Piazza not such a hot deal
I thought the Piazza deal was an interesting gamble for the A’s, especially in that it gives them a particularly weird tool to work in and out of games using the DH, but that certainly was a lot of money for them to wager.
Over at BP’s blog o’snippets, Nate Silver went through a lot of convolutions to try and get Piazza’s projected value up, tweaking things to give him a break, but the best he got to was .272/.336/.436.
The A’s do make mistakes. We can hope this is one, for the division’s sake.
(Also, Gil Meche’s projected ERA is 5.40)
2007 Mariners, post-meetings
If the season started today…
~80 wins. That’s probably a little low… 82? 83? Assumes they blow their last chunk of change on one starter, as seems likely. Also omits Reed, who is almost certainly gone.
SP Felix Hernandez
SP Wrss Fhccna
SP Jarrod Washburn
SP Horacio Ramirez
SP White/Baek/Woods/Foppert/Whoever
RP Putz
RP Mateo
RP O’Flaherty
RP Lehr
RP Sherrill
RPx2 Woods/Baek/whoever
DH-L Broussard
C-R Kenji Johjima
1B-R Richie Sexson
2B-R Jose Lopez
SS-R Yuniesky Betancourt
3B-R Adrian Beltre
LF-L Raul Ibanez
CF-L Ichiro!
RF-R Jose Guillen
C: Johnson/Rivera/whoever
UT: WFB
UT: Morse
OF: Snelling
This squad overachieves if
All the good things they said about Ramirez turn out to be true, Broussard turns in a good season, Lopez is Lopez instead of the horrible hitter Hargrove turned him into, Johjima hits better in his second season, they get Snelling three or four starts a week somehow to get the bat in there, Guillen is healthy and productive. Betancourt turns in another good year with the bat, Sexson starts well and hits all season long. Ibanez defies age entirely for another year. That magical team wins 90 games. Hargrove quits to pursue another career during spring training.
They undershoot if
Ramirez is what everyone thinks he is, Snelling never plays, Lopez is the horrible hitter Hargrove wants him to be… you know this litany.
The year collapses if
Felix or Ichiro is injured for any significant amount of time.
Things that could yet help or hurt the team
– Whoever that last starter they throw money at turns out to be
– Whether Broussard is moved, and for what
– Whether Sexson is moved, and for what
– Whether spring training actually matters in determining spots
Baseball America picks top ten M’s prospects
Jim Callis did the team’s list:
1. Adam Jones, of
2. Jeff Clement, c
3. Brandon Morrow, rhp
4. Tony Butler, lhp
5. Ryan Feierabend, lhp
6. Wladimir Balentien, of
7. Mark Lowe, rhp
8. Chris Tillman, rhp
9. Yung-Chi Chen, 2b
10. Eric O’Flaherty, lhp
And he’s chatting now about the list if you’re a subscriber (like me).
I like Jim Callis’ stuff a lot, and I’m glad we drew him of the BA guys. It’s a good read. His writeup of Jones manages to capture both why I’m such a huge fan and why there’s still reason to wonder.
Who gets the last ten million?
The M’s have money in the budget. They haven’t made a name signing to appease the restless natives. They need another starting pitcher. But there’s only maybe $10m left in the budget?
Who gets it? Quick, before they make a move.
wrss fhccna
Antonetti in ’08
You may have noticed over on the left sidebar that there’s an image that looks an awful lot like a political button. In a sense, it is a political button, though for an election that isn’t run by democracy. Due to the way the offseason is unfolding, it is becoming apparent to us that, barring an unforseen miracle, the Mariners aren’t going to be contenders in 2007. Even in a best case scenario, where the young core takes a step forward and the aging veterans stave off decline, this is still an inferior team to that of the Angels, Rangers, and Athletics.
Given a public ultimatum to win or lose their jobs, the Mariners current baseball operations department will begin the year as underdogs, and it’s a distinction they’ve earned with moves like the Horacio Ramirez acquisition. Simpy put, this regime couldn’t afford to have a bad offseason following the Jarrod Washburn and Carl Everett debacles of last year, and while we have yet to see a disaster along the lines of those two signings, it’s fairly evident that the Mariners are not going to be able to sufficiently upgrade the team this winter in order to expect to challenge for the division crown next year.
