Ranking the GMs, #28: Bill Bavasi

Recently Dave Cameron of the superlatively excellent Mariners blog U.S.S. Mariner wrote to his favorite team's general manager:

Learn more about baseball than a blogger who lives 2,500 miles from Safeco Field and covers the team as a freaking hobby. I shouldn’t know more about how to build a baseball team than you, but I do, and that’s why you and your entire staff deserve to be fired.

Normally such a statement would be easily interpreted as the ramblings of an impudent and caustic blogger, who in the midst of rage about some minor perceived injustice, and suffering from delusions about his own intelligence, saw fit to rail against the man with the rancor and lack of professionalism that is endemic to his craft. But in this case, he's perfectly correct. Bill Bavasi has shown his incompetence time and time again, while the bloggers of U.S.S. Mariner have proven to be superior analysts.

What sparked this angry and righteous remark were Bavasi's recent comments:

Nobody had the nerve to pick us less than second place in our division. We were picked anything from first to second to wild-card. You name it. The expectations were a heck of a lot higher than this, based on any analysts’ evaluation of out players’ individual track records and their age. Their ages are such that they’re not all young guys that they’re inexperienced. But they’re not too old to believe that they would backslide. So, I think those expectations are realistic. They were and they are.

Cameron rightly called bullshit, as several models predicted the Mariners would lose far more games than they won, and many foresaw the team in third place to end the season, well short of the playoffs. Currently the team is 18-34, worst in baseball.

Last year the Mariners, like the Mets, won 88 games. In the offseason the Mariners, like the Mets, acquired an ace pitcher. But the Mets and Mariners, though both are run rather poorly, were in quite different positions. I wrote about their differences at Mets Geek. Basically, I wrote that the Mariners made the wrong choice in dealing Adam Jones and others for Erik Bedard, because they weren't really an 88-win team in 2007, but a 79 win team by Pythagorean record. Even then, one can't blame the Mariners for trying to compete in baseball's only four-team division when the only competition is the L.A. Angels. But Bill Bavasi went about it in entirely the wrong way, and he did so because he doesn't understand the strengths and weaknesses of his own team.

Raúl Ibañez is a competent hitter. He's not a superstar, and his on-base percentage is a little low (not the the Mariners know anything about that), but he can hit. The problem with Ibañez is that he's a terrible fielder. Bavasi seems to be ignorant of this.

Jose Vidro is a competent hitter. He has a .300 career average. He can walk a little bit. A little bit more would be nice, but he's a nice hitter. The problem with Jose Vidro, though, is that he's the Mariners' designated hitter. Apparently he either can't play second base anymore or Seattle feels that Jose Lopez is the better option. The problem with this arrangement is that Jose Vidro hits like a second baseman. The DH doesn't have to play the field. The Mariners could use anyone there, including Barry Bonds or Frank Thomas. Or Raúl Ibañez. Instead, it's Jose Vidro. I have to think it's the batting average, and that makes me think that Bill Bavasi has no idea what he's doing. In fact, he actually traded for Vidro's contract, which had two years and $16 million left on it. Yea, he's better than Luis Castillo. But not by much.

So 2007 was a season in which the Mariners significantly over-performed, despite this unfortunate arrangement with Ibañez in left field, Vidro at DH, and the young Adam Jones hitting .314/.382/.586 in AAA and playing a much better defense than Ibañez could ever dream of.

There have been more recent blunders and more distant ones. Recently the Mariners gave catcher Kenji Johjima a 3-year, $24 million extension. Johjima is an above-average hitter for a catcher, but doesn't shock anyone with his power and doesn't get on base very much. And he's 32. And the Mariners have a catcher in AAA who OPSed .867 last year and is hitting .382/.507/.755 in 138 AAA plate appearances this year. AND (I'm going crazy here), the Mariners recently allowed crappy fifth starter-type Jarrod Washburn to dictate that he prefers backup catcher Jamie Burke, citing "communications issues with the language barrier." The Mariners happily complied, making Burke the personal catcher for both Bedard and Washburn, with the newly extended Johjima works only 3/5ths of the time.

Johjima's extension means that Jeff Clement immediately loses value, as he must become a 1B or DH to remain with the Mariners. In the sphere of extensions for pre-free agent players, this one didn't make a lot of sense. The Mariners could have simply kept Johjima under their control and dealt him if necessary, instead of needlessly locking him up and blocking Jeff Clement. In fairness to Bavasi, this deal might have had more to do with the Mariners' Japanese ownership.

Other notable transgressions:

Not offering free agent Jose Guillen arbitration, and thereby failing to collect a compensatory draft pick. He's unlikely to accept. If he does, he can be released and the team only has to pay 1/6th of the price.

Trading Rafael Soriano to the Braves for Horacio Ramirez.

Willie Bloomquist! Miguel Cairo! Chemistry! Veteran leadership!

Really, I haven't touched the surface of how bad Bill Bavasi has been as the General Manager of the Seattle Mariners, a position he has held since November 2003. In that time, he has been unable to get the Mariners to the playoffs, despite having a large payroll in a division that has only four teams. Nor as he set up the team for long-term success, as he falls over himself to give long-term contracts to mediocrities like Carlos Silva (4 years, $48 million, career 100 ERA+, 3.7 K/9) and Jarrod Washburn (4 years, $37.5 million, career 107 ERA+ but worse now), pay for the decline phases of guys like Jose Vidro and Richie Sexson, and fill his bench with useless veteran "leaders." He has repeatedly shown himself to be ignorant of modern statistical analysis, and that ignorance has doomed his team to perpetual mediocrity, despite all the market and resources to compete in baseball's only four-team division. He's better than Sabean because Sabean has a lot more bad contracts, and he's better than Ed Wade because at least Bavasi has a semblance of a plan, but that's not saying a whole lot.

If there's one good thing for Mariners fans about Seattle's already disastrous 2008 campaign, it's that it might be the end for Bill Bavasi.