M’s Re-Sign Oliver Perez
The M’s announced today that they’ve re-signed Oliver Perez for the 2013 season, and Jon Heyman reports that he’s getting $1.5 million in salary with $600,000 in incentive bonuses. Given that his velocity spiked with the move to the bullpen and that he was actually pretty good for the team last year, this is a nice little pickup. Relievers who throw 94 from the left side aren’t growing on trees, and the M’s basically got him for little more than the league minimum.
With Perez coming back, the bullpen is officially overcrowded, which means someone is going away before spring training. The late inning roles are likely to go to Wilhelmsen, Furbush, Capps, and Luetge, with Pryor, Perez, and either Shawn Kelley or Josh Kinney working in middle relief. Given that Kelley and Kinney are both arbitration eligible but that Kelley is probably in line for a bigger raise and has more trade value, my guess is that Shawn Kelley is the odd man out, and the team will flip him as part of a minor trade for a bench player or a non-roster prospect.
The bullpen should once again be the strength of the team. With Perez back in the fold, they’ll have three pretty decent left-handed bullpen arms, and then three guys who throw serious heat from the right side. Not a bad group to play the match-ups with.
I agree the bullpen should be strong. Of course we’ve seen pitchers inexplicably fall apart before, so while practically speaking I agree the bullpen is overcrowded, you never know how it will play out in practice.
I do wonder if Z might decide to sell high on Wilhelmsen if a good offer comes along. I love the guy, don’t get me wrong, and his curve is a thing of beauty – but as you said, the bullpen is the team’s undeniable strength right now.
Good to see Z taking care of business early. I thought Perez might have been able to get more money from another team. Nice to know he’d rather be with the M’s than seeing what the market might have been for his services. Having a vet in the pen with the kids will help.
I was hoping they would re-sign him. This move gives them more flexibility.
For example, they could experiment with stretching out Furbush and Wilhelmsen as starters, should this become necessary as a stopgap measure because of injury, or ineffectiveness by other starters.
I’m not saying making Furbush and/or Wilhelmsen into starters should be Plan A, but sometimes Plan B and Plan C become necessary.
Perez and Kinney were smart pickups who emerged from a whole pile of players signed to minor league contracts. I’ll be interested to see who else they get in this manner.
“Perez and Kinney were smart pickups who emerged from a whole pile of players signed to minor league contracts. I’ll be interested to see who else they get in this manner.”
This is a great strategy for getting relievers and even back-end starters. Of course, it helps to see potential where other teams don’t, too.
Trading Wilhelmsen wouldn’t be a bad move, but I don’t think they would get enough for him until midyear.
I still would like to see Wilhelmsen try starting, given his 3rd pitch has developed nicely. His potential value as a starter, plus the excess of relievers, makes him a great low-risk.
We emotionally over-value closers so much, but putting Wilhelmsen in for 150-170 innings this year could be a huge plus for this rotation, which is missing a fifth starter.
And I don’t want to it be Beaven. Like ever. And I don’t believe ANY of the “big 3” are that close to the majors.
Z makes bullpen construction look so easy you wonder why everyone can’t do it.
The repeated Beavan-bashing, and the herd mentality that accompanies it, is becoming a bore. When the Mariners have a better pitcher than Beavan is to fill that slot in the rotation, he’ll be in there and Beavan won’t be.
We can stipulate that Beavan is not Felix Hernandez, or Randy Johnson, or Juan Marichal, or Cy Young. But how many times do I have to read “Beavan sucks? or “I hate Beavan?” What does it add to our collective knowledge?
Beavan has good control, an average to below-average fastball that he can throw for strikes, a mediocre but demonstrably improving breaking pitch, and a mediocre but developing change.
The operative word is “developing.” Beavan is also 23 years old, and pitch for pitch he is where Doug Fister was when he was 23 years old, except that Fister was pitching in AA ball at age 23, and Beavan is in the AL.
I’m not saying Beavan is the next Doug Fister, or the next anything else, because how the hell would I know that? If people think he sucks, maybe it’s because he’s in over his head to begin with because there isn’t anybody else, and for whatever reason, there hasn’t been. It boggles my mind that I can read “Beavan sucks” and “sign Tom Baker” in the same comment thread.
Just as I can’t say for sure that Beavan will improve, none of you who pile on with “Beavan sucks” or “anybody but Beavan” can say for sure that he won’t. Tom Wilhelmsen, after all, wasn’t born with that big curveball. He had to learn it.
The list of pitchers who suddenly “got it” in their mid- to late 20s after consistently sucking and became top-flight major league pitchers is too long to list. For one who leaps to mind, see Stewart, Dave. Many of these pitchers started out with far fewer positive attributes than Beavan has shown so far.
We can all agree that we’d like to see Beavan do better, or have a better pitcher in his place. Until such time, I hope to see less of this “me-too-ism” and juvenile piling on.
Whoa, dude. That’s a lot of reaction.
