USSM Mailbag: Meche heads to arbitration
First in a series of slow-news-day posts.
Meche is going to make what in arbitration? Really?
Yeah, I know. Meche made $2.5m. He asked for $4.2m, and the team offered $3.35m. They may well yet agree, as they did last year, on a split-the-difference one-year contract.
But you might well be asking “What the hell? Why would Meche get even $3.35m?”
That’s a good question. Generally speaking, arbitration is not about performance. It’s about comparing the player to other players with similar service time and then determining where, within that range, the player’s performance lies. There are other factors that enter into it, but usually, playing time plays a huge fact. Take, for example, the Mariners v Brian Hunter, a case they lost:
M’s: He’s terrible! Look at his performance.
Arbitration board: If he’s so terrible, why did you play him all year?
M’s: We didn’t have any choice!
Arbitration board: We rule for Mr. Hunter. Mr. Hunter, if you could just walk over here and take this gigantic sack of money…
Hunter: I don’t walk, sorry.
Another thing that’s important to realize here is that given the two numbers, the arbitration board choses the one they think is closer to the established value. So say Meche’s number is horribly unrealistic. The M’s want the arbitrator to chose their number over Meche’s, which means they argue over what the best strategy is and then (historically anyway) they go in and lose the case.
Now, whether Meche’s numbers match up with people with similar service time, I don’t know. Meche’s service time is a thorny issue in itself, and I’m not a major league team with access to his info or that of his peers.
The problem is that Meche, given either of those numbers, is going to be really hard to trade. If it’s a couple months into the season and Meche has an ERA of 5, a $4.2m salary, and Livingston’s pitching well enough to force the issue, Meche probably heads to the bullpen (which might be a good move, but that’s another question) unless the Yankees are suffering another rotation meltdown.
Next up: more stuff!
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I don’t think MECHE is as bad as all that. His 10-8 W-L record last year puts him two wins above .500. If the other four starters and the bullpen can finish two wins above .500, the Mariners will get to 93 wins.
They could make the playoffs.
Yes, and Kevin Millwood’s 9-11 record clearly means he was a subpar starter last year, because W/L is the best way to evaluate pitchers.
Please tell me 10 good reasons why Gil Meche deserves $4.3 million at this stage of his career!
I don’t believe 10 good reasons is the criteria for winning an arbitration award.
What I don’t get is why he got kept. 3-4 million for someone who basically has 3 months of good pitching (April-June of 2003) in five years (OK, maybe 5 if you stretch and include the later part of 2004, where he was gopher-prone but not walking people)?
I mean, really, we’re not even talking about that young a pitcher any more. Gil Meche is older than:
- Mark Buehrle
- Jon Garland
- Cliff Lee
- CC Sabathia
- Johan Santana
- Carlos Silva
- John Lackey
- Josh Beckett
- Brett Myers
Maybe he’s just not very good, and the M’s need to realize this.
Gil Meche is not worth $4.2 million nor is he worth 3.35 million — that’s why the obvious call for the M’s was to non-tender him — which is what they should have done. A pitcher who isn’t even a guarantee to pitch well enough to stay in the rotation does not merit that kind of money — and the M’s didn’t have to give it to him. It’s not like he was in the middle of a multi-year contract (like Pineiro).
Apparently the M’s looked at the market and decided that they’d have had to overpay to replace Meche in the rotation and that might have put them over their sacred budget. I’d have non-tendered him and hoped to pick up a bargain in January or February (such as the still unsigned Jeff Weaver)…
I don’t know why the M’s decided to haul him to arbitration. I suspect that part of it is fear of having to go dumpster-diving, but it’s also an aversion to having Meche turn it around somewhere else and embarass them, as frankly unlikely as that is.
Well, there ARE some interesting pitchers on his baseball-reference comp list like Schmidt and Carpenter, but the difference is that Schmidt and Carpenter were actually showing an ability to master their craft by age 26. Meche is regressing for things like BB/K and K/9, and it shows in his other stats.
