FanPost

StolenDonuts' Off-Season Plan

The Lookout Landing staff did an awesome job with their extensive plan, and to be honest I've liked many of the ideas in the fanposts here so far. I really like MHanny17's trade for Jake Odorizzi, and NBurres' ardor for signing Carlos Santana, which both dramatically improve the team. I think the best strategy, and certainly the most defining, that the Mariners can adopt this year would be leaning headlong into the Wolfpack. I see this happening by acquiring back of the rotation arms, and dealing from the Bullpen as Jerry has already proven willing to do with Emilio Pagan, and Thyago Vieira. By building such a cost-controlled pitching staff there will be money to spend on options like Santana. This means building a pitching staff where no pitcher faces more than 15-18 batters, but no one faces much less than 9. This should help contribute to player health, it more closely models recent postseason usage, and it can be immensely cost effective.

Note: I am not factoring Shohei Ohtani into this plan, though he would be a tremendous asset. However, since no pitcher would face more than 15-18 batters, and none would face less than 9 his schedule wouldn't allow for as many rest days where he would neither hit nor pitch.

Trade 1: Trade Ryon Healy and Shae Simmons to Tampa Bay for Jake Odorizzi. The Rays may be in a position to cut costs and move Odorizzi after a down year, making him an ideal buy-low candidate. Plus they might be eager to bite on Healy after their success turning around LoMo. Odorizzi joins Ramirez, Smyly, and Karns before him in a line of transplants from Tampa Bay. Also flipping Healy before he even wears a Mariners jersey feels appropriate as he goes off to join Mallex Smith as teammates.

Trade 2: Trade Nick Vincent and Marc Rzepczynski to the Yankees for Estevan Florial. New York has an obsession with building a super-bullpen, Vincent was Seattle's best reliever last year, and they are losing Sabathia and Pineda which means they might lean even more on that bullpen. Florial faces a crowded outfield ahead of him in New York, so they may be willing to deal him. Adding another stud to Seattle's farm system doesn't affect the Mariners for a few years, but relievers don't fit well into the wolf pack.

Trade 3: Trade Edwin Diaz, David Phelps, and James Pazos to the Rangers for Jurickson Profar and Nick Martinez. Profar is Texas' version of our Vogelbach, he just doesn't seem to have a future on that team. Not to mention the problems Texas has had with closers the last few years. Though after getting burned on Wilhelmsen they may be more reluctant. Still Profar could provide an upgrade over Guillermo Heredia as an everyday outfielder. Nick Martinez slots in as a good back end starter, who threw roughly as many innings last year as Pazos and Phelps combined. Unlike them he was only replacement level.

Trade 5: Trade Tony Zych and Dan Altavilla to Milwaukee for Brent Suter. Suter is another player who struggles making it five innings, which is exactly what the Mariners should target, since they don't plan to use most players that long. The Brewers shouldn't be too concerned dealing from their starting pitching with their strong top three. Also Suter was the fastest working pitcher with at least 40 innings pitched last year, which makes him a huge asset facing the 20 second pitch clock next year. In fact, he joins Mike Leake, Andrew Moore, Marco Gonzales, and James Paxton among the 30 fastest on that list.

Signing 1: Sign Jason Vargas, who may have an expected contract of 10 million for one year. He's another guy who will get a big boost from only going 15-18 batters. Also Vargas will be familiar with Safeco, and joins those mentioned in the above item as one of the fastest pitchers in the game.

Signing 2: Sign Carlos Santana, who could have some bargain value with a contract maybe around 64 million over four years.

Signing 3: Sign minor league free agent Drew Hutchison. Enacting Jake's plan to grab Hutchison after his tenure with the Pirates provides another back end starter who can probably be signed for something around the 2.3 million he was making, let's assume 2.5 million a year for 3 years.

Arbitration: Given the recommended arbitration values the following four players should be locks: Andrew Romine at 1.9, Erasmo Ramirez at 4.7, Mike Zunino at 3.2, and James Paxton at 5.6 where the other players can be traded, or in Drew Smyly's case offered 3 million a year for the next three years.

After all that the 25 man roster looks something like this, with the money divided to each position in the pie chart:

Position

Player

Projected 2018 Salary ($ Millions)

WAR 2018

C

Mike Zunino

3.2

2.5

C

Mike Marjama

0.51

0.3

1B

Carlos Santana

16

3.1

2B

Robinson Cano

24

3.2

3B

Kyle Seager

19

3.5

SS

Jean Segura

9.5

2.2

DH

Nelson Cruz

14.25

2.6

UTIL

Andrew Romine

1.9

0

OF

Mitch Haniger

0.51

1.8

OF

Ben Gamel

0.51

0.5

OF

Jurickson Profar

1.1

0.3

OF

Guillermo Heredia

0.51

1.2

WOLF

Felix Hernandez

26.857

2

WOLF

James Paxton

5.6

3.8

WOLF

Mike Leake

17

1.9

WOLF

Marco Gonzales

0.51

0.4

WOLF

Erasmo Ramirez

4.7

1.1

WOLF

Andrew Moore

0.51

0.1

WOLF

Ariel Miranda

0.51

0.3

WOLF

Andrew Albers

0.51

0.4

WOLF

Drew Hutchison

2.5

0.1

WOLF

Nick Martinez

0.51

0.3

WOLF

Jason Vargas

10

1.2

WOLF

Brent Suter

0.51

1.4

WOLF

Jake Odorizzi

6.5

0.9

TOTAL

167.207

35.1

Mariners Spending Percent

Percent spent on each position

Conclusion: The salary should be pretty similar to what the staff came up with, or where the Mariners were at in 2017. Maybe a little room is left over to sign Smyly to 2 years at 6 million, or something comparable, and assuming Hisashi Iwakuma takes his offer he could easily play his way back on to the team. Not to mention, he could stay much healthier on this kind of schedule. As Mike Leake is the only member of this staff with the durability to keep putting up 200 inning years he might be able to adopt some intense schedule like the ‘3 man rotation’ that Bill James likes, while the rest of the rotation shoots for something like 120 innings over the year. They would have to have roughly 3 pitchers a game, and with 13 arms they would go once every four games. Maybe a team like Paxton and Odorizzi could tandem games more often than not or the Mariners could come up with another approach. But the workhorses to get the job done should be on the staff. This would be a fun experiment to play out, and the Mariners are in the perfect place to implement it.

Carlos Santana is really the only exciting part of the rest of the team, and with Taylor Motter, Shawn O’Malley and Zach Vincej stashed in Tacoma there should be plenty of depth along with Vogelbach, and the gaping hole that I assume would play catcher. The Steamer projected 35.1 WAR for this team doesn’t give a lot of these players very much playing time, but it still comes in ahead of the 30.4 fWAR for the 2017 Mariners.

Well that wraps it up; I would love any feedback on this plan, whether the players could handle it, if everyone could just agree to ignore Wins and Saves, or if any of the trades are a little lopsided? Here’s to an exciting offseason, Go Ms.