Cactus League Game 12 – M’s vs. Angels
The Angels have a split-squad game today, so the M’s face a line-up full of the Angels prospects. Top prospect (and #2 in all of baseball according to BA, #1 according to MILB.com) Mike Trout gets the start at DH and bats 3rd, and new CF Peter Bourjos hits 2nd.
Both the Angels and Mariners project as below average offenses, and both will need key prospects to provide some offense. For the M’s, the responsibility falls mostly to Justin Smoak (and then to Dustin Ackley). The Angels really need Bourjos to hit. A defensive wizard in CF, scouts have been mixed on his progress at the plate. He’s been above average at making contact, which helps ameliorate his poor walk rate. He looked a bit lost in his MLB call-up last season, but he’s still young. The projection systems are going to be all over the map with him (CAIRO thinks he’ll be pretty awful, Bill James has him only a bit below average, the fan projections have him as an above-average regular), so it’ll be good for the M’s to get another good look at him.
Erik Bedard starts for the M’s, with Josh Lueke, Aaron Laffey, Denny Bautista, Fabio Castro and a cast of thousands behind him.
Line-up thanks to Ryan Divish:
1: Ichiro – DH
2: Chone Figgins – 3B
3: Milton Bradley – LF
4: Justin Smoak – 1B
5: Ryan Langerhans – CF
6: Gabe Gross – RF
7: Jack Wilson- 2B
8: Brendan Ryan- SS
9: Adam Moore – C
Jack Wilson’s getting a lot of PT at second base. Langerhans is in CF as Franklin Gutierrez has flown to be with his father in law, Luis Salazar, who was severely injured after he was struck by a foul line-drive off the bat of Brian McCann.
Split Squad Cactus League Games 10, 11. Or 10a/10b.
Head vs. heart, nature vs. nurture, man vs. wild, blue vs. gray, and now this – the first split squad game of the spring. How will the A team react to not having dozens and dozens of teammates cheer them on? How will the B team react to being labeled ‘the B team?’
The A game features Jason Vargas making his Cactus League debut and a line-up that looks like so:
1: Josh Wilson
2: Brendan Ryan
3: Justin Smoak
4: Jack Cust
5: Ryan Langerhans (CF)
6: Michael Saunders (DH)
7: Gabe Gross
8: Matt Mangini
9: Adam Moore
The B game’s noteworthy in that the M’s are trying Milton Bradley in CF.
1: Dustin Ackley
2: Adam Kennedy
3: Milton Bradley
4: Mike Carp (DH)
5: Tui (1B)
6: Mike Wilson
7: Alex Liddi
8: Luis Rodriguez
9: Steve Baron
SP: Luke French
(Line-ups via Larry Stone)
Cactus League Game 9, M’s at A’s
RF Ichiro!
3B Figgins
CF Gutierrez
1B Carp
2B Jack Wilson
SS Ryan
LF Saunders
C Gimenez
DH Mangini
P Felix! and then Pineda!
If Twitter isn’t lying to us, then it seems as though the game won’t be on radio after all. I’m going to tune in anyway and be horribly disappointed.
Jack Wilson is back in the lineup. That’s something.
Stories From Camp That I’m Reading, pt. 3
Has it been a week? Yes, it has been a week. Here are some things to tide you over until Felix! and Pineda! around noon.
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Cactus League Game 8: M’s at Giants
12:05 start, on 710 radio and MLB gameday audio.
Line-up:
Dustin Ackley 2B
Adam Kennedy 3B
Milton Bradley LF
Jack Cust DH
Justin Smoak 1B
Ryan Langerhans CF
Carlos Peguero RF
Josh Bard C
Luis Rodriguez SS
Nate Robertson P
* Ichiro gets the day off, so Carlos Peguero gets some at-bats against Tim Lincecum and Madison Bumgarner. I don’t know that you could get more dissimilar players, physically, at one position (pitchers don’t count: Randy Johnson and Rich Garces).
* Behind Robertson, the M’s have Blake Beavan, Brandon League, Garrett Olson, Chaz Roe, Cesar Jimenez, Fabio Castro, Chris Smith and Yusmeiro Petit.
* The low-leverage righty competition has been ugly so far. Today’s entrant is Chris Smith, who’s a huge longshot to make the team, but, but between Dan Cortes’ disastrous inning yesterday, Manny Delcarmen’s poor command/velocity, Denny Bautista’s struggles…no, he’s still a longshot. I have no idea how these guys have looked in workouts, and they can’t make the decision based on the results of tiny samples, but a lot of these NRI/prospect guys are not exactly making a case for themselves. We knew this was going to be a battle this spring, but I think we’d all like tough decisions that aren’t least-worst options.
* Greg Johns notes that Olivo had his MRI, but the doctors won’t actually review it until tomorrow.
* Minor league pitchers/catchers report to Peoria today, with physicals tomorrow and workouts beginning Tuesday.
Cactus League Game 6 – Reds at Mariners
Back in Peoria, meaning more pitch fx! Woo! Which means we get to check on Doug Fister’s velo, which Felix and Pineda play a road game in pitch fx-less Phoenix.