At this point, unless Rafael Chacves is the second coming of Leo Mazzone or Dave Duncan, I just don’t see Meche going anywhere- and, honestly, I think Meche needs the “teachable moment” of waivers for the purpose of unconditional release and a pitching coach of that caliber to have ANY shot. We would be better off ditching Meche and picking up Brett Tomko for cheap, because if we’re hoping for random bouts of excellence to strike ala Jose Lima in 2004, we might as well try it cheap.
The best move likely would have been to non-tender Meche and go dumpster diving.
Actually, if they were going to risk $4.2M, they could have tried to be aggressive about signing Jason Johnson. Johnson’s got about the same SO/BB/HR peripherals, though with a much lower walk rate the last two years. Oh yeah, Johnson’s also a groundball pitcher, which could be nice with Betancourt and Beltre pickin’ it on the left side of the infield. Signing Johnson to a 1-year deal for around $4-5M would have been a better move in my book than offering Meche arbitration, and that’s not even really dumpster diving.
But as for whether or not Meche “deserves” the money, if the M’s are stupid enough to offer him arbitration, he deserves every penny he gets.
Ultimately it came down to non-tendering Gil Meche or non-tendering Ryan Franklin, and I’m glad they kept Meche out of those two. The one we were going to keep was going to get paid too much due to the way that arbitration works, that’s just how it is.
It’s hard to stay optimistic about the guy when he constantly underperforms to his ’stuff’ that he’s had all along and now makes this kind of money.
“We would be better off ditching Meche and picking up Brett Tomko for cheap…”
According to espn.com’s player tracker, Tomko has signed a 2-year deal with the Dodgers for $8.7M. Not cheap, but I’m surprised to see that he got that much, too.
“Ultimately it came down to non-tendering Gil Meche or non-tendering Ryan Franklin, and I’m glad they kept Meche out of those two.”
No, if they had signed someone else to replace Meche, they could have also non-tendered him. Like I said above, for $4-5M, if the M’s had been aggressive, they might have gotten Jason Johnson, a better pitcher, to replace Meche. Even if that didn’t work, Meche has been declining towards replacement level, so there are likely cheaper options out there that would have given similar performance to Meche while freeing up money to upgrade from the Washburn tier of pitching to the tier of good pitchers.
But mainly, my objection just that there was no reason the M’s had to keep either pitcher. They had the choice of spending $3-4M on Meche or using that $3-4M to sign another pitcher. If Meche was the best pitcher for those dollars, then so be it, but I don’t buy that.
Thanks for the Brian Hunter joke Derek. Best laugh I’ve had today.
I think that Meche going to arbitration was highly likely once the M’s decided not to non-tender him. I think that the M’s brass is too afraid to give up on this guy and have him do well somewhere else, but I hope that he gets the middle ground and not top dollar.
I have always questioned his place on this team (and maybe any major league team for that matter) – to me, Meche has always been very good the first time through the line-up. It’s after that the wheels start coming off…I know that most have him penciled in as part of the rotation and a move to the bullpen would be predicated by the need to open a rotation spot, but is he better suited to pitch at the end of games? I have always thought that he has the stuff to be a great right hand set-up man (or potential closer) – and the team kinda of has a need to develop a closer for the future (I am not convinced yet that Soriano will get back to that level). So, if he does get 4.2 million and he ends up being a dominant bullpen pitcher – was it worth it (I know alot of ifs)?
Come on people…..4 million dollars? I lose that much change in my sofa cushions every month…..
And for the record, Brian Hunter likely sprinted for the arbitration award or at least trotted very quickly…
I think this WAS the Mariners line of thinking in mid-December. They got scared/stupid looking at the free agent market.
All the talk in October was keeping 2 or 3 starters — Hernandez, Moyer, and Pineiro. And I assume signing one star FA either and perhaps a second or letting many fight for the 5th spot. Then they saw what free agents were getting or asking for and worried they’d get nothing and have a bunch of rookies and NRIs competing for two (or 2.5) spots in the rotation. And they heard there was some interest in Meche if he were non-tendered. They panicked.
