The Stars & Scrubs Reaper Comes Calling
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Mojician sez,
.RHP 1 2012 slashline: 67 IP, 2.26 ERA, 9.2 SO/9 3.2 BB/9. RHP 2 2012 slashline: 47IP 3.25 ERA, 9.1 SO/9 3.0BB/9. Pitcher 1:Rafael Soriano, just paid 2 yrs, 14 mil per year. Pitcher 2: Sean Kelley, DFA'd and available for cheap.
.Your evaluation of Shawn Kelley depends on whether or not you believe he has a dinger problem. Numbers are never enough to tell you if a reliever has HR issues; there's just not enough data to draw a legitimate conclusion. Capps has never allowed an MLB home run, but for all we know he could have a huge problem with the long ball. So... you have to scout, pretty much. From a scouting perspective, who do you think would allow more homers... Soriano or Kelley?
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Mojician's point wasn't that Kelley needs a $14M per year salary like Soriano has got; it was that Shawn Kelley isn't a pitcher you need to be DFA'ing.
Thirteen's question about the longball, we can cosign that, with gusto. Kelley challenges people, and more than he should. Still, Shawn Kelley has a wonderful cut to his fastball, excellent location, he has 9+ strikeouts a game despite always being around the strike zone...
.... and SSI makes him definitely odds-on to have a very nice career in the American League. The 1997 Mariners would have given you a starting catcher for a pitcher like this :- )
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=== The Stars & Scrubs Tab: You Can Pay Dr. D Now, or You Can Pay Him Later ===
The same day that the Mariners traded Doug Fister the first 10-15 seconds after the Mariners traded Doug Fister, Dr. D was thinking about the fact that the Mariners would wind up CUTTING players equal in value to the scrubs that the Mariners took back for Fister.
That day just arrived. Mike Carp was the canary, and he just fell over in the coal mine.
The Mariners just voluntarily flushed two of the four players they received back for Fister:
Wells = CarpRuffin = Kelley- Martinez, minor leagues
- Furbush, LH RP
Mike Carp was fully the equal of Casper Wells on the day of the trade, and he's fully Wells' equal now. Carp's 2013 was an injury washout, but the last time we saw Carp, he hit .286/.325/.494 in the second half of 2011 -- in Safeco Field. That's a 125 OPS+. He had 12 homers and 15 doubles, and 46 RBI, in 64 games. Just because we've forgotten him doesn't mean he's forgotten how to hit.
Wells has the better glove, but Mike Carp has a whale of a lot better chance to become Mike Morse than Casper Wells does.
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This is all second nature to rotisserie players: you don't make trades where you give up the best player in the deal, and you CERTAINLY don't make trades of superstars* for multiple role players. (There are exceptions to every rule, but...)
On the day of the Fister trade, other sites were counting up WAR (present and future, left and right sides of the ledger) - using a tactical paradigm.
SSI was talking about Stars & Scrubs - using a strategic paradigm. Lower-level managers use tactical paradigms; CEO's use strategical paradigms. I'm not saying I'm a CEO; I'm not. We're trying to turn on light bulbs here, give new ways to think about old problems.
It is every GM's job to FIGHT AGAINST the traffic jam that he has at the bottom of the 25-man roster. If he does not do that effectively, he winds up flushing his wallet down the toilet, when he runs into the clock expiration on guys like Carp and Kelley. Those subtractions cancel other adds; they are errors that completely "erase" important good things that have been accomplished.
And there's a lot worse to come. Carp and Kelley were just the canaries in the coal mine. The day is here. The Mariners have too much talent, configured too awkwardly. Stars & Scrubs configures your roster for fungi-bility and ag-ility.
The way to avoid this situation was to purchase a single $20M starting pitcher in place of Hisashi Iwakuma and Joe Saunders and Blake Beavan. And to trade six players for Adrian Gonzalez. And not to trade Doug Fister (I know, I know). And simply to be MORE Stars & Scrubs oriented than Zduriencik already is.
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If there was ever a day for 25 Civics in Seattle, that day is long gone. THIS team HAS to convert 4-for-1's, both in its trades and (more importantly) in its salary structure. Joe Saunders should be just about the last Civic contract they hand out.
This is a team that needs to be paying six big contracts and fifteen very small ones.
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This isn't a crucifixion of Jack Zduriencik. It's classy of him to cut Mike Carp in such a way that Carp has plenty of time to win a job with another team. And the traffic jam EXISTS because Zduriencik is grabbing talent with both hands -- his basket has stuff falling out of it, precisely because it's full.
But this, gentlemen, is why you trade six 2.0 WAR players for one 5.0 player. Give the extra prospect. You'll just cut him later anyway.
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