Letting Ichiro Leave For Nothing
As we’ve talked about before, there is a large contingent of Mariner fans that want to see Ichiro get traded in July. With the team falling out of contention (yep, I’m pretty much ready to throw in the towel), I expect these people to get louder as the next month and a half progresses. The rallying cry of the Trade Ichiro brigade is that he’s going to leave at the end of the season and the M’s cannot risk letting their superstar center fielder walk out the door without getting anything in return.
I’d done some research on the issue of trade deadline deals a few years ago, but with the issue being relevant to the Mariners right now, I decided to update the data and look at the decisions made by organizations in similar situations over the past seven years. I found 34 players that I deemed to be in comparable situations to what the Mariners and Ichiro now face. These players were all all-star talents in the midst of a highly productive season, were free agents at the end of the year, and were unlikely to re-sign with the club they were on at the time, and would be classified as Type A Free Agents for compensation purposes, meaning that the organization would get two high draft choices if the player left via free agency.
This gives us a tangible, real basis for what rent-a-player all-stars command in trade, as well as giving us a breakdown of whether the teams who traded their stars fared better than the teams who let their stars walk away at seasons end.
As it turns out, 16 of the 34 stars were traded, and 18 were retained, only to leave at the end of the year for greener pastures, giving us a pretty even comparison across the board. Here is the list of stars who were sent packing.
| Stars Traded | Date Of Trade | Players Received |
|---|---|---|
| Carlos Lee | 7/28/2006 | Laynce Nix, Kevin Mench, and Francisco Cordero |
| Carlos Beltran | 6/24/2004 | John Buck, Mark Teahen, and Mike Wood |
| Freddy Garcia | 6/27/2004 | Jeremy Reed, Miguel Olivo, and Mike Morse |
| Shannon Stewart | 7/16/2003 | Bobby Kielty and Dave Gassner |
| Aramis Ramirez | 7/23/2003 | Jose Hernandez, Matt Bruback, and Bobby Hill |
| Jose Guillen | 7/30/2003 | Aaron Harang, Joe Valentine, and Jeff Bruksch |
| Sidney Ponson | 7/31/2003 | Kurt Ainsworth, Damian Moss, and Ryan Hannaman |
| Bartolo Colon | 6/27/2002 | Brandon Phillips, Cliff Lee, and Grady Sizemore |
| Ray Durham | 7/25/2002 | Jon Adkins |
| Kenny Lofton | 7/27/2002 | Felix Diaz and Ryan Meaux |
| Scott Rolen | 7/29/2002 | Placido Polanco, Mike Timlin, and Bud Smith |
| Jermaine Dye | 7/25/2001 | Todd Belitz, Mario Encarnacion, and Jose Ortiz |
| Matt Lawton | 7/30/2001 | Rick Reed |
| Jason Schmidt | 7/30/2001 | Armando Rios and John Vander Wal |
| Dave Justice | 6/29/2000 | Ricky Ledee, Jake Westbrook, and Zach Day |
| Denny Neagle | 7/12/2000 | Ed Yarnall, Jackson Melian, and Drew Henson |
None of these guys are a perfect comparison for Ichiro, but they were all highly coveted players who were significant contributors to their teams. Scott Rolen and Carlos Beltran were two of the best young players in the game at the time of their trades, so while they’re the most comparable players in on field value, they were also a decade younger than Ichiro is, which had a significant impact on their trade value. Kenny Lofton, Shannon Stewart, and Ray Durham are the closest matches to Ichiro in terms of offensive skillset, but none of them were as good as Ichiro is today. Carlos Lee, Jermaine Dye, Jose Guillen, and Dave Justice were middle-of-the-order sluggers, which are generally valued higher than leadoff guys by most major league clubs. And then, of course, Freddy Garcia, Sidney Ponson, Bartolo Colon, Jason Schmidt, and Denny Neagle were all pitchers.
So there’s not one guy on this list that you can point to and say “see, that’s an Ichiro type player, and that’s what he’ll bring in return”. You have to look at the list as a whole. So, when we do that, what do we see?
Of the 16 trades, three resulted in obvious net gains for the team who received some young prospects in return. The Indians reloaded with the Bartolo Colon deal, the Royals got a pair of productive hitters for Carlos Beltran, and the Reds got Aaron Harang in the Jose Guillen trade.
3 times, out of 16, you can look back and say that the team that traded it’s all-star away clearly improved the future of the franchise. And, to boot, there’s a giant asterisk next to the Colon trade, as it was made by a franchise that was literally making moves trying to keep themselves in existance – no one was sure the Expos would even be a franchise beyond 2002, and Omar Minaya and his staff were simply trying to save baseball in Montreal, or at the very least, go out with a bang. The circumstances that caused the Indians to receive a king’s ransom for Colon aren’t in play this year, and probably won’t be ever again.
