runs scored.
Another area that must be shored up is situational hitting. The Mariners were last in runs scored, but fifth in hits last season.
I would say something about how frustrated I’m going to be the first time Richie Sexson is instructed to dribble a grounder to the right side with Ichiro on second, but instead I’ll just hope there is no first time that happens.
Derek and others have rebutted the productive out theory in depth, but I’m a simple man. Simple like William of Occam, who said that correct explanations are usually the ones that require the fewest moving parts. Adding elements — “we got a lot of runners to first base, so why didn’t we score? Perhaps we didn’t sacrifice enough, or make wide enough turns …” — just obfuscates.
How’s this for simple: that run-scoring problem happened because the 2004 team hit a lot of singles. If the team had hit more doubles, triples, and home runs, runners would have had a better chance of scoring without giving up outs — items which, when given up in quantities equal to 27, end games.
Maybe this whole “last in runs scored, fifth in hits” deal has to do with a lack of productive outs after the hits, like Jim Street says. Or maybe it has to do with the absence of aggressive baserunning, as Mike Hargrove implies later in the article.
If you’re looking for the most likely explanation, though, the fact that the Mariners were last in the AL in team slugging percentage seems compelling to me. That’s why it was a fine idea to bring in talents that specialize in the long hit.
So should Don Baylor stress so-called “productive” outs? No. The all-time leader in getting hit by pitches would have better luck teaching players to lean into offerings, especially if Willie Bloomquist is still on the roster. It might hurt, but it doesn’t advance the out clock any closer to midnight.
Hitters, like folks in any other profession, ought to use the top skills they possess. Asking Sexson, Adrian Beltre or Bucky Jacobsen to refrain from hitting the ball a country mile is like trying to make the Hanson Brothers stop putting on the foil before games.
Dan Reichert
In Derek’s PI column today, he talks quite a bit about Dan Reichert, whose signing has been mostly glossed over as just another arm for spring training. However, if I was going to rank the Mariners offseason moves, the signing of Reichert to a minor league deal and an invite to spring training would rank behind only the Adrian Beltre and Pokey Reese moves in terms of potential return for dollars spent. Reichert is already a better pitcher than Ryan Franklin, and when combined with Safeco Field and the Mariners infield defense, there’s a realistic chance that he could give the Mariners 150 innings of above average performance. For the league minimum.
The 2005 M’s are the perfect environment for Reichert. As Derek states in the PI piece, Reichert is an extreme groundballer. His career 2.5:1 GB/FB ratio would have ranked 5th in the majors last year. He’s not quite Derek Lowe or Brandon Webb in terms of groundballing, but he’s not that far behind. His sinker/slider combination are excellent at producing a huge number of balls being struck on a downward plane. Command always has been a problem for Reichert, similar to Webb and Lowe, which has limited his effectiveness. However, his walk rate last year in Indianapolis was the best of his minor league career, and he appeared to make real gains at throwing strikes while still keeping the ball from being swatted all over the field. Reichert’s performance from 2004, translated to a neutral major league park, was better than that of Ryan Franklin or Jamie Moyer. If he didn’t improve one bit or gain any extra edge from his environment, he’d still be a quality candidate to fill out the end of the rotation.
But here’s the exciting part of having Reichert on the roster; his strengths are complemented perfectly by by the roster the M’s have built and by the way Safeco Field plays. Most of you are familiar with the hits per balls in play philosophy, where most pitchers gravitate to an average of around 30 percent of all balls put in the field of play (not walks, strikeouts, or home runs) going for base hits. However, not all kinds of hits are equal in BABIP; fly balls only go for hits about 27 percent of the time, while groundballs go for hits around 33 percent of the time. Extreme fly ball pitchers often give up lower than average BABIP, while groundballers post higher than normal averages. However, because flyballs go for extra base hits significantly more often than groundballs, the actual value of one or the other mostly cancel each other out.
