Mueller to LA, Transaction news
No word still on who gets cleared off the 40-man roster to make room for Mr. Everett. They’re at 41 now. Likely suspects now that Harris is off: RHP Baek, RHP Franklin (pleeeassee), OF-R Strong. There are a couple guys you could see them trying to sneak through (Rivera, for instance, or Choo) but as long as Baek’s on the 40-man, he’s likely to be the next one off.
From the comments: Harris made it through to Tacoma, and yup, it’s Baek that gets designated for assignment.
Bill Mueller (who was mentioned in the “Everett alternatives” post) signed a two-year deal to play for the Dodgers. Looks like two years at $9.5m, which (assuming the easily-vestable Everett 2nd year kicks in) would be a little more expensive than Everett’s deal.
Everett and comments
I’ve deleted 100 comments easily in the last couple of days. I know the other authors have done some policing as well. Some get notes, a lot just go disappear like a thief in a mazy of twisty passages, all alike. This has generated some complaints and a lot of numbering drift at times, and so I’d like to say this:
Maybe 5% were unreasonably foul, error-filled, or obscene
5% were pro/anti-religion (or bait for such), which, like several other topics, lead to huge flame wars
90% were of the “you [supporters/haters] are all [stupid/blind/moralists/apologists] whatever].” And that doesn’t fly*. Some of it’s survived, either because there’s some reasonable thought behind it (“I think one of the reasons we’re disappointed is we wanted more…”) and some of it because we’re unpaid.
I’ll spare everyone my standard self-flogging (ooooh it sucks to have to delete each one blah blah blah) and just say: the disclaimer by the submit button’s there for a reason. And as always, if you’ve got complaints about the way the site’s run, please email us.
It is my hope that having pretty made the case for not signing Everett, and said that I think it’s a terrible signing, we can move on to things that actually make us happy, and if that has to be kittens, baby pandas, and other things cute, well… okay.
* and yes, I know I say this as someone who once rabidly accussed Ichiro RoY opponents who argued against Japanese candidates of being xenophobes. It’s been a long path.
Salt In The Wound
Not to distract from the ritual suicide being committed in the Carl Everett threads below, but, in the wake of the Everett signing, there’s some other bad news that’s being overlooked.
Now general manager Bill Bavasi says his focus is on free agent pitching. He didn’t name names, but that would mean Kevin Millwood, Jarrod Washburn and Scott Elarton, among others.
With the traditional break agents, players and front-office types take at Christmas, time is closing quickly.
Bavasi has offers on the table to all three of the above. It’s not that he’ll land all three. For now, he’d settle for one, then seeing if a second one might come along.
He says if the Mariners don’t land a pitcher right away, it won’t be from lack of effort — or money.
“No one will act before we do,” Bavasi said at the early evening new conference to introduce Everett, late of the Chicago White Sox. “We’ve got our offers out there. We’ve put a lot of money out there.
“Even with Matt Morris (a top choice of the Mariners who signed with the Giants), it wasn’t a money thing. We got eliminated by Morris the same day the Cardinals (Morris’ former team did). The offer was competitive.”
Millwood, Morris, Washburn, and Elarton. Those are the pitchers we know that the M’s have expressed serious interest in this offseason. So which of these is not like the others?
Seriously, putting Millwood in the same group with those three is like serving a honey glazed salmon with a side of fries, grits, and chasing it with a can of Schlick’s.
Millwood, we’ve covered. We like him. He’s good.
Morris, we were against, and we’re glad he chose the Giants over the M’s. Dodged a bullet there.
Washburn, well, he’s just not good. He’s one of the more extreme flyball pitchers in the AL, has mediocre command, and can’t miss bats. If you break out his batters faced by contact type, his mediocrity shines through.
27 percent of his BF hit flyballs
8 percent walked
13 percent struck out
Want a Mariner comparison? How about Ryan Franklin:
Flyballs – 28 percent
Walks – 8 percent
Strikeouts – 11 percent
He’s basically a left-handed Ryan Franklin.
And Elarton? He’s basically the epitome of replacement level. He’s even more flyball prone than Washburn, and his basic strategy is throw-ball-over-plate-and-pray.
In fact, here’s the batted ball outcomes, side by side, for Elarton and Eric Freaking Milton.
Player Team BFP K% BB% GB% OF% IF% LD% Oth% Elarton S. CLE 774 13% 7% 26% 31% 5% 17% 1% Milton E. CIN 855 14% 7% 26% 31% 4% 15% 2%
2005 Expected Fielding Independant ERA for the three pitchers the M’s are known to have offers out to:
Millwood: 3.99
Washburn: 5.01
Elarton: 5.19
If the M’s give any kind of significant contract to Washburn or Elarton, this offseason will go down as disastrous. Washburn and Elarton are barely better bets going forward than Bobby Livingston or Jeff Harris. Washburn, especially, is going to command a salary so far from what his real talent level is that he’ll be untradeable from the minute he signs.
So, it’s Kevin Millwood or bust. Literally.
