Third Place Books next Wednesday
Hey everyone – next Wednesday, the 30th, is the rescheduled date for my appearance at Third Place Books. 7pm. Their event calendar is here. Please do come out, it’s always nice to hang around with USSMers and hopefully the team will be on a terrific tear and we’ll all be in good moods.
Wacky fun fact: the next day features two local science fiction/fantasy authors, Kay Kenyon and Louise Marley. Marley wrote the short story “Diamond Girls” aaand a nice review of the Cheater’s Guide to Baseball, over at Amazon. I thought that was kind of cool.
The Adam Jones Conundrum
Down in Cheney Stadium yesterday afternoon, Adam Jones went 3 for 5 with a home run. Or rather, I should say, another home run. Becaue he went 3 for 5 with a home run on Monday, too. He also launched one vs Tucson last Thursday, he hit two in Albuquerque on the 13th, and he hit one in Round Rock on the 10th. He has six home runs in his last 10 games and is hitting .351/.448/.703 in May.
Jones has taken clear steps forward across the board this year. He’s raised his walk rate from 6.7% last year to 10.2% this year while keeping his strikeout rate the same, showing that he’s working the count without staring at hittable pitches. He’s also raised his average without sacrificing power, hitting .321 with 36.5% of his hits going for extra bases. He’s hitting the ball on the ground more often this year, turning on fastballs and driving them through the hole between 3rd and SS. His route running has improved significantly, and while he’s still got some more room to go defensively, he’s now becoming much more of an asset with the glove.
Adam Jones is ready for the majors. If major league rosters and line-ups were simple talent competitions, where the best player in the organization got the job regardless of other factors, he would be the Mariners starting left fielder. He’s a better player today than Raul Ibanez in every aspect of the game.
However, Adam Jones is also one other thing that Raul Ibanez is not – right handed. As we discussed last week, the Mariners offense is already too RH heavy. With only Ichiro, Vidro, and Ibanez providing left-handed bats, the team has a power shortage whenever they face a right-handed pitcher, simply due to basic matchups.
The M’s can’t permanently replace Raul Ibanez with Adam Jones. Even if Raul wasn’t designated as Mariner For Life by the executives, this team cannot afford to sub out a left-handed bat for a right-handed bat and become even more unbalanced. And, being pragmatic, there’s just no way that Raul Ibanez loses his job to Adam Jones in the middle of a push for a playoff spot. It won’t happen.
But Adam Jones is one of the 5 or 6 best hitters in the organization right now, and with the team doing whatever it takes to try and win, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have that kind of asset hanging out in Tacoma and blistering Triple-A pitching.
What’s the answer here? Honestly, I wish I had one. Perhaps you trade Jose Guillen to a team that needs a power hitting outfielder, such as Minnesota, and install Jones in his place. But that doesn’t make the offense any better, since Guillen’s one of the shining stars of the first two months of the season. Maybe you call-up Jones and have him play the fourth outfielder role, starting over Ibanez against lefties and giving Guillen and Ichiro days off here and there. But then you’re asking Mike Hargrove to actually run something of a platoon, and to take a veteran out of the line-up in place of a kid, neither of which are likely to happen without an edict from heaven.
The M’s are in something of a quandary. They have a guy in Tacoma who can help them win games, a team in need of help, and no easy answers for how to fit a good hitter into the line-up. This is part of why we hated the last offseason – the M’s removed huge amounts of flexibility by tying up the DH spot, essentially eliminating the chance for Adam Jones to provide a spark during the season.
He needs to be on the team. I just don’t know how they pull it off.
Game 41, Mariners at Devil Rays
4:10 FSN. Washburn v Kazmir.
M’s present:
CF-L Ichiro
DH-B Turbo
RF-R Manhole
1B-R Sexson
3B-R Beltre
C-R Johjima
SS-R Betancourt
2B-R Lopez
LF-R Ellison
The Devil Rays offer:
CF-R Dukes
2B-R Upton
LF-L Crawford
3B-R Wigginton (not “Wiggington” remember)
SS-R Harris
RF-R Young
1B-L Pena
C-B Navarro
DH-R Cantu
Time to play “Would you swap ’em?” Even if you think Upton’s an eventual DH, do you give up Lopez and try and fill second somehow? And then the outfield…
The long stretch of road
At 19-21, the Mariners at least have Felix back. But this schedule is just crazy.
May 22-24, 3 games at Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay’s 18-25.
May 25-27, 3 games in Kansas City. KC is 17-28
So there’s some time against weaker teams, hopefully the M’s at least keep pace with the Angels ahead of
May 28-30, 3 games in Anaheim.
May 31-June 3, 4 at home v Texas.
June 4-6, 3 more at home v Baltimore
And then June 7th they get off before another road trip featuring another stuffed-in Cleveland makeup game.
