I didn't really think the Napoli talk was real world stuff. I was wrong, perhaps.
But I don't think Z is looking at Napoli as a 4-yr catcher, not with Zunino nearly ready. So Napoli is a (perhaps) a 75-80 game starter at catcher NEXT YEAR, then he becomes a 1B/DH. AND if we're signing a catcher for next year if means Zunino is spending all summer in Tacoma OR Montero or Jaso or Smoak is gone. No way we carry three C/1B/DH types and Smoak.
What is the chance that we're signing a 1B/DH in Napoli, who catches just 25 games a year?
Doc, Napoli just turned 31 on Halloween, so we only need to get his year 31-34 production w/a 4-yr contract. He won't be playing for us at 35.
And a Napoli signing almost certainly wouldn't be the end-all for our off-season moves. We would do another deal to go along with.
All that said, I'm in on Napoli with reservations for the 4th year. Maybe the 4th year concern is mitigated some by the fact that he's not catching for us at that point.
He's never had a bad year, he mashes the ball and he's a wonderful hitter to be bookended by guys like Seager and Saunders. Much to like here.
Jaso and Montero make for an interesting duo to go with him. Too interesting, I think. And if Zunino kills ST, what becomes of our overloaded catching position.
There are some interesting questions to be answered. But I'll buy in on Napoli. I would buy in even more if we WEREN"T catching him more than 40 games, or so.
moe
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Q. What are the Mariners expecting to receive from Mike Napoli?
A. Napoli slugged .630 two years ago. He slugged .470 last year, that being .450 in Arlington and .490 on the road. His lifetime SLG is .507. He walks 70 times per full season and the BB total is going up, not down.
So rotisserie analysts are going to split the difference, splitting it well towards the DWN side, and project him to a 2013 slash line of .250/.350/.500. -ish. With nothing on the line, without being too close to the situation, without emotions involved, a roto champ in St. Louis, MO is going to assume .250/.350/.500 for Napoli next year based on 100-120 games.
The question is: what's that worth? Not to a phantom drone team, but to the 2013-14 Seattle Mariners?
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Q. What are the chances that he'll outperform a 4/$50M contract?
A. YOU ARE AT THE WRONG END OF THE ROSTER TO ASK THIS QUESTION. You save money with --- > Scrubs. So that you can buy more Stars. Stars' salaries need to meet the "not silly" standard.
You save money on some players so that you can buy players you need. Not so that you can look like a tree full of owls, wisdom personified. Get it? "Got it." Good.
Let me read that last paragraph again.
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It's not like the M's have a fixed $260 roto budget. They can raise it to $305 at any time. In that context, %-of-payroll questions become almost meaningless.
Tell me the value of 12/x, when you don't know the value of x. Supposing that ownership will plonk down an extra $10M, if and only if it's Josh Hamilton? In that event Hamilton costs a rotisserie $13M per year, not $23M. Supposing you played roto and one player came with a $10 dinner-for-two discount?
Lay aside the dogma when dealing with owner budget decisions. They don't lend themselves to CPA-style "this is correct, that is not correct" evaluations.
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So the question morphs: how does the Mike Napoli option compare to the Mariners' other real-world options? The Mariners aren't competing against an XL spreadsheet. They're in a war and they can select a tank, a helicopter, or a mortar for tomorrow morning's battle.
Obviously, it's to your advantage to save a buck. But when did that become the POINT of the game, making sure that every purchase was a Hisashi Iwakuma-level heist?
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Q. What ARE the Mariners' other real-world options?
A. Too many to list. Category A includes those options that go with the kids and pocket the money. Category B includes other 2012 free agent buys, notably Swisher or Upton, or in a longshot Josh Hamilton, or a pitcher.
Napoli would presumably be one of two imports. So in the grand scheme, it's like, [Swisher + Napoli? vs. Swisher + Gordon?] vs. one Josh Hamilton - if Hamilton is even worth holding up other options for.
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Q. What if Napoli were useless at age 35, making $13M?
A. One thing I can tell you about GM's, for a FACT, is that they don't mind a useless year or two on the end of the contract if they got big production early.
Suppose Napoli earns $20M per year for three years, and $0 the fourth. Fans chip their teeth during year four. GM's don't. Most GM's very definitely think in terms of "that last year isn't going to be pretty, but we want the production now and we'll make it up in the big picture."
You HAVE to. Big-money thinking has to be three-dimensional.
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Q. Supposing that Napoli did hit like Buhner or Glaus, playing C/1B/DH. What's that worth?
A. Dr. D likes WAR, for many uses ... none of which include dogmatic uses. I take it as first principles that WAR underrates RBI men. That's not just my opinion. Real-world GM's, using hordes of state-of-the-art support saberdweebs, consistently pay more for RBI men than Fangraphs thinks they should.
Napoli is a part-time player; that's the difference between him and a big star. In the games that Napoli plays catcher, he's a reasonable facsimile of Mike Piazza.
In the games that he DH's and plays 1B, he's a reasonable facsimile of Mark Teixeira or Adrian Gonzalez - subtract ten or twenty BB's per 162 games. Or take Paul Konerko - the OBP's and SLG's are the same for Konerko and Napoli.
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Q. But how much is that worth at DH?
A. You run into the misleading idea of "Replacement Level Player." Fangraphs calculates the average production at 1B, but this average includes Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Ryan Howard, etc., and that skews the real-world "average."
