Jon Paul Morosi:

One proposal involved the Tigers sending Matt Joyce to Tampa Bay and outfielders Wilkin Ramirez and Casper Wells to Seattle. Putz was the only player the Tigers would have received. (Contrary to what was reported in Thursday's Free Press, infielder Jeff Larish and right-hander Freddy Dolsi were not involved at that stage.)

I'm not sure what Tampa Bay would've sent to Seattle in this one (Fernando Perez?), but considering the minimal price they paid for Joyce straight up, I think I'm a bigger fan of the trade we made.

Note: we're also receiving Maikel Cleto, Ezequiel Carrera, and Jason Vargas. Vargas is a soft-throwing lefty starter with middling stuff and extreme flyball tendencies. Carrera's a speedy center fielder who hasn't seen AA. Cleto's an untested low-minors teenager, so expect to hear him referred to as a "live arm". Interesting players, the lot of them, but none of them guarantees. Zduriencik seems excited by Carrera and Cleto and I'm happy to defer to him on this sort of stuff.

I'm still kind of taken aback. I mean, I've known for a while that trading JJ was a possibility, but I didn't expect it to come together so fast, and I certainly didn't expect it to be this big. This is a blockbuster. Not a blockbuster as high-profile as the Manny trade from the deadline, but a blockbuster nonetheless. It's been a long time since the Mariners were involved in one of these. They're difficult to wrap your head around.

I suppose what people are most interested in is the package of players that the M's are set to receive. Franklin Gutierrez, Endy Chavez, Mike Carp, Aaron Heilman - the two most familiar of these names are the two names about which I'm the least excited, and it's the other two, the two that you may not have heard before, that really pull this trade together and make it worth making.

Like Russ Branyan, I've mentioned Endy Chavez before as a guy I'd like to have around, and sure enough, Zduriencik went out and brought him in, presumably to replace Jeremy Reed. Chavez isn't going to fool anyone into thinking he can hit, but what he brings is the sort of three-position defense that makes him an asset and a real valuable role player. Honestly, he's the perfect fourth outfielder for a team to have - he can play left, right, and center with remarkable ease, and there's just enough in his bat to keep him from being a problem in the event that he gets forced into regular action for a little while. On days when he starts next to Gutierrez and Ichiro, I don't know that you'll find a better defensive outfield in the league. And as Wlad insurance, you could do a lot worse. A neat addition, if an unexpected one.

Aaron Heilman is a hard-throwing righty who recently demanded a trade from New York because he wants to start. He subsequently got traded to a team with too many starters. I don't know what Zduriencik's intentions with him may be, and it's possible that he might not even be in Seattle for more than a few weeks (or days), but for the time being, he's one of the newest Mariners, so he's worth discussing. His repertoire consists of a mid-90s fastball, a strong changeup, and a slider that he had previously put on the shelf. The slider wasn't there in 2007, but he started throwing it again in 2008, and one has to wonder if this is correlated to his dramatic walk rate increase, which prior to this year was trending in the other direction. Anyway, the Aaron Heilman of 2006/2007 and the Aaron Heilman of 2008 are very different pitchers. One of them is well-suited to relieve, but more importantly, neither of them is very well-suited to start. With rare exception, an effective starter needs at least three functional pitches, and I just don't think Heilman's slider is good enough to get him there. I dunno, I could be wrong. Maybe Heilman's repertoire is sufficiently polished to get him through five or six innings at a time. But based on his results last season, he thinks too highly of his own abilities. I like him better as a power reliever capable of missing bats, especially if you can convince him to go back to two primary pitches. He's got a little upside out of the rotation, but he's probably a better fit in high-leverage relief. Under team control through 2010 in the event that the Mariners keep him around.