So, we believe that a change in management is inevitable. While we will be the first to say that Bill Bavasi is a good person, and he’s been kind enough to spend time talking with us the past couple of years, we’re endorsing Chris Antonetti as his replacement. Like any good grass roots campaign, you can never start too soon, and this is a cause worthy of your support.
So, without further ado, an introduction to the man we hope is the next General Manager of the Seattle Mariners.
Who is Chris Antonetti?
He is currently the Assistant General Manager to Mark Shapiro, working for the Cleveland Indians. He is Shapiro’s go to guy on contract negotiations and evaluative analysis, as well as spear-heading most of the initiatives to create new programs that give the Indians a competitive edge on his opponents. The Indians have been the leader in using technology to their advantage for years, and they’ve leveraged their intellectual knowledge of systems into a sustained advantage on the field. Antonetti has been the man responsible for overseeing these areas and pushing for their use throughout the organization. A lot of the things that make the Cleveland Indians the best run organization in baseball are in place due to the work of Chris Antonetti.
Why is he qualified to be a major league GM?
Antonetti is going to be labeled as a “Moneyball” executive by the media, as he did not play professional baseball and has advanced degrees from elite universities. He got a bachelors in business administration from Georgetown and a masters in sports management from Massachusets, learning the academic side of how to be a successful manager. From there, he took a low level job with the Montreal Expos in their minor league operations department before joining the Indians organization in 1999 as, essentially, an intern. From 1999 until now, he has worked his way from the title of Assistant, Baseball Operations to Assistant GM (a position he earned in 2002), and has held numerous roles during that time. The Indians have had him work in both administrative and player development positions, and he’s spent numerous hours working with both scouts and statistical analysts.
No one understands how to use both subjective scouting information and quantifiable statistical data together as well as the Indians, and Antonetti has been successful in both sides of the baseball operations department. Under the leadership of John Hart and now Mark Shapiro, the Indians have become baseball’s most well-oiled machine. Antonetti has been a vital cog in that machine for the past seven years.
What are his unique strengths?
Antonetti has many things going for him, but a few notable traits set him apart. He’s brilliant, without a doubt, but there a lot of people in baseball who are extremely smart, and most of them would make terrible general managers. The most important responsibility a General Manager holds is to gain the respect of those who work for him and motivate them to do good work. In this respect, Antonetti is set apart from other executives with an academic background. He commands the respect of his employees, but also exudes humility with his soft-spoken manner. While he has his own set of convictions about truths as they apply to baseball, he seeks input from a variety of sources and seeks to find knowledge wherever it may lie, whether with new statistical research or old scouting truisms.
Antonetti isn’t the most outgoing person on earth, and he’s not the charasmatic figure that Billy Beane or even Bill Bavasi is, but he combines respect, humility, and intelligence in a package that makes him one of the best leaders of people in baseball.
Why do you want him to be the next GM of the Mariners?
The Mariners are an organization in transition and are looking for an identity. During the Pat Gillick era, the team focused heavily on the present success of the major league club at the expense of the farm system, and while they experienced short term gains on the field, the price was paid during the Bill Bavasi era, where the major league club was sacrficed in an effort to replenish the organization with young talent, both through trades and amateur acquisitions.
Now, however, the team has the foundation of a potential contender in place, with guys that can be built around in their pre-arbitration years and a nucleus of young talent that should form the basis for the Mariners in the near future. Bill Bavasi and his staff have done a very good job of changing the culture of the club towards valuing building from within, and he has helped get the team through the painful process of rebuilding. However, in all his years of running a franchise, both in Anaheim and now in Seattle, he’s yet to show a particular aptitude for surrounding that young talent with quality major league players.
Chris Antonetti understands player valuation at the major league level extremely well, and has had a hand in many of the Indians numerous good acquisitions over the years. While the Indians have shared the Mariners strong desire to build through the farm system, they’ve also been able to acquire quality players in trades and on the free agent market to put around their home grown talent, allowing them to contend in a competitive division despite restraints on their payroll.
