Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 121: The Three-Way Trade and the Mariners’ Quest for a Big Bat

Episode Date: January 17, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the three-way trade between the Mariners, A’s, and Nationals and talk about whether Seattle was too fixated on adding power this offseason.

Power. I have a little project. Edgar Martinez has it. Because if you don't have power, you're not in the game. Now this is what I call a bet. Good morning and welcome to episode 121 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Perspectives daily podcast. In New York, New York, I am Ben Lindberg, and in Long Beach, California, joining me as always is Sam Miller. Hello, Sam. Hello, Ben.

It was an eventful day. Doesn't it feel like we should be talking about the fake dead girlfriend, but there's just no baseball connection that we could possibly torture out of it? Neither of us had even heard the fake story before it was debunked today or yesterday, if you're listening to this on Thursday. So we had to catch up on the fake story and the real story at the same time. That's true. So we are going to talk about baseball. There was some baseball news.

There was a trade that happened. It was a trade that went three ways between the Nationals and the Mariners and the Oakland A's. I guess I will summarize the trade just for the benefit of people who haven't read about it. To Seattle was Michael Morse. Mike Morse and Oakland got John Jaso, and Washington got a couple of pitching prospects, A.J. Cole and Blake Traynon, and a player to be named later who probably won't be anything major.

So that's the deal. What do you think about the deal? I guess I don't like it from the Mariners' perspective, and I guess I really like it from the nationals perspective yeah i mean so like with the nationals okay so they traded cole and um peacock and malone and norris for geo gonzalez a year ago and it just seems to me that if you imagine that trade like they gave up a lot that's a lot that's a big package for geo gonzalez now they got i think geo gonzalez at the time had five years of service time left or maybe four so there was a reason that they gave up a lot but i mean they gave up a lot it was a

trade they had to give up a lot but if you just swap out cole for morse and you just sort of mentally do that math all of a sudden it doesn't really look like they gave up that much for Gio. I mean, Malone and Peacock are both kind of like nice pitchability kind of guys. And Norris is good. You know, Norris is a fine prospect, although his prospect star had really, I think, dimmed a little bit. And then Morse is basically like, I mean, you know, Morse is not that far off from a non-tender candidate at this point. He's a free agent after next year. And so, I mean, that's effectively what they got in two deals with the A's. So from their perspective, it sort of puts in perspective

what an upgrade Cole is on Morse at this stage in each of their careers. And it was kind of the rumor that the Nationals would trade Morse either for a left-handed reliever or a couple prospects. And they did the prospects thing, maybe because they already signed Rafael Soriano, who is not a lefty reliever, but he is a very good reliever. And at a certain point, if you have enough very good relievers, it doesn't necessarily matter all that much that not many of them throw with their left hand. And some of their relievers are good against opposite-handed hitters also. So the Nationals are a really, really good team. So, the Nationals are a really, really good team, and I guess they're one of the few teams that a guy like Mike Morse would just be kind of a spare part who wouldn't really be used at all.

And so they upgraded their system, which was not the greatest, not terrible, but they could use a little more depth and Cole is a good prospect. So yeah, I guess they did well. And Oakland, I guess it depends what you think Jaceau is, because you know he's not a good defensive catcher. He is not a good framer. He's not a good thrower. He's not a good fielder of batted balls. So what he is, is a hitter. And he hit very, very well last year in limited time. And he's a guy with big platoon splits. So he is a lefty. He hits right really really well and will probably be i guess a platoon guy for oakland and he just kind of replaces george kataris who was basically jso but i guess a little worse uh and and now jso is just in kataris's place i i mean it's not a a massive upgrade i guess i don't uh yeah it depends i mean it depends what you think about uh you know jso's one great year i mean that was a massive outlier it was also a phenomenal year i mean he was a catcher with a 145 ops plus he was the best Mariners hitter in like a good five years.

So if you think that he's anywhere close to that going forward, then he's an upgrade over almost, you know, I mean, if you think he's anywhere close to that going forward, he's like the second or third best DH in the league. But he's probably not, right? Even if you like Jace, he's probably not that. No, there's nothing crazy fluky about his stats from last season, but he just hit for a ton of power, which he really hadn't ever done before.

He's always been a guy who kind of walked and didn't strike out all that much, but the power was much, much more than it had ever been before, even though he was moving to Seattle. So I don't know. He was 28. He is 29 now. So I don't know if that, I mean, probably that was kind of like a career year, I would think. Although, I mean, not that he's going to be bad now. I think he'll probably still be a pretty good catcher, a pretty good hitter for a catcher. And he's signed for three more years. So that's nice. Have you ever looked at John Jaha's player page?

I'm sure I have. He's fun. It's one of the strangest career paths i think in major league history but no i mean i assume there's an explanation for this that i've forgotten but in 1999 his first year with the a's he was 33 he hit 276 414 556 um which is a cool 970 ops in a full season and then the next year he hit one home run and then the year after that he had a negative five OPS plus and never played again he must have gotten hurt right did he get hurt he must have but I mean he did play some in those games I he didn't miss an entire season but he he didn't play much he he played very little so I imagine that he did get hurt. And he didn't play. Well, like in the second of those years, he spent at least a month in AAA. But yeah, I mean, yes, he got hurt.

