Game 150, Yankees at Mariners
Chamberlain v Snell. I was hoping to see the lineups, but what the hey. Last game against a juggernaut team before season’s end: Tampa and Texas are good, but they’re not insanely great like this Yankee team.
Game 149, Yankees at Mariners
Tui at… second?
RF-L Ichiro!
CF-R Gutierrez
1B-R Lopez
DH-0 Sweeney
3B-R Beltre
C-R Johjima
LF-R Hall
2B-R Tuiasosopo
SS-R Wilson
Talk about stacking it. Wow.
We get letters
Donald Moran writes, in “I can’t take it anymore”
I read your guys blogs daily and I get pissed off more by the day. The post on the 18th of September by DMZ saying that by Ichiro hitting a walk off off of Rivera, that should change someones mind about wether or not Rivera should be a first ballot hall of famer or not is just plain stupid. He has been the most dominant closer in the AL for the last 10 years. I am a die hard Mariners fan but I am a baseball fan first and I can identify good baseball when I see it. You guys have your heads so far up Ichiro’s ass you can’t see the light of day. I would love a reply from you just to see what useless garbage you have to come back with.
You Suck!
Go Mariners!
Hi Donald!
Here’s what useless garbage I have to come back with: I was making fun of people who think Ichiro! can’t hit in “clutch” situations, pointing out that he just won a game hitting a home run off the pitcher considered clutchiest of clutch closers.
That’s all. No slight to Rivera intended, though I guess if you’re really looking for an argument you could read “flip” as “change from pro-Rivera to pro-Ichiro” which I could have made clearer at the expense of having a two-sentence quick post.
Yours sincerely,
Guy with his head so far up Ichiro’s ass I can’t see the light of day or maybe it’s just cloudy and raining in Seattle today.
Transitive properties
If Mariano Rivera is the greatest closer of all time, ice water for blood, a sure fire Hall of Famer, and on and on and on, doesn’t Ichiro flip 5-10 holdout voters by hitting that shot off him to win the game? Read more
Also, Woo!
That was unexpected. And awesome.
Attention Mr. Hall
If you can’t be bothered* to run at the minimum effort level that could be provided by a nine year old, go do something else for a living. I’m a pretty forgiving person, but you’re quickly wearing out your welcome with the ridiculous displays of loafing.
Run. It’s not that hard.
*I know he has a strained quad, but that fly ball was hardly an isolated incident. That was just the latest example of Bill Hall exerting about 10% effort on a play.
Game 148, Yankees at Mariners
Burnett vs Hernandez, 7:10 pm.
Happy Felix Day!
Over the last few weeks, various people have written in to request a post on Felix’s chances of winning the Cy Young. Here’s the very short version – he shouldn’t get a single first place vote. Zack Greinke has been the best pitcher in the American League, and it’s not even close. Felix has been good – Greinke has been great.
I love Felix, but he’s not the Cy Young winner this year. Not with what Greinke is doing in KC.
Brandon Morrow Needs A Lot Of Work
This probably isn’t news if you watched him pitch last night, or really at all since he returned to the team, but Brandon Morrow isn’t any better now than he was before his trip back to Tacoma. In fact, he might be worse.
In his two starts since rejoining the club, Morrow has displayed his usual lack of command, throwing strikes on just 58% of his pitches. But combined with his inability to find the plate, he’s added the new inability to miss bats. Of the 177 pitches he’s thrown in those two starts, he’s gotten 11 swinging strikes. When batters have swung at his pitches, they’ve made contact 91.7% of the time. Among pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched this year, the highest opponents rate of contact belongs to John Lannan, at 88.7%.
John Lannan is a pitch-to-contact groundball lefty with a fastball that averages 88 MPH.
His command is already Double-A quality. He can’t get left-handers out. And now, he’s not even fooling hitters. This version of Brandon Morrow is not a major league starting pitcher. He’s not even really close.