The Mariners need a better philosophy of major leauge player acquisition. They need to do a better job of selecting pitchers, getting away from ideas of value based on minimually useful statistics such as W-L record and ERA and moving towards a more realistic understanding of how to project pitching ability. They need to stop collecting athletes with impressive skills and start collecting ballplayers who contribute runs on the field.
Most importantly, however, they need a philosophy that permeates the organization, from the parent club through the minor leagues. They need cohesiveness in what is being taught to their players as well as what is valued in terms of abilities. They need to establish a foundation to work from and a strong identity in what being a Seattle Mariner is all about.
The Indians have refined organizational cohesiveness, and while no one is perfect, they do it better than anyone.
Well, if he’s so great, then why does he need a grassroots campaign to get the job?
Chris Antonetti is 32-years-old, is unheard of by almost everyone who doesn’t cover baseball for a living, and has no experience as a professional ballplayer. In the eyes of most of the media, this will make him just another laptop-toting seamhead who focuses on what their computer tells them and has no respect for the establishment. For every Theo Epstein, who gained a modicum of respect after building a World Series champion, we see scathing rebukes written by local scribes when teams have hired guys with similar backgrounds, such as Paul DePodesta, Josh Byrnes, Jon Daniels, Andrew Friedman, or J.P. Ricciardi. In a city where Pat Gillick and his traditional ways are honored with the highest esteem, it’s going to be a very tough sell to get the Mariners to change directions and hire someone too young to be elected president.
In a division where Arte Moreno is willing to spend lavish amounts of money to leverage the Los Angeles market, Oakland is taking their highly efficient development strategy to a new ballpark, and Tom Hicks’ huge dollars in Texas are now being managed by a high quality team of executives led by Jon Daniels, the Mariners cannot afford to be behind the eight ball in terms of player evaluation.
The Mariners have the revenue streams and talent in place to build a contending baseball club. Chris Antonetti has the skills it takes to transform this club from a rebuilding process into perennial contender.
Antonetti in ’08. Spread the word.
Thursday’s fun
Freddy Garcia traded to Philadelphia for Floyd and Gio Gonzalez.
Gil Meche, the pitching coach’s dream, signs with THE ROYALS for 5/$55. Supposedly. So Jason Schmidt gets 3/$47 and Meche 5/$55. I’m going to make a wild guess and bet Schmidt returns more on that investment than Meche does.
The last three years, the Royals have only seen him four times, and Meche’s line has been decent but not superficially stellar: 5.73 ERA, 2-1, 22 IP, 26 H, 2 HR, 8 BB, 15K. I… they’re the Royals. Whaddayagonnado.
Lilly to Cubs.
Pettite’s going to pitch somewhere.
Luis Gonzalez got $7m to play for the Dodgers.
“There’s probably [only] a handful of guys in baseball who permeate the clubhouse like he did with us,” Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin told the Arizona Republic before Gonzalez signed with the Dodgers.
That’s an interesting choice of words.
Rule 5 (5! It’s 5!) draft was today. 19 players picked. Baseball America has a ridiculous amount of coverage including the wrap-up a blog and other good stuff.
M’s make another pointless trade
The M’s have made another trade that doesn’t help the team, though this one isn’t quite as destructive as yesterdays debacle.
The M’s have acquired Sean White for cash, after the Pirates selected White from the Braves in this morning’s rule 5 draft. You may remember White from his days at the University of Washington, and since he grew up in Pullman, he’s a Local White Boy (TM).
Unfortunately, he’s not any good. Think Sean Green as a starting pitcher. He throws a good sinker, but like most extreme GB guys, he doesn’t have great command and doesn’t strike anyone out.
As a rule 5 guy, the M’s will have to carry him on the major league roster all year or offer him back to the Braves. Since White was a mediocre pitcher in Double-A at age 25 last year, expecting him to contribute anything in the majors this year is a pretty big stretch. So, the likely scenario is that he eats up a 40 man roster spot all winter, the M’s realize in spring training that he’s not any good, and he goes back to Atlanta in March.
