Update 23:02 - Brandon League confirms he's flying to Seattle for a physical.

You know, I was rather looking forward to working on some stuff that's been piling up for some time now, but our GM just keeps making moves. The latest, so it is being talked about by Ken Rosenthal, is that Brandon Morrow is being shipped to Toronto in exchange for Brandon League and an unknown prospect.

Stay tuned for any word on the validity of this, any mention of the prospect involved and some analysis on Brandon League. It seems like an odd one, so try to avoid getting too worked up until we hear more and/or from another source.

League, a right-hander, enters his age 27 season in 2010 and his second (of four) arbitration years. He's a free agent after the 2012 season. Morrow, meanwhile, is under team control through 2013. Known for his velocity, League spent some time on the shelf in 2007 after a great year in '06. He split 2008 between Triple-A and Toronto and was solid and was with Toronto all of 2009, posting an outrageous 14.3% swinging strike rate and striking out nearly one-quarter of all batters faced.

League is also a significant ground baller, relying on his mid-to-high-90s sinker as almost his only weapon. He introduced a changeup/splitter this past season to solid success. If you need a quick comparable, Brandon League is basically a groundballing David Aardsma, with more velocity. He instantly becomes a fantastic set up option and a very useful part of the bullpen. Relievers are volatile of course.

Just for funsies, here's CHONE's projections:

League - 60IP, 53K, 21BB, 6HR, 3.78 FIP
Morrow - 63IP, 60K, 33BB, 6HR, 4.10 FIP

Obviously, CHONE discounts Morrow's potential as a starter.

This post makes me sad. I'm so sorry, Red.

I love Adrian Beltre. I would love to continue being able to watch him in a Mariners uniform. But like Jeff's two posts on Felix earlier in the offseason, this one is going to take the rational approach.

Here is our situation as it stands now:
1B - Hannahan/Carp - 1 WAR, $400K
2B - Lopez - 2 WAR, $2.5M
SS - Wilson - 2 WAR, $5M
3B - Figgins - 3 WAR, $9M
Total - 8 WAR, 17M

Re-signing Adrian Beltre would mean that he reclaims his third base position and almost assuredly moves Chone Figgins to second base now that left field is filled with some rotation of four players (Michael Saunders, Milton Bradley, Ryan Langerhans, Bill Hall). Figgins is likely to be the same value at third or second, 3-3.5 WAR since the positional adjustments are the same and Figgins has familiarity at both positions. Figgins at second base means Jose Lopez is displaced either to first base or another team.

I covered what Jose Lopez moving to first base would be like (see? The dominoes are all falling into place now) earlier and concluded that he would not be significantly better than either of our already present options (Jack Hannahan, Mike Carp). In other words, whether Hannahan, Carp or Lopez, we probably only have about 1 WAR projected out of first base for now. Since moving Lopez results in no possible upgrade at first base, Adrian Beltre essentially replaces Lopez's production and Mike Carp's cost in the infield. That shuffling of the infield deck chairs represents a mere one win upgrade.

Signing Beltre, Moving Lopez to 1B
1B - Lopez - 1 WAR, $2.5M
2B - Figgins - 3 WAR, $9M
SS - Wilson - 2 WAR, $5M
3B - Beltre - 3 WAR, $X
Total - 9 WAR, 16.5M + X

In this illustration, you should clearly see the problem. We gained a win, sure, but because the only player bumped was one making the league minimum, the cost of that single win would be the entirety of Beltre's salary over that amount, a far too rich amount.

Clearly then, acquiring Beltre means that Jose Lopez needs to go. There are still problems with this. Even in the case where you just traded Lopez for something non-infield related, you still net just one win, however your marginal cost for that one win would be reduced to Beltre salary over Lopez's. The issue is how cheap Jose Lopez is. At just $2.5 million in cost, Adrian Beltre's additional win over Lopez would mean that we could offer Beltre about $7 million for what he would supply the team in marginal production under this scenario. I have a hard time believing Adrian Beltre is signing here for $7 million, much less that Jack Zdurencik is interested in paying full market price for wins.

Moving further into complicated land, we could suppose that instead of trading Lopez for non-entity's, Jack Z could turn him into a league average 1B (given that Lopez is a league average 2B, I'm not going to go any higher). In that case, the infield would then look like:

Signing Beltre, Trading Lopez For League Average 1B
1B - Trade Target- 2 WAR, $Y
2B - Figgins - 3 WAR, $9M
SS - Wilson - 2 WAR, $5M
3B - Beltre - 3 WAR, $X
Total - 10 WAR, 14M + X + Y

Now we have a two win upgrade over our current arrangement. We also now have two unknown salaries. Sticking with the best case scenario (see how flimsy this hope is getting?), and assuming the league average 1B we trade for is a 0-3 year player making the league minimum, we are back to Beltre's cost replacing Lopez's cost, but with the benefit of gaining us two wins instead of one. Two wins at market value is about $8-9 million which means the Mariners could offer Beltre $10-11 million a year and the deal would make sense from a marginal production point of view. As a quick side note, it's actually a little less than this because re-signing Beltre means we lose out on a Type B compensation pick, worth a million or so.

