Act now!
Not literally now, since the playoffs are going on and there won’t be much roster activity until after the World Series, when free agency starts and important people start having meetings with each other and stuff. But this post is about an often forgotten reason why there ought to be a particular sense of urgency about 2012. (No, this is not an argument for the Mariners to sign Prince Fielder.)
What factor gives the Mariners a big head start on building a team that can make the playoffs, but is potentially going to disappear in the next couple of years? Let’s take a look, shall we?
Felix playing out his contract and becoming a free agent? Look, I want him to win and be happy here as much as anyone else, but is it more critical to get him his shot at a World Series than it was for any other fan favorite, whether that’s Griffey, Ichiro, or even Alvin Davis? From a budget perspective, he starts getting pretty expensive in 2012, so the real advantage has already been wasted, although he still has surplus value. Which is one reason the media will continue to gin up trade rumors regardless, so if you just want those to go away, I’m not sure even being in contention will prevent that. (Cue New York writer with, “The Mariners still need offense, so they would have a better shot at the Rangers by adding a big bat to their everyday lineup than relying on a guy who only plays once every five days. So a fair trade would involve Alex Rodriguez to plug their hole at third base, paying the difference in salary, plus throwing in a couple prospects I’ve been hyping for the past month to get warmed up for this.”)
How about the accumulated financial surplus from Safeco Field being exhausted, so that ownership hamstrings the payroll budget in the face of mounting losses and continuing attrition in fan attendance? Maybe an issue, but we don’t actually know where things stand in terms of the franchise’s internal accounting. Anyway, if the owners start crying poor from self-inflicted wounds, they’re not going to get a lot of sympathy and they know it. They’ll be under pressure to make a choice: front the cost or sell the team.
So, how about… that’s right, the AL West. That structural advantage of only having to beat out three other teams, instead of four or even five, to win your division isn’t going to last forever. It could disappear as soon as the next collective bargaining agreement, which is conveniently timed to be negotiated around the time of Jim Crane’s deadline to complete the purchase of the Houston Astros from Drayton McLane. So guess which team is the prime candidate to switch leagues in realignment. Yes, I know the Astros are terrible right now, even worse than the Mariners, but every obstacle counts and in the long term their current state doesn’t mean anything. There might be just one more season left to go, depending on what the deal is with divisions as well as potentially a different playoff structure going forward. Remember, flags fly forever, or something like that.
Alright, how do we “act now” then? I’m a bit confused about what you’re trying to get across in this article. That we need to win the AL West next year? That we need to trade Felix to fix the line up? It just seems all over the place to me.
I’m also confused…
Hey, knowing those NY writers… I bet they’d say WE needed to pay the salary difference AND throw in several of our own best prospects along with Felix to get A-Rod in return. After all, he’s a Yankee.
Ah, but he’s not a True YankeeTM. They might overrate him, but there’s also a big segment that’s frustrated with the personal foibles, lack of clutchness, and so on. I think it’s eminently possible that as he continues to decline, they ultimately end up looking to unload him and pick up the next shiny megatoy.
For those that are confused, sorry. Read it and imagine a salesman making a pitch for his product and trying to shoot down the competition, maybe that will help. The post isn’t necessarily a purely didactic argument, it’s exploring the issue for entertainment as much as anything.
The big one you overlooked is the one the sportswriters and columnists love most: “if they don’t act now, soon NO ONE will go to the games!!”
Frankly, I see every one of these arguments as a detriment to Z just continuing to do what he’s doing–accumulating talent. If his batting average holds true, a couple will turn into stars, and a few more will create the payments to other teams to fill the holes that remain.
This makes so much more sense now, thanks !
Without looking at the specifics of Felix’s salary, which as you point out may figure into this calculation, I’ve felt for some time the team shouldn’t look to deal Felix until after this coming season. If we’re going to contend in the next three or four years, Felix will have to be part of the team. We have several up and coming players that can form a good core.
