Week #10 in Review
So how do the Mariners rebound from an embarrassing sweep in Baltimore? How about their first back-to-back series wins of the season–five of the six games decided by 1 or 2 runs.
And who says this team isn’t fun to watch any more?
Vital Signs
On this Friday we find the Mariners 22-30, sitting firmly in third place. The Angels maintain their 8.5-game lead over the Mariners as they hosted Kansas City over the week. Meanwhile, the third-order wins suggest the Mariners are still unlucky by a pair of games and also that the Angels are the luckiest team in baseball this side of Arizona.
The offense ranks 11th in the league, scoring 220 runs, comparable to the Royals and A’s. Their 37 home runs rank 13th in the league and their 152 walks tie them for 6th in the league. This is an improvement over last week. However, the difference between the White Sox, Indians, Mariners, Orioles, Rangers and Blue Jays is a mere 5 base on balls. Meanwhile, their .314 on-base percentage ranks 11th and their .383 slugging percentage ranks 13th. Their .258 EqA ranks 22nd in all of baseball.
The defense has allowed 243 runs, which makes them the 9th best team in the American League at keeping runs off the board. The gloves are turning 71.6% of balls in play into outs, which along with the White Sox, is the best rate in the American League. Overall, the pitching staff is looking league average, with a staff ERA of 4.49. The starters remain well below average with a 5.20 ERA, while the bullpen continues to be solid with a 3.11 ERA.
The theme here is “Making Outs.” The offense does it much too well. The defense does, too.
As noted earlier, the Mariners took advantage of their first games in a month not against first-place teams or teams with the letters “NY” or “B” on their caps, and won their first back-to-back series in the year, going 4-2. They didn’t do it the easy way, though, as they outscored the Devil Rays and Blue Jays by a margin of just 31-28. Their opponents outslugged them 8 home runs to 4, but the Mariners collected twice as many doubles, 15-7. They also, for once, showed more discipline at the plate, drawing more walks, 25-17. For the week, the M’s hit .290/.370/.440, which maybe isn’t the line of a championship team, but we’ll take our moral victories one step at a time. That’s a huge improvement over the previous week.
Heroes
The success of the offense rests squarely on the shoulders of Richie Sexson and Raul Ibanez. Sexson hit .333/.520/.611 with a pair of doubles, a home run and 6 walks. And he stole a base. Ibanez provided production from the left side hitting .409/.500/.545 with 3 doubles and 4 walks.
Gil Meche made a pair of starts, pitched 11 total innings and allowed just 3 runs, for a 2.45 ERA, including a combined shutout on Wednesday night against Toronto. Those thinking, “Finally, the pitching hero we’ve been waiting for!” Um… no, things are not all rosy for Gil Meche. In those 11 innings, Meche walked 7 and struck out only 3, and success never lasts when you walk nearly a batter an inning and make your defense responsible for making 30 of 33 outs.
Meche, Jamie Moyer and Aaron Sele combined to make 4 starts, pitched 23.2 innings (6 IP/start) and allowed just 5 runs. And struck out 7.
Not-so-much Heroes
I keep telling myself it’s going to get better. But Adrian Beltre continues his nightmare season, hitting .217/.280/.261 with a walk and 4 strikeouts in 22 at bats. It’s going to get better. It’s going to get better? My confidence is showing the first signs of waning.
Tuesday Ryan Franklin coughed up 7 runs (5 earned) on 10 hits in just 2.2 innings. He struck out 1. His K/9 stands at 3.69, the lowest of his career, which is cause for serious concern.
Coming to a stadium near you
Memorial Day is behind us and so that means one thing: summer. And Florida!
This weekend the Mariners play host to the Devil Rays. Here’s the magic number for the Rays: 3. That’s how many games Tampa Bay has won on the road this year. It’s the first weekend of June and the Devil Rays have won 3 games. I’ll let that sink in.
