Series Wrap-up, Rearranging Deck Chairs, etc.
On June 19th, the Mariners were a couple of games over .500 and just a half game behind the division-leading Rangers. On July 5th – within two weeks! – the M’s were 2.5 back of the Angels/Rangers. Fans on twitter, on talk-radio, everywhere mentioned the M’s exceptional heart and desire – so unlike the 2010 team, who just rolled over and accepted defeat.
Now, on July 17th, the M’s are 9 games below .500, 11.5 back of the Rangers, and people willing to publicly advocate for their “heart,” “fire,” “determination” are thin on the ground. People who point out the similarities between this year’s M’s team and the last are a lot more numerous than they were 10 days ago.
This isn’t to suggest that criticism of the current roster is reactionary and ill-considered – it’s not; this roster is legitimately awful. Rather, I’m trying to remember how it was that THIS team, the one with Adam Kennedy at DH, or Miguel Olivo at clean-up, with Franklin Gutierrez and with the left-field platoon from hell, fancied itself contenders. From 2009 through 2011, only the Mariners have a team wOBA below .300. From 2009 through 2011, the M’s have trotted out the least valuable collection of position players in the majors, edging out the Orioles and Royals. This includes their exceptional fielding performance in 2009, which netted them almost 10 wins (they’ve been worth 29 *total* in 2.5 years). You will tell your grandchildren about the 2010/2011 Mariners. This team will live on in family stories about great hardship (“So after Jim lost his job, and after my unemployment ran out, we were basically sick-Guti there for a while”) or annoying failure (“Damn it! The TV’s gone Olivo again!”).
The way the M’s lost this series makes you question so much about the team’s decent performance through June. The M’s went 20 for 126 against a good-but-not-exceptional series of Rangers hurlers. The M’s were outscored 17-2. Say what you will about sequencing, luck, or slumps, the talent disparity between these two line-ups just jumped off the screen. Seriously, would Endy Chavez hit clean-up on the M’s? Swap out Peguero for Carp, or Peguero for George Brett circa 1980 and the M’s still get swept handily.
The M’s made lefties like CJ Wilson and Derek Holland look great, because many of the team’s RHH struggle against southpaws (Brendan Ryan, Gutierrez, Halman) and the lefties (while they’ve done OK) can’t pick up the slack. The M’s made righties like Matt Harrison look good because Justin Smoak and Dustin Ackley are struggling against righties for some reason and people like Olivo, Gutierrez and Ryan never stood a chance anyway. The most shocking thing about the M’s offense is how impervious to regression they’ve been. The M’s finished 2010 several standard deviations from the mean, and have somehow maintained that pace in 2011. The M’s are looking like an offense with a true-talent level so far below league average that you have to start questioning the way the team was put together.
I know, I know: they’ve been hit with some key injuries. Adam Moore was supposed to catch at least 50 games this year, Franklin Gutierrez was supposed to be healthy (or healthier), and David Aardsma and Shawn Kelley were supposed to anchor the bullpen. But Adam Moore put up a .224 wOBA last year, and his ZiPS projection was far lower than, say, Josh Bard’s. It’s not at all clear that the M’s “lost” anything there. David Aardsma’s Tommy John surgery’s thrust Brandon League into the closer role, but that’s clearly last on the list of M’s issues. Shawn Kelley would be nice, but Jeff Gray’s demonstrating just how easy it can be to find RH set-up men. Gutierrez is perhaps the most under-performing player on the roster, but after his 2010, no one was counting on him to be above average with the bat. Even if he was healthy on opening day, he’d likely be a below-average hitter.
All of this is to say that we now know more about how the M’s stack up against Los Angeles and Texas, both this year and since 2009 – and the more we know, the more the M’s seem to drop relative to their rivals. This is a roster that had huge, easily-identified holes when the Zduriencik regime took over, and now has larger, just-as-easily-identifiable holes in other places. The M’s have done well in the amateur draft and in trades, but Zduriencik’s free-agent acquisitions haven’t worked out, and even some of the “good” trades (Brendan Ryan for Maikel Cleto) haven’t helped the M’s relative to their peers. The M’s went from an overpaid glove-first SS to a cheaper glove-first SS, but all that did was push the overpaid glove-first SS to the bench.
