North and South of Royal Brougham

Raul Ibanez the Replacement Level Player

Published May 20, 2013 | By Matthias Kullowatz | Posted in Mariners

I couldn’t resist this picture.

Raul Ibanez has been one of the Mariners best hitters this season. The argument goes like this: Ibanez is second on the team with eight homeruns, fifth on the team in wOBA and third in OPS. That wasn’t a difficult argument, so let’s tackle something a little more controversial. Ibanez hurts—not helps—the Mariners in his current role.

Whoa! I just said he’s one of the M’s best hitters, and then I said he hurts the M’s. What gives? Pretty much everything that doesn’t involve hitting homeruns—that’s what gives. For parts of the season, specifically the last week, Ibanez has been asked to be an “everyday player.” He has started 25 of the 28 games in which he has appeared, and 19 of those have come in left field. Basically, Ibanez is being asked to play defense and hit some off lefties, and that will eventually kill all of his value gained by hitting against righties.

Here are Ibanez’s defensive ratings over the last 5 seasons, courtesy of Fangraphs:

Year	Innings	UZR	DRS	Avg/1500
2009	1123.7	2.7	-2	0.5
2010	1294.0	-6.6	-11	-10.2
2011	1196.7	-19.2	-23	-26.4
2012	651.0	1.0	-5	-4.6
2013	157.7	-5.3	-6	-53.8
Total	4423.0	-27.4	-47	-12.6

Not only is Ibanez an awful defender, but he’s an awful defender at one of the easiest positions to fill and play. Across the league, left field has been an easily-replaceable position, and thus higher levels of offensive output are expected from the position. Since 2012, 75 players have qualified as left fielders and received at least 200 PA, a group of which Ibanez is a card-carrying member. Those 75 players have recorded a 0.320 wOBA and 100 wRC+. That’s league average for all hitters. But if we include just… Continue reading →

PED suspension just part of the Bruce Irvin package

Published May 18, 2013 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Seahawks

As I pondered what to write and think about Bruce Irvin suspension I couldn’t figure out whether or not to be outraged or validated. I was one of many that didn’t love the Bruce Irvin pick last year. Irvin performed well in stretches, and showed the kind of athletic dominance that made the Seahawks’ brass fall in love with him.

We give the front office a ton of credit because they’ve had a tremendous history thus far in the draft despite being roundly criticized in their first three years. They haven’t had a ton of success in the first round, but the idea that they’re somehow better at spotting talent later on is flawed logic.

And when they drafted Bruce Irvin there was also a lot of criticism for the front office. He’s too small. He won’t play every down. His technique is unrefined. He didn’t show any pass-rush moves at West Virginia.

More importantly though, he’s shown a tendency to be kind of a dumbfuck.

Irvin dropped out of high school and got arrested after the combine. At one point he thought he played for the Redskins, and just last week he took to twitter to announce he’d cut his hair on the same day as the NBA Board of Governors meeting, an event that drew a lot of attention from Seattle sports fans:

Loving my haircut! twitter.com/BIrvin_WVU11/s…

— Bruce Irvin (@BIrvin_WVU11) May 16, 2013

Now Irvin, a defensive end on a team that will likely be without Chris Clemons for much of the 2013 season, and a defensive end that could benefit greatly from weight gain that doesn’t ruin his quickness, has been caught using a substance that belongs to a family of substances – amphetamines – that have been used historically for weight loss.

He’s on a… Continue reading →

Sonics to stay in Sacramento

Published May 15, 2013 | By Madison McCord | Posted in Sonics

This sight will be seen again — just not right now.

The city of Seattle didn’t lose today — the city of Sacramento won.

There’s nothing that the fantastic ownership group of Chris Hansen and Steve Balmer could have done differently in their quest to bring the NBA back to the Emerald City today.

The goal of getting the Sonics back in town was defeated a month ago when the Sacramento group lead by billionaire Vivek Ranadive did what the NBA asked of them — match the Seattle offer.

But there still seemed to a be a glimmer of hope in Sonics fan’s eyes, especially when Lord Hansen raised the offer to buy the team from the Maloof family for far more than Ranadive will last week. Even then though, we all knew how the vote would end today.

