The supposed 30-day waiver rule
Hi — I’ve seen this restriction mentioned but cannot find evidence that the M’s couldn’t put Washburn back on waivers within 30 days of their first (now withdrawn) attempt. If this restriction does exist, this obviously means he’s much less likely to be claimed, as he couldn’t be put on a team’s playoff roster (and you know how valuable Washburn is in the playoffs). But while there are two waiver periods (essentially it’s up to Aug 1 and then Aug 1 onwards) I can’t find anything that would have prevented a second (irrevocable) waiver request within 30 days.
If anyone who can cite the actual rule — not a story about the rule, not someone claiming the rule exists — could help with a comment, that’d be much appreciated.
Free Agent Compensation
Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard a lot of talk about free agent compensation draft picks, especially as they pertain to Raul Ibanez. The Mariners (correctly) decided that they wouldn’t take less than two good prospects for him at the deadline, since they’ll receive two high compensation picks if he leaves as a free agent this winter. They could get two good prospects by not trading him, so there’s no reason to trade him for less than that. By in large, the media has caught on, and we rarely see any more references to a player being traded or “lost for nothing” during the winter. Most people get it – free agent compensation picks are valuable.
However, they don’t make any sense. Seriously, when you stop and think about how the system works and the results it provides, everyone loses. They’re bad for everyone, and it’s pretty remarkable that they still exist. Let’s look at what they’re supposed to do and what they actually do.
Goal #1: Promote parity by allowing teams to recoup talent lost when big market teams steal their players
This clearly doesn’t happen. Go through the list of who gets compensation picks every year, and it’s not the Marlins, Rays, and Royals. It’s the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers, plus other similar big payroll teams. There’s a couple of reasons for this:
1. Type A and Type B free agents are generally good players. Good players make a lot of money, so they are more likely to be on teams with big payrolls. When their contracts expire and they sign with a new team, they’re generally just going from one big payroll team to another, and so the big boys who certainly don’t need extra picks for competitive balance reasons end up with an advantage in the draft anyway.
2. The system requires you to take a financial risk in order to get the draft pick. Teams on strict budgets can’t always afford to take the risk that a player will accept arbitration and eat up a big chunk of their payroll, but it’s just not a big deal to the Yankees if Damaso Marte makes a couple million more than they were counting on. The big payroll teams are more able to take the risk, and thus, more likely to get the reward.
Goal #2: Provide a disincentive for teams to sign free agents away from other clubs, making it more likely for players to stay with their original franchise.
Again, it clearly doesn’t work this way. If you lose a Type A free agent (and you offer them arbitration), you get two high draft picks. If you sign a Type A free agent that another team had offered arbitration to, you lose one high draft pick. In many cases, you actually get rewarded for letting your player leave and bringing in someone else’s exact equal. For instance, if the Mariners were to have to decide between re-signing Raul Ibanez this winter or offering the exact same contract to say, Pat Burrell, then they’d gain an extra pick from signing Burrell and letting Ibanez leave. In fact, we’ve seen teams essentially swap free agents at the same position and both teams have come out with +1 draft picks – the Orioles and Rangers did this in 1994 with Rafael Palmeiro and Will Clark.
Those are basically the two overriding goals of free agent compensation, at least in theory. The current system fails spectacularly at both, and just for good measure, has even more flaws as a byproduct of the system.
Some players are less marketable, and have to sign for less money, after being classified as Type A free agents when they shouldn’t really have been. This is especially true of relief pitchers – rack up the saves and you’ll climb the Elias rankings pretty quickly, even if you’re not particularly good. Most teams have figured out that surrendering a draft pick to sign a mediocre reliever who just happened to notch a lot of 9th inning finishes isn’t a good idea, and they’ll shy away from signing undeserving Type A players who get offered arbitration. For a subset of major league players, they’d be better off getting a worse ranking in the Elias system, because if they become Type As, it will cost them money.
It also, as we saw with Ibanez, keeps non-contending teams from trading quality players at the deadline, making the stretch run and post-season less interesting. Instead of playing for a winning team and potentially getting to play in October, Ibanez has to play out the string for a horrible team because it was in the best interests of the organization not to trade him because they’ll get more for him if he leaves as a free agent.
Overall, it’s hard to find a redeeming quality about the system as currently structured. It doesn’t help small market teams – it does just the opposite, in fact. It doesn’t convince teams to keep their home grown stars, but again, rewards a team for letting their guys walk and replacing them with an equal player from another franchise. It dissuades teams from making deadline trades to help contenders strengthen their clubs, and in some cases, it costs players a chance at a better contract.
If this system does anything right, I have yet to find it. It fails on so many levels and helps no one, but because it has to be collectively bargained (due to how it affects player salaries, which is a big union issue), it’s unlikely to go away anytime soon. So we’re stuck with a failing system that does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do and adds a few lemons on top of that.
Owners, Players Union, I know this isn’t a sexy issue, but when you guys sit down to renegotiate the CBA, can you do us a favor and just rip up the current free agent compensation system? Thanks.
Stating The Obvious
Ryan Feierabend better figure out why his fastball didn’t make the flight to Minnesota, because he’s not a major league pitcher when his fastball averages 86 MPH. He needs to get it back to the 88-90 range with some regularity, because otherwise, he’s just Horacio Ramirez with a hard to spell last name.
Game 123, Mariners at Twins
Feierabend vs. Perkins, 11:10.
Silva to DL, Feierabend up
As you can probably tell from the lack of a game thread (sorry!), it looks like everyone is out enjoying the summer weather. After the game, the news is that the Chef has “triceps tendinitis,” so Silva going on the DL is the long-expected roster move that allows Ryan Feierabend to start Sunday.
