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Some of the best M's authors gave two of their favorite SSSIIIIIGGgggggggh's, they wiped their brows, and they kissed the Cruz-less ground of Safeco Field. Disaster averted, mate. Nobody handcuffed and put in prison, Seattle baseball lives to fight another day.
The blog-o-sphere has acknowledged, without much alacrity, that 1 year $8M wouldn't exactly have been as bad as being busted for driving while intoxicated. Still, much joy in Mudville: we ducked Nelson Cruz' .497 slugging percentage by the skin of our teeth.
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Tale of Two Cities, dept.
Player A and Player B, career batting lines per 162:
| Player | AVG | OBP | SLG | G | PA | 2B | R | HR | RBI | BB |
| Bone'd | .254 | .359 | .494 | 162 | 652 | 26 | 88 | 34 | 106 | 87 |
| Bash'd | .268 | .327 | .495 | 162 | 641 | 34 | 81 | 32 | 99 | 50 |
True, Nelson Cruz got to play in Arlington. But Jay Buhner got to play in the climate-controlled Kingdome ... I don't know what the "normalization" stats say and don't care (park normalization stats are about as reliable as UZR). There was never a worse place to pitch than in the Seattle Kingdome, and any pitcher who ever put on a jock will tell you as much.
Jay Buhner walked 35-40 times per season more than Nelson Cruz does. But in those 30 some extra at-bats, Nelson Cruz does get 9 additional singles and 8 additional doubles -- he goes 17-for-37 in those at bats.
Yes, you'd rather have 35 walks than 15 hits and 20 outs. But that is the TOTAL DIFFERENCE between a Seattle Mariner Hall of Famer, and a man who was going to personally bring down baseball in Seattle.
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There is one other difference between Buhner and Cruz: Jay put up a string of 155-game seasons, and therefore a string of 40-homer seasons. Jay's baseball card has a very nice-looking clump of 40's in the HR column.
But that's a James-ian axiom. Only putzes judge by bulk numbers, based on 155-game seasons. You want a real find, go for a guy who has been camouflaged by 125-game seasons.
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Caveats and Quid Pro Quo's
Dr. D will cheerfully acknowledge that GM's, as an industry, sided with the bloggers on Nelson Cruz. And then some
He would maintain, however, that GM's were not averse to paying for the Nelson Cruz that has, in fact, been hitting 5th for Texas, and getting 2 WAR per season. Dr. D would maintain that the market skittishness has been based on the fear that Nelson Cruz would decline -- that he will not, in fact, be the player that he has been.
This has not been the blog-o-sphere position, not in the main. The blog-o-sphere position, at its heart, is that you simply do not want the Nelson Cruz who played the last four seasons in Texas. The difference is key.
Still, the (other) blogs have to take the baby with the bathwater. Jack Zduriencik has obviously proven his savvy - he wouldn't even go to two years on Nelson Cruz. There, that must be a genius.
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Poster Child for the Avant Garde
Dan Quayle, about one generation hence, was a cultural icon for low IQ in high-ranking politicians. After he was anointed, he made One Big Blunder that gave them their opening. He referee'd a spelling bee, and a child spelled POTATO correctly, and Quayle (a college graduate) corrected the child: it's POTATOE, said Dan.
That was the opening they needed. If they'd had any doubts about their prejudices against right-wing politicians, surely this incident removed them. "Quayle" and "potatoe" return 122,000 hits on Google in 0.16 seconds.
With Nelson Cruz, the sabertistas' dogma per UZR and WAR had (for once!) had a firm traction in reality. Cruz really does play terrible defense, and it really does suck a lot of the value out of his offensive contribution.
Seeing their ideas finally vindicated, as it were, Cruz has become a pawn in a much larger context. Is an RBI man worth anything or is he not? He's not! See? Didn't we tell ya?
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That was the emotional undercurrent, it says here, that had people terrified about a 2 x $8M deal for a man packing a .500 career slugging percentage. Here was an RBI man who, in reality, was overrated, and our aversion to having him on our team knew no bounds. The aversion was out of all proportion to Cruz' actual shortcomings, but then again, Cruz was the personification of every "Bavasi the Moron" self-inflicted wound ever suffered.
Granted, on the surface, the local blog-o-sphere was more nuanced about Cruz. It grudgingly conceded that it would be okay to pay for, say, 1 or 1.5 WAR on him. They qualify their concerns reasonably, by (accurately) pointing out that Cruz comparables age badly. These concerns have traction. We don't want to paint them with too broad a brush.
But though they win a battle on Cruz, the war itself is doomed to defeat. The fact is, GM's will pay more for "hard WAR" earned in the batter's box than for "soft WAR" amassed through dubious UZR achievements, position scarcity, and so forth. Given two 3 WAR players, GM's will take the proven 90-RBI man every time.
