Game 99, White Sox at Mariners, Nerds
King Felix vs. Dylan Covey, 7:10pm
Happy Felix Day.
Last night, the M’s were able to overcome a great performance by James Shields thanks to a 10 strikeout gem from Wade LeBlanc. Among the many sentences I never thought I’d write this year, that one may take the cake.
Today’s game preview will be an abbreviated one, as I’m heading up for the Baseball Prospectus event before tonight’s game against the White Sox. Come say hi if you’re at the game.
The M’s, back at 20 games over, send the newly-healthy Félix to the hill against the Southsiders’ stopgap, former Rule 5 guy, Dylan Covey. Covey has been in the A’s system, but struggled with injury and control, but you can see what the Sox saw in him: armed with a 95 mph sinker and a solid slider, he offers the promise of Ks AND grounders, if it’s often obscured by a present reality smothered in walks and hard-hit balls.
As a righty sinker- slider guy, Covey struggles against lefties, and teams are putting more lefties in their line-ups against him. Should be a good match-up for Seager, Span, and the suddenly hot again Dee Gordon.
The other big news of the day is that Kyle Lewis has been promoted to AA Arkansas, though the circumstances aren’t great: Arkansas CF/M’s prospect Braden Bishop’s season’s over after a pitch broke his wrist.
The Second Half Begins: White Sox at Mariners
Wade LeBlanc v. James Shields, 7:10pm
Two extremely homer-prone starting pitchers face off in the much more hospitable climate of 2018-in-Seattle. James Shields, one of the originators of Tampa’s “pitch up in the zone” philosophy used a located fastball and a good change to become a reliable #3/occasional #2 for many years. As he lost a tick on his FB, the game changed around him, and thus not only did he allow more balls in play (as his strikeouts dropped), that contact turned more and more damaging. After signing a deal with the go-for-it Padres (this was a thing; it’s easy to forget, as it only last a few months), he collapsed thanks to a barrage of dingers. His FIP crested 6, and the Padres gifted him to the rebuilding White Sox, where he’s been since. Not even Don Cooper could help him last year, as the rabbit ball and close confines in Chicago combined to produce tons more HRs.
In 2018, though, Shields is enjoying a very mild sort of resurgence. He’s not a #3 anymore, or anything close – but he’s also not solidly below replacement level anymore. He’s posting his second straight year with a well below average BABIP, and the newly changed ball has made his stuff playable again. He’s transitioned away from his change-up to cutters and breaking balls (including two species of curve), but keeping lefties from doing damage is still a critical issue. Maybe it’s improved command, maybe it’s the ball, but one night-and-day change for him has been on non-pulled contact. A year ago, Shields had a .417 wOBA-against off of his four-seam and sinker. This year, it’s down to just .216. You can see by his pitch chart that he keeps it away, inviting opposite-field or up-the-middle contact – but it’s essentially unchanged from a year before. His approach isn’t different, but the results are.
One other thing’s different though, too, making it hard to tease these variables apart. Shields has abandoned his old, straight, rising four-seamer and has completely moved his position on the rubber. In, say, 2013, he threw from a 3/4 slot that produced a FB with 10.5″ of vertical rise. His sinker was more a change of pace, as it didn’t really sink much, but had a bit more armside run. So far, so standard for a Rays pitcher equipped with a curve. Last year, his vertical release came down by a half a foot, and he was one foot closer to 3B. He had the same armside run but much less vertical run, implying a bit of cut and gyro spin had infiltrated his four-seamer. Despite getting pounded last year, he doubled down this off-season, moving his release further out, and dropping his arm slot even more. Now, his sinker has very little rise, and his weird cutter/four-seam hybrid thing has over one standard deviation less rise than average. Have batters noticed? Well, *lefties* certainly have. After years of getting destroyed by southpaws, his FB is holding them in check this year. Whatever deception his new mechanics have hasn’t quite carried over to righties, and lefties are still drawing walks off of him, but his old fastball had become unplayable – not MLB quality in any way – and he’s managed to figure out a work-around.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Segura, SS
3: Haniger, RF
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Span, LF
7: Healy, 1B
8: Herrmann, C
9: Heredia, CF
SP: LeBlanc
Lots of moves for the M’s as their DL’d players get healthy and as Cano eyes a return to action. First, the M’s have recalled John Andreoli and 1B Dan Vogelbach. That’s interesting, and seems to put some pressure on struggling 1B Ryon Healy and CF Guillermo Heredia, but there’s no news on that front. They’ll need another move in a day or two as Félix Hernández comes off the DL. Mike Zunino is *eligible* to come off the DL, but the M’s are sending him to Tacoma for a while; he’ll start tonight at Cheney. Vogelbach has clearly done all he can at AAA, but still doesn’t quite enjoy the faith of Scott Servais (just signed to an extension, by the way). As hard as it is to understand when the incumbent sports a .270 OBP, Vogelbach has looked lost in the bigs, and needs to show he’s dealt with the weaknesses that MLB pitchers exploited. Of course, to demonstrate that, he’s going to need to actually play. Hard to
Mike Morin was outrighted to Tacoma, removing him from the 40-man for the second time this season. Erasmo Ramirez is throwing again, and Zunino will catch him down in Tacoma tonight.
In a press conference, GM Jerry Dipoto praised Scott Servais in announcing the manager’s extension, noting a great record in one-run games (hat tip, Shannon Drayer). He noted that he’s shying away from rental players at the deadline, especially involving top prospects – ergo, don’t get your hopes up for Cole Hamels. He also mentioned that Robbie Cano’s taking grounders at 1B in the Dominican, and that he could play 1B/DH and some 2B when he comes back, with Dee getting most of the time at 2B, and occasional games in CF. That makes some sense, but puts one/both of Ryon Healy/Dan Vogelbach’s status up in the air. Sure, Robbie can’t play in the postseason, but what will the M’s do with 3 1Bs?
I looked at wOBA-allowed on FBs – Four-, two-seam and sinker this year in three pitchers who’ve previously struggled with HRs – Wade LeBlanc, James Shields, and Marco Gonzales. This year, they’re all essentially tied at .363 (ok, Gonzales is at .364). If we turn that wOBA into delicious, protein-rich wOBACON (exclude Ks/BBs), a big shift occurs: Gonzales and LeBlanc’s results get worse (as we remove their strikeouts), but Shields’ actually get *better* as walks drop out. The FB isn’t a K pitch for Shields – it’s just weird enough to produce bad contact, which is reflect in his wOBA on Contact. But for LeBlanc and Gonzales, those FBs are a key part of their attack, and they sneak backwards Ks and whiffs with their elevated heaters.
Can the M’s Upgrade Their Rotation?
Yes, I mean, the answer to that is pretty straightforward. WILL they is a bit trickier, and doesn’t lend itself to clear, definitive answers. And after years of doing this, I’m drawn to definitive answers, as nothing else in this forward-looking, saber-y, projections-and-stuff blog leads to them.
But we can’t just leave the post there; we’re going to have to wallow around in the much of “will they?” and laugh about it in a few weeks once the definitive answer comes. The past two to four weeks have helped to shake things out, not just the teams who might be vying with the M’s to buy talent (welcome, Oakland), but the types of players each team may want to acquire. The shift in the way they acquire players is clearer now, too. The M’s have traded just about everyone save for their last two first-rounders, and without marquee names to move, the M’s strategy has been more about taking on salary. That’s not a critique, by the way. The M’s have a barrier, and they’ve been creative in surmounting it. The M’s got Mike Leake and cash for a so-so prospect because St. Louis, flush with a bunch of prospect arms, wanted the payroll flexibility. When the M’s wanted to acquire a set up man, they got Alex Colome in part by giving up Andrew Moore, but also by taking on Denard Span’s contract (and have watched Span outperform Colome quite handily). The M’s big names – especially Kyle Lewis – have red flags now, so setting aside the fact that the M’s would be loath to trade away a potential star for a rental, Kyle Lewis might not get it done. But the team has money, and if they’re serious about giving themselves the best chance to win in 2018, they could spend it. With Manny Machado finally moving (to the Dodgers), Deadline season is well and truly upon us. Will they M’s be a part of it, or did they shoot their shot back in May?
