Game 1, Indians at Mariners
King Felix vs. Corey Kluber, 7:10pm
Happy Felix Day, and a blessed Felix Year to you and yours.
I was just re-reading last year’s opening day post, and I guess I’d forgotten just how optimistic I was/most everyone was a year ago. The Astros’ death star wasn’t yet fully-operational, and the successes of 2016 were so recent and so predictive, or so we thought. Everything feels different this year, right down to the fact that some people were actively affronted by the fact that Felix got tonight’s start over James Paxton, a pitcher who’s pretty clearly superior at this stage. I understand that Paxton is better, but I know that there hasn’t been an athlete so fiercely/bizarrely loyal to the Northwest than Felix. I know that baseball is more life-affirming when Felix is stomping around the mound, jawing with Adrian Beltre, and getting excited by a great defensive play behind him. I know that baseball’s long season feels especially laborious when Felix is either struggling or injured or both, even as I realize that watching peak Felix coincided with some depressing M’s teams.
I didn’t put it in the “the upside” post below this, maybe because I don’t want to be reminded when I go back and look and see how those predictions did. But while it’s not exactly likely, I’d give just about anything to watch Felix post a back-from-the-dead ace-style season. For a number of reasons, people point to 2018 as a critical one for the M’s: their aging core will start to break up after this year, as Nellie Cruz is a free agent, and the M’s last, best shot at contention runs into the ahead-of-schedule rebuilds from several challengers. The Astros and today’s opponents have build impressive clubs, and are still breaking in talented rookies. As a result, many people – myself among them – think that the M’s need to win the wild card to declare this season a success. They’ve leveraged their meager farm system, they went all in on Ohtani and came up short, they sat on the sidelines in the most team-friendly free agent market in memory – they’ve pretty much shown that 2018 is a make or break year, even as they’ve hesitated to hedge against the risks that fans see.
But there’s an exception, I think. If Felix returns to form and pitches the M’s to meaningful baseball late in the year, and if the M’s long-dormant farm system shows signs of life, I think I’d take that. To be fair, this consolation prize feels about as far-fetched as the M’s fending off the Twins/Angels/Red Sox/whoever and winning a wild card slot, and let’s be honest: the entire idea of winning the wild card is itself a consolation prize. The M’s are not one of baseball’s elite teams, and won’t be one for a while, but they employ Felix Hernandez. On opening day *five years ago* I wondered if we/I weren’t falling into a trap that Felix was “enough” for a beaten-down fanbase who’d essentially stopped demanding contention. In the five years since, even after the addition of a second wild card, the M’s playoff drought stretches on. I want the M’s to build a perennial contender, and I’d love to see Felix start a postseason game in Seattle. But I’ve seen the M’s fail with awesome Felix, and I’ve seen the M’s fail without awesome Felix, and the former is better.
The Indians went to the World Series two years ago, and won 22 games in a row last year. With Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, and the most strikeout-inducing pitching staff the game’s ever seen, they look like they’ll be contention for years. Like the Astros, their success isn’t simply the product of high draft picks going supernova, like Lindor. The Indians have done a better job of developing talent than most, and today’s starter, Corey Kluber, is a perfect example. An afterthought on draft day, and then a small part of a minor trade, Kluber never had any kind of prospect sheen. He had a solid pitch mix, with a low-90s sinker, a decent change, a very good, sweeping slider and then a harder cutter, and it got him to the big leagues in 2012. He wasn’t amazing, but he seemed like he could miss enough bats to become an innings-eater. Instead, some relatively minor changes have turned him into one of the game’s best pitchers, and one of the few pitchers able to keep his HR/9 under 1 even as baseball looks more and more like a home run derby.
