Game 147, Rangers at Mariners
Wilson vs Hernandez, 7:10 pm.
Happy Felix Day.
I’m going to miss tonight’s game because my wife is doing a sprint triathlon in the morning, and we have to be up at some ungodly hour to get her to the race for “morning” registration. For the last month or two, missing a Mariners game hasn’t been a big deal – in fact, I’ve intentionally skipped most of them, as this team is basically unwatchable. But, since Felix is pitching, I actually wish I could see this one live.
That’s how good Felix is – he makes the least entertaining team in baseball worth tuning in for. Go Felix. Be awesome.
How Not To Use Park Factors
A few days ago, Baseball Reference updated the park factors they use on their site to include data from 2010. This caused some pretty decent sized changes in some of the stats that they host that are park adjusted, including their version of Wins Above Replacement. Most notably, the addition of the park factor data caused CC Sabathia to overtake Felix Hernandez for the AL lead in their version of pitcher WAR, as they’ve significantly upped the offensive level for New Yankee Stadium and significantly lowered it for Safeco Field. As Sean Forman noted in his post announcing the move, the data indicates that shas “become more of a pitcher’s park”.
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However, when you look at the data for Safeco this year, you’ll see some interesting things.
At home, the Mariners have hit .236/.302/.325, and on the road they’ve hit .232/.294/.352. The plate appearances are almost exactly equal, so we can actually just compare straight up numbers from the M’s offense, home and road.
Singles: +33
Doubles: -6
Triples: +1
Home Runs: -25
Non-HR extra base hits have basically been the same. The team has more singles at home, but fewer home runs. That translates to slightly less offense, but not that much. The offense’s overall production suggests that Safeco has played as a slight pitcher’s park, but not an extreme one.
On the pitching side of things, it’s another story though. Mariner pitchers have held opposing hitters to a .235/.294/.361 line at Safeco, while giving up a .274/.333/.440 mark on the road. Despite facing 140 more batters in Safeco, they’ve given up 32 fewer singles and 21 fewer home runs. The pitching staff has been helped quite a bit by Safeco, which is the main reason that the park is appearing to be an extreme run suppressor. But, remember, Safeco plays very differently for left-handed and right-handed pitchers, and the Mariners built their pitching staff to take advantage of that fact. And, not surprisingly, the vast majority of the difference in performance at home and on the road can be attributed to those lefties.
At Safeco:
Ryan Rowland-Smith: 222 PA, .263 BABIP, 2.25% HR/PA
Jason Vargas: 401 PA, .254 BABIP, 2.00% HR/PA
Luke French: 148 PA, .222 BABIP, 2.70% HR/PA
On Road:
Ryan Rowland-Smith: 261 PA, .344 BABIP, 7.28% HR/PA
Jason Vargas: 333 PA, .287 BABIP, 3.00% HR/PA
Luke French: 146 PA, .272 BABIP, 2.74% HR/PA
Those three are driving almost all of the difference in performance of the M’s pitching staff at home versus on the road. Remember how we said that the team had given up 21 more home runs on the road than at home? Ryan Rowland-Smith has given up 14 more away from Safeco by himself – he is 67 percent of the difference in team home run rate.
The Mariners have intentionally loaded up on soft-tossing flyball lefties because Safeco Field is death to right-handed power hitters, and those pitchers can exploit that difference by letting long fly ball outs get tracked down in the left center field gaps.
Know who can’t do that? Right-handed pitchers. It’s actually pretty easy to hit a ball out to right in Seattle, so left-handed hitters have few problems pulling balls over the wall. That’s why RHPs rarely exhibit home/road splits at Safeco that are anything close to what LHPs offer.
Felix’s home/road splits, by the way? His BABIP is four points LOWER on the road, and his HR/PA is 1.39% at Safeco compared to 1.87% on the road. To translate that into actual numbers based on his PAs, if his home and road HR rates were equal, Felix would have given up an additional two home runs in Safeco this year, going all the way from six to eight.
