The Sac Bunt: The Real Rally Killer
I just finished up an 1,800 word post on the foibles of the sacrifice bunt from last night’s games over at FanGraphs. I spend more time on the Dodgers-Giants game than the M’s-Tigers affair, but the point is all the same – the decision making on this issue from the field level continues to be staggeringly uneducated.
The Sacrifice Bunt Is a Scourge
The worst. Bunting is just the worst.
Game 32, Tigers at Mariners
Millwood vs Verlander, 7:10 pm.
When people talk about potential rotation changes, inevitably we end up hearing someone talk about how Millwood should be the first guy to go. After all, he’s 37-years-old, so he’s not any kind of long term solution, and his 5.34 ERA shows that he’s washed up. Really, though, only the first part of that sentence is true.
Millwood’s relevant stats to date: 7.9% BB%, 15.0% K%, 45.4% GB%. AL averages for starting pitchers in 2012: 7.9% BB%, 17.6% K%, 43.9% GB%. Millwood’s stuff has declined to the point where his strikeout rate is just south of league average, but he’s right in line with the norms in both walk rate and ground ball rate. Look at his career line, and this is what Millwood is – an average BB/GB guy and a slightly below average K guy. He is essentially the classic #5 starter.
His ERA is bloated by a .344 BABIP and a 59.2% strand rate, neither of which are going to continue. There’s nothing wrong with Kevin Millwood, and he’s a decent enough guy to have as an innings eater at the back of the rotation to let the kids develop down in the minors so the organization doesn’t have to rush them before they’re ready. He’s better than Blake Beavan, and at this point, he’s better than Hector Noesi, though at least Noesi has the upside to become something more than what he is now. Don’t be so quick to throw Millwood to the curb – he’s still a useful piece for this team.
Ackley, 2B
Ryan, SS
Ichiro, RF
Montero, C
Seager, 3B
Jaso, DH
Smoak, 1B
Carp, LF
Saunders, CF
Ichiro Being Ichiro
Ichiro Suzuki, 2012: .298/.343/.411, .334 wOBA
Ichiro Suzuki, 2001-2011: .326/.370/.421, .348 wOBA
If you look at Ichiro’s performance this year in comparison to the first 11 years of his career, you can see some signs of age-related decline. His batting average is down 28 points, his on base percentage is down 27 points, and his slugging percentage is down 10 points compared to his career averages prior to 2012. As the season goes on and the question of whether or not to re-sign Ichiro becomes more frequent, you’re almost certainly going to have people pointing out numbers just like the ones above.
Only, there’s one serious problem with those numbers – they don’t adjust for the changing offensive performances in baseball over the last decade. When Ichiro broke into the Majors, the average American Leaguer hit .267/.334/.428 and the average team scored 4.86 runs per game. In 2012, the average American Leaguer is hitting .250/.317/.406, and the average team is scoring 4.34 runs per game. Offense has been trending downwards for several years, and the pattern has continued again this season with offensive levels reaching their lowest point since 1989.
That’s why players should be evaluated by their performance relative to the context they’re playing in, and why park and league adjusted metrics such as wRC+ are so useful to compare performances over time. wRC+ puts everything on the same scale, where 100 is league average, and each point above or below that represents how far from average a player has performed offensively.
So far this year, Ichiro’s wRC+ is 116. From 2001-2011, Ichiro’s wRC+ was 116. He’s had five seasons where he’s posted a wRC+ over 116, and six seasons where he’s posted a wRC+ lower than 116. This season is both the average and the median. In other words, he’s performing in a way that fits in perfectly with his career up to this point.
Given his age, you’d actually expect him to be performing a little worse than his career averages, and his more recent performances (113 in 2010, 82 last year) suggest that he might not keep this up all year. However, if you thought 2011 represented the end of Ichiro as a productive big leaguer, his start to 2012 should have convinced you that it may have been more fluke than significant loss of skills.
Just Saying
Hisashi Iwakuma: 32 batters faced, 9 strikeouts
Blake Beavan: 143 batters faced, 14 strikeouts
I hope Blake Beavan’s elbow is okay and he didn’t sustain any kind of serious injury. That said, if he ends up missing a start or two, not only would the team not miss a beat, they’d likely be better off. Iwakuma has been banished to mop-up work because Eric Wedge is a bad talent evaluator who thinks spring training statistics matter (see also Jaso, John), but the team is simply better off with Iwakuma starting and Beavan pitching in relief. It’s where they both belong.