Yeah. I'm looking at old or trying to look for old annual comments for John Jaha. I don't see any. He's got a blank player page when it comes to annual comments he's been just stricken from the record anyway so now we go to the Mariners and the Mariners I mean

I personally I think that what this sort of speaks to is the restrictions that get placed on a team when you start deciding how a team needs to win instead of just whether a team needs to win, which I guess, I mean, it's always the question is whether they, you know, how to make them win more games. But I think people sometimes get fixated on having balance

and having a particular, you know, you can look at this Mariners roster before this year, you can see that they don't hit and that they don't have power and they also didn't win. And so you just sort of conclude, well, they need power to win. But of course they could have won with all sorts of upgrades throughout their roster and yet it seemed like they were fixated in the front office and also in a large portion of the fan base on this idea that they needed dingers they needed a big bat a big bat is just one of them I think I think the phrase big bat might be one of the most pernicious things that you can introduce into a franchise because once you start thinking along the lines of big bat instead of good player it just seems like that

leads down all sorts of crazy roads. I remember the years when the Giants, it was agreed by all that the Giants needed a big bat. And thank goodness, Sabian never pulled off any of the many trades that were rumored, like Tim Lincecum for Alex Rios. But this idea that you need a big bat is weird and limiting. And this offseason, the Mariners have just been in pursuit of a big bat the entire time, and when they couldn't get a guy like Hamilton, I think that we've seen, I think this is the

end result of it. Mike Morse is a name hitter. He's a pretty good hitter, but... Not a big bat, really. He's not a big bat, but he is... He's what you settle for when you've tried to get Hamilton and Swisher and Upton and failed to get all of them, and he's available. I guess he's a big bat in the sense that it says on the label, big bat.

But he doesn't actually necessarily i mean he he did in 2011 he was a certified big bat right 2010 he was probably pretty close to a certified big bat i mean i don't have any problem with the idea that mike morse is a pretty good hitter no uh it's just the idea that he fits into this category of big bats i mean in the same way that kendry's morales fits into this category of big bats. I mean, in the same way that Kendry's Morales fits into this category of big bats. And I just don't know... With those two guys, it's really just they're big bats because they are small gloves or small legs.

They don't do anything else, so they kind of have to be big bats to be useful. Yeah, no, I think that that's the flip side to the Nichols' law of catcher defense. Anytime you're bad at one part of your game, I think people assume that you're slightly better at the rest of your game because otherwise, what are you doing there? And Morrison and Morales both offer virtually nothing.

They arguably neither should even be given a glove, and neither one runs. They both have some on-base issues even, so their bat is really concentrated in this idea of power, of dingers. They are dingers hitters more than anything, although I guess Morales is not as much a dingers hitter as a doubles. Morse just doesn't walk. Yeah, Morse doesn't walk and Morales doesn't walk neither one of them uh and morse really doesn't walk wow he walked 16 times in 430 plate appearances last season that was less than usual but he's never walked a lot yeah he's been he's been trending downward though so yeah i, yeah, I mean, I just, I don't know.

I get the feeling that Morse is the guy that seems, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to, I know that the Mariners did their due diligence. I know that they put a lot of thought into this. to like make it seem like they just uh like saw mike morrison was available and didn't bother to look up their his baseball reference page or anything like that but he just seems like the kind of guy that um has that um that label attached to him but he doesn't he doesn't really help you win and i don't think he helps them win particularly. I think it's an open question whether he's a better hitter than Jaso next year. And he's replacing, I guess, Casper Wells. I mean, they have so many kind of first base DH corner outfield types now

that if you add one, someone else doesn't get to play. And Casper Wells is not a bad player. He's not the hitter that Morse is. He is not a big bet. But he does other things better than Morse does. Yeah, and Morse is a free agent after next year, and

JSO wouldn't have been for three years. I don't know. Maybe they tried to shop Jace around the league and nobody wanted him, in which case it's hard to argue. I mean, you can,

I think you could make the case that Jace is not particularly useful to this Mariners team in their current construction because he's not much of a catcher. They didn't let him catch much last year. I don't think that they would like to let him catch much or would have liked to let him catch much this year. And they have

Mike Zanino who should be up, you know, mid-season at the earliest or maybe, well, theoretically, you know, opening earliest, but certainly by next year. So JSO's three years, you know, make him less valuable to the Mariners than to another team. And so if they shopped him like crazy and that was the best they could come up with, then it's hard to judge it too much, I guess. But it's easy to judge it some. I mean, they had resisted any temptation to have a balanced team, as you said, for the last few years, really, ever since Jaxie has taken over there.

The first offseason, he was the gm he kind of remade the roster and went after defense and and really has been doing that since since he took over the mariners have every year been the best or one of the best uh defensive teams and have been terrible at hitting and i mean the terrible at hitting is not a new thing. And they have resisted really doing all that much about it, I guess, just kind of figuring that a run saved is roughly as valuable as a run scored. And I wonder whether any of this has to do with the fact that people's contracts are about to expire, people being Jack Z and I guess also Eric Wedge, and possibly there's some pressure to win now, I guess.

