Us
Meta
Reference Material
The Future Forty 3/19/09
Evaluating Defense Evaluating Pitcher Talent
Evaluating Managers
Bugs Bunny, Greatest Banned Player Ever Selected for Best American Sports Writing!
The Attrition WarDisclaimer, Copyright
The U.S.S. Mariner is in no way affiliated with, condoned or given any notice by the Seattle Mariners baseball team, who have their own website. Similarly, we have no association with the ownership group or any businesses related to the Mariners. All article text is written by the authors, all pictures are taken by the authors, who retain copyright to their works. No copying or reproduction of any content here, photographic or otherwise, is authorized. Please email us if you wish to reproduce our work.
Game 101, Cleveland at Mariners
Sorry we’re late.
Tags:
Comments
227 Responses to “Game 101, Cleveland at Mariners”
-
Recent Posts
- The AI Has Taken Over
- ’22 40-Man Preview Extravaganza
- ALDS Game 3: Astros AT Mariners – Welcome Home
- ALDS Game 2: The Pitch and What Follows
- ALDS Game 1 – Series Preview
- Recent Events Fill Mariners Fans With Unexpected Emotions
- AL Wild Card Series Game 2: The Ray Game
- AL Wild Card Series, Game 1: Here We Go
- AL Wild Card Series Preview: The Battle of Robbie Ray
- Game 162, Tigers at Mariners
Author Links
Local M's Coverage
M's Blogosphere
M's Official Sites
Resources
Twittah
Ballgame. Goddamnit.
Felix was ready in March, just as he is ready now. His stat-line has barely changed a single bit and nothing in his game has changed the last 4 months. The same goes for Campillo, Sherrill, Lopez (at short), Leone (over Dobbs), etc.
(That’s entirely an opinion though, so I don’t expect you to agree or anything, which is a good thing.)
Yes, Nelson has performed somewhat and Sele is well, Sele, but that doesn’t justify one bit the fact that some of the best players in the organization are playing in Tacoma. Sele has been bleh for 4 months. What in Campillo’s name said that we shouldn’t have tried him in May, when we still had a chance for the West? Same with Felix.
From the reports at the pizza feed, it sounds like the Mariners are sparing no expense on scouting young players. Why not change things up and spare no expense on a new pitching coach or two. Hire the very best and pay them decent money. The fact is, it does little good to have the very best in scouting and presumably good drafts and then watch our young pitchers not develop, either from poor coaching or injury.
I don’t know if BP is a bad pitching coach but it sure doesn’t seem like he’s a great one. I think it’s high time for a change and it doesn’t have to involve a lot of finger pointing.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
#203: How would the M’s recognize a good pitching coach if they found one?
re 205
How would anyone on this blog recognize a good pitching coach if they found one?
#146 I have always thought that Gil Meche looks kind of like Marshal Mathers.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Why does Price get the blame for post-injury (or whatever) Pineiro, when his velocity went through the floor and his mechanics suffered, but none of the credit for pre-injury Pineiro, when a young, modest pitching prospect looked like a future star for a couple of years?
As for Meche — in 1999, height of his prospect-dom, he was well-regarded byt the team but only had one plus pitch, the fastball, and had two pitches, the curve and the change, that he couldn’t control all that well. Then he had a couple of labrum tears after his debut and he hasn’t been even that good. Pitchers who go through that almost never come back, and there are maybe five, six who have regained their previous speed and talent. So Meche isn’t one of them.
At the same time, the year after Meche looked horrible, Price got almost a full year of good work out of him (though, in my view, Melvin really ran Meche down over the season and Price is complicit in that).
Now, the organization’s treatment of Meche and his relationship to them’s another matter. But to say Price is entirely to blame for screwing up his mechanics makes little sense.
As for Garcia — Price’s been the pitching coach going on six years now. If you want to blame him for the bad times, you have to credit him for the good as well.
Price’s legacy is a mixed bag. He’s certainly not the worst pitching coach out there, but we’ve also seen his reputation decline a lot from the early Piniella days (as his philosophy has also seemed to drift).
No croynism Benny looper=Aaron looper Lee pelekudos=Chris pelekudusMike Hargrove =Andy Hargrove yes the good old boy syndrom in full effect.Not to mention every unemployed ex GM are Farm director that was unemployed is know employed by guess who Bill Bavasai.Changes are needed here quickly are the ship sinks
#206 I would go to an Atlanta game find that guy on the bench that constantly rocks back and forth. Then resurrect Roger Craig and Gaylord Perry.