Unfortunately due to timing, or perhaps not having a master plan, they offered Meche arbitration and were guaranteed to overpay for him at the same time they locked up a “quality” veteran starter by overpaying for him and avoiding the need for Meche.
As noted above, there are MANY options for $3-4M that are almost guaranteed to be better than Meche. I still think/hope the Mariners are trying to trade Meche.
just so long as they keep Frank Coonelly out of the hearing room….
If the M’s want to trade Meche, they just have to eat some of it to make Meche more attractive.
In hindsight, the M’s wouldve been better off saying goodbye to both Meche and Franklin and then being the ones who got Padilla from Philly for a bag of popcorn (maybe the M’s couldve topped the Ranger’s offer by including half a stick of butter). Padilla will probably get 4 million this year but he’s an extreme groundball pitcher whose career k/9 and BB/9 are a little better than Meche’s. Padilla’s career FIP is much better than Meche’s. Also, Padilla has shown he can go 200 innings. Meche has yet to top 190. So for the same money and a player to be named later, the M’s rotation wouldve been ALOT better off….
Im not saying Padilla is a #1 starter but he couldve definately solidfied the back of the M’s rotation. In any event, Id rather pay Padilla 4 million to pitch in Safeco than give Meche 4 million and his millionth chance to prove himself.
I don’t see this as that big of a deal. We’re talking about a 1 year deal, it’s not my money, and I really don’t see them getting a more productive pitcher than Meche for 3-4 million.
Not that this is a good move or a good use of the money, I just don’t think it makes very much difference in the long run. The chances they were going to have a good pitcher in the 5 hole was pretty much none from the start of the off-season.
If they got an equally productive pitcher for $500K, they could have spent that extra $4 million on someone good. Like someone else instead of Everett. Or someone else instead of Washburn.
And Jason Johnson wasn’t that expensive, was he?
Kevin Brown is available for cheap. He’s better than Meche.
The problem with all of these “it’s not that much money” arguments is that it’s not about any single signing. Bloomquist alone, not that much damage. Everett, not a huge payroll impact. Overpaying for Washburn, well, that’s kinda huge, but not crippling.
It’s that you can’t ignore the total effect. Every year the M’s have a huge chunk of the payroll devoted to paying really bad players to suck it up, decent players to lollygag around, and they’re not getting any performance for their money.
I agree that the money adds up, I just think that at this point it doesn’t make much difference.
If they’d just signed Lawton and not Everett, and used that money and Meche’s money, and signed Millwood instead of Washburn, that would have been good. But as of today, I don’t really see what they were going to do with that money other than to give it to Meche. If they had any ideas, we’d probably have seen them move by now.
Not to be overly optimistic, but I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Meche had some trade value.
Truthfully, I would have loved it if the M’s simply banked 3 years and 22 million on Loaiza, traded the bag of popcorn for Padilla, let Meche and Franklin walk and then went into hiberbation (of course all of this after Johjima and the one year stop gap for Moyer). Its going to be a bumper crop of free agent arms after next season. Why invest 37 million on one arm thats a compromise?
Sure 4 million dollar contracts signed or missed are all a bunch of little things but like one very smart blonde once sang….its all of those little things I hold dear…..
I don’t think it’s a sure bet that a one year deal for Moyer is going to be better than a one year deal for Meche.
But that they’re giving it to Meche today is indicative of really poor planning earlier in the off-season.
The decision to offer Meche arbitration was made some time ago – back when they still had a chance to have a good winter.
Imagine if you were a politician and you released some really awful attack ads late in a campaign. Your campaign is doing really poorly already, so the ads can’t do that much harm, but the decision to produce the ads and build your campaign around them was made weeks earlier, back when you still had a chance to look vaguely credible. The ads now aren’t that bad on their own, but their indiicative of really awful decision-making, and now you’re stuck with trying to protray your opponent as a guy who keeps a dragon in his shed.
