From Yahoo! Sports:

Aug 7 Jim Street, of MLB.com, reports Seattle Mariners 1B Richie Sexson has been benched indefinitely by Mariners manager John McLaren. He has been replaced in the lineup by Ben Broussard.

Well, what do you know? It’s probably about time, don’t you think? In the midst of one of the worst seasons by a full-time player in recent memory, Richie Sexson is finally being benched in favor of Ben Broussard and others to fill in for the first baseman. While morons like me, the media, fantasy experts, et al have been waiting for Sexson’s “annual” second-half surge for some time now, many people, such as the good folks at USS Mariner, have been calling for this change for quite a while.

For a player who has a career .264 average and has had seasons of 45, 45, 39, 34, and 31 homeruns and 125, 124, 121, and 116 RBI and SLG% of .592, .578, .559, and .547, this 2007 campaign has been a complete disaster. With a line of .199/.298/.390 for the year, Sexson has been a complete bust since day one - and by far the worst every day first baseman in the game. Personally, I feel as though his struggles should be more magnified because the Mariners are right in the middle of a Wild Card chase, presently one game behind Detroit.

So that is what I want to look at today. What would the impact have been on the Mariners if Broussard had been the first sacker from day one? Would the Mariners be in better shape? Would they be in the Wild Card lead? How big would their lead be?

First let’s look at some numbers for our test subject. Where applicable, I have listed how poorly the numbers rank amongst his peers, whether first basemen or all of baseball. All numbers are as of August 7, 2007:

This is ugliness on a screen, my friends. Look at all of those categories where he ranks last at his position - and how unfavorable he compares to other major leaguers as well. In almost every rate stat that means anything, Sexson is dead last at his position and in the bottom 15% of the majors.

So what are the Mariners to do? Well we often talk about the replacement level in this space, so, using the same stats, let’s take a look at Sexson’s primary replacement, Ben Broussard, and his numbers on the season. Again, as of August 7:

Kind of funny that the replacement player’s stats are all better than the starter. With these stats, we can start to play a little game of “what if,” and see what might be different if the Mariners had played Broussard instead of Sexson this year.

Let’s assume these 564 plate appearances represent the sum total of the Mariners’ first basemen this year. I am sure we add a few here and there doing that, but we should make that up in games where neither Sexson or Broussard played, or played sparingly. So, if we gave every one of those plate appearances to Broussard, assuming his current pace, we come up with the following numbers:

**To find out VORP over 564 PA, I took Broussard’s VORPr (VORP rate per game calculated by Baseball Prospectus), assumed four plate appearances per game (564/4= 141) and multiplied the two together to get 31.4.

For some comparison, 21 HR would put him just behind Paul Konerko in the HR race, a VORP of 31.4 ties him with Kevin Youkilis, 82.9 RC has him relatively equal to Derrek Lee, and an EqA of .279 puts him just off the pace of Kevin Millar and Lance Berkman. (For clarity’s sake, no one in MLB has reached more than 539 PAs for the season so far, but you get the point on the comparison. If you want, compare Broussard’s extrapolated numbers to other first basemen in about two weeks.)

But what I really want to look at is Runs Created and the difference between the two and how that has contributed to wins and losses. We can see from the chart above that Broussard’s RC totals 82.9 over 564 PAs. If we give Sexson 564 PAs, using the same math, his RC totals 58.6 or 24.3 runs less than Broussard over the same number of plate appearances.

If you are like many out there and understand the theory that 10 runs either way adds up to a win or a loss, the Mariners have essentially thrown 1.7 wins out the window by playing Sexson. I come up with 1.7 because, in reality, the Mariners have about 65 RC from the position when you add Broussard’s 23.8 and Sexson’s 41.8. Broussard at all 564 PAs and 83 RC would have given them the 1.7 win extra.

So watch the Mariners down the stretch and the races they are in. If they win or lose by one or two games in the WC or division races, look back to see how much Sexson plays these last two months. Hopefully, McLaren sticks to his plan and keeps Sexson on the pine. It really is their best chance.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot the most telling numbers that I found in this research:

Richie Sexson 2007 salary: $15,500,500
Ben Broussard 2007 salary: $3,500,000