Here's my problem with it, thought it may still be worth getting AG regardless, especially if you don't think he's past his peak (or that a move to the Safe will hurt him... IIRC Taro mentioned that he's really an OPPO hitter). Getting AG really means dropping two of the following (I'm assuming that Smoak goes to Boston in the deal):
Carp, Montero, Zunino, Jaso
Is losing two of those guys (and the other spects, and taking on Beckett, and removing all payroll flexibility in the offseason) really worth the delta between AG and the best player in that list?
It also means that you have to lock up the DH role for sure every night just to play AG and two of those guys, o/w one of those three players will have to sit. This basically precludes signing someone like Hamilton that will need frequent resting.
It also looks like we'd need to block out a SP slot for Beckett for three years, who may or may not be done.
And we'd have to send in real prospects, while also bailing out a perennial contender for the playoffs. With the expanded wildcard, the distinction between trading within and without of your division has shrunk considerably, and effectively, trading with Boston in a way that improves their team, is equivalent to trading with Oakland or Texas.
If the moves put you over the top, then you don't care of course, but it's a pretty big dice roll. There's a reason Boston wants to move those guys.
I can't really say that the price of getting AG has really decreased in the last 18 months... it may actually have increased substantially.
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Q. How confident would you be that Gonzalez' first half was a hiccup?
A. Not all that confident.
Among his first ten b-ref.com comps are Kent Hrbek, Mo Vaughn, Will Clark, and Justin Morneau. Clark and Morneau were accused of being the best players in baseball, pretty much, during their (very short) peaks.
Also, his HR's are real short this year, as are his fly balls + home runs.
Also, he's never had a real quick bat launch; he's a pitch-recognition guy with a smooth, Olerud-style swing. He's an old-player skill guy.
Also, his BB rate is trending down over the last four years; it's not just down this year. It's gone from 17% to 13% to 10% to 6%.
Also, his numbers aren't down - not at all - because of luck stats (BABIP, HR/F etc) to any degree whatsoever.
Also, looking at his 120-130 hitting indexes from ages 24-26, his 150's from ages 27-29, and his 130 again now, it's all too easy to imagine the 150's as a three-year prime.
Also, he doesn't look like he's mailing it in, to me. He looks like he's doing his best.
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Q. Ouch. So what's the best reason to think that he's still great?
A. Every single one* of his component skills is consistent with the idea that he's mailing it in. For instance, look at his swings on balls outside the zone:
| Year | Swings on pitches Outside Zone (OOZ) |
| ML Average | 30% |
| AGone, 2009 | 23% |
| AGone, 2010 | 32% |
| AGone, 2011 | 35% |
| AGone, 2012 | 37% |
On sucker pitches, he's gone from swinging 25% less often than average, to swinging 25% more often than average. Also, he's making huge and life-sucking contact on those sucker pitches; his contact rate is 77% this year, compared to 66% league average. You remember Ichiro whaling away at everything, and topping bad pitches weakly. You have noticed Ichiro, now that he's into the ballgames, ripping away at a full-blown .302/.323/.469 in New York. And AGone isn't 38 years old; he's 30.
Since July 24, Gonzalez is hitting .350/.400/.650 with an 8:11 EYE, which EYE is up to his 2010 and 2011 standards.
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Q. How would you decide?
A. I think this one would be a tools-scout call. Send guys who know Gonzalez like the backs of their hands, tell them you need a thumbs up thumbs down or I dunno ... if it's I dunno, pass-a-deena....
The saber markers are pointing kind of down, but it's impossible to tell. He has been a great player and he's only 30.
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Q. Does Gonzalez provide value in excess of the 6 x $21M owed him?
A. Is Felix going to provide value over his next contract? Do you care?
We wish it were as simple as, "$5M x WAR, minus yearly salary, equals desirability as a player." If that were true, you'd trade a $25M Felix for any Kyle Seager available, correct?
The fatal logical fail occurred when sabermetricians equated these two things:
- The industry average dollar per win paid =
- The correct payment of dollar per win in every specific case
Suppose that over the last 1,000 tournament games, Illinois Avenue has been traded for, on average, $302. Does that mean that in your game, tonight, the "correct" trade figure for Illinois is $302? Of course not. You might pay $900 in your game, and win the game, because the red monopoly occurs at a different time of the game (when you have eight turns before anyone else will get a monopoly).
Sabermetricians have made one of their most crushing mistakes here, in propagandizing the idea that the previous average dollar paid will now be decreed the correct dollar paid next time. You can tell us the average paid in the past. Good on you. Now stop snorting at people who pay less, or more, because the context is unique.
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Q. Like what is different about the M's context?
