Lookout Landing

No Jerry Hairston For Us

2009-01-07T05:33:54Z

CINCINNATI -- The Reds have reached an agreement with free-agent infielder/outfielder Jerry Hairston Jr. on a one-year deal worth a guaranteed $2 million, a baseball source told MLB.com on Tuesday.

I don't particularly care either way, but since it seems like Hairston was the top utility infielder on Zduriencik's winter list, I guess we'll have to set our sights on someone else, as I doubt the team has enough confidence in Reegie Corona to run with him as the Opening Day backup. Guys like Alex Cora, Craig Counsell, and Alex Cintron are still available, and that's just among the free agents - there are trade possibilities as well, and Dave's recommendation of Alfredo Amezaga was a good one. I'd say more but listing off the names of six different utility players in sequence causes my brain to shut off from disinterest.

Griffey Post

2009-01-07T05:24:30Z

Let's do this.

Ken Griffey Jr. is a good player.

Demonstrably untrue. According to Fangraphs' data, since 2002, Griffey has averaged 0.75 WAR per season, and since 2006 has been a replacement-level player. Whatever pluses he's had at the plate have been completely and utterly undone by his ineptitude in the field. Ken Griffey Jr., as of the present day, is an absolutely awful all-around Major League baseball player.

Ken Griffey Jr. is a good hitter.

Now you're doing a little better, but still, not really. Using Fangraphs again, you're looking at an average of +10 runs/season since 2002 and +6 runs/season since 2006. He's been all right, but he turned 39 in November, and is coming off arguably the worst offensive season of his 20 year career. Griffey, at this point, could be somewhere around average, and maybe even a little better, yet no matter how you slice it, he's no star, and he's not particularly close.

Ken Griffey Jr. would be best put to use as part of a platoon.

Almost certainly yes. While the guy could hit southpaws at his peak, over the past five years (in hitter-friendly environments) he's hit .291/.380/.536 against righties and .227/.304/.428 against lefties. With his abilities eroding, it's gotten to the point at which, when facing a lefty, Griffey turns into a pretty easy out. There's no reason for anyone to promise him a full-time role.

Ken Griffey Jr.'s 2008 season was destroyed by a knee injury.

It's possible, of course - there's no way for us to prove anything either way - but it's worth pointing out that Griffey hit just .248/.342/.416 in April, before he got hurt, and .249/.356/.427 the rest of the way with a comparable home run rate. There's no evidence that the bad knee was responsible for his bad season aside from the agent claiming it was, and what else would an agent say? Besides, injuries aren't much of an excuse anyway, since injuries are an unavoidable part of the picture once a player gets to be Griffey's age. Even if a bad knee was to blame for his weak numbers last year, you can't just look around that, because the fact of the matter is that his body is far more likely to break down than most anybody else's. He's not exactly the most durable guy in the world. Injuries have to be considered, not ignored.

Ken Griffey Jr. would be rejuvenated by a return to Seattle.

Griffey hit .260/.347/.405 after getting traded from a shitty team to a playoff contender. To claim that a return to Seattle would cause him to elevate his game would imply a whole lot of unfalsifiable things, not the least of which being that Seattle is somehow more worthy of his top performance than Cincinnati or Chicago. Coming back to a bunch of standing ovations would probably make Griffey feel good, but there's a lot more to hitting a baseball than being in your happy place. I'm not buying it.

Ken Griffey Jr. would be a big draw.

Griffey brought nearly 140,000 people out to Safeco for a three-game series in 2007. Humans tend to suck when it comes to getting over lost love, and I don't think there's any questioning the assertion that signing Griffey would cause a jump in attendance. Probably not so much in the middle months, but for the first and last few weeks of the season, you'd probably see the stadium pretty full. Just because Griffey didn't mean that much to me as a kid isn't to say that he didn't mean the world to most of the city, and you better believe they'd want to come out and support their old hero. Griffey, if nothing else, would stir a little enthusiasm among the parts of the fan base who haven't been impressed by Zduriencik's franchise navigation.

Nostalgia is good.

I guess this one pretty much depends on what you think it means to be a fan. Some people want to win, and other people just want to feel happy and entertained, no matter the reasons why. Neither one is better than the other. The former group would presumably be less than enthused by a Griffey acquisition. The latter group, meanwhile, would wet its collective trousers.

Ken Griffey Jr. would be cheap to bring in.

With the vastly superior Burrell signing for $16m/2yr and the even more vastly superior Bradley for $30m/3yr, I can't imagine that Griffey's going to get much of anything. At the end of the day he'd probably be willing to settle for a few million dollars to ride off into the sunset, money that we have available to spend. Probably the most difficult thing would be trying to figure out how to deal with him in the event that he totally sucks, since the Mariners wouldn't exactly be able to bench Ken Griffey Jr.

Ken Griffey Jr. would take up playing time that would otherwise go to a young player who could be part of the future.

This much is true - if he DH'd, he'd take some time away from Jeff Clement, and if for some unholy reason he were to play LF, he'd take some time away from Wlad Balentien. But with the Mariners in the market for a bat, it seems like one of these things is going to happen anyway, so the issue isn't unique to Griffey. Griffey, Abreu, Dunn, somebody else, it doesn't matter who - if the Mariners bring in another bat, he's going to take playing time away from somebody else. It's on them to deal with the consequences.

We might as well just sign Griffey since we're not going to go anywhere this year.

The Mariners, as currently constructed, are pretty close to being a .500 true talent ballclub, with upside at an awful lot of positions. The A's, Angels, and Rangers are all decent to good teams, but not one of them stands out as being very strong, and the opportunity exists for the M's to contend, especially if they add another multiwin bat. Bringing in Griffey neither improves the team nor grants development time to players who may help in the future. When that's the case for a team in our position, you're dealing with a move that isn't worth making.