Anyway, the line-up thanks to Greg Johns:
1: Ichiro!
2: Figgins
3: Bradley
4: Cust
5: Smoak
6: Gross
7: Josh Wilson
8: Ackley
9: Moore
P: Doug Fister
That’s Gabe Gross in CF and Jack Cust in LF, which would be concerning if this game meant something. As it is, this may be a way of reinforcing the importance of GBs to the pitching staff.
M’s Acquire Aaron Laffey
Not satisfied with their current crop of left-handed pitchers whose fastballs average 87 MPH, the Mariners added another one to what the guys at LL call “The Pile” by acquiring Aaron Laffey. The team is certainly taking a quantity approach to stockpiling southpaws, as Laffey joins the likes of Nate Robertson, Garrett Olson, Cesar Jimenez, Luke French, Royce Ring, and Chris Seddon as options for either the fifth spot in the rotation or a job as a left-handed arm out of the bullpen. While his velocity isn’t going to impress, Laffey does offer a couple of skills that set him apart from most of this crew:
1. He’s a sinkerball guy who gets grounders in decent quantites. While the M’s have had no shortage of fly ball lefties over the last few years, Laffey offers something a bit different, in that 51.6% of his careers balls in play have been hit on the ground. While this means that he won’t get as big of a boost from Safeco as someone like Jason Vargas, it does mean that he’s more likely to be able to induce a double play when its called for, and that does have its advantages. Especially if he ends up as a reliever, where he would be called upon to enter situations with men on base.
2. Speaking of being a reliever, Laffey has some pretty significant platoon splits. Here are his career marks against hitters from each side:
Vs LHB: 2.86 BB/9, 6.39 K/9, 0.57 HR/9, 46.9% GB%, 3.77 FIP, 4.38 xFIP
Vs RHB: 3.90 BB/9, 3.50 K/9, 0.64 HR/9, 53.4% GB%, 4.68 FIP, 5.04 xFIP
While he gets ground balls against hitters from either side, the big difference is the strikeout rate. Laffey’s slider gives him a pitch he can use to get whiffs against left-handed bats, but his change-up isn’t very good and the slider doesn’t work against right-handed hitters. The lack of any kind of out pitch means that he has to nibble on the corners, and that drives up the walk rate. Laffey is not much use against RHBs, but because the Indians have used him primarily as a starter, he’s faced 1,000 of those in his career compared to just 408 left-handed batters.
If used as a reliever, the team could get a far more favorable distribution of batters faced, and Laffey’s numbers would look quite a bit better simply from not facing the same proportion of right-handed bats. Without significant improvement from his change-up, he’s probably not cut out to be a starting pitcher in the big leagues, but his repertoire has shown that it’s at least somewhat effective against lefties. Given that the M’s have a bunch of southpaws who aren’t that great against lefties, Laffey actually gives the team another option as a lefty specialist. It’s not the sexiest role on a roster, but as we saw quite a bit the last few years, it can be important to have that kind of guy on the roster who can go after a tough lefty or get a ground ball when you need it.
He’s not a great pitcher by any stretch of the imagination, but Laffey is useful in the right role. If the team doesn’t like what they see from Robertson or Ring, Laffey could be a better option as a left-on-left reliever than many of the other incumbents. On the surface, he might look like a nothing acquisition, but he’s got a chance to actually help the team.
To acquire Laffey, the M’s surrendered Matt Lawson, the infielder they received from Texas in the Cliff Lee deal. Lawson was a utility infielder in the making, so this isn’t much of a loss. In order to make room for Laffey on the 40 man roster, the team has placed Shawn Kelley on the 60 day DL.
Throwing the Book at the M’s Lineup
The M’s 2010 offense was a spectacle none of us will forget, however hard we might want to. If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you know that scoring runs is just one part of the WAR equation, and that run suppression is just as important. But clearly, the M’s gave their pitchers/defenders a hopeless job last year, and while regression to the mean will help the M’s score more runs, the gap between where they were and plain old ‘bad’ is still huge. This team’s upgraded the offense, particularly at DH, but while regression and luck may giveth, aging taketh away (Jack Wilson, Milton Bradley, Chone Figgins and Jack Cust are all 30+, and while Ichiro doesn’t fit traditional aging curves, the man IS 37). The M’s offense has a lot riding on a good year from its prospects, the health/improvement of Jack Wilson and a bounce-back year from Figgins or Bradley. All of this means deploying these meager resources wisely is more important to the M’s this year than it is for other teams.
Using a neutral projection system (I’ve chosen CAIRO, as it breaks down projections by batter handedness), I’ve taken a stab at an optimal line-up for this decidedly sub-optimal collection of hitters. Steel yourself, then take a look.
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Bedard And Impressive Performances
I’m a few days late to this party, but as you probably know by now, Erik Bedard had what he called “the best spring training outing of his life” on Sunday. And while that sentence is kind of funny on the surface, it’s hard to argue with his enthusiasm – he threw nine pitches, eight of them strikes, and got two strikeouts along a first pitch ground out. Given that he’s basically spent the last 20 months rehabbing, you wouldn’t expect him to be laser sharp in his first outing. But, there he was, throwing fastballs and curveballs that Pitch F/x said were consistent with his pre-surgery velocities. Now, it’s just one inning in a game that didn’t even count in the Cactus League standings, but it’s the kind of outing that inspires hope. Every time Bedard throws like that, we remember just how good he could be, and there’s a part of every fan that wants to believe he can be that again. That’s what spring is all about after all, right? Hope?
