Rebuilding or reloading?
better question: architects or demolition crew?
This is gonna be me musing about the state of the Ms and our frustration with the wait to build a contender in general. Be warned and hang on.
As we wander into our annual September irrelevance, the gnashing of teeth around the blog-o-sphere is increasing. Baker sums it up well with his article today:
And sometimes, you’ll get it wrong. Sometimes, the Josh Hamilton signing might not work out.But if you don’t try, you don’t win. Looking at the Mariners right now, I see some potentially good young players, but no top-tier elite star like a Posey. No break-out performer who can help catapult this team to where it needs to be.So, you either spend some big money this winter — which the Mariners do have sitting in their coffers — or you get better trade results than you have. Draft-wise? That might tack a few more years on to this rebuilding plan at this stage.
Of course, in this article from 2008, Baker himself points out that the Mariners tried the high-money approach to contending under Bavasi:
So, every year in which Bavasi has been a GM, his club has had the fourth or fifth-highest payroll of the 14 AL teams. The only other AL clubs that can say that? Those would be the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels. How many rebuilding phases have those teams been involved in over the same time period? Exactly.
The Ms spent. Not well, and not exactly extravagantly (they still count themselves as having a net profit all those years except one, I believe) but they had the payroll to compete. Their management made terrible decisions that prevented them from doing so, no matter what the method of player acquisition was used. I’ve described the draft woes under Bavasi before (summary: 5 years of drafts netted only Saunders, Fister, Morrow and Tillman) and his other snafus in free agency and trades are well, WELL-documented.
Did that failure with a larger payroll make the Mariners management (more) gun-shy about paying for players? They certainly slashed payroll before the old, terrible contracts were gone, which handcuffed the new guy Zduriencik. Would it have mattered? Not in the beginning, I don’t think. It looked to me like the Mariners finally, FINALLY decided to undo their terribly arrogant decision under Armstrong and Lincoln to “reload rather than rebuild.” Chuck and Howard must have thought they were so smart – and Chuck said as much when he made that statement about reloading with all the swaggering braggadocio of Martin Short and Steve Martin in the Three Amigos, right before they figured out the other guys had real guns pointed at him. The team they derided when making that statement (Cleveland) has rebuilt twice since we decided we were too good for that method of reconstruction.
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After butchering half a decade’s worth of drafts so badly that none of their assets had any real trade value, the FO handed the reins over to Zduriencik and McNamara, who together might be the best draftniks in the game that don’t live in Tampa. It’s not Jack’s fault that he didn’t get the #1 pick in either of the seasons where a generational talent was available. The Nats got it BOTH YEARS, so of course they’re doing insanely w… oh, wait, they’re average again. Maybe two guys don’t make a team after all. IMO, you’ve got to get the draft correct if you won’t post a top-3 payroll and pay off the errors you make along the way. For a naturally shy and restrained ownership group, the draft has always been the way to go. With a good set of drafts and smart FA pickups (accompanied by a decent payroll) we could go far.
But we’re not winning. We’re not guaranteed to be winning next year either. We don’t have one definable cornerstone player on offense, as DaddyO was saying earlier in the shouts (excepting Seager I would say) and Baker among others echoes. Hard to argue much with that, or the notion that maybe the guys in charge aren't up to the task of finishing this remodel. Terry elaborates when he says there are 5 moves that happened just this offseason that have turned him against Jack as an architect of a future Mariners contender:
1) Designating Montero as starting catcher when his defense clearly was inadequate2) Trading Jaso for Montero - Jaso should have been retained to bolster the catching position, and Morse was a disaster3) Pursuit of Hamilton - thank goodness Moreno bailed GMZ out4) Attempted trade for J Upton - GMZ gave way too much and J-Up saved GMZ's job5) Signing Ibanez and letting Carp go - yes, Rauuul had a marvelous 6 weeks, but Carp is more versatile, younger, cheaper, and can help in the future.