-----

I'm out of ideas so, Overall

I understand why so many people want to see Griffey retire in a Mariner uniform. I really do. When I watch the Ottawa Senators, I can't even imagine how awful it would feel to see Daniel Alfredsson retire anywhere else, and while Alfredsson never stabbed his city in the back by demanding a trade, handcuffing the organization, and talking about death threats, the impact he's had on Ottawa is comparable to the impact Griffey had on Seattle, and that means something. To a lot of people, Griffey should retire a Mariner because he has to retire a Mariner, and there's no other choice. It's just the way the story's written.

But at the same time, I just can't get on board, because what this team needs is to look forward, not backward. This team should be focused on putting a successful product on the field, because that's more important for the franchise than short-term entertainment value, and Griffey just doesn't represent any part of the bigger picture. He certainly can't help us down the road, and even in 2009, he wouldn't represent an asset. At his age, with his track record, you're talking about an absolute max of maybe 1 WAR, with all kinds of room for collapse. Marcel projects him to be a 0.2 WAR DH, and PECOTA projected something in the neighborhood of 0.8 WAR for 2009 before he even had his lousy 2008. Statistically, the odds just aren't good that Griffey would be able to help us. Even if you were to platoon him very carefully and moderate his exposure against tough opponents, you're talking about an incredibly limited impact, and a performance that you could approximate, if not exceed by bringing in a AAAA lefty slugger (or simply sticking with Clement). It's just not worth it.

There is no convincing statistical case to be made that Ken Griffey Jr. would be of significant service to a 2009 Mariners squad that's closer to contention than many ever thought possible. As such, all of these sorts of arguments are coming from other places - sentimental places - and while I respect what those people are going for, this organization can't get caught up in that kind of stuff. It's not about collecting old heroes. It's about building a winner and bringing us new ones. As painful as it may be for some people to swallow, it would be in everyone's best interests for Seattle to remember Griffey not for what he is, but for what he was. Short of a late-summer acquisition by a Mariner team going nowhere, this is a retirement story that I feel is better left untold.

Tyler Walker

2009-01-07T00:00:01Z

This one comes via Geoff Baker:

On to the Mariners, they've made their first move of 2009 and it's...well...hardly earth-shaking. Right-handed relief pitcher Tyler Walker of the Giants has just been signed by the club. If you're building a football team, he'd be a good place to start, as he's listed at 6-foot-3, 272 pounds. On the baseball side, he went 5-8 with a 4.56 ERA in 65 games last season before being non-tendered.

Earlier today, Larry Stone mentioned that Zduriencik had an offer out to a free agent - probably a reliever - and that Zduriencik was optimistic the deal would be consummated. I'm guessing that Walker, then, is said free agent.

The most notable thing about Walker is that he had Tommy John surgery in 2006, but outside of that, he's put together a decent albeit entirely underwhelming career. What I imagine Zduriencik is banking on is that Walker's able to sustain some of the improvement he showed in 2008, when he achieved career-best rates in both swinging strikes and groundballs. He used to be a pure fastball/slider guy, but he started throwing more sliders and changeups and fewer heaters last year, and it looks like that might've helped him a little bit. Not that his numbers were great or anything, but aside from the elevated HR/FB, they were acceptable for a guy you're not counting on to win you a Series.

Walker has closing experience, which gives Wakamatsu another PR-friendly option for the ninth, and his repertoire makes him an okay bet to survive the season without obscene platoon splits. With that in mind, he's an interesting addition to a bullpen that has a fair bit of talent but a lot of unknowns. I'm not quite sure how he fits into a crowded and pretty young relief corps, but if Zduriencik intends to make room for some of his current relievers in the rotation, then spaces will need to be filled, and Walker's all right. He's not likely to hurt us, and in the event that he does, he's easy to ditch. Pretty harmless little move.

Graham's Update: 1 year, $750,000. Not bad for a potentially league average reliever.

Reminder: LL/USSM Event This Weekend

2009-01-06T15:57:19Z

Spots are filling up fast, faster than I thought they would. We're down to 75 or so spots left, so I wouldn't dally any further if you are planning on coming but haven't signed up yet.

Original Post

So

2009-01-06T05:32:08Z

About eight months ago, Matthew and I were seated among a host of baseball officials and executives at the First Annual PITCHf/x Summit in San Francisco. One of the people sitting at our table was none other than Mat Olkin. He didn't say much, but we noticed that, when asked, he introduced himself as an employee of the Royals.

I think that's about as low as I've ever felt as a Mariners fan. It was at that point I realized that either our team no longer had a sabermatrician on staff, or the sabermatrician they had on staff was so embarrassed by the connection that he'd sooner admit to working with Kansas City. I spent the rest of my weekend consumed with thoughts of how I was devoting myself to a baseball team for whom the clock of intellectual evolution was ticking steadily backwards.

Now it's 2009, and I can't even begin to wrap my head around how different this organization looks. Yeah, ownership is still the same, but it isn't, because Armstrong and Lincoln have elected to defer to a brand new front office that seems to know exactly what it's doing. Zduriencik, Blengino, McNamara, Fusco, Grifol - there's intelligence. There's real-life, legitimate, powerful intelligence at the top, and in just half an offseason the new crew has already made a case for its being one of the strongest front offices in baseball. And now, to top things off, it's been made public that Tom Tango's going to be working as a consultant (along with Olkin, who will have a more appropriate role). Regardless of how much Tango actually goes on to contribute, and how much consideration will be given to his input, the fact that the Seattle Mariners went out and hired probably the greatest publicly accessible statistical analyst in the world speaks immeasurable volumes about how much this team has changed. Bavasi may have wanted to make this organization better, but the bottom line is that Zduriencik and the rest of his front office seem to actually know how to do it.

Tom Tango works for the Mariners. Given everything we've gone through over the past five years, it's absolutely flooring to see how good our organization suddenly looks on paper. And while we can't yet be certain how things will work out in the long run, it's the groups that look the best on paper that have the strongest odds of success, so with that in mind, I am more than prepared to usher in a new era of Mariners baseball. An era of pride, an era of relevance - an era of winning. For the first time in my life, I believe with all my heart that the people in charge of my baseball team are the right people to take it where we all want it to go.

