Three outfielders of youth and future notoriety today: Kyle Blanks, Matthew Joyce, and Michael Saunders.
Some people are going to take this the wrong way, but I’d definitely nominate Blanks and Saunders for the Reggie Cleveland All-Star team.
Any ink spilled over the Florida Marlins usually pertains to ownership, fire sales, or (until recently) relocation ideas. Their front office consistently works under a mysterious shroud and probably doesn’t get the due they deserve because of their economic standing. When one references Andrew Friedman or Billy Beane, the usual statement that follows is, “Imagine if they had Brian Cashman’s payroll.” With the Marlins, it’s more like, “Imagine if they had the Rays’ payroll.”
One of the areas the Fish seemingly succeed at – and rightfully so – is finding cheap relievers. Some of the skill is simply adaptation, since the Marlins wear gloves when looking at the more expensive options just to ensure they aren’t forced to purchase the product after a stain or smudge appears. They may as well wear Isotoners. Only three relievers have received more than $2M from the Marlins in one season since 2005. For comparison, the Pittsburgh Pirates had the third lowest payroll in the majors last season, and they had two relievers making more than $2M.
Here’s how the Marlins have ranked in reliever ERA and FIP in each season, with steady improvement noted:
2005: 27th in ERA, 16th in FIP
2006: 24th in ERA, 23rd in FIP
2007: 15th in ERA, 17th in FIP
2008: 12th in ERA, 17th in FIP
2009: 11th in ERA, 10th in FIP
The line of one-and-done relievers since 2005 is startling, with its length making John Calipari blush. First came Todd Jones, then Joe Borowski and Matt Herges, then Joe Nelson, then finally Doug Waechter, Brendan Donnelly, and Kiko Calero. Throw in a few extended stays, like Justin Miller and Kevin Gregg, and the picture becomes clear.
Even with rumors of Gregg potentially returning, the Marlins have added a few arms who look like the next junkyard rental. First came Scott Strickland, who’s pitched well since flaming out with the Houston Astros in 2005. Then Clay Hensley, technically a re-signing who spent most of his 2009 starting with the Marlins Triple-A affiliate. A pair of power arms followed, with Jose Veras and Derrick Turnbow also signing on this week.
Veras split last year between the Indians and Yankees. His fastball routinely touches over 95 MPH, although his contact rate is essentially league average. Issues with walks and longballs left him on the outside looking in. Turnbow is similar, with an extra dosage of Steve Blass’ disease. He’s thrown 30 innings in MLB and Triple-A over the last two seasons and walked 63 while doing so.
In other words, look forward to those two leading the N.L. in reliever ERA come next July.
I like tormenting Matt Klaasen, and as such, I’m going to expand on a question I asked him earlier: is the Durham Bulls’ lineup better than the Kansas City Royals’ lineup?
If the season started tomorrow, Kansas City would have something that resembles this:
C Jason Kendall
1B Billy Butler
2B Chris Getz
3B Alex Gordon
SS Yuniesky Betancourt
LF David DeJesus
CF Scott Podsednik
RF Rick Ankiel
DH Josh Fields
Meanwhile, depending on what the Rays do over the next two months, the Durham lineup could look like this:
C John Jaso
1B Dan Johnson
2B Elliot Johnson
3B Chris Nowak
SS Reid Brignac
LF Fernando Perez
CF Desmond Jennings
RF Justin Ruggiano
DH Ryan Shealy
There’s an outside chance that Matt Joyce and/or Sean Rodriguez also wind up here, or some other minor league free agent types. Let’s go position by position.
C: Kendall has the edge defensively and in grit, but Jaso is the better offensive player no matter the level.
1B: Butler.
2B: CHONE thinks Getz is about 20 wOBA points better in 2010. Both are probably best suited for a bench spot in the Majors.
3B: Gordon.