By the time 2012 is complete we should have a good idea of what players like Smoak, Ackley, Carp, Seager, Hultzen, Paxton et al can do. For all but Ackley on that list there are a lot of question marks. If those guys are looking good, you don’t dare trade Felix. But if they all bust…what the hey. Get a NEW young core of players by dealing him.
Devin Mesoraco C 23 y/o, Reds top prospect
Juan Francisco, 3b/lf/DH kills RHP, hits for tons of power, perfect platoon guy in the AL
Travis Wood LHSP, 23-24 y/o, FB pitcher would do well in Safeco.
For Pineda
Ichiro
Guti
Ackley
Smoak
Mesoraco
Carp
Francisco
Ryan
Wells
What do you think?
Then, if I were Jack Z I’d look at Dempster for 2 years 15 mil.
Felix
Dempster
Vargus
Wood
Beavan / Bedard?
The Reds want to hold onto Mesoraco from what I’m hearing, but if they wanted to go for that trade, I’d absolutely pull the trigger on it.
Is it too early to start panicking and trying to figure out how to go about getting Doug Fister back? Did we trade away our best (value) pitcher in the middle of this season? Seriously. (Say it ain’t so, Joe!)
I mean, kid is killing it… .90 WHIP since becoming a Tiger… For a little over $400,000 a year. (whimper… tears… cry!)
*All a bit tongue in cheek– but it IS fun to watch the Fist do well in the post season*
So can we start talking about trading Felix? $19 million a year for the next 3 years or so, if we trade him now we maximize return, get a group of prospects who will be up and seasoned with the entire core by 2013-2014, and free up $19 million (plus Ichiro’s $18 million and this year’s contracts) for FAs. If we can get the right package doesn’t this seem logical?
Just food for thought. Maybe it’s not Pineda for Votto we should be thinking, but Felix for Mesoraco/Alonso/whoever.
Re: Felix – On paper, sure, there’s plenty of value you can get back, and it’s a good way to reload quickly. Especially if you can get above-average players at C, 3b and LF all at once.
But to go from King’s Court to King’s Ransom… I don’t see how you can sell it to the fanbase. I mean the average fan overall, not just the diehards here and at LL.
Too many fans would be irrational about trading Felix, no matter who you got back, no matter how much one could point to the good teams that were here after Randy, Junior, ARod, etc. left. Last thing a last place team needs is to shed their most (only?) popular player.
Will there still be an unbalanced schedule after realignment? I thought that it wasn’t so much that the AL West would gain the Astros and be a 5-team division, thus having another team for Rangers/Angels to feast on… but that Houston would move to the AL and then divisions would go away entirely, raising the specter of several years of only NYY/RedSox/Rays/Tigers being the AL playoff teams.
I haven’t seen anything to suggest divisions would go away entirely. Most of the realignment ideas are connected to the proposal to add a second wild card, likely with the two wild cards dueling each other for the fourth Division Series spot alongside the three division winners. Understandably, if the division leaders are going to have that big of an advantage over the wild cards, there’s considerable sentiment that baseball needs to revisit the divisions and address things that make one division easier to win than another. That potentially includes both oddball sizes in the NL Central and AL West, as well as unbalanced schedules. The endgame remains to be worked out, but as far as I know we should still expect the divisions themselves to stick around.
Ah, ok, thanks. I didn’t know the intent was 3 divisions of 5 teams in both leagues. I thought I’d read somewhere of a proposal to remove divisions entirely and have the playoffs come from the top teams in each league… but I suppose that eliminates the need for wild cards at all if it were done that way.
Regardless of division size, the overall goal needs to be just getting higher quality players in there in general, year over year. I don’t think there’s the need or ability to sell the farm to ‘go for it’ in 2012, even though I’m tired of the target year of contention being moved out by a year every year. (E.g. after 2010 was so bad, the meme was that the team would be good by 2012… now it seems like people are giving up on next year being rebuilding, and 2013/2014 is closer to a shot at contention… meh.)
