Dog bites man, Armstrong feels team is great and you’re stupid
Club president Chuck Armstrong said before Wednesday’s game that there is more to the Mariners’ attendance troubles – seven of Seattle’s top poorest Safeco Field attendances have come this year – than the club’s 14-20 record.
”You expect some ebb and flow,” Armstrong said. ”The weather hasn’t been good. We haven’t played as well as we wanted. And this is the worst schedule ever.
…needless to say, I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust.
Really. Worst schedule ever. Worse than the time the team couldn’t play in the Kingdome and was on the road all year? Worse than last year, when they were trying to make up those missed games in absurd fashion? Substantially worse the Mariner schedules before unbalanced divisional play?
”I’m optimistic, but when you see 15,000 against a division rival, yes, you are disappointed.”
I’m optimistic, but when you see your team squander year after year of great revenues by having the wrong people spend that money on the wrong things, yes, I’m disappointed.
Jeez.
The most vocal portion of the Mariners’ fan base has long advocated changes at the top, specifically targeting general manager Bill Bavasi and, somewhat less often, manager John McLaren.
That’s only because McLaren hasn’t been around that long.
”There’s a fine line with patience,” he said. ”We already made moves (Clement and Balentien) to address the problems. Maybe those moves will come back to bite us. We don’t know.
“the problems” being.. two of them? I’m not sure how to read that. Does he really think that’s a complete solution to all the problems? I’m probably being too critical.
”But we made the moves in a considered manner with everybody involved. And I remember that last year at this time people were talking about making a move with Raul Ibanez. We stuck with him, and it paid off.
Who was advocating “a move” with Ibanez at this time last season? Seriously, I’m drawing a blank here. Was it me? I don’t think that was me.
If there was, though — shame on you, stupid people, talking about making a move with Ibanez, who was injured and concealing it and absolutely sucked. How dare you talk about making a move for such a selfless leader who gets injured and conceals it so that the team can’t figure out what’s wrong and stupidly keeps running him out there so his injured self looks terrible. How dare you! Don’t you know he’s injured?
Now, if you remember, at this time last year, there were people advocating that all kittens and puppies should suffer horrible, gruesome fates too terrifying to even detail here. But we persevered, and today those puppies and kittens are all living happy, fulfilling lives, letting doubles skip on past them in left field, and giving great post-game interviews.
People may ask “what do you expect Armstrong to say? He’s the president, after all.”
And I would respond here’s what I’d like Armstrong to say: “They’re right to be dissatisfied. We’ve tried to put together a contender this year, and we’ve gotten off to a bad start. I understand that it’s a mid-week night game, and it was cold, too. I appreciate the fans that did come out to see the team, and I’m sorry we put on such a poor showing.
“I still think the team is a lot stronger than we’ve shown so far, particularly with Bedard and Putz returning from injuries. I expect we’ll play much better from here on out and hopefully we’ll be able to make up the ground we’ve lost.”
And that’s probably not far off what Armstrong would like to say, but here — and you see this in Lincoln’s statements, too — what he actually says is steeped in the organization’s long-standing contempt for their customers, who here are irrationally concerned about the chances of a team with the worst record in the AL, a team they were assured was going to make a run at it.
I hate that. It does as much to turn me off as the losing, as irrational as that is at times, knowing that my ticket dollars support an organization that can’t even pretend to understand and sympathize with entirely reasonable fan sentiment.
Fielding statistics and defense
I’ve been thinking about defense with the team’s recent woes. Dave wrote a large article on evaluating defense a while back that stands up nicely, and I came across an interesting post randomly that I thought I’d pass along: “Comparison of Fielding Statistics” which compares 2006 data from six different stats and comes to some interesting conclusions about their utility.
I have some quibbles with the piece’s logic in places, specifically the comparison of stat “features” leading to
So, based on that table, I would have to say that UZR and PMR have the best methodologies, with a nod to the Fans data because they can provide such unique insights into player skill.
