| By Casey McLain |  | By 03-10-2013 |
In many ways the last two Seattle Mariners offseasons have been similar to one other. In each case the M's went into the offseason with some perceived needs, namely power hitters, and in each offseason there was a high-profile player available that fit that mold at a position that the Mariners could stand to see some significant improvement.
Both years, the division rival Angels made upgrades at both positions by signing Josh Hamilton, whom the Mariners were actively courting, and Albert Pujols, who is better than his curvier first base counterpart, Prince Fielder, whom the Mariners were also flirting with to some degree. Both Hamilton and Fielder signed for deals well above their expected value over the course of their contract based on the expected career arc of any player -- let alone one with addiction or weight concerns.
The problem in either case, or even the case of Pujols -- who never was rumored to consider Seattle -- was that the Mariners remained very low on the front-side of their win curve. Paying above projected value can make sense if doing so offers security that is essential to a team's success, but doing so in the meaty part of a rebuild is bound to have some future ramifications.
This is the same reason why financial experts advise that people closer to retirement contribute more money, but to allocate it toward less volatile assets. For someone close to retirement, doubling one's investment over the course of thirty years is less important than making sure that their investment isn't halved in six months.
The Angels are a team at full maturity. Say what you will about Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo but the Angels are a team that was likely to be looking for some answers to larger questions a half-decade from now regardless of whether or not they signed Hamilton or Pujols.
And with the departures of Torii Hunter, Dan Haren and Zack Greinke, the Angels are replacing quality players with more expensive players out of necessity. They're using massive amounts of money to accrue very little, if any marginal gain. That's not to say that it doesn't make sense for them, but that in a vacuum it's quite the inefficient use of funds.
It's a less-exaggerated equivalent of pulling a Radio Flyer wagon with a Sherman Tank. It gets the job done, but the gas mileage sucks, and in the unlikely event that things go wrong, you and your wagon probably catch on fire, or are under fire, or wherever this silly analogy should go.
The point is, the Angels probably didn't get better this offseason. Signing Josh Hamilton didn't actively make them worse than they were the day before he signed, but it wasn't enough to fill the hole left by Hunter -- who alone was worth 5.3 WAR -- let alone Haren and Greinke.
This is where projections come in. FanGraphs presently displays three sets of formulated projections and a set of aggregate fan projections. We'll use ZiPs, Oliver, and Steamer for this exercise.
Without digging too deep into the formulation of each projection system, it's important to point out that each system is prone to flaws and outliers. There are things that aren't captured by any projection system and that can't be quantified statistically. If Josh Hamilton converts to Islam and sees a huge, inexplicable surge in his contact rate, you can bet that Steamer didn't project it.
Here are Hamilton's projections:
ZiPs: 3.2 WAR
Steamer: 2.9 WAR
Oliver: 4.7 WAR
Even the Oliver projection -- the clear, optimistic outlier of the group of formulas -- has Hamilton more than a half-win behind Hunter’s 2012, and Hunter's contract with the Tigers will guarantee him nearly $100 million less than Hamilton. Of course, the Angels hope that long after Torii Hunter is gone from this league that Hamilton will remain productive.
Any determination of Hamilton's future is almost sure to come from personal biases as it relates to the effects of addiction on long-term physical and mental health, and hardly anything that can be captured in a spreadsheet or a database and then correlated with on-field value, but that I had to type that sentence to begin with displays the inherent risk of signing a player of Hamilton's type.
The Mariners took a much more low-risk route, as did the rest of the division, save for a Yu Darvish signing by the Rangers, as has the rest of the division historically. Since Tom Hicks sold the Rangers, the desolate ghost town of Anaheim has been the only home for the trigger-happy AL West cowboy. The Angels have signed and traded for several large contracts with players well into their prime in the past couple of years (add C.J. Wilson and Vernon Wells to the discussion), while the rest of the division has taken a more organic approach to talent acquisition.
The Mariners, for their part, acquired Kendrys Morales and Mike Morse. The Morales trade was considered something of a lateral move, trading a known, limited asset in Jason Vargas for a surplus part in Morales. The Morse trade drew the ire of some, and the praise of others, but ultimately figures to account for less than a win of production difference this year if Morse and John Jaso are both productive and receive their expected amount of plate appearances.
