Todd Walker
Today, the Padres announced that they were going to release veteran second baseman Todd Walker, paying him just under $1 million in termination pay, rather than keeping him on the roster for the full season and paying him $4 million to be Marcus Giles’ backup. Because his salary was determined through arbitration, it wasn’t fully guaranteed, and the Padres decided they’d rather pay Walker $1 million to not play for them than $4 million to be part of their bench.
Just for fun, let’s play the comparison game. Here are the 2006 numbers for Walker and another bad defensive second baseman who you may have heard of.
Walker: .278/.356/.398, 442 AB, 9 HR, 55 BB, 38 K, 62 Runs Created
Vidro: .289/.348/.395, 463 AB, 7 HR, 41 BB, 48 K, 63 Runs Created
It’d be hard to find two more similar players. Both aging, injury prone former middle infielders who belong at DH defensively, lack power, but control the strike zone well.
The Mariners valued this skillset so highly that… oh, you know what they did. The Padres looked at this skillset and decided that they’d rather pay it to go away.
Well done, fellas. Way to gauge the market.
I hate when our fierce regional rivals show us up like that!
Prosecution Exhibit #87 for why Bavasi is no the guy to lead the Ms.
I’d take those 14 extra BBs, and 10 fewer strike outs, from Walker over Vidro in a heartbeat.
and we’d have Doyle back…
How do their intangibles match up?
I remember reading a couple of weeks ago that if the Pads released him there would probably be a grievance. What is the basis of that grievance in the eyes of Walker and the union? Doesn’t the team still have the right to decide who the best 25/40 ballplayers on their team are?
There will be a grievance, because you’re not allowed to terminate a contract for strictly financial reasons. It’s the same clause that won’t allow teams to bench a player to keep them from reaching a playing time triggered bonus in their contract or to keep an option year from vesting.
Of course, it shouldn’t be very hard for the Padres to just go before an arbiter and say “he can’t field anymore, we’re not in a league with a DH, we gave his job to Marcus Giles after he had already accepted arbitration, and we wanted a better defensive backup middle infielder”. They’ll win that case with ease.
I’m suprised Bavasi didn’t hatch a trade with our fierce regional rivals / frequent trade partners to grab another example of this vetran skillset, taking on all the salary and giving up some valuable young player. But maybe Bill has already used up all the latter.
I don’t think that I ever want to get on Dave’s bad side. The last few days have been a one man war against the organization, and it’s not even close. It’s like Unicron versus, versus, whatever that planet was that he took out at the beginning of Transformers.
This is more evidence of why I want the Mariners to fail from the very beginning of this season…..to get rid of Hargrove and Bavasi. If the Mariners do a nice mediocre job of winning half of their games it will be validation that the M’s are on their way back. Management will keep them both, and with the dynamic duo leading the way the M’s will never make it back…they will just be a West Division version of the Orioles.
If the M’s must fail to clean house, it is like an addict that must hit rock bottom to fully recover. So I am hoping for disaster first, and for it to lead to a house cleaning that will bring in leadership that I can root for again.
Yeah … so basically they’ll be exactly like they were before their little 6-year run of moderate success. This is a bad franchise. I’d be shocked if they put together a good team more than once per decade, and even that good team will be the result of luck rather than intelligence.
Would someone please care to explain to me why the Mariners kept both Dumb and Dumber (Bavasi and Hargrove)?
Because the Ms went from 63 wins in 2004 to 78 wins in 2006….
Is it possible to bungle your way to a 15 game improvement?
Really the logical extension of the Andretti in ’08 campaign is that Bavasi and Co an’t cut bait. The question I have is, how many wins should/could the M’s have had last season?
If not for platoon splits, I’d be happy to have Todd Walker as a cheap DH. Everything else being equal, of course.
Pygmalion, I concur.
Dave, excoriate away…
Duck Snorts has a pretty good write up and break down of this as well.
Yeah, Dave’s on a roll today, between this and the Morrow stories. I agree on both counts. I am seriously considering becoming an A’s fan, at least until the current M’s management is gone. These guys are just hopeless.