There’s a problem here, though. The M’s – like most teams – would like to stay below the self-imposed luxury tax threshold, which is at $197 million this year, and rises to $206 million next year. The M’s aren’t in serious danger of exceeding it this year, but they’ve actually committed more money than any team in the division for 2019. That is, they start planning for 2019 with over $125 million in guaranteed expenses, way more than the Astros (under $80 M), the A’s (of course), and more than the Angels, the team with Albert Pujols on a back-loaded deal through 2021. This has given the M’s stability; with the exception of Nelson Cruz, a big chunk of the M’s talent is under contract for years to come. But it means the M’s may see constraints on how much they can add in future years.* All of that to say that, just as the M’s have limitations in marketable prospects, they have limitations (perhaps self-imposed) on the kinds of multi-year contracts they can take on, too.
Another limitation in this year where parity up and died is supply. There are a *lot* of downright awful teams out there, but the problem is that these teams already shed tradeable talent; it’s why they’re awful! Teams like, say, the Marlins don’t have pitchers (or hitters) under long-term contracts now. They shed their biggest over the winter in the Giancarlo Stanton trade. They can get a mint for JT Realmuto now, and the M’s could probably use him, but they’re not going to be serious players for guys with multiple arb years remaining. That’s why the M’s haven’t been connected with Michael Fulmer, the Tigers hurler who may net Detroit a big prospect haul: the rebuilding Tigers want premium prospects for a guy like that. The same may be true for teams like the Twins who have a couple of starting pitchers on one-year pillow contracts. The lack of long term commitments mean the contract itself is affordable to every team in MLB, meaning it may be harder (but not impossible) for the M’s to compete. The M’s best shot at acquiring a starter or impact reliever is to take on a big free agent contract, but that’s hard to find on teams that are already well out of the race.
Learning from the most recent Rays trade, the M’s could compete for one player by taking on another’s contract, too. That would push their offer up the list with many teams, but that runs into another constraint. I’m assuming here that the M’s want to at least explore an extension for Nelson Cruz. He’s been, by just about any measure, one of the most important, successful free agent acquisitions the M’s have ever made. If he’d sign a two-year deal here, I think the M’s would try to move heaven and earth to make it work – he’s been instrumental in fostering the team’s positive culture as well as hitting loads of dingers. But taking on too many contracts now would make that more difficult. I don’t think it’s impossible, but it’s a constraint that the M’s are no doubt aware of.
So what to do?
1: Get Cole Hamels+
Hamels will be a free agent at the end of the year, and while Ryan Divish pooh-poohs the idea here, he’d be a good fit. He’d be a huge boost to the M’s rotation in a playoff series, especially if James Paxton pitches in the wild card game. He wouldn’t imperil any deal for Nellie, as his 2019 option is only $6 M. And without years and years of club control, the Rangers can’t really expect big-time prospects in exchange for Hamels, who’s currently having a so-so season.
But if Hamels won’t get MUCH, he’ll still drive a decent return. I can’t imagine the M’s would give up Evan White/Kyle Lewis for two months+ of Hamels, but then, I don’t know the M’s thinking on what the proper balance is between “win at all costs in 2018” and “we can be good in 2019, too.” There’s a way to get Hamels without giving up too much, though. Get Shin-Soo Choo, too. Choo’s having a great year, but is owed another $42 million through 2020. I imagine the Rangers wouldn’t mind off-loading that commitment, and that Choo would waive his limited no-trade deal (not sure if Seattle’s on his list of blocked teams) to come back to the area he lived in for years. A year ago, Choo’s salary looked like dead money. This year, that’s much less true. As such, taking on an aging Choo for ~$50 million may not be seen as such a big offer. But the Rangers are now in a full-on rebuild, as Hamels and Beltre could both by free agents this winter. Where would the M’s play Choo? They already have an All-Star at DH *and* RF, Choo’s two positions. Moving him to 1B would block the one spot the M’s could use Robinson Cano at, especially if they don’t want to yo-yo Dee Gordon back to CF. But hey, that’s for Scott Servais to figure out.
Cost in talent: Moderate
Cost in 2019-2021 contracts: $6M option buy-out; $20 M 2019 option.
Likelihood: 10%
2: Take on Jordan Zimmermann’s deal
It made so much sense at the time. Jordan Zimmermann had been remarkably consistent as a National, and thus his 5 year, $110 million deal with Detroit seemed a good fit for the win-now Tigers. Almost immediately, everything fell apart: Miguel Cabrera faltered, Victor Martinez got hurt/fell off a cliff, and Zimmermann himself started to struggle at the big league level. His K rate plunged, and with it his strand rate. It had been above 74% in every full year in DC, but it’s never been terribly close to 70% in Detroit. Despite their commitment to Cabrera, the Tigers seem set to selling everything off, including Michael Fulmer, who won’t even reach arbitration until next season. If they’d rather have prospects than pay Fulmer a comparative pittance, then they’d probably love to escape the last two-plus years of their commitment to Zimmermann.
Importantly for the M’s, Zimmermann is actually starting to pitch well again. His strikeouts are back, and his command’s improved. The problem is that he’s been hit hard by injuries over the past few years, and apparently got a “nerve-blocking injection” in his neck over the All-Star break, which sounds like fun. Still, we’re talking about an All-Star caliber pitcher who probably won’t command a lot in trade as long as the M’s are willing to take on most/all of his deal. He’s owed more than Choo, so this could interfere with their pursuit not only of Cruz, but several other players who’ll become available in the 2018-19 off-season – guys like Hamels, JA Happ, and the one-year contract folks like Jake Odorizzi.
More importantly, this would require some serious input from the M’s coaching AND training staff. Can Mel Jr. help Zimmermann continue to do whatever it is that enabled these promising 2018 results? Can the M’s keep him relatively healthy through 2020? Unless the M’s know exactly what changes he’s made and how to help coach him, I think they stay away. If they see something they could work with, this would be an interesting move, and it wouldn’t be a rental contract of the sort Divish reports the M’s owners hate.
Cost in talent: Moderate/low
Cost in 2019-2021 contracts: Moderate/high
Likelihood: 15%
3: It’s Happ-ening dot gif
Since last we saw JA Happ, he’s enjoyed a remarkable late-career renaissance, first in Pittsburgh immediately after leaving the M’s, and then again in Toronto. Happ started his career as a fairly average pitcher in terms of strikeouts, but he always had some annoying control issues. Towards the end of his first stint in Toronto, something seemed to click, like he was poised to unlock some bat-missing strategy, but we never really saw that in Seattle. Instead, he settled back in as a perfectly reasonable (if boring) low K middle of the rotation guy. Traded at the deadline, he went to Pittsburgh and instantly struck out more than a batter an inning while cutting his walk rate. After being in the high teens/low 20s in K%, he shot up to 27%+ in what was admittedly a small sample. It was large enough that the Blue Jays signed him to a three year deal, though, and while his K rate fell back to earth initially, it’s over 26% for 2018, good for a K/9 of 9.99, which is stunning even taking into account the whiff-prone era we’re in. Happ is no longer a bottom-of-the-rotation guy.
