Mariners 2008 WAR – position players
The awesomeness of FanGraphs grows – David Appelman added the Win Value data we told you about on Wednesday to the leaderboards and team pages. For instance, here is the 2008 Mariners Position Player Win Values. Here’s an image for those of you who just want a sneak peak.
The M’s had four position players who could be described as significantly better than replacement level – Adrian Beltre, Ichiro, Jose Lopez, and Raul Ibanez combined for 11.8 wins added. The rest of the offensive roster combined for -3.3 wins, led by the trifecta of suck known as Jose Vidro, Wladimir Balentien, and Richie Sexson. As a whole, the Mariners got 8.2 wins from their non-pitchers, worst in all of baseball. A playoff caliber team would get between 25-35.
As for the new guys, Franklin Gutierrez was worth 1.7 wins last year (in 440 PA, no less), Endy Chavez was worth 0.8 wins (in 298 PA), and Russ Branyan was worth 1.2 wins (in 152 PA!).
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Oh, that’s sad.
Looking at all this new info got me to diggin’ around. I know batting average fluxuates a lot, more than secondary skill sets. What I found interesting regarding Ichiro’s BA is that it seems to follow how his IFH% goes. When his IFH% is high, his batting average is high.
The year he hit .372, his IFH% was 14.1% (both career highs). The next season he hit .303 and his IFH% was 9.5%, both career lows.
I’m certainly not advocating IFH% RULEZ!, but it’s one more super fun thing on fangraphs.
Oh! I also noticed today that next to ‘dollars’, there’s a ’salary’ column so you can check out a player’s value without jumping over to Cot’s or something.
I hate to be the one to poop in the Christmas stocking but is 1.7 wins in 440 PA that impressive a feat? (Or at least impressive enough to add the PA comment?) That’s essentially a Happy Pete-type season, another frustrating bat/great glove player.
That’s the worst opening to a comment ever.
1.7 wins per 440 PA translates to 2.3 wins per 600 PA. Basically, on a per PA basis, 2008 Branyan = 2008 Ibanez. I’ll leave it up to you if you want to consider that impressive or not.
Dave, was that supposed to say that a 2008 Gutierrez=2008 Ibanez? 2008 Branyan, in 600 PA, would be around 4.8 wins, which would’ve been best on the team and equivalent to a Jayson Werth or an Aramis Ramirez.
You see the problem there, though — you don’t get 600 PA of Branyan at that productivity rate.
Exactly. I wouldn’t argue that Branyan is actually worth the same as those players I listed. I was just extrapolating the numbers as Dave did, as I was trying to clarify his comment. I would be happy with 300 PA of Branyan even at 90+% of his 2008 production rate, which would still be 2+ wins.
Dave, I think the 1.7 wins is Gutierrez.
edit: nevermind, it was caught and I’m slow.
Who cares if his bat is frustrating? Who cares if someone’s glove is frustrating? A run is a run is a run. Gutierrez is at even odds to be a 10 million dollar value player for about 400k.
Also, Bill James has him for a .332 wOBA next year, which would have put him between Michael Young and James Loney this year. I wouldn’t call that frustrating when he’s playing a top tier centerfield for us.
Where’s our bailout plan????
That’s all I ask.
I mean, ya, I’m happy Z is here now.
But let’s be honest, this team isn’t much better than a expansion team right now.
Umm, don’t buy any more tickets?
Seems like an odd question. At least to me, but maybe I don’t get it, or am confused by the question marks.
I don’t have anything brilliant to add, so I hope funny is OK. I’ve been staring at the chart in disbelief for so long that my laptop kicked into hibernate mode.
What’s even worse is of the four offensive players (by which I mean non-pitchers) with value, one is gone and one only rates so well because the defensive metric chosen is less unkind to Lopez than others. Despite the Mariners moves, you’d think somewhere, somehow they’d luck into a hot two months and get a 1-win player from AAA or get Jamie Burke ala 2007. Seems like a collection of players who all performaned at their 25th percentile “PECOTA” in 2008.