My question is, why credit him for the ups, when those are quickly followed by free-fall descents and few returns to grace?
Garcia, Pineiro and Meche have all gone up for a little bit and then have suffered catastrophic returns to mediocrity. Only Garcia has started to show what he can do again, but in a different uniform. I frankly think that the maintenance and longevity of a pitcher is far more important than spurts of success, and Price hasn’t shown that he can do that.
The most frequent patterns I’ve seen is that Price “succeeds” with pitchers who’ve had previous success or lots of experience (veterans like Sasaki, Hasegawa, Rhodes, Nelson, Sele, Franklin, etc.), but not as much so with young pitchers (Meche, Pineiro, Garcia, Thornton, Putz, etc.). I know I’m severely generalizing, but I have to say that Price is a mixed bag at most and I don’t think he’s the best option around.
I pray for Felix, for I don’t wish to see Price coaching him.
Garcia, Pineiro and Meche have all gone up for a little bit and then have suffered catastrophic returns to mediocrity. Only Garcia has started to show what he can do again, but in a different uniform.
This isn’t true and isn’t blamable on Price. Garcia was pretty good in 99, then good/pretty good for 2000-2002, has his problems, and then went to Chicago, where he’s about as good as he was in 2001. So if you’re crediting Price with any of that, you have to give him the “started to show what he can do again” because he did that in 2004 with the Mariners, where his pitching coach was Price.
And again, Meche doesn’t count. Price can’t reasonably be held responsible for that labrum, and two labrum surgies explains far more about the Meche we see now than any theory.
As for Pineiro, you’ve seen him come up, have a couple good years, and then suddenly his velocity drops significantly and he’s no good anymore. Now, if you want to blame Price for some mechanical thing that caused some injury, maybe we can talk about that. But Pineiro’s not the same pitcher he used to be.
Price’s legacy essentially runs like this:
Price comes on to replace Stan Williams, the last in the rotating pitching coach. He gains Piniella’s trust somehow, gets Piniella to buy into pitch counts, treating his pitchers better in general, and so on. Piniella essentially lets Price run the pitching staff, and suddenly the pitching solidifies and they enjoy a long run of success.
Then, Price seems to drift from his initial success: his pitchers are hung out longer, he seems to neglect pitchers who are running down, and the “he sucks with mechanics” stuff starts.
I don’t know what happened. But that’s where we are. To say he’s a mixed bag at best… well, he’s done a lot for the team. Denying the Piniella turnaround and those years of success seems foolish to me.
Now, whether he’s doing well now… hard to say.
I actually thought “Stitch’n’Pitch” was pretty damn clever — and for once I got to go to the game with a bunch of female friends.
(there’s a series of knitting books which are in vogue these days called Stitch’n’Bitch, and there are sewing/craft/etc circles referred to by the same name, where you get together with friends, work on crafts, and chat, hence the stitching and the bitching, and the play on that name… not to knit-pick, but it was actually pretty fun, and one of my friends won a really nice set of yarn and needles and books and stuff.)
I have no idea if I’m being redundant by explaining this. Umm, plus it resulted in our very own Mound Conference Theater quote of “Sorry, Meche, time to go stitch, ’cause you sure as hell can’t pitch.”
Isn’t an unsuccessful hold just counted as a blown save? That’s why Rhodes always had that horrible save percentage, because when he gave up the lead he got a blown save, but when he held the lead all he ever got was a hold.
There’s a reason blown save is BS.
For anyone who didn’t see it or check out the box score, that game in TO was pretty cool.
8 innings with no scoring.
The 9th inning.
8 more innings with no scoring.
The 18th inning.
Well, I don’t agree about Garcia. There was a noticeable change in Garcia’s pitches, which seem to have stemmed from a change in mechanics. Whether this was because Garcia was in pain, or because Price meddled, I don’t know. But Price sure as hell didn’t figure out what happened, because it took almost two years for Freddy to find any semblance of his former self.
As for Meche, I’m not sure you can blame his failure completely on surgery, considering he came out shooting in 2003. And then his stuff hits a wall in 2004 and has been that way since. I still lay blame on Price for not saying, “Hey Bob, Gil looks like he’s tiring. Maybe we should skip him once?” If the pitching coach doesn’t care/can’t tell if his pitchers are fatigued, etc., then who’s job is it to do that?
Pineiro… Eh. But there are reports in the papers that point towards the fact that Price likes to meddle with mechanics so they’re orthodox and fluid, even while ignoring success (like I said before, I’ve heard that BP hates Sherrill’s mechanics).
