Learning to Pitch
This morning afternoon day, the Mariners won a game, after Felix Hernandez shut down the Pirates despite not really seeming to have his best stuff. Granted, the Pirates’ offense isn’t nearly as intimidating as actual pirates, or at least as actual pirates would’ve been a few hundred years ago, but so far they’ve been middle of the pack, and it’s not like Felix turned in this start in isolation. This was the fifth start in a row that Felix allowed one or zero earned runs, and his ERA is now exactly half his ERA from last season. His ERA last season was good! ERA is being used because this post is unscientific in nature.
There’s an old expression that gets slapped onto young guys who throw hard: they need to learn how to pitch, not throw. It’s so vague as to be completely unhelpful, and I generally can’t stand it when it’s used on phenoms and prospects, but at its core is the right message. There is an art to pitching, and it’s a hell of a lot more complicated than throwing the ball 97 miles per hour somewhere and trying to get a swing and miss. You need to have multiple pitches, you need to know how to command them, and you need to know how to mix them up in mostly unpredictable patterns. Some people are just naturally gifted at throwing, but that’ll only get them noticed, and it’s challenging to get to the bigs and stick in the bigs. The biggest idiot big-league veteran still understands better than most how to do his job.
I was asked in my latest FanGraphs chat about, I don’t know, someone, some young pitcher who throws really hard and has a famous fastball. The name escapes me and the name doesn’t matter. That pitcher, whoever he is, might have some initial success just on account of his raw stuff, but when the league adjusts he’ll have to adjust back. When he loses velocity as he gets older, he’ll have to make up for it. A gifted young pitcher still needs to develop, and we can all think of examples of pitchers who didn’t.
In the course of writing this I’ve been interrupted by several text messages, so I already hate the way this post flows, but I’m thinking about that old expression and the King, on the heels of his latest greatness. Felix, as a rookie, had immediate, outstanding success, the sort of success that led us all to believe he couldn’t possibly struggle. Seriously, that’s what I recall as we headed into 2006 — I recall thinking “Felix doesn’t have any downside.” Subsequent years would reveal that Felix still had a lot of work to do, but as his fastball deteriorated, his numbers bounced back. Felix, now, looks only a little like the guy he was in 2005. Felix, now, looks almost identical to the guy he was in 2005. There are throwers, and there are pitchers. Felix has been amazing as both of them.
This is all to set up just a few factoids. The following, courtesy of Baseball Info Solutions, won’t take you by surprise:
2005: 96mph average fastball
2013: 91mph average fastball
Every so often Felix used to rush it up there in or near the triple digits. Somewhat alarmingly, now I feel good when I see him hit 93. I say “somewhat alarmingly,” because while velocity loss is cause for alarm, it’s hard to panic when the results look like Felix’s results. He’s clearly not broken, and now for another comparison, updated to include today’s eight-inning gem:
2005: 2.67 ERA, 2.85 FIP, 2.77 xFIP
2013: 1.53 ERA, 2.16 FIP, 2.66 xFIP
Felix is all the way back to his incredible rookie results with a fraction — albeit a big fraction — of the stuff. More generally, this year stands as continuing evidence that Felix has evolved as he’s needed to as the years have gone on. No longer capable of doing what he did, Felix is doing what he did, in another way. In a more polished, intelligent way.
With less of a fastball, Felix worked on his patterns. With less of a fastball, Felix worked on his location. With less of a fastball, Felix mastered the changeup, then he mastered that mastered changeup. We aren’t to the point yet where we can say that Felix is thriving as a finesse pitcher, but what’s crazy is that such an idea isn’t wild or unrealistic. Ten years from now, that could be Felix. He’s lost five ticks off his heater — what would be five more? He’s slowed down without slowing down.
Felix is perfect. Felix has worked out perfectly. While Felix still allows hits and runs, what needs to be appreciated is that this is what it looks like when a prospect reaches his ceiling. Prospects are always being evaluated on their ceilings by idiots, and those people are idiots because prospects don’t actually reach their ceilings. Ceilings are virtually unreachable, but here’s Felix, who got there and who then figured it out. His stuff was unbelievable, and it all still moves like pitches shouldn’t. Felix has demonstrated maturity and dedication, and there’s no questioning his loyalty, and while I remember Felix getting blasted by Will Carroll for having violent mechanics, Felix to this point has stayed almost perfectly healthy. When Felix got to the majors, he was great. When he struggled in the majors, he actually made all the adjustments that he needed to make. It took him a few years, but Felix was 23 when he was the Cy Young runner-up. He was 24 when he actually won it. At just about every fork in the road, Felix has followed the right path. There’s no question he’s unusually blessed, but Felix put his work in. He actually learned to pitch, when he found out what’s what he needed to do.
I hate this post. I don’t think it conveys the idea I want it to, and I think it’s pretty poorly written. Thankfully, people seldom notice bad baseball writing, given the pool of people selected to write about baseball. Here’s a takeaway point: Felix is a pitcher, and because of that, we’re constantly worried. He’s the best pitcher on this team. He’s the best player on this team. He is this team, even though this team isn’t very good. We’re constantly worried about his health and about his ability to keep being dominant while his fastball slows down further and further. All of our worries — they’ve pretty much all been in our own heads. Felix hasn’t actually given us a reason to worry. Felix has been amazing, and he still is, despite it all. These days he’s been pitching as well as he ever has.