Two problems with that though. First, would Beltre accept that? He may want more. Secondly, and more damning is that while that offer would be justified in a vacuum, the Mariners are up against their budget. They cannot afford to pay fair market price for wins. Even with the creative additions of Figgins, Lee and Bradley all coming in well below market rates (discussed in future post), the team is still needing to address some holes and paying the market rate isn't going to do it.

In an ideal world, Lopez would fetch a good return after his high average, clutchy, 25-homerun, 40-double 2009 season. A return good enough to allow the Mariners to then pay Beltre what he wants. That's not likely to happen however. And even if it did, Beltre would have to want to come back and be willing to sign at below his fair market value. Remember, for Beltre, a 3 WAR player, he's worth about $12-14 million a year. On top of that, Jack Zduriencik would have to want to sign Beltre to such a deal and basically punt the rest of free agency.

I think we all figured that Beltre was gone as soon as the 2009 season ended. The reports that surfaced at the Winter Meetings about the Mariners being interested in bringing Beltre back probably renewed that hope for some people, but as things stand now, it's not an avenue that offers much sense to the Mariners at this time.

More photos » by Chris Carlson - AP

Jose Lopez is willing to throw a temper tantrum right here in the store.

Browse more photos »

This is not really a pressing issue at the moment, but some future posts are going to build off this concept and it's bound to come up in the future, so consider this a bookmark post. Feel free to refer back when the inevitable happens.

Jose Lopez the last two seasons has posted WARs of 2.0 and 2.6 and was at 2.1 in 2006. His dreadfully awful 2007 really mars the picture, but the outline is still clear. While Lopez has the potential to crater offensively at times, always a possibility with free swinging righties in Safeco Field, he is a decent bet to produce a final 2010 line close to this (figures are relative to league average):

0 run bat
0 run glove
+2.5 positional adjustment
+20 replacement level

That's a 2.25 WAR player, slightly above average. For the $2.5 million that he's slated to earn in 2010, that's a real bargain, on the order of an $8-10 million asset. What would happen if we moved him to first base however?

Well, he would no longer be playing second base, for starts. Second base is a nearly perfect position for Jose Lopez's defensive skill set. He has average range for a second baseman and he turns the double play well. Lopez's problem are the retarded errors that he tends to make, seemingly stemming from lapses in concentration that, along with his hacktastic hitting style, serve to profile him as a lazy player. Moving to first base would probably cut down on his error rate, as first baseman get involved in much fewer plays of the type that lead to errors and their dropped catches are always blamed on the thrower for some reason.

I would expect Lopez then to gain about three runs in defensive value from reduced errors and probably three runs or so from increased range. He would also lose about a run from no longer being involved in double play turns. In the end, about a five run boost in total seems reasonable. Incidentally, that's in close range to the increases in defensive value that Miguel Cabrera (from third base) and Albert Pujols (from left field) saw after moving to first base. Furthermore, moving to first base from a non-catcher or DH role seems to offer no increase in hitting skill.

The downside is that first base carries a 12.5 run penalty with it as it is among the easiest of all positions to fill. Coming from second base, with its 2.5 run bonus, Lopez would see an instant 15 run drop in positional value. Those extra five runs in defensive skill, from being compared to first baseman instead of second baseman, is not enough to make up the difference. Lopez's likely projection at first base would look approximately like this:

Lopez, at first base:
0 run bat
5 run glove
-12.5 positional adjustment
+20 replacement level

Moving Lopez to first base has the net effect of chopping about a whole win off his value. That $8-10 million asset is now a $4-5 million one. In addition, that 1.25 WAR or so does not constitute much of an improvement over what we would expect from Jack Hannahan or Mike Carp, much less from any outside options that may or may not be available.

I've been against it for years, every time it gets brought up in the media, or here, or anywhere. Jose Lopez at first base is a bad idea. It's an inefficient use of resources and represents a fractional upgrade at best over current in house options at the cost of opening a much more difficult hole to fill. If the Mariners find themselves in a situation in which Jose Lopez's services at second base are no longer desired or needed, then a trade is almost certainly going to be the optimal route.

Dear fans of Milton Bradley's former teams,

It may come as a shock to you, but we up here in Seattle are aware of Milton Bradley's past behaviors. I know Seattle seems isolated from the rest of the country, but we have this interweb thingy that keeps us quite informed whilst we stay indoors from all the rain. Also he played for two of our divisional rivals so we've had some experience seeing him. We understand. Really. He's a malcontent. He's violent, explosive, unstable, unhinged, arrogant, pick your adjectives of choice.

