M’s Select Fields
No surprise – the M’s selected the best college reliever on the board, in this case, Georgia RHP Josh Fields. He’s a short power arm who can throw 97 and misses bats, so as far as college relievers go, he’s a very good one. He should be able to get to the major leagues very quickly, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him pitching in the 8th inning in Seattle next summer. For what he is, he’s good.
Our problem, of course, is what he is. As I detailed below, taking a college reliever in the first round is just a waste of a valuable resource. You can build a bullpen without using first round picks on them, and the Mariners have been very good at finding quality relievers on the cheap. This just isn’t a very good way to restock a farm system that’s taken some hits in the M’s efforts to win now.
This organization needs long term help, and Fields is not what this organization needed.
Oolan – ah. Thanks.
50 – If they had drafted him because they thought he could start, that would have been cool. Or if it was because they thought he was the best player available… also cool.
But we knew ahead of time… days ahead of time… that they were targeting relievers. That is my problem. Fields is only some convincing proof of that tragic strategy, not a terrible player himself.
If they didn’t set out to throw their first pick at a reliever? If that was all a smokescreen? If all espn and Dave’s sources were wrong, and Fields just happened to be the pick as a coincidence… then I’ll take back my criticism. Mostly.
I would take this Josh Fields over our Josh Fields at the moment:
http://mlb.mlb.com/team/player.jsp?player_id=435222
D-Cam 4 GM.
This smells of a “higher up” mandate. In other words, it stinks.
Look forward to feeling like the team that drafted this guy.
It is only because people are still so butt hurt because he is local from the ground up (h.s. – college etc…) … that is really the root of the problem
No, the root of the problem is that people refuse to move on. We know, ok? Everybody here already knows. Unless you’re a member of his immediate family, or Tim L himself, there’s nothing you can say that we don’t already know. All you’re doing is wasting your time and our patience.
You know that jerk at your local tavern who gets a couple of drinks in him and always, every night, gets going about the god-damned gubermint or the god-damned ay-rabs or the god-damned whatever? Don’t be that guy.
D-Cam 4 GM.
Ok, was I the only person who sat there for 30 seconds going “Who TF is ‘D-Cam’?”
yes.
Reese Havens or Hewitt, but whatever. Like it matters. Oh, a change is gonna come!
I’m more interested in seeing if Barry Zito gets back on track than watching the M’s right now.
Should we feel better about them taking OF Dennis Raben from Miami in the 2nd round? BA had him as their #34 prospect heading into the draft. Sounds like a power corner OF, which would be good for us. Actually, sounds like Wlad.
The knock against Raben is he has a long swing and, get this, takes too many pitches. The Mariners will definitely cure him of that problem.
Is it just me or did the Phillies clean house today in terms of pure offensive talent?
Alright, i think I’ve figured out the logic in this pick….follow along if you can.
You always hear managers and baseball announcers talk about how a good bullpen shortens the game to 5-6 innings…….our starts stink and might get us 4-5 innings….so by drafting a reliever, we’re even further shortening the game and us having to watch wasburn, silva, and Batista.
Pitching prospects in general have as much chance of becoming impact major leaguers as a three quarter court shot has of going in at the buzzer. If the Ms first round heave at the basket pays off, they’ll get 60 innings from him a season. Woohoo!!!!!!
Good lord….that was supposed to be “Washburn, Silva, and Batista”…..sorry.
The Mariners web site features a photo of Fields here you can clearly see that he’s throwing a knuckle curve. That’s an interesting (i.e., semi-strange) pitch to see from a college pitcher who throws heat.
Piss.
A guy who throws 60 innings a year is not worth a first round pick, period. I don’t care how lights-out he is. NOT WORTH IT. You get your relievers off the scrap heap and draft PLAYERS.
Piss.
Steve T – I can always can’t out on you to take my pessimism to the ultimate level. Sad again, but true.
I do like this kid though
Just another reason to be upset with the organization right now. Man, it really hurts to be an M’s fan sometimes.
Even ESPN gets it
“I’m surprised to see a team in last place take a reliever this high in the draft. Fields is up to 97 mph with his fastball and has a power curveball. If he can’t get big league hitters out this year, he will next year. Philosophically, though, you would think the Mariners would go longer term with this pick instead of taking a reliever, who is more of a short-term solution with a shorter life span. ”
Sigh!
