Game 89: Mariners at Nationals – Let’s Make it Ten
Erik Swanson vs. Erick Fedde, 3:05pm
The second game of the hastily-arranged twin bill sees the M’s going with a bullpen game against the Nats and their 2014 1st rounder, Erick Fedde. Fedde was having a great junior season at UNLV in 2014, and was a top-10 pick based on his FB/SL combo, but he fell to the Nats at 18 because he needed TJ surgery. Would he bounce back? Would the stuff that made him a first-round lock still be there? Any command issues? The answer, as is so often the case in baseball, is a sort of murky “kind of?”
I don’t want to bury the lede here: Fedde is not good. His ERA’s over 5 this year, and for his career, and it’s right in line with his FIP. He’s struggled to miss bats, gives up too many HRs, and often walks too many. That’s not a great combo. He throws a sinker at 91-93 – one that he’s been tweaking over time, and that is sinking and moving less than ever in 2022. That’s not necessarily bad; his results on the pitch are actually better than last year. But it’s also not great, as it’s resulting in a much lower ground ball rate. To lefties, he relies primarily on an upper-80s cutter, and *that* has been his real problem this year. It was great when he debuted it several years ago, but it’s gotten a bit worse each successive season, and at this point, I think I’d go back to a four-seamer or something. His breaking ball is a slurve (MLB calls it a curve, Pitch Info a slider) in the high-70s, and MLB hitters have found it to their liking in 2022. This is not a great profile, I know.
The Nats have had a hell of a time developing pitchers, so they have to shoulder some of the blame here. And to be fair, Fedde will uncork a gem every once in a while – he’s had two game scores over 70 thus far, on two scoreless 6IP performances…one against the Dodgers. But they’re mixed in with some truly dismal outings, capped by his last game: 3 IP, 8 R, 3 HRs, 3 BB, 1 K against an Atlanta team that was just shut down by the Mets. His K-BB% has dropped each month. I’m not saying this is a must-win game, but you have to like the M’s chances, *even though* it’s a bullpen game.
The downside here is that the M’s used Murfee/Sewald/Munoz in the opening game. Munoz threw only 13 pitches, but it’s gotta be hard to warm up, pitch an inning-plus, then come back hours later, warm up, and pitch more. Sewald threw just 4 pitches, so hopefully he’s good to go if need be.
The plus side is that Julio Rodriguez is back after serving his one-game suspension in the morning. The M’s were looking good before the big fight that saw Julio, Winker, and JP Crawford suspended, but they’ve been nearly untouchable after it: they’re 12-2 since then. Julio’s in the news nationally as well, as he was just announced as a Home Run Derby participant at this year’s All-Star Game.
Baseball Prospectus just released their updated top 50 prospects today. Cracking the list is low-A SS Edwin Arroyo, the biggest riser in Seattle’s system. Noelvi Marte dropped a bit, but still shows up in the 20s. Marte got off to a slow start, but has been red hot over the past month. Arroyo is slashing .319/.392/.521 as an 18-year old shortstop for Modesto. He was signed as more of a glove-first guy, but his bat has blown away evaluators as well as most Cal League pitchers.
1: Juliooooo, CF
2: Winker, LF
3: Crawford, SS
4: Santana, 1B
5: Suarez, 3B
6: Frazier, 2B
7: Upton, DH
8: Torrens, C
9: Haggerty, RF
SP: Swanson and co.
Cal Raleigh’s 12th HR leaves him with a bizarre line. He’s got just 13 singles on the year, but 12 HRs and 10 2Bs (11, if you count his triple). There have been a handful of guys to post more HRs than singles, from the classic steroid era seasons of Bonds (’21) and McGwire (’98 and ’99). And we’ve seen it more recently from all-or-nothing sluggers like Joey Gallo and the inimitable Ryan Schimpf (’17). But by and large, they did it by having their hard-hit balls go over the fence. They didn’t have equal parts singles, doubles and HRs. Raleigh’s OBP stands at .269, but he’s been so fascinating to watch. I almost hope he *doesn’t* hit more singles. He’s already got one of the weirder statistical lines going; let’s get it really weird.
The Seattle Mariners: What in Tarnation?