Pointless trade, and a nice finishing touch on a terrible 24 hours to be a Mariner fan.
Site under volume
This is one of those “request for thoughts” posts that’s only going to be of interest if you’re wonky into servers/etc/Wordpress/MT/etc and want to talk about things like caching through .htaccess and mysql optimization. Sooooo I’m just going to throw the more tag up now Read more
The bad deal
Okay, so the deal of doom has been reported by just about every media outlet known to man. The Mariners are still refusing to officially confirm that a deal is in place, but they’re no longer denying it, and it’s clear that this trade is going to happen, barring an 11th hour miracle.
The Mariners have traded a good 27-year-old pitcher for a mediocre 27-year-old pitcher.
Forget everything else you’re going to hear for a minute. Forget the starter vs reliever designations, years of service, groundball rates, all of it. The M’s traded a pitcher who will be 27 in two weeks for a pitcher who turned 27 two weeks ago in a straight up, one for one deal. It’s a challenge trade, essentially. The M’s chose left-handedness and a designation as a starting pitcher over talent and performance. They swapped a good pitcher for a mediocre one, and none of the issues about rotation vs bullpen can wipe that away.
This is a bad deal. We’re obviously against this in every way, shape, and form. Horacio Ramirez is not the kind of guy you trade arms like Rafael Soriano’s for. Horacio Ramirez is the kind of arm you pick up as a throw-in to a deal or that you sign for a cheap, one year contract as a free agent. Like they were going to do with John Thomson. He’s John Thomson’s left-handed twin.
Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, this deal still has a good chance to look okay for the M’s in retrospect? We were in favor of dealing Rafael Soriano this offseason for the same reason the M’s were willing to give him up – I believe that it’s only a matter of time until he needs surgery on his arm again, and that he’s one of the highest risk pitchers in MLB. There’s a very real chance that he blows his arm out in May and spends the next year and a half rehabbing, returning just in time to become a free agent after the 2008 season.
That chance that Rafael Soriano was going to turn into a near useless asset if they held onto him, and that he was going to be used as an 8th inning setup man, made it wise to deal him. There’s still a very real chance that Rafael Soriano is going to turn into a near useless asset. He comes with all kinds of risk, and the reward for the Mariners wasn’t as high as it should have been.
And, for all his mediocreness, Horacio Ramirez does some things well. In 520 innings in the majors over four years, he’s posted a groundball rate of 49.7%. He uses a two-seam fastball to induce a lot of grounders, which reduces the need to post an excellent strikeout rate. Miguel Batista, for instance, has been using this skillset to be a decent back-end starter for years, and there are plenty of left-handed, 50% GB guys who don’t strike anyone out and regularly post decent to average seasons in the rotation.
Most of them have better command than Ramirez does, however, and all of them have better health records. For all the talk about Soriano’s arm, Ramirez isn’t exactly a workhorse. He’s already had shoulder surgery, and missed half of 2006 recovering from problems with his arm, his groin, his hamstring, and his finger. Durable isn’t a word used to describe the man.
He’s only got three full years of major league service, so he’s not free agent eligible until after 2009, and he’s certainly going to command less in salary than a comparable free agent starting pitcher. If he’s healthy and everything goes well, he could give the M’s 200 league average innings for the next couple of years, in which case this trade would probably be a win for the Mariners.
But trades aren’t evaluated by the performance of the best case scenario for the guy you’re getting and the worst case scenario for the other guy. Yes, this trade can work for the M’s if Ramirez stays healthy and Soriano blows out his arm. But that’s not how you evaluate whether you should make a deal or not.
Soriano’s just a better pitcher than Horacio Ramirez, and the M’s a worse team for having exchanged the two.
To this deal, I just have one word: Boooooooooooooooooooo.
Ugh
There are conflicting reports surrounding a potential trade of Rafael Soriano to the Braves for Horacio Ramirez. Several sources close to the Braves claim its done – one source with the M’s claims its not.
We should know in a few hours.