Game 26, Dodgers at Mariners: Roster Moves
Taijuan Walker vs. Luis Urias, 6:40pm
You can’t say the M’s didn’t let us know their patience was wearing thin. On August 9th, Ryan Divish wrote a story for the Times about the M’s frustration with Dan Vogelbach’s prolonged slump and how they couldn’t afford to keep him on the roster if he didn’t snap out of it. After an abysmal road trip, Vogelbach – hitting .094/.250/.226 – the M’s today DFA’d the husky DH who’d made the AL All-Star game a bit more than a year ago.
Since that power+patience fueled hot streak, he’s utterly collapsed. The HRs are few and far between, the result of an overly-patient approach that’s also pushed his K rate higher, and an out-of-whack swing that’s seeing him posting the high ground ball rates that sunk his first call-ups in Seattle. It’s been a surprisingly rapid, and surprisingly thorough, decline.
We’ve all seen players that flame out after a brief spark, and the M’s have been hurt by call-ups who are great for a couple of weeks, but can never regain that glory (Jeremy Reed and Willie Bloomquist are the go-to examples here). But in Vogelbach, I think we have a neat parallel to another M’s/Cubs 1B who made an All-Star team and will be a damned hard pub quiz questions years hence. Yes, the M’s have finally repaid the Cubs for the three-month success of Bryan LaHair.
LaHair was a lefty-swinging 1B who came through the M’s system as a competent gap-hitting guy who’d sometimes get hot. That’s not a great prospect profile, but that he had one at all was a minor miracle; he’d been a 39th round pick. He got a couple of games for a truly awful 2008 M’s team, but left after that, resurfacing with the Cubs years later. In 20 games, he hit reasonably well – enough, at least, that he’d come back in 2012 while the Cubs gave newly-acquired 1B prospect Anthony Rizzo more AAA seasoning. In the first half, LaHair hit .286/.364/.519 with 14 HRs and made the NL All-Star team. By the end of calendar year 2012, LaHair had signed a contract with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, and I think a move to NPB or KBO is potentially in Vogelbach’s future.
Vogelbach had a bigger prospect pedigree, but that was largely based on draft position (he was a somewhat risky 2nd rounder). Vogie detonated short-season and the Pioneer League, but once he moved up, his lines looked a bit like LaHair’s had a decade earlier: solid batting average, some patience (Vogelbach had more, to be fair), and a slugging percentage on the wrong side of .500.
That’s the guy the M’s called up back in 2016 after the mid-year trade. Vogie hit well in Tacoma, but didn’t have an ISO over .200. He was again a good overall hitter for Tacoma in 2017, but his ISO went down to .166. Given his speed and position, that wasn’t going to cut it in the majors, and to his credit, Vogelbach reinvented himself somewhat, ditching the short, contact-focused swing and essentially selling out for power. He killed AAA in 2018, which is nice, because in doing so he burned his final option year. It worked in the big leagues in 2019 for a while, but pitchers found a hole and relentlessly attacked it.
We’ll see if another AL team picks him up, or if he’ll ply his trade in Asia. For a guy who leaves the M’s with a career .199 average and .397 slugging percentage, I think there’s refreshingly little animosity directed his way. We all *wanted* this to work. It just didn’t.
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With Mallex Smith demoted and Vogelbach now gone, the M’s have brought up two righty hitting OFs to deal with a number of left-handed starters in the coming days. First, there’s UW product Braden Bishop, who had a rough go in 20 games last season, but is probably the best CF defender on the M’s roster by a good margin. They’ve also brought in Sam Haggerty, whom the M’s got off of waivers from the Mets months ago, and who was drafted/developed initially by Cleveland. Haggerty’s actually a switch hitter, so has some versatility once the M’s face another RH starter or just a reliever later in games. Haggerty has a bit more plate discipline than Bishop, but is similarly lacking in over-the-fence pop. Bishop made more contact and hit for higher average in the minors, while Haggerty stole more bases.
The M’s face lefty Julio Urias, once a top-5-in-baseball prospect. The lefty came up at the age of 19, but injuries and the sheer depth of the Dodgers staff have slowed his ascent. Coming off of TJ rehab last year, the Dodgers opted to use Urias out of the bullpen, and he was a formidable reliever for them. But they’ve moved him back to the rotation, seeing if some of the gains he made in velocity would stick around. So far, they have. He’s sitting 94 with his fastball, up from 93 in 2016-2018. His best pitch is a change at 85. It’s been good for years, but never had much of a gap in vertical movement from his standard, rising fastball. That’s changed a bit this year, as the change has more drop than in prior years, something he’s been able to do despite throwing it much harder than before. Yes, he has a slider and curve, but it’s the change that’s enabled him to run pronounced reverse platoon splits in his career.
I had a lot of good things to say about Tony Gonsolin in yesterday’s post, and he went out and shoved last night for the Dodgers. He didn’t get the win, AND he was utterly outpitched by Marco Gonzales, but it seemed to be enough that he’ll stick around in the Dodger rotation. But that’s not why I bring him up. I was thinking yesterday about who he reminded me of, and for non-Iwakuma four-seam-and-splitter guys, the go-to example is probably Matt Shoemaker. But there’s another starter who throws plenty of splitters but is a fly-ball pitcher despite it: tonight’s starter, Taijuan Walker. Pitch tracking has improved baseball analysis, I think, and it’s certainly something I lean on heavily in these posts. But it kind of fails us here, where we really need it: Why is Gonsolin so effective compared to Walker? I mean, I think Walker was pretty successful 2017, I’m not saying he’s a failure as a pitcher. But Gonsolin has been ridiculously hard to hit, while Walker’s first M’s tenure was beset by HR trouble? The differences are so subtle, but they’re picked up on by hitters remarkably quickly. Ah well, maybe Gonsolin’s in for some dinger problems of his own in the coming months/years, but I’d love for Walker to have a dominant streak like Gonsolin’s. Hell, he’s certainly shown flashes of it this year.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Moore, 2B
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Nola, C
6: White, 1B
7: Lopes, DH
8: Haggerty, LF
9: Bishop, RF
SP: Walker
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10 Responses to “Game 26, Dodgers at Mariners: Roster Moves”
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Guys built like Vogelbach almost never manage to make an actual career out of it. Sure, there’s a couple guys with the last name Fielder… but with most heavy guys, it generally seems like they’re balancing on the sharp side of a knife blade in a very unstable equilibrium.
He seemed like a good guy, though, and while I didn’t expect he’d last… I would’ve liked to have been wrong. I hope he gets to play somewhere, even if it’s overseas.
Hey there, Nola is putting on a show tonight!
Come on, Evan, turn it around!
… oh man, I hope he’s not hurt.
Darn it, Shed.
Taijuan is looking pretty sharp, even having given up three runs. 7 Ks, 1 BB so far.
Hey six feet of separation, guys.
Mr. Dylan Moore, ladies and gentlemen!
C’mon guys, Taijuan deserves the win here! Don’t blow it, bullpen!
Sweet! Ugly ninth inning; but they closed it out!
Really good seeing Walker adjust once it was clear his fastball wasn’t helping him.
But the bigger story for me was Dylan Moore. That change he hit was impressive. His numbers on the year are now .297/.381/.568, 8.3% BB, 27.4% K, .370 BABIP, and a wRC+ 162. He’s currently worth .9 fWAR.
I’d like to see him holding a regular infield position the rest of the season.