He’s done it by making a series of adjustments. I’m not sure how conscious a process this is for Kluber, or if it’s just something he and his pitching coaches work through as needed; Felix famously avoided video and never seemed like a cerebral pitcher, but he did the same thing for many years as his upper-90s fastball left him. The first big move that Kluber made was to drop his arm angle a bit. This move, which happened between 2012 and 2013, saw him gain a tick on his fastball, but more importantly, it magnified the gap in horizontal movement between his sinker (his primary fastball) and his slider. His sinker still wasn’t great, but batters couldn’t quite figure out his breaking stuff. He started throwing even harder in 2014, and that’s when he really became the Cy Young hurler we know today: his slider’s break was a foot and a half different from his fastball’s, and dropped 9″ more than his sinker did. Batters slugged .123 off of that slider in 2014. By 2015, his velocity dropped back again, and thus the movement gap between FB/breaking balls wasn’t what it had been. So, he started throwing his four-seam fastball, and built that gap back up again. After throwing less than 4% 4-seamers in 2014, he was over 20% in 2015, giving him a pitch that had a gap of 12″ in vertical movement from his slider and a still-impressive 6″ from his cutter. In 2016, with his movement and velo again retreating somewhat, and Kluber’s performance fell back as well. But he was back with a vengeance in 2017, throwing a blizzard of sliders/cutters and cutting back on his fastballs.
One of the things that’s always been noteworthy about Kluber is his command of his slider and cutter. These are not chase pitches; he’s able to throw them for strikes whenever he wants. His slider, a pitch he threw more of than any other pitch last year (OK, tied with his sinker), was called a ball less than 25% of the time he threw it. It generated swings on nearly 60% of pitches, which is absolutely insane for a breaking pitch, and those swings came up empty *half* the time. Kluber won his second Cy Young thanks to the pitch that led him to record at least 8 Ks in 14 straight starts, and post a season with a K% of 34.1% with a walk rate under 5%. Kluber’s become a generational talent, seemingly out of nowhere. How much of last year’s startling level of play can he sustain? Will his velocity drop again? Will he throw his slider even more, a la Lance McCullers of Houston, or will he throw more cutters, the way he did in 2015?
Like last year, the M’s open up against one of the best teams in the game. It’s nice to see how the M’s stack up, and it’s also nice that the M’s don’t HAVE to compete with the Indians/Astros. If you want the M’s to compete toe to toe with the best in the game, you’re probably not reading this, and you gave up on this club years ago. But it’s nice to have these yardstick series early on, so we can see how the M’s new contact-oriented approach fares against the team that allows the least amount of contact. We’ll see how Felix looks against a formidable line-up, and we’ll get to see some early indications on how the M’s bullpen might be deployed.
Random predictions:
1: M’s finish 82-80. A great year from James Paxton isn’t enough.
2: HRs continue to climb, as the league sets a new all-time dinger record, along with another strikeout record.
3: At least three teams end the year in arrangements other than the typical 5-man rotation; the Angels 6-man, the Rays 4-man, and someone else tries either piggy-back starters or goes to the pen so often that the distinction between “SP” and “RP” grows kind of meaningless.
4: Teams shift less on the infield, and more in the outfield.
5: The Athletics are better than people think, as are the Braves.
6: Carlos Correa/Bryce Harper win MVPs, and, to be extra boring, Kluber/Kershaw win Cy Young. Garrett Richards/James Paxton, two oft-injured potential aces receive votes, though.
The line-up:
1: Dee Gordon, CF
2: Jean Segura, SS
3: Robinson Cano, 2B
4: Nelson Cruz, DH
5: Kyle Seager, 3B
6: Mitch Haniger, RF
7: Ryon Healy, 1B
8: Mike Zunino, C Mike Marjama, C
9: Ichiro!, LF
SP: KING FELIX
[EDIT: Zunino’s scratched with a sore side; please don’t be an oblique problem.]
Ichiro! Felix!
Go M’s! I’m not the most optimistic fan, but cheers to all of you who are, and a head nod and a clink of the ol’ whisky glass to my fellow pessimists. We’re all M’s fans, and that’s easiest to see on a night like this. God, I’ve missed baseball.
For further reading, check out the Times’ preview section centered on the elephant in the room: the M’s looooong playoff drought.
