Buying And Selling
Larry Stone has a good piece in the Times this morning, discussing the timing of when the Mariners need to decide whether they’re buyers or sellers. As you guys know, I advocated for an early selling position on Bedard and Washburn, calling them “volatile assets” whose value could drop precipitously with an injury or a regression in performance. With both of them nursing health problems and Washburn coming off a bad start in Coors Field, hopefully you can see what I was talking about – it would be harder for the M’s to get a good deal for either of them right now than it would have been 10 days ago.
So, now, the M’s have to wait and let those two re-establish their health, which they’ll hopefully do this weekend. In Bedard’s case, he probably has to string together several good outings in a row, showing he can handle a regular workload without having to skip starts every few weeks. Washburn has to continue to show that his two-seamer has given him an extra weapon to handle lefties, and his uptick in strikeout rate isn’t a fluke.
For today, I agree with Larry. The market for these two will grow if they can prove that last weekend was an aberration and pitch well for the next couple of weeks. For now, we probably need to wait before moving those two.
However, as I talked about a bit yesterday on 710/ESPN with Mike Salk, I am convinced that there is an option here beyond the normal “trade prospects for veterans to make a run” or “give up on the season and go with the kids”. Yes, historically, teams have divided themselves into those two camps after the July 31st deadline, but I think the M’s are in a unique situation, in a unique economic environment, and that they have a chance to do things differently this trading season.
The AL West isn’t good. The Rangers have stopped hitting of late, and despite their improved run prevention, they aren’t getting to the playoffs on the backs of their pitching and defense. The Angels were supposed to get a boost from the return of their walking wounded, but Kelvim Escobar just needed one start to prove he couldn’t handle a regular rotation spot anymore, while Ervin Santana hasn’t found his fastball and is going to miss his start tonight with forearm tightness. John Lackey hasn’t exactly been an all-star, either. The Angels still have issues, both offensively and on the pitching side of things.
So, despite the flaws on this M’s roster, I think the front office would be wise to make moves that would help keep the 2009 team afloat and potentially able to capitalize in the second half if Texas and Anaheim continue to struggle. However, at the same time, I think Bedard and Washburn fit the mold of overvalued assets in the mid-season trade market. Teams always overvalue pitching, especially left-handed pitching, as they gear up to make a playoff race. It’s the one thing that’s constantly in demand from multiple clubs and could bring a significant return in trade.
As Mike Salk pointed out yesterday, though, the common belief is that if you trade Bedard and Washburn, you’re done. You’ve just punted two starting pitchers who have been critical to your early season success, there’s no way this team can with without them. I disagree. I think the team can take a buy-and-sell approach to this deadline that would help them build for the future but also keep the 2009 team from going in the tank.
Here’s my suggestion.
The M’s badly need a shortstop. We all know that. The M’s rank 29th in wOBA (.242!) and 30th in UZR (-9.8!) from the SS position. The performances they’ve gotten from Betancourt/Cedeno have been worth about -1.5 wins less than a replacement level shortstop in about 40% of a season. That’s incredibly awful, the kind of gaping hole that no team can really overcome.
The M’s also need another left-handed hitter in the line-up, which we’ve covered ad nauseam here on the blog. The line-up is too right-handed, so when they face a righty with two-seam fastball (the pitch with the largest platoon split), they lack the left-handed bats to punish the opposing pitcher and they get shut down.
What the M’s need more than anything else is a left-handed hitting shortstop with some ability to hit and field. They need a stop-loss to prevent the massive sucking hole at shortstop from taking wins off the board. Upgrading from Betancourt/Cedeno to even a below average SS would be a massive improvement over what the M’s have gotten from the position this year. Where would they find such a player?
Meet Reid Brignac. He’s a 23-year-old left-handed hitting shortstop in the Tampa Bay Rays system. He spent the last few weeks filling in for Jason Bartlett while the Rays starting SS was on the DL, but now that Bartlett is back, it’s off to Durham again for some more time in Triple-A. With Bartlett ahead of him at SS and Ben Zobrist/Willy Aybar holding down second base (and then some) in Akinori Iwamura’s absence, Brignac doesn’t have a role with the Rays. He’s depth for them, an insurance policy in case Bartlett gets hurt again, but not a piece of their core now or going forward.
Now, maybe you look at his .271/.295/.390 mark that he posted over the last few weeks for the Rays and say “meh, another low OBP hacker”. However, look closer. In fact, look at his L/R splits.
