A’s Pursuing Figgins
An interesting rumor has popped up this morning, as Joe Stiglich of the Contra Costa Times is reporting that the A’s are trying to swap Kevin Kouzmanoff for Chone Figgins. Ken Rosenthal has since confirmed the report, and he’s the most reliable guy in the business on this front. So, there’s almost certainly something to this.
If the M’s have a chance to unload Figgins’ contract, they have to do it. I wrote about why they should trade Figgins back in August. Circumstances have changed since they signed him last winter, and at this point, he’s unlikely to still be a positive asset by the time the Mariners are ready to challenge for the AL West title again. Unless the A’s are asking the M’s to pick up significant amounts of money, the answer to any deal where the M’s get to dump the rest of his contract should be yes.
Beyond just dumping Figgins, though, Kouzmanoff actually would be a decently valuable piece to get back in return. By UZR, he’s an above average defender at third, rating out at +6.1 runs per 150 games over his career. He’s not Adrian Beltre, but he can play a pretty solid third base. Offensively, he’s actually kind of similar to Jose Lopez (commence cringing… now) in that he doesn’t walk much, has slightly above average power, and has played his entire career in home parks that have been disastrous for him. Kouzmanoff’s overall numbers don’t look great, but his home/road splits are pretty telling: .242/.288/.386 at home, .273/.315/.461 on the road. While he won’t get much of a boost while playing in Safeco, we at least don’t have to adjust his numbers down, as we do with most right-handed bats. We already know about how well he’ll hit in ridiculous pitcher’s parks, since he’s done it his whole career.
It’s not the kind of package the M’s should be signing up for long term, but as a one year stop gap while they figure out what they have in Ackley, Pineda, and Smoak, he can keep the position from being a black hole. Odds are he won’t be worth his arbitration raise next winter (he’s making $4.75 million in 2011), but the team would be able to non-tender him and walk away at that point.
Kouzmanoff for Figgins? Yes, please.
Update: Buster Olney adds on Twitter that this could be a three team deal involving the Blue Jays. Just speculating, but I’d guess that Kouzmanoff would end up in Toronto (which would allow them to keep Jose Bautista in the outfield), with the M’s getting something from the Blue Jays in return. The Jays do have pitching depth, so perhaps the Mariners could end up with another arm for the back-end of the rotation. This would leave a hole at third base, but they could sign a guy like Willy Aybar to share time with Matt Mangini as a low-cost option that would allow them to give another young kid a look. We’ll have to see what plays out.
Given the As acquisition of outfielders David DeJesus and Josh Willingham, Chris Carter might be available. Based on my observation of Carter during the PCL playoffs against the Rainiers at Safeco, it’s worth a thought. His 2011 Bill James projection is 251/330/460 (see http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=9911&position=OF)
In contrast, Saunders projection is 242/315/388:
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=9981&position=OF
It’s also worth noting that Saunders is a considerably better fielder than Carter. Saunder’s WAR projection is 1.6 when fielding is taken into account (+5), Carter is only 0.6 (-5).
wRC+ by Month
Mar/Apr 78
May 75
Jun 104
Jul 78
Aug 78
Sept/Oct 114
I keep seeing this argument, but if you break it down by month instead it tells a different story. At multiple points in the season people thought he was finally turning the corner and hitting like it was supposed to, but it didn’t last.
If this deal is out there, the M’s have to make it. The M’s lack power and Figgins will be playing third, a traditional source of power. With no power at short or right, moderate at best in CF and Ackley an unknown power source at 2nd, left up in the air, dont you have to free yourself of his contract to give you some flexibiliy with payroll in 2012 and 2013?
Kouzmanoff is not the long term solution but he is a major league caliber hitter and has a great glove. Even in a rebuilding year we do need some level of major league proven hitting so I hope we get him back in this deal along with getting rid of all of Figgins contract. To me this sets us up better for putting together a better 2012/2013 club.