That analogy makes perfect sense to any Canadians reading it.
[extremely long link deleted]
That’s kind of arbitrary isn’t it?
When you post a really long link without using the tags like you’re supposed to, it screws up the formatting for a lot of people.
So no.
Use the standard HTML tags, you’ll be fine.
Well, Bazardo is doing well in winter ball and would be an option for less than 3-4 million
Bazardo, Yorman 1-2 2.51 ERA 21G 30SO 14BB a .242 AVG against in 32.1 innings
And I jope you all missed the Jojima introduction because my reference to it was deleted for it also containing an “Extreeeeemeeelyy Looooonng Link”
Don’t know how to use tags
Please inform
I agree that the money adds up, I just think that at this point it doesn’t make much difference.
You might not be saying that once the M’s are 41-44 in July, Meche is 3-7 with a 5.43 ERA, Everett is hitting .243 with an OPS in the high 6’s, and we are farting around with giving Willie Bloomquist a full time job. Some different decisions might be the difference between deciding which of Sexson, Ibañez, Ichiro or Moyer is THIS year’s veteran to be traded at the deadline, or a penant race and commensurate trades.
If anything, having some millions to spare late in the season instead of picking up Gil Meche’s arbitration eligibility, on the off chance he turns into Mark Prior, means you might be able to pick up a player that ordinarily you couldn’t for salary reasons- and you might not even have to wait until July to do this (think Bartolo Colon). It’s not as if trade opportunities don’t happen.
The H is back on his uniform (Johjima)
If the M’s have 41 wins at any point in July, ill be ecstatic.
“Bloomquist alone, not that much damage. Everett, not a huge payroll impact.”
Considering that Bloomquist is overpaid by $500K and Everett is overpaid by about $3.5M, or 7 Bloomquists, I don’t think that lumping them in the same discussion of overspending is very accurate.
I can live with a team overpaying guys by tiny amounts like that to smooth things over with the players, so they don’t all assume they’re going to get shipped out at the first available moment. And to a certain degree, it’s not worth the front office’s time sitting around splitting hairs between Bloomquist and another scrub bench player when they clearly have a lot of work to do figuring out how to spend huge $20-30M chunks of the payroll. Basically, I think that in the scope of a $90M payroll, it takes a really long time for six-figure mistakes to add up, but the $3-4M+ mistakes add up quickly. And since there are fewer $3-4M+ decisions to make, you ought to spend more time getting those decisions right before you worry too much about the small stuff.
If Meche wins in arbitration, do the M’s have to pay him the full year salary no matter what?
Or could they release him in Spring Training?
The reason I ask is I seem to remember this happening back in the dark days of the Mariner franchise. Someone got a crazy contract in arbitration so the M’s dumped him.
Considering that Bloomquist is overpaid by $500K and Everett is overpaid by about $3.5M, or 7 Bloomquists, I don’t think that lumping them in the same discussion of overspending is very accurate.
Accuracy? I don’t think that’s the term you want.
My point is not that Bloomquist = Everett. It’s that the argument “this particular move isn’t so bad and doesn’t really hurt the M’s” ignores that what rankles about it is that it’s one of many similar bad moves.
I suppose they know what to expect from Meche, which will be mediocre, if he has a good year. Were they to dumpster dive, they would be more uncertain as to the results. With Meche, they can assume that if he’s reasonably healthy he’ll contribute 8-12 wins, and have an e.r.a of 4.50-5.50.
Me, I would have gone the dumpster diving route, but I suppose they’re trying to send the message that they’re willing to spend $. Too bad in the wrong places.
#25– well, he does have a dragon. Seriously.
#36– that was Hunter — “Outfielder Brian Hunter went to arbitration in 2000 and also beat the club. The arbitrator ruled for Hunter’s salary figure of $2.45 million over the Mariners’ $1.75 million offer — but they released Hunter in spring training and were only required to pay him $593,290.”