The M’s take Monday off as they fly to Miami were interleague picks up again as the face-off against the Marlins. Florida started the season on fire, but has cooled off lately. They still have the second best ERA in all of baseball. Their offense has a .275 EqA, which is 6th in all of baseball. Their lineup has three spots with OBP’s over .400 (Cabrera, Delgado, Castillo). And Mike Lowell (.201/.249/.325) has whatever third-base-no-hit disease is going around the AL West.
A .500 week is not out of the question, as I can see the Mariners taking 2 of 3 from Tampa. As long they can avoid the three-headed monster known in the Senior Circuit as BurnettWillisBeckett, they should be able to squeeze at least one victory from Florida.
Comments
53 Responses to “Week #10 in Review”
Good reading to start my day. Thanks!
Won’t this be the first time the Mariners have ever played the Marlins?
Maybe if we all chant “It’s going to get better” over and over and over, Beltre will heat up sooner than later. It has to get better. God knows, given his skills, It can’t get worse. Can it? I have an impossible time believing that last year was a fluke. That might be because I dont want to believe it was. If he can put up even 3/4 the numbers he did last year, I would be pleased. I would like to see him dropped in the line up a bit. Perhaps trading places with Ibanez. Well…yeah yeah its all been said before. I just dont want to give up on him.
Brett Boone…not-so-much hero. ‘Nuff said.
Occasionally when we actually have a lead Eddie…Hero IMHO
I’m gonna go catch the series up in KC next month, and have been secrectly (well not anymore) hoping that the King is there. Doyle too. Unlikely, and probably selfish of me, but hey, I can dream. Im also going to run down to Wichita to get a first hand look at the Missions.
I’m worried about the Devil Ray series. We could lose, which would suck, but we might also get solid performances out of some suspect pitchers, convincing the team to leave them in there.
Playing bad teams when you are yourself a bad team is a double-edged sword.
How about swapping Beltre and Reed in the batting order? Batting third is clearly not working. Luckily, his defense doesn’t seem to be suffering.
well put Evan
Actually, with Sele, Pineiro, Moyer scheduled against the Rays, I’m only really worried about Sele. From the other two a good outing could well be evidence of improvement. Luckily Franklin isn’t facing the Rays.
Looking back at the season so far, there is one big positive. The Seattle Mariners only have one HACKING MASS All-Star, and we already sent him down (Olivo). Even Valdez wasn’t bad enough to make the team.
Beltre almost has to get better. He’s not at a point in his career where he should be physically declining, and he’s never put up a season this horrific (even his rookie season was somewhat better). Maybe he’s mentally toast, but it’s possible to fix that.
Juggling the batting order seems like an awfully old-school thing to do, but I can’t help but feel like it’s in order right now. I say dump Beltre down to 6. Send him a message. It seems like a “bandaid on a gunshot” type of solution, but that’s where we’re at.
Beltre has all the tools to make him a great hitter, I just think he’s trying to hard to justify his contract. You don’t have to look at the numbers to see that he’s struggling. With the pitches he’s swinging at, a 5 year old would have just as much power. I’m surprised he hasn’t swung at a pitch-out yet. I don’t think Grover is doing him any justice by continuing to hit him 3. He needs to be moved down until he gets his head on straight. Everybody knows that Adrian can hit except for Adrian.
I have to add Jeremy Reed to the heroes list. His .348/.400/.565 may not quite live up to Sexson and Ibanez, but it was still a break-out week for Jeremy, and it was a welcome relief to see somebody other than Ichiro, Sexson, and Ibanez actually contributing at the plate.
#10 – It’s amazing how the “swing at everything” approach can work for some and not others. Everyone critcizes Beltre for swinging at so many pitches out of the zone, but yet Vlad Guerrero does it and does it well. Same could be said for Ichiro…
There’s a huge difference in the approaches of Ichiro, Vlad, and Beltre.
Does anyone know of anything tangible that the coaching staff is doing to work with Beltre? Is he suffering from some sort of mental/psychological block at the plate? Is it an issue of having no plate discipline or is he trying too hard? Is it both?