Roy Halladay needs shoulder surgery, and it’s an operation that involves his labrum, so there’s no telling how he’s going to come back. It’s a devastating blow to the Phillies, who previously saw Halladay as automatic. It’s something we’re all going to keep in mind, because pitchers are healthy until they aren’t. But the only worry about Felix is worry because he’s a pitcher. There’s not a single reason to worry about Felix otherwise. There’s nothing that’s Felix-specific. Felix is an ace, and he’s ours, and he’s perfect.
Game 35, Mariners at Pirates
King Felix vs. AJ Burnett, 9:35am
Happy Felix Morning!
The M’s ace faces off against the Pirates unlikely reclamation-project-turned-ace in AJ Burnett. Burnett famously slumped through three seasons in New York, but a return to the national league seems to have energized him. He posted a 3 WAR season last year at age 35, and is off to a fast start this year (he’s at 1.2 WAR through 40+ IP). Sure, you can adjust for quality of batters faced and the overall league quality, but the man has 57 strikeouts in his 42 innings and a FIP in the low 2’s. He’s still the same pitcher he’s always been – a four-seam and two-seam fastball and a big curveball. He’ll throw in the rare change-up, but primarily, he’s a a fastball/curveball guy, just as he was when he was coming up with the Marlins years ago.
He’s a bit above average in generating ground balls too, which is a bit concerning. The M’s seem to be struggling against ground-ball pitchers this year, as they demonstrated last night in flailing against spot-starter Jeanmar Gomez. This is most likely just noise, but it’ll be interesting to see if it persists.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Bay, LF
3: Seager, 3B
4: Morales, 1B
5: Ackley, 2B
6: Montero, C
7: Chavez, RF
8: Andino, SS
9: Felix Hernandez
Go Felix!
Game 34, Mariners at Pirates
Aaron Harang vs. James McDonald Jeanmar Gomez, 4:05pm
There are rivals, interleague “natural” rivals, and then there are teams like the Pirates, who exist solely on the ESPN crawl, in 1979-Pops-Stargell highlights, and old Barry Bonds baseball cards. I know about them – I know some of their players, I know their new ballpark looks gorgeous, know all about their 20-year plan for a winning season, and about the new-school front office that was going to instill a new culture and build a sustainable winner within 5 years. But I just don’t think about them. It’s harder and harder for teams to exist like this. With so much coverage, and with mlb.tv, mlb network, etc., you’re going to hear about it when Andrew McCutchen develops into a star. As a kid, I was fascinated by the Montreal Expos and their ‘other’ness. Their radio announcers spoke French. Their pitchers hit. They had all of these stars (the had a *catcher* who could seriously hit. Not just “not bad for a catcher” but real, actual hitting. This was more bizarre to me than the French thing, honestly) who existed in This Week in Baseball highlights and as All-Star Game ringers, but I had no sense of them as a team. That’s the Pirates for me now.*
Righty James McDonald starts tonight’s game. He’s a fastball/curve/slider pitcher who’s never quite put it all together. At one point, he had an above average fastball and a decent curve, and who looked like he could become a #3 in the Pirates rotation. He started experimenting with a slider, and got incredible results with it, so he used it as his two-strike outpitch in 2012 and raced off to a brilliant first half. Then, just as suddenly, he collapsed again. His first-half FIP of 3.00 turned into a second-half FIP of 6.37 and he was back to being the same old frustrating #4/5 starter on a below-.500 team. It’s fascinating, because his slider still got good results, even in 2012. His curve was solid too, even when hitters put it in play in the second half. His problem seemed to be that he couldn’t get into those two-strike counts, and when he’s behind, he relies heavily on his four-seam fastball. It’s a perfectly understandable, perfectly rational approach that 80% of MLB pitchers use, but it’s not working for McDonald.
Aaand now it would appear that McDonald’s been scratched and put on the 15-day DL. Huh. Taking his place is righty Jeanmar Gomez, a sinker-slider guy with a change-up against lefties. Gomez is a pitch-to-contact, groundball guy who came over from the Indians organization. He doesn’t miss many bats, has poor control, and a bit of a home run problem. If that sounds like a replacement-level starter, you’re dead on. He’s pitched about one full season over the course of his career with a FIP of about 5, good for 0.1 WAR. It’s a bit surprising that his platoon splits aren’t higher, considering his repertoire and arm-angle, but it’s just that he’s been bad against righties and lefties alike. The M’s start Aaron Harang tonight, so it’s not like this is a total mismatch on paper, but this is a game the M’s need to win. The Pirates aren’t a bad team, and they’re playing at home, but the M’s caught a break, and they should capitalize. To add to the Pirates problems, catcher/pitch-framer Russell Martin’s out with a neck injury, so the M’s get to face a B-team battery.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Bay, LF
3: Seager, 3B
4: Morse, RF
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Ackley, 2B
7: Shoppach, C
8: Ryan, SS
9: Harang, SP
No Morales, as the M’s lose the DH. We’ll see how many starts Morales gets at 1B in NL stadiums this year.
