Game 41, Mariners at Reds
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Dan Straily, 4:05pm
Ah, the Reds. It’s a rebuilding year, and no one really expected much from them. It’s actually kind of *nice* to go into a rebuild when you share a division with a club that’s peaking, and is laying waste to the entire league. You probably weren’t going to compete with the Pirates/Cards this year anyway, Cincinnati, let alone the Cubs, so good on you and Milwaukee for building for the future. That sounds okay and all, but kind of like with Atlanta, you worry about poisoning the well with putrid play. The Reds pitching staff has been historically awful. Their ERA is nearly 0.6 runs per game worse than Colorado’s. Their FIP is the worst in baseball by even more than that. They have the worst walk rate in baseball by a mile, as well as the worst home run rate. And somehow, their bullpen has taken these anti-qualities and honed them, turning dog crap into crap-diamonds.
The A’s bullpen last year was famously bad, but they were bad in some specific ways. They gave up HRs, and they gave them up at the worst possible times. They weren’t historically bad *pitchers*, which is why Jerry Dipoto poached Evan Scribner from them, they just made their fans *feel* that way because they reserved their worst pitches for the times they’d hurt the most. Cincinnati’s might be historically bad. The Reds bullpen ERA and FIP starts with a 6. They’ve already accumulated -2.3 fWAR. In run expectancy terms, they’re worst in WPA, but that actually undersells them, because the rotation’s been bad enough that the bullpen sometimes comes in when the game’s already out of reach. By RE24, which measures the change in run expectancy after each plate appearance, the true magnitude of the Reds problem becomes clearer. Because it includes inherited runners, it’s probably a better measure than just ERA or FIP. The Royals (duh) lead MLB bullpens with a 23.06 mark as a group, meaning the sum of all plate appearances they’ve been in have made 23 runs less likely to occur, and Baltimore’s a fraction of a run behind. Anyway, at the other end of the spectrum sit the Rangers, at -17. Think of Tom Wilhelmsen’s repeated meltdowns, or how Shawn Tolleson’s lost his closing job. They’ve been up and down, but when they’ve been down, they do it comprehensively. The Reds are well over twice as bad, at a mind-altering -46, getting close to three times worse than the #29 team. The gap between the Reds and the 2nd-worst Rangers is the same as the gap between the Rangers and #9 Angels.
So, Dan Straily. The former pop-up prospect for the A’s has become a peripatetic journeyman, moving from the A’s to the Cubs to the Astros and now Reds, all since 2014. He came out of nowhere in 2012, an unheralded, late-round draft pick who led the minors in strikeouts by a mile. He never had a great walk rate, but it was average to a bit better, and he did it without an overpowering fastball. At 92-93, it wasn’t bad, but his slider and change meant he had weapons against lefties as well as righties. By 2013, his first full season in the majors, his fastball was down a tick or two, settling in at 91, but as it fell, his control got worse and worse. After a month in the rotation in 2014, his velo averaged 89+ in a start against the M’s, and the A’s sent him to AAA immediately after. Soon after *that* he was dealt to the Cubs in the Samardzija deal that sent Addison Russell to Chicago.
He got in a few games for Houston last year, but wasn’t all that effective, with a walk rate stubbornly above 10%, just as it was in 2014. This off-season, he worked with Kyle Boddy and Driveline baseball, as detailed in this August Fagerstrom piece at FG. In it, Boddy notes that it’s not uncommon for pitchers’ walk rate to go up as their velo drops.
“The first thing you see from guys who lose velocity is that they start not throwing strikes, not because of any mechanical problem they have, but because they’re just like, ‘Oh, shit, I’m throwing 88, I don’t want to throw anywhere in the zone,’” Boddy said.
Also mentioned in the piece were reports from the spring, in which Straily was hitting 94 again, so I’ve been very curious to see him now that we’re a quarter of the way through the season. It’s just… if he was throwing 94 in Florida, he hasn’t brought that north with him. In his first game of the year, he averaged nearly 92 and touched 93, which is a clear improvement over last year, and would put him on pace to hit 94 in the warmer months. But since then, he’s regressed again, averaging 90 in his last outing vs. Philadelphia and hitting a top velo of 92. He hasn’t averaged 92 since April, also the last time he touched 93+. I don’t say all this to impugn his work, or Driveline’s efforts at improving him. He is, or at least WAS, throwing a touch harder. But it’s probably a sign of how hard it is to maintain not only gains you make in the gym, but maintain the work rate you used to get them, all while playing a big league schedule.
Straily’s tried to reinvent his FB, and move away from the disappointments of last year, but here’s the funny (if you’re not Straily) thing: he’s having the *exact same season*.
| Season | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | HR/FB | GB% | FIP | xFIP | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 7.56 | 4.32 | 1.08 | 10 | 41.5 | 4.63 | 4.85 | 5.40 |
| 2016 | 7.84 | 4.35 | 1.09 | 10.9 | 38.2 | 4.6 | 4.78 | 3.05 |
Every number is eerily similar except, of course, ERA. Straily’s stranding runners now, instead of letting them in, buoyed by a much lower BABIP (of note: Straily’s BABIPs have always been low, maybe due to his rising FB, dropping SL combo). And yes, BOTH years are stupidly small samples, but it highlights just how much ERA can vary from a nearly fixed set of peripherals.
Despite the fact that lefties have not hit him well this year, Straily remains pretty platoon-able. His best pitch is his breaking ball, a slider, and that’s made his K% much better against righties. At the same time, he’s still walking a lot more lefties…it’s just that lefties have put up a a BABIP of .118 against him this year. This is a game for the lefties, and hoping Adam Lind can keep his hot streak going.
1: Marte, SS
2: Smith, LF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, RF
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Iannetta, C
8: Martin, CF
9/SP: Iwakuma
The Rainiers beat Iowa 2-1 on a solo shot from Mike Baxter and an RBI single from Luis Sardinas. Donn Roach had his best game of the year, going 6 2/3, striking out 7 and walking none. Joe Wieland starts for Tacoma tonight.
Jackson got a 3 run 5th and made it hold up for a 3-2 win over Chattanooga. Brett Ash was solid through 6, giving up 2 runs and K’ing 6. Edwin Diaz pitched the 7th, a 1-2-3 inning that included a strikeout and some 98mph fastballs. Dylan Unsworth starts today’s game for the Generals.
Andrew Moore was predictably good for Bakersfield, but the story was the offense, who scored 17 in a 17-2 win in High Desert. Even weirder, three starters were held hitless, which shows you how much damage the other guys did. 9th hitter Gianfranco Wawoe had 4 hits, including a 2B and HR, and 8th hitter Arby Fields had 6 RBIs on 3 hits (including a HR).
Clinton lost 9-4, so we didn’t get an org sweep, but we did get something better: top prospect Alex Jackson made his full-season debut after starting the year in instructs and crushed a 450′ HR. Clinton opens up a series with Burlington today with Nick Wells on the hill.
Game 40, Mariners at Orioles
Nate Karns vs. Tyler Wilson, 9:35am
Early game = abbreviated game post.
It’s funny the way we associated teams with a certain style of pitcher, or at least starter. The Orioles of the past few years were a great example: Miguel Gonzalez, Chris Tillman, Wei-Yin Chen all came from different countries, threw at various speeds, Chen was a lefty, Tillman a righty, etc., but there were all basically the same pitcher. They threw rising fastballs, gave up tons of fly ball contact, and used the resulting low BABIP to work around the home run issues that were a byproduct of this approach. I think most fans here would probably point to the Twins as well. Minnesota’s staff famously ranked last in baseball in strikeouts for a few years. It seemed that all of baseball followed the trend towards more and more whiffs, and the Twins decided that 1987 was great, and that they’d just like to stay. This is the club that signed Kevin Correia and Mike Pelfrey to free agent deals. The club that brought us Nick Blackburn, (the bad version of) Liam Hendriks, and Scott Diamond.
Given all of that, the only thing I think when looking over Tyler Wilson’s repertoire and results is: how did Minnesota miss this guy?
Wilson throws a straight fastball without much vertical rise, and he pairs it with a slow slider (MLBAM calls it a curve) and a change-up that’s remarkably whiff-proof. It all adds up to an extreme pitch-to-contact guy with above-average ground ball rates. This is Nick Blackburn reincarnate. Thus far, though, Wilson’s been fine as a 5th starter. In 66+ big league innings, he’s only given up 25 runs thanks to a very low HR rate that makes up for that fact he’s only struck out 28. That’s interesting, because in the minors, Wilson gave up tons of HRs. Is he going to get exposed the more hitters see him, the way Blackburn and, I don’t know, Blake Beavan were? I think so, and that in this era, it’s damn near impossible to be even a fifth starter with a K/9 under 4.
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Clevenger, C
8: Marte, SS
9: Martin, CF
SP: Karns
Rainiers open a home series against the Iowa Cubs today. In recent years, fans would’ve had this one circled on the calendar for months, as the Cubs high minors have been overflowing with big prospects, but that’s less true now. Still, it IS a good opportunity to see old friend Munenori Kawasaki, who’s now with the I-Cubs. They also feature CF prospect Albert Almora, as well as 1B Dan Vogelbach, RP Carl Edwards, Jr., and NPB single-season hit king Matt Murton. Donn Roach takes the hill for Tacoma against his former team.
Jackson opens a series against Chattanooga today with Brett Ash facing off with DJ Baxendale.
Tyler Marlette wins M’s affiliate player of the night last night with two HRs and 6 RBIs (one HR was of the grand variety). It’s been a rough year, but maybe this’ll get him going. Bako beat High Desert 10-3, by the way. Andrew Moore’s on the mound for the Blaze tonight.
Quad Cities beat up on Clinton, 9-3. Lukas Schiraldi starts today for the L-Kings against the Bandits’ Makay Nelson, who’ll be making his first career appearance above rookie-ball.
Game 39, Mariners at Orioles
Taijuan Walker vs. Chris Tillman, 4:05pm
Happy Mt St Helens day to you all. I’m not as into volcanoes as my one-time co-blogger Jeff Sullivan, but they are pretty cool, and the 1980 eruption is one of my earliest memories. I had a lot of fun camping down in that area a few weeks back, and I’m just struck at how much it’s changed. I’ve been going every few years, but the pace seems to have accelerated (or I hadn’t been down as recently as I thought).
I just want to thank Wade Miley for last night’s USSM game post-affirming performance. Using his four-seamer over twice as much as his sinker, Miley induced a bunch of harmless fly balls, and BABIP’d his way to a great outing. By FIP, it wasn’t great at all, thanks to his 1:3 K:BB ratio, but the whole thing seemed pretty deliberate. Miley wanted a specific kind of contact, and he was able to get it again and again.
Today, Taijuan Walker will try to get back to the form he was showing before missing a start with neck spasms. Of course, it’s worth remembering that Walker’s faced two fly-ball hitting teams in Tampa and Houston recently, and he’s been a huge ground ball pitcher this year. That said, Walker’s getting grounders this year NOT with his fastball, but with his split. His rising four-seamer looks a lot like Miley’s (albeit better, and coming from a right hander), and Miley may be able to talk about locations that work against a tough line-up like Baltimore’s. It’s not a real GB pitch. Instead, the reason Walker’s GB% has surged from 38% to over 50% this year is his splitter. Last year 59% of splitters in play against Walker were grounders. This year, it’s 85%. He’s throwing it a bit less, but it’s still a pitch that batters have a hard time laying off of, so it gets more swings and more balls in play than his other offerings. That’s important because the Orioles haven’t been great against splitters either this year or last (they were a touch above average on them in 2015, and well below in 2016).
He’ll face Chris Tillman, who’s off to a fast start in 2016. He’d settled into a role as a quiet middle-of-the-rotation guy who could use a low BABIP to “beat” his fielding-independent metrics and keep his team in a game. After a great 2013 seemed to indicate he could develop into a strikeout pitcher, his K% settled back down in the years since. With a good, not great walk rate and constant HR issues, Tillman always seemed like some bad luck away from collapse. Well, bad luck came in 2015, and his BABIP rose to a perfectly normal .293. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, but it sunk Tillman’s year. More baserunners, a few more HRs and a few more walks, and suddenly Tillman’s ERA was 5, above even his elevated FIP. It wasn’t HR/FB luck; his HR rate was actually lower than it was in 2013. But without the weird mojo that suppresses BABIP, Tillman couldn’t strand runners, and so he gave up runs in bunches.
This year, Tillman’s BABIP has crept over .300 AND his walk rate is currently at its highest level since his 50 IP 2010 season. So, he’s toast, right? In a strange development in a season full of them, Tillman’s refashioned himself as a strikeout pitcher, with 47 Ks in his 45 IP. Instead of bad luck, he’s gotten incredibly lucky on his HR/FB ratio, and the resulting mix of strikeouts and just 1 HR allowed have his ERA and FIP hanging out together in the mid 2’s. This isn’t all luck: Tillman’s FB velocity is up noticeably, and that helps. He’s altered his pitch mix substantially, too – he’s throwing fewer four-seamers, and more cutters and curves. The cutter’s an interesting pitch, as he’s able to get a lot of drop on it relative to his rising fastball. After years of so-so results, it’s been an effective pitch this year, particularly against righties. With a K rate of 26%, Tillman’s got another way to strand runners besides hoping for a lazy fly ball, and this he’s left many more runners on base. These changes are all quite striking, and quite sudden, so I’d welcome the M’s proving that they’re just small sample noise.
Speaking of small sample factoids that are still too good to ignore: Tillman remains undefeated against the M’s. In 8 career starts, Tillman is 6-0 with a 2.98 ERA. Against everyone else, he’s 55-43 with a 4.18 ERA.
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Iannetta, C
8: Marte, SS
9: Martin, CF
SP: Walker
The Rainiers beat Omaha 7-5 behind a great start from Adrian Sampson and some late-inning heroics from Rob Brantly. The Rainiers bullpen blew a lead in the 8th, but the R’s second catcher’s key 2-run single in the bottom of the 8th put the R’s back on top. Brantly also homered and doubled in the game. Sampson’s now pitched at least 6 IP in his last 5 starts, and has yielded just 6 walks in 51 IP this season. Tacoma’s off today.
Jackson dropped a 5-4 decision to Mobile. Tim Lopes and Leon Landry had two hits each. Early one for the Generals today on getaway day, and they beat Mobile 3-1 behind a solid (6 IP, 1 R, but no K’s) start from Ryan Yarbrough and a solid day at the plate by Guillermo Heredia. Emilio Pagan got a 2 IP save.
Bakersfield’s Tyler Pike started off the season strong, before a recurrence of his odd control issues. That’s why it was great to see him get back on the right track in last night’s 12-2 win in High Desert. Pike K’d 8 in 6 1/3, with 2 walks allowed. The Blaze hit four HRs, one each by Austin Wilson, Drew Jackson, Joe DeCarlo and Kyle Petty. High Desert IF Travis Demeritte’s hot start had him leading the minors in dingers, but he’s now one back. I mention this only because Demeritte was Kyle Petty’s teammate this winter in the Australian Baseball League, and I would like to credit the ABL for both players’ hot starts in 2016. Early game for Bako today, with Eddie Campbell on the mound.
I mentioned Clinton’s shutout win yesterday, but they’ll face Quad Cities tonight with Kyle Wilcox on the bump.
Game 38, Mariners at Orioles
Wade Miley vs. Ubaldo Jimenez, 4:05pm
It’s raining in Baltimore, but it’s supposedly supposed to dry up by game time.
