Game 112, Braves at Mariners
Chris Young vs. Julio Teheran, 12:40pm
I’d like to propose that this is *Still* a happy Felix day, as I’ve got a bit of a Felix hangover right now. That was a brilliant game against a tricky line-up, and then Chris Taylor added to it with the best defensive play by a SS that the M’s have made all year. The M’s didn’t hit particularly well, but for a night, it didn’t matter. There was more angst than usual following Felix’s exit after 8 IP and 97 pitches, but I’m not going to complain about that. Seems like a more than defensible position for McClendon to take, especially as the M’s look for Felix to pitch them into the postseason in September.
Today’s game features the Braves young ace, Julio Teheran. The righty throws a four-seam, a sinker, a slider, a curve and a change-up, with the slider doing the bulk of the work as far as non-fastballs go. The change-up’s an effective pitch not because it’s a huge swing-and-miss pitch, but because it generates some ground balls, which helps Teheran keep left-handed hitters in the ballpark. As a fly-baller overall, and someone who pounds the zone effectively (witness the 5-and-change walk rate in both 2013 and 2014), that’s important. That said, he’s comfortable throwing his slider to lefties as well, and as of yet, lefties haven’t made him pay for it. It’s a really good pitch, so that’s not a shock, but lefties have hit about .170 on the pitch in his career. It’s not clear if it’s good luck or a change in approach, but while lefties knocked six HRs on it (giving them a slugging percentage over .500 with their .170 BA in 2013), they’ve only hit one this year.
Because of that HR/FB issue – one that was confined pretty much to lefties last year – his career splits are a bit wider than they’ve been this year, and, frankly, his ERA’s a lot better than his FIP. Chris Young knows all about this, of course, but you can make a case that Teheran’s underrated by fielding-independent metrics. Of course, you could simply argue that he’s been HR-lucky and sequencing-lucky this year, and that his ERA will rise. In any event, this is a very, very good starter – one without true ace potential, but who’s knocking on the door of that tier at just 23 years of age.
You probably knew I couldn’t get through this without mentioning it, but Teheran is a common alternate spelling of Tehran, the 27th largest city in the world by population. As Miguel Cairo retired after 2012, I think that makes Teheran the active pitcher who shares a name with the largest world city. Cairo’s the all-time leader, with the 18th largest city, while the late Jose Lima follows with the 21st-largest city. After that, there’s a fairly large break down to #48 – Sydney. If you’re lax with your spelling criteria, you could say Sidney Ponson qualifies, but you’re probably better off with Sydney “Syd” Smith, a back-up C/1B on the 1911 Cleveland team that featured Shoeless Joe Jackson. Current minor leaguers who can join the elite group include pitcher Gabriel Lima, a pitcher in the VSL for the Cubs, and D-Backs org-guy Taylor Harbin, who shares his name with the 59th-most populous city.*
1: Jackson, CF
2: Ackley, LF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Morales, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Taylor, SS
7: Morrison, 1B
8: Chavez, RF
9: Sucre, C
SP: Chris Young
I’d say something about Taylor’s hot start moving him up the line-up, but it seems it has at least as much to do with getting Endy Chavez and Jesus Sucre in the line-up as anything Taylor himself has done. The M’s just can’t quit Endy Chavez.
* I’m surprised there aren’t more Londons out there, given the NFL had a London Fletcher for so many years. There’ve been a few minor leaguers with that surname, though none appeared in a big league game. There’s one active player in the Dodgers Dominican League team named Miguel Londono – again, not sure how you handle that. I think it doesn’t count, but perhaps you’re more accomodating/inclusive than I am.
Game 111, Braves at Mariners
King Felix vs. Alex Wood, 7:10pm
It’s nice to be back, and it’s nice to start a series like this one with so much importance to both the AL and NL wild card races. Like the M’s, the Braves begin play two games back of the 2nd wild card spot, and like the M’s, Fangraphs’ playoff odds thinks they’re a better club than the team immediately ahead of them. The M’s case gets trickier because of the number of teams in the race, but the point is the same: these are two extremely evenly matched teams with a lot to gain.
