Game 34, Mariners at Orioles
Hernandez vs Millwood, 9:35 AM.
Happy Felix Day. I hope.
I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but if the Mariners lose this game, we’re going to have to deal with the potential reality that the season might be just about over. Following this match-up, they head to Tampa Bay for three, and realistically, winning one of those games will be an accomplishment with this roster. Bradley apparently won’t return to the team until some point during the next home stand, which means the team is probably looking at another week of makeshift ridiculous Triple-A line-ups.
Meanwhile, Texas just added Derek Holland to their rotation and look like they could be on the verge of running away from the Mariners. They are already 5 1/2 games up, and if the M’s lose this one and can’t overcome Tampa this weekend, they could easily start next week seven or eight games out of first place. At that point, they’d have to play something like .620 baseball the rest of the way to catch Texas. This roster isn’t capable of playing .620 baseball for four months straight.
It’s May 13th, and the Mariners are facing a game that is pretty close to “must win”. Lose today, and we get precipitously close to the point of asking what the team could get for Cliff Lee rather than trying to figure out what bats the team could add to fix the offense. The Mariners need this one. Badly.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Kotchman, 1B
6-4-3, DH
Lopez, 3B
Langerhans, CF
Josh Wilson, SS
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
Game 33 Recap
Well this is no fun.
I caught some of the post-game show on KIRO, and found I agreed entirely with Matt Pitman’s read on the situation: Ryan Rowland-Smith is a great, great guy, and he’s incredibly easy to root for. He’s also not helping the team right now. I thought RRS would be good for nearly 2 WAR this year, a prediction that now looks certifiably insane. Did I overestimate him because I like him? Is this just an aberration or another dead-arm period that affected him last year at this time? Is this, as Ryan’s hinted at himself, just a period of self-doubt, where he’s out-thinking himself and struggling with his confidence? I don’t really know, but it’s painful to watch.
Ryan Rowland-Smith’s fastball averaged 87 MPH today, exactly the same as he averaged in his last start. I went back and looked at some of his starts down the stretch in 2009, and while the data aren’t consistent, they’re telling. In his last start of the year, he went 6 2/3 IP against Texas, throwing 104 pitches. He topped out that day at 93, and hit 92 with his 100th pitch (and again with his 102nd!). Can you even imagine RRS hitting 92 now? This is as difficult for me to visualize as a Griffey home run off of a curve ball. Velocity isn’t the key to Ryan’s game any more than it is for Jason Vargas, but he really doesn’t pitch well at 87.
Coming into the year, we all thought the curve was RRS’s out-pitch. He’d run up consistently good pitch values on it, and he used it enough to command it. The first game out, the A’s clearly waited on the slow curve and hit it hard. He had a modicum of success with his change-up that night, so he’s since thrown more change-ups and fewer curves. RRS threw a total of 3 curve balls tonight, but it didn’t matter: his change-up didn’t fool the O’s, and it ended up his worst pitch on the night. Now, these are all tiny, tiny samples, but it’s looking like he comes into a start with a game plan, with pitches he wants to use to get swinging strikes and outs, but the pitch just isn’t good enough. I thought his early struggles with the curve were survivable given the success he’s had with the change and slider, but today’s game makes me think that ‘success’ has been BABIP luck. Like I said, this sucks.
Ken Griffey Jr hit a sacrifice fly to right field in the ninth for a meaningless run. As is so often the case, the at-bat will be seen completely differently by different fans, based entirely on what they thought of Junior going into it. The pro-Griffey camp may see it as the beginning of a turn-around: down 1-2, he fought off two tough off-speed pitches, then *pulled* a 96 MPH fastball deep to right. Pessimists will see this as confirmation that Griffey’s power is completely shot: a 96 MPH fastball imparts a lot of momentum, and Griffey’s swing can no longer hit one out under the best of circumstances. Honestly, I thought it was a good AB, and the fact that he got around on the pitch impressed me. There may be more in the tank than I’d previously thought, but not enough to justify the roster spot.
Adam Moore looks completely lost at the plate right now. His swing doesn’t look capable of driving the ball, and a bloop single or a seeing-eye GB is basically the best-case scenario in each at-bat. Alonzo Powell needs to work with him, and soon. There’s ability in there, but his approach puts him on the defensive. He looks like he’s mimicking someone else’s swing (as a kid, I loved copying Mickey Tettelton’s swing, which is basically the opposite of what Moore’s doing these days).
