The Schedule
After Friday night’s frustrating debacle, I decided to take the last two games off. The Mariners, apparently, thought that sounded like a fantastic idea, and followed suit. The road trip that started 5-0 with wins over good teams ends at 5-5 after getting swept by one of the worst teams in baseball. And swept in convincing fashion, a beatdown where the Mariners didn’t put up a fight and were outscored 24 to 7.
By all accounts, the team is exhausted. They have their first day off on Monday since June 7th, and that was their first day off since May 14th. They also didn’t have a game on April 24th, due to a rainout, and they had a normal day off on April 16th, as well as a postponed game in Boston on April 12th. Since the snowout series, the Mariners have played 63 games in 69 days. Tomorrow is the fourth day in two and a half months that they haven’t had to go to the ballpark to prepare for a game. That’s tough.
But, unfortunately, that’s also baseball. Lost in all the talk about the Mariners scheduling around the makeup games is that those games involve another team – the Cleveland Indians. Every time the Mariners jump on a plane to Cleveland, the Tribe also have to come to the park on what was supposed to be an off day for their club. So, for comparison, let’s look at the Indians schedule.
The Indians just played their 13th game in a row and are headed to Philadelphia for games 14, 15, and 16 before an upcoming off day on Thursday. Their last day off was June 4th, and before that, it was May 14th. That was the only day in May that the Indians didn’t play baseball. They also had a day off on April 16th. Since the snowout series, the Indians have played 65 games in 69 days, and by the time they get another day off, it will have been 68 games in 72 days.
The Indians are 40-28, first place in the A.L. Central, having outscored their opponents by 46 runs on the year. They’ve played two more games since the end of the snowout series than the Mariners have in the same amount of days. I’m sure they’re a tired bunch, but unfortunately, I can’t find any quotes in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer to prove it. Maybe they were too tired to give interviews?
Or, alternately, perhaps they’ve overcome their exhaustion and continued to win baseball games because they’re a good team. A playoff team. A team with a well constructed roster able to provide organizational depth when the preseason rotation falls to pieces.
The schedule has been tough on the Mariners. It’s been tough on the Indians, too. One of these teams has shown the ability to overcome the challenge and keep winning enough games to keep themselves firmly entrenched in a pennant race. The other is taking tomorrow off, regrouping, and hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates at Safeco Field on Tuesday night.
Two teams with tough schedules born out of bad weather. One is still in first place, while the other saw their playoff hopes put on life support this weekend. Perhaps it’s not the schedule? Perhaps it’s the roster.
“The schedule has been tough on the Mariners. It’s been tough on the Indians, too.”
Except I think it is far worse for the Ms because they have to travel. Not only do they have to fly three more times to another destination, they need to check in and check out of their hotels and sleep in non-home beds. Sure, one of the four games converts to a Seattle home game, but still I think the Ms got a way shorter end of the stick.
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to bring this up.
I’ve never seen a convincing argument that flight miles or time spent in first class on a private plane have any tangible effect on a teams win-loss record. And, regardless of whether you think the M’s schedule is tougher than the Indians, there’s no way you can think that the short end of the stick is large enough to explain the difference in records.
I think there is something to what SCL just said.
Then again, Guillen has stopped hitting, Ibanez had two games of torrid slaughter then shut up again, Vidro sucks, Sexson still hasn’t woken up yet, Beltre has been hurt and we’ve had to endure Willie Bloomquist in various forms in his place, and even Kenji has slowed down from his hot two months of pitch exfoliation.
Basically when the only people hitting are the leadoff man, the seventh hitter, and the eighth hitter, and then your pitchers and bench players all being non factors… well your offense is gonna suck and you’re not gonna win.
Let’s face it, during our hot streak, it wasn’t the starting five doing the work. Our “one thing” that was working isn’t anymore, and none of our other facets are able to compensate.
Another factor: Don’t the Indians also share a division with the Royals and a subpar White Sox team?
Then again, the Mariners share a division with Texas, and these interleague sets with the Cubs and Astros were supposed to be easy money.
The “tired” argument also looks thin when you begin examing individual players. The players with talent who are not declining tend to continue to play well. For the M’s, this group constitutes Ichiro and J.J. Ichiro showed no signs of being tired. Hell, he seemed to get better with each consecutive game in Houston. At least the M’s losing streak has allowed the club to rest J.J.’s arm.
During their stretch of winning games, I kept thinking, “Who are these guys?” As depressing as the last five games have been, it’s far more in character for the 2007 Mariners than the winning bits.
Re 6,
Bull.