Now on to the really interesting players. Mike Carp's a 22 year old first baseman coming off a .299/.403/.471 batting line in a repeat season at AA. It was a breakthrough year for Carp, as he had his first sustained success against legitimate competition. He hasn't yet been tested in AAA, much less the Majors, and he's not an upper-echelon prospect, but what he is is the best first baseman in the system and the potential long-term solution that we talked about when Zduriencik brought on Branyan as a stopgap for 2009. Carp's not going to set the world on fire, and he has only limited upside, but with a ceiling of ~Lyle Overbay's offense with decent enough glovework, he's a good player to have hanging around. If he carries his 2008 success over into Tacoma in 2009, then tadow, you've got your Branyan replacement without ever having to talk to another agent or GM. And if he doesn't, then (A) there's still time, and (B) oh well, it was a nice idea.

Finally, Franklin Gutierrez. Though it may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you see an outfielder with a .691 OPS, Gutierrez is the gem of the trade return, and here's why - he's one of the best defensive outfielders on the planet. PMR likes him. UZR loves him. Plus/minus had sex with him on Adam Everett's coffee table. Franklin Gutierrez has played 284 games in the Major Leagues, and in pretty much every single one of them he has provided extraordinary defense. Based on the data we have, it is not a stretch to call him a legitimate +20 corner outfielder, which in turn means that he's more than capable of handling center and still being +5 or +10 runs with the glove. +5 --> +10 in center. It's almost unthinkable. He doesn't have a great bat, and offensively speaking his ceiling is probably somewhere just beyond league average, but even if he checks in with a low OBP, a dozen homers, and a wOBA* around .325-.330, you're still talking about a really good value. While the casual fan may not like him, unless something horrible happens and his career goes down the shitter, the thinking fan should come to appreciate everything he provides. It's like taking what we thought of Yuni's defense in 2005 and putting it in the outfield every day. Four more years of cheap team control.

Mind you, with all of that said, I'm not sure that we really "won" the trade; I think I would've rather gone Putz/Joyce straight up given the opportunity. But I don't think we necessarily lost it either. Jeremy Reed's nothing special. Sean Green has his uses, but his skillset is replaceable, as evidenced by Roy Corcoran. JJ can be really good but he's really risky, and as I wrote last night I thought now was a good time to cash him in.

The player whose loss we might feel the most, I think, is Luis Valbuena. I liked Valbuena as a future Jose Lopez replacement, on account of he plays strong defense around the bag with good range and soft hands, and his approach at the plate should make an easy transition to the big leagues. At no point did I expect to hear his name surface in trade rumors this offseason because he struck me as one of the simplest solutions to the blossoming problem that is our middle infield. However, I suppose if the front office is committed to keeping Lopez around, then Valbuena didn't serve much of a long-term purpose, making him expendable. Besides, it's not like we just traded Carlos Truinfel. Valbuena's nice, but he's never going to be a superstar. I just wish we could've held on to him is all.

Overall, it's a whale of a trade that rather significantly re-shapes the team's roster. Sliding Gutierrez into center and flanking him with Wlad and Ichiro gives us a talented outfield trio that could stay together for a long, long time given a little development. Chavez provides better defense than Reed without sacrificing any of the stick. I don't know how the pitching staff's going to shake out, but either Heilman takes over the 8th or 9th innings, or room is made for him to fit into the rotation (or he's traded). I pray, of course, that this doesn't mean the end of the Brandon Morrow: Starter transition, because I still think giving him an extended opportunity is in everyone's best interests, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there, and we'll have to evaluate it separately. That's not really what's important right now.

I miss JJ Putz. I felt a knot in my stomach as I listened to Thunderstruck a little while ago, and I'm incredibly disappointed that I never got to see his Safeco entrance for myself. He's given us so many memories and provided so many of our '06/'07 highlights that I can't imagine ever getting used to seeing him in a different uniform. In my head, he's still a Seattle Mariner. The cockpunches. The Bonds at bat. Back to the cockpunches. We've been through a lot with JJ. Bidding him farewell isn't easy. Over the years, I've wanted to see him succeed more than almost anybody else on the team, so this is a bit of a punch in the gut.

