Year after year, we watch the Angels (and more extensively,) the A's rise to the top near the end.
As we all know, the A's take the money ball approach. The Angels take a lesser-rout of spending money, spending it smart, and for players with great upside.
Our Mariners FO seems to pride itself in taking a more humble approach. We don't toss around money for proven players, we much prefer giving 8 million dollars for 6 months of suckage to ones like Jeff "Not quite a dream" Weaver.
And yet, we always seem to complain about being not as good as those two other teams. We all know our FO sucks, but there is one particular thing I've thought about recently. Is our more humble, and sensitive signings logically sensible enough to create such a margin as 6 games or so late in the year?
The Oakland Athletics have Billy Beane. He's about sabermetrics, and taking older players (yet proven and respected givers to a team and clubhouse.) The Angels' GMs in recent years have spent money VERY intellegently. They pick up Vlad Guerrero, take young players that have tremendous upside, and older players (like Vlad, Garret Anderson, John Lackey, Torii Hunter) who pretty much function as destructors of a promising season for the rival Seattle Mariners.
We pick up people like Richie. We pick up Rick White. We pick up Ho. We back out of races for big arms (Dice-K, Bedard.) Those two are acceptable abdications. However, backing out of races for ones such as Johan Santana, and a solid 3-man in Kuroda, the season comes around and we're the same. Teams that win go out and get what they need. They know they have the money, that's not an issue.
Our FO is so cautious, and only willing to either build from inside (which I don't have a problem with, really,) or go out and make stupid moves. These said stupid moves are played off as "a veteran we're picking up to add depth to our baseball team, and shift us into the contender position."
In conclusion, my question, (which would be a raging debate in the comments alley), is how big an advantage of Money Ball is, over Seattle Mariners FO baseball. It may be a less personal and colder take to it, but it puts fans in the seats to go out and watch people that are exciting play. Should the Mariners start taking this approach, or are we as fans content with how our FO is controlling our decision-making personality? I know none of us like the FO at all, but is their approach currently going to pay off, and should we wait it out?
12/14/07
Money Ball versus Our Ball
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8 comments:
You say that the Mariners backed out of the Santana race and the Kudora one but it wasn't Bavasi and the Mariners fault they couldnt land those guys. Kudora wanted to go to LA over us even though we offered more money and that isn't our fault. Also giving so much money to a Japanese pitcher isn't such a smart thing to do even if you do need pitching, look at Igawa and Matusaka. Igawa sucks and Matusaka was supposedly the best pitcher in Japan and he is just okay in the MLB. And with Santana we were pretty much picked out by the Twins because Santana doesn't want to go to Seattle, that isn't our fault. Stop being so critical of the Mariners when they have such a tough job. Yes they make mistakes but getting guys to come to Seattle is harder then you think. Yea i think we should ditch Bavasi, just because i want to give someone else a chance. But Mariner fans need to stop thinking that they could do so much better.
-Mariner fan since birth
This is why I half-labeled it "Rants."
I would not want to be a 'Moneyball' team, Moneyball is for teams who cannot outspend and must therefore out think the other, richer teams. What we could be is similar to the Cleveland Indians, who use some Moneyball theory but use that theory to get the best players out there and not just the players they can afford. And on a side note everybody who has not yet read Moneyball probably should.
Cleveland Indians, LAAA, these are smart Front Offices to me.
Like Zev said, you can't blame it all on Bavasi. Bavasi tries to get the big names but they either take waaaay too much money elsewhere, or just don't like the travel schedule SEattle has to deal with. I'm convinced that's why we can't sign pitchers. The Mariners tried to get Vlad, they tried to get Tejada.. we just get outbid and it's not because Bavasi isn't offering enough. Bavasi offered Zito what would have been the richest deal ever given to a pitcher but Zito found an even bigger offer.
I agree with Jon and Zev...Like I've said before, I'd hate to see how critical Mariners fans would be of a GM who HADN'T HELPED IMPROVE THE MARINERS RECORD EVERY YEAR HE HAS BEEN WITH THE TEAM...Bavasi is certainly trying to get players this offseason and circumstances so far have seemingly prevented him from getting the guys he wants...I personally try not to be critical of a guy doing and job that NONE OF US ARE QUALIFIED FOR AND ABLE TO DO...You think you can do better???...I highly fucking doubt it...Granted, Bavasi hasn't been the best GM in the world, but he certainly hasn't been the worst GM the Mariners have ever had...Things so far haven't worked out too well for Bavasi trying to acquiring pitching, however, I doubt any member of the Mariner Nation could do any better...
Hey now, I wasn't taking against Bavasi really at all here. I was asking for a side v. side of money ball or humble ball! Don't make this into something else now.
Personally I think the never ending criticism of our front office from fans is ridiculous...Most fans don't have the slightest clue as to what is really going on in the front office...Most of the shit you read about is speculation and BS that writers present as the truth...The plain fact about our current front office is that our record has gotten better every year since they took control...Things may not seem to be going well right now but it doesn't seem to be from a lack of effort...And as far as "Money Ball" vs. whatever you want to call the Mariners front office strategy of being a top ten spending team, Billy Beane's money ball has won them the exact same amount of titles as the Mariners in Beane's tenure...ZERO...Yeah the Mariners have had some bad signings but so has every team in this league...They've also had some very good signings...My own personal theory is that players simply don't want to come to Seattle very much because of the travel schedule and perception that all it ever does in Seattle is rain...Afterall it's hard to paint a picture of the real Seattle when your trying to sign a free agent in the winter when it rains 5 to 6 days a week...
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