If the Reds aren’t dealing Votto, how about a 3 way deal to get someone like Matt Kemp or Alex Gordon instead? The Dodgers have an obvious interest in catching prospects, which the Reds can easily provide. Z does well in 3 way deals. We could probably get something useful back in addition to Kemp
If there are an odd number of teams within each League, doesn’t it mean one of the following:
1. there is always one team on a bye (within each League)
or
2. there is always an interleague game being played
Isn’t this the main reason why there are an even number of teams within each league currently (16 and 14 respectively)?
If it goes through, it’s assumed that interleague games would be going on throughout the entire season. You can’t use byes like in football because a series involves multiple consecutive games against the same opponent, so you’d be forcing teams to take 3-4 days off at a time and totally disrupting the structure of the schedule.
The merits of interleague play are a separate topic, but there’s an argument that the novelty has worn off. In that sense, it doesn’t necessarily have a particular value anymore to warrant concentrating it on a few special weekends. If it weren’t for the designated hitter rule, baseball would be about where pro football was, at about the same point in time post-AFL/NFL merger, where there’s still some distant historical memory of which teams were originally in which leagues, but for practical purposes it doesn’t really matter.
All the more reason to get rid of the unbalanced schedule, IMO. I know the logistics are a nightmare, with travel and esp. weather delays… but somewhere, someone has to be able to figure out One True Schedule(tm) that has every team play every other team close to the same amount of times.
I know that the unbalanced schedule creates rivalries, fuels NYY/RedSox and their accompanying ratings, and gives some teams a half a chance that otherwise couldn’t assemble the talent to make a run at the playoffs. And that you get some exciting races, like this year, thanks to it.
But at some point you’re not getting a good measure of various teams’ strengths if they’re beating up on the same teams, or being beaten up by the same teams, over and over. Right? The risk is that any sort of drama is over by late summer and 22 teams are just playing out the string by mid-August… but isn’t that much like it is now?
A-Rod back in Seattle? I’d trust him only as far as I could throw him, plus he’s a shadow of what he was. Surely we could do better.
I agree. Felix is holding the fanbase together (Ichiro could be gone soon). We should try to improve the team now, but I think the priority should be 2013. Also, any move that doesn’t help us until 2014 or later is too late.
On the unbalanced schedule, I think you should win your division by beating the teams in it. If we play everyone the same amount, what does the division mean?
The idea of bringing A-Rod back makes (… ughhhhh… phhhhhffffttt…)
*drip, drip, drip…*
Dammit, just threw up all over my keyboard… I’ll try to put it into words after I get my composure back… But really? I mean…
(bullehchhhaaa….)
Jesus… Not AGAIN…
I’ll be back later…
In the theme of, “act now” I have a suggestion. Paul Maholm just had his option declined.
WHIP BAA ERA (2011 season)
1.31 .260 4.25 Jason Vargas(28yrs old)
1.29 .262 3.66 Paul Maholm (29yrs old)
1.28 .241 3.62 Erik Bedard (32yrs old)
1.22 .248 3.47 Felix (25yrs old)
1.10 .211 3.74 M. Pineda (22yrs old)
Maholms option was for $9.75M and hes coming off an injury so there’s a good chance a incentive deal or even a 3yr/$15M contract.
You sell it to the fanbase by winning with the pieces you acquired. Fans care about heroes, but they also care about winning.
The biggest benefit to trading Felix now is we don’t lose any valuable development time to our core. It takes a couple years for players to adjust to the Majors. If we trade Felix 2 years from now for an AAA C/3B/OF we’ll have to spend a couple years letting them learn the majors using up Ackley/Smoak et al’s service time. If we trade Felix now, we can develop the AAA C/3B/OF we get simultaneously with our core, so they all peak together for the best chance for contending.
Of course, it’s all dependent on will we trade Felix in his walk year. If we’re contending, probably not. But our biggest holes are projected to be LF/RF/C/3B and we’ll have Wells/Robinson/???/Martinez (or whoever steps up) and money to fill those holes.
Ultimately it’s a question of do you believe our core as it is can contend within 2 years. If not – trade him; if yes – keep him.