Both clubs come into today’s game tied for the lead in their respective divisions, the Orioles with the Red Sox, and the M’s with the Rangers. Baltimore was supposed to have a powerful but whiff-prone offense, and they’ve delivered: they lead MLB in home runs, but while they’re above average in K%, they’re only at 13th – far below other similar teams like Tampa, Houston or Detroit. Manny Machado is proving that his break out was no fluke, and Chris Davis is off to a solid start, too. The surprise of the offense somehow isn’t CF, leadoff man and Rule 5 pick Joey Rickard, though I do wonder how often a Rule 5 pick gets to lead off for a good ballclub. Instead, it’s ex-Mariner disappointment Mark Trumbo, who shares the lead in HRs with Machado at 11, and is hitting .306/.362/.593 thus far. He’s penalized a bit for his defense, but he’s already produced 1.1 fWAR, or his season total from last year across the M’s and D-Backs.
The Oriole offense is tough because they combine a high HR/FB ratio with a whole lot of FBs. They’re #1 in baseball in HR/FB, and have the 10th-highest FB%. That’s going to be something for Wade Miley to think about tonight. A few years ago, you may have heard about this Andrew Koo article at BP noting that the Athletics had stockpiled fly-ball hitters, which, the thinking went, gave them an advantage against all of the ground-ball pitchers in the AL West at the time. On the cheap (of course), the A’s assembled a line-up that gave over 60% of its PAs to fly-ball hitters, by far the most in the majors in 2013. Those fly-ball hitters hit *best* against ground ball guys, and thus the A’s put together a solid offense by keeping an eye on a very different kind of platoon advantage.
Well, the Orioles have enjoyed some success against pitches classified as sinkers and two-seamers, as have other FB teams like the Mets and Blue Jays. Wade Miley’s been a ground ball guy for a while now, but unlike, I don’t know, Dallas Keuchel, he doesn’t *need* to be. Miley throws a rising four-seam fastball that, on its own, seems like a strong fly ball pitch. He’s also using it more this year than he has in the past; he was throwing his four-seam and sinker about equally often in his first few starts of the 2016 regular season, but he’s now throwing 2 four-seamers for every sinker. The Orioles’ linear weights against four-seamers is currently negative. This isn’t about getting Miley to go out of his comfort zone to combat an opponent’s weakness – it’s more that his recent shifts would seem to give him a better chance than might think (HR-plagued pitcher faces HR-slugging offense).
Ubaldo Jimenez is coming off a solid 2015, when a drop in his walk rate allowed him to post an above-average season after a poor 2014. Jimenez started 2015 strong, and kind of tailed off down the stretch, and unfortunately, he’s still not looking great. He’s given up a lot of the gains he made in walk rate, and his K% has dropped below 20% for the first time in years. He’s getting more ground balls thanks to using his splitter a lot more, but it hasn’t yet impacted his HR rate – when batters DO elevate the ball, they do damage. Thanks to the splitter, a curve, and an extreme over-the-top delivery, Jimenez never really had much in the way of platoon splits. But lefties are torching him this year, with a .386 average and a SLG% near .600. That’s BABIP-driven, sure, but it may be a sign that his fastball’s not able to keep them honest any more. Lefties and righties are teeing off on his fastballs, and at least *righties* can hit his splitter (lefties still struggle with it).
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Iannetta, C
8: Marte, SS
9: Martin, CF
SP: Miley
Tacoma enjoyed a walk-off 7-5 win over Omaha last night, scoring 4 in the 9th in the process. James Paxton started and posted a great K:BB ratio of 8:1 in 4 IP, but gave up 5 runs in a disastrous 2nd inning, giving up 4 extra-base hits in the frame. The bullpen made it hold up long enough for the Rainiers to mount a comeback. Ed Lucas homered twice (including the walk-off shot in the 9th), Luis Sardinas had 3 hits in the leadoff spot and Chris Taylor had 2 more. Oddly, Mike Zunino/Stefen Romero going a combined 0-9. The two clubs have a day game today on getaway day. Adrian Sampson’s going for Tacoma.
Mobile beat up on Jackson last night, scoring 6 in the first on their way to a comfy 10-3 win. Tyler O’Neill homered and walked for the Generals, but it wasn’t enough, as Jordan Pries (just sent down from Tacoma) gave up 9 runs in under 3 IP. Of note, Edwin Diaz pitched two innings for the first time, and was lights out: 1 hit, 0 BB, 5 Ks. Sam Gaviglio starts for the Generals in Mobile tonight.
The Stockton Ports smoked The Blaze’s Tyler Herb for 4 runs in the first and came away with an 8-4 win over Bakersfield. In Herb’s worst outing of the year, the RHP walked 6 after not walking more than 2 in any other 2016 start. Drew Jackson and Jay Baum both had 2 hits for Bakersfield. The Blaze head to High Desert tonight, with Tyler Pike on the mound-in-a-wind-tunnel in Adelanto.
Clinton was off yesterday, but kicked off a series against Quad Cities with a 6-0 win today. Zack Littell had his best outing of the year, with 7 2/3 scoreless IP and 8 Ks. Dalton Kelly singled and doubled, and Rayder Ascanio had 3 hits for the Lumberkings.
Game 37, Angels at Mariners
King Felix vs. Hector Santiago, 1:10pm
Happy Felix Day.
I started this series mentioning that I felt bad for the Angels, and that somehow, through their cavalcade of injuries and awful luck, they seemed less detestable. Yeah, so that lasted all of 48 hours.
Today’s match-up is a repeat of the game back on April 23rd, when Hector Santiago worked his high-fastball, hard to square up magic for 6 solid innings. As I mentioned then, Santiago’s in the Marco Estrada/Wei-Yin Chen family of pitchers who throw a lot of rising four-seam fastballs, and attempt to pitch around the occasional home run that this approach produces. Like Estrada, Santiago’s ERA’s been much better than his FIP, which is sky high due to an elevated HR rate. The key to this approach is that the rising FB seems to help Santiago maintain a very low BABIP (something ignored by FIP). One reason why is a consistently high pop-up rate. Even those fly balls that find the outfield tend to have a low BABIP.
Santiago’s fastball is only 92mph, and he doesn’t throw a ton of breaking balls. Instead, his secondary offering is a big change-up, that kind of reminds me of Mike Montgomery’s. It’s a decent pitch, and it gives him something to use against right-handed hitters. That said, he’s not able to reduce or eliminate his platoon splits the way some high-rising, over-the-top FB guys can – righties have hit him much harder over his career than lefties. The change-up allows him to post essentially equal K rates to RHBs/LHBs, but righties’ HR/9 is triple that of lefties. Why? For whatever reason, Santiago has vastly different batted ball profiles depending on the handedness of the hitter. Against lefties, he’s essentially league average – a few more GBs than FBs, and an overall GB% of 44%. But against righties, he’s about as extreme a FB hitter you’ll find, with a GB% under 30% over his career. All of those fly balls mean more HRs, and that’s why you’ll see a righty-stocked line-up today. The gap in batted ball outcomes is consistent between his FB and CH, but it’s still striking: lefties have a GB% on Santiago’s four-seam of 44%. For righties, it’s 20%.
Felix’s fastball velocity seems to be trending up again, as he averaged 91 against Tampa and 90-91 against Oakland in his last two starts. That’s not to say everything’s back to normal. He’s still struggling a bit to miss bats, but the contact he allows has never been better. He’s still getting great results with his change and curve, and he’s mixing in a bit more of his four-seam fastball in recent starts. His FIP’s still ugly thanks to that weirdly high walk rate, itself a product perhaps of batters’ increased patience against him. Batters’ swing rate against Felix has dropped by 5 percentage points this year, which is odd, and bears watching. Has Felix just thrown a few more obvious balls, or is this part of a deliberate strategy, especially when Felix’s command appears to be off?
1: Aoki, LF
2: Marte, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Iannetta, C
6: Seager, 3B
7: Lee, 1B
8: Gutierrez, RF
9: O’Malley, CF
SP: El Cartelua
Welcome back, Shawn O’Malley, who’s swapped places with fellow utility man, Luis Sardinas.