Reigning PCL pitcher of the week Jeremy Bonderman takes the hill for Tacoma in Oklahoma City today, and Roenis Elias leads Jackson against Huntsville.
The Rainiers won the final game of their homestand behind Andrew Carraway and homers from Corey Patterson and Carlos Peguero. Victor Sanchez lost his first decision of the year yesterday, but is still pitching beyond his years in full-season ball.
Go M’s!
* First thing I thought of when I thought about the Pirates just now: this game. The game in Safeco when Jeff Weaver shut out the Pirates on four hits, despite coming into the game with an ERA over 10, and 0-6 record, one DL trip for “tendinitis”, and generally being the worst pitcher in the league up to that point.
Keeping Things in Context
I debated whether or not to write this post, since I know that it’s just going to be fuel for the fire for those who believe that I’m constantly looking for the negative side of things, and only have bad things to say about the organization. But, I don’t really want to let perception drive what I write, and I think there’s an important lesson in the following piece of data, so I’m going to share it, even if people just take it as more Debbie Downer talk.
Over the last few weeks, the Mariners have played a lot better than they did the first few weeks. In the last 14 days, they’ve gone 8-5, mostly propelled by an offense that put up a 123 wRC+ that rates 4th best in baseball during that time frame. The moribund offense of the first 23 games has sprung to life, led by Michael Saunders, Kyle Seager, and a rejuvenated Dustin Ackley and Justin Smoak. This hasn’t just been the veterans carrying the young kids; the guys who are supposed to be part of the core have been tearing the cover off the ball.
Even just over a two week span, a .275/.344/.451 stretch fuels optimism. The Mariners spent their winter trying to upgrade the offense, and it’s finally paying dividends. Get encouraged, right?
Well, sure, it’s nice to see them swinging the bats well and scoring runs, but just looking at the raw results can be a bit deceptive. Context is everything in baseball. 10 runs at Coors Field is not the same thing as 10 runs at Safeco Field. You always have to put numbers in context. And in this case, the primary variable over the last two weeks has been the lousy quality of opposing pitching.
The Mariners last 13 games have come against the Angels, Orioles, Blue Jays, and Astros. Those four teams rank 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th respectively in xFIP, making them the four worst pitching staffs (to date) of 2013 by BB/K/GB rates. The Mariners hit well against four teams that everyone is hitting well against. In fact, the Mariners hit almost exactly the same against those four teams as the rest of the league has.
Mariners, last two weeks: .275/.344/.451
MLB, vs BAL/TOR/HOU/LAA: .267/.345/.442
Now, hitting the league average against those teams is still a vast improvement over what the team did in the first 23 games, so I’m not trying to say that there haven’t been any positive signs for the team the last couple of weeks. Michael Saunders is showing that last year’s improvements are sustainable, and might even be a foundation for bigger and better things. Kyle Seager has more power than we’ve all given him credit for. Dustin Ackley no longer looks hopelessly lost. These are good things.
But the Mariners offensive improvement the last few weeks has been heavily influenced by facing some terrible pitching staffs, and not just bad pitching staffs, but fill-ins on bad pitching staffs.
With Jered Weaver on the DL, Garrett Richards has been forced into the Angels rotation, and he started in lieu of the Angels ace. With Josh Johnson hitting the DL right before the M’s got to Toronto, they missed out on a good pitcher and were instead able to feast on the still broken Ricky Romero, who got optioned to A-ball after spring training for a reason. The Orioles called up Zach Britton to make a spot start against the M’s, then shipped him right back to Triple-A after the game. The guy who came in to relieve Wei-Yin Chen in the final game against the Orioles was just DFA’d, cleared waivers, and is going to be turned into a knuckleball pitcher after his traditional arsenal was deemed a failure. And the Astros are the Astros.
There’s a reason the Mariners offense looked so terrible against Detroit and Texas – they had to run a gauntlet of the best pitchers the AL has to offer. Those two teams rank #1 and #2 in 2013 pitching by nearly any reasonable metric you want to use, and the M’s ran into their best pitchers. Just as you shouldn’t have been too down that the M’s couldn’t hit Darvish, Verlander, and Scherzer, you shouldn’t be too excited that the M’s could hit Romero, Britton, and Richards.
This is why so many narratives about a player or team heating up or going into a big slump are simply B.S. In reality, many of these fluctuations are just due to the quality of opposition faced, and the Mariners have followed up a run of facing elite starters with a couple of weeks against baseball’s worst pitching staffs. Of course they looked better facing guys who belong in Triple-A than guys who belong in the All-Star Game.
That’s why you adjust for context. And when you look at the staffs the Mariners have faced the last few weeks, their recent performance looks more average than spectacular. Average is still a nice step up from the first few weeks of the season, but don’t be too shocked if this new and improved line-up doesn’t keep hitting the same way against PIT/OAK/NYY. You have to recalibrate your expectations for what a good performance looks like based on the opposing pitcher, the ballpark the game is being played in, and even the month of the year. For the Mariners, they happened to get a nice gift from the schedule makers. Now, though, they’ll actually have to show that they can hit real MLB pitchers, or else another slump is on the way.