That’s a blessing and, if you’re an M’s fan, something of a curse. Happ’s in the last few months of his three year deal; he can walk away at the end of the year. Because of that, his contract is cheap enough for any team to take on. That’s going to make talent in terms of prospects the key determinant of where Happ finishes the year. Who can offer more? Well, the Yankees apparently want pitching, and they’ve got more brand-name prospects to offer Toronto. So too could one of the NL contenders, like Philadelphia, who lost out on the Machado sweepstakes. It’s too bad, because Happ makes a lot of sense in Seattle, which is why he’s been linked to the M’s in trade chatter. It just seems like other teams could fit better, especially if the M’s don’t want to give up one of their few premium prospects for a rental.
Cost in talent: Moderate
Cost in 2019-2021 contracts: 0
Likelihood: 10%
4: Nate Eovaldi? Nate Eovaldi.
Nate Eovaldi of the Rays is like Happ, but with the risk and reward amped up. The oft-injured fireballer has thrown 51 IP this year, and none in 2017 as he rehabbed from surgery. He tantalizes with plus velocity and a four-pitch mix, but the results have always lagged behind the scouting reports. Still, what he’s shown in very limited duty this year make him intriguing as a short-term boost to a rotation. He’s throwing more of his secondaries and relying less on his straight-but-speedy fastball, and his K:BB ratio has never been better.
All of that’s true, but his overall season line (again, 51 IP) is right in line with his frustrating career marks. Sure, much of that has to do with his last start, a 2 2/3 IP disaster that saw him give up 8 runs to the Twins, of all people. But on the other hand, the hot streak that saw him shoot up trade target boards was really based on just his three starts before *that*. Small samples are always intriguing, but his career numbers don’t scream “maybe trade your top prospect for this?”
Again, this is the type of pitcher who would be an interesting risk if the bidding comes in lower than expected (8 runs to the Twins?) AND if the M’s coaches have some sort of a plan to improve upon the intriguing raw material that Eovaldi represents. If there’s a mechanical or repertoire change to make, or a change in his delivery to amp his deception, sure, maybe you go for it. Failing that, it seems like a massive risk to ask a frustratingly inconsistent starter to add consistency to your rotation. That hasn’t stopped the M’s from exploring the idea, and I’m glad they’re doing so. I just don’t see it happening, despite the history of deals between these two clubs.
Cost in talent: Moderate
Cost on 2019-2021 contracts: 0
Likelihood: 15%
I get that it feels gross to even worry about contracts. I get that it’s silly to get too fixated on prospects at the expense of putting the best possible team on the field right now. But while there has to be some sort of balance, the M’s are very clearly in win-now mode. They can make a splash in this market if they want to give up Lewis plus some of their relief arms, but given the returns we’ve seen for Machado and now Brad Hand/Adam Cimber (a big-time, high-minors, top-50 hitting prospect+), sprinkling Warrens and Festas over the proposal may not be enough. The question is are they willing to give up Kyle Lewis?
* The M’s CAN exceed the threshold, of course. Depending on exactly how the hypothetical contracts worked out, it might make sense to blow past it for one year, without triggering the larger penalties meted out to teams who exceed it three straight years.
Game 96, Mariners at Rockies – Welcome to the Show, Matt Festa + The Enigma of Jon Gray
Wade LeBlanc vs. Jon Gray, 6:10pm
Jon Gray started for the Rockies on opening day. He made his last start for Albuquerque in the PCL. Depending on your pitching metric of choice, Gray has performed basically at replacement level, and his demotion was well-earned (an RA9 of 5.97, leading to a BBREF WAR of 0.4). Or he’s been a top-20 pitcher in the game, having already accrued 2.7 WARP, ahead of Miles Mikolas and Noah Syndergaard (DRA of 2.72). Or somewhere in between; a good pitcher undone by bad luck (FIP of 3.12, BABIP of .386). His strikeouts and walks are amazing, but it seems like every ball in play goes for a hit.
He plays in Colorado, so some of this is park related, but not all of it. Gray avoids HRs thanks to a four-seam fastball without a ton of rise. It’s not exactly a sinker, but I can imagine it feels heavier to hitters than, say, uh…Wade LeBlanc’s. Colorado’s defense has been quite good this year at turning grounders into outs – better than the league average easily – but it just hasn’t worked out for Gray. Sure, his BABIP is worse at home than on the road, but it’s still pretty bad on the road.
That brings up an odd thing that ties these two clubs – and today’s starting pitchers – together. Both are profoundly changed by their home park. The Rockies allow a BABIP of .328 at home, by far the highest in the big leagues. The M’s smaller park helps them to restrict base hits – they’ve posted a .279 BABIP at Safeco. On the road, everything flips. The M’s shoot up to .309, 5th-worst in the game, while the Rockies – finally away from their neverending outfield – plummet to .283.
No one’s been more affected than LeBlanc, who’s got a .207 BABIP at home vs. a .333 mark on the road. At home, he’s much more aggressive, with more strikeouts and also more home runs. On the road, he gives up more balls in play, and those balls in play are much more likely to find a gap. Does he give up harder-hit balls on the road? No, his average exit velocity is actually lower on the road, and it’s the lowest figure for any M’s starter. It’s just that he’s a fly ball guy, and that type of pitcher is going to do very, very well at Safeco if they can pitch around a HR or two. Gray gives up harder contact at home, but even still, he appears to be extremely unlucky.
Gray throws a four-seamer at 95-96, and his outpitch for many years has been a slider, thrown around 90. It’s been a swing-and-miss pitch, and also a grounder generator (handy at altitude), and while it’s still his best pitch of 2018, it’s lost a bit of its luster. Sure, his fastball’s getting hit fairly hard, but for whatever reason, Gray’s *always* given up a high BABIP on his fastball (and in general). This year, he’s doing it on his slider as well. Of course, this is the circular feedback loop of peripheral stats. His overall BABIP is bad, so it’s quite possible that it’ll be bad for each individual pitch he throws. There’s nothing different in the movement/speed of his pitches…they’re just going for base hits, and while it’s pretty exceptional this year, it’s always been a problem for him. So what to make of Gray? I don’t really know, I’d just settle for making him today’s losing pitcher.
The M’s optioned last night’s starter, Christian Bergman, back to AAA after the game. To fill his active roster slot, the M’s have brought up AA reliever Matt Festa, whose stats I included in yesterday’s post. He’s been solid for Arkansas, and owns an impressive 44:7 K:BB ratio in his 31 2/3 IP, but he’s also given up 37 hits. That helps explain how someone with 12.5 K/9 and 6.3 strikeouts for every walk has an ERA over 3, and an RA9 essentially at 4. Festa pitched in the AFL this past fall, showing three pitches: a four-seamer with some sink, thrown at 93-94, a slider at 88 with pretty good two-plane break, and a slurve-y curveball at 82 with more downward movement. He throws them all from a low-3/4 arm slot, so you’d think he’d have some platoon split issues; that’s been the case this year, though it’s not been a big issue for him in the past. All in all, from his heavy four-seamer to the movement on his slider, he *kind of* reminds me of Gray. Sure, one’s a reliever, and Gray both 1) throws much harder and 2) more over-the-top, so they’re not exactly identical twins or anything. But there’s also this: Festa’s allowed a BABIP north of .400 this year.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Segura, SS
3: Haniger, RF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Span, LF
6: Healy, 1B
7: Gamel, CF
8: Herrmann, C
9/SP: LeBlanc
Gamel gets his second-straight start in CF, which doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence with a fly-baller like LeBlanc on the mound. Still, it’s probably a boost to the offense, as Gamel’s got strong platoon splits. Mitch Haniger’s recent knee injury probably rules him out of CF, and Denard Span had a foot problem this week as well. So, Ben Gamel flanked by two slightly hobbled corner OFs in the largest, toughest to defend OF in the game. Hmm.
Tacoma beat Fresno thanks to an IF-single turned “little-league triple” for noted speedster Dan Vogelbach. A sac fly later, the R’s had the go-ahead run in their 8-7 win. Williams Perez, the most successful of the indy-league signings the M’s made in June, starts today’s game opposite Trent Thornton of the Grizzlies.