By replacing Vargas with his near-equal or functionally-superior Joe Saunders, the club has made basically any contribution that Morales makes to the offense a marginal gain, and an even bigger marginal gain considering that it prevents the team from losing value in the way of Justin Smoak plate appearances if Smoak continues to struggle and becomes a lost cause that is shipped out of town.
As it relates to projections, the only system that really makes sense to use for a whole team's projected WAR are the Steamer projections. The other projection systems don't account for total plate appearances very well, and have allotted the Mariners more than 3,000 extra plate appearances, some of which works in their favor, and in the case of the ZiPs iterations of Carlos Peguero and Eric Thames -- both of whom are unlikely to be on the 25-man roster for a full season's worth of plate appearances -- much to their detriment.
These are the Mariners projections according to Steamer, and altered by myself in Excel to display stats I prefer, and to ignore less predictive stats:
It's worth pointing out that this projection system includes some players unlikely to receive the amount of playing time listed. I'm higher on Francisco Martinez than most, but I doubt he or Julio Morban receives 100 plate appearances this year. I am also higher on Chance Ruffin that most -- which basically means I haven't created a voodoo doll in his image and poked it with Doug-Fister-shaped pins, but again, in my mind he's unlikely to pitch 30 innings in the big leagues this year.
But that's probably true for every team pushed through the system, and the impact of those players is basically negligible when combined with other rookies who have received favorable projections.
The Mariners as a team were worth about 27.0 WAR last year. Their projection is 28.5 WAR this year. Nobody is organizing an early-November parade after hearing that Steamer projected the Mariners to gain 1.5 wins. However, when you consider the relative conservatism of the Steamer projections, the picture may be less bleak:
Consider though, that while the nature of projection systems is to display the relative closeness of these teams, that this particular projection system projects a final total of negative 1500+ WAR for the league. This is due in part to minimum thresholds and the near-impossible task of projecting players who have little or no major league experience. There are dozens of rookies on this list that won't play in the big leagues this year, and some that will produce negative WAR if they do.
The Angels and the Rangers got objectively worse this offseason. The Rangers lost Josh Hamilton and replaced him with Lance Berkman. The Angels lost Hunter, Greinke, Haren, and Ervin Santana, and replaced them with Hamilton, Vargas, Joe Blanton, and Tommy Hanson.
Projection systems hate teams like the A's and Mariners -- clubs with a lot of young players with little or no big-league experience on which to base projections. The reality is that these projection systems function on past performance weighted by how recently the performance occurred but extending to a certain range. For young teams, often times significant parts of their lineup are being projected to develop conservatively because of the constraints of the system.
According to Steamer projections, however, the Mariners gained more than eight wins on both the Angels and Rangers, all while spending very little money on free agents, locking up Felix Hernandez long-term, and sticking to the rebuilding plan.
That's reason for M's fans to be somewhat excited for the 2013 season and furthermore, the organization's front office to be given at least another year to push the roster over the top into contention.