I would like to think that Z is going to have a successful enough winter, that our core will change by spring training. Which makes it hard to answer that question.
We need to address this around the trade deadline this year, in my opinion. If the young guys are looking like future studs at this time then we should definitely hang on to him and be big players in the 2012 offseason free agency market.
If not, then we should probably ship off Felix to get the highest return value for him possible. I love Felix and losing him would be awful, but if we’re going no where and trading him can get us back on the right track then I think it’s something you have to do.
When it comes right down to it, I’ll take a Felix-less team that’s a consistent threat to make the playoffs year after year over a team with Felix that doesn’t even sniff the playoff year after year every single day.
I just realized that the final paragraph/sentence of my previous post kind of runs together and is a bit difficult to read, sorry everyone.
If we can’t contend in 2 years, there’s a good argument for trading Felix. But either way, at that point, there may be permanent damage to the fan base.
I can’t think of a more stupid idea than bringing Alex back to Seattle. First of all he is universally despised here and he is not even close to the player he was when left. Lets revisit the last former Seattle superstar who came back, the Golden Grifter was a complete disaster. Personally I wouldn’t take Alex as a gift.
Just so we’re clear on this, I did put the Alex-for-Felix trade rumor in the mouth of a New York writer for a reason. Nobody here would be that delusional.
It takes a couple years for players to adjust to the Majors.
Felix Hernandez, 2004 WAR: 2.6
Dustin Ackley, 2011 WAR: 2.7
Michael Pineda, 2011 WAR: 3.4
Might want to amend that to “some players”.
As to your overall point: this is typically something I bring up to the “let’s wait and win NEXT year” crowd”: what is the point of paying a player 20 million dollars on a team when you don’t care about wins and losses, as opposed to trading for a bunch of cheap young talent that helps start up the NEXT wave of success?
That being said, it’s not necessarily an either/or situation if either you are rebuilding and losing 90-100 games every year, or contending. What Zduriencik was obviously trying to do was win now (Lee, Figgins, Felix) without doing harm to the future. The question for 2012 becomes “So, should we keep doing that?”
What Zduriencik was obviously trying to do was win now (Lee, Figgins, Felix) without doing harm to the future. The question for 2012 becomes “So, should we keep doing that?”
I think he’s been pretty clear from the start that he intends to do both at the same time.
But if it comes to either/or, I’m sure he’s not going to sacrifice building system-wide talent for the short term value of two or three Jeff Cirillos.
I think this coming season is a special situation. Even in the best case scenario for many fans…pencilling in Pujols or Fielder in the middle of the order…there are still way too many questions to be answered for us to legitimately be a contender. Plus, beyond those two guys, there really are no marquee free agents who can fill our needs.
So my guess is that they see 2012 as another year of figuring out who internally is going to fill a need, and who isn’t. Because in the areas were we still fall short, after next season there are potential answers in the free agent pool.
But this is going to be a tough sell to the instant gratification crowd. If they perceive the M’s ‘doing nothing to get better’ this winter, even more pitchforks and torches will come out.
So to get back to the point, in my mind, this winter shouldn’t be a time to expend too much young talent in trades…or too much money on the free agent market…because we really need to see who figures it out this coming year…and then spend the bucks to fill the remaining holes right after that.
But patience isn’t a very popular strategy.
I disagree that the Lee acquisition was an obvious “win now” move.
My belief is that with so few trade chips to try and build the farm system, Z created one by trading for Cliff Lee.
Z gave up Aumont and Gilles (+ Juan Ramirez) to get him. Then he flipped him for Smoak/Beavan/Lueke/Lawson.
So he basically flipped bad prospects for better prospects.
Now if the M’s magically became contenders, great! We have 2 aces for the stretch run. But I think the true intention of the acquisition was to flip prospects.
Now, HowChuck may have told Z, “We’re close, go get players”. And Z may have told himself, “No f-ing way we are” and thus found a way to accomplish his L/T goal while appeasing HowChuck, but I do not believe that the Lee acquisition was first and foremost a “win now” move.