Game 33, Mariners at Blue Jays
Joe Saunders vs. Brandon Morrow, 10:07am.
The M’s look to complete a sweep of the reeling Jays this morning behind Joe Saunders and an offense that’s legitimately hot right now. Opposing them is old friend Brandon Morrow, who appeared to take a big step forward last year as he seemingly solved his long-standing problems with men on base, posting an ERA under 3 despite his FIP remaining pretty much unchanged in his three seasons in Toronto. Like everything else in Toronto, it hasn’t worked out that way in 2013. Instead, Morrow’s taken a big step back in the early going, with an ERA and FIP over 5.
This isn’t necessarily luck – he’s suddenly become much more hittable this year, with a contact rate well above the league average and a plummeting rate of out-of-zone swings. But perhaps the biggest change has been how lefties have hit him. He’s a fastball/slider pitcher for most of his career, but he’s developed a pretty good splitter which acts as a change, and that’s given him something else to throw against lefties. His HR rates against lefties have been lower than those against righties since he’s been in Toronto, but his K% is the same (or perhaps a bit better against lefties). It’s not that he throws the split to get strikeouts – he uses it early in at-bats. But it may give hitters something else to think about, so they’re vulnerable to two-strike sliders. In 2012, he posted great results against lefties, but in hindsight, it’s possible a lot of that success was BABIP related (it was .226).
In 2013, lefties are torching him. It’s a handful of starts, but lefties are slugging .644 and have five HRs and 13 total XBH in only 83 batters faced. The contact rate issues mean his K rate’s dropped (although it’s dropped more against righties), and he’s walked over 12% of lefties. Now, this will regress towards the mean eventually, but the contact rates give me some pause. In any event, this is probably the best time the M’s could face Morrow, and they’re doing so in good park to hit HRs in, and with two incredibly hot lefty hitters at the top of the line-up. It’s enough to give an M’s fan confidence despite the whole Joe-Saunders-starting-somewhere-other-than-Safeco problem. Go M’s!
1: M. Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Bay, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Montero, C
9: Andino, SS
SP: Joe Saunders
The Rainiers had a turn-back-the-clock to the 1980s yesterday, wearing Tacoma Tigers uniforms. I had Mike Gallego and Curt Young flashbacks, but it apparently didn’t help the Blake Beavan, as the Rainiers were shutout by Charles Brewer and the Reno Aces, ending the R’s 10 game winning streak. Today, they’re wearing Tacoma Giants uniforms. I’m wearing a Tacoma Tigers shirt today, and I encourage all of you to visit the site using lynx or another text-base browser. Jimmy Gilheeney starts today against D’Backs #1 prospect Tyler Skaggs at 1:30 at Cheney.
Game 32, Mariners at Blue Jays
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. RA Dickey, 10:07am
Early game today on yet another glorious NW day. This is a good pitching match-up, and the M’s are as watchable as they’ve been in some time at the moment, but it’s going to be tough to stay inside and watch a game this morning.
Ex-Tacoma Rainier, reigning Cy Young winner RA Dickey came to Toronto in a blockbuster deal with the Mets. He’s coming off a career year in which his K% went through the roof, which helped him strand more runners and take advantage of the knuckleballer’s BABIP /
exception. It all came together for a 4.6 WAR year, but as Dave mentioned he’d been pretty good in his first two years with the Mets as well. The Jays paid a fairly hefty price to land him, but they were landing a dependable starter they could pencil in 3 WAR or so.
Like everything the Jays did in the offseason, it just hasn’t worked out. Dickey’s K% is down, but not dramatically so. His GB% has dropped in each year since 2010, and that’s hurt his HR rate, but again, it’s not abysmal. It’s more a case of each peripheral being a bit worse, and the sum total (and the interaction of the parts) producing a fairly ugly line. He’s had some neck soreness recently which may or may not have contributed to his poor results, but it’s not serious enough to keep him out of today’s game.
On the other side of the coin, Hisashi Iwakuma’s obviously one of the hottest pitchers in the game. It’s an open question as to whether his low workload due to his blister problem is actually a blessing – because he’s been so efficient (and because his BABIP is so low) he’s pitching almost as many innings. Like last year, Iwakuma’s got reverse platoon splits because of his change-up-like splitter. But unlike Ricky Romero or Steve Delabar, that doesn’t come at the expense of poor results against same-handed batters. Iwakuma’s been excellent against everyone this year. Still, it’ll be interesting to see if more managers start putting a bunch of righties in their line-up against him.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Ibanez, DH
6: Shoppach, C
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Chavez, LF
9: Andino, SS
SP: Iwakuma
The Rainiers ran their winning streak to ten games last night with a 7-6 win over Reno. The middle of their line-up, Nick Franklin and Eric Thames, were actually shut down by Aces pitchers, but Nate Tenbrink and Rich Poythress picked up the slack. Blake Beavan makes his 2013 Rainiers debut today.