That’s pretty brutal, and when it’s done, over a third of the season will be complete. If the team’s still five games behind the Angels and we haven’t seen improvement from – well, you know the list – slogging through those remaining games will seem almost as unappealing as these long stretches without any off days.
Game 40, Mariners at Indians
Baek vs Sabathia, 4:05 pm.
The Indians are a good team and Sabathia’s a very good pitcher. But at least he’s left-handed, so there’s a good chance we’ll put some runs on the board. Except that Willie has been so awesome this year, he’s earned a second straight start in left field.
I’m sure Jason Ellison is thrilled.
Perhaps if we had two hands and a flashlight
Baker, over at his blog, shares the opinion of an unnamed clubhouse insider–the M’s are crummy because they don’t have enough jerks. No, really.
He told me that what the Mariners lack, to put it bluntly, is more jerks. He didn’t use the word “jerks” — more like a word that rhymes with manholes. Anyway, this insider also didn’t mean jerks like the kind who go around getting into bar fights, driving drunk and such. Just guys with a little more edge to them. Put simply, the Mariners “are too nice” is what he conclude
Wait a minute, now. Weren’t the Mariners so good in 2001 because they didn’t have any jerks? I realize Baker wasn’t here then, but still. This whole thing gets back to the argument that winning breeds so-called “good chemistry,” not the other way around. Well not quite that exact argument, but similar.
Win… Or Go Home
It’s May 21st. The season is seven weeks old, and the Mariners have only played 25% of their season schedule to date. There’s a lot of baseball left to be played. Or, as you’ll hear people say all around the country, its early.
In most cities, that’s true. Not in Seattle, though. The Mariners struggles over the weekend while the Angels surged ahead have put them squarely at a crossroads. At 19-20, the M’s stand five games behind the Angels, and while five games doesn’t sound like a lot, it is a big lead. It would be one thing if the Mariners were clearly the most talented team in the division or had a hall of fame pitcher building up arm strength in Double-A while waiting to join the rotation. But that’s not the Mariners – this is a flawed team with issues hitting right-handed pitching and no answers in the back of the rotation.
This team can’t afford to dig any kind of significant hole. They are teetering on the edge of putting themselves into a situation that they can’t get themselves out of.
Cool Standings gives the Mariners a 4% chance of making the playoffs. The BP playoff odds report is a little kinder, putting the mark at 11%. Either way, that’s a veritable longshot.
This Mariners team isn’t good enough to run down a better Angels team late in the year. This Mariner team needs to keep on the Angels heels the entire year. The M’s simply have to begin winning ballgames starting today. With back to back series with Tampa Bay and Kansas City after the one game interlude in Cleveland, the M’s have a chance to make up some ground before they travel to Anaheim. They need a 5-2 or 6-1 east coast swing before they come back west to face the Angels, because a 4-3 or 3-4 trip against some easy opponents is only going to serve to put the M’s down 6 or 7 games in the standings and give the Angels a chance to drive a nail into the coffin of the M’s playoff hopes.
It’s only May, but it’s not early. The M’s need to win, and they need to do it this week.
Felix and rehab
Baker makes an interesting point on the Times blog:
All I’ll say about Hernandez is that he looks like a guy who could have used a rehab assignment before stepping back in to face major league hitters.
Here’s the interesting thing: I totally agree, and I totally understand why they didn’t.
I made the point during the first start, but Felix’s return, where he didn’t look fine, and really, as Baker notes, like someone who would have been better off with a rehab assignment or two, picking up innings working more easily even if that meant finding him a start in AA or wherever.
But! Felix’s short, tentative, ill return was better than any Jeff Weaver start this year. If you’d had the choice, ahead of time, between Weaver and that Felix start, you’d take Felix’s. The team, illusory or not, was competing for the division lead, and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference to Felix’s recovery if he worked there, with instructions to limit his use of breaking pitches, or did the same thing in the minors.
Similarly, today: in an ideal world, he gets a second start in the minors to get even better, work on his stuff, and it’s clear that while he’s better than he was the last time he took the mound, he’s still not quite all there.
But his start today was better, really, than anything we’ve received from any non-Washburn starter in the rotation this year. That’s a sad comment on how bad the 3-4-5 guys have been, but it also makes it entirely understandable why the team’s better off having a shaky Felix up and working out his issues here than they are with Weaver taking his turns and waiting.
Game 39, Padres at Mariners
Germano v Hernandez. Oh yeah.
Sunday lineup of curiosity:
CF-L Ichiro
DH-B Turbo
RF-R Guillen
1B-L Broussard
3B-R Beltre
SS-R Betancourt
2B-R Lopez
C-R Burke
LF-R The Ignitor
It’s interesting, at least.
This just in
Today is Felix Day.