However, because blanket park factors make no attempt to correct for how differently parks play based on the handedness of the player, we’ll now get to see people making claims about Felix benefiting dramatically from the extreme pitcher’s park that he calls home, ignoring the fact that it is not an extreme pitcher’s park on the days that he takes the hill because he is not left-handed.
The sabermetric community currently uses one-size-fits-all park factors right now only because, to this point, we’ve been too preoccupied with other things to actually put in the time and effort it takes to do them right. In a few years, once we’ve applied component park factors based on handedness to each player’s performance, we’ll look back and laugh at some of the conclusions that using one park factor for every player forced upon us. One of the things we’ll laugh at is the notion that Felix Hernandez got some dramatic benefit from Safeco Field in 2010. He didn’t, and we shouldn’t act like he did.
Redemption And Punishment
This will probably be the last thing I write about Josh Lueke for a while, but after receiving a few compelling emails about the subject and having some conversations with people who don’t follow the team or know anything about his situation, I thought it would be worth having a discussion about. Please, keep the comments civil – I know this is a sensitive topic for a lot of folks.
The details surrounding the incident that Lueke was involved with are awful. Here is the original story from his arrest, and then coverage of his no-contest plea. Regardless of what legal terminology is used, it’s pretty obvious that Lueke did something to a girl that should never happen. We weren’t there, and there’s no way any of us can know exactly what happened that night, but there is little doubt that Lueke’s actions that night were despicable, to say the least. There is no justifying what happened, even without knowing all the details.
So, now, the Mariners have a pitcher in the organization that did something awful. A lot of people, when they find out about what happened, want the Mariners to get rid of him, as they don’t want to be faced with the situation of having to root for a guy who has this kind of history. When we did the poll last week on whether you would root for Lueke as a Mariner, 24 percent of those responding said that they would not. For them, his crime outweighs any help he could offer to the team by pitching well. This is a totally understandable point of view.
However, there’s another level that goes beyond not rooting for the kid, and that’s the belief that the Mariners (and presumably, every other Major League organization) should not be willing to employ him. And that’s a position that I don’t think I can get behind. Lueke spent 42 days in jail due to his actions, and has satisfied the legal punishment laid out by the laws of the land. There are no pending charges against him. He has not gotten in any trouble since the incident occurred. By most accounts, he’s remorseful for what happened, and has gone along with all of the requirements set out by the organization since he was acquired, including mandatory counseling.
The argument that the Mariners should cut ties with Lueke is essentially based on a “one strike and you’re out” policy that offers no chance for redemption. Should a 19-year-olds mistake prevent him from pursuing his chosen career after his legally required debt to society has been paid? I don’t think so. As much as it makes my skin crawl when I think about how I would feel if the victim had been my daughter, I also have to consider how I might feel if Lueke was my son.
I’m sure my (eventual) children will not be perfect, and they’ll make some pretty big mistakes. I hope that, when they do, forgiveness and redemption are offered to them, and that they have a chance to make things right. In no way do I want to minimize what Lueke did, but at the same time, I believe that he should be afforded the opportunity to make a living, just like any other person in America who was not in the public spotlight. I can’t support the notion that one night of horrible decision making should be enough to justify the end of Lueke’s career.
He has paid for his crime, and he will continue to in the days to come. It will follow him around for the rest of his life, and deservedly so. But, I don’t believe that punishment should go so far as to nullify a chance at redemption. Lueke deserves another shot to do better. He’s going to have to live on the thinnest of ice, where any future screw-ups will likely spell the end of his career, but he should get the chance to do so.
I will feel certainly feel conflicted every time he puts on a Mariner uniform. My feelings, however, should not negate his right to pitch in the big leagues.
Brock and Salk segment
I’m doing my regular spot with Brock and Salk at 11:30 today. My post for them will go up tomorrow instead of today as usual, by the way.