The Jackson Generals play two vs Jacksonville; Roenis Elias and Chance Ruffin will be the starters. South African control artist Dylan Unsworth takes the hill for Clinton today.
What *IS* Jesus Montero?
OK, besides “really slow?”
Jeff wrote a good post about Jesus Montero wherein he contrasted his Baseball America prospect rankings and Miguel Cabrera comparisons with the cold, sterile fact of his Mariner performance. In the comments, Scraps asked: “Have we asked Baseball America?” That is, have the prospect ranking pros seen enough to change their early assessments? Are these growing pains magnified by the *need* of the M’s fanbase to see one of the lauded team centerpieces break out? Or are they an indication that the skills Montero showed in the minors simply won’t play at this level?
Obviously, there’s no way to know for now, but I took scraps’ advice and reached out to Conor Glassey at BA and Jason Parks at Baseball Prospectus. Both publications had Jesus Montero among their top 10 prospects in baseball rankings; this isn’t a Baseball America issue, and it’s not a Baseball Prospectus issue, nor is it a case of the Yankee hype machine turning Dioner Navarro into an elite prospect. *Everyone* had Montero as an elite bat with poor to piss-poor defense from the C spot.
Conor supplies us with the case for optimism:
“I still believe in Montero. He was the youngest player to hit 15 HR for the Mariners since Alex Rodriguez in 1998. It’s difficult to catch and transition to the big leagues as a hitter. Montero’s .685 OPS isn’t all that different from Matt Wieters’ .695 during his first full season, and he was two years older than Montero at the time.”
And what about Jason Parks? OK sure, he wasn’t the guy putting Montero in the top-10 pre-2012, but it wasn’t solely Conor’s call for BA either. In any event, here’s your pessimistic viewpoint:
“I watched Montero a lot this ST and he ripped average pitching, just like he did in the minors. But stuff could beat him, especially good breaking stuff. The elephant in the room when it comes to scouting is that projection is abstract, and no matter how sure you are about the player, you can’t accurately simulate or forecast what a minor leaguer will do at the major league level until they arrive at that level. Montero had all the signs of an impact talent, but he hasn’t made the necessary adjustments at the highest level and I’m not sold that he can. He will always be able to hit bad balls, but not being able to deal with plus stuff is always going to be an issue, and its quite likely that he just isn’t wired (neurologically speaking) to recognize and react on the same level as other top bats in the game.”
How do we evaluate this? Well, I’m not entirely sure. But as I’m blogger, I guess I can always go with a trusty Fangraphs table. The problem is trying to narrow down a comparable group. Since 1990, ten players have made at least 200 plate appearances as rookie catchers at age 22 or younger. The group’s a pretty illustrious one, with Joe Mauer, Ivan Rodriguez and Brian McCann among the ten. There are some (familiar) cautionary tales in there too, of course, like Ben Davis. So: we’ve learned that it is exceedingly rare to come up and get much more than a cup of coffee at the age Montero did last year. It also highlights the problem with catcher comparisons: there are essentially two different groups. The first is the pure catchers; the fact that Ivan Rodriguez didn’t really hit at age 19 misses the point. Then there are the bat-first guys that teams hope can stick at the position in the big leagues, even if they’ll never really dominate. Michael Barrett and Jarrod Saltalamacchia belong in this group – as does Montero.
At other positions, it’s not terribly rare for a 21-22 year old to play, as the M’s have seen recently in facing Mike Trout and Manny Machado. But at catcher, it’s not terribly common – something Conor emphasized above. Expanding the age range gets you more players – the college catchers like Buster Posey, Jeff Clement, Mike Piazza, Matt Wieters up through Yasmani Grandal. By wRC+, Jesus Montero’s rookie campaign with Seattle was the 15th best of the group (of 65 players). The raw numbers were much worse, but in context, Montero had a surprisingly good season, even comparing him to older, college-trained catchers. If you eliminate the guys with elite on-base skills (Mauer, Alex Avila, etc.) and the whiff-prone (Salty, Napoli, Clement), you’ve got a decent looking set of comps from Miguel Montero, AJ Pierzynski, Javy Lopez, Eli Marrero and Ryan Doumit. Again, this shows that catchers often do develop later, and that, like all players, they improve at the plate with MLB experience. And Jesus Montero’s first season featured better hitting (adjusted for context) than any of the aforementioned group.
The larger point of course is that Jesus Montero probably isn’t a catcher at all, and thus it doesn’t matter if his bat may compare well with Wilson Ramos’ or even Miguel Montero’s. Catchers generate so much value because of their scarcity; this makes Montero’s 123 wRC+ elite. But give the same hitting stats to a 1B, and he’s barely above average (Paul Goldschmidt’s 123 and position got him 2.8 WAR last year). Add in the base-running penalty because, well, you know, and the gap between where Jesus Montero stands now and where he needs to be looks massive. To have any hope, the power projections that many saw in the minors need to start showing up. His blast in Houston shows that he’s got power, but he’s going to have to show he can drive breaking balls, at least occasionally (he hit a cutter out of Safeco on 4/27, which was pretty encouraging).
