Your current depth chart for the 2010 M’s they have Cliff Lee now
Pitching
SP-R Felix Hernandez
SP-L Cliff Lee. That’s not a typo. They really traded for Cliff Lee.
SP-L Ryan Rowland-Smith
SP-R Brandon Morrow
(one of:
SP-R Ian Snell
SP-R Carlos Silva
SP-R Doug Fister
SP-R Yusmeiro Petit)
RP-R David Aardsma
RP-R Mark Lowe
RP-R Shawn Kelley
RP-R Sean White
RP-L Jason Vargas
RP-L Garrett Olson
RP-L Luke French (?)
RP-R Kanekoa Texeira
It looks like Carlos Silva’s moving into the vacated Miguel Batista vastly overpaid mop-up guy. Unfortunately, the team’s still looking for a guy to call “Doc” and “Prof” now that their distinguished author is gone.
There’s also been a little talk about going with an 11-man pitching staff. I’m with Dave on this: I’ll believe it when they start the season with one.
Position players
C-R Rob Johnson
C-R Adam Moore
1B-L Mike Carp
2B-R Jose Lopez
SS-R Jack Wilson
3B-B Chone Figgins
LF-L Michael Saunders
CF-R Franklin Gutierrez
RF-L Ichiro!
DH-L Ken Griffey Jr.
UT-R Bill Hall (IF/OF-R? OF-R?)
IF-L Jack Hannahan
.. and then they’re still looking for someone else.
Now I’d like to think that right now they’re calling the agents of the ninety 1B/DH guys left on the market and trying to get someone to jump early (Nick Johnson, if you could just wander by Seattle and hang out for a week, we’ll pay for the airfare and promise you’ll like the city). But the front office is probably looking at the roster right now and thinking “We should go snag another ace starter while everyone’s still shaken up, and there’ll be bats to play off against each other when we’re back.” Or something even more surprising.
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General Managers cringe at the thought of doing business with him
My comment was tongue-in-cheek.
snowsk8,
Why are you worried about Morrow?
He’s a great upside-guy earning little cash while not being relied upon to pitch in any high-leverage role.
Doesn’t sound like a problem to me.
You’re mistaking a Win/Loss record as only achieved by the pitcher, when in fact any win he garners also has, to an extent, offensive contribution. (A pitcher cannot win a game in which his offense scores no runs.) And unless the only way to get a hitter out is via the strikeout, the pitcher is not responsbile for outs recorded in the field. Every ball in play is fielded by a defense; a good defense can inflate win totals, and a bad one can deflate same.
Think Zack Greinke. Great pitcher throwing for a meh team, but is any other pitcher on that team gonna earn wins like he did? Now put Zack Greinke in Seattle…he’s suddenly a 20+ game winner, right? Same pitcher, different team.
What we’re talking about Lee as being a “five-win” upgrade is looking at his underlying stats–how many strikes he throws, groundballs (easier to record outs than flyballs), how few walks–and saying, all things being equal (an average defense and an average offense on both teams in the field) what he as a pitcher will contribute to a team.
WAR is a stat that measures how many wins a player contributes to the teams overall total. If everyone on a major league team was a league-minimum, just out of AAA, non-superstar talent rookie, that team would win about 48 games. Lee replacing just one pitcher on that roster gives you five more wins, making a five-win upgrade, even if he wins 18 games that season.
Oh I think Morrow has huge upside… when he is on he is fantastic. When he is off he is a disaster! Bavasi screwed him up, and I hope things get better for him. I would like to see some consistent performance.
General Managers cringe at the thought of doing business with him
The serious answer to an obvious t-i-c statement gave me a good belly laugh!
Doug Fister is not an option to start. He is the last guy on the starter list who would be considered and he is probably behind Vargas and French as well. After watching Fister try to get through a lineup the second and third time particularly the second time he faced a team I would think everyone would have learned that. He just does not have the stuff to get even an average hitter out more than once on a consistent basis. He could do very well as a multiple inning middle reliever though.
You’re mistaking a Win/Loss record as only achieved by the pitcher, when in fact any win he garners also has, to an extent, offensive contribution. (A pitcher cannot win a game in which his offense scores no runs.) And unless the only way to get a hitter out is via the strikeout, the pitcher is not responsbile for outs recorded in the field. Every ball in play is fielded by a defense; a good defense can inflate win totals, and a bad one can deflate same.