I understand that Zduriencik inherited a terrible roster/farm system, and that guys like Taijuan Walker and Nick Franklin might help transform the roster a couple of years from now, but how many years does that mitigating circumstance hold? Zduriencik took over a roster with historically bad 1B/DH spots and shifted the historically-bad spots to CF and 3B. I don’t think any of us would’ve done a whole lot differently, but here we are with a line-up that can’t compete in the wide-open AL West and without much help anywhere in the system (they’ve used Seager and Halman, so there’s absolutely no easy way to project even incremental improvement – Langerhans in CF? Liddi/Catricala at 3B?), it’s not clear how the relative strengths will change. Going into 2009, the M’s had a talent deficit vis a vis Anaheim, but an advantage at GM. At this point, it’d appear the Rangers have the better roster and front office. It’s tough to imagine this changing absent a big trade, but as Dave’s already pointed out, the M’s don’t have a lot of veterans to trade.
This April, the M’s ran advertisements acknowledging how painful 2010 was, and pointing to the farm system as a solution to the problem. Well, the M’s could run the same commercial in April of 2012, as absolutely nothing’s changed. Yes, in many ways, this is the exact wrong time to blame the front office; a long losing streak exaggerates a team’s weaknesses and plays up their rivals’ strengths. But the past two series have exposed the current roster’s deficiencies, and the past few years haven’t given me a whole lot of confidence that the team can buy their way out of their predicament on the free agent market.
Yes, the team’s developed some young players who’re getting their feet wet, and Ackley/Smoak should improve, where does that leave the club? We support a team that, when it’s smart, starts Kyle Seager, Brendan Ryan, and Greg Halman. We cheered when the club swapped out Carlos Peguero for Mike Carp in left field. I think that pretty much encapsulates where the team is and the options they’re currently facing. In the past six months, the Rangers lost Josh Hamilton to a broken arm, saw several of their top pitching prospects go down with injury, saw Brandon Webb’s comeback fizzle out, watched Neftali Feliz regress, and watched Julio Borbon stink up Arlington, then go down with an injury. Going back a bit further, they traded a decent chunk of their high-minors depth for a few months of Cliff Lee. And after all of that, after so many bad breaks, still can’t put the M’s in the Rangers’ class.
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Of course we think “they can’t be that bad”, but just how long is one player/team given to regress to the mean? 1.5 years is plenty of time, I suspect.
With multiple standard deviations from the norm, the norm average should probably be reset.
Yes. The concept of prioritizing pitching and defense at the expense of offense is not proving to be a sustainable strategy for roster creation in the major leagues.
Well, now I’m really depressed. I can’t find a flaw with anything Marc said at all.
One would like to believe that the Bradley money freed up next year will gain us SOMETHING… but then we’ve got yet another bad contract (which was supposed to be a GOOD contract!) weighing the team down next year and maybe the year after that. Plus we’ve got enough holes that it’s not realistic to expect 17 million to be enough to patch them all.
Crying myself to sleep now.
Yeah, this is really depressing and true at the same time.
While Jack Z and the rest of the front office seem to employ a good process, it’s hard not to look at the production (or lack thereof) the M’s have generated since 2009. There has been as much bad as good.
The starting pitching is probably the best it’s ever been, which is fantastic, but unfortunately very little of that has to do with the “Z regime.” Felix, Bedard, Pineda and Fister are products of the Bavasi era.
The Mariners have seemingly had fantastic drafts since 2009, but it’ll be tough to truly evaluate for several more years.
Zduriencik has pulled off some undeniably incredible and lop-sided trades: the Gutierrez and Vargas deal is the gift that keeps giving, plus the two Cliff Lee trades. He’s identified good buy-low candidates (Branyan, Cust, Langerhans, Hall, Kotchman, Snell, Wilson, Ryan), but a shocking few of them have worked out. The only big free agent he’s made (Chone Figgins) has been an unmitigated disaster, but seemed like a smart contract at the time.
I think I still feel confident going forward with Jack Zduriencik manning the ship, but this is the first time I’m starting to wonder whether a replacement GM would be good for the team at the end of the season. Zduriencik seemed savvy at the time of the hire, but looking around at other GM’s like Alex Anthopoulos (TOR) and even Jon Daniels (TEX) make him seem less impressive since he’s taken over.
What does everyone think? Should the Mariners replace Jack Zduriencik at the end of the season or do you have faith that he can adequately fill the massive holes on the offense?
Bring on Kim Ng!
(I kid, I kid…)
I support keeping Jack, at least for one more year. I doubt any GM would have done better with this budget. I doubt anyone knows a better candidate. Nobody thought Figgins would be this bad. This ownership sets GM’s up to fail. Even assuming Jack’s a bad GM, how many bad GM’s do we see before higher-up people get fired?
If we lose 100 again, he’s gone. If we suck next year, he’ll be fired. But I doubt we’ll be any better off for it.
I think that Jack might be the perfect guy to run the Oakland Athletics, and the wrong guy to run the Seattle Mariners.