Chase de Jong was sharp, and Chris Mariscal homered in the Travelers 7-2 win over Springfield last night. Max Povse starts for Arkansas tonight, who again face the Cardinals.
The Stockton Ports doubled up on Modesto 4-2, thanks to a good start from recently-demoted Kyle Friedrichs. Friedrichs was doing fairly well in AA, but then stumbled badly in a few starts at the end of June/early July. Nick Wells makes his 5th hi-A start for the Nuts tonight.
Clinton shut out Great Lakes 1-0 thanks to a solo HR from Ariel Sandoval and a brilliant 11 K, 1 BB performance on a bullpen day. Ryne Inman started, and then Tyler Jackson went the next 4 IP. Kyle Wilcox K’d 5 in just 2 IP before Sam Delaplane finished it off in the 9th with 2 Ks of his own. Delaplane’s 14.2 K/9 ranks second in the Midwest League.
Everett faces Salem-Keizer tonight, with Orlando Razo starting for the AquaSox. The Frogs beat S-K last night 3-1; 1B Ryan Garcia homered for Everett.
Game 95, Mariners at Rockies
Christian Bergman vs. Antonio Senzatela, 5:40pm
The M’s close out a wildly successful first half with a three-game set in Denver. With the All-Star break looming, the M’s decided to put James Paxton on the 10-day DL, figuring he’ll only miss one start or just have it delayed slightly. If the back spasms that knocked him out of last night’s game are as minor as the M’s have intimated, then this is a great way to give him a bit of extra rest. It also allows the M’s to bring in another starter, so they’ve gone back to AAA to pick up Christian Bergman, the guy who began his MLB career as a Colorado Rockie.
Bergman made one start for the M’s this year, and he made it a memorable one. On May 16th, he two-hit the Rangers over 7 scoreless innings, striking out 5 and walking none. It recalled his two best performances last year – a seven-inning, 0 run gem in Fenway Park, and 7 1/3 shutout innings against Oakland that saw him strike out 9 A’s. Bergman *does* this every once in a while, and it’s pretty cool to see a guy with a high-80s sinking fastball keep big leaguers off balance. The problem is that he can’t sustain it. The problem is that when he’s not shutting down a big league line-up, he’s…uh…vulnerable:
Christian Bergman has started 9 games for the M’s. In one third of them, he’s gone at least 7 IP, given up 0 runs on a combined 6 hits. In all the others, he’s thrown 28 2/3 IP with 46 hits, 11 HRs and 28 runs.
— Marc W (@USSM_Marc) May 16, 2018
Is this just down to the subtle-but-vital differences between MLB and AAA? Can he cut a John Wasdin-style swath through the PCL, but still struggle in the bigs? Eh, no. His problem isn’t command, and, refreshingly in 2018, isn’t home run troubles. Rather, Christian Bergman gives up too many hits. In the minors, batters are hitting .296 off of him, pretty close to the .307 they’ve hit off of him in the big leagues. His HR rate is far, far higher in the big leagues, but that’s probably to be expected. While the PCL has a mostly-deserved reputation as a dinger-paradise, with plenty of parks at altitude, it sees fewer HRs per game than MLB. The real difference between the PCL and MLB isn’t dingers at all – it’s base hits.
This season, the PCL, as a whole, is batting .270. MLB is batting .247. While MLB sees a HR in 2.99% of plate appearances, the PCL’s down at 2.53%. Sure, sure, but batting average is way down in MLB. In the past 10 years, MLB’s overall batting average has generally been in the mid .250s, dropping from the low .260s in 2008-09 as strikeouts continued to rise. The PCL has only dropped *under* .270 once, and had a peak of .286 in 2011. It’s been a while, but team averages north of .300 weren’t unheard of, and Las Vegas still gets above .290 with some regularity. For a variety of reasons, the PCL just sees tons of base hits, and a lower K rate is only part of it. The K% in the PCL this year is over 21% – lower than MLB’s, but on par with MLB in 2016. MLB has, in general, better fielders, more power, and smaller ballpark dimensions, and that makes the PCL game noticeably different. It also makes you understand how a pitch-to-contact guy like Bergman can get singled to death in the PCL and come up to the bigs and alternate between great results when freakishly talented defenders and solid positioning turn balls in play into outs, and also get dingered to death when his command isn’t perfect. All to say: I think limiting hits is a really interesting metric in the minors, as a low HR rate may be easier to get through luck. The same’s true in reverse: a batter with a solid batting average may be decent, or he may be the 8th-best hitter on Las Vegas. Power production and plate discipline are probably better correlated with MLB success.
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9:
SP: Bergman
Ljay Newsome and two relievers combined on a 3 hit shutout against Visalia. Eric Filia had two more hits for Modesto. Newsome’s been hit hard at times, but possesses an 85:8 K:BB ratio for the Nuts. Someone wants another invite to MLB spring training next year.
Tacoma beat Fresno 4-3, Clinton got demolished 10-1, Everett lost 3-1, and Arkansas edged Springfield 6-5.
Some prospect season lines of note:
Kyle Lewis: .266/.310/.441 (high A)
Evan White: .288/.348/.412 (high A/AAA)
Julio Rodriguez: .336/.424/.507 (DSL)
Josh Stowers: .255/.364/.455 (SS A)
Braden Bishop: .286/.359/.417 (AA)
Joe Rizzo: .270/.341/.359 (high A)
Art Warren: 15 2/3 IP, 10 H, 22 Ks, 14 BBs, 1.72 ERA (AA) (on DL)
Seth Elledge: 33 1/3 IP, 15 H, 46 K, 12 BBs, 0.81 ERA (high A)
Matt Festa: 31 2/3 IP, 37 H, 44 Ks, 7 BB, 3.13 ERA (AA)
Max Povse: 92 1/3 IP, 97 H, 103 Ks, 44 BBs, 5.65 ERA (AA/AAA)
Wyatt Mills: 36 1/3 IP, 27 H, 41 Ks, 8 BBs, 2.23 ERA (high A)
Game 94, Mariners at Angels
James Paxton vs. Tyler Skaggs, 7:00pm
The rubber match of this three-game set features the best pitching match-up on paper, with the M’s ace facing the Angels’ ace…especially now that we’ve heard Garrett Richards damaged his UCL in Game 1.
Tyler Skaggs, the lefty so beloved by Jerry Dipoto who acquired him with the D-Backs and then again with the Angels, is having a Paxton-esque season. That is to say, he’s been a talented enigma, and someone I think Angels fans have always wondered what he could do with a full year. No coming back from TJ surgery, no weird dead-arm phase, no random DL stints. To be clear: he doesn’t have Paxton’s nuclear stuff, but Skaggs has been a big-time prospect for years and his injury history is nearly as long as Paxton’s. Well, I guess now we know. He’s been healthy, and he’s blowing away his previous levels of performance, with more than a strikeout per inning, low HRs-allowed, and a GB% that’s more in line with where he was pre-TJ.
He works primarily with three pitches: a fourseam fastball, a curveball, and a change-up. This year, he’s added a sinker that he reserves for right-handed bats, nearly exclusively. That’s kind of an odd choice, if you think about it: sinkers have one of the higher platoon splits of any pitch type. That is, if you cared about the numbers, you’d throw the sinker to *lefties* and give the righties a steady diet of four-seamers. The Angels are counseling the opposite, which is both weird, and entirely consistent with the way they’ve operated for years. I mentioned this with regard to Skaggs himself in 2014, and for a while, he listened – he all but stopped using his sinker at all in 2016-17, but it’s back now. Given he had a HR problem before, and fairly hefty platoon splits, maybe this makes sense? Well, not *quite*. His platoon splits this year are even wider – they’re massive. It’s just that he’s utterly dominating lefties so much, the fact that righties are faring OK is hardly a concern. This seems like an approach designed to fix one problem, and while it’s not exactly remedied that problem, the process of attempting to fix it may have fixed other, much larger, problems.
