Game 97, Indians at Mariners
Bedard vs Sowers, 1:10 PM, no TV
As Derek noted below, this one’s not on TV because the M’s are playing an early game in order to accommodate the city’s request to not compete with the Torchlight Parade, and Fox has national blackout rights for all Saturday day games. Yay, stupid MLB regional territory rules.
Saunders makes his MLB debut as the new starting left fielder.
Ichiro, RF
Branyan, 1B
Lopez, 2B
Sweeney, DH
Gutierrez, CF
Hannahan, 3B
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
Cedeno, SS
Wlad DFAed, Saunders to MLB
Per Baker and others.
Dave adds: Interesting timing. Saunders has been on fire down in Tacoma of late, but shouldn’t be expected to be such a huge improvement over Langerhans for the rest of this year to make a dramatic difference on the field. This, to me, looks like a move for 2010 – Saunders gets an extended audition so they can get a better idea of what they have in left field going forward. I’d say this is the first sign that the team is shifting its focus away from this season.
As for Wlad, don’t worry about losing him for nothing. He was getting traded this week regardless – this just gets him off the roster sooner. The M’s now have 10 days to trade him or pass him through waivers. There will be enough interest in a young/cheap outfielder with power that they’ll be able to deal him for something. Like, say, Ian Snell?
Many Hands Make Light Work
It’s a common refrain to hear people say that the M’s need another bat or two to be a real contender. The offense is bad, there’s no doubt about that. Their .313 team wOBA is 6th worst in baseball. However, I’d like to suggest that the M’s don’t need to get one big bat – they just need a couple smaller ones.
Let’s compare our offense to the Rangers offense, for instance. They have a .335 wOBA that ranks 10th in baseball. When you adjust for their home park, they come out just a bit above average. If the M’s had the Rangers offense, they’d be right in the thick of things, and we’d be talking about chasing down the Angels over the last two months.
Texas’ offense is led by Nelson Cruz (.380 wOBA), Michael Young (.371 wOBA), and Ian Kinsler (.357 wOBA). Those three have combined to be +34 runs above average on the season. The Mariners offense is led by Russ Branyan (.390 wOBA), Ichiro (.374 wOBA), and Franklin Gutierrez (.350 wOBA). Those three have combined to be +46 runs above average so far this year.
The M’s big three bats have been better than Texas’ big three by a fairly decent margin. The difference between the two isn’t in the quality of the good hitters, but instead in the quality of the bad hitters.
The Rangers have five players who have gotten significant playing time and been below average hitters. Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Chris Davis, Taylor Teagardan, Elvis Andrus, and Josh Hamilton have racked up -37.5 runs between them, basically canceling out the work of the top three and giving the Rangers an average offense overall.
The Mariners, on the other hand… the guys who have held down shortstop (Cedeno + Betancourt), catcher (Johnson, Johjima, and Burke), DH (Griffey and Sweeney), third base (Beltre, Woodward, and Hannahan), and left field (Chavez, Balentien, and Langerhans) have almost all been below average. Their combined total: -68.7 runs.
The M’s are 29th in wOBA from shortstop, 29th in wOBA from catcher, 13th (of 14) in wOBA from designated hitter, 30th in wOBA at left field, and 27th in wOBA at third base. The good work done by Ichiro, Gutierrez, and Branyan is wiped out by the lack of offense the team has gotten from these other five spots.
The difference between Texas’ offense and Seattle’s offense isn’t that they have more big bats, but instead that they have little bats that are okay instead of terrible. Omar Vizquel, Hank Blalock, David Murphy, Marlon Byrd – role players who can hit a little bit and won’t sink the offense when they’re on the field. This is what the Mariners are lacking.
The team needed more Ryan Langerhans and less Ronny Cedeno. You can win with average bats playing great defense behind a decent pitching staff. You can’t with with lousy bats playing great defense behind a decent pitching staff. The Mariners simply have too many lousy bats.
The problem spots are catcher, shortstop, and designated hitter. The M’s got good enough value from the gloves at 3B/LF to justify the offensive levels that they got from those positions. The same can’t be said at the other spots. Rob Johnson, for all the talk about how much pitchers love him, doesn’t have enough offense to be the #1 catcher for a playoff team. Ronny Cedeno has done a nice job defending at short, but he’s miscast as anything other than a utility infielder. Ken Griffey Jr and Mike Sweeney may have been great for the clubhouse, but they didn’t live up to their end of the bargain on the field.
These are the positions the M’s have to address going forward.
Adam Moore may push his way into the catcher conversation next year, but if the team isn’t ready to give the catching job to two youngsters, they’ll need to go get an offensive minded backstop that Wak can live with behind the plate for 2010.