Although, as you say, I don't know how much Morse really helps them do that. It's not like he pushes them over the edge into playoff contention or something if they weren't without him um i will be looking forward to seeing jesus montero possibly catching a whole season or at least until zanino comes up he was i think he played 50 he started 55 games at catcher last year and max had him at i I think, negative 14 framing runs, something like that. So that'll be fun to see him have possibly a full season

or something close to it. I mean, you would think that they would just go out and get a free agent backup kind of a guy who could still do, you know, at least half the games and maybe bridge to Zanino. But, I mean, because that guy, you know, those sorts of guys are still available at this point. Yeah, like a Jorvit Torialba or something. Yeah, or Kelly Shopping or something like that.

But the thing is that they just don't really have a place to play Montero. They have nine DHs at this point. And Morse is going to be, you know, forced into the outfield partly because they have nine DHs. And so I think that in a way that probably suggests that Montero will catch more than the idea that they've given any signs that they think he can catch. So a couple years ago, Jack Z was the hot GM. You know, he was the guy who couldn't make a bad move and seemed like he was the perfect marriage of stats and scouting. And right now it seems like this offseason Rizzo has sort of emerged as that guy who, to be honest, I didn't know much about Mike Rizzo's background before he turned the Nationals around this year.

he turned the Nationals around this year. And he kind of was just sort of like this generic GM who has built the Nationals into probably the best team in the National League, has really set them up well for the future, partly because he's got Bryce Harper and Steven Strasburg, of course. I mean, also, he's been a kind of a nice mix of aggressive and long term planning. RJ yesterday or on Wednesday wrote in his transaction analysis that the Soriano deal is the early favorite for transaction of the year as kind of a perfect move for the team's circumstances. So, I don't know.

I guess, do you think that we're very good at judging GMs? Or in a few years, is Rizzo just going to be on the scrap heap in our minds like Jack C kind of is right now? I don't know. I think about how different the outlook for the Mariners would be right now and maybe Jacksy's reputation right now if the highly touted young hitters that he acquired had panned out already imagine if Justin Smoke had turned into a really productive first baseman or if Dustin Ackley had hit last

year or if Montero had hit last year and I mean it's it's too early to write off uh Ackley had hit last year or if Montero had hit last year. And, I mean, it's too early to write off Ackley probably and too early certainly to even discount Montero very much. But, I mean, if those guys had turned into what people thought they would be, and really none of those moves was criticized widely at the time. People didn't really have any doubts about Justin Smoak being a productive future first baseman at the time that he was acquired. And if he had turned into that, then probably the Mariners wouldn't feel such a need to go out and get a big bat. They wouldn't have needed to trade for Morales. go out and get a big bat they wouldn't have needed to trade for for morales and if actually had hit and if montero had hit suddenly this would be a team with a great young core of position players and also a bunch of really promising starting pitching prospects and everything would be kind of coming together and now it doesn't really seem like that's going to happen, or it certainly hasn't happened yet, and now his reputation has kind of gone in the tank along with those players that he kind of tied the team's future to,

but it seemed defensible at the time. So you're saying that it's not that we're bad at evaluating GMs, that we're bad at evaluating their results, maybe? evaluating GMs that were bad at evaluating their results, maybe. Yeah, I guess. Or just that, I mean, it could be a good process that goes wrong. And if you screw it up once, I mean, if you screw up a whole rebuilding movement, not through your own moves, but just because prospects who were supposed to pan out didn't pan out, then yeah, maybe we're not giving him a fair deal. I don't know. But I mean, it's hard to say with prospects whether it was good process or whether they just actually missed something about that prospect. All we can really do is say what the general thought about those players was at the time. And there didn't seem to be any major concerns about them. So I don't know. He would look a lot different today if that plan had gone right.

And maybe it was a good plan that just didn't go right. Yeah, I think that's reasonable. So notes from his conference call just popped up on my internet. So I'm just going to read one quote that's relevant to what we just said and one quote that's hilarious. So the one that's relevant is one of the things we have seen since I've been here is our lack of raw power. And Michael, we have got a guy who has got big time power so yeah uh the hilarious one is we've added to what we think could be a pretty good middle of the lineup there with Michael Kendry's Morales, Raul Abanez, and Jason Bay oh wow the inclusion of Jason Bay

because it's not like, I mean, he could have said that sentence with credible fourth names. He could have said Montero. He could have said Michael Saunders. He could have said, you know, Kyle Seeger, who was good last year. Kyle Seeger is like a legitimate hitter. But Jason Bay is like, I mean, I would think in a rational organization, Jason Bay is like a one in six shot to make the club out of spring training right now. So why did he throw him in there? I don't know. I guess because he's a recent acquisition and because he used to be a big bat.

He used to be a big bat. He's got the big bat label. He doesn't do anything else. He must be a big bat. Why else would he be in a major league if he weren't a big bat? Right. All right. Well, that's the deal.

So maybe tomorrow someone else will make a trade and we'll have just as much to talk about. Okay. All right.