EDIT TO ADD: There seems to be some confusion as to what I was trying to do with this post.  The discussion has inexplicably gotten bogged down in whether the Mariners should replace Sexson, Guillen or Vidro with Jones (IOW, who do we get rid of if we were running this team?).  This discussion is pointless and here is my thinking as to why it is pointless.

• In principle, the Mariners can choose between Vidro, Guillen and Sexson as the guy they wish to offload.  However, I have ruled out Vidro because their media has made it abundantly clear that the Mariners have no intention of letting go of Vidro (the positive press on Vidro as a clubhouse leader, line-up glue and hit machine…deserved or not…represents how the Mariners are thinking).  We've all seen that the Mariners, more than most franchises, tip their hand a lot in the press as to which guys they like and which guys they don't.  Vidro stays.  I'm taking that as GIVEN.
• Besides, even if we didn't want to believe the above, no one is going to take two years of a slow, injury prone singles hitter off our hands and give us anything useful in return…the Nats tried for a whole season to unload Vidro and the Mariners were the only team calling.  I've never (not EVER) seen this Mariners front office make a salary dump trade.  Admitting they made a mistake is difficult enough for them when the player is on a one-year deal and obviously not producing.  It would be IMPOSSIBLE for this group to admit they made a mistake when in fact they did NOT (statistically).  Vidro is hitting very well…doing exactly what Bavasi asked him to do, and he represents 16 million dollars worth of sunk costs that they won't recover in a trade.
• What about Guillen?  The Mariners could conceivably let Guillen walk if his salary demands are too high, but again, we have the media talking up how badly the Mariners want to extend Guillen and now, to the Mariners, Guillen is going to look like the safer play.  Richie Sexson just had a HORRENDOUS year and Guillen just led the team to within a game of the Angels before the 2-15 bullpen meltdown commenced.
• Even if my interpretation is wrong in point three, it makes better sense for a front office obsessed with team chemistry to a fault to keep the guy who everyone has come to recognize as the clubhouse leader than the guy who was the clubhouse leader in 2005 and 2006 when the team went nowhere.

All of the below roster construction is based on two assumptions.

• The regulars we do keep avoid catastrophic injury (as Sandy so cheerfully points out, you can't predict injury…if someone does get hurt, the Mariners will be in trouble no matter what roster I set up here).
• Sexson gets traded.  I see no other viable (to the MARINERS!…not to the geeks in fandom) ways to get Jones into the starting line-up. 

OK, we can't always get what we want.  If you were GM'ing the Mariners, we'd be trading the farm for Johan Santana, AJ Burnett, Manny Ramirez and a real manager, getting rid of Jose Vidro, Jose Guillen, Raul Ibanez, Richie Sexson and Jarrod Washburn, and signing Fukudome and Uehara.

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SABRMatt wrote:

his ISO patience can stay the same and his OPS will be .750 or so. But yes, I agree, in an ideal world, we’d have David Ortiz DHing.

The thing is…the Mariners’ choices for DH aren’t as broad as people seemed to assume prior to the season. I view the trade as spending money we had available and trading away nothing of value to get a high stoploss (IOW…certain production, even if it’s not all that amazing). I guess I just see Vidro as a nice piece to a playoff team if that team can put good parts aroud him…and the mariners have those parts on offense if Jones develops and Beltre stays healthy.

The problem is most of our lineup is stop-loss. Eventually you need some upside, some actual production.

And as you said yourself, if Beltre doesn’t bring it and AJ isn’t a star out of the gate with a Tulo/Braun type of year, then we’re hosed as far as offensive production goes. There aren’t likely to be “happy accident” sort of surprises from the hitters.

We’re a team that is immobile as far as roster shuffling goes. We might as well have our feet in concrete. So we can’t do what the As do and shuffle guys through until we find the right mix, or the surprising bat.

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M-Pops wants ta know,

Hey Doc,

How about doing a POTD on a one seaon Burnett rental?

The Jays sound like they are ready to get something for him before he excersizes that opt out. Would he be worth the high price the Jays would demand for him for only one season? What would they want? A third baseman for the near future and a starting prospect?

.
cf. the pro’s and con’s of Boston’s Josh Beckett deal Pops?

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I will give Mac the benefit of the doubt, mostly because Ichiro loves him.

He shoots he scoooooooooores….

If you're sour on McLaren (as other blogs, and many D-O-V ites seem to be), or if you're beginning to wonder about him (as Dr. D) is…

This is a question that ought to give you pause for thought.