Shortstop, the answer has to come from outside the system. There aren’t any internal options. You know the names by now – JJ Hardy, Reid Brignac, Jack Wilson if they want a stop-gap who will have to settle for a one year deal… the M’s will have to get someone in here over the winter who can play the position and hit enough to justify his paycheck.
DH should be fairly easy, honestly. Russ Branyan isn’t the only under-appreciated hitter who hasn’t been able to land a full-time job and is just waiting for his shot. Jeff Clement probably deserves another look, and Mike Carp may be able to give him a run at the internal candidate position as well. Eric Hinske could serve as a short-term fill-in, or you could try to get Jake Fox from the Cubs as a more long term solution. Finding a DH who can hit just isn’t that hard.
As the M’s begin to shift their focus towards 2010, they should not be seduced into looking for “a big bat”. They don’t need another all-star caliber hitter. They just need a few more guys who don’t totally suck at the plate.
Why Saturday’s game isn’t televised
I thought I’d share (with permission) this from the M’s Tim Hevly, sent the last time this happened:
MLB has an exclusive Saturday afternoon “window” for FOX TV. If your game is schedule in the FOX window (basically, 1 pm pacific on Saturdays) no local broadcast is allowed.
Since the A’s chose to play a day game today, once FOX did not pick up the game neither the A’s or the Mariners could televise it. We can televise morning games from the east (10 am pacific) and late afternoon/evening games from the West on Saturday. But not the middle.
As you know, currently FSN will televise 158 games this season, and the national partner is on board for 1 game (they could add more later). The only other games currently not scheduled to be broadcast are July 25 vs. CLE and Oct. 3 vs. TEX.
Game 96, Indians at Mariners
Laffey vs Rowland-Smith, 7:10 pm.
It’s the return of Hyphen, and Wak celebrates by putting out the best line-up possible:
Ichiro, RF
Branyan, 1B
Lopez, 2B
Shelton, DH
Gutierrez, CF
Langerhans, LF
Johjima, C
Hannahan, 3B
Cedeno, SS
Pitching staff stays at 11
According to the TNT blog, Roy Corcoran has been designated for assignment to make room for Ryan Rowland-Smith’s return to the rotation. I wouldn’t expect Corcoran to get claimed, of all the guys on the roster he should be just about the easiest to pass through waivers. But if not, Sean White is doing the stuff he did last year but better, so it would hardly be a tragedy.
As nice as it is to have more guys on the bench (now please untie Chris Shelton from it), the move suggests how the team plans to fill Sunday’s rotation slot. Vargas would be right on schedule for it, but that requires another move, probably swapping out for a position player as off days dwindle and we return to a 7-man bullpen. That gives a couple more days before a tougher decision has to be made, and even that might be postponed if Gutierrez’s neck, Griffey’s knee, or one of several backs simplifies things a bit.
It’s A Sellers Market
We’ve heard a lot of talk about how the economy is going to cause players with big contracts to be significantly less valuable as trade chips, and that the market for high paid players is going to be way down this summer.
So much for that. The Cardinals just traded their best prospect, Brett Wallace, along with a quality pitching prospect in Clayton Mortensen, and a third okay prospect in Shane Peterson, for two months of Matt Holliday and $1.5 million in cash. With the A’s kicking in 25% of his remaining salary, the Cardinals are on the hook for $4.5 million over the rest of the season.
Holliday’s a good player, but this is a ton to give up for a rental. To put into Mariner equivalencies, this would be similar to if the M’s had shipped off Michael Saunders, Ryan Rowland-Smith, and Tyson Gillies for Holliday. We’d all be throwing up if the M’s had made that move, so you can imagine how Cardinal fans are reacting right now. St. Louis wanted Holliday, and they paid through the nose to get him.
If Zduriencik needed a nudge one way or another on what he should do with Bedard and Washburn, this should push him towards selling. It’s clearly still very much a seller’s market.
The Next Five Days
The next five days for the M’s should be fairly interesting, if only to see how Wak handles the line-ups. Check out the pitchers the M’s are scheduled to go against between now and Tuesday.
Friday, Aaron Laffey, LHP
Saturday, Jeremy Sowers, LHP
Sunday, Cliff Lee, LHP
Monday, Ricky Romero, LHP
Tuesday, Mark Rzepczynski, LHP
A couple of months ago, this would have been fantastic news. Not so much now, with Beltre on the shelf and Gutierrez questionable due to the wall crash in Detroit. Now, the line-up features guys like Langerhans and Hannahan, in addition to Ichiro/Branyan/Griffey, so facing a lefty isn’t a benefit like it was earlier this year. And five straight lefties? This isn’t exactly the stretch you want to see when you’re trying to bust Russ Branyan out of a slump.
Then, there’s the issue of who goes to make room for RRS on the roster tonight. