Dudes
That was ridiculous.
Again, huge thanks to Tony Blengino, Tom McNamara, Pedro Grifol, and Carmen Fusco (in order from the podium view) for being so generous with their time today, and for their thoughtful and interesting answers to all our questions.
And the Seattle Public Library for hosting.
The auditorium! The big one!
To answer some common questions:
– we’re in the “Microsoft Auditorium”
– at the Seattle Public Library
– yes, the big glass and steel thing downtown
– we’re scheduled to go from 1:30-5:30
– I’ll be providing water
Last chance to get in on the event
Tomorrow I’ll be out running around and doing event prep, so if you don’t get your foot in the door by midnight, that’s it. No deal. If you show up and you’re not on the list and want to get in and cause a fuss about how you wanted to attend but you couldn’t and your firewall or whatever wouldn’t let you register, and behind you there are a ton of well-behaved reasonable people being inconvenienced, we’ll have a computer there so we can ban you from even reading USSM and LL ever from any computer.
If you’re having problems using Pledgie or whatever, email us and we’ll make other payment arrangements. We have some slots left. Pledge apparently ended the drive at midnight eastern time.
Bloomquist To KC
And Willie officially says goodbye. He got 2 years, $3 million from the Royals. Good for him. Good for the M’s not matching.
Imagine being a Kansas City fan this winter. Your team has now spent $11.5 million of the 2009 budget to acquire Kyle Farnsworth, Mike Jacobs, Horacio Ramirez, and Willie Bloomquist. That’s a replacement level reliever, a replacement level first baseman, a replacement level reliever, and a replacement level utility player. Even if you give them extremely optimistic forecasts, you’re looking at something like +1 win over what it could have cost to grab guys for the league minimum.
The Royals have spent about $11 million on free agents, and they might not even get one win out of it. Toss in Jose Guillen’s big salary from last year to be slightly above replacement level, and the Royals are tossing about $25 million down the drain. Nice job, fellas.
Last Minute Q&A Stuff
Here’s a few last minute notes about the Q&A tomorrow.
The library will be providing coupons at the event for $5 parking if you park in the garage. So, if you’re driving to the event and don’t know where to park, you can park there for $5. The garage is on Spring St between 4th and 5th.
Also, while there’s going to be an open Q&A where you guys get to fire questions at our guests, Derek and the LL boys are going to be asking some questions as well that they feel will be of interest to everyone. If you leave a question in the comments, they will pick what they feel are the best ones, and those will get asked tomorrow.
And, for those who don’t know, here’s a short bio of each of our guests for tomorrow:
Tony Blengino: Asst. GM, head of Department of Baseball Research. Jack’s right-hand guy, member of SABR, heavily involved with pushing the organization forward in the use of statistical analysis and technology, the guy who hired Tango. Came with Zduriencik from Milwaukee.
Tom McNamara: Director of Amateur Scouting. The guy in charge of the amateur draft and all the scouting related to draft-eligible prospects for the organization. Came with Zduriencik from Milwaukee.
Carmen Fusco: Director of Pro Scouting. The guy in charge of the team’s scouting of professional players, from the minor leagues all the way up through the majors. Ran his own academy in Pennsylvania after leaving the Mets in 2002, where he’d worked as scouting director and Asst. GM. Played college ball with Zduriencik at Austin Peay.
Tango Answers Questions About His Job
Here.
The best quote:
Q: Does this really maan anything to a Mariners fan?
A: I don’t have as much insight into answering that question as you might think. Think of me as Tony B’s big toe (reference: Stripes). The front office has a bunch of beacons in the sky, and I try make mine as bright as possible. While I can’t force Tony B to look in that direction, I can use the power of my big toe as much as that can work. Tony has Z’s ear, so we’ll see what kind of impact I have, if any. So far, I am happy with the direction.
So are we, Tom, so are we.
