Addition by subtraction is one of those sports phrases that's almost become cliche. When we added Rickie Weeks Scott Weber said:
Weeks isn't going to be a door-buster impact player, but this is addition by subtraction. If he can even be replacement level, he'll improve on what the M's struggled to replace a year before.
At the beginning of 2014, David Schoenfeld of ESPN claimed the Mariners would surprise because dumping Raul Ibanez, Michael Morse and Jason Bay was "addition by subtraction." Later that year I thought it was addition by subtraction when replaced Abraham Almonte (0.2 WAR, 113 plate appearances) with James Jones (-1.0 WAR, 328 PA), and then I thought it was addition by subtraction when replaced Jones with Austin Jackson (-0.3 WAR, 236 PA ). Then I started wondering if the Mariners have unusual issues with negative-WAR players (spoiler: yes) and whether they'll hurt us again this year.
Addition by subtraction should be easy. Zero-WAR replacement level players are easily available by definition. But for addition by subtraction to be real, some player on the team is playing at below replacement level. At some point we did subtraction by addition. How common could that be?
I went to Fangraphs for stats on all players with >100 PAs for a team over each of the past 5 seasons and took a look at their WARs.
Well, I don't know about you, but I found that somewhat surprising. Over the last 5 years, a full 24% of position players finished the season with a WAR below zero. An important caveat is that those bad players received fewer plate appearances than their decent peers. But still, 1/6 of the plate appearances went to sub-replacement players. I should also note that most of those at bats went to players with -0.5 to 0.0 WAR, which either makes you feel better about about baseball's ability to identify replacement level, or worse about James Jones.
As to how we end up with this picture, it's clear with a little reflection. Those "replacement level" players are expected to deliver around zero WAR, but sometimes bad things happen to mediocre people. By the time a player has had enough plate appearances to be fairly evaluated, they've also had enough plate appearances to take their team out of the playoffs.
How bout them Mariners?
OK, it sure seems like we've had more than our fair share of these sub-replacement level players, but is that really true? Using the same data, here's some relevant charts.
The first chart shows the number of sub-replacement seasons (e.g. Justin Smoak was less than zero for 2010, 2012 and 2014, so he's counted 3 times). The second chart shows the total damage done in those years (-0.9 WAR for Justin). And my intuition was right: the Mariners are second worst on both charts, probably due to bad roster construction compounded by bad luck. Notice that the teams that have been good over the last few years don't get burned by sub-replacement players.
OK sure, that's bad, but our new roster is much better. Jack isn't making the same mistakes anymore, is he? I'm hopeful, but let's take a deeper dive into this cesspool and figure out what kinds of players have delivered negative WAR in the past and whether we might have the same kinds of issues this year. Someday I would like to do a statistical clustering analysis, but for now here are the categories I dreamed up and a few exemplars, mostly from the M's.
Category 1: Faded Stars
Also known as the cure for nostalgia. Griffey cut short his last season, but still managed to put up -1.0 WAR in only 108 plate appearances. Derek Jeter's -0.3 in his farewell tour seems pretty good by comparison.
Season | Name | Team | G | PA | BABIP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
2010 | Ken Griffey Jr. | Mariners | 33 | 108 | 0.22 | 0.184 | 0.25 | 0.204 | 0.215 | 32 | -1.0 |
2011 | Jorge Posada | Yankees | 115 | 387 | 0.262 | 0.235 | 0.315 | 0.398 | 0.313 | 92 | -0.7 |
2014 | Derek Jeter | Yankees | 145 | 634 | 0.294 | 0.256 | 0.304 | 0.313 | 0.279 | 73 | -0.3 |
2014 | Carlos Beltran | Yankees | 109 | 449 | 0.252 | 0.233 | 0.301 | 0.402 | 0.31 | 95 | -0.5 |
2015 Suspects: None. Ichiro would be the only candidate and though I wish him the best I'll just paraphrase a line from Fiddler on the Roof: "May God bless and keep Ichiro -- far away from us".
Category 2: Faded Mediocrities
These guys were never that good. Then they got worse.
Season | Name | Team | G | PA | HR | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
2013 | Brendan Ryan | Mariners | 87 | 287 | 3 | 0.192 | 0.254 | 0.265 | 0.235 | 45 | -0.6 |
2013 | Endy Chavez | Mariners | 97 | 279 | 2 | 0.267 | 0.290 | 0.327 | 0.272 | 71 | -1.2 |
2014 | Brendan Ryan | Yankees | 49 | 124 | 0 | 0.167 | 0.211 | 0.202 | 0.190 | 12 | -0.7 |
2012 | Yuniesky Betancourt | Royals | 57 | 228 | 7 | 0.228 | 0.256 | 0.400 | 0.280 | 73 | -1.0 |
2013 | Yuniesky Betancourt | Brewers | 137 | 409 | 13 | 0.212 | 0.240 | 0.355 | 0.257 | 55 | -1.9 |
But hey at least we got rid of Yuni and Ryan before the worst.
2015 Suspects: Looks pretty good. Maybe Rickie Weeks, but I'm not too worried.
Category 3: Broken Down Sluggers
Seems like this has been Jack Z's crack habit, but the Jack Custs of the world didn't play enough to do much damage. The players below did damage, though notably a number of them had at least one decent year after crashing.
