just benching/batting Figgins 9th. As easy as it would be to just call it a sunk cost, "Guess we're working with 85 mil a year instead of 95 for a while," I don't think you can do that. It's the same thing as what was discussed when people wanted to DFA Cust at the end of April, if you sign guys to contracts and let them loose when things don't go as a dream scenario (or in this case a couple inches from nightmare), then doesn't that make other free agents a bit gunshy about signing with Seattle? We already had the bad reputation from a few years ago after "letting" 3 straight super stars walk, Seattle has the most travel time of any team, it's not the most beloved city in the country any way, there's been several real bad seasons and the stadium has a reputation for punishing offensive numbers so forget about that shot at getting one last good contract at the end of this one (unless you can pull an Adrian Beltre [side note: I did predict that one]).
What happens when you add to that, "They'll bench you if you for rookies and nobody's if your numbers slouch in the doom stadium." It's not quite as simple as that, but it would probably play that way for players, just like when Carlos Guillen left saying how the Mariners didn't want to pay for talent when it got expensive. It ignored the facts of why 2 of the big 3 left, but it held up and saw Bavasi paying more than he should have for Sexson and a premium price for Beltre.
Q. Are the M's in a position to drop Figgins out of the #2 yet?
A. Very surprised to see that Figgins debates are already heating up around the 'net.
I hadn't guessed that people would be suggesting the Nuclear Option on Figgins. That's not a viable option, though SSI wishes it were.
SSI's main $0.02 at this point is that the real-life problem is much more political than it is sabermetric. (And if it were sabermetric, it wouldn't have such a clear solution that we needed to re-ignite the sneerfests in the M's blog-o-sphere. We were just now getting past those.)
Figgins is owed a lot of money, and Zduriencik has to let Figgins stay in the clubhouse whatever Figgins does. Capt Jack has a huge longterm problemo on his hands, and I don't see the solution.
The dream scenario, in the real world, Yogi .... that Figgins would accept the #9 spot and 450 AB's around the diamond, Mark McLemore style. You are not going to do any better than that.
.
Q. Would Figgins stand for this?
A. The Figgins-hits-#2 decision is, it says here, essentially Jack Zduriencik's. And the game-within-a-game here might be off-the-field ... it's about Chone Figgins' reaction after the ballgame is over. Especially if they lose and LRod didn't hit two doubles.
Very possibly, Figgins no longer has the political capital to stage the kind of shipwide mutiny that he enabled last year. But who knows? I'd love to see the message that in 2011, Figgins' Entitled Veteran Comfort Zone will be subjugated to the team's need to win.
A lot of media pressure has been brought to bear on Wedge here. He can pretend he doesn't care, which we admire. But you get to the point where every fresh 0-for-5 gives you a "twisting in the wind" vibe.
Note carefully that Eric Wedge runs a test flag up the pole - he drops Figgins out of number two with a "it's just one game" qualifier. This allows Wedge to retreat if the pushback is not manageable.
I hope the test flag works out well for him.
..........
I was fascinated to see Eric Wedge comment that "he gets it." That sounds like "he's starting to accept that he's feeb and doesn't get to make the demands he did when he was a star."
Hope so.
.
Q. How necessary to drop Figgins out of #2?
A. How necessary is it, not to bat your pitcher #2 in National League games? Does it matter much, or is it one of those things that is sort of negotiable?
Figgins' OPS+ is 50 -- and that's in Safeco. The man has a.242 OBP (!!) and his slugging (.273) is not compensating.
Remember, in 77% of all games, the #2 batter is going to get a full extra at-bat, compared to the #9. Are you going to bat your pitcher #2? Why not? What would be the downside to doing so?
.
Q. Does SSI project Figgins to "regress" toward league-average stats?
A. How do you know that Safeco hasn't simply destroyed him as an offensive player?
And don't give an oversimplified answer based on home-road splits. Did you project Adrian Beltre correctly in Fenway in 2010?
If Figgins were a Strat-O-Matic card, then sure. You'd just expect better results starting next game. He is not a Strat-O-Matic card. Chone Figgins just flat looks terrible at the plate. By a strange coincidence, he has looked terrible at the plate since the time he became a Seattle Mariner. As did Adrian Beltre and many other hitters.