Tacoma beat Omaha 3-2 thanks to a solid start from Joe Wieland and another HR from catcher Rob Brantly. Today, Cody Martin takes the mound against Omaha’s Brooks Pounders.
Jackson beat Mobile 3-2, as Brett Ash pitched into the 7th IP. Ash had blanked the Shuckers for 6, but gave up a game-tying two-run HR to Kevin Cron in the 7th (Cron’s CJ’s brother, and a guy who spurned the M’s when they drafted him out of HS). Undaunted, the Generals got a bases-loaded walk in the 8th to re-take the lead, and Emilio Pagan made it hold up. The Generals play two today, with Dylan Unsworth and Andrew Kittredge starting today.
Bakersfield took a 9-1 lead, and then held on for a 9-6 win over Stockton. Andrew Moore was sharp for 6 IP, with only a solo HR sullying his line, but Thyago Viera had a bad time in his 1+ IP, giving up 5 runs. Kyle Petty and Daniel Torres each had three hits for the Blaze.
Clinton was swept in their double header against Peoria, with Nick Wells taking the hard-luck loss in game 1’s 3-2 game, and Joey Strain absorbing a well-deserved L after giving up 5 runs in the 9th in Peoria’s 7-2 win. Art Warren starts today’s game.
Game 36, Angels at Mariners
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Jhoulys Chacin, 6:10pm
The M’s will try to get the awful taste of last night’s loss out of their mouths by beating the Angels’ newly-acquired starter, Jhoulys Chacin. Chacin made his debut for Colorado in 2009, but enjoyed his first sustained big league campaign the next year (he started 2010 in the PCL, where he started on opening night against Tacoma). He looked like a junkballer, but a *good* one. Not a command and control guy (he walked way too many for that), but someone who made up for his lack of raw stuff by throwing 4-5 different pitches, trying to induce half-swings and bad swings in the process.
Injuries and inconsistency dotted his tenure with the Rockies, but for a while there, he really was an effective pitcher. He racked up nearly 4 fWAR in 2013, and had a pair of 2+ win seasons earlier on, which isn’t too shabby for a guy walking 4 per 9 at altitude. In those “good” years, he pitched around the walks by running a very low BABIP and keeping the ball in the ballpark. Befitting his junkballing ways, he seemed to do this differently each year. In 2011, he was an extreme ground ball pitcher. He’d give up walks, but he kept the ball in the ballpark with two different fastballs, a slider, and an odd change-up (I say odd, because it rises more than his sinker, which is kind of amazing given that it’s slower).
He suffered a pectoral injury the next year, which may have had something to do with a completely different batted-ball profile. In 14 starts, his walk rate plunged nearly 18 percentage points, leading to a predictable increase in HRs-allowed. In 2013, again healthy, he enjoyed his best season thanks to a drop in walk rate. His GB% rebounded, but ended up splitting the difference between his 2011 and 2012 seasons. After injuries doomed his 2014 season, the Rockies released him, and he spent 2015 pitching for the Cleveland and Arizona systems, ultimately making a few starts for the Snakes late in the year.
At some point last year, he picked up a cutter, giving him a sixth pitch. Despite some ugly results with it in 2015, it’s become a pretty important pitch for him; he throws it more than any breaking/offspeed pitch. It’s thrown pretty hard (88mph), and has similar vertical break to his sinker. Taking his arsenal overall, Chacin’s able to get the ball to move quite a lot horizontally. The four-seam and cutter have very little, but his sinker has 8″ of armside run, while his slider and curve get 7-8″ of gloveside movement.
The slider’s his best pitch, and for a guy who’s struggled to miss bats, it’s kind of stunning to see the whiff rates he gets on it. In 2016, over half of the swings on it have come up empty, and he’s induced whiffs on over 40% of the 2,500+ he’s thrown throughout his career. Of course, sliders generally come with platoon split issues, and that’s just what we see with Chacin: in his career, his FIP is 1.2 runs better vs. RHBs than LHBs. Chacin started 2016 with the Braves, and had an up-and-down month. He was brilliant in his first start, tossing 6 shutout IP and striking out 8. In his last start, he gave up 8 runs in 4 2/3 IP, yielding *4* dingers in the process after not allowing one in his previous 4 starts. I have no idea what to expect from Chacin going forward. This is a decent move by the Angels to get a competent starter for nothing (they dealt ATL an org guy, since that’s pretty much all they’ve got), but no one thinks Chacin’s going to replace Garrett Richards’ – or even Andrew Heaney’s – production.
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Clevenger, C
8: Marte, SS
9: Martin, CF
SP: Iwakuma
Wanted to mention this Prospect Insider piece yesterday, but I forgot. Jason Churchill goes over the standouts in the M’s system over the year’s first month, including Tyler O’Neill and Tyler Herb. It’s a great overview, and I essentially agree with all of it. I’ve been really bullish on Tyler Marlette for years, but that’s getting tougher and tougher to sustain. Meanwhile, Churchill tabbing O’Neill as the #1 prospect before the year is looking better and better. It’s hard to overstate how out-of-step that move was with the consensus pick of Alex Jackson, and the M’s have had such terrible luck with high-HR, high-K guys hitting AA (Johermyn Chavez, anyone?). O’Neill’s transition to AA has been remarkable, and it’s definitely been one of the young season’s highlights.
The Rainiers dropped the series finale in Fresno, 4-3 in 10 innings. Astros prospect Joe Musgrove was tough for 5 IP, and the Grizz bullpen was pretty stout the rest of the way. Donn Roach pitched well for Tacoma, yielding 2 runs in 6 IP, but Jonathan Aro gave up the tying run in the 7th, and Paul Fry gave up a walk-off fielder’s choice in the 10th. Rob Brantly homered for Tacoma. Today, it’ll be Joe Wieland opening a homestand for Tacoma as they host Omaha. Today’s game’s at 5:05. Royals prospect Hunter Dozier was recently promoted, and has hit very well this season.
Jackson blanked Birmingham 2-0, thanks to 6 shutout innings from Ryan Yarbrough. Yarbrough K’d 7 without a walk. DJ Peterson doubled in a run, which made up for Tyler O’Neill going hitless for the 2nd time in 3 games after a 14 game hitting streak. Emilio Pagan notched the save; he’s given up 8 hits and 6 walks in 16 IP with 22 Ks and only a single run allowed. Brett Ash starts tonight’s game in Mobile against ex-D’Backs prospect Charles Brewer.
Bakersfield beat Stockton 4-1, getting a solid start from Eddie Campbell who held the Ports hitless into the 6th. Chantz Mack homered, and Ivan Sanchez picked up the save. The ex-Pirates minor leaguer now has 26 Ks in 18 2/3 IP. No word yet on today’s starter.
Clinton was rained out, so they’ll play two today. Nick Wells and Lukas Schiraldi start against the Peoria Chiefs.
Game 35, Angels at Mariners
Nate Karns vs. Nick Tropeano, 7:10pm
The first-place M’s host the reeling Angels tonight, a team facing the loss of their starting shortstop, and big off-season acquisition, Andrelton Simmons. They’ve gone from a rotation headed up by Garrett Richards to one relying on Andrew Heaney (whoopsadoodle) and whatever BABIP mojo Jered Weaver has left. All of this has led to a spate of stories about the possibility of trading the Angels superstar, Mike Trout. Will this actually happen? No. But Trout self-evidently can’t make the Angels contenders on his own, and there sure as hell aren’t any reinforcements coming from the minor leagues. His value to the Angels is high, as he’s their marketable superstar, but not as high as it would be to other teams, who could use Trout in a playoff race. It’s all very logical, and in the final analysis, it’s just for fun. But it has to feel familiar: how many years have we endured the idle speculation of national writers about the necessity of moving Felix Hernandez to a contender, or musing on the prospect package that might get the M’s attention. As an M’s fan/Felix fan, that sort of thing was excruciating, even as people would say it was for the club’s own good. This memory, and this Meg Rowley piece at BP about how the Angels struggles and what M’s fans do about them, has me in the weird position of feeling bad for the Angels. I didn’t think it was possible either.
