Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

Geoff Baker has had some great pics and videos of early work in Peoria. Of particular interest is the rudimentary blocking drills they did. Base stuff, head on breaking pitches in front of them. Zunino and Hicks are very, very athletic as is Sucre. Shoppach and Montero are big. I was startled to see both Shoppach and Montero wearing knee savers, a little league thing or an indication of knee issues.

In the same link, there is a short video of Shoppach catching a bullpen of reliever Carter Capps, mainly throwing a huge fastball and a slurvy slider. Besides him you can see lefty Bobby LaFromboise who had a monstrous year last year in Jackson and Tacoma both: 66.33 innings pitched, 45 hits, one homer, 70 ks and 18 unintentional walks…his FIP is really good, BABIP too, without being ridiculous. Command and control both seem special, no pitch f/x data is available, but 70 ks in 66.33 innings suggests stuff.

Good stuff.

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/mariners/

Jim Caple on Felix’s deal. Jim’s been around here for a while. Good stuff. He swings and misses on the BABIP remark….I hope Felix is clean and good, his BABIP was not a random thing, it was a shellacking of a worn out guy…. .450

http://espn.go.com/mlb/spring2013/story/_/id/8945923/felix-hernandez-stays-home-new-mariners-contracthttp://pugetsoundblogs.com/peabody/2013/02/14/felix-and-some-funny-thoughts/

Some of you will go to Peoria this spring, others will watch on their television. One thing to anticipate is Taijuan Walker, as seen below on the link. That is as good as it gets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=645jCwiYPn4

Next check out James Paxton last fall in the Arizona fall league being caught by Mike Zunino. Paxton is very, very special. Zunino’s work is not something we’ve seen since Dan Wilson was here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ik2R8yKGQ0

Here is the dark horse Brandon Maurer big right hander.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsr4UObTjMo&list=PLU79PuRZUOLsQDyx0pAUMAhp0FJdhvYGc

In the last week we’ve brought in three older guys, Kameron Loe, Jon Garland and Joe Saunders to compete with Jeremy Bonderman. Wedge predictably this morning exclaimed about having veterans involved now. In and of itself, probably an obvious disclaimer about being with a team trying to develop players. Not sure who listens to him but there it is.

Larry Stone writes a very interesting piece contrasting the off-season that the Cleveland Indians had by signing Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher. He posits that many Mariner fans felt that was the off-season that they wanted to see the Mariners put together. Link below.

Late yesterday afternoon he was on KJR with Softy Mahler and was asked to opine about Jack Zduriencik’s status and whether he survives this year. To paraphrase and sum up he said that if the Mariners do not take a step forward that this could be the end of Zduriencik’s rebuilding plan.

I think his piece and his comments weave together and offer something were riffing about.

The makeover of the Tribe’s major league roster is different than that of what the Mariners have done. The Indians signed to multi-year deals Nick Swisher, Michael Bourn, Mark Reynolds, Mike Aviles, Ryan Rayburn. They acquired Drew Stubbs for Shin Soo Choo. They traded for phenoms Trevor Baurer and Didi Gregorius. They also signed Brett Myers, Jason Giambi and Daisuke Matsuzaka. These are financially bold moves that affect and link them to aging players for four years and beyond in Swisher and Bourn. Neither of those players has upside and they hope that Bourn can recapture the lost offense and Swisher sustain his offense for most of the contract duration. Lots of offense and a modicum of defense as a simple statement is what they added. Their minor league system is not especially loaded.

The activity is notable by the absence of new starting pitching. This is a weakness and probably prevents them from overtaking the Tigers in the Central. Enough for a wild card? Doubtful.

As as been previously chronicled the Mariners reacquired Raul Ibanez and Michael Morse, picked up free agents Jason Bay, Joe Saunders, Jon Garland, Joe Saunders, Kameron Loe, Kelly Shoppach, Ronnie Paulino and traded for Kendrys Morales.

Financially this is distinctly different. The Mariners are not obligated to any of these players past this coming year. Further, coming off the payroll this year will be Franklin Gutierrez and Chone Figgins.

The Mariners MAY win enough games to push them past the .500 mark, they may not. We get to watch and find out, but the contrast of the two teams is two very different situations. Indians are all in and believe they can make a run at the Central Division, if not immediately this year, some time in next four years.

The Mariners have not added anyone in the off season that will be here next year, to repeat myself. On the face of it, the off season can be viewed as a stop gap, done to bridge to when the minor spews forth starting pitchers and players. The Mariners it would seem, do not believe that is this year for the harvest.