I left for a vacation in late June, and after a few weeks away and a few days to recover from jet lag, I now have the delightful task of trying to figure out why the M’s have become a juggernaut. When I left, Fangraphs had their playoff odds pegged at around 5-6%. Today, they’re at about 45%. A lot of stuff has gone down, but “losing games” wasn’t part of that. What…what happened here?
1: Is it the offense or the pitching/defense?
I think the big narrative at the beginning of the year was wondering if the M’s had improved the team enough to counterbalance the very likely regression in their luck. As one of the luckiest teams in recent baseball history, that was a tough ask. In May and into June, we got to witness an improved team battle not only a lack of depth, but actively *bad* luck; their BaseRuns winning percentage was *higher* than their actual one, in a darkly ironic twist.
If you asked Fangraphs, it would lay a lot of the blame for the poor start at the feet of the pitching staff. While their ERA was superficially good, their peripherals stank, and the bullpen was fast and loose with late-game leads at times. It all added up to a bottom-third staff, countering the contributions of what they saw as a top-third offense. Sure, the offense hadn’t done a whole lot of, you know, run scoring, but they played in a tough environment, and made solid contact and had sneaky power. Other sites, like BBREF, disagreed, saying that for all of their flaws, the pitching staff was keeping opponents off the scoreboard, and if they got a bit more run support, they’d be a decent group.
At this point, I think supporters of both viewpoints would claim victory. Since mid-June, the Seattle pitching staff has been amongst the league’s absolute best. In the past 14 days, they’re 11-1 with an ERA of just 2.21, and while their FIP is worse, it’s still quite good. The key has been maintaining a decent K rate while refusing to give up walks. Sure, sure, the strand rate’s ridiculously high, which is part of the reason FIP isn’t quite buying in all the way, but even FIP has them as the second most valuable unit in that time frame.
The “the pitching was never the problem” group nods knowingly, while the “the pitchers have finally stopped dicking around and started pitching well” people think they’ve figured it all out. What’s been fascinating is that the hitters have been remarkably consistent. FG has them as the 10th best group of position players for the whole season, but they’ve actually been slightly lower than that in the past 14 days. They’re hitting a bit better than they did in April/May, but then, so is everyone else. What *has* changed is their luck. After getting killed by the luck gods early on, they’re getting the best of both worlds now. Not only are they an improved team, but they’re a *lucky* improved team: their clutch score is 4th-highest in the past two weeks, even as their score for the entire season ranks 21st, and is firmly in negative territory.
2: So, WHY did the pitching staff improve? Is it just luck?
Eh, it’s hard to say, but there are some key reasons to think it might not be. First and perhaps most famously, Robbie Ray is back. He was clearly not the Cy Young version of himself in the early going, but he was also getting destroyed by sequencing. His mid-game adoption of a sinker has transformed him. It may not have mattered what pitch he started throwing – he needed a third look. Since the change, his sinker’s been good, but the difference is best seen in the results of his other offerings. His four-seamer’s no longer being hit hard, and his slider’s turned into a true out-pitch now that batters can’t simply sit on it.
Success with the slider’s one of the stories of this run, actually. And it’s not just Ray. Over the course of the season, Pitch Info’s pitch-type linear weights has the M’s as the best staff in the game for sliders. This is all the more remarkable due to the fact that some of their starters – Logan Gilbert and George Kirby in particular – haven’t fared well at all with their breaking pitches. To be clear, it hasn’t hurt them much: their fastballs more than outweigh that. But the fascinating thing has been watching how some of those sliders keep improving. With Ray, we’ve talked about the importance of the new pitch. How important has that been? Well, 5.2 of the 5.8 runs above average he’s notched with his slider have been racked up in the past two weeks.
Another pitcher’s made a very noticeable change to his slider and is also reaping the rewards: Andrés Muñoz. For the first part of the season, his slider averaged 86 mph, with 3.5″ of horizontal break. More importantly, it was released slightly lower than his high-octane fastball. Since mid-June, though, his slider’s release part has crept up towards his fastball’s. It’s also now thrown at 90 mph. He’s sacrificed horizontal sweep – he’s chosen to zig a bit as baseball zags towards “sweepers,” but it’s working for him. And why wouldn’t it? Breaking ball velocity correlates very well with results. Through mid-June, he’d given up 7 hits including 2 HRs and notched 21 Ks with his 230 sliders. That’s pretty good! Since then, he’s yielded just 3 singles and K’d 20 batters on 122 sliders. That’s much, much better.
