The Mariners are a team I generally take a lot of flack about, but I think that might be a little different now. The Mariners are doing worse than anyone expected, and at 19.5 GB, the Mariners are expected to be sellers this season. With several high salaries on the roster and not much down on the farm with Jeff Clement already in the majors, it’s hard to say when the Mariners should target for contention. Let’s take a look before setting a target year.

Potential Starters under Contract for 2009

C Kenji Johjima, C Jeff Clement, 2B Jose Lopez, 3B Adrian Beltre, SS Yuniesky Betancourt, OF Ichiro Suzuki, OF Wladimir Balentien, OF Jeremy Reed

SP Felix Hernandez, SP Erik Bedard, SP Jarrod Washburn, SP Carlos Silva, SP Miguel Batista

CL J.J. Putz

If Washburn, Silva, and Batista were not performing so poorly, I’d suggest that they try to trade them off for prospects. Alas, that doesn’t appear to be an option. What does this team need to win in 2009? In my opinion, they’d need Washburn, Silva, and Batista to return to league-average form, and they’d need to bring in two of the top offensive free agents (Mark Teixeira, Pat Burrell, Adam Dunn, Milton Bradley). Given that you can’t expect all three of those pitchers to return to form, that means they’d need to bring in a good starting pitcher as well. In the end, it would be nearly impossible to get three top free agents to join the Mariners in the same offseason, mostly due to cost. In the end, I’d implode this thing and start from scratch. That means making trades that will make the 2008, 2009, and 2010 teams worse, but as Billy Beane says, “You’re either building something that’s special or you have something that’s special. In between is just no man’s land.” It’s time for the Mariners to get out of no man’s land and start building something special. Let’s set 2011 as the target date.

Players to Cut

1B Richie Sexson and DH Jose Vidro

Just like when managers get fired, sometimes players become scapegoats as well. However, Sexson and Vidro have played so horribly that they deserve their fate. I don’t think either will get anything back in trade, and since they aren’t part of the organization’s future, it’s time to move on without them.

Players to Trade This Season

3B Adrian Beltre, LF Raul Ibanez, SP Erik Bedard

Raul Ibanez is the obvious name here as he’s a free agent this offseason. Beltre and Bedard are both under team contract for 2009, but they shouldn’t be a part of a rebuilding effort. Beltre is 29 and starting to enter the decline phase of his career. The Mariners should get what they can for him now rather than wait for him to leave as a free agent. Bedard is also 29, and as I read somewhere (sorry, I can’t find it back), remove his 2007 season and all of a sudden, it doesn’t look like Bedard is having a down year. His K/9 rates over the last 5 years are 7.93, 7.94, 7.84, 10.93, and 8.06. Now, you tell me which one looks out of place. It’s starting to look like last year was a fluke for Erik Bedard. As I said, he’s a free agent following the 2009 season, and it doesn’t sound like the Mariners clubhouse is going to miss him anytime soon. They might as well turn him into prospects now.

Players to Trade down the Road

C Kenji Johjima, SP Jarrod Washburn, SP Carlos Silva, SP Miguel Batista, RP J.J. Putz

Right now, they have to hold onto these guys due to underperformance and/or injury, but I wouldn’t consider any of them to be worth holding onto over the long-term. Only Silva’s younger than 30, but the Mariners need all of them to regain their productivity in order to get meaningful offers in return.

Core to Build Around

C Jeff Clement, OF Ichiro Suzuki, SP Felix Hernandez

Clement might not stick at catcher due to defensive concerns, but his bat appears to be capable of starting at 1B. They should give him as much time as possible at catcher to see if he can stick, but he has his doubters. King Felix needs to stay healthy, but the guy I want to talk about is Ichiro. While I’m skeptical that he’s worth the $90 million he signed for less than a year ago, Seattle’s the only place where he’s possibly worth it. If the Japanese influence wasn’t so large, I’d suggest they (gasp) trade Ichiro, but it is. While they rebuild, maybe they can use Ichiro to fool people into thinking they’re not.

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Let me hear your thoughts about what the Mariners should do. I’m sure there are several people who disagree with mine. It took a while to get myself off the fence about their future, but remembering the Billy Beane quote did it for me.

With the month of April coming to a close, we will be down to 5 months of regular season baseball. This is also a time of the year where a lot of people are starting to completely buy into player’s statistics, so in that vein, I’m going to take a look at starting pitchers to see who should be targeted in fantasy baseball leagues and who should be shopped.

Methodology

I’m only looking at pitchers with enough innings to qualify for the ERA title at this point, using the data available at FanGraphs. For the target list, I’m going to list all pitchers with a Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) of less than 4 and a better FIP than ERA. For the shop list, I’m going to list all pitchers with an ERA of less than 3 and a worse FIP than ERA. The idea is that a pitcher’s ERA will more than likely move back towards his FIP as the season progresses.