Out of curiousity, I looked at the average wOBA-against for lefty pitchers throwing sinkers to righties. As you can imagine, they fare much, much worse than when they throw sinkers to same-handed batters. But again, the change in the environment this year due to an apparently new ball becomes evident. This year, righties have produced a .357 wOBA against lefty sinkers/two-seamers. (Lefties put up a .366 wOBA against righty sinkers). Last year, though, righties put up a .371 wOBA, and .367 the year before. As in so many other cases, it’s like baseball has just re-set the clock to 2015, and we’re just moving along like 2016-2017 never happened.
So, the last time the M’s were facing the Angels, Corey Brock at the Athletic had an article about the M’s run differential and how their record didn’t match up with it. In that piece, the M’s front office said that they care about their own “Control the Zone” metric, or the differential between good and bad K/BB outcomes. I wrote about it here, and about how that metric told essentially the same story as run differential – the M’s were good by the CtZ metric, but 3rd-best in the division and a far cry from the Bostons/Houstons/New Yorks of the world. Today, there’s another article about the M’s apparent luck – this one by Tim Brown at Yahoo. Predictably, the players don’t care a whit about their pedestrian run differential, and they absolutely shouldn’t. Nick Vincent mentions one of – probably THE – big reasons: Edwin Diaz. But the whole article gave me an excuse to re-run the numbers.
The M’s CtZ number is now 87, good for 9th in baseball. That’s good, but it’s *still* 3rd in the AL West behind Houston (352) and Anaheim (125). Houston’s number is where it is because their pitching staff has the highest K% in the game while their batters the 4th-lowest. The *Angels* fare well thanks to the 3rd lowest batter K%, and middle-of-the-pack numbers everywhere else. The M’s simply weren’t built to succeed in CtZ, not with the 4th-lowest walk rate on their offense. They’re still good, mind you, with a very low pitcher walk rate and solid K% numbers. But CtZ still isn’t going to show *why* the team’s outperforming its run differential. As I mentioned a month or two ago, run differential and CtZ are highly correlated; more highly correlated than CtZ and wins. The A’s, meanwhile, look terrible by CtZ (-81), but a bit better with my even simpler HR delta. Back in the spring, I mentioned that net HRs – HRs hit minus HRs allowed – may be a better lens to look at teams in the current day and age than the other FIP components, walks and strikeouts. Indeed, the correlation between net HRs and wins is 0.80 to CtZ’s 0.70, and it’s got a better correlation to run differential. This may just be a fluke, but I think it adds some credence to the idea that even as HR rates come down, HRs are *still* absolutely critical to wins in the modern game. Controlling the zone is important, don’t get me wrong, but with K rates moving up inexorably, it’s harder and harder to string hits together to create runs. Thus, there may be diminishing returns to something like Houston’s utterly bonkers CtZ numbers; so much of that gets wasted. Either that, or they simply built their pen around the wrong closer. Heh.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Segura, SS
3: Haniger, RF
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Healy, 1B
7: Span, LF
8: Heredia, CF
9: Freitas, C
SP: BIG. MAPLE.
Congrats to David Freitas on his first MLB HR last night; he’s rewarded with a second straight start (ok, ok, Skaggs left-handedness had more to do with it than the HR, but still…good for him).
The PCL defeated the hated International League *in* IL territory, and with that job done, the Rainiers begin the second half tonight against Cy Sneed and Fresno. Johendi Jiminian takes the ball for Arkansas as they face Springfield, while Ljay Newsome starts for Modesto against Cody Stapler and Visalia. I sincerely hope the Rawhide can pull together some sort of Office Space-themed promotion for Stapler. 2017 7th rounder Max Roberts starts for Everett.
Game 93, Mariners at Angels
Marco Gonzales vs. Jaime Barria, 7:00pm
The less said about last night’s loss, the better. Mike Leake didn’t have it, and the M’s couldn’t figure out the Angels’ pen. Everyone has an off-night.
Tonight’s game features Marco Gonzales, perhaps the story of this dream-like season for the M’s. While he seemed like a potential break-out player, his ceiling seemed limited, and the HR troubles that sunk his 2017 could be a concern going forward. But Gonzales has thrived this year, cutting his HR/9 in half and throwing more strikes, resulting in a much-improved K-BB% as well. The specific areas of improvement haven’t been the ones we/I keyed in on back in the spring: his velocity is *down* from 2017, for example, and while his cutter’s been a solid pitch, it doesn’t appear to have been the key to his success. Instead, it’s been his curve and his ability to sneak high four-seamers past hitters who are looking for something else.
Yesterday’s post centered on the ball changing and HRs falling league-wide, and how that’s helped the M’s in particular (just as the more dingerific ball hit them harder than most). Today, let’s talk about how/why pitchers are reacting to it. One of the big changes last year was the changing value of the high fastball. As hitters learned to elevate *low* fastballs, the high fastball seemed like a good pitch to employ – you get the benefit of the lower BABIP that fly balls bring, but the penalty in SLG% and HRs is low- to non-existent as hitters blast away on low pitches. That all changed last year, as hitters elevated high pitches over the fence, and so the M’s, who’d focused so much of their pitching strategy on high fastballs, were sunk. The league put up a wOBA of .308 on high fastballs in 2016 (a year with a lot of HRs, remember), but that jumped to .320 last year. In 2018? It’s back down to .308 again, as the slight mishits that flew over the fence last year stick around and find gloves again.
Have the M’s noticed? Here’s a graph charting the vertical height of Marco’s pitches:
The points are months, and you’ll notice that Marco’s highest ever average FB height have come in the last two months. He’s not throwing his fastball low anymore – now he’s got the cutter for that. The FB is now thrown up, where it pairs really well with his bigger breaking curve.
How about James Paxton? Yeah, same thing:
With the Big Maple, you see not only a higher average FB, but a change in his slider/cutter from a pitch thrown way low – a chase pitch – to one that can occasionally sneak a called strike.
This isn’t universal or anything – Mike Leake still looks pretty much the same, which is funny given the narrow band his season stats move within – but there are enough that it starts to feel more like a pattern. To be clear: the M’s aren’t exactly doubling down on their “fly balls or bust” strategy from last year. They’re throwing fastballs up, but they’re throwing fewer four-seamers. The cutters are lower, and, in theory, can get ground balls. This strategy isn’t foolproof; they still give up HRs, and the cutters/sinkers haven’t been stellar, at least at the team level. But this strategy seems to have worked fairly well, at least for Gonzales and Paxton.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Segura, SS
3: Haniger, RF
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Gamel, LF
7: Healy, 1B
8: Heredia, CF
9: Freitas, C
SP: Gonzales
M’s fans have officially #sentSegura. Thanks to a great marketing campaign, Jean Segura won the final spot in the All Star game in a fan vote. He’ll join Nelson Cruz, Mitch Haniger, and Edwin Diaz in DC. The All Star game itself is on Tuesday.
The PCL All Star game is going on now in Columbus, and it’s already a slugfest – it’s 10-7 in the 6th. Arkansas are facing Springfield in the Texas League tonight. Oliver Jaskie starts for Clinton tonight, Ashton Goudeau for Modesto, and a rehabbing Rob Whalen takes the mound for Everett. Yesterday, Luis Liberato hit his 9th HR for Modesto in a 6-4 loss.
