John's Inbox is Up
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As y'know, Dr. D used to never miss a Geoff Baker column. As it turns out there is no more Geoff Baker.* A good facscimile is Greg Johns, who also has:
- A good feel for the game
- The ability to direct his attention to germane issues
- "Access" and the willingness to use it, without causing unreasonable problems for the Mariners
- Natural intuition
So, here's his latest Inbox. Let's kibitz.
The first Q had to to do with pending FA Nelson Cruz: to sign, or not to sign? That is the question.
1. It is better that a die at birth than to fumble in the Super Bowl, or to pay a player $8M for $7M worth of performance, especially to a 39-year-old-player (in 2019),
2. The Mariners paid Edgar 2 years at a time until he couldn't hit any more, which was age 41, at which time he gave them -1M worth of bases for $3M in salary and the M's "dynasty" offically coughed one final time, widened its eyes, and expired.
3. At age 37, Cruz delivered $30M worth of bases (including defense at DH) for $14.25M.
4. At age 38, Edgar hit .306/.423/.543. At age 39, it was .277/.403/.485. At age 39, he hit .296/.406/.489 (a 141 OPS+ in Safeco).
5. At age 37 (last year), Cruz slugged .747 in August and .553 from Sept 1 to the wire.
6. In other words, he's a 24K-gold Cleanup Hitter, he was the last two months we saw him, and he'll be 38 going into next year. Ages 38-39 look quite reasonable when you break down his component skills.
....
Johns says Cruz loves Seattle, so we can only hope that he shares Edgar's cheerful willingness to stay hear for reasonable dinero. It's easy enough to imagine him remembering the M's as the team willing to bet on him in the last stages of his career.
Cruz goes into 2018 at age 38, with a jammed FA pipeline, and ... is it likely he's going to want 3 x $25M to play DH? Doubt it.
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JOHNS' CORNER
Johns figures Dipoto as wanting to see how 2018 goes before venturing an offer. Further Johns opines:
It's also possible, if the Mariners find themselves out of contention, that they could trade Cruz for younger prospects in midseason, though obviously that's not a path either would like at this point. As for replacement options, first basemen Ryon Healy, Mike Ford and Daniel Vogelbach are current in-house options and Robinson Cano -- who has six years remaining on his contract at age 35 -- could eventually be an answer there.
Which is reasonable, if the return is juicy. It might be, if Cruz slugged .600 in July, which he probably will. Without any question this is the default Beane strategy going in to 2018, but Dipoto does seem to be aware he's not running an $81M payroll. The M's are 15 in the league, roughly twice where Beane is.
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BASEBALLHQ
Basically says: there isn't anything here to indicate decline, even if you squint. .284/.364/.532 is the "regression to the mean" and so the SSI Denizen asks: how much harm in offering a 1 x $15M, or even 2 x $15M, extenstion through age 39?
From here, not much. He can stay in shape to DH.
BABVA,
Dr D