During the winning stretch, the Mariners were playing good baseball, and even then not everybody was playing to their talent levels or even their talent averages. The team was carried by a few people, including Ibanez, while some others got cold or have remained in slumberland.
Losing is more in character for the 2007 Mariners then winning? I don’t get it. You are what you are, and the Mariners, right now, are a 35-31 team.
They won 4 straight games by 1 run, then won the next game by a whopping 2 runs. They then lost by 1, 1, 4, 5, and 7.
They’ve been outscored on the season. They might have a 35-31 record, but they’re not a 35-31 team.
No doubt the schedule has been tough on both teams…but it’s clear the Indians are a far deeper and better team. There’s absolutely NO reason to have lost 3 games to the woeful Astros, tired or not.
7: I think jefffrane’s point was that the winning was surprising, the losing is not.
A very interesting post by Dave. I don’t think the Mariners are on life support…they are done.
They do not have the talent in their starting rotation to compete. Who should be their power hitters don’t have enough power. They have cracks in their bullpen that are starting to grow wider. They have two teams in front of them in a four team division that are better constructed, and better managed in both the front office and on the field.
However the local media will flog that it was the schedule that did them in, they are not that far out, all they need is to regroup….etc. I think the most interesting question for the Mariners is what is going to happen with Ichiro…everything else pales in consideration right now.
Baseball is all about pitching; especially starting pitching. I’m sure the schedule has been tough on the Ms, but Dave is right. The problem is the roster, especially the pitching.
Felix has been adequate lately. We need him to be great.
Washburn has had three awful starts in a row. Baek, Batista and Weaver aren’t delivering quality starts. Morrow suddenly looks shaky.
There is a lot to like about the Ms, and a lot to build on. The pitching, however, is not where it needs to be.
I have no idea how to quantify the impact of a travel schedule on a teams play. I don’t see how the travel schedule is an advantage.
The other factor is Hargove, who refuses to force players to take time off. This team has some older players who shouldn’t be playing everyday (Ibanez, Sexson, Vidro) and Hargrove has not been proactive about giving them the time off they need.
I am not disagreeing with your thesis that the team needs to get better players on the roster, clearly they do.
I’m just raising the issue that the M’s have had some trying circumstances and Hargrove has done very little to protect his players from the everyday grind.
The bullpen is just wiped out. Morrow was the first to fold under the workload, and Jason Davis caved this weekend. I’m proud of O’Flaherty, who weebled and wobbled but didn’t fall down, and Sherrill and Green acquitted themselves quite nicely but couldn’t have realistically held up much longer. The Feierabend/Woods Shuffle, while a neat dance step in theory, had marginal practical effect.
I’m just glad we didn’t have to see JJ Putz have a ninth-inning meltdown to lose a game.
The starters simply have to do better and go deeper.
Unfortunately, the starters can’t … because Bill Bavasi didn’t get us those kinds of pitchers.
It needs to start with Felix/Wash/Batista. They must get us into the 7th every time out.
If we want the starters to go deeper into ballgames, someone needs to tell Felix to stop throwing so many stinking fastballs. It’s probably cost him at least an inning in his last few starts.
When the Jeff Weaver was you best starter over the last 2 turns in your starting rotation, you know you are in trouble. I was in all 3 games in Wrigley. After the first game, you can see that the Mariners were tired. I wasn’t that surprised that they lost the series in Houston, but getting swept was still in-excusable.
SCL: It isn’t like the Indians haven’t had added travel. The June 11th game was sandwiched between games at Cincinatti and at Florida.
Dave,
I wasn’t considering just this road trip. I was referring to the “hot streak” we’d been on since the road trip where you declared we had to win a bunch of those games to get back into respectful contention. Since that road trip, our offense had done most of the work.
We’d won our games by 3, 4, 8, 8, 3, 7, 4, 1, 5, 3, 1, then the current list you gave. It’s painfully obvious that the offense that was carrying us to our 17-10 stretch here is gone. Meanwhile, the pitchers hadn’t improved at all, giving up during those same wins 2, 1, 2, 1, 4, 5, 5, 4, 6, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3, 7, and 3 runs.
We is what we is. We can context all we want, but right now we’re a 35-31 team after a 16-6 stretch turned into a 16-11 stretch.
Looking at the upcoming schedule, the Mariners need to go 5-1 or maybe 6-0 over this home stand to get back to the race. The Angels play the next 9 games at home against Houston, Pitt and KC, then go on the road to play Baltimore and Texas before heading to the Yankees stadium, where they always play well. They could go on a ridicoulous winning streak over the next 18 games before the AS break. The M’s have the next 12 games at home against Pitt, Cincy, Boston and Toronto. They could go 9-3 on this home stand and not pick up a game on the Angels. They then go to KC and Oakland before the AS break. Basically, they need to go 13-6 before the AS break to stay on the race for the AL West title. I think the wildcard might be more realistic, although they have to contend with the loser of the Central division, Oakland and now the Yankees again for the wild card. This 5 game losing streak really hurt the M’s bad.