But it's also a signal of change, and as much as I came to love individual players over the past few years, I'm prepared to say goodbye to some of them if it brings me closer to being able to love an entire team. A team that competes. A team that wins. A team that lets me wear my Felix jersey outside without feeling a little embarrassed. Jack Zduriencik may be old, and he may be bald, but he couldn't be a more different GM than Bill Bavasi if he tried. In but a short while Zduriencik has demonstrated an understanding of both freely-available talent and the importance of team defense, and he's made moves to improve the organization while having to sacrifice very little in the way of future value. That's huge. That's exactly what we all wanted him to do. The GM of the Seattle Mariners is doing exactly what we all wanted him to do.

The Mariners didn't rip anyone off tonight, but they followed a series of good thought processes and wound up making a pretty good trade that addresses at least two of the organization's most pressing needs.

These are good times to be a fan of the Seattle Mariners. Good times, indeed.

Thanks for everything, JJ.

The tentative details:

To Seattle:

Aaron Heilman
Franklin Gutierrez
Mike Carp
Endy Chavez

To New York:

JJ Putz
Jeremy Reed
Sean Green

To Cleveland:

Joe Smith
Luis Valbuena

There may be another prospect in there somewhere, but who knows. There are the major names.

So I've been thinking about this for a little while, now, what with JJ's name being the one that's coming up the most often. I wasn't sure what would go on with him as far as offseason dealings were concerned after last year's injuries and trouble throwing strikes, but the M's have made him available and there appears to be a market, so it's worth discussing the idea.

For the longest time, I've thought that the best thing to do with JJ is to hold out for good value during the offseason and, if no one comes up with a strong offer, let him try to improve his status during the summer so you can attempt to move him again later on. And while I stand by that, after witnessing the Francisco Rodriguez contract and various other deals and rumblings, I think we have to re-consider how we define "good value", at least in terms of what it would take for us to be willing to say goodbye. Because the more I think about it, the lower that "good value" gets.

Let's look at it like this. Let's put JJ's current trade value at X. It doesn't matter what X actually is - it's just a number, or a player, or a group of players, or something.

(A) The Mariners decide X isn't enough, and they hang on to him. JJ pitches well for the first few months, and come July X has increased by 10%. There's less time for him to make an impact, and teams might be less willing to give up a young ML-ready player or two than they were over the winter, but overall his effectiveness elevates his value.

(B) The Mariners decide X isn't enough, and they hang on to him. JJ struggles, or gets hurt, and come July X has decreased by 80%. A team might be willing to take a flier on a guy a year and a half removed from being awesome, but overall JJ has stabbed his value in the nuts.

Faced with those theoretical black-and-white percentages (this is just an example), the breakeven rate for hanging on to JJ is 1 - (.1 / [.1 + .8]) = 89%. In other words, the Mariners would have to be at least 89% certain that JJ would follow path (A) in order to justify keeping him around. Alternatively, they'd have to believe that an effective JJ would be worth more than 1.1*X around deadline time. Whichever the case, were the M's to keep JJ through the winter, they'd be doing so because they believed there was a really good chance that he'd improve his value by pitching well out of the gate.

I don't need to tell you that that's an awful big risk. Relievers are volatile. Particularly the ones coming off disappointing seasons in which they got injured. There's no guarantee that JJ's ever going to get back to what he was in 2006 and 2007, and the downside inherent in giving him the opportunity is enormous. One more rough stretch or DL stint and his value goes through the floor.

While we know that JJ could destroy his value by struggling, what we can't say is whether his value would even increase by that much were he to resume pitching well. I thought that teams might be a little wary around him given his iffy 2008, but from all indications, he's still considered to be an upper-echelon closer with a very affordable price. How much could he possibly improve on that? It doesn't seem like front offices are very concerned by his injuries at all, so I have to wonder just how close his value is to its ceiling. Because the nearer it is, the less sense it makes to hang on to him through the winter. Why take that kind of risk when there's only minimal upside?

(Also, while the list of teams seeking a closer will change mid-season, it's impossible to predict who else will be available.)