Thursday fallout and now, forward
The Times offers the best take I think. Stone’s article has possibly the best paragraph:
Everett’s past has been riddled with controversy (see accompanying time line), and initial fan response toward his acquisition seems to be leaning heavily toward the negative. But the Mariners firmly believe Everett’s fiery attitude is just the jolt this team needs after two straight 90-loss seasons.
Folks, if a player requires an accompanying time line, that’s bad. The timeline, by the way, repeats again that the child abuse charges were dropped, which is an inadequate summary of what happened [edited 12/16 to clarify and add the link].
Stone also drops this bombshell (which, I’m sure, those of you hoping this is a 1-year stopgap at most will enjoy):
Everett signed a one-year, $3.4 million contract Wednesday with a club option for 2007 that includes a $600,000 buyout. But industry sources say the deal vests for 2007 with a very makeable threshold that kicks in the second season.
I’m not so sure that’ll happen. If he’s hitting, he’ll stick and vest. If he doesn’t, they’ll trade or move him as early as possible. And, as you’ve seen before, I don’t see it.
The PI’s coverage is just bad. The article on the transaction includes no mention of Everett’s issues and includes such infobits as
Everett hit 23 homers and drove in 87 runs while averaging .251 for the White Sox last season. He helped the Sox win their first World Series title since the days of the infamous Black Sox, but Chicago decided against picking up his option for 2006, freeing him to sign elsewhere.
“Helped”. Uh huh. His inspirational out-making caused the team to try even harder to make up for his poor hitting, and drove them to improve. Or does everyone on a Championship team help in some intangible way?
Levesque writes that Everett should shake up the clubhouse, which is good. And I thought was being provided by Willy Bloomquist, Eddie Guardado, Richie Sexson, and before that by that whole wave of 2004 guys with World Series rings.
Mariners sign Carl Everett
Announcement imminent (update: it’s up)
It’s a bad signing if you have any kind of sentimental attachment to the players who put on the uniform of your team.
It’s a bad signing if you like baseball, because Everett makes the game look bad. You can see this in his fight with umpire Ron Kulpa, or his crotch-grabbing, spitting act towards Jamie Moyer.
It’s a bad signing if you believe that a team’s ability to get along plays any part in their success. He’s been hustled out of almost every organization he’s been in, fought with team members highly regarded by their peers, clashed with his bosses. If you’re a teammate, a coach, or a manager, you’re probably wondering what’s going to happen when you report this spring.
It’s a bad signing if you’re a baseball writer, because the chances you get socked next year just went up dramatically, which almost certainly outweighs the easy quotes and possible ink from fights and arguments with teammates, coaches, and the manager.
It’s a bad signing if you like the Mariners’ family-friendly reputation. [edit: see this later post for a full summary of what happened when with the child abuse saga]
It’s a bad signing if you wanted the Mariners to improve this season. Spending millions to have Everett do a job that almost any minor league veteran could do for league minimum takes money away from the pursuit of valuable targets, like pitchers.
It’s a bad signing if you like to see the Mariners win. Ibanez will move back to the outfield, where he’s below-average defensively, and that’ll hurt the pitchers. Everett’s not a good hitter any more.
2003: .287/.366/.510
2004: .260/.319/.402
2005: .251/.311/.435
Against right-handers, which he’s being brought in for:
2003: .299/.382/.557
2004: .272/.332/.450
2005: .246/.317/.441
Before that, he wasn’t even an average hitter in 2001-2002. The Mariners may be hoping that he follows a 2 bad/1 good pattern. An AL DH hit .258/.336/.436 last year. Bringing Everett in is a step back from trying to get over 80 wins.
There’s a chance that this all works out. Everett behaves for a year, provides power as a DH that we haven’t seen from him in years, and the team gets a bargain. That doesn’t make it a good risk, and it’s not going to get rid of the nasty smear on the team’s reputation.
It’s a bad signing.
More Moves for Mid-week
Javier Vazquez traded to the World Champion White Sox, with the Diamondbacks receiving Orlando Hernandez, reliever Luis Vizcaino, and outfield prospect Chris Young. The Diamondbacks, it appears, will pick up some of Vazquez’s salary as well.
The Devil Rays won the rights to negotiate with reliever Shinji Mori. Dude was once a really good reliever over in NPB, but hasn’t been as effective lately.
In other hot Devil Ray news, the Marlins are asking after Joey Gathright, and are willing to give up LHP Scott Olsen. Mmm… prospects a-swappin’.
The PI’s got the skinny on Reed being highly-coveted by other teams in trade talks.
O’er at the Times, Finnigan’s flogging the Reed-for-Clement story as Boras links Clement to Millwood to Washburn to JEFF SHAW OMG!!
Also, confidential to CE in FL or TX: three million gay paleontologists.
Bradley to Oakland
I really don’t envy Bill Bavasi’s job this time of the year–really most any time of the year. When you think about it, his job is to outsmart a bunch of smart guys (smarter than me, anyway), one of whom is Billy Beane.
The A’s have acquired Milton Bradley and former Tacoma Rainier IF Antonio Perez from the Dodgers for Texas League player of the year Andre Ethier.