Today’s game features an interesting pitching match-up between two somewhat similar pitchers. I wouldn’t have picked them as similar before today, but hey, that’s research for ya. What leaps out at you from Nick Tropeano’s Fangraphs page is the way that so many peripherals are essentially cranked to 11, Spinal Tap style. K/9? Over 10! BB/9? Sky-high! Home runs? It’s rainin’ dingers! This is a Rob Deer-style, er, Joey Gallo-style for you younger folks, line-up. Fully 41% of his plate appearances end in a K, a walk, or a homer. That’s odd to me, because when Tropeano first came up with Astros, he seemed like an unremarkable, pitch-to-contact 5th starter. OVer time, he’s figured out how to use his slider to miss bats, which is great, but he likes missing bats so much, he’s also missing the strike zone. Despite the great slider, he doesn’t get batters to chase all that much. It’s just that when they do, they’ve got no hope. It all adds up to a right-hander throwing 90-91, and posting an overall contact% this year of 68.8%. After his 20-K game, Max Scherzer’s contact% was 72.2%. Noah Syndergaard’s is 69.9%. Only Clayton Kershaw and Jose Fernandez have lower contact% numbers.
But it’s not just that his three-true-outcome stats are cranked up. His BABIP allowed is .345! He ranks in the bottom 20% in expected linear weights given his batted ball velocity/angle – that is, even the contact he DOES allow is similarly jacked up. Strand rate? Insanely high. Fly ball rate? Top 5 in baseball, ahead of Jered Weaver, and within range of Chris Young’s. Nick Tropeano doesn’t do half-measures, apparently.
So, how many pitchers are there that, like Tropeano, have K’d over a quarter of batters they’ve faced, and walked at least another 10%? There are 9 thus far, and tonight’s match-up features two of them. Yes, Nate Karns has a *higher* K% (lower K/9, because Tropeano gives up more hits, walks, homers, everything), and a high walk rate. Whereas Tropeano’s three-true-outcome percentage was 41.2%, Karns’ is 39.7%. While Karns’ BABIP is a boringly average .295, the contact he’s allowed is among the loudest in baseball. Remember how Tropeano’s in the bottom 20% for contact quality? Karns ranks 486 out of 492 in expected linear weights per ball in play. Both Tropeano and Karns have been fly-ballers, and they’re lucky enough to play in parks that suppress fly ball damage. That said, their contact rates should account for park, so by these statcast numbers, they’re still giving up a lot of loud outs.
Looking at Jeff’s post about Drew Pomeranz made me think of Karns, too. Pomeranz is another of the 9 high-K, high-BB pitchers, and he’s off to a hot start with San Diego. He’d been a swingman for Oakland for a few years, and was then traded to SD for the about-to-be-non-tendered Yonder Alonso. This year, Pomeranz started throwing his curveball much more than he had in the past, and mixing it with high fastballs. Sound like anyone on the M’s? This year, Karns’ curve usage is up over 10 percentage points, throwing a fair number of high FBs, and reaping the benefits of both high Ks and low BABIP. Karns’ ERA is 0.70 runs better than his FIP while Pomeranz’s is 0.82 runs better. (Tropeano’s is 1.20 runs better, because of course it is).
1: Aoki, LF
2: Marte, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Smith, RF
7: Lind, 1B
8: Iannetta, C
9: Martin, CF
SP: Karns
News from the minors today includes the call-up of Gary Sanchez to the Yanks. The power-hitting Sanchez has been a big prospect for many years, and makes his debut tonight. The other call-up is former #1 overall draft pick and long-time cautionary tale, Matt Bush, who’ll join the Rangers tonight *12 years* after going #1 overall in the 2004 draft.
Adrian Sampson pitched well for Tacoma, and the Rainiers clung to a 3-2 lead before blowing it open with a 9th inning grand slam and a 9-5 win over Fresno. Chris Taylor had three hits and a walk, and Daniel Robertson had the aforementioned salami. Sampson gave up just 2 hits and 1 earned run in 8 IP. Donn Roach starts for the R’s tonight.
Jackson scored 3 in the 5th to take a 3-0 lead over Birmingham, but the Barons put up a 7 spot in the 7th to win, er, 7-3. Ryan Horstman gave up 6 runs without recording an out, which really stings the old stat sheet. Tyler O’Neill doubled for the Generals, who send Ryan Yarbrough to the hill tonight.
Sam Coonrod and the San Jose Giants confused Bakersfield en route to an easy 6-0 win. The Blaze managed three singles all night. Tyler Pike’s weird control problems had something of a relapse last night, as he walked 4 in 5 IP with just 1 K. The Blaze host Stockton tonight, who start Casey Meisner, an Oakland pitching prospect, and the main return in the Tyler Clippard deal a year ago.
Clinton downed Peoria 5-4 thanks to three hits from Dalton Kelly and a home run by Connor Hale. Art Warren starts for the Lumberkings tonight.
Miscellany: The AL West, Edwin Diaz, Minor Leagues
This post was supposed to be out yesterday for the off-day, but I… I didn’t finish it. Darn. Let’s talk about various things, but only briefly. Let’s not linger, for baseball is always approaching. It is relentless, and it is wonderful.
1: You know what else is wonderful? This picture:
This is Fangraphs’ Playoff Odds in the AL West from the beginning of the year until May 11th, when Jeff Sullivan used it in this post at Fangraphs. Jeff mentions that this isn’t just Fangraphs’ odds overreacting to the Astros slow start, but because visuals are nice, here’s BP’s Playoff Odds through yesterday:
In both, the M’s started out with the second-highest odds behind Houston, and in both, the M’s passed the Astros as the most likely playoff team some time in April. At the other end of the division, the A’s and Angels have quickly fallen off the pace, and especially in BP’s version, they’ve got essentially no shot now. This is pretty remarkable, given that the teams seemed bunched around .500. That said, this kind of wholesale re-shuffling of the playoff odds is only possible *because* the teams started off so close together. With the teams’ true talent near .500, the first month or so of actual games – and the M’s actual, sizable lead over Houston – is crucial. Houston was the favorite not because the systems thought they were great, but that they had a consistent yet small advantage. Even if that were true, it’s not going to be enough at this point. The M’s hot start means something.
The interesting thing, at least to me, is Texas. They’re the only team sticking around with the M’s, but Fangraphs thought they’d be awful, or whatever passes for awful in the parity-stricken AL. Thus, even now, they haven’t passed the Astros in playoff odds. In BP’s version, they started out ahead of the A’s and Angels, and thus their hot start combined with a not-abysmal estimate of true talent means their playoff odds are second-highest in the division.
That Texas is in second right now doesn’t really shock me – I thought they’d be a tough team, and thought they were being overlooked before the season. What HAS surprised me is the degree to which the division’s separated itself so distinctly so early. Some of this is due to injury: the Angels suffered some bad luck in the spring, and it’s only accelerated since the season began. They’ve now lost their ace, Garrett Richards, for the season, and must turn to Brendan Ryan at SS due to Andrelton Simmons’ injuries. Oakland, though, is harder to understand. I don’t think anyone thought their rotation was going to carry them, but the A’s are giving up 5.17 runs per game, well above even the Angels’ 4.47, and the Astros’ 4.72. Some of this is bad luck; Sonny Gray won’t have an ERA of 6 the whole year, and Jesse Hahn’s already replaced some of the stragglers. But Sean Manaea was supposed to help, and he’s allowed 16 runs in 12 2/3 IP. Kendall Graveman wasn’t supposed to be an All-Star, but his FIP’s over 6 at this point. They’re the A’s, and they play in a cavern: their run prevention will improve, and improve markedly. But I think any estimate of their true talent needs to be revised downwards a bit. Sonny Gray isn’t bad, by any stretch, but he may not be a true #1 starter. Graveman seemed like a perfectly fine #4-5, but if he’s closer to replacement level than that, then the A’s are kind of sunk.