I know it’s an attractive thought to have Figgins’ salary off the books… And I don’t see any reason to pay Figgy that for a team that is likely not going to contend for the next couple years.
But what about this year’s draft and Anthony Rendon? He’s an outstanding player AND a third baseman. I know it’s somewhat unlikely for him to slip past Pittsburgh and someone like Gerrit Cole would still be awesome,but I just wonder if Rendon factors into this thought process at all or if it’s just money.
Either way I’m good though
Ok, I have seen a lot of people writing all over that we need Kouzmanoff’s bat. Lets all remember, he is Jose Lopez. Carbon copy of Jose Lopez! Lopey=Kouz One and the same. I get the argument that trading Figgins is about the contract not the player, but I still think Figgins offers more than Lopez did and we shouldn’t sell low on Figgins.
There hasn’t been much interest around the league in Figgins. I think the best you can hope for is a repeat of the second half of last yeat and team’s have shown they are not that interested in that player. I agree Kouzmanoff is not the answer, but his production overall will equal Figgins and his glove surpasses his. And we are not obligated to him for 2-3 more years. If a better solution comes through the draft or elsewhere to solve third base, Kouzmanoff doesnt get in the way, he will just be non-tendered. Figgins though would still be commanding a big salary.
Figgins does have a big contract, but since it is not my money, my only concern with this, or any other possible trade, is a simple question or two: Will the Mariners be better after the trade? Will they win more games this year because they made this trade ?
Yes because they will use the money saved to improve elsewhere. The Mariners do not have an infinite supply of money! They just don’t! Accept it!
Heading over to Fanfest now to get in line. See you all at the ballpark! Hopefully I’ll be first in line!
The fact that a third team is being talked about tells me that the A’s want this to happen more than the M’s (ie, the A’s want Figgins, but couldn’t convince the M’s to take anyone they were offering– enter a 3rd team). At least, I’m hoping, ’cause Kouz just doesn’t perk my interest all that much, even short term. So if indeed Toronto is in, and wants Kouz (which makes more sense), then this trade gets much more interesting.
This also fits with the way Z yesterday was keeping his cards close to the chest, and didn’t mention the possible trade but instead responded by saying “We envision starting the spring with Chone Figgins as our 3rd basemen.” This to me was him saying “We’re not sold on this A’s deal yet.”
This also fits with him continually saying that any move they make will be to make this team better. He may feel a bounceback year will make more sense for moving Chone at the All-Star break.
Should be interesting.
That approach would be embracing the rebuilding spirit, that’s for sure. An even lower cost option would be not signing Aybar and giving Tui time at 3B. Alex Liddi is another guy who could, depending on how he does in AAA, see some time at 3B. Kyle Seager is also a remote possibility later in the year.
Willy Aybar. Thats what this franchise has come to. How is Aybar any different than Figgins, other than the cheap salary? And Kouzmanoff .. okay, not a bad David Bell type, but … is he in any danger what so ever of being a championship-quality guy? At best, a solid citizen with some occasional power and occasional OBA. Guess what, we could have just left Figgins at third and he would have been a better lead off man… oh, wait, we already have a leadoff man, and Figgins couldn’t hit 2nd for some reason.
By the way, anyone remember 10 years ago, we won a bunch of games I think.
What is our future now? Endlessly hoping our one or two minor leaguers don’t completely suck, and we get a few seasons from them til they get traded? Is Ackley going to save the franchise by himself? When will the minors produce actual talent like Tampa or Philadelphia or St. Louis minor league systems do? Felix, thats it relaly. A one off lucky shot by a guy scouting way off the grid. Great shot, but … we need a lot more like him or we’re going nowhere forever.
Resume your fascinating discussion about Keith Kouzmanoff or some Toronto prospects.
I don’t think Mangini’s going to be very good. Jose Lopez was hitting like that in AAA at age 21 (except striking out a lot less)… and, well, we just washed our hands of him.