Season | Name | Team | G | PA | HR | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
2013 | Michael Morse | Mariners | 76 | 307 | 13 | 0.226 | 0.283 | 0.41 | 0.303 | 92 | -1.1 |
2014 | Kendrys Morales | Mariners | 59 | 239 | 7 | 0.207 | 0.285 | 0.347 | 0.282 | 81 | -0.9 |
2014 | Corey Hart | Mariners | 68 | 255 | 6 | 0.203 | 0.271 | 0.319 | 0.266 | 70 | -1.2 |
2014 | Kendrys Morales | Twins | 39 | 162 | 1 | 0.234 | 0.259 | 0.325 | 0.255 | 59 | -0.8 |
2011 | Raul Ibanez | Phillies | 144 | 575 | 20 | 0.245 | 0.289 | 0.419 | 0.306 | 90 | -1.7 |
2011 | Adam Dunn | White Sox | 122 | 496 | 11 | 0.159 | 0.292 | 0.277 | 0.268 | 60 | -3.0 |
2015 Suspects: Please stay healthy Mr. Cruz.
Category 4: Failed Replacements
These guys were never expected to be much more than zero-WAR players, but they turned out to be much less.
Season | Name | Team | G | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
2010 | Matt Tuiasosopo | Mariners | 50 | 138 | 0.173 | 0.234 | 0.307 | 0.243 | 51 | -0.8 |
2010 | Adam Moore | Mariners | 60 | 218 | 0.195 | 0.23 | 0.283 | 0.227 | 40 | -1.1 |
2011 | Trayvon Robinson | Mariners | 44 | 155 | 0.21 | 0.25 | 0.336 | 0.258 | 63 | -1 |
2014 | James Jones | Mariners | 108 | 328 | 0.25 | 0.278 | 0.311 | 0.262 | 68 | -1 |
2014 | Stefen Romero | Mariners | 72 | 190 | 0.192 | 0.234 | 0.299 | 0.239 | 51 | -1.2 |
2012 | Eric Thames | Blue Jays | 46 | 160 | 0.243 | 0.288 | 0.365 | 0.285 | 74 | -0.6 |
Oh, Hello Eric Thames.
2015 Suspects: I don't know if you can see these guys coming in advance. Could be James Jones again?
Category 5: Struggling Prospects
Smart people thought they would be good. Some of them are.
Season | Name | Team | G | PA | BABIP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
2011 | Michael Saunders | Mariners | 58 | 179 | 0.212 | 0.149 | 0.207 | 0.217 | 0.192 | 19 | -0.5 |
2012 | Justin Smoak | Mariners | 132 | 535 | 0.242 | 0.217 | 0.29 | 0.364 | 0.288 | 85 | -0.5 |
2010 | Alex Gordon | Royals | 74 | 281 | 0.254 | 0.215 | 0.315 | 0.355 | 0.303 | 85 | -0.5 |
2010 | Michael Brantley | Indians | 72 | 325 | 0.271 | 0.246 | 0.296 | 0.327 | 0.28 | 73 | -0.6 |
2015 Suspects: I suppose Miller could fall here, but seems more likely to break out. Either way we have good insurance in Taylor so he's unlikely to be allowed to subtract much.
Category 6: Inconsistent Fringey Guys
Season | Name | Team | G | PA | BABIP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
2013 | Logan Morrison | Marlins | 85 | 333 | 0.281 | 0.242 | 0.333 | 0.375 | 0.312 | 96 | -0.6 |
2010 | Casey Kotchman | Mariners | 125 | 457 | 0.229 | 0.217 | 0.28 | 0.336 | 0.27 | 69 | -1.5 |
2012 | Casey Kotchman | Indians | 142 | 500 | 0.233 | 0.229 | 0.28 | 0.333 | 0.271 | 70 | -1.6 |
2015 Suspects: See above - I'm a bit worried about LoMo. Kotchman had a couple years of 2+ WAR. Last year's 1.0 is the best Logan has been able to muster. But the new Montero will step in if needed, right?
Category 7: Figgins
The Figgins thing is a mystery to me. In 2009 he put up over 6 WAR for the Angels. 2010 was worse than expected, but in 2011 at age 33 he was way worse than replacement.
Season | Name | Team | G | PA | BABIP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
2011 | Chone Figgins | Mariners | 81 | 313 | 0.215 | 0.188 | 0.241 | 0.243 | 0.220 | 37 | -1.2 |
2012 | Chone Figgins | Mariners | 66 | 194 | 0.237 | 0.181 | 0.262 | 0.271 | 0.242 | 54 | -1.1 |
2015 Suspects: Austin Jackson is only 28 but Jake Mailhot outlined his struggles last year. Last year was a fluke for him right? I'm not worried. Actually, I am worried.
Summary
This year's roster seems both better in the middle and less fragile at the bottom than years past. There's no way sub-replacement players are going to put up -5.6 WAR like they did last year. On the other hand, almost every team ends up with someone underperforming replacement level even if Steamer thinks everyone is above replacement . I'm happy where we are, but after doing this analysis I'm a slightly more nervous. For your viewing pleasure, here's a link to underperforming Mariners for the last 5 years.