So Larry says no move forward for Mariners, then rebuild is over this year. None of these acquisitions can be characterized as rebuilding, old players or players that will not stay. The moves allow the minor starting pitchers to further develop or to waste a year of pitches against minor leaguers that might otherwise be used against major league hitters, depending on your perspective.

As my good friend Terry Mosher tells me over and over again this is a business. With this group of players and the Astros here in the division, 85 games is a possibility, TV ratings up and they do a new TV deal…which is really good for the owners. Not sure about the prospects of a better team, but players should start to show up through out the year, pitchers more driven by injury. Such players might include Mike Zunino, Nick Franklin, Stefen Romero, Vincent Catricala, Brad Miller etc. But it depends. They were ready to dump Franklin and top pitcher Taijuan Walker for a flawed Juston Upton.

Lots of cross currents, rebuild per se may be concluded with the softball team they’ve brought in. Mariner’s owners might like competing next year with a $40 million payroll. Competing is the axiom, not winning.

This is not meant to be negative, rather help you see what you’re looking at. The ability to watch games with players at this level is always the banquet. Harmony and balance is a rare thing in major league baseball. People write me, stop me in the street and frequently say things like, the Mariners can’t compete with the Angels or Texas and how much they spend. The simple response is that they do not have to do that. The best organization in baseball in terms of results and efficiency from 2000 on has been the St. Louis Cardinals. From that time period 2000-2012 the Mariners have spent a bit more than they have. The Cardinals have been in a bunch of playoffs and won and lost World Seriesssss. Tampa Bay from 2005 forward has spent nothing and has competed and won. In other words they could have spent what they did, not any more, maybe less and presented a great team and won games and held their attendance and revenue. They did not.

The Mariners have been really bad at the find baseball talent, bring them to majors and compete at major league level. The last four years they’ve worked hard to build up their talent base. They’ve have continued to make egregiously bad trades and their performances in the last three years have been historically bad. The team is focused on getting the new media deal done and they now realize that winning baseball might put people in the seats and watching their games on television. It will be a better summer if they’re correct.

http://seattletimes.com/html/thehotstoneleague/2020340804_indians_had_offseason_many_mar.html

I wrote the stuff below in italics in Friday’s piece and it still is on point:

Felix had a phenomenal year in 2010 when he won the Cy Young award, 2009 was a year he should have won that award as well. 2011 he really fell off and then came back last year and had a very nice season despite a terrible September. In fact the last two years the last month has been bad for him.

In the month of August when the Mariners were playing well, coming off a good July their record each month was 15-11 and 15-12. What is startling is that last August Felix pitched in five games. He averaged 8.24 innings per game. One of those was the perfecto, for nine innings and he threw two other complete nine inning games and one for 7 2/3 innings and one for 7.0 innings. Three 1-0 wins, a 5-1 win and a no decision that the team lost. 523 pitches, 104 average. Then we move into September and one start in October. Six starts. Combined total of 35 1/3 innings. 54 hits and an ERA of 6.62…not a big ERA fan as a measure, but he was done and baked, stick a fork in him. So the team starts playing well and they’re competing for the first time in years in July and August. Three 1-0 wins and the perfecto as the center piece. In March to start the year his velocity had disappeared and there was wailing and consternation. It came back a bit but not way back. His pitch f/x data suggests a real slide the last three years.

If he’s your star you don’t destroy him by throwing him for nine innings a game start after start after start. That is really, really stupid and a measure of Wedge as a steward of his talent. So you hope he’s recovered, but he was not good the last time out for a month and now the team is ready to do this. I always come down on the side of the player, in that he’s a wonderful player and pitches his guts out. Good for him, none of those guys that own the team will miss the money.

I think the risk to them has been assessed in different ways by the Mariners. So his salary goes up at some point, this year or next year or two years from now, they’re working that out. As a general statement, the Mariners payroll declines a bunch at the end of this year. No Figgins or Gutierrez or Morse or Morales or Ibanez or Bay or Perez or Saunders or Garland. And there are a bunch of low priced pitchers and players that they will apparently incubate this summer, so that when Felix’s numbers kick up there is no appreciable increase in overall salary, quite the opposite.

So now the Mariners put in cya clause about Felix’s elbow and they move on and do deal.