A. Like they can't get anybody to come here.
If the Mariners had their choice of 18 franchise free agents, two each at every position, then fine. Last winter they had their choice of exactly one no, they begged that one player to come here and he said no.
Throw out the dogma that says $5M per free agent win is the "correct" amount to pay. That were true if the shelves were stocked and the cash registers accepting debit cards. They aren't, and they're not. Your team, here in Seattle, does not have the ability to convert $25M into 5-WAR players at positions of its choosing.
Not that AGone projects to less than 4 WAR, of course.
..............
Many other things are variable about context. "Replacement Level" is different in Seattle now than it was four years ago. The payroll can be floated up or down; what if Adrian Gonzalez' salary is $21M, but the committee expands payroll by $10M for him?
We're not saying you don't watch your spending. We're saying life is too complicated to get dogmatic with simplistic formulas.
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Q. How would you get your bearings on whether AGone is worth his salary?
A. Well, the M's supposedly just offered Prince Fielder 8 x $23M, 8 years for 170 or 180 million. One thing about Gonzalez: six years (the amount left on his contract) is a relatively short contract for players like him. You'd owe him about 2/3 of what you'd have owed Prince. What would Fielder have said to 6/$122? How smiles would you be if he'd taken that?
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Q. Are you saying that he is worth it - taking into account Mike Carp, and the Zunino/Montero situation, and all the rest of it?
A. Not necessarily. But let's stipulate for a second that Gonzalez is going to have a great career -- that he is going to hit .300/.400/.500, in Safeco, for the next six years, with Gold Glove defense.
It's like a $260 roto budget. You've got to spend your money on something. You pile up those club-controls players, those cheap young guys, SO THAT you can afford one extra superstar. You might have noticed that the Angels and Rangers buy superstars, as do the Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers.
One thing SSI absolutely rejects: the idea that it would be super cool to hand the committee back a $60M budget and say hey look! We won 81 games and saved you $20M! Have you seen the price of a Pepsi in Safeco? I'm all for the Mariners fielding star players, like the Angels and Rangers do.
The right paradigm: which stars are you going to commit to? Not, are you going to unilaterally declare a knife fight in the middle of a rifle range. In the Stars & Scrubs paradigm that grants you roster agility, and that is used by all contending AL teams, t's not whether you're going to hand out $20M contracts. It's who do you give them to.
Last winter, we were hoping Prince Fielder would take our money. He snuffed us, and Zduriencik replied, "We're all excited that this ownership has (now) committed the resources..."
Is the $/WAR ratio a shade the better, a shade the worse? That's the wrong question. The payroll flexes anyway. Is AGone the $20M+ hitter you want, among the players available to you? That is the right question.
Comments
I agree. Spend the money at 3B, or a corner outfield position, if at all possible. We need 1B to leverage off the very best talent currently on the roster.
Doc,
Again props for your excellent blog - I read it before all the other Mariners blogs now. My question/point on AGon is that I think the Mariners can't decide how much they really want AGon until they reach a decision on Montero at 1B. Assuming that Zunino is the primary catcher by mid 2014 and we still have Jaso, is Montero a DH only ---- or does the Mariners brass see Montero as an every-day 1B? Eric Wedge has stated that they are working Montero out at 1B but they not yet ready to play him there in games. If they project Montero as the every-day 1B by mid 2014, then I would think that the M's should target on outfielder for their big free agent / trade target expenditure. Does anybody have any information on the M's timetable to actually play Montero at first and/or how he has looked in his workouts there?
And Jaso is only under club control for 3 more years anyway. And Beckett is only 2 years, unless I'm mis-remembering his contract. He's got 2013 and 2014 under his current deal and then he's done.
So you're basically building a 2-stage rocket - one stage for the 2 remaining Felix years (A-Gone/Beckett/Felix/Jaso/Ryan) and the next for what comes after (keep A-Gone, replace Jaso with Zunino, Beckett with Walker, Ryan with Miller perhaps, get the first arb years of most of the kids). If Felix signs up for Stage 2, I'm thrilled - but either way I'd like to maximize my shot at the ring the next coupla years. If we're serious about not trading him then we might as well try to win with him. We dropped payroll this year again and have plenty of money to spend the next couple of years with big-ticket players coming off the books. We could afford this, and our kids don't get expensive until Beckett's off the books anyway.
If we fail to compete the next two years we're not totally out of luck. We could fire-sale the Jaso/Ryan/Beckett crew in 2014 and decide if we want to take a package for 3 months of Felix (assuming we haven't extended him by then).
Would taking on Gonzalez and Beckett help Boston? Only if they spend their money well. The Mets and Cubs have plenty of payroll, but it's not helping them. Freeing Boston up to add another Crawford doesn't hurt us at all. And honestly, at the end of the day I don't care what other people do - I care what we do.