There are a few other trades in there that have worked out okay for the trading team. Jake Westbrook has been a solid pitcher, and getting him for a few months of Dave Justice was a good move for the Indians. The Brewers are pretty happy with Francisco Cordero this year, although I’d argue that they’d have been better off just offering Lee arbitration and picking up the two draft picks, rather than settling for Role Player Soup from Texas.
But, the other 11 deals… there’s not much to show for the loss of a star player. It’s a collection of busted prospects and mediocre role players. Out of the 41 players received in return for the 16 traded all-stars, two have turned into all-stars (Grady Sizemore and Aaron Harang), several more are good everyday players or mid-rotation starters (Mark Teahen, John Buck, Brandon Phillips, Placido Polanco, Cliff Lee, Jake Westbrook), and the other 33 aren’t in baseball anymore or have little to no value.
Over the last seven years, the prospects coming back for rental players have had a 1 in 20 chance of turning into an all-star, a 1 in 5 chance of being a solid player, and a 4 in 5 chance of flaming out
How about the teams who decided to play out the string, let their free-agents-to-be stick around through the end of the year, and then collect a couple of draft picks after they walked during the winter?
| Free Agents | Compensation |
|---|---|
| A. Soriano | 31st and 67th picks in 2007 draft (Smoker, Zimmerman) |
| Jason Giambi | 24th and 35th picks in 2002 draft (Blanton, Brown) |
| J. Isringhausen | 30th and 37th picks in 2002 draft (Fritz, Obenchain) |
| Johnny Damon | 16th and 39th picks in 2002 draft (Swisher, Teahen) |
| Miguel Tejada | 40th and 49th picks in 2004 draft (Street, Rogers) |
| Manny Ramirez | 17th and 35th picks in 2001 draft (Denham, Martin) |
| Alex Rodriguez | 36th and 49th picks in 2001 draft (Garciaparra, Rivera) |
| Mike Hampton | 18th and 38th picks in 2001 draft (Heilman, Wright) |
| Mike Mussina | 19th and 31st picks in 2001 draft (Fontenot, Bass) |
| Chan Ho Park | 31st and 51st picks in 2002 draft (Miller, Hammes) |
| Juan Gonzalez | 33rd and 82nd picks in 2002 draft (Whitney, Cooper) |
| Jim Thome | 18th and 31st picks in 2003 draft (Snyder, Miller) |
| Jeff Kent | 22nd and 33rd picks in 2003 draft (Aardsma, Whitaker) |
| Tom Glavine | 35th and 79th picks in 2003 draft (Atilano, Stevens) |
| Mike Remlinger | 36th and 43rd picks in 2003 draft (Salty, Reyes) |
| Andy Pettitte | 23rd and 37th picks in 2004 draft (Hughes, Poterson) |
| Keith Foulke | 24th and 36th picks in 2004 draft (Powell, Putnam) |
| Bartolo Colon | 34th and 53rd picks in 2004 draft (Lumsden, Whisler) |
| Carlos Lee | 17th and 35th picks in 2007 draft (Beaven, Borbon) |
| Carlos Beltran | 38th and 89th picks in 2005 draft (Iorg, Manzella) |
| Ray Durham | 26th and 33rd picks in 2003 draft (Snyder, Quintanilla) |
You’ll see a few duplicate names on here, as Carlos Beltran, Carlos Lee, and Ray Durham were all traded to a club as a rental player, who got the benefit of the compensation picks after the player left as a free agent. Tip of the hat to Billy Beane for the Ray Durham coup in 2003, when he picked up two months of Ray Durham for non-prospect Jon Adkins, then offered Durham arbitration at the end of the year and got two of the top 33 picks in the 2003 draft for losing Durham two months later.
Anyways, as you can see, there have been a lot of teams who have decided to simply hang onto their free agents to be and sort it all out in the winter. The A’s, especially, have eschewed mid-season dealing. How has it worked out?
Of the 42 compensation selections on the list, three have become all-stars – David Wright, Nick Swisher, and Huston Street. Several more have become solid contributors – Joe Blanton, Mark Teahen, David Aardsma, and Aaron Heilman. And, a few others have become the elite prospects in baseball today – Philip Hughes, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and Adam Miller, while JoJo Reyes is just a good pitching prospect instead of an elite one, and ’07 draft picks Beaven, Borbon, Smoker, and Zimmerman are far too young to determine their value at this point.
27 of the picks could be labeled as busts, even though a couple still have a shot to turn into major league role players down the road. Three have been big successes, four have been good enough, and three others are among the most valuable young players in the game today, while we’ll have to wait a few years to figure out the fate of the other four.
Recent history shows us the compensation picks are returning better value to the teams than the prospects teams have acquired by moving their free-agents-to-be. Yes, if you trade Ichiro, you might Grady Sizemore, but you might also get Drew Henson. If you let him walk, you might get Rene Rivera (ugh, that draft sucked), but you might also get David Wright. The odds are about the same either way.
