Also, Woo!
That was unexpected. And awesome.
Attention Mr. Hall
If you can’t be bothered* to run at the minimum effort level that could be provided by a nine year old, go do something else for a living. I’m a pretty forgiving person, but you’re quickly wearing out your welcome with the ridiculous displays of loafing.
Run. It’s not that hard.
*I know he has a strained quad, but that fly ball was hardly an isolated incident. That was just the latest example of Bill Hall exerting about 10% effort on a play.
Game 148, Yankees at Mariners
Burnett vs Hernandez, 7:10 pm.
Happy Felix Day!
Over the last few weeks, various people have written in to request a post on Felix’s chances of winning the Cy Young. Here’s the very short version – he shouldn’t get a single first place vote. Zack Greinke has been the best pitcher in the American League, and it’s not even close. Felix has been good – Greinke has been great.
I love Felix, but he’s not the Cy Young winner this year. Not with what Greinke is doing in KC.
Brandon Morrow Needs A Lot Of Work
This probably isn’t news if you watched him pitch last night, or really at all since he returned to the team, but Brandon Morrow isn’t any better now than he was before his trip back to Tacoma. In fact, he might be worse.
In his two starts since rejoining the club, Morrow has displayed his usual lack of command, throwing strikes on just 58% of his pitches. But combined with his inability to find the plate, he’s added the new inability to miss bats. Of the 177 pitches he’s thrown in those two starts, he’s gotten 11 swinging strikes. When batters have swung at his pitches, they’ve made contact 91.7% of the time. Among pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched this year, the highest opponents rate of contact belongs to John Lannan, at 88.7%.
John Lannan is a pitch-to-contact groundball lefty with a fastball that averages 88 MPH.
His command is already Double-A quality. He can’t get left-handers out. And now, he’s not even fooling hitters. This version of Brandon Morrow is not a major league starting pitcher. He’s not even really close.
If I was advising Zduriencik on specific goals for the winter, #1 would be finding a team that still believes that Morrow can be a top of the rotation starter and is willing to pay for the right to try to turn him into one. He’s not anywhere close right now, and I think the M’s best option is to try to trade him to someone who still sees a 96 MPH fastball and thinks he’s got ace potential.
Game 147, White Sox at Mariners
Danks vs Morrow, 3:40 pm
Well, this should be interesting. With a lefty on the hill, Wak goes to his anti-LHP line-up that features Lopez at first base, but instead of Hall replacing him at second base, we get our first look at Matt Tuiasosopo, Second Baseman. He played a lot of second base in Tacoma after returning from the disabled list, with reports ranging from “he’s worked really hard and its paying off” to “he’s worked really hard and he’s still awful”. Everyone agrees that he’s put in the effort, but he had a long way to go, so he could make big strides and still be pretty rough. It will be interesting to see how he handles the adjustment at the big league level.
From Wak’s pre-game comments, it sounds like they’re not expecting much either. In other words, don’t read too much into this – it’s pretty unlikely that Tui ends up at second base long term, and especially not for a club that values defense as much as the current administration does.
Adam Moore makes his major league debut behind the plate, too. Also, Morrow pitching. The White Sox offense isn’t good, and especially lacks good LH hitters, so this is about as good a matchup as he’s ever going to get. I’m already not overly optimistic about his future, but maybe he can open some eyes today.
The Transformation Of RRS
Over the last couple of years, we’ve made a bunch of comparisons between Ryan Rowland-Smith and Jarrod Washburn, and for good reason – they’re very similar pitchers. Both throw four seam fastballs in the high-80s and big loopy curveballs, are pitch to contact strike throwers, and their success is predicated on home run avoidance. In fact, watching Hyphen work deep in the game the last four starts, it’s nearly impossible to not see pieces of Washburn when he’s on the hill. RRS, right now, looks a lot like pre-trade Washburn did.
Just with one fairly notable exception. Ryan Rowland-Smith has turned himself into a groundball pitcher.
In 2007, pitching exclusively out of the bullpen, Hyphen posted a 33.6% GB%, one of the lowest marks in the league. He pitched up in the zone, and since his fastball averaged 91 out of the bullpen, he was able to rack up a bunch of strikeouts. It was an effective combination for him, and he continued to pitch that way out of the bullpen last year, actually getting even a bit more extreme – his GB% as a relief pitcher in 2008 was just 29%, a crazy low total.
But, after the M’s sent him to Triple-A to convert him to a starting pitcher, he came back a different guy. Over the 10 starts he made to finish last season, 46% of his 206 balls in play were hit on the ground. By moving to the rotation, he gave up some velocity, but also started using his fastball differently. I’m sure he’s smart enough to realize that he’s not going to get an 88 MPH high fastball by too many people, so he started locating it down in the zone more often, trading strikeouts for groundballs.
That’s continued this year, and especially of late. His GB% for the 2009 season stands at 41%, just a tick below league average, but he’s at 49% ground balls over his last four starts, when he’s been working deep into ballgames and solidifying his role as an innings eater. Between 2008 and 2009, his GB% as a starter is 43%. That’s a far cry from the 31% he was posting as a relief pitcher.
It may not sound like much, but it makes a pretty big difference. As a pitch to contact guy, RRS is going to give up a lot of balls in play. By limiting the amount of those that are hit in the air, he’s limiting the number of home runs he’s going to allow, and that’s really the key to his success. When he’s pounding the strike zone like he has been lately (67% strikes in his last four starts), the only hope opponents have is to string together a few hits and then park one over the fence. But that last component becomes less likely if they’re chopping the ball in the dirt.