Beaven belongs in the organization, just probably not in MLB. Yeah, he could develop. But if you’re hoping to compete in 2013, Blake Beaven probably shouldn’t be in the plan. He could be an excellent 6th/7th starter as an injury replacement. I don’t think anyone is saying to release him. But there are better options. One of them could be Wilhelmsen, or about 20 other guys who might be available. But 2013 could be an important year for the M’s, I don’t know that a guy with 250 MLB innings with an xFIP of about 4.8 is who you want with many potential better options out there.
Hard to get too jazzed about the reliever signing–since the M’s are coming from so far back.
Beaven? Don’t get down on him. Still learning the ropes. Many people weren’t too thrilled with Fister… in his first couple of years. I guess we know how that turned out?
Beavan has shown no signs of becoming a useful starting pitcher in any capacity.
In lieu of all this “Beaven-bashing” I am also very glad Perez decided to come back. I figured he’d test free-agent waters for a bit longer, but then again he is sitting on an extra 12mil he didn’t really earn.
“When the Mariners have a better pitcher than Beavan is to fill that slot in the rotation, he’ll be in there and Beavan won’t be.”
They had Furbush who posted good splits, but kept him in relief/long-relief. He’s was (is) better. I’m not confident the management can determine who their top talent is.
And Beavan to Fister is a lazy comparison.
So, who’s down for Hamilton at 7/175? If 100 of that was based on incentives, I’d probably pull my ear-buds out, but otherwise I’ll enjoy listening to The Who. “We’re not gonna take it”.
The Who or Twisted Sister?
Beavan is the next coming of Greg Maddux. Whynot?
^Guess you’re not familiar with “Tommy”.
Beavan wont be with the Mariners long, regardless of him starting the season in the rotation or not.
Glad to see the bipartisan support for TW as a starter. Win with Tom
Glad to see the bipartisan support for TW as a starter. Win with Tom
Just for curiosity’s sake, what’s the track record for turning good or better relievers into starters? And what would we consider a success for a conversion?
Sure, Beavan *could* turn into Doug Fister. He could also develop a killer splitter that makes him a 7 K/9 player. There’s not a lot of chance of either happening. Beavan developing into Fister is probably somewhere around the 90th percentile on a potential development curve.
As for Hamilton, no thanks! For one thing, I doubt he’s going to sign anywhere for a deal that incentive-heavy, not when someone will be willing to give him that kind of cash up front. And I just don’t see him being worth $170M over the life of the contract. Assuming he’s worth 4.5 WAR (he was at 4.4 last year and 4.1 the year before so if anything that’s a little bit hopeful) and assuming $5M per win and half a WAR decline per year (which is pretty standard in these kinds of things) that’s a guy who is worth more like $105M over 7 seasons. And I just don’t see anything about Hamilton that tells me he’s going to age any more slowly than the average player.
CJ Wilson is a good recent example of a reliever to starter conversion. Actually TW was a starter before his bartender stint. If a guy has 3 or more + pitches and is healthy there is no reason on earth except the fear to take a chance. It’s kind of like the people who didn’t want to play Jaso because we would lose him as a pinch hitter. The A’s who have developed (and lost to free agency) more pitchers than almost any organization in MLB commonly bring a young guy up, get his feet wet in the pen and then make a starter out of him if all is well.
I dunno, I’m skeptical that Wilhelmsen’s arsenal would translate well over multiple innings and trips through the batting order. I know there was talk of him mixing in a changeup, but fangraphs is telling me he only threw it 5 percent of the time and I don’t recall it being much of a weapon. Not worth messing with a good thing.
Furbush, on the other hand, should get a look as a starter again. His peripherals looked good in 2011 if it wasn’t for that unsustainable HR/FB rate. He’s got enough of a mix of pitches that he could keep a third or fourth pitch in his back pocket for the second trip around the lineup. I know he had that DL stint last year – I wonder if there’s concern about his durability in the front office that has kept him in the pen. He’s obviously effective as a LOOGY, but we’ve got a couple of those already and I feel like he’s being sold short.
_Hutch_:
I agree on Furbush. I have said all along that he needs to refine his approach to right-handed hitters, if he is to face them more than once in a game. He needs to throw fastballs away and get them to reach, then bust that slider in on them. He also needs a better changeup than he has.
Apples and oranges- TW mostly pitched in closer situations and with the M’sa lot of one run leads so he wasn’t going to get beat with his third pitch. The fact that he was developing a third pitch tells me he would like to be a better pitcher. If he spends all winter in the bar and comes back in Feb. the same guy as Sept. well then he is your closer. But IF he develops the change like I think he will and can get lefties to chase it he can then make multiple passes through a line up. Just as Hutch says about Furbush – He also needs a better change up. Same for Tom
Just curious, has anyone looked at Furbush’s splits from last year? There was significant improvement facing right handed hitters (facing lefties too). Sure, he can work on a few things, but he by all means deserves another shot at the rotation. Especially if the alternative is Beavan.