Pocket Lint
We’ve really laid off Bob Finnigan this year. We used to hammer him pretty regularly, but the decision was made to mostly ignore him and keep the blog focused on actual analysis, rather than reminding everyone how abysmal the guy was at his job.
Today, he’s decided to re-incarnate last year’s “M’s Caught in Numbers Crunch” article, where he claimed the team had about $13 million to spend on free agents (they spent about $24 million, in reality), and today has posted “No Easy Solution to M’s Problems”. Despite the fact that he’s run this bad-math-expectations-lowering pile of crap article every year since the beginning of time, he still feels the need to remind us all that he lacks basic logical skills, and attempts to share his depressing view of the world with his readers. Fortunately for us, his ramblings aren’t based in reality, so we don’t have to take his down-in-the-mouth approach to the offseason.
But man, how this thing gets published every year is beyond me. What a lousy paper the Times is. They should be embarrassed to put this thing in print.
So that would leave Millwood, the American League earned-run average champ, Kenny Rogers, or Jeff Suppan, a former American Leaguer, as the best choices.
When the right answer to your question is Kenny Rogers or Jeff Suppan, you’re asking the wrong question.
Suppan, who won 16 games for St. Louis, has AL experience. The problem is that his prior AL experience was nowhere near as successful as he has been with the St. Louis Cardinals. But then he was pitching for Kansas City…
So, we should pursue Suppan because he was once horrible in the American League?
Indications are that the payroll will be down some from the $96 million/$98 million, to $90 million/$92 million.
Of course, every real analysis of Mariner payroll puts the ’05 mark somewhere around $86-$89 million, nowhere near Finnigan’s numbers. But he’s the king of making up payroll, so this is nothing new.
This money still is not Cracker Jack, but it awaits the market to see how much it will bring. Based on existing contracts, Seattle has already used up about $49.5 million (all figures rounded off) of that money.
For that they get Sexson, Beltre, Ichiro, Joel Pineiro, Raul Ibanez, Miguel Ojeda and Eddie Guardado. (The club is unlikely to pick up Guardado’s option at $6.5 million, and he can opt out or come back at $4.25 million.)
About $50 million for that group is actually pretty accurate. Amazingly.
Add in buyouts of club options that might not be exercised  Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Pokey Reese, Wiki Gonzalez, Jeff Nelson and Spiezio  and you get another $4.5 million.
This is poor wording; Spiezio’s buyout is only $250,000, but his ’06 salary is $3.25. If that comes off the ’06 books (it probably will), then this number is accurate. If the M’s eat it on the ’05 payroll, this number goes way down.
Add in prorated signing bonuses (including that of departed Ron Villone) of about $6 million, and about $1 million still due on Jeff Cirillo, and you’ve got another $7 million.
And now we get into classic Finnigan. Villone’s signing bonus was $500,000. Prorating that over the two years of his contract, we get $250,000. Big whoop-de-doo. And here Finnigan uses prorated signing bonuses, assumed for every player on the roster who got one, but earlier in the article used actual 2006 payout to add up the salaries for the guys currently under contract. Consistency, Bob. Either use actual payout or annual average value. You don’t get to combine the two to make your bottom line as high as possible.
Add in other contracts  Hernandez, Yuniesky Betancourt, Jose Lopez, Greg Dobbs, Rene Rivera, Jeremy Reed, Bobby Madritsch, Rafael Soriano, J.J. Putz, George Sherrill, Mike Morse (and possibly Jeff Harris, Matt Thornton, Scott Atchison, Chris Snelling, Jamal Strong, Ramon Santiago) and you could reach another $4.5 million.
That’s 17 players, Bob. 17! If you think the M’s are going to give major league contracts to all those guys, you’re freaking insane. Chalk this group up to about $3 million.
Then there are arbitration eligibles  Gil Meche, Willie Bloomquist, Julio Mateo, Yorvit Torrealba, Ryan Franklin  and put down another $10 million, give or take.
Now the real fun begins. No comment on this for now. But you should note that, at the moment, Finnigan has the M’s carrying a 29 man roster.
The budget is so tight, it will almost certainly turn Franklin and Torrealba and other arbitration eligibles into non-tendered players, although it is tough to see Meche in this category. If they are not traded and don’t sign a deal by the Dec. 20 deadline, they might not be offered a contract, and will become free agents.
So, the arbitration group knocks $10 million off the payroll… but they’re likely to be non-tendered. Wait, what? Did Bob even bother to read these two paragraphs. And who are these “other arbitration eligibles”? He already said Franklin and Torrealba would be, and Meche wouldn’t be (he’s wrong about the last two), so that leaves Bloomquist and Mateo. Anyone here really expect either of those to be non-tendered? Does anyone see any situation, ever, where that would happen?
In reality, Franklin is a certain non-tender, Meche is a very likely non-tender (or trade for peanuts), and Torrealba, Bloomquist, and Mateo will combine for about $3 million in salaries for next year. So you can immediately lump $7 million off of Finnigan’s bottom line, despite the fact that he wants you to believe that the M’s are broke.
Finnigan wants you to believe that the M’s have about $10 million to spend. In reality, they have about $25 million. Last year, he threw out a $13 million figure and wrote several articles ridiculing everyone who expected big changes. When the M’s ended up signing Beltre, Sexson, Reese, Villone, Campillo, Betancourt, Sele, and Nelson, blowing Finnigan’s numbers out of the water, we never saw any kind of retraction. Or even an article explaining how the M’s fit these contracts into his little $13 million window.