Vs RHP: .357/.386/.524, 44 PA, 2 BB, 5 K
Vs LHP: .059/.059/.059, 17 PA, 0 BB, 7 K
To say that Brignac had problems with left-handed pitching would be a bit of an understatement. There’s definitely need for improvement there, and he’s not ready for an every day role in the majors. However, that performance versus lefties hides the fact that he hit the crap out of the ball against right-handed pitching during the last couple of weeks. This isn’t new, either. Here’s his minor league splits from Durham this year.
Vs RHP: .300/.370/.491, 124 PA, 14 BB, 17 K
Vs LHP: .258/.303/.355, 33 PA, 1 BB, 4 K
Brignac hasn’t figured out how to hit lefties yet. That’s okay – he’s 23. That can be improved upon later, and hidden now. The M’s could hide Brignac against lefties, platooning him with Cedeno in order to give both of them the best chance to succeed offensively. He won’t put up a .900 OPS against RHP all year, but he doesn’t have to. If he hits .270/.320/.400 and plays league average defense, the upgrade from Betancourt to Brignac would be larger than the downgrade from Bedard to Rowland-Smith/Jakubauskas/whoever.
Seriously, if the M’s swapped Erik Bedard for Reid Brignac, there’s a pretty good chance they wouldn’t see a significant drop-off in 2009 performance as a team. When you couple the magnitude of the problem that SS has been for the M’s this year with the general overrating of the impact of starting pitchers, you get a situation like this where a decent position player can be worth as much as a good starting pitcher.
Now, there’s a pretty good chance that the Rays wouldn’t swap Brignac for Bedard straight up. They don’t have a ton of budget flexibility, and they’re notoriously reluctant to trade young talent. That’s okay – the M’s have the pieces to make a deal work. They have the financial ability to pay Bedard’s contract through the end of ’09, eliminating the need for the Rays to increase their payroll. They have extraneous players like Jeff Clement, who would appeal to a Rays front office that likes that kind of player type, that could be added into a multi-player deal.
The pieces are there to make this work. Even if you can’t find a perfect fit with the Rays (maybe they don’t want to deal with Bedard’s health problems), the team should still pursue Brignac as a target. As we saw Jack do in the Putz deal, it’s quite possible to use players to acquire talent that another team wants in order to get the guy you’re after. If the Phillies are willing to overpay for Bedard (and it sounds like they probably are), then the M’s can target a player in that deal who would appeal to Tampa Bay in a Brignac trade.
Because they’ll be in demand this trading season, the M’s have the flexibility to use Bedard and Washburn as bait to pick up pieces that won’t just help them in the future, but can help them right now. There are players out there, like Brignac, who would be an immediate upgrade for the Mariners, while also providing some long term value. These are the kinds of players the M’s should be targeting.
Don’t get caught up thinking that it’s a trade-prospects or trade-for-prospects decision. The M’s are in the position to do both. Deal Bedard and Washburn to the highest bidder, or for the pieces that will allow you to go out and get guys like Brignac. Sell, yes, on those two players, but then buy us a left-handed hitting shortstop who can help the team right now and going forward.
This isn’t an either/or situation. Buy and sell, not buy or sell.
Rainiers On TV
With no Mariner game tonight, Fox Sports Northwest is broadcasting the Tacoma Rainiers and Portland Beavers game tonight. Rich Burk, the Beavers announcer, will be on the call, but you could always turn the sound down at listen to Mike Curto on the radio. Good chance to watch Michael Saunders, Jeff Clement, and Mike Carp swing the sticks.
Dave on 710
I’ll be on with Brock and Salk in about a half hour or so. Early in the noon hour, anyway. Tune in – I’m sure we’ll talk Brandon Morrow, among other things.
The Morrow Situation
I think we’ve made it obvious that we’re pretty big fans of the new administration. Since Zduriencik was hired and put his team in place, we’ve seen the organization take some huge steps forward. The Putz deal was fantastic. Signing Branyan was exactly the kind of move we’ve been arguing in favor of for years. The team prioritized outfield defense, and we’ve seen the benefits of the Three CF Plan. Honestly, the new front office has given us a ton of reasons to be extremely excited about where this team is headed and to believe in the future of the Seattle Mariners. With all that said…
What on earth are you guys doing with Brandon Morrow?