The Braves are coming off of a dispiriting sweep in Los Angeles, while the M’s are probably just as frustrated about how they dropped a series in Baltimore. The M’s at least get to turn to their ace, and the prohibitive favorite for the AL Cy Young race, Felix Hernandez. The Braves counter with the underrated Alex Wood, a lefty with a 90mph four-seam fastball, and a solid change and curve. I say underrated because Wood’s had to work as a swing man with the Braves this year; just a few weeks after being one of the starters in the best pitcher’s duel in years, he moved to the bullpen. Think back to April/May and how dominant the entire Braves rotation was* – Julio Teheran was emerging as an elite starter, Ervin Santana looked like the FA pick-up of the year, and Aaron #@%ing Harang had turned back the clock to 2006.**
Alex Wood is an object lesson in the value of consistency. Despite being bumped around from rotation to the pen in both 2013 and 2014, he’s shown nothing in the way of a performance drop in the rotation. His OBP against as a reliever was .315, but as a starter, it’s .314. Sure, he’s been hit harder, as his SLG% against skyrockets from .360 all the way to .369, but still. His OPS against vs. righties is .685, and against lefties it’s .673. At home, it’s .674, and on the road, it’s .689. He’s pretty much exactly what he is, whatever role the Braves ask him to perform in, and who he’s facing, and where. How? Again with the consistent thing. There’s nothing you can really point to and say, “there, THAT’s the pitch that’s made him a success.” His FB was never overpowering, and he – somewhat worryingly – lost about two MPH from 2013 to 2014, but just about nothing else changed. The pitch has a great deal of horizontal movement to it, and thus he’s got an above average whiff rate with it. By BP’s Pitch FX leaderboard, he ranks 56th of 156 pitchers who’ve thrown a four-seamer at least 200 times this year. The change-up’s even better, with a 33% whiff rate, good for 26th out of 60 starters. Wood’s curve ranks 33rd of 72 qualified starters. There’s no obvious, game-changing weapon in his arsenal, but there’s also no just-get-it-over, “I wanted to give them a different look” style bad pitch, either. Roenis Elias’ curve AND change rank far better than Wood’s, by either pitch-type linear weights or whiff/swing, but Elias’ fastball(s) aren’t all that effective. Erasmo Ramirez’s change-up STILL turns MLB hitters into Mark Reynolds, but that fact hasn’t helped him become a reliable big league starter, which, when you think about it like that is kind of remarkable.***
Anyway, I think my favorite example of Wood’s consistency has to do with his curve. Like many pitchers, he throws it to righties and lefties alike, and like many pitchers, he prefers to keep it down. But unlike most pitchers, he doesn’t care about batter handedness or tendencies or “soft stuff away” or any of that. Instead, he throws the pitch to his designated curve ball spot. Seriously. Here’s his curve heat map to lefties:
And here’s his curve ball heat map to righties:
When a guy’s really getting hit hard, the color guy will often chide him for “aiming the ball.” That’s a wider, more nuanced definition of the word “aiming” perhaps, but this…this looks like the real thing. Alex Wood throws some pitches, and then essentially attempts to play darts or horseshoes with his curve. This is taking the guesswork, the over-analysis and the over-thinking out of the enterprise and replacing it with clean, unbending simplicity. A simplicity that starts with not trying to do too much – with a recognition of one’s own fallibility, and in the end looks inseparable from an almost overbearing confidence. This is Bauhaus baseball.
M’s line-up:
1: Jackson, CF
2: Ackley, LF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Morales, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Denorfia, RF
7: Morrison, 1B
8: Zunino, C
9: Taylor, SS
SP: FELIX HERNANDEZ DULLS PAIN AND MAKES YOU MORE ATTRACTIVE TO OTHERS
Taijuan Walker got roughed up a bit in yesterday’s start in Albuquerque, giving up 8R in 2 1/3 IP, including a grand slam to Carlos Triunfel. Dosger prospect and Miguel Olivo chew toy Alex Guerrero also homered in the game, that one coming off of Blake Beavan. Jordan Pries starts tonight for the Rainiers in Albuquerque.
* An underrated part of the Braves’ pitching is their primary catcher, Evan Gattis. Gattis is in the line-up for his bat, and his wRC+ is the best on the team, ahead of Justin Upton and Freddie Freeman. Gattis was always seen as a bat-first guy, and someone other teams might look to run on when they got on base. And those teams aren’t wrong! Gattis leads the league in wild pitches allowed despite not qualifying for the batting title because he’s played in dozens fewer games than the guy he’s tied with, Tyler Flowers (who two weeks ago started wearing glasses). But framing, man, framing. The Braves probably expected a massive decline from Brian McCann, reliably among the league leaders in framing runs, but they’ve instead replaced him with yet another elite framer, if various metrics are to be trusted, and, critically, if they’re isolating just the catcher and not some other, more global factor.
** Harang’s start, and his entire 2014 season, is one of the reasons I imagine the gap between the AL and NL is larger than it seems to be statistically. I *saw* Harang last year. I know what he can do, and what he can’t do. If Harang’s a well-above average SP in your “major league” then I’m at least a utility infielder or situational right hander. Yes, yes, I know there’s some kid in Arizona who probably thinks the AL sucks because Brandon McCarthy’s tearing it up with the Yankees, but his underlying peripherals clearly showed he was undervalued, and you have to account for defense and park and I am now arguing with a hypothetical child.