Mariners at Angels – The Ball is Different, and It’s Changing the AL West Race
Mike Leake vs. Garrett Richards, 7:10pm
Back in mid-April, I wrote this article on the sudden drop in HRs league-wide, and how that seemed to be the result of a new, less-springy baseball. It referenced work by Rob Arthur, who gained fame by pointing out that the baseball had changed in the *opposite* direction in 2015-2016, leading to the unprecedented dinger surge of 2016-17. Yesterday, Alex Chamberlain wrote this at Fangraphs, noting that component stats for hitting are trending up even as results go down: batters are hitting the ball harder than ever, at better angles, leading to better quality-of-contact…and they’re getting less out of those contacts than in the past. At this point, it’s essentially impossible to chalk it up to bad luck, or really good defensive positioning (shifts!) or anything but the baseball. It’s pretty clearly different than it was last year, and that’s why HR/FB ratios and isolated slugging are down throughout the league – it’s a subtle difference overall, but it’s noticeable.
Back in mid-April, I wondered what that would mean for the M’s chances: their pitchers were still giving up far too many dingers, but their batters were hitting just as many, and keeping the club afloat. Since that time, things have changed dramatically: the M’s pitchers essentially stopped giving up HRs, which bailed out a relative dinger-dearth from the offense. Meanwhile, the Angels have been hit about as hard by the injury bug as the M’s were last year, and it’s resulted in a staff so bad that their HR/FB is actually *up* relative to 2017. The Athletics looked to be in full-on rebuild after trading Sonny Gray last year and relying on a mix of cheap vets (Edwin Jackson!) and untested youngsters (Paul Blackburn). But the new ball has made them…well, not great or anything, but a perfectly average staff. The A’s shouldn’t be in the playoff race, not with a line-up that’s the most dependent on HRs for run scoring, not with Edwin Jackson, Brett Anderson and Trevor Cahill pretending it’s 2010.
But changing the penalty for giving up decent contact means different things in different places. One of the most stunning effects of the new ball – at least to me – was that it seemed to swamp traditional park effects. Safeco Field was *always* a pitcher’s park in large part because it suppressed HRs. Then, suddenly, in 2016, it didn’t, and I was completely dumbfounded. Now we know what was causing all of that. Back in April of this year, I wrote about the huge difference that had opened up between Statcast’s expected wOBA, or xwOBA, and actual results, measured by wOBA itself. That is, Statcast calculated the average results of batted balls with a given exit velocity and angle. This worked pretty well, and in general, there was no or very little difference league wide between xwOBA and wOBA…as there shouldn’t be. Well, several months later, that gap remains, and it’s absolutely massive. All of the data that went into calculating xwOBA was based on 2015-17 results/batted balls, and now that the ball has changed, it’s assuming that we’re still in an offensive explosion. As Alex Chamberlain’s piece lays out, batters are hitting the ball even harder, and higher, than they did in 2017, so xwOBA believes we’re in an offensive environment that’s incredibly tilted towards batters. But we’re not. And the effects of that mismatch between expected and real outcomes is felt most keenly in certain parks…like the ol’ marine-layered parks of the AL West’s coast: Oakland, Anaheim, and Seattle.
By venue, no park has seen a bigger mismatch than Oakland, where the gap is nearly *60 points* of wOBA. Seattle’s got the 7th-highest gap, and Anaheim’s not far behind at #9. Sorting by team and not by park gives a slightly different view, but they’re correlated (er, as they should be). Oakland’s #3, Seattle’s #5, while the Angels fade a bit towards the middle of the pack. But look at those xwOBA figures! Seattle pitchers have, apparently, given up more threatening contact than Miami’s, or Cincinnati’s staff. Oakland’s been slightly *better* in fact, but they’re still in the Baltimore range rather than Boston or Houston. If expected contact lined up with actual results – *the way it did, nearly perfectly, the past two seasons* – the Mariners would likely be struggling mightily.
Or at least, that’s one way of looking at it. The other way is to say that the M’s anticipated this, and changed their approach a bit in April. The M’s K/9 and BB/9 this year look remarkably similar to their 2016 rates, and their BABIP is exactly the same. The only difference is HRs, where a drop in HR/FB has pushed their FIP lower by almost half a run. Remember back in 2016, when the M’s clearly thought the park would bail them out, so they pounded the zone at home and had higher FB rates, higher strike rates and lower walk rates? They’re doing all of that again, but the change in HRs has totally shifted their results. Sure, you’ll get guys like Wade LeBlanc who may take it a bit far, and thus have far more HRs-allowed at Safeco, but then you have the opposite effect with Marco Gonzales. The M’s were *always* set up to profit from non-insane levels of HRs. That way, they could take advantage of Safeco’s low BABIP and run a competitive rotation out without breaking the bank. Oakland wasn’t necessarily set up that way, but they too needed something to change in order to compete in 2018. They got it, and now they’re competing. Poor Anaheim’s seen injuries decimate their roster, and they’ve thrown pitches so bad that even the new ball hasn’t been able to completely eliminate the odors. The Yankees don’t care about the ball – they replaced Jacoby Ellsbury with Giancarlo Stanton; they’ll hit some dingers. The Astros don’t care too much, because even as the ball brings Jose Altuve back to earth, it’s turned Gerrit Cole into an absolute beast. All in all, the new ball has helped turn the AL West into a remarkably deep division.
Tonight’s game features two hurlers who’ve benefited from the new ball, but in different ways. Richards has amazing stuff, thanks to elite spin rates, but so-so or worse command. His walk rate’s up, and he’s even giving up too many HRs despite pitching in parks that suppress them. Richards has given up some hard contact, but hasn’t paid as much of a penalty for it, and thanks to his swing-and-miss stuff, he’s limiting the number of balls in play. Mike Leake has one of the highest gaps between xwOBA and wOBA in the game – he ranks 144th out of 156 pitchers with at least 150 balls in play this year. But look at who he’s hanging out with! Gerrit Cole is at 142nd, Luis Severino is at 148, and Sean Manaea’s at 153. Like a lot of sinkerballers, Leake gets plenty of weak ground balls – but if the batter adjusts his swing plane, the fly balls he DOES give up get hit really hard. Thus, Leake’s given up lots of very hard hit fly balls. That would…that wouldn’t play in 2017, but in 2018, it’s not some disqualifying flaw. Incidentally, Garrett Richards has the same issue; his GB rate is 50%, but he’s giving up some of the hardest-hit fly balls in the league.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Segura, SS
3: Haniger, RF
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Span, LF
7: Healy, 1B
8: Herrmann, C
9: Heredia, CF
SP: Leake
Another interesting sign of the new/old ball and how it plays differently in different parks. If we exclude “barrels” or ideal contact, and look just at “solid contact,” you can see how things have changed in the marine layer parks. In 2016, Safeco saw 22 HRs off of non-ideal contact, and Oakland just 13. The next year, the peak of DingerMania, Safeco was up to 31, and Oakland saw 23. (Cincinnati led the league both years at 47 and 49, respectively). This year, with over half the year in the books, Seattle’s seen just 9, while Oakland’s at 7.
Felix Hernandez has been placed on the 10-day DL with back tightness. Not a great sign, of course, but this seems like the kind of thing the new, shorter, DL was designed to address. Let’s get Felix healthy – completely – before we need him for the stretch run. Nick Rumbelow’s up to take his place on the active roster. Also, Gordon Beckham’s swapping places with John Andreoli.
One easy way to extend the M’s competitive window is to extend Nelson Cruz, who becomes a free agent at the end of the year. Today, Larry Stone wrote about why the M’s should do so in his column at the Seattle Times, and Brendan Gawlowski did the same over at the Athletic ($).
Game 89, Rockies at Mariners – M’s Extend Jerry Dipoto
King Felix vs. German Marquez, 7:10pm
Happy Felix Day to you and yours. It’s been an especially happy Felix day for one Gerard Peter Dipoto, who signed a multi-year extension. His contract was up at the end of the 2018 season, and while he wasn’t exactly on the hot seat with the team sitting at 24 games over .500, this gives him some security.
