Note from Jon: I’d like to welcome another possible addition to the PBNW team, Conor Dowley.  With his internet down, Conor pounded this post out on his smart phone, an accomplishment that makes this post deserving some positive feedback and welcoming comments.  I’ll add my take at the bottom.

I have to admit, I wasn’t so thrilled when rumors of the Casey Kotchman trade cropped up. Like you, I saw his steady decline with the bat ever since he was traded from Los Angeles (of Anaheim, from Orange County, somewhere in California, in America, on Earth, part of the Milky Way) to Atlanta. He never had a ton of power, but his ISO of just .114 last year was almost disturbing. There is, however, a lot to like about this trade.

Kotchman’s defense is still among the best of all 1B in the league (career UZR/150 of +4.4, which is very good for a 1B), and he has a good lefty approach at the plate (his career K% is under 10%, and walks about 9% of the time).  Both of these facts fit what Jack Zduriencik wants to do with this team like a glove.

And while he doesn’t project to be all that valuable (he figures to wind up somewhere between 1.5 and 2.0 WAR, around average), Kotchman still figures to be better on a whole than any other 1B option currently in the system. Even Mike Carp, the closest 1B the Mariners have to being Major League-ready, projects to +0 WAR, maybe 0.5 if you’re being very, very generous.  With the team in a position where any extra value is incredibly, well, valuable, his just being average is a good asset for the Mariners in 2010.

Since Kotchman won’t hit free agency until 2011 (barring a non-tender next offseason), he can act as a bridge to get to the younger guys, including Carp, Richard Poythress, and Dennis Raben.  He also only figures to only make around $3.5 million in arbitration this year, making his WAR-to-dollar cost only around half the going rate. Kotchman is also relatively young himself, as he’s only entering his age 27 season, suggesting he might have some room for improvement yet to come.

Still, there are some concerns. As mentioned earlier, what power he has seems to have virtually vanished. Kotchman’s contact percentage has also dropped in each of the
last two years, which is worrying at best.  His line drive percentage has gone up, which is nice, but so have his percentages of ground balls and infield flies, both of which usually lead to outs.

On a whole, this doesn’t appear to be the huge, game-breaking move many Mariners fans were hoping for.  Casey Kotchman is not Adrian Gonzalez, no matter how you fudge the numbers.  He’s not Prince Fielder.  What he is, though, is an inexpensive, fringe-average first baseman with excellent defensive skills, and a better option than what
the M’s already had.  To borrow a saying from prospect scouting, Kotchman doesn’t have an especially high ceiling, but his floor is high enough to make this a very low-risk acquisition.

Besides, the trade got rid of Bill Hall. What else could you ask for?

Jon adds: To avoid Kotchman overload (here is the initial rumor/knee-jerk reaction post as well as the “it’s official” post), I’ll just tack a couple quick thoughts on here.

My initial reaction to the rumors was something along the lines of: Kotchman? Wait… Kotchman? In true Jack Zduriencik fashion, this one came out of nowhere and was pending physicals before we knew it.  MLB Trade Rumors offered no warning.

Kotchman? Really? I understood the health and age risks with regards to Russell Branyan and Carlos Delgado, and how the risk is magnified given health concerns elsewhere on the roster.  I understood Adam LaRoche is asking for far too much money.  I understood that Adrian Gonzalez was a pipedream.  Isn’t Mike Carp basically Kotchman without the defense?

Answer: that’s exactly what he is.  And it seems like a reasonable reaction at first, but really, if you have two identical hitters, one led baseball in 1B UZR last season and the other is a poor defender, who would you prefer?  Even if Carp managed to hit .277/.372/.432 in his rookie year like FanGraphs’ fan projections ridiculously suggest, he’d still be less valuable than Kotchman figures to be.  But still! Did the Mariners really just acquire that weak hitting first baseman that was a big time bust for the hated Angels?

But I soon found some reasons for optimism.  Kotchman is only 26 years old? Kotchman came up with the Angels at such a young age it feels like he should be on the wrong side of 30 right now.  Instead, he’s entering the physical prime of his career.  Given Zduriencik’s building resume of predicted post-hype breakouts– traded for David Aardsma and Franklin Gutierrez, tried to trade for Edwin Jackson and Ben Zobrist, all of whom were hyped prospects that were disappointments to varying degrees until 2009– there was reason to hope for some upside.  Of course, Zduriencik isn’t hitting 1.000.  Ronny Cedeno matched that same mold but didn’t quite pan out (to put it lightly).  And while it’s unlikely Kotchman fullfills his potential or even gets back to his 2007 level of play,  you never know what will happen with a player entering that magical age 27 season.  Zduriencik remains optimistic: “He’s an outstanding first baseman and a player that I think still has upside. And people who join us here seem to have seasons where they’ve taken off.”

And the defense!  The Mariners now have good defenders across the board with the lone exception of Jose Lopez.  Not only that, but they have elite defenders at multiple positions.  Gutierrez, Ichiro and Jack Wilson definitely fit that profile with Chone Figgins and Kotchman on the bubble.  Not to mention Ryan Langerhans and Jack Hannahan on the bench, two elite-level defenders in their own right.  Can you imagine what Cliff Lee and Felix Hernandez’s respective ERAs will look like?  They won’t look like anything, because they’ll be so small you can’t see them!

A lot of fans are freaking out about this move, but it’s important to keep it in perspective.  The Mariners gave up Bill Hall, a negative WAR player who has seen his career go to shit, and , if the rumors are true, a low level catcher that no one has ever heard of (even a minor league nerd like me!) for a slight improvement.  Read: the Mariners didn’t give up anything and they got better.  I know all of our hypotheticals produce even more improvement, but this is a no risk move.  And while Kotchman is probably the guy, he doesn’t represent much of an investment.  If a chance to re-upgrade falls into Zduriencik’s lap, Kotchman can be flipped or released without a problem.

But the biggest thing, as detailed by Dave at USSM and Jeff at LL, is that this small improvement opens Seattle up for another improvement.  Hall figured prominently in the projected LF/1B/DH rotation.  Hall isn’t very good.  Now the Mariners can go out and try to improve offensively over Langerhans/Hall, which may be easier or cheaper than finding a durable 1-2 win improvement over Carp.  As far as RH hitters go (which makes the most sense), Xavier Nady, Rocco Baldelli, Angel Pagen, Ryan Rayburn and Randy Winn (switch) are intriguing names that have been speculated upon.  A lefty could still make sense, especially Luke Scott and Johnny Damon (who are somewhat versatile), though bringing in one of those guys would likely mean shaking up the bench a little more as the team would go from ridiculously left handed to comically left handed (so long, Langerhans).

I see my “quick thoughts” have extended into several hundred words.  I think that about covers it though.  In Jack we trust, right?

Welcome to the site, Conor.