Why is Ichiro so confident in him?

That question needs a quality response, if you're going to be confident in your rejection of McLaren.  And we're not talking about brushing off the question.  We're not talking about nodding, token gestures towards self-checking. 

I could condescendingly suppose that Ichiro just wanted McLaren in, because Ichiro likes McLaren personally.  I could also limit myself to 2-dimensional caricaturization of all the people around me.  I might have a harder time selling D-O-V on my scientific pedigree.  :- )

…………………… 

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Edit - 9/26/07

Not much has really changed since this original post.  Sexson's BABIP is still ridiculous - .218 for the season.  It's is still by far the lowest of the dataset I used (which is all of the qualified hitters in BOTH the AL and NL in the last 4 years.  This dataset is easily available - it would take a bit more work to get datasets farther back)

Meanwhile, I've seen many blogs and forums taking shots at Sexson and others using dubious logic, at best.  For example…

1.  "Vidro cannot possibly maintain this production since the all-star break.  His production is largely influenced by the luck of an extra high BABIP….and Sexson still stinks".  Nary a word has been mentioned about how Sexson's season has been influenced by luck…far more so than Vidro's was for his most productive stretch.

2.  "Remember, BABIP is more about defense than pitching - the M’s defense has been killing them all year, but never is this more obvious than since the all-star break."  So, going by this logic it appears that Sexson has simply had better defense and pitching, especially defense, against him than other players have…

3.  "Bavasi is a moron for not letting Detroit have Sexson when they claimed him".  He stinks real bad, but yet a franchise on the upswing with a recent history of making solid moves doesn't recognize it like the rest of us…

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Daddy O sez,

Turned on KJR to start the drive home this evening and heard a guest (not a caller) saying rumors were swirling around nationally that Jocketty and LaRussa might be headed to Seattle next year as a tandem IF the M’s decide not to go with MacLaren.

I have NO IDEA who this was or what substance there is to his statements.

Personally would be very enthused about the possibility.  (Yes, if somebody tells us tomorrow that it's a bogus rumor, nobody will be surprised.  Very good; now sit down, Egbert.)

That’s not the same thing as saying that we endorse the hire. But intrigued? What’s Jocketty got, like 7 straight playoffs or something, with a couple pennants?   Checking … 6-of-7 or 6-of-8 playoffs, a 105-win season, a 100-win season… dazzling W/L resume.  And St. Louis doesn't run a $140m payroll, do they?

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Linkage:

http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20070922-00000000-spn-spo

Translation:

The Sports Nippon, Sponichi sports newspaper, reports that Hiroki Kuroda's contract through 2010 contains a clause that lets him opt out to try "challenging the MLB"

Sponichi also reports that Kuroda has revealed to his confidants (nice friends, eh? Goin' out telling everyone… I always wondered about these sources, lol) that he "wishes to try a higher level. But age is important, and the earlier the better".

Kuroda is well known for his loyalty to Hiroshima. He strongly considered leaving the team, but he ended up staying out of loyalty to his fans and Japanese baseball.

But it is said that he began to reconsider after the success of the rivals of his graduating class, such as Hideki Matsui and Tadahito Iguchi. Matsuzaka's success was another factor, a teammate from the 2004 Athens Olympics Team Japan. 

Yet, the death of his father in August is said to be a larger cause. Kuroda is said to want to challenge the Major's and dedicate this image to his father, a baseball player before him.

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1: Pitching is 70% of Defense

Miniature Cliché: DIPS Theory has been largely discredited and the pitcher’s role defined by correlations run by Tom Tango and company in a study called “Understanding DIPS.”

Let’s follow the logical thought process from the beginning of baseball analysis to current line of SABR-literate correlative analyses and try to get a handle on what we do and do not understand regarding team defense and pitching (the relationship between the two).  We’ll begin with Bill James, where most of these kinds of posts will begin.  James has a remarkable baseball acumen and intuition.  As Dr. D would put it, he’s got way more light bulbs on than most of us (myself included, most likely).  The way he tends to approach baseball analysis, however, is not particularly scientific (that’s not meant as an attack on Bill, it’s just a pattern I’ve observed).  He tends to follow this research outline:

• Watch lots of baseball games and determine that X is true.
• Run the numbers as well as he knows how and determine that Y is true.
• Assume the difference between his intuitive understanding and the numbers he ran is a mathematical failing and adjust the numbers until they fit.

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