Our top 7 includes a catcher who couldn’t hit, and two bench players who were “good” by virtue of not sucking as bad as everyone else.
It’s amazing that for four years running, the Mariners have been able to enter “next year” expecting a huge upgrade by plugging in a replacement level player.
Would you care to provide data to support that assertion??
There is lots of solid, demonstrated factual information in previous posts showing that is not the case. If you believe all of that information is incorrect, let’s see your basis. If you haven’t done so, a visit to the USSM Orientation and Helpful Reading links (located at the top of the page) might be helpful,
Or if you prefer, you can submit comment for consideration in the “Least Insightful USSM Comment of 2008″ competition. Despite a being a late in the season entry, it would be a serious contender for the title.
How much does it cost to sign a replacement player? Shouldn’t a 0 WAR player cost the league minimum? Wouldn’t it make sense to add the league minimum to everybody’s salary?
101 losses seems like enough data for me. You certainly don’t get 100+ losses based on dumb luck.
Should we be a better team next year now that we’re committed more to defense and acquiring talent through statisical analysis? Probably.
But right now I sure don’t see any reason to believe this team will be .500 next year.
The only 3 legitimate major league hitters in the lineup right now are Ichiro, Lopez, and Beltre and the starting rotation and bullpen are a little shorthanded at this point.
I hope I’m wrong and I hope this team can get some more talent on the roster before spring training, but I wouldn’t bet on that happening a lot.
Actually the 101 losses were a combination of bad luck and piss-poor performace. We’ve talked a lot how this team wasn’t as good as ‘07 and not as bad as ‘08.
101 losses seems like enough data for me. You certainly don’t get 100+ losses based on dumb luck.
Smart luck, then?
Is there any chance that Fangraphs will post players’ salaries (actual for past seasons, projected for this season) in the value section next to the WAR and value stats? That would be an incredible resource and an excellent way for fans suffering under Bavasi-like regimes to knock some sense into their tormentors.
Whatever happened to Jose Vidro after his release? Did he retire?
Is there any chance that Fangraphs will post players’ salaries (actual for past seasons, projected for this season) in the value section next to the WAR and value stats?
Yes. Just not for the current season.
Oh! I also noticed today that next to ‘dollars’, there’s a ’salary’ column so you can check out a player’s value without jumping over to Cot’s or something.
True, but it hurts to lose Raul’s bat. It sucks that he didn’t want to be DH for this team next year.
That and statisical projections aside, we won’t know how good or bad the Putz trade was until we see Gutierrez, Heilman, Endy, and Carp (in a couple of years) perform on the field obviously.
(Although signs seem to point to us being a little better of a team from that trade because of the improved outfield defense.)
The reason for that is the past few years of Bavasi and Company. Jack Z. has already turned this around with some quality moves. Let’s just hope it continues.
And I don’t get your bailout question either.
Oh wait, I just found the salaries in the individual player stats. Like losing your sunglasses when they’re on the top of your head. But still, it would be cool to see the player salaries in the team value page you just pointed out.
Yeah, but I’m not going to miss his terrible defense. Raul was worth 2.2 WAR if you count his defense, Franklin was worth 1.7 in EDIT: [two thirds] as many PAs (like Dave already pointed out). Gutierrez was worth the same as Raul last season. Whether you score the run or save the run, it’s all the same.
Bingo.
I’m looking for a bailout from the losing seasons, haha.
Maybe Z is part of the Mariners bailout plan, but he can’t go out on the field and pick up a bat or toe the rubber.
The signs are positive and Zduriencik and co. are showing their obvious understanding of real player value.
The Teixeira domino just fell and more will surely follow.
Being in Orange County, I just got through yet another holiday season filled with Angels and Yankee fans who love to rub it in. I can now at least sit back with some sense of confidence that our FO has a plan. That’s so much better than trying to find some way to ‘defend’ Bavasi’s B.S.
Folks who are curious / confused about how some of these numbers are calculated might want to look at Dave’s Win Values post and the comments in the Replacement Value post at Fangraphs and Tango’s Q&A thread there as well. Of course you can also consult Tom Tango’s “The Book” and its website, but I can’t link to it because I’d exceed the 3 link minimum that throws posts into the mod queue. (I prefer the 3 drink minimum myself, but oh well).
There’s a mod queue @ three drinks. Oh jeez, I’m really sorry guys.
It is impressive in that you’re essentially trading Ibanez’s bat with Gutierrez’s glove and pocketing a bushel of cash for your consideration. That alone i.e. the roster construction vis-à-vis cost is a huge point in favor for Zduriencik and makes me giddy for what the future holds. My only issue is that you seem to go out of your way to adulate a player that is essentially the Pedro Feliz of the outfield.
Having a player of Pedro Feliz’s caliber isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially given this team’s bloated suckitude last season, even more so if we are to believe Colin Wyers (via THT) recent assertion that a run saved > run scored. But at what point does forsaking offense for defense with respect to the rest of the lineup cause a problem? I’m not asking that rhetorically; I’m curious. With the team currently constructed as such would having a player of Gutierrez’s profile (great defense/meh bat) be better than having a good bat/average glove? Teams can afford to have Feliz (or Adam Everett or Coco Crisp once upon a time) on their roster because they have enough offense to compensate for the lack of bat.
Oohhhh. Now you also want to get in the running for “Most Superficial Comment of 2008″ as well!!!
If you’ve spent any time at all here, you ought to understand the basics of component analysis and how component analysis is a far, far better predictor of future performance than simplistic projection of past performance. That isn’t only true of baseball; it’s equally valid for almost any type of projection of future performance.
In the stock market it’s how intelligent investors discriminate among low earnings companies for which earning are likely to remain depressed because the earnings components are bad versus low earnings companies for which profits are likely to rebound because the earnings components are stronger than past performance.
If you want to be taken seriously with your comments you ought to consider component analysis. Quoting from the USSM Orientation (to which you were previously pointed):
There is a current state of the argument regarding the existing talent level and expected peformance of the team going forward. That state of the argument differs widely from your assertion that the Mariners are currently no better than an expansion team. Further, that state of the argument is based a fundamental component analysis that lies at the heart of this site. USSM thrives precisely on delving deeper than a analsyis such as “We lost 101 games last year. How much more proof do you need?”
If you want to be taken seriously, you really need to bring more to the discussion than “they lost 101 games last year”. As the orientation points out, “This may seem like a terrible burden on you. Sorry. But there it is. Bear it.”
In their first two years as an expansion team, the Mariners had 120 wins and 205 losses (.369); those same two years, the expansion Blue Jays went 113-209 (.351). Do you really think the 2009 Mariners are going to lose more games than the 2008 M’s did?
But you said right now. And you’ve just noted this team is already better than last year’s team, and others have noted last year’s team — as bad as it was — actually under-performed. In addition to being bad it was, in fact, subject to dumb bad luck. You could run last year’s roster out again and, based on the RS/RA Pythagorean calculation, you’d expect to see something like a 95 loss team. And that’s giving at-bats to Vidro and Sexson etc. Those guys are gone, the outfield defense is vastly improved, and Zduriencik may not be done overhauling the roster. And you think the net effect of all that will be a team that loses something like 105+ games?
Wait, are you arguing this team is no better than an expansion team, or this team won’t be a .500 team? Those are very different things: the team can be much better than an expansion team (which I feel confident in saying it will be) without reaching .500 (which I think is possible, but a stretch). I guess it’s easy to always be justified in your cynicism if you redefine your baseline however it suits you, but it makes it rather hard to have a rational discussion.
But at what point does forsaking offense for defense with respect to the rest of the lineup cause a problem?