It felt a bit like a formality not only due to the M’s performance this year, but because he just inked Wade LeBlanc to an extension. If you’re comfortable with a GM making multi-year commitments to players, you’re probably comfortable with that GM’s vision for the next few years, even if those commitments are small (like LeBlanc’s bargain deal). This news is not a big surprise to anyone, but a few of you may have navigated over here to hear what I, one of Dipoto’s more annoying critics, think of it. Here you go: I like it.
The organization the M’s have in place right now was created in ways I vaguely dislike, in contexts I don’t really know/understand, with input I can only guess at. All of that said, the M’s certainly look weaker in certain aspects than many of the superclubs in the AL right now, particularly the AL West heavyweights in Houston. What I think many of us want is this sense that *our* GM is simply better at identifying talent than his peers, and uses that asymmetry to create a juggernaut. That’s a cult-of-the-GM simplification, but it’s got some explanatory power. The Astros have used the game’s best player development AND excellent pro scouting to great effect, turning complete non-prospects like Jose Altuve and Marwin Gonzalez into all-star talents AND getting more out of established stars like Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole. Their PD leaves a minor league system where high draft picks and the latest unheralded stars (Josh James?) provide depth for the big league club and desirable prospects for trades. The Cubs traded off anything of value a few years ago and rebuilt their own system, and then used a series of remarkable trades (and the draft of Kris Bryant, of course) to create a dominant 2016 club and a contender for years to come. They identified future contributors like Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Hendricks, and Jake Arrieta, and got more out of them than anyone else thought possible. The process was painful at times, but it’s helped create a perennial contender as well as a Series winner.
The M’s don’t look like either of those clubs, as close as they are in the standings to both. The M’s have made a flurry of moves, and the results are fairly normally distributed at best. The franchise-altering trade for Jean Segura and Mitch Haniger is clearly, clearly in the win column, but there are a hell of a lot of misses, too. In the past, I’ve harped on their pitching acquisitions, but I’ve mocked the Healy trade, the Dee Gordon experiment, and many others. Now, if they worked out – if they were precisely the sort of raw material the M’s player development coaches excelled in forging into weapons of baseballing war (WAR?) – then that’d be one thing. But for every Mitch Haniger, there’s Healy and his .279 OBP. There’s Seth Smith for Yovani Gallardo, or Chris Taylor for Zach Lee, or the Adam Lind deal. There are clear, important adds, and the Marco Gonzales deal seems to be turning into one, but they don’t seem to be the product of a preternatural gift for talent evaluation. If you trade for a million guys, *some* of them are bound to be remarkably good.
So, is the argument that he’s not infallible, like Theo Epstein in the fever-dreams of daily fantasy sports bros? No, it’s that the relentless churn impacts the ability of the team to develop the way “good” orgs seem to develop players. Last year, the Tacoma Rainiers famously used 56 pitchers. Series to series, it was somewhat hard to predict who would be on the roster. Now, injuries both in AAA and in Seattle played a huge role in that, so what would happen this year, now that the injury plague has moved on? Well, it’s early July, and the Rainiers have already used 36 pitchers. The Rainiers operate a little like an independent league team, and I don’t say that just because half of their starting rotation came from an independent league a month ago. This is the byproduct of the kind of trades the M’s make – the draft picks are moved, leaving organizational needs that have to be filled via the waiver wire or calls to the Atlantic League. That’s not awful, and the team’s pretty solid because of it…but it’s essentially impossible to say that any development is occurring. Homegrown sorta-prospect Ian Miller has been shunted off to the OF corners for waiver claims like John Andreoli and Andrew Aplin.
Sooooo, you hate the extension then? No. There are two main reasons. First, extending Dipoto is necessary to give not just the FO but the coaching staffs at every level a modicum of security and, crucially, a vote of confidence. GM’s don’t work well if they think the next move they make has to turn out well *right now*. Coaches need to know that their superiors understand that player development takes time, and that mechanical changes may include periods of poor performance when the body reverts to old habits or struggles with changes. Second, and even more important, I started to recognize that there are other ways to build a winning club. My vision of Dipoto’s “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” approach is reductive and skewed, sure, but making trades is one aspect of the GM’s job. Another big one, if really hard to measure, is setting a tone, and allowing a culture to develop around the team.
The GM can do that in many ways, from insulating players/managers from ownership, to selling ownership on his/his manager’s direction, to selling free agents to become culture-setters or bask in the warm glow of that culture’s success. For the last two years at least, the M’s clubhouse seems to be unusually together/optimistic, and that includes one year of bitter disappointment in the standings. I have no idea how to measure this, or how to apportion the credit for its creation between Dipoto, Scott Servais, and clubhouse leaders like Robinson Canó or Nelson Cruz. But I DO know that Dipoto didn’t thwart it, and didn’t try to rein the team’s free-wheeling, idiosyncratic, often goofy, identity back in, either in the name of focus or of “respecting the game.” No, allowing long haired outfielders doesn’t make Jerry Dipoto a good GM, but building a clubhouse that players seem to actively like being a part of is an essential part of the job, albeit one that we can’t rank on Fangraphs. It’s a task that allows individuality while respecting the need for preparation and development, which I think previous M’s teams have lacked.
There’s another reason, too. If you’ve been around here for years, you know that my grudging admiration for what the Astros have accomplished echoes my earlier admiration for Jon Daniels and the Rangers, who built an AL West power 10-12 years earlier. That team was different, as it was buoyed up by a remarkable string of international free agent signings, thanks to AJ Preller. Still, it wasn’t like those teams were a collection of international, home-grown players. Instead, they, more than most teams, were the product of an almost obsessive-compulsive number of trades, both minor and major. Not all of them worked out. The Rangers were the source of a few of the Cubs’ 2016 stars, include Hendricks and Carl Edwards Jr., and Daniels left a trail of lopsided trading L’s, like dealing Chris Davis for a little-used Koji Uehara, right before Uehara became a star with Boston. It didn’t hurt them too much, because they’d just develop other players and do the same thing again.
I realize the M’s don’t have the Rangers’ player development group of 2009-2011 – though Scott Servais was pretty important in that unit – and they certainly aren’t as active internationally as the old pre-bonus-pool Rangers were. There’s an argument that Jon Daniels *without* those advantages will give you the Rangers of 2018, not the Rangers of 2011, and I suppose we’ll wait and see. But the point is that you don’t have to win every trade. A poker player or any other gambler knows that you can exploit even a small advantage if you keep at it (and if your bankroll can survive some losses). Dipoto seems to believe that you can jump-start development if you find a player who clicks with what your coaches are trying to do. James Pazos may be such a player, just as Chris Taylor was in Los Angeles. Not all of them will work out, and that’s fine so long as you keep acquiring new ones.
The churn does indeed prevent the M’s from building the kind of system that could compete for Manny Machado this year or whoever your favored trade target might be. But even there, Dipoto’s figured out a short- to medium-turn workaround: the trade for contract relief. Mike Leake hasn’t turned into a solid #2, and his 2018 numbers are actually worse than his career averages. But on a team like this one, a solid, dependable #4 was critical. The M’s acquired him not so much for talent as for salary relief – the Cardinals had a ton of young pitchers on the way up and didn’t need Leake’s expense. The M’s acquired Leake – and cash – despite not having a lauded system. I’d argue the same is at least partially true of the Dee Gordon deal, and while Gordon’s OBP isn’t what you want from your leadoff hitter, he’s been a clubhouse leader since arriving. The M’s were able to acquire MLB vets despite not having MLB-ready talent in return (that’s more true of the Leake deal than the Gordon one) because they’ve been able to find room in the budget for it. And there’s room in the budget for it in part because so much of the rest of the team’s been built cheaply – Healy, Zunino, Edwin Diaz, and Mitch Haniger are all making ~ league minimum.
