Why pay?
This turns up in Hickey’s latest entry @ the PI, and I’ve seen it elsewhere, that the M’s don’t have the money to sign Griffey or Garret Anderson, but they might do a deal with a lot of deferred money. Here’s Hickey:
Technically speaking, the Mariners don’t have the payroll to fit either man into the payroll at the pay level they might otherwise expect. But with some creative accounting – read that to mean lots of deferred money, it’s a good bet that a deal for one or the other will come down in the next few days.
Why? Abreu got $5m in base salary and you’d much rather have him than either of those two. The remaining market is pretty much no one. Why give Garret or Griffey a ton of money because it’s what they’re accustomed to? Why defer money?
If they want, the M’s can call both sets of agents, say “We have one contract here for $2m base and $1m at 400 PA and another $1m at 500 PA. The first person to say yes gets it. Second prize is you retire.”
We’ve seen the market crater this off-season. There’s no reason to overpay.
Now, the particularly interesting scenario to consider is whether Hickey knows Griffey’s coming and knows the deal has a lot of deferred money, and he’s just being clever here.
You’re overpaying at $2 million.
Seriously, Griffey’s worth about $750,000. Anderson’s probably worth $1 million, but not to this team. Offer Junior $1 million and leave it at that.
What would it take to get one of Washington’s extra OFs?
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m happy the free agent market has died off a little bit so teams don’t have to compete to pay $8-10M for a “veteran clubhouse leader”. Griffey is worth less than $1M by current skill level but the name is worth much more. He’ll bring an extra 500-1000 people per game averaged out through the entire season (guessing). If the team shits the bed like last year the Griffey thing will wear off after a month or two.
“Great tickets are still available”
I wish we knew two things:
1) What is Hickey’s definition of “a lot” of deferred money; and
2) Is Hickey pulling this out of you know where, or is he well connected in the FO?
I should have used $1, $1, $1 as example values, sorry.
Only thing I’d add to the $1 $1 $1 is a promise not to offer arbitration (I’ve been convinced by Tango how the market changes even for Type B free agents otherwise).
The thing with sportswriters is that they tend to lag far behind changes in economic reality. This market has changed so much since the early signings you can’t expect them to catch up yet.
Griffey is .6 WAR as a DH at 550 PAs or $2.5mm in a normal market. This is NOT a normal market. Seriously, he’d be lucky to get 1mm from anyone other than Seattle. Perhaps Seattle can offer more due to potential increase in revenues but no way should he get more than 2mm. Personally i am indifferent as I would rather see the youngsters get the ABs and every PA KGJ gets takes on away from Wlad/Clement.
I’d be a bit nervous about offering incentives for playing time (with Griffey; with Anderson who cares). Since this deal would mostly just be a feel-good PR thing anyway, you want to minimize the potential for an unhappy, whining to his fans in the local media Griffey if he’s not getting the playing time he wants.
Derek and Dave are 100% right on this.
While I would prefer we turn our back on both of these guys, it’s clear that the leverage is all on the side of the Mariners. And thus far, Z had shown a perfect understanding of using leverage.
If we sign Griffey or Anderson to a contract with “lots” of deferred money when we could have done the same thing with Abreu or Dunn, I will be pissed.
I wonder how / when Z knew he was on a budget. I find it hard to believe that he would have signed his players, done the arbitration deals, then all of a sudden realized he didn’t have the scratch for Abreu. Maybe he was betting all this on dealing Wash / Batista / Silva and having more money, but that seems like a pretty limiting plan.
I’ve been conspiracy theorying for a while now that the budget crunch has been Lincstrong’s way of forcing Z into a corner on signing Griffey.
Jack Z: “Okay, got my arbs done, got Branyan, and some other interesting guys, now to get my left handed slugger! Abreu here we come!”
Lincoln: “Oh… so sorry. Budget.”
Jack Z: “What?”
Armstrong: “Economy, y’know. But hey… Griffey’s agent says he’ll take a hometown discount / deferred money deal!”
I thought second prize was a set of steak knives?
But would Abreau or Dunn have taken deferred money, considering the deals they got elsewhere? Griffey is a bit of a special case because he’s already getting deferred money this year from his Reds contract.