If I was advising Zduriencik on specific goals for the winter, #1 would be finding a team that still believes that Morrow can be a top of the rotation starter and is willing to pay for the right to try to turn him into one. He’s not anywhere close right now, and I think the M’s best option is to try to trade him to someone who still sees a 96 MPH fastball and thinks he’s got ace potential.
Game 147, White Sox at Mariners
Danks vs Morrow, 3:40 pm
Well, this should be interesting. With a lefty on the hill, Wak goes to his anti-LHP line-up that features Lopez at first base, but instead of Hall replacing him at second base, we get our first look at Matt Tuiasosopo, Second Baseman. He played a lot of second base in Tacoma after returning from the disabled list, with reports ranging from “he’s worked really hard and its paying off” to “he’s worked really hard and he’s still awful”. Everyone agrees that he’s put in the effort, but he had a long way to go, so he could make big strides and still be pretty rough. It will be interesting to see how he handles the adjustment at the big league level.
From Wak’s pre-game comments, it sounds like they’re not expecting much either. In other words, don’t read too much into this – it’s pretty unlikely that Tui ends up at second base long term, and especially not for a club that values defense as much as the current administration does.
Adam Moore makes his major league debut behind the plate, too. Also, Morrow pitching. The White Sox offense isn’t good, and especially lacks good LH hitters, so this is about as good a matchup as he’s ever going to get. I’m already not overly optimistic about his future, but maybe he can open some eyes today.
The Transformation Of RRS
Over the last couple of years, we’ve made a bunch of comparisons between Ryan Rowland-Smith and Jarrod Washburn, and for good reason – they’re very similar pitchers. Both throw four seam fastballs in the high-80s and big loopy curveballs, are pitch to contact strike throwers, and their success is predicated on home run avoidance. In fact, watching Hyphen work deep in the game the last four starts, it’s nearly impossible to not see pieces of Washburn when he’s on the hill. RRS, right now, looks a lot like pre-trade Washburn did.
Just with one fairly notable exception. Ryan Rowland-Smith has turned himself into a groundball pitcher.
In 2007, pitching exclusively out of the bullpen, Hyphen posted a 33.6% GB%, one of the lowest marks in the league. He pitched up in the zone, and since his fastball averaged 91 out of the bullpen, he was able to rack up a bunch of strikeouts. It was an effective combination for him, and he continued to pitch that way out of the bullpen last year, actually getting even a bit more extreme – his GB% as a relief pitcher in 2008 was just 29%, a crazy low total.
But, after the M’s sent him to Triple-A to convert him to a starting pitcher, he came back a different guy. Over the 10 starts he made to finish last season, 46% of his 206 balls in play were hit on the ground. By moving to the rotation, he gave up some velocity, but also started using his fastball differently. I’m sure he’s smart enough to realize that he’s not going to get an 88 MPH high fastball by too many people, so he started locating it down in the zone more often, trading strikeouts for groundballs.
That’s continued this year, and especially of late. His GB% for the 2009 season stands at 41%, just a tick below league average, but he’s at 49% ground balls over his last four starts, when he’s been working deep into ballgames and solidifying his role as an innings eater. Between 2008 and 2009, his GB% as a starter is 43%. That’s a far cry from the 31% he was posting as a relief pitcher.
It may not sound like much, but it makes a pretty big difference. As a pitch to contact guy, RRS is going to give up a lot of balls in play. By limiting the amount of those that are hit in the air, he’s limiting the number of home runs he’s going to allow, and that’s really the key to his success. When he’s pounding the strike zone like he has been lately (67% strikes in his last four starts), the only hope opponents have is to string together a few hits and then park one over the fence. But that last component becomes less likely if they’re chopping the ball in the dirt.
As a starting pitcher, Ryan Rowland-Smith is like Jarrod Washburn in some ways, but he’s also proving he’s got the ability to get grounders with some regularity, and that strikes+groundballs skillset gives him the potential to be better than the back-end starter that Washburn has always been.
Hyphen’s giving us significant reasons for optimism. If you were worried about the lack of mid-rotation starters in the organization, we might just have found one now.