Game 59, Rays At Mariners
Bedard vs Davis, 1:10 pm.
Wade Davis, K/9, by season:
2009: 8.92
2010: 6.05
2011: 4.25
Don’t think of him as the hard-throwing top prospect he was a few years ago. Think of him as a pitcher that this team could light up, especially if they don’t swing at crap out of the strike zone.
Game 58, Rays At Mariners
Fister vs Hellickson, 1:10 pm.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Cust, DH
Kennedy, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Peguero, LF
Figgins, 3B
Gimenez, C
Game 57, Rays At Mariners
Sonnanstine vs Vargas, 7:10 pm.
As Marc noted last night, the M’s made a roster move by shipping Michael Saunders back to Tacoma and replacing him on the roster with Greg Halman. It’s an odd move from my perspective, as the role he’s up to fill is basically twice-a-week fill-in at CF with some defensive replacement work in left field mixed in. If the M’s actually think Halman is a prospect worth developing, having him sit around on the bench isn’t going to be a great way to have him spend his days, but then again, they might agree with me that Halman is not likely to ever turn into much in the big leagues.
Like Peguero, his approach at the plate is just atrocious, and his power isn’t enough to make the whole package work. Halman is a good defender, at least, but I don’t think he’s ever going to hit much. I do wonder what his promotion means for Mike Wilson, though – Halman could theoretically serve as the right-handed of the left field platoon, making Wilson redundant.
Essentially, this move is strange on its own, but this roster is hardly a finished product – I still don’t expect Peguero to be here much longer despite his two homer game last night. Dustin Ackley will be up soon, and the roster will need to do some more changing to accommodate his presence. The Halman promotion may have just been about getting Saunders back to Tacoma more than anything else.
Halman Up, Saunders Down
Greg Halman was recalled from AAA this evening and Michael Saunders was finally, mercifully, optioned to Tacoma. This move wasn’t exactly difficult to foresee; when you’ve got a CF with a wOBA of .212 in 150+ PAs, you reach for another CF. Halman fits the bill as a good CF (unlike Peguero/Wilson), and he won’t need to play as often as Saunders did now that Franklin Gutierrez has a few weeks under his belt.
Halman’s missed several weeks himself with a broken bone in his hand, and he showed some rust tonight in his last AAA game: he had some late breaks on shallow fly balls and struck out twice. That said, he’s shown some improvement from 2010, when he hit 33 HRs, but struck out in over 36% of his plate appearances. He’s around 20% this year, though the sample’s quite small.
While the improvement in plated discipline looks nice, this move is all about Mike Saunders. Halman’s just the CF who’s closest to the majors. In an ideal world, he’d have more ABs in AAA to get his timing back after missing so many games. Of course, in an ideal world, Saunders wouldn’t force the issue with a .212 wOBA. Saunders altered his batting stance near the end of spring training and had a decent game or two with the new mechanics in Peoria, but since the season’s started, he’s looked lost. It’s not like he’s been the victim of bad luck: in May, he struck out in nearly 40% of his plate appearances, and I’m actually surprised the figure’s that low. He’s been good defensively, but you simply can’t carry a hitter this bad for long. Halman’s famously a tools project with poor discipline and pitch recognition, but he’s found himself in a situation in which his discipline/pitch recognition skills may be better than the guy’s he’s replacing.
Something’s really, really wrong with Saunders, and he’s forced the M’s hand here. Gutierrez still isn’t playing back-to-back games in CF, so they desperately need a competent back-up (this is why Halman gets the call and not Carp, as Ryan Divish and others have noted). Everything was set up for Saunders to stake his claim as a legitimate MLB center fielder, and instead he’s looked far, far worse than his initial MLB call-up. We’ll see if Alonzo Powell can work with him better than Chambliss could, though it’s worth pointing out that Powell was Saunders’ hitting coach in the 2nd half of last season too. Saunders has looked so lost that it seems the problem’s more mental than mechanical. Here’s hoping he can work things out in Tacoma.
In other recent transactions, Nate Robertson made his first rehab start for Tacoma tonight, going 6 innings with 6H, 3R, 2K, 1BB, 2HRs. The ex-Tiger sat 87-88 with his FB, with a decent two-seamer at around 84-85 and a change-up in the 80 range. He’s always been a fly-ball pitcher, so the two HRs don’t come as too much of a surprise, and Reno’s line-up hit him harder than his line might suggest, but all in all it was a decent first outing for a guy who missed all of spring training with bone chips in his elbow.
Manny Delcarmen asked for his release and got it yesterday; the veteran reliever is now a free agent.