Not sure how many of those turn me against Z, personally. Montero was a mistake, but once you decide to go with Montero as a catcher you CAN’T have his backup be just as bad defensively, and Jaso is. He’s bad. So one of the two had to go. We traded Jaso, probably because Beane wasn’t stupid enough to take Montero. Trading Jaso also kept other minor leaguers on this club (getting Morse cost AJ Cole, Ian Kroll and Blake Treinen for Oakland - the Nats sold high). We lost the deal but honestly that would have looked like Pike, Elias and Farquhar for us, maybe more (which only matters if those players help us in a future trade or on the 25-man, but it was a consideration). Jaso has 250 PAs as a platoon bat; I would have loved that to pair with Zunino, but Mike isn’t gonna cough up that many PAs.
I don’t see any way to view Morse as a win, but he was an understandable risk for sure. He’ll probably hit great next year and stay healthy just to rub salt in that wound. Carp, btw, has just 200 PAs for the Bo Sox with a 29% K rate and a .405 BABIP (ie, unsustainable success). Smoak, Morse and Carp still look like part-time players; at least the Bo Sox are getting the most out of their player by using him that way. It could certainly qualify as two mistakes there – but are they unrecoverable? Two part-time player losses?
Morse was the backup plan once Justin Upton wouldn’t come here (and the list of what we were offering to AZ is not correct in total, though I’m sure some of those parts were certainly involved). We couldn’t put it all on Morales to carry the team, and we were right not to plan to. Upton’s .836 OPS would lead the team, btw, and he’d be the RH bat to balance the lineup that we are currently completely lacking. The idea had merit.
Hamilton crashed and burned this year (alllll the way back to being an average player) but would it be better to never take that risk? It's not like he died - is he irreperably demoted to being an average player with a large salary? Swisher has been very average as well, but it hasn’t kept the Indians from contending.
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In fact, we have approximately the same offense the Indians do :
Team OPS+ Hitters over 125 100-125 90-100
CLE 106 Two Two Three
SEA 100 Two Three Hard to say
Seattle has a bizzaro lineup to understand. Miller has a large OPS+ number right now, but so did Franklin a month ago. Will he again? Will Zunino be under 90, as he is now, or will he turn into Wieters with a 110? Posey with a 130+? Clement with a -9000? Ackley has an 85, but raised his OPS from .520 in the first half to .850 in the second half. His .385 BABIP won’t last, but what’s Dustin’s projection? What kind of team is taking the field in April of next year, and how might it be different from this year's?
Cleveland has one player under age 27 in their lineup for next year (Lonnie Chisenhall). We have FIVE (Seager, Miller, Franklin, Zunino and Ackley), with two more who are just 27 (Saunders and Smoak). Even if Choi was ready for the bigs I wouldn’t want to promote him because it just adds another baby to the mix. It's very hard to win being that young in the lineup.
The Mariners have gone too far the other way. Instead of buying expensive free agents and setting fire to the farm, they’re hoarding the farm’s contents while being xenophobic toward outside help. For the most part, anyway; we certainly got HUGE contributions from Morales and Iwakuma, but only one of them is guaranteed to be here next year. Was this Zduriencik’s choice, since his wheelhouse is young players, or is it a mandate brought on by a dropped payroll ceiling and the FO of Chuck and Howard wanting all free-agents and trades run by them so as to avoid more Bavasi-style snafus?
I maintain that you need to have both veterans and youth, and I prefer that the veterans be the heart of the order. They can pass that duty off to the home-grown guys later (once they’ve actually, you know, GROWN) but making the kids carry all the weight messes up their growth curve. Can we compete with this lineup next year, when they’ve had a little more seasoning under their belts?
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Kinda depends on the pitching, actually. Felix, Iwakuma, Shields (free agent), Erasmo and Walker would be pretty devastating I’d think. It would leave Paxton and Hultzen for trades, but since Walker would fetch the most in trade I would think he would go if we could get a monster. But which pieces to shuffle is always the question, isn’t it? Taylor, Miller and Franklin can’t all play in the same infield, not with Seager rightfully entrenched at third base. Walker, Hultzen, Paxton and Ramirez can’t all pitch in the same rotation with Felix and Iwakuma. We have ten or twelve good bullpen arms competing for six slots. People have to start moving on. Zduriencik has to concentrate his various assorted pieces into a 25-man championship contender, and that needs to start now.
