After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Seattle Mariners.

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The 2020 Mariners are a bit like going to a failing mall. There are still some stores you remember scattered about, though the logos appear to be from another era. The fountain’s dry, and the shops mainly sell sunglasses. There’s an ear-piercing kiosk manned by a guy who looks like he missed the carnival employee bus and decided to move into the abandoned Caldor instead. Yes, this will all be hit by a wrecking ball and give way to a new open-air shopping district with a Kelenic’s Grille in a few years, but for now, you wander into the food court and feel your childhood memories being wiped out by the collective reek of old cinnamon, cigarettes, and shame.

OK then!

Mitch Haniger is the best player on the Mariners and one of the few above-average starters who still retains trade value, unlike most of the veterans left behind. Unfortunately, Haniger’s expected to miss the first month of the season with a core-muscle injury, though given that Haniger missed time in 2019 due to a testicle ruptured by his own foul ball, I’m sure he considers it an improvement.

On the positive side, Kyle Seager had enough of a rebound that his career is no longer in imminent danger. While age-32 is probably a bit too late to expect him to get to where he was a few years ago — possibly the most underrated third basemen in baseball — he returned from a wrist injury to have the second-best OPS of his career. With two years and $37 million remaining on his contract, the Mariners could theoretically pay most of the freight in a trade and get an actual prospect, but this is complicated by the fact that Seager’s team option for 2022 becomes a player option if he’s traded. Read the rest of this entry »

Julio Rodriquez has what it takes to become the face of a franchise. Nineteen years old and seemingly on a fast track to Seattle, the top prospect in the Mariners system possesses more than upper-echelon talent. He’s also blessed with a healthy dose of character and charisma. More on that in a moment.

Rodriguez currently sits 44th on The Board, and there’s a decent chance he’ll climb significantly from that slot in the not-too-distant future. MLB Pipeline has him at No. 18, while Baseball America is even more bullish on the tools Dominican-born outfielder. BA ranks Rodriquez as the eighth-best prospect in the game.

The numbers he put up last year between low-A West Virginia and high-A Modesto are eye-opening. In 367 plate appearances, Rodriguez slashed .326/.390/.540, with a dozen home runs. Keep in mind that he did this as an 18-year-old in his first season stateside. A year earlier, he was a precocious 17 and punishing pitchers in the Dominican Summer League.

Rodriguez is listed at 6’ 4”, 225, and Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto expects his right-handed stroke to propel plenty of baseballs over fences in years to come. Just as importantly, Dipoto sees a well-rounded skill set that is augmented by drive and desire.

“I don’t think he’s even scratched the surface of what he’s capable of from a power perspective,” opined Dipoto. “And he’s committed to improving in the areas you can really control, like defense and base running — the small nuances of the game.”

And then there is the aforementioned character and charisma. Read the rest of this entry »

Triston Casas continues to grow, and not just developmentally on the field. The top prospect in the Red Sox farm system recently told a trio of reporters, yours truly included, that he’s put on 10 pounds of muscle, and gained nearly an inch in height, since the end of the season. Just a few days past his 20th birthday, the 2018 first-round pick is now 6’ 5″, 255.

Casas comes by his size naturally. Asked about his lineage, he explained that his father is “about the same size height-wise, but has put on a little weight and is bigger than me in terms of roundness.”

The hulking youngster is surprisingly agile and well-rounded for someone of his stature. While his long-term position will almost certainly be first base, Casas was drafted as a third baseman and has seen time at both infield corners since turning pro. His athleticism also makes him a candidate for left field.

His role model is a first baseman.

“I emulate Joey Votto as much as I can,” said Casas, who swings from the left side. “He’s my favorite player. I actually choke up on the bat from the first pitch. Every at bat. And with two strikes I’m 4-5 inches up the bat. If you’ve never seen me play, there are pictures with me way up the pine tar.”

There is also footage of the former Plantation, Florida prep propelling baseballs long distances. As Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel wrote in his prospect profile, Casas “participated in multiple home run derbies during his amateur summers, and posted gaudy exit velocities during team pre-draft workouts.” They placed a 65/70 on the young slugger’s raw-power grade. Read the rest of this entry »

Seattle Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto said the following when I spoke to him in November:

“The best we can do is lay out a game plan, a quality game plan, and then track our success. In this game, everything can be tracked.”