Exactly my thoughts. We don’t want to encourage him to take more AB’s. What if Clement has his breakthrough and starts tearing the cover off the ball, to the point where you want him DH’ing even on the couple of days a week you’re letting Joh catch? The only upside to adding incentives for PAs in Griffey’s contract is that it may increase the odds he gets hurt and sits the rest of the season.
As someone who didn’t live in Seattle for the Griffey years (and they were never on tv in New England), when I see Griffey what I see is a player that really shouldn’t stand in the way of the team “seeing what they’ve got” (yet again) in Wlad.
Maybe they’ll sell more jerseys, but I doubt it… there’s always plenty of Griffey t-shirts in the local Goodwill and Value Village, even now. Man, they must have made a lot of those back in the day!
You honestly believe if they wanted Z to sign Griffey they just wouldn’t have said, ‘sign Griffey’?
Maybe what Hickey meant by “lots of money being deferred” is that a LARGE PERCENTAGE of the contract is deferred. It could be a 2-3 mil deal but with a lot of it being deferred money, especially since Griffey is already cashing in on deffered money from Cincy.
I am not going to worry about this until I see him sign and for how much. Jack Z has shown that he is a pretty shrewd GM so far and I would be surprised if he overpayed too much in thise case.
I get that the M’s shouldn’t pay more than $1m for Griffey, but at the same time, if he wants to take that and come back to play for Seattle, why not?
Look, Griffey earned the chance to come back here and be the 25th man at the end of his career.
There wouldn’t even be a “Hit it Here Cafe,” let alone a team in Seattle if it weren’t for Junior, so give him a little slack, will ya?
I’m not saying he should get tons of AB’s, but in a rebuilding year, I think he deserves at least a spot if he’s willing to take less than they paid WFB.
Junior might still be (I mean, HAVE BEEN) the best player I’ve ever seen in person, and I’d love it if we did the “Jerry Rice” method – to sign him for a day so he can put the uniform on for real one last time and retire as a Mariner.
But this year should be all about getting Clement and Balentien the at-bats to learn how to handle major league pitching, while keeping the best possible defensive team on the field.
Love ya Junior, but no. Take the team we have right now into 2009 and PLAY BALL!
Why in the world would the Mariners need to defer a salary to Griffey or Anderson. Neither will sign for more than Abreu ($5mil plus) and the Mariners drawn better than 24 other teams each year. They have the money, just want to prove a point about a fixed salary, which will cost them a legitimate chance this season by not going after Abreu seriously. It could be a heartbreaking season watching a nice starting rotation get no run support, and have no “closer” to finish off the games.
“Look, Griffey earned the chance to come back here and be the 25th man at the end of his career”
How exactly did he earn it?
If they wanted to do that, they would have done so from the get go. The thing about conspiracy theories is they have to have an element of bad logic to them. In this case, being passive-aggressive on Griffey allows them to keep up the appearance that they’re NOT overt meddlers.
The Mariners drew better than 24 teams. There is no guarantee they will do it again after last year’s fiasco of a season. I expect a significant drop in attendance this year.
Griffey and Goldberg have zero leverage here, because literally nobody else is interested in his services (at least not in this economy). All Z has to do is tell him “you can either take the $1 million, or start planning your retirement press conference.”
I might assume the front office is a bit torn in this case. They likely promised themselves not to go over Jack’s head on who to sign and for how much this time around(they did that with Johjima during Bavasi’s time and look how it worked out). On the other hand, Armstrong and Lincoln have a history with Griffey (some great, some bad) and they probably feel like the stewards of Mariners’ nostalgia. They feel the pressure to do the PR-thing and pay Griffey to retire a Mariner more than anyone in Seattle. Yet, here they are with a smart GM who knows (like Dave) that it’s not the best baseball move to sign him and if he must, it should be done for $750,000 max. And then you have Griffey’s ego that says “no way am I playing for chump change like that”… “That team is gonna make millions at the gate with my picture on the cover of the program”. It’s a really interesting 3-way dynamic but let’s hope Jack’s wisdom prevails.
