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Cruz's lifetime UZR/150 in the outfield: ******* PLUS 2.5 *********
Cruz's UZR/150 the last three years: -4.5
so...he's a slightly below average fielder right now. Why is that scary?
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It's a funny thing. If, from here to the start of Spring Training, the Mariners signed nobody, then --- > the blog-o-sphere would be fine with that. If they expanded their payroll to sign Nelson Cruz, that would cause anger. Something is wrong with this picture, gentlemen.
The most-WAR-for-the $ paradigm evades this point constantly. Teams CAN and DO change their payroll caps on a whim. If you were playing $260 rotisserie, and somebody gives you an extra $30 to sign, let's say, Corey Hart, you're delighted. But not in Seattle. In Seattle we say "Hart isn't worth $30 roto. We don't want him dirtying our roster."
The choice isn't between (1) Nelson Cruz and (2) a brilliant, cost-efficient move that leaves us looking as wise as a tree full of owls. Your choice, amigo, is between (1) Nelson Cruz or (2) nothing. The Mariners will happily bank the money if Cruz does not take it.
You're not talking about land-locking $15M of payroll space for four years. The Mariners have resisted that. You're talking about a short-term deal here. It's, do you want to add Nelson Cruz or do you want to stand pat.
Cruz' lifetime per-162 stats: 32 HR, 99 RBI, league-average AVG and OBP. Bad defense in RF. (Last year, he was better.) Do you want to add a "prototype 30-homer right fielder" or do you want to give more AB's to Michael Saunders? That's the question.
Two arguments for Cruz, and six against:
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The "Soft Skills No-Hit 5 WAR Player" Principle - Inverted
The last year or two, the world has begun to catch on to the Chone Figgins Problem. In 2012, Fangraphs had an epiphany. It realized that no-hit 5 WAR players were not as good as WAR makes them look:
Here is a list of every player in the UZR era (2002-2012) that has posted a +5 WAR season while running a wRC+ below 110 ...
[List of catastrophic implosions follows]
... it’s a slippery slope down [for Bourn] if he begins to lose a step or two. There are a lot of parallels between Bourn and Carl Crawford, though Bourn has even less power and is hitting free agency at a later age, and Crawford’s recent performance is likely going to be in everyone’s memory when analyzing what kind of deal they should offer Bourn this winter.
Crawford’s not even the scariest comparison for this type of player, though. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the age 26-29 seasons of Michael Bourn and Chone Figgins ...
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It is beginning to dawn on sabertistas that --- > the LESS a player gets his (recent, short-term) WAR from the batter's box, the more of a problem the player's future is.
The inversion of this has NOT dawned on anybody. Nobody outside SSI and the game's 32 GM's. The inversion is: a player who gets ALL of his value in the batter's box is MORE valuable than WAR says he is.
It's one thing to post a 115 OPS+ in part-time play. It's another thing to be able to rake the way Nelson Cruz can.
... Look, I get it. It's neat that we can capture WAR and divide it by salary. That's a helpful stat. Problem is, that stat blots out the sun, and we can't see Nelson Cruz hit.
Zduriencik's more than aware of WAR, and WAR/$; in fact he just said, on the radio, that the Mariners have a propietary system they consider superior to WAR, and they wallow in it. But Zduriencik applies this information with discretion, and he is able to look around WAR/$ if there is a consideration such as "Left hand relievers are fighting to get to the mound against us."
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All that said, you're now TALKING about a cheap contract for Cruz.
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Roster Fit
We read somewhere that Nelson Cruz is a poor fit for the Seattle Mariners. (?!)
Three words. Left Hand Pitchers. The Mariners batted .227 against them last year, with a .293 OBP. Those stats understate the problem.
Could somebody explain to me, in one-syllable words so I can understand them, why Zduriencik's season-long agony is now a moot point?
That's exactly the idea of Cruz: that he provides a 2014 version of Morales, but hitting from the preferred side of the plate. Kendrys Morales was also a "mediocre WAR player." You'd rather have experienced the 2013 season without him on the roster?
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NEXT
Comments
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Two years and an M's option. Make it relatively cheap. I'm consistent there. There are guys I would rather get, not soft skill guys, either...but I can live with a Cruz signing within those two parameters......mostly because he does split lefties so well. He's been a Home Park hitter ( isn't every Ranger) but .260-.320-.440 still is a reasonable prediction. It could be better...but that's a pretty safe bet. ISO'ing 180 still has value.
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Will he be worse than Ibanez in the field? No? Okay. Will he be as bad as Ibanez in the field? No? Okay.
I'm not a fan of signing Cruz at the money he was initially talking about. No one is. But! On a short-term, incentive-laden, doesn't hamstring the franchise four years down the road contract? Okay by me.
Yes, I know it's a lot of one type of player, and where and how will you play them. If you have Hart in left and Cruz in right you'd want Mays in center. But against a lefty, that's when Guti should be playing, and we hope he can still be death to flying things. Better loosen up those hamstrings.
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Lets start with the easy ones... Taijuan, Paxton, Erasmo. Maurer... Do you really want them to be welcomed to MLB with an outfield of Cruz, Ackley and Hart?
2. We have right handed hitters - Hart, Guti, Zunino, Buck, and the guys who may excel - Romero, DJ, Almonte... and as people keep claiming he can hit lefties, WFB.