That includes trades, and it’s no secret that Dipoto has made a lot of them since he was hired to replace Jack Zduriencik following the 2015 season. The exact number — this based on a perusal of transaction logs — is a whopping 106, which works out to more than two dozen annually. The subject broached, Dipoto acknowledged that “it’s a long spreadsheet.”

What does the spreadsheet show in terms of wins and losses? The plethora of deals precludes a detailed response to such a question, but the 51-year-old executive did provide an overview when asked. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

When I sketched out a plan to tackle the 14 one-and-done candidates on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot, I found unifying themes to group them together even as the profiles themselves expanded: oft-injured infielders, sluggers who finished their careers concurrently with the White Sox, Dominican-born players who took unorthodox routes to the majors, starting pitchers for the 2003 champion Marlins, late-blooming relievers. When I reached the final pair, reliever José Valverde and slugger Raúl Ibañez, I was ready to concede that they were simply leftovers — but I had momentarily forgotten that during the 2012 ALCS, I had witnessed a moment firsthand that permanently tied them together:

In addition to that moment from the 2012 ALCS, both of these players seemed to have nine lives as they kept their grips on baseball — or vice versa, to invoke Jim Bouton’s famous line — for a long, long time. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Batch five hundred thirty-seven — no, wait, it’s just batch five, the rest of that was my daughter’s drawing — of my completist series features a pair of hard-throwing relievers who took a long time to get a shot at the majors, and even longer to become closers. Not much went right for either of them as Mets, and by the time they crossed paths in Arizona, both had seen better days, but somewhere in the middle of all of that, they became All-Stars. We could quibble as to whether they should be on this ballot, but why not celebrate two guys who made the most of their relatively brief careers?

Heath Bell

It took Heath Bell until he was nearly 27 years old to reach the majors, and he turned 31 before he claimed the closer’s job. Big-bodied (6-foot-3 and as much as 275 pounds) and with a big personality, he radiated joy on his best days, showing his exuberance with his signature sprints to the mound, making three straight All-Star teams, converting 41 straight save opportunities at one point, and netting a big deal in free agency — not too bad for a guy who was a 69th-round draft pick by the Devil Rays. Read the rest of this entry »

In what is shaping up to be a very busy pre-Thanksgiving Hot Stove League, the Mariners announced on Wednesday that they have agreed with relief pitcher Carl Edwards Jr. on a one-year contract. Edwards will receive a base salary of $950,000, with the potential to make another $500,000 in performance incentives tied to appearances and games finished.

This is the type of move that you will likely see more of in Seattle this winter. The Mariners are rebuilding, and though it’s not the type of rebuild that tears everything down to the foundation, they probably won’t be competitive in 2020. Whether you call it a rebuild or a retool or a reimagining, finding low-cost pickups and reclamation projects are typically smart things for teams to do. It’s also a healthy situation for players seeking to rebuild their value and get better contracts down the road.

Seattle’s bullpen is a prime place for these types of low-risk additions. Spending on relievers tends to be the worst bang-for-the-buck signings when it comes to wins, so it’s natural to look for these kinds of transactions to fill out the relief corps. The Mariners are also a good candidate for this as they’re currently projected in our Depth Charts to have the worst bullpen in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, the Cubs declined to pay $3 million to keep Kendall Graveman around and see if he’s recovered enough from a July 2018 Tommy John surgery to challenge for a rotation spot in 2020. That makes sense for Chicago, whose fourth starter is probably José Quintana. The Mariners, whose fourth starter is probably Justin Dunn, have more room to experiment a little and see what gives. They did just that this week, reportedly inking the 28-year-old Graveman to a one-year, $1.5 million deal (there’s a $500k buyout on a $3.5 million option for 2021, making the total guarantee for 2020 $2 million).