Pitchers to Target

I'm sorry about the width of this table. I followed the same procedure as the one below, but for some reason, this one's width won't reduce to the proper size. If you scroll over to the last column of the table, you’ll see just how much each pitcher has underperformed his underlying peripherals. From the rest of the guys in the table, Javier Vazquez and Ian Snell stand out.

Coming off a 15-win season with a 3.74 ERA, Vazquez had problems in his first and fifth starts. In his first start, he only went 5 innings, giving up 4 ER with 6 K. In his last start, he went 5.1 innings, giving up 6 ER with 3 K. The two bad games came against the Yankees and Indians. In between his bad outings, he threw 20.1 innings with a 2.21 ERA, 3 wins, and 21 strikeouts. However, he’s not going to have a 2.32 ERA the rest of the way either. For a guy that has averaged 26 HR allowed in Chicago, Vazquez has yet to give up a HR in 2008. That’s not going to continue, and although he should continue to rack up the strikeouts, his ERA probably won’t fall much lower than its current level, so I wouldn’t consider him a must-target pitcher.

Similarly, Snell has also not been giving up the home runs so far this year. Snell gave up one to Brian McCann on Opening Day but hasn’t since. He doesn’t have any bad outings like Vazquez, but he also only has one good outing. On April 6, Snell struck out 10 Marlins while only giving up 1 ER over 6 innings. Also similar to Vazquez, I wouldn’t call Snell a must-target pitcher. He will probably lower his ERA a little bit, but he’ll pretty much stay on his current pace.

Instead of looking to acquire one of the big-name pitchers from the list, I’d look to pick up some of these guys as free agents (if possible). Depending on your league setup, Nick Blackburn, #### Bonser, Clay Buchholz, Jonathan Sanchez, and Jair Jurrjens might be available, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Pitchers to Shop

After failing to find any quality pitchers to target, let’s see if there are any pitchers you should be looking to trade away while their value is at its peak.

This list is considerably longer, but it also includes guys I’d be much more willing to make a move on than the previous list. Several of these guys are the type you’ll want to hold onto unless you are offered more than full value for (such as Peavy, Webb, etc.), so I’ll just pick out a few guys that I think should be offered to the gullible owner in your league.

Scott Olsen has only given up one run in his last three starts while going 7+ innings each time. After a closer look, you start to wonder how it’s being done. In the first game of the streak, he struck out three Braves, gave up 5 hits, and walked no one. In the second game, he struck out three Nationals, gave up 3 hits, including a HR to Hanley Ramirez, and walked 2. In his last outing, he struck out zero, gave up 4 hits, and walked 5. It is a rare outing where you walk 5 guys and give up no runs. In those three outings, he walked one more than he struck out (6). That’s not a good sign for the future, and now is a good time to cash out.

Like Olsen, Shawn Chacon has walked as many guys as he’s struck out this season. He is also coming off an outing where he got lucky. In 7 innings against the Cardinals, Chacon struck out 3, walked 6, and allowed 5 hits. That amounted to 2 runs, 1 earned. In addition to his inability to keep guys off the bases via the walk, Chacon has a lengthy track record of not being that good. If you can get somebody to buy high on Chacon, give yourself a pat on the back.

Unlike Olsen and Chacon, Carlos Silva has never been one to walk too many guys in a season. In his best season, he walked 9 guys in 188.1 IP. However, he has also never struck out more than 89 guys in one season. When you rely on your defense as much as Silva does, it’s hard to post a sub-4.00 ERA. For that reason, you can expect Silva’s ERA to jump up as the season progresses. When you combine that with the fact that Silva won’t be helping you in the K category anytime soon, you’ll want to look to put this guy on someone else’s roster before reality sets in.

If you drafted Cliff Lee, congratulations, you’ve gotten a four-game start to the season that is far beyond any reasonable expectations for any starting pitcher (Johan Santana included). The good news is that his peripherals are outstanding (29:2 K/BB ratio), but there’s nothing in his track record that suggests he’ll end up with a sub-3.50 ERA. Lee’s season statistics will definitely command interest on the trade market, and although you won’t get full value for those statistics, you should get considerably more in trade than you can expect from Lee the rest of the way.

Ryan Dempster returned to the starting rotation for the first time in 5 years, and although he could pitch as well as Braden Looper did last year, I wouldn’t expect it. In his last two years as a starter (2002 and 2003), Dempster had ERAs of 5.38 and 6.54. Over the last two years, he racked up 52 saves, but also blew 12 (81% save rate) while posting a 4.76 ERA. Dempster could put a good season as a starter, but I don’t think it will happen and neither should you. Convince someone that he’s back to his Marlin ways and get what you can.

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I hope you guys enjoyed this look at pitchers to target and pitchers to shop article. Over the next few months, I’ll probably post once a week, but I’m a little short on ideas. Last year, when I was writing the “Another One Bites the Dust” series, I planned to do that again this year with one per week, which would mean it would start next weekend. I have several reasons why I shouldn’t, but I’d like to hear what you think. If you have any thoughts on what you’d like me to write, put it in the comments and I’ll do my best to oblige. I don’t say this enough, but I truly appreciate all the feedback you give me.