The Friday rumor mill
In general: moves afoot. The powers that be are angry after seeing the A’s somewhat methodically pick the team apart over three games.
Bavasi gone? Seems unlikely, especially ahead of the draft. Hargrove? Could happen. Some roster changes? More likely. Armstrong and Lincoln stepping down in an unexpected moment of self-awareness? Not going to happen.
PI on Hargrove’s team meeting (and the Times has a version). Theil on Mike Cameron. The Go 2 Guy returns to form with a column on Hargrove.
Times notes: Beltre could sit more
Game 42, Mariners at Athletics
A 12:35 start, and no television!
RHP Joel Pineiro v RHP Kirk Saarloos. Two “a”s, two “o”s there.
Gee, you think
Now, I’m really not trying to criticize Jeff Pentland here. I’m sure he knows far more about hitting than I ever will. But, well, just read this comment about Beltre’s problems:
“I was looking at the tapes of the last four or five games, and it seemed to me he needed to cover more of the outside of the plate,” Pentland said. “I talked to him about it, and he said he’d move closer to the plate.”
The fact that the M’s hitting coach just noticed that Beltre’s not covering the outside of the plate well is just jaw dropping. We’ve been complaining about/making fun of Beltre’s inability to hit the outside pitch for the better part of 13 months now. And we’re just fans.
Game 41, Mariners at Athletics
WILLIE TIME!! OH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
Moyer v Zito, 7:05.
Charting Felix
So, last night, I decided to chart King Felix’s pitches. We’ve heard a lot of scuttlebutt over pitch selection, location, mechanics, velocity, and what have you, so I busted out the ultimate geekery and tracked each pitch. Well, until mlb.TV died after it was 8-1, anyways. But, I got the first 73 pitches and the bulk of his suckitude, so here’s what I saw.
First Inning
Felix was clearly looking to establish the fastball. He threw first pitch fastballs to five of the six hitters he faced, and all three baserunners reached on fastballs. He wasn’t missing his spots, and his stuff looked fine, but he wasn’t mixing his pitches at all. My comment in the game thread after that inning: “Throw more offspeed stuff, Felix”.
Second Inning
This is where you see the A’s approach made plainly obvious; see fastball and swing. Felix got through the inning with just 9 pitches thrown, 8 of them fastballs, but the A’s were jumping on the first straight pitch they saw. They swung at 6 of the 9 pitches he threw. It made for a quick three-up, three-down second inning, but the tone was clear; they were all looking dead-red every at-bat, and they were going to jump on the first fastball they saw.
Third Inning
Ellis leads off the third by hitting the first pitch of the inning into left field. It was, naturally, a fastball. At this point, I’m openly pleading for offspeed stuff. Swisher fouls out after fighting off a bunch of fastballs, and then Felix has his best pitch sequence of the game to Eric Chavez. Change-up, Curve, Curve, Change, Change, Curve. Strikeout. All three strikes were looking. Chavez was clearly looking to hit the first fastball he saw 450 feet, but he never saw one. And he walked back to the dugout with a wimper. Then the floodgates opened.
Crosby reached on Beltre’s error, swinging at the second pitch he saw (shockingly, a fastball). Payton got an infield single on a curve that was just a lucky high hop. Then, the Melhuse at-bat. Melhuse fouls off a fastball, Felix misses with two pitches, and then, on a 2-1 count, bases loaded, where everyone and their mother knows he’s throwing a fastball, Melhuse gets one at the belt and launches it. Just a terrible pitch in so many ways. Melhuse has been swinging at every fastball he sees, and he’s a terrible breaking ball hitter. Compound that by leaving it up, and well, that’s recipe for disaster.
Kendall ended the inning by looping out to short on a change-up. Two pitches too late.
By then, the damage was done – Felix just went out there throwing frisbees in the fourth, and they continued to tee off on the fastball.