3. We NEED pitchers!!!! Money spent on Cruz is not money spent on pitching...
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...and Hart is the DH...not the LF. Most of the time, it's going to be Cruz/Ackley/Saunders or Morrison and Gutierrez will be available when you need defense.
6
If the team budgets $95 mil. and only spends $85 mil. what happens to the remaining money. over the course of 6 years the under budget could have accumulated and propelled a much stronger financial scheme. Why can't the remaining money be banked for future endeavors? I guess it just evaporates.
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Remember the supposed Sasaki money? The Mariners seem to have a myopic year-by-year budget mentality embedded in their DNA.
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Per the Mariners tax records and several reporters like Shannon Drayer, every dollar of profit is put back into the team... so the owners are not profiting from not spending more money...??...
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per 150 are -7.9, -3-3. and -6.5, and that's just straight UZR numbers, not taking into account any positional adjustment for RF. He will turn 34 in July, so we should reasonably expect those last 3 years to be better than his next 2. I think a reasonable projection would be in the -5 to -10 range. That's not scary so to speak, but that's comfortably in the below average category.
There is also a reasonable case to be made that some of that performance was affected by his PED use, so if he's no longer using PED's (and that is an IF), might we also expect his offensive and defensive performance to degrade faster than what normally might be expected? This may be a reach, but his 2012 season was probably
aided by his admitted PED use, which all came to light after the 2012 season in January of 2013. So he posts a slight rebound in 2012, but then in 2013 he drops back down to -6.5. If he is no longer using anything, might now -6.5 (or thereabouts) be the UPSIDE to his defensive value? What if he's -10 THIS year? To me it's a reasonable assumption, but admittedly it's all just conjecture.
So if you give me that he is in the -8 to -13 range, and you combine that with a 105-120 wRC+(which I like because it park neutralizes his Texas performance) offensive projection, then what you're getting is basically this year's Ibanez. Raul was -17 UZR last year with a 117 wRC+, so he was worse defensively, but you're talking pretty similar production.
Add on to that that the only year he has played over 130 games was that 2012 year. And I did mention that he's turning 34 and coming off a PED suspension already right ha?
And to really pile on you've got either Morrison or Hart targeted for one OF spot, Ackley and Saunders in center (which I think is a below average defensive duo in center) and Gutierrez, whose defense has clearly degraded, as your backup. If any team could use a stud defensive outfielder, it's this one. Actually it was last years team, but this one isn't that far behind. Now you want to add Cruz to that group. So some days you're gonna have Morrison Ackley Cruz, some days Cruz Saunders Hart. Hope they've got the groundballer on the mound those days.
To me it's the entire picture that starts to look scary, and this is all regardless of how much they pay him.
10
The M's ownership are staying afloat without having to commit any further capital. It's unlikely they've turned much of a profit given the decline in attendance. The main thing they avoid with the tidy annual books is ever having to invest further growth capital in the business.
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If you buy a rental house for $100,000 ... and sell it five years later for $150,000 ... your profit is $50,000. Whether you made $50 a month on rent or not is not the point. The +$50 or -$50 per month is cash flow, not profit.
I'm mystified why the entire media insists on referring to yearly cash flow as "profit." It isn't.
The Mariners' profit is in the $900,000,000 or so equity that they have accumulated. They choose not to take loans and extract the profits in cash -- paying the loans at time of sale -- as most owners do. But their profit has been immense, and is liquid through sale or equity line of credit, any time they so choose.
Clearly, there are very few sportswriters who have ever owned real estate.
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12
I was just parroting the media's pat simple answer to complex question no one wants to answer... not that I support the media's story...
I really have to start using more smiley faces...
13
It's my understanding that in the years that the M's run a surplus, they use the surplus to retire debt and make the required upgrades to Safeco.
Could they borrow more to increase payroll? Almost certainly. Should they? I'm not sure. I'm pretty conservative fiscally so a low debt ratio is fine with me. Beane has been kicking the M's behind with a much lower payroll for a long time and I think we tend to fixate on the payroll figure too much.
The As are run more like the Seahawks - focus on what a player can do and build around it, not on what he can't do and try to change him; cycle through tons of guys and don't be afraid to turnover the roster in the attempt to find the right mix. Jack is doing some of that but his success has been mixed. One reason may be that he tends to bring in a number of guys that are kind of the same - first it was the speedy defense first guys, now it's the bad defense, bad OBP, swing from the heels power hitters. That is really the argument against Cruz - the team already has guys like him in the lineup and those guys may not be well suited for Safeco.
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There actually zero evidence at all that PED users have any change in their performance after being caught. Don't get me wonr...you could turn out to be right in this case...but I'm not prepared to assume such a worst case scenario based on fear alone.
I will, however, say that Cruz is the poster-child for why you never go 3 years on a guy his age with his "old man" skills.
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Right. Though annual cash flow "profits" do matter separately from equity appreciation - as they are literal cash in the bank account that can be spent on something right away. Either way, your point stands that the yearly income statement is a minor sideshow, relative to the balance sheet side of sports ownership. Clearly as you say, the M's ownership could cash out some of the equity appreciation for a very attractive loan to invest in the team (or go buy an island). (Or they could commit more of their own capital and avoid taking on debt.) Neither of which they have apparently decided to do.
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The Mariners prioritize (1) low debt ratios, and max'ing out their equity gains, over (2) the pennant. To an absurd degree!
Apples to apples, other teams are pedal-to-the-metal, trying to deliver a product that is not embarrassing.