The 2010 Team, Quantified
After the first trade last week, I put up a post looking at the projected 2010 roster, given players under team control for next year, and the amount of payroll it would cost to put that team together. Based on that projection, we saw that the M’s would have to spend around $78 million or so to field that particular roster, which would give them a little less than $20 million to play with this winter, assuming the budget holds something close to constant.
One thing we didn’t get into that much was just how good that team would be – it certainly looks unimpressive on paper, after all. And today, Art Thiel put in his two cents on the matter, essentially laying out his reasons for why next year’s team may be worse than the current version.
I think he’s wrong, and here’s why – the continuing reliance on cliched definitions of certain types of players significantly underrates the kind of team the Mariners have built. You know the lingo by now – “big bat”, “innings eater”, “proven commodity”, “solid performer” – this is how baseball players are still described in some circles. I’m not trying to pick on Thiel here, whose work I genuinely like, but sentences like this one…
The upside is intriguing. But after Hernandez, the group also could end up being just a bunch of back-of-the-rotation guys.
… would also describe the Philadelphia Phillies rotation last year (Hamels and fluff), and they won the World Series. These vague categorizations of contributions often do more to hide the actual value of players than reveal it.
So, let’s get away from cliches, and actually look at what the 2010 Mariners, as currently assembled, can actually contribute, based on some back-of-the-envelope projections of the guys that the team already has.
That roster adds up to something like +29 wins above replacement, and remember, a replacement level team would be expected to win ~50 games over a full season. So, as hard as it may be to believe based on cliches about their player types, that team would project out to something like a 79-83 club, despite the fact that its filled with “back end starters”, “unproven youngsters”, and a bunch of “glove-first” position players.
You can quibble with some of the projections if you want, but not enough to get below ~75 wins. That’s really the floor of what you’d be looking at for a projection for the 2010 Mariners, as they stand right now, if you were fairly pessimistic about the talent currently in the organization.
And remember, we’ve already noted that the M’s should have about $15 to $20 million to spend on new player acquisitions this winter. The going rate for wins in free agency is between $4-$5 million per win, so even if Jack wasn’t a GM good at finding undervalued assets for pennies on the dollar, the room in the budget should be good for another 3-5 wins.
For instance, the M’s have the cash to bring back Beltre and Branyan, which would make Hannahan a quality reserve and put Nelson back in Tacoma. That’s probably a +4 win upgrade, just by bringing back those two. That 79 win team would then be an 83 win team, and that’s if those were the only moves the M’s made all winter. What if the M’s were able to squeeze a guy like Jim Thome or Carlos Delgado in along with Beltre/Branyan? Now, you’re looking at something more like an 85 win team.
As long as the M’s don’t take the $20 million or so they’ll have available this winter and light it on fire, the expectation for 2010 should be that the Mariners will be a better than .500 club. If you think the organization is capable of improving the roster by making moves that help the team without really increasing the payroll as well (like they did with Aardsma/Gutierrez/Branyan last winter), then you’re probably looking at a potential 87 or 88 win team.
In other words, the 2010 Mariners have a very real chance of being a contending club. It isn’t a finished product, but the idea that the team can’t win because Silva and Johjima are on the books for $20 million next year is a fallacy. Yes, Bill Bavasi left the organization in bad shape… but Zduriencik and crew have done astonishingly good work in picking up the pieces and putting the M’s back on the path to winning baseball.
They’re further down that path than folks like Thiel realize. The 2009 Mariners are okay – the 2010 Mariners should be even better.
I am curious about what they do with the catcher position. Obviously Jo has fallen out of favor with his pitching staff(which is basically the worst thing for a catcher), and I’m not sure how confident I am in Johnson yet.
Baseball offers a repeatable, neutral, mano y mano environment. Hitters are confined to a batter’s box and pitchers are confined to the rubber. There are external factors to consider, such as ballparks, league competition and teammates, but incorporating them back into a neutral projection is easy. Also, there is no running clock and the singular goal of scoring runs and preventing runs stays constant throughout each game, from start to finish.
Football is the opposite of baseball. There is nothing repeatable or neutral about it. It’s orchestrated chaos, and both the orchestration and the chaos are subject to major change at any moment. The performance of each player is tied directly to the performance of the other 21 players on the field, all of whom are dealing with constant change on an individual basis in an infinite number of ways in very short periods of time. And while scoring points and preventing points is the goal, how a team goes about doing those two things (run/pass, short/long, inside/outside, speed/power, zone/man, blitz/contain, etc.) can change at any given moment based on the score, individual matchups, down/yards-to-go, game plan adjustments, injuries, the weather, whatever.