Unless, like in this case, you’ve built a roster that can turn a far higher than average number of groundballs in play into outs. Adrian Beltre is right there with Scott Rolen as the best defensive third baseman in baseball, both creating outs with the glove at hall of fame levels. If Beltre continues to defend at his established levels, he’s the runaway gold glove winner in the AL until he stops, with due apologies to Eric Chavez. Pokey Reese is the best defensive infielder in the game, period. Richie Sexson is in the top tier of first baseman defensively. It remains to be seen how effective Boone will be, but at worst, we can expect 3/4 of the infield to play terrific defense. How big of an effect will even just an above average performance from the defense have on Reichert? Consider this:
Based on his career performance, assuming his command reverts to prior 2004 levels and he regresses from where he was last year, he will face approximately 4.5 batters per inning. If he tossed 150 innings, he would face 675 batters over the course of the season. He would walk 83 of those, hit 6 batters, strike out 87, and allow 14 home runs, leaving 485 balls in play. Of those balls in play, 344 would be hit on the ground, leaving just 141 fly balls. Now, a league average defense in a league average park (assuming no “luck”) would allow 160 hits, with a breakdown looking something like this:
Singles: 81 percent or 130 singles
Doubles: 16 percent or 25 doubles
Triples: 3 percent or 5 triples
A pitcher who throws 150 innings giving up 130 singles, 25 doubles, 5 triples, 83 walks, 87 strikeouts, 14 home runs, and hitting 6 batters would be expected to post an ERA around 5.22 in a neutral park. Reichert’s career 5.56 ERA is actually worse than we would expect for various reasons, but component ERA has consistently been a better future predictor of performance than actual ERA, so we’ll use 5.22 as the baseline for Reichert’s performance, assuming that his 2004 improvement wasn’t real and that he’d get no benefit from Safeco Field or the Mariners defense.
Now, factoring in the park, Safeco Field reduces doubles by 10 percent and triples by 13 percent, so just by benefit of the park, we could cut 3 extra base hits off that total, just because of the Safeco effect. Doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but every base counts.
Now, the defense. This gets a little trickier, since we don’t have tremendously reliable information that tells us exactly how many extra outs we can expect each player to contribute, so I’m going to eyeball this a little bit, trying to err on the conservative side without erring too heavily. Considering the abilities of the Mariners infield defenders, I’m going to speculate that the M’s will be able to convert an extra three percent of his groundballs into outs that average fielders would not be able to get to. The vast majority of balls that are in the margins between fielders are in the holes, where almost all ground balls will end up as singles, not extra base hits, so I’m going to remove the three percent strictly from his singles total, so we’ll knock 10 hits off of his singles total.
The run value of a single is about .49, meaning that for every two singles you prevent, you save one run. The run value of a double is about .7, so after removing the hits allowed to compensate for defense and park effects, we can say that the environment surrounding Dan Reichert will knock approximately 8 runs off his total if he pitches to his career major league numbers. 8 runs doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but lets translate it to ERA over 150 innings to show the full effect.
Reichert’s career performance + league average defense + league average park: 5.22 ERA
Reichert’s career performance + Mariner 2005 defense + Safeco Field: 4.74 ERA
Remember, this is working completely on the assumption that Dan Reichert will pitch just as poorly as he has in the past major league performances which got him run out of baseball. Just because of the help he’d receive from his teammates and his park, we could shave half a run off his ERA, and all of the sudden, he’s every bit as good as Ryan Franklin.
Now, if the improved command he showed in 2004 is real, well, that opens up a whole new range of possibilities. Rather than walking 83 men, at his 2004 BB/9 rate, he’d only walk 67, shaving another 11 baserunners (approximately 5 of those walks turned into balls in play will become hits) and approximately another 6 runs. Shaving another 6 runs off his total puts his ERA at 4.23. The potential is there for 150 innings with a 4.23 ERA for $300,000? That’s one of the best signings of the offseason.
I really want Dan Reichert to make the team out of spring training. I’d love to see him force his way onto the staff and bump Franklin back to the bullpen. At worst, he’s going to provide about the same level of performance, and the potential is there for him to be significantly better. If Reichert is given a chance to make this club and contribute every 5 days, he could turn out to be the steal of the offseason.
Chat With Stone and Finnigan on Thursday
Seattle Times baseball writers Larry Stone and Bob Finnigan will be answering questions submitted online this Thursday (today) at noon. These are three examples of questions you should probably not ask.
1. Boxers or briefs?
2. When you interview Dave Valle, does he refer to you as “Stoney” and “Finney” respectively?
3. What do you like best about the U.S.S. Mariner?
But definitely check out the chat. You can submit questions beforehand as well as during the event. Watch for the truest sign of spring: Finnigan pushing rumors that the Mariners are bringing back Ken Griffey Jr.
The Economics of Ichiro
A host of articles from 2000 and 2001 talked about how Ichiro’s arrival would give a shot in the arm to regional tourism. So how’s that worked out?
