Game 20, Mariners at Red Sox
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Martín Pérez, 4:10pm
Yesterday’s game was a bizarrely compelling triumph. I still can’t tell if it was a super simple underdog-comeback story, like a sports-based Disney film aimed at tweens, or a complicated, but ultimately satisfying foreign film aimed at adults. At one level, the M’s couldn’t get any hits, but then got a bunch at exactly the right time, punctuated by the 10th inning HR that gave them the final margin of victory. It’s baseball; it’s not that complicated. They were behind, then they tied the game, then they won in extras.
But…like, it’s *weird.* This is the level of commentary that you’ve come to expect from this fine blog for decades. Seriously – I talked pre-game about how Pivetta’s got good stuff, but horrific results *especially* in terms of hits and HRs, but Justin Dunn’s raw stuff, while not as electric, was tougher to square up. Then the Red Sox square the hell out of Dunn, who pitched around hard hits all night, but kept his team in the game. Meanwhile, Pivetta gave up no hits into the 6th, before two walks and a double tied it up. The teams did look fairly equally matched, but it played out in such a different way than I would’ve expected, but in a way we’ve seen quite often in the early going this year.
One important part of that – the repeated late-inning comebacks after the bats have looked anemic for 5-6-7 innings – is the disastrous relief appearance. I’m certainly not saying this is new, like relievers haven’t had off days before Covid. I watched the 1990s Mariners, so I know all about crappy relief outings spoiling good games. But I’ve been struck this season by this phenomenon wherein one reliever (sometimes more, but often just one) comes into a game and utterly gives it away.
On Twitter, there’s a famous maxim about the Main Character. It’s “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.” Every day there’s some outrage, major or minor, and then loads of people dogpile on that person for whatever transgression they’ve made. I keep thinking that the goal of a reliever, especially a non-closer, is to never be the Main Character in the baseball game. That’s for starting pitchers, the batter who goes 3-5 with 3 extra-base hits, etc. A middle reliever can pitch fantastically well, but their goal is for the current score to remain the same: the story’s already there, they’re just trying to advance the plot. They’re the text onscreen in a movie that says, “Two Years Later.” If everyone is talking about the non-closing reliever, chances are that reliever has done something pretty bad.
Yesterday had a few main characters, but you can’t talk about the game without mentioning Darwinzon Hernandez, who faced 7 batters and allowed 4 runs in the 10th (yes, yes, one was a fake run because of the new extra innings rule). Because the inning started with a sac bunt, and because Tom Murphy flied out after Sam Haggerty (!) gave the M’s the lead with a double, he had two outs and was facing JP Crawford, who is *slugging* .254 as I type this. The lefty reliever in a one run game was facing a *lefty* hitter who’s grown remarkably punchless. Walking Crawford would put two on for Mitch Haniger, a right-hander with a slugging percentage several multiples of Crawford’s. There is one thing that Hernandez cannot ever do, but he did it. He paid a hefty price for it.
Seriously, how many games have we seen like this? It started on *opening day* when the Giants let a big lead go, giving up 6 runs in the 8th inning, but it was split over several relievers. Still, you’ve got to mention Jose Alvarez, who simply walked the bases loaded, and then walked it off with another free pass. Six days later, it was Matt Foster’s turn to be the main character, as he came in with two on and a 4-1 lead, and left with the White Sox trailing 8-4. Alex Colome a few days later, giving up 3 runs in the 9th to lose it for Minnesota. I’m not counting a reliever giving up a run to lose a tie game. That happens, and while it’s hugely important in win probability stats, it’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about a pitcher who comes in and very clearly doesn’t have it, and the inning just snowballs. I feel like we’re seeing more and more of them this year.
This may be biased by the fact that I’m watching the M’s, who’ve had a few thus far. But I feel like they’re happening all the time. I tried to look this up on Sports-Reference Stathead feature using RE24 and aLI (average Leverage Index), but it wasn’t giving me all the games; it didn’t have last night’s or opening night’s, both of which qualified. So I’ll keep trying to quantify it, but this is my theory: bullpen usage has changed such that there are now more relief appearances and relief innings in each game. The need for starters – and all pitchers, really – to pitch vastly more innings than they did in the Covid-shortened 2020 season magnifies this problem. The need for more pitchers pitching more innings plus the extra roster spot has led teams to go with 14-man staffs and super-deep bullpens. All of this means that we’re increasing the chance of finding the one guy who simply doesn’t have it.
Does that mean teams should change pitchers less? If your reliever pitched excellently in the 6th, maybe think about them pitching the 7th as well? Maybe, I’m not sure. But I do think it highlights that there’s a downside to the way essentially every team is turning to ever more relievers to fill out their roster. That said, I’m not sure that we can blame this on the 26th man; this isn’t just an issue with marginal middle-relievers. But I feel like the first 5 innings of a game mean less, somehow – like a lead isn’t safe until the game’s over. That’s flying in the face of the research I mentioned earlier about how later-inning lead changes have grown *less* common as managers don’t leave tiring starters in and instead give the ball to almost fungible 96mph power arms in the pen.
The game is so, so hard. I don’t want to focus too much on relievers losing the plot, so let’s talk about today’s starter. Martín Pérez has been facing the M’s for about a decade now, and while he was an uber-prospect for years around 2010, he’s become a journeyman lefty bottom-of-the-rotation guy now. It’s his second year in Boston, but he was on three clubs in three years before this. The lefty throws a four-seam and sinker, but last year focused heavily on a high-80s cutter and a change-up at 84. This essentially gives him two pitches with ~similar speeds and opposite horizontal break. He can mix in a curve, too. He never missed bats in Texas, his first team, and while he’s striking out a few more now, he’s still below average. His game is to generate weak contact, and at least by statcast, he’s doing so, and has been pretty effective at it since 2019. It just hasn’t shown up in his overall results. He hasn’t pitched in super friendly parks, but you just wouldn’t peg a lefty with 4-5 pitches and at least SOME record of weak contact to be seemingly perpetually on the wrong side of 5 with his ERA.
The culprit here is stranding runners. It’s simply never been a strength. Batters have hit .267 with the bases empty off of him in his career, but .304 with men on. His K rate goes down, and while his HRs do too, his walk rate increases. With no one on, he’s a so-so journeyman. With men on, he’s worse. So take some pitches, and pounce on mistakes in the strike zone, M’s.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Murphy, C
7: Moore, 2B
8: Haggerty, LF
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Kikuchi
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For a moment, I was confident they were coming back once again.