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First off, there is no "RE"-building. There is only building. EVERY MLB is constantly building, because every MLB constantly has parts that are getting worse or breaking down. Players age. Eventually they all wear out. But, even young players get hurt. Once upon a time, Mark Prior was going to be the next 300-game winner. The term "rebuilding" is simply used as a shorthand for "we don't expect to compete THIS season." But, it is often "rebuilding" teams that jump up and surprise. Atlanta and Minnesota both went from worst to first in a single season back in the 90s, to meet in the World Series. Nobody was pegging Seattle and Texas to jump up and dominate in DER in 2009, were they? Tampa had been "rebuilding" for its entire existence, and then in 2008, WHAM! They're in the Series. The simple truth of baseball is that the difference between 40 wins and 90 wins is simply not nearly as huge as is generally believed. In truth, "rebuilding" most aptly describes a team that intentially makes itself worse in the short run with an expectation of being better in the long run, (typically dumping productive veterans for cheap youngsters). But, often the expensive veterans tank and the youngsters surprise, and one could seriously debate the question of whether the team REALLY got worse or not. That said, much of the discussion about what Seattle should do moving ahead is built on foundations of EITHER "we try to win THIS year", or "we CAN'T win this year, so we play for the future." I believe both positions are flawed. The concept of "going for it" is almost always supported by the notion of going out and getting "known" talent, as if said talent comes with some sort of guarantee of success. The Mets spent a ton of money on talent for 2009, picking up Santana, and K-Rod, and Wagner and Putz and Sheffield along the way. They won 70. The Cubbies spent a fortune and got 83 wins for their money. Yes, some big spenders certainly made the playoffs. The Yankees, Boston, Dodgers happily made the playoffs in 2009. And money does make a difference, (in general terms), but there is no guarantee of anything in a specific case. In looking at building, the simple goal is, "we want to ALWAYS be improving". That's the simple truth of the matter -- to always be "improving". But that goal requires to look BEYOND the immediate year in all cases. You cannot simply ignore the balloon payments on upwardly mobile youth with a pretense that the bill won't come due. If you plan on Felix being a long-term part of the future of the team, you HAVE to take his future salary into consideration when planning on how much to commit to other resources TODAY. When you make 12/48 commitments to Silva, you influence what your decisions on Felix WILL be in 2 or 3 years. As with most things, there are no absolutes. Long term contracts simplify one side of the equation, but rob you of flexibility. Short-term contracts create lots of flexibility, but force annual roster churning that can often be detrimental to building long term success. Seattle proved my point when in short order they traded away TWO future hall of famers in Unit and AROD, and improved the team in the process. But, when they got good, the team got complacent, content to ride the players it had with the irrational notion that they wouldn't decline over time. It's not so much that the club made mistakes, (sometimes attempts to improve will not work - live with it). The problem was that by and large, the club got good enough they stopped "trying" to improve. THAT is when things go south. Most of the Hot Stove talk is centered on how to improve the Ms enough in 2010 that they can make the playoffs, (or more). And some would have us believe that anything short of trying to get 95 wins in 2010 is a copout. I don't view it that way. I see that 2009 club as an 80-win team that got a bit lucky. I see no shame in attempting to improve that team to a mathematical likelihood of an 85 win team in 2010. I would consider that improvement, (assuming the run differential was reflective of the 85 wins, as opposed to 80 or less). In point of fact, I see the near obsession with "doing it all today -- immediately" as the very flawed foundation that led to steroid use. Things of value take time and effort to accomplish. And taking shortcuts for immediate gain is the very thing that leads to bankruptcies and all manner of severe costs down the road, whether speaking of a baseball team, or a home mortgage. Seattle turned around an organization in complete disarray, and they did it incredibly fast. This makes it look so much easier than it really was. But, the club is not JUST the team on the field. It is also the entire farm system, and the scouts, and the coaches and even the fans. The club got a taste of an actual prospect showing improvement, (Rob Johnson), until he got hurt. They also saw some prospects perform dreadfully, (Wlad, Saunders), and others that showed promise, (Carp, Fister), in limited playing time. PART of being a good organization is having the ability to find and DEVELOP talent. Even the richest teams MUST develop some talent internally, even if for no other reason than to trade it away for immediate help. It's short-sighted and self-defeating to pretend that the only thing that matters in getting to the playoffs is the 25-man roster. Z and W put new siding and a new roof on the franchise, and from the OUTSIDE, the 2009 season made the Ms appear really nice. But inside the house of the Mariners ... the plumbing is busted, the paint if peeling, and many outlets are dead. The culture of veteran entitlement was largely purged in 2009. BUT, it is not gone simply because Z and W came on board. It changed because of their ACTIONS. Z went and acquired a number of low priced, UNDER-appreciated veterans, who had every reason to be hungry ... who were players that had every reason to work as hard