Garko Waived
Jon Morosi reports that the M’s have placed Ryan Garko on waivers, finalizing the speculation over the last week that Mike Sweeney took his roster spot. Garko had an option left, so that the M’s put him on waivers tells you just how little they want to keep him around. He didn’t impress anyone in Peoria, and this is the M’s just letting him go.
I’m not a fan of making roster choices based on March, but I already ranted about this last week, so I’ll leave it at that.
Update: It turns out we were all wrong assuming the M’s could just option Garko to Tacoma. I’ve been told that there’s a rule that requires any player to pass through waivers before he can be optioned after the 3 year anniversary of his major league debut. Since Garko debuted on September 18, 2005, he fits the criteria. Even though he has an option left, the M’s were still required to put him on waivers before they could send him down.
If he clears waivers, they then have a choice. They can option him (he’d stay on the 40 man) or they can outright him, which would remove him from the 40 man.
Players who have been outrighted before have the right to refuse and become a free agent. This doesn’t apply to Garko, since he has not yet been outrighted, but that would be the scenario where a team would choose to option a player rather than outright him.
In this case, the M’s will almost certainly outright Garko to Tacoma if he clears. Or they may just release him. We’ll see.
One other note – the waivers that players with an option have to go on are not normal waivers. They’re revocable, so theoretically, the M’s could pull Garko back if some team claims him. That won’t happen, but it does make it less likely that he gets claimed. Teams are more wary of claiming someone they might not end up with.
USSMariner is really the radical fringe of sabermetrics. Obviously, knowing what we, anonymous internet users, know, the decision to roster Sweeney instead of Garko is stupid. But I literally cannot believe that anyone is arguing that, in general, four to five weeks of daily scouting is not enough time to learn new information and make informed decisions about players. As someone has already pointed out, every team in baseball makes multi-million dollar decisions every year on less scouting than that (amateur draft), and some of you refuse to admit that a 500K decision based on a month of scouting might possibly be a good one, or that there might be things that talent evaluators could learn in a month that would justify Garko’s expulsion? That is extremely radical, and not in a good way.
Of course, we don’t know that they made this decision based on some revelation of spring scouting, and as I hinted earlier, with the information available to you and me, we’re fully justified in criticizing the move, but I think the best response to “maybe the scouts saw something” is “maybe so, but from where I’m sitting this looks mighty stupid,” not “you can’t discern anything valuable from a full month of scouting.”
I think the biggest problem with taking a no-glove guy like Sweeney is that we already have a platoon DH. We have Griffey and Bradley. Frankly, I would take Bradley over Sweeney. I loved Ryan Garko for the month he was a Mariner, but I’m willing to admit he might not be the best option for this team. I love Sweeney too, but I definitely know he is not the best option.
Running Griffey as the DH against righties with Milton Bradley playing left field, and Bradley DH’ing against lefties with Eric Byrnes in the field seems a far better choice than having Sweeney DH against lefties. With Bradley/Byrnes, we get better fielding and better hitting.
I’m not really sure who should get this roster spot, but I don’t think it should be Sweeney.
I get the sense that this is more about Kotchman’s ability to be an everyday first baseman as much as it is anything else.
Obviously the club feels that Kotchman’s defensive ability is strong enough to warrant him playing every day at first base regardless of who the opposing pitcher is.
That being said it comes down to whether they feel Garko’s bat is better than Sweeney’s which apparently they like Sweeney more.
Just my opinion but I get the sense that this whole thing has more to do with Kotchman.
It is a small sample size. From August to now is about 130 at-bats. This is close to a month’s worth for an everyday player. If a player’s three year history says he is a good player, you wouldn’t judge him too harshly if he had a bad month. Conversely, one good month for Mike Sweeney doesn’t erase the last few years of evidence that says he a replacement level bat.
“Radical fringe”? Seriously?
We signed Garko at the end of January for $550,000 when the common wisdom had him worth more than that. Now Garko had free will in this but I look at it as 29 other teams had a chance to sign him way before that and didn’t. Jack could’ve saved his money and opened up his spot on the roster by selling him or trading him for a non-roster nobody but apparently 29 other teams said, “No thanks.” It’s not just the M’s that have evaluated Garko and found him perhaps wanting in some aspect of the game.
If that’s true, that just means the rest of the world is even more wrong than I’d thought.
In reply to: ?Paul B on March 30th, 2010 4:29 pm
“Something to keep in mind. A GM can put together a great roster in the winter, but it is all moot if it does not fit the manager’s style.”
Wak has input, but the team is ran by Jack Z .
And for the people who are hung up on “chemistry” and “belief system”…what would you rather do; spend a day enjoying your hobby with your (wife/children/best friend) or spending it at the dentist getting a root canal?
If you want to whine about everything, go to the Cubs board, you’ll fit right in.
Sweeney is a career 300 hitter. I’ll take it.
In that case, let’s sign Edgar. He’s a better hitter.
For that matter, Ted Williams and Babe Ruth would be even BETTER hitters.
Oh, what’s that, you mean there might be some more information that’s relevant to how good a hitter someone is today than their career batting average? Well, whod’a thunk that?
Let me play Devil’s Advocate here. I know we’re talking small sample sizes, but bear with me.
After being traded to SF last season, he hit .235 with 2 HRs in 115 ABs. Both those HRs came in the same game. This year, Garko hit .220 in the spring with 1 HR.
Maybe we can say the guy just had problems adjusting to his new environment. This is not unusual among MLB players. But in sum, we’re looking at a 29 year old who had an atrocious second half last year, had an atrocious spring training offensively, and totally sucked with his glove (when defense was a huge part of why he even GOT an audition with the club).
Yes, he DID hit 21 HRs over 541 PAs in 2007. But his OPS was 90ish points lower in ’08 and ’09, and he was a .6 and 1.0 WAR player in those years. He was -.4 WAR with SF.
Why are we so enamored with Garko again? Sabremetrically, are we assuming he’s going to revert to 2007 form because he’s “only” 29? Projections aren’t always right. I can easily see how the FO could have seen his spring training, had visions of Carl Everett, and gone with hot-hitting Hugs instead. This is Ryan Garko we’re talking about, not David Ortiz. Garko has touched +1 WAR just once in his career, he doesn’t get much benefit of the doubt here.
Obviously the club feels that Kotchman’s defensive ability is strong enough to warrant him playing every day at first base regardless of who the opposing pitcher is.
I’m not fully convinced Kotchman is that much better than Mike Carp- the defense is good for half a win, but the record so far on his offense makes him into a younger version of Eric Hinske (or, alternately, an older version of Mike Carp with a better glove and maybe a bit less bat). You basically have to do the “maybe he blows up like Carlos Pena and Carlos Guillen did at 27” handwave to make him go into the 2.5ish WAR realm.
Garko would have been great if he was used in a judicious manner (i.e. versus left-handed pitchers). Even with his slumps the past two years, he’s always destroyed lefties. Of course to take advantage of Garko’s abilities, Wak would have had to play him mostly against lefties. If Wak wasn’t going to do that, I guess Sweeney is just as useless as Garko would have been.
Disclaimer: This post is my attempt to justify the Garko/Sweeney decision.
It looks to me like Garko became expendable once the Mariners decided to start Kotchman at 1B every day.
1) Garko’s strength was the ability to hit left handed pitching. I suspect that the M’s suspected that Garko was poor defensive 1B when the M’s signed Garko. The evidence that the M’s saw during Spring Training confirmed their prior suspicion. Thus, Garko looks like a DH only type player that mashes LHP.
2) Byrnes’s strenght is the ability to hit left handed pitching and the ability to play good defense in the OF. Hopefully, Byrnes will play every day against LHP. Thus, Bradley will need to DH against LHP. The M’s did not have a use for LHP mashing DH only type (ie., Garko), because Bradley will play that role.
3) I understand that Sweeney has not shown a platoon disadvantage when hitting against RHP. Thus, the M’s may be planning to have Sweeney and Griffey DH against RHP, while having Bradley DH against LHP. I agree that this looks like having one too many players that only DH against RHP. However, it is probably better than having Griffey and Garko DH only against RHP.
