Game 30, Mariners at A’s
Chris Young vs. Scott Kazmir, 7:05pm
This game’s as important as any early-May contest, I suppose, but I think a lot of northwest fans might be interested to note that top prospect Noah Syndergaard’s starting tonight against the Rainiers in Tacoma. Catch Chris Taylor face actual MLB-level pitching, and plus velocity from the right side. The M’s couldn’t really find a spot for Nick Franklin, who started off the 2014 season on a hot streak, but Chris Taylor is making things even more complicated.
Ok, ok, back to the big league game for a bit. Scott Kazmir was famously difficult to forecast this off-season. He was a lackluster member of the Sugar Land Skeeters recently, and the fact that he’d made the Indians roster came as a shock to most. He looked OK, but had mediocre results in the first half, like teammate and fellow comeback story Ubaldo Jimenez. In the second half, he was an effective #3. So: forecasting him going forward, or forecasting what he’d make on the free agent market, how do you weight his performance record? What do you DO with the fact that his career was *over* 18 months ago? It was a slightly more extreme version of the questions regarding the top of the free agent pitching market, namely Ervin Santana (who was abysmal in 2012) and Jimenez (who was replacement level in 2012 too). It’s tough to tease out how much the ambiguous nature of their recent performances played into their contracts, and how much of it was due to the draft pick compensation attached to signing Jimenez/Santana. Santana’s been absolutely brilliant and stands to make more money next year while Jimenez looks pretty much exactly like he did in 2012 again. Meanwhile, Kazmir’s been among the best bargains of the off-season.
He had fairly neutral GB/FB ratios and he’d had home run problems off and on since 2008, so he looked like a good candidate to pitch well in Oakland. But since joining the A’s, his GB% is up dramatically, from the low 40s to the mid 50s. Small sample weirdness? Maybe, but a pitcher’s ground ball rate stabilizes early on; Russell Carleton found it stabilized (r=.7) at around 150 batters faced. Kazmir’s faced 151 thus far. An updated version of Carleton’s work by Derek Carty, using a slightly different methodology, found that GB rate stabilize after 105 balls in play. Kazmir looks to be around 106.
There’s nothing that stands out as an explanation for this change in the pitch fx data. He’s not using a different pitch, or targeting a different part of the zone. He’s still the same sinker/slider/change that he was last year, and he’s throwing just as hard. He always showed fairly dramatic platoon splits for grounders – with lefties pounding the ball into the ground while righties elevated it. But he’s faced four times as many righties this year as he has lefties, so that’s not it. The other dramatic difference in his stat line is his walk rate, which is under 5% for the first time in his career. Even when he was at his best, from 2005-07, he had so-so command, and a walk rate over those three years near 10%.
Chris Young is having perhaps his most Chris Young season, which is saying something. Coming into the year, he was known for being 1) tall, 2) an extreme fly-ball guy but who could 3) generate lower BABIPs due to all of those fly outs without 4) giving up tons of HRs somehow, no one really knows why, but it all adds up to 5) a guy with actual runs allowed coming in lower than the fielding-independent metrics would assume. So far, he remains exceedingly tall; his GB rate is just 24%, below his own absurd career average of 27%; his BABIP is .211, below his own absurd career average of .253; he’s given up HRs on 6.7% of fly balls, below his low-but-not-absurd average of 8%; and he’s got an ERA of 3.04 and a FIP of 5.46 and a whatever’s-beyond-absurd xFIP of 6.27. I know allusions to animated series are the lifeblood of baseball blogging, so to put it in old internet meme terms:
Phase 1: Throw 85mph fast straightballs up in the zone.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit.*
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Romero, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Gillespie, LF
7: Smoak, 1B
8: Miller, SS
9: Zunino, C
SP: Young
As you’ve no doubt heard, the M’s have sent down CF Abraham Almonte and recalled CF James Jones. Jones was off to a solid start in Tacoma, but so’s just about everyone. He’s fast, he’s got a howitzer of an arm, but he’s a lefty. In theory, Almonte’s switch hitting helped balance the line-up against lefties like Kazmir. In practice, of course, Almonte just didn’t hit. Defensively, I don’t know that I’m qualified to say if this is an upgrade or not. I thought Almonte was a solid to plus fielding CORNER OF, but I think his range was better than I’d predicted in the big leagues. On the other hand, whether it was concentration lapses or positioning, he made more unforced errors too. When I’ve seen Jones, it’s mostly been in the corners too – the R’s have Endy Chavez and Xavier Avery to rotate through the OF positions – and he’s looked solid. He had some nice starts in the spring as well, but it’s tough to know how it all adds up. Best of luck to Jones, who obviously was up for a brief call-up earlier. That he’s made it this far shows some solid work by the M’s much-maligned player development system, considering nearly everyone saw Jones as a pitcher coming out of LIU.
