Organizational Rankings: Current Talent – Mariners
The Mariners spent an all time high on player payroll in 2008 and spent it so atrociously that they won only 61 games with it and got a brand new front office. As it turns out, it was probably worth it as they now employ one of the better-run offices in baseball and are heading back into contention far faster than anyone possibly could have imagined. Still, the new regime has to bear some crosses from the past one in terms of reduced financial flexibility. After that peak in 2008, the 2009 Mariners dropped about $20 million in payroll and this year’s team is down a little over another $10 million.
The Mariners went from 61 wins to 85 last year. Will the loss of an additional payroll project to hurt the Mariners this season? According to our notable projection systems, it looks like it will have some impact though perhaps not a great one. FanGraphs readers and CAIRO both have the Mariners at 83 wins for 2010 while CHONE is more pessimistic at just 78 wins.
Run prevention is going to be the name of the game for Seattle this season. Fronted in the rotation by Felix Hernandez and Cliff Lee and possibly joined later on by Erik Bedard, the Mariners can boast some seriously good arms. The bullpen is no slouch either with power arms galore and breakout candidate Brandon League, discussed previously on FanGraphs with regards to his added splitter.
Kenji Johjima departs from the catching platoon, replaced by Adam Moore, which should make pretty much no difference. Casey Kotchman at first base will get a chance to get his career back on track and at the least will provide more solid defending than the Mariners have seen there in a long time.
Newly signed Chone Figgins is making the switch back to second base where he’ll be an asset and Jack Wilson mans shortstop from now until he–no, wait, he just got hurt again. Jose Lopez moves from second to third where the Mariners say that his body type plays better but more likely meant his trade value as they await Dustin Ackley.
Franklin Gutierrez and Ichiro Suzuki need no more fanfare, except they do, but I will not take time here to add on. Left field is a sticky situation, along with DH, with several mediocre candidates vying for time in between Milton Bradley suspensions.
The Mariners, as built on paper, are going to contend in what looks to be a slightly watered down AL West division. Given the savvy front office and talent in house, do not be surprised if the Mariners hang around contention for the foreseeable future.
Matthew Carruth is a software engineer who has been fascinated with baseball statistics since age five. When not dissecting baseball, he is watching hockey or playing soccer.
Looks like an 80 win team gets the number 6 spot. At least they didn’t make top 5.
But they do have a middle of the pack farm system! Man fangraphs(well… Dave Cameron) must really think that Jack Z is some type of superhuman value-finding machine. The talent on this team from the majors down through rookie ball is not even close to sixth best. One of the themes of this site is regression to the mean and semi-conservative value projection, I suggest these concepts be applied to the M’s front office.
And what are the chances they re-sign Lee? Especially if Beckett re-ups with Boston and he becomes the only top-of-the-line starter on the market?
If Lee leaves the Mariners get 2 compensation draft picks, making it decently likely that the talent they gave up for him will be a wash.
Sure, but it’s extremely unlikely to be a wash with the talent of CLIFF LEE.
Therefore, the fact that Lee will most likely not be in Seattle next year is a highly relevant point.
“Jack Z is some type of superhuman value-finding machine”
He got rid of Silva didn’t he? He got Gutierrez didn’t he? He traded away Putz for prospects, didn’t he?
I think you’ve described him perfectly.
Ah, Reuben, let me tell you this story about a man named Brian Sabean….
“The Mariners, as built on paper, are going to contend in what looks to be a slightly watered down AL West division. Given the savvy front office and talent in house, do not be surprised if the Mariners hang around contention for the foreseeable future.”
I was keeping an open mind with the Mariners being placed so high, but if that is the best conclusion you can write, I’m not convinced. Hanging around contention in a weak division isn’t impressive.
But it has merit towards postseason possibilities now and in the future. The Blue Jays and Orioles… don’t you think they would rather be somewhere ELSE than the AL East behind the two biggest juggernauts in baseball and the very talented and smartly run Rays?
It is important. We all know it is. That’s why they keep talking about posssible rearrangements of the divisions and leagues and ways to nerf the Yankee’s payroll advantage. Division rival strength matters.
It clearly doesn’t matter very much when the top 6 teams all come from the same league and 3 of the top 5 come from the same division. How can you reasonably argue those things won’t make it tougher for these teams to win then the likes of the Phils, Braves, and Rockies?
Certainly the Mariners deserve to be way, way ahead of the Orioles and Jays. And certainly the Orioles and Jays would merit a higher ranking then what they received if they played in any other division. However, using those teams is a bit of a straw man, no one is arguing that those teams are better than the Mariners.
In all seriousness here, how can you guys with a straight face write this one at #6, and have Philadelphia and Colorado, amongst others, behind them? Philadelphia is set up to be contenders for the next three years, at the very least. Colorado is in a weaker division than Seattle with a significantly better group of young talent on the MLB roster.
No disrespect to Seattle, but ranking them this his is absurd.
Roy Halladay is a decrepit 33 years old!
You can make an argument for Colorado, but I have no problem with the placement of the Phillies.
Of course not. Any affiliation with a Pat Gillick created team will get a scornful response from the creator of this list. Couple that with the Phillies having the audacity to put Ibanez on the roster and no amount of current or near-future success will be forecasted.
