Game 21, Astros at Mariners
Chris Young vs. Jarred Cosart, 12:40pm
Shhhh….shhh..it’s almost over now. The Astros and Marlins will be gone for a good long while. They were bullied themselves, you see, and can’t help but continue the cycle of violence, borne from their anger and helplessness. They lash out not because they want to, but because they never learned anything different.
Collin McHugh had and 8:5 K:BB ratio in 14 AAA innings coming into last night’s game, FYI. Either the PCL is no joke this year or the M’s…never mind.
OK, the M’s have avoided the Astros’ best pitcher to date, Scott Feldman, but today they’ll tangle with the Astros most *talented* hurler, Jarred Cosart. The strong-armed righty came to Houston in the Hunter Pence deal in 2011. He sits in the mid-90s with his fastball, but like Nathan Eovaldi, he’s had some control issues coming through the minors and never quite put up the strikeout numbers you’d imagine for someone with that kind of velocity.
What he has shown in the majors thus far is an ability to get plenty of ground balls and avoid really loud contact. His HR/FB was pretty lucky in 2013, and it could certainly regress – but he’s a righty who gets a staggering number of GBs against *left* handed hitters. He’s been better against lefties overall thus far because of it. He’s pitched all of a handful of big league games, so you wouldn’t forecast that to continue, but it’s something to keep an eye on – he had a slightly better MiLB FIP against lefties too, though this was due to a couple of HRs more than sustainable differences in K:BB/batted balls.
In fact, he reminds me a lot of James Paxton. Just looking at the vertical movement on their fastballs, you wouldn’t peg it as a grounder-generating machine, but it is. Like Paxton, he backs it up with a big curve ball that *also* gets ground balls. Paxon’s fastball has a bit more arm-side run despite his over-the-top delivery (and may be something that Paxton tweaked a bit during 2013), but Cosart’s more of a classic cutter. Depending on the pitch fx source you use, it may be that the cutter is essentially the ONLY fastball he throws (as Brooks Baseball suggests); others (MLBAM) think he uses it most often, but mixes in quite a few four-seamers as well. Looking at this chart, I don’t see a clear break between FC and FA, so I’d tend to believe the Brooks coding, but it’s not critical for game thread analysis: Cosart throws a lot (or nearly exclusively) 95mph cutters that allow him to get ground balls and frustrate lefties. He’s not close to a finished product; in his last start, he gave up 7 runs on 4 walks and 2 HRs in just one third of an inning. His control/command issues prevent him from taking the next step and becoming an elite starter, but Cosart is talented and has done an admirable job of learning in the big leagues. He was clearly due for some regression coming into 2014, but I’d like to have a guy throwing a 95mph cutter all day on my team.
Chris Young starts today. I’d say that things have to get better as he’s pitching in a fly-ball friendly park, but then, so is Marlins Park. I don’t know. Do something interesting, Mariners.
1: Almonte, CF
2: Miller, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Seager, 3B
7: Franklin, RF
8: Ackley, LF
9: Zunino, C
SP: Young
I feel like this season has already fallen into familiar patterns – snark about the M’s, add in some Felix-worship, talk about prospects – so what’s one more: the Rainiers are pretty fun to watch, and you should do so if at some point it stops raining. The R’s are crushing the ball despite playing most of their games in damp and chilly Cheney Stadium thus far. After a slow opening series, SS Chris Taylor is leading the charge with a .636 slugging percentage. AAAA vet Cole Gillespie didn’t seem to have a future here, as he’s not on the 40 man, but he’s at .362/.456/.741 so far, and he could get a look if Saunders/Almonte continue to struggle. Given that Nick Franklin’s already up, it looks like they’ll give the erstwhile IF further looks in LF/RF, but he’s slumping like everyone else. Anyway, go see the Rainiers some time if only to remember what it looks like when a team scores lots of runs.
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99 Responses to “Game 21, Astros at Mariners”
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Quick everyone diss the Mariners, it seems to be working, I think they feed off it.
Kyle Seager sucks. Matt Dominguez is better. Jared Cosart is better than Felix Hernandez too.