You've got a player pool that includes 10-12 leviathans, and they skew a "league average," and you say "so what. This guy only slugs .500. That's not much better than league average."
Maybe there are exactly 20 astronauts in the world, and the "league average" for 30 of them (20 astronauts and ten plumbers) is a .500 astrophysics SLG. How does that help you if you're #24 on the hiring list? You've got to take into account plateaus in the resource field.
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Comparing Mike Napoli to, let's just pull a name out of our ears, Justin Smoak, you are talking about 6.5 runs created per 27 outs versus 3.5 runs per 27.
Or let's say you compare Mike Napoli to Miguel Olivo, rather than to a hypothetical "average/mediocre" catcher. A lineup of nine Olivos gets you 2.5 runs per game. Napoli, 6-7 runs per game.
Which one is better to talk about? Mike Napoli, versus your theoretically average player, or Mike Napoli versus Justin Smoak and Miguel Olivo?
For that lineup slot, you're talking 6-7 runs per game, vs. 3-4 runs, vs. 2-3 runs. I wouldn't characterize that as "Napoli's a meh DH who occasionally impersonates a catcher."
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Q. Leaving us where?
A. Napoli is fragile, and is going to get more so. You're going to figure on 100, 120 games of his production. In Seattle, we've got a 9-to-make-5 lineup thing going, as they did in Texas.
For those 100, 120 games -- assuming there's no career-arc splatter here -- you're talking about an All-Star level player, near-Piazza instead of Olivo*, near-AGone instead of Smoak.
I got your "market inefficiencies" type right here, babe. Part time players.
Comments
Without a doubt, the Zunino situation creates confusion here. The M's gusto for a Russell Martin or Napoli is surprising. Obviously they've come to an internal decision about Jaso and Montero; maybe that means they're talking The Big Three sooner rather than later?
If, on Z's desk, there is a variety of attractive options for Montero's exit, then all these moves would make a lot more sense.
Good stuff Mo Dawg.
I thinkn you're dead on, Doc. If Martin and Napoli are being sniffed at, then the internal decision is that Montero or Jaso is not the guy to carry on at the position until Zunino is ready. I wonder how much is Wedge, here. Man, he had a huge crush on Olivo, a dirt-dog type of guy....old school catcher, for sure. Neither Montero or Jaso quite fits that mold. Napoli? More so, I think.
If we get Napoli's name on the page, I will be surprised if we don't make a move that includes Montero or Jaso or Smoak. Montero, mostly, I think, if we sign somebody like Butler. He would bring in something nice, paired with Hultzen.
Get Napoli to sign, Z.
I don't know what the skinny is on Montero, but I doubt it is any less than 1-yr ago. It might be more out there in the baseball world, even more so than here in the M's blogosphere. A year ago Montero was a hotshot mashing prospect who may or may not be able to catch at the MLB level. Now he's a guy who turns 23 in a few days, has a year under his belt of thrashing MLB LHP to within an inch of its life, had a low .258 BABIP against RHP, and hit .295/.330/.438 on the road.
It would be pretty easy to market all that. I'm still very bullish on Montero precisely because he did all that at 22.
I hope we keep him. He proved he can catch adequately and he certainly established some hitting talent, even if it never progresses beyond a platoon masher. I think a 3 to make 2 1B/DH rotation of Montero/Jaso/Napoli would be a terrefic MOTO presence. But with Napoli, if he's here, and with Zunino about to be here, that's a weird lineup makeup. Has any team recently had four guys on the roster that entered a year a principally catchers? So if we're signing Napoli, something must go.
I suppose the something could be Zunino, who stays down all year. But it makes little sense to commit now to keeping him down until mid-June 2014. In fact, it makes NO sense.
Since the market for Jaso is less than that for Montero, it makes sense to think that Montero is a guy being dangled.
Interestingly, the guy most likely to be the M's target of lust is Butler. But, a Butler addition just piles another guy into the 1B/DH mix. So I wonder if Smoak is being peddled, too.....if Butler is on the M's very short list. If the Royals are a trade partner and if Butler is the guy, it almost makes more sense if there is a third trading partner involved, as well.
Rosterbation, I know.
But Napoli in M's livery opens up all kinds of roster questions. I'm intrigued.
moe
Love this idea. Hey, the M's were going to have to carry 3 C's this season anyway, right? Why not sign Napoli instead of Jesus Sucre, or whatever?
Also, Napoli is ALWest tested and approved. How many AL West pitchers has Napoli himself caught?!
Yep, Angels excommunicated Naps, the Rangers have not shown proper respect/appreciation. I would love to slap an M's uni on the guy and unleash him against his former clubs.
If Jack's assessment is that prying Butler from KC won't happen, or that it will cost too much of the M's best young players, then Nap is an alternative. You won't see both Napoli and Butler on the roster. It also presumes that Zunino, Smoak, Montero, Carp, and Jaso will not all be on the roster with Napoli. That is just too much C/1B/DH types on the 25. Carp may be gone if he doesn't have an outstanding ST, as he's out of options. Both Zunino and Smoak could start in Tacoma. Four players to fill three spots in the lineup, and cover backup C, looks about right. When Zunino gets the call north, there will be too many sets of the tools of ignorance. Someone will have to go then, if not sooner. Nap brings a power MLB-TM bat, which we need.