I look at the article and see one GM who was given a top 10 payroll every year because he convinced the front office he could reload rather than rebuild, consistently whiffed in the draft and had the benefit of a young Felix Hernandez and only achieved a similar win-loss record to a GM who received a team loaded with bad contracts, has faced payroll reductions every year in an environment of salary inflation, inherited one of the worst farm systems in baseball.
If Z received another 20-25 million a year to play with, I find it hard to believe the win-lose record will be close. Z would have 4-5 more wins a season and things would look much better. The lesson I've learned from this rebuild is the difficulty of building a team from the ground up with no money. How many free agents has Z been able to sign to multi-year deals to plug holes in the organization. One, and that was Chone Figgins who flopped. And Figgins wasn't even making top dollar for a free agent. Imagine the Bavasi years if he hadn't been able to sign Sexson, Beltre, Washburn, Ibanez, Eddie Guerrero, Scott Spiezo, Batista, Johjima and Silva. Granted some of these players were flops, but as a whole they were a net positive.
.
The 2013 season is gone, up in smoke, so far as Dr. D is concerned. If you've lost count, this is season #5 in Jack Zduriencik's rebuild plan.
A quick comparison:
| GM | Seasons | W | L | % | W per 162 |
| Bavasi, M's | 2003-08 | 322 | 395 | .449 | 73 |
| Zduriencik, M's | 2009-13 | 323 | 407 | .442 | 72 |
| Bavasi, LAA | 1994-99 | 434 | 491 | .469 | 76 |
| Bavasi, career | 756 | 886 | .460 | 75 |
The fact is that the Mariners' on-field product is no better under Zduriencik than it was under Bavasi. There is a mitigating factor to consider here: Zduriencik has piled up a huge flotilla of under-25 talent.
Bavasi had done exactly this in Los Angeles. The farm system that Bavasi ran --- > became the core of the Angels' 2002 championship team, with a core of Troy Glaus, Troy Percival, Darin Erstad and many others. The 1995-2001 nucleus was stuffed with breathtaking talent, and Bavasi wisely signed a group of them up to long-term, under-market contracts.
Bavasi then handed this young talent over to Bill Stoneman, not at his own initiative of course, and from 2002-09 the Angels appeared in six postseasons.
.
The Neutrality of This Wiki Article is Disputed
I don't believe there was another figure in Seattle sports history who drew the hatred that Bill Bavasi drew. It is a genteel city, and citizens of Seattle simply don't care about wins and losses the way that fans in most cities do. But Bill Bavasi seemed to touch something close to Cyber-Seattle's souls, seemed to be a touchstone for the entire Saber vs Scout debate. This was ironic, because Bavasi himself was as clued into Baseball Prospectus as anybody.
I think it is fair to say that this is a major part of USSM's legacy, the fact that Bill Bavasi is hated in the city of Seattle.
The wiki article was undoubtedly written by somebody in the blog-o-sphere. It reads in the main,
..............
During Bavasi's Mariner tenure, the club achieved only one winning season (88–74 in 2007). Losing records of 63–99 in 2004, 69–93 in 2005, 78–84 in 2006, and a sub .500 2008 did not help Bavasi's image from the fans perspectives.[1] At mid year of the 2008 season, Bavasi could have been the first general manager in the history of the MLB to have a 100 loss season with a 100 million dollar payroll,[2] which was unprecedented in not only MLB, but sports history. On June 16, 2008 Bavasi was relieved of his position with the Mariners in hopes of improving their already losing 2008 season.
In May discussions about the losing 2008 season, Bavasi was quoted backing his field manager John McLaren saying "John is doing the job, and the team's performance is not related to his work. It's purely related to player performance and underachieving."[3] Unfortunately for Bavasi, he was the individual who signed and/or traded for the majority of the Mariners players.
Finally, with the worst record in the major leagues (24–45) Bavasi was fired on June 16, 2008.[4] Seattle Mariners Chief Executive Officer Howard Lincoln, who made the announcement, said, "Change is in order. We have determined new leadership is needed in the GM position. With a new leader will come a new plan and a new approach." Vice President/Associate GM Lee Pelekoudas was named to take over in the interim.
Internet petitions[edit]
Several internet petitions had been started by outraged Mariners fans calling for the firing of Bill Bavasi as general manager of the club. A website[5] cited the goal of becoming contenders once again and achieving the goal by firing the Mariners general manager. An online petition was also started[6] calling for some action on Bavasi from the Mariners' upper management.