SS: A simple “Brignac” would suffice, I’ll expand anyways. Brignac is left-handed, hits righties well, and fields the ball. He may not be the slayer of foreign worlds like many hoped a few years ago, but he’s better than Betancourt.
LF: DeJesus.
CF: Ignoring contractual status, I think you have to go with Jennings. He may be the best prospect in the American League East and he’d debut on Opening Day in some other organizations. Here he’s stuck behind Carl Crawford and B.J. Upton.
RF: Ankiel, although Ruggiano did work with the same swing mechanic who made Ben Zobrist into BZA.
DH: Amusingly, Shealy was a member of the Royals organization until just recently, yet he appears to be a better player than their DH; unless their DH is Butler, then he’s obviously not.
It appears the Royals get the nod, for now, but if Joyce and/or Rodriguez show up, you would have a hard time convincing me the Royals lineup was better on a spot-by-spot basis.
The Jon Garland deal makes sense financially. For the cost of a little more than a win, the Padres get, well, a pitcher who will produce more than a win. I’m just not sure it’s the best usage of money given their roster construction.
First, Garland. He’s a rubber-armed back-of-the-rotation arm through and through. His career xFIP is 4.61 and in every season since 2002 he’s amassed at least 190 innings. Nothing is wowing or awe-inspiring about his game. Rarely will he strike a batter out and even rarer is a walk. He works the zone with a low-90s fastball and has a garden variety of secondary pitches to choose from.
The problem is that the Padres really don’t need another back-end starter. If the season started tomorrow, they would have Chris Young, Mat Latos, Clayton Richard, and Kevin Correia guaranteed rotation slots with a whole host of arms fighting for the fifth spot including Sean Gallagher, Cesar Carrillo, Wade LeBlanc, and even Aaron Poreda. Is Garland better than those options? Probably. Is he worth $4M more to a team that doesn’t figure to have playoff aspirations? It wouldn’t seem so.
Obviously the Padres could cash him in at the deadline to a team looking for a stretch-run starter with ultra-valuable and rare post-season experience. That would be exactly what Arizona did last season with Garland, who wound up being traded in late August to the Dodgers for a player to be named later. Petco should deflate some of his metrics and I guess that could help with the return, although it’s not like the other general managers are going to be hoodwinked here.
The Padres add a league average starter at a league average price. It’s just not a sexy move and maybe even an unnecessary one.
Last off-season, the Padres signed Cliff Floyd. This was weird because the Padres were still located within the National League and Floyd’s knees were discovered alongside Ardi years ago. Floyd was fresh off a season with the World Series runners-up and immediately became the Padres’ designated pinch hitter. He appeared in 10 games, walked once, and hit two singles. The coincidences aren’t damning, but Matt Stairs may want to glance over his apparently slim shoulders come springtime.
The deal is of the minor league variety, meaning Stairs is hardly guaranteed a roster spot. Evidently his role could be similar to that of Floyd’s; which is to say, the left-handed pinch hitter and clubhouse presence extraordinaire. The rest of the Padres’ bench seems settled though; Jerry Hairston Jr. will play everywhere, Dusty Ryan will be the back-up catcher, Salazar will be the right-handed pinch hitter, and one of the other outfielders (presumably Scott Hairston or Tony Gwynn Jr.) will take the other bench spot.
Trying to project a 40-something pinch hitter’s offensive performance is an unenviable task. I hesitate to compare Stairs to Lenny Harris, since he walks more than Harris ever did and Stairs is yet to go through a season where he’s exactly -1 WAR off the bench (which Harris did in 2003 despite impressively only appearing in 88 games). CHONE calls him a below average hitter and fielder who will come oh-so-close to that -1 WAR mark, but I’m hopeful CHONE is wrong.
The odd thing about Harris – which I guess isn’t so odd when you consider the sample size – is how he was able to produce one final string of plate appearances as an above average hitter before bowing away in 2005. I don’t know if this is Stairs’ final year or what his plans are, and there is little doubt that Stairs is a player with an immense amount of cult appeal which he’ll continue to hold long after his playing days are done.