I find this post both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. On the one hand, yes, it’s a pretty good bet that next year’s team will be better than this year’s, but on the other it looks like the 2010 M’s will still only have an outside shot at the playoffs at best.
Dave’s projections show an 83 win team at a “competent GM” baseline, with maybe 88 if Zduriencik turns in a SuperGM offseason. I still think you’d better have 92+ projected wins to be a real playoff contender, so I’m resigned to another season of “hope we play above our heads” even if our new GM pulls a couple more Gutierrezes out of his hat.
But, looking at the glass half-full, if they do play above their heads, they could make the playoffs this time, instead of just getting everyone ecited for a couple of months. It’s progress, just not as fast as I’d like, though I’m probably being a tad unrealistic considering the shape the team was in at the end of last year.
And on the gripping hand, next years team should have more upside potential than any we’ve had recently. Morrow and Snell could each be a win (or two!) better than projected without causing a rip in Time-Space, and Tui, Saunders, Carp and French all have more upside than downside.
Better than Bedard who is a native francophone who didn’t start learning English until his late teens. There’s a reason (or two) why he’s not a big fan of interviews.
So what he’s saying, essentially, is no. With everything that goes on in football the sample sizes of each event would be almost infinitessimal and therefore subject to too much “noise” to be accurate.
This is certainly true, but there has been some progress made in developing useful “advanced” stats for football. To avoid going too far off topic in this thread, I’ll just link you to Football Outsiders and let you do your own reading on things like DVOA, DYAR, etc.
Yes, after a few of the easy improvements at DH and 1B, it got tougher. I’m amazed at the quality of the team this year considering the steaming pile that was the 2008 roster.
What needs to happen now is for the farm system to produce a couple of star players.
NICE Niven reference. 🙂
Are you going to be talking about this stuff at the feed next Saturday, Dave et al? I would be very interesting to hear their take on these type of things that you bring up here and at Fangaphs.
This is the best news I’ve heard in, well, ever. I didn’t think I could get more impressed with Z and the new regime… I just did.
Jimmie
While there aren’t a ton of 3B options to upgrade over Hannahan, the M’s do have Tuiasosopo in AA ready to push Hannahan, even if they don’t re-sign Beltre or go after another vet like Crede or Glaus (aka the “broke back twins”), they at least have more than just Hannahan as an internal option.
In addition to the free agent crop, I think there are some potentially interesting trade options for a stop-gap at 3B. The Padres are cutting costs and Kevin Kouzmanoff is arbitration eligible. He’s probably not in line for a huge pay day, as his bat has slid 3 years in a row and his defense is generally maligned in the scouting community (despite being around league average for the past 3 years according to UZR). He’d easily be worth the money he gets through arbitration and I’d certainly be willing to roll the dice on his bat rebounding if he can be had for cheap.
The Rays will probably be looking to shed some salary too and I wonder what it would cost to get Iwamura from them. They have an in-house upgrade and he’d be a nice upgrade over Hannahan. Other guys they might move include Crawford, Pena, and Kazmir. I’m not too interested in Kazmir, but Crawford would be a great coup for 2010 and the 2011 draft picks would be useful. I imagine his price would be pretty high though. Carlos Pena would be a lot cheaper to acquire. His BABIP is down this year and I be he’d be at least a 3 WAR player in 2010.
My real, true, (pretty please) hope is that the M’s can somehow upgrade the team by swapping Johjima’s contract with another team. If Varitek doesn’t come back, maybe the Red Sox would part with Lowell and shift Youk to 3rd. The M’s would have to pray for a rebound on defense, but Lowell could still be a very good player if the defense returns (presumably it will if he is healthier). JD Drew might be another option, though I don’t know how he’d feel about moving to LF (or getting traded).
On a different note, is it me, or are Langerhans and Hannahan the same player? Good defense, lefty bat, same age within about a month of each other. One has a career .233/.334/.380 batting line, one has a career .226/.314/.352 batting line. I’d tell you which was which, but does it matter?
