AJ Zapp exploded last night. Tacoma’s 1B went 5-5 with a double and two homers, including a game-winning grand slam. He scored three times and drove in nine. He now has hits in eight consecutive at-bats. He’s not on the 40-man roster, but probably deserves a call-up… I’m not one to get hung up on defensive contributions at 1B, but Zapp’s quite a bit better than Jacobsen out there. Oh, and he can hit a little bit, too: .296/.366/.531 season line.
One of the drums we banged the loudest last year was the value of Mike Cameron, probably the most underrated part of the Mariners success the past four years. The low batting averages and high strikeout totals frustrated fans and announcers, leading to proclamations of his lack of clutchness and poor offensive contributions. When he hit .253 with 18 HR, 76 RBI, and 137 strikeouts, the organization decided that they wanted to go another direction in center field. They preferred Randy Winn’s contact ability and Raul Ibanez’s left-handed power and felt that Ibanez and Winn would provide better value than a Cameron/Winn tandem. Nearly every local media writer agreed with the Mariners, and Cameron was unceremoniously shoved out the door without even an offer of arbitration.
But you already know all this. What you may not know is just how bad a decision that has turned out to be, as Mike Cameron has turned into a force offensively in NY while continuing to play the best defense of any player in the game. His impact on the Mets cannot be overstated, and yet, because he is hitting .239 and is on pace for 150 strikeouts, no one is talking about him. So, consider this an ode to Mike Cameron, the biggest missing piece from the days when the Mariners were good.
Cameron is hitting .239/.338/.500 for the season, which gives him the 5th best OPS in baseball among center fielders. Only Jim Edmonds, Carlos Beltran, Andruw Jones, and Johnny Damon have higher marks. His EqA is .289, matched only by the above four as well as Mark Kotsay and Milton Bradley. Cameron has been worth 26 runs above a replacement level center fielder offensively. In comparison, Randy Winn has been worth 23 and Raul Ibanez has been worth 12 over a replacement level left fielder.
Cameron has done all this despite playing through a broken hand in May, which limited his contributions to a .169/.258/.313 mark during that month. Since the all-star break, he’s hitting .261/.355/.622, and his OPS is north of 1.000 for July and August. For those who think that his statistics hide the fact that he doesn’t do the little things, he’s also 20 for 24 in stolen bases and is hitting .261/.368/.500 with runners on base, compared to .220/.312/.500 with no one on. The clutch argument doesn’t hold any water. His lack of contact doesn’t stop him from being an offensive force. Put him on the 2004 Mariners and he’d be the second best hitter for the season, ranking behind only Ichiro! (Bucky’s been better in much more limited time).
And remember, offense is the weakness of Mike Cameron’s game. We ran these stats during the first few months to show just how much of a difference Cameron made on the Mariners ability to translate fly balls into outs, but haven’t run them lately. It’s time for an update.
Doubles + Triples Allowed Per Game:
2003 Mariners: 1.44
2004 Mariners: 2.06
2003 Mets: 2.22
2004 Mets: 1.80
The Mariners are allowing 30 percent more doubles and triples this year than last. The Mets are allowing 23 percent less than they were last year.
At-Bats divided by Doubles + Triples Allowed
2003 Mariners: 23.19
2004 Mariners: 16.97
2003 Mets: 15.29
2004 Mets: 18.29
It takes 6 less at-bats to get a double or a triple against the M’s this year than it did last year. It takes 3 more at-bats to get a double or triple against the Mets than it did last year.
Individual Mariner Pitchers Batting Averages on Balls In Play:
2003 Ryan Franklin: .250
2004 Ryan Franklin: .304
2003 Joel Pineiro: .276
2004 Joel Pineiro: .299
2003 Jamie Moyer: .272
2004 Jamie Moyer: .266
2003 Gil Meche: .285
2004 Gil Meche: .338
2003 Freddy Garcia: .277
2004 Freddy Garcia: .278
2003 Shigetoshi Hasegawa: .251
2004 Shigetoshi Hasegawa: .303
2003 Julio Mateo: .240
2004 Julio Mateo: .281
With the exception of Jamie Moyer, every holdover from last year’s pitching staff saw an increase in the amount of balls in play that were going for hits. Most of those increases were dramatic. You can tie the collapse of Franklin, Hasegawa, and Mateo directly to the weakened defense. It was clear to just about everyone not working in the Mariners front office that Hasegawa and Franklin were products of their teammates and would fall apart in 2004. Googling the archives of any of the M’s blogs shows this analysis was being done in the blogosphere long before the collapses inevitably occurred.
Individual Mets Pitchers Batting Averages on Balls in Play:
2003 Tom Glavine: .303
2004 Tom Glavine: .261
2003 Al Leiter: .308
2004 Al Leiter: .230
2003 Steve Trachsel: .280
2004 Steve Trachsel: .283
2003 Jae Seo: .285
2004 Jae Seo: .310
The Mets pitching staff had a lot of turnover, so I just compared the four starters from both seasons. Glavine and Leiter have experienced an enormous lift from their defense. Their resurgance is almost entirely due to improved fielding behind them.