If there’s an imaginary dial or slider control to that (from slow to now, not from harm to now…), I’d start nudging in the ‘now’ direction.
I think there’s room for the kind of cheap upgrades that Dave mentioned in his last post, if necessary and done smartly. I.e. no flyers on aging veterans or on castoffs whose upside is about league average.
But I also think there needs to be a couple of impact trades / acquisitions, with the accompanying payroll increase if needed. Not along with any kind of “we’re one bat away” sort of message; the front office should set expectations low. More “this is the same rebuilding we’ve been doing, only expanded, with the benefit of a better farm and better $ flexibility”.
…I’d also like a pony.
are there any realistic trade partners outside of the Yankees? Someone who could afford Felix and has the right talent? Yanks could do a Nova/Montero and Banuelos which wouldn’t look too bad. Just curious on legit thoughts of who else could play? Blue Jays?
And I know no one has mentioned it, but even though David Ortiz had a good year, and would have been a leader in multiple categories if he were a Mariner, and wants a low-drama club to go to as a free agent, I count him as taking a flyer on an aging veteran, good 2011 aside. He’s overdue to completely implode.
I don’t know the various rosters well enough to opine, but I sure as hell hope that if the M’s ever do need to trade Felix, that they’ll send him to the NL if at all possible. Perhaps a similarly rebuilding team that wants to ‘go for it’, like the Nationals? Or a recent swing-and-miss team like the Braves?
Anyway. NL, I hope. Not only so we avoid the sting of facing him more often than the occasional interleague game, not only to give him a chance to bat regularly… but dang, I don’t want to see the Yankees or any other AL team have that good a rotation piece for years to come.
The logical trade partner for Felix would be the Reds. They’re hurting for pitching and have some fantastic prospects we could get from dealing Felix to them. If we had to trade Felix then that’s who I’d target first.
I agree, the Reds would be the best option.
Chapman, Leake, Hannigan….not a bad start.
But if it comes to either/or, I’m sure he’s not going to sacrifice building system-wide talent for the short term value of two or three Jeff Cirillos.
Nobody’s arguing for him to do that.
So to get back to the point, in my mind, this winter shouldn’t be a time to expend too much young talent in trades…or too much money on the free agent market…because we really need to see who figures it out this coming year…and then spend the bucks to fill the remaining holes right after that.
What makes you think spending the money in 2013 will yield more impact than in 2012? If the best players get extended or end up costing too much, we’re in October 2013 saying “OK, we should wait until the REALLY good players show up in 2014. Maybe we can sign Godot“.
There’s also the factor that another year of a bad team means less attendance, less revenue… and possibly less salary budget for free agents. Maybe the Mariners decide to cut 10 million from the 2011 budget down to $75 million, on the grounds of “well, we aren’t close, why bother”, and then when Ichiro walks after a 90-loss season… cut another $10 million. Remember, attendance is a lagging indicator of team quality, so “we will wait until the fans to show up and the team’s good to start spending money” means you might be waiting quite a while… and you might not get a lot of good out of it; the Indians have already gone through an entire cycle of cutting salary ($34 million in 2004), to a peak ($81 million in 2009), and right back down ($49 million in 2011).
But I think the true intention of the acquisition was to flip prospects.
Well, you could have done that without taking on 2/3rds of Cliff Lee’s 2010 salary. You could have dumped Ichiro+prospects for better prospects. You could have bundled Felix+prospects.
I think the idea was “well, we’ve made a move that helps the now (in that Cliff Lee improves our team now) and does no harm to the future (since we can flip him for prospects at the deadline)”.
But salary for one year is relative. Once the year is over, that’s done with and won’t affect you going forward. You needed Lee as the medium to flip the prospects. In reality, it’s the price to pay to try and quickly rebuild the farm system when you don’t have the blockbuster pieces to trade and build with.