Regarding football, the best thing I have found from a statistical analysis perspective is the DVOA (Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average), at http://www.footballoutsiders.com
Even then, its still in its infancy and isnt anywhere near as advanced as baseball. It is much harder to separate individual contributions in football than it is in baseball, so at this point they are mostly looking at things on a team basis.
Foodball statistical analysis isnt nearly as advanced as it is in baseball.
Ummmm??? His stay in Seattle has been frustrating but his injuries have not always been due to the fact he can handle starting every season previous to this. As a strikeout pitcher 100 pitches can give you 4-5 innings with a lot of strikeouts or sometimes 7+ innings with a lot o strikeouts. If he doesn’t have control of his pitches he’s not gonna go far into the game as has been the case lately. He’s a frontline starter but he isn’t exactly a workhorse or innings eater either.
Did Tangotiger invent WAR, or is there another awesome person that they hired that I should know about?
that’s what I’d like to know as well. Seems like we cut payroll this year (is the number 19mill?) and only dropped about 1000 in average attendance from last year, so I’m thinking the M’s should be back in the black.
What is Johjima worth on the market? Fangraphs has .3 WAR… wouldn’t SOME team want him even if they had to pay SOME of the salary?
Dave –
You’d mentioned before that MLB teams en masse fared better through the crisis than many had predicted. Do you know anything about how the Mariners fared in particular, and whether there is any chance they are willing to raise payroll next year? I know they play their cards close, I jsut wonder if there are any rumors about their planned payroll budget after the ~20% cut last year.
Reason I ask is Jack has shown that he can do a lot with very little, and I don’t doubt that the team can be decent even as it stands. However, it seems unfair for a team flush with money to bring in a new guy and give him so little room to maneuver. If I were Zduriencik I’d be very frustrated at this point unless the payroll budget had been made clear at the time of hiring.
Well, if the Seahawks made a nice run and the city got all caught up for sports again, I could see them expanding the payroll a bit. The garlic fries certainly aren’t getting any cheaper.
I like the idea of Iwamura. I bet our ownership has eyes for him too. Wonder what he statistically pans out to be WAR wise?
Too, you’d think you got a lot of material to work with in the marketing department—some interesting faces and an above expected outcome this year. Any competent marketer could produce some excitement with that…
Has Johjima actually improved his throwing accuracy or release time in throwing out runners this year, or is it all small sample? I read the post about Rob Johnson and why it’s best to give him the playing time, but Johjima completely shutting down opposing base stealing is one of the pleasant surprises of watching this team.
Yeah, I think that’s hurting the team even worse than the lingering Johjima/Silva contracts. Looking at the list above, of the 15 or so guys allocated the most playing time, we have exactly one above average player to come out of our farm system. Add to that a handful of guys at or just below league-average, and it’s a pretty pathetic performance, a legacy of both Gillick and Bavasi.
Speaking of our one above average farm product, does anyone think that the delay of real contention to 2011 changes how we approach the question of extending Felix?
Iwamura is 30, right handed, only average defensively, and completely tore up his leg this year…I’ll pass.
Iwamura is 30, right handed . . .
He’s a left-handed hitter.
I don’t really understand the Comparison that Art Theil was attempting. He believes that we will take a step back next year because he is comparing this years team at the beginning of the year to the Current team after the trading deadline? Wouldn’t it be more relevant to Compare Last years remaining players to this years remaining players? Something like this:
C- Johjima/Burke – Johjima/ Johnson
1B- Bryan LaHair – Mike Carp
2B- Jose Lopez – Jose Lopez
SS- Yuniesky Betancourt – Jack Wilson
3B- Adrian Beltre – Matt Tuiasosopo
RF- Ichiro Suzuki – Ichiro Suzuki
CF- Wladimir Balentien – Franklin Gutierrez
LF- Prentice Redman – Michael Saunders
DH- Jeff Clement – Brad Nelson
SP- Felix Hernandez – Felix Hernandez
SP- Erik Bedard – Ian Snell
SP- Jarrod Washburn – Ryan Rowland- Smith
SP- Carlos Silva – Lucas French
SP- Ryan Rowland-Smith – Brandon Morrow
So the differences include:
Beltre, Washburn, Bedard, Silva, Clement, Balentien, Lahair, Redman, Betancourt & $8mil
or
Gutierrez, Wilson, Snell, French, Morrow, Carp, Saunders, Tuiasosopo, Nelson & around $20mil
It looks to me like a team with better stop gaps should we need them, more money to spend, and better talent at the core positions. I think we are headed in the right direction.