He seems to be able to find the cheap just above replacement guys (Branyan, Wright, Guti (until this year, which I must give a pass to, obviously), Kennedy, Ryan, etc.
You must also give him the credit for having to deal with a very dysfunctional organization (the Lueke situation, the Griffey situation) and having to try to sign players that view playing in Seattle as playing in Siberia.
By the All-Star break of next year, Jack is either going to be clearly in, or clearly out (if not already). If he has made one or two good signings, and the team can score runs or win games, he should be good. However, if the team is on pace to score less than 600 runs, and has a losing record, he is done with.
It might sound silly, but Jack almost needs to bet the house next year if he wants to keep his job. It’s a piss-poor plan for running a franchise, but it’s probably how he keeps his job.
It’s kind of like a CEO who knows his company could be really stable and grow well in a few years, but has to accept a take-over now because the investors can make a ton of short-term profits now.
He has the potential to have a very cheap team out there actually playing. Seager could play 3B if he figures it out. Ryan, Ackley and Smoak round out one of the cheapest infields in baseball. Guti could figure it out, and Ichiro should be a pretty reliable .270 or so. Get a LF and a DH/1B, and you have a good team. But that might cost you 35 million a year. And Vargas is going to be kinda spendy this off-season.
Are the owners willing to give Jack $40M to play with?
Just for kicks, since I’m bored and can’t sleep:
Current obligations for 2012:
$60M
League and Vargas for 2012 (arbitration):
$10M
So, that basically is what you’re going to pay, minimum, next year. Unless you trade Vargas or League of course.
Can the team say that for the last year of Ichiro’s contract (gasp!) they can pay $110M, including the $18M Figgins weight around their neck?
Perhaps the ownership would realize that after 2012 they have another $21M coming off the books, and could manage $110M for that year.
But I doubt it. I have this terrible feeling that the team will want to spend only $95-100M, and we’ll end up with another Jack Cust or Miguel Olivo signing.
I really regret my cynicism and overdone irony concerning the contention issue. And it’s frustrating to have negativism and pessimism proved right. But beyond the apology, I have to admit even I’m surprised how far the wheels have come off the wagon, despite how we all knew how big the OF/offense holes are.
Is Jack the problem? Nah. He’s as well aware of all this as anyone else. The problem will be whether they give him any leeway.
That last line could be the epitaph for many a season past around here.
Has anyone ever considered that this IS regressed? The offense was this bad last year, and the only plan for improving it was signing a DH whose best skill is drawing walks instead of hitting.
You don’t get an offense this bad, for a season and a half, if the front office properly values offense. This one doesn’t.
I would not go that far.
A HUGE chunk of our payroll is tied up in two slap-hitters, one of whom is on the bench, the other not hitting well.
Most teams save their big bucks for the sluggers while finding table-setters on the cheap. Most of the teams that pay a lot for both also have a higher payroll than we do.
The Front Office does value offense, I think everyone does, it’s pretty useful in this game…but they don’t value it enough to widen the budget. They aren’t the Yankees, that’s for sure.
If you’re going to criticize Jack Z, I think you really need to look at his moves in isolation and honestly explain what you would have done differently. And doing that, where has he gone wrong? Figgins? Yeah, but what else was out there at the time? And most people applauded that move. You can’t blame him for Ichiro falling apart. Or Guti. And Smoak, for his struggles, has been a lot better than Jesus Montero, the other guy we may have acquired for Lee (who, incidentally, we acquired for some b-level prospects who haven’t turned into anything). Morse? You going to blame him for that? Only with 20-20 hindsight. Jack Wilson? I suppose, but what’s the alternative?
Jack Z came into an awful situation, with his only hitting “star” getting old and no offense to speak of. Payroll has decreased substantially each year since he arrived. I have seen no good argument for blaming him that doesn’t cherry-pick data and ignore the larger context. Look at the good he has done, and I would suggest it outweighs the bad by a large margin. But when you start off terrible and take away $25,000,000 / year as well, it’s tough. Marc’s argument amounts to: “Look, it’s not working. Front office’s fault.” I think that’s far too blunt of a conclusion.
Jack hasn’t been able to assemble a decent lineup yet, but it’s still fair to point out that he has had surprisingly bad luck with this offense. A number of guys have had bad to shockingly bad offensive performances for the M’s the past couple of years, including but not limited to Bradley, Lopez, Kotchman, Cust, Saunders, Ichiro, Gutierrez, and especially Figgins. Where have we seen any offsetting good fortune? The guy who performed well above expectations and picked up the team?
In the pitching, yes, but I can’t think of anyone on the offense, either this year or last.