As a starting pitcher, Ryan Rowland-Smith is like Jarrod Washburn in some ways, but he’s also proving he’s got the ability to get grounders with some regularity, and that strikes+groundballs skillset gives him the potential to be better than the back-end starter that Washburn has always been.
Hyphen’s giving us significant reasons for optimism. If you were worried about the lack of mid-rotation starters in the organization, we might just have found one now.
Game 146, White Sox at Mariners
Floyd vs Rowland-Smith, 7:10 pm.
So, yeah, about Saunders playing again? Not happening. Jose Romero reports Wak’s comments that they’ve basically shut him down for the year, as they didn’t like the lack of improvement they were seeing at the plate. Not a fan of this, honestly. Players struggle, and they learn from it. He’s not going to learn anything on the bench, and this eliminates the chance that he plays well enough to give them confidence to head into the off-season knowing that they don’t have to go out and get a left fielder. Now, it’s a question mark, and the team already has enough of those.
Line-up:
Ichiro, RF
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 2B
Griffey, DH
Beltre, 3B
Johjima, C
Carp, 1B
Langerhans, LF
Josh, SS
Hall and Saunders
You’ve probably noticed that Bill Hall has been essentially an everyday player since he arrived in Seattle, and that after Adrian Beltre returned and Mike Carp joined the club when rosters expanded, Wakamatsu has found playing time for Hall by sticking him primarily in left field. Because of that decision, Michael Saunders has essentially disappeared. In the last two weeks, Saunders has three plate appearances. Three.
I know the M’s wanted to see what Hall could offer them if he got regular at-bats, and Saunders hasn’t exactly made a case for more playing time with his performance, but I’m not a fan of this arrangement. While Hall was a nice little pickup as a potentially useful and relatively cheap utility player, his total potential value to the M’s is fairly limited. He turns 30 this winter, and the odds of him fixing his contact problems are slim at best. Given his inability to regularly put the bat on the ball, Hall’s just not going to hit enough to make him a good enough player to be the team’s regular left fielder in 2010.
Saunders, on the other hand, actually has some real ability to improve with regular playing time. He’s had a rough go against major league pitching so far, but there’s a reason they call it a learning curve – the rate of improvement increases exponentially with playing time. We can’t really expect him to figure out how to hit a major league breaking ball sitting on the bench, and the 2010 Mariners could really use a version of Michael Saunders that can hit a breaking ball.
With the team out of contention, the goal for the last two weeks out of the season should be to help next year’s club as much as possible. And for that team, Michael Saunders is simply more important than Bill Hall is. I’m fine with Wak getting Hall in the line-up, but not at Saunders expense.
Less Bill Hall and more Michael Saunders please.
Game 145, White Sox at Mariners
We’ve covered Snell. The pitching matchup also features the return of Freddy Garcia, in case that’s of interest to you.
It’s stretching things a little bit, but I could imagine a starting outfield of guys who are in some fashion a product of the Garcia trade. Put Ichiro at DH for a day to rest his hamstring, and you could have Langerhans (acquired for Morse) in RF, Gutierrez of course in CF, and Endy Chavez in LF. Both of the latter two were part of the trade that involved, among others, Jeremy Reed. So what if Chavez is on the DL and they wouldn’t have even picked up Langerhans if he hadn’t been hurt, this is just a silly exercise.
The real lineup:
RF-L Ichiro
CF-R Gutierrez
2B-R Lopez
DH-L Griffey
3B-R Beltre
LF-R Hall
C-R Johjima
1B-L Carp
SS-R Jack
Show Something Soon, Ian
Ian Snell takes the hill for the M’s tonight. He needs to pitch well pretty soon, or the M’s are going to have to seriously re-evaluate whether they can go into the off-season planning on him taking one of the spots in their rotation next year. To be frank, Snell has been terrible since the M’s acquired him. Really, really bad. Here’s a comparison, for instance:
Snell as a Mariner: 40 1/3 IP, 38 H, 6 HR, 28 BB, 21 K, 6.13 FIP
Silva, pre-DL stint: 28 2/3 IP, 38 H, 5 HR, 9 BB, 10 K, 5.91 FIP
They haven’t been terrible in the same way, of course – Silva gave up a ton of hits, while Snell has just been walking everyone in sight, but their performances were roughly equivalent in terms of expected runs allowed. Neither of them have pitched like major league starters in Seattle this year.
When the M’s made the trade with Pittsburgh, they clearly did it with the intention of turning Snell’s career around and sliding him into their rotation for 2010 and beyond. He’s due $4.25 million in salary next year, so he’s going to get a lot of chances to earn his paycheck. But he can’t continue to pitch like he has since the trade and still be penciled into the starting five for 2010. The M’s simply can’t head into spring training next year with Snell expected to break camp in the rotation if he continues to pitch like he has in his first eight starts as a Mariner.
Tonight would be a great time for Snell to show that he can still throw strikes and miss bats. The stuff is good, but his command has been abysmal, and on the nights where he has thrown strikes, he’s been a pitch to contact guy. We have enough of those. We need Ian Snell to get a bunch of outs on his own without putting men on base every inning. We need him to pitch up to his abilities. And we need him to do it soon. Otherwise, he’ll have to be relegated into the already large group of guys who haven’t shown enough to be considered reliable starters for 2010.