Game 153, Mariners at Blue Jays
I know, the season’s all but over. It’s Felix Day, though. You gotta tune in for Felix.
Game 152, Mariners at Rays
Morrow v. Davis, 4:08.
As you may have heard, by winning yesterday the Mariners mathematically eliminated any possibility of the Rays qualifying for the playoffs. Should the Rays win today, they might very well be returning the favor. (The other part of the picture involves Josh Beckett shutting down the Royals.) Of course, realistic playoff possibilities for the Mariners disappeared a couple months ago, so it’s not as big a fuss for us as it was for them.
RF-L Ichiro
CF-R Gutierrez
2B-R Lopez
DH-L Griffey
3B-R Beltre
C-R Johjima
1B-L Hannahan
SS-R Josh
LF-L Saunders
Lopez Putting Himself In The History Books
Last night, Jose Lopez hit his 25th home run. One reason that this is notable is that he now has more homers than walks, of which he has 24. Historically, this is fairly unique. There are only thirty players in baseball history who have finished a season with 25 or more homers and fewer than 25 walks. If interested, here’s the list.
Want to be really encouraged? There are some great players at early stages of their careers on this list. Want to be really depressed? There are some really terrible players on this list, too.
What is most interesting to me is how few infielders there are. The list is almost entirely strong athletic outfielders who had a ton of power but hadn’t figured out how to play the game yet. That’s the Albert Belle/Juan Gonzalez/Sammy Sosa/Bo Jackson kind of player type, and Lopez just isn’t that kind of player.
The only other guys on the list who played second base during their season with 25+ homers and less than 25 walks were Alfonso Soriano (who soon moved to the outfield, where he probably should have been all along) and Jorge Cantu, a 1B/DH type who has played out of position for most of his career.
One of the reasons we constantly hear talk about Lopez moving to third base is that he has the kind of offensive skillset that we just don’t see in a middle infielder. He’s not a good defensive second baseman by any means, but it’d be interesting to see if there was a similar groundswell to move him to a corner infield spot if he was more of a traditional offensive middle infielder with the same defensive skills.
Game 151, Mariners at Rays
Rowland-Smith v. Niemann, 4:08. Who makes up these start times, anyway? Today and tomorrow are both 4:08, and then for some reason in Toronto the games start at 4:07. At least in Canada there’s a second national anthem to squeeze in, so it makes a little bit more sense.
Meanwhile, how many people would have guessed that the Mariners would be going into this series with a better record than the defending league champs? Okay, so that’s mostly the Rays’ 11-game losing streak (remember when we used to have those?), and in reality they’re probably still the better team, but it’s interesting.
RF-L Ichiro
CF-R Gutierrez
2B-R Lopez
DH-L Griffey
3B-R Beltre
DL-R Hall
C-R Johjima
1B-L Carp
SS-R Josh
Felix and the Cy Young Award
I briefly mentioned this in a game thread the other night, but for those curious, he’s a slightly more expanded reasoning on why Felix shouldn’t really have any shot at winning the Cy Young award.
As Mike Salk noted on his blog, one of the M’s suggested that Zack Greinke has “come back down to earth” after a hot start. This is somewhat true, and will probably be used as tool to promote Felix’s candidacy.
After all, Greinke was ridiculous in April, running a 0.50 ERA in five starts, but not surprisingly, he wasn’t able to sustain that kind of performance. No one could. But, just for the sake of argument, let’s throw out April, where Greinke was amazing. After all, the M’s went 5-0 in Felix’s starts in April as well, so the end result of their first month dominance was the same for both clubs.
May 1st to present.
Greinke: 174 1/3 IP, 156 H, 36 BB, 180 K, 11 HR, 2.48 ERA.
Felix: 182 1/3 IP, 156 H, 54 BB, 160 K, 13 HR, 2.47 ERA
The “coming back to earth” version of Greinke? Still better than Felix. Even if we wanted to arbitrarily remove Greinke’s best stretch of performance of the season while not penalizing Felix in the same way, we can’t do any better than saying Felix has only been a little bit worse than Greinke.