Meanwhile, the early returns on some of the M’s big gambles look pretty promising. I don’t know that I’d even put Nate Karns in the “gamble” category, but the fact that the M’s weren’t sure he’d make the rotation 7-8 weeks ago sounds hilarious now. Steve Cishek really WAS a gamble, an ex-closer with declining velocity and someone who’d been traded off by a go-nowhere Marlins club. Dae Ho Lee, too, was no guarantee to make the roster, and has been the kind of bench bat/spot starter the M’s simply haven’t had in years, and his presence allows the M’s some flexibility in dealing with Adam Lind’s struggles. The M’s have been the beneficiaries of some good breaks, but they’ve also shown some aptitude for finding value. They’re in the best position this franchise has been in for many, many years.
2: So perhaps THAT’S why the M’s decided that now was the time to pull the plug on Edwin Diaz as a starting pitcher. As I mentioned the other day, Diaz led all of AA in K-BB%, and if his change-up wasn’t well developed, it clearly wasn’t preventing him from missing bats. Moreover, it’s not like Diaz was struggling against opposite-handed hitters. In his career, Diaz has been better against lefties than righties. Last year, over two levels, Diaz allowed a .730 OPS to righties, but just a .585 mark to lefties. His OBP-against has been better against lefties *every year*. I’m not saying that this proves he’ll always have reverse splits, but it seems to suggest that he’s learned how to use his slider against lefties effectively. The flipside is that he’s not a guy who’s succeeded by dominating righties, which means it’s harder to assume he’d instantly become a great situational reliever.
The numbers we have are limited, of course, and may not prove a whole lot. Brandon Maurer didn’t show much in the way of platoon splits in the minors, and then looked completely defenseless against lefties as a big league starter. If the M’s foresee those kinds of problems, the move makes some sense. Diaz’s delivery is low-3/4, releasing the ball around 5 1/2 feet above the ground, and way off towards third base. That delivery screams platoon splits, as it should give lefties a long look at the ball. That minor league lefties haven’t learned how to exploit it doesn’t necessarily mean that big leaguers won’t. The numbers don’t identify Diaz as a clear reliever candidate, but his body type and arm angle might.
That said, I’ve never really been clear on why such a move helps. Andrew Miller, Wade Davis, Zach Britton – these guys were all starters in the majors, and many other excellent relievers only moved to the pen when they’d failed as starters in the minors (or failed at hitting, in the case of Kenley Janson and Jason Motte). The M’s have a 20-day plan for Diaz that includes pitching on back-to-back days, and that’s the kind of thing that makes some sense to test months before you attempt it in the majors. But it seems like starting is a great way to build stamina, overall arm strength, and learning how read/attack hitters.
In general, I’m against letting the big club’s success drive player development goals and timelines. As pretty much the only high-ceiling pitching prospect in the M’s system, Diaz seemed too valuable for a role change in early May, particularly given how well he was pitching. I don’t think the M’s did Brandon Morrow any favors years ago by switching his role around, and I keep thinking about that experience when reading about Diaz. But while it’s only been a month and a half, the M’s player development group has earned a benefit of the doubt, at least a grudging one. Diaz has already improved his command, and it’s not insane to think he actually could help the big league club. If you change a prospect’s role because of an injury to a set-up man or two, that’s insane. If you accelerate a timeline because of an aromatic stew of injuries, a radically changed playoff picture and a big-league need, well, that’s still a bit crazy, but so is Steve Cishek: shut-down closer, so I’ma let you finish.
So what would Diaz look like as a reliever? Luckily, we got a preview during last year’s all-star break, when Diaz pitched out of the pen for the World team in the Futures Game. He gave up a dinger to Josh Bell, so the overall results weren’t great, but it afforded us a look at how his stuff plays in short stints, and how his pitches move. His velocity was excellent, sitting near 95, but touching higher. His slider looked pretty good as well, albeit without a ton of vertical break. Still, it’s his fastball that has me intrigued, and may be what got moved up the M’s timeline for him. BrooksBaseball categorizes it as a sinker, and it’s got impressive armside run (as you might expect from the whippy, low-3/4 angle) and very good sink for a pitch moving so fast.
Which relievers throw 95-97mph sinkers with 4″ of vertical movement? Well, that’s pretty much exactly what Zach Britton’s devastating sinker looks like, as Jeff Sullivan wrote about here. Now, that’s not to say Diaz has *pitched* like Britton or gotten batted ball results that look anything LIKE Britton’s. That in itself is something of a mystery to me, and something I hope this change in role might correct. I say that not because I think Diaz needs to pitch at the knees exclusively, but that his raw stuff could really play up if he tried to attack hitters the way Britton does. Obviously, it took Britton himself a long time to figure this out, and many years of getting annihilated as a starter, so I don’t think this is something that a 20-day plan can instill. But a change in approach is much easier to implement than an overhaul of mechanics or stuff.
Mechanically, Diaz and Britton are nothing alike. Britton’s much more over the top, which makes the horizontal run on his sinker *more* impressive. But given Diaz’s command, there’s no reason he couldn’t get ground balls when he needed to, and that’s something the M’s bullpen could actually use. The M’s bullpen currently ranks 5th in MLB in FB%. Cishek, Vincent, Nuno, Peralta and to a degree Benoit are all strongly fly-ball oriented, which means your GB guys are simply the ones without much of a big league track record: Mike Montgomery, Tony Zych and Mayckol Guaipe. Slotting Diaz in, particularly if he’s able to target his sinker a bit differently, could add a different dimension to the pen.
Just because Diaz throws a good sinker doesn’t mean he’s destined to become a great, Britton-esque reliever. If you just look at horizontal and vertical movement, there are other names that pop up as similar, including some whose mechanics look more like Diaz. Names like Trevor Gott, which is a name I’d not encountered before. There are no guarantees in life, but especially in pitching. That’s one of the reasons this move makes me nervous. That said, there are reasons to think this could work out.
3: #1 and #2 above are clearly linked. The M’s are doing well, they’re projected to be a contender, and that causes other things to happen, both within the organization and outside of it. How we as fans react to that depends a lot on our experience as M’s fans: where have we seen something like this before? What happened then? These are completely normal questions, almost hard-wired into the human brain, but that’s not to say they always lead to good answers. As M’s fans, we have seen a lot of bad things, and thus any precedent, anything that reminds you of something that came before is highly likely to be an unpleasant memory. How do you enjoy this ride when that keeps happening?
I saw this conversation with author David Rieff today about Rieff’s new book, “In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies,” and thought that it applied rather well to being a fan. Rieff’s thesis is that the old nostrum that those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it is obviously, conclusively false from an actual, empirical basis, and not all that convincing from a theoretical point of view. His solution is, as you can see by the title, to forget.
Baseball often seems like a very applied branch of history; it can seem to outsiders like it’s all tradition and memory, with a dash of Mike Trout and Aroldis Chapman thrown in to give it an athletic veneer. I don’t totally agree with that, but there are so many things about baseball, starting with its exhaustive documentation, that set it up for historical comparisons, for finding precedents, for connecting 2016 with 1986, 1956 and 1916. I think that’s kind of nice, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sometimes prevent you from getting swept up in something. Baseball kindly builds drama over a long season to such an extent that something like the 1995 season, or a playoff run like Kansas City’s in 2014 will absolutely overwhelm the “don’t forget about Brandon Morrow!” parts of the brain. They can shut them out entirely. But until you get there, the historical memory is going to keep pointing stuff out.