Are those good enough?
I bet the Astros AAA team could beat us. Which is probably true.
Hurray for Kyle Seager!
Er, I mean – Kyle Seager is garbage!
Except he’s probably not going to bat again this game…
We’ve been dissing this team for ten years…
I have a pretty strong feeling that the Mariners won’t lose tomorrow!
If we had a decent pinch-hitter, I would recommend we pinch-hit for our lead-off hitter here.
Dissing Almonte didn’t work. I tried.
Seriously though what happened to Brad Miller….
He’s been a Mariner too long.
There are few things in life sadder than hearing a pumping techno song being blasted at a thin and indifferent baseball crowd.
Other than being part of the thin and indifferent baseball crowd, of course.
I wonder if we’ll see Taylor at SS before too long.
I missed most of this game. Was Young throwing horseshit pitches? I see Ackley resumed his hitting after moving down in the order.
I’m going to predict – groundout to 2nd, pop up to SS, pop up to SS. All in 8 pitches.
Smoak triple play?
Josh Fields is Ramsay Snow.
Mariners fans are Theon Greyjoy.
We are now being tortured by hope.
First two runners on? No big deal, Mariners just trying to show us another improbable way to lose.
Woohoo!
JOFFREY’S DEAD!!!
Seager!
Oh my freakin’ god!!!
Wow. Nice job Kyle!
I love you, Kyle Seager. That’s all. Goodbye for now.
Thank you Kyle. Thank you!
KYLE SEAGER. WINNING STREAK INITIATED.
Wow, Cano and Hart!
Oh, it’s Smoak.
Finally.
Finally, a first round Mariners draft pick delivers us a victory.
Holly shit? Did I just see that correctly? I think there is something wrong with gametracker, it said Seager just hit a walk off HR? Yeah it must be broken.
@SodaPopinski
Josh Fields? 😉
I’m willing to forgive Seager’s whole 20-game lousy start, for the moment. That was fun.
Holy Cow! They won a game against the Astros!!
And of coarse while that was happening MLB Tonight cuts in to the Giants Rockies game, so I missed it.
We’re getting excited about a win against the Astros?!
Steve,
After 5 straight losses to the Marlins and Astros, a 9th-inning walk-off bomb? Yeah, I’ll take it.
That wasn’t a complaint! I was just weighing what the situation was.
Fair enough. We’re kind of starving for some good news.
MY! OH! MY!
It was obviously a direct result of having Franklin play right field! We need to see this same lineup again and again and again!
Westy, it was obviously a direct result of having Ackley batting 8th again.
Gawd.
Of COURSE, Steve! You’re right – I can’t believe I overlooked that!
My Oh My
Can you imagine our reaction if Mr. Pineda was still on the team today after Pine-gate?
Erasmo to High Desert/Tacoma; Franklin to Tacoma; Gillespie to Seattle; Leutge likely to Seattle
http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/news/article/sea/seattle-mariners-erasmo-ramirez-nick-franklin-sent-down-to-see-more-time?content_id=73221788
Mike Carp has an ERA of 9.00.
Westy-
You beat me to it… I was coming to post about Carp’s pitching debut last night…
Other fun fact from that game– Brett Gardner scored 4 runs, without getting a hit. The odds of doing that have to be nearly infinity:1.
Also… This just in– The “transfer rule” has been scrapped in its implementation. Effective immediately.
Yay. Supposedly they’re simply returning to how it was previously enforced, meaning at the discretion of the umpires.
Woo hoo!
To add some meat to the somewhat dry Mr Z-bone above, this:
MLB said that the committee, chaired by New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson, determined “a legal catch has occurred … if the fielder had complete control over the ball in his glove, but drops the ball after intentionally opening his glove to make the transfer to his throwing hand.”
“There is no requirement that the fielder successfully remove the ball from his glove in order for it be ruled a catch,” the committee said. “If the fielder drops the ball while attempting to remove it to make a throw, the umpires should rule that the ball had been caught, provided that the fielder had secured it in his glove before attempting the transfer.”