The A’s had a painfully obvious plan; hit fastballs, don’t swing at curves or change-ups. And Felix pitched directly into that plan. Of the first 73 pitches that I charted before mlb.TV got cut off, 68 percent were fastballs, 20 percent were curves, and 12 percent were change-ups. He threw first pitch fastballs to 20 of the 26 batters he faced.
His problem last night wasn’t command, mechanics, or stuff. He had the normal 2006 Felix package working. He just had a bad gameplan. The pitch selection was brutal. When I can call the next pitch coming with almost 90 percent accuracy sitting at home, you have to know the A’s were as dialed in to what was coming as I was.
I don’t know who is responsible. Felix has had this problem with both Johjima and Rivera, so I don’t think its the catchers. He didn’t shake off many pitches, but it might be time to start. My guess is that its a coaching philosophy to establish the fastball and work the breaking balls in for strikeouts. Personally, I think that philosophy is wrong.
Felix’s 95 MPH fastball is his worst pitch. If he figures out how to dial it back up to 98 like he had last year, great, feature the fastball. But right now, he can’t get it by hitters when they know its coming, so he needs to mix his pitches better. He needs to exploit hitter’s flaws. Chavez is a fastball hitter, and he got nothing but breaking balls. It was brilliant. The rest of the line-up, though, saw fastballs all day long.
How do you fix it? Felix has to learn how to pitch. I don’t know how to teach that. I’m a blogger – thats not my job. Hopefully, Rafael Chaves can instill some words of wisdom about gameplan and approach into the King’s ear. Because, when he’s throwing fastballs that often, he’s hardly royalty.
Game 40, Mariners at Oakland
RHP Felix Hernandez v RHP Joe Blanton. 7:05, FSN.
Heyyy, you know how Hargrove wanted 40 games before drawing any conclusions about the team? This is game 40. And the team’s getting smacked around the league. Oh, we can say things may turn around, or they’re no worse than team X or better than team Y, but 90 wins? 80 wins requires them to play a little better than .500 ball the rest of the year, and that’s certainly possible, but playoff contention? Probably not.
Unless… unless they turn it around now, and Felix has fixed his mechanics and they build a little momentum and they could be right back in this. Right? Right?
Rainiers Game Thread – Doyle Fields!
Rainiers playing another early game today, and everyone’s favorite Aussie is going to be throwing his body around the right field area. This is the first game this year he’s playing defense. Someone pad the walls!
As always, listen to Curto here or watch it on Gameday here.
Mariner news of note
Larry Stone on Jose Lopez. Short version: team asked him to make a lot of changes over the last, year or so and he did. MLB.com echoes the sentiment. And Washburn has dead-arm!
Jim Moore manages to write an affectation-free column on Fruto.
The Answer Guy’s latest column concerns the black on the plate, evil spirits, and losing on a balk.
Also in the PI, a lot of hooey about the closer’s role as Guardado mentors Putz. And there’s a meandering set of column-inches on the season so far.
Random photos from Isotopes @ Rainiers
I didn’t get really good photos in part because my not-at-all-trusty Minolta decided that sitting on my desk for a couple of days was too much for it to take and broke, so I was using a tiny Kodak for these. Also, I’m not the photographer Dave is.
Doyle, when he steps into the box, takes one hand and…
Here’s our boy tearing out of the box to have a scab replacement umpire call him out (which got Doyle to argue, and I didn’t get a good photo of that).
This is what I start taking pictures of in the late innings of a horribly played 3h 40+m 3-0 game.
I somehow forgot to mention this, but the Rainiers ran a promotion I could not believe: the Diamond Dig. They buried a diamond ring in the infield dirt, and allowed women to go out there and dig for it using plastic spoons. No, really.
Standing just behind second is Rhubarb, supervising his workers with an eerie frozen grin on his face.
Isotopes at Rainiers game report, 5/14
I was so excited about today’s Meche v Weaver matchup I drove to Tacoma (which took me over an hour: 405 crawled all through the S-curves and then I-5 crawled from miles ahead of the Highway 16 exit and then, on H-16, crawled at half speed)(on a Sunday, before noon!).
