M’s Sign Jack Wilson
Dave · November 13, 2009 at 1:41 pm · Filed Under Mariners
To the surprise of no one, the M’s announced that they have signed Jack Wilson to a two year contract. Terms not disclosed, but I’d guess it’s around $10 million or so.
Wilson is a +1 to +2 win player who derives almost all of his value from his glove. For ~$5 million per season, that’s not a bad deal. He’ll help fill a hole for a couple of years. He’s not a star, but he’s a nice enough role player, and he didn’t cost a lot. There’s value in that.
Update: Dejan Kovacevic suggets that I’m a good guesser.
It’s pretty obvious that Jack Z said yes to those three things when he traded for Wilson. He gave up too much for him not to have planned signing him to an extension, which is why I never understood the endless speculation about trades for other shortstops. After the trade, Wilson was always Jack Z’s guy for the next couple of years at the position.
The M’s have much bigger holes to plug than SS which is why Z’s trade pieces have been held in reserve for more pressing needs.
You continue to confuse an opinion about what should happen with some kind of lack of understanding about what would happen.
We were all well aware that this was inevitable. We all knew this was going to happen. You’re not saying anything that everyone doesn’t already know.
The posts about Hardy were an alternative suggestion to the inevitable. You know, like the ones where we’d suggest Bavasi make smart trades.
OK, maybe it’s just the lingering hangover from the Bavasi era, but I always feared this wasn’t inevitable.
My fear was that one of the recurring stories from spring training would be, ‘who’s going to play shortstop?’
So color me very excited about this.
My post wasn’t directed at you, Dave. I do think there are commenters here who didn’t see this as inevitable which was the reason for endless speculation in thread after thread about trades for Hardy and other shortstops that weren’t realistically going to happen. Jack Z didn’t give up five players, including Jeff Clement, for Wilson to be a two month rent-a-shortstop.
Well, as you say there’s lots of reason to be excited. It’s not as if Bavasi said “I want Marco Scutaro, damn the years, damn the money, and damn our unprotected first round pick to Toronto!”. That’s the kind of thing that’s gone now. If we’re going to have “inevitabilities”, it might as well be non-shitty ones.
Then again, now I’m wondering about Felix…
And what if he did? What if we did trade for JJ Hardy? Or Reid Birgnac? Or Jose Reyes?
What you have to understand is that with Jack Zduriencik, maybe even the inevitable isn’t inevitable. If there was a better option out there, and he could have gotten it, he would have sure tried to.
One thing about the new M’s under Jack Z… nothing is inevitable. It was not inevitable that the M’s would sign Jack Wilson to an extension. Likely, yes. Inevitable, hardly. Jack Z was certainly looking at all available options (Hardy, Breignac, Hannahan even), and when nothing materialized he went with what he had in his back pocket.
Similarly, while it’s pretty clear he wants to sign Russell Branyan, and he probably will, he’ll ask about Thome and Nick Johnson and probably even explore interesting trades (Adam Dunn?), and I’m sure many others. And in the end, he’ll sign Branyan, and maybe one other guy, and we’ll all pretend like it was inevitable, but it’s not. We finally have a guy in the FO who isn’t tunnel-visioned. We shouldn’t be, either.
TIF and I agree.
He already gave up one the M’s top prospects in Clement to get Wilson which makes it unlikely he would’ve given up more trade pieces to fill the same position just a couple of months later. I’m not saying he wouldn’t consider obtaining Hardy, Birgnac, or Reyes if the price was right, but the SS position was probably way down his list of priorities. He wasn’t going to use his limited resources to fill a position that, for all intents and purposes, he had already just filled.
As are we all. But if he doesn’t sign, I seriously doubt that it’s because of Z.
I do find it slightly alarming that even “the paycheck” was unable to get him inked.(though that may have been from upper
mis-management) That makes me think more and more that nothing is going to keep him from testing the market in 2 years. (please let me be wrong)You’re forgetting he got Ian Snell in the same trade. What did we give up to get Snell and Wilson?
A failed catching prospect whose best future outcome was a barely league average first baseman / DH.
A replacement level shortstop.
Three low minors arms, only one of which with a realistic shot at making a rotation.
You’re acting as if this was the Bedard-esque trade where we were stuck with our babydicks* in the wall socket. This was an easily replaced set of losses. Would it have meant we’d have lost out a bit if we didn’t retain Wilson? Sure. But it wasn’t crippling to begin with, so it would have been easy to move on to a better player if it came available.
Look at it this way, the probability was high that Wilson would be retained with an extension. However, before Zduriencik was sure that there was nothing better (or cheap enough), I’d say that probability was resting at about 90%. Once the other possibilities were eliminated, it became 99% (with 1% being not getting a deal done).
So, yes, it was ‘inevitable’, because the likelihood of anything else happening was low.
Oh yeah, the *. The * is “Thanks, Field Gulls!”.
You’re right Dave. I am sorry for the hyperbole. I guess I expected a little more enthusiasm. I’ve reread your post and subsequent comments and I see where you are coming from. Again, sorry for the mischaracterization.
I think it’s a great move and not the last for the M’s infield. Wilson will not almost certainly regress imho. He could just as easily put up a career yr. The next moves are going to be exciting. I think J. Lopez is going to be moved to 1st base/3rd base or DH or another team. Current positions for potential transactions are 1st, 3rd and 2nd base plus DH along with experienced starting pitching. The Phillies just non tendered P Feliz and I think he’s got to be given a strong look for 3rd base his defense is a perfect fit for the M’s
AFAIK there’s no real evidence he was trying to do anything with Felix, or that the upper reaches of the organization had strong opinions either way. Bavasi tended to undervalue young prospects anyway (just look at the Bedard trade or anything he did with Cleveland or, well, anything) so I doubt he felt much of an imperative to do anything with him, especially with several years left on Felix’ clock and all the other problems he’d created for himself. And to be fair, Felix a couple of years ago was still much more of a work in progress: flashes of brilliance and plenty of promise, but also frustratingly inconsistent. How many posts have we had here over the past few seasons complaining that Felix wasn’t living up to his “King” billing and wondering when, if ever, he was going to “put it together”? (I don’t like to put too much emphasis on a single event because real life is rarely as simple as the “feel-good movie” narrative we tend to impose on it, but doesn’t Felix seem like night and day since that interview when Wakamatsu called him out?)
Felix in the Bavasi era was a different player — both in terms of performance, and in terms of his service-time clock — so I wouldn’t use those years to draw conclusions about today. That would’ve been the time to sign him cheap, yes, and it’s easy to say that now (and Dave and DMZ were saying it then); and a better GM who valued players (especially non-“veteran” players) correctly would’ve done so. But if Felix is different so is the team, and so especially is the GM. The past is just the past and, in this respect, isn’t a guide to anything.
Hey, isn’t Rich Aurilia available?
“Inevitable” was Dave’s word, not mine. I agree that it was always highly probable, not necessarily inevitable, that Wilson was going to be extended.
Whatever you think about the players that Jack Z gave up to obtain Wilson and Snell, the fact remains that he has limited resources to improve the team which made SS a much lower priority once he acquired Wilson. Upgrading LF, 3B, DH, and the starting rotation are all much more critical to the future success of the M’s than replacing a +2 WAR shortstop, so why spend even more of his limited resources on the position? That’s why I doubt he ever made any serious attempt to go after Hardy or any of the other names mentioned at SS. I could be wrong, of course.
Wouldn’t it have been better to find a guy with some potential for the league minimum who can hit .250 with a great glove. Are those guys hard to find?
Wilson’s BA last year WAS .255…and he has one of the great gloves in the major leagues.
His BABIP (.281, I think) was .13 lower than his career average…it may well be 13 points higher next year.
Here’s a guy that saves a ton of runs AND comes relatively cheap. (around $3M/WAR).
That’s a bargain. And a good one.