Here’s a photo from tonight’s game – Robertson’s first and Halman’s last in a Tacoma uniform.
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Game 56, Rays At Mariners
Hernandez vs Shields, 7:10 pm.
Happy Felix Day!
Last year, I predicted that James Shields would win the AL Cy Young. He posted an ERA of 5.18 and didn’t receive a vote, but his peripherals were pretty good (3.55 xFIP) and I remained a fan. This year, Shields is actually pitching like a Cy Young winner, running a 2.15 ERA and a 2.75 xFIP through the first two months of the season. Couldn’t have done this last year, Mr. Shields? You suck.
The M’s counter with Felix, so whatever the over/under is, take the under.
Also, Figgins is back, and Peguero is still here. Celebrate* accordingly.
*Don’t actually celebrate.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Cust, DH
Gutierrez, CF
Kennedy, 2B
Olivo, C
Figgins, 3B
Peguero, LF
David Pauley’s Success
My latest piece for the Brock and Salk blog is now live – I’ll be on with the guys on 710 ESPN at 9:30 to discuss this and the rest of the goings on with the team.
Here’s the first few paragraphs of the piece, and you can read the rest at 710sports.com.
Perhaps no part of the Mariners surprising success so far this season has been more unexpected than the development of David Pauley into a reliable relief ace for Eric Wedge to turn to. Pauley began the year as a long reliever, but has pitched his way into a highly valuable role as a rubber-arm who doesn’t give up runs, and his ability to get critical outs in front of Brandon League is one of the main reasons the Mariners are over .500 with an offense that is still pretty terrible.
It’s not that uncommon for starting pitchers to go to the bullpen and get better. In fact, almost all relief pitchers are failed starters who have resurrected their careers in relief. In many cases, relievers possess some flaw that keeps them from succeeding in the rotation, but those weaknesses can be hidden in short stints where they are only asked to get three outs at a time. Relievers also benefit from the ability to throw as hard as possible on every pitch, since they don’t have to pace themselves and stay on the mound for six innings or more.
That is why a pitcher such as League – the prototypical modern reliever – can succeed while throwing just two high-octane pitches. However, Pauley is different, and he’s succeeding in a way entirely different from most relievers.
Game 55, Orioles At Mariners
Pineda vs Matusz, 12:40 pm.
One more abbreviated day from me. Hopefully the last one for a while.
Ichiro, DH
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Olivo, C
Gutierrez, CF
M. Wilson, RF
J. Wilson, 2B
Rodriguez, 3B
Saunders, LF
Game 54, Orioles At Mariners
Bedard vs Guthrie, 7:10 pm.
Because any attempt to talk about anything other than Chone Figgins is immediately rejected, let’s just start off with Chone Figgins news – he’s not playing tonight, and Eric Wedge says he’s going to get a couple of days off. His performance last night obviously is a driving factor here, but more than that, I think anyone following this team can feel the level of vitriol rising towards Figgins, and it’s getting close to what is probably an unhealthy level of anger from a fanbase towards a player. If Figgins struck out a few more times tonight, he was going to hear it from the crowd, and I don’t know that it would be all that helpful for him or the team. The Mariners don’t need Figgins to be the new Bobby Ayala.
So, he gets a few days off and the crowd gets a few days to let their anger subside. It’s probably in everyone’s best interests.
Ichiro, RF
Ryan, SS
Smoak, 1B
Cust, DH
Gutierrez, CF
Kennedy, 2B
Olivo, C
Rodriguez, 3B
Peguero, LF
The 2011 Draft: Many Names, One Pick
Next Monday, around four o’clock, the Mariners are going to select the player that will likely finish the season as their number one prospect. It’s very cool for us, but also kind of scary. Coming into the season, we were pretty confident that the Pirates would likely take Rice third baseman Anthony Rendon and we’d then have our choice of UCLA RHP Gerrit Cole or TCU LHP Matt Purke or maybe a college hitter. Purke slipped off the radar, Cole has been good at times and mediocre at others, the college hitters haven’t broken away, and Rendon has simply been injured. In the meantime, various other names have clawed their way into the discussion and the whole thing has become nebulous as the “what have you done for me lately?” scouting crowd starts to make their vocal presence known. There’s a phrase my father used to use for situations like these, but it’s unrepeatable in polite company.
