Ackley Coming Up
Per Shannon Drayer on Twitter. Not sure why M’s would wait until they have a day off to promote him, but there you go – expect him to start at second base on Friday night. Luis Rodriguez was optioned to Tacoma to make room on the roster.
While I don’t think Ackley is going to come up and challenge for the batting title right away, I do think it’s reasonable to conclude that he is, right now, a better hitter than everyone on the roster except for Justin Smoak and Ichiro. I’m sure we’ll see him at the bottom of the order to begin with, but he has the skills to make a smooth transition to the big leagues, and adding him to this line-up can only help.
I’d expect something like .270/.350/.400 out of Ackley over the rest of the year, and while that might not sound like much, in this day and age, it’s a pretty nifty line out of a middle infielder. And given what else the Mariners are running out there right now, that makes him look like Barry Bonds.
Welcome to Seattle, Dustin. Stay awhile.
Game 69, Angels At Mariners
Santana vs. Bedard, 7:10 pm.
Is this a joke? Not that tinkering with lineup order matters that much, but first, Wedge doesn’t want to stick Smoak in the cleanup spot because he doesn’t want to put that kind of pressure on him, yet now he’s fine putting Peguero there just to give it a try.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Peguero, DH
Olivo, C
Carp, LF
Gutierrez, CF
Figgins, 3B
Wilson, 2B
Game 68, Angels At Mariners
Weaver vs Fister, 7:10 pm.
The Mariners are going to need Doug Fister to be excellent tonight, though Jered Weaver does have some of the most extreme home/road splits in baseball, and Safeco isn’t as friendly to flyballing RHPs as Anaheim’s stadium is. Maybe the M’s can get one or two up in the air and out to right field.
Oh, and we get our first look at Mike Carp in left field tonight.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Kennedy, 2B
Cust, DH
Olivo, C
Carp, LF
Halman, CF
Figgins, 3B
It’s Not Super Two
Since people keep referring to the Super Two deadline as a reason why Dustin Ackley is still in Tacoma, I figured I’d just do the math. A day of service is any day that a player is on the active roster during the regular season, whether that team has a game that day or not.
Today is June 14th. The regular season ends on September 28th. By month, the number of service time dates available, including today:
June: 17
July: 31
August: 31
September: 28
17+31+31+28 = 107 days. That is the amount of service time that Dustin Ackley would accrue if the Mariners called him up tonight.
Last year, the Super Two cutoff was 122 days. Most years, it’s been over 130, but it’s going down as more teams are waiting to keep their top prospects away from that extra arbitration year if they can. A reasonable estimate for the 2013 Super Two crop would be around 110-115 days, which is why you saw a lot of teams call up their better prospects last week – Anthony Rizzo (SD), Mike Moustakas (KC), Jemile Weeks (OAK), and Dee Gordon (LA) all made their MLB debuts between June 6th and 10th, and that wasn’t a coincidence.
There’s almost no chance that the Super Two cutoff is only 107 days in 2013. Baseball America keeps a chart of all the players who have made their debut this season, and a lot of those guys have remained in the Majors since they were called up. It is not hard to find ~20 guys (the number of players who qualified for Super Two status last winter) on that list who will likely have more service time than Ackley, even if he’s called up today.
The Mariners showed that they didn’t care about Super Two status, or even the extra year of team control, when it came to Michael Pineda. We’re almost certainly past the super two deadline with Dustin Ackley, and yet he’s still in Tacoma. The only reasonable conclusion is that his promotion timetable has nothing to do with service time, and everything to do with the forced reduction in playing time for either (or both) Chone Figgins and Adam Kennedy. The M’s are apparently not yet willing to make those two share third base, and that is almost certainly the reason why Ackley is still in Triple-A.
Game 67, Angels At Mariners
Vargas vs Haren, 7:10 pm.
Dustin Ackley is still in Tacoma. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. We’re well under the service time threshold for Super Two status from the last few years, and while the expectation is that the number of days required to qualify will be lower if it’s still around when Ackley would be eligible, it’s hard to believe that the number would be this low. At this point, the only explanation I can come up with is that they’re simply not willing to turn third base into a Figgins/Kennedy platoon yet. While I still don’t think this team is a contender, they are 1 1/2 games out of first place, and Ackley is probably the third best hitter in the organization right now – they can worry about rescuing some of Figgins value down the stretch if the team does fade from the race. It’s not like he’s going to have any trade value by July 31st anyway.
Essentially, that was a long-winded way of saying Dustin Ackley has no more business in Tacoma and should be starting at second base for the Mariners tonight. That he’s not is… disappointing.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Kennedy, 2B
Olivo, C
Peguero, LF
Gutierrez, CF
Carp, DH
Figgins, 3B
Minor League Wrap (6/6-12/11)
I’m not going to let a little thing like a raging draft hangover keep me from my weekly duties. Keep in mind that Everett opens up their season next Friday, with the first homestand starting the next Wednesday, and Pulaski will gear up the Tuesday the 21st, with the AZL starting up the day before. I’ll have previews as rosters become available to me, but right now I haven’t even heard of any signings. We’re getting to the crazy part of the season here.
To the jump!
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Game 66, Mariners At Tigers
Hernandez vs Porcello, 10:05 am.
Happy Felix Day!