Bah, that first 17-10 should be 16-11… I recounted later and forgot to change it.
That’s a curious statement to make, based on a casual look at fatigue literature.
Fatigue from crossing even 2-3 time zones is fairly well known; constantly resetting the physiological clock does have physiological costs, as does travelling itself. Is there something in the literature to contradict that?
(That’s not to mention this would affect an older team more, as well as a team that has to cross more time zones).
I’m with the group that says the starting pitching just isn’t good enough. Like Dave, I’ve suspected Felix’ arm isn’t sound for some time. He needs time on the DL, and then time in the minors to work on mechanics, pitch selection and command. (I greatly respect Dave’s work on the pitch selection issue, but it also seems somewhat beside the point when it’s obvious his pitches don’t have enough bite, which strongly suggests arm trouble.) Washburn, Ramirez, Batista, Weaver, Sexson, Vidro, Guillen and Ibanez are all examples of the team’s bizarre policy of overpaying second-tier and washed-up players. This team needs to be torn apart and rebuilt around the core of young players (Felix, Putz, Betancourt, Lopez, Broussard), plus (hopefully) Ichiro, and the job needs to be done after the front office is also torn apart and re-staffed with people who actually understand baseball.
Is this surprising to folks? This team has been prone to streakiness in its offense last year and this year; that the offense carried us for a while and then dropped out of sight should be something we should expect from time to time.
…Perhaps it’s the coaching.
I agree with this article completely. The Mariners aren’t a terrible team, but we’re not a playoff team and if we’re not a playoff team, what’s the point? We need to get ready for next year. Start rebuilding. With the exception of Putz and Johjima, we should be unloading every old man we can so the youngsters can operate. The Yankees want a firstbasemen? They can have one of ours. They can pick: Sexson, Broussard, or Ibanez for any solid prospect. How much patience can Boston have with a leadoff hitter with a .270 OBP? We have one with a .408 OBP. Want him? For the love of God, will anybody take Jose Vidro off our hands? If Adam Jones doesn’t get three hundred big league at bats this year, somebody (cough*Bavasi*cough) needs to get fired. Maybe we’re not terrible, but we’re not going to the playoffs so we might as well get ready for next year. Get Adam Jones (and maybe Wladimir Balentien and Jeff Clement) up here. Now.
All baseball offenses are streaky to some extent; it’s the nature of a game in which success is defined as failing 70% of the time. This is why successful teams always have a good starting pitching staff; being carried by one’s offense just doesn’t work in baseball. (Come to think of it, it doesn’t work all that well in football, basketball or hockey either.) This is why the Rangers for years had awesome offenses and .500 records; nobody could pitch. This is also why I just don’t see the Yankees making the playoffs this year; yes, the offense is incredible, but they don’t have credible starters after Wang and Clemens (Mussina is showing his age, and Pettitte is too injury-prone), and consequently they’ve also been very streaky, just as one would expect. They’ve also had the same tired bullpen problems the M’s have had, for the same reasons.
One thing that isn’t fatigued is Ichiro’s comedic instincts:
Was it a big deal for Ichiro to get his 100th hit today?
“In one way I feel it’s important, because if I don’t get to 100, I can’t get to 101,” he told the P-I.
Successful teams do not always have a good pitching staff.
All I know is that I’ve felt the same way as Dave the last couple of days. I woke up late both times this weekend and missed 6 innings of the Saturday game and all of the Sunday game. Didn’t miss all that much, either. At least nothing worth watching. After another off day tomorrow, I’ll be up to watching the Mariners again, and hopefully this time, the team will be up for the challenge of an NL Central cellar dweller.
How much patience can Boston have with a leadoff hitter with a .270 OBP? We have one with a .408 OBP. Want him?
I’m always fascinated with the idea that the way to improve teams is to dump Hall of Fame-caliber players. Not to mention: why would you keep Putz with Morrow or Lowe around, or Johjima with Clement or Johnson, as opposed to Ichiro? If anything, they have MORE trade value in potential return than a guy with 3 and a half months left on his contract.
KC’s been having regular youth movements and fire sales for 10+ years now. You might ask them how many shiny World Series trophies they’ve acquired in that time.
Successful teams do not always have a good pitching staff.