In the past few weeks, I’ve heard about seven different names linked in discussions for picks one through three of the first round. At this stage, the hope still seems to be that we get Rendon, but no one knows what the Pirates are going to do. If Rendon is off the board, it could go in any number of directions. What follows is seven capsules on the players we’re likely looking at. The information is largely culled from various internet sources and synthesized/spun in some small way. I’m not playing armchair scout yet because that’s something I reserve for draft day and players that I know to be in the system. College data is taken from collegesplits.com, prep data is pilfered from BA’s Top 200 Prospects list.
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One Solution To Two Problems
I’m pretty sure that if, before the season started, you would have offered Jack Zduriencik a 27-26 record – with the team only being 1.5 games out of first place, no less – through the first 53 games of the season, he would have gladly taken it. Even for those of us who didn’t think this team was going to be terrible, the record is a bit of a pleasant surprise. But, as anyone who watched this team play can tell you, there’s still some issues on this roster that need to be addressed. And probably sooner than later.
When the M’s made the decision to get rid of Milton Bradley, it was more about Milton than it was about having a better option in house. They decided to make do in left field with a platoon of Carlos Peguero and Mike Wilson, but Peguero has been awful and Wilson has hardly seen the field – even when Wedge put him in the line-up on Sunday, it was as a DH. Peguero just isn’t a Major League player, and he probably never will be. If he has any chance at a career, he needs to be in the minors learning some pitch recognition and an approach at the plate other than “swing at everything as hard as I possibly can”.
Michael Saunders isn’t in a much better place, though, so if the team options Peguero back to Tacoma, they won’t really have many options for left field. In a just world, Saunders would also be headed back to Tacoma, but the team needs him around to play center field while Franklin Gutierrez gets back to full strength. So, for now, he sticks around, but Wedge understandably isn’t very interested in giving him much more playing time in left except for as a defensive replacement.
So, the team needs a left fielder. There isn’t one in Tacoma (Mike Carp is a 1B/DH, and if Wedge won’t use Cust or Wilson out there, he’s certainly not going to use Carp) and unless they can swing a trade for one of Arizona’s Triple-A outfielders (seriously, I’d take any of Pena, Cowgill, or Gillespie right now) or something, there’s probably not anyone available in trade right now – league wide parity means that there are about 27 buyers and two or three sellers at this point.
The team also has another need, or they will at some point in the next few weeks when they call up Dustin Ackley from Tacoma. The presumption at the beginning of the year was that Jack Wilson would be the one to lose playing time or a roster spot to accommodate Ackley’s promotion, but Wilson isn’t playing much anymore. Adam Kennedy has essentially assumed the role that Ackley will be inheriting upon arrival, and he’s done a pretty nifty job for the team over the last month or so. There’s no way that Eric Wedge is going to want to bench him to get a rookie in the line-up, especially with the team playing well at the moment, so the organization will need to find a spot for Kennedy to play when Ackley comes up.
The team needs a left fielder. Kennedy needs a position. Two birds, meet one stone. Kennedy is not exactly an experienced outfielder; he has played just 63 innings out there in his entire career, in fact. That said, he’s a decently athletic guy and his routes can’t possibly be any worse than Peguero’s. Given a few days to shag balls in the outfield before being placed out there in a game, I’d imagine Kennedy could be adequate defensively in left field, especially if Saunders is still around to serve as a late-game defensive replacement.
Is it an ideal solution? No, of course not, and hopefully it wouldn’t be a long term solution either. If the team miraculously stays in contention, they’d need to go shop for a real outfielder at the trade deadline, but Kennedy could give them a few months to figure out the buyers-or-sellers question. If they fall out of the race, having him show some extra positional versatility may make him an even more attractive piece to potential buyers who already know he can play the infield.
If I’m the Mariners, I tell Adam Kennedy to report to Safeco early tomorrow to begin a conversion to the outfield for a few months. It’s his best chance at playing everyday with this team even after Ackley arrives, and it would give the team a legitimate Major League hitter to hold down the LF position for the next few months while they figure out just what this team actually is. It makes the roster decisions easier as well, as you can simply ship Peguero out to call Ackley up and don’t have to worry about finding a trade partner for Jack Wilson right away.
If you don’t shift Kennedy to left, you’re faced with either benching Chone Figgins (which I’m certain the organization is not ready to do, given the $17 million he’s owed in 2012 and 2013 before his contract expires) or delaying Ackley’s promotion to keep Kennedy in the line-up. I don’t think the organization wants to do either of those two things, and let’s be honest, as bad as Figgins has been lately, he still brings more to the table than any of the left fielders on the roster right now.
Kennedy to left, Ackley to second. If I was in charge, you’d see this by the end of the week. Let’s hope the M’s are thinking along the same lines.