Japan Today has a piece from Kyodo News this morning that says it’s gone about as well as can be expected. Ichiro’s presence has been impactful not just for the Mariners, but for Seattle at large and the rest of Washington. [Japan Today’s server seems to be up-and-down, so I’ve quoted the two most relevant bits.]
According to the story, “Ichiro’s arrival in the city further increased the number of Japanese visitors by 30 percent in the first year of his major league baseball career.” Obviously, that increase was not all Ichiro — there has been a multipronged marketing effort at work for a while now — but the thrust of the article is that the brilliant right fielder piqued peoples’ interest, they came to see him, and then stayed for the wine, the mountains and, um, the scenery from “Brother Bear.” No, really.
But what about team revenue specifically? Is anybody buying those hellaciously expensive signed Ichiro baseballs in the team store? Darren Rovell said yup in 2002, and today’s story goes a bit further.
“[Miki] Harada [of Azumano International Inc, the official travel partner of the Mariners] quoted a veteran freelance tour guide as saying proceeds from the goods have skyrocketed 150 times since Ichiro’s addition to the team.”
Okay, this statistic can’t be right, and my guess is that it is intended to mean that merchandise sales are 150 percent of what they were before Ichiro came west. Take the unofficial stats from a “veteran freelance tour guide” (?) with a grain of salt anyway — but if that’s close to accurate, a time-and-a-half bump in merch sales is pretty unreal.
Just another way the wizard of right field makes his presence felt.
Peter and Jeff join
Hey, I’m happy to announce that for the first time in however long we’ve been doing this, U.S.S. Mariner has added new authors: Jeff Shaw and Peter White, who I hope you’ve been reading over at Mariner Musings, are now part of the crew. I think the timing couldn’t have been better for any of us, for complicated and mostly boring reasons except Jason’s thing, which he hasn’t said anything about.
I’m happy to have both of these guys, who I’ve read and enjoyed for at Mariner Musings and before that at San Shin, on board. I’ve been a long-time fan, and I think writing alongside with them will be even better.
Added by Dave:
Seriously, we’re really excited about Jeff and Peter bringing their talents to the blog. For those of you who haven’t read their work regularly, I think you’re going to find that you’ll be enjoying the site much more now with their contributions. Jeff and Peter are both great writers who bring a unique approach to the table, are consistently entertaining, and can make you laugh. They are also great guys, as I’ve had the pleasure to spend time with both, and I was as big a fan of their character as I was their writing. Having them come on board is a terrific thing for all involved, and I look forward to USSM becoming more entertaining than ever before.
Added by Jason: Ditto. No, really, we’re quite excited about this, and think it’ll serve everyone — us the writers and you the readers — better on all things Mariner.
Updated Future Forty
The Future Forty has been updated for the last time during the offseason. The next update will come at the end of spring training, and then we will resume monthly updates during the season.
The big change is the removal of Clint Nageotte, who, as I had overlooked in the last update, passed the service time required to maintain rookie status, and is no longer eligible for the list. Also leaving were Aaron Taylor (traded to Colorado) and Ryan Rowland-Smith (selected in Rule 5 draft), and I shuffled a few guys around after having more substantial conversations with people who convinced me I was wrong about a certain aspect of the player. Joining the list are three fringey prospects; Rick Guttormson, Brent Johnson, and Jared Thomas.
I avoided adding Yuniesky Betancourt at this time because, frankly, it would be guessing on my part. The reports on him are all over the board, and we don’t really know anything about Betancourt at this point in time. Yes, he’s probably one of the M’s 40 best prospects right now, but whether he’s #2 or #40 is complete speculation, so I’ll leave him off the list until I actually have a capable reason for placing him in a specific spot.
If I’ve been neglecting your prospect related questions, this is also a good catch-all thread for those. Feel free to use the search function of the site first, however, as I may have already answered your question in the past.
I’m back
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been posting at a drastically reduced rate the last few weeks. For a variety of reasons, I took a short hiatus from regular blogging to keep my sanity. The rest was good and needed, but as the calendar turns to February, I’m looking forward back to getting back to regular posting habbits. You can expect a new Future Forty before the night is over, and I promise I’ll post the results of the Feed Surveys this week.
And, on a quick personal note, if someone out there with experience in the realty/mortgage industry wants to provide me with some friendly counsel, email me. I’m beginning the process of buying my first home, and have found it relatively impossible to get an objective opinion on much of anything, despite the hours of research I’ve already poured into this. Having someone without a vested interest in taking my money to bounce things off would be a big help.