Ian Snell was his usual enigmatic self. He averaged 93 MPH and touched 95 with his FB, and his slider had nice break. The Orioles – the Orioles – hammered both of them. I thought that he had a chance to re-invent himself as a 2-pitch reliever with a FB set-up by a slider. His FB’s generated such poor results that he may need to throw the slider 40/50/60% of the time to survive, but the stuff was clearly there. Now I’m not so sure. There are plenty of theories as to why Snell’s FB doesn’t make batters miss, but now we have to wonder why his slider’s hittable too. I like Snell and wanted him to succeed badly, but the early returns on his ‘change of scenery’ aren’t encouraging. He’s slowly (or not-so-slowly as the case may be) becoming a likable Miguel Batista. This recap is pure sunshine.
Uh, Langerhans looked great – at least we’ve got a player with actual positional flexibility. After a day at 1B, he moved to CF and threw Miguel Tejada out at home on a single. He’s hitting well recently! I’m… scraping here.
The M’s still have a chance at the playoffs thanks to the division’s mediocrity and the number of games left to play. If you’re hoping for a late charge though, it’s time to start rooting for whoever’s playing Texas. The Rangers talent looked a touch better than the M’s to start, but they’re not running away with things thanks to Chris Davis’ death-rattle, Justin Smoak’s learning curve and Julio Borbon’s inability to get on base. They had as many disappointing starts as the M’s, but their depth is allowing them to work through them. They’re starting to look scary. OK, MORE scary.
Let’s Hope Zduriencik’s Not Mike Rizzo
After beating the Mets today, the Washington Nationals are improbably one of the better teams in the National League, record-wise. Some of this is smoke and mirrors – most notably, Ivan Rodriguez’s insanely unsustainable performance – but surprisingly, not all of it. Coolstandings has their playoff odds at 10% with current talent.
In related news, Stephen Strasburg will make his seventh professional start today…in Syracuse. I understand the business reasons for holding Strasburg down, but this is a team that will need every possible break to keep running with the heavies in the National League. In a couple of days, the Nationals will have crossed the threshhold for getting an extra year of club-control out of Strasburg (for comparison’s sake, Evan Longoria came up on May 6th a few years ago). If they want to ensure they’ll avoid super-two status, though, they will need to wait it out another month.
This situation sucks. It has already deprived us of the opportunity to watch a rookie of the year race that might have rivaled Magic v. Bird, but that’s just sentimentality speaking. More importantly, this is a team that won’t remain competitive unless a lot of things break right. They cannot afford to hold their best pitcher down much longer. I understand the people who will point to the Nationals’ negative run differential and say they don’t really have a chance to contend, but there are a lot of Nationals fans who would rather not write the season off in May, especially when the team is only a half-game back in the Wildcard standings.
With Dustin Ackley currently hitting the Mendoza line, the Mariners will not have to worry about this until 2011 if ever. If the issue comes up, though, I really hope Zduriencik will choose to put the best team on the field instead of trying to think 6 years ahead.
Game 33, Rainiers at Orioles
Rowland-Smith vs Bergesen, 4:05 pm.
The Mariners have the night off today – the Tacoma Rainiers have been recalled from Triple-A to take on the Baltimore Orioles. Or, at least, that’s what it looks like according to the line-up.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Kotchman, 1B
Lopez, DH
Tuiasosopo, 3B
Langerhans, CF
Josh Wilson, SS
Moore, C
Saunders, LF
Unfortunately, the team did not also recall Mike Curto to announce the game tonight, despite the fact that it’s Tacoma Night in Baltimore.
Jack Wilson to DL, Tui back up
Jack Wilson’s been placed on the disabled list retroactive to May 6th, and Matt Tuiasosopo’s been recalled from Tacoma.
More details later; this comes from Mike Curto on 850am (the Rainiers played an early day game today).
Game 32 Recap
No one expects a Game 32 recap!
I don’t know if it was the drizzle, the “12,614” fans, or the fact that this game featured the Orioles, but it was tough to get into. A fairly crisp (if predictably offense-free) start turned ugly in the 6th, but a win’s a win.
Thoughts:
* I never understood why David Hernandez wasn’t in Baseball America’s top 10 Orioles prospect rankings. His minor league K rates were great, and BA admitted he had the best slider in the organization. So how could Kam Mickolio be rated higher? Some said it was his lack of a change-up, but compared to Kam Mickolio, Hernandez is as polished as Greg Maddux. Others said it was that he was prone to lapses in concentration. That always seemed suspicious to me, but I think I get it now.