Going into spring training, he was slotted in as the team’s #3 starter. Then, we had the whole end-of-spring training fiasco where Morrow asked to be moved to the bullpen, because he wasn’t going to be ready to start the year in the rotation and apparently didn’t want to go to the minors. Now, we don’t know what Morrow told Zduriencik and Wakamatsu at that time, but given how much waffling he’s done on the issue since, it’s hard to imagine he was so forceful in his conviction that they didn’t have the option to say “no, you’re a starter, you’ll be up with us in May.”
But, maybe the diabetes thing really was convincing, and they believed him when he said he’d been thinking of moving back to the bullpen ever since the Putz trade, feeling like it’s where he belonged. We’ll give them some benefit of the doubt on how that part was handled. It doesn’t end there, of course.
After getting himself straightened out and pitching well, he showed up with some shoulder soreness and the team decided to put him on the disabled list, despite the fact that he claimed he could pitch. I’m all for caution with arm problems, but Morrow was legitimately upset that they put him on the DL when he claimed he was fine. To make matters worse, he was immediately placed back into the closer role as soon as he came off the DL, and predictably, this didn’t work out so well. Wak even admitted that this wasn’t a very good idea, Morrow’s struggles after coming off the DL eventually led him to losing his job as the closer and ending up in middle relief.
Wait, we’re still not done. After failing as a closer because of his lousy command and over-reliance on his fastball, Morrow came to the club and told them he wanted to go back to the rotation. He felt like he was selling himself short by moving to the bullpen, and wanted to give starting another shot. He knew he needed to work on his secondary pitches and to improve his command, and he was willing to head to the minors “for as long as necessary” in order to work his way back to the big leagues as a major league ready starter. After a roller coaster ride of three years of being mishandled, he was finally going to get the minor league seasoning he needed, working on his pitches in low pressure environments and refining his command away from the spotlight of major league action.
It had taken a long time, but we were finally at the right point. Morrow would go to the minors, learn how to pitch, work out his mechanical flaws, and come back to Seattle when he possessed more than just a big fastball. The long, windy road at least ended up at the right place.
Then, for reasons that still don’t make a lot of sense, the M’s reversed course again and gave him a start in Colorado due to Bedard’s shoulder pain. The team had other options – Chris Jakubauskas could easily have made the start, or the team could have recalled Ryan Rowland-Smith or Gaby Hernandez from Tacoma. Yes, there are issues with each of those guys, and I get that the team doesn’t feel like RRS is ready to start in Seattle yet, but neither was Brandon Morrow.
But, you know, we can overlook a short speed bump in the plan. Bedard’s shoulder problems threw a monkey wrench into the timetable, so Morrow had to stick around for a little bit longer. Okay. Fine, whatever. But now, the team has announced that Morrow will get another start against San Diego, and now he might not go to the minor leagues at all. Wak is talking like he wants Morrow to transition to being a starter in the major leagues.
Come on. Can we please stop changing our minds with this guy every 10 minutes? If going to the minors for a few months was a good idea a week ago, it’s still a good idea. Nothing that happened in Colorado on Saturday should have changed anyone’s mind about Morrow’s need for some time in Triple-A. The organization was convinced it was the best thing for him. He was convinced it was the best thing for him. Everyone who watched him pitch was convinced that it was the best thing for him.
But now, for whatever reason, we’re going to have watch Morrow walk the world in San Diego while the team tries to stay in a playoff race that they’re not really in. We’re getting the worst of both worlds – the team’s failing to give themselves the best chance to win games and they’re failing to put Morrow in the situation where he’s best able to develop long term. What we have now is this weird middle ground where the team isn’t buyers or sellers, Morrow isn’t a major leaguer or a minor leaguer, and he’s not really a starter but also not a reliever.
Welcome to confusion land.
Can someone in the front office just make the right call, write it in stone, and end the conversation? Send Brandon to Tacoma and tell him he’ll be back when he figures out how to throw strikes 65% of the time and throw less than 65% fastballs for 7+ innings. If that takes a month, great. If that takes until September, fine. But no one wants to see Morrow start in San Diego, continuing his high wire act where he tries to develop and win at the same time.
The front office has done a lot of things right. They’ve just done this one thing very wrong. Please fix it.
Minor League Wrap (6/8-14/09)
Aside from our draft, which was decent, the big minor league news of the week was uber-prep player Bryce Harper enrolling in the College of South Nevada so he’ll be eligible for next year’s draft, assuming he passes his GED, of course. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s the fellow who has moved beyond baseballs in batting practice and is now using beans. He also hit a 570 foot home run at one point, and he’s a lefty to boot. So, next year, the Nationals might have the most touted battery in recent memory, while the M’s continue their up-and-down season and end up picking around ten or so.