Comparison to other General Managers[edit]
Forbes magazine ranked Bavasi 87th out of 98 General Managers of professional sports with 3 or more years of experience in 2007, the lowest ranking of any General Manager in Major League Baseball.[7] Bill Bavasi was ranked as 22nd out of 30 general managers for the MLB in 2004[8]
.............
I'm not a fan of Bill Bavasi, particularly. I'm just a fan of objectivity and fairness. You could be in Bavasi's seat yourself, some day, facing the same burning-hot scrutiny that he has faced. When you are, we hope that the scrutiny will be fair.
Certainly Bavasi's results with the Seattle farm system turned out to be poor. In LAA, Bavasi's results with the Angels farm system turned out to be great. The on-field results took one bad-luck hit after another, as Zduriencik's have. True, Bavasi had a team around him in LAA, developing that young talent. His team in Seattle affected his results also. Zduriencik's team in Seattle affects his results.
There is a lot more luck involved in these outcomes, than most fans care to imagine that there is. Some GM's also get a lot more VP interference than others do. Some GM's get different Stars & Scrubs money parameters; Bill Bavasi was not allowed to bid on Prince Fielder or Josh Hamilton.
Perhaps Bill Bavasi is simply an ineffective GM, and if given the Red Sox or Rangers, would fail again. There are a lot of ineffective GM's, possibly including Zduriencik. It doesn't mean that they deserve villification, or accusations that their IQ's are south of 80, or etc.
................
For some reason, Jack Zduriencik remains quite well liked in Seattle, certainly much better respected than Bavasi, but hey. Seattle Sports Insider is the place where you can go to get the truth.
The emperor has no clothes.
There isn't a lot of difference in IQ between the two GM's, not a lot of difference in approach, and not a lot of justification for the way that Bill Bavasi was smeared. (For instance, the Erik Bedard trade -- as well as its twin maneuver, the Carlos Silva signing -- was a response to an offseason plan submitted by a leading sabermetrician, Mat Olkin. The characterization of the Bedard trade as anti-sabermetric was completely unfair from the start.)
Time and chance happeneth to every man. Some GM's get the breaks and some don't.
So far, Zduriencik hasn't caught many, either.
Cheers,
Jeff
Comments
He can get performers up and down the ranks. He's drafted polished college pitchers and turned them into top-20 talents, and done the same with high school arms that have barely thrown a ball.
He has international FA pitchers that have logged successful big-league time and IFA hitters that are getting Futures game votes.
He has college hitters and HS hitters both crushing it on our infield has we speak.
The dude just adds talent.
Can he mold and shape it? Dunno. That's what we're about to find out.
The bigger question: can he make a cohesive roster, including veterans, or do we have to wait another 3 years for all these kids to grow up?
He has had 5 years at the helm and in those years has not added one free agent or veteran via trade who was a piece of any sort of Mariners Future Contender. Not one.
Figgins was atrocious. Bradley too. The Wilson/Snell trade was abominable as far as solidifying either position, and Brendan Ryan has been a good glove who is so bad at hitting it doesn't even matter. Olivo was bad, and gone. Branyan had one decent year, like Jaso, before he was gone. Raul is 83 years old. Bay is crawling into his grave. Washburn and Joe Saunders and all the rest are bad filler.
Maybe it's not his fault that Guti, his shining success story, turned into a one-year wonder due to health constraints.
And Iwakuma might be that cheap-ish FA who makes us dangerous in 2015, his final year.
But what Jack has not proven, in any way, is his ability to add and keep pieces to this roster that he did not plant with his own two hands down on the farm. Smoak and Montero, two pieces grown on other peoples' farms, are disastrous thus far. In the Detroit deal we're down to what, an inconsistent lefty reliever in Furbush for a prize?
T-Rob, Eric Thames, Casper Wells... couldn't finish the polish on anybody else's AAA bodies who were ready for Show or Bust. Came up bust.
This doesn't put us in bad shape, honestly. We are not saddled with any large contract save Felix's, and that one is well worth it. But sooner or later Jack has to prove he's more than just the farm guru that we knew he was - and that got him promoted.
If that's what he's good for, then he's done that job brilliantly... but those were not the sole qualifications of getting to play GM for half a decade.
I still give him another year. We're worlds better off than we were in 2008 as far as positioning to make moves, having a clean roster with no massive contracts killing us and flexibility to work with whatever can be added from outside the current mix.
But now is when the vet bats that the next 3 years are centered around while the kids flood the roster with blue-chipper after blue-chipper need to bring it. This is the call that HAS to work. If we build around Figgins and Bradley to help out Franklin/ Seager/ Miller/ Zunino, we're screwed.
