The Good Guys Sports Blog

People who know me probably know that I love to ask questions. I think it is the single most important way to build relationships, because questions often get people talking. I’ve come to enjoy twitter for a couple reasons. First, it’s the quickest way to learn about breaking news in the world of sports. Secondly, it is a platform to spew quick thoughts that don’t require a post, and lastly, twitter provides an opportunity to have a conversation with people you probably never could have arranged to speak with. They have to be willing to reply of course, but surprisingly a lot of sports writers do respond, especially when posed with a question.

Last night, and again today, I was able to engage Dave Cameron in a twitter conversation. I was pleased to speak with Dave because I read USS Mariner regularly and although I agree with him on some things, I find myself disagreeing often, usually because I think he gets stuck in stats world and loses site of other aspects of the game. Below is the conversation/debate we had. I should mention that Dave Cameron really knows his stuff, far more than me, and I respect his opinion.

d_a_cameron David Cameron
Jack Cust is on the bench for the sixth time in the last 10 games. I’d bet he gets released before the All-Star break.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
Fine by me. Roll your eyes but I’d rather watch Peguero than Cust looking at pitches all night. You disagree?

d_a_cameron David Cameron
The best hitters in baseball swing the least often.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
Ya but when they do swing, they make things happen. Cust has a nice OBP but no future here. Pegeruo hacks but power is precious.

d_a_cameron David Cameron
Power is only useful if it comes from a player who can actually hit.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
He can hit some, improving day by day, and his 5 HR in 30 games is a welcome sight in Seattle even if he strikes out 30%.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
Besides, lots of power hitters strike out at that same rate (i.e. Nelson Cruz) I just think watching Peguero develop and provide some pop outweighs 3 more months of Cust.

—————————————————–

d_a_cameron David Cameron
The M’s have had five players post a BB% over 10% (min 50 PA) this year – 2 have been released, 1 optioned to AAA, and 1 has been benched.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
So you’re saying M’s don’t value BB? Fine. Lhans, L-Rod, Milton, Cust are gone/benched because they hit .173, .167, .218, .214

d_a_cameron David Cameron
Not the M’s – Wedge. Also, people stopped using batting average to evaluate hitters about 20 years ago.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
Wedge doesn’t value walks, or did those players just suck? I’d say the latter. Lots of hitting stats back this claim.

d_a_cameron David Cameron
There are a lot of sucky hitters on this roster. The only ones who have gotten tossed are the high walk guys.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
M’s are 6th in AL in walks, not too worried. I know you’d prefer to see Cust play over Peguero, but of Bradley, L-Rod, Lhans, who would you have kept around?

d_a_cameron David Cameron
Was just making a point. It’s a problem that the manager thinks walks aren’t useful.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
Fair enough but Wedge has been terrific w/ this team despite your line-up & BB gripes. Sorry there’s no sabermetric to show ya.

d_a_cameron David Cameron
The point of sabermetrics is to get people to think critically. Be willing to go beyond “team winning = manager good.”

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
I just think you need balance. Sabermetrics provides in-depth, critical info, but people play this game. Wedge = people pro.

d_a_cameron David Cameron
Heading to bed, but I’d just ask you to think why you believe that. Because someone said so? That shouldn’t be good enough.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
Mike Salk has eluded to this, yes. But simply seeing Wak vs. Wedge, I see accountability, guys being called out. Refreshing.

goodguyssports Dan Scansen
Thanks for your time Dave, really do enjoy the blog and learning more about sabermetrics.

How is it possible that Franklin Gutierrez, Miguel Olivo, Jason Vargas, Brandon League, Dustin Ackley, Brendan Ryan, Jamey Wright, Adam Kennedy, Doug Fister, Aaron Laffey, David Pauley, Justin Smoak, and Michael Pineda will COMBINE to make LESS money than Jason Bay alone this year? Well, MLB contracts are a funny thing. Superstars will always be paid, and probably over-paid, but A-Rod and Pujols aren’t usually the bad contract culprits. Bad contracts are lousy players being paid like good players, good players being paid like superstars, and the worst, when lousy players are paid like superstars, which is quite a phenomenon. Any of these, in my opinion, qualifies as a bad contract.

I should mention that determining bad contracts can be easy, like in the case of Barry Zito, but sometimes it is quite subjective. For starters, some teams, including the Mariners, often are forced to over-pay for free agents, because it can be tough to lure big names to South Alaska. This has to be taken into account, and also, it’s easy to view a player’s salary for one year and call it an awful contract. For example, Torii Hunter and Ichiro are both making roughly $18,000,000 this year, and it does not appear that they will produce enough to justify that kind of dough. But you have to assess the deal in its entirety, not year by year. Both guys signed 5 year/$90 million deals back in ’08, and both guys were top 10 outfielders in the AL for the first 3 years of their deals. In the case of Ichiro, he’s played like a guy worthy of $20 million or more for the past 3 years, leading AL outfielders in batting average, 2nd in WAR, and 3rd in stolen bases. So in my mind, that kind of production is worth about $65-75 million, and I would expect him to easily produce at a clip worthy of the remaining $15-25 million due through 2012.