The problem is that this doesn’t at all evaluate methodologies. If I came up with a defensive metric called Random Runs that claimed to be built on hit-location data, zones, ball type, batter handedness, ballpark-adjusted, and player skill types, and I did all of those things horribly, that’s not a better system than something that does fewer things the right way, even though you’d check off those boxes.
The particularly interesting thing is the easy-to-scan graphs of system-to-system results. It’s interesting to see that in the 2006 data, the correlation is both highly significant and not anywhere near as good as you see from offensive contribution measures.
It all goes to reinforce something I’ve been saying for years — recognize that defensive tools are still pretty rough, but looking at a couple of them you’ll be able to get a pretty good idea of how good a particular player is with the glove.
Five Days
This will sound overly dramatic, but it’s simply a realistic assessment of where this team stands – the Mariners have exactly five games to save the 2008 season. If they don’t perform well between now and Sunday, the rest of the year will simply be playing for second place, because the hole will be too large to overcome. They have five home games against below average teams, starting with Bedard and Felix to close out this series.
If the Mariners don’t win three of the next five games, they can cash in their chips and go home. The deficit would just be too large to believe that anything short of a miracle could cause them to win the division.
With the Angels and A’s both off to strong starts, you have to set the bar for minimum wins required at 93. It would take some historic collapses by both clubs for the division winner to finish with less than 92 wins, especially considering how well they’ve both played through the first five weeks of the season. So, the M’s target has to be 93+ wins.
If they go 2-3 to finish out this homestand, that would put them at 16-23 with 123 games to go. In order to finish the year with 93 wins, they’d have to play .626 baseball, a 77-46 mark. This team is just not capable of playing that well. Very few teams are, and this is certainly not one of them. If they can go 4-1, they “only” have to play .608 baseball the rest of the year – very freaking hard, but at least within the ream of possibility.
Two wins or less and it’s pull the plug time. The season will officially be over, and they can start shopping the veterans around and setting up the interview list for the new front office and management staff. Three wins keeps the team on life support, with a faint chance of contending still hanging by a thread. Four or five wins gives them a little bit of life as they head out on the road next week.
But they’re at a crossroads. Finish this week strong or fold your tents, because the rest of the year is a waste of time if they can’t beat the Rangers and White Sox at home with the season on the line.
15,818
That’s announced attendance and not actual turnstile count. So 15,818 fans didn’t see the game in person.
Why? A couple things come to mind:
– it’s cold, and more and more people are catching on that Safeco Field night games early in the season are really unpleasant.
– the M’s, for all the talk about this year being a contention year, were way under .500 and way back in the division, which makes the sales pitch not that much different than other recent years
– they were playing the Rangers, who have a bad record (like the M’s) and have been bad for years, so there’s not a lot of rivalry or divisional interest there either
– uninspiring pitching lineup
If I’d had season tickets, I’d have been trying to move or exchange for a future matchup. This is the kind of game it used to be really hard to convince my wife to go to, because she had good sense (“Ryaaaan Fraaaaaaaanklin? Uhhh…. I couuuuuuuuld goooo…”)
This isn’t all that far off previous season lows, especially the last few years, where they’ve had mid-week night games in the cold draw poorly. It happens. I have no doubt that as we’ve seen before, the stadium will fill up when the weather gets better.
But it is a new low, a benchmark for how fickle their fans have become and how few the most dedicated are.
Game 34, Rangers at Mariners
If the Mariners don’t manage to cut into the Angels’s lead in the next week or two, I get the feeling that there’s going to be a lot of finger pointing going on as to who’s responsible for the team’s awful fortunes, and there’s a very good chance that we’re going to see the new guys, called up to help the franchise, blamed for not turning the team around.
That’s too bad, because they don’t deserve it. Let’s compare where things stand right now just in terms of production.
Balentien’s hitting .238/.238/.524 in his 21 plate appearances. But Wilkerson was hitting .232/.348/.304, so every game he’s playing that Wilkerson doesn’t is an improvement just on offense.
Jeff Clement, new semi-DH, is hitting .176/.300/.176 in 20 plate appearances.
Jose Vidro, the old DH, hit .192/.248/.298 in 113 plate appearances. As a side note, to get to Clement’s line: -3 singles, -1 double, -1 walk (sort of).