.........
Like James says, stats are backwards-looking. We are all guessing when we project the future. The future is not where our dogma belongs.
I can't see Figgins getting it back. Not here. That's not a sneering, dogmatic "best information available" opinion: it's just my prediction.
How is Chone Figgins going to get better? Suppose his BABIP goes up a little -- those 70-mph punch bunts start falling in Safeco -- and his OBP goes up to .300. So what?
.
Q. Is Kennedy way over his head this year at the plate?
A. He certainly isn't. His lefty topspin swing is a fit for Safeco, like Ibanez' was.
People tried to "capture" Michael Pineda's and Erik Bedard's impacts by saying, well, that's 4 WAR a season if you're lucky. Um, no. It was the difference between having a season, or not.
If Kennedy were an okay 3B, that would be the difference between having a fine ballplayer at third, or a terrible player at third -- and in this offense, having a 3rd competent hitter may be Critical Mass for turning the offense around.
.
Q. Can Adam Kennedy play 3B?
A. The Mariners don't seem at all interested in the idea.
SSI's guess is that Kennedy would be mediocre / average at 3B. But it seems to be a moot point. Probably because Figgins is a given at 3B, and LRod plays 3B, and LRod isn't playing enough anyway.
Leaving us with the question: how do the M's keep their 3rd-best hitter in the lineup, once Ackley's here?
.
Q. Where is SSI on the "sunk cost" semantics?
A. The semantics are debatable.
If you don't get it, use the poker expert's paradigm: you don't throw good money after bad.
Human beings have a tendency to continue unwise endeavors once an investment has been made in them. Wow, I shouldn't a spent $3,000 on that $800 jalopy... now it needs a $2,000 tranny, guess I have to spend it now, right?
.
But a poker pro folds out of a pot:
- No matter how much he's put into it .... and he folds out,
- The moment it's to his advantage to do so
A poker pro might bet $10,000 into a pot, but if the very next card and bet gives him a bad ROI, he blows off the "investment" in 2 seconds.
It doesn't matter whether your $45M to Figgins was paid on the day of signing, or over a 5-year period. That $45M was bet into the pot.
If you are keeping Chone Figgins on the 25-man roster because he has a big contract, you're violating Game Theory and you're hurting yourself. (That's not to say the M's should bench Chone Figgins.)
Per Game Theory, you would play LRod, Figgins, and Kennedy precisely as if they were all making $425,000 per year (and we know who would play in that scenario).
As we all know, the real baseball world does not (and cannot) work that way.
.
Q. Maybe Figgins will play better and they'll be able to trade him for part of his salary?
A. Good luck with that.
It's what they'll try to do. When's the last time you saw it happen? Gimme a name.
.
Q. In the real world, the base case being what?
A. If the M's could shed Cust, then:
- Kennedy shares DH with Carp and Mike Wilson, and
- Kennedy shares 2B with Ackley, and
- with Jack Wilson gone, LRod backs up at SS and 3B
But assuming Cust stays, you'll have to tell me. Kennedy is one of three players who can hit, and your young slugger is replacing him. Bad deal.
You can see why it would be worth some contortions to get Kennedy in there at 3B.
...........
I guess, with Cust here, you give Kennedy two games a week at DH and two games a week at 2B. Shame to jobshare your few productive hitters, but oh well.
.
My $0.02,
Dr D
.
Comments
In two weeks if we draft Rendon, then Figgins should be here through about the trade deadline next year. At that point we'll talk about the super prospect coming up next year once we know how fast he's adjusting to pro ball, and we give Figgins the option of being that super-sub or moving on.
Personally, I think we try to trade him then for a wet rag and some castor oil. No way do we want that 5th year to vest and subbing him so he can't get the option to vest is a great way to have a Chone Sulk Fest for the whole season.
No sense going through that.
If we DON'T add Rendon (or trade for Lonnie Chisenhall or something) then we've got a bigger problem in dropping Figgins. You can get buy-in when one of the best prospects in the game is trying to come up and be a plus hitter, especially when the vet is hitting like an anorexic girl-scout. Omar Vizquel was good and nobody batted much of an eye when we traded him with A-Rod coming up. Chone is no Omar.