It isn’t an exact science, and sometimes you don’t know a bad contract until it expires, but a safe formula is to look at what a full contract pays a player, and if his production is only worthy of 50% or less of the deal, it’s a bad contract. For example, Chone Figgins will be paid $36 million from ’10-’13, and if I am to project his production, I can’t see it being worthy of even $18 million, thus it is a no good, bad, awful contract. It’s sunken cost my friends, and it sucks.

But bad contracts are a part of MLB, because the money is guaranteed, but the production is not. Teams try their darndest to avoid locking up players who don’t live up to their contract, and yet almost every team has a lousy contract, or two, or three. Everyone knows you have to pay for big time production, so you can’t hide like the Pirates and never throw money around. The key is to minimize these contract mistakes, which often effect wins and losses, because unless money is no obstacle like with the Yankees or Red Sox, it becomes difficult to cover your mistakes when a bunch of your payroll is tied up in sunken costs. This is a sticky situation the Mariners know all to well for the past 5 years—

2011: payroll: $94.62; bad contracts: $29.33 (Bradley, Figgins, Silva, Betancourt) = 31% bad $
2010: payroll: $91.14; bad contracts: $27.78 (Bradley, Figgins, Snell, Silva, Betancourt) = 30% bad $
2009: payroll: $98.9; bad contracts: $42.48 (Silva, Washburn, Batista, Johjima, Betancourt) = 43% bad $
2008: payroll: $117.66; bad contracts: $46.1 (Sexson, Washburn, Batista, Silva, Wilkerson) = 39% bad $
2007: payroll: $106.46; bad contracts: $49.83 (Sexson, Washburn, Weaver, Vidro, Batista, Ramirez) = 47% bad $

The good news going forward is that the only bad $ on the books past 2011, assuming Jack doesn’t ink someone to a bad contract, is the $18,000,000 still owed to Figgins through 2012-13. What this means is bad contracts should only eat up 10% of next years payroll, rather than 30-40% like the team has dealt with since 2007. This is a ratio the M’s can live with, and hopefully money well spent translates to contention on the field.

As for the teams whose future is littered with bad contracts, top 5, according to my subjective analysis, are the White Sox, Mets, Cubs, Angels, and Giants. We can whine about the Figgy deal all we want, but clearly things could be worse—

-Dan

About a week ago we took a look at the amount of runs the Mariners have allowed so far this season in comparison to past Mariner rotations.  This year’s rotation is on a pace that no other Mariner team has been on.

In that post I didn’t separate the rotation from the bullpen, but today we will take a closer look at just the rotation.

ERA (Earned run average) is not regarded as the most reliable stat for a number of reasons, most notably the teams fielding.  But since it’s the most well known stat for pitchers, I’ll dive into it a little bit.

The 5 Mariners starters have the following ERA’s:

• Michael Pineda – 2.30
• Felix Hernandez – 3.04
• Doug Fister – 3.24
• Erik Bedard – 3.41
• Jason Vargas 4.50

That gives the rotation a 2.76 ERA total.  There’s a couple of things that are pretty spectacular with these numbers.  First of all, the Seattle Mariners have never had all 5 starters with ERA’s under 4.00.

The 2003 rotation, which is considered by many the best, had two starters over a 4.00 ERA (Freddy Garcia –  4.51 and Gil Meche 4.59).  The 2001 Mariners, the 116 win team, were a little closer.  They had 2 starters over 4.00 (Paul Abbot – 4.25 John Halama – 4.73) but Halama only started half the season.  The 1990 team was the closest of any team, having 3 starters under 4.00 and a 4th starter with an ERA just over 4.03.  They had a variety of 5th starters and a few of them had ERA’s under 4.00.  There wasn’t enough starts by one single person to give him the label as ‘5th starter.’  That rotation had an ERA of 3.67.

Vargas had been under a 4.00 ERA until his last two starts in which he got roughed up a little bit.  I don’t think those starts are anything to worry about, I have a theory but that will be saved for another post, and I bet he’ll be back to himself soon enough.

Simply put, the Mariners’ rotations ERA is set to break a team record, and it’s not even close right now.  This rotation is almost a full run lower than the next lowest in team history.  I’m telling you, these guys are incredible.

If ERA isn’t your stat of choice, then we’ll move on to the next one.  The problem with the newer stats is that it’s harder to compare them to Mariner teams of the past.

Continue reading →

It’s been a while since we’ve posted on here, sorry.  I can’t really defend myself aside from not being able to watch many Mariner games so I’ve been stuck following them over my laptop.  That said, I intend to post more.