My reward was one of the worst-played games I’ve ever seen in my life of watching baseball, at any level. It took 3:42 to play out this 3-0 shutout of the Rainiers. If I’d written the game story, it would have led “The Rainiers and Isotopes played an interminable, painful game this Mother’s day, perhaps in the hopes that in some small way it would remind of us of what our own moms went through for us.”
I have many notes, which I’ll relate in somewhat random order:
– I saw Michael Garciaparra’s debut (this year) for the Rainiers, playing second. Scrawny dude.
– Hunter Brown’s intro music is the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” which is inappropriate in a number of ways
– Appier looked quite hittable and shaky. The crowd booed him in the first inning
– Concessions at Cheney Stadium are horrible. Ugh. I understand there’s a polish sausage that’s good, but I didn’t luck into that. I had the pizza. Bleah.
– Adam Jones is taking huge cuts at pitches, but he’s not taking cuts at bad pitches. When he gets bat on ball, the ball just takes off. When he shortened his swing and tried to make contact, he didn’t look so good. Also, he’s what, 20?
– Jones’ defense is potentially standout: he’s got a great first move, he’s fast, and he gets in a position to come forward when he’s catching it to be in better throwing position. His routes aren’t always the best, but again, he just converted.
– Jones has an amazing arm for a centerfielder. He’s not hitting his man consistently, but he did just convert in the AFL this last year. Seriously, it’s a cannon. If you promoted him today (which you shouldn’t) he’d have one of the strongest outfield arms (you hope accuracy comes). In this game, he almost nailed a runner going 2nd to 3rd on a deep fly ball.
– Despite the PA announcement, I don’t think the Fun Patrol makes any effort to target the specific fans who are screaming for T-shirts the loudest
– Appier sucks at backing up plays. Imagine a 1998 Frank Thomas trying to back up third.
– Appier sucks at defense: he made a stop on a ground ball up the middle, turned to second and threw it into center field, turning a potential double play into 1st and 3rd. Throwing the ball away was a running theme: Hunter did it later, backhanding a grounder at first and then hurling it almost into the stands.
– Appier sucks
– Doyle got big applause from the crowd
– Doyle gets up way before his turn and starts to stretch, get his helmet on, and likes to stand near the on-deck circle when he’s in the hole (I hear this has led umpires to shoo him back to the dugout). Really, he’ll get ready to bat four batters ahead of his turn when there are two outs and the chances he’ll bat are next to nothing. I’m surprised he doesn’t try to impersonate other batters to get more at-bats
– By contrast, other guys might only stand up off the bench when it was they were in the hole
– When Doyle makes contact, the ball still leaps off the bat. He’s something
– The scab umps suck
– Asdrubal Cabrera’s going to present the Mariners with a difficult question sooner than I think people realize. He’s good defensively and he can hit (though, admittedly, whether his current offensive game can move up a level is open to question). What do the M’s do with a guy like that next year?
– I saw Cabrera swipe second and when, sliding in, he saw the ball go past the fielder, he got up and just tore into third. Nice play.
– Rainier batter is up, bases loaded, full count, they announce that if he hits a grand slam, some dude gets a car. The batter grounds out on the next pitch.
– Foppert looked bad
– A kid did a sweep-the-bases thing and after he was done, he brushed off the umpire’s feet, and the ump gave him a ball. Implied message: do as you’re told and debase yourself to authority, and you’ll be rewarded.
– With guys on 1-2, 1 out, the team down by 3 and TJ Bohn up, Brundage called for a double-steal early in the count and then, when the count was full, did it again. Bohn swung and struck out and the runner was picked off at third. Doyle was left standing in the on-deck circle.
– What a ridiculous call that was. I’m sorry, but down by three with a strikeout threat at the plate and a good hitter on-deck? What the heck was Brundage thinking was going to happen there?
– Doyle’s intro song is Pearl Jam’s “Alive”
People in Tacoma on Doyle:
– he’s a cutie
– he’s a Mariner who’s only down here for an injury rehab
– he’s a great player who can’t stay healthy