Boy, we dodged a bullet there, didn't we. Jay Buhner minus 30 walks might be here!, Quick, somebody blow my head off!
We got a little silly on this one. Cruz on a 1-year deal in Baltimore, he'll probably hit 30 homers and drive in 100 runs. Which Fangraphs will call irrelevant, of course. Rotisserie owners will probably draft him about #20 among AL outfielders, far ahead of Dustin Ackley.
No Mariner outfielder has driven in even 75 runs in many years, by the way, not since Raul Ibanez the previous time he was here. In 2011, Miguel Olivo was the only Mariner with 60 RBI.
You don't see a lot of contenders who have no outfielders who can hit.
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Kendrys Morales
SSI has never taken seriously the idea that Morales would hold out until June. Why would he? His salary would wind up pro-rated, anyway. The only person served would be Scott Boras, proving to GM's that he won't give in next time.
Exactly how many Morales-level players have there actually been who did this?!
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Though I'm a Kendrys fan, I'm cooling off to the idea of his absorbing the Seattle DH slot. It's hard to imagine Corey Hart lasting very long in right field, and the Mariners do in fact need to get more right-handed.
Sure, if you could get Hart every day in RF ...
Then that would be great. Four legit MOTO guys and then all the kids. Cool. But I don't like Hart's chances, do you?
Should the Mariners let Morales go, and Hart get injured, there is still Logan Morrison, the loser of the Saunders/Almonte battle, Stefen Romero, and ... the loser of the Miller/Franklin battle who could profitably take at-bats.
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Could you win your next pennant with Kendrys Morales? Not easy to see. Could you win it with Almonte, or Romero, or Franklin? Now we're cookin' with peanut oil.
Bloggers, transfixed by their WAR columns, continue to far underestimate the value of a legitimate MLB(TM) middle-of-the-order hitter (as Cruz, Hart, and Morales in fact are).
But it's high time to figure out who you're going to win your next pennant with. Sailing by that compass, Nelson Cruz and Kendrys Morales are gone and that's just fine. They're not worth another thought.
That's my opinion I could be wrong,
Dr D
When you throw Morrison and Smoak in the M's lineup, the best you might count on is a platoon bat in Smoak. Neither is a legit corner IF/DH/MOTO bat. If we re-sign Morales, now he's a MOTO bat. If Hart needs some time away from the OF, he can complement 1B/DH time with Morales. Smoak and Morrison can ride the pine if they are still on the roster.
All through the Cruz sniffing out, I said that there was going to be a price where you couldn't say no. I thought that was in the 2X$10M range. For 1X$8M, he was essentially free. I'm no great Cruz fan (and have said so), but Baltimore got a great buy. If we do nothing else to our MOTO it was a mistake to let him go at that price. If we have a plan to add a RH bat (and if we actually do add one) then I shall not quibble.
And we're sure reading/hearing lots about how good Hart looks in the field. Cm'on. We hired the guy to hit. Let's not roll his reconstructed knees (plural, mind you) out there to get banged up. Let him swing for the fences and then go back and get on the exercise bike.
BTW, Doc, I like the fact that your list above has Almonte at the top, rather than Ackley.
I may well be wrong, but I'm higher on Almonte than I am on Ackley.
Cruz has spent a couple years as Beltre's teammate. I'll guess the two spoke quite a bit about what Safeco can do to a slugger's paycheck. Unless Nelson was getting a sweet long term deal, no way was he gonna sign a one year "prove myself" contract here.
Good point Rick
Rick and Moe... there was a lot of talk saying exactly that... but who knows if just agent posturing... the results do seem to confirm it though.
McClendon's proclamation that Hart would ideally spend 145 games in right field was a little bit disheartening. Hart said on the Hot Stove League the other month that the reason that he chose Seattle over Milwaukee was because of the DH slot. He said that he has worked through injuries his entire career in the outfield, and the American league was to be a career extending move, or something to that effect. The podcast can be found here. If Hart knows his legs better than anyone, and he is throwing up some warning signs, that he only expects to play a few token games out there, then the Mariners should proceed with extreme caution. The reasons, which are known to all, but bear repeating are:
Hart is our only star level right handed bat;
There is no one comparable that needs the DH slot;
Seattle managed to maim Morse last year, and doesn't need a label of ruining free agents' careers;
McClendon came from the coaching staff that moved Miggy Cabrera to the hot corner, and nearly put out what is arguably the most valuable eyeball in the world. Good thing he was wearing his trademark Oakleys. It looks like the three gouges are from the sunglasses, and not the ball; his shades distributed the impact away from his eye. Detroit had to get rid of Prince Fielder to keep this situation from repeating.
Ditto, Mo. I'm fine with hoping that Hart's knees will enable him to play every day in the OF but I think they would be foolish to plan on it. I fear a repeat of the Morse fiasco.