The pattern is just beyond clear. The Mets outfield defense has increased significantly while the Mariners has plummeted. The collapse of the Mariners pitching staff is directly tied to Mike Cameron’s new zip code, and the experiment with Randy Winn in CF and Raul Ibanez in LF behind contact pitchers has failed miserably. Winn has improved as the season has gone along and the M’s performance isn’t as bad as it was the first month of the season, but it’s still evident that this is not an acceptable outfield for the Mariners to play everyday.
Meanwhile, when you combine the fact that Mike Cameron has created 26 runs with his bat and saved another 20 with his glove, he becomes one of the most valuable players in the game. Despite hitting .239 and striking out 150 times. We miss you, Mike.
Ichiro talks tonight about playing with the after-effects of his concussion:
- “In the first inning when I ran down the line, I was really dizzy and didn’t know if I could even run straight,” Suzuki said through a translator. “To me, it felt like having four beers, for me. … The next time it was three beers, the next time it was two beers. It didn’t go to zero beers. Maybe the last time was one beer.”
The man’s playing drunk and still goes 3-4. Amazing.
Speaking of Boone, I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere, but he crossed the 450 plate appearance mark a week or so ago… hello, $9M contract option!
I particularly like this Bret Boone quote from the article…
- “He’ll chop one off the plate. He’ll flare one. He’ll hit one hard. And all of a sudden he’s got three hits,” Bret Boone says. “Because he’s so fast getting out of the box. No one can compare with him getting from home to first — probably that’s ever played. I ask him sometimes, ‘Are you gonna count that as a hit? Nobody else in the world can get a hit like that!’ And he goes, ‘On purpose.’ “
Good stuff.
My favorite baseball writer, Alan Schwarz, pens a piece on Ichiro today. It’s worth a read, as is everything Schwarz writes.
Lamentations and Their Relation to Baseball
—
I suck. My season line at this point must be .025/.200/.025. I got thrown out today, ending a rally, by turning in after running through first base and being called out in a bizarre series of events I’m still confused by, but which meant I got tagged repeatedly and only called out on the third one (I think) while standing on first (I think). I’m like old Rickey Henderson except that in rec league, the umps call such a wide and tall strike zone that I’m regularly run up on called third strikes that Eric Gregg would have let go. So I should hack, right? No, I can’t hack.
I blame softball. After years of softball, I’d developed this swing that had the early Eric Chavez toe-tap (1, 2, 3, stride), big step forward as I put the hurt into the ball.
Doesn’t work in baseball. I’ve finally got my timing to where it’s not terrible, but my legs, hips, shoulders, and head fly all over the place now.. it’s awful. I’ve been playing most of the season without regaining the kind of form I had playing 2-to-a-team baseball on parking lots and pickup games before I took up softball what, seven years ago.
Here’s my point, though — I’m a fairly athletic guy. I’m in good shape, I have good vision. I have a good batting eye, though it doesn’t do me any good. I cannot get my swing back. I’m facing rec league guys, where their best pitcher hits 80 and has a curve. I can’t hit them.
This is why I find Ichiro! amazing. I can’t, for the best of my stubborn efforts, get my swing together. Ichiro! has a swing he uses while running to first, another chopping down, he’s into ball placement… he has a right-handed swing he doesn’t use that is sweeter than any swing I’ve ever taken. I never thought in my life that I would be as good a hitter as Ichiro! is. Even when Ichiro! has had his down years, the defense, crazed hitting, and successful baserunning have made him worth the price of admission, and to see this display he’s putting on now….
I just have to shake my head and smile. I love watching Ichiro! Call him one dimensional, say whatever you have to say. I know it’s difficult to even make contact with pitched baseballs, to the point where the frustration is eating me up, and Ichiro!… I don’t think Ichiro! knows what that is.Like Bonds, Ichiro is a unique talent, and I love seeing him play.
On another note… Spod’s can’t be the only decent batting cage on the Eastside, can it? I used to hit Dave Henderson’s Ballyard when that was around, when I was destroying my baseball swing to play softball (side note: what was I thinking?) but now that that’s gone, what’s a guy to do?
In other “now we have the answer” news, we finally know how to slow down Ichiro — plunk him.
If you have ever wondered “What kind of animal would Derek Zumsteg be?”, we now know the answer.
Here we are, from the PI: Tommy John surgery for Rafael Soriano, which of course is the bad news. The further bad news is that Justin Leone, who I like quite a bit, is out 4-6 weeks with two broken bones in his left hand.
The (supposedly) good news is that Eddie Guardado isn’t going to have surgery despite a tear in his rotator cuff. Now, I’m no doctor, and of course Lewis Yocum knows volumes more about this than I ever will, but… the “rest and rehab” course of action always scares me. If you recall, that’s what they tried with Soriano — and he wasted several months with it, only to wind up needing surgery anyway. My fear is that Guardado will report to spring training, have some shoulder soreness and wind up going under the knife later rather than sooner.
Finally, here’s a quote that should raise a few eyebrows: Joel Pineiro said the pain in his right elbow, which landed him on the disabled list, is “getting stronger all the time.” Pineiro is hopeful he’ll be able to resume throwing next week, although no timetable has been set. We can only hope this means his elbow is getting stronger, not the pain in it…