To the jump!
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Game 63, Mariners v Rockies
12:10. Hammel, I think it’s interesting to note, was one of the floating excess pitchers Dave and I wanted the M’s to go after when it looked like the M’s were going to need rotation help, and then the M’s had too many pitchers for the rotation, and now we’re back to famine.
Per the Times, the lineup looks like:
RF-L Ichiro!
1B-L Russ Branyan
3B-R Adrian Beltre
2B-R Jose Lopez
DH-L Ken Griffey Jr.
SS-R Yuniesky Betancourt
C-R Guillermo Quiroz
CF-LF-R Franklin Gutierrez
P-R Jason Vargas
Yes, I’m stealing Mike Snow’s joke.
Rockies
CF-B Dexter Fowler
2B-R Clint Barmes
1B-L Todd Helton
3B-R Garrett Atkins
RF-L Brad Hawpe
LF-R Ryan Spilborghs
SS-R Troy Tulowitzki
C-R Chris Iannetta
P-R Jason Hammel
Fun question to contemplate: are there four future Hall of Fame members in this game? Two and a “wait and see”? Three and a “wait and see”? One? I’ve been tossing this over in my head since I saw the lineups.
Game 62, Mariners and Rockies vs. Mother Nature
Morrow’s reconversion to starting begins, according to the National Weather Service, in a tornado watch. Also, in the National League park, now Griffey is back out in the field. In windy conditions and the big Colorado outfield, I can only imagine the potential for misadventures out there.
Morrow v. Marquis, whenever it starts. Update: Supposed to start at 5:50
RF-L Ichiro
1B-L Branyan
3B-R Beltre
DH-L Griffey
2B-R Lopez
SS-R Betancourt
C-R Burke
CF/LF-R Gutierrez
P-R Morrow
Condolences To The Johnsons
The Mariners placed Rob Johnson on the bereavement list today, and Larry Stone reports that it’s due to the passing of his mother in law, who died in a car accident last night. Our thoughts and prayers are with Rob and his family.
Interpretations welcome
This morning I was chewing on a question about how other teams are approaching games with the Mariners, researching on Fangraphs and I found this:
The M’s see almost as many fastballs as any team (they’re 6th, at 62.7%, the Cubs the low at 56.5%). And they see fewer changeups than any other team (their 7.6% is last… the Braves are first at 12%). Now, is that because teams think they’re so weak hitting (generally) that you just want to pound the strike zone and let them make outs?
And does this in part help explain some of Branyan’s success? So far this season, if you fed the team a diet of fastballs, only Branyan and Ichiro! wouldn’t starve for hits. I didn’t think it was likely, but when you look at what hitters have been seeing it’s hard to make sense of it. Of the regulars, here’s the fastball order, and what they do with it
Griffey, 71%, bad
Ichiro, 66%, good
Branyan, 64%, crazy good
Chavez, 63%, really bad
Gutierrez, 62%, bad
Lopez, 60%, horrible
Beltre, 59%, bad
Betancourt, 58%, bad
Johjima, 58%, bad
Balentien 55%, really bad
The minimalist pitching plan for the M’s would be “fastballs to everyone except Branyan, Ichiro” and you’d do pretty well with that right now. And I know that Ichiro and Branyan are going to see at least 55% fastballs. I don’t get it.
The only explanation I’ve come up with is that teams are regularly pursuing poor options to get those two out because they’re buying into commentator-reality where a man on means you have to throw fastballs continuously. Gutierrez at the bottom’s meant Ichiro hitting with a runner on reasonably often, and Branyan gets Ichiro. Still, this requires teams to actively decide that they’re going to pick a strategy with less likelihood of success for no good reason, and I can’t bring myself around to lean on that.
So I welcome thoughts.
Morrow to start in Bedard’s place
Limited to 60 pitches. Larry Stone:
“The main thing is, I’m going to try to be conservative with my pitches and give them the best start I can, and the most innings I can, to make it easier on the guys after me,” he said.
Five innings, he said, would be “ideal.” Combining our Cal educations, we figured out that would mean an average of 12 pitches an inning — not easy to accomplish.
Hee hee hee. I uh… I’m unreasonably excited about seeing Morrow start again. If you got tired of me cheerleading for him last season, you might want to stay away from the site that day.