Game 31, Tigers at Mariners
The M’s continue their brief homestand with a series against Detroit, the team that the M’s seem to love playing for whatever reason. Tonight’s opener features ex-Mariner Doug Fister, who’s making his first start since coming off of the DL for a costochondral strain (an injury to the cartilage in his ribs). Fister’s injury occurred in his season debut, so it’s hard to know what to expect from the guy.
As you remember, Fister rose from #5 stop-gap to solid deadline acquisition when his velocity increased, he tweaked his slider/cutter and when he went to a sinker in place of his old four-seam fastball. His velocity wasn’t terribly consistent with the M’s – rising in May, then falling in July, but he was pretty much league average in that regard with Detroit. Now, coming off a chest injury, it’ll be interesting to see what he looks like. The move to the 2-seam/sinker in 2010 transformed his ground-ball rates, as you might imagine, but now he’s got to deal with Tigers putrid infield defense.
Opposing him is Blake Beavan, a guy who was in many ways quite similar to Fister. Both are very tall control artists without a lot of swing-and-miss stuff. Fister’s two-seamer was, by linear weights, the most effective pitch by any Mariner in 2011. Blake Beavan’s four-seamer’s been solid in his MLB career as well, and for similar reasons, I’d guess: he throws it for strikes and has enough command to keep it out of the center of the strike zone. I’m not saying Beavan’s as good as Fister; the lack of a (good) two-seamer is a problem, and Beavan’s pitch-to-contact tendencies make Fister look like Pedro Martinez. Without grounders, Beavan’s value is a bit too reliant on keeping fly balls in the park. In his first few starts this season (and last season too), he did, but he’s given up 3 HRs in his last 11 innings, and now his FIP looks bad. I’m still fairly encouraged by what we’ve seen of Beavan, but the Tigers present a pretty big challenge. On the plus side, this is their first time facing him, so novelty may be on his side.
Erasmo Ramirez went 3 IP for Tacoma today in Reno, giving up 2 R on 6 hits (one of them a missed IF pop-up that Triunfel lost in the sun), 0BB and no strikeouts. Honestly, it was something of a sub-par outing, as he didn’t miss many bats, but he got a lot of ground balls. He had a pitch count of 50 that the M’s will be increasing over time.
Today’s lineup:
1: Ackley (2B)
2: Ryan (SS)
3: Ichiro (RF)
4: Montero (C)
5: Seager (3B)
6: Jaso (DH)
7: Smoak (1B)
8: Carp (LF)
9: Saunders (CF)
Sp: Beavan
Game time’s 7:10; Go M’s!
Minor League Wrap (4/30-5/6/12)
This week, Brad Miller scored on an at-bat in which he struck out swinging. There were other interesting things that happened this week, positive signs for players that may end up being significant pieces in the Mariners future development, but nothing I tell you will be more interesting than that.
To the jump!
Read more
Game 29, Twins at Mariners
Oops, Felix Day comes an hour early on Saturday evening. Hernandez vs. Marquis.
Montero and Jaso are both in there, so hope there are no catcher injuries. Especially since Montero’s the one doing the catching. Shawn Kelley has been called up, by the way, and Erasmo Ramirez goes to Tacoma to resume starting. That means that a) Noesi needs to step it up, and b) Iwakuma might actually get a chance to pitch once in a while.
Game 28, Twins at Mariners
Vargas vs Pavano, 7:10 pm.
You could feel this coming. With Chone Figgins showing that his problems had nothing to do with where he hit in the line-up (please learn from this, media), it appears that the plug has been pulled on the Chone Figgins, Leadoff Hitter experiment. Despite facing a right-hander, Figgins isn’t in the line-up tonight, having been replaced by Mike Carp in left field. Jesus Montero is behind the plate again, with Alex Liddi playing third and Kyle Seager at DH. For those that care about batting order, Ackley moved up to the first spot and will be followed by Liddi, but we just had a big lesson in how unimportant batting order actually is, and it’d be really great if everyone could just realize that who plays each night is far more important than where they hit.