Yes, this has been brought up before. Part of the problem is that we’re debating each step along the way, rather than waiting for the final roster and discussing that as a whole. And we may even need to wait for the 2010 roster to get Zduriencik’s complete answer to the question.
But if we’re going to debate the roster construction incrementally, as it happens, then I think we need to address it in terms of the moves available at those points. Raul was going to get a big contract somewhere, and he wanted to play the field (so, even if he was willing to suck it up and DH for the M’s, presumably they had to offer him more than the Phillies offered). Was offering Raul big dollars for his declining years worth it? Especially considering the draft picks (which you have to assume Zduriencik will be able to make good use of). Given what went into the Raul calculation — the dollars, the draft picks, the likely decline, and the defense (the 4 D’s?) — letting him go was the only defensible decision. Raul’s offense was out of the lineup, no matter what.
And that’s independent of Franklin Gutierrez and Endy Chavez.
Those guys in themselves don’t have to make up Raul’s offensive production. And they can certainly make up with their gloves at least part of what he provided with his bat — it might mean a lot of nail-biting one-run low-scoring games, but a win’s a win. And since great outfield defense can make flyball pitchers look better than they are, there’s an opportunity to find added value in them if that gives Zduriencik the opportunity to, say, flip a seemingly-”rejuvenated” Washburn at the trade deadline for a bat that might help in 2010. Nobody claimed this team was going from 101 losses to the WS in one season.
Meanwhile there still are opportunities to add offense (and not all of them involve acquiring players — Clement has to start producing sooner or later).
There’s a mod queue @ three drinks.
For New Year’s, we will be requiring that all commenters be equipped with keyboard interlock.
The sooner people get past this idea that offense is somehow inherently more important than defense, the better off we will all be.
The formula for winning baseball games is very simple; you have to score more runs than you give up. Winning a game 2-1 is equally as valuable as winning 6-4.
I would think the Branyon/RH 1B platoon, instead of the Sexson/Vidro train wreck, would more than make up for Ibanez’s lost offense vs. Chavez. Plus you’re better defensively (by a lot) at both positions.
Getting over the glitz of offensive numbers is hard to do in baseball. If the Seahawks signed a top defensive player, the fans would be psyched, saying things like, “We may only win games 13-10, but, with this defense, we’re gonna win!” but when the Mariners go out and get a top defensive player, all the casual fan sees are things like HR, OPS, AVG, SB, etc because, to those same fans, the idea of defense in baseball is limited to the quality of the pitchers. They see lots of wins and a low ERA and think the pitchers were great and the team had a good “defense” without actually considering the quality of the people catching the balls. Casual observers think batters/fielders score runs, and pitchers prevent them. Period.
Actually offense is more important than defense. It’s just that defense is generally totally overlooked. Dave has a great post about it.
Yes, and Fantasy Baseball just reinforces the stupidity. The stats that matter in Fantasy — RBIs, ERA — are the ones that are so misleading and useless in real life. And there are no defensive stats at all (most Fantasy players would dispute that defensive stats even exist).
I’m hoping FanGraphs starts administering Fantasy games using things like FIP and wOBA and UZR.
Great idea. Knowing anything about more accurate statistical measures might even be a handicap in fantasy baseball. Sometimes I make the mistake of drafting players I know are actually good as opposed to players who are gonna put up the big money stats that fantasy sites look for (AVG, HR, RBI, SB, etc.) Granted, usually those players are one in the same. A fantasy site that brings defense into the equation would be wonderful. And, finally, to follow up on my earlier comment, if the Seahawks signed, say, Ray Lewis in his prime, no one would be mad because he doesn’t score many TDs. A lot of people seem upset that Gutierrez isn’t going to hit for a .330 AVG with 25 HR and 100+ RBI though.
Knowing anything about more accurate statistical measures might even be a handicap in fantasy baseball
And this is why I havn’t been any good at fantasy baseball in several years.