Based on innings pitched, they’re being prudent. The investment in him, as in this renewal, has more to do with their perception of him as a guy that puts people in seats and in front of their television to watch. The intrinsic distinction in the remark is that other teams want to do that too, but believe the way to do it is to win. Mariners believe they can hype players and don’t need to win. It was true for a while, but attendance is dropping as is Q-factor, because the team stinks.

John McGrath this morning agreed with the Friday assessment quoted above.

New money for Felix, Joe Saunders and Jon Garland, the latter not more than a rumor.

All kinds of discussion throughout the whole State about Felix’s deal, indeed National correspondents making comments that range from salutatory to very critical. The absolute funniest
of the nationwide remarks have been from Ken Rosenthal in print and on MLB the network and KJR this evening decrying it as a risky deal for Seattle, while a couple of weeks ago he was
pitching a story that Seattle should trade him to the Yankees.

Morning to mid-day on 710ESPN two non-baseball guys talking about the risk in the deal given Felix’s 1,600 innings pitched going into this coming season at age 27. Fernando Valenzuela, Dwight Gooden and Bert Blyleven were names that were thrown out as cautionary figure posts. Go to baseball reference and look at them from their 27 year old season and beyond with the links below:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/blylebe01-pitch.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/goodedw01-pitch.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/valenfe01-pitch.shtml

They all pitched for a few more seasons at high levels and then they really fell off. Blyleven at the age of 38 after years as a third or fourth starter had a magnificent year painting the corners and throwing that magnificent curve ball. But by and large the criticism and risks to the strategy exist.

Felix had a phenomenal year in 2010 when he won the Cy Young award, 2009 was a year he should have won that award as well. 2011 he really fell off and then came back last year and had a very nice season despite a terrible September. In fact the last two years the last month has been bad for him.

In the month of August when the Mariners were playing well, coming off a good July their record each month was 15-11 and 15-12. What is startling is that last August Felix pitched in five games. He averaged 8.24 innings per game. One of those was the perfecto, for nine innings and he threw two other complete nine inning games and one for 7 2/3 innings and one for 7.0 innings. Three 1-0 wins, a 5-1 win and a no decision that the team lost. 523 pitches, 104 average. Then we move into September and one start in October. Six starts. Combined total of 35 1/3 innings. 54 hits and an ERA of 6.62…not a big ERA fan as a measure, but he was done and baked, stick a fork in him. So the team starts playing well and they’re competing for the first time in years in July and August. Three 1-0 wins and the perfecto as the center piece. In March to start the year his velocity had disappeared and there was wailing and consternation. It came back a bit but not way back. His pitch f/x data suggests a real slide the last three years.

If he’s your star you don’t destroy by throwing him for nine innings a game start after start after start. That is really, really stupid and a measure of Wedge as a steward of his talent. So you hope he’s recovered, but he was not good the last time out for a month and now the team is ready to do this. I always come down on the side of the player, in that he’s a wonderful player and pitches his guts out. Good for him, none of those guys that own the team will miss the money.

I think the risk to them has been assessed in different ways by the Mariners. So his salary goes up at some point, this year or next year or two years from now, they’re working that out. As a general statement, the Mariners payroll declines a bunch at the end of this year. No Figgins or Gutierrez or Morse or Morales or Ibanez or Bay or Perez or Saunders or Garland. And there are a bunch of low priced pitchers and players that they will apparently incubate this summer, so that when Felix’s numbers kick up there is no appreciable increase in overall salary, quite the opposite.

So they have all these seasoned old players on the scene now. Felix and all of his marketing beauty and the new media deal that will probably be signed in this upcoming off season or early next year. The Mariners want to arrest the decline in attendance and cable viewers and to hell with the rebuild, let’s go compete a little bit, squash the Astros, maybe even surge over .500.

I guess that is as good a strategy as anything going now and it allows the harvesting of the prospects to await their further ripening. The fences are in and I suspect this might be a season unlike we’ve seen in a while.

Very large deal. There is some dispute as to final numbers, but it looks like it is done.

Run differential is the next great concept.

I read the following remark about the WAR (Wins Above Replacement) discussion, argument:

“I do think that, most of the time anyway, the arguments coming from folks against WAR usually amount to them fundamentally not believing that defense is particularly important. So many times I saw people refuse to accept that Cabrera’s bad defense gives back a non-trivial amount of the substantial offensive value he provides, for example. It’s not even about advanced stats, really – they see Miggy and Prince stumble and bumble their way around the infield, and they figure it doesn’t really matter how bad they are with a glove on. They mash, and that’s all that matters.”

