Game 83, Padres at Mariners
Dustin Ackley’s still out with sore ribs, so we get Figginsed again. Also, Adam Kennedy gets the night off against a lefty, allowing Jack Wilson to get a rare start. Doug Fister takes the hill against lefty Cory Luebke, a reliever making a spot start.
Luebke came up through the SD system with great command and decent GB rates, and the move to the pen helped his K rate. The main reason he’s been fairly successful as a reliever (and in 4 previous starts between 2010-2011) is his HR/FB rate.
He doesn’t show much in the way of platoon splits, but the M’s went with a fairly standard line-up with Halman in LF instead of Carp/Peguero and Franklin Gutierrez moved up to 3rd. That’s not an awe-inspiring middle of the order, but I can’t say I’m unhappy with it. This is a very good defensive arrangement, and they’re playing the Padres.
The lineup (courtesy of Greg Johns)
1: Ichiro, RF
2: Ryan, SS
3: Gutierrez, CF
4: Smoak, 1B
5: Halman, LF
6: Cust, DH
7: Bard, C
8: Figgins, 3B
9: Wilson, 2B
Mariners Sign Dominican OF Helsin Martinez
It’s not quite July 2nd yet, but some of the major international free agent signings are now public. The big signing for the Mariners is OF Helsin Martinez, a power hitting OF who signed for $2m. Both IPL Baseball and ESPN’s Enrique Rojas confirmed the signing on twitter.
From what little I know, the best comp would seem to be Guillermo Pimentel, another power hitter from the DR who signed for $2m back in 2009 (he’s now in the Appy league and has appeared as a top 5 prospect in several lists).
In other prospect news, the M’s have made a flurry of promotions in the minor leagues, with Vinny Catricala and James Paxton moving up to AA Jackson, Anthony Vasquez and Josh Fields moving to Tacoma, C/LF Angel Salome continues his comeback at High Desert, and tons of catchers moving up/around thanks to the M;s losing both of their backstops on one day.
The M’s have one more move to make: they need to call up a starter for Sunday’s game to take the place of Erik Bedard. Eric Wedge has said it’d be someone who wasn’t on the roster (ruling out a David Pauley/Aaron Laffey spot start), this has led many to speculate that the start will go to Tacoma RHP Blake Beavan, acquired in the Cliff Lee deal last year. He’s got two things going for him: he’s been hot recently and Sunday would be his turn in the rotation (he pitched on 6/28). The huge righty was abysmal for Tacoma in a late season call-up last year, and got out of the gate slowly in 2011 as well. But an uptick in his velocity’s made him an effective starter – he went 21 IP with 18 Ks, 5 BBs and 4 runs allowed over 3 starts this month before a terrible start the other day in Las Vegas.
Nothing really jumps out at you with Beavan – he doesn’t have a wipeout breaking ball, he doesn’t have great command, and he’s not going to light up radar guns (he was at 89-90 last year/April 2011 and is now 91-93, touching 94). If he can carry the newfound velocity with him, though, he could hopefully do a decent Doug Fister impersonation for a while. Fister always had better command, however. Beavan’s also had a bit of a HR problem, especially at home. They’d need a 40-man spot for Beavan, but they have several candidates for a DFA – from forgotten man Jeff Gray, OF Mike Wilson or P Yoervis Medina. They’d likely slip through waivers, the way Edward Paredes did this week.
The other spot start candidate in Tacoma is Luke French, who’s currently on the 40-man and who made 13 starts for the M’s last year. French, however, has been consistently awful this year, with 21 HRs given up in his 85 innings, and a FIP over 7. His velocity’s down a bit, and I’m not convinced he’s healthy
Update: It’s Beavan who’ll start tomorrow. M’s will wait on the roster move until tomorrow. Hat tip: Ryan Divish.
Photo of Beavan below:
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Game 82, Padres At Mariners
Vargas vs Moseley, 7:10 pm.
Dustin Ackley is not in the line-up tonight due to bruised ribs, but apparently he’ll be back in the line-up tomorrow. Still, that makes tonight’s game about 99% less interesting.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Kennedy, 2B
Smoak, 1B
Cust, DH
Peguero, LF
Gutierrez, CF
Bard, C
Figgins, 3B
Asking The Question Slightly Differently
I get that a lot of people think the idea of trading Michael Pineda away is crazy. It’s just not something you see teams do – in almost every case, they keep their best young players around and hope for the best. But, let me turn the tables and present the question in a slightly different manner.