I mean, telling Texas, “Hey, we’ll trade Aumont, Gilles and this other guy for Smoak et al.” would never fly (unless you’re some of the commenters here who live in la la land).
And yes, you could use Felix and Ichiro to do that, but that would take people from your current base. Felix you hope is part of the foundation for the future. And yes, you could argue about Ichiro’s viability going forward, but he hadn’t shown signs of decline at the time and there’s the weird dynamic I know I don’t we don’t need to get into.
But salary for one year is relative. Once the year is over, that’s done with and won’t affect you going forward.
It certainly affects the team’s retained earnings after their income, no? More salary = less profit that can be used to subsidize future salary boosts when it’s “time to spend money and win now” without asking for a capital call (since, again, attendance and thus revenue will lag team quality).
Being a bad team and “waiting for the kids” has consequences. Cleveland used to lead the league in attendance, just like us. Now? At the bottom of the league… just like us (except more so). And big salary cuts.
That’s why I think Jack’s motto has been “win without doing harm to the future”, not “we don’t care, we’re screwed”. And even if we give you Lee in this scenario, this doesn’t explain Figgins.
And yes, you could use Felix and Ichiro to do that, but that would take people from your current base. Felix you hope is part of the foundation for the future.
Well, let’s look at his contract.
10:$6.5M, 11:$10M, 12:$18.5M, 13:$19.5M, 14:$20M
It’s pretty obvious that 2010-11 are the years where you’re getting WAR at a huge discount to market value, and 2012-14 aren’t, so much.
I’m looking at that contract and thinking “well, if we add some guys in 2010, and we start winning, we’ll be OK”.
We added some guys in 2010 (Figgins and Lee). We didn’t start winning so much (and remember, they were added to a team that won 85 games the preceding year).
Our Pythagorean W-L was 75-87 in 2009 – no one thought we were contending 2010, even with Cliff Lee and Chone Figgins, except maybe the truly optimistic. We got him because we were going to flip him, plain and simple. It was both win now and help the future move.
So why sign Chone Figgins if we didn’t think we would contend? Because we had zero 3B prospects and 3B’s FA market looked awful for at least a couple years – hence Figgins, the top non-Beltre (because he wasn’t resigning here, period) 3B FA on the market for the next couple years. We needed someone at the position.
The attendance issue: We haven’t led the league in attendance since 2002. We haven’t been top 10 since 2004. Texas was 25th in 2008 and now they’re 10th and on their way up. And who did Texas trade in 2007 so they could be competitive 2009-2011? Mark Teixeira. Winning is the only thing that matters for attendance because winning makes your team relevant and being relevant means fans come to games. Just a note: Milwaukee is 7th.
Felix’s contract: it was a standard contract buying out 2 of his arbitration years and 3 of his FA years. It’s a deal most Aces sign to not deal with arbitration and find some security. Just because his 2nd year of arbitration happened to coincide with 2010 doesn’t mean we thought we should contend 2010. To me, that contract screams “let’s find some cheap talent to build around him for 2012-2014.” The question we’re looking at now is, do we have enough talent to build around Felix for 2012-2014?
What makes you think spending the money in 2013 will yield more impact than in 2012?
Just check the free agent list this winter vs. next.
There’s also the factor that another year of a bad team means less attendance, less revenue… and possibly less salary budget for free agents.
There’s no possible way to know that. In your scenario, it’s at least as likely ownership says, ‘we have no choice but to spend more money now.’
Just check the free agent list this winter vs. next.
That will always appear to be the case. Check back on which of next year’s potential free agents end up either signing extensions, or no longer looking nearly so attractive after a season gone south.
Nobody saw the Putz or Lee (for Lee) trade coming. Nobody expected a multi-year deal for Figgins (though we knew a 3rd baseman was needed), nobody expected him to snag Hultzen in last years draft. Point is, there is a million different scenarios that could develop very quickly. I’d bet we end up with more than one name on next seasons roster that nobody has given thought to yet. We know he likes players who have at least some major league experience. Maybe he makes a play for Jesus Montero? It will be interesting.