And I can't explain how weird that sounds.

Yuni's Last Legs?

2009-01-06T00:23:03Z

I like the Hardball Times revised zone ratings [RZR] and out of zone plays [OOZ]. I think you can take their statistics and couch them a certain way, and get some really good indicators. --Tony Blengino

(courtesy of Hardball Times)

I think that with the Hardball Times metrics you can come up with a baseline fairly easily and know what you’re talking about, whether a guy is above or below average at a certain position, and watch trends over the years fairly easily. --TB

We know the new group values defense highly.
We know Yuni rates extremely poorly amongst its preferred metric.

Something's got to give eventually.

For completeness, his UZRs show a poor trend as well.

Holy Crap

2009-01-05T19:55:45Z

I don't understand how they pulled this off.

Pat Burrell is leaving the World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies for the runner-up Tampa Bay Rays.

Burrell has agreed in principle to a two-year, $16 million contract with the Rays, sources told ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney on Monday. The deal is pending a physical.

Going into the offseason, Burrell was one of those slugging corner outfield types I had pegged as likely to receive a retarded contract. Instead, the Rays signed him for less money and fewer years than the Phillies gave the older Raul Ibanez.

Burrell can't play defense, but he's been a +20-25 run hitter for four years in a row, and as a DH, he's due to be worth somewhere at or around two wins. Even with a skillset that doesn't age particularly well, he's a good bet to earn his deal, with the potential to do quite a bit more than that.

Real solid deal for Tampa Bay. And if this is what the market looks like, then suddenly I'm a little warmer to the idea of pursuing Adam Dunn. He's no Milton Bradley, but he'd be the best hitter in the lineup, and should he be willing to sign a reasonable contract, then that mitigates a lot of the presumed risk.

Fascinating.

Matthew's superior take:

The Rays have, or are about to, ink Pat Burrell to a two-year, $16 million deal. He's probably going to DH most of the time. That actually improves his value as with the positional dock that left field gets (-7.5), Burrell was costing the team about 20.5 runs by playing the field. Moving to DH negates the poor defense and only incurs a 17.5 run penalty. With his offensive projection, that makes Burrell between a 2 and 2.5-win player and worth $9-$11 million per year.

Raul Ibanez signed a three year, $31.5 million deal to continue playing left field. Ibanez projects to be worth around $5 million as an outfielder. The Phillies forfeited three draft picks by refusing to offer arbitration to Burrell and signing Ibanez instead.

The Mariners used to be the Phillies. They are now the Rays.

Graham's take:

Don't be silly I never write anything.

Cat's Out of the Bag

2009-01-04T23:38:11Z

Baseball Prospectus Interview with Blengino

It's a big Q&A with Tony Blengino, who by the way, you can ask questions to directly, perhaps as follow-ups to answers presented above. There is lots of great stuff in the interview.

USS Mariner post on matter

DMZ pulls two exciting quotes out and mentions something that, if you are familar at all with the internet baseball community could be the most exciting news of all this winter. Remember how Bavasi "used" Mat Olkin as a consultant except that the Ms were so backwards that a 1996 edition of the Sears holiday catalog would have been just as useful? Well, Blengino has his own consultant, but since we have a very good inkling that this administration actually cares about statistical analysis, the identity of the consultant is pretty damn important.

That person is Tom Tango.

It's literally beyond wildest dreams. I never thought we'd have to create a "Great News" section for our stories here.

Graham's addendum, presented without comment:

So it really is vital that statistics and traditional scouting work hand in hand for an organization to succeed, and I think you see that with the most successful organizations in the game; they do both well.

-Tony Blengino

Community Projection: Jeff Clement

2009-01-04T23:16:13Z

The twelfth in a non-alphabetical and irregularly updated series of review pieces for each(?) of the players we predicted last spring.

LL/USSM Community: .274/.346/.465
Actual Line: .227/.295/.360

Disastrous seasons aren't supposed to coincide with a 1.131 OPS in AAA, but I think it's fair to say that a disastrous season is exactly what Jeff Clement had in 2008.

After turning the corner and coming on strong in Tacoma in 2007, Clement kicked off 2008 hotter than vintage Eliza Dushku in a hockey jersey, collecting twice as many walks as strikeouts through the first month and batting nearly .400 on his way to a late April promotion. Having made the move while still hovering around .500, the Mariners intended to use Clement's scorching bat to ignite a slumping offense in need of new blood. Instead, though, Clement struggled to produce, collecting only eight hits in 15 games without a single home run before getting sent back to the minors in May. Whether or not the demotion was justifiable is an open question - at the time, Jose Vidro was just as big a pile of crap - but that's a separate matter, and the bottom line is that, when given his first trial, Jeff Clement didn't take advantage.

So Clement spent another month beating the snot out of the ball in Tacoma. Where his April was partially inflated by a high BABIP, over 109 PAs in May and June Clement slugged a legitimate .670, clubbing nine homers while hitting 50% fly balls. Once again he demonstrated that he had nothing left to learn at the plate in the minors, so once again he got promoted to the big leagues, this time in an effort to introduce more youth to a ballclub going nowhere.

And once again, he struggled. Things weren't quite as bad this time as they had been earlier, but he was still striking out too often, and he didn't hit a home run after July 13th. His .245/.298/.394 batting line over the course of his second extended stint gave him a total .655 OPS on the season, and while there were occasional glimpses of power and discipline, the impression he left was that of a young player in no way shape or form prepared to hit against Major League pitchers. It was a disappointment of a big league campaign that ended with Clement getting a knee procedure for the second time in three years.