In terms of overall contibutions, here’s their VORP: Vidro, -4.1, Clement, -1.2. Clement needs to suck as badly as he’s sucked for another 18 games before he’ll have hurt the team as much as Vidro already has.
If you want to portion out responsibility, start with the players who have really stunk up the place. Johjima, as much as I’ve been a fan, has been horrible (-7.1 VORP). Bloomquist still can’t hit, and managed to get over thirty plate appearances (-2.6 VORP). Miguel Cairo’s awful ten plate appearances (-1.8 plate appearances) hurt the team more than Clement has so far.
And that’s not even getting into who isn’t playing up to expectations or salary. Or the team’s defense, which has been bad.
The rotation’s been pretty good, though Batista and Bedard have disappointed to different degrees. Putz hasn’t been himself, and the bullpen’s been a real weakness so far, along with bullpen management.
Which brings us to the topic at hand. It’s not fair to blame Clement or Balentien if the team doesn’t come back to be competitive. They don’t fill out the lineup cards, forget who’s in the bullpen, or run the game. They didn’t assemble the roster, or hire the manager. They didn’t hire the GM who hired the manager.
Blame, if you’re going to hand it out, should flow upwards from the new guys who’ve only been playing for few games to the architects of the season, roster, and franchise.
But it’s too early yet for blame. Let’s wait a game, at least. And hey! There’s a game in an hour!
That donation page again
Some of you have asked, w/r/t Dave’s news, what the link is to the leukemia/lymphoma research drive page in question. Since Amy has already reached her goal, if you want to continue to donate, here’s a link to her running partners page.
Dave on KJR
We’re doing the KJR gig today at 1:50, since I was a little busy proposing yesterday and all.
An Update
A few months ago, I put up a post mentioning that my girlfriend was running a marathon in Alaska this June to raise money for leukemia and lymphoma research. Well, I wanted to give you guys a couple of updates.
First off, she stands all of $13 away from her goal of $5,000, and you guys were a huge part of that, giving almost $2,500 in a day. She was overwhelmed by your generosity, and both her and I can’t thank you guys enough for being willing to give to a great cause. Thank you.
And, as a further update, she’s actually not my girlfriend anymore. As of yesterday, she’s now my fiancee`. I proposed in front of Elk Falls in the mountains of North Carolina, and her response was “Are You Serious?”. Apparently, even when dating a blogger, it’s hard to imagine that they’ll ever actually propose. She did say yes once the shock wore off, at least.
We’re probably headed towards an October or November wedding, which means that I’m officially rooting for the Mariners to not win it all this year. Feel free to suck eggs and not be playing meaningful baseball this winter, fellas. You have my permission.
Game 33, Rangers at Mariners
7:10. Both teams 13-19. Huh. Who woulda thunk it?
Millwood (who, as Sims noted last night, it seems like we’ve seen pitch against the M’s waaayyy too many times) v Washburn. Lineups when I get ’em.
Update: Huh, interesting. Sexson at 5, and Betancourt moves up to 7 behind Clement with Balentien at 9. I wonder why they’re moving Betancourt up from 9?
On sunk costs, the value of wins, and the course of the season
Today’s earlier post veered frighteningly fast from my “here’s a good thing that’s happened” to “blow the team up aieeeeee!”
Which was a little disconcerting for me. But it took an interesting turn late into sunk costs, with a comment about, as I understand it, a box with contents almost everyone would find disappointing.
As fans, we’re in a really strange spot for what to hope for.
Uncontroversial tenets:
Not a lot of faith that the team’s going to compete
We know the team is great at marketing and has huge amounts of revenue and a sweet stadium deal that allows them to print money
Ownership that is not particularly savvy and isn’t interested in getting with the program, if you will
A front office that reflects that philosophy
A front office that isn’t particularly good at talent evaluation, but pretty good at drafting and player development
Which leads to a whole other spiral: you don’t want anyone fired if you can reasonably believe that their replacements will be worse (and I really do think that Bavasi & Co are as forward-thinking and talented as we’re likely to get hired under Lincoln’s stewardship). Then what?