The name I keep coming back to is Ryan Doumit (aka “No-Mitt”), the “C” who came up with Pittsburgh, and has bounced between catching, 1B and corner OF spots with the Pirates and now the Twins. While Doumit developed late (as the Pirates kept trying to improve his defense), at his peak around age 27, he was a well above average hitter who paired good contact skills with some power. Improvement in plate discipline with significant growth in ISO he moves into his mid-late 20s…this is a good blueprint for Montero, and it’s good to see that MLB’s been able to wring some value from a catcher-in-name-only in the recent past. But at the same time, we’re assuming fairly big improvement in both power and contact, and we *still* don’t have a legitimate impact bat. Doumit still catches more than he plays other positions, and that helps get his value up towards average. If Montero moves off the position for the majority of his PAs (as he’d have to with Zunino on the team), it’s going to be awfully tough for him to add meaningful value above an average player. So, any time you want to push that ISO over .200 or so, that’d really help, Jesus.
Thank you for reading this not-as-good-as-Jeff’s Montero article.
Game 31, Mariners at Blue Jays
King Felix vs. Ricky Romero, 4:07pm
It’s been a weird 12-13 months for Ricky Romero. He was Toronto’s opening day starter in 2012 following a 2011 in which his ERA was below 3. There were some mixed signals that were perhaps buried by his lovely RA – a very high strand rate, lower K rate, higher HR rate, but fundamentally, Romero was a solid lefty starter who used a very good change-up to get ground balls and enough strikeouts to pitch around so-so control and command. In 2012, he essentially collapsed – his walk rate spiked, his strikeout rate fell, and he simply couldn’t get out of innings. It all added up to nearly 6 runs per 9, and no guarantee of a spot in Toronto’s revamped rotation in 2013.
Late in spring training, the Blue Jays (who’d added Josh Johnson, RA Dickey and Mark Buehrle) took the extreme step of sending Romero to the minors to work on salvaging his command. Not just AAA, though. Instead, the Jays sent Romero back to high-A ball, in the pitcher-friendly Florida State League. He’s made one start at that level, and now injuries have forced the Jays to bring him back and hope that he figured something out against the Brevard County Manatees. When we last saw Romero, he threw a 91mph fastball, a curve to lefties and a change-up to righties. Because the latter was a heck of a lot better than the former, Romero’s got reverse platoon splits for his career, with lefties battering him for a .370 wOBA while righties have hit just 3.08. This isn’t just BABIP either, as his FIPs follow the same pattern. It would have been somewhat frustrating to see Wedge deploy a righty-heavy line-up in a game like this, but injuries to Franklin Gutierrez and the inability of Raul Ibanez to hit pitched baseballs have taken the guesswork out of it. Michael Saunders and Jason Bay start because there’s really no other option right now. In any event, the M’s need to be patient and work counts to see if Romero’s command has returned.
HAPPY FELIX DAY!
1: Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Bay, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Montero, C
9: Ryan, SS
SP: King Felix
James Paxton starts for Tacoma tonight against Reno, while the M’s affiliates in A and AA have both been rained out. Jeremy Bonderman had his first good outing for the Rainiers last night in Tacoma’s 8-0 win (their ninth in a row). John Stearns takes over a team that’s cruising right now, somewhat similar to the last time Tacoma had its manager called up to the majors unexpectedly.
Clinton OF Jabari Henry’s received some national attention for his hot start. After yesterday’s two-HR game, he’s now the proud owner of a .397/.511/.616. That .511 OBP edges out Nick Franklin’s .500 for best in the org, and it’s actually leading all of the minors. The FIU product is obviously gunning for a promotion to the Cal League, where he could team up with Jabari Blash to form a rare double-Jabari outfield.
On Nick Franklin and Promotions
I guess this is the off-day topic du jour: should the Mariners promote Nick Franklin, who was hitting .400/.524/.600 in Tacoma before his 0-4 night tonight? Marc emailed me to find out if I had a take, so I guess I should weigh in. I will note, though, that my opinion is basically ambivalence.
I think you can make a pretty good case that Nick Franklin is a better player, right now, than Robert Andino, because Robert Andino is basically a scrub, so the bar we’re asking Franklin to clear is very low. So, if the only question that mattered was whether or not Franklin would make the 2013 Mariners better, then yes, I’d probably support calling him up, and either jettisoning Andino — who would almost certainly clear waivers, given his salary, so putting him through waivers doesn’t guarantee you’d lose him — or dumping Ibanez and giving the team a little more flexibility on the bench. But, I think we all know the latter has no chance of happening, so we’ll set that aside for now.
But promoting a player from Triple-A isn’t simply about whether he’s better than a bad player on the big league roster, especially for a team in the Mariners situation. I know there’s some optimism returning now that the Mariners spent a week beating up on bad pitching staffs — their last 10 games have come against the teams rated 27th, 29th, and 30th in the majors in xFIP, and the Blue Jays are rated 28th, so this is the softest possible schedule to hit against — but the chances of the 2013 Mariners making the playoffs are essentially slim to none.
Dan Szymborski re-ran his ZIPS projections on May 1st, and he had the Mariners with a playoff probability of 2.5%, down from 10% on opening day. While you can say that April was just one month, it was a month that made it exceedingly unlikely that this team would put together a surprise run to October this year.