A large part of that appeal stems from his mustache (amongst the universal rules in life: you must respect a man with a nice lip sweater) and I guess what I’m saying is: I hope Stairs and his mustache go out on top. Whether that comes with the Padres or whatever contender he latches onto in August. He’s not the most useful player anymore; he’s just fun to watch.
Three cats who found new scratching posts this weekend. Jason Giambi, Matt Stairs, and Doug Davis.
I have little to add, other than I hope Padres fans have ordered their shirts.
Jason Giambi’s future as a baseball player was very much in doubt five months ago. His .316 wOBA with the Athletics was a confluence between poor luck on balls in play, decreased power, and the massive ballpark in which he batted most days. A switch to the National League and a .357 BABIP reignited the (now) 39-year-old, carrying him to a .445 wOBA with the Rockies over 31 plate appearances.
The former A.L. MVP with a gray-infested beard appeared in 19 games with the Rockies and averaged a little over one plate appearance per game, hitting well when called upon. Clearly the numbers are close to irrelevant. A week’s worth of plate appearances just isn’t worth much. We know that most hitters see their offensive numbers suffer as a pinch hitter relative to their full-time playing numbers. That makes it even more unlikely Giambi will come anywhere near his initial N.L. debut in 2010.
CHONE and Marcel expect wOBA of .344 and .340 next season, seemingly reasonable given his age but also a full-time role within a hitter’s park. Over the last three seasons Giambi has wOBA of (least recent to most recent) .349/.377/.327. Keep in mind sample sizes when looking at his decisively interesting platoon splits – he’s hit lefties better over the last three years – 290 at-bats leaves a lot of room for fluctuation and any projections heading forward should regress that total towards league average.
The deal is worth close to $1.8M which … never say never; after all, nobody saw Giambi finishing below replacement level last season. It’ll be interesting to see how many plate appearances Giambi can find behind Todd Helton and whether his Athletics’ stint was more to do with his age than his environment.
When Winston Abreu reached the Majors last season he did in part because of an out-clause in his contract, but also because he earned the trip. Disney executives were not in charge of his Major League stint, and after six innings and eight runs allowed, Abreu was on his way back to the minors.
Abreu is a frail 6’2” righty from the Dominican. His middle name is Leonardo, but it may as well be Quada. Since joining the Braves Gulf Coast League team in 1994 as a 17-year-old, Abreu has spent time with the following organizations:
Kansas City
Chicago (NL)
Arizona
Los Angeles (NL)
Baltimore
Washington
Tampa Bay
An avid traveler, Abreu has also spent time in Mexico and Japan. All told, Abreu has appeared in 210 Triple-A games, thrown nearly 300 innings and done so while striking out 11.5 and walking 4 per nine. Abreu’s 44 innings in the Majors are ugly. Kissed with gopheritis that doesn’t appear in the minors and smells of small sample size, Abreu has a 7.31 ERA and 5.31 xFIP. Nevertheless, CHONE still believes Abreu has the wherewithal to post a 3.73 FIP this season.
Most cases like these involve a guy with no stuff who makes his living in Triple-A by working the margins and tricking batters of lower competence into chasing garbage. Abreu isn’t like most cases. He has velocity and even an excellent slider, but he lacks fastball command. Abreu’s inability to locate the heater makes it difficult to crack the whip with his slider in favorable counts. This is nothing new for high-strikeout, high-walk relievers. In recent years, pitchers like Grant Balfour, Matt Thornton, and David Aardsma have taken a similar recipe, turning Sam’s Choice into champagne for their respective teams.
Can Abreu take that step? Probably not. His 33rd birthday arrives in early April; could all of those teams really be wrong about one player? Still, it’s hard to root against him. When Abreu was designated for assignment by the Indians last season, he rejected their optional assignment to Triple-A and chose to become a free agent so he could sign with an organization that he felt treated him fairly. That doesn’t seem unusual, but this a career Triple-A journeyman who decided against 40-man pay in favor of respect. You don’t see that every day.