Is he the man for that job? I dunno. Who’s to say the next guy is gonna be more Gillick than Bavasi? Unless the next guy actually IS Gillick, I guess.
Let’s put it this way: if I could get you James Shields for the rotation and Giancarlo Stanton for the offense in a way that still kept enough blue-chippers to fill out the roster, would that be enough help? We could still afford a bullpen vet or two as well, if you wanted.
Would this work?
| Lineup | Rotation | Pen |
| RH SS Taylor | RH Felix | 6 or 7 guys who can get outs |
| LH 2B Miller | RH Iwakuma | |
| LH 3B Seager | RH Shields | |
| RH RF Stanton | LH Hultzen | |
| SH DH Morales | RH Erasmo | |
| LH CF Saunders | ||
| SH 1B Smoak | ||
| RH C Zunino | ||
| LH LF Ackley |
That requires ponying up money for one major free agent (Shields) and paying the bloodprice to get Stanton (Walker and Franklin/Miller for sure, plus some other stuff). And re-signing Morales, but that shouldn’t be Mission: Impossible or anything.
That’s it. So if that’s what it takes, then that is feasible. Whatever mistakes might have been made, we’re a pitcher and a bat from contention, IMO. If we can keep one of Peterson and Choi on track, they’ll be stealing Smoak’s spot shortly (say that three times, fast). Almonte is around to take over CF if Saunders or Ackley can’t hack it out there. Taylor is a walk machine (if he’s not leading the minors, he’s close) who has incredible success in base-stealing and maxes out his doubles-and-triples ability. Miller is better suited to 2B, IMO, and without Franklin here he can do that. If he goes in the trade instead of Franklin, nothing much changes. 3 righties, 4 lefties, two switch hitters (or 3/3/3 if Franklin stays).
The rotation is pretty ridiculous, with a playoff-ready top 3 and a pair of back-enders who can be #3s or 4s on most teams.
So if Zduriencik can pull something like that off, now that we FINALLY have enough drafted depth that we can trade from positions of excess after half a decade rebuilding the farm, is that good enough? Is that setting the bar too high, because free agents don’t come here and we won’t do the kind of 5-for-1 painful trade that would be necessary to net Stanton? And even if we net them, would it be enough? Both the Angels and the Blue Jays netted a ton of stars, and those stars didn't bring wins with them.
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What is the bar to set that states we’ve finished the rebuilding phase and are now ready to compete? And therefore that Jack is entitled to stay and watch the competition, as it happens. Is competing into September like Cleveland and KC have enough? This year we hoped to do well, and injuries and lack of elite talent nipped that in the bud. Do we have to add the elite talent from outside the org or within it to finish the job – and is it a job that can BE finished over this offseason (or at least have a foundation set) or does it require yet MORE seasons and a new architect for all this great building material we have laying around?
There are only three ways to add talent: draft, free agency, and trades. You can't make trades without talent on your club, so in reality you ONLY have two ways. Bavasi was good at no ways. Zduriencik is really good at one way. Maybe now that we have a farm, we need to switch out to a guy who can utilize free agency and trades better... But if we get another Bavasi we're gonna be set back a long, long time.
It seems like Chuck and Howard are aware of this, and that's why Zduriencik gets another year. The worst thing that happens is we get another year of adding more talent to the farm while we finish under .500. We'd have a ton of tradable assets and hopefully have identified another couple of building blocks around which to add the rest of the roster.
The best thing that happens is we add the FA we've been looking for and work a trade for another star (Lee, Stanton, whoever) to kick this thing up another notch or two.
Now that the pitchers are getting here, I still don't think we're that far away. We have all the affordable, club-controlled players that will allow us to pay for the stars, PLUS enough trade chips (finally!) to allow us to trade for a star or two without taking the hit on the big club.
Staying with Zduriencik doesn't mean we can't still be bold. I'm kinda hoping for both.
~G
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