Game 65, Mariners At Tigers
PIneda vs Scherzer, 4:05 pm.
Ichiro is back, and back at leadoff. Rooting hard for Chone Figgins to go like 8 for 8 tonight so that the “he needs to hit leadoff!” cries go away.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Kennedy, 2B
Olivo, C
Peguero, LF
Carp, DH
Figgins, 3B
Halman, CF
Game 64, Mariners At Tigers
Bedard vs Penny, 4:05 pm.
For the first time since August of 2009, Ichiro is not in the starting line-up. His prolonged slump has finally led to a real day off, rather than just getting a break from playing the field by serving as the team’s DH. Carlos Peguero gets the start in right field, though Ichiro is essentially being replaced by Greg Halman, who is playing left field tonight – the spot Peguero likely would have been against an RHP had Ichiro been in the line-up. Chone Figgins moves to the leadoff spot with Ichiro on the bench.
The question as to why Ichiro is getting a day off is a simple enough one to answer – since May 24th, he’s 8 for 67, a putrid .119/.157/.164 line that is worse than what you’d get from a generic pitcher. When a player slumps this badly for this long, they get a day off. It’s just how baseball works.
But there’s a why behind that as well, and that’s a question that doesn’t get asked as often. Why do slumping players get a day off? Because the manager needs to look like he’s proactively doing something to fix the problem, while in reality, there’s nothing he can actually do to fix it. It’s a symbolic gesture because the manager can’t appear to be doing nothing, so he does the only thing he can actually do – change the line-up.
In reality, it doesn’t actually do anything. On May 27th, Chone Figgins got a day off following a travel day so that he could have a few days to clear his head. He then started three games in a row and went 0 for 12. He got two more days off to really clear his head, then started seven games in a row in which he went 4 for 24. The days off didn’t change anything.
Giving a slumping player a day off is the baseball equivalent of spitting at the wind; when you’re done, it’s still going to be windy, and there’s a good chance you’ll have saliva on your face. I’m not saying that Wedge shouldn’t give Ichiro the night off. I understand why he’s doing it. He has to feel like he’s doing something, so he’s doing the only thing he can do. It’s just not going to matter. If Ichiro comes back tomorrow and gets three hits, people will play the bad assumption game and say that the day off sparked him. If he doesn’t, they’ll forget it ever happened. This is how flawed theories on causation get created.
Ichiro is too good to be this bad. He will eventually start hitting again – maybe not at prior levels, but he’s certainly better than he has been lately. Giving him a day off today won’t do anything to make that happen any faster. Hitting him third won’t do anything to make it happen any faster. Hitting Figgins leadoff tonight won’t help him hit better. None of this matters. It’s all just to make everyone involved feel like they’re doing something, which is better than feeling helpless, but in the end, the only people who can fix Ichiro and Figgins are Ichiro and Figgins.
Figgins, 3B
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Cust, DH
Kennedy, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Peguero, RF
Halman, LF
Gimenez, C
Game 63, Mariners At Tigers
Fister vs Verlander, 4:05 pm.
Evaluating managers is hard – most of what their job actually entitles is done away from public view, and by and large, they all generally make the same decisions on the field anyways. What might be good for one team might be bad for another, and there are always things going on that we aren’t aware of. When someone asks me if a manager is good or bad, my standard response is generally “I don’t know.”
That said, I will note that there’s one thing we can fairly easily judge a manager on that does make an actual difference in terms of winning and losing games, and that’s how well he evaluates what players should be on the field the most often. Some managers just are better than others at maximizing the skills of their players, and put their team in a position to win more often than others.
I’d say that tonight’s line-up is another reason to be a little bit concerned that Eric Wedge is not particularly good at figuring out which players should be on the field. You’ll find the batting order below, but the short version is that Justin Smoak is getting the day off, Cust is again being displaced at DH by Mike Carp, and Greg Halman is starting in left field. All of this is happening against Justin Verlander, one of the best right-handed pitchers in baseball.
The Mariners have three players on the roster who have performed above the league average offensively this year – Smoak (131 wRC+), Kennedy (118), and Cust (106). All three can hit from the left-hand side, giving them the platoon advantage against a right-handed pitcher. Two of the three are not playing tonight. By moving Kennedy to first base, Wedge has essentially replaced Smoak’s bat in the line-up with Jack Wilson’s, and by using Carp at DH, he’s swapped out Cust’s bat for Halman’s.
The rationale that will be given is that Smoak has struggled since moving to the #3 spot, that Halman has been hot since he came up, blah blah blah. None of that matters. It’s all hogwash, and a bad use of statistics. The fact is that the Mariners are throwing out a lousy line-up against one of the game’s best pitchers, and that’s on Eric Wedge. He’s shown that he has a very low opinion of the value of a walk, and it looks like Cust is going to be the one to lose the most playing time with Carp on the roster. That’s not an upgrade, and it’s a bad use of the players he has on hand.
Wedge may be great at dealing with players, motivating the young kids, handling pitchers… I have no idea. I hope he is, because he’ll need to be good at some of that stuff to cancel out the fact that he’s shown that he’s not particularly great at realizing what makes a hitter effective.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Kennedy, 1B
Olivo, C
Gutierrez, CF
Carp, DH
Halman, LF
Rodriguez, 3B
Wilson, 2B