So, the M’s current talent is just a tick above average. And I’m guessing their future talent won’t be evaluated much more highly (and most probably should be lower). Hrm…
After Dave Cameron made a post on USSM a couple months back saying everyone should stop blowing kisses in the direction of Seattle’s Front Office, it sure does seem like he’s about to take it one step further and start planting smooches directly on a certain GM’s derriere.
I’m a bigtime Seattle fan, and even I think this ranking is sortof silly. But hey, I guess that’s the fun of it!
Maybe in the future you guys should have 3 separate rankings. One for current talent, future talent, and organizational rankings. It’s just really hard for me to take the M’s 6th in current talent seriously when:
The M’s run 2 pitchers deep for the first few months until Bedard is back. Even with an easy schedule, they go one deep (Felix) till May since Lee is out.
The offense will probably rank 13th in the AL, optimistically at 730 RS. They scored 640 runs last year, so I think I’m being extremely optimistic saying that the best case scenario is 730 runs scored.
A middle of the pack bullpen, even with League who I think will end up being the best guy there.
The defense is terrific, no question. But they allowed 692 runs last year, and even if they manage to prevent more runs they’re not much more than a 500 team. Maybe being slightly better than 500 will be good enough to win, but this team shouldn’t rank 6th in terms of current talent. Which again, goes to my point about separate rankings for future/current and organizational rankings.
I know you guys put a lot of work into this series and I’ve enjoyed it, but it’s really tough to accept the M’s as a top 6 organization for now and in the future. They have a great front office, but right now their current talent shouldn’t place them in the top 10.
Yes this seems to me to be all based on the fact that their Front Office has shown an ability to be better than their predecessors. The simple facts here are that this team has less current and future talent than teams like Colorado, Philadelphia and Atlanta. They may have a great defense and two stud pitchers fronting their rotation, but what are they going to get from slots 3-5. And what about an offense that is as anemic or even more than the Giants. Its a really poor placement and discredits this lists, even though there has been some fantastic work done previously. I think there is quite a bit of fanboy, homerism at play here.
“And what about an offense that is as anemic or even more than the Giants.”
When it comes down to it, the Mariners basically are the Giants (though with maybe less young talent), with what appears to be a much better GM. Should they be ranked way above the Giants based on that? Yeah, sure, no argument there. Should they be ranked the #6 team in all of baseball because of it? Sounds a little out there.
As a longtime Ms fan I think they have been overpraised by the media and blog pundits for their off-season moves and are now seemingly being discounted as ineffective by many of the same sources. They did good, they ain’t great, but they are getting better and I think they may play one of the more entertaining games of baseball to be viewed this season. Let’s see how it plays out when it counts. Whatever happens they have the best GM in the game and he’s not finished yet.
Can we hold off on the “best GM in the game” until he actually puts together a team that wins something?
He still has managed to have Kotchman as his starting 1B, and Griffey as his starting DH.
This ranking seems more based on a sense of optimism that the M’s front office can make good calls with what is pretty good financial resources. I can’t buy a 6 though with just one solid SP beyond this year… Yeah they manuevered really well the past two years, but your projecting that same manueverability when you give them a ranking this high and to the point above, regression to the mean is called for especially the small sample size we have on this front office.
A little above average team. A little above average farm system. And yet they’re a better organization than anyone in the NL? Really? Can anyone really tell me that if they had the choice between Atlanta and Seattle for both this year and beyond, they’d honestly choose Seattle?
What I find interesting is the spread of the AL West teams in the rankings. The projections say the AL West will be a dogfight (as do all the various fangraphs writers) so true talent is probably fairly close on a team aggregate basis.
The various rankings of the farm talent show a bit of a spread but generally it seems to follow a rough ranking: Rangers, Athletics,Angels/Mariners.
So I suppose the ranking is based more on front office with the Al West? But Billy Beane, for all his flaws,is a rather good GM with a reasonable record of success. Jack Z has had one good offseason (it was a killer, this is true). Perhaps I’m biased but this ranking is very optimistic.
As was noted in the A’s ranking, the AL West is now an ineptitude-free zone. While the M’s FO has been impressive so far, at this point their talent base is a little above average, both current and future, nowhere near enough to justify the ranking. I wouldn’t bet against the FO improving the overall talent level over the next few years, but I also wouldn’t bet against any of the other teams in their division keeping pace with them on an operational level. If the organization is given what appears to be enormous credit based on faith that their GM will continue to do a good job in improving the organization, shouldn’t it also be taken into account that whatever competitive advantages their strong management might give them are likely to be dulled by the fact that the teams in their division are universally well managed?
The Mariners havent won anything in eight years, and are averagish at most places on the diamond with only one big impact position player (Ackley) on the immediate horizon. I am a huge mariners fan, and I love the direction the team is moving in, but just because the new front office is so much better than their predecessors doesn’t mean they are worlds ahead of every other organization in baseball. So we’ve got a decent team, a decent farm system, strong financial resources and a good front office . . . what am I missing here? There is nothing in that post that even begins to explain a #6 ranking. Sorry fangraphs, but you dropped the ball here. Feel free to reveal the secret weapon that the mariners are stashing away at any time.