So to me it boils down to a) what do we get back, and b) what’s your plan for 3B? An Aybar/Mangini platoon is basically punting 3B and going for two replacement-value players. Figgins at least has a decent chance at being a 2-3 WAR player at 3B, and the plan for 2011 isn’t “we don’t care if we lose 100 games as long as we look at kids”, it’s “let’s look at kids without having a terrible team that destroys the value of our franchise and instills a culture of losing like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Florida, KC and so on” (KC plays lots of kids… and has been a terrible franchise for decades)- so you have to consider the 2011 team as well as the future.
Has anyone seen the news about Bedard? He has been throwing from about 100 ft on flat ground.
Obviously no news that includes Bedard is good news unless it is the fact that he is still pitching in July. We will see.
effing Bedard. Bradley. Figgins.
its like an all star team of brooding underachievers.
Yeah, I hate pitchers who give the team a 3.55 FIP (2.82 ERA) while pitching through a shoulder injury, and then give up a guaranteed major league deal in favor of a non-guaranteed contract because they feel bad that they haven’t performed up to expectations yet.
Screw that dude.
I don’t why you’d include Florida in that list. They’ve won two World Series in their short history and have finished over .500 in five of the last eight years. They’ve also won 76 or more games in 10 of the last 11 years (and 71 in the other).
Baltimore and Pittsburgh haven’t had a .500 season in 13 and 18 years, respectively. Kansas City has had one .500 season in 17 years. Florida has had more winning seasons since 2008 than Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City have had this century combined .
“KC plays lots of kids… and has been a terrible franchise for decades”
Well, the 2009 and 2010 Kansas City Royals rosters provide plenty of evidence to contradict that statement.
Unless you consider the likes of Jose Guillen, Rick Ankiel, Gil Meche(injured for most of the season, but still…), Jason Kendall, and Yuniesky Betancourt “kids”.
I suppose they had a few young players like Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, and Luke Hochevar–and generally speaking, those are the players viewed as having the most potential to turn the Royals’ hopes around, whereas the veterans I listed above were generally viewed with disdain by Royals’ fans for contributing little to nothing of value the past few seasons.
An even lower cost option would be not signing Aybar and giving Tui time at 3B.
I’m at a loss to what Matt Tuiasosopo needs to do to convince you people he has no business in a major league uniform. Strike out 50% of the time?
If we trade Figgins for not-a-3B and decide to go internal, Mangini would be a better choice, insofar as his chances of being a useful major league player are infinitesimal, as opposed to non-existent. I imagine many utility players and AAAA types in other organizations who are extemely likely to outperform Tuiasosopo could be had for virtually nothing, though.
How is Aybar any different than Figgins, other than the cheap salary?
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
More seriously: he’s different in that he is a significantly worse hitter and fielder than Figgins. The cheap salary is kind of the point–the idea is to have money to spend on more valuable things than Figgins in his mid-30’s when the team in (hopefully) in a position to contend.
Obviously no news that includes Bedard is good news unless it is the fact that he is still pitching in July.
If Bedard pitches effectively through June, then gets injured for the rest of the year, that would be a significantly greater than 50th percentile outcome.
To me the deal is based off how the team will look in 2012. I can see Figgins possibly being a part of a contending team in 2012. Kouzmanaff? Doubtful. So the real issue is A)is the second player a AAAA type who is on the brink? and B) Do we use the freed up money intelligently? If the amswer to either of these questions is “No” then Id say keep Figgins.
I don’t why you’d include Florida in that list.
Well, OK, Florida’s problem is a bit different than those other franchises: it’s that they blow up their decent teams as soon as it looks like they’d have to pay anyone more than 59 cents over league minimum, which is a big part of why they don’t draw (dead last in their league in attendance for years and years). It still destroys their franchise value, which is what I am getting at.
All it goes to show is you can only kick your fanbase in the teeth for so long before they decide they don’t like being kicked in the teeth, and stay away, no matter if you have an occasional good year.