Count me amongst the group of people who doesn’t think that 2004 was a fluke. I wasn’t necessarily expecting the same #’s, but I was thinking 30 HR, 100 RBI, and .290 average was a realistic hope. At this point, I’d take Joe Randa numbers.
Yes there are some free swingers out there, Vlad being one of them, but one thing that makes Vlad and Ichiro great is they hit it where it is pitched. Beltre tries to pull the ball with a pitch a foot outside the plate.
All Beltre needs to do is lay off the outside stuff or learn how to hit it to RF. With his open stance, it makes that more difficult. Pitchers aren’t giving him nothing to hit, because they know he will swing at it. Low and outside, Low and outside. Lay off of it already.
Isn’t an open stance one where the front foot is towards the line, so that the batter faces the pitcher?
Yeah, the more the forward foot is moved away from the plate, the more “open” the stance. Boone opens his stance when the count goes to 2 strikes, and faces the pitcher more squarely (not that it seems to do him much good the last couple of years). There was a mention in one of the papers yesterday that Molitor etc thought Beltre’s stance was a little less open than it was last year, but they didn’t think it was a big deal. I would think anything that is different from last year is, at this point, subject to scrutiny. I could imagine that if your stance was more closed you might subconciously judge outside pitches to be a little closer to the plate than they are, and go chasing them.
I haven’t seen many games, just listened, please forgive me if this is obvious to all of you.
When Beltre swings at the low-and-away pitch, does his front foot move:
1) towards the 3rd baseman (into the bucket);
2) towards the pitcher;
3) ????
Same question, but when he “drives” the ball (not a large sample, I know).
Not that I can offer anything, I just would like to get a mental picture.
Thanks…
#19
Toward the dug out where he’s about to be sitting.
Honestly, I haven’t paid attention. I’ll watch for it tonight. Of course, today will be the day he turns it all around and it will become irrelevent. Eh?
Beltre has one of the most closed stances in the game. His front foot is clearly closer to the plate than his back foot.
When he chases the low and away slider, he steps forward, bends over, extends his arms completely, and flails at the ball, just trying to get his bat on it. I don’t agree he’s trying to pull that pitch. I think he’s just trying to make contact, though why he refuses to just not swing at it is beyond me.
No, he just reaches for it, he legs don’t move at all. It isn’t pretty. I believe he shifts his weight toward the pitcher on a drive, but his stance is pretty quiet to begin with. He’s all about upper body.
And hey, Ryan Ludwick has cleared waivers.
In other words, the M’s had an opportunity to pick him up for $20,000 and said “no thanks”.
Sometimes, you wonder if they even care.
You’re right Dave, it is closed.
Thanks … picture getting less fuzzy … sounds ugly.
Does he try to “throw the bat at the ball”, figuratively, of course.
Are his hands crossing the plate BEFORE the head of the bat, ie. is he breaking his wrists early?
Oops … one more … when he DOES make contact with it, where does the ball go?
#26 – The ball typically seems to find a glove when he makes contact.
In terms of which field he hits to this year, I’d have to say the majority of the hits that I’ve seen are to left field, with just a handful of them to center. This is without me looking at a spray chart, however and based on watching about 15 games this year.
He’s a pull hitter. I believe all of his dongs have been to LF.
If we find out that Bavasi passed on Ludwick pursuant to a gentlemen’s agreement with Cleveland not to claim Wilson Valdez, it is time to gather the torches and pitchforks and head on down to 1st & Edgar Martinez Drive.
Ludwick isn’t a diamond in rough. Besides, with the log jam of OF’s where do you put him? He’s just another obstacle in the way, and with Speizio comming back, you have to ask the question again. Granted you can get him for peanuts.
I was thinking about Beltre and I think my biggest fear is that the team will panic and trade him at the deadline or after this season (for very little) and then things will click. That would be just about the most painful thing possible.
