Swept at hoooome by the Nationals
Write “we suck” on a paper bag, cut out two eyeholes, and head on down to Safeco Field for three games against the 37-32 Marlins.
From the Pocket guide to McLaren firing dates:
Assuming that they want to do the traditional Viking funeral, where they set the manager on fire and the team off on a road trip away from fans, here are your next two opportunities:
June 19th, after the Boston/Toronto road trip and Washington/Florida home stand
Three games against Florida ahead. What bone are they going to throw the braying wolves, assuming they don’t sweep? Sexson or Vidro released? Another coach fired? Even… McLaren?
In which I wonder if Howard Lincoln is being duplicitous, being duped, or lying
I wanted to give this comment from sodomojojojo in a previous thread some discussion.
They wrote:
Howard Lincoln knows exactly how I feel when it concerns this year’s team.
I sent back a pair of tickets a Boston game with a letter that I would not be spending ANY of my money at the park this year. I told them that anyone with more than a passing interest in baseball could not seriously believe this team was constructed to compete this year and we’d be lucky to see a .500 win team on the field this year. I also hit them with a “we don’t care about your bobble-head giveaways and knitting nights,†and they might “want to join the 21st century†when it comes to evaluating talent.
I received a response from Mr. Lincoln, dated the 30th of May, he says that like me, he’s frustrated and disappointed by our team’s performance, especially given the high expectations we had at the beginning of the season and our high Major League player payroll. Also I’m simply not correct about saber metrics, they employ two people who are highly skilled in all aspects of saber metrics.
Also it was this ownership group that saved the Mariners for Seattle and has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the team here. We didn’t do that for profit… (Really, then why would you do it?)
Sometimes I am so frustrated this year, I really don’t know if I should laugh or cry. This also makes we believe this front office really has no clue how to evaluate or make adjustments in regard to any aspect of the game. ARRRRRGHHHHH
First, there’s the possibility that Lincoln is lying, and the team doesn’t have two statheads on staff. Who are these two people who are highly skilled in all aspects of sabermetrics? You might ask. If they’re awesome enough that they’re highly skilled in all aspects of sabermetrics, they’d be pretty high profile, most likely — or at the very least you’d want to trumpet their presence and qualifications. If they exist, wouldn’t we or our readers know who they are?
Let’s assume the best, though, and say that Lincoln believes that he has two statheads, skilled in all aspects of sabermetrics, on staff, and they’re stealth hires. There’s another possibility, that he’s been conned: he’s hired two former Andersen consultants with statistical backgrounds who gave a great sales pitch, and now have brought in a whole group of their friends, all charging $500/hour to build a set of Access reports that measure clutchiness or something.
Because the next possibility is that he’s by omission glossing over the important part: that whoever these two are, if they’re competent, they’re certainly having absolutely no effect on the team’s moves. Not the way the team is managed on the field, not the way the lineups are built or how players are evaluated, and in no way did they have any sway over this last off-season.
So I have a couple of follow-up questions for the Mariners organization:
– Who are these two statheads you have on staff, and when did they join?
– Where did they come from? What other work have they done?
– What are they working on? What’s their involvement in the team’s decision-making?
– Where have they disagreed with the team on a major decision, and how was the disagreement resolved?
– If you have two statheads, skilled in all aspects of sabermetrics, why aren’t they involved in any of the cutting-edge research on things like Pitch f/x in the same way the Indians, Rays, and other teams are?
– How did they think the team was going to do this year?
Game 69, Nationals at Mariners
Redding v Washburn, 1:10.
Brief comment on Reed at first
Reed is working out at first, according to a story on mlb.com.
This means that given an outfield consisting of a wretched defensive left fielder, Ichiro, and a bad defensive right fielder, the team will be using their good defensive outfielder to play first, replacing a terrible defensive first baseman they’ve turned into an singles machine with a fresh conversion.
What am I going to say? This is a team that bats Vidro third. They could announce tomorrow that they’re moving Ichiro to short because Betancourt can’t get a bunt down and I’d shrug. We’re all waiting this kind of silliness out until the cavalry arrives (we hope) and some kind of sanity can be restored.
The open stance
Sexson, up to May 26th: .200/.277/.413
Sexson, since returning to the lineup with that new, open stance: .263/.349/.263
Assuming for a second that his performance coming back is entirely representative and a reflection only of his open stance change, that’s +72 OBP, -150 SLG.
Yup.
Another fine WP/Apache post
Below the fold to avoid inducing insomnia in most of our readership Read more
Using marginal wins to evaluate the Mariners
Sooooooooo, I’ve seen comments that ask “isn’t there some way to measure how much money the M’s are wasting?” or “Can’t we use salary to evaluate GMs?” and so on.
Yes. Fortunately, the heavy lifting on this has already been done for us, probably best by Doug Pappas, who in 2004 wrote a great essay in that year’s Baseball Prospectus. He proposed that we look at how much each additional win cost a team, compared to a team made up of league-minimum players, who would go about .300 on the season. That team wins 49 games and costs $10.5m to field (I know… I’ll get to that). So if you spend another $10m and get 10 wins, you’re paying $1m/win.
Pretty easy.
Right now, the M’s are on track to win 57 games and pay $118m (rounded!) to do it, for a cost of $13m/marginal win.
The next-highest is the Yankees at $5.6m, followed by the Tigers at $5m, the Dodgers at $4m, the Mets at $3.8m… and at the other extreme, you have the Marlins, paying only $.3m/marginal win, the Rays, at $.7m, and the Athletics, at $1m. The average is about $3m.
The Mariners are on track to pay more than twice as much for a win as any other team in baseball, and four times what the average team pays.
But if you’re skeptical that you could field a team on a $11m payroll budget, I understand entirely. You have to spend on minor league free agents, and bringing non-roster guys into camp, and so on.
Assume then that the Marlins’ budget of $22m is the least you can possibly spend to get a team on the field, and that team would go .300. The Marlins then have to be dropped from the chart, because they’re getting an infinite return on their marginal dollar.
The M’s would then spend $11.7m/win, still over twice as much as the Yankees, and about five times as much as the league average.
That’s an amazingly bad return on their investment, and if the ownership group only looks at one metric, I recommend that: the M’s get half as much for their payroll dollar as any other team, and the people who did it can’t tell you what happened, except to say that they got unlucky. Again.
Game 68, Nationals at Mariners
Clippard vs. The Interview, 7:10.
Here’s a fun game: before you look at the lineups, try and name as many Nationals starting today as you can.
Game 67, Nationals at Mariners
Hill v. Dickey, 7:10.
Dickey’s starting! Woo-hoo!
A USSM milestone
We had our first direct “I’ll donate if you’ll do x” email today. Read more