Paul Sewald’s slider is visually gorgeous, but both last year and in much of this campaign, his fastball’s been the better pitch. Early this year, his slider came in at 82, with 7″ of sweep (per BrooksBaseball). Since then, he’s throwing it a tad harder, resulting in less vertical and horizontal movement. Since mid-June, no one’s gotten a hit off of it. I don’t think these changes are large enough to be the sole reason for the pitch’s improvement, but I do think a slightly different look from guys like Sewald/Muñoz who throw their sliders *so* much can make a difference.
The emergence or rather improvement from Muñoz has turned a solid bullpen into a great one. Penn Murfee and Diego Castillo already had their sliders pretty well dialed in. Castillo’s improvement had more to do with better results on his sinker than any mechanical changes to his breaking ball. But Muñoz has allowed the M’s to part ways with Sergio Romo and Drew Steckenrider and solidify the roles in front of Sewald. They’re reducing the volatility and variance in a notoriously volatile part of the club.
3: Yeah, OK, but is it going to matter?
Who knows? What I do know is that the *way* they’ve won these games – hard-fought, taut games punctuated with late-game heroics – is objectively awesome. I definitely wish the M’s hadn’t dug themselves such a big hole, but this is as compelling a team as we’ve seen in a while. Last year’s team was incredibly fun, but fun like a CGI-filled popcorn movie. It wasn’t, you know, art, but it was cool to watch. The improvement in the line-up and the solidification of the staff makes this a bit more interesting, even as they may struggle to win 90 games.
But more important to the rest of the schedule is how the AL is shaking out. I mentioned a month or so ago that I thought that you might not *need* to win 90 to get a wildcard this year, unlike in 2021. The reason is that essentially all of the wild card contenders (outside of the M’s and some darkhorses like Cleveland) are in the same division. A division with a historic Leviathan in it. The AL East could go a number of different ways, but if the non-Yankees start beating each other up, that critical number of wins to get a wildcard keeps dropping. Well, since then, the AL East has…beat itself up.
There are a number of keys here, from Tampa losing Wander Franco for much of the spring (and now the rest of the summer) to the White Sox’s collapse to Toronto’s pitching woes to the unlikely emergence of a decent Orioles club. But it all gets to the same place: it’s much less likely now that you’ll have *four* teams in the AL East with 90-92 wins. It could happen, and Fangraphs’ still likes the playoff odds of the Rays/Red Sox/Jays better than Seattle’s. But critically, it has the Rays winning 85 games, while the M’s are at 83. This is well within the margin of error. And at this point, the strength of schedule difference between, say, Tampa and Seattle looms pretty large. A Wander-less Rays team facing the Yanks a bunch more times vs. the M’s taking on Texas and an Angels team that could maybe even trade off Ohtani? Yes, that seems aligned with my interests.
4: How do they get better?
In perhaps the biggest change from a month ago, the trade deadline is now Important. Whereas it was shaping up to be a complex-league flyer in exchange for Adam Frazier, the M’s are clearly buyers, and have to be willing to deal off some of their minor league depth. The pick-up of Carlos Santana’s already paid enormous dividends, and I know things get weird now if the M’s want to play France/Santana/Haniger once Mitch is activated, but we’ll take line-up crunches. The line-up still has black holes, and the M’s should endeavor to fill them.
The Royals acquired some prospect depth for a draft pick, and while it wouldn’t get them enough, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them sweeten a package in the next week with their first-round selection in Sunday’s draft. They have to be willing to let some of their more heralded prospects go and/or take on significant salary, but I’m not sure how they face the clubhouse without doing it. They’ve crept back into what was looking like a lost season, and they’re a far sight better than last year’s club. The league’s fallen back as well, and a few of the teams that looked like serious challengers – the Angels and White Sox – have essentially dithered away half a season. If you can’t make serious moves now, when can you make them?