I don't know that things really could've gone much worse for Clement in Seattle. Just consider the three elements of his game:

OFFENSE: Clement's plate discipline disappeared when he got to the big leagues. His swing rate on balls in the zone was below-average while his swing rate on balls out of the zone ranked in the upper fifth. In other words, while Clement was swinging the bat with normal frequency, he wasn't swinging at the right pitches. He went fishing after too many sliders, struggled with changeups, and did his best to simply ignore curveballs. When he made contact, he was able to hit the ball with some degree of force, but neither his home runs nor his line drives showed up nearly as often as his minor league performance would've predicted. It was an all-around bad year for a guy who had the tools to be a whole hell of a lot better.
DEFENSE: A project behind the plate since the day he was drafted, Clement still didn't look very comfortable this past season. While there's no way for us to quantify how well or how poorly a guy calls a game, Clement had trouble in every other relevant area, from receiving the ball to fielding pop-ups to throwing out runners. His footwork remains all kinds of bad, and while there was improvement, there wasn't enough.
HEALTH: Two knee surgeries in three years. From the press release:

Mariners medical director Dr. Edward Khalfayan will perform the arthroscopic procedure to repair a lateral meniscus tear and a medial meniscus tear in Clement's left knee...It is believed the tears were the result of normal wear and tear, not any one traumatic incident.

Clement is 25 years old, and he's already had two knee operations to address issues brought about by the wear and tear of his everyday job. It's worse that these tears aren't the result of a traumatic accident, because at least those are accidents. Being the result of wear and tear is an indication that Clement's body is unable to withstand the rigors of his work.

There can't be a Mariner coach or fan in the world who feels good about Jeff Clement's 2008. The season provided so many more questions than answers, and that's the last thing this team needed from a guy they've been counting on to help pull them out of the cellar. Jeff Clement was supposed to be an established, successful big leaguer by now. Instead, four years into his professional career, he's a questionable bat without a position.

The "questionable bat" is the lesser of Clement's main problems going forward. While there's no ignoring his struggles, it's not fair to evaluate Clement's offensive ability by looking at the poor numbers he's put up in the big leagues so far. He does have a decent eye, he does have good power, and he does have a pretty high ceiling. These are irrefutable facts. It's just that what Clement did in Seattle this year served to squelch the excitement generated by what he did in Tacoma. It's not unusual for even the best young hitters to come up and have some trouble during early exposure, but after seeing Clement look the way he did, it's worth considering that he may be more flawed than many thought. At 25, he needs to start hitting. If it turns out that his peak might be, say, an .850 OPS instead of a .950 OPS, then that's a big deal.

The other problems are interrelated, and far more significant. Jeff Clement is not a good defensive catcher. He's not a bad defensive catcher. He's a lousy defensive catcher, and his work there has on multiple occasions taken a toll on his health. There was already a good discussion on this matter two weeks ago, so I won't go into detail, but here's what it comes down to: Clement is way, way more valuable as a catcher than as a first baseman or DH, and if he isn't able to stick behind the plate, then that takes a lot of the shine off the apple. An average defensive catcher only needs to hit like Rickie Weeks to be a 3 WAR asset. An average defensive first baseman needs to hit like Carlos Beltran. A DH needs to hit like Chase Utley. Clement was a high draft pick because he could swing a solid bat as a catcher. His future value rests on the fate of both of those characteristics.

It's also worth mentioning, as Dave pointed out in that earlier thread, that being a catcher may be holding Clement's bat back from further development, which only complicates things even more. It makes sense; the more time you spend trying to make a guy better at a defensive position, the less time he has to work on his hitting. On this matter we can't be certain either way, but it is a distinct possibility, and that clouds the picture.

Looking ahead, Jeff Clement has a lot of work to do. I don't know how the team sees things playing out, but it seems to me that 2009 should be the most significant season of Clement's career. If he wants to preserve his ceiling as a potential star, he needs to improve his footwork behind the plate, put up something at least approximating a league-average batting line, and stay healthy. He needs to prove that he can be an all-around effective player while remaining as a backstop, because that's something he has yet to do, and at 25, he's running out of chances. You can only give a guy so long of a leash before you're forced to go in another direction.

If Clement's able to stick behind the plate, that's awesome. That's great for him and great for the team. If he's not, then that's worse. Unfortunately this is the way things appear to be leaning. Honestly, as much as I'm hoping for improvement, I just can't foresee too many scenarios in which Clement's still a regular catcher in 2010. He's had so much time to get better already that the odds are stacked against him.

Which is all right, I guess, so long as you're able to let go of what might have been. If Clement has to move to first base or DH, he can still be a valuable player. He just ends up with a lower ceiling than he had as a draft pick. Even so, there's nothing wrong with having a good hitter with minimal positional value. Clement would simply have to make sure to bring his bat more often than he did with Seattle in 2008.

2009 could use a good Jeff Clement, and Jeff Clement could use a good 2009. It won't be a season that makes or breaks his career, but it will likely be a season that determines whether or not he ever turns into what we wanted him to be. The organizational outlook is just so different with Clement behind the plate than it is with him at first or DH. Say hello to one of the most important storylines of the year. Jeff, the team has given you everything up to this point. Now it's your move. Prove that you belong.

Fun With Numbers - What's Your WAR?

2009-01-03T02:06:57Z

Imagine if you (i.e. the average reader) were suddenly dropped onto a major league baseball team. You'd be virtually useless in the batter's box - striking out each time (if you're lucky), and you'd be a defensive liability, forcing you into the DH position.

Assuming that you strike out on three pitches in every at-bat (which is probably being overly conservative but whatever let's roll with it), your wOBA would be .000. That's not a good number. Over 600 plate appearances that translates to something like 180 runs below average.

The DH positional adjustment is -17.5, and the replacement bonus we'll take as 20 runs. Your WAR would therefore be approximately -18 (meaning that you should be paying whichever team you were on almost $100M a year to make up for the fact that you're playing).

While this is an amusing little exercise, consider this: Jose Vidro, over 600 PA last season, would have been worth about -3 wins. That's 15 wins over someone who can't play baseball.