Plus…it frees the M’s to fill their LF/3B/DH holes. I think a lot depends on the Tuiasosopo factor. If the M’s feel he’s ready now…and can handle the glove work at 2nd or 3rd….then they just chase 2 positions. I keep thinking Lopez will go. But perhaps not. He was a plus UZR guy last year (barely) and can play 2nd, 1st and (supposedly ) 3rd. Versatility will be important in the wake of the Jr. signing. It’s one reason I keep wondering if Branyan is the DH? If he can only play 1st (didn’t play 3rd last year..Would his back handle it? Hasn’t played the OF in at least two seasons) he isn’t very versatile…and he’s fragile. I suspect that the real Branyan is somewhere betwen his first half and his second half. Not a great two year $10M investment. 1/$6M makes better sense. So does making another signing.
Somebody mentioned Pedro Feliz as a 3B possibility. With the bat he would be essentially Beltre of last year and his once incredible defense has slipped a bunch the last two seasons in Philly (Age? A surface difference between Philly and SF?). He’s just a few runs in the UZR plus column.
Beltre without the glove isn’t much..That’s what Feliz brings to the table. Tui will be that good..without the investment.
Keith
Other pieces are available for LF, 3B
LF: gamble on Saunders/Langerhans (if on the team) [Preston Wilson still around?)
3B: gamble on Tui/Hall/Hannahan (Hannahan’s my sleepr choice for a good year)
but DH?
Honestly, Carp isn’t destroying the minors, which is what most successful MLB players do.
And we all know Griffey inhabits an old body.
Branyan could be the DH.
So, yeah, Nick Johnson, Delgado, somebody from outside the org is going to HAVE to fill this role.
Is Shelton still around?
I think he and Jeff Cirillo are busy getting together bail/rehab/tatoo money for Speizio.
While I’d agree that signing Jack Wilson makes sense based on an assessment of his likely contribution, we should also understand that there is considerable downside here. Hitters moving from the NL to the AL often see their hitting deteriorate significantly, and I’m concerned that Jack could end up in this category. So in addition to age-related decline, I think we have to factor in potential deterioration relating to NL->AL movement. Add that to the possibility of significant time lost due to injury, and there would seem to be a signficant probability that this deal won’t appear as “adequate” in two years.
Since people here seem to somewhat agree that Truinfel will 1. probably be in the majors in 2-3 years, and 2. not play ss, my question is, why do the minor league clubs give guys years of experience at positions they know they won’t play instead of positions they will play? Didn’t the same thing happen with Tui? When I saw him at second and third he looked like he wasn’t sure what was going on, or is that just his normal defensive look?
Oh, and I like signing Jack Wilson at ss. We weren’t going to get someone with great glove and bat at that position, and if we’re looking for hitting, there are easiler positions to find it at.
All of the factors that you mention are figured into the projections. It’s just that the projections are really a midpoint on a statistical range, not really a fixed number. However, if management makes a reasonable contract for someone who projects to a certain number of wins, and he doesn’t produce or is injured, then it’s wrong to criticize the move with 20:20 hindsight. It’s when you pay someone like Sexson or Silva more than even an optimistic view of their projected wins that you get in trouble. Or when you improperly discount a value like defense or give too much credit to a value like avoiding strikeouts.
Exhibit A for this, as Dave will tell you anytime you want (and the person second most likely to make the same argument is our current GM) is Mike Cameron. Great defense, lots of strikeouts. And his teams always get better when he arrives and get worse when he leaves. This is not random coincidence.
So is Jack Wilson “the answer” at shortstop? No. But he won’t be the reason the M’s don’t win the pennant in 2010 or 2011 either.
Wins are wins. Whether you get them at short, center, left, right, third, second, first, catcher, pitching, or the designated hitter. If we could have gotten a ~4 WAR short stop, it would have been two more wins we didn’t have before.
You’re getting stuck in the mindset that we must only fill the positions where we have obvious holes. If Chase Utley comes available tomorrow for peanuts, you’d better believe we’ll dump our 2 WAR second baseman for him.