Graveman was moderately effective as a starter for the A’s from 2015 to 2017, posting a 4.44 FIP across 71 starts and 407 innings. That success ended in 2018, when a 7.60 ERA over seven early-season starts presaged the elbow injury that’s kept him off the mound ever since. He signed an incentive-laden deal with the Cubs last winter that promised substantial earnings contingent upon a successful return to the mound in 2019. That return never happened, despite two September minor-league rehab starts, and the Mariners were able to sign Graveman for only $1 million more in guaranteed contract dollars than the Cubs were willing to concede a year ago.

Graveman has a groundball-friendly profile (55.2% for his career) that will likely play well in front of Kyle Seager and J.P. Crawford and, if he is able to recover his pre-surgery velocity, he can be expected to pair a four-seam fastball thrown in the low 90s with a slider, a cut fastball, and an above-average changeup. There’s a well-traveled history of players adjusting their repertoires after returning from major arm surgery, of course, so I wouldn’t count on that mix (or, especially, that velocity) returning unchanged; know only that Graveman still likely has the raw materials to become the kind of pitcher who once so intrigued Jeff Sullivan. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Yankees traded utility lefty Nestor Cortes Jr. to the Mariners for international bonus pool money. A source indicated to Eric and me that the deal was for $30,000 of pool space (we’re told it’s all Seattle had left in their pool), while others characterized it as being in that range, if not that number exactly.

This move may seem insignificant, but it hints at the motivations and strategies of both clubs. Back in July, the Yankees were one of a couple teams we spotlighted as having a 40-man crunch on their hands (we had Cortes as the last guy to make the roster), so being able to get something in return for him rather than throwing him on waivers because they needed to clear roster spots makes for an easy decision. The price of claiming a player on waivers is $50,000, while we’ve found the return on investment of an international bonus dollar, including operational expenses, is about 300%. Most teams think of bonus pool money as being worth at least double its nominal value, but the Yankees — who consistently trade for extra pool money, with GM Brian Cashman emboldened by their quick returns on high-variance prospects in the international market — likely see it as much more valuable than that. Factor in that given Seattle’s interest, the odds of Cortes passing through waivers was zero, and this makes a ton of sense for New York.

Meanwhile, Seattle is ramping up to compete in 2021 and has open spots on its 40-man roster, so adding an accomplished depth piece with major league experience and remaining minor league options for just a bit over the waiver price, while shifting a little international money into their 40-man roster, fits their competitive posture. Cortes is a 5-foot-11 lefty who sits 88-91 mph and relies mostly on his fastball and slider, but also mixes in a changeup. He’s likely never going to be a role 5, 50 FV or a reliable bulk innings rotation piece, so the Yankees probably figured that one of the prospects recently added to the roster, or a veteran on a minor league deal who won’t need to be added to the 40-man until next season, can fill the same role. Read the rest of this entry »

The Detroit Tigers are a rebuilding team with a plethora of promising pitching prospects. As of a few weeks ago, they also have a director of pitching development and strategies, and a coordinator of player development analytics. Each is a new position within the organization, and both are a step in the right direction. Dan Hubbs was hired to fill the first of those roles, Jordan Wergiles the last.

Who are Hubbs and Wergiles, and what will be their primary responsibilities? I asked those questions to Al Avila during the recently completed GM Meetings.

“Dan came from the University of Southern California, where he was the head baseball coach,” answered Avila. “Before that he was the pitching coach there for 12 years. He comes with a good knowledge of the technology that’s being used now. He understands the analytics that can help a pitcher get better. Basically, his challenge is to set up our pitching system.”

Addressing Wergiles — a recent Wake Forest University graduate who’d been interning for the Tigers — Avila spoke of the organization’s attempts to keep up with an ever-changing game.

“There are obviously some things that your average instructor, or pitching coach… those guys aren’t analysts,” said the GM. “Those guys don’t work with numbers. They work with human beings, so it’s more of, ‘Hey, here is what the numbers are telling us about this pitcher.’ [Wergiles] can be deciphering that to the coaches, so that they can make those adjustments with the pitchers.”

Requests to speak to Wergiles and Hubbs about their new roles were declined by the Tigers. Read the rest of this entry »