“I’m surprised to see a team in last place take a reliever this high in the draft. Fields is up to 97 mph with his fastball and has a power curveball. If he can’t get big league hitters out this year, he will next year. Philosophically, though, you would think the Mariners would go longer term with this pick instead of taking a reliever, who is more of a short-term solution with a shorter life span. â€
Well, you know, Bavasi fully expects to contend next year. This is still the same roster that was expected to contend this year and there’s no reason to think the team can’t rebound and perform more like everybody knows the players are capable of. With veterans like Silva, Washburn, Sexson, and Vidro, it’s impossible for them to stay in slumps like this for very long. With a few judicious free agent signings and some careful trading of prospects to fill the remaining holes in the roster, there’s no reason that this team can’t do well in 2009, and this draft choice is just a reflection of that.
Tomorrow they’re going to concentrate on drafting gritty bench players, unless, of course, they can find some washed up no-power, low-average veterans in the draft, then they’ll go for them first.
Pitching, Dave roughly estimates, is about 35% of a team’s on-field performance (50% run scoring, 15% defense, 35% pitching). There are 1458 innings in a year if every game goes 9 innings. When you draft a starter, you’re looking for, say, 225 innings a year, or roughly 7 innings a game. So you’re trying to get a guy who will contribute about 15% of your pitching, or about 5% of your total on-field efforts (15% of 35%).
Now you’re drafting a positional player. Since it’s the first round, you’re hoping that guy will contribute about 11% of your team’s run-scoring efforts (one out of every nine plate appearances) and somewhere in the ballpark of 12% of your defense (1/8 of your defense, rounded down to account for pitcher defense) — more if he’s a shortstop, less if he’s a first-baseman, but something like that. What you’re hoping for is a guy who will be responsible for a total of maybe 8-10% of your on-field efforts.
Now let’s say you’re drafting a reliever. If everything pans out, you’re hoping for maybe 70 innings a year, or about 5% of the pitching that’s going to happen over the course of the year. That’s less than 2% of the team’s on-field product. You can quibble about whether this needs marginal adjustment up because of leverage situations, but leverage situations come about principally as a result of the performance of the starters and the position players.
Those contribution percentages are not about how much each player contributes to winning — it’s just what percentage of the total effort each player represents. All else being equal, you want to allocate your resources to acquiring players who can make positive contributions at positions where those contributions will have the greatest overall value. An above-average starter is more valuable than an above-average reliever just because he will be above-average for more outs. Even if the reliever is a bit better at run prevention on a per-inning basis, the starter will prevent more runs total because he prevents them in more innings.
In allocating your resources, you also have to consider the value of Plan B. If you don’t draft a starter or a shortstop, how easy will it be to obtain an adequate substitute? The consensus here seems to be that relievers are relatively (not absolutely, but relatively) easy to find. The Mariners certainly have found a lot of good ones without using high picks or FA money (Sherrill, Soriano, Putz, Green), though they spent resources on others (Morrow, Guardado, Sasaki). It’s a lot harder to find quality starters or position players.
One of the assets a team can use to acquire a player is a #1 draft pick. That asset is extremely valuable because it has both monetary value (it locks up what you hope will be a quality player at below-market rates) and non-monetary value (it confers monopoly rights over that player’s performance). The best use of that asset is in acquiring a player that will affect the greatest number of outcomes in the most positive way compared to what one can get in the replacement market. A reliever affects few outcomes and is relatively easily replaceable. That’s why you don’t use one of your most valuable assets to draft a reliever.
Isaac — I think that’s a great way of looking at the draft and I agree with you 100%.
I’m virtually certain, however, that the risk-averse Mariners feel (right or wrong) that they can more accurately project a “proven” college reliever than they can any position player. Baring injury, they think a guy who throws a mid-90’s fastball with even a semi-passable off-speed pitch, is a lock for the bullpen. They love Morrow in that mode, and see him as proof of their strategy.
Just another reason to be frustrated with this organization.
Is Clay Bennett behind this?
You’re telling me he didn’t secretly buy the M’s in a “good faith” package deal?
This smells of dung.
When you were a kid, for Christmas, you asked for a bicycle, a stereo, or something really good.
This is like asking for a big candy bar for Christmas. Nothing wrong with a candy bar, but isn’t Christmas the time to ask for something more?
various quote from Fields, and the Ms here and
here
This goes along with the best player on the board theory that Fontaine lives by. I do think we all agree with post 72 to an extent, if not completely.
Bottom line is how much better could we have done, and this KID is a good pitcher. Like I said before, he’s hits 97 on the gun consistently has a monster curve and a live arm.