Now, this isn’t a completely thorough cost/benefit analysis. By trading for prospects, you’re not incurring the costs of signing the players, as you are with compensation picks, so the financial outlay is several million dollars higher by going with the draft picks. The payoffs are going to happen a year or two later by taking the draft picks versus taking the prospects in most cases.
But, the evidence is clear – the expected return by trading an all-star in the last year of his contract is not any higher than the expected return of letting that player walk at the end of the season and collecting two draft picks as compensation. The Trade Ichiro brigade are living on a false premise. The organization will not be any better off by dealing Ichiro in July than they would be if he left in October of his own free will.
When you factor in the added value of still having Ichiro on the team in August and September, the exclusive two week negotiating window that the team would have with him at the end of the season, and the actual chance (no matter how slim you think it is) that he might re-sign with the team, and the best path is astoundingly clear.
The ideal scenario is keeping him around, but even if you think he’s going to leave, you still shouldn’t trade Ichiro. It’s just not worth it.
Big Time Kudos
From Geoff Baker’s recent blog entry:
First, let me deal with the issue of the posts from this morning and yesterday. You know, when enough people tell you you’re wrong, you start to think that maybe they’re on to something. So, I went back and had another look at those numbers using the suggested ERA+ method to account for park factors. The reasoning I listened to, from “Sammy” in the comments thread, Dave at the USS Mariner site, and others, has convinced me that comparing teams using a statistic that could adapt to changing year-to-year run conditions — rather than a static number that couldn’t change — was the best way to go.
Geoff has been paid to write about baseball for a long time. He’s a very smart guy, and he puts a lot of work into what he does. And yet, when some fans challenge a point he made, he’s willing to listen, evaluate what they’re saying, and take another look at his stance. Truth is more important than pride, and Geoff proved that in spades.
Baker deserves a lot of credit for taking the time to dive into the issue. He’s already set the bar for Mariner beat-writers to follow, and now he’s just pushing it even higher.
Congratulations to the Seattle Times – you made a fantastic hire.
Game 67, Pirates at Mariners
Gorzelanny vs Batista, 7:05 pm.
The Pirates aren’t very good. Tom Gorzelanny is succeeding through the Jarrod Washburn smoke-and-mirrors philosophy of stranding runners and not having flyballs go over the wall. He’s also a lefty, and you know that the M’s hit lefties well. Put it all together, and let’s just say there’s a good chance that we’ll have some regression to the mean going on tonight.
Also, Adrian Beltre is back. Huzzah!
However, I do have to make one request. Mr. Hargrove, I know you don’t believe in platoon splits or think it’s worth your while to set different line-ups against RH and LH pitching, despite the fact that there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence that shows that you’re leaving runs on the table. But, do you think you could consider not hitting Raul Ibanez clean-up against lefties?
He’s hitting .250/.257/.306 against southpaws this year with a whopping 4 extra base hits in 72 at-bats. His .573 OPS vs LHP is 36% below the league average. He hit .243/.301/.362 against LHPs last year, and he’s a career .261/.313/.395 hitter against pitchers that throw from the left side.
Raul Ibanez cannot hit left-handed pitching. This isn’t a new development. Maybe, just maybe, he shouldn’t be hitting clean-up when the other team throws a southpaw? I won’t even mention the fact that the Mariners best left-field option is stretching down in Sacramento. Just, you know, take a look at reality and realize that Raul Ibanez has no business hitting 4th in a major league line-up when a left-handed pitcher is on the hill.
Correlation, Causation, and Beat Writers
(Caution: Really Long Post Ahead. Get a cup of coffee and make sure you have some time.)
When I look back on the 2007 season, there’s going to be memories of positive developments and frustrations alike. We had Felix in Boston, and we’ve had Felix almost everywhere else. We had Kenji Johjima’s Pull Power Swing Of Doom, and we’ve had Turbo’s Double Play Special. But, interestingly enough, one of my favorite things about the 2007 Mariner season will not have occurred on the field or even involve any members of the roster.
Instead, one of the things that has made this season enjoyable (most days) to cover has been the ability to read Geoff Baker in the Seattle Times everyday. Now, we weren’t the biggest Bob Finnigan fans in the world, so pretty much anyone would have been an upgrade as the Times beat writer for the Mariners, but Baker has delivered above and beyond what we’ve come to expect from the local writers. The blog that he has maintained has been a source of terrific information and entertaining reading on a near daily basis, and he’s shown a passion for his job that, frankly, we’re not used to seeing, even posting multi-thousand word blog entries on his days off.
Baker has embraced the ability to interact with the fans and has shown what a traditional journalist can do with the power of today’s internet intertwined. It’s been fun to read, and honestly, quite refreshing to look forward to reading the Times sports page again.
So, it’s with respect for the work he’s done this year and his willingness to open himself up to new ideas and outside opinions that I feel compelled to respond to his latest blog entry, entitled “Mound of Trouble”. Geoff – you can do better than this.