Hannahan seems to be the most ideal fit for the bench, given his versatility. Hall has similar versatility, but he painfully underachieved offensively and was maybe average defensively in his month and a half with the M’s. Perhaps that could be attributed to the AL/NL switch, but he just seemed lazy and unmotivated to me. Hannahan can play 3B, SS, and 1B, so he seems to me to be the perfect IF utility man for next season.
As far as the outfield is concerned, I’d love to see the M’s pick up Mike Cameron and have the best defensive outfield in the history of the solar system. With Ackley, Halman, and Gillies on the horizon, it seems that a one to two year fill-in is all that’s needed, and Cameron could do that well, albeit a bit on the pricey side. He could also serve as a good mentor to Saunders, and provide an extra spark to a clubhouse that really seems to put a bonus on hugs and smiles.
That leaves openings at 1B and 3B (assuming Branyan will serve best as a DH, which I believe). Someone somewhere tossed out Joe Crede’s name, and that got my attention. His defense is superb and his offense is about average or slightly below. His back problems could be helped significantly by a platoon situation with Hannahan. The thought of Wilson and Crede holding up one side of the infield gives me little happy feelings all over.
Finally, for a 1B/DH option, of all the FA’s out there, I like Nick Johnson first and Adam LaRoche second. Both have good OPSs, hit for good average, are decent defensively–and the big plus, they both bat left-handed, which means that likely, Safeco will smile upon them. The negatives for them probably aren’t too bad, given how they would be used respectively. Johnson has injury issues, which could be assuaged with a platoon situation. And LaRoche strikes out a lot. That’s the biggest concern, given that I don’t know if I would want two 130-150 K guys in the lineup at the same time.
Anyways, these are just the musings of a campus security officer between patrols. Tear it apart as you wish…
Because every other guy on their roster would be even worse at that position? You play the best guys you have, but you’ve got to play somebody.
Last season when it was rumored that the Mariners were hot after an OF with great glove and potential I speculated that it might be David DeJesus. It was Guti, of course. But now let me speculate that DeJesus brings a skill set that might make for a very nice LF for the M’s.
He hits from the appropriate side, is a plus glove guy, is durable and consistently puts up 2.7-4.0 WAR’s…oh, he comes cheap! For two years (’11 is an option year, I think), he’s a bit LESS costly that Jack Wilson was.
So…as a purely speculative exercise, what would it take to pull a DeJesus from KC? I’m assumingthat prospects might do the job for a building (eternally) Royal team. Who might the M’s be willing to part with…and conversely, the Royals be wiling to take….for a guy worth 6 to 7 wins cheap over the next two years?
Keith
Keith
I think teams are generally reluctant to slide players on the fielding spectrum (1B – LF – RF – 3B – CF – 2B – SS – C) from positions of defensive difficulty to easier defensive positions. It is very difficult to move a player to the right during any phase of his career than to move him left.
The strategy to keeping a guy like Truinfel at SS involves multiple factors. I think the idea is to maintain flexibility from an organizational standpoint.
He’s only 19 years old. If he can cut it at all as a ML SS, he’s much more valuable than a 3B. Teams tend to give prospects like this every opportunity to succeed in the minors. If it turns out that he can cut it at SS, that would be huge. A team might also be able to better maintain a prospect’s trade value if they hold him at a position on the right side of the defensive spectrum. Since finding a SS who can hit and field well is a relative scarcity in baseball, it makes sense to give the kid every chance to stick there. I don’t think a shift from SS to 3B, or even 2B is considered a major change. Since he is still probably a couple of years away, it makes sense to keep him at SS for the time being.
One example that comes to mind is the hit that Jeff Clement’s value took as he shifted from a can’t miss catcher prospect to a likely 1B/DH. The more the M’s played Clement at 1B/DH, I imagine other team’s perceptions changed dramatically.
Pondering hypothetical Dayton Moore trades can lead to irreversible brain damage or, in extremely rare cases, epileptic fits of Posnaski satire. Risking the former is not worth the latter in my opinion, but that’s just me.