LF Monster: You can read about commenting here.
The front office pretty much knows what they have with Meche, and they are willing to go with him until they see something better come along, either via trade or improvement from current players in the minors. If they non-tendered him, what would people expect that Gil could have gotten on the current free agency market? Probably a little more than what Ryan Franklin got, I’d guess, say $3.2 million.
#31, I fully expect that’s what’s going to be happening in the middle of the year, and I don’t think anything that the M’s could realistically do with 4 million dollars either now or then is going to prevent that.
#37, generally speaking I agree with you, I just think that right now the M’s are going to suck next year and there’s no reasonable chance of fixing things before the season starts. I don’t think that offering arbitration to Meche is precluding them from doing anything significantly useful.
I did my griping when they signed Everett, Moyer and Washburn. Back then is when we gave up our chance to make a meaningful move.
^^^^^^ agreed.
The second they pissed away 4M on Carl, I knew the offseason wasn’t getting any better. They need a 5th starter now. Who’s left to go get instead of Meche @ 4M? Nevermind what they could/should have done previously. Nevermind that Meche + Washburn is going to = Burnett + BH Kim in terms of salary *sign*. What could they do now?
Terry, you must have been pretty esctatic LAST year on July 17th, right?
http://www.baseball-reference.com/games/standings.cgi?year=2005&month=7&day=17&submit=Submit+Date
(41-44 at the appropriate point in July would have meant you were 10 games out in the AL West and 7 games out in the Wild Card, looking up at 6 teams in the Wild Card race. Folks, miracles like 1995 don’t happen very often- and we never THAT far below .500 or out of the Wild Card in 1995.)
“Accuracy? I don’t think that’s the term you want.”
Agreed.
“My point is not that Bloomquist = Everett. It’s that the argument “this particular move isn’t so bad and doesn’t really hurt the M’s†ignores that what rankles about it is that it’s one of many similar bad moves.”
After further consideration, I think my position isn’t so much that the bad moves don’t add up, it’s that the Bloomquist move wasn’t really bad in the first place. We went over that when he was signed, though, so I won’t try to start that up again here.
#37, generally speaking I agree with you, I just think that right now the M’s are going to suck next year and there’s no reasonable chance of fixing things before the season starts. I don’t think that offering arbitration to Meche is precluding them from doing anything significantly useful.
I did my griping when they signed Everett, Moyer and Washburn. Back then is when we gave up our chance to make a meaningful move.
I guess I can SORT of understand the “hey, if we’re going to screw up, let’s REALLY screw up” attitude…except, no, really, the M’s, even as constructed, have a decent shot at .500 (and thus an outside shot at a pennant race), so flubbing $3-4 million in salary for a player who’s 1-2 WARP instead of 5-6 really CAN make a difference in a tight pennant race. Meche represents the same amount of salary as Everett.
And Moyer? He doesn’t represent that much of a problem compared to Washburn- and played better last year than Everett, comparatively speaking.
#46, so what do you think they should have done instead? Start Livingston and made a hypothetical midseason trade? If we’re threatening to contend in mid season, they can just eat Meche’s contract.
I think Moyer’s contract is likely to bite us in the butt. I think his 5m contract and fan popularity will make the M’s feel required to play him as he sucks his way through 2006. As to him playing better last year than Everett, yeah, but he’s a year older this year.
something to perk up the SLow News Day, it was Meet Kenji day at Safeco, and there is a link to the Johjima press conference on the page
Bazardo is a cheaper option. Rich Dorman is a cheaper option. I think PR wise you wouldn’t want to dump Meche and replace him with anything in house short of an excellent young starter. But a few young guys are proving what they can in Winterball.
The small sample size red flag applies to Bazardo’s winter league stats. Matt Thornton posted crazy good K/BB last winter, and it did not help him come spring.
Bazardo is certainly promising, but his AA stats (142 IP, 99/47 K/BB, 16 HR, 4.06 raw ERA, 1.56 G/F) do not suggest he’s major league ready. Let him spend some time in Tacoma finding consistency for his curve and developing his change.