The cheap salary is kind of the point–the idea is to have money to spend on more valuable things than Figgins in his mid-30’s when the team in (hopefully) in a position to contend.
Of course, you’re assuming the money will be there, and it will be spent on more valuable things. I can totally see a scenario where a bad 2011 team does another sub-70 win pratfall, in part made possible by deciding having a halfway competent 3B is too much of a burden (we saw what a half-assed strategy at SS got us last year), and is followed by “so, Jack, you’re fired” , and/or the GM (or even Jack, if Jack is retained) is handed a budget with salary cuts from 2011 levels due to the attendance continuing to implode and ownership not wanting to take losses. Oops, there went your savings from trading Figgins.
Not to mention the reason we want to dump Figgins in the first place was that he was signed by us in what in retrospect appears to be a mistake. No guarantee the next signing isn’t going to be a mistake, too, especially if the same GM is making the decision.
So bottom line: it all depends on what comes back. And if it doesn’t help the 2011 team and is just a straight salary dump, I’m not particularly hot on it.
I agree. I want to know that the salary savings would go back into the salary budget. If so, then I would make the trade, even with the ho-hum Kuzmanoff. If it’s not guaranteed, then let’s let Figgins improve (in my humble opinion, he will very likely improve over last year’s performance), and either trade him later, or ride the talent.
This trade was actually talked about a month ago, and will not happen, according to Rosenthal.
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/rosenthal-figgins-seems-unlikely-to-move-to-oakland-012911
This seems key here, in the link above:
At issue: The amount of money the Mariners would have contributed toward the $26 million remaining on the final three years of Figgins’ contract, and the quality of prospects they would have received in return.
If all Billy Beane was willing to send us back is maybe a few million a year in salary relief (and we’d be eating the rest of Figgins’ salary for years) plus organizational filler-type prospects, or players who were years away, nothing that was likely to help the team in 2011, well, I’m not very disappointed in this outcome.
The financial flexibility of getting rid of Figgins contract and bradley, silva, all off the books at the end of 2011 gives some hope that we can make more moves and in 2012 we may be back to the middle of the pack and in 2013 we may have a shot a playoff spot.
With or without figgins we are at best a 70 win team this year. We need to continue to churn the roster and I for one dont want the team to have to work around figgins declining production and what we will be paying him for that production.
Feels like this is a deal that is not going to get done though.
The overall feeling this offseason seems to be that the team has 0% chance to contend next season. But we know of course that this is not true. Every team has a non-zero chance to contend, however small.
Last year, almost everything that could conceivably go wrong did go wrong. Expectations were confounded. At the very least, one lesson should have been learned: that we should be open to the extreme ends of projections, both good and bad.
What I have not seen much of lately is this consideration: what if (!?) the team does its best case scenario next season, instead of worst?
Suppose Ichiro is Ichiro(!), Guti repeats his past performance, MB becomes his Texas incarnation, Figgins becomes LA Figgins, one or two of the top prospects (Ackley, Smoak, Pineda) surprises us with darned good performance, Bedard returns 100% healthy, and League figures out how to use his splitter again…
… and suddenly, you have a team that looks far from silly.
Sure, the chance that everything goes as we want is lost somewhere in a big beanpile. But Zduriencik has certainly constructed a team with much possibility, in Ryan, Moore, Lueke, Saunders, and Moore. These are high-variance guys. How many of them have to over-perform before we’ve got a pretty nice team?
OK, someone tell me why I’m being silly.
Oh, I guess my last comment should be taken to mean: so – are we so hopeless that we should ditch every high-contract guy besides Ichiro and Felix, first chance we get?
According to chatter at PI, it seems these talks took place a few weeks ago and were just reported by Mr. Stiglich(the source mentioned by Dave) in his most recent column, but it doesn’t look like anything is happening now.
I’m OK with that. Keeping Figgins and watching him build value over a full season, then seeing what can possibly be done with him next offseason based on who else is available in free agency/via trade is not a bad idea.