I think there’s been a lot of talk on twitter, and presumably on the radio, about how to react to this M’s team, and I’ve seen a lot of arguments that any argument from the past necessarily has no bearing on the present season. That just because Bill Bavasi was bad at his job doesn’t mean Jerry Dipoto has to be (my brain is telling me they both came from the Angels, and I’m telling myself to shut up). Or that just because Dustin Ackley flopped doesn’t mean, say, Ketel Marte has to. This is objectively true, of course, but I think what the pessimists are pointing to are patterns of behavior on the part of the org, not specific players. That is, we’ve seen overreactions to short bursts of success, and those things have hindered the club. This doesn’t mean that Jerry Dipoto’s going to trade Asdrubal Cabrera for Eduardo Perez again. It just means that we’ve been thoroughly conditioned to worry.
That’s not fun, I know. But my long tenure with this team means I am *always* waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I think that any suggestion that shoes can’t keep dropping ignores the powerful, Adidas-laden supercell that’s parked itself over Seattle for the past 10 years. If you keep getting hit in the face every time you look up, you learn to lower your gaze. That’s perfect for an analytical fan like me, as I can dive into other things and not feel crushed by a year like 2015, which felt familiar, almost routine to me, and seemed to drive other M’s fans batty. Today, though, I’m dealing with the opposite problem, and it’s something I’m trying to think through. The first rule of analytics is that you don’t dump 10 years of data because “he really looked different in May,” so I don’t think I’m capable of shutting off the “this feels familiar, and by familiar I mean dangerous” comments from my brain. I’m not sure I’m capable of the “Active forgetting” that David Rieff (and Nietzche) talk about. Maybe it’s just a matter of finding the subtle distinctions and clutching to them like they’re dispositive. Maybe Dae-Ho Lee is the gateway drug, and I just need to hear a few more Korean HR calls. As far as problems go, this is probably one of the best to have, so I’m not really complaining. But complaining, or rather suffering, is so ingrained at this point that everything feels a bit weird. I can’t imagine, but really want to try, what the playoffs would feel like now.
Game 34, Rays at Mariners
Taijuan Walker vs. Chris Archer, 12:40pm
Early one today, as the M’s go for a sweep of Tampa Bay. The pitching match-up is a great one: Archer’s young, but unquestionably the ace of the Rays (good) staff, albeit one who finished 2015 in a bit of a slump, and is off to something of a slow start in 2016, too. Walker was the frustratingly inconsistent would-be star who got absolutely destroyed early in 2015, before starting to figure things out down the stretch. What we’ve seen from Walker thus far in 2016 has blown even our high expectations out of the water.
Archer was originally an Indians prospect, and while he had great stuff, his abysmal command held him back. After moving to the Cubs org, his walk rate improved a bit, but after walking 39 (and hitting 2) in his first 70 IP of AA, the Cubs moved him to Tampa in a deal for Matt Garza. Even in the Rays system, the walk rate was disconcertingly high, but Archer’s one of the rare guys whose control has continued to develop/improve at the big league level. So after solid seasons in 2013 and 2014, the Rays looked like they had a solid #2-#3 – a guy whose pure stuff limited runs and hits, but who didn’t miss enough bats to make the leap. In 2015, he greatly simplified his pitch mix. Out went the sinker that had been his primary fastball, and he replaced it with a blizzard of sliders. He had a change-up, but it was mostly a show pitch, used less than 10% of the time. He became a FB/SL guy, and it *worked*. Archer’s strikeouts spiked, and his walk rate stayed low as well. In the first half of 2015, he was one of baseball’s top starters, and that’s saying something considering the performances we saw last year. But more and more walks started creeping into the box score down the stretch, and they’re showing up in the early going this year as well.
In the first half last year, Archer’s K-Bb% was 24.2%. In the second half, that fell to 17.9%, and it’s only partially recovered to 18.8% thus far in 2016. Let’s be clear: those are still good numbers, and any team in baseball would take that from a starting pitcher. But any team in baseball would also ask why their 27-year old ace fell off from a level of performance he’d sustained for over 100 IP just last year. Everyone’s trying to figure this out, and the theories range from mechanical issues to wildness to dumb luck. I’d like to see the guy figure things out and get back to where he was a year ago, but I’d also like him to wait until after this game to do so.
Speaking of control and improved walk rates, Taijuan Walker’s on an incredible run right now. His BB/9 is under 1, and second in baseball only to Clayton Kershaw (among pitchers who’ve thrown at least 30 IP). That low walk rate means his K-BB% is 11th in the league, just ahead of Chris Sale. Encouragingly, he’s gotten much better pitching with men on – this was his achilles heel last season, when batters slashed .318/.361/.575 against him with men on. This year (and yeah, I know the sample’s tiny, let’s just move on), they’re hitting .236/.255/.321.
1: Aoki, LF
2: Marte, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Smith, RF
7: Lind, 1B
8: Iannetta, C
9: Martin, CF
SP: Walker
The big news in the minors last night wasn’t any of the games, but rather the news that the M’s have decided to move SP Edwin Diaz, currently laying waste to the AA Southern League, to the bullpen. Jerry Dipoto mentioned that his change-up wasn’t really developing, but his FB/SL combo could be deadly in short stints (and we’ve already seen Diaz’s velo shoot up out of the bullpen in the Futures Game), and could even help the big league club this year. That’s nice, and I know the M’s bullpen has been hard hit by injuries, but it’s a bit tough to understand the urgency here. Diaz is 22, and is #1 at the AA level in K-BB%. As a starter. Sure, he could help the big league club this year out of the bullpen, but so will Joaquin Benoit and Tony Zych. The M’s bullpen has been very good, and while you’d always want more talent, more shut-down pitchers to turn to, it seems odd to say that Diaz can’t be a starter long-term when he’s excelling as a starter in AA at a young age. Hmmm.
Tacoma lost a lead late, but scored a run in the 10th to hold off Fresno 7-6. Cody Martin had a quality start. The two clubs face off again today at noon – no word on the Tacoma starter.
Jackson beat Birmingham 3-2. Dylan Unsworth got hit hard, but limited the runs, and Tyler O’Neill had 3 hits to pace the Generals offense. A hot streak from DJ Peterson is helping, too. Great to see that. Today, Andrew Kittredge gets the spot start, moving in from the bullpen as the Generals suddenly have a hole in the rotation, and he’s facing top prospect Carson Fulmer of Birimingham.
San Jose beat Bakersfield 4-3, as a four-run 5th doomed Anthony Misiewicz and the Blaze.
Clinton and Wisconsin play two today, with Art Warren and Zack Littell starting the games.
Game 33, Rays at Mariners
Wade Miley vs. Drew Smyly, 7:10pm
Sorry for the lack of posts here – just returned from vacation to watch Felix hold it together enough to pitch 7 strong against the Rays, and for Ketel Marte to have his best game as a professional. Let me bid all of you a happy belated Felix Day; I was encouraged by what I saw, though it’s still pretty clear Felix doesn’t yet have his royal command at his disposal. The two HBPs were particularly ugly, but Felix consistently missed his spots, especially with 2 strikes. That said, he was good enough to limit the Rays to 2 solo HRs, and the M”s defense ably handled the balls in play Felix allowed.
Last night felt like the first, clear, unambiguous, win for the M’s shift-happy ways. The M’s heavily shifted a number of Rays hitters, including guys pretty far from the ol’ David Ortiz/Adam Dunn template of “shiftable” hitters. Kevin Kiermaier was a great example – a guy who’s fast and doesn’t have a sky-high ground ball rate. It’s actually lower than average. Still, the combination of Kiermaier and Felix was one the M’s felt they could exploit, and they did: he grounded out in his first two trips against Felix, and hit a tailor-made DP ball the 2nd time that the M’s bungled into a FC. I’ve been thinking about the shift a lot recently, as Manny Acta’s tweeted a couple of times about how successful it’s been for the M’s. At the same time, though, analysts are starting to question why we’re not seeing more evidence of its utility now that teams are shifting 10X more than they did 5 years ago, or whatever the actual multiplier is. It’s gone from a very rare play, probably done by only a couple of teams, to a league-wide phenomenon. And yet BABIP is essentially unchanged. Teams wouldn’t DO it if it didn’t work, but, uh, how do we know it works?