I couldn't believe the "maybe we can compete in 2018-2020" crowd that came out of the woodwork conceding the AL West fight to the Angels and Rangers for the next 6 years after their offseason moves. Hey guys - where's LAAAAAA at in the standings? The As of all people conceded nothing and are currently in playoff position.
Felix is ready for a playoff push. The fans are REALLY ready for it. The offseason FA pool is...shallow. We'll have to make our mark in the trade market, and we can pay for these upgrades with cash instead of prospects, leaving us our entire next wave of talent basically intact (except for one or two pieces which would be duplicated by others). We don't have to worry about A-Gone leaving in a year, we DO get to kick an aging Beckett off the team in a couple of seasons if he can't perform, and we leave spots for the kids both around the diamond and on the staff.
The only real downside is if Gonzalez pulls a Smoak and Beckett's arm explodes. Felix could have an offseason snowmobiling accident too. There are downsides in sports. If Beckett's arm explodes then Hultzen, Erasmo, Beavan, Maurer, Walker, Paxton or Wilhelmsen need to step into the rotation and contribute. There ARE backup plans.
Gonzo not hitting would be the catastrophe, but how is Gonzo being bad at $20 mil worse than Smoak being bad at $2 mil? It's not like we were using the extra payroll for anything anyway. And who here thinks we're not getting far more out of Adrian than we did out of Smoak?
Our 1B position this year has given us a .203/.270/.338 line. Last year? .253/.324/.436. 2010? .224/.293/.357.
This is Adrian's worst year since 2005 and he's hitting .300/.343/.469. His career average is .294/.372/.509 in a HUGE park. If you believe he's done and he's just gonna hit like David Segui from now on, with similar Gold Glove defense, okay...
But can some one tell me again how horrible that would be? THAT's the ultimate downside of this move, that we add David Segui and that Taijuan Walker needs to perform well after Beckett goes down?
Where do I sign up?
~G
If you go get Gonzo now...that forces Carp off the team along with the departing Smoak (so you've foresaken all upside from your current 1B spects), and guarantees that Liddi never has a role in Seattle. And it takes away your options for moving Montero off of C when Zunino is ready. And it costs ABs from our best hitter (Jaso). And it prevents us from being able to afford a marquee starting pitcher (the kind of free agent we CAN get!) to bolster our rotation and take the pressure off the kids. And...even if I thoguht AGon was going to rebound some...he's not the prime player he was at one time and he's only likely to get worse with time. I just don't think that's a good play...the timing is lousy. I'd rather see us splurge and go after a waived aging power hitting outfielder.
The Rays burned a lot of eligibility. So I don't see a lot of crossover between Zunino and Jaso unless Mike forces his way up next year. You could leave him in AA next year, AAA the year after and then trade Jaso's last year before FA to someone and bring up Zunino. Unless you intend to pay 32 year old Jaso a ton of money to be a platoon catcher, which I don't plan to do.
Now maybe Jaso hits like this again next year, and you simply cannot do without him. AND Zunino keeps up his Clubber Lang impression, AND Montero hits well enough to be a top-flight first baseman AND we signed A-Gone. How would we solve that?
Man would I love to have THAT problem. Can we please have that problem?
~G
It means we passed.
Bring on the Casey Kotchman era at 1B again. Woo!
~G
As usual, G, very convincing. Yeah, if you think AG will be AG and Beckett is at least servicible it's basically a no brainer. Even in a bad caes scenario as you point out the risk isn't too bad, though in that case the delta between AG and the best player out of: Carp, Montero, Zunino, or Jaso would be pretty small and might even be unfavorable.
I guess the question really comes down to your opinion of being able to sign someone like Hamilton in the offseason. By that time, hopefully we'll be seen as an up and coming team with a bright future and someone will sign with us. But it's a dicey proposition for sure.
Wasn't he the best hitter on the 2011 club and for the last month before his injury? Seriously...can we please wait until we know what we have in talent for sure before we spend eleventy billion dollars? Just saying...I'm not losing sleep over losing A-Gon. The dude is a good hitter, and a better fielder than Carp or Smoak, but we're talking about an absolute metric ton of money and years for a guy who's thirty and declining in most SABR categories.
Well, either Montero, Jaso, Carp, or Zunino will be wearing a 1B glove shortly.
... is something I never do, under any circumstances. If you had Lou Gehrig, worth 25 runs more than any other player in the league, I probably still wouldn't do it. It's just too important to me, to have options and agility as your team reacts to dynamic circumstances throughout the year. I don't remember ever drafting a first baseman in the first ROUND of a roto draft. I want a shortstop, catcher, a Randy Johnson, etc. who leaves my roster totally agile. It's the only way you can outplay your opponents.