as they could to produce as much as they could. A large portion of the change in clubhouse attitude was a direct result of NOT going after the quick-fix, high-priced free agent types that often have egos the size of Alaska. This doesn't mean you can never sign expensive FAs ... but is a warning that one must always CONSIDER the ramifications on all the other parts of the organization when you do, be it players, coaches, or scouts. The club improved in 2009, no question. But, Wash is gone and Bedard starts 2010 on the DL. The situations at catcher, first, third, short, DH and left are all question marks. It's a near certainty that 4 regular positions, and three slots in the rotation are going to be manned by players that weren't a significant part of the 2009 results, and those numbers could easily go higher. Realistically, the club is NOT starting from a point of 85 wins, or 80 wins, or 75 wins. The club is practically starting from scratch ... with anywhere from 12 to 20 new faces dominating the 2010 roster, (compared to where the team began 2009). The team proved it knows something about good defense. Whether this was simply the personnel chosen, the positioning, the pitching patterns, or a combination of all, they had a mercurial rise in DER, leading the majors. It was the ONLY area of baseball skill that the club excelled in. So, at this point, I am absolutely ready to accept that the organization is a vastly superior judge of how to identify and deploy defensive excellence than I. That said, DER is a remarkably maleable TEAM statistic. Some teams have shown an ability to maintain good (or bad) DERs with significant player turnover, while others have shown the ability to massively change DER results with minimum change in personnel. While I believe that TEAM defense is critical to pitching success - (and is largely underappreciated), I also believe that INDIVIDUAL defensive prowess and importance is by and large overstated and is almost completely unreliable in terms of predictive application. The #1 priority is obviously offense. It ranked dead last, (making it easiest to improve). Pitching was mediocre, and defense was best in the majors. There's lots of different ways to examine offense, and I'm going to use two methods side-by-side -- quick and dirty raw run generation RRG (RBI+Runs - HR) -- and Runs Created to get a feel for what the club can expect moving forward, and where the largest gains are likely to come from. By position:
POS -(RBI+R-HR)-- RRG -- RC (players included) The really, really, really good news? The top run producers are mostly returning. Ichiro, Gutz and Lopez. The RRG is truly by position, as bbref sorts the basic stats this way. But, RC I had to do by hand, so all of Lopez' games are counted at 2B, even though he played some at first, etc. Of course, the RRG is dependent on lineup position and is a horrible stat to use for most purposes, but I wanted to put it beside RC to illustrate that in "most" cases it's a pretty good stat to judge relative contribution, (within the context of a single team). And those top 4 producers are pretty tightly bunched with 3 of 4 returning. The point here is that the positions where replacements and changes are coming are the lower end of the production scale, (by almost any measure). LF, SS, CA were horrible production slots in 2009, and 3B was nearly as bad for much of the season. Replacing the WORST producers is a nearly perpetual best methodology for creating significant production gains. Let's start at the bottom, shortstop. The Mariner SS position was one of the worst producing spots in all of baseball in 2009. Yuni produced only 19 RC in 245 PAs, while Cedeno was drastically worse - 10-RC in 206 PAs. Jack Wilson is the likely SS for 2010. Many are dubious about this choice, mostly because of the 2.7 RC he produced in his brief (injury-plagued) stint with the Ms. It's important to understand the Jack Wilson produced at the exact same rate that Yuni did in 2009, (2.7 RC/27). But, for his career, Jack Wilson is a 3.9 RC/27 guy -- and the WORST full season he's had was a 3.5 RC/27. In point of fact, while injuries reduced his PT in '08 and '09, if you look at the 4 previous seasons, you get: 2004 - 96 RC; 2005 - 63 RC; 2006 - 62 RC; 2007 - 73 RC. If he gets 535 PAs or more, his worst ever production is still 62 RC. That's 140-150 games. You add in even Yuni production for the rest of the season, and you're looking at a gain of 10-15 RC at short. If you look at what Wilson has done from an RRG perspective, he's never had a full season where he didn't break 100. That's looking at his WORST seasons. If Wilson matches his WORST season ever, he's still a 10-15 run gain for the team. If he has an average or good season, you're looking at 20-30 run gain. At Catcher, Johjima is gone, and the club is left with a pair of near rookies. Johnson had a 2.8 RC/27 average, as did Moore. That's GOTTA be bottom end for at least one, if not both. Johnson was improving until he hit the wall with injuries. If Johnson isn't healthy by Spring, maybe you look for a 1-year vet, (the club picked up Bard since I wrote this), but I'm thinking 2010 is a perfect season for going with the two youngsters, so each can get significant PT in the majors. Moore has more offensive upside, but is behind in actual MLB PT. Without outside assistance the position could be as bad, (or worse), than 2009. But, it could also improve, as 60% of the PAs came from the youngsters who are likely to improve. They only need to get half way to Johjima's production rate to end up producing the same aggregate, because mostly, they are replacing their own low production. Personally, I think both will succeed, and that the catcher position is likely to increase production, (slightly) in 2010 without needing to go and get someone during the year. When you add in the more reliable Bard level production, backstop should be pegged as repeat to slightly