Water, Water Everywhere

First-hand impressions go a long way toward shaping opinions and understandings, sometimes overwhelming statistical knowledge. As such, my view of Bill Bavasi, as well as the organization over which he presides, has been tainted by witnessing Bavasi’s shortcomings in person. Before a spring training game between the Padres and Mariners last March, I sat down with a group of about 30 hardcore baseball fans, a handful of Baseball Prospectus personnel, and the General Managers of both clubs for two hours of casual discussions on all baseball-related subjects.

San Diego’s Kevin Towers impressed me substantially, weaving together his background as a scout, his experiences in a smallish market, and his exposure to Theo and Eddie Epstein’s statistical bent into a complex web of well-informed decision making. He employs a system rigid enough to know when to say no, while flexible enough to plug holes on the last few dollars of a budget. The contrast between Towers and Seattle’s Bavasi was, shall we say, stark. Bavasi appeared frequently confused, as if he had not even thought through simple questions about organizational depth which many of the questioners had examined thoroughly. Beyond the starting lineup at the Major League level, the rest of the franchise seemed like a mystery to him. Why work harder when you can delegate? At very least, it would be difficult to maintain accountability when the head of the organization cannot tell the difference between success and failure at any level below the top. Of all in attendance, Bavasi may have benefited the most, as he clearly learned tactical and strategic lessons from Towers, and he has the privilege of employing them, whereas the rest of the crowd had more of an academic experience.

Suffice to say, my outlook on the 2006 Seattle Mariners was less than rosy. I saw the middle infielders’ low OBPs instead of their defensive potential. I saw Ichiro’s singles as non-homeruns rather than non-outs. I saw the pitching staff as King Felix and a collection of number five starters instead of, well, they were a collection of number five starters, even with the glass half full. The season played out to justify my pessimism, leaving the Mariners in the wake of three other AL West teams who performed somewhere near their preseason expectations. I felt smart, knowing that Bavasi had built a team full of wastefulness and ineffectiveness, then watching it crash and burn.

This year, I see the same front office using the same decision calculus to make its choices. A funny thing happened, though, on the way to Peoria for spring training; the team acquired just enough talent to potentially compete in a far depleted AL West. Manifesting the improvement would require some difficult decisions involving lineup construction and bullpen usage, and they would need a good deal of help from the rest of the division to stay in the pennant race, but I still see the M’s as a much better bet for a playoff sleeper this year than I did last when they were a more popular pick. In order to get a systematic view of how much the team could improve, I will break down some of their notable success and failures from the past twelve months, as well as what we can expect going forward.

Biggest 2006 Overachiever- J.J. Putz: Many times, teams or fans attribute regression in terms of runs scored and runs allowed to failure in plugging the team’s holes. Too often, we overlook replacing the actual value of players who overperformed the pervious year. For instance, maybe Mark Derosa is not a superstar player, but the Rangers have to replace his career year to get back to even going into 2007. We are all very willing to assume that players coming off of down years will recapture their past brilliance- even too willing, considering the possibility for natural decline-, and we make the opposite mistake just as often; we assume that replacing a player’s true value would suffice instead of replacing the actual value of his career year.

Rambling aside, the point is that the Mariners get the backhanded compliment that none of their regulars overperformed so greatly in 2006 that the 2007 crash will cause the team much peril. J.J. Putz accumulated 33 runs of VORP last season in extremely high leverage situations (at least as high as the leverage got last year in Seattle), and PECOTA sees him cutting that roughly in half. Not that Putz is a bad player, but age 29 is a little late to start going all Jonathan Papelbon on the league. An 8:1 K:BB ratio might not come back in 2007; PECOTA and ZiPS agree on 4:1 sounding like a more reasonable number. They also agree that his ERA will be closer to 3.00 than to 2.00, so he will be a hair less valuable than he was in ’06.

While I would not start crying about the closing situation just yet, the rest of the bullpen seems a bit more dire. Any decline by Putz strains a pen that does not feature another lights-out righty since trading Rafael Soriano for Horacio Ramirez in the off-season’s second biggest mistake (more on this later). Adding Chris Reitsma and Arthur Rhodes give them some other cheap options, but with such a tiny sliver of upside in either case (PECOTA eqERAs near 5 for both), I do not see how they will resolve these issues, especially the deficit of northpaws.