Paying AGone $21M in real life -- or Fielder $23M -- would be precisely the same thing as having the 1-1 roto pick and spending it on a Mark Teixeira. Enough to make a roto doc weep.
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On the other hand, suppose you were ENTERING a keeper league, 95% of players taken, and they said "you can have Adrian Gonzalez, or nobody, for your first SEVEN rounds." I guess I'd take AGone.
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As to Zunino, Montero, and Jaso specifically ...
As to a roster crunch with AGone...
(1) for a legit $20M hitter, I'd shed Carp and Smoak etc. So would Jay-Z; he was going to sign Fielder, right?
(2) The three catchers... two can actually catch, one can DH, and you've got AGone playing first. Jaso maybe plays some OF. If and when Zunino is a good AL player you've got to sort it out then - trade or whatever.
The roster config is 100% valid as a concern, but Jay-Z's paradigm is, gimme the HOF'er and I'll flush everybody else. Only with the Zunino-Montero-Jaso situation do you run into the issue of there being a real delta problem, since Zunino and Montero could feasibly hit 90% (100%?) of what AGone will.
Like G-Money sez, if you sign AGone and somehow wind up with four 140 OPS+ batters to share 3 positions, you're willing to endure the pain. :- ) But point conceded, at that point you'd be wishing you hadn't committed $100M to AGone. That is true. I don't think you can proceed on the assumption that Zunino, Montero, and Jaso will ALL THREE quickly become All-Stars. Only in that case do you "regret" having a HOF-level Gonzalez on your roster.
You'd have to decide whether your main offices are going to be in Seattle. Agree 100% Terry.
If you're on-load $120M for Gonzalez, as a preliminary step to that, you've got to first make a clear, decisive call about Montero's position. Agree.
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Somebody would have to explain to me why any catcher -- who is automatically good at short hops -- would be unable to play first base, with due practice time expended. In my day, first base in the NL was where you put all your 40-homer guys with lead feet. Nowadays it seems that the fangraphs crowd is far too "precious" about UZR at first. You've got to put your cleanup hitter somewhere, right?
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But in this scenario I thought AGone played 1B, and Montero DH'ed? Zunino 100-120 games at C if he's really Varitek, Jaso 40-60 games at C, 30 games at DH, and some in the OF ... 4 guys to make 3 positions leaves you 120 games to start with, before anybody grabs OF time.
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But yeah. I'm the original position-scarcity guy. People are asking the right Q here in my view. Do you want your $20M player to be a 1B? Maybe you don't, and maybe you don't precisely because of Zunino.
The roster can be thought of as a spiral on a cylinder, and the seasons are unwinding as we go along. Zunino, Jaso etc. don't overlap precisely. Critical point.
Personally am thankful for the guys, G, Baker, etc. who aren't signing off on the annual "compete in 2018-20" game plans. In 2018 and 2020 there will likely be more problems than there are now. Take no thought for the morrow; sufficient unto today is the evil thereof. :- ) You've got your hands full coping with 2013-14 without trying to win 2018 at the same time.
of Jaso's emergence and Zunino's little work sample there.
If somebody wanted to look at the M's talent pyramid and go, "No, I don't think we need to be blocking our 1B's and C's," that would seem fairly reasonable under these circumstances. :- ) John Jaso is looking like the next star in this league. The man can control a strike zone and, if you just joined us, he's Felix' personal catcher.
Of all the M's lotto tickets - Trayvon, Wells, Thames, Peguero, Saunders, Liddi, even Smoak - I'd put my dinero on Mike Carp over the next two years.
Seager, Ackley and Montero being special cases, but am not sure that Carp won't be more valuable than Ackley in two years' time.
Has anybody come up further in Mariner land this year than Jaso? He started the year at the far end of the Sarge's bench, picking splinters out of his backside, hoping to pinch hit once a week while he watched Olivo strike out and rack up passed balls in the name of veteran grit and goodness. Now: he has an OPS >.900, he's batting clean-up, and he's the personal favorite catcher of the best pitcher in the universe who is the single most important figure in the entire Mariners organization.
Has any body seen the absolute mega deal brewing between the Sox and Dodgers? Crawford and Punto and Gonzalez AND Beckett. I think Charington asked for a reset button and ownership gave it to him.
Ha. That...or the $60 million it will require to take on AGon, Beckett, Crawford and Punto. I can't recall a trade like this even being seriously discussed before.
A-Gone's reputation was based off of one monster season. BBs inflated by rediculous IBBs in Petco since then. Actually started declining last year. Ran a rediculous BABIP to mask the decline. No thanks to him or Beckett. Dodgers can have 'em.