Let’s say that the team was in exactly the same position in the standings that they are right now at 39-42, 4 games out of first place. However, instead of Jack Cust struggling at DH, they had 24-year-old Yonder Alonso, a left-handed hitting line drive guy with some upside. Instead of Adam Kennedy and Chone Figgins platooning at third base, they had 25-year-old Todd Frazier adding some right-handed power to the line-up. The rotation featured a 24-year-old lefty in Travis Wood who had racked up +3.2 WAR in 196 innings at the big league level and was a perfect fit for Safeco Field. And, down on the farm, the best prospect in the system was a 22-year-old switch-hitting catcher with patience and power, the fruit of the team’s high selection in the first round a year ago.
Would anyone here really be suggesting that the Mariners trade three guys off their Major League roster and their best prospect remaining in the minors – one of the very best catching prospects in the game, by the way – for a starting pitcher? Anyone?
I’ll suggest that the answer is no, and as evidence, I’ll point to the discussions we were all having at this time last summer. The Mariners were going to trade Cliff Lee and everyone knew it, so the month of July was essentially non-stop speculation about what kinds of players the Mariners should target. The public opinion was nearly unanimous – the package of players coming back should be centered around the best hitter the team could get. The general reaction to a rumored package from Minnesota that might include Scott Baker was “no thanks, we want bats!”
That’s why the focus the last few weeks was on the teams who could offer up a top hitting prospect in return – the Yankees dangled Jesus Montero before the Rangers finally caved on Justin Smoak, but this was the kind of guy the Mariners were after when trading Lee, and the kind of guy that nearly everyone in the fan base wanted to see the team get in return. There just wasn’t any kind of push to use Lee to get a young pitcher in return, even though the rotation was mediocre and in need of some serious help.
Last year, no one wanted to build around pitching when making a trade that would almost certainly bring back an elite young talent. Now, all of the sudden, a premium young pitcher is a more valuable commodity to the team than a position player despite the rest of the rotation getting even better and the team using the #2 overall pick in the draft on a premium pitching prospect?
I get that watching Michael Pineda is exciting, and dreaming of what he could be is one of the most fun things about being a Mariner fan right now. However, if the tables were flipped and Pineda was already in Cincinnati, and the Mariners had Grandal, Alonso, Frazier, and Wood in the organization, I just don’t think we’d be seeing massive support for trading them all away to acquire Pineda and build an uber-rotation. I think the reaction to that suggestion would be something along the lines of “the pitching is already very good, why create huge holes on the roster to upgrade the strength of the team?”
I’m just saying that if you wouldn’t make the trade if the tables were turned, then maybe it’s not such a crazy idea after all.
Trade Michael Pineda?
Turning comments back on for this post as a test since I know many of you will want to weigh in. Behave.
My newest post is up on the Brock and Salk blog, and in it, I advocate the team exploring a trade for Michael Pineda. Yes, seriously.
I realize that the thought of trading Pineda is going to sound crazy. He’s a 22-year-old flamethrower who is already a quality Major League arm, and the Mariners control his rights through the 2016 season. He’s the leading candidate for the American League Rookie of the Year, and a big part of why the Mariners have been competitive this season. But, for those same reasons, Pineda would attract a ridiculous amount of demand if the organization let it be known that they would move him for the right price.
The list of available starting pitchers this summer is weak and thin. There is no Cliff Lee on the market, and so teams looking to upgrade their rotation will be frustrated by their options. There are also multiple contending teams that are up against their payroll limits, and given their budgetary restraints, they wouldn’t be able to take on much salary even if they could find a player they coveted. Pineda solves a lot of problems for these teams, offering a league-minimum front-line starter who would be with their organization for years to come.
Read the rest over at 710sports.com, and the link to my segment with the guys should be up on that page soon..