Final thought: would it be better to have an additional LF or utility infielder? I would have thought yes. But on the margin, I doubt that the additional LF (Langerhans) or the additional utility infielder (Josh Wilson, Woodward, or trade) would have been a substantial improvement over Sweeney.
Coincidentally, Tango just posted about the benefits of scouting in situations where the sample of data is inadequately small, and he quotes Jack Z to set up his point.
Instead of the “radical fringe”, can we call ourselves the “lunatic fringe”? It sounds so much cooler.
If a player is gameday-healthy, five weeks of drills, ABs, and games should give anyone an idea of how someone can perform. Especially with the intimacy that spring training has over the regular season. But it can’t be wholly relied on, and mistakes can/will happen.
Hand up over here for “lunatic fringe”
Don’t use BA to evaluate hitters. And, players age.
Yes, this isn’t just a Sweeney versus Garko thing. Having Sweeney on the team means that Bradley will not be platooning at DH. It means, at least until Bradley or Griffey or Sweeney get hurt, Bradley will be playing in LF every day and won’t be getting any partial rest days at DH.
.
Wow.
What are you trying to say?
If you like the best of both worlds, consider the “lunical fringe.” Sounds mysterious and all-statsy-like.
For my money, Sweeney fits at DH better than Junior, but that argument would fly much better in, oh, any other city, anywhere.
Haven’t had a chance to watch games the past few days. Is Sweeney at least taking the field and logging some innings at 1B?
+1 for “Lunatic Fringe”… First concert I ever went to: Red Rider and Pat Benatar at Hec Ed Pavillion (wow, that sounds not so cool anymore *laugh*)
Another Devil’s Advocate point of view– the difference between a guy like Ichiro and a guy like Garko is that Ichiro WASN’T competing for a job, or roster spot. In those instances (competing for a spot) you tend to think the player is accountable for the performance he puts up.
You would first look at that small set of data, see what sort of results they provide, and if they seem to be out of the norm, THEN use other data to make baseball decisions.
No matter how adverse you are to using small data sets, when it comes to defining a 25 man roster with more than 25 players, you have to use SOME sort of criteria, and sometimes you have to decide between two equally qualified people and set one free (to half of the fans’- or more even- disappointment).
It’s been standard practice the past two years to use even less data with pitchers (as they take the field for fewer innings) and decide which of our younger guys make the opening day roster, or fill the 3-5 rotation spots. Is it ideal– no, of course not. But you still make those decisions, and I don’t think anyone would argue that a guy who pitches 12 innings giving up 2 runs while striking out 10 (making up numbers) seems like a better choice than a guy who pitches 18 innings, giving up 12 runs, walking 5, with 1 strikeout.
Yes, in year’s past, spring didn’t mean anything to the Mariner’s, but I think Z is different about spring. He wants competition at every position (that’s why he signed more folks for roster spots than were available, rather than just fill the empty holes with minor leaguers, like years past). And if you set a precedent of promoting competition, but not having it actually matter in the end– you’ve just shot yourself in the foot for the future. Why should players show up in shape, or take it seriously. A winning team uses spring training to fine tune, and if promoting competition at every position helps in that regards– small set, or not, the team benefits.
Or am I way off? (Still learning here… Novice hardcore baseball fan.)
If we’re really the “lunatic fringe”, your hand would be up… holding a rubber chicken dressed in a pink tutu.
Wouldn’t our hand be way off to the side, barely visible?
For my money, Sweeney fits at DH better than Junior
This is kind of like saying surgery with a butter knife is better than surgery with a chainsaw. The reality is they are both pretty horrible options as DHs, in that they don’t actually “hit” enough to deserve starting jobs any more.
Essentially, the Mariners have decided to hand 1/9th of the offense over to two players who you’d project as ~0 WAR players (and have performed at that level for an extended period of time, and did so in 2009), in the name of clubhouse chemistry, loyalty (in Griffey’s case, organizational loyalty, in Sweeney’s case, Wakamatsu clearly likes him, and specifically requested him to be signed in 2009), and intangibles.
C’est la guerre. Let’s hope we won’t be ruing this come September.
Or I would be dressed in a pink tutu …
Whatever kind of a year Garko has this year, it will be for the Rangers, (at least for now.) Claimed and signed by them this afternoon.