Yeah, but 4.77 ERA and 12th in the AL while playing in the best pitcher’s park in the AL isn’t “not good”, it’s “pretty bad”- and when you consider the bullpen, that starting staff is even worse, what with Bad Felix is serving up gopherballs, it’s a staff of 5 4-5 starters.
Successful teams rarely are that bad in a category.
Of course, the craptastic defense isn’t helping, either.
[i]I’m always fascinated with the idea that the way to improve teams is to dump Hall of Fame-caliber players.[/i]
This raises the question of what we could get in return for Ichiro that would bring us closer to becoming a contender in 2008 or even 2009.
This team is best served by going all out to win in 2007 in an attempt to keep Ichiro in town and taking the picks as compensation if we fail to resign him.
Ichiro is too awesome to trade. I would never think of giving up a HoF calibur player either. But giving up somebody who can come up with the greatest quotables ever?
My only caveat to what Dave said is that I don’t think you can discount what kind of games we’ve played. Dave said it himself, he needed a day off from this team. The 5 game winning streak was emotionally draining and tiring from a fan’s standpoint, I can’t imagine what it would be like from a players.
I did a study a bunch of years ago looking at Mariner travel records, because a lot is made sometimes about how much traveling the Mariners have to do because of the location of Seattle.
At that time, I found that their record in the first game after traveling east was worse than expected. Of course, I needed to use multiple years of data to get a sufficient sample size.
But their record in other road games was what would be expected.
It would be interesting to see if that conclusion has held up in the last decade or so.
Fatigue is a problem, the cause however is not likely simply air travel. While air travel can have a negative impact on people, it is also something that frequent travellers cope with well, i.e. we adjust to the process. We can safely say the M’s are frequent travellers.
They are simply tired. They are tired for many reasons which include too many consecutive days and for some players they are simply older.
As we age, we lose some critical ability to recover quickly. Toss in a suspect or unbalanced diet, lack of sleep and poor daily performances and it’s a recipie for total meltdowns.
Baseball teams should try to model what endurance athletes do for the long seasons. The conditioning of baseball players has always been suspect. They could benefit from adopting some practices that are proven to fight fatigue and promote recovery.
Correct diet: A well-balanced diet with the correct supplements can improve the bodies natural ability to secret HGH. This is in us, REM cycles induce it along with proper nutrition.
Rest: Gains only come from rest. They simply need to be rotated sooner so that they don’t get completely worn down. Total fatigue can takes days to get over whereas a day here and there can make all the difference in the world.
Injury prevention: See above. Tired muscles and ligaments get injured easier as they are not keeping joints in place as well. Once you lose that step, things are all lined up for a joint injury that either sends one to the DL or just flat out slows you down for weeks.
There are literally dozens of reference books on this subject. They are well-written and researched by very sports passionate doctors and reseachers. The “trainer” may be offering this advice, who knows. Chances are though that our trainer is more injury focused as that is the traditional baseball role.
However, I suspect that travel fatigue only accounts for a game or two in the standings this year. It’s still pretty clear that the last sentence in Dave’s op is true — it is the roster.
The starting pitching is horrible, Morrow should be in the minors, they’ve had some injuries, and, not least, the lineup spots expected to produce offense (those that are the least demanding of fielding skill) are filled with people who are aging rapidly. Take a look at this, where the M’s hitters rank in OPS compared to all major league hitters who play that position and have enough AB’s to quality for batting.
First the good (rank and total number of players):
C: Johjima, 3 out of 16
CF: Ichiro, 4 out of 26
Then, the average to slightly below average:
2B: Lopez, 12 out of 25
RF: Guillen, 14 out of 22
SS: Betancourt, 15 out of 27
3B: Beltre, 11 out of 19
Then, the woefully bad:
LF: Ibanez, 15 out of 17
1B: Sexson, 23 out of 24
DH: Vidro, 7 out of 7
If you expect that aging players are going to return to their glory days if we just give them enough at bats (which Grover certainly does), then the Mariner offence might yet improve, and the recent hot streak would not be a fluke.
Ignoring the amount of travel time and fatigue this induces is folly. Cleveland may have an “emotional advantage” (if there is such a thing) by playing all of these games at home.
In the two prior make-up games with Cleveland the M’s played at home vs. San Diego, then flew to Cleveland for a game, followed by 3 game serieses at Tamba Bay, KC, and LAA. There were no days off in this string of games. That is just brutal. (May 18 – 30). This was followed by a flight back to Seattle and games vs. Texas and Baltimore (no days off May 31 – June 6).