The best player in the game, Albert Pujols, posted a WAR of about 9 in 2008. The difference between him and Vidro? 12 wins, only a little bit less than the difference between ol' Turbo and someone who can't play baseball at all.

Let's present this in another way.

We paid him $6,000,000 to be our starting DH last year. What the hell.

Not a serious piece of analysis, just an amusing train of thought.

Sign Up Now. LL/USSM Talk with Zduriencik's Top Assistants, Jan 10.

2008-12-30T04:51:58Z

UPDATE: If you are having any issues with signing up, you can email me or drop a line on the USSM folks. Derek provides some tips:

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To be held at the Seattle City Library, Central Branch on the afternoon of Saturday, January 10th. Scheduled to start at 1:30pm and last until around 5:30pm or so.

Guests will include most of the LL and USSM crew who will be on hand to answer any beer related inquiries.

Guests you might ask baseball questions to include GM Jack Zdureincik's top two assistants who he brought over from Milwaukee; Tony Blengino, our new czar of statistical analysis and other goodies and Tom McNamara, our new scouting director and possible Strasburg selecter.

The schedule for the event is simple, Blengino and McNamara will be there for a large, if not the entire, period of time. I cannot stress how awesome that is.

Cost is at the bargain basement price of $10. Click the pledgie icon to sign up. When you do, please DO NOT check the box to donate anonymously. We need your name to appear so that we can keep the list straight at check in.

Do it! Do it now!

Today's Fun Fact

2008-12-31T10:02:05Z

With the $11m he will receive in salary in 2009, Carlos Silva could afford to send an I'm Sorry card to every household in Seattle once a month for all six months of the season.

I should be back to regular posting by the weekend. Enjoy your New Year's and don't do anything alarmingly stupid.

Milton Bradley Close To Signing With Cubs

2008-12-31T09:00:29Z

It's not a done deal, but it looks to be all but set, as Chicago will be picking up a guy who last season was among the five most productive hitters in baseball. Bradley comes with obvious injury concerns, as he's averaged just 100 games a season since 2002, but when he's healthy enough to swing a bat, he's peaches. His .384 Marcel-projected wOBA is only two points lower than that of Mark Teixeira. Bottom line, he's going to hit.

By taking Bradley off the market, the Cubs are removing what may have been the easiest and best way for the Mariners to add a few wins in 2009 without making much of a sacrifice. Had the M's been able to, say, sign Bradley for three years to DH (at a reasonable price due to injury and attitude issues), they could have shifted Jeff Clement to a job-sharing role with both Bradley and Kenji Johjima, and in so doing made themselves two or three wins better without in any significant way impeding the rebuilding process. It would've been a good way to draw closer to the top of a mediocre division.

Instead, with Bradley all but gone, Zduriencik is left with a host of less desirable free agent alternatives, like Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr. Manny and Pat Burrell might as well be in there, too, but for a number of reasons none of these four seems as ideal a match. Bradley was the guy I wanted. Who knows, though; maybe he didn't want to DH, in which case there was nothing we could've done. Still, as much as I didn't expect us to get involved, it's just a little bit of a bummer.

We'll see how Zduriencik goes about navigating the rest of the offseason. As things currently stand, I imagine Clement and maybe Balentien would get a good bit of time at DH, but I wouldn't put it past the front office to go hard after another bat. And if they're able to land one without making too big of a commitment, more power to them. There's no harm in trying to make this team better now provided you keep an eye towards the bigger picture, and if that's the path that Zduriencik intends to pursue, then even without Bradley, he has my trust. Because this is all we've wanted since Bavasi went away, and because I think he's earned it.

It's No "Raul Ibanez Takes Pride In His Defense", But Then Nothing Is

2008-12-31T02:58:18Z

Remember that extended period in this franchise's history during which we went through like 300 different left fielders? If only a certain someone had been born a generation earlier.

If there's still a need in left field when spring training begins, LaHair knows just who can fill it: himself.

LaHair played several games in left field during his first pro season with the Everett AquaSox in 2003 and a few dozen more the next year at Class A Wisconsin while the Timber Rattlers' regular left fielder, Wladimir Balentien, was playing with the Dutch team at the Athens Olympics.

"I’d been an outfielder my whole life. Left field is like my second home," LaHair said last week before a workout at the Mariners' training complex in Peoria, Ariz. "First base is my home now, but if you gave me two weeks in left field, I would be ready to play there."

Six years ago, LaHair was drafted as a first baseman. Since then he has filled out physically and developed into a bad hitter. I understand the guy wants to make himself seem useful however he can, but the idea of playing Bryan LaHair in left field is like putting mayonnaise on a pie because it looks kind of like ice cream. Bryan, you already suck at one position, so what makes you think you could succeed at a harder one? Just sit down, shut up, and wait to be traded to Baltimore. I hear they're getting desperate.

Memo to Rick Adair: Fix Felix's Fastball

2008-12-29T07:49:21Z

It is no secret that we think that Felix Hernandez throws too many fastballs. With tremendous off-speed pitches, Felix's fastball, especially his 4-seam, is possibly the worst pitch in his repertoire. This is understandably tough for a bull-headed young pitcher to comprehend because for most pitchers, they have had velocity velocity velocity drilled into their heads from a young age. It's velocity that gets you noticed by pro scouts when you are a measly teenager in Venezuela. The velocity on your fastball is what got you where you are and when you end up under the tutelage of noted fastball-fetishist Mel Stottlemyre, it makes it no easier to heed the advice of others.

So, much as Dave pleaded and actually got heard by Rafael Chaves who in turn was able to broach the subject with Felix, the task is largely going to fall to you Rick Adair, our new pitching coach. First off, Felix is throwing way too many fastballs. We hammered on this all throughout 2008, but just look at the jump in 2008. 66% fastballs last year, up from two seasons of 57%. During that same time span we saw Felix's overall swinging strike percentage drop from 9.7% to 8.6%, a troubling fall.