*** Maybe Erasmo is the Craig Hodges of baseball. Or the Billy Hamilton, if Billy Hamilton was more like the plus-plus run, absolutely-no-hit-at-all player we thought we were getting.
Podcast: Transaction Indeed Made
Sunday Afternoon Podcast!
Jeff and I got this recorded a little earlier than early and why make you wait? Try not to be too upset over the end of today’s game, and we like the trades made.
Podcast with Jeff and Matthew: Direct link! || iTunes link! || RSS/XML link!
Thanks again to those that helped support the show and/or StatCorner work in general last week, and in the past, and hopefully in the future. It’s truly appreciated.
Game 110, Mariners at Orioles
James Paxton vs. Miguel Gonzalez, 4:05 pm
Hullo all. I’m back again, pinch-hitting for Marc over the weekend while he’s otherwise occupied. The hope is that I get a thread up tomorrow morning too, but some scheduling things on my end may prevent that. None of us know what tomorrow will bring.
Today brings the news of James Paxton’s return to the major league rotation after nearly four months sidelined. When last we saw our hero, he was making a rehab start against Sacto where he lasted four and a third innings, having thrown 47 of 78 pitches for strikes (60.3%) and giving up a run on six hits, three walks, and five Ks. Before that, he gave up three runs (two earned) on three hits (two dingers), a walk, and four Ks while throwing 34 of 60 for strikes (56.7%) through three frames against Las Vegas. And before THAT, he lasted just two and two-thirds in Everett with two runs scoring on two hits (HR), a walk, a wild pitch, and two Ks. There’s an upward trajectory here, but one gets the impression that the Mariners wouldn’t be pushing him out there unless they had to, and they kind of do in this case. Or at least they seem to be more confident in his ability to get them innings than they do Erasmo or Walker because both those guys were optioned. This too may end up as a trial run for Paxton.
Making way for him, we have Corey Hart hitting the DL with reportedly a bruised knee. One never really knows in these cases which it really is, the injury as an excuse for a lack of performance or a lack of performance as a means of justifying a DL stint from what may not be a serious injury. They say he hit a wall in Cleveland and played through it. Okay. We know Hart had all of the knee surgeries recently. We know that in July he had a 43 wRC+ which is only so much better than the 38 wRC+ he had in May just before hitting the DL. We are learning, and perhaps the Mariners may be learning, that trusting an aging player to improve as they recover from multiple significant surgeries may not be the best course of action when organizing a roster. Throw the dice on TJ victims or guys that have had broken bones in the draft if you wish, but not FAs on the wrong side of thirty who have had ligament or joint surgeries when millions of dollars are involved.
Of course, since Paxton was on the 60-day, we had to clear a 40-man spot for him, and in this case Blake Beavan was the victim. We may not see him as a fill-in the rotation again. Man, that seems weird. But we all know why, how he stopped throwing hard after he was drafted, how he never really developed into much more than an innings guy, etc. He threw eight innings for Tacoma last month and had a .276/.361/.276 line against. My guess is that the Mariners probably started the DFA process around the trade deadline when everyone else was too busy to be interested in a Blake Beavan, and what do you know, he got outrighted already.
This is all probably more interesting to you than Miguel Gonzalez, who started against the M’s a week ago and held us to one run over six frames despite eight hits, two walks, and only one K. And few groundballs. He simply evaded one problem spot after another even though his stuff is ordinary at best. So we’re up against a pitcher who recently frustrated us, using a lineup that, as recently as last night, was a bit frustrating.
[Edit: Late lineup change, Morales and Morrison switch positions.]
CF Austin Jackson
LF Dustin Ackley
2B Robinson Cano
1B Kendrys Morales
3B Kyle Seager
DH Logan Morrison
SS Chris Taylor
RF Endy Chavez
C Jesus Sucre
Down the minor league ladder tonight, we have Erasmo on the mound for the Rainiers in Albuquerque, Landazuri for Jackson at home, a TBD for the Mavericks against Inland Empire, Eddie Campbell for Clinton at Burlington (BEES), Jeffeson Medina for Everett at Eugene, and a couple of double-headers for Pulaski and Peoria, the latter of which finishes up a lightning-suspended game from a little over a week ago.
Go ‘Ners.
Game 109, New-Fangled Mariners at Basically-The-Same Orioles
Roenis Elias vs. Wei-Yin Chen, 4:05pm
Sooooo, deadlines, huh? Yesterday’s game thread talked about the small move the M’s made on Deadline day, but because of life and obligations, I wasn’t able to update it with the biggest news in M’s land: the M’s acquiring CF Austin Jackson for IF Nick Franklin as part of the three-team trade sending David Price to Detroit. That get s a non-ironic “wow.” If you’ve read this site at all, you know I haven’t been all that excited about GM Jack Zduriencik’s trades, and his decision-making in general. So let’s get this out of the way: I think this was a great move, and one that had to be made.