Links for an Evening Without Baseball
The M’s got swept this afternoon, and the PCL’s off tonight (thanks for letting us borrow Mike Curto, Tacoma!), so here’s what I’ve been reading while I drift in and out of consciousness due to sleep deprivation:
1: Taijuan Walker had one of his poorer outings on Monday, giving up 5R and 5BBs to Beloit. He’s still striking out over 30% of hitters facing him, and he’s still putting up an absurd GB rate. But the pure ground/air out ratio obscures something: Walker will end the month of June with just two outfield putouts behind him. He could end the year with his first baseman making more putouts on fly balls/popups/whatever than his LF/CF/RF put together. There are two things to take from this, both of them good: first, he’s had bad BABIP luck in the OF, and this could regress when he moves up the ladder. Second, he’s getting a high percentage of infield fly balls, a stat which stabilizes relatively quickly for pitchers. Speaking of which….
2: Many of you probably came across this seminal article by Russell Carleton aka ‘Pizza Cutter’ a few years ago measuring when various statistics “stabilized,” defined as an R^2 of .50. That is, how much *information* – as opposed to small-sample noise – do you see in a pitcher/hitter’s GB rate over a given number of plate appearances. Derek Carty’s just updated it with a small but important tweak to the methodology: instead of having a common denominator for each statistic (plate appearances), the denominator shifts based on the metric in question: balls-in-play for balls-in-play stats and plate appearances (or something close to it) for things like K rate. Just using PAs works fine for the majority of players, but consider how many balls in play Ichiro and Jack Cust would put up in any given number of plate appearances; if we’re trying to figure out each player’s ground ball rate, for example, it’s probably significant that Ichiro will have vastly more balls in play than Cust. This is really, really useful stuff even for the 99% of us that won’t use these figures, apply the proper amount of regression, and create new player projections. It’s handy simply as way to rank the various factors that pitchers or hitters control/influence – strikeout rate stabilizes first, walk rate stabilizes a bit slower, and things like HR rate and BABIP don’t stabilize for years.
3: I feel like I should link to this whenever a pitcher has a slight drop in velocity, or every week, whichever is soonest. Amazing.
4: SS prospect Nick Franklin saw his hostile takeover of AA cut short by a freak batting practice injury this week. Larry Stone spoke with M’s head of Player Development Pedro Grifol about it here. Sounds like a concussion; here’s hoping Franklin’s able to heal and resume play quickly.
5: A’s manager Bob Melvin’s seen his injury-ravaged line-up score 9 runs in 7 games, all while bat-first prospect Chris Carter (brought to Oakland on 6/23) perfects his seed-spitting skills on the bench. Carter has one at-bat over the past week, as the vets in front of him continue to struggle. Susan Slusser touches on this apparent incongruity in this post, which leads off with the news that RHP Tyson Ross will make a rehab start this week. Ross injured his oblique on May 19th, which underlines how long these injuries take to heal. Tough break for Chris Gimenez, and a decent opportunity for Josh Bard.
6: Former Rainier Dan Reichert never really lived up to the expectations many had of him, but he’s now given the world this, and that’s OK in my book. All is forgiven for ditching the 2005 R’s after 4 awful innings, Dan. Good look in any future Garrison Opportunities.
7: Bill Petti wrote an interesting article on the drop in runs scored this year, and may have identified an explanation: pitchers entering MLB this year have been really, really good. As a fan of Michael Pineda, I can only say that this hypothesis makes a great deal of sense to me. To be fair, there’s a sizeable drop in FIP for veteran pitchers, so this isn’t the *only* explanation, but for M’s fans who’ve seen Pineda replace Ryan Rowland-Smith/Chris Seddon/David Pauley, it’s quite a plausible one.
Game 81, Braves At Mariners
Hernandez vs Lowe.
Happy Felix Day!
First things first – a huge congratulations to friend of the blog Mike Curto, who gets the call-up from Tacoma and will be calling a few innings on the radio with Rick Rizzs. Curto does yeoman’s work for the Rainiers, and while he might not have the dulcet tones of Vin Scully, few announcers work harder or are more prepared to give their listeners interesting insights about the game itself. I’m thrilled personally for Mike, and look forward to listening to him this afternoon.
In other news, Josh Bard has been called up from Tacoma to replace the injured Chris Gimenez, who was placed on the 15-day DL. Edward Paredes was DFA’d to make room for Bard on the 40 man roster. It was always a mystery why Paredes was on the 40 man to begin with, and if he gets claimed on waivers, it will just mean that we don’t have to talk about him anymore. Win win!