So if we don't trust Jack to make the calls on those vets, then he can get shown the door and somebody who can keep the right 4 young bats and 3 young arms and trade the rest will be a king in this town, using Jack's stolen treasure to prop up his own legacy.
Possession is nine tenths of the law, though. Just creating the surplus isn't enough, you have to own it and maximize it. Hope you can do that, Jack; I don't want to lose your Midas Touch in the minors because of your Medusa Gaze in the bigs.
~G
GMZ has also proven adept at finding bullpen arms on the scrap heap or on-the-cheap: Luetge from Rule 5; Delabar & Wilhelmsen from out-of-baseball-altogether; Perez a failed starter whom everyone else had given up; Kinney as well.
From this fan's perspective, Z is SEEMS much more tenacious than Bavasi or even Gillick: he is scouring the independent leagues and waiver wires, going to the 11th hour in a staring-contest-of-a-negotiation with Scott Boras over Fielder (his greatest Brewer draft success) and consistently turning what little org surplus he may have into crucial org/roster band-aids (in widely-accepted theory).
If it matters at all that a team's GM is fighting as hard as he is hoping his players are for the team, then I think Z is head and shoulders above his Mariners GM predicesors.
Z seems like a fighter. I think the players respect that. The M's farm, at this rate, could quickly reach critical mass in regard to talent and the Z team is wholey credited for that.
This is a fun philosophical discussion. However, as etowncoug stated, Z has so far made the best of a very bad situation with less money while paying defference to our miscast front office trio. They love him. He will not be fired if he keeps doing what he's done so far.
I am curious about how Z feels about this discussion. He must believe his attention and hard work will win out and secure his place in the org. Otherwise he would've already traded Taijuan and Franklin in a desperate attempt to save his job.
But flipping Leuke for Jaso and then Morse and Vargas for Morales strongly suggests Jack may indeed have acquired integral vets, good vets even, from spare parts - if we can keep them. And even if we don't, I won't fault Jack for that. I gotta think he has better ideas in mind. The point about vet acquiring is valid, but not one I'm concerned about. I don't fault him for being unable to keep Beltre, and Figgins was a creative stab at a solution there.
I like the way Jack thinks outside the box. It blows up in his face at times, but he's agile, willing to experiment, try things out, work hard for an advantage. There was a time we feared teams wouldn't trade with us, he was so good at it.
I really think Jack is a lot like some of these talented kids we're struggling with - there's real talent there, we've seen it in action. There's also some real headscratchers. But he learns from his mistakes, and I think his best days are ahead.
Well put, Rick. Well done!
The ownership trio just secured their financial security with the new Root buyout; they will keep whoever THEY want. That's Z, for better ot worse. But I'm optomisitc that Z's luck with undrafted additions will "regress to the mean" ;-)
If I could dream even a little bit.....
Chairman of the ownership committee: John Stanton
Vice-chairman of the ownership committee: Chris Larson
Chairmen emeriti: John Ellis AND Howard Lincoln
President: Pat Gillick
President emeritus: Chuck Armstrong
General Manager: Jack Zduriencik
Manager: Mike Scoscia (if available)
Bench Coach (or manager if Scoscia not available): Joe McEwing
Bench Coach (if McEwing is manager): Joey Cora
The ones who haven't brought us championship baseball step aside, with our thanks for their fiscal accomplishments, to give the other ~48% of ownership a try.
Yamauchi, Arakawa, Gorton, Gardner, Lowry, Rice, Hill, Ellis, Lincoln, and Armstrong get busts in the back of the concourse by the pen and/or big screen, recognizing their work in saving baseball in Seattle and building a strong franchise.
And then the new guys get us a series of banners.
More specifically, through last year (4 complete seasons) Z's M's have averaged about an $85M payroll, 14.5th place in payroll on average. Bavasi's averaged about a $97M payroll putting them in 8.8th place in payroll. I averaged place rather than add up 30 teams during 2 different time frames...$12 million and 6 places lower in payroll on average.
Add to that the monetary constrictions on early Zduriencik rosters that were resultant of Bavasi: Very little young cheap talent (that effect would have mostly been moot by now) and they were also filled with expensive non talents signed by Bavasi. Bavasi did a similar dance early on too, but Gillick was winning. Gillicks players were about to fall off cliffs at that transfer, Bavasi's had often never been high enough to fall off a cliff in the first place and had already nosedived before Bill got fired. Bavasi's moves were almost thoroughly despisable at the time (Beltre was a mostly liked move at the time, Kenji and Sexson were not much hated acquisitions...) while Zduriencik's have mostly been at least considered sound at the time. Except for Morrow and Fister...and the dumpster diving that comes with lower payrolls. Mostly even Figgins seemed a good acquisition at the time. Silva did not. Bautista? wow...No Zduriencik comparables for those or the Cleveland DH tandem trades. Bedard is probably top 5, but Soriano, Choo and Cabrerra (among multiple others...) are other moves that were also immediately disliked. For obvious reasons, in the moment. No Bavasi comp for Morrow or Fister trades though...