We get it.

We know. We already knew. We knew two years ago too when we wanted to sign him then. It's part of the risk of Milton Bradley and we know that risk exists. If it didn't, Bradley would be one of baseball's stars, and one of its most-hyped given his hitting prowess and a lack of Black role models in baseball of late.

We get it.

It would be one thing if Seattle's postseason hopes hinged on Milton Bradley staying healthy and level-headed. If that were true, we would be a lot more cautious about this. But they do not. Realistically, Bradley pencils in as a 1-2 win improvement at DH over what we currently had. Milton Bradley is not the lynch pin on which our entire season rides. He is merely a possible high-upside addition. A guy who could explode for 4 WAR as he did in 2008. We welcome his arrival based on that potential, the positional flexibility he provides as a fill-in outfielder and his switch-hitting.

We get it.

We're not expecting Bradley to reform himself and become a model clubhouse citizen. We have merely pointed out that Seattle might be such an environment where Bradley might find himself comfortable in. We're pretty low-key up here and we have a good support staff in place in the coaches and even fellow Black teammates. Pointing out that Bradley might not be a total nutcase in Seattle does not mean we expect it to happen. Just as pointing out that he has high upside as a hitter doesn't mean we're going out and buying playoff tickets. Please stop confusing the acknowledgment of a possibility with asserting that it is the most probable outcome.

We get it.

We'd also understand a little more if we were, say, gaining Milton Bradley on a 2Y/$30 million contract. There would be a lot more discussion about his attitude and likely playing time issues if that were the case. Milton Bradley did not arrive here in a vacuum though. Pardon me for the assumption, but you know how much you seem to hate Milton Bradley? We hated Carlos Silva similarly and no more how jaded you are, you have to admit that Milton Bradley has more upside as a productive player than Carlos Silva. That's all we are caring about right now.

So If you want to feel better about yourself by coming here and trying to enlighten us all about the dangers of Milton Bradley, please keep one thing in mind and go find somewhere else:

We get it.

Hugs and Kisses,
Matthew Carruth

Miguel Batista has departed via free agency, Kenji Johjima's contract was voided and Carlos Silva was miraculously dealt away. So I am left to wonder, who is our whipping boy now? There are no bad contracts on the team, nobody whose performance vastly underwhelms their salary, or is horrible at defense, or is blocking a stud prospect.

I find myself not hating anyone on the team. The highest my disgust meter is rating is "mildly dislike". What about you? Who on the current 40-man roster is your least favorite, for whatever reason? I tried to include what I thought were the most likely candidates in the poll, but I also included a "Someone Else" option in case I missed the player in your mind.

Also, with Beltre gone in addition to the others, many a casual fan's whipping boy from 2009 is somewhere else as well. In the comments, I'd be interested to read what you think will be the player most dissed by sports radio callers.

Before the whole Milton Bradley trade went down, the trending topic of the LL universe was us losing out on Nick Johnson. He seemed like such a good fit and was inking such a reasonable deal with New York that understandably some people were confused why Zduriencik didn't simply top the Yankees' offer.

One of the great things about rooting for a team helmed by Jack Zduriencik is the level of trust that we can place in him partly because we share similar thought processes and talent evaluations. The Mariners were interested in Johnson for the same reasons that we were. Just as with the Rich Harden signing, when the Mariners have an identifiable hole and a player they are interested in who would fill said hole signs somewhere else for a reasonable amount, it's a pretty safe bet now a days that the reason Zduriencik didn't reach for that player is because he has other options at his disposal.

Milton Bradley is not really a fall back option from Nick Johnson though. Hopefully, Bradley's role is as the primary DH and getting occasional starts in left field. That still leaves us with a hole at first base currently occupied by Jack Hannahan or possibly Mike Carp. What's the options for this hole?

There's trades. The Brandon Morrow for Mat Gamel type of deal that, while maybe not being the exact deal, illustrates the type of deal that could be made. Essentially Zduriencik would be swapping the hole at first base for a hole in the rotation. For which there are still numerous free agent solutions (Randy Johnson being my favorite) still abound. There's Luke Scott in Baltimore or maybe Ryan Doumit in Pittsburgh and yes, the door has to be open on Adrian Gonzalez simply because who knows what Zduriencik is capable of.

There's also free agents, a simpler fix. Namely, there's still Russell Branyan. We know the two parties are comfortable with each other and earlier in the offseason it seemed incredibly likely that Branyan would return for 2010. He wanted two guaranteed years, the Mariners weren't budging on one and Zduriencik was content to wait things out. Nick Johnson may have been why. Not only as an alternative to Branyan but look at what just happened. Johnson just signed for one guaranteed year at $5.5 million.