The more I think about it, the more I come around to the idea of trading JJ away. I mean, I love everything about the guy, and I'm not saying the M's should deal him if the best they can get in return is Jeff Larish, but if you can get a Matt Joyce from the Tigers or someone equally interesting from the Brewers, I think you have to pull the trigger. For one thing, teams just don't look like they're going to give up much more for a closer, and for another, that's already good value - Joyce, for example, would give us six years of team control over a left-handed league-average outfielder with upside. That's quite a return for a reliever with injury concerns who turns 32 in February. What more could you want?

JJ was a phenomenal closer at his peak, and he may resume pitching at the same level again in 2009. He's a volatile player, though, and holding on to him into the season runs the risk of pulling the rug out from under his value before we get the chance to cash him in for someone who can help this team win a pennant. Zduriencik, if nobody offers anything good then by all means feel free to stand still, but if there's adequate talent to be had, I implore you to seize it without thinking twice. Because for as much as we love JJ, and for as much as he's meant to this organization, it's the right thing to do, and at the end of the day, that's the only thing that matters.

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From NY's finest:

But Met officials departed the GM meetings confident that someone they like from the free-agent field will fall to them in this game of big-money musical chairs.

If all fails via free agency, the Mets talked to the Mariners about J.J. Putz, and believe Seattle eventually will make him available this offseason. However, Putz makes just $5 million in 2009 with a 2010 club option for $8.6 million or a $1 million buyout.

So that puts Putz into the affordable available closer category with Oakland's Huston Street, Florida's Kevin Gregg and perhaps even Jenks in the right package.

On the one hand, teams with no plans of being competitive have little use for shutdown closers. On the other, JJ's value is as low as it's been in three years. I'm all for making JJ available - everybody should be available, all the time - but if I'm the new front office, I don't go into trade negotiations looking to settle. I look for a big return, and if nothing comes along, I give JJ a chance to right himself next summer before exploring the market again near the deadline. While this team doesn't have a need for JJ right now, it also shouldn't be in any rush to see him go away for less than what he's worth.

If anything, this offseason should be about seeing how much you can get in return for guys with decent value who either won't be around long-term, or who risk having their values drop down the road. Jose Lopez. Jarrod Washburn. Yuniesky Betancourt. And, as much as it pains me to say, Adrian Beltre. Obviously I wouldn't want to deal Beltre if I thought this team might be able to win, but if we're committed to rebuilding, we won't have any real use for him in 2009, and he won't want to sign an extension. So you might as well test the waters. It's the right thing to do. You just have to hope that GMZ's as good a salesman as he is an evaluator of talent.

There are countless right ways for the new front office to handle this offseason, and there are countless wrong ways. All this waiting for the first shoe to drop is killing me.

I think everyone understands that it's been a bit of a grind for JJ. He hasn't been right all season long, and when I say "all season", I really mean all season - the last time he felt anywhere close to 100% was the first day of April. Since then it's been a tedious, difficult slog of a year, as he's encountered hurdle after hurdle while trying to pitch himself back into form.

What's been interesting to me is watching him try to pitch his way back at the Major League level. This isn't something you see very often, but in a season pulled straight from a box of Instant Nightmare, it's not like the Mariners have had anything to lose, so for the most part they've let JJ get out there and plug away. And plug away he has, with mixed results.

It's weird when you see someone lose what made him successful almost overnight. At first he'll try going back to the well to see if he can summon old ability, but if that doesn't work, then you'll see him start to experiment. I think this is the stage that JJ presently occupies. Having struggled with his fastball and splitter command all summer, the old combination wasn't working on its own, so recently we've seen him toy with a curveball that he previously abandoned a few years ago. I'm guessing the idea here is to try and refine another pitch just in case one or two of the other ones aren't working.

It's not a very good pitch. Right now, anyway. He threw a good one to Garret Anderson last night, but that's been far from the norm, as not only is it loopy and soft, but he also can't control it for beans. Which pretty much just gives him a fourth pitch he can't locate. It makes him a different pitcher to watch, but it doesn't make the watching any less difficult. It's hard when someone you used to hold in higher esteem than all others loses faith in his strengths.