Think Zack Greinke. Great pitcher throwing for a meh team, but is any other pitcher on that team gonna earn wins like he did? Now put Zack Greinke in Seattle…he’s suddenly a 20+ game winner, right? Same pitcher, different team.
What we’re talking about Lee as being a “five-win” upgrade is looking at his underlying stats–how many strikes he throws, groundballs (easier to record outs than flyballs), how few walks–and saying, all things being equal (an average defense and an average offense on both teams in the field) what he as a pitcher will contribute to a team.
WAR is a stat that measures how many wins a player contributes to the teams overall total. If everyone on a major league team was a league-minimum, just out of AAA, non-superstar talent rookie, that team would win about 48 games. Lee replacing just one pitcher on that roster gives you five more wins, making a five-win upgrade, even if he wins 18 games that season.
Fangraphs fan projections have Morrow as a 1.7 WAR pitcher right now. Dave’s posts early this off-season slotted Morrow at, I believe, 0.5 WAR (lower than Lookout Landing). What’s clear is that there’s no consensus on what Morrow’s going to be or do–he’s certainly got tons of potential, but no one’s certain about how he’s going to tap into that.
Let’s assume, for the sake of discusison, that Dave’s projection of Morrow at 0.5 WAR as a starter is the “low end” of the sample pool. I don’t have access to Fangraphs numbers, but a 1.7 WAR pitcher with someone projecting 0.5 WAR in theory has someone else projecting 2.9 WAR to balance that out.
If Morrow is looking 1.7 to the masses, and a high end nearing 3.0…why would you move him to the pen? I mean, seriously: a starter netting you near 2.0 is nothing to sneeze at.
And for what it’s worth, Morrow’s career line as a starter is a horribly small sample size (79.1 innings). Batters against posted a 111 tOPS+ versus 93 as a reliever according to Baseball Reference. But WAIT! In 2009, Morrow collected 58.1 of those 79.1 innings as a starter. His tOPS+ against? 96, which is (slightly) above average–100 being average.
I’m a self-confessed Morrow fan. He’s a pitcher I will root for when he’s playing for any other team. But laying aside that sort of blind emotional love for a player…
You know what, read this thread. There’s some good points made in response to Dave’s pessimism (and yes, I call it pessimism).
Morrow=starter in 2010. Hopefully for the Mariners.
My favorite off-season moment so far: I was having dinner with family in a fancy place. After we all sat down, I leaned forward and whispered to my baseball-loving Mom about the pending trade. Everyone in the place heard her exclaim, “The M’s are getting Cliff Lee?!!”
I know that the risk/reward is high and it could saddle us for a year longer, but a nagging thought keeps coming into my mind: Carlos Silva for Dontrelle Willis.
I am partial to “Soul Brother Clifford” if they are open to suggestions.
You have that backwards. Per Cot’s:
Willis – 2010:$12M
Silva – 2010:$11.5M, 2011:$11.5M, 2012:$12M mutual option ($2M buyout)
I apologize for being silly.
The reason why the Mariners need more offense:
2-1 leads in the 8th inning turn into losses much easier than 4-1 leads. I’m not asking for 20… but 3 or 4 would be nice.
Absolutely we need more offense. I realize we are not done yet so its all probably a moot point. Im not saying we need to lead the league in HR or anything like that, cause thats not who we are. But we definitely need to score more runs than last year. We were already pretty stellar in defense and pitching last year, and we have only improved that even more. But even if we just get into the top 10 in the AL in all the categories where we finished dead last in, i can see us doing some real special things next year.
Is there any reason Chone can’t play 2b? Would he be better defensively than Lopez?
What would be better; Carp at 1st, Lopez at 2nd and Chone at 3rd or Lopez at 1st, Chone at 2nd and Tui at 3b?
I’ll take option #3 please.
The M’s can do far better then Carp or Tuiasosopo with the ~$10M and trade chips they have.
Despite the new found playoff excitement (TM), I’d still hope there are fresh new faces from the M’s farm working their way into the line-up over the course of 2010. (Tuiasosopo, Saunders, Carp)
I’d much rather sacrifice a win or two towards that portion of the cycle of life than see 250 PA’s of Old Man Griffey forgetting how to hit.