The Mariners rank dead last in baseball in production from the CF spot. The combination of Almonte/Jones/Chavez is essentially replacement level. The M’s are in the wild card hunt turning the top of their line-up over to replacement level OFs, which is both aggravating and a clear opportunity. Of course, it’s easy for everyone on twitter to just say, “Stop playing awful CFs and play someone not-awful!” as if Tacoma was stocked with decent, MLB-ready CFs. Remember, Jones swapped places with Almonte in May. Until yesterday, if you wanted to pull the plug on Jones-as-starting-CF, you were either giving the spot to Endy Chavez full time, or you were un-doing that swap and re-installing Abe Almonte again. Sure, there’s Xavier Avery, and yes, Chris Denorfia could play CF in a pinch, and when he’s back, you could give the position back to Mike Saunders, but there are waaay too many assumptions in all of that. The point is, through a combination of bad luck, developmental hiccups (I think it’s sort of telling that they haven’t tried Ackley in CF again) and injuries, they had a fairly sizable hole, and yesterday, they plugged it.
One of the laments I heard/uttered when Nick Franklin was sent down after struggling with the M’s early in the season was that they’d taken a player with lots of trade value and slowly whittled it away, leaving a player unsure of his role and potential trade partners unsure of his value. Again, it’s easier to say with hindsight, and I’m wary of blaming the front office for a player not hitting in a call-up, but it seemed like the M’s had missed their chance to move Franklin and get actual utility in return. Well, I guess not. Jackson has slumped his way to being a league-average bat, and while his defensive numbers have struggled a bit, the M’s know none of the previous occupants of that role are in contention for the Gold Glove. It came late, but the M’s did indeed use Franklin to get not just an MLB-ready OF, but a guy just two years off of an elite, all-star-level season in CF.
So where do the M’s stand today? According to BP, the move improved the M’s wild card chances by a percentage point or so. Fangraphs adds in the results of yesterday’s games, so the combination of acquiring Jackson AND the M’s late win significantly improving their playoff odds. To be clear: they’re still not good, but no team helped themselves more yesterday than Seattle. Part of what made the deadline so interesting this year is how teams similarly situated at the margin of the WC race took such divergent actions. Cleveland essentially gave up, trading Justin Masterson a day or so ago, and then shipping Asdrubal Cabrera to the Nationals and installing a replacement-level bridge player until Francisco Lindor’s ready next year. Everyone’s talking about how Tampa threw in the towel, and while it’s not *quite* so simple, they had to understand that moving David Price now made it harder for them to make the playoffs in 2014. In any event, one of the interesting thing about that Fangraphs piece was showing how the magnitude of some of these trades pales in comparison to adding/losing a game. That is, yesterday’s games – the games played while everyone flew to new teams and looked to break apartment leases – mattered about as much as acquiring a big star. You can quibble with that, or you can relish the fact that, as Nathan Bishop talked about yesterday at LL, the M’s are suddenly playing really, really meaningful games.
So welcome, Austin Jackson. Welcome, Chris Denorfia. Help us keep up the habit of checking the playoff odds every day. Help us forget about mismanagement, a nearly unbroken string of lost seasons and a flawed roster. Let’s have fun again.
I was going to say I just wrote about Wei-Yin Chen, was sort of true, but then I saw just how little I wrote. In that start seven days ago, Chen shut the M’s out for eight innings – his best outing of the year. That said, Chen’s traditionally been better against lefties (though this year he’s had almost no splits), and while the M’s tried to run most of their RH bats against him the other day, their RH bats are a bit better this time around. The M’s are also facing him in a better environment; Safeco’s the perfect place for a fly-ball lefty who doesn’t walk anyone.
1: Jackson, CF
2: Ackley, LF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Morales, 1B
5: Seager, 3B
6: Denorfia, RF
7: Hart, DH
8: Zunino, C
9: Taylor, SS
SP: Elias
That’s six RHBs. It’s not that the M’s haven’t been able to use six RHBs in years and years, it’s just that they’ve had to rely on switch-hitters who either couldn’t hit much at all, or struggled mightily against lefties – guys like Justin Smoak and Nick Franklin. This…this is better, even despite Morales’ continued struggles.
Stefen Romero and James Jones head to Tacoma to make way for Denorfia and Jackson.
Tacoma had its second national TV game yesterday. CBS Sports Network has been televising one upper-minors (essentially PCL and IL) game per week, and I suppose we’ll soon see what they want to do with this model next year. Step it up, and have two or three? Bag it? Or market it along with the draft and the burgeoning interest in MiLB prospects. I had some thoughts about this back in June, before the Rainiers first TV game of the year, and, for unknown reasons, it never posted. So I’ll plagiarize myself and put some thoughts about it below the jump.
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