Branyan had the better year last season, but it was close and Johnson is certainly the better bet as a hitter based both on his past performances and his age, 31 compared to Branyan's 34. It's going to near impossible for Branyan's camp to defend him getting two guaranteed years in light of Nick Johnson getting only one and furthermore, it would be difficult to justify Branyan being worth significantly more in guaranteed salary.

Johnson has been the more historically injury prone player, but a few of those injuries were freak accidents and none are as recent as Branyan's troubling back issue that ended his 2009 season. It's hard to see Branyan netting more than a one year deal in the $4 million guaranteed range with some incentives based on playing time and possibly an option thrown in. With about $10 million left to spend and 1B being the biggest hole left, that should bring Branyan right back into Seattle's wheelhouse.

I am not writing this based off any inside information, but it would surprise me not at all to see Branyan signed with Seattle before the clock strikes 2010. And if not, if Zduriencik, with Bradley aboard, decides to pass on Branyan's health risks, it's probably because he has someone even better in his sights.

It's great to know how the Mariners' projected team is stacking up, but ultimately we do not play in a vacuum but in a four-team division. In order to establish some relativity to our discussions, I went about compiling a version of the sheet that Jeff posted below for the other three teams.

First the caveats. This is a gross estimation. I am nowhere near as knowledgeable about those teams as I am about the Mariners and thus projecting depth charts was a lot tougher. That being said, most of the fringey decisions (is Macier Izturis or Brandon Wood the starter at 3B for the Angels?) do not represent much variance in terms of projected production. When I wasn't sure, I defaulted to the player with the better projection.

As for the following, they are a combination of CHONE and me glancing at past history in WAR, tRA, UZR and the like in order to determine what I thought felt about right. These are not precise, but I am pretty comfortable thinking that I overshot as much as I undershot. I am also including my own version for the Mariners, which I did independently of Jeff's.

If you have any corrections to offer, please do so in the comments. If you do it politely, you'll be listened to.

THE ANGELS

THE ATHLETICS

THE MARINERS

THE RANGERS

THE STANDINGS

Some notes:

-The Athletics project to spread a lot of innings around 7-8 starters, hence the higher WAR in their assorted pen.
-I combined Feliz and Holland into one slot since I figure they'll total out to about 200 innings.

Obviously, the offseason is nowhere near complete and teams are still filling holes. That is why the WAR totals here are lower than you'd expect. The Angels are 9 wins below their 2009 total, the A's 8 wins, the Mariners 1 win and the Rangers 5 wins. It's unlikely that all four teams (though not impossible since all four were above average in 2009) take a step backward in 2010. Still, hopefully this can provide a starting point for us to figure out a better estimate for the division as the winter progresses.

On December 15th, 1984, the Seattle Seahawks retired the number 12 in honor of the fans.

Yes, it was used first by Texas A&M. It's also been used all over the soccer world. I don't care. What matters to me is what the symbol of 12 means to me, to us, as Seattle fans. A symbol of undying support. Times are tough right now as far as victories go, and things can get mean when things go bad. I'd like to use this day as a reminder that no matter the disagreements, there's still a bond that we share.

Happy 25th anniversary, 12th man.

Moving on from Rich Harden, Nick Johnson is another player who fits right in the same sort of category as Harden and we have yet to profile him significantly. Like Harden, Johnson has been plagued by health issues in the past, but is coming off a decently healthy 2009. Also like Harden, Johnson has demonstrated significantly above average skills when able to take the field.

Nick Johnson hits. He's never failed to post above average lines for his park and league in his Major League career. On top of that, he's rated as a slightly above average fielder at first base as well by UZR. A full season from Nick Johnson would be expected to be between his 2006 year, a .290/.428/.520 line, and his 2009 .291/.426/.405 composite line. Throw in average first base defense and that's a four win player. That's about Johnson's 90th percentile year at this point in his career.

The risk with Johnson is his 2004, 2007 or 2008 seasons, three years that he combined for 360 at bats and 1.5 WAR. No matter what, you are going to be hedging your bets between those two extremes.

In addition to four-win upside, Nick Johnson brings in the same sort of offensive profile as Chone Figgins, a profile greatly needed on the Mariners lineup. The 4.6 pitches per plate appearance that Johnson averaged last year are unlikely to be repeated, but he consistently checks in at the 4.2-4.3 range. Stick him third in the lineup against right-handed starting pitchers and suddenly the prospect of leading off the game against Ichiro Suzuki, Chone Figgins and Nick Johnson, all batting from the left side, becomes a potential nightmare for opposing hurlers.

Word on the street is that Johnson is still holding out for two guaranteed while teams are still in a one + option frame of mind, much as with Russell Branyan. As long as both remain unsigned, it gives the Mariners some leverage in order to sit back and wait for one, or both, to drop their demands for that second year.