Alex said:”Does anyone know of anything tangible that the coaching staff is doing to work with Beltre? Is he suffering from some sort of mental/psychological block at the plate? Is it an issue of having no plate discipline or is he trying too hard? Is it both?”
see this: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/226826_mari02.html
sigh. they get both Willis and Beckett.
#30, granted, Ludwick will never be a star, but he would immediately become the best player on the M’s bench and the only true power threat. He’d be fifth on the team with 4 HRs, and the four guys in front of him have 150 more ABs. Aside from the switch hitting Winn, the M’s “logjam” outfielders all bat lefthanded, and aside from Ibanez, none are power hitters. He immediately becomes a better option at DH than Ibanez agaisnt lefthanders. You make room by dropping the 12th pitcher or Dobbs (or Hansen once Speizio returns). And you would never have to see Willie Bloomquist play the outfield again.
Grizz pretty much just summed up how I feel about why Ludwick would have been a good signing.
It wasn’t just the Mariners that blew an opportunity, though: couldn’t Kansas City, currently giving at bats to Terrence Long, use a young cheap outfielder under team control?
4 home runs this season, isn’t a lot to go on. He’s had 14 Hrs in 334 career abs. Granted he has shown a little power, and he doesn’t bring that much risk, I just don’t see anything special there. If they need more power off the bench, bring up Rifkin. He isn’t an OF, but he does have power. Either way, 20K isn’t a big risk, so maybe they should of snagged him.
At this point, I think KC is making decisions with a ouija board. Passing on Ludwick is just another in a long string of random decisions.
But M’s don’t have an excuse.
I don’t think it’s fair to say he “refuses to not swing at” those outside breaking balls. I’m sure he would prefer not to strike out. The problem isn’t that he has decided to keep swinging foolishly at breaking balls low and away. The problem is that he isn’t recognizing them in time to lay off.
Now maybe he could fix that with a mechanical change, and maybe he could fix that by watching a few thousand breaking balls in BP. I don’t know. But I’m sure he would prefer not to hit the way he’s hitting.
The real frustration here is that Bavasi passes on a guy like Ludwick yet claims guys like Wilson Valdez and Abraham Nunez (not to mention leaving Dobbs on the major league roster).
Ludwick, who is still only 26, was actually a legitimate prospect until leg injuries sidetracked his career. Despite the injuries, he consistently posted good OBP and SLG numbers in the minors. And his 4 home runs are 4 more than the M’s bench combined. Maybe there would be more of an outcry from Mariner Nation if he looked a little more like Paul Bunyan, or grew up in the Pacific Northwest, or had a goofy nickname.
The risk of picking up Ludwick is this: 100 guys in the organization, all hoping for a shot, see Doyle hitting .396 at Tacoma only to be passed over for a marginal (at best) improvement by a marginal (at best) cast-off who will be expendable the moment Bucky Jacobsen can run the bases.
Ludwick is not “freely available talent” because of inefficiencies in the marketplace. He is “freely available” because that’s fairly close to what he’s worth.
Maybe this will help?
If those 100 guys in the organization aren’t looking at the major league roster baffled at why Dobbs and Hansen is there, they’re not going to mind if the team adds a reasonably young, decent power bat in Ludwick. If anything it would demonstrate they’re serious that the best talent will win a spot, which should give them hope they can control their own destiny.
Why would Cleveland not recall Ludwick when Gonzalez lasted one at bat?
Ludwick seems to be an ideal fit now as Ms need righthander with power. Not only now but the Future Forty does not reveal RH outfielder. Wow a player that can field all 3 outfield positions or DH gives the team flexability it desperately needs.
What is the Front Office waiting for?
#7 — Valdez may not be a Hacking MASS all-star, but he’s awfully close. Remember, he’s listed under Second Base, where he is still one point shy of the leader, Tony Womack, with 42. And that’s with no playing time in a few days. Our real 2B has 23, which puts him tenth.