The Dodgers avoided arbitration with two of their brightest young players today by signing Jonathan Broxton and Andre Ethier to a duo of two-year deals. Let’s take a look at each situation.
Broxton is one of the best relievers in baseball. This represents his second year of arbitration, which means the Dodgers have set their price for his final arbitration-eligible season as well. Broxton will make $11M total. Papelbon is also in his second year of arbitration and he agreed to a new contract worth $9.35M. If the Dodgers motivation was to avoid an arbitration award similar to Papelbon’s $6.5M last season, then they did a pretty fantastic job.
Broxton has 317 career innings, a 2.92 ERA, and a 2.83 xFIP. Batters miss his pitches at a high frequency and when they do put it in play, it’s generally a groundball. He’s basically the perfect reliever. Even if you think WAR and the WAR-to-dollars translation generally leave high-leverage relievers undervalued, Broxton’s last three years average is around $9.3M. 60% of that is a little under $6M. And this is without noting that Broxton wasn’t a full-time closer until this season.
Ethier is actually in his second year of arbitration too, but he actually has an additional two remaining since he reached Super-Two status last year. He will make roughly $15M over the next two years, which works out to an average of ~$7.5M – or depending on the cost of a win, 1.5-to-2 wins – he’s been good for that every year of his Majors career. He turns 28 next season and it seems unlikely he’ll be -16 runs in the outfield again.
This subject is something I’ve juggled for the past few months. If it sucks, I blame Carson Cistulli. Not because his Marcel of Joy series probably spawned it, but because everything that goes wrong is clearly his fault. I’d also dish some of the discredit Tommy Bennett’s way. He’s basically the sabermetric version of Jay Electronica and helped me flesh this out beyond its initial stages.
I’ve looked over the Yankees’ gamelogs for attendance numbers as well as the Rays’. The one thing that always stands out is that people go to the games against the Red Sox while nobody goes to the games against the Orioles. The Red Sox were the second best team in the division last year with the Yankees and Rays flanking them. Without doubt, they are and have been a superior team to the Orioles for a while now. Ultimately, we go to games to be entertained and experience joy, so why don’t more people go to Orioles games?
It would seem that a win is more enjoyable to experience than a defeat. I’d rather go to a Rays game where they win than one where they lose. And, I’m not sure if I went to those games against the Washington Nationals last season because subconsciously I wanted to see victories, but I suppose I could’ve been on a losing strike without really knowing it. If I asked a thousand Yankee fans which team they’d rather pay to see live, 95% would say the Red Sox and the other 5% would make vulgar comments about the folks from Boston. But is this rational?
If the goal of attending a game is to enjoy oneself, and we get the most enjoyment from attending victories, then why wouldn’t people regularly attend more games where victory is in higher likelihood? Of course, the obvious answer is that the spread of the odds of victory aren’t so extreme as to attend any game that can be marked down as a definitive win.
Does it come down to the hedonic value of a defeat over the Red Sox, one that a victory over the Orioles doesn’t carry with? Or is there something more? The Orioles tickets are likely cheaper and the seating choices likely more expansive. Fewer people are prone to attend, which means the social aspect is diminished, although there’s probably fewer [expletive] Sox fans too.
Much like I did with the 116 wins versus a world title post, I’d like to pose some discussion questions; I am hopeful none of these result in someone telling me I don’t belong on this site, but I accept full blame if it comes to that. As for those questions:
1. Say you are a Yankee fan and price is irrelevant. Would you rather buy tickets to an Oriole or Red Sox game?
2. Would you pay more money to guarantee that you are attending a victory? If yes, how much more?
3. Do you ever consider the likelihood of a victory when purchasing tickets, or do you base your decisions on availability? Or is it purely on the quality of the opponent?