And Now We Look Forward
Normally, the end of a baseball season isn’t something I would celebrate, but I join Marc is saying that I’m glad the 2011 season is over for the Mariners. There were some positives but more negatives, and for the last few months, the team just wasn’t a particularly compelling product. So, now, we look forward to 2012.
We start that off today with my final piece of the season over at Brock and Salk’s blog. Here’s the gist of the point:
With the M’s loss last night, they finished the season at 67-95. They ended the season with just a few actual Major League players in the lineup and the starting pitcher was perhaps the worst hurler in the history of the game. Given their struggles over the last few years, it’s common to hear people talk about why this team is several years away from contending, and how next year will probably be more of the same.
It doesn’t have to be however.
Need an example? The Arizona Diamondbacks are the NL West Champions, having finished the year with a 94-68 record that easily outpaced the rest of their division rivals. Their record in 2010? 65-97, worse than what the Mariners put up this year. And it’s not like they just had a down year due to injuries and then bounced back — they went 70-92 in 2009, giving them 135 wins in the two seasons prior to their dominance this year. That’s pretty darn close to the 128 wins the Mariners have compiled the last two years.
You’re going to hear a lot of people talk about what the Mariners “need to do” this winter. Some people think they need to raise payroll and sign Prince Fielder. Others think they need to commit to the youth movement and let the kids have a full year to show what they’re made of. While those sides don’t agree on specifics, they both come from the point of view that there’s a right path and a wrong path. I’d argue, however, that future performance is not written in stone nearly as much as people might think, and that staking your ground on one particular way of approaching this off-season isn’t a great idea.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss the different options the organization has, the pros and cons of each, and talk about how the team might look depending on what way they choose to go. I just hope everyone realizes there’s not just one “right way” to approach this off-season.
Looking at the 40 man roster, it seems like there arent a lot of easy removals on it anymore. Other than Figgins (who probably can only be gotten rid of through outrighting) and Kennedy there are the two catchers (Gimenez & Bard) but that doesnt really open much as a back up would still be needed for catcher. Without a trade of some of them you may be left with Mike Wilson and Mike Saunders as times up guys and of course Jamey Wright. I dont know how soon some of the lower talent needs to be protected such as Franklin and Martinez but looks like some trading is surely needed.
Good thing San Francisco didnt go “not this year” even though their pitching was good and hittig sucked!!!!
The problem with the idea of “we’ll spend money later” is sometimes there IS no later.
I think this is an important point. I’m leaning more and more towards a philosophy that outside of the extreme margins, it makes the most sense to just apply a sensible, mid-range discount rate and look for opportunities to get better now and in the future, and be flexible about which to privilege based on where the best opportunities are. The most important reason here is that it’s not feasible to predict exactly when your opportunities to compete will arise. You can’t predict your own players precise development curves, you can’t predict a run of good or bad luck in one run games, you can’t predict when Texas will have an all around unlucky year, and so on and so forth. This general truth is amplified by being in a 4 team division.
“The smart thing to do is target 201X as the year we really try to contend” is classic overplanning, given the degree of uncertainty in the planning environment.
djw, that’s pretty much my point. You can’t take advantage of an opportunity if you’ve decided to discard the opportunity, and every year you play baseball is an opportunity to win a division and potentially make the playoffs.
I’m not saying “burn all the kids in trades and add $50 million in salary for every over-30 veteran we can get our hands on, it’s time to make a run”. The principle is to do no harm to your ability to contend in the future, and within that, make targeted signings/trades/whatever that maximize that. Yeah, there’s a risk you might sign the 2012 version of Chone Figgins. You know what? There’s also a risk Felix might blow out an arm on Opening Day. You can’t possibly eliminate ALL risk of any particular move or signing not backfiring. You can try to assess risks and have good decision processes on what to do with your resources (salary budget for FAs, MLB players under contract, minor leaguers and so on). And that’s really all I want: moves that pencil out as upgrades over the roster that ended the 2011 season, not “well, sorry, 2012’s not going to be our year, no big deal that the last two years were crappy, but this isn’t our year to try anything, and maybe after we give our kids another 700 plate appearances in MLB we can decide which one of them are decent players and which ones won’t be. Sorry about the lost decade, Ichiro and Seattle, we’ll try to be good…sometime. Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today.”
Everyone is so divided. Spend the money or don’t spend the money. Focus on next season or focus on 2013 and beyond.
The one thing everyone seems to be agreeing on is we need more POWER. More pop. More bada-bing.
Theres a way to do both. Transition our youth movement from Kyle Seager and a bunch of unknown quantity outfielders to a couple players with power who are still young. Players who give us pop at a position that we don’t have it while not compromising talent and AVG.