Biggest 2006 Underachiever- Felix Hernandez: Ay, there’s the rub. Joe Sheehan recently pegged King Felix as a sleeper since his merely above-average 2006 left so many people missing the images of Doc Gooden dancing around in their skulls. How high do expectations have to be for 191 solid innings from a 20 year old to be considered a disappointment? Well, the bar has been lowered considerably, making Felix a huge breakout candidate- 42% according to PECOTA, accompanying an 87% improvement rate, both among the best for all pitchers in American professional baseball. Even a more modest improvement should result in an ERA around 3.70, about 180 IP (to be judicious), more strikeouts, less walks, and maintenance in his sterling groundball rate. That sort of performance would be worth about 3 wins by itself, graduating him into the class of a true number one starter, and chaining the rest of the rotation into more appropriate positions. Even tough I think baseball fans have a severe tendency to overrate and overhype all players, especially young ones, I remain bullish on King Felix, pegging him for a top 5 finish in Cy Young balloting.

Runs Scored Outlook: I do not see a great deal of change on this front. Some issues to consider:

1. Raul Ibanez put up a career-best .299 EQA last year, making him look like a candidate for decline, especially considering his age, 35. ZiPS sees a 70 point drop-off in slugging, PECOTA sees a 40 point loss. Both of these systems include his performance history across time spent at Safeco and Kaufman, which I believe misevaluates his ability. Ibanez is the type of player who has a lot more value for Seattle than for any other team because his swing fits beautifully in a stadium built for fellow lefty pull-hitter Junior Griffey. His stats in Kansas City may show his true ability more accurately, but I do not believe that Seattle cares as long as he keeps performing at a higher level for them. True, 2006 was out of line with 2004-2005 by a bit, and I think he is going to drop back below the .500 SLG line while carrying an increasing risk of injury or collapse. Nonetheless, I think he will exceed the value projected by PECOTA and ZiPS, costing his team less than a win in terms of regression.

2. Moving Ichiro to centerfield has lots of implications for run prevention, and may even have some effects on the offensive end. Center is a more demanding defensive position, forcing players to put more strain on their bodies (see: Erstand, Darrin for a somewhat controlled study of position and injury risk). It is one thing to increase the injury risk of a player who has value across the board, such as Jim Edmonds. It is quite another issue to risk Ichiro’s health, when even small, nagging injuries can sap all of that value that he derives from his speed. Stealing 45 of 47 bases and beating out hits to inflate his batting average make Ichiro unique and outstanding. I will not go so far as to predict injuries, just be wary.

3. Richie Sexson started last season hitting about .150 for a few months, making many wonder if his old player skills had expired early. He rebounded nicely, pulling his slugging back over .500 and OBP near league average. Seattle needs him to be an anchor in the middle of the lineup since they have several OBP issues all the way up and down- repeating his 24.9 VORP will not get the job done. As with any analysis of the 2006 Minnesota Twins, though, Sexson must get credit for digging himself out of such a deep hole to still show some value. Weight his second half more heavily than his first, expect a slightly better season, but be cognizant of the risk of a total collapse- PECOTA and ZiPS hedge their bets significantly on this fact. Having Ben Broussard as a secondary option definitely helps.

4. Early in the article, I mentioned that acquiring Horatio Ramirez only qualified as the second worst move. Giving up Chris Snelling’s potential for the burden of Jose Vidro ranks far worse on my scale of putridity because I doubt that any manager would have the guts to contradict Bavasi, play Broussard at DH, use Vidro as a corner and 2B utility option, and take advantage of the 21 point surplus in Broussard’s EQA. When I said that the team would have to make difficult decisions, I meant that they would require strength of character, not necessarily that much strength of mind. Nonetheless, I fear the decision’s been made.