Many are pointing to a low payroll for the M’s as the primary problem in achieving success, as if they were the Pirates, Royals, or Marlins. Take a look at how salary equates to performance in Seattle:
YEAR SALARY RANK FINISH
2004 10th 28th
2005 9th 27th
2006 13th 16th (3-way tie)
2007 7th 10th (3-way tie)
2008 9th 29th
2009 10th 13th
2010 9th 29th
The M’s have been paying a top third average payroll and getting a bottom third result.
If you want to be even more depressed, go to the Mariners Site, click on Roster and then on Drafts. In the last 10 years the M’s have drafted one position (Ackley) who is currently playing anywhere in the majors. The draft, at least for the M’s, is apparenly not the road to success.
Matt Harrison is a southpaw
As an example of how effectively the M’s use salary, here are the top six position player contracts for 2011 (and, yes, I know there are some extenuating circumstances):
PLAYER SALARY OPS+ WAR
Ichiro 18.0 80 -0.2
Bradley 11.0 92 0
Figgins 9,0 36 -0.6
Wilson 5.0 46 +0.5
Gutierrez 4.0 31 -1.0
So bascially, unless we sign a legitimate impact bats *cough*Fielder*cough* at some point down the road then we’re screwed? Sounds just about right.
If we can get Hultzen to sign then we need to look into trading Paxton or Walker for some offense, because finding good to decent pitching is easy these days.
Meant to add Cust at 2.5, OPS+ 94, and +0.2 WAR.
That’s 49.5 million for a collective minus 1.1 WAR and an average OPS+ of 63. That’s 49.5 million for a DFA, three bench players, the worst OPS+ in the majors, and a banjo hitter. The problem might not be payroll.
Wow, that is a pretty bleak assessment.
Maybe we should focus a bit on the positives. Here are a few reasons for optimism going forward, and some reasons to keep watching this team in 2011:
1. Few bad contracts: The only albatross contract the M’s have is Figgins. Despite how difficult it is to watch him everyday, I think he could be a good utility player. Hopefully the M’s can find another team that is willing to give him a shot, and we can get him off the roster and save a few mil. Beyond that, the M’s don’t have much dead money at all. After Figgins, the M’s worst contract are probably Ichiro or Guti. That’s a good thing. Jack will have some money to play with next offseason, and that will give him the opportunity to address the offensive deficiencies.
2. Good pitching: The M’s have a good pitching staff with two dominant starters and good depth at both the ML and minor league levels. Felix is among the top 5 pitchers in baseball, and Pineda has been much much better than anyone thought. Vargas and Fister are good, dependable, and cheap back end guys. And we have guys who can help in minors in Beavan, Robles, Ramirez, Paxton, and Hultzen, plus a guy with #1 upside in Taijuan Walker. And with the M’s park and defense, we can keep picking up guys like Bedard and give them a great opportunity to thrive.
The M’s have great pitching right now. Its easy to dwell on offensive futility. But this isn’t a terrible team. Its a terrible offense.
3. Some interesting young players. The M’s have Smoak, Ackley, Halman, Seager, and now Carp getting their feet wet. Smoak and Ackley are going to be the core of the next good team, and Halman has been better than I think anyone would have thought. I think that Alex Liddi could get some playing time later this season as well. If 3-4 of these guys show they can help the team going forward, the M’s will be in good shape. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that one of the 3B prospects (Seager, Liddi, Catricala) can emerge as even a decent place holder for a year or two.
4. A chance to improve at the trade deadline: I know that the M’s don’t have a trade piece like Cliff Lee this year. But we do have a GM with a pretty good track record in trades. This is his chance to shine. The M’s are out of contention. We have guys like Bedard and League who could help contenders. And we have other guys like Kennedy, Wright, Pauley and Laffey who would might bring back an interesting player. If nothing else, the M’s need to clear roster spots and let the kids play. Wilson, Cust, Figgins, and Kennedy are just taking up space right now. I’m hoping that Jack can pull off a brilliant trade or two in the next few weeks. And as Dave argued previously, even moving a guy like Pineda could be an option.
This team has lots of holes and areas to improve. Jack now has the luxury of a clearly defined role as seller right now. I’m hoping that he can work some magic. I don’t expect to see a bunch of huge names or top prospects, but it would be great if he could replicate something like the Putz deal, where the initial reaction for most fans was “meh”, but the club got a lot of solid contributors. Jack’s a great talent evaluator. Lets hope he makes a brilliant move or two, and can net the M’s a few undervalued assets from other organizations.