I’ll have something up here on USSM later today, but for this morning’s recommended reading, check out Shannon Drayer’s latest post, dealing with the involvement level of the ownership during the last few years. It’s good stuff.
Game 146, Red Sox at Mariners
Buchholz vs Pauley, 3:40 pm.
The M’s play an afternoon game today so that the Red Sox can take off afterwards, and with a match-up of Buchholz versus the Mariners offense, this one shouldn’t take very long. It’d be nice for the M’s to rough up Boston’s young starter and knock him off the list of potential Cy Young vote receivers (he won’t get much support, but he might steal a vote or two that would otherwise go to Felix if he ends the year with an ERA in the low 2s), but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, DH
Gutierrez, CF
Kotchman, 1B
Lopez, 3B
Saunders, LF
Moore, C
Woodward, SS
Game 145, Red Sox at Mariners
Matsuzaka vs French, 7:10 pm.
Dice-K is one of the least watchable pitchers in all of baseball. He takes forever, he nibbles at the corners, he throws a ton of pitches – he’s anti-entertainment. And then you have the M’s. Unless you are Luke French’s mother, there has to be something better for you to do tonight.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, DH
Gutierrez, CF
Kotchman, 1B
Lopez, 3B
Saunders, LF
Moore, C
Josh Wilson, SS
Rainiers versus Memphis: PCL Championship Series Preview
The Rainiers’ run for the PCL Title continues this afternoon in Memphis. Game 1 starts right about now, with Blake Beavan getting the start for Tacoma against Evan MacLane and the Redbirds. You can listen here or follow gameday once it’s posted here.
As with any minor league series, you can only learn so much by looking at the season statistics. The Rainiers starting rotation looks excellent by tRA , but the bulk of that stellar pitching runs above average total is due to the contributions of guys who won’t be playing this series: Luke French, Chris Seddon, Ryan Rowland-Smith and Garrett Olson are in Seattle, while Michael Pineda’s been shut down for the year. Instead, the Rainiers turn to Beavan, Mauricio Robles, Yusmeiro Petit, Ryan Feierabend and Andy Baldwin – none of which were in the rotation when Tacoma was swept by Memphis back in May.
Memphis’ rotation looks average by tRA (or RA for that matter), but it’s got a considerable edge in experience and polish. Evan MacLane’s a PCL vet who’s pitched well against Tacoma, and Brandon Dickson’s a lanky righthanded ground-baller with good command. The top two starters are Lance Lynn, a 2008 draft pick out of Ole Miss, and PJ Walters, a veteran who’s seen time with St. Louis this year and 2009. Walters is something of an enigma, as he’s gotten great results and racked up lots of strikeouts without much of an outpitch. He’s got Fister-esque velocity from the right side, and reports on his off-speed pitches tended to be mixed. He apparently has a good change-up (and unlike Fister, he uses it), and that’s helped him post solid K% and K/BB numbers in AAA. Lynn’s a guy with a 90-91MPH fastball that can outpitch his repertoire, as he did to close out Oklahoma City in the PCL semifinal series – Lynn struck out 16 in 7IP. Still, his stats this year aren’t eye-popping, and as much as some praise his competitiveness, I’m not sure Memphis is the clear favorite in his game 4 start versus Ryan Feierabend.
Why? Memphis has a number of hitters with somewhat pronounced splits. 1B Mark Hamilton is essentially Bryan LaHair – he’s death on a stick to righties (1.100 OPS this year), but he’s lost against lefties (.577 OPS this year). Ruben Gotay isn’t a whole lot better – he had a .50 point wOBA split in the majors, and his OPS splits this year in AAA look similar. The righties on the team – led by OF Allen Craig – have much more even splits. If Mauricio Robles has decent command, he could excel against this team.