Line-up today includes Cust again, so that’s a win, and he even gets to move up from 8th after showing he’s not dead last night. That said, the Ryan/Kennedy experiment as the #2/#3 hitters is killing the team right now, and so this line-up is still problematic.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Kennedy, 3B
Smoak, 1B
Ackley, 2B
Cust, DH
Gutierrez, CF
Peguero, LF
Bard, C
The Massive Blunder
This is being written under the assumption that the double steal in the 7th inning was called for from the bench. That assumption could be wrong – if so, just replace “Eric Wedge” with whoever decided to try this. Of course, you can also make a very valid argument that it’s the managers responsibility to make sure that the people under him aren’t stupid enough to do something like this without his consent either…
Tonight, Eric Wedge made one of the worst tactical decisions I’ve seen from a manager in a long, long time. Down by two runs in the 7th inning, the Mariners had managed to get the tying runs on base, and Justin Smoak had worked a 3-0 count from George Sherrill. This was an amazingly great situation for the M’s. Sherrill is a left-handed specialist who is mediocre against right-handers, and he was now pitching in the best possible hitter’s count to a right-handed batter who could sit on a fastball and try to launch it over the fence for the lead.
Instead of getting to see what the team’s clean-up hitter could do in the best possible hitting situation you could imagine, the M’s attempted a double steal. Smoak took a called strike, and Brian McCann threw out Adam Kennedy at second base for the second out of the inning. All of the sudden, Smoak was the tying run instead of the go-ahead run, and any out would end the rally and let the Braves turn the game over to the vaunted Venters/Kimbrel duo in the 8th and 9th inning.
So, yes, the result sucked, but what’s maddening about this play isn’t even that it didn’t work. It’s that had it worked, it still wouldn’t have helped the team. Even if Kennedy is called safe and the team moves the tying run into scoring position, it’s an automatic intentional walk for Smoak to load the bases. There’s no way Fredi Gonzalez would continue pitching to Smoak with first base open when he could simply put him on, get the platoon advantage against Dustin Ackley, set up the double play and a force at home. It’s the easiest IBB call ever.
And so, the best possible outcome if the double-steal is successful is bases loaded, 1 out, and Ackley at the plate against Sherrill. But guess what? Had the M’s not sent the runners, they almost certainly would have had that outcome anyway.
Justin Smoak has had 21 plate appearances this year where he’s worked a 3-0 count (before tonight). He’s gone on to draw a walk 15 times, giving him a .714 OBP after getting to that spot. The AL average this year is .746. When a pitcher falls behind a hitter 3-0, they usually just end up walking them.
The outcome the M’s were willing to risk the tying run for was the most likely outcome if they did nothing. To do anything other than have the runners stand and watch Justin Smoak either get a fastball to try and thump or take his base is just craziness. Absolute insanity.
That double steal call was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen on a baseball field, rivaling Eric Byrnes famous pull-back-the-squeeze last year. Whoever called for it needs to take Baseball Run Expectancy 101. That Smoak did walk and then Dustin Ackley immediately singled up the middle for a hit that would have tied the game just makes the mistake all the more obvious, but it was a mistake from the minute it was conceived.
Whether that was Wedge, one of his coaches, or the runners themselves, the person who made the decision to try and steal there owes the team an apology. They may have very well cost the Mariners a win.
Game 80, Braves At Mariners
Pineda vs Hanson, 7:10 pm.
Since comments are off for now, this is more of a game preview than a game thread, I guess. But, look, I just don’t have the time or the desire to spend time cleaning up things like people wishing Chone Figgins would kill himself – yes, that’s an actual comment from yesterday. Derek, Jason, and I started this blog as an outlet for ourselves to share our thoughts on the franchise, and I just don’t have a desire to let it become an outlet for the immature and ignorant. If I can figure out a way to have comments on the site that reflect that at least a little bit of thought went into it, we’ll bring them back. But, if they do come back, know that you guys need to do better. The status quo recently just isn’t acceptable.
Jack Cust makes his return to the line-up tonight, but due to his struggles, he’s hitting 8th. Wedge might as well be drawing names out of a hat at this point.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Kennedy, 3B
Smoak, 1B
Ackley, 2B
Olivo, C
Carp, LF
Cust, DH
Halman, CF
Turning Comments Off For A Bit
They might come back. We’ll see. For now, we’ll just go without comments for a bit.