5. Time for evaluation: Since the M’s are out of it, they have a chance to regroup and see what they have internally. Its logical to expect several trades and moves in the next few weeks, even if they are simply clearing roster space. Wedge seems pretty comfortable playing kids. If nothing else, we’ll get to see some guys for the first time. This audition time makes meaningless games more interesting, but will also give the team a chance to work in the youngsters and develop a more clear picture of what they will need going into 2012.
Maybe I’m a homer, but I think this club is inching closer to respectability. The farm system is productive, we have a good GM, and watching prospects play at the ML level will help alleviate the boredom of watching a bad club. Lets just hope that we get a few more pleasant surprises in the next few months, starting with midseason trades and continuing with the development of young players.
The hell does this matter? Of the players on the 2010 squad the only ones still here (and starting regularly now) are Ichiro, Gutierrez, and Figgins. What does the regression impervious 2011 squad have to do with the regression impervious 2010 squad. Is it something in the water that prevents hitters from performing to their peak levels and, thus, plagues two mostly unrelated squads of players?
Of course not. The only correlation is the coincidence of it all and our frustration at it. You stated in your article that it is a bad idea to dog a team at it’s worst, so I have to wonder why you wrote this, marc. Even if there are deficiencies in the roster, and it’s not like we didn’t already know these before the losing streak, you have to know that the team will get back to hitting even a little bit. I’m not expecting Adam Kennedy to continue a late life resurgence, but we’ve seen what the others can do. Their talent didn’t just suddenly die.
I think its time the team consideres taking offers for Ichiro. At this point I’d take his salary off the books as a fair trade. You could sign Fielder with Ichiro’s salary next year. We played the feel good with Griffey at it killed us. The 49ers gave up Joe Montana, the Mariners traded Griffey, the Braves let Glavin and Maddux go, and I think of any others but they all survived the next 5 years disposing of expensive and iconic assets. Ichiro should be traded in my opinion.
It’s the truth, but the fact is, the 500lb gorilla in the room finally, really, made its presence known.
Any team with so many hitters hitting below expectations would suffer. The Mariners started with a lower talent level to begin with, so their suffering is to the bottom level.
Have all the hitters permanently lost their capability to hit at the same time? Is Ichiro now a .260 hitter for the rest of his career? Smoak a .227 hitter? Olivo completely worn out? Figgens? Figgens?? Who, two years ago, would have predicted Figgens now? Why did Cust’s power fall off the face of the earth? What happened to Gutierrez?
It is a very strange thing happening with Mariners hitters, and I don’t think anyone can do more than guess at what is going on.
You’re right that their talent didn’t just suddenly die, but I think it’s time to consider that their offensive talent was vastly overrated to begin with.
This current struggling team isn’t the 500lb Gorilla. The 500lb Gorilla was already there. Right now you have the 500lb Gorilla laying in the middle of the room hugging the plasma TV like a body pillow. Seriously, this is worse than anything we’ve seen so far. It seems silly to me to get that frustrated over it now, so I just wonder why the need for this particular topic at this point.
Vastly overrated by whom? Even back when we were winning we weren’t scoring that many runs. We have never been on pace for more than 600 runs this entire season. That didn’t suddenly change.
Again, we already KNEW there were weaknesses on this team. They’ve been weaknesses all year. What we’re seeing right now is beyond that. But it should not be looked at as an accurate representation of the offense anymore than the mid April slugfest in Detroit was.
Over on the left, there’s a link to an article titled “The Attrition War” that DMZ wrote six years ago. He wrote it, I believe, in response to the seemingly unusual number of arm injuries the M’s suffered in their pitching prospects. The article compared attrition rates for young hurlers in various organizations to see if the M’s had a quantifiable problem.
I wonder if it’s time for Derek to dust off the keyboard and write one about flame-out position players? The M’s seem to have a greater-then-average number of busts. Much of it is undoubtedly due to bad drafting, but even guys that showed a lot of talent and were highly rated around the league have turned into terrible hitters. Jeremy Reed, Jeff Clement, Lopez, etc. Do our hitters bust at a higher rate than other teams? Is there something beyond bad talent evaluation at work?
I think the worst thing that could have happened to this team…did happen…we started to contend.
Before this season, we all knew this team was not built the way that a solid, contending team should have been built–there simply weren’t available parts for Z to bring in…nor was there the budget to take higher profile risks–so, I assumed the plan was…keep building slowly, give the kids a chance, ride out this year until we get a couple of bad contracts off the books and see what a little coin in Z’s pocket gives us.
And sure enough, the beginning of this year was pretty miserable–and the decision of our group not to get season tickets (for the first time in 15 years) seemed to be the right one.
Then, for whatever reason–unexpectedly great pitching across the board, the schedule, the temporary bad luck of the Angels & Rangers–we found ourselves much higher in the standings than we’d expected…in a division where no one, it seemed, was really performing to expectations.