Swapping Figgins for an L-Rod type is not only a tougher sell to players but harder to justify eating that sunk cost for to your penny-pinching bosses as well.
I prefer option A.
~G
I suppose that Z and Wedge could say, "Heck, we're in the hunt right now with Figgins! He'll warm up a bit, so let's stay with him."
They could say that. It would be silly....but they could. The issue is simply that we have 3 IF's (LRod, Kennedy, Ackley) who are better than Figgins right now.
I suppose Wedge could force the issue by giving LRod 2 starts at third each week AND batting Figgins 9th when he does play. But even when Figgins goes all pout-ville on you, you still just bench him. Heck, why not just do it in the first place.
Ironically, this whole issue comes down to two Z bad decisions. Firstly, he signed Figgins to an expensive long-term contract (based on an outlier year) and then covered his arse when Wakamatsu tried to do the right thing. Z is married to Figgins, in a baseball sense. This situation was WAY predictable, and many of us did just that. This past winter Z should have dumped Figgins for a broken down Dodge Dart or Kevin Kouzmanoff, whichever offer came first. Kouz is way cruddy this seaon but is actually better than Figgins. And at least you could bench/DFA Kouz. GM's are supposed to make decisions that benefit the team. There is no reasonable scenario that plays Figgins a lot that benefits this team, minus the minor miracle of Figgins hitting .280 from here on out. Were the M's destined for no better than 70 wins then you might play Figgins and pray you could unload him next winter. But even that would be a decision that blocks players that might help in the future. Currently, Figgins is hurting a team in the thick of a playoff race.
Figgins' performance this year is historically bad for a 3B. If you set the parameters at .220-.250-.300, which are all better numbers than Figgins currently has, and search for comparable 400 PA 3B since 1970, you will find exactly ONE. Pedro Feliz, for the '10 Astros & Cards, went .218-.240-.293. That's it. One "fulltime" 3B in the last 40 years has performed as badly as Figgins projects. No 3B has hacked away with those numbers for 500 PA's, a figure Figgins is easily on pace to better.
Even if you give Figgins year end numbers of .240-.300-.300 (which means he gets hot), you still find only 8 other guys (excluding Feliz) who performed that badly since '70. That list include such names as Jerry Kinney, Jerry Royster, Coco Laboy and Mike Pagliarulo. Brooks Robinson, '75, was actually the best player on that list, but he was still an A+ fielder. He hit .218 in 550 PA's.
Figgins isn't just bad right now, his incredibly bad for a full time 3B.
This team isn't going to get much offense from CF this year and you have a defense first SS and C. You can say that your DH is OPS+ing 100, but is is misleading, as well.
There is a solution. It involves Ackley at 2B, Kennedy at 3B (Holy snot, Pete Rose played 3B for back to back WS title teams...You're telling me Kennedy can't play the position) and Figgins watching a bunch.
Even if Figgins hit .280 the rest of the year, it only marginally improves his value with other MLB GM's.
He's toast. Continuing to pencil him in just to prove it is incredibly addle-brained.
Bench him.
You've got relationships with the players in other cities, relationships with the 25 guys in the locker room now, and Zduriencik's own relationships with the other suits.
The Mariners *married* Chone Figgins, as Don Wakamatsu found out. Wedge has some fancy steppin' to do here.
Although in the bad old Grover days, the worst sell of all was a Lopez vs. Boone situation...
This time around, Jack Wilson appears to be going down without a fight to the Ackley Imperative, so ya...
Z is married to Figgins, in a baseball sense.
Beat me to the punch dude...
You say you predicted the albatross at the time? What was your thinking?
... Lesson learned, for me anyway, is be V-E-R-Y careful about soft 4.0, 5.0 WAR players based on outlier years, dazzling UZR and "overachiever" offense...
He is being paid for an outlier BABIP ('07) and # of walks ('09) that was 60% above anything he had done before. That's why his "decline" was predictable.
Figgins will improve some this year because his BABIP is outlier low. But the Chone Figgins some thought we got doesn't exist anymore.
Figgins is not worth his contract as a starter. He is most valuable as a 3 position utility guy.
We could just bunch it with Cust and send him on his way then DH Kennedy quasi-fulltime. But that creates only a marginal improvement compared to a .275-.340-.400 Ackley at 2B and batting 2nd. And those are pretty conservative numbers.