Here is what I find to be a nifty chart. I separated Felix's pitches into two categories: fastballs and non-fastballs. I then computed how often the pitch was swung at and missed and how often it was called a ball.

Felix threw more fastballs in 2008 and his ability to miss bats with them fell. He also lost some ability to throw them for strikes. That's a big double whammy. Meanwhile, look at how often Felix gets a missed bat when he throws an off speed pitch! And notice how he does not even need to go outside the zone any more often than he does with his fastball to accomplish that. If instead of saying "Fastball", the above chart said "Pitch X", wouldn't you be calling for Felix to stop throwing Pitch X?

Okay, so throwing the fastball too often (read: at all) is the first problem. The second problem, seeing as how I expect to Felix to go right ahead and continue to throw fastballs, is the location of those fastballs. I mentioned above the falling strike and missed bat rates from 2007 to 2008 on fastballs. Notably, Felix saw a big decline in throwing fastballs for strikes to left-handed batters and in throwing fastballs for a swinging strike to right-handed batters.

Tackling the lefties first, we saw visually see what happened by going back to my awesome heat maps. On the left is 2007, the right, 2008.

The up-and-in area that Felix went to with some regularity in 2007 is pretty much gone. Felix simply abandoned the idea of throwing fastballs inside to left-handers in 2008. Whereas in 2007 the distribution of location is fairly centralized, 2008 is obviously skewed, massing around the outer edge of the strike zone.

Moving on to right-handers, the heat maps again help illustrate the issue, spotting the potential cause for the drop in swinging strikes.

Look at the down and away corner (lower-right). That's the bread-and-butter area for pitchers and Felix used to set up shop there in 2007. Come 2008 and he is all over the place instead. Also compare the ratio of pitches landing in the upper third of the zone between the years and it becomes clear that Felix's fastball was elevated more in 2008. That's fine if you manage to get more missed bats that way (which is the general relationship between pitching up in the zone and strikeouts), but our chart above showed that not to be the case and instead all Felix ended up with is a nine-point drop in his ground ball rate.

Mr. Adair, Felix's fastball is holding him back and actually causing him to get worse at an age and experience level when he should be making a leap forward. You need to get it through to him that he was much better off when he was throwing it at 2006-7 frequency and locating it down in the zone. I do not think it is hyperbole to say that until Felix makes those changes, we will not see the Cy Young-caliber pitcher that he can be unless he magically learns to command his fastball like Greg Maddux.

Community Projection: Wladimir Balentien

2008-12-27T11:23:57Z

The eleventh in a non-alphabetical and irregularly updated series of review pieces for each(?) of the players we predicted last spring.

LL/USSM Community: .263/.320/.459
Actual Line: .202/.250/.342

Back when the whole Bedard trade went down, a lot of people who were in favor of the move tried to reassure the skeptics by pointing out that, while we may have lost Adam Jones, at least we still had an approximation in Wlad Balentien.

I don't think 2008 was exactly what those people had in mind.

While Jones was off in Baltimore establishing himself as a league average regular with solid defense, Wlad tore through AAA but had all kinds of struggles upon getting promoted, posting numbers that made him arguably the worst player in the Majors among guys who got semi-regular playing time. His first extended cup of coffee didn't go well at all, to the tune of a .611 OPS, and after going down to Tacoma for two more months of seasoning, he came back up and somehow did worse than before. It was a summer of extremes for Wlad, but none of the good ones came in Seattle, and at the end of the year I found myself reflecting upon the fact that, while with the Mariners, Wlad didn't do anything well.

There's not an advertising professional in the world who could sell Wlad's 2008 with the M's as anything other than a total failure. He didn't hit for average. He didn't get on base. He didn't hit for much power. He didn't play good defense. He didn't make contact. He didn't show any discipline. He didn't hit righties. He didn't hit lefties. He did have that big extra innings home run against the Angels, but outside of that longball, I guess you could say that it was a season-long learning experience. Even his prodigious strength only showed up on a handful of occasions, as his HR/FB% wound up around the same level as guys like Mark Teahen and Ramon Hernandez. Wlad showed that he can a few home runs, but after watching him hit 18 in 233 ABs with Tacoma, most of us expected more than seven in 243 with Seattle. I wonder if that wasn't the biggest disappointment of all.

Put simply, it was a season that everyone would like to forget. But at the same time, it was also a season that told us an awful lot about Wladimir Balentien, and how he profiles as a player. While the performance was terrible, the information we were able to glean from it is invaluable.

Wlad's probably never going to be known for his defense. He's not exceptionally slow, and he has a bit of experience playing center field, but his instincts aren't quite there and he runs funny routes. His career upside is probably as an average defensive LF, and it's likely that he spends a lot of time in the red.
Wlad's probably never going to be known for his ability to make contact. Of this we've been aware for a while, but even during his dual hot streaks in Tacoma, he was still missing the ball with a quarter of his swings. He's going to strike out, and he's going to have trouble when he falls behind in the count.
Wlad's probably never going to be known for his discipline. He may end up somewhere around average, but he's a free swinger at heart, and that can be incredibly difficult to turn around. He'll draw a few walks if he's hitting. If he's not hitting, he'll swing himself into a mess.
Wlad's probably never going to be known for his batting average. The average BA among big leaguers with contact rates at or below 75% last year was .253, and while there were a few exceptions in there, those are guys with remarkable talent, like Ryan Ludwick and Josh Hamilton. I'd be ecstatic if Wlad ever broke .270.
Wlad's game will be his power. If only by process of elimination. But the power is real. He was able to post an above-average HR/FB% in his first season in the Majors, and he doesn't turn 25 until next July. This is a guy who hit 16 homers as an 18 year old in the AZL. Wlad's version of solid contact is entirely different than, say, Willie Ballgame's, and he should be able to settle in as a threat to hit 20-30 balls over the fence, if not a few more.