An idea I have been kicking around is, if Beltre doesn’t come back, moving Jose Lopez to third and signing Felipe Lopez to a short-term contract (2y/$8m) to play second. Felipe is a better defender than Jose at 2B, while having Jose at 3B means a better bat at the hot corner than Hannahan. Meanwhile, there should still be $6-8 million that would not be there if we re-sign Beltre to get someone like Delgado to DH and bring back Branyan. Ichiro/ F. Lopez/ Delgado/ Gutierrez/ Branyan/ J. Lopez/ Saunders/ Wilson/ Johnson is a lineup with handed balance, some pop, and should play decent enough defense.
Obviously, I wouldn’t be in favor of an Iwamura acquisition unless the M’s felt his leg was healthy enough for him to perform at the 2.5 WAR level he established in 2007 and 2008. Not sure whether _David_’s “tore up his leg” comment was a reminder or because you think I am clueless (I knew about his knee).
A healthy Iwamura is clearly an upgrade over Hannahan, and his higher salary is roughly equal to the expected increase in WAR. The Rays do not need him and will probably be looking to move at least 1 or 2 of their veteran contracts. That was my point.
If healthy, he would upgrade the M’s. Because the Rays have cheaper internal options (Aybar and Zobrist) and because everyone knows they want to move some salary, the Rays don’t have a ton of leverage.
I want Ackley now! (Or late 2011 would be acceptable as well)
Isn’t hockey the same thing? I know Mr. Tango has done some work for a number of hockey teams. I’d be really interested to know what he’s come up with, but couldn’t find anything when I searched.
Why is 10 the magic number? Is there some analysis to back this up or was it basically picked out of a hat? Not looking for anything in-depth, just curious.
[off-topic]
stevie_j13 – I had similar thoughts after Beltre went on the DL and the M’s started running out Woodward. While I think it is a good idea conceptually, there are 2 problems to which I do not know the answer:
(1) Can Lopez play good enough defense at 3rd to justify moving him? If he is even worse at 3rd, then no sense moving him unless the upgrade from Hannahan really justifies it. Looking at Fangraphs, one of the areas he gains (a small amount) of value is turning double plays, which he would largely lose moving from 2nd to 3rd.
(2) Is (Felipe) Lopez really the guy we want to “upgrade” the M’s? Sure, he’s been worth 2.2 WAR so far this year, but he’s been highly inconsistent on offense and defense, with 4.6, 1.6, 0.4, 0.8, and 2.2 WAR over the last 5 years. And does his inconsistency really justify a 2-year contract?
If (Jose) Lopez really can handle 3rd defensively, I like the flexibility it gives the front office to pursue and upgrade over Hannahan. And there are other guys that the M’s could sign for 2B instead of Lopez that could provide similar value. Adam Kennedy (not much of an upgrade over Hannahan), Placido Polanco (unlucky BABIP masks the fact that he is the exact same hitter as ever, and his defense remains very good), Orlando Hudson (though his defense is clearly below average at this point).
Depending on salaries, Placido Polanco is actually a guy that interests me a lot for 2010 if the M’s either move Lopez to 3rd or trade him. His BABIP might really deflate his value and on a 1-year deal, he could put up 3 WAR (WAR from 2002-2009: 3.1, 4.6, 2.6, 5.2, 1.2, 5.3, 3.1, 1.7*). If you want to offer any of the free agent 2nd baseman a 2-year contract for $4-5 million per year, this is the guy I’d target. Maybe he commands more, but he’s turning 34 and hitting .263/.317/.392 (with a .270 BABIP), so I think he’ll be a bargain. UZR/150 of 15.4, 7.7, 12.0, 3.6, and 7.7 since 2005!
Polanco is another interesting candidate, and if you are right that his BABIP would artificially deflate his value, then I would be for signing him. However, signing a 34 year-old to two year deal scares me more than signing a 30 year-old to a two-year deal, especially since Lopez has averaged 150 games from 2005-08, while Polanco has only two 140+ seasons since 2003.
Polanco’s BABIP also might not be so artificial. His O-Swing% has been steadily increasing the last four years, while his O-Contact% has dropped almost 5% from 2007. Lopez’s stats are frankly a little tougher to decipher. Polanco is a better defensive 2B, but I think I would prefer the younger, more durable Lopez.