Well, sure. But we also have to remind ourselves that March is full of the kind of hope that disappoints. Matt Tuiasosopo is the King Of March, annually tearing the cover off the ball in Arizona and convincing the team that he deserves a spot on the opening day roster. Two years ago, Mike Wilson led the Cactus League in home runs and Wakamatsu nearly put him on the team too. Remember the epic Chris Jakubauskas spring, where he forced himself onto the staff out of nowhere with impressive performances left and right?
Now, there’s a difference between just compiling good spring numbers and actually impressive feats of skill, right? Right. We don’t really care that Bedard got two strikeouts on Sunday, but the fact that he was throwing 91 MPH fastballs is something. However, even there, we need to exercise some caution. Pitch F/x data is great, but it can be wonky at times. We know the system in KC reports inflated velocities, and the one in Texas is a tick or two slower than the rest. Is the one in Peoria calibrated correctly? It appears to be giving similar numbers to what we see in other parks during the season for most guys, but are guys really throwing at full strength at this point in spring training? Maybe, but we can’t really be sure sure if the 95-98 that Peoria was reporting for Dan Cortes today is the same 95-98 that Safeco was reporting him at last September. Because we only really have spring training (and Arizona Fall League, but not many elite arms pitch there) data for Peoria’s system, we can’t really vet the numbers as well as we would like.
It doesn’t seem like the data is inaccurate, but it’s at least possible that it’s overstating the pitch velocity (which would be really terrible for Manny Delcarmen, who was already way below his career norms). On Pitch F/x data in spring training stadiums, I’ll just encourage caution and leave it at that.
Bedard’s not the only one who has been opening eyes so far. Johermyn Chavez has opened some eyes with a couple of long home runs and strong throws from the outfield, and given his size, it’s easy to be impressed by the physical specimen. He looks like a monster of a man, and when he crushes a ball into the Arizona sky, it can be easy to get enthused about a potential cleanup hitter on the way to Safeco. However, caution is once again the right path here. Just like with Wilson and Tui, Chavez is an undisciplined hitter who has some fairly easily exploitable flaws, but the pitchers he’s facing now don’t care. They’re not reading scouting reports on how to get him out. They’re not pounding him with breaking balls and mixing locations to keep him off balance. Pitchers are tinkering with things, trying to get the feel for certain pitches, and generally just getting their work in. If they groove a fastball to a big kid who spent last year in A-ball and he hits it a mile, so be it.
When the games count, everything changes, and that’s when flaws become apparent again. Chavez has some ability, certainly, and he might just turn himself into a big league player with time, but don’t get sucked into a big guy launching home runs in Arizona and think that he’s showing off some better skills than he had a year ago. He’s a prospect, and worth keeping an eye on, but he’s not going to help the Mariners this year no matter how many impressive moon shots he launches in March.
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With a few baseball notes out of the way, I have a couple of site related things to mention. As you’ve noticed, I simply haven’t been able to maintain my previous pace of writing here this winter, so I’ve reached out to Jon Shields and invited him to join the writing crew here. Jon runs Pro Ball NW and has been around the blogosphere for a few years, so he’s probably a familiar name to many of you. We’re not absorbing PBNW, but Jon is going to do double duty and contribute to both sites going forward. Jay and Marc aren’t going anywhere, but adding Jon to the mix should give the site more consistent content going forward, and I think you’ll enjoy reading his take on the goings on surrounding the organization. I’m happy to have Jon as part of the crew, and look forward to reading his contributions both here and at his home.
Speaking of writing consistency, I’m going to be hit or miss the next few weeks here. I’m flying to Boston on Thursday for Dorkapalooza The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where I’ll be through Sunday morning. Next week, the wife and I are spending some time up in New Hampshire on a semi-vacation, and then on the 10th, I fly to Arizona for four days of spring training. I’ll have internet access the whole time, but am not sure how much time I’ll have to bang out long posts. I’ll try to do a chat or two when I have some free time, but they may be fairly spontaneous, so check the blog (or follow me on twitter for notifications – @d_a_cameron) if you want to be involved in some impromptu Q&A sessions. While I’m down in Arizona, I’ll try to get a few interesting things to share, but those might have to wait until I get back – the schedule is pretty crowded while I’m down there.
Thanks for bearing with me this winter. I know we weren’t as active as you guys have gotten used to, but we’re doing our best to make sure the site maintains a premium place for discussion of the organization. We appreciate your patience while we fine-tune things to make it all go as smooth as possible.
Stories From Camp That I’m Reading, pt. 2
I’m thinking this could be a regular thing for spring training, or at the very least, I’m hoping they still give me material for it throughout. Here are some mostly minor league tidbits from the past week with some commentary and the occasional tangent.
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