Matsuzaka winning bid: Red Sox, $51.1m
I know, but please, close your mouth before the flies get in.
This is, by the way, approximately 1/4th the value of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays franchise.
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Today’s news, tightly edited
$42m Red Sox bid wins Matsuzaka posting (link)
Verlander wins AL RoY, Johjima places fourth
NL RoY announced
Teams flatter Meche
Karim Garcia courted by M’s, others
Webb wins NL Cy Young
M’s sign scrubs
Read more
Random Monday Musings
The GM winter meetings start. Rumors a-flurry! We’ll see if the M’s look to make any moves, or if they sign Jason Schmidt this week (which, if I may, seems likely).
We find out Tuesday whether the Seibu Lions accepted the highest bid, whatever it may be, for Daisuke Matsuzaka. The Hardball Times has a piece today worth reading (“When Will Daisuke Matsuzaka’s Arm Fall Off?“) as food for thought. The summary contains this gem.
I am surprised that so many baseball fans are worried about how Matsuzaka threw over 200 pitches in a high school playoff game. That kind of stress on an arm probably isn’t a good thing, but it isn’t a death sentence either. Strenuous 150-plus pitch outings for high school and college pitchers happen, even in the United States.
I’m surprised that people are frightened of playing Russian Roulette. Many people play and are not killed…
We find out Thursday (or earlier) whether the Yakult Swallows accepted the highest bid for 3B Akinori Iwamura, who we haven’t discussed here at all since the M’s aren’t in the market for a 3B.
The interesting news is that the Yankees, rather than pay $4m to opt out of Jaret Wright’s contract, agreed to pay $3m of it so they could ship him to the Orioles, re-uniting him with Leo Mazzone, who is guy who managed to last wring a nice season out of Wright.
Also interesting is the M’s are converting some suites into one large super-suite (thanks to eponymous coward for the pointer). Sounds kind of like the Diamond Club, only higher. This is a really weird thing to do. You’ve seen the team push the bizarre press box seats before, but this means that the team’s been unable to get any companies to bite, aaand didn’t have much success selling them for individual games, either. Look forward to having Dave Valle pimp these seats endlessly during broadcasts.
Richie Sexson: Albatross
I’ve talked about this in other posts the last few months, but never laid out a complete case for it to the point where I feel people actually understand where I’m coming from. Talking with other Mariner fans, I certainly don’t get the sense that very many people agree with me on this issue, so, let me lay it out as plainly as I can and see how many of you I can convert:
Richie Sexson isn’t worth anything close to the $28 million he’s owed the next two years. His contract is an anchor that the Mariners should be actively trying to unload on someone else, and the sooner he’s removed from the roster, the better this team will be. Trading Richie Sexson for a bag of baseballs would be addition by subtraction. If you can con someone into giving you something of value for him, all the better, but just removing his contract from the roster should be a priority.
Let’s take a look at his production and what we should expect the next two years. We’ll begin with the sole strength of his game; hitting.
Sexson’s last three healthy seasons, he’s posted EqA’s of .308, .307, and .280. He turns 32 next month, so he’s likely at the end of his prime and entering the decline phase of his career. That said, his raw power is still among the best in the game, even if its only 90% of what it used to be, so we shouldn’t expect Sexson’s value to collapse over night. A reasonable projection for the next two seasons would be a .295 EqA, or something in that range. He should be better than he was in 2006, but a little worse than he was in 2005.
That kind of offensive performance is worth about 90 to 100 runs, depending on what kind of run conversion formula you want to use. We’ll go with 100 because it makes the math easier, and I always like giving the benefit of the doubt to the side I’m not on. Replacement level for a first baseman is the highest of any position in baseball, and you should be able to find a player who can create about 70 runs with his bat without too much of a problem. That makes Sexson worth something like 30 runs offensively each of the next two years. As we talked about yesterday with Beltre and Ramirez, 30 runs is a pretty valuable player.
But we’re not done with Sexson just yet. He’s about +30 offensively, but he also takes the field and runs the bases. And he does both very poorly. His UZR for 2006 was -7, and most other systems have him in the -5 to -10 range. He’s among the worst defensive first baseman in the game. And he’s also a lousy baserunner. Mitchel Lichtman’s calculations had him as costing a team two runs over the course of a season running the bases, so his defense/baserunning are probably in the -10 range, give or take a couple of runs.
That makes the total package worth about 20 runs. For the next two seasons, the Mariners are going to pay Richie Sexson something like $7 million per win. $7 million per win! That’s one of the worst values in baseball. Based on his actual run production, Sexson should be making something like $6 or $7 million next year. His salary is double what it should be.
One of the common responses to this is “who cares what he’s paid – he produces, and it’s not my money” or something to that effect. But, of course, this argument is foolish, because the Mariners operate on a budget, and every decision comes with an opportunity cost. The $14 million that Richie Sexson will earn next year is about 15% of the entire team’s payroll, and his occupation of first base fills a position where it is easy to find major league quality hitters. The opportunity cost of having Richie Sexson far outweighs his actual onfield value. It’s not even close.
The Mariners need to capitalize on this market and trade Richie Sexson. A first baseman who is worth 20 runs over the course of a season isn’t worth anything close to $14 million, and that money could be easily allocated to any number of other, better players. Take whatever you can get for him. Just trade Richie Sexson.