More than what he’s “done” before, I think we should worry more about the fact that most of our pitchers aren’t developing. But I do know Safeco Field also happened during his watch. 😀
So, while we’re on the subject of Meche:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/234508_mari29.html
That began with the starting pitcher, Gil Meche. He felt some tightness in his shoulder before the game, but didn’t mention it to anyone.
“I’ve felt this before,” Meche said. “It’s not like a pain. It’s like a pressure. I thought I’d be able to get over it.”
The trouble is, manager Mike Hargrove and pitching coach Bryan Price weren’t in the loop on Meche’s condition. If there’s one thing a manager, any manager, demands, it’s that he know the exact physical condition of his players.
Hargrove might have scratched Meche if he’d known of the problem. Or he might have pulled him earlier than he did once he saw that the stiffness wasn’t getting worked out of Meche’s system.
As it was, Meche was around long enough to give up a three-run homer to Victor Martinez in the third inning, and that meant the Mariners were playing catch-up all night long.
It’s a decent bet Hargrove will want to have a chat with Meche about the silent, stoic baseball path the pitcher chose last night.
“We didn’t know about it until after the first inning, when (trainer) Rick Griffin was stretching his arm out,” Hargrove said. “That was the first we were aware of it.”
#211 DMZ….
You left out the “Used the same 5 starters all season” legacy that BP and Melvin left behind from the 2003 season. It did as much for the 2004 M’s as the same feat did for the 1967 Dodgers (The 1966 Dodgers were the last team to use the same starters all season). The 1967 Dodgers were in last (10th place) for most of the season until they crept up for 7th place (it wasn’t all Koufax’s retirement)
Meche was wearing down in 2003 at the end. Not skipping him in the rotation in order to protect their “feat” was not wise.
I didn’t leave the Big 5 out. 😀
Back to Meche… Do you expect Meche to talk when his pitching coach says crap like this earlier in the year, right after he skips a turn…
[i]”I’d hate for anybody to have to go through the year with any type of a chronic problem, soreness,” Price said. “[b]Even if it wasn’t career-threatening, it’s still tedious, and it works people over mentally. You feel like you’re not going out there with your best stuff.[/b]
“[b]But experienced pitchers understand they’re not going to go out there every time with their best stuff, and they still have to compete and give us a chance to win.[/b]”[/i]
I think there’s a difference between your curveball not breaking and your elbow feeling like it has a nail through it.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2002239838_ston13.html
And I would fix that if I could.
June 19th 108 pitches thrown in 5.1 innings pitched.
June 24th 96 pitches thrown in 5.0 innings pitched.
June 30th 111 pitches thrown in 4.2 innings pitched.
July 5th 80 pitches thrown in 3 innings pitched.
Guess which pitcher I am?
Answer: Gil Meche
That’s a lot of stress on a pitching arm that by no suprise to me has led to any discomfort in Meche’s throwing shoulder. In my humble opinion Bryan Price is a habitual butcher arm abuse and he personally is responsible for Pineiro’s injury last season. I personally believe in yanking a pitcher when his counts get as high as Meche’s has in low innings pitched especially after 111 pitches thrown in 4.2 innigs and you leave Meche in his next start for 80 pitches in 3 innings? I would have yanked him at a 50 max pitch count.
In my humble opinion Bryan Price is a habitual butcher arm abuse and he personally is responsible for Pineiro’s injury last season.
While I’m willing to concede that I disagree with the team’s recent usage (and we’ve talked about this at length), isn’t that going too far? Price clearly brought Piniella back from his brutal pitcher handling, and in particular endorsed shorter leashes and pitch efficency on the staff.
Now, perhaps something’s changed — I don’t know, can’t say. But Price can’t be a habitual butcher, because he spent years clearly and obviously protecting the livestock from the slaughterhouse… even if you think he’s personally leading them in there now.
208 – Derek, thanks for that post, good insight.
When did 80 pitches become a lot?
Spread over only 3 innings, 80 pitches is a lot.
It’s not just counts – it’s counts/inning that matter. Long innings stress the arm more, as do working out of jams.
Think about it. Can you do more pushups if you do 10 and then rest for 5 minutes before starting again, or if you do 30 before taking your rest?
I’m still not convinced 80 pitches is a lot, even if it’s in one inning.
Obviously it’s a lot because if you throw 80 pitches in an inning (or in 3 innings) you suck, but as far as it putting an undue stress on an arm I don’t think any of us have any evidence to base that on.
I’m no expert. I’m just working with what I learned from Rany and Will.