Hernandez was down 2 in the 6th and the rain had made the mound a bit muddy. He seemed to struggle with his landing foot and walked Josh Wilson on pitches that were nowhere near the strike zone. 2 outs, Josh Wilson on first, Ken Griffey Jr coming to bat. You could find the run expectancy for an average situation like that, but taking the specific players into account, I’d put it – charitably – at about 0. *Rob Johnson was in the hole.* Hernandez, though, lost the plot. He walked Griffey, tossed in a wild pitch, gave up a line drive single to Johnson (figures that he found the plate again with an M’s catcher hitting), and that was that. This game should’ve been closer, but I’ll admit I’m glad it wasn’t.
* Rob Johnson is unquestionably a better hitter at this point than Griffey. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a simple statement of fact that illustrates why The Nap doesn’t matter.
* In the 5th, the M’s loaded the bases with 2 outs, and Hernandez walked Ichiro to get to Chone Figgins. At one point in his AB, Figgins squared to bunt. One thought came to my mind: awesome. 2 outs, force anywhere, and Figgins thought the percentage play was a bunt. That’s the 2010 offense in a nutshell.
* Brandon League just doesn’t seem like the pitcher I thought we were acquiring. That’s not League’s fault, and it’s not Zduriencik’s; I just need an adjustment period. I thought we were getting a dominant strikeout pitcher, with moderate-to-questionable command and a great splitter. Instead, we got a command/GB reliever whose sinking fastball may be his best pitch. League came in with 2 on and 1 out in the 8th, facing Miguel Tejada. Jeff’s already recapped the AB here, but it really was a thing of beauty. People have been wondering (and I’m definitely one of them) why he doesn’t throw his deadly splitter more, but after seeing that AB, I’m not sure I care anymore. Those were 4 pitches with Brandon Webb-level sink and mid-90s velocity. Oh, and he’s walked 2 hitters in his last 10 appearances, covering 46 batters.
* Cliff Lee is really good. The strikeout of Wigginton with runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out cut the Orioles’ win expectancy by 9 percentage points. The Wieters at-bat that followed had an even higher leverage index, and Lee induced an easy ground ball with a well-placed change. Cliff Lee is very good at what he does – he’s able to miss bats when he wants to, and he’s seemingly able to get GBs when they’re called for.
Game 32, Mariners at Orioles
Lee vs Hernandez, 4:05 pm.
First off, don’t expect any recaps this week. I get the pleasure of being blacked out of Baltimore games thanks to MLB.tv’s insane territorial rights, and my family is flying out for the weekend, so I won’t be around much in the next few days.
Wak shakes up the line-up again, dropping Junior to seventh in the order. Langerhans plays first again, though at this point, you have to wonder if it’s because of Kotchman’s sore ankle or the fact that he hasn’t been hitting for the last few weeks.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 2B
Langerhans, 1B
Josh Wilson, SS
Griffey, DH
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
It’s Not The Fact That He Was Asleep
Interesting day, especially for those with deep interests in the sleep patterns of sports stars. I can’t wait until someone declares it the “Nap Heard Round The World”. In a lot of ways, this whole story is funny. In other ways, it reveals what everyone knows deep down inside.
It’s not the fact that Junior was asleep on Saturday night that matters. If he was hitting .380, it would be the source of good natured jokes, and people would marvel at the greatness of a guy who could hit well while also apparently lacking the energy to watch his teammates play. If the team was winning, it would be written off as a non-story. In fact, I’d guess that if the team was winning, the two players who talked to LaRue never mention the incident, and it never sees the light of day. This is only a story because Griffey is not hitting and the team is not winning.
But he’s not hitting, and they’re not winning, and the fact that two teammates would talk to a reporter about Junior being asleep during a game is perhaps the more telling aspect of this story. If Griffey really commanded the respect of the entire clubhouse, and they loved having him around, no one talks about this to a member of the media. But they did, and that they were willing to bring this up to someone who they had to suspect would write about it suggests that perhaps Griffey’s influence in the clubhouse either isn’t as great as some would suggest, or perhaps more likely, that it only matters while a player is producing.