As you can read in the thread below on Jeremy Reed, quality centerfielders are particularly scarce this winter. Oakland now has two. If you listen really close, no that’s not Santa’s sleigh bells. That’s Billy Beane’s cellphone ringing. It’s probably the Yankees.
Perez is a month away from turning 26 and already in his young career he has been traded for Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Winn, Jason Romano and now Andre Ethier. And in his next transaction, he’ll be traded for the starting pitcher of your local high school team.
Today’s depressing news roundup
The PI offers this update on the impending Everett fiasco:
The Mariners have offered a contract to free agent Carl Everett, according to one source with knowledge of the negotiations. If it is to his liking, the switch-hitting outfielder/designated hitter could sign with Seattle before the end of the week.
The Seattle Times, which has pretty consistently written that the process is further along than other sources, continues:
Sources say they can be expected to announce later this week they have reached agreement with outfielder/designated hitter Carl Everett on a contract for either one year, or one year plus a club option for 2007.
Ugh. Everett’s a horrible player and he’s done a lot of bad things. But I’ve gone on about this repeatedly, and I don’t see much point in repeating all those arguments here.
More from the Times:
As for filling their significant pitching needs, the Mariners have talked with agent Scott Boras about right-hander Kevin Millwood and left-hander Jarrod Washburn, but it seems unlikely they will meet Boras’ expectations of five years for Millwood or three or four years for Washburn.
Scott Elarton’s also a possibility.
Man, this off-season’s getting depressing.
What To Do With Jeremy Reed
The Boston Globe reports this morning that the Red Sox are interested in dealing Matt Clement to the Mariners in a deal that would net them Jeremy Reed.
We’re pretty big Matt Clement fans. We lobbied for the team to sign him last year, and a year later, despite a disappointing performance, he’s still a more intriguing option for the rotation than anyone on the free agent market. However, since the Red Sox backloaded his contract, he is owed $19 million over the next two years.
We’ve discussed Reed to death around here. Yes, he had a poor rookie season with the bat, though his glove appeared to be better than most expected. However, he’s shown promise as a hitter, and there’s no reason to write off his offensive abilities after just 500 at-bats. All along, we’ve projected Reed as a .290/.370/.450 guy in his prime, and while he probably won’t hit that well in 2006, he’s a pretty good bet to improve, and he has a chance to imporve significantly. He also will make the league minimum next year.
Clement struggled with his command at times, and missed some time after getting hit in the head with a line drive, but overall, was an effective starter. He’s a groundballer who also can miss bats but you have to live with occassional bouts of wildness. Even in a mediocre-for-him season, he posted a Fielding Independant ERA of 4.08, which would have easily been the best of the non-Felix Mariners last year. So, there’s little doubt that Clement would be a big upgrade for the M’s rotation.
The question, as it was in the Betancourt-Tejada thread, is fairly simple; is the performance upgrade worth the cost in salary?
Lets look at Clement first. We’ll assume he throws 200 innings next year to make the math easy. If you think he’ll pitch significantly better in Safeco than he did in Fenway, we’ll assume he’d allow 80 runs. If you think he’ll pitch about as well as he did last year, that puts him on track for about 100 runs allowed. If he struggles, we’re looking at about 120 runs. So, depending on your level of optimism, you can peg Clement for something like 80-120 runs allowed.
A replacement level pitcher, in 200 innings, would allow 130 or so runs. For instance, Gil Meche would have given up 128 runs if he had pitched 200 innings last year. So, Clement will likely be worth something like 10 to 50 runs over a replacement level starting pitcher. I’d probably peg him for about 35 runs over replacement myself.
Now, for Reed. Last year, he was worth about 5 runs over a replacement level CF with his bat, and, depending on how you evaluate his defense, his glove was worth somewhere in the 10-15 run range, again, compared to a replacement level defender (some metrics have him way better than that, but the more I study Safeco, the more I think a lot of that was the park). So, Reed, even if he doesn’t improve, is something like 20 runs over replacement. I think most of us expect some improvement. If he hits even .270/.350/.400, he’d be something like 40 runs over a replacement level center fielder when you include his defense.
Based on their 2005 seasons, Clement was worth about about 2 wins more than Jeremy Reed. That’s not worth $9 million per season. Considering that, with even marginal improvement, Reed’s a good bet to be just as valuable as Clement will be, there’s no way I can justify swapping the two straight up.
I like Matt Clement, and I’m glad the M’s are looking into acquiring him. But not at the cost of Jeremy Reed.
Mariners Miss Morris
ESPN’s reporting that free agent pitcher Matt Morris has agreed to a 3 year, $27m deal with the Giants. Possibly the worst deal in a bad free agent class.
As Dave said in “Free Agent Landmines”
Since the all-star break, Matt Morris has been, well, awful. His numbers across the board have taken a nosedive. His strikeout rate has fallen and he’s getting lit up like a Christmas tree. He has a history of arm problems, and at this point, wouldn’t be a good bet even on a one year contract. Given his reputation and his overall totals, someone is certainly going to overpay.
Action is not inherently better than inaction, and the Mariners are better for not having made this signing, even as it puts them into an even tighter situation trying to assemble the 2006 team.