The premise of the post is completely accurate – the M’s pitching, especially the rotation, has been their downfall. That’s obviously true. No one’s going to argue that point. But, well, the analysis that led to the conclusion leaves a lot to be desired. Let’s look at the specific points raised.
To further the discussion of this morning, I received a very interesting email today from a friend of this blog, Jack Lattemann, who has done an exhaustive study of whether teams with an earned run average of 4.50 or higher can even post winning records, let alone contend for a playoff spot. Jack has graciously allowed me to pass on his findings. They don’t look good on the Mariners, who have a 4.84 team ERA despite a rock solid bullpen. He found that no team before 1969 had qualified for the playoffs. Not surprising, given the two-league format. There were a few more, post-1969, that made it. During the two-division format (four teams making the playoffs) from 1969-1993, the only playoff team with a 4.50 ERA or higher was the 1987 World Series champion Minnesota Twins, who finished 85-77 with a 4.63 ERA.
Where to start with this paragraph – how about with the glaring, obvious problem, and one that I’ve been railing on for years here – Earned Run Average, by itself, is not any real indicator of pitching quality. It’s just not. I know it’s commonly accepted as the be-all, end-all pitching statistic, but the reliance on this inherently problematic stat has led to more bad analysis over the years than just about any other statistic out there. Using ERA to draw broad conclusions about pitching ability is a great way to be wrong on a large scale.
In reality, ERA kinda sorta measures the ability of the team’s run prevention skills when a specific pitcher is on the hill. ERA doesn’t attempt to separate responsibility for said run prevention between pitcher and defenders. It doesn’t attempt to take into account the context of the run scoring environment. And, just in case those weren’t big enough problems (they are), it introduces the biases of ballpark specific official scorers by excluding “unearned runs”, which are often classified as such due to arbitrary decisions on what constitutes an error.
Baker presents this research as evidence that teams with “bad pitching” don’t make the playoffs. Unfortunately, there’s no explanation for why we should accept a 4.50 ERA as a marker for “bad pitching” in any context. As Baker notes, not one team made the playoffs before 1969 with an ERA that high, while he does recognize that the fact that, before the league championship series creation, only two teams made the playoffs, making the point essentially irrelevant.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t also point out that the run scoring environment in, say, 1917, was massively different than the run scoring environment today. The Philadelphia Athletics had the worst team ERA in the American League 90 years ago. Their ERA? 3.27. The league average was a nifty 2.66. The A’s ERA+, adjusted for ballpark and era, was 84, meaning that their pitching staff was 16% worse than the league average that season. You know who has an ERA+ of 84 this year – the Texas Rangers, with their 5.48 ERA, have also been 16% below average, once you account for the fact that today’s game is massively different than 1917’s and the fact that the Rangers play half their games in a park that is highly condusive to offense.
Now, this is an extreme example. However, the point remains – picking a random ERA number that reflects “bad pitching” and applying it to any context is going to result in a list that means absolutely nothing. If you want to use ERA to evaluate a pitching staff, you’d be forced to come to the conclusion that the Washington Nationals currently have a better pitching staff than the Chicago White Sox. After all, they have a lower ERA. Of course, everyone understands that there’s a huge difference between pitching in RFK stadium against National League hitters and not facing the DH and facing American League hitters in New Comiskey park. We wouldn’t expect Mike Bacsik to post a 4.59 ERA if he was traded to the White Sox. No one would.
So, unfortunately, the only conclusion that you can draw from the fact that the ’87 Twins were the only team to make the playoffs with a 4.50 ERA or higher before 1993 is that the game has changed dramatically as time has gone on. Using that selected data to make any inferences about the importance of pitching in terms of a team making the playoffs is simply a misuse of statistics. It’s a conclusion that can’t be supported by the data provided. It’s the kind of thing that people who hate statistics point to when they throw out their “lies, damn lies, and statistics” cliches. Essentially, this entire opening paragraph doesn’t tell us anything useful about the 2007 Seattle Mariners. Moving on…
Now, during the wild-card era, things have changed. So far, there have been 13 teams make it with an ERA of 4.50 or more. But don’t forget, that’s out of 96 playoff teams. So, basically, even with the diluted pitching and inflated ERA totals we’ve seen over the past decade or so, there’s still only about a one in 7.5 chance of getting there.
Now, here, Baker does outright state that “things have changed”, so he obviously understands everything I just wrote above. He just didn’t do a particularly good job of explaining the limitations of the data in his first paragraph. Here, though, we’re presented with a new data problem – 13 out of 96 teams that have made the playoffs since 1995 have had an ERA of greater than 4.50, so Geoff turns that into a “one in 7.5 chance” for a team with “bad pitching” to make the playoffs.
Unfortunately, the flaws of the data won’t let you make that claim, either. The 1996 Texas Rangers are one of the 13 teams that posted a 4.50 ERA or higher and still made the playoffs, finishing 90-72 and winning the AL West. They scored 928 runs and allowed 790, so the immediate reaction is that they slugged their way into the playoffs and overcame their poor pitching staff.