Why not take someone who can at least close down games and give the Mariners a chance in the late innings next year when Morrow moves to the starting rotation.
Like Bavasi tried to do with this years team, why would fontaine make the same mistake and reach for some other pick Gillaspie? Cooper? I’m just curious what the other option is … and I did scroll through this entire post to try and find other suggestions.
Lookout Landing compared Raben with Brad Wilkerson; hardly a ringing endorsement. Not even draft day can get me excited about the M’s future.
This is like asking for a big candy bar for Christmas. Nothing wrong with a candy bar, but isn’t Christmas the time to ask for something more?
It depends. If the last few times you asked for a bike and your dad spent those Christmas Eves in the basement “putting to together” and you came down on Christmas morning to find a some random parts broken and smoking under the tree, or discovered he’d given up on the assembly and handed it over to the kids next door (who figured out how to put it together and ended up with one of the coolest bikes on the block)…. or told you the bike could only be used for 15 minutes twice a week… well, sometimes you rein in your expectations and just hope for a candy bar.
Even Verducci gets it; while his data regarding the shortened apprenticeship of many players is a little questionable, his point about the increasingly sparse free agent market resulting from the recent tendency of smart teams to lock up their players young just underlines how out of step the “veteran leadership” M’s are and how increasingly handicapped they’re going to be in the future, especially if they’re not making good long term decisions about the draft today.
Oops, I guess a link would help.
#79
joser-
thanks to you, beer came out of my nose and onto my keyboard.
truer words were never spoken!
Look at it this way. At least next year we will have the #1 overall pick and surely won’t be drafting a reliever. Right??? Well, unless that reliever is dubbed the “best available player” of course.
The bad thing is this management won’t be around to see how awful this draft turns to be. I am not excited by any pick they made today. This sucks.
One word reaction: blah
I’m waiting for an in depth post from the USSM guys on the results of the entire draft to make my final conclusions … At least I need to know more insider information about Fields.
I honestly don’t understand how most people can scream end of world from this.
1) This isn’t the disaster that is 2008 season. Please try and somewhat separate the draft from this season and previous regular seasons. It’s not fontaine’s fault that Jones is gone.
2) Fontaine has been good before and like Nye posted in the last thread it comes down to the overall draft results.
This kid is not a complete disaster. Not by any means.
More importantly is the Front Offices decision on the current state of affairs/2008/2009 directions – and instead of saying we need x,y,z NOW lets make smart, cool headed decisions.
Total strawman.
Who said it was?
Both of those things relate to the Mariners, though, no?
Who said it didn’t? And if the rest of the draft is good, doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been better.
No one said he was.
Um… isn’t that the opposite side of the argument? Don’t draft for NOW?
Also, you said this:
Which I guess you didn’t mean. Or you misunderstood 72. Because the rest of your post says the opposite:
If you agree with 72, then you know why not, right?
I don’t get the point of your posts.
We mostly agree, as you pointed out vigorously. I just said with no one else available, I don’t think its bad pick considering circumstances.
I wanted to know what the other choice was at 20 that would have been that much better (I tried looking for suggestions, granted I could have missed them, lots of text) that was the main point.
While at the same time I think this kid is very good.
Worst Pick according to ESPN. YAY MARINERS!!!
But i do think he will setup and maybe close next year if JJ gets traded
Oops.
Maybe the Mariners are going the “any PR is good PR” route.
This pick could show a glimmer of self-awareness. Perhaps management realizes that they are not capable of assembling a good staff of starting pitchers, so they will only require the starters to go 4 or 5 innings. Lowe, Fields, Morrow, and Putz pitch the last 4 innings of each game.
Ok, Bratman. Cool. I will be excited to see him pitch, too. But, boy, I hate that approach to the first round.
92 – Couldn’t agree with you more on the approach. I think USSM (on the whole) agrees that we DID NOT need a reliever/should not have chose one first round.
Even with that being said, we didn’t choose picking 20th overall. Can’t make something out of nothing. Lets thank he overachieving 2007 Mariners accomplished that for that pick number.
And if there is someone better to have taken at that point in the draft I would like to know some names. I am not saying there aren’t others I just haven’t heard names yet.
I have a feeling one of the USSM guys will give an in depth opinion soon, maybe about some other options we could have chosen/routes we coudl have taken.
We did the Fontaine ‘choose the best player’ method, I guess.
To answer my own post from Dave:
Guess he wasn’t the best choice, but was he the best overall talent?
I would have picked Shooter Hunt just on name alone