Remember last year, when Jeff Weaver went on the disabled list because his pitching simply wasn’t cutting it in the majors anymore? Just imagine, what if the Mariners hadn’t done the prudent thing and signed Weaver to a one-year flyer, but instead had given him a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract based on his reputation and veteran experience? Never mind, no imagination needed now.
Here’s the bet
In considering whether the M’s should have dumped Washburn for nothing, the issue of whether the team could better use the money comes up again and again.
This off-season, at least one free agent pitcher who has superior numbers to Washburn will sign a one-year deal for under Washburn’s 2010 salary of $10m. And here, I mean numbers indicative of a pitcher’s ability:
* Strikeout rate
* Walk rate
* Line drive rate (and HR rate)
* Ground ball/fly ball split
I predict this year we’ll see at least one pitcher who is clearly superior enough to Washburn to make arguing moot, but here’s our specific criteria: at least 180 IP in 2008, K rate equal or better than Washburn’s, walk rate equal or better than Washburn, LD/HR rate equal or better than Washburn’s. They will sign a deal for one year for less than $10m. Bonus points for 2y under $10m.
I’ll make an additional secondary prediction: there will be at least one free agent hitter who signs a one-year deal for under $10m who would provide a +20 run overall upgrade at a Mariner position from this year, with offense measured by any reasonable advanced metric and defense by UZR, PMR, +/-, or any like decent defensive stat.
Rotating stats
K/9
—
BEST ~9
Felix 8.34
Bedard 8
RRS 6.97
LEAGUE AVERAGE ~6
Batista 5.72
Dickey 5.19
Washburn 5.17
Silva 3.89
WORST ~3.5
BB/9
—
BEST ~1
Silva 1.65
Washburn 2.72
Felix 3.46
LEAGUE AVERAGE ~4
RRS 4.01
Dickey 4.04
Bedard 4.11
Batista 6.09
WORST ~8 (actually, more like 7, 7.5 — at eight you have to be a short reliever who throws 100)
HR/9
—
BEST ~.4
Felix 0.6
RRS 0.74
LEAGUE AVERAGE ~1
Bedard 1
Washburn 1.06
Silva 1.12
Dickey 1.15
Batista 1.5
WORST ~1.6
LD%
—
BEST ~14%
Bedard 16.7
Dickey 18.3
Felix 18.5
Batista 21.5
Silva 22.2
Washburn 22.8
RRS 23
WORST ~25%
GB%
—
RRS 30.6
LOW ~33%
Washburn 36.2
Bedard 40.3
Batista 43
Silva 44.2
Dickey 46.8
Felix 51.5
HIGH ~65.6% (for Webb… mortals aspire to 60%)
Game 121, Mariners at Twins
Silva’s joyous return to Minnesota. Faces Liriano.
Seriously, the Twins offered to give the M’s $10m and the M’s wouldn’t take it. And now they get to face Silva. Their cup runneth over.
Washburn for GM
Because half-bad is better than no good.
From Larry Stone, writing on the Seattle Times blog:
On the rumors that the Twins were offering Boof Bonser, Washburn said: “If that was the case, how much more do you think you’re going to get? A young guy with a great arm who’s cheap.â€
Washburn and the Winner’s Curse
We’ve mentioned this around here before, but the Winner’s Curse is one of the most important concepts to grasp around baseball valuation. In short: the person who wins an auction is most likely wrong, because they have the highest opinion of the value of the object. Take an oil field, probably the most common example: if ten companies survey it and make a guess at the value, how much oil they can extract from it, of what kind, and how much it would cost, the one that offers the most came up with a set of assumptions that deviated the most from everyone else’s expert consensus, and while they’ll win the auction, they’re probably screwed in how well they’ll do.
Or take Tejada — the M’s thought he was worth x, the Orioles thought he was worth x+y. The Orioles were much less likely to get a good return on their investment.
So here’s the problem with Washburn. One of the arguments about keeping Washburn is that his $10m next year is a bargain in this market, he’s a left-handed innings eater, and so on.
Here’s the problem with that… no one else believes that Washburn’s next year is worth giving up a decent prospect. If they did, someone would have made a deal before the trade deadline. If $10m was a bargain, every team in baseball with a remotely malleable rotation would have lined up to bid.
So we know at least that the remainder of Washburn’s contract isn’t valued highly enough by the rest of the league that many teams will offer a nice package for it.
Moreover, we also know that teams in a pennant race who could use Washburn, where Washburn’s remaining potential contribution could have an enormous return in getting into the playoffs instead of missing them, still didn’t line up to offer prospects for Washburn before the deadline.
So in the mind of 29 other teams:
Washburn 2009+2010 = not worth a decent prospect
Washburn 2009+2010+increased chance of playoff contention = not worth a decent prospect
If the Twins were indeed willing to give up Bonser, that would make them the team outside the M’s with the highest opinion of Washburn’s potential value.
At this point, a rational organization, or one with some kind of internal variety of opinion, would stop for a second and think “I wonder if we’re over-valuing his services. After all, 29 other teams, almost all of which are more successful than us, are coming in far lower than we thought, and that includes teams that we know are really smart and have more to gain from Washburn’s services than we do.”
They might even consider whether this disparity ties into the horrible contracts they’ve been handing out to pitchers for years and years. They might rethink their assumptions, look ahead to next year, and realize that the default option of letting Washburn go for nothing helps the team in the long term.
Not the Mariners. The M’s can manage to lose bidding wars to themselves. And it’s us, the fans, who are going to pay for this continued incompetence until there are massive organizational changes, including those who represent the team’s owners.