My suggestions….
PABLO SANDOVAL (3rd base)—426AB’s 23HR’s
25 yrs old. .315AVG/.357OBP/.909OPS
ALEX GORDON (3rd base/LF)—611AB’s 23HR’s
27 years old .303AVG/.376OBP/.879OPS
LOGAN MORRISON (LF)—462AB’s 23HR’s
24 years old. .247AVG/.330OBP/.797OPS
What it will take: Some combination of 2 or 3 of these players; Liddi/Trayvon/Saunders/Hultzen/Paxton/Walker should get one of those deals done.
Other alternatives for players age 30 and under: BJ Upton, Carlos Quentin, Mike Moustakas, Edwin EnCarnacion, David Wright, Andre Eithier, Matt Kemp. Adjust perspective accordingly.
I think what we really need is more contact.
Our guys have plenty of power. But that power only shows up when bat meets ball, which in many cases is quite rare.
Josh, I’m not sure why you scoffed at my Seth Smith suggestion earlier when Logan Morrison is a younger version of the same player.
Seth Smith (LF)—476AB 15HR
29 years old. .284AVG/.347OBP/.830OPS
accept Smith has more doubles, triples, stolen bases..
Park factor aside it seems we’re suggesting the same types of players the Mariners should target. Young, affordable, cost-controlled, realistic etc.
What it will take: Some combination of 2 or 3 of these players; Liddi/Trayvon/Saunders/Hultzen/Paxton/Walker should get one of those deals done.
First of all I don’t think Hultzen can be traded for a year. As I said in an earlier post I believe we can get Ethier for some money and a couple of players say Cortes and maybe Catricala. Ethier is a high contact guy who can give you 15-20 homeruns in a season and would fit nicely in LF. The one problem is he’s lefthanded.
Actually, I think some just plain offense would be better.
TumwaterMike says:
>>> What it will take: Some combination of 2 or 3 of these players; Liddi/Trayvon/Saunders/Hultzen/Paxton/Walker should get one of those deals done.
First of all I don’t think Hultzen can be traded for a year. As I said in an earlier post I believe we can get Ethier for some money and a couple of players say Cortes and maybe Catricala. Ethier is a high contact guy who can give you 15-20 homeruns in a season and would fit nicely in LF. The one problem is he’s lefthanded.<<<
I don't see why his being left handed hurts him.
The one thing everyone seems to be agreeing on is we need more POWER. More pop. More bada-bing.
This strikes me as alarmingly similar to the “we should put all our eggs in the contending in 201X” basket. We know perfectly well how to evaluate the tradeoffs between different offensive skillsets in generating more runs. If the best and most efficient way to upgrade the offense is via some other route, it would be quite foolish to pass it up because of an essentially aesthetic preference for a particular sort of player.
I don’t see why his being left handed hurts him.
It doesn’t hurt him. We just seem to have an in-balance of left-handers.
Jordan,
Seth Smith Compared to Logan Morison might on the surface appear similar. However,
– Seth Smith is 29 compared to Logan Morison who is 24.
– Seth Smith has never hit more than 17Hr’s in a season while playing his entire career in Colorado.
I believe what the M’s need going forward is to make some trades to aquire some young players with good power as alternatives to our current 3rd base/LF positions. Seth Smith is a nice little player with some Casey Kotchman type upside. But personally id rather just let Casper Wells play everyday.
Modeling our team after the 2010 San Fran Giants would be my goal if I were the M’s front office. Keep Pineda and Felix together. And try to upgrade at 3rd base or SS.
If there was one big move I would make this offseason, it would be to get a catcher close to the major leagues like Yasmani Grandal. We would be a good trade matchup with the reds since they need pitching and we need an everyday catcher and hitters.
Kyle Seager had a third of a season that would pencil out to an above-average 3B if it was a complete season. Unlike other players (*cough*Smoak*cough*Peguero*cough*Saunders*), he didn’t spend weeks at the plate looking totally lost. He adjusted to the level of competition just fine, and remember, this was a guy who 12 months ago was coming out of A ball.
He’s not the problem, and given that he has better minor league stats than any of our hitters outside of Ackley (and the characteristics of very good MLB players tend to include “race through the minors very quickly”), I don’t get why everyone wants to turn him into Willie Bloomquist or Mark McLemore or trade him. but seems to be fine with Smoak, Carp, Wells, Robinson, or (fill in the blank of guy we need to trade for RIGHT NOW).
Oh, right, he doesn’t hit DINGERS!11!!!