The Mariners are on a streak that we Washingtonians aren’t quite used to.  They’ve won 7 of their last 8 games and are only a game and a half out of first.  If it wasn’t for a bad week from Brandon League they’d be in first and a few games above .500.  For the first time in a couple of years the M’s be playing very meaningful games in the month of June (barring an absolute collapse in the next 5 days).  They’ve been winning games the way they were supposed to win games last year; with great pitching and timely hitting.

Over the course of this hot-streak (which began on April 26th) the Mariners have outscored their opponents 98-71.  That has given the Mariners a record of 16-10 over that stretch.

As you can see that’s a 26 game period and the Mariners have scored 98 runs in those 26 games.  In other words, 3.77 runs a game.  That is not very many.  To set a comparison, The Twins, considered by many to be the American League’s worst offense, have scored 3.5 runs a game during that same amount of time.  The poor Twinkies have gone 7-19 in the last 26 games while putting up only .27 runs/game less than the Mariners (or 7 runs total).

The Bronx Bombers, who may not have the best offense in the Majors this year but continually put out an outstanding offense, have gone 13-13 over the last 26 games.  But unlike the Mariners, they have scored 4.77 runs a game.  That’s a full run better than the Mariners a game (or 26 runs total).  I admit, the Yankees have gotten a little unlucky, since they’ve outscored opponents 124-106 during this stretch and still only came out with a .500 record.  With that said, the point remains that the Mariners have scored 1 run/game less than the Yankees and still have outscored their opponents by 9 runs more than them.

If you’ve read this far, congratulations.  There were far too many numbers in those paragraphs without me even getting to the point.

Clearly, the Mariners are not winning these games with offense.  You don’t need me crunching numbers to tell you that, just take a look at one of their lineup cards.  What the Mariners are doing is winning with pitching.

During this 26 game stretch the M’s have only given up 2.73 runs a game.  That’s insane.  It’s just a small sample size you say?  Fair enough, but if you count the whole season instead of just the hot streak  the M’s are still only giving up 3.73 runs/game.  That is incredible, especially considering Erik Bedard’s slow start and the bullpen collapses by Brandon League.  Every team will suffer a few blow outs and without those the numbers would be even lower.

Now, to the point of what this series is about:  Does this number show that this is the best Mariners rotation ever?  Here’s a few numbers from past rotations to compare.

2011 Mariners (Through 49 games) – 3.73 runs allowed/game
2010 Mariners – 4.31 runs allowed/game (This rotation included Felix, Fister, Vargas, and Cliff Lee for half a year.  Not too shabby.)
2009 Mariners – 4.27 runs allowed/game  (A Team that won with pitching first, much like this year.  But they don’t hold a candle to what this team is doing.)
2007 Mariners – 5.02 runs allowed/game  (A year in which the Mariners which 88-74, their best year since 2003.  This year the M’s did it with their bats (Jose Vidro is somewhere smiling).  And luck.)
2003 Mariners – 3.93 runs allowed/game  (Considered by many the best Mariners rotation ever, the ’03 Mariners used the same 5 starters all year.  They put up great numbers but are still .2 runs behind this year’s squad.  .2 runs amasses to 32.4 runs over 162 games, if you were wondering.)
2001 Mariners – 3.87 runs allowed/game  (This team set a Major League record for wins and they’re still behind by a good amount.)
1997 Mariners – 5.14 runs allowed/game  (The Mariners won their division this year.  Obviously they were more hitting oriented.)
1995 Mariners – 4.88 runs allowed/game  (The magical year.  Obviously, the same goes as 1997.)
1991 Mariners – 4.16 runs allowed/game  (The first year the Mariners were above .500 and also their lowest amount of runs until the 2001 team.)
1977 Mariners – 5.28 runs allowed/game  (The first Mariners team.)

As you can see, this team is ahead of any Mariners team in giving up runs.  If they keep the current pace of 3.73 runs/game they’d end up giving 604 runs the entire year.  Allowing less than 600 runs in a year has only happened 4 times since the steroid era began.  The teams that have accomplished this are last year’s Padres and Giants, the ’03 Dodgers, the ’02 Braves (Thank you NL West, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, and Greg Maddux).  The Braves and Phillies are on pace to easily do it this year but this feat hasn’t happened in the American League since the early ’90’s.  The Mariners have a shot at something special, and it’s not just contention.

Disclaimer:  I do realize that runs allowed has other factors involved than just the starting rotation, most notably the bullpen and defense.  Also, I should include that Safeco Field is a pitcher’s park (just like Petco and Target Field where the Mariners have had their hot streak).  But, the rotation’s ERA is much lower than the bullpen’s and that’s saying something because the bullpen has been solid.  Also, the defense has been a little below average so far in most fielding metrics.

So, there you go.  That’s some basic stats that show you just how good the Mariners rotation has been thus far and how they stack up historically.  We’ll look at some different factors in the next couple days.  For now, just enjoy what’s been the best Mariners rotation ever, so far….

Andrew