I’ll be in Tacoma to check out the Syndergaard, one of the Mets top prospects, and one of the top righties in the minors. Andrew Carraway gets the start for Tacoma. Jake Zokan, Jimmy Gillheeney and Eddie Campbell start in the minors as well. OF Austin Wilson, the M’s 2013 draft pick, was named the Midwest League Player of the Week last week, collecting six XBHs and nine total hits in seven games.
* The M’s are only 2-2 in his starts, despite the lack of runs allowed, and they lost in his only relief appearance. None of this is Young’s fault, of course, but that’s a pretty fielding-independent way of looking at things for a guy who famously cannot be evaluated by fielding independent means.
James Jones lost 50% of his OPS with that last plate appearance.
Three outs from .500.
Take a bow, Mr. Miller…
Nice, Bradley!
Miller!
Romero has his OPS up to .712, he’s starting to look like he can play. He’s still got some rough spots, but not Almonte rough.
I take back a couple of those things I have said about your defense, Brad. Nice play!
Great play Millsy!!
Nice play! It’s Miller time!
Ooh, just got a UW Alert – strong-arm robbery on campus.
Eastside-
I’ve got Dalwhinnie going right now, but I thought you could use something a little heftier! *laugh*
Eastside, I think you can put the defibrillator away!
Highlight…
(laugh) I love it. I missed your throne post because (no lie) I was refilling the scotch.
Yeah baby. 4-2. .500
That was crisp ………..and rare.
Great play by Miller!
Well done M’s!!!! .500 baby
Westy, are you sure there wasn’t another alert for a robbery in Oakland courtesy of Miller and the M’s?
Nice to see Miller making some good defensive plays tonight.
hehehe Bryce.
If the Angels lose, we leapfrog them.
Espn has them ranked 11 today, we were 24th. And we are 3/4 of a sweep from a first place tie with Oakland.
Who was that throwing 1st pitch strikes in the 9th?
Just got back from vacation in Hawaii, where the only baseball reports I saw only mentioned the “local boys”…Good to see the M’s having a resurgence to make up a bit for that losing streak, and I agree it’s also good to see the infield working well.
I just want so badly to believe when/if we get back a healthy Paxton and Walker and Kuma returns to form. Given what Felix and Elias have done, we may have a chance to stay interesting until August…..just maybe
Thing about the Angels is – they’ve got a significant positive run differential. We’ve seen them sucking, but they don’t seem to be doing that so much at the moment… but they continue to be unlucky.
Works for me. I love seeing expensive teams significantly underperform expectations.
Section, it looked like Rodney, but I couldn’t tell… I was impressed that the kardiac kids didn’t turn this into more of an adventure than anything…
Good job Rodney.
.500! Feels like ’09.
My favorite words to sum up a 9th inning…
“Fernando, we hardly knew thee…”
Short and sweet. That feels nice.
I wonder what were going to do with Morrison. We don’t need another left-handed bat, especially one with no glove. Jones is a lefty too, not that they are competing, but we’ve already have a lot of them.
Lloyd doesn’t sound happy with him either:
“Morrison is recovering more slowly than expected. Even McClendon is surprised. “I have been. There’s no sense in arguing about it,” he said. “When I get him I get him. Until then I’ll just read his tweets.”
I sense a lengthy rehab assignment.
McLendon may be like Wedge – he may see dealing with injuries as a toughness thing. It’s a stupid attitude, but it seems fairly widespread… especially among old ex-jocks.
Of course if he heard that Carter Capps is hitting 98-100 again… maybe it’s just sour grapes.
Eastside – re: August. I’ve had those thoughts, but, because optimism isn’t a normal Mariner fan mindset, and in fact isn’t recommended, I tend to bury them. But going with the idea that if wishful thinking is allowed there’s no reason to hold back, I’ll confess to a variation:
If they stay healthy and consistent, I’m wondering what we’ll find ourselves looking at as of midnight, 31 July.
We are .500 and we have scored exactly as many runs as we have allowed. Your 2014 Seattle Mariners: no one is more average than we are!
Hey, Breadbaker – when was the last time this team didn’t have a negative run differential 30 games into a season? I will take it!
Your 2014 Seattle Mariners… The hottest team in the AL the past 10 games. After being the coldest team in the AL for 10 games.
Adding to your stats breakdown Breadbaker… 2-8 followed by 8-2…
Yay Baseball!
Since there’s no real antonym for regress, we could call this (with blind wild optimism) improving to the mean?
BTW Z, I agree with what you wrote earlier. Mike will no doubt, eventually, regress to the Morse. Just don’t say so on any SF blogs, they’re too giddy to want to know.
Top prospect Noah Syndergaard’s starting tonight against the Rainiers in Tacoma. Actual MLB-level pitching.
Franklin, 3 for 3
Taylor, 0 for 2 BB
Could have been another error on Taylor last night. The ball he through to 2nd hit the batter allowing a run to score.
Teams that dont walk tend to be streaky?
Just a thought.