m\'s-project-better-in-2013
Comments
The following 7 comment(s) for this article are shown below:
| 1. By: BackseatGM on 03-11-2013 11:19:26 Ok, I'm hopelessly old school and admit to not having a good handle on these new stats. Can someone tell me how a guy with 92 RBI's in 140 games in 2012 (Torii Hunter) has a WAR of 5.3 but a guy with 128 RBI's in 148 games (Josh Hamilton) has an expected WAR in the 3's for 2013? |
| 2. By: Casey McLain on 03-11-2013 11:35:37 WAR is based on the Runs Created model created by Tom Tango (former M's employee), where every event has a theoretical run value. The currency of baseball, obviously, are runs, and the same way that things like health plans or not having to drive in traffic should factor into someone's total compensation at their job, even though they may not directly effect a person's bank account, baseball's events separate from RBIs also carry a similar value. I'm not a guy that quotes RBIs much, and there are several studies that show that RBIs are correlated more with frequency of opportunity than repeatable skill. Also, one thing that isn't captured in RBIs, or any other traditional metric, is the value of above average defense. Hunter's value is derived to some extent from his ability to competently play the outfield. I'm not convinced that there is a comprehensive defensive metric stable enough to consider the gospel, but they generally agree and are worth considering in terms of value. RBIs don't have much predictive value for a player, and are highly influenced by a surrounding lineup and/or the player's home ballpark. |
| 3. By: Seattlesteve on 03-11-2013 12:18:29 #1 The difference in Hamilton and Hunter last year was not as big as you might believe. Per Fangraphs WAR Hamilton's 2012 was 4.4 and as you noted Hunter's was 5.3. WAR will give you a good idea of a player's true talent level, it should not be used to make the argument "Hunter is a superior baseball player to Hamilton." There are so many variables that go into this calculation that you will have to dig pretty deep to understand where the difference in value is generated from. But just one key point: These WAR values are park adjusted, so since the Ballpark in Arlington is incredibly hitter friendly his WAR value took that into account. On the other side Hunter played in one of the most pitcher friendly parks in baseball and had his WAR positively impacted due to it. It makes sense if you just take a step back and look at it big picture... You would expect a player to put up better numbers in Texas than you would in Petco. In regards to the article, nice piece. I would agree that this roster projects better in 2013 (and is one with crazy upside). Erasmo 1.2? Saunders 0.8? Guti 0.6? All of these guys definitely come with question marks but these projections are extremely conservative. |
| 4. By: maqman on 03-11-2013 12:25:10 I don't have much faith in the various projection systems, including Steamer. However I do agree with it's basic prognostication that the M's improved their team more than the Texicans and Anaheimians. Hunter put up his numbers last season in a big ballpark and Hamilton did his in a bandbox. That leads me to believe Hamilton will struggle to equal his last seasons output and will be unlikely to replace Hunter's contributions. While I plead guilty to being a homer, I find Steamer is luridly underestimating the potential of several M's players, including Morales, Morse, Smoak, Wells or Bay (whichever they keep), Saunders and Wilhelmsen, plus Ryan who can do it with just his defensive runs saved. |
| 5. By: maqman on 03-11-2013 12:30:39 Seattlesteve is right, I forgot WAR is park adjusted, but I still believe Hamilton will not improve the Angels enough to compensate for their lost production. |
| 6. By: Casey McLain on 03-11-2013 12:38:22 @Steve I agree and don't think single season WAR is enough to determine one player is better than another. Hunter's 2012 was an outlier in his recent years, but it was production, albeit likely lucky, that they must replace to remain at the same level they were last year. All of the projection systems are pretty pessimistic about Hunter's ability to repeat his 2012 results, for the record. @Maq I have been pouring through Saunders' peripherals to find some optimism. He's not an obvious "good luck" or "bad luck" guy, but he strikes out more than league average, walks less than league average, and swings and misses more often than league average. I can't find a reason to believe he'll be better this year than last. That said, and as I mentioned, these projections systems are going to be tough on young guys with little experience, and especially young guys who have a poor production as a large part of their experience. Guti's lack of recent playing time makes him function like a guy with much less experience within these systems. Also, thanks for the extra vowel in your description of Anaheim's natives. With their nickname already being Angels, if you'd omitted it you may have started a new, more crude nickname for them. |
| 7. By: short on 03-15-2013 11:25:29 Based on these projections I see a couple of guys that I think have a good chance of outperforming their numbers: Guti and Morales. At only .6 WAR Guti is assumed basically to be injured most of the year. If he's on the field he's producing at least a couple more wins than that. And Morales' second half last year suggests he could return to form and produce a win or so more than the 1.5 he's down for. Although he does have the positional adjustment problem, he claims that he's fully healed and his August and September numbers from last year seem to agree. I like him for 2.5 wins assuming he gets the AB's. This doesn't make up for the ~12 WAR difference between the M's and the favorites in the division. They'll still need surprising progress from youngsters and for the other teams to stumble if they have a shot at the post-season. It'll be a miracle if they win 85+ games. |
Haven't created a Prospect Insider account yet? Sign up!
|
|
| Copyright 2013 Prospect Insider, Inc. | Created by AQ Central Prospect Insider is optimized for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome |