Perspective, Patience, Persistence
I am in a slump.
There’s no way around it. My post quantity is down, the word counts are lacking. Jokes that used to flow like ouzo at Socrates’ parties suddenly went as dry as a Steve Kelley column.
Worse, I’m a relative newcomer to USSM, so my dry spell left me whipsawed with regret about the impression I was making in my new surroundings. The last thing I want is to start off in a funk.
So I thought I’d walk around USS Mariner Labs seeking counsel, starting with Dave. Here’s what he said:* Read more
Game 28, Angels at Mariners
RHP Byrd v RHP Sele. 3:35, no TV, radio only.
Over/under on HR: 3.5. I’d take the over.
Transactions today, from MLB.com:
Optioned OF Shin-Soo Choo to Triple-A Tacoma; Transferred INF Pokey Reese from the 15-day disabled list to the 60-day disable list; Selected contract of INF Dave Hansen from Triple-A Tacoma.
M’s v LHP: .204/.263/.290
M’s v RHP: .265/.335/.386
If I was facing the Mariners, I would call up any random left-handed starter in AAA to face this team.
Or, if you’re really looking for the cause of the team’s problems:
#1 .339/.393/.482 (Ichiro!)
#2 .265/.364/.353 (!?)
#3 .227/.265/.318
#4 .219/.348/.510 (no, really)
#5 .255/.300/.382
#6 .281/.373/.385
#7 .223/.299/.266
#8 .204/.250/.286
#9 .200/.214/.232
This is going to be a looooooong May. If we get out of this month within shouting distance of .500 I’ll be happy.
[update: Jeff’s convinced me to open comments. Be good.]
No comments today: it’s been a terrible couple of days for USSM commenting, and I don’t have the energy or availability to police another thread. If another of my compadres does, they’ll swing by and allow comments (and edit this, presumably). If you want to express outrage, etc over this, you can go ahead and email us.
Public humiliation: priceless
The River City Rascals aren’t selling out: they’re buying in. Or rather, they hope you are buying in.
That’s right, in this eBay auction, you can purchase a one-day contract to play independent league baseball. At this writing, it’ll cost you just over two grand to bat and play right field for a small hunk of game.
What does this guarantee you, save a lighter wallet, an oh-fer and an E-9 or two? The enmity of your teammates, most probably, and possibly some chin music from a bitter indy league pitcher. Remember, Bobby Madritsch came from the independents — imagine his reaction to “the guy who bought his way in.”
My lawyer buddy told me he wants to do something like this. With visions of a Mads clone dancing in my head, I told him, “no you don’t. That is, unless you’re a fine plaintiff’s attorney and they don’t make you sign a waiver.”
Not dead
I’m not dead. Really. We’ve actually been here for about a week now — we arrived last Monday, got the keys to our place Tuesday and our stuff showed up Wednesday — but are so far without the DSL Verizon promised us. Depending on who you talk to, we’ll either get it May 10th or… never. The latter situation according to the technition I tracked down yesterday, who said there isn’t even DSL running to our development and that they never should have let us order it in the first place. So… it’s looking like cable. In the meantime, I’m on a 45-minute limit computer here at the Arlington branch of the Poughkeepsie Public Library System.
Quick trip summary: Seattle WA to Yakima WA; Yakima WA to Hope ID; Hope ID to Billings MT; Billings MT to Rapid City SD; Rapid City SD to Mitchell SD; Mitchell SD to Minneapolis MN; Minneapolis MN to Milwaukee WI; Milwaukee WI to Chicago IL; Chicago IL to Cleveland OH; Cleveland OH to Philadelphia PA; Philadelphia PA to Pleasant Valley NY. (I’m doing that from memory, so it might not be 100% accurate, but I think it is.) Approximately 3,350 miles all told. We saw Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana, Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, The Mall of America in Minneapolis, Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, ate pizza in Chicago and cheese steaks in Philly. We also stopped at more travel plazas, ate more fast food and paid more tolls than I care to for the rest of my life.
In any event, I hope to be back up and running in the next week or so. School starts next Monday and I’ll try to get an update on that blog, too.
Competition
So, yesterday, I’m having another conversation about the M’s with one of the two scouts I quoted during last week’s post on Miguel Olivo, and he made an interesting assertion. We were talking about the offensive struggles of the M’s, and he noted that seemingly every time he looked at a box score, we were getting shut down by one all-star hurler or the next. Santana, Radke, Harden, Sabathia, Buehrle, etc… He thought that we’d faced better pitchers than the rest of the league, and it was making the M’s offense look worse than it really is.
Thanks to one of the many reports available at Baseball Prospectus, I realized I could actually verify if this was true or not. BP has a batter’s quality of pitcher’s faced report which estimates, well, exactly what it says; the quality of the pitchers the batter has had to face to date.
The American League average is .260/.325/.404, or a .729 OPS. If the M’s really have faced tougher pitching than average, you would expect that to show up team wide. I was expecting to find evidence to refute my friend’s claim. Well, here’s the table:
NAME TEAM PA AVG OBP SLG OPS Ichiro Suzuki SEA 122 0.237 0.310 0.349 0.659 Adrian Beltre SEA 114 0.240 0.314 0.352 0.666 Randy Winn SEA 113 0.234 0.311 0.349 0.660 Bret Boone SEA 111 0.241 0.318 0.362 0.680 Raul Ibanez SEA 110 0.238 0.315 0.358 0.673 Jeremy Reed SEA 103 0.239 0.315 0.352 0.667 Richie Sexson SEA 102 0.244 0.323 0.361 0.684 Wilson Valdez SEA 84 0.236 0.313 0.348 0.661 Miguel Olivo SEA 70 0.238 0.315 0.348 0.663 Dan Wilson SEA 25 0.255 0.332 0.383 0.715 W. Bloomquist SEA 21 0.229 0.294 0.345 0.639 Scott Spiezio SEA 15 0.211 0.281 0.313 0.594 Greg Dobbs SEA 14 0.200 0.271 0.294 0.565 Shin-Soo Choo SEA 3 0.185 0.293 0.300 0.593
He’s right. Not one single Mariner hitter has faced pitching that would even be considered “below average” to date. Collectively, the pitchers the M’s have faced have been the equivalent of Roy Oswalt. Or, last year’s Jake Peavy or Curt Schilling. In fact, the M’s have faced the toughest pitching in baseball this year. It’s not even really that close, honestly.
This will almost certainly come closer to regressing to the mean as the year goes on. Teams won’t face equal pitching all year, but the disparity won’t be this large. As the M’s face weaker pitchers, expect the offense to improve, even if the hitters on the M’s roster don’t change one bit.
Slumping
It seems like the fans patience for Adrian Beltre to start hitting is wearing thin. Without a doubt, he’s had a miserable first month, and after struggling through the Jeff Cirillo years, the natural reaction is to think “here we go again”. Well, here’s some hopefully reassuring numbers.
Vernon Wells: .202/.250/.358
Eric Chavez: .210/.288/.314
Andruw Jones: .238/.308/.394
Mike Lowell: .191/.223/.337
Jim Thome: .203/.347/.304
Brian Giles: .185/.336/.348
Rafael Furcal: .229/.274/.349
And, our own example from last year, Ichiro in April 2004: .255/.309/.304
There are some other legitimately great players having awful starts to the season as well. It happens.
Lou About To Crack
Your friend and mine Les Carpenter, late of the Seattle Times, returns to the well of people he once covered. His conclusion? Mount Lou is about to explode, wreaking its terrible Pompeiian vengeance.
I paraphrase.
Few not in the owner’s immediate family would shed a tear if Lou treated Vince Naimoli like first base. The interesting thing to watch, though, is what happens if the Yankees’ slide continues. In a sane world, winning several World Series would get JoeTorre substantial job security.
If you think that’s Steinbrenner’s world, well, you probably missed the 1970s.
Game 27, Angels at Mariners
RHP Lackey v RHP Meche, 7:05. KSTW-11. Listed some places as FSN, but they swapped it to KSTW, what with the Sonics game on FSN… hmm.
Continuing their consecutive-game streaks: Ichiro! Beltre Boone Ibanez Winn. Boy, Hargrove rides his regulars, doesn’t he?
Meche v Lackey… Hoooooboy. Boone continues to wait on his 1,000th career RBI.
Mmm… the catch
Check out this cool PI photo from the AP. I swear, if that guy reaching out had got in Ichiro’s way, I’d have strangled him myself. You know who you are.
Garret Anderson, quoted in the PI:
“He just went up on the wall and made the catch,” said Anderson, who did not initially believe it was a home run. “I mean, I’ve seen a lot of guys go up on the wall and make a catch. You might blow it out of proportion because he’s a good defensive player. I’ve seen that before.”
Mr. Anderson,
Hi. Ichiro took off on the hit, ran full-tilt to the wall, lept up, planted on the padding to get up, then turned, adjusted, and caught it before he came back down. I’ve been watching baseball for almost all of my life, though in deference I will admit I have likely not seen as much baseball as you have played. I have seen Griffey make many spectacular plays during his time as a stellar centerfielder, and enjoyed Mike Cameron for years, and probably in that way have seen more spectacular centerfield play than you.
I have seen Griffey go up on the wall, Buhner go over walls, I’ve seen all kinds of crazy things. I have never seen a catch like that. Ichiro didn’t just go up on the wall and make a catch, as you say — Ichiro ran a long way to get there and then had to do a couple of equally spectacular things to snag the ball.
If you have indeed seen such a play more than once in your life, you are a luckier man than I am.
Yours,
Derek
Also, the PI notebook has a lot on Madritsch’s shoulder (it’s better but he’s still going to be out for a couple weeks, at least). It also mentions that the team has now watched “Napolean Dynamite” seven games in a row.
The Times has Spiezio news: his midsection still hurts. Your reaction to this news may vary.
What I Would Do
Despite the fact that the M’s are significantly better than they were last year, and are actually playing to the expected level of performance we had for them heading into the season, there are always decisions that we would make differently than the organization. So, a month into the year, here’s my list of things I would change about the M’s roster if I was given the title of czar for the day. For the purpose of this exercise, I won’t be acquiring any new talent from outside the organization.
1. Option Shin-Soo Choo to Tacoma, place Bobby Madritsch on the 60 day DL, and purchase the contract of Abraham Nunez.
There could be a case for Choo being with the team if Hargrove was committed to using him, but he’s not, so the Mariners are essentially burning a roster spot and playing short-handed. Choo doesn’t do anything well enough to convince Hargrove to use him in any specialized role, and he’s not going to start ahead of the established players at his position, so I’d rather have him in Tacoma playing everyday.
Nunez isn’t much of a major league player, but as a switch hitter, he may be able to wrangle more playing time out of the roster spot than Choo was able to.
2. Option Greg Dobbs to Tacoma and recall Justin Leone to take his roster spot.
Greg Dobbs stinks.
Leone would provide a power right-handed bat off the bench to combat LOOGYs and give the Mariners a legitimate pinch-hitting option. At 28 years old, playing regularly in Tacoma won’t be significantly beneficial to him, and the Mariners could use his bat on the bench.
3. Designate Matt Thornton for assignment and place him on waivers. Purchase the contract of Dave Hansen.
If Thornton clears waivers (and I think that’s actually likely), send him to Tacoma. If he doesn’t, well, I’m not concerned. Baseball is teeming with power arms who can’t throw strikes, and the M’s don’t need a 12 man pitching staff.
Hansen gives the M’s a LH pinch-hitter to fill the role that Grover has been using Dobbs in. Despite his lack of power, Hansen’s still a semi-useful player, and if used in combo with Leone, could give the M’s at least an interesting L/R platoon pinch-hitting tandem.
4. Switch Bret Boone and Raul Ibanez in the line-up.
I’m of the opinion that Boone is basically done as a hitter. He’s an easy out with occassional power who will hit something like .260/.310/.400 this year, and there’s no way you want that kind of guy hitting 5th if you don’t have to.
Ibanez, on the other hand, has increased his walk rate this year and is one of the few productive players in the lineup. Getting his .377 OBP higher in the line-up can’t hurt the offense, and breaking up the Beltre-Sexson-Boone trio of right-handed hitters is a nice bonus.
5. Designate Aaron Sele for assignment for the purpose of giving him his unconditional release. Call up Jorge Campillo from Tacoma to fill the 5th starter position.
Sele is a replacement level pitcher adding nothing to the team. He pitches poorly and doesn’t soak up innings and has no chance of improving. There’s no upside here. He is what he is, and he’s not very good.
Campillo is the kind of pitcher who you can learn very little about through his minor league performances. He’s a pure junkballer, mixing a steady array of breaking balls and change-ups and rarely breaking 86 on the gun. At 26-years-old, he’s essentially refined his craft, and the adjustment to Tacoma has been an easy one for him. He’s most likely a sink-or-swim proposition, but at least there’s a real chance that he could baffle the league with his crap and provide some legitimate innings for the M’s.
I go back and forth on whether to cut Nelson loose to bring George Sherrill back, but for right now, I’m okay with Nelson on the roster, and would rather have Sherrill in reserve for when someone gets hurt. But I could easily be convinced that Sherrill belongs on the major league club, and I’m not real passionate about Nelson keeping his job, either.
None of these changes would have a huge impact on the club. It is what it is, but they’d make it slightly more interesting and perhaps a little bit more competitive.