Miguel Olivo’s $750K buyout is a sunk cost, so any evaluation of his option should consider his 2013 salary to be $2.25M. On that note, let’s take a look at some telling projections:

My analysis suggests that Olivo will be worth less to the Mariners next season than I will, and that his $750K buyout should be redirected to my bank account. I summarize my opinions on Olivo’s 2013 status with a Venn Diagram:

Kawasaki, while not much of a baseball player in Seattle, was very much a fun guy to have around. He will be missed by me, and I assume many of you.

]]> http://sodomojo.com/2012/10/26/mariners-leave-two-behind/feed/ 0 http://sodomojo.com/2012/10/22/mariners-awards-like-youve-never-seen-them/ http://sodomojo.com/2012/10/22/mariners-awards-like-youve-never-seen-them/#comments Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:00:03 +0000 Matthias Kullowatz http://sodomojo.com/?p=9799

Well, this gives away one of the awards. Mandatory Credit: Ed Szczepanski-US PRESSWIRE

We’ve obsessed ourselves with league-wide MVPs, Cy Youngs and Rookie of the Years for long enough now. Don’t worry, you won’t find any of those, or Silver Sluggers, Roberto Clemente awards or any of that crap here. I instead present you with the Mariner Awards of Irrelevance.

Let’s get things started off with the Bored Fans Relief Award.* This player made sure to keep the game moving while additionally providing action that a bored fan would enjoy (or enjoy yelling at). Our winner swung at 54.4% of all pitches and 44.2% of pitches outside the strike zone, leading the team in both categories. Not surprisingly he averaged just 3.62 pitches per plate appearance, good for second on the team. He also managed homeruns in a whopping 3.7% of his plate appearances en route to appeasing all fans tired of long, monotonous batter-pitcher matchups with a remedy of quick plate appearances full of swings, strikeouts and homeruns. His catching was always an adventure in and of itself, and without further ado, I present to you Miguel Olivo.

The Manly-Man Award* was a difficult one to choose, and so I really had to split it between two tough, manly men.  Each took a team-leading five pitches off his body without so much as a grimace, and promptly responded every time with, “thank you, sir, may I have another.”**  Each played one of the most physically demanding positions on the diamond—shortstop and catcher, respectively—while sporting the manliest and ruggedest of facial hair. I present to you, Brendan Ryan and John Jaso.

The offensive Most Well-Traveled Award goes to the guy that covered more ground than anyone. Thanks to a team-best 9.6% extra base hit percentage, our winner covered 219 total bases with his hits, and tacked on a team-leading 21 bases through thievery and deception. Playing center field put him over the top for this award, so let’s give it up for Michael Saunders.

The pitchers deserve some of this credit, too, of course. We begin with the MVP—Mean and Volatile Pitcher Award. This hardly gentle man led the team with 12 hit batsmen, and before you start pointing at garbage like innings pitched, those twelve poor souls represent four times the number that teammate, Jason Vargas, hit in 217 innings. His 13 wild pitches represented 41% of all Mariners starters’ wild pitches, and were more than twice the next highest count.  Additionally, our winner led the Mariners in something called WAR—quite the surly, temperamental sort, to be sure.  I thus present this award to Felix Hernandez.

That’s how you help your starters’ ERAs. Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-US PRESSWIRE

The Best Friend Award goes to Lucas Luetge, who allowed just 8 of his 50 inherited baserunners to score (16%), leaving the ERAs of many teammates intact. Additionally, he pitched 17 of his 63 outing on zero days rest, the top percentage on the team. I mean, who didn’t like Lucas Leutge? On the flip side, the Worst Friend Award goes to Stephen Pryor for allowing 10 of 17 inherited baserunners to score (59%). Side note: he also drew the most glares from his starters.**

The last award—the Pitching Efficiency Award—goes not necessarily to the pitcher that most efficiently recorded outs, but rather the pitcher that most quickly recorded outs. We fans have other crap to do, right?! This pitcher threw nearly 15% of the entire team’s innings, or about one-seventh, and did so with a team-quickest 20.0 seconds between pitches. His 5-minute, 9-second innings were the shortest on the team, and for that, we are thankful for Jason Vargas.

*Players required at least 300 PA

**Source not found

Bringing in a Bat

This has been discussed in depth by just about every Mariner blogger in the world, but the Mariners need some offense and there will be good options on the free agent market and available for trades. The name I think would be best for Seattle is Billy Butler, but there will be a lot more power hitter talks in the future.

Chone Figgins

According to a report by MLB Trade Rumors, Figgins wants out of Seattle. He also stated that he, “can’t take two more years of this.” Oh, the irony. The first thing I said when I saw this was, “well, I can’t take two more years of you.” I don’t believe that the 9 million dollar benchwarmer is needed much in Seattle, so I hope that Jack Z can find a way to appease all of Seattle by ridding the city of Figgins’ presence.

Another funny thing about the situation is that this is probably the best opportunity he will find these days. I can’t imagine that there is a team that would sign him to a major league contract, so if he leaves Seattle, he will probably find himself in AAA.

Resigning Free Agents

There are a couple of current Mariners whose contracts have expired. The most notable of these are Hisashi Iwakuma, Oliver Perez, and Miguel Olivo.

Iwakuma looked very good in the starting role this season, and will likely require more than his current 1.5 million dollar contract to stay in Seattle. At 31 years old, the Japanese pitcher probably has a few more good years in him and would be a nice middle of the rotation piece over the next couple years until the big 3 can take his place.

Oliver Perez went into the year as just another minor league pitcher at the end of his career, but he finished the year as a dependable lefty specialist out of the bullpen. He accumulated just 29.2 innings of work in 33 appearances, but he posted an ERA of 2.12 and a WHIP of 1.25. His 2.93 FIP was impressive as well, and proves that he has some value going forward. Between lefties like Furbush and Leutge, there may be no need for Perez in the pen this year, however. It will be interesting to see if Seattle pursues him.

I assume that Olivo will not be back in Seattle next year. The Mariners have a pretty solid catching situation right now between Jaso and Montero and Zunino on the way. Olivo doesn’t bring much to the table anyways. His BB% is 2.2 and his K% 26.3 which comes out to a .08 BB/K. Let that number sink in for a few seconds. I actually laughed when I read that considering he probably won’t be our problem anymore. In addition, towards the end of his Mariner career, he platooned against lefties, but Jesus Montero’s average against lefties was about 100 points higher than Olivo’s.

Finding a New Hitting Coach

Today, Chris Chambliss was fired as hitting coach in Seattle. He was here for two years, but the team OPS was .665 and .640 in those two seasons. There haven’t been many bright spots in the Mariner offense in the last two years. Ackley had a miserable sophomore season, Smoak has been a disaster all the time except during Septembers, Brendan Ryan has looked lost in the batters’ box, and the list of offensive frustrations extends forever. The Mariners will need to fill the role soon, and hopefully the new man will help turn around the offense.