In general, the Rainiers have an advantage at the plate, with a much better team wOBA and much more power, which is only partially offset by Memphis’ contact edge. Halman, Mangini and Brad Nelson were all on the team in May, but Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak, David Winfree and Tug Hulett weren’t (they replaced average-to-below-average hitters from Tommy Everidge to Ezequiel Carrara to Ramon Vasquez). The Rainiers have the advantage at CF, 2B, SS and possibly 1B (Smoak and Hamilton have the same problem), it’s a push at 3B and RF, so the only real positional advantage for the Redbirds is LF. Catcher’s a bit unsettled, but I suppose we’ll be nice and give the nod to Memphis.
The bullpen’s tough to call, but I’m tempted to give the advantage to Tacoma. Cortes/Lueke/Patterson is a formidable trio at this level, and if they have command, they’re lights out. Memphis had a great closer this year in Fernando Salas, but he’s been called up. Their ‘pen includes some solid AAAA/MLB journeymen types, and that can be useful – just as Tacoma prospered early in the year with a rotation made up of experienced journeymen like David Pauley and Luke French. But not many teams in baseball (and certainly not the Mariners) have the kind of potential in their bullpen that Tacoma does. The Cardinals did send AA closer Adam Reifer to Memphis before the PCL semis, and he’s a legitimate prospect, but he’s not on the level of Cortes or Lueke.
In a neutral setting, I’d be tempted to give the edge to Tacoma, but I think it’s going to be tough for the Rainiers to win 3 times in Memphis. They’ll need to hit HRs, and they’ll need very good outings from Beavan and Robles.
Match-ups and preview from Mike Curto here and the TNT here. BBREF team pages for Tacoma and Memphis.
The Lueke Situation
I generally prefer to stay away from gossip. I’m not an investigative journalist, and we’re not here to try and dig stuff up. But, given what has come out in the last few weeks, and given Carmen Fusco’s firing today, this is something I feel compelled to write about. And yet, I don’t necessarily feel qualified to do so. I generally write from a place where I believe I have some steady ground to stand on. I like the evidence to be on my side, and I like to be able to point to facts to support my opinions. On this issue, those are unfortunately few and far between. Here is a timeline of what we know to be factually true about the Josh Lueke acquisition.
July 10th – The Mariners traded Cliff Lee to the Texas Rangers for Justin Smoak, Blake Beavan, Josh Lueke, and Matt Lawson.
That’s it. That’s the entirety of what we know. We don’t know what happened leading up to the deal being completed, and we don’t know what happened after the trade was completed.
What we do have are public comments from people, all of whom have their own agendas, that we can choose to place degrees of trust in or not. I’m going to try not to tell you who to trust and who not to trust, because I don’t know who is telling the truth. Neither do you. We can make guesses, but that’s all they are, and we need to realize that. Among the quotes that we can choose to put stock in, we have the following, all courtesy of Geoff Baker:
July 11th
Chuck Armstrong tells The Seattle Times that he was “not aware” of Lueke’s legal problems before the trade was completed.
In the same article, Jack Zduriencik says: “We had a degree of information and we have flown Josh in for a face-to-face. We were satisfied with the interview and it’s an issue that’s behind us”
September 1st
Rick Adair tells The Seattle Times that he told Jack Zduriencik everything he knew from his time in Texas: “”I told him everything I knew about every prospect I was asked about, including Lueke, including any court case.”
Chuck Armstrong, on whether he ordered Zduriencik to send Lueke back to Texas: “We tried that on Friday night, but then, on Saturday morning, the Rangers said, ‘No, we’ve already notified the players. The deal stands as is.’ ”
Jon Daniels, on whether that statement is true: “We offered several times to reacquire Lueke in a separate transaction — an offer originally made the same night the deal was announced. That offer stands.”
Jack Zduriencik, on Lueke’s future in Seattle: “He’s part of our organization, he understands our policies, he understands that there’s a short leash … and believe me, we do not take it lightly. I think he understands that from us and here we are. We’re moving forward and he’s pitching for us.”
Obviously, some of those statements are mutually exclusive. You can’t believe everyone is telling the truth, since their statements conflict. There are half-truths and potentially even outright lies in there somewhere. How do we identify which statements to believe? There’s no magic formula – we can’t sick Jack Bauer on these guys and extract a confession. The best thing we can do is use common sense and understand the limitations of our knowledge, refraining from drawing conclusions that outstrip what we can know.