So, I don’t think the Mariners should be attempting to maximize 2013 wins at all cost right now. If they’re going to promote a player from the minor leagues, it should be because his development will be more fruitful facing Major League competition than facing minor league competition. And I don’t think I can say that’s true of Nick Franklin.
Yes, the batting line is fantastic, but please keep a few things in mind:
1. It’s not even 90 plate appearances. Weird things happen in a month. Carlos Gomez is currently the fourth best hitter in MLB. Lucas Duda is hitting as well as Prince Fielder. 90 plate appearances, at any level, simply do not tell a real story. Nick Franklin has been very good in Triple-A for a month, but he was pretty bad there for a few months last year. There are signs that he’s improving, which is good, but it’s not like he’s dominated PCL pitching.
Right now, he’s drawing walks and he has a high BABIP. The BABIP is almost certainly not going to carry over, and the walks aren’t that likely to either, unfortunately. Walk rate has one of the weakest correlations of any statistic between the minors and the majors. That he’s making better contact and controlling the strike zone is certainly a positive development, but it doesn’t mean he’s going to do that exact same thing when he faces big league pitching.
2. It’s the PCL. You have to heavily discount offensive numbers for everyone in Tacoma because of the league they play in. It is the most hitter friendly league in the entire sport. The difference between the run environment in Tacoma and in Seattle is as stark as any you’ll find. Not only is Franklin facing minor league pitching, he’s facing minor league pitching in ballparks where is downright scary to throw a strike.
People underestimate park effects for non-HR events. You hear that a guy got hurt by Safeco when his long fly ball gets caught at the warning track, but people don’t talk about the rest of the things that go along with high run environments. Because there are more baserunners, it’s more likely that a hitter will face the same pitcher multiple times, and hitters perform better against pitchers they’ve already faced that day, with the improvement increasing each time around the order. Most Triple-A teams don’t have great middle relievers, either, so high scoring games lead to the worst pitchers on the staff getting onto the mound at increased frequency.
It’s not as simple as noting that Franklin only has three home runs so the PCL effects aren’t helping him. It’s a great league for hitters for a variety of reasons, and you have to account for those whenever you’re looking at any PCL hitter, not just the guys like Carlos Peguero or Mike Carp.
3. Nick Franklin has primarily been playing second base. His start at shortstop tonight was only his seventh of the year at the position, even though the obvious playing time for him in Seattle would be at short. Put simply, there aren’t that many people who think that he’s physically capable of playing shortstop in the big leagues at an acceptable level. Now, I think it’s at least somewhat humorous that the Mariners might not be willing to play Franklin at short while also catching Jesus Montero and using guys like Michael Morse and Raul Ibanez in the outfield, but if Franklin is to shortstops what Jesus Montero is to catching, then playing him there probably won’t help the team in a meaningful way and may very well hurt his trade value.
There’s an old phrase that goes something like this: “Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” A lot of people think Nick Franklin probably can’t play shortstop long term, but sticking him there in the big leagues will essentially give every team a chance to see his shortcomings for themselves, on a pretty grand stage. Especially if you’re scouting the Mariners and you get Franklin one day and Brendan Ryan the next, or if Ryan comes in as a late inning defensive replacement, the contrast is going to be highly unflattering.
The Mariners already traded Nick Franklin once. Assuming they’re not ready to give up on Dustin Ackley, I wouldn’t be surprised if they expected to try and trade him again at some point in the future. Brad Miller is the current shortstop of the future, so Franklin would just be auditioning to play out of position for a while until Miller took his job — which he might be ready to do later this year, if he can stop making so many errors, anyway — and the potential damage that might do to Franklin’s trade value has to be a consideration.
Nick Franklin would probably make the Mariners a little bit better, if they dumped Robert Andino in order to call him up. He would probably make the Mariners no better, or not significantly better, if they dumped Brendan Ryan in order to call him up. He would not make the Mariners drastically better, and the difference in 2013 value probably wouldn’t have any meaningful positive impact on the franchise long term.
You don’t call Nick Franklin up because you’re tired of Brendan Ryan making outs, or because you just want to try something different. That’s not a good thought process. That’s an emotional reaction to frustration, and it isn’t how the Mariners should be deciding who is on the roster. You call up Nick Franklin if you think you have an everyday job for him that he’s capable of succeeding in. I don’t know too many people who think Nick Franklin is ready to handle an everyday SS job in the big leagues. It won’t hurt him to spend more time in Tacoma. It won’t hurt the Mariners to keep playing Brendan Ryan at shortstop.
If they make the switch, I won’t be outraged. After all, they’ve already rushed Brandon Maurer into a rotation spot he’s not ready for, and they’re asking Jesus Montero to play a position he can’t physically play, and there’s no way Franklin’s defense at short can be as embarrassing as Ibanez’s in the outfield. But I’m not sure calling up Nick Franklin actually solves any problems for the Mariners unless your view of a team’s problems are so narrow that they’re constrained to “we need more offense from the shortstop position.” That shouldn’t be how the organization views it’s problems. The Mariners roster needs more talented players, but it needs those talented players to be put in a position to succeed. Forcing a round peg into a square hole simply because you really want the peg to be square doesn’t work.