A solution is for the M's to swallow 1/2 of Figgins salary each yar and package him as an affordable IF. Brave move, that.
BTW, I must admit, as much as I'm fascinated by Peguero's raw power, I would LOVE to see M. Wilson get some LF AB's against RHP. Maybe three-four games in a row AB's.
Go team.
A rocky marriage is the Z-Figgy relationship. I suspect we will see a messy divorce. Four years of of an aging Figgy at $9 mil? Not pretty, not pretty.
Ichiro will correct but Figgins is toast? Cameron was right, Figgins is swinging at too many bad pitches. His walk rate this season is half of what it was last season. Historically bad? He's -.5 WAR according to Fangraphs, but B-Ref has him at 0.0. Last season, playing at perhaps his least comfortable position, he managed 1.1.
Figgins can give you 2.0 WAR. He's signed for what, 8 mil a year? What do you pay for WAR these days on the market? About $4 mil. If this is Z's albatross, it's a pretty minor one.
Don't bury Chone too early. There is a very good chance he'll adjust. I've seen him sting the ball, even during this lousy streak of his. He plays a very good defense at 3rd. Yeah, he needs to be dropped in the order. He needs to get back to his selectiveness at the bat. I doubt pitchers ever pitched him carefully because they feared his ability to drive the ball. Figgins was the guy you feared on the basepaths. So long as he still has legs and keeps his eye, he'll find a way to get on base. Over-aggressiveness, he's hopefully learning, is not the way.
Last year he was a 1 WAR player. So he was $5M overpaid. This year, even back at a "natural" position, he's a -0.5 WAR guy. Meaning he's about a gazillion $ overpaid. Any WAR he had in '09 was based on an unsustainable level of walks (almost 60% above anything he had done before).
Figgins is seeing a steadily declining diet of FB's and more sliders. Evidence is he is swinging at more pitches out of the zone. There's a hole in his hitting ability somewhere that is being exploited. The question to ask is whether Figgins is the player of the 2nd half of last season or the player of the first half of both '10 & '11?
Right now he is a historically bad fulltime 3B. He will improve some....but he may just then be simply pretty bad.
If he shows some life at the plate then play him. Right now he is atrocious there. It makes no sense to play the player that he currently is. Last year we were already down and out. Not so today. Sit him, use him sparingly, and if he shows life then increase his AB's. That is exactly the right prescription for a utility-type player. We did it with Kennedy. Should happen with Figgins.
If Figgins is really a 2 WAR (+) player, then there should be GM's who would happily eat up his current salary. We saw how many were knocking at the M's door this winter.
I think he's done (as a fulltime + 3B). I think baseball knows it.
Tough situation, because the likely chosen answers are so extreme. Either you bench him or play him everyday and hope he finds a game. Z created this mess. His letting it fester further is a poor decision.
I'm rooting for Chone, really. It would make us better. Not as good as an Ackley/Kennedy 2B/3B solution, however.
Truthfully, I don't think Z thought this team would contend, which would give him a year to arrive at a solution. Pineda, Bedard, Vargas, Smoak and Kennedy have changed that dynamic.
Right now (yes, it could change), everyday we play Figgins we're a bit worse than we should be. 100 games of a bit worse adds up. Batting him 2nd for those 100 games (rather than 9th) is an extra 77 (or so) PA's that he shouldn't get. 77PA's is something like nearly two games of nothing but Figgins. That's two games way too many.
If there were not inexpensive and bettter alternatives at hand it would be another thing. But there are.
This is a different season than it was 3 weeks ago. The old paradigm is out the window. A new one is needed. More than any other player, a reevaluation of Figgin's role (in the absence of a resurgence) is part of that new paradigm.
Go team.
BTW, benching Figgins this year is not necessaily the same as benching him for the next 3 years of his bloated contract.
it him until he proves he is a hitter again. If that is next Thursday, so be it. If it is next April, so be that.
Any reason Ackley couldn't play third? I mean, other than the fact that he's never done it. He was an outfielder his whole life before he got hurt. He has to have some sort of arm, which is the only thing he might lack.
(1) Ackley has spent his minor league seasons learning second.
(2) Ackley's value would be diminished at a bat-first position like 3B. His BAT wouldn't be diminished, just his value.