Let’s put the story that has gained traction in the last few weeks to the common sense test first.
The Mariners didn’t know about Josh Lueke’s past issues and found out about the true extent only after the deal was completed. At that point, the Rangers wouldn’t take Lueke back as the deal was done.
That wouldn’t be how they would phrase it, of course, but that’s essentially the story that is most often repeated, and it’s somewhat pushed forward by the company line that is being peddled by the organization. Does any of that make sense logically, though? In order to believe that story, you’d have to believe that the Mariners knew less about a player that they were trading for than I did. Forget the ridiculous “they didn’t google him” thing that has somehow become part of the narrative – there was no googling required. Josh Lueke’s history was, as Rick Adair stated, common knowledge among anyone who followed the Texas Rangers or the minor leagues with any kind of diligence. Jay Yencich, in his post reviewing the prospects the Mariners received – this was published on our blog within an hour of the deal being finalized, by the way – talked about Lueke’s history.
It would take a ridiculous leap that is beyond reason to believe that the Mariners were unaware of Lueke’s past. Did they know everything about the situation and what happened? Maybe, maybe not. Did the people who knew communicate well enough to the upper management? Maybe, maybe not. We don’t know the full extent of what they knew and when, but it is outside of the realm of common sense to believe that the front office – one that had been negotiating with Texas for several weeks – did not know about Josh Lueke’s past. I think we can essentially reject the notion of ignorance as just overly implausible.
So, why does the company line push forward this notion? It could be because its the one that someone in the organization decided would appease sponsors and allow the team to try to treat it as a finished story and one that they could move on from, with Josh Lueke remaining in the organization. Both of Jack’s quotes above, as well as the fact that the Mariners haven’t taken the Rangers up on their public standing offer to take Lueke back (assuming that Daniels is telling the truth on that), point to the Mariners wanting Lueke in the organization. Somewhere, the decision was apparently made that they would rather have Lueke than not, baggage and all. There is nothing forcing them to keep him around. If he was seen by the management of this club as a bigger liability than an asset, he wouldn’t be closing for the Tacoma Rainiers in the PCL championship series.
I don’t know who made that call, when it happened, or who all was involved in the conversation. But, I think we can look at fact that they traded for Lueke, and that he’s still in the organization, and make some assumptions about how the organization views the respective costs and benefits of employing him. And, since those calculations have been made, it doesn’t take much of a leap to believe that those calculations were probably made before the deal was consummated. Do we know that? No, but it makes the most sense, right? Could I be wrong? Of course. But, gun to my head, that’s my interpretation, based on what appears to be common sense to me.
So, that brings us to yesterday, and Carmen Fusco’s firing. How does that fit into all of this? We don’t really have any additional facts to go off of. It certainly seems suspicious that Fusco loses his job a few weeks after the Times story comes out. As Larry Stone noted today, Jack and Carmen go back a long, long way, and their friendship extends outside of the game. The safe assumption is that Jack did not fire his long time friend. I have a hard time buying any explanation of the move other than upper management deciding that someone had to get fired because of how this has played out, and Carmen Fusco was the unlucky fall guy. I don’t know that to be true, but it’s the only explanation that makes sense to me. If you want to punish the GM for how this was handled without actually firing him, making Fusco the fall guy is probably the most severe action they could have taken.
There’s no doubt that this situation has been handled poorly all the way around. The M’s screwed up, plain and simple, and they’ve perpetuated the mistake with public comments that could best be described as cryptic and unsatisfying. The organization deserves to take heat for the debacle that this has become. I would guess that, given a chance for a do-over, they’d go back and take the Yankees package. Acquiring Lueke set off a series of events that they didn’t see coming (presumably – if they knew this would happen and went through with it anyway, they’re insane), and they should have seen a good deal of this coming. You can’t acquire a guy with who plead no contest to a terrible crime and hope no one notices.