Mike Curto’s got you covered if you’re interested in how Tacoma’s roster’s shaking out with all of the late moves the M’s made as spring training ended – Gordon Beckham left, then came back, Jayson Werth will join them soon (and I hadn’t realized Werth’s dad played on the 1978 PCL Champion Tacoma Yankees), and Ben Gamel may be rehabbing. With the MLB schedule pushed forward, there’s now much more of a break between opening day in the majors and opening day in the minors.
Mike Marjama’s mini-documentary/video over at Uninterrupted is really worth your time. The M’s catcher opens up about his struggles with body isssues, which led to an eating disorder that could’ve killed him, and his journey back to health. Lookout Landing had a great story on it, and they’ve embedded the video. Check it out.
New M’s beat writer TJ Cotterill has a great interview with M’s skipper Scott Servais at the TNT.
Shannon Drayer has a great article on the new Felix who’ll be making his 10th opening day start tonight.
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21 Responses to “Game 1, Indians at Mariners”
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Can’t believe Zunino’s out. Seriously, what did we do to deserve this kind of luck with injuries?
I think your move to Brazil was probably the catalyst.
Happy opening day everyone from Aotearoa/New Zealand. Thanks Marc for keeping site going. Your game posts always a must read.
Ha!
Not on me, Mike.
It definitely feels personal sometimes, though. You wouldn’t believe what I went through just to get the damn game on.
Nice to see the Angels blow a 4-run lead and go on to lose their opener.
Looks like we have 3 corners of the globe covered tonight. Anyone following from Europe?
Hate seeing these extreme shifts. Someone is likely to bunt.
Five and a third on 85 pitches for Felix with 0 runs, 1 hit, and 2 walks.
That works.
Well that was only one game but it was fun to see Felix pitch well. And if he’s going to be successful this year it ought to be with him pitching stylistically like he did tonight.
Vincent is sure regressing quickly.
Vincent wasn’t bad. Gordon’s misread led to a blooper and Seager was probably too far in, which led to that odd single through the shift.
Haniger with 3 solid hits. Any questions regarding his timing appear to have been answered.
We deserve this, right????
Was feeling karma for making fun of Rodney today… I don’t care if Diaz hits the mascot 3k’s will work with 2 HPB. 1-0!
Yay from China!
And my internet connection was repaired/upgraded yesterday so MLB.TV made it all the way through in HD with no hiccups! YAY! Yay! First clean broadcast I’ve been able to see here in 3 years….
In my last reaction, I let irony have sway. Fact is, I don’t feel any particular gravitational pull towards either optimism or pessimism this year. But my interest in the team has returned. The combination of Dipoto and Servais interests me. No, it isn’t the watch-through-the fingers, carny funhouse, kid-in-the-candy-store atmosphere of the Jack Z days, but to be honest that often only felt like walking onto a used-car lot somewhere on Pacific Avenue south of Tacoma … I slipped my emotional wallet into my front pocket. Worse, of course, were the years on end of what seemed like an eternal mobius strip, where expectations and frustrations just followed each other in a predictable, back to the drawing board, pattern. Here, it doesn’t feel like that. Not high expectations … but at least true interest. I like it.
Go M’s!
Delayed response, but yes a hearty LET’S GO! from London
Yikes anybody here actually live in Seattle lol? Im in Rochester, NY looks like it’s easier to watch them on TV in China than it is here. I could get the MLB package but seems like such a waste since it’s hard to stay up till 2am to watch games and I have zero interest in watching any other team. The won’t let me delete the YES network from my lineup either 🙁
I was watching on MLB.tv last night and, like always, tried to overlay the radio broadcast audio while watching the video. It was horribly unsynchronized, where the audio was occurring before the video. Did anyone else have that problem?
I much prefer the TV crew so no issue for me.
Road games outside the Pacific Time Zone are always over or mostly over when I get up. So I get up, eat some breakfast and then watch those games on delay.
I am pretty sure radio feed will always be a few seconds earlier than television. Speaking of which, ESPN also carried the game and Dave Flemming and David Ross each tried a grasshopper. They also showed a new graphic on the Safeco scoreboard “MV” for mound visits.
It worked all last year in perfect synchronization. Strange. Must be another “enhancement”, like no longer being able to watch two games at once.