Tony Adams Dept.
Maybe Hisashi Iwakuma can get the Mr. Arsenal title

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1.  How badly did the Mariners lowball the dude?  Well, in their defense, Iwakuma is fragile.  And they had many other (attractive!) options for the period 2013-15.  Had Iwakuma chosen to move on, the Mariners would legitimately have shrugged and given the job to somebody else.

It's tough to ask for a raise if the fact is that other people can do it better and cheaper.  Rich Dad said, the days of claiming we "deserve" a raise are over.  That's going a bit far, but one day, eBay (the paradigm not the company) will rule the planet -- if you need a carburetor, you'll be able to ask 8 billion people for the cheapest one.  Frictionless sales mean that, increasingly, you are going to get paid more and more precisely what you are worth.

Right now Cindy and I have added Saturn Barter to our eBay 'lifestyle', as it were.  Our other writing jobs are paid (handsomely) through a giant barter collective.  My own services are advertised and we purchase services with barter credits.  That's where we're headed:  put your goods and services up into the cloud and start swapping so fast we can't see our hands moving.

Gotta stop axing for grace and favor and be worth something.  /capitalist moment

Iwakuma was in an odd situation:  he wanted to be here, but couldn't shop his services unless he took the nuclear option to Seattle.  Who'da thunk the club-only period would be such a bludgeon in Zduriencik's hands.

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2.  What did Iwakuma deserve?  There's no correct answer, because there's no data on Iwakuma's 2013-14 performance.  But here is what I look at:  the two guys above and below him, for 2012 xFIP, were Darvish and Kuroda.

  • HI:  Darvish $23M in production last year (same exact xFIP as Iwakuma's in the rotation)
  • MID:  Kuroda $16M, $10M, and $18M in production the last three years
  • LO:  Vargas $10M, $10M, and $3M in production the last three years

We throw Vargas in there as a reality check, a LOWER bound.  

Darvish is a very realistic UPPER bound - here's a crosscheck.  Doug Fister is a very similar pitcher to Hisashi Iwakuma, both sabermetrically and stylistically.  Doogie earned $25M and $16M the last two years.  There you go:  the $20-25M range is the UP scenario for Hisashi Iwakuma, it says here.  Maybe a 25% chance of earning that.

Hiroki Kuroda last year fanned 6.8 men, walked 2.1, and gave up 1.0 homers, with a lifetime grounder rate a bit worse than Iwakuma's.  Over 220 innings, that was 3.9 WAR and $18M in salary earned (WAR uses a lot of theoretical outcome in its output).

...............

Certainly Iwakuma is less of a workhorse than Kuroda.  But on the other hand, we're looking at very possible inflation in 2013-15.  I think it's fair to say that the Mariners gave Iwakuma right at 50c on the dollar.  It will be 30c on the dollar if Iwakuma has a good year.

Two years, plus a club option with a piddling $500,000 buyout -- isn't that absolutely the ideal club length of term for a veteran pitcher?

Tony Adams, Mr. Arsenal, once said "I will sign every contract Arsenal puts in front of me without reading it."  Says here that Iwakuma REALLY wanted to play in Seattle.  Glad to have you, sir.

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Comments

1

This is a real Gillick-style veteran contract. Perfect length. There is a really good chance he out performs the contract and if he doesn't, it won't cripple the club.

2
Lonnie of MC's picture

... stop using the expression "lowball"? To me, it means that nothing else matters other than trying to screw a player over, and I really don't think that Zduriencik would have done that.

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