In fact, I was surprised to hear that eight owners voted for the relocation — my money was on a near-unanimous decision, not a 22-8 split.

But now the focus is how to move on. Commissioner David Stern made it clear that any talk of expansion won’t happen until the end of the current television deal in 2015-16, and even then a new team in Seattle is far from guaranteed.

Another option is finding another team that is in a poor market and is just cash strapped enough to want to sell — because the one thing the fans of the Sonics must know is that the Hansen/Ballmer group will not quit until a team is back in Seattle.

And finally there’s still the hope that the Maloof’s keep their word and don’t sell the team to the Ranadive group, sell 20 percent of the team to Hansen (after an NBA approval), sit and wait for Sacramento to bail… Continue reading →

Evaluating the Bullpen: Shutdowns and Meltdowns

Published May 15, 2013 | By Matthias Kullowatz | Posted in Mariners

The evaluation of relievers might be evolving more slowly than any other area of baseball, but there are statistics out there that are attempting to weight relievers’ roles more accurately. We’ll get to those, but first, some discussion on closers.

The shiny toy in any team’s bullpen is its closer. Managers (usually) take their best relievers, make them the closers, and let them pitch the ninth inning in save situations. The most common measurement of closer’s skill is measured by saves and blown saves, and closers are paid handsomely for accumulating the former. But the problem is that saves—and reliever outings in general—are not all created equally.

Tom Wilhelmsen entered a game in the ninth against the White Sox back in April with a comfortable two-run lead and nobody on base. He proceeded to walk three batters, allowing one to score, and he put the winning run on first base. With a strikeout, the Mariners escaped with a one-run win and the Bartender picked up a save. Compare that to his performance a few weeks ago against the Angels when he entered the game with a one-run lead and had to face Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, and Mark Trumbo. A perfect inning later, and Wilhelmsen got another save—but hardly the same as his save against the White Sox earlier in the year.

The advent of win expectancy allowed for the formulation of a new set of statistics for relievers: shutdowns and meltdowns. Those links are good primers on the subject, but here’s a quick rundown through examples:

A reliever comes in with his team down a run in the seventh inning. “Win expectancy” says a typical team in this situation has a 26 percent chance to win. Three outs later, he leaves the game having… Continue reading →

What Anthony Rizzo’s extension could mean for the Seattle Mariners

Published May 14, 2013 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Mariners

With news of a long extension for young Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo and an increasing trend of signing players to extensions before their arbitration years, some fans may be looking for the Mariners to enter that club. While the Mariners have had a relative lack of success as it relates to top-prospect-to-star conversions, the team does have some players that are several years away from free agency that they may consider extending at a discount rate.

The key components to the Rizzo deal, and also the Paul Goldschmidt and Allen Craig deals the preceded it, were Rizzo’s relative youth and service time. Rizzo had almost a year of service time, Goldschmidt nearly a year-and-a-half, and Craig had about two-and-a-half years of service time. Rizzo is in his age 23 season, Goldschmidt in his age 25 season, and Craig in his age 28 season.

The three players have signed to these contract terms per Baseball Reference:

Rizzo: seven years, $41 million, $14.5 million options in 2020 and 2021 with a $2 million buyout each year

Goldschmidt: five years, $32.05 million, with a $14.5 million option in 2019 and a $2 million buyout

Craig: five years, $35 million, with a $13 million option in 2018 and a $1 million buyout

Rizzo has basically spent his career following Jed Hoyer, who helped draft him in Boston, traded for him in San Diego, and then was on the staff that traded for him in Chicago. Rizzo has barely been an average first baseman in about a full-season’s worth of plate appearances, but at only 23 years old average seems less mediocre. There’s no doubt that the Cubs front office has a larger sample of not only actual game-action experience with Anthony Rizzo than any other team, but they’ve likely also invested a fair… Continue reading →

Raul Ibanez the Replacement Level Player

PED suspension just part of the Bruce Irvin package

Sonics to stay in Sacramento

Evaluating the Bullpen: Shutdowns and Meltdowns

What Anthony Rizzo’s extension could mean for the Seattle Mariners

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