Except, that’s not true. The Rangers 928 runs ranked 5th in the A.L. that year, while their team ERA ranked 6th. Toss in the fact that The Ballpark in Arlington is a hitters haven, and it becomes clear that run prevention, not run scoring, was the strength of that team. Their ERA+ was 109, meaning that they allowed 9% less runs than an average team would, considering their home park and the run environment of the American League in 1996.
I could go through this process many more times, but I think you guys get the point. Even the 13 out of 96 number really doesn’t tell us anything about the respective merits of the pitching staffs of playoff teams or the importance of having a quality pitching staff in terms of winning your division. It just doesn’t. Again, moving on.
So, yes. It really does come down to the pitching. There have been 74 teams post winning records since 1921 with an ERA above 4.50. The Mariners did it several times in the late 1990s. One of the teams on Lattemann’s list is the 2003 Blue Jays, a squad I feel epitomizes the need to understand how good starting pitching will always be more valuable than hitting.
Argh. That last sentence was almost assuredly written with the intent of having me throw myself off a bridge. Okay, probably not, but if I read it too many times, I might do so anyways.
Geoff goes on to extrapolate about how the ’03 Blue Jays show that you can score a lot of runs, but if you don’t have enough quality starters, it won’t matter. He ends his Blue Jay rabbit-trail with this paragraph:
The point of this is, the Jays had the AL’s second-best offense. They had a guy who should have been an MVP in Delgado. They had the Cy Young winner. And they still won only 86 games.
Problem #1 – the Blue Jays didn’t have the AL’s second best offense. They did finish second in the league in runs scored, but the Skydome is a nifty place to hit. It’s not Texas, but it’s one of the higher run scoring environments in baseball. When you account for context, the Blue Jays had an OPS+ of 107, meaning that their offense was 7% better than league average. The ’03 Red Sox (118 OPS+) and Yankees (117 OPS+) both blow the Blue Jays out of the water, and while the Blue Jays did have the 3rd best offense in the AL that year, they were closer to 9th place than they were to 2nd place.
The 2003 Blue Jays were good but not great at scoring runs and average at preventing them (ERA+ of 100, the epitome of league average). Being good at one aspect of the game and average at the other is rarely a recipe for a playoff team, regardless of whether your strength is offense or defense. Using an example from the same year, the 2003 Chicago White Sox posted an ERA+ of 108. Essentially, they were as good at preventing runs as the ’03 Blue Jays were at scoring them. Their ERA ranked 4th best in the league despite pitching in a good hitters park. They, also, only won 86 games and didn’t make the playoffs? Why? They didn’t score enough runs.
Geoff points to the ’03 Blue Jays as evidence that “good starting pitching will always be more valuable than good hitting”. However, he doesn’t mention the ’06 Los Angeles Angels, a team that ranked 3rd in the A.L. in ERA and had a tremendous rotation of Lackey-Escobar-Weaver-Santana, and failed to make the playoffs because they employed a bunch of terrible hitters in their line-up.
Now, Geoff’s not going out on a limb here. It’s established baseball doctrine that starting pitching is the most valuable commodity in the game, that good pitching beats good hitting, that pitching and defense win championships, etc… You’ve heard all this before. Unfortunately, it’s just. not. true.
There have been numerous studies done on the issue of whether teams should value run prevention over run scoring. Needless to say, these studies go just a bit further than sorting by ERA and counting the number of playoff squads under an arbitrarily selected number. The consensus is that, in general, a team that is strong in preventing runs will do slightly better than a team that is equally strong in scoring runs. The breakdown is accepted at about 52/48, meaning that stopping the opponent from scoring is approximately 2% more important than putting runs on the board yourself.
The problem, however, is that run prevention isn’t 100% pitching. I’ve been beating this drum for a couple of years, now, and I’ll keep beating it until people begin to realize that defense matters. An awful lot. The Detroit Tigers gloves carried them to the World Series last year. They had an average offense, an average pitching staff, and the best defense in baseball. And it got them the American League pennant.
Run prevention is probably about 52% of winning, but pitching is, at most, 80% of run prevention. The ability of the other eight guys on the field cannot be ignored, and credit cannot be simply handed to the pitcher for the strength of his teammates. In terms of value towards wins, the breakdown is close to something like this:
Offense: 48%
Pitching: 41%
Defense: 11%
No matter how you slice it, Geoff is simply wrong when he writes the following:
In other words, as you can see, it really is all about pitching. Especially starting pitching. Always has been, always will be. Through the dead-ball era, the Depression era, WWII, the onset of free-agency, expansion, advent of the wild-card, the Moneyball era and all the other so-called periods of change this game has gone through. One thing remains constant. Right now, the M’s don’t have that one thing. And they don’t have it in a division where two teams, the Angels and A’s, are loaded at starting pitching. Just hammering the point home.
It’s just demonstrably not true. It’s not. If you’re in the mood for some very mathy and hard to read evidence, here’s a table that essentially sums up the actual performances of historical teams based on their run scoring and run prevention, and adjusts for run scoring environments to give apples-to-apples comparisons. But, basically, as the chart shows, there have been winning teams that were great at hitting and not so good at pitching, just as there were winning teams that were great at pitching and not so good at hitting. In reality, pitching isn’t more important than offense. Never has been, and never will be.
Okay, that would be the end of this entirely too long post about a common misconception from a guy we like, but he just had to threw in one more statement that I can’t leave alone, just for good measure.
Do the Mariners have an MVP candidate? Uh, no.
Sorry, but they absolutely do. Ichiro Suzuki is hitting .356/.409/.466 while playing half his games in an extreme low scoring environment by today’s standards. He’s 19 for 21 in stolen bases. He’s 3rd in the major leagues in Value Over Replacement, which Keith Woolner (now working for the Cleveland Indians) created as a total measure of offensive value, adjusting for positional scarcity. In terms of VORP, Ichiro has been worth 36 runs to the Mariners offensively so far, ranking ahead of David Ortiz (35.2), Vladimir Guerrero (35.0), and Jorge Posada (32.3). The only guys in the majors who have contributed more offensively to their teams are Magglio Ordonez and Alex Rodriguez, who are both about 10 runs ahead of Ichiro based on their fantastic power displays to date.
But, when you factor in defense, Ichiro closes that gap in a hurry.
You can call me a biased fanboy if you want, but the data is on my side – through June 18th, Ichiro has been every bit as valuable as any other player in baseball. Even if you don’t think Ichiro’s glove makes up for the ten run advantage that Ordonez and Rodriguez have created with their bats to date, you simply can’t argue that there’s anyone else in the American League who should rank #3 on your AL MVP ballot right now. And, well, if the #3 guy in the league isn’t an MVP candidate, then your standards are pretty freaking high.
You know why the Mariners are currently 35-31 despite having a disaster of a starting rotation? Their center fielder is absolutely awesome.
Okay, that’s enough writing for today. Geoff, we still like you, and we’re still thrilled you’re in Seattle, and I look forward to being entertained and informed by your writing in the many days ahead. On these issues, though, I couldn’t disagree more.
Aquasox, Mariner Alternative
If the M’s are driving you up the wall, but you still want to take in some outdoor baseball and see some good young talent, can I suggest making a trip (or ten) to Everett Memorial Stadium? The Aquasox begin their 2007 Northwest League season tomorrow night at 7:05 pm, kicking off a five game home series against the Yakima Bears that runs through Saturday night.
And, don’t worry, we won’t let you head up I-5 without knowing who to look for when you get there. The M’s have put some good young talent in Everett this year, including two of the organization’s best teenage pitchers.
Juan Ramirez makes his stateside debut, and will spend the first two months of his life in Everett as an 18-year-old before he turns 19 in mid-August. A 6’3 RHP out of Nicaragua, he’s a true power arm with a big curveball, and he’s one of the highest upside guys in the organization. He’s going to be the guy you’ll want to schedule your trips to Everett around.
But he’s not the only good young arm on the roster. Also appearing as an 18-year-old, Doug Salinas is another promising young arm who spent last summer in Peoria with the Arizona League complex team. He’s more projection than performance at this point, but the M’s think he could turn into a pretty good pitcher down the line.
Also showing up on the Aquasox roster, though an official announcement that he’d been signed hasn’t yet appeared, is Nolan Gallagher, a 6’3 RHP out of Stanford that the Mariners selected in the 4th round of this year’s draft He had a terrible junior season after heading into the year as the Friday starter for the Cardinal, but the M’s liked his arm and were willing to bet on it just being a down year. There was some thought that he might head back to school for his senior season and try to re-establish his value, but the M’s obviously convinced him to sign, and he’ll attempt to turn his fortunes around in Everett.
On the offensive side, OF Greg Halman returns for a second tour of the NWL, where he put himself on the map last year with an explosive display of power and a troubling lack of pitch recognition. After struggling in Wisconsin, the M’s have sent him back to short-season ball to work on refining his approach at the plate and turning his raw tools into baseball skills.
Also on the team is 20-year-old infielder Deybis Benitez, who I saw take some hacks when I was down in Peoria in March. Tall and gangly, he barely used his legs at all when he swung the bat, generating all his movement from his arms. If the hitting coaches can work with him on incorporating his lower half, there are things to like about his swing.
Playing next to Benitez is potentially interesting 18-year-old infielder Edilio Colina, who spent a few weeks in the California League last month to fill in while High Desert dealt with some injuries. I don’t know a ton about Colina, other than that he’s considered intriguing by some folks in the organization, and the team is showing some faith in him by sending him to the NWL as a teenager. He won’t begin the year with the Aquasox, however, as he joined the Rainiers to fill out their roster. Generally, when a team is willing to yank a guy around like this, it means he’s not much of a prospect, so react accordingly.
