Ginger or Mary Ann?

Dave Paisley

The age-old question.

A choice between two very different but equally tempting alternatives.

The Mariners have apparently convinced themselves that they have a similarly tough choice to make sometime in the next year, because everyone knows that no team (except maybe the Yankees, Dodgers and Braves) can afford two $20M a year superstars. Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr. could both be free agents after the 2000 season, and if they get that far without a contract extension, it's very unlikely the M's will be able to compete with the trunkloads of cash being flashed by the aforementioned rich boys of baseball.

At this point Griffey and Rodriguez are naturally playing it coy, telling everyone they only want to play on a "winner," and that the money is "unimportant." Yep, sure it isn't. I'm quite sure Scott Boras, Rodriguez' agent, isn't singing backup on that tune.

Let's pretend for a moment that the M's really can't sign both, and that they do have that all-important choice to make. Which one is the right one? It's a tough call for GM Woody Woodward.

In our "Woody's Island" scenario, Griffey is most like Mary Ann -- the tried and true, faithful Mariner. He's been around longer, but still with a solid ten years ahead of him. He's also about halfway to Hank Aaron's home run record with a decent chance to surpass it. He's married with two kids and is more likely to value a stable, long term contract in the relatively harrassment-free environment of Seattle.

If Griffey is Mary Ann, then Rodriguez must be Ginger, right? It fits in many ways. The guy is much more of a heart-throb for female fans than Griffey ever has been, and is still a fancy-free bachelor. He's more likely to leave for the bright lights of New York or LA, where he would instantly quadruple his celebrity status (and endorsement opportunities.) The tough call for the Mariners is that he is ahead of almost every offensive pace Griffey has set, and could ultimately be the best shortstop to ever play the game.

But who says the Mariners can only afford one of them?

Let's take a look at some team salary distributions from last year and see if we can find some insights. Here are the salary curves for 1998 for the Yankees, Orioles, Mariners and Expos. I've ordered the salaries from highest to lowest and then summed them. Looking from left to right, you can see how the total salary build up as we add each player.

It shows that, for the Yanks, O's and M's, the top four players last year cost each team about the same amount of money (about $25M total), and that the Mariner's lower total payroll came from paying the remaining 21 guys less. I include the Expos for comparison, and bear in mind that 25 guys making the major league minimum last year would run about $4M total.

I'm also interested in the distribution of these salaries as a percentage of the total. You can see that the Expos spent 40% of their total salary on their top two players (Rondell White and Carlos Perez). Of the other teams, Seattle's distribution is biased more to the left than the others, as they have  a higher proportion of their salary invested in fewer players. The Orioles and Yankees payroll curves are very similar overall, although the results on the field weren't, of course.

What are the implications for 2001, the first year of the new Griffey and Rodriguez contracts? Let's assume that they can each command a $200M, 20-year deal that starts at $17.5M in 2001. This is probably low, but I think my calculator will break if I try to go any higher. If we assume the rosters of these teams continue to consist of the same type of players they have now, what would the payrolls look like in 2001? To project out into the future, I'm assuming the top 10 salaries on each roster grow at 15% annually, while the rest grow at 10%. (Those numbers match fairly well what's happened for the last thirty years in MLB salary growth.)

Here's the data (omitting the Expos). As you can see, adding in Griffey and Rodriguez bumps the Mariners' salary curve way out to the left, with a sudden break after those two. Note that the total payrolls run between $90M and $100M, with Seattle's still coming in a shade lower than the Yanks and O's, but not by much.

 

So in order to keep the same kind of team around them as they have now, the Mariners would have to spend an additional $55M. In all likelihood, the Mariners will be unlikely to allow total salaries to exceed $70M by 2001, so they'll be working with more like $35M for the other 23 slots rather than $55M. That will be tough to do, especially as pitching will continue to be at a premium. Even now, number-three starters are commanding in excess of $5M a year in the free agent market. One saving grace is a possible wave of young pitching due to hit the Mariner big time soon, but that won't stay cheap for long.

Mariner management has probably convinced themselves they can't keep both (even if they could both be persuaded to stay), but that kind of pessimism is self-fulfilling. I say, loosen the purse-strings, boys, and go for broke. (Perhaps a poor choice of words, though.) Build a winner and the future of the franchise will be secure anyway.

So to answer the original question, I say why can't we have both?

about the author

Dave Paisley attempted to interview Dawn Wells for this article, but then he saw Wells' Western Union ad. Offer a similar boycott of Roger Clemens.