The Attrition War, Marlins
Part of a continuing series, follow-ups to the initial post detailing the Mariners history over the same period.
Do the Mariners, in comparison to other teams, suffer a higher rate of injury to their pitching prospects than other teams? Here, I look at the Marlins.
The Attrition War, Indians
Part of a continuing series, follow-ups to the initial post detailing the Mariners history over the same period.
Do the Mariners, in comparison to other teams, suffer a higher rate of injury to their pitching prospects than other teams? Here, I look at the Indians.
Game 68, Oakland at Seattle
Pop quiz, hotshot: identify what the following pitching lines have in common.
90.2 IP, 4.27 ERA, 1.32 WHIP 51 K
85.2 IP, 3.78 ERA, 1.52 WHIP, 51 K
92.2 IP, 4.66 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 69 K
87 IP, 4.14 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 67 K
All are or were members of the Oakland A’s rotation. It seemed fitting to bring this up as the M’s start a series with the Green and Yellow Elephants tonight.
First up is Mark Mulder. Next is Tim Hudson. Third is Barry Zito, rounding out the former “Big Three.”
And number four? That’s Dan Haren, who goes tonight against the Mariners. You could make a solid case that he’s pitched at least as well as any of the others — including Mulder, who he was traded for. The A’s also got Kiko Calero and catching prospect Daric Barton in the deal.
The A’s offensive moves haven’t worked out this year, but Haren is legit. And he turns 25 in September. I’ll be rooting for the M’s to treat him like Tom Glavine, but if they don’t, it may not be the fault of the bats.
Aaron Sele v. Dan Haren. TV: FSN. Radio: KOMO.
The View From The Other Side
Sometimes it’s interesting to see the spin from other markets after games, or, in this case, a series.
It seems Tom Glavine feels that — apart from Richie Sexson’s home run — the Mariner offense just plain got lucky off of him yesterday.
[“]The rest of the stuff, ground balls in the hole or bloop line drives falling in front of guys. If you get a break here or there, it’s a ground ball at somebody or it’s a fly-ball out.”
Without irony, I can say that I admire confidence. It’s a necessary stock in trade for any high-pressure industry, professional sports perhaps the best example. But Tom, you’re giving up 11.8 hits per nine this year. Crash Davis’ “ground ball with eyes” speech aside, not all of those are bleeders.
Besides, it seemed to me that command was the real issue for Glavine yesterday. In over 80 innings, he’s walked just 34 men so far this year — but issued two free passes in two-and-a-third yesterday.
Perhaps he was just frustrated at giving up so many runs against the heretofore anemic Mariner attack. Hopefully, the bats have woken up just in time for another offensively-challenged ball club, the A’s, to roll into town.
Random notes
There’s a lot of stuff to talk about, so forgive me for going all Peter Gammons on this post.
The lesson here, though, isn’t that Mike Morse is a tremendous player. He’s not. He’s a mid tier prospect who is having a phenomenal hot streak to begin his career. The lesson of Mike Morse is the one we’ve been clamoring for the front office to learn for years: the perceived dropoff from major league to Triple-A talent isn’t nearly as vast as a lot of people think. Rather than spending millions of dollars on players who have proven to be mediocre or worse at the major league level, the team could improve remarkably by simply reallocating those resources to upper level players and giving opportunities to younger, unproven players with similar skills. Paying a premium for players with a major league track record of failure has cost this team dearly over the past few years. If there’s one thing we can hope comes from the ridiculous start that Morse has had, it’s that the organization may begin to realize that freely available talent often can outproduce the bottom rung of major league players, and do so for the league minimum.
Oh, and if you’re one of those wondering why Morse can’t keep this up, 82 percent of his hits in the majors have been singles. Besides Ichiro and Luis Castillo, two burners who get a huge amount of infield hits, there aren’t productive major league hitters who avoid extra base hits at that kind of clip. A realistic projection for Morse for the rest of the season is still something along the lines of .250/.290/.360.
Game 67, Mets at Mariners
Glavine vs Meche as the M’s go for the sweep.
Boone benched
I hate to upstage the Game Thread, but this is quite noteworthy.
Boone was not in the lineup Saturday night against the Mets and manager Mike Hargrove said the veteran second baseman would not start during the final six games of the Mariners’ homestand.
It’s only a matter of time now. Does anyone think he’ll still be with the M’s after the AS break?
Game 66, Mets at Mariners
Franklin vs Pedro. Yea, that’s fair.
Meet the Mets
Living in New York now, I have a different perspective on the Mets and Yankees than I used to. Still hate the Yankees, of course, but I’ve sort of adopted the Mets for the time being (don’t worry, there’s no conflict at all this weekend).
A couple of things:
As a rule, fans hate Kaz Matsui. He certainly hasn’t been the middle infield version of Ichiro! as everyone hoped, and he’s more or less the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong with the Mets. He gets booed when he’s hitting at Shea and routinely looks awful at the plate. And what do you expect — he’s hitting .234/.284/.321 on the year and making $7M.
Matsui’s OBP is five points higher than that of Jose Reyes, who his leadoff. Yes, the Mets employ a .279 OBP in the #1 slot. Reyes has walked eight times in 287 at-bats this season and is hitting .258/.279/.383 — but the fans love him. Maybe it’s his defense at short, maybe it’s because he’s young and barely making above the minimum, but he appears to get a free pass while Matsui is ripped on a daily basis.
The fans have also been pretty hard on David Wright because he’s made 11 errors already at 3B. Frankly, if they get sick of him, any team in the league would take a 3B hitting .300/.400/.500 at the tender age of 22. Wright’s a stud, better than Hank Blalock and two years younger to boot. I’ll make the Beltre for Wright swap tomorrow, defense be damned, no questions asked.
Pedro goes today. I don’t know about you, but it’s still weird to see him in something other than a Boston uniform. Mets fans say the same thing. He’s been really, really good this year, nearly back to his early Boston days. I suppose it goes without saying that the M’s have their work cut out for them today.
Finally, I hope Mike Cameron is able to make an appearance this series — he’s in for quite an ovation, I’m sure.
Game 65, Mets at Mariners
You know the drill; sorry we’re late.