The Meche tender reflects that, while the M’s have some good upper level arms, it would be unfair to expect any of them to step right into a rotation spot out of spring training.
Seriously? You could have picked up Jason Johnson for about what you’re going to pay Meche. You could dumpster dive for the Halamas and Browns of the world on NRIs (I don’t like Kevin Brown’s chances of being very good very much…but he might have a better shot than Gil Meche). Sift through the young arms and wait for the midseason to pull in another starter.
I wasn’t aware that Tomko went to LA for that much- under the circumstances, no I wouldn’t have gone for him.
As to him playing better last year than Everett, yeah, but he’s a year older this year.
So’s Everett, and Moyer’s usefulness at this age isn’t ENTIRELY unprecedented- knuckleballers and guys like Warren Spahn made it to this point. He’s a risk, sure. As far as a big risk…not really. I wouldn’t have sobbed bitter tears if we had gone a different direction, mind you. But what’s frustrating, though? Add up Everett, Meche, Moyer and Washburn and you’re VERY close to Johnson, Millwood and Loaiza… and you still have Matt Lawton, and you might even be able to scrounge up a RH bat to platoon in LF for 750K to 1 million. Aaaargh.
I’d rather go with Meche than go dumpster diving. Meche has been consistantly inconsistant and has pissed us all off at points. He’s going to be on our team for the same reason that Thorton will be on the team. I hope Meche puts it together next year. If he does great, if he doesn’t then bump him out of the rotation. I think(hope) Meche will likely do better than Moyer this year. He’s one of the guys that I still want to see put it together. He’s still only 27 and has some stuff that can be good but just needs to be consistant for an entire game. $4 mil is a little steep but I think its a better deal than any FA on the market.
That made almost no sense at all.
When it comes down to it, we can’t really win with Meche. We’re already paying him 4 million plus… if he has a good season, he’ll likely command a large, multi-year deal, if not from us, than from somebody else. Do we really want to give him that, if he posts one solid season?
DMZ, which part DID make sense? I couldn’t tell.
On the point in 54- Well, I suspect we would, because he MIGHT be executing the Chris Carpenter/Jason Schmidt turnaround at age 27, and going from being a pitcher with no idea where the ball’s going to a good pitcher. My problem is that paying $4 million to see if he can do this is the roster equivalent of taking your 401k when you retire and buying lottery tickets as a wealth-building strategy. Could it pay off? Sure. Is it a wise strategy? No, not really.
#51, It seems to me that the one tiny advantage Meche has is that we only are stuck with him for a year. With free agents, it’s often hard to avoid longer contracts. I’m fairly sure we could have gotten Kevin Brown for a year (since he’s so old) but I don’t see why he would be leaps and bounds better than Meche.
I agree with your angst over the Everett+Washburn+Meche = Johson+Millwood+Loaiza, I just got done having it when we signed Washburn.
As far as Moyer not being a good risk, I think the Moyer fans are squinting really hard at his home 2005 numbers. In the article about Defense on this site, I learn that a good sample size is 2 years. Over the last 2 years, Moyer struck out 5/9 ip, and walked 2.6/9 ip. I don’t have his groundball percentage rate, but he did give up 67 dingers in that time so I doubt it was stupendous. Apply a reasonable amount of regression for being 43 years old, and you get what? 4.5K/9ip, 3bb/9ip? Whoopee.
Heard on KJR that Meche and the M’s have come to terms (I’d assume at the halfway point).
If I hold my nose and overlook the fact that Gil Meche is getting $3.7 million, Bavasi has demonstrated a nice trend of getting folks such as Bloomquist and Meche to agree to less than a fifty-fifty split. I particularly like the Meche incentives, since they have improbably high thresholds – if he gets them, he will have earned his salary. (Of course, if the budget reserves for incentives on a dollar-for-dollar basis, as a fan their unlikely-acheiveability isn’t doing much for me.)