Ackley, 2B
Liddi, 3B
Ichiro, RF
Montero, C
Seager, DH
Smoak, 1B
Carp, DH
Saunders, CF
Ryan, SS
Justin Smoak’s OTHER Problem
It was June, 27th of 2011. Justin Smoak stood in against Justin Verlander, and when the Tigers ace left a fastball out over the plate, the M’s 1B muscled it out to left center for a 421 foot home run. Smoak was on his way to a breakout season; he’d homered the day before, and at the end of play that day, he had an impressive .300/.412/.557 line. Smoak was hitting everything, but he was doing serious damage against fastballs. Verlander’s pitch was 96 mph, and fairly well located. He struggled in May, but still punished mistakes, like a HR off of 94 mph fastball from CC Sabathia and a double against Chicago closer Sergio Santos’ 96mph heat. By June, it seemed clear he wasn’t a .300 hitter, but he was still a solid contributor. He had a .264/.366/.488 line as late as June 24th – a line that showed solid patience and the kind of power the M’s expected when they traded for him.
After today’s loss, Justin Smoak’s slugging percentage hovers around .300. He’s been unlucky on balls in play, so some of that is the result of a putrid batting average, but his isolated power is around .100, near where Chone Figgins’ is this season, and around the level Ichiro hit early in his career. Forget BABIP – where’s his power? Dave laid out his struggles against offspeed stuff in this fine post, but Smoak’s still capable of hitting a hanging change-up, as Rick Porcello found out on this road trip. But as worrying as his whiffs on bendy pitches are, I’m worried that he’s not able to punish fastballs anymore. It’s barely May, so we don’t have anywhere near enough data at this point, but I’m finding it increasingly hard to believe he homered on a 96mph fastball. He’s managed four extra base hits on the year – three of them have come off of change-ups. Only one HR’s come off a fastball – his first, in the Tokyo Dome against Bartolo Colon. Colon put a FB on the outside corner and Smoak hit it the other way just over the fence in left. It was a nice piece of hitting, but it wouldn’t be a homer in any park here, and given the pitcher, it likely wasn’t exactly Verlander-level velocity.
Against pitches over 92mph (which is completely arbitrary, I know), Smoak is 1 for 13 this year, with only a single off of a reeling Yu Darvish. He singled sharply today on a fastball, but that brought his line against straight stuff to 4 for 26; three singles and the HR in Tokyo. The low BACON (Batting Average on Contact) is something that fans have mentioned as a possible cause for optimism with Smoak, but his problem isn’t his batting average. The M’s wouldn’t be happy with X more singles in his batting line. Smoak’s speed and issues with offspeed pitches mean that he HAS to crush mistakes to be an average player. He’s done it before, but it’s been so long that you have to wonder if we’ll see that version of Smoak again. A .100 ISO Smoak would have to hit like Ichiro at his peak to be a real asset and frankly that’s not terribly likely.
Below are two heatmaps comparing Smoak’s run values against fastballs to the league average against fastballs. Blue is below average, yellow/orange/red are better, and the run values are calculated on balls/strikes as well as balls in play. The first covers July 1, 2011 to May 2nd, 2012. There’s an awful lot of blue in the heart of the plate. But there’s not much data, and it’s colored (heh) by his awful batting average on contact that I mentioned above.
Not good.
So let’s extend it out a bit and compare Smoak to league average on fastballs for his entire career, and let’s regress it by adding in some leage-average performance in some of the zones:
Hmmm. Better, but not great. And this includes his fleeting glory days (not a metaphor, I mean actual *days*) when he was hitting good fastballs.
The other day, Smoak turned around a 95mph fastball from Matt Moore, but his line drive was snagged at 1B. Then he hit a long fly ball on a 94mph fastball from Moore, but it died near the track in center. Optimists have plenty of ammunition here – his slugging percentage isn’t hurt solely by a lack of home runs, his .043 BABIP on fly balls is robbing him of doubles too. He’s been phenomenally unlucky against lefties, with a wOBA of .091, and a BABIP of .100. If/when he brings that back to his true talent level, he’s…well I won’t say ‘good,’ but something tolerable. They’d probably point out that his hand injury may still be bothering him, and that power’s often the last skill to return after an injury. But visually and statistically, he’s just not a potent bat right now. And while his whiffs are concerning, the most concerning thing of all’s what happens when he *does* square a ball up, like he did against Moore two days ago.
Luckily for Justin, the Minnesota Twins come to town tomorrow night, and for whatever reason, that organization seems to hate high-velocity fastballs almost as much as Smoak does. He’ll face Carl Pavano, Jason Marquis and Nick Blackburn, meaning there’s very little chance of seeing a 92mph fastball this series. When Nick Blackburn’s the flamethrower of the group, you’re dealing with some soft-tossers. Show us a sign, Justin.
Note: this post was spurred by a twitter conversation with former USSM mod Graham MacAree. The heatmaps come from Jeff Zimmerman’s great www.baseballheatmaps.com.