Free Agent Review: Aramis Ramirez
If you haven’t heard by now, the first free agent signing of the winter was actually a re-signing. Aramis Ramirez stayed with the Chicago Cubs, collecting a cool $73 million over the next 5 years, or about $14.5 million per season.
So why am I posting this on the blog, since it doesn’t have much to do with the Mariners?
Because Aramis Ramirez is not even a better player than Adrian Beltre, and the reactions to this signing are going to point out how even the statistical analysts of the day incorrectly evaluate players. And they make the same mistake nearly every time. Ignoring – or undervaluing, really – defense.
Now I know some of you are rolling your eyes as you read this, thinking I’m an idiot for believing that the guy who posted a .291/.352/.561 line last season and has hit 105 home runs the last three seasons could actually be a worse player than Beltre, whose offensive production hasn’t been anything close to that since the 2004 season ended. So, let me do the math for you guys, just so you know I’m not completely crazy.
Aramis Ramirez, the last three years, has posted EqA’s of .306, .301, and .293. It’s fair to say that a .300 EqA level is his established record of performance, and that’s what he’s being paid for. He’s entering his age 29 season, so the decline in offensive production shouldn’t be severe for a few years, at least. What’s a .300 EqA worth over a full season? About 100 runs, give or take a few. That’s about 40 runs more than a replacement level third baseman would contribute offensively.
However, Aramis Ramirez is a butcher with the glove. He’s a bad defensive player. By bad, I mean terrible. Every defensive metric we can find agrees with this. UZR, the best of the defensive metrics, has had him at -15 runs per 150 games played in the past. It’s unlikely that he’s consistently that bad, but if you average together the consensus of all the metrics, the scouting reports, and what Cubs fans believe about his work with the leather, marking Ramirez down as about 10 runs below average is pretty fair.
So, offense and defense, Aramis Ramirez is worth something like 30 runs a season over a replacement level player. That’s a good player, certainly, and one contributing to a team.
But let’s look at the oft-maligned Beltre, shall we?
He posted a .268/.328/.465 line this season, giving up 130 points of OPS to Ramirez. But he did it in Safeco Field in the American League (even though the difference is overstated, the AL was clearly more talented than the NL this year), so after making context adjustments, Beltre’s offensive performance was worth something like 80 runs over a full season. That’s 20 runs less than Ramirez, but 20 runs more than replacement.
Defensively, Adrian Beltre’s one of the best third baseman in the game. He’s not the best – that’s probably Brandon Inge right now, or maybe a healthy Scott Rolen – but he’s in the discussion of guys in that next tier. Scouts love his defense, fans love his defense, and the stats love his defense. He’s basically the anti-Ramirez with the leather, and his defensive value is something about 10 runs above average over the course of a full season.
Guess what? 40-10 and 20+10 are equal. They were both something like +30 runs for 2006.
However, you’ll never see anyone write that Adrian Beltre and Aramis Ramirez just had similarly valuable seasons, and if Beltre was the one with an opt-out clause, there’s no way people would be talking about him as a premier talent lining up for a monster deal.
For whatever reason, mainstream analysts simply fail to grasp the importance of defense, especially at the extremes. Beltre’s one of the best gloveman at third base around and Ramirez is probably the worst. That fact wipes away the whole of the difference between their 2006 offensive performances.
When you factor in that Adrian Beltre is a year younger, has a pristine health record compared to Ramirez, and that it’s not at all clear that a .267 EqA isn’t a low-end projection for Beltre’s offensive performance the next few years, and you have the reasons that I believe Adrian Beltre is a slightly better bet for the next few years than Aramis Ramirez.
Even if you hate Beltre and love Ramirez, the best you can do is call it a pick-em. It’s close enough that trying to decipher the margins here is basically a waste of time. The question of which one is better isn’t important – the key is that they’re basically equal.
And you’ll never, ever see a mainstream sports writer come to that conclusion. Instead, the Beltre contract will continue to be lampooned, while Ramirez is talked about as an all-star who the Cubs can build around.
Free agent review: Gil Meche
WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
I hope the sucker that decides to give Meche a huge long-term free agent deal because they think they can fix him is in our division, because I would love to watch him get regularly shelled by the team for the next 3-5 years.
Unless they do fix him. That would suck.
Here’s your Daisuke post
since every thread’s been the subject of hijacking attempts all day.
Buster “Productive Out” Olney has reported the Red Sox won the posting with a $45m bid. Other sources are reporting the Rangers bid something between $20 and $30m. Other random rumors are a-floating.
I didn’t write this up because it’s all rumor and random stupidity, and there’s really not a lot of productive discussion to be had or analysis to be done until we know anything for sure.
Igawa posts
From the Yomiuri Shimbum, lefty pitcher Kei Igawa is going to be posted.
Igawa’s not going to attract nearly the crazed interest of Daisuke, on account of he’s not nearly as good. Still, in this pitching-starved market, someone’s going to toss some cash at him.
Igawa allowed two runs (and walked six) pitching against the traveling MLB team on Tuesday.
Sheffield to the Tigers
The Yankees get three (3!) pitchers: uber-prospect Humberto Sanchez, then two 22-yr old righties in Kevin Whelan and Anthony Claggett.
This is a shocking haul for a year of Sheffield’s petulant services. If they were willing to trade Ibanez, what would the M’s get, a whole farm system?