It was part of a discussion on USSMariner site.

It is worthy of clarification, even if it is an ill informed insult. The defensive component of WAR is the Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR). Jim Caple wrote on ESPN.COM last week with some direct remarks, but if that is not enough I refer you to this thread: http://www.fangraphs.com/forums/topic.php?id=3235

UZR mis-states defensive performance, frequently. Just look at Michael Bourn’s UZR up and down, negative to way positive and yet he catches the same number of balls. He’s not remotely the best center fielder, yet his UZR and WAR suggest that he is Tris Speaker and Willie Mays reborn. He’s not. His is not the only inconsistency. They are legion.

So according to the remarks above, if you don’t like WAR above it’s due to you disregarding defense. I don’t want to put words in other’s mouth, but it is not about disregarding defense, rather it is not relying on the simplistic notion that a player’s ability and worth can be reduced to a single number and that the proportionate weight to various talents is correct in that single number. Defense, especially in spots that are more important than others, e.g. ss versus left field, must be considered. The point is really that in WAR, it is not being considered in a correct manner.

Why be stuck using a flawed tool? Why not use all analytical tools? Why trust formulations by two entities that vary widely? It would seem that there is an economic interest that accrues to the two entities that formulate and or use work supplied by smaller vendors. Which tools? Total chances by innings played and double plays and assists for out fielders and total chances by innings played for infielders.

So defense is critical but a single measurement that relies on bad information about defense can not be good. No value in distortion. It is not at all important to reduce everything to a single number if the results are not good.

Please don’t panic and sign Michael Bourn. Don’t sign a guy whose defensive prowess is hugely over-stated, who is not better defensively than what the team already has in Saunders and Gutierrez.

Don’t sign a guy that collapsed the entire second half of 2012. We just dumped two large long term deals in Ichiro and Figgins, don’t sign an old guy with old man skills.

Larry Stone goes on about this today. Read if you must.

Here are Bourn’s monthly splits:

Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS
Apr/Mar 23 23 105 95 13 32 5 1 0 4 7 4 10 14 .337 .400 .411 .811
May 29 28 135 126 24 34 5 2 5 12 7 1 9 28 .270 .319 .460 .779
June 25 25 115 105 15 34 5 1 2 13 8 2 7 25 .324 .357 .448 .804
July 26 26 124 112 18 28 4 4 1 14 6 1 10 37 .250 .317 .384 .701
August 29 27 129 107 15 26 3 2 1 12 9 1 18 25 .243 .359 .336 .696
Sep/Oct 23 22 95 79 11 17 4 0 0 2 5 4 16 26 .215 .347 .266 .613

Here is the point, you sign him, one of Scott Boras’s third tier older guys, like so many of Bavasi’s deals, you lock up a guy that can’t play
any more.

If he is so damn good why are no pennant contenders signing him?

It has nothing to do with the draft pick in compensation for signing him.

It is because he can’t play any more.

This almost guarantees that the Ms will sign him now.

It is hard not to follow the story, especially given the Alex Rodriguez element of the story and the National network’s New York centric focus.

One of the things that struck me about it is the evidence of the defunct clinic is handwritten stuff on a notebook. Line after line, with players named, line after line show up.

This raised a level of skepticism as I first saw it as information about patients are typically not summarized on same sheet, let alone a handwritten effort. There are HIPAA laws
that mitigate against that. Further on an experiential basis, every time I have been in a clinic in last thirty years the information about me is on a computer printout, or visible on a computer screen for the nurse or doctor, or more recently on a computer tablet.

I’ve shared my suspicion with some sports writers and they have a large level of suspicion as well. Universal agreement.

It feels like a prank, like the Manti Te’o thing except on a more vicious level.

Shannon Drayer on her blog noted that the acquisition of a fifth starter as talked about and leaked has not occurred yet.

While it may still happen, it might be towards the middle of spring training after some games have occurred. The weak sisters at least based on last year’s performance in the projected rotation are Blake Beavan and Hector Noesi. What I’m hearing is that the earnest hope is that two of the younger guys, such as Taijuan Walker, James Paxton or Brandon Maurer will break camp. Similar prayers are being uttered about Mike Zunino, which were it to happen would immediately alter the future for Justin Smoak and Jesus Montero, one or both.

If they decide to not bring up a pitcher or two, then they have the two guys at hand and there are still some veterans lurking out there.