When you put it all together, you have a variation of the standard slugging corner outfielder skillset, with maybe a little better defense than usual. Which isn't too different from the consensus opinion of him a year ago, except that now people have a better understanding of the risk that always accompanies prospect-related optimism. When you see a guy as young as Wlad hitting well in the minors, it's tempting to look at him and think "future star." Wlad's 2008 season, then, serves to remind us of the folly inherent in evaluating prospects by their ceilings.

So how good or bad of a player are we dealing with, here? Let's say, for the sake of simplicity, that Wlad's true talent is as a -5 run defensive left fielder. Assuming a .335 league average wOBA and 85% playing time, here's what Wlad would have to do at the plate to be worth ~each amount of wins:

0 WAR: .320 wOBA
1 WAR: .340
2 WAR: .360
3 WAR: .380
4 WAR: .400
5 WAR: .420

Keep in mind that 2 WAR is just about a league average player. In order to be league average, Wlad would have to hit like Rick Ankiel or Carlos Guillen. In order to be a solid asset, he'd have to hit like Ryan Braun. In order to be a star, he'd have to hit like David Wright.

How likely are those outcomes? 5%? 10%? 25%? Those are all damn good hitters. Wlad's talented and all, but is he that talented? What if he just ends up hitting like, say, Marcus Thames? Or maybe Wily Mo Pena? Then he's not really helping very much, if he's helping at all. And that's obviously not a guy worth building around.

Personally, I'm just not a big fan of Wlad's type of player. They can have exciting ceilings, but rarely do they get there, because the probability distribution is skewed against them. Most of the time they end up as something less than what people imagined, and while some of them might retain their name value because of high HR or RBI totals, few of them actually contribute very much to the greater cause. Slugging corner outfielders who don't do much else just aren't really as valuable as people think.

So with all that in mind, 2009's going to be a big year for Wlad. Potentially career-defining, if you will. If he wants to establish himself as an important part of the future, he needs to put his struggles behind him and come out of the gate flashing some kind of improvement. I won't ask that he start hitting from the get-go, but he needs to look like he has a clue in April, punish a few breaking balls in June, and get into a groove down the stretch. He needs to hit at some point, and he needs to hit over a sustained period of time, because a young player only gets so long to make excuses, and Michael Saunders is on the way. In short, if Wlad wants to go on to be a good player, he needs to get started next season.

As is the case with Jeff Clement, the time is now for Wladimir Balentien to show what he can do. Prospect sheens don't last forever. Realistically speaking, 2009 won't be the last chance for either player, but it would behoove both of them to treat it as such. Impress me.

Randy Johnson Over The Years

2008-12-27T06:22:47Z

	tRA	tRA+	tRA*	GS
2003	4.36	109	4.25	18
2004	2.10	156	3.05	35
2005	3.88	121	3.95	34
2006	4.10	120	4.45	33
2007	3.14	137	4.48	10
2008	3.32	130	3.83	30

It's impossible to be sure how many innings Randy will throw next year at the distinguished age of 45, but given reasonable health and barring sudden collapse (of which there are no clear indicators), he's going to be one of the best starting pitchers in baseball, and the Giants were able to land him for nothing. In so doing, they get to add him to a rotation that already includes Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez, and that's a foursome that matches up pretty well with any other in the league. I know, I know, there's still the whole Zito hilarity at the back, but considering the front 80% of the rotation could easily end up being 90-100 runs above average next year, I think the Giants will manage. In that division they just might end up competing for the playoffs, and while their route hasn't exactly been conventional, there's no denying the roster's strengths.

Randy, by the way, has a career win total of 295, and San Francisco's series in Seattle between 5/22 - 5/24 should coincide with his tenth start of the year. So yeah, there's the potential for a little history to be made in a rather appropriate location. Hopefully the city treats him right. You can keep your other guy; Griffey never meant to me what the Unit did, and should Randy end up starting one of the games in Safeco, I'll be giving him a standing ovation from my desk. Here's to the legend who didn't bend us over a table.

Community Projection: Willie Ballgame

2008-12-26T11:11:04Z

The tenth in a non-alphabetical and irregularly updated series of review pieces for each(?) of the players we predicted last spring.

LL/USSM Community: .255/.315/.307
Actual Line: .279/.377/.285

And so we can finally put an end to the dreadful grit and hustle jokes that never seemed to stop.

As years go, 2008 could've been kinder to Mr. Ballgame. Never a guy who took much of a shining to his role as a backup, all Willie's ever wanted is more playing time, but playing time he didn't get. His pinch-running job was usurped by Miguel Cairo, which left him scrambling for work in other areas, and while he was able to get a little early time in right field, he started in just ten of the team's first 62 games and didn't get semi-regular action until the season was beyond the point of irrelevance. Then he injured himself running out a grounder in early August and never came back. Willie tried to return, but the team resisted, and come October Willie found himself going into free agency having made the fewest appearances of his career. There are a lot of ways to go into free agency, but that isn't a very popular one among the players looking for cash.

It wasn't just the lack of playing time that frustrated Willie, either - there was also the whole bad hitting thing that kind of got on his nerves. Willie's never had the most potent bat in the world, but it was what he did between 7/18/07 and 7/8/08 that nearly got him into the history books. For over this period of time spanning 356 days, 193 plate appearances, and 87 games, Willie went without an extra-base hit. No doubles. No triples. Certainly no homers. All 42 of Willie's hits during that stretch were singles, including one on July 1st that would've easily gone for a two-bagger had it not won the game. Instead it got marked down as a single, as Raul Ibanez was somehow able to outrun Willie in a 60 yard dash. As the games mounted it felt like things were meant to be, and while Willie would sadly get his first extra-base hit nine days later and fall short of the record, that extra-base hit would be his only extra-base hit, and that wound up tying him with Felix Hernandez. Among players with at least 150 PAs in a season, I believe Willie's .006 isolated power is the lowest of all time.