Don't get me wrong, there is a little upside. Pitch variety is important, and if JJ were somehow able to come out of this with another reliable weapon, then more power to him. It's just that...this is Spring Training stuff that we're seeing, because the curveball is nowhere near as good as JJ wants it to be, and after the last few seasons, watching JJ pitch like this makes me uncomfortable. I hate thinking that someone can go from untouchable to unreliable this quickly, but if we've learned anything from this season, it's that everybody can disappoint. And the uncertainty I feel about JJ going forward just kills me inside.

I want JJ to get better. I need JJ to get better. But at this point I'm not sure of anything anymore. All I really know is that if this offseason doesn't cure what's ailing him, then I'm going to be one sad panda.

I guess I should probably put up an open thread for this giant pile of dumb.

Dear JJ,

I write to you not out of anger, but out of concern. We're worried about you. All of us. Even the best are entitled to an off day every once in a while, but these last two outings, you haven't been you. You haven't been close to you. We've been conditioned to expect such great things that even the slightest misstep is cause for alarm, and while I might just be making mountains out of molehills, I'd like to ask something of you.

If you're still hurt, let someone know.

This may simply be rust. You missed a few weeks there, and God knows you looked awesome in your return, so if you're just trying to get into a groove and this all blows over in a few days, then forget I ever said anything.

But if you're still hurt, let someone know.

We admire your fire and we admire your competitive spirit. The intensity you bring to the mound is contagious, and if ever the Mariners had cobbled together a roster of 25 guys with your determination, there would probably be another banner flying out there in right field. But if, in an effort to get back to helping the team as quickly as possible, you returned from the DL too early, you need to let someone know.

This isn't the time to try and prove your heart. We know you have the biggest heart on the team. Every last one of us. This is about doing what's best for the Mariners, and if you're still feeling lingering pain in any way, what's best for the Mariners is that you sit out until you're completely healthy. Better to have no JJ for one or two months than to have no JJ for six. I know it's tough to sit on the sidelines wishing you could be out there making a contribution instead of wearing a jacket in the bullpen, but what this team needs is for you to pitch at 100%, and if you're not capable of doing that right now, it's better that you sit out until you are. Pitching hurt doesn't do anyone any favors.

I hope you're okay. I hope this is just a rut, or you're sick, or you couldn't get a good grip on the ball, and that you work yourself out of it over your next few appearances. I'd love nothing more than to be able to look back on this in a few weeks and think "man, what a stupid thing to write." If your rib feels fine and you're just trying to shake off a little rust, then by all means, don't pay attention to me.

But if you're still hurt, let someone know.

Yours,

Jeff Sullivan

Biggest Contribution: Richie Sexson, +29.4%
Biggest Suckfest: JJ Putz, -29.3%
Most Important AB: Sexson homer, +33.4%
Most Important Pitch: Cabrera single, -34.1%
Total Contribution by Pitcher(s): -29.9%
Total Contribution by Hitters: -36.9%
Total Contribution by Opposition: +16.8%
(What is this chart?)

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I'm throwing this up now, because there's a scheduled network outage coming up in a little bit and I'm not sure if I'll be awake when everything returns.

Needless to say, a certain someone is back. And the only thing keeping me from adding "-and better than ever" is the fact that it's not really possible for this certain someone to improve.

Putz to 15-day D/L

Putz felt discomfort on a pitch to Michael Young in the 9th inning last night and was sore after the game. The Mariners had a precautionary MRI exam done today. It revealed that Putz has mild costochondritis on his right side. Costochondritis is inflammation where cartilage attaches to a rib.

Costochondritis is basically treated with rest and ibuprofen. The prognosis depends on the severity of the swelling. Most cases tend to take months before pain subsides.

Ray Corcoran has been called up in the meantime.

Jeff's note: in a weird way this is kind of a relief. Since it probably explains JJ's lack of command last night, now my brain can pretend the whole thing never happened and get back to thinking JJ's unhittable when he makes his return. In the meantime, uh oh