It gave us hope–and we’ve been thirsting for hope… We ran through the desert to drink deeply from the lake. Only now, with a bellyful of sand, do we realize that it was just a mirage.
Now, as a faithful USSM reader for many years, I know better than to think that firing the hitting coach will suddenly make the bats come alive…and giving the manager any blame or credit for how his players play isn’t particularly smart analysis. I know that.
BUT…when the M’s won games early in the year, they seemed to do so without hits. Early in the year, it seemed like the M’s had a better, more patient approach at the plate.
…and it seems that Wedge’s answer to EVERY problem is: get tougher and be more aggressive.
Guti a shadow of his former self? Get in there and take your cuts. Ichiro looking astonishingly foolish at the plate? Gotta keep swinging. Peguero? Swing even harder, young man. Cust? Quit being a baby and swing your bat, big man.
We HAD to keep swinging, because suddenly we were in contention and not scoring runs for pitchers throwing their hearts out (and don’t think that the sheer tonnage of pitches and innings being burned up this year by our starters isn’t going to bite them…and us…at some time in the future.)
I don’t claim to know what’s wrong with Ichiro or Figgins. I don’t know how to put Smoak or Guti back together again. But it also seems like neither does anyone on the M’s coaching staff…and I’m not convinced that Wedge’s “get tough, be more aggressive” approach hasn’t made things worse.
At this stage of this season, though, I’m not sure that it matters. Wedge went to the whip and the M’s horses had nothing more to give.
Ichiro is not tradeable. It’s been brought up before, but he has 10/5 rights now. And that’s not even getting into how nobody will want a 37 year old slap hitter who is struggling at the plate and on D.
Guti is a mess and who knows if he will be the same again. Smoak has just had terrible luck, hitting a lot of balls right at guys – his BABIP has suffered, but it’s not like suddenly he’s Figgins.
As for Wedge, there is absolutely nothing wrong with telling a hitter to be more aggressive after watching said hitter taking called third strikes over and over. If a hitter can’t adjust to it, then maybe he shouldn’t be a major league hitter after all…because the majors are ALL ABOUT ADJUSTMENT.
I wish people would stop parroting this like it’s true.
The answer to our problem is so simple. We need to trade from our strength to shore up our weakness. It’s a no-brainer, especially when our strength in starting pitching matches up with where so many other teams are weak.
Jack should be looking to trade all tradable starting pitchers in our organization with the possible exception of Felix Hernandez. Paxton and Hultzen are (I believe) not tradable since they were only recently singed as draftees. Bedard, Vargas, Fister, Beavan, Pineda, Walker…all should be on the block.
We need to get a solid bat in left field, third base and DH. There have to be teams with players at those spots that are in the majors now, or nearly so that need pitching. Start talking to them, Jack (like he needs me to tell him). I don’t think anyone in Seattle will cry if we have to shed pitching in order to improve our offense.
I think the plan that Dave put up on Brock and Salk’s site to trade Pineda for a handful of bats MUST be seriously considered.
The offense continues to be bad on historic levels, and isn’t doing anything to suggest it’s going to ever change without a drastic change.
Pineda is an amazing pitcher, I love watching him pitch, but if trading him means we get a watchable offense in trade? Do it. Do it now.
I think Z is doing a good job.
I wonder about how Wedge is handling the team.
Has anyone noticed that collectively the team is not legging out hits? I’ve noticed the player’s slowing down ten yards from the bag on routine grounders.
At first, I thought that’s to be expected when down by ___ runs, but it’s happening everyday by everyone. And some of these plays were/would have been VERY close if not base hits.
I love wedge’s fire type attitude but wonder if the team is turning on him.
I have wondered about how his coaching/personality would mesh with Ichi from the moment he was hired.
Anybody else seeing this?
Maybe it’s not Wedge at all but the confirmation that management was not “going for it” while only back a game or two?
Nicely done, Marc. Both fair and accurate, in my opinion.
While there are some unfortunate circumstances that have caused difficulty for the Front Office, it’s undeniable that there hasn’t been the improvement you would hope to see on the field over the past two years. Fairly or unfairly, the Front Office is held responsible for results.
+1. The hitters are the ones with the bats in their hands. If Wedge is having to tell them how to hit, they don’t belong in the major leagues.
Jack will have some money to play with next offseason, and that will give him the opportunity to address the offensive deficiencies.