The weird thing about football is that a good defense can be all you need, because defensive players can not only stop the other team from scoring but also score points themselves. So it’s obvious to even a casual fan that good defense can carry a team, and trading off offense for defense (especially when working within a salary cap) is a sane and potentially winning strategy. And thanks to the way modern football teams are constructed, fans think of both equally and focus on the matchup of one team’s offense against another’s defense; heck, fantasy football even reinforces the concept by having you play an entire team’s defense like it’s a single player.
Baseball has always focused on the matchup between pitcher and batter, the throw and the swing. Defense is just something that kind of happens, or doesn’t, after the fact. That a team can prevent runs, that a good set of fielders can make a pitcher look better (or a bad set make a pitcher look worse) flies in the face of our historical understanding of the game; indeed, it defies the very narrative that orders and defines what we think we know about the game and its players.
Who were the fielders when Casey was At The Bat?
Thanks for the link Jack. I was just in the process of asking a question about defense as an (approximate) percentage of run prevention, and you posted before I could finish typing my question!
I love this site.
You’re misrepresenting Dave’s post; he breaks what most people would commonly call defense, but what should more properly be called run prevention, down into the contributions of pitching and the actual defensive players.
But he still defines run creation as 50% of winning a game, and run prevention as the other 50%. Which was my intent as well.
So I guess I should’ve said that run prevention and run scoring are equally important, but I figured most people would infer “run prevention” when I talk about defense.
OK I have been lurking for the past couple of months and have found the defense vs offense discussions very intriging. On an empirical level based on my personal observations over the last 20 plus years I have seen a number of above average offense teams that have never done anything (pre 95) and a 116 win team with what seemed to be a very good defense with a less potent offense. So based on the observation it would seem at least on face value there might be something to this defense thing.
More interesting to me personally I have not seen a lot of discussion (may have missed it) in regards to the home field i.e. Safeco and its effect on an optimal team, offensive or defensive. In my humble opinion it would make sense to build at least the core strength of a team to fit its home ballpark based only on the idea that half the games of the season are played there. That said I would contend that Safeco in a general sense favors a team with good defensive skills first and speed on the base pads second over those flashy offensive HR/RBI numbers everyone seems to love so much. Seems to me that adding some top notch defense in the outfield even at the expense of some current offense is a smart first move to build on given where the team plays.
I am really interested to see what the regulars of this site feel the variable of Safeco field has in the on going discussion of offense vs defense
One player that hasn’t been mentioned here was about as bad as Sexson. Recall that Cairo was starting at first base quite a bit.
The theme of the thread is the evaluation of an offensive player. I am not trying to misrepresent Dave’s post, I’m simply trying to point out from Dave’s analysis that a position player’s value is based roughly on 75% offense and 25% defense. People don’t generally underrate the value of pitching as they do positional defense, which is part of the reason I dislike lumping the two together. In fact, Dave’s post does a great job in pointing out that run prevention is less about pitching and more about defense than most people think which I think is what you were trying to get across.
Wow – 45 comments thus far and not one of them points out that WFB actually was worth his contract?
A 200K bargain even!!!
But, that’s only b/c the range of output on offense is much greater than on defense. The range of defensive performance in MLB is fairly narrow, approx. -15 R/150G to +15 R/150G. Offensive output can range from below replacement to 80 or 90 runs above.
Despite this, a run saved is as good as a run scored, you just can’t save as many vs. replacement level defense.
What I thought was really funny was that if you put the PA minimum down to zero, you get the pitchers in there and Felix was worth $1.3 million just as a batter.
of the four offensive players (by which I mean non-pitchers) with value
Yeah, since some of our pitchers are pretty offensive too, even if they don’t contribute anything to the offense.
I’m really looking forward to when FanGraphs adds WAR for pitchers.
Cause now I’m really curious how the 2007 Mariners managed to win 88 games when got 12.8 wins from their non-pitchers…second worst in baseball ahead of….wow, the White Sox’s 4.7 wins (72-90)?