I got Womack, which is terrific, and a bunch of other super-stiffs, but my foolish selection of Rookie-of-the-Year-to-be Chris Young as one of my pitchers is holding me back in 144th to date. Still about a thousand places higher than DMZ. I noticed they took the Prospectus staff link off the page….
Yes, clearly, despite not being a BP staffer any more, I somehow engineered the removal of a link on the HACKING MASS page in order to conceal the shame of my middle-of-the-pack team. You’ve got me.
Also, I’m #1,016 and rising with every Ryan Franklin start, so nyah.
Current trends predict that you’ll ride Franklin past me in the standings about August, about the time Chris Young starts getting mentioned seriously for Cy Young. Dammit, I picked the wrong Ranger hurler (i.e., not Ryan Drese). If I had Jose Lima instead of Young, I’d be in third place….
Speaking of pitching coaches, judging from the first coupla months, the M’s ought to take Boone’s and Moyer’s salaries next year and throw the money at Orel Hershiser. Hands up, everyone who predicted a 1.65 ERA (in a hitters’ park) for Kenny Rogers…
#40: It isn’t a zero sum game in which it is either Ludwick or Doyle or Bucky. The M’s need Doyle to play everyday, so he is blocked by Winn and Ibanez, not by a potential bench/platoon player like Ludwick. Bucky can’t play the outfield, and more importantly, his knee problem might keep him from playing at all. As the Future Forty reveals, this team cannot afford to pass up a free, relatively young player who is better than several players on the 40-man roster.
I lauged when I read this…From Rotoworld.
“Yuniesky Betancourt went 0-for-5 yesterday in his first game for Triple-A Tacoma.
Betancourt takes Michael Morse’s spot on Tacoma’s roster after hitting .273/.301/.410 for Double-A San Antonio. The Mariners like what he’s showed defensively, so he has a chance to be a regular shortstop someday.”
I laughed because it seems par for the course. No offense. Like the defense. Furure Mariners shortstop written all over him.
Do we really need to be in a lather about Dobbs? He’s a dead man walking. I don’t think he’s up because the team is in love with him. Quite the opposite. I think they’ve decided that the only potential he has is to be a career pinch hitter. If they saw him as an everyday player, he’d still be in the minors. If they saw him as a utility man, they’d be giving him playing time in the field.
So, basically, I think Dobbs is getting his one and only tryout. He’ll be up for a while, so that they can make a legitimate decision. If he continues to fail, he’s gone.
It’s June. How long do you think “a while” should be?
The Ms auditioning possible “career pinch hitters” is like a guy whose mortgage is due tomorrow combing through the couch for quarters.
Who the hell needs a career pinch hitter? That’s like saying we should stock the bullpen with “career two strike men”. What we need more of is something Dobbs patently is not — baseball players.
Wiser heads than mine have said, “There’s a fine line between stupid and clever.” Maybe I’ve crossed it. But my point is that if the team were really committed to Dobbs, he would not be sitting on the bench with 31 AB for the season. This is not the way you express undying love for his swing.
How long should we wait? That’s why I’m not feeling too worried. I think he’s had his chance. I think it’s just a question of who’s going to take his place. Maybe it should have been Ludwick.
I certainly agree with #51 that auditioning a career pinch hitter is a low priority. Of course. Who would disagree? For example, finding a starting catcher would be nice, but what does that have to do with Dobbs? If we send Dobbs down, does that help us fill any of our holes? If we had a promising catcher or SS we wanted to audition, they wouldn’t take Dobbs’ roster spot. Rivera or Morse would be on the bus. The only player Dobbs displaces is a better Dobbs. (Personally, I’m ready to see v2.0)
So, I think it boils down to two scenarios:
1) Bavasi and Hargrove are blind, stupid, and can’t read a box score. They have an irrational commitment to Dobbs and just want all of us to suffer.
2) Someone thought Dobbs might be able to hit off the bench and they’ve given him 31 AB. There’s no one else we’re dying to put on the bench.
Mind you, I’m just speculating. I recognize that there are folks on this site who are in a position to actually know the facts of the matter.