But that’s not who I was talking about. Armstrong, Lincoln and Z are (and Bavasi was) employees of the same rich guys who employ Silva. Silva may be the more highly compensated than the middle managers above him, but ultimately it is the Baseball Club of Seattle who is signing those checks, and when Silva sits on his wide ass and collects them it is their pockets he is picking, not Zduriencik’s or Lincoln’s or even Bavasi’s (though in a perfect world….)
Endy is a free agent next year. He’s a better fielder than Saunders/Langerhans, but he was also geting paid $2M vs $400K. He might be willing to take a cheap deal to re-establish himself after the injury, but in at the level of detail Dave is doing this that doesn’t really make much difference (swap the names and tack on another $1M)
Well, you could figure that this level of explanation was provided in the links that hae already been listed and look there. It’s derived from the Pythagorean formula, which itself is based on runs scored and allowed, and while it teams regularly over and under perform it to some degree, it has been shown empirically to be have a lot of predictive value. (In fact it’s a little more complicated, because it’s not exactly 10 and there are adjustments for the run environment, which means it varies a little from one year/league to the next, but “10” is close enough for most purposes and is obviously convenient).
Baseball attendance overall is down over 5% so far, or more than 2.6m paying customers. Mariners are a little better, down about 3.6%. But in any case that doesn’t seem to suggest an increase in payroll.
More to the point: if we decided NOT to spend money on people currently on our roster, who’s more attractive and available given our needs? I can’t see a better bet than Beltre.
Dave- Great piece of work here. Love it! Really helping me to feel good about the future – a feeling I haven’t had as a M’s fan in a while. The Mariners PR department need to have u on staff so they can sell a few more tickets and bring a better brand of fan to the ballpark. Keep up the good work.
So the thing that caught my eye in the comments was the Iwamura thing. The Red Sox don’t need a catcher after Martinez(although he isn’t too durable); but the Rays have been shopping for one. Any likelyhood at all they were take a waiver on Joh? I bet Aki is a lot more valueable, but coming off injury maybe hurts that. Acquiring Johjima would prevent the cutting cost, and probably isn’t the answer the Rays want, but if this has any real chance of happening I think GMZ has to go for it.
I’m worried about Felix, I’m really starting to think with all these new revelations that we won’t keep him.
We couldn’t keep Junior, A-Rod and Randy while they were in their primes.
So it almost makes you wonder why it would be any different with Felix?
Btw, the minute Felix says he wants out, that’s the minute you fire Chuck Armstrong.
Another note: 3 most obvious free agent signings to add to that 2010 list. . .
1. Nick Johnson
2. George Sherrill
3. Omar Vizquel (as a backup)
Interesting piece. So what you’re saying is that the 2010 M’s will be a little more mediocre. Boy I can’t wait for next season.
You are getting awfully close to troll status.
Nope.
Yup.
Why should it be? Sooner or later he’s going somewhere with deeper pockets. If any of Baker’s rumors are close to accurate, and Zduriencik could get a package like that this offseason, I’d be ok with it. I love Felix, and I love that every 5 days there’s a reason to watch even when nothing else is going right, but I also recognize that sometimes you have to say good-bye to the things you love to make progress. Sometimes.
I take it you’re kidding.
Willful ignorance is one thing. Deliberately misconstruing things just so you can leave a little turd on the front step is something else.
joser,
So if we trade Felix and keep on doing business in the absolutely cheapest way possible, when are we going to get to the playoffs and win a World Series? When are we going to catch up to the Angels? Yes, I know about the Florida Marlins but we are in the AL and we are trying to build a team that will make the playoffs every year and the only way the Angels will get to the playoffs will be via the Wild Card. I am fine with getting cheap players with great upside but to catch up to and pass the Angels we have to make some bold moves and invest some money in some good players. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want the Ms to overpay for any players but they need to pay players like Fleix what they are worth to stay here long-term. The Ms are not poor. They can pay Felix as much as he needs to get paid. It is up to Zduriencik to convince Armstrong, Lincoln, and the owner in Japan to spend some money. He has his work cut out for him but it is not an impossible mission.
TomTuttle,
I only want Nick Johnson from your list to share 1B/DH with Branyan next year. We don’t need Sherrill and Vizquel.
My guess is that the Mariners will win less games next year, but their run differential will be better. Individuals like Thiel will then claim “I told you so” and we’ll have to read arguments about how the lack of veterans makes the Mariners vulnerable in close games.