We’ve all played with that guy who tries really hard to be a leader because he likes to hear himself talk, but he doesn’t have the skills to back it up. In basketball, this guy always tries to run the offense and tell you where to go, but he ends up just jacking up an off-balance 18 foot fade away that barely catches rim. You know that guy – he’s at every gym, annoying the hell out of everyone. People hate that guy, because he doesn’t realize that he’s the reason the team is losing, even as he orders everyone else around. Everyone wants that guy to either show enough self-awareness to realize that he’s terrible or shut up.
That guy can’t be a leader, because he’s just not good enough, and no one respects anything he says because he can’t play. Junior is now that guy. While they may laugh at the pranks and the tickling, the other 24 guys on this roster are all extremely competitive players who badly want to win, and they’ve had a front row seat for the “Griffey Is Done 2010 Tour”. And when he’s constantly grounding out to second base or waving badly at change-ups in the dirt, he loses the credibility to tell anyone else what they’re doing wrong. His ability to lead the team is compromised by the fact that these guys realize he probably shouldn’t be on it. And that’s my guess for why a couple of guys were willing to talk to LaRue about the fact that he was sleeping during a game.
I don’t think the nap really matters. I don’t think the guys on the team are all that upset that he wasn’t available to pinch hit the other night. My guess is that most of them probably didn’t want him hitting in that situation anyway, so maybe deep down, they feel like he did them a favor. But I think there’s a reason that this became a story in the first place – it’s that everyone involved with this tragic experiment realizes it’s not working and it’s not going to work. The Mariners brought Griffey in to be an influence in the clubhouse, but you can only lead as long as you can back up your words on the field and play at a minimum level to where you’re not actively hurting the team.
Griffey can’t do that anymore. He’s a drain on the team’s chances of winning, and the guys on the team know it. They might like his personality, but I think that, deep down, they don’t really want him as their teammate. Not anymore. They might enjoy playing cards with him, but at the end of the day, they want a DH who can hit.
This story doesn’t get written about a clubhouse leader who really commands respect. That this story got written suggests to me that Junior is not that guy, and if that’s true, he has nothing left to offer this organization. It’s time. Hang them up, Junior.
Weekly KGA Radio Spot
I’ll be doing my weekly radio spot with the guys at 1510 KGA in Spokane at 5:15 pm. Unfortunately, there’s not much for us to talk about today, so we’ll probably just talk NASCAR or something.
Listen live here.
Now What?
After a disastrous home stand, the Mariners now head to Baltimore to try to get healthy off one of the league’s worst teams. However, this road trip won’t be interesting for the games themselves, but instead, how the team handles the inevitable roster decisions that should come at week’s end.
The weekend saw the Mariners get some much needed production from Ryan Langerhans (reached base nine times in 17 trips to the plate) and Michael Saunders (single, double, home run, and a walk in two starts), who split time in left field due to Milton Bradley’s absence from the team. While Bradley isn’t going to travel with the team to Baltimore, the initial “five to seven day” time frame given by the team suggests that there’s a good chance he’ll join the Mariners on Friday in Tampa, at which point, the M’s will have to make a move to get him back on the roster.
The easy decision would be to just send Saunders back to Tacoma, give Bradley the LF job back, and soldier onward with the Griffey/Sweeney platoon at DH. But, the Mariners are not stupid, and they know just as well as we do that it isn’t working, and that they can’t continue to just punt offense from an offense-only position. And so, I don’t think that’s what they’re going to do.
This team needs a spark, needs some life, and needs to keep Milton Bradley’s bat in the line-up (they are 10-10 when he starts, 2-9 when he doesn’t). Saunders hit for more power in a weekend than either Griffey or Sweeney did in a month, and he can actually play the field. The organization thought he was ready to help them last summer, and despite a tough start in Tacoma, he’s clearly a better player than either of the current DHs on the roster right now. And this team needs better players than they have as they try to dig themselves out of the hole they dug the last two weeks.
So, unless he just looks abysmal in the Baltimore series, I don’t think Saunders goes back to Tacoma. My guess is that one of the two DHs lose their spot, and according to Larry LaRue, it’s going to be Junior (side note – can you imagine what would be getting written right now if Bradley, and not Griffey, was the one sleeping in the clubhouse during a game? Just saying).
The Mariners can’t continue like they have been, and the performance of Saunders and Langerhans have forced the team to admit that they have options. They can’t continue with Griffey and Sweeney, and I don’t think they will. When Milton comes back, I’m guessing we see a new line-up, and honestly, it’s long overdue.