The rest of the line-up will be filled out with organizational players like Marquise Liverpool and Ogui Diaz. Kalian Sams looks like a player, but has yet to prove that he is one. And, for those wondering, 1st round pick Philippe Aumont won’t show up in Everett until August, at the earliest, as the team will have to go through the process of getting him a visa. Even though the government has done better about getting through the paperwork, it still takes a while. But, if all goes well, I do expect him to end the year in Everett. You’ll just have to settle for Ramirez and Salinas until he gets there.
And, if you can’t make it up to Everett, you can always catch the games on Northsound 1380 am, and listen to friend-of-USSM Pat Dillon announce the games. They also stream the contests live on the Aquasox website
Oh, and finally, without being too self-promotional, pick up a program while you’re there. I’ve heard it contains an article by a good looking guy.
Now What?
In the post below, Derek shows how the team’s playoff odds dropped 20% during the five game debacle of a losing streak, making the M’s now a 1 in 20 shot to win either the division or the wild card. They’re now 7 games behind a good Angels team for first place in the A.L. West. They’re only 3 games out of the wild card, but the other teams in contention for that single playoff spot are the loser of the Detroit/Cleveland battle, the Yankees, and the A’s. You’re not going to find anyone with any kind of rational thinking that believes the M’s are better than all those teams.
In reality, the pecking order of the American League has essentially been established. The Red Sox are the best team in baseball, and the Yankees, Indians, Tigers, and Angels are all a step or so behind them in the second tier in the A.L. The third tier features the A’s at the top, followed by the Mariners, Twins, and Blue Jays.
No matter how you want to look at it, the best this team could realistically argue for is being the 6th or 7th best team in the American League, depending on how you feel about Oakland’s ability to win with the back of a rotation of Chad Gaudin, Lenny DiNardo, and Joe Kennedy and a team that still can’t hit.
As noted, mathmatically, it’s not very likely that the 6th or 7th best team in the league can overcome the a significant deficit to pass a better team in front of them in the standings. The M’s playoff chances are, officially, a longshot. A 10% chance of making the playoffs isn’t a death knell, but it’s not exactly reason for optimism either. The M’s are, again, at a crossroads. The last time they faced a win-or-fold-your-tents series of games, they went on a tear and closed the gap in the division.
The M’s are now back where they started, however. Tomorrow, they begin a homestand that brings a bad Pirates team and a bad Reds team in for back-to-back series before Boston rolls into town. Essentially, the Mariners have 3 weeks to salvage their season. In the final 19 games before the all-star break, they have a lot of winning to do in order to make up enough ground to really consider themselves contenders in the second half.
If the Mariners are serious about getting back in this thing, there are some things they can do to put a better team on the field for the next three weeks and give themselves a better chance. We’ve talked about most of these, but consider this an official request.
1. Promote Adam Jones from Tacoma and stick him in the line-up everyday.
He’s a better player today than half the guys in the line-up, a kid who can hit for average and power while playing terrific defense on a team that badly needs another quality defensive outfielder. Raul Ibanez simply can’t cover enough ground to be a credible option in Safeco Field anymore, and the Mariners would gain a huge competitive advantage by sticking Jones in left field and splitting RF/DH duties between Raul Ibanez, Jose Guillen, Jose Vidro, and Ben Broussard. Mike Hargrove is systematically opposed to platoons, but in the interest of winning ballgames, he should simply get over his preconceived biases and do what’s best for the team. By installing Jones as the everyday left fielder and using the worn down veterans to give each other frequent offdays, the team would instantly improve it’s offense, defense, and bench. It’s a no-brainer of a move, the kind of talent addition that most teams only dream about getting from a mid-season acquisition. And the M’s don’t even have to make a trade to pull this one off. Show some cajones and make the move. Give us Adam Jones in the majors tomorrow night.
2. Stick Ryan Feierabend in the rotation.
In an ideal world, Feierabend could still be in Tacoma, but as sad as it is to say, right now, he’s one of the five best starting pitchers in the organization. To create a spot for him, shift Jeff Weaver to the bullpen to pitch mop-up work. At this point, things like contract and veteranness just can’t matter in the decision making process – today, Feierabend is a better pitcher than Jeff Weaver, and the M’s can’t afford to have a better pitcher sitting in the bullpen while the M’s lose another game where Weaver takes the mound.
3. Re-organize the bullpen.
Brandon Morrow’s command problems have finally caught up with him, and his velocity was down at the end of the road trip as well. He walked a high wire act through the first two months of the season, but let’s be honest, a guy who walks more than a batter per inning simply can’t be counted on in high leverage situations. With Sherrill and Putz, the M’s have a lights out pair of relievers who can handle the 8th and 9th innings. Hand the 7th inning over to Eric O’Flaherty and Sean Green, and let Morrow hang out in the low leverage situations with Jason Davis and Jeff Weaver. If his velocity doesn’t come back soon, stick him on the DL and give his arm a rest.
Three simple moves that allow the team to re-align their assets as an organization and put the team in the best possible situation to win ballgames. If it still isn’t enough to make up ground in these last 19 games before the all-star break, then you have your answer on whether you’re a contender or not, and you can commence trading off of the veterans.
In the next three weeks, the M’s have one final chance to show us they’re serious about winning, and they’re willing to step on some players toes in order to do so. Here’s to the organization sacking up and making some calls that might not be popular with some highly paid veterans, but put a better team on the field while they try to salvage the rest of the 2007 season.
Size of the swing
There are any number of caveats that should be inserted here, and like with WPA, I trust you to find and apply them on your own.
Mariners Playoff odds, overall, as predicted by Clay’s Monte Carlo method at Basball Prospectus:
June 13th, 29%
June 14th, 25%
June 15th, 20%
June 16th: 15%
June 17th: 12%
June 18th: 10%
The Mariners had been over 28% twice since April 20th. June 18th’s 10.538% is their lowest on the season.
The Schedule
After Friday night’s frustrating debacle, I decided to take the last two games off. The Mariners, apparently, thought that sounded like a fantastic idea, and followed suit. The road trip that started 5-0 with wins over good teams ends at 5-5 after getting swept by one of the worst teams in baseball. And swept in convincing fashion, a beatdown where the Mariners didn’t put up a fight and were outscored 24 to 7.
By all accounts, the team is exhausted. They have their first day off on Monday since June 7th, and that was their first day off since May 14th. They also didn’t have a game on April 24th, due to a rainout, and they had a normal day off on April 16th, as well as a postponed game in Boston on April 12th. Since the snowout series, the Mariners have played 63 games in 69 days. Tomorrow is the fourth day in two and a half months that they haven’t had to go to the ballpark to prepare for a game. That’s tough.
But, unfortunately, that’s also baseball. Lost in all the talk about the Mariners scheduling around the makeup games is that those games involve another team – the Cleveland Indians. Every time the Mariners jump on a plane to Cleveland, the Tribe also have to come to the park on what was supposed to be an off day for their club. So, for comparison, let’s look at the Indians schedule.
The Indians just played their 13th game in a row and are headed to Philadelphia for games 14, 15, and 16 before an upcoming off day on Thursday. Their last day off was June 4th, and before that, it was May 14th. That was the only day in May that the Indians didn’t play baseball. They also had a day off on April 16th. Since the snowout series, the Indians have played 65 games in 69 days, and by the time they get another day off, it will have been 68 games in 72 days.
The Indians are 40-28, first place in the A.L. Central, having outscored their opponents by 46 runs on the year. They’ve played two more games since the end of the snowout series than the Mariners have in the same amount of days. I’m sure they’re a tired bunch, but unfortunately, I can’t find any quotes in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer to prove it. Maybe they were too tired to give interviews?
Or, alternately, perhaps they’ve overcome their exhaustion and continued to win baseball games because they’re a good team. A playoff team. A team with a well constructed roster able to provide organizational depth when the preseason rotation falls to pieces.
The schedule has been tough on the Mariners. It’s been tough on the Indians, too. One of these teams has shown the ability to overcome the challenge and keep winning enough games to keep themselves firmly entrenched in a pennant race. The other is taking tomorrow off, regrouping, and hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates at Safeco Field on Tuesday night.
Two teams with tough schedules born out of bad weather. One is still in first place, while the other saw their playoff hopes put on life support this weekend. Perhaps it’s not the schedule? Perhaps it’s the roster.
Game 66, Mariners at Astros
Washburn vs Oswalt, 11:05 am.
Jarrod Washburn is a pitch-to-contact guy who relies on his defense and a spacious Safeco Field to succeed. The Mariners haven’t been able to convince MLB to let them take Safeco with them on the road, so when he pitches in other cities, he’s at a disadvantage.
Then, Mike Hargrove does this to him.
LF – Ibanez. One of the five worst defensive left fielders in baseball.
CF – Ichiro. He’s good, obviously.
RF – Broussard. He’s not an outfielder. Making him run for a ball is criminal.
3B – Lopez. 9 innings at 3rd base last night doubled his career total. Not a 3rd baseman.
SS – Betancourt. He’s fine, despite the throwing problems.
2B – Vidro. He has no business ever taking the field.
1B – Sexson. One of the five worst defensive first baseman in baseball.
Ibanez, Vidro, and Sexson are all bad enough defensively that they should be DH’ing. Broussard’s not much better as a first baseman, and he’s horrible as an outfielder. And we’ve got Jose Lopez playing out of position to boot.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to watch the Marlins play defense on a daily basis, this is going to be similar. Good luck Jarrod – between the short porch in left field and your defense, you’re going to need it.
Game 65, Mariners at Astros
Baek vs Williams, 4:05 pm.
I’m going to be honest – I need a day off from this team. With Lopez playing 3rd, Vidro at 2nd, and Baek pitching, today’s as good a day as any.