Zduriencik has been hit and miss with MLB acquisitions, but many talk like it's been far more miss. I think it's been a reasonable mix since the farm system is making that need less stressed by the month. I can handle a few more years in hopes that his talent fills out the teams needs because it seems that's where it's headed. No reason to claim that his acquisitions this year were bad anyway. The vets acquired are doing well. The trades made, while maybe questionable momentarily, were not Bavasi "Are you joking?" bad.
Just playing a little devil's advocate here...if your team is terrible every year and keeps cutting relative payroll shouldn't you end up with a top farm system, just by being average as a GM? It is not like Z's talent scouting has turned out any superstars or even all-stars yet. (Not saying none of the latest wave will be stars, but it hasn't happened yet.)
I guess, I think he is solid and would like to see him stick around, but just don't see what makes him superior. Hasn't swayed any big FA's (whether you think this is a good outcome or not, it is one sign of GM's talent as a salesman and he has apparently been whiffing on his tries), hasn't drafted any superstars...seems like he's doing about GM par for the course on a long term rebuild. We still have question marks in almost every slot on the roster (again not saying I don't like our kids, but Seager is the only proven one at this point).
I don't think either Z or Wedge are worth firing unless a much better successor is waiting in the wings. Stability for an org is a good thing, it is not like those guys don't work hard or are ruining the team. Bavasi founding the -100/100 club was 100% a fireable offense, regardless of how much he deserved the blame.
Given Hamiltons comments that it was never serious with the M's and the idea that they knew Upton was going to veto, it's possible that the players aren't who he was acting a salesman for. No serious effort was reported about most of the middle tier players either. What would a Fielder, Hamilton or Upton have really done for this team? Isn't it possible that Zduriencik want seriously after any of them yet? Maybe we were just being sold on the attempts. It's not hard to believe that he didn't think this was the year either.
I agree with what you're saying in general otherwise, I just see the salesman assertion as assumption.
I can't comment on Fielder since I know very little of the story. I don't remember reading much about it at the time, except that the Mariners were linked to the player and were one of the teams bidding. However, the idea that the pursuit of Hamilton was for PR reasons only and not genuine makes a ton of sense. It's also possible that Z was trying to appease Chuck Armstrong, who said publicly that we should go after Hamilton. I'm less certain about Upton. As I understand it, that trade was actually completed and a done deal and was killed by the player later. And Upton would have made a lot more sense than Hamilton, so I tend to believe that one.
Z has two jobs: win today and win tomorrow. To win in the longterm in baseball, more than any other sport, it is about longterm investments. GM Jeff Daniels, in defending their all in approach to this year's international signings, said 'we have a long range plan.' What is the Mariner's long range plan? It is to rebuild using today's revenue. But that isn't the way I think it should be. Since the Mariner's KNOW they will have a huge jump in future revenue due to new broadcasting arrangements, that future revenue should be borrowed against to make reasonable investments for the future. They can invest wisely now or be forced more than they would like in the future into the costly free agent market. So if Jack Z, Jeff Kingston, et. al. are the right team (and ownership should know by now if they are!!!), they need to give them the freedom to explore opportunities and invest in the future. Lots of possibilities here: increased spending on recruiting, scouting or player development, locking up their own players to longterm contracts, a stronger presence in the international market. Lets have a PLAN and with that, hopefully, will come perennial success.
The nice thing about singing international players is you don't have to spend 1-2M per player to find good ones. Many of the higher dollar guys never pan out. Need to sprinkle in a good number of guys you can get for several hundred thousand each. Just like in the draft first round picks flame out all the time with huge numbers of stars found in the following rounds. This group is good at finding quality players late in the draft, would like to give them a few more tries in the international market. We need to stay away from spending huge wads of $$$ on international hitters with no eye and terrible K rates.
In most years, I would be in favor of spreading the money around on the IFA equivalent of 2nd and 3rd round picks. Maybe every now and then you go all in on a guy, but for the most part, when you're dealing with 16-year olds, you simply don't know who's going to develop and who isn't.