If Griffey does end up here, it would be pretty fun to see him have a throw-back season with 30 homers or more (it could happen, right?). Either way, I’d be more bummed about giving a roster spot to a guy that might flunk out completely (and be embarrassed for trying) than I am giving him more $$$ than he deserves. This team has pissed away so much money in the past 5 years that over-paying Griffey is not that big of a deal.
Hard to believe so many people aren’t more mad at the way Griffey extorted his way out of here (without a care in the world for what happened to the Mariners in 2000).
Is this a sourced quote or sheer guess?
If Griffey hits 30 homers next year, the beer is on me next time you’re in Bellingham.
regarding Griffey’s ego…
No, I am not sourcing a quote and sorry to imply that with the quote marks. I’m guessing 100%. His ego was usually a prominent feature though.
Sorry.
Benne,
I wouldn’t put it past Griffey to hit 30 home runs in Safeco if he gets the AB’s. After all Frank Thomas hit 39HR in 2006, and 26 in 2007, after being “done” in 2005 and having to settle for $.5m just to get a chance to play in 2006. Beane took a shot on him and polished up his Genius credentials.
Griffey is a year younger, which of course would make him two years older than Thomas was in 2006, but Griffey has always been a better athlete, and has never DH’d. Of course it isn’t likely but it is by no means past the bounds of reason the think that he could have a big season in a park that was built for him.
I think they should give him a lowball offer, but be reasonably generous with the incentives.
The Big Hurt hit 8 homers in 289 PAs in ’08. Assuming he reaches his ’07 level of 624 PAs, he would hit 17 homers in ’09, and that’s not even factoring in age decline.
The beer offer is still on.
I agree with this. Give him a $1M base, with a $1M bonus for 500 PAs or something close. Anything more than that is crazy talk.
Well, OK, I agree that you do have the bad logic thing going for you
But how exactly would that move him closer to his precious family?
His kids are teenagers now, they hate him because he is ruining their lives.
Perhaps something like “this is your last season in the bigs. After that, you’ll have more than enough time to spend with your family. Of course, if you don’t accept our dirt-cheap offer, you’ll have even more time to spend with your family.”
Is Griffey insisting on a roster spot for his brother Craig?
You’re living in the past. The M’s haven’t been in the top 6 since 2004.
M’s attendance rank, by year:
2001: 1
2002: 1
2003: 2
2004: 10
2005: 12
2006: 15
2007: 16
2008: 19
That’s right: 18 other teams drew better than the M’s last year. Eighteen. Including Toronto, San Diego, and Detroit. The M’s are well below the median among the teams in baseball — and they’re going to draw less this year, so they’ll probably be in the bottom third. As I said in a previous thread, they’re going to be lucky to stay above 2M fans (vs 3.5M back in 2002). And meanwhile their pay structure is way out of whack: they spent $50 on payroll for every butt in a seat in 2008, by far the most in baseball, and even with their new reduced payroll they’re going to be in the top two or three.
Yeah, because you always have to go spend lots of money on getting closers in free agency. They never come out of nowhere, like Putz.
At least we didn’t sign Adam “I can’t beleive I’m not Jeff Cirillo” Dunn.
ESPN is running an article saying Mariners have stepped up negotiations with Griffey.
Yea – pretty much everyone realizes this is a mortal lock to happen now. We’re not going to put up a new thread to cover every escalation of the rumor. We’ll talk about it once it’s announced.
I wouldn’t put it past Griffey to hit 30 home runs in Safeco if he gets the AB’s. After all Frank Thomas hit 39HR in 2006, and 26 in 2007, after being “done†in 2005 and having to settle for $.5m just to get a chance to play in 2006. Beane took a shot on him and polished up his Genius credentials.
Frank Thomas had SLGs of .563 in 2004 and .590 in 2005, so having him post a .545 SLG in 2006 during full time play does not exactly count as a huge surprise.
Ken Griffey, on the other hand, has not posted a .500 SLG since 2005, while playing in two of the better hitter’s parks in baseball.
By the way: Frank Thomas’s numbers last year (.240/.349/.374) were almost as good as Griffey’s when you take the park effects out of the way, and his numbers in Oakland (.263/.364/.387) were BETTER than Griffey’s. So Griffey could be hitting .350/.410 next year, be performing slightly better than last year if you throw away park effects… and having everyone in Seattle go “gosh, he looks done”.