Zduriencik Is the New Beane
Posted by Bill Baer on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane helped change the landscape of running baseball front offices with help from the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Instead of entrusting the future of the organization to the eyes of a group of scouts, Beane gave credence to statistical analysis and took an economic approach to player evaluation.
Jack Zduriencik
Beane has been the GM of the Athletics since 1998 and he was very successful from 1999-2006. However, as other teams began to notice and borrow Beane’s tactics, his success began to wane — his A’s have lost 86 or more games in each of the last three seasons. Many front offices became increasingly stat-savvy, including the Seattle Mariners.
The Seattle Mariners removed Bill Bavasi from his position as GM of the Mariners after a disappointing 2008 season in which his team lost 101 games just one year removed from winning 88. The organization wanted to hire a more well-rounded, stat-savvy GM and they found him in Jack Zduriencik.
Zduriencik has been the GM in Seattle for just over one year but he has already done enough to win over Mariners fans and earn the respect of writers and bloggers nationwide. Consider his body of work:
- Traded J.J. Putz, Sean Green, and Jeremy Reed to the New York Mets and Luis Valbuena to the Cleveland Indians. Received Franklin Gutierrez from the Indians and Endy Chavez, Aaron Heilman, Jason Vargas, Mike Carp, Ezequiel Carrera, and Maikel Cleto.
- Traded Fabian Williamson to the Boston Red Sox for David Aardsma.
- Traded Aaron Heilman to the Chicago Cubs for Ronny Cedeno and Garrett Olson.
- Traded Mike Morse to the Washington Nationals for Ryan Langerhans.
- Traded Yuniesky Betancourt to the Kansas City Royals for Daniel Cortes and Derrick Saito.
- Traded Jarrod Washburn to the Detroit Tigers for Lucas French and Mauricio Robles.
- Traded Ruben Flores to the Milwaukee Brewers for Bill Hall.
As the following table will display, Zduriencik’s trades worked out favorably in 2009.
None of the players sent from Seattle contributed more than 0.2 WAR in 2009 while two acquisitions played a crucial role in the team’s success: center fielder Franklin Gutierrez and closer David Aardsma.
Zduriencik made his presence felt by focusing on defense. In 2007, the Mariners as a team had a -4.7 UZR/150 and -1.1 in ‘08.
In ‘09, the Mariners led all of Major League Baseball at +12.0 — nearly 17 plays above average better than ‘07 and 13 in ‘08.
Among their regulars, only Yuniesky Betancourt posted a negative UZR/150 at -18.5. He was traded to Kansas City and replaced by Ronny Cedeno, who finished with a +6.8 UZR/150.
Despite being the American League’s worst offense, averaging less than four runs per game, the Mariners were able to win 85 games on account of their pitching and defense. The pitching staff was worth 16.4 WAR and the defense alone provided over 8 WAR according to FanGraphs.
Zduriencik found himself in the news again last night when it was announced that his Mariners would be acquiring pitcher Cliff Lee as part of a three-team trade (which isn’t finalized yet), barely a week after signing premier free agent Chone Figgins to a four-year, $36 million contract. In ‘09, Figgins was worth 6.1 WAR (runs up to about 7 WAR when base running is factored in) and Lee 6.6 WAR.
Even if we assume heavy mean-regression for both players, the Mariners are significantly better going into 2010 and should be the favorites to win the AL West. Neither of their main competitors — the Angels and Rangers — have improved. The Rangers have stood pat and the Halos countered John Lackey’s move to Boston with the signing of Hideki Matsui.
Best of all, in acquiring Lee, the Mariners did not have to relinquish their top-three prospects in Carlos Triunfel, Greg Halman, and Michael Saunders.
The newbie general manager has taken a team that couldn’t hit a lick, couldn’t field a lick, and could barely pitch a lick (and I’m talking about the 2008 team, mind you) into a squad that can pitch and field with the best in the game, certainly well enough to overcome a lackluster offense. Very few general managers in the history of baseball can lay claim to such a fundamental transformation of a franchise in such a short amount of time. Count Zduriencik among that small group.
Soon, general managers will learn from what Zduriencik has done well and apply that to their own teams. Just as OBP became the stat du jour following Beane, defensive metrics may be popularized in front offices thanks to Jack.
Words cannot describe how great it is having JackZ as my team’s GM.
Oh, and you forgot the Snell/Jack Wilson deal.
I agree that JackZ is a pretty impressive GM, but don’t you think Andrew Friedman of the Rays deserves a bit more credit for popularizing defensive metrics – if indeed we are going to lay such credit at the feet of any one architect? The Rays underwent a similar but much more dramatic and much more successful transformation, on a smaller budget.
I do have to say that I feel like that first paragraph is a bit of an oversimplification since the statistical analysis is more of a layer to the overall talent evaluation process. Last time I checked, the Athletics still employed scouts and invested time and money to actually looking at players.
I also like how you give credit to Z for dealing Heilman but don’t put Heilman on the “dealt for” side… although doing such a thing would actually nullify Heilman’s impact on the “SENT” side which is actually a positive one when considering WAR. So, it’s more like 8.0 to -1.9 or 7.8 to -2.1… not that that is a major difference.
Interesting read!
whtouche: Friedman’s stock is down after the moves of the past 12 months. Signing Burrell, giving away Kazmir and Iwamura to save cash then turning around and using the freed up cash to add Rafael Soriano who is likely to cost $6-$8 million per year.
1. “Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane helped change the landscape of running baseball front offices with help from the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis.” No: not at all. The book documented how Beane was operating in a particular season, and for some time operated. Beane’s “help”, which he first received on being appointed to the position of A.G.M., was a summary exposition of the methods that Sandy Alderson and I developed, which Sandy was, and had for some years been, using. Beane’s reaction to that exposition, which I wrote at Sandy’s behest, is documented in both Lewis’s book (“When Billy read Walker’s [document], he experienced–well, he couldn’t quite describe the excitement of it”) and in Alan Schwarz’s excellent tome “The Numbers Game” (esp. Chapter 11).
2. “[A]s other teams began to notice and borrow Beane’s tactics, his success began to wane . . . .” No; his success began to wane when the A’s shifted their emphasis from the original “moneyball” concepts to others, such as an emphasis on defense. It is a commonplace, but a very wrong one, to say that now all teams know about “this stuff”. Some do, many still don’t.