.279/.377/.285. It's comical is what it is. I remember a bunch of years ago I was amazed that Tom Goodwin's OBP could top his SLG. Not only did Willie's OBP top his SLG - it topped it by damn near a hundred points. It was a page right out of the Reggie Willits playbook, except instead of standing still, Willie would swing sometimes and foul the ball off. It was incredible to watch, because here we had one of the most feeble hitters in the league, and pitchers couldn't throw him consistent strikes. That Willie was able to draw his highest walk total while appearing in the fewest games of his ML career is nothing short of miraculous.

That batting line isn't sustainable going forward, of course. Willie's swing rate at balls out of the zone is only slightly better than the average, so his walk rate will come down, and no matter who you are, it's basically impossible for your power to suck that bad, so his IsoP will go up. His true talent at this point is somewhere around .270/.330/.320, sort of the standard line for a player of his ilk. But no matter who he is or what he does from this point on, nothing will ever change the fact that, in 2008, Willie Ballgame posted one of the strangest slash lines in baseball history. So this season wasn't a total loss.

It's hard to believe that Willie turned 31 last month. It's a combination of effects, I think; for one thing, it still feels like his crazy September debut was just yesterday, and for another, in my head white utility players are always little 26 year old balls of spunk. It's weird to think of Willie as being past his prime, whenever the hell that was. But he is, and now that he's a free agent, he gets to try and pitch himself as an experienced jack-of-all-trades who can fill in at almost any position in a flash without embarrassing himself or the team. And while that's all perfectly true, he doesn't possess the most impressive skillset, and he's highly unlikely to ever land the kind of job he thinks he's capable of doing. There just aren't that many teams willing to throw a lot of regular playing time at a 30+ year old career utility guy who's never once demonstrated the ability to not be bad.

For Willie, I wish him the best of luck, since he never played enough to be a real problem. Hopefully he's able to get used to the fact that he'll always be seen as a backup. For us, things are sure going to be weird without our little Ignitor. Say what you will about how much crap we gave Willie over the years, but (A) it was directed more at Willie's irrational supporters than at Willie himself, and (B) it was all in good fun. The whole time, it was all in good fun. I mean, okay, maybe there were two or three instances in which people got really upset with him, but that's nothing compared to some of the seething rage we've seen pointed towards guys like Horacio Ramirez and Carlos Silva. Willie's just always been there for the easy joke when we needed a break from legitimate anger, and now that he's gone, I'm not sure who's going to take his place. Reegie Corona? I guess we'll have to wait for Rick Rizzs' cue.

Willie Ballgame's not a good player. He's never been a good player, and he's never going to be a good player. But for the past six seasons, he's been a constant source of humor through some of the darkest days in the history of the franchise, and for that I couldn't be more thankful. I'm going to miss you, little buddy. You and your laughable talent. The last thing you ever did in a Mariner uniform was get hurt while running your ass off, and I imagine neither you nor I would have it any other way.

Our Gift to You: Math!

2008-12-25T22:10:17Z

No, not really, but rather, just a story about the triumphs of statistical analysis in sports. So if you want to kill 20 minutes away from the family or are just on a break while your greasy friend sets up a new deck for the marathon dungeons and dragons game in your mother's basement (why is it always the mother's basement anyways? It always seemed to me that is was the fathers who wanted a basement), here's a decent read.

HS Football Coach Defies Conventional Wisdom, Wins State Title

Kelley's team only punted twice in 2007 − once as an act of sportsmanship to prevent running up the score − and never after that Dollarway game.
...
Kelley supports this rationale with numbers analysis.
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An innovative and statistics-minded coach, Kelley became further emboldened after reading several studies, including "Do Firms Maximize? Evidence from Pro Football," by University of California-Berkeley economics professor David Romer. Kelley also examined ZEUS, a computer program developed by Chuck Bower, who has a doctorate in astrophysics, and Frank Frigo, a game theory expert, to model and predict football outcomes.

Happy holidays everyone. Enjoy your final week of existence 2008, I'm coming for you.

Clement the Catcher

2008-12-23T04:58:22Z

It's 'Let's look at some numbers' time again.

Turn to page 191 of your shiny new 2009 Hardball Times Baseball Annual (don't have one? Matthew is displeased with you). Here Tom Tango discusses the impact of catcher defence by considering stolen bases, caught stealing, pickoffs, balks, wild pitches, and passed balls, controlling each for the pitcher in order to eliminate their effect on the battery's defence.

I'll summaraise the findings for you, in case you're currently invoking Matthew's wrath:

The worst defensive catcher of all time is Mike Piazza. The best was Ivan Rodriguez. Hardly surprising, huh? The really interesting thing about Tango's article is that it shows how many runs a year Piazza cost his team. He rated at roughly -1 win per season with his 'defence' at catcher. Pudge is worth about the same in the other direction.

So the difference between the worst catcher of all time and the best is on the order of 2 wins a season. Which isn't very much.

Now let's take a look at some positional adjustments.

C: +12.5 runs
1B: -12.5 runs
DH: -17.5 runs

Remember that the worst defensive catcher of all time was worth -10 runs. Apply this knowledge to Jeff Clement. With some work he could probably become a passably bad first baseman. He's never played it before and he's not particularly agile, but it's an easy position and he's a hard worker. He'd probably end up as a -5 guy overall. And unless you believe that Clement is the worst defensive catcher in history, that's only a 0.5 win improvement.

For 5 runs of defensive upgrade, Jeff Clement would lose 25 runs of positional value. 25! Potential injuries aside, no matter how bad he looks in the field, there is no way that you shift Clement off his postion right now. As an average major league hitter, a level well within his ability to reach, he'd be worth 2-2.5 WAR as a catcher against 0-0.5 WAR as a DH/1B. Start being less conservative with his defence (after all, he's not going to be Piazza bad), and the difference only grows.

Clement's bat can only take him so far. For him to live up to his potential value, he absolutely has to be kept as a catcher. Moving him from behind the plate should be the last resort.