Russell Carleton at BP had an interesting article a week ago arguing that it simply doesn’t work, and that a possible explanation is that pitchers pitch differently when they know their defense is shifted behind them. As a result, it’s possible that they give up, say, more home runs – they may be able to induce more GBs overall, but by sticking to smaller segments of the plate, or using specific pitches in specific locations, any “miss” may end up getting punished more severely than it would if they were pitching normally (read: more unpredictably). What we can see at a league-wide level says that BABIP is unchanged, and actually moving higher recently. If shifts don’t save enough hits to make a dent in BABIP, as this Rob Neyer tweet indicates, then…what? It seems to clearly limit singles to a certain set of players, but other than that, it all kind of washes out? I doubt that, given how enthusiastically teams have been adopting it, but I’d love to know more about how the M’s measure success. The most stunning thing I’ve learned in looking into this was that there’s no publicly available data about home runs when the defense is shifted. Fangraphs shows some stats with and without the shift, but the denominator is *balls in play*. Does K rate tank with the shift on? Do batters walk more? Fewer HRs, or nah? I have no idea. That seems like an easily addressed issue, but until then, what do these shift numbers mean?
Hey, so there’s a game today. Drew Smyly’s someone I’ve had an eye on for many years, since he was a promising hurler at AA for the Detroit Tigers org. Why did M’s fans suddenly care about Drew Smyly? Because the M’s and Tigers had just agreed on a deal that sent Doug Fister to Detroit in exchange for a package including Charlie Furbush and Caspar Wells, and a mystery prospect who’d be revealed later. Nick Castellanos was the big name, but most people assumed there was no chance he’d be thrown in. It came down to two pitchers: a reliever named Chance Ruffin, and the over-the-top starter, Drew Smyly. I have no idea if the M’s made the choice, or if Detroit decided to protect Smyly from poaching, but the M’s ended up with Ruffin, who retired a few years back, and the Tigers were able to use Smyly to land David Price.
Drew Smyly has missed a lot of time due to shoulder and other ailments, but when he’s toed the rubber for Tampa, he’s been an exceptional pitcher. As this Jeff Sullivan post details, Smyly’s racking up strikeouts at an impressive pace, especially for a guy with below-average velocity. Smyly struck out a lot of minor league hitters, but his ceiling always seemed limited both by his lack of top-shelf velocity and the fact that he didn’t have a big breaking ball. As I noted way back when he made his first start against Seattle in 2012 (holy crap I’ve been doing this a long time), he throws a cutter that features pretty much no discernable horizontal movement. Not 0″ of break, but it doesn’t look that different from his (straight) four-seam fastball. He has a slurvy curve/slider thing that likewise features basically no curving action whatsoever – his fastball gets 4+” of armside run, and his “curve” gets 2″ of armside run. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a curve that curves less, or slides less, depending on what you want to call the thing.
It hasn’t mattered at all. As Jeff’s article points out, the Rays got Smyly to throw his extreme-riseball four-seamer up in the zone, and batters have had trouble not only with *it*, but with everything else he throws, too. He gets whiff per swing rates of over 30% on his fastball, his cutter AND his curve. I said four years ago that he was going to need to develop a change, and while he has one, his entire career has been a rebuke to my by-the-book prediction of future problems with opposite-handed-hitters. Instead, his fastball’s turned into one of the game’s least likely weapons. It’s not just that his whiff rate is so high; the corollary’s actually more shocking to me. Batters have a hell of a time putting Smyly’s 90-91mph fastball in play. This year, batters have offered at 45% of his four-seam fastballs. They’ve taken another 38% for called strikes. When they swing, they come up empty on 32% of them. They foul off another 42%. Put it all together, and batters are putting 12% of his fastballs into play. Since the beginning of 2015, that figure is just 13%.
For some context on that, batters put 16% of Noah Syndergaard’s four-seamer in play (and over 20% on his sinker). Stephen Strasburg? About 18%. Andrew Miller? 15% last year, so hey, pretty close. The only pitcher I can find with a modicum of effort that has a lower BIP rate is Aroldis Chapman. That’s kind of insane. For starters who are in the same basic ballpark, the guy who’s the closest parallel is probably Marco Estrada, who’s at around 14% this year and was in the 16% range last season. Like Smyly, he’s got a four-seam with a ton of rise, and he’s not afraid to pitch up in the zone. While Estrada’s not getting quite as many whiffs with his heater, he’s getting even more foul balls this year, and he drew a ton of fouls last year as well.
An obvious question is: how to teams attack this? Can you pick up a high spin fastball on video and subtly adjust your swing in response? Or is adjusting your swing in response to each opposing starter a sure recipe for messed-up mechanics and a self-imposed slump? The M’s looked troubled at times by Matt Moore’s extreme *horizontal* movement – movement that seemingly allowed Moore to sneak strikes when non-Marte M’s took pitches middle-middle. Dae Ho Lee looked confused by a first-pitch center-cut fastball, and I think he did it to Kyle Seager as well. If Smyly leaves any middle-middle pitches hanging around the M’s need to attack them. They also have to be mindful of the fact that Smyly thrives by getting hitters to expand the strike zone upwards; limit the swings on pitches at eye level, fellas.
1: Marte, SS
2: Gutierrez, LF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, RF
5: Iannetta, C
6: Seager, DH
7: Lee, 1B
8: Sardinas, 3B
9: Martin, CF
SP: Miley
Tacoma’s Stefen Romero and Chris Taylor have continued their hot streaks, which makes up for Mike Zunino going a bit cold over the past couple of weeks. The M’s split a four-game series at Albuquerque and now take on Fresno tonight behind Cody Martin.
Jackson finished up their own four-gamer with Jacksonville, and they too split the series. Jacksonville won an 18-inning contest on Friday. The Generals are in Birmingham now, and have Dylan Unsworth on the hill tonight. The South African righty’s started off the season well, limiting hits allowed and posting an ERA under 1 over his first five starts.
Bakersfield suffered the ignominy of being swept in a series to Inland Empire, the Angels’ affiliate and a team that came in 7-21. Inland Empire “features” Cuban 2B Roberto Baldoquin, the player that’s been Jerry Dipoto’s biggest miss in the international market. Baldoquin signed an $8m bonus a few years back, one of the highest bonuses ever for a bonus-pool player. Playing in the Cal League last year and this year, Baldoquin has compiled a .290 slugging percentage and a .262 OBP. Bakersfield hosts San Jose tonight.
Clinton won their series with Lake County 2-1, and won the opener of their series against ex-affiliate Wisconsin yesterday. They’ll face off with the Brewers affiliate today, with Art Warren on the mound opposite Dominican teen Marcos Diplan.
Speaking of the minors, the News Tribune’s Bob Dutton linked to a Baseball America report on minor league park factors that found Cheney Stadium was the most extreme home run park in the PCL. To say this is a counterintuitive finding is quite an understatement. For years, Tacoma’s been the preeminent pitcher’s park in the hitter-friendly PCL. Last year, though, teams hit more HRs in Tacoma than in any other park in AAA, and hit 39 more at home than were hit on the road. That’s…remarkable, and so strains what we know about places like Albuquerque and Las Vegas that I wonder what they did to account for schedule and players. Statcorner’s park factors show a very distinct gap between the factors for lefties (home run heaven) and righties (average-to-a-bit-below). Interestingly, Tacoma still grades out as a pitcher’s park because run scoring – despite the maybe a fluke, maybe not dingerfest last year – is still much lower there than in other PCL parks. At this point, it’s apparent that the remodel had a much bigger impact on HR/FB than I ever would’ve thought possible. I’m still betting the under on the park factor BA reported, and by a lot, but it’s clear Tacoma’s much more like an average park (and may in fact be aiding HRs now) than it was in the good ol’ days.