There’s work to do here. However close the M’s are right now, the Astros and Yankees seem to be fundamentally different, and the M’s will need a real farm system soon. But I’m fine with the club giving Dipoto the freedom to work on that now.
Today, the M’s face the club Dipoto pitched for in his playing days, the Colorado Rockies. Colorado’s offense has been poor this year, while their bullpen’s gone from an intriguing strategic gambit to a terrible waste of tons and tons of money. All of that’s spoiled a solid performance from their unherladed starters, especially the group behind Jon Gray, who was just demoted due to ineffectiveness. By fWAR, they’re neck and neck with the Mariners. Last year, the group led all of baseball in four-seam fastball usage, a bold move in the year of the home run at altitude. But it worked, as the group worked around a few too many walks and produced an abnormally high ground ball rate. They’re not as extreme this year, which is kind of funny – they’re throwing more sinking pitches now, but it’s resulted in fewer grounders.
Today’s starter, German Marquez, is belatedly following the league-wide trend towards fewer fastballs. Last year, he threw a four-seamer or sinker 65% of the time. This year, it’s down to 57%. Those FBs are now sliders, which is an interesting move in and of itself. Last year, he was primarily a FB/Curve pitcher, but he had a hell of a time getting righties out – which is strange because Marquez is a righty himself. He saw roughly similar amounts of rightes and lefties, but gave up 3X more HRs to righties. Hence, he’s now throwing far more sliders to them than ever before. As a pitch with high platoon splits, you understand the thinking. And lo and behold, it’s working. He’s fared far better against RHB this year. Only…now lefties are hitting him hard all of the sudden.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Segura, SS
3: Span, LF
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Healy, 1B
7: Gamel, RF
8: Herrmann, C
9: Heredia, CF
SP: FELIX
A third straight start for Chris Herrmann, as Mike Zunino’s on the 10-day DL with an ankle bruise – one that may keep him out 2-3 weeks. Further complicating things is the fact that Mitch Haniger’s also out with a sore right knee, albeit one that doesn’t seem to be DL-able. John Andreoli would figure to be the call-up if the M’s need OF depth; they’ve already recalled David Freitas at C.
Kyle Lewis will represent the M’s at the Futures Game during the All Star Break. It’s been an up-and-down year for Lewis, who spent the first month or so getting his surgically-repaired knee ready. Nice to see him healthy for a prolonged period of time.
Logan Gilbert, the M’s first-round draft pick, hasn’t played yet in the M’s system, and now we know why: he’s got mononucleosis, and has for some time. Get well soon, Logan!
Game 87, Angels at Mariners
Mike Leake vs. Garrett Richards, 1:10pm
The moribund Angels desperately need a win or two in this series, but it’s looking harder and harder to see them as a real challenger at this point. They could win today, and they’d still be the Angels, their season still sunk by injuries.
Garrett Richards remains one of the game’s enigmas. A Statcast darling with freakishly spin rates, and the velocity and stuff to turn that raw material into plenty of strikeouts. And while his long and varied injury history gets a lot of the blame for why he’s never quite blossomed into a Cy Young candidate*, another key reason is that he’s not really developing in any real sense. Injuries probably have a lot to do with that, I know. But he came up as a guy with great stuff and disappointing results: too many walks, troubles stranding runners, etc. Now, after over 700 big league innings, he’s…still that guy. He’s getting more strikeouts now than when he came up, but then, so is the entire game of baseball. That 10-11% walk rate in his initial call-ups was a bit of a concern, but now, with several years under his belt, his walk rate is…11%. The huge sink on his breaking balls and cutter/fastball produced growing GB%, peaking around 58% a few years ago. But now, it’s back to 50% – very good, but not a true stand-out several-standard-deviations-from-the-mean skill. His career strand rate is just over 70%, and it’s 67% this year.
There are probably attributes that make it hard to really coach/develop someone like this. You don’t want to change the mechanical processes that generate his freakish spin rates in a misguided effort to bring down his walk rate. You have to take his injury history into account, but you probably don’t want to radically change his approach. After all, he’s got a career ERA and FIP below 4. You’d take that, right? It’s just that Richards’ talent is such that being a perfectly fine when healthy #3 feels like a terrible outcome. Richards’ curve is one of the better pitches I’ve seen, and no one’s ever homered off of it. His career SLG%-against on the thing is .153, and he’s never thrown it much. Its usage rate is above 10% for the very first time this year, and by a fraction of a percent. Look, his slider is really, really good too, but his curve seems like a cheat code, and he just doesn’t throw it, largely because he’s always struggles to keep it in the zone.
So: you’re a pitching coach and you’ve got Garrett Richards. I keep thinking there are plenty of things to try, and ways to make that curve much more of a dependable weapon. To date, they’ve failed to do so. The Angels have struggled with health, and they’ve struggled with dingers, and while they’ve had some big successes (Skaggs this year, Shoemaker in the past), I’m starting to wonder how much of that is player development more generally, and how much is really attributable to MLB coaching. Shoemaker can’t stay healthy, nor can some of their other big development/coaching successes like JC Ramirez (or Richards), but they’ve struggled to get more out of vets from Ricky Nolasco to Jesse Chavez, and now Andrew Heaney and Nick Tropeano seem to be kind of stuck in neutral. The Angels are still set up well for the future; Mike Trout is still somehow just 26, Ohtani’s 23, and Andrelton Simmons is 28. But something’s going to need to change -pretty dramatically- for them to reach their potential.
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the key reasons for the M’s success this year seems to be the success of that big league coaching staff, with Marco Gonzales and Mike Leake improving not only over prior years, but improving over their own April-of-2018 levels. Felix is showing signs of life, and of course there’s Wade LeBlanc. No, not everything is perfect – if it was, the M’s wouldn’t need to scoff at run differentials. But Mel Stottlemeyer Jr seems to have gone from embattled to low-key cog in their best season in over a decade. I’ll take it.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Segura, SS
3: Haniger, RF
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Healy, 1B
7: Gamel, LF
8: Herrmann, C
9: Heredia, CF
SP: Leake
Happy Independence Day!
This is verging on talking-about-run-differential territory, but I wanted to point out Jeff Sullivan’s great article on negative WAR. As you know, the M’s have often had great performances by their star players rendered irrelevant by awful, awful performances from guys the M’s simply couldn’t stop playing. The M’s gave 280 PAs to a below-replacement-level Taylor Motter last year, and 500 to Danny Valencia. Think of Adam Lind and Ketel Marte in 2016, Zunino and Dustin Ackley in 2015, Kendrys Morales/Stefen Romero/Corey Hart in 2014. Sometimes, the M’s simply had no other options – they *wanted* to bench Valencia, but Vogelbach was somehow worse. Other times, they kept cycling through people who put up curiously similar (awful) lines. The point is that the M’s in 2018 are, finally, not giving lots of playing time to sub-replacement-level players. Their positive WAR is more or less identical to their overall WAR, and it’s only little blips like a few innings of Erasmo Ramirez that make up the delta.
Still, there’s a chance that the M’s will coast into the postseason with a number of negative WAR players. Guillermo Heredia is at 0.0 right now, and Denard Span is at 0.1. Ryon Healy’s already at -0.2. It’s not likely, but the M’s could end the year with negative WAR from 2-3 *positions* and still get to 100 actual, real world wins. The more you try to explain the M’s, the more you really fall back on things like chemistry, which is weird for a blog like this, but kind of freeing, as well. The M’s are better than the sum of their parts, and I think that helps explain why the region’s fallen so hard for this group in 2018.
* Yes, I know I predicted he’d get Cy votes this year. I predicted a lot of dumb stuff this year.