The Budget
When John Hickey wrote about the Tyler Walker signing, he used the column to make a larger point about the M’s payroll, including dropping this tidbit that hadn’t been published before:
But there likely won’t be much more free-agency action because the team has a goal of trimming last year’s $117 million payroll by about 20 percent.
To support this claim, he includes the following quote from Zduriencik:
“I don’t think we are going to be enormously active in free agency,” Zduriencik said. “If the fit is right there, maybe, but we’re not in position to break the bank.”
If the M’s really do want to cut 20% off of their payroll from last year, that would put the 2009 budget at around $93.6 million. If you add up the salaries for the projected 25 man roster as it stands right now, you get $93.2 million. He’s not kidding when he says they’re not in a position to break the bank.
Now, there’s some wiggle room there. Ichiro is going to earn $17 million this season, but $5 million of his salary is deferred at 5.5% interest until after he retires, so they’re only going to physically pay him $12 million. However, they need to account for the deferred payments as a liability against this year, but thanks to the time value of money, the cost of those payments won’t total $5 million – instead, it’s more like $3.5 to $4 million. So, the expense of having Ichiro on the roster for 2009 is more like $15.5 to $16 million.
Also, we can’t really do anything but guess at the salaries for Bedard, Hernandez, and Heilman, since they’re arbitration eligible. I put in $8 million, $3 million, and $2 million respectively, and would imagine all the deals will end up in that vicinity, but variation from those numbers would push the remaining room left in the budget up or down a bit.
No matter how you look at it, though, if the M’s target payroll is around $95 million, then they are pretty close to being out of money. That would push them towards the trade market, where they could match salaries in deals to move pieces around. It makes things tougher, but not impossible.
Looking ahead to 2010, the team has about $55 million committed to 17 roster spots (again, guessing at arb salaries for Hernandez, Heilman, and Morrow, who will be arb eligible after 2009). The expiration of contracts for Beltre, Washburn, Batista, Bedard, Chavez, Branyan, and Walker would give the team something like $40-$45 million in budget room next winter, but would also create some pretty substantial holes in the roster. Beltre, especially, isn’t going to be cheap to re-sign or replace, so a good chunk of that money would go to keeping him in Seattle or trying to recoup the wins lost by watching him go elsewhere.
I know signings like Russ Branyan and Tyler Walker aren’t the kind of moves that are going to get people excited, but given the roster that he was left with by his predecessor, if a 20% budget decrease was really ordered, then Zduriencik should get a few gold stars for how well he’s been able to re-make this team without having much capital to spend.
Under fifty spots left for the Jan 10 Q&A
Really.
Site update note for Jan 7
Hey, I moved USSM to the newest WordPress version late last night/early this morning. You shouldn’t have seen any problems, but I noticed there are 315 comments now marked as “spam” which show up as not visible, going back for ages… and some of them I know were live before. And we don’t have a spam filter since everyone’s registered. I don’t know what the deal is. I’m looking into it.
Maybe J.J. Needs Lasik?
J.J. Putz on Miguel Batista:
“What’s baffling about Miguel is he’s got some of the nastiest stuff you’ll ever see, and he throws a 93-97 mph fastball with movement – and he refuses to throw it,†Putz said. “He wants to throw his other pitches to get you out. I mean, I’ve never seen him get beat with his fastball.â€
Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen him get beat with his fastball. I’m going to have to put my hand down to keep typing this post, but the rest of you can just keep pointing at the sky.
His BIS pitch data (available, with everything else good in the world, on FanGraphs) has him throwing 50% fastballs and 39% cut fastballs last year. His “other pitches” were thrown 11% of the time.
Maybe J.J. hates Batista’s cut fastball, but he’s always thrown it a lot. That didn’t exactly change.
Oh, and then there’s comment, presented without (much) commentary:
“If you’re looking for the guy who’s got it downstairs, Corcoran is best suited to close,†Putz said.
I’m sure the boys at Lookout Landing will have fun with that comment.