Andrew Benintendi could be an interesting pick-up if the M’s had confidence Ty France could return to 2B. There are a lot more pitchers on the block this year, so if the M’s wanted to bolster the rotation they could target Luis Castillo or help the bullpen through Matt Moore or Michael Fulmer. The latter two wouldn’t cost much in prospects, but also have less scope to really change the outlook for the M’s. I’d like Moore’s left-handedness in a pen dominated by righties, though.
Game 83, Mariners at Padres: Independence
Chris Flexen vs. Sean Manaea, 3:40pm
Happy Independence Day. I am far from home this year, way over in Europe…hence the paucity of game posts and general thoughts on what’s been a very successful stint from the M’s. What was going to be a family trip has been marred by Covid, and thus I almost feel like I’m hiding out here on the Eastern shores of England. It makes this, for me, at least, an exceedingly odd July 4th. I’ve missed so many M’s games due to the time difference, so my news from home consists of the phone notifications upon waking: how the M’s game ended, and a mass shooting update.
I didn’t have to wake up for the shooting notification. You got started early, I guess. I’d mentioned on Twitter the other day that, absent watching the M’s game live, the only option is to follow the narrative. We try to rise above that sort of stuff at USSM, but when you can’t watch the actual games, what else is there? It’s kind of the same for watching the US…I get snippets on the BBC or elsewhere, and it looks unrecognizable, and all too familiar. Narratives can be annoying for what they elide, but most have a basis in truth.
It’s felt this way for a few years now, but in 2022, it’s inescapable: half the country is celebrating something very different from the other half. Sure, I know: most people are just grilling and having fun with family. But to the degree people are reflecting on the actual holiday, people are drawing very different conclusions. It’s weird, and I’m not sure how to change it.
But then, we know exactly how this goes, right? This hot streak lands very differently for those who expected the M’s to contend this year vs. those of us who didn’t. There is a very real divide between something as small and fragile and beautiful as Mariner fans online. So let’s be clear here for a minute. It’s July 4th, after all.
If you’ve ever read any of this…whatever this is, you’re at the party. If you’ve read Dave and DMZ and company, and left when it was mostly left to this weirdo, you’re at the party. If you’ve hate-read this and believe in your heart that Jerry and the M’s are perma-contenders starting now or next year, you’re at the party. If you just want more statcast and pitch movement posts and hate the lack of posts, you are definitely at the party. July 4th is a great holiday because there is no one way to do it; there aren’t hard and fast rules. So today, from a long way away, in quite weird circumstances, and in ominous and angry times, we get to define what we want.
All M’s fans, all baseball fans, all of baseball Twitter, all of analog baseball who listens on radio, or goes to minor league games: you are my people, and you have supported me without knowing it. It is so weird to connect to something like baseball, as beautiful as it is, but it is extra weird to connect to the flawed and perhaps doomed form the Seattle Mariners play. Every one of you so afflicted is awesome, and I wish I could clink a glass with you today. As everything seems to spin apart, as divisions harden day after day, let’s think about how insane and magical it is that something so imperfect can create connections and sustain community. But it can only do so if we all do the work to sustain it.
So, yeah, it’s extra weird being abroad on July 4th, but I am trying to feel the spirit of it here at night on a rundown seaside. I’m gonna catch at least part of the game today, and I’ll be thinking a lot about home. I’m homesick today, even though the big parties were cancelled at home. Mostly, I just miss my dog. But I am very excited to dive back into the nuances of the season and not just the big narratives.
Today, though, it’s Sean Manaea and the Padres. We are perhaps over-familiar with Manaea: FB, CH, SL, in essentially the same percentages as when he broke in back in 2016. He looks consistent, and he really is: his ERA’s bounced around, but he’s figured out how to be himself as the game has changed around him. He had HR trouble in 2016 and 2017, but be fitted from the HR dip in 2018. He was injured for bits of 2019-2020, but while his walk rate is up this year, the second drop in HRs (and the drop in BABIP) has helped him out. I don’t want to say that his success is the result of league-wide trends. He is who he is: successful overall, and more or less so depending on the context. Which means he is remarkably consistent, and I kind of like that.
1: Rodriguez, CF
2: Crawford, SS
3: Suarez, 3B
4: Santana, 1B
5: Raleigh, C
6: Toro, 2B
7: Upton, DH
8: Moore, LF
9: Wilson, RF
SP: Flexen