If you think they’re totally incompetent, you don’t want them to tear the team down because they’ll never recover from the funk. And even if they tore down, who would they trade, and why should you think they would get anything worthwhile back? But then again, they were pretty good at losing there before, and player development pretty much saved their butts… and you don’t want them to go for it, because they’ll trade the rest of the team for the wrong veteran reinforcements. Even if they rally, keep it close, that’ll just extend the current regime’s reign. And playoffs? This punchless, no-field team with a shaky pen’s going to have a hard time getting anywhere even if they do luck into it, but their berth will get everyone even longer contracts.
Really, if you believe that the people running the team are totally incompetent, there’s no course of action you want to happen except a team sale and house cleaning.
Your fandom, not the off-season acquisitions, are the sunk cost.
Still, I’d like to talk for a second about something Dave and I wrote about repeatedly during the worst of the losing years: there’s no need for a Cleveland-style rebuilding. There’s no need for the team to blow everything up and lose 100 games for a few years. There’s a huge reason for them not to: while as a borderline obsessed fan I might willingly trade years of terrible teams for a World Series title, the team’s financial viability and fanbase depends on winning games. People who come to see the team and watch the M’s lose over and over stop coming to games.
Others have done a lot of research into what drives a team’s marketing reach, and we find that it’s a team’s success over years that brings in the TV deals, keeps the turnstiles going, and so on. It’s worth winning 76 games instead of 72, and it’s worth winning 72 over 68, because unless you get the #1 or #2 draft pick, it’s not that big of a deal.
Or to put it more bluntly, a win is probably worth $2m to the M’s. Probably more. Winning keeps the revenue coming.
To tie that back in, look at the rest of the season. The M’s are unlikely to make a playoff run at this point. Do you, as many people have advocated, tear it all down?
I don’t see the point. For many of these guys, the M’s don’t have internal replacements and it’s hard to see who’s going to trade them enough prospects in return. There’s value in giving playing time to young prospects if you’re trying to develop them, or sort out how they fare against major league competition. If they’re all organizational fodder with no long-term future, it doesn’t help anyone (except the fodder, who get delicious service time).
Take Beltre. Beltre, as Dave’s argued, is a fine value when weighed against his competition, even as he’s generally slagged for being a free-agent bust. If you traded Beltre now and stuck Bloomquist out there (or Cairo!) to finish out the season, whoever you received in return would have to be good enough to make up for that loss over their Mariner career. I don’t see who offers that. Better to take his contributions this year and enjoy his play.
And so on, down the roster. Maybe you pull a Beane and try and haul some top-line guys for Bedard, but to who, and when, and what can they offer the M’s that helps in the long term?
Because of the way the team budgets (the “no carry-over” accounting method) there’s almost no point even in trading Sexson. Saved salary doesn’t benefit you next year, so unless you can make an improvement on the field now, you might as well pay him.
It’s no good to argue that the M’s should trade their vets for good prospects. That’s all fine and dandy. But on any serious consideration, it becomes extremely hard to imagine reasonable scenarios where the players the Mariners have on hand that have trade value would get them the blue chip prospects they’d need to get in return.
And similarly, I’d argue that even if the M’s have a 10% chance at the playoffs, there’s no reason not to keep working towards improving the team. Ibanez is still a huge defensive liability — if they had a chance to upgrade left field and move Ibanez to DH… whoops, Clement’s there now. My point is that there’s no reason for this team to ever give up wins, much less seasons. I for one would much rather see a .500 team playing interesting baseball late in the season without a shot at a division title than I would a torn-down team patched with more Cairo-style acquisitions to patch newly created holes from trading off players they don’t have replacements for.
If you think the team’s run by incompetents, there’s no course of action short of a Politburo-style purge by a new leader that won’t make your skin crawl, so your skin’s going to be crawling. Sorry.
If you think they’re about as good as we’re going to get right now, we have to accept that and draw our enjoyment from what we can (Ichiro! Felix Day and so forth).