better. Getting catcher-level production out of left field is almost certainly the primary reason that the Seattle offense ranked last in 2009. As bad as 3B was, LF was simply worse. Endy had a disappointing 4.0 RC/27, but Wlad managed only 3.2 before getting traded, and Saunders' 2.4 to close out the season erased any nominal plus of the 4.3 Langerhans produced. THIS is the truly difficult decision to be made. It is not terribly difficult to find a 4.5 LF on the open market for a reasonable price. Or, you can spend big and go after a name that could produce 6.0/g. But, many people are very high on Saunders. The club has picked up a combo of Milton Bradley, Byrnes and Langerhans, (along with Saunders, of course), to battle for time in LF. If Bradley spends most of his time DHing, LF falls to Byrnes, Saunders, Langerhans with Garko as a longshot to play a little. Byrnes has a 5.1 career RC/27. Heck, LF production could be poor and STILL be a huge improvement. It is going to take a negative miracle for Seattle to not improve in LF, even if only by accident. For the league as a whole, catcher and shortstop are the worst offensive positions. It is not necessary to have great production at those two slots to be average. But LF is another story. Left field is one of the more productive positions in baseball, and the Mariners had a pathetic output from this slot. The question of how much PT to hand to Saunders is particularly tricky, especially with Byrnes entering with a 5-ish RC/27. The Hemenway expectation of run changes (per position) for 2010:
2B -- +10 (Lopez had a dreadful start to '09. Final 4 months had .800 production. New personal best is likely) Net = +55 There's danger here. I show 5 slots up, and only 3 down. That split, by default, is overly optimistic. But, the club had a multitude of positions with replacement level performances, so expecting improvement (just by blind luck) for short, catcher, left and third isn't really a reach. In truth, one could easily be more aggressive with the upside for Lopez and Gutz, (both entering prime). One could gamble that Moore is going to benefit from his '09 cup of coffee and develop faster. One could project a bigger gain at shortstop, (not because Wilson is going to be great), because the 2009 results at shortstop were so utterly pathetic. One could even argue that because of the specific major push in OBP, (Figgins and Bradley), that *ALL* of the better hitters, (Ichiro, Lopez, Gutz) that are returning, will increase their total RC just by having more total PAs, (though Ichiro is the most obvious as a leadoff hitter). On the other side of the equation, one could argue that Lopez and Gutz are both due for regression from their career 2009 totals, and that coupled with the departure of Branyan and likely regression of the aging Ichiro (coming off a career year), further decline from Griffey, (and the likelihood that Bradley will spend much time on the DL), that the club could see a reduction in output from its top FIVE (5) lineup-producing from 2009. One could construct an argument that at best, any gains from LF and SS are going to be washed away by age and injury declines elsewhere. This is precisely why team projections are as much art as science. The age charts skew every hitter over 29 downward, (and every hitter under 27 upward). When you've got injury prone guys, (Bradley, Wilson, Griffey), you cannot rely solely on the age-projection charts. Many look at the basic output from someone like Jack Wilson, and moan. But, trying to compute final totals is as much about the COMBO of players as the individuals involved. During 2009, the Ms had a particularly nasty problem getting production in the 2 and 3 slots in the lineup, where good bats would slump as soon as placed there. If the bad bats end up in their normal slots, (7,8,9), the club gains runs. If the OBP of the worst bats are .300 instead of .270, (Cedeno had 206 PAs with a .213 OBP, btw), the team gains runs. The 2010 club can gain a LOT of runs with a "group" of small gains. In 2009, the club had 4 lineup positions which had aggregate OBP totals below .300. #2 - .297; #7 - .268; #8 - .299; #9 - .280; If 45% of the lineup can't produce a .300 OBP, your offense is going to stink, regardless of where they hit in the order. While having a .400 OBP from a single guy is great, it can never make up for 4 "automatic" outs in the lineup. The club today, with the players already on hand, could EASILY produce a team that has ONE lineup slot with an OBP below .300, (maybe even .310). That starts translating into extra chances for the guys high in the lineup, (Ichiro and Figgins). My best guess is that the club "will" gain about 55 runs of offense. My belief is that, with the roster today, the club "could" double that without any "exceptionally" good performances. This would be require a repeat of the 2007 dynamic, where the bulk of the team feeds off the successes around them, (relative to 2009), so you get maybe 7 guys hitting slightly above projection all at once. Unlike 2007, the club has a GM who is unafraid to make moves - which means that in the case where 7 guys are producing and a couple are not, he is DRASTICALLY more likely to make a move to address the weak areas. The club could, with the proper mid-season tweak increase its output to a total gain of 150 runs with nobody (outside of the near-rookies) having a career year. But, that's the best-guess and upside projections. The club could also repeat its 2009 worst-in-baseball production. If Junior and Bradley and Wilson all hit the DL, (not a reach), then Z is juggling chainsaws blindfolded. I think it likely the club will climb out of last place in the run scoring column, but while reaching mediocrity (7th in league) is possible, I don't think it likely. A 10th place finish in runs scored is about where I'd expect them to end 2010. But, that IS improvement. And that is the goal every season. |