We can argue about whether they should have been willing to acquire Lueke in the first place. I don’t know where I stand on that, honestly. And, really, that’s another issue, even though its connected to this one. This story is about what the M’s knew and what they’re being honest about. The organization’s lack of transparency has been disappointing, and it’s a big black mark on everyone involved. This whole thing is, quite simply, an organizational failure. It probably cost Carmen Fusco his job. It might cost more people their jobs before this thing is over with. It might cost Jack Zduriencik his job. He’s done a lot of good things since he’s gotten here, but this is clearly not one of them. I think he’d admit that. Mistakes were made. Pretty big ones, at that.
But, at the end of the day, we don’t really know what exactly went on. We weren’t there, and the only thing we have are statements made in self interest. So, we can speculate, but we have to acknowledge that’s all it is. Beware of conclusive statements – there simply isn’t enough in the public arena to build a foundation that would support dogmatic claims. It’s up to you who and what you want to believe. It’s up to you whether you want to root for Josh Lueke, or an organization that employs him. You can make your own choices about who is credible and what statements pass the smell test. I’ve got my theories, but that’s all they are. That’s all any of us have.
Game 144, Red Sox at Mariners
Lester vs Fister, 7:10 pm.
Insert pithy comment about game here.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, DH
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 3B
Kotchman, 1B
Tuiasosopo, LF
Moore, C
Josh Wilson, SS
Carmen Fusco Fired
As first reported by King5, and now confirmed by the team, the Mariners have fired Carmen Fusco, who was serving as the director of professional scouting. It was originally reported that he would be relieved of duties at the end of the year, but it’s now been made effective immediately, likely due to the fact that this became public – hard to have a guy hanging around who knows he’s a dead man walking.
I’m working on a longer post that I’ll publish tomorrow about how this move fits into what we’ve seen happen since the Cliff Lee trade went down. I’m still gathering information, so I don’t want to comment about Fusco’s firing prematurely. I did, however, want to tell the Carmen Fusco story. Those of you who have been around a while have already heard this, but for those of you who have found the blog in the last year or so, here’s why I’m a Carmen Fusco fan.
A few months after the Mariners hired Jack Zduriencik and re-tooled the front office, I invited him to come hang out with us at the Seattle Central Library for a Q&A with the readers. We’d done these with Bavasi and other friends of mine in the past, but I didn’t know Jack at all, and I wasn’t sure how the new front office would take to us. Due to a radio commitment, Jack couldn’t make it, but he made sure to send all of his top lieutenants in order to make sure the event was a success. Along with Tony Blengino, Tom McNamara, and Pedro Grifol, Carmen came and introduced himself to 275 of our readers on a Saturday afternoon.
It’s the only event we’ve ever had that I couldn’t attend. I really wanted to be there, but I just couldn’t make it happen. After the event was over, I got a report from Derek on how it went, and while it seemed like a success, he threw out one thing that I thought was odd – apparently, Fusco went through about half of the two dozen water bottles we had provided on stage. Everyone I talked to couldn’t stop talking about how much water Fusco drank. It was the story of the day.
Fast forward to last August. I went to Burlington to watch Pulaski, the Mariners rookie level affiliate in the Appalachian League. I wanted to see Steve Baron, Gabriel Noriega, and a few of the other interesting guys on the roster. Sitting behind me? Carmen Fusco. I introduced myself, and we started talking about the event in January. He talked about how he had a great time, and it was something he would love to do again. I brought up the water drinking, and here’s a paraphrase of his response:
“You want to know the story behind that? I was in so much pain, and I was just trying to stay hydrated. I went home when it was over and passed two kidney stones.”
Carmen Fusco spent four hours talking baseball with USSM readers on a Saturday in January while passing two kidney stones. And he had a blast doing it. After that, he could strangle puppies in front of my bedroom window at 2 am and I would still be a fan of his.