Nick Franklin’s real value to the Mariners is insurance in case Ackley continues to suck or a trade chip in case he does not. Could they play him at short for a while and get away with it? Maybe, and it might even get them an extra win in a season where an extra win won’t matter. But I don’t see a compelling case to push Franklin into a role he’s probably not suited for in order to chase that kind of upgrade.
Game 30, Orioles at Mariners
Aaron Harang vs. Wei-Yin Chen, 7:10pm
The M’s made a personnel move today, sending Blake Beavan down to Tacoma and recalling lefty Lucas Luetge. This season’s been an absolute disaster for Beavan; his attempt to change his arm slot has to rival Dustin Ackley’s abortive swing change for the least successful tweak in baseball. Since he came up in 2011, Blake Beavan actually adjusted his arm angle twice. He moved it upwards in 2012 too, but that didn’t seem to do much. The pre-2013 tweak got more attention, in part because he went outside the org to work on the change and because it was thought that the change would help his consistency from pitch to pitch. During the spring, his delivery did seem to be more over-the-top, but the actual adjustment was fairly small. It was no bigger than his 2011-to-2012 change, and while it made his pitches move slightly differently, it certainly wasn’t a mechanical overhaul.
So far during the regular season, Beavan’s given away most of that increase in his vertical release point – it’s now pretty much exactly where it was in September of last year. More worryingly, while a more over-the-top delivery can produce a downward plane and reduce platoon splits, it hasn’t helped Beavan against *right* handed hitters. In his 2011 campaign, Beavan got killed by lefties (.370 wOBA), but held righties to a stingy .287 wOBA and a 4.30 FIP. That’s not great, especially as the wOBA was BABIP driven, but it’s not awful. In 2012, after increasing his vertical release point, his wOBA to righties was up to .319 while his wOBA against lefties remained terrible. So far in 2013, he’s gotten killed by right-handers. Beavan never struck out many righties, despite throwing plenty of sliders and curves, but his low BABIP may have been related to pop-ups and high flies he was able to generate. At this point, I might have Beavan go back to a much flatter, more low-3/4 arm angle and see if he’s able to get righties out again.* It’s also quite possible that his entire 1+ year record of being moderately troubling to right-handed hitters was a BABIP mirage, in which case there’s not a whole lot to do.
That’s an awful lot about a minor transaction, and I realize I probably write about Beavan too much as it is. But it’s actually odd how many similarities you can spot between Beavan and tonight’s Oriole starter, Wei-Yin Chen. Like Beavan, Chen’s been an extreme fly-ball pitcher – his 35.6% career GB rate is actually a tiny bit lower than Beavan’s 37.1%. He throws a four-seam fastball at 90-91mph, that’s generated a touch over 11″ of vertical movement, giving it the appearance of ‘rise.’ Beavan throws a four-seam fastball at 91mph getting just under 11″ of vertical movement this year. Sure, it’s not perfect as Chen’s a lefty and 90-91 from a lefty’s qualitatively different than 90-91 from a righty, but this illustrates just how fine the differences in command, deception and consistency are and the differences they can make in results. Chen struck out about 19% of the batters he faced last year, whereas Beavan…did not.
Chen’s K% is down so far this year, but he’s faced a pretty tough group of opponents: Tampa, Boston, the Yankees, the Dodgers and finally Oakland. Despite that, his RA is sterling and his FIP’s lower thanks to a drop in his Beavan-esque HR/9. That said, this is a better match-up for the M’s than Jason Hammel. It’s not a great match-up, and the Orioles line-up is still tough against a righty who’s giving up more hard contact than Brandon Maurer. I’m going to watch the Chris Davis at-bats through my fingers. OK, nevermind, this isn’t a great match-up at all. Aaron Harang looked sort of intriguing in his first start, but really, really looked like a guy who’d just been DFA’d by the Rockies recently. C’mon M’s. Poach a game.
1: Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Bay, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Montero, C
9: Andino, SS
SP: Harang
I’d be tempted to put Montero at 6th, but this line-up makes sense against a lefty like Chen.
Jimmy Gilheeney was excellent in his AAA debut, throwing 6+ shutout innings with 9 Ks. Nick Franklin went 3-3 and is now batting .410/.538/.623, which is a pretty decent batting line. He’s certainly making things interesting for the FO. Andrew Carraway gets the start tonight against Tucson – it’s his first appearance since losing his no-hit bid late in the game in Las Vegas. Taijuan Walker takes the hill for Jackson, Trevor Miller starts for High Desert and Tyler Pike gets the ball for Clinton. Good day in M’s prospect land.
* Since the beginning of 2012, Beavan’s used a sinker a lot more, and his four-seamer less often. Correlation is not causation and all of that, but the sinker’s generated terrible results. I suggested he throw it more going into 2012, so it’s not like it was a terrible idea…it’s just a terrible pitch. Going back to a four-seam/curve/change/slider repertoire couldn’t hurt, I suppose.