Felix is a terrific pitcher having a great season, but Greinke is having a season of historic proportions. And he’s doing it with a pretty miserable cast of characters around him. He not only deserves the award – he deserves to win it unanimously. He’s been that good.
I love Felix, but he’s been the second best pitcher in the AL this year.
Aardsma’s Command
David Aardsma’s ability to lock down the ninth inning has been one of the pleasant surprises of the season, though the way he accomplished his domination wasn’t exactly worry free. Command has never been his strength, and even when he was blowing hitters away in the first half, he could best be described as effectively wild. In June, for instance, he was basically untouchable, striking out 20 batters in 11 scoreless innings, but he also walked four batters and only threw strikes 59% of the time.
Well, don’t look now, but Aardsma hasn’t walked anyone in a month, and since August 24th, he’s thrown strikes 70% of the time. He’s been perfect in that stretch as well, throwing 11 innings, striking out 11, and holding opposing hitters to a .150/.150/.175 line. He’s been a relief ace in every sense of the term.
I know it’s en vogue to suggest that the M’s should sell high on Aardsma this winter, having successfully turned a generic bullpen arm into a proven closer, but Aardsma isn’t just a generic arm who is getting inflated value by racking up easy saves. Even with an expected regression in his HR/FB rate, Aardsma would still be one of the better relief pitchers in baseball.
If the M’s are going to try and re-sign Felix, a big part of the sales pitch will be to convince him that they can win soon. While the buy low/sell high philosophy is all well and good, you have to retain enough good players to put together a contending roster. For the M’s, David Aardsma is one of their better players. Unless someone wants to offer another low cost +2 win player that could fill a hole elsewhere, the M’s should hang onto their closer. He’s not a fungible piece that could easily be replaced.
Game 150, Yankees at Mariners
Chamberlain v Snell. I was hoping to see the lineups, but what the hey. Last game against a juggernaut team before season’s end: Tampa and Texas are good, but they’re not insanely great like this Yankee team.
Game 149, Yankees at Mariners
Tui at… second?
RF-L Ichiro!
CF-R Gutierrez
1B-R Lopez
DH-0 Sweeney
3B-R Beltre
C-R Johjima
LF-R Hall
2B-R Tuiasosopo
SS-R Wilson
Talk about stacking it. Wow.
We get letters
Donald Moran writes, in “I can’t take it anymore”
I read your guys blogs daily and I get pissed off more by the day. The post on the 18th of September by DMZ saying that by Ichiro hitting a walk off off of Rivera, that should change someones mind about wether or not Rivera should be a first ballot hall of famer or not is just plain stupid. He has been the most dominant closer in the AL for the last 10 years. I am a die hard Mariners fan but I am a baseball fan first and I can identify good baseball when I see it. You guys have your heads so far up Ichiro’s ass you can’t see the light of day. I would love a reply from you just to see what useless garbage you have to come back with.
You Suck!
Go Mariners!
Hi Donald!
Here’s what useless garbage I have to come back with: I was making fun of people who think Ichiro! can’t hit in “clutch” situations, pointing out that he just won a game hitting a home run off the pitcher considered clutchiest of clutch closers.
That’s all. No slight to Rivera intended, though I guess if you’re really looking for an argument you could read “flip” as “change from pro-Rivera to pro-Ichiro” which I could have made clearer at the expense of having a two-sentence quick post.
Yours sincerely,
Guy with his head so far up Ichiro’s ass I can’t see the light of day or maybe it’s just cloudy and raining in Seattle today.
Transitive properties
If Mariano Rivera is the greatest closer of all time, ice water for blood, a sure fire Hall of Famer, and on and on and on, doesn’t Ichiro flip 5-10 holdout voters by hitting that shot off him to win the game? Read more