Overall, the DH position will not be any worse than Carl Everett, even with Vidro. Jose Guillen’s wide range of possibilities as the third OF next to Ibanez and Ichiro leaves some open questions, though improvement over Jeremy Reed and other failures seems a bit more reasonable than decline. Betancourt and Lopez need to learn plate discipline or face judgment, and I expect at least a couple of more runs here and there, though not even a full when between the two. Big contracts aside, Beltre and Sexson are basically average on offense, widely disparate on defense, and quite predictable. And after only one year, Johjima seems a little boring and completely stable. Altogether, I’ll throw 10 more runs on the offense, optimistic about the lack of Everett and last year’s CF failings, but worried about Ichiro’s position shift, the regression of Sexson, and the aging of Ibanez. 770 Runs

Runs Prevented Outlook: To me, the rotation looks like it will probably be Felix, followed by some ordering of Washburn, Weaver, and Miguel Batista, with Ramirez bringing up (or down?) the rear. With three fifths of a new rotation, and five pitchers who did not start 2005 in their rotation, there is a surprising amount of predictability here. Additionally, the staff looks like a pretty decent one, compared to averages for first through fifth starters from 2006:

Pitcher	2006 AL Avg ERA	PECOTA ERA	ZiPS ERA
1. Hernandez	3.70	3.63	3.71
2. Washburn	4.24	4.67	4.45
3. Weaver	4.58	4.77	4.28
4. Batista	5.09	4.94	4.62
5. Ramirez	6.22	5.12	5.13

If you split the different between the two sets of projections, the Mariners have a true ace, three number three starters, and a number four. Considering that Jake Woods (PECOTA 4.63) and Cha Seung Baek (PECOTA 5.04) provide ample reinforcement for a staff without too painful an injury history, and they look deep and dependable, if not all that top-heavy. Signing Weaver to a one year deal where park effects will likely neutralize the league change makes all kinds of sense, especially since it chains their questionable younger starters downward into reserve/relief roles where they can develop without risking the team’s competitiveness. Furthermore, Weaver’s problems last year do not show up as career threatening in any of the major projection systems, according to the Seattle experts at U.S.S. Mariner (http://www.ussmariner.com/), where they describe the pickup thusly, “On a one year deal, a durable guy who has shown an ability to eat innings and avoid the disabled list and projects to post an ERA south of 5.00 is a pretty nice pickup. Jeff Weaver is not the kind of arm you want to be committing to for multiple years, but he’s a decent innings sponge, and since Safeco is rather pitcher friendly, it’s a good spot for him to come attempt to rebuild his image.”

In a world where the Mariners signed Jeff Weaver in December, I do not believe the Soriano-Ramirez trade would have ever materialized. Even though starting pitching was a need for the M’s, and even though Soriano may have a large injury risk, the sheer gap in talent between the two makes the trade a horrible move, reminding me once again why I formed the opinion of Bill Bavasi that I did. Soriano had the fourth highest VORP on the team last year, and leaves a big hole in late inning relief, since most of the staff projects to six-and-done more often than not. O’Flaherty, Green, White, Huber. I’m not terrified yet. Still, the bullpen after the top was pedestrian enough last year that it will not take all that much to replicate the performance, although losing Soriano could be worth a win or two on the season that Ramirez will not make up.

Defensively, I like the construction of the team. Chris Dial’s defensive regression analyses have Johjima and all available outfielders as above average- good with several fly ball pitchers in a large ballpark. The infield is up and down, but the players alternate, so there is not a strong and a weak side. Moreover, scouts like Yuniesky Betancourt much more than Dial, so the left side is arguably one of the best in the AL. Having Broussard to spell Sexson may make both of them slightly better. Neither will be a star in any system, though, and Jose Lopez is going to be responsible for most of the right side of the field. Due to his groundball tendencies, Felix will rely more on his infield than most of the rest of the staff, though it should not hold anyone back as a unit. With Ichiro’s shift as the biggest change, there is no reason to suspect huge difference on the defense in any way, maybe a few runs difference between last year’s centerfielders and this year’s rightfielders- not a full game one way or another.

I like the rotation a lot more than last year’s. I like the bullpen a lot less. I think the rotation has improved relatively more, and I think the defense is not substantially different. The 792 runs from last year will almost certainly be less, to the tune of about 745 total runs (mostly saved by Felix).

A run differential of 770-745 projects to a .516 winning percentage and about 84 wins. Since the AL West may be among baseball’s worst next year- Oakland and Anaheim have major offensive problems, SLG in Oakland and OBP in LA; Texas still needs pitching- 84 wins seems within reach of the division title. At very least, keeping up that pace until the trade deadline will make it worthwhile to fill the bullpen holes, or add a bat if Vidro is as bad as projected. With some payroll flexibility coming across the Pacific, I’ll call them a sleeper contender, and I may even soften my line on Bill Bavasi.