No, he won’t have a lot of money. Assume that the team budget stays at ~$85-90 million. The numbers up there:
Current obligations for 2012:
$60M
League and Vargas for 2012 (arbitration):
$10M
are roughly correct. So you’re looking at $15-20 million. That might get you Fielder… and leave you with crappy OF depth behind the OF that isn’t getting it done, crappy 3B, oh and doesn’t resign Bedard.
Now look at who we signed/acqquired during THIS offseason:
Cust: $2.5 million
Bedard: $1M (plus incentives)
Olivo: $2.25 million
Ryan: $1 million (yeah, this was a trade)
So that’s 7 million… and it got us… well, you know. $15 million isn’t going to get us Fielder and Pujols, to be blunt.
But we do have a GM with a pretty good track record in trades.
Has Zduriencik done some good trades? Sure. But it’s not a 100% record of success, otherwise we’d have never bothered with Bradley and just dumped Silva for nothing, we’d still have Mike Morse, Jack Wilson would have never been a Mariner.
I don’t think we can count on a big haul from the talent we have available for trade at the deadline. It’s going to be closer to French + Robles for Washburn (B prospects with low ceiling, and/or guys who aren’t very close- we haven’t seen Robles in a M’s uniform yet and it’s two years later) or Clement/Cedeno for Snell/Wilson (more Large Item Pickup where we trade garbage for garbage) than Smoak & Co. for Lee, or the Putz deal.
Maybe our offense wouldn’t suck if the team didn’t play in a park that hinders offensive production as much as Safeco.
It hinders power numbers. It shouldn’t hinder on base percentage or most other stats.
http://danny-knobler.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/8590096/30691984
According to this, the M’s are now shopping pitching, although not Pineda, it’s a step in the right direction. And from Morosi via Twitter, the M’s are receiving calls on Kennedy and Wright (who both by all means should be moved if we can get anything for them).
Exactly right. This is why the GM (whether it is Zduriencik or anyone else) cannot and should not sign Fielder or any other top tier free agent. Not to mention that multi-year big dollar deals have been part of the problem for the team anyway.
Unfortunately, the real problem is deeper – a lost decade of bad drafts and poor position player prospect development. That is not Zduriencik’s fault but it is his problem to solve.
In a nutshell: we do not have enough hitting talent in the system. We cannot afford to buy it, and we have only pitching to trade for it.
After the end of the 2008 season did anyone think it’d take any less than 5 years before we could consider contending? When the front office hired JZ I’m sure it was laid out on the table to slowly decrease payroll, rid the team of “bad” contracts, build from the farm system up, and play competitive baseball until it looked like we were back on track again.
If anything I think this is a testament to how far Bavasi set this organization back; between inflated contracts to one year wonders who didn’t perform, HORRID trading, and even more HORRID drafting, this team was a sunken ship. Payroll is irrelevant at that point. We were a team with no present and absolutely no future. JZ is in the process of completely revamping the entire team from bottom to top, and nobody said it’d be quick and easy.
We are in a decent position; as stated above, our payroll is in the top 1/3, and we have some young up and coming talent. We have a plethora of good/great starting pitching in a market where a lot of teams are in high demand of it, and we have a GM with a track record of sound drafting and great trading. Just look at the firepower of the Brewers right now; some home-grown talent between Weeks, Fielder, Hart, Braun etc. If he did it there, I honestly don’t see why he couldn’t do it here.
This is a problematic view. The current front office is not responsible for the past ten years of drafts. They are responsible for the past three years of drafts. Now, how many players realistically should be on the major league roster from the 2009, 2010 and 2011 drafts? Uhhh, not many.
The M’s technically have two (really just Ackley). According to baseball-reference, there are six players with more than one WAR from the first five rounds of 2009 draft, and only one player after 12th overall. Ackley is one of those six. Who expects anything from the 2010 and 2011 drafts right now?
How do you judge a GM before he’s had a chance to develop his own drafts? How does a GM fully own a club’s W-L when we should be lucky to even have one contributing draft pick? (a pick that was the result of the previous regime’s gross incompetence)
The M’s have Ackley, Seager, Franklin and Catricala from the 2009 draft. Anything before 2013 is almost gravy.
…it sure seems like it’s true.
I’m with ya there. It’s agonizing and longer than what I want it to be…but I believe in the future that this team has.
Just some bats. Gotta find a way to get those…
Who is Dan Knobler and why should I care?
The Mariners may shop pitching. It makes sense to do so. That doesn’t mean they are. Since the M’s FO is pretty much Alcatraz on leaks, I’m guessing this is just speculation.
As for Morosi, he’s probably heard that from the people who called the M’s about Kennedy and Wright. Makes sense that they would get calls on them. Kennedy serves as a veteran left handed bat who has had a bit of a rebound season and can play most infield positions. Wright I don’t quite understand, but meh. Someone wants a cheap and fungible bullpen arm? Sure, why not.
