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Wish I was a quarter as smart as you are. Why don't you write for a fish wrap,or some paying gig.
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SSI, along with everybody else, acknowledges Replacement Level's usefulness as a paradigm. Obviously RL moves are made, many times, by every GM, during every season.
Jack Zduriencik just ran into his first Replacement Level situation of the 2013 season. We're not saying that GM's can avoid "stop-loss" or RL situations; what SSI questions is how reliably we can PREDICT what the replacement level is, at any moment in time, for any given club.
Pitching is easier to predict than hitting -- any pitcher can replace any other pitcher* -- whereas Endy Chavez would not be able to replace Brendan Ryan.
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Aaron Harang was acquired via the "replacement level" process. If there's such a thing as swivelling your head around, surveying the pitchers who are freely available, and taking your choice ... well, that's what Aaron Harang was.
Harang has been worth 0.8, 0.6, and 1.8 "wins" above "replacement level" the last three years. Those -32 runs saved, vs. a theoretical "replacement" pitcher, were not calculated based on his "lucky" ERA. The WAR are calculated based on his FIP.
So, in the recent past ... when last we saw him ... Harang was actually a good distance better than theoretical AAAA pitching.
On the face of it, the Mariners came up with a "replacement" band-aid who is considerably better than (the presumed) replacement level.
Not that Dr. D has a lot of confidence that Harang will outperform the ACTUAL in-house replacement-level pitchers; he's trending down. Stats are backwards-looking. What is Aaron Harang going to do next? Looks to me like he's going to give 50-100 more of the same meatball innings with that little Jim Kaat fastball.
But the projection is dicey, as Blake Beavan could tell you, and that's what makes a ballgame. As replacements go, Aaron Harang looks like about the best refurbish you're going to buy.
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Like Gordon says, Zduriencik is serious about winning now, and if he's got to grovel wins out of the #3-4 slots for two months, he's going to do it. At least he's got defenders behind Saunders and Harang.
Zduriencik is being positively Lou Piniella about it right now. Good on him.
Comments
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So let me see if I understand this roster construction. We break from Peoria with no long reliever, dump Wells as our fourth OF who is snatched up by Toronto and say no contract for Jon Garland. What happens next? Condor goes down in the outfield and could have been replaced by Wells, Garland goes to Colorado and into their rotation, Maurer and Beavan struggle so we grab Harang from Colorado's DFA and DFA Loe because he sucks and can't pitch more than two innings per outing, which has basically been his role lately. The problems with this roster were created this Spring and will require fixing for weeks, if not months to come. The best way to sabotage a potential .500 season is/was to make the decisions that were made to build this roster. It's a self-made implosion. No pity here. I just wish I could stop watching this train wreck.
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In terms of position players, the key roster construction mistake was, is, and always will be: adding Raul as a 4th/5th OF. He is a disaster of a defensive outfielder who cannot run and can only hit right handed pitching. He is in decline and has no upside. He may be the world's best clubhouse guy, but he is too limited on the field to provide the team what it needs with 2 out of 3 starting OFer's down with injury. My $.02.
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is Raul's right-handed cousin.
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Weeks ago, paraphrasing Cato the Elder, I said my new motto was, "...and Raul must go!" I gave up o the motto because nobody that ever counted was going to listen. Heck, I'm probably stupid about baseball, anyway.
Last year Raul was a .248-..319-.492 batter vs. righties. He had a .246 BABIP. Unlucky, maybe. In '11 he was a .256-.307-.440 hitter vs. RHP. His BABIP was .270...which indicates (along with the '12 number) that he has LOTS of easy outs, to go with a little bit of mash.
We should get 350-400 AB's out of him.
But those AB's and the vR .475 slg. % we will get out of him come with some significant cost. We've reduced roster flexability considerably. To keep Raul, we pay the piper by keeping only one bench IF. That guy is Andino. There is some cost there.
Now with Morse out for a bit, we're going to see him against LHP, too. He stinks there.
Is he a great clubhouse presence? Probably. No beef here. And we can afford him, certainly.
But he comes with cost. Flexability is one of them.
moe