(3) Kennedy, while mostly used as a MIF, has experience at 3B. So does Rodriguez. Being temporary solutions, because of the bat-first nature of the position, it makes more sense to employ THEM there than Ackley.
I know he's spent 18 months learning second; it's a much more complicated position. I'm just saying that if for some reason Kennedy can't play there, Ackley could move. And if he slashes 290/400/440 his bat will play anywhere on this team. If he hits even better, and I think he will, his bat will play anywhere on any team.
At least you can talk about the infield without Lopez. If so, the toilet picture would have needed a large plunger. I was shocked that the Rockies wanted him, especially with some of their talent at AAA. Watching several games with Lopez here was quite sad. If I were a GM I would not even consider.
Excellent article!
I really, really, really would like to see the 2009 posts where people were predicting Figgins would hit .500. Because *I* certainly never saw them.
While some people argued that his contract was too long or too pricey ... most of the griping was because of the 'style' hitter Figgins was ... that he was a lead-off hitter zero power bat, on a team that already had a lead-off hitter (that would never be moved), and on a team with zero power. (Those were both valid complaints). But, Figgins' worst OPS of his entire career was .685. His *WORST*. If Figgins' were hitting .685 at the moment, there would be no complaining.
The notion that a slap hitter, who doesn't put the ball in the air ... would tank in Safeco ... well, it was NOT predicted ... nor does it make much sense. His WORST offensive WAR from 2004-2009 was 1.5. His WAR in 2009 was 6.9 (4.9 hitting and 2.0 with the glove). If Jack, HAD paid him "based on his outlier season", his paycheck would have been $27 million for 1 year. He was NOT paid based on outlier season - he was paid almost precisely in the middle of the range of his total body of work. In Figgin's 2008 season - he had a .276/.367/.318 (.685) slash line good for an 82 OPS+. That was a 1.5 WAR and he added 1.0 WAR with his glove. If he were producing that 2.5 WAR ... (the WORST of the 3 years prior to signing with Seattle), he'd be overpaid.
While I'm sure Z was "hoping" for a 2007 or 2009 year out of him ... the contract is built to pay for a quartet of .685 seasons with a decent glove and 40 SBs. Mind you ... a .650 season and a .500 season was NOT on the agenda. But players have career bad years. ALL players. A .700 hitter in a disaster year ... yeah, he can end up in 5-something land. But, .900 OPS guys have .700 seasons, too.
That said ... the best case for Z (and Figgins) at this point is to look for a Bradley/Silva type deal, where you make a change-of-scenery swap of bad contracts. If I'm Z, I'm actually scouring the market for an overpaid, veteran pitcher that seems "broken" (but is healthy) ... or maybe even another struggling 3B ... (Brandon Inge is a similar sunk cost doing zilch this year).
Figgins' may indeed be "psyched out" in Seattle at this point ... and like Sexson and Silva, his best bet for recovery lies elsewhere. It happens.
That said ... I will note that during April there were calls that Ryan was useless and hopeless and LROD needed to be handed the full-time SS position and Ryan either dumped or relegated to the bench. Olivo, for a time, was viewed as dead weight, with some pleading to bring up Bard. Cust was also pegged for immediate dismissal.
May figures:
Olivo - .275/.358/.406 (.764)
Ryan - .371/.420/.468 (.888)
Cust - .279/.388/.441 (.829)
LROD - .148/.250/.222 (.472)
The stupdendous May was supported (offensively) almost specifically by those players that were the most often talked about benching or trading or replacing in some way. Baseball players do NOT (and never have), produce on a steady schedule. The best you can "expect" is that the highs and lows balance out over time - (and hope that you get lucky and cash in more highs than lows --- like Kennedy so far).
The reality, however frustrating, is that Kennedy is "likely" to swoon at some point - and Figgins is "likely" to get hot at some point. But, there aren't any guarantees. Maybe, at age 35, Kennedy has the best season of his entire career. But, it's unlikely. And horrid years aren't isolated to just Seattle. Kennedy posted a 50 OPS+ (.572 OPS) in 2007 with the Cards.
Of course, if Figgins posts a .680 OPS in June while Kennedy posts a .550 ... the club lands in about the same place it is right now.