Now, a year later, we get the same thing. Apparently he hopes that everyone who reads today’s piece forgets the hatchet job he did last year and gives him a mulligan.
Sorry Bob, but you don’t get any more chances. You’ve earned the nickname Pocket Lint.
Research Project
One thing we get in our inbox fairly frequently are comments like “hey, love the site, if you guys ever need anything, let me know.” Well, I’m taking you guys up on it.
Baseball America has relaunched their player finder feature, which allows you to search for a player by name and pull up his 2005 statline. It’s a very nifty tool that they made so unbelievably cool by adding the hardest-to-get-meaningful-stat in the minors in groundout/flyout ratio. This is a pretty important part of evaluating a pitcher, and until now, we had to jump through hoops to find out what a minor leaguers G/F rate was.
Here’s the catch, though. It’s only available through the player search pages. They aren’t listed on the team by team statistics or the league statistics. So, while we now know that Clint Nageotte was a groundballing machine (2.82 G/F rate) in Tacoma, we have no idea what that means, in context. He was definitely more of a groundball pitcher than Felix was in Tacoma, but that might be sample size. We don’t even know where Nageotte stands among his peers in the PCL. Or where the PCL stands in regards to the Cal League. Basically, we lack context.
I don’t want to lack context, so I’m making a request; if anyone is really bored, has a ton of free time, and wants to help, you can claim a league or half a league in the comments section and start knocking it out, player by player. You can get the rosters from a multitude of sources and just start using the player finder feature. Drop the players statline from his BA team stats page in an excel spreadsheet and add a column for G/F rate. Then, add the numbers to the spreadsheet from the player search page. When you’re finished, you can send it to me, and when I get enough of them, I’ll start creating league averages and leaderboards, and we can have some kind of idea of where these guys stand in relation to the other players in their leagues.
In other words, we’ll have context.
So, claim away in the comments. You can claim the Midwest League. You can claim the Cal League. You can claim the PCL North. You can claim the whole PCL. Just pick more than one team. Pick as many as you think you can handle. And then get to work. I’d love to have, say, 12 guys (or girls) chip in and each claim a league, which would cover the 10 full season leagues and the 2 short season leagues. I don’t care too much about the rookie leagues or at all about the complex leagues – those stats are worthless anyways. But I’ll take what I can get.
Knock yourselves out. When this gets done, it’ll be darn cool and we’ll have created a resource for the rest of the baseball fan community to share. And we’ll know just how excited to get about Nageotte’s G/F rate, and what it might mean for his future.
Bryan Price to resign
According to Finnigan, Bryan Price has resigned as the Mariners pitching coach.
Rather than rehash the good and bad of Price here, I’ll simply point you to the back and forth discussion Derek and I had about him a few weeks ago. Basically, I don’t expect this to be a huge deal either way.
Dempster, as in “dumpster”
A week ago, Dave speculated on the myriad of quality relievers who’ll be on the market this winter, and specifically how that relates to Eddie Guardado’s team/player option situation. The prevailing wisdom was that the M’s should decline their $6.5M option, and if Eddie picks up his (cheaper) option, so be it. If not, there’s always the FA market.
That FA market got an early boost today when Ryan Dempster — who has essentially never pitched well in his life before this season — signed a three-year, $15.5M deal with the Chicago Cubs. A former starter, Dempster has served as the Cubbies’ closer for most of the year and has done well, coverting 33 of 35 chances including 19 straight at one point.
I applaud the Cubs for taking a guy who never cut it as a starter — he was released by the Reds just two years ago — and making him a closer. More clubs should take marginal starters and make them into relievers, as there’s generally pretty good success with this sort of thing, and it can be a cheap way to fill out your bullpen. But after you’ve made a smart move like this, turning freely available talent into something useful, you don’t turn around and give the guy $15.5M.
When the M’s are forced to pay some closer $21M over four years this winter, they’ll have the Cubs to blame. OK, so they’ll really have themselves to blame. But it’s always nice to blame the Cubs for something.
Game 162: Athletics at Mariners
LHP Joe Kennedy vs. RHP Felix Hernandez, 1:05pm, FSN & KOMO.
The 2005 season has come to an end for your Seattle Mariners. It’s fitting, I think, that King Felix take the hill today. Not only was he one of the few bright spots in an otherwise miserable season, but he’s also going to be a big part of the team returning to respectability next season.
RF Ichiro!
SS Betancourt
DH Ibanez
1B Sexson
3B Beltre
LF Morse
2B Lopez
CF Bubela
C JoeJessica
Game #161: Athletics at Mariners
Jeff Harris makes his first start since September 20, nearly two weeks. It could very well be his last in a Mariner uniform.
The Mariners face right-hander Joe Blanton. One could make a good case that Blanton should rookie of the year, but that won’t happen. According to VORP, he leads all rookie pitchers.
The Mariners have seen Blanton three times this year. April 30 the M’s chased him before the end of the fifth inning with 8 hits, scoring 4 times. June 29 Blanton dominated the Mariners, surrendering only an Adrian Beltre home run. September 5 he took the loss in a pitching dual against King Felix.
As I type this, both the Indians and Red Sox seem to have decided to let the Yankees have a playoff spot. Crap.