I know, and I don’t mean to jump on you specifically. Aside from coincidental speculation, nobody can actually find any evidence that Wedge is forcing his hitters to swing at crap and forgo walks. On the contrary. that they’ve replaced the higher walk players with lower walk players (done by Z, not by Wedge) and some other players who were walking more have moved back to their career norms doesn’t mean Wedge is influencing any of it. It is just as likely not as it is related to him.
He could be, so I could be wrong, too. I just don’t see anything concrete putting the gun in his hand, so to speak.
That was unnecessarily rude.
Knobler is just a network sports journalist, and as journalistic practice goes, he’s not going to divulge his sources, but I’m guessing just like Morosi, he’s getting his information from other organizations, not the M’s themselves. While nobody is being named, there’s a difference between anonymity and speculation.
I merely posted that link to show that yes, the M’s are shopping their guys around, and because it gave a few names who are probably on the block. I’m not really sure what offended you about it, but it clearly did.
I usually enjoy reading marc w posts, but this one is just as reactionary as the sports radio callers that he derides in the opening two paragraphs.
I guess that is what people want to read when their team has lost 9 in a row, but I expect better from USSM.
Likewise, why are you offended for Dan Knobler’s sake? My criticism is directed at him, not you. You sharing a link does not mean that I was equating you to him.
The reason I am expressing skepticism is because I am skeptical of anything delivered by the media. I’m especially skeptical of anything delivered by a national media personality on the Mariners. Time and time again we have seen others try to do this, even reputable persons such as Jayson Stark of ESPN and John Paul Morosi of FOX, and they turn out wrong. John Heyman, one of the guys who usually gets stuff right, even gets swerved by Mariners FO moves. He tweeted during the 2011 Rule 4 draft that he got duped along with everybody else about the M’s first round choice.
And, so, when someone says…
…as if it is undisputed fact, I arch an eyebrow.
Despite all the panic and pessimism, I do think there is a lot to look forward to. Our current lineup is flawed, but has true upside:
C Olivo
1B Smoak
2B Ackley
SS Ryan
3B Seager/Figgins/Kennedy
LF Carp/Halman
CF Gutierrez
RF Ichiro
DH Cust/Carp
That’s not terrible. Some guys are experiencing career-lows and hopefully will rebound (Figgins, Ichiro, Gutierrez, Cust), others are developing at the major league level (Smoak, Ackley, Seager, Carp, Halman). If we hadn’t been in contention until the first week of July (and suffer an enormous 9-game losing streak), I think we wouldn’t feel quite so bad. There is progress here.
3B/LF/DH are the obvious spots for upgrades, but we have internal options that we should use the rest of the year to audition. If at least one of Seager, Halman, and Carp can prove they are MLB-ready, then the Mariners will have a better idea of where to upgrade in the off-season.
Personally, I think the Mariners need to go hard after a flexible outfielder who can play center field. Gutierrez is very questionable going forward and LF is currently uncertain. If I were Jack Zdruiencik, I would focus on a Angel Pagan type who can fill either of those needs for this year and in the future.
When one complains about the lack of good position players being developed by the Ms in recent years, one has to remember that the three best position players developed in the past couple of years are playing elsewhere. Adam Jones, Asdrubal Cabrera and Shin-Soo Choo sure would look good in an Ms uniform. Man, those trades hurt and the Bedard trade probably was not the worst of them. At least Bedard pitches well, if only too rarely.
. If at least one of Seager, Halman, and Carp can prove they are MLB-ready, then the Mariners will have a better idea of where to upgrade in the off-season
Halman isn’t ready. 2BB/25K in 71 plate appearances? Not ready. And he’s been like this his entire career- toolsy but swings at anything on the same continent as he is. These types of players don’t generally EVER become ready.
I doubt Seager’s ready as well (78 games above Cal League)- the only reason he’s here is Figgins is a complete horror show. That leaves us Carp, who deserves a shot… but that’s a thin reed to lie upon.
Upgrade at “hitter”, no matter what the position – then find a lineup slot for the guy.
Any competent bat would be a plus, and it’s nice that we have the DH slot available. I like to think that gives us more flexibility, in that current first baseman we bring in could DH and spell Smoak I grant that one issue is that many position players don’t want to become DH’s, but I’ll also note that I am not enamored with Smoak’s defense, so DH’ing wouldn’t be the worst thing for him.
The ideal bat would be a LH power hitter, which is why I understand the interst in Fielder (too expensive and risky, please don’t) and the team’s fascination with Peguero (AAA is where he belongs right now, and he might never develop).