In all fairness, though, Todd Walkers ’06 is basically his upside. Vidro at least could conceivably be a better player than that. Not saying its likely, but certainly possible.
Vidro has an upside. The best thing about him is he’s not Carl Everett. The downside is he’s no Doyle. Did we upgrade over Everett? Duh, yeah. Did we possibly sell out to get him? Duh, yeah.
I know this is only slightly on topic, but what does runs created take into account such that someone with a lower OBP and SLG can create more runs?
Park effects.
but … but … Vidro is a Professional Hitter!
Also, I’m not making this a post because I’ve ripped on the organization enough today, but Mike Rivera cleared waivers today.
The one who hit .268/.325/.458 for the Brewers last year and has been one of the PCL’s best catchers the past two seasons. The 30-year-old with some juice in his bat. Yea, that one.
Even in their limited playing time in 2006, Mike Rivera was 15 runs better than Rene Rivera. 15 runs!
These guys all deserve to lose their jobs.
But Dave, all Rene needs is enough playing time to gain a Defensive Catcher reputation (the hitting inversely proportional to defensive rep. principle), then he’s set for his career. Don’t you care about his career?
Maybe we can swap Riveras without anyone noticing? I mean, anyone in the M’s organization.
I guess the good news is, if Vidro goes down with an injury, now we can just pick up Walker instead of having to trade Morrow to the Padres for him.
I mean, a middle reliever is a small price to pay for a veteran DH…
especially an untested one like Morrow…
It doesn’t concern the Mariners much but I wonder: Is Marcus Giles better than Todd Walker?
Basically RC has an on-base component and an advancement component that are weighted by opportunities (i.e. PA).
So the first culprit could be the relative number of PA’s each player had.
It also depends on which source you’re using for the RC figure. You may have noticed that EPSN, baseball reference and THT will report different values for a given player. This is due to differences in the formula that they use (there are about 14 versions of James’ formula), how they correct RC, and slight differences in the counting stats totals. THT uses the latest version of James’ formula and then corrects RC for team context, park effects and situational hitting. IMHO, it’s the most useful RC value. ESPN and baseball reference don’t correct for park etc as far as I know.
While park effects can contribute to a player with a lower OBP and SLG having a higher RC value with THT, the situational adjustment is likely a bigger contributor IMHO. This is indeed the case when comparing the 2004 RC values of Hank Blalock (.276/.355/.500; PA:713; THT RC: 113) and Adam Dunn ( .266/.388/.569; PA: 681; THT RC: 111).
First while Blalock’s SLG and OBP are lower than Dunn’s, he has about 30 more PA. Their unadjusted THT RC are: Dunn 120; Blalock 107. Interestingly, Dunn has near the extreme in ’04 for negative clutch while Blalock was insane with runners on (near the extreme for positive clutch). So after adjusting for clutch, their THT totals become Dunn 112; Blalock 117. Then team context and park effects are accounted for to yield the final RC values listed above (111 vs 113). So in this case the situational adjustment dwarfed the magnitude of the park effects.
If you compare those to ESPN, you’ll note that for 2004, ESPN credits Dunn with significantly more RC than Blalock.
Mike Rivera cleared waivers today…These guys all deserve to lose their jobs.
As I’ve said before, as hard as it may be to believe, the Mariners front office (and I honestly don’t know if that’s Bavasi or a collective) simply doesn’t understand how to evaluate major league talent, especially when it comes understanding how a player compares to replacement level.
Definitely organization as a whole; this isn’t the first time this has happened.
dunno if he is better, but by golly, he has grit, moxie, and a chin that rivals Dudley DoRight.
Just to validate what Dave said, the most similar batter to Walker is Vidro, and the most similar to Vidro is Walker.
Vidro
Walker
The above is overall, entire career. Through age 31, though, Walker is the 7th most similar to Vidro. The most similar to Vidro through age 31 are those superstars Carlos Baerga and Jeff Cirillo.
I’m still up for picketing at opening day. But no one seems to be very keen on the idea.
Great stuff, Dave.