With or without figgins we are at best a 70 win team this year.
False. If Smoak hit like a league-average 1B (which is a stretch for him but not impossible), Cust, Gutierrez, Figgins and Ryan hit the numbers on their baseball cards and the non-DHs in that list fielded as well as we know they can, and Ichiro stayed Ichiro, this team could be around .500, assuming that Felix’s arm doesn’t fall off and the pitching staff has a ~normal year (it would be even better if Erik Bedard came back and threw 150 quality innings). You’d have full season league-average or better players (2+ WAR) at 1B, SS or 2B (wherever Ryan plays), 3B, CF, RF and DH, six positions. Last year, we had league-average or better players at RF (Ichiro, 4.5 WAR) and CF (DTFT, 3.4). The next best player was Lopez at 3B (1.6 WAR). None of the players I have mentioned are particularly old- Figgins is the oldest.
People don’t seem to realize how terrible last year’s team was- and that replacing a couple terrible players with “not terrible” goes a long way towards “respectable team”. Billy Beane does this every year, with a roster of “who the **** are these guys?” turning around and winning 75-82 games by having enough decent pitching and defense to counter a bad but not terrible offense. The problem with last year was almost everything that could go wrong in the offense did, and we ended up with a terrible offense. So we dumped a ton of players and started over.
We need to continue to churn the roster and I for one dont want the team to have to work around figgins declining production and what we will be paying him for that production.
But if Billy Beane says “Of that $26 million Figgins has left, you need to eat $20 million, and I will send you some AAA relievers and a banjo-hitting 26 year old middle infielder from AA”, the salary relief is negligible (2 million a year), and the return is negligible.
Also, since I missed this earlier:
The FO should have gotten Vlad, ManRam, or even Matsui rather than Cust.
Matsui the last 3 years: .279/.366/.467
Cust the last 3 years: .245/.373/.444
There actually really isn’t a huge difference between them at the plate. Remember, Matsui is 37 (read: at an age where he’s declining- it’s showing in his numbers), and Cust spent a ton of time in AAA when he was capable of hitting in MLB, because baseball has a habit of picking some people every decade and ignoring their clear hitting ability while watching them crush AAA pitching. He’s not as GOOD as Edgar, but like Edgar, he should have been playing regularly in MLB several years before he did.
And you know, I’m sure Manny and Vlad would have been jumping to sign a contract with a team coming off of a 100-loss season. That’s probably their dream job in their late 30’s- playing DH on a team that’s obviously rebuilding, isn’t likely to get to the playoffs and is highly unlikely to reward them with a ring, all in a park that kills right-handed hitters. Who wouldn’t put Seattle at the top of their list knowing that? I mean, really, why would you want to sign a contract with the Rays like Manny did, who only have a good team and make the playoffs consistently the last few years, playing in a division with the Red Sox and Yankees, when you could maybe win 81 games if things went well in Seattle?
Maybe you could suggest some other realistic trades to go with your FA signing scenarios, like trading Chone Figgins for Albert Pujols or trading Doug Fister for Roy Halladay.
Rosenthal and Olney both say the deal between the A’s and the Mariners is dead; Figgins will be our 3rd baseman…good.
I don’t know about our major league club, but the way things are going, the Mariners prison team could be *awesome* !
Anybody in this thread bring up the possibility of picking up Eric Chavez if we end up shipping Figgy out for Toronto pitching? I missed it quickly perusing the thread if so.
Chavez doesn’t really have any value. His body has completely betrayed him. It’s probably the saddest failing of a talented player to reach his potential of the last decade. People don’t really remember anymore because his last few years were such a disaster, but Eric Chavez was Evan Longoria before Longoria had graduated from high school. Circa 2004 he looked like he had the potential to be an all-time great.
I hate the A’s with a passion, but I’m still really bummed about the turn Chavez’s career took.