This is 23 straight days of playing, no days off, 5 flights (Seattle to SoCal is 2.5-3 hours, Seattle to Cleveland is 4, Cleveland to TB is 2.5-3, TB to KC is 3-4, KC-LAA is 3). Who knows what sort of traffic situations exist in these city’s or when the flights came in or if they were stuck in traffic for an hour or so. I really can’t speak on this, but it could definately exacerbate the travel issue.
Over this period of time, the M’s went from 18-19 to 30-26! Intestinal fortutude. Well done.
They M’s then got a day off on June 7. On this day, the likely flew to San Diego. They then proceeded to sweep San Diego at SD (won in the 11th, 9th, and 9th! which is a bit stressful), beat Cleveland at Cleveland (a very long flight), then to Chicago (a very short flight) where things started going south until they got all the way to Houston and things got Deep South. The M’s had a respectable split on the road.
I have a hard time being disappointed with these results. By the same token, Cleveland is playing these make-up games at home. The first make-up, was at the end of a homestand. The second one (good lord!) was between away games, albeit they played at Cincinnatti, in Cleveland, and then flew to Florida.
Over the same time period (May 20 to today), the M’s went from 19-20 to 35-31 and Cleveland went from 26-15(!) to 40-28.
The Indians had 13 losses and the M’s had 11, while winning 14 and 16, respectively.
The M’s won more, lost less, and didn’t have near the record Indians had when this crap started. The M’s aren’t on life-support, the team is wearing down. The M’s had tougher travel (not too much, but they start with a natural disadvantage of having had their closest away game 1,000+ miles away) and less natural talent than the team, yet played better than Cleveland over the same time period.
Dave,
How can you make the argument that the M’s are exhausted without acknowledging that the M’s brutal travel schedule is a significant component of that exhaustion? Talent is obviously the more compelling reason for the M’s recent struggles, but you introduced the idea of exhaustion, then used a team with half the travel requirement as a comparable. Either the M’s are not competing because they are tired (and travel is a factor), or they are not competing because they aren’t good enough But saying they are tired and then saying travel isn’t a factor is simply ignoring fact (fact supported in the literature).
heh.
Took me a while to make my post, so I missed TheEmrys argument. Just piling on.
Look, I live on the east coast, and I used to work for an airline. I’ve flown cross country a lot. I know how tiring it can be.
I also know that the effects of flying aren’t nearly as dramatic on professional athletes as most fans think, and their desire to assign a reason to every win or loss on some external force leads them to some lousy conclusions.
The M’s are obviously tired. The schedule has been hard. No one’s arguing that. I was simply pointing out that the Indians schedule has also been hard, playing even more games in the same amount of time as the M’s, and they’ve managed to continue winning games.
My point is that the M’s won more games than the Indians in the same time period of make-up games. As near as I can tell, they played the same number of games.
The snowout series ended on April 9th. As of that date, the Mariners were 2-1, and the Indians were 2-1. It’s been 69 days since that series ended. Since then, the Indians are 38-27 while the Mariners are 33-30. The Indians have played 65 games in 69 days, while the Mariners have played 63 games in that same timespan. The Mariners are taking a day off today, while the Indians continue their road trip, not getting a day off until Thursday.
Well, if you are starting from then, yes, the Indians have played more games and had a better record. If you start from when those games began to be made up, the M’s have the advantage.
I totally don’t buy the travel excuse for the M’s. Sure, Seattle is farther from the geographic center of the country than other teams. But that only makes a difference at the beginning and end of each road trip. Maybe 4 flights a month (2 road trips). How much longer is an east coast flight to Seattle as opposed to Oakland or LA? Not a whole lot.
Once they’re on a road trip, they go city to city just like every other team, and those flights aren’t any longer.
The one-game makeup trips are certainly an added source of fatigue. But what’s really doing it is that they have an aging team with a weak bench, and a crappy starting rotation which forces them to use the bullpen a lot.
It’s not Seattle travel, though. That’s a total copout.
Ian Snell will not start tomorrow night against Seattle because of a blister on the index finger of his right hand.
The right-hander blistered his finger while cooking in his kitchen.
“I was cooking a chicken breast for a salad and burned my finger,” Snell said. “I’m all right, but the salad wasn’t too good.”
But hey, at least the Mariners didn’t tear down the team and start over the way Cleveland did. I mean, look how that turned out.
Beautiful Post…Thank you
Following up late, so who knows if anyone is still reading. Quantifying the difference in the travel schedules:
The Mariners have flown a little more than 25,000 miles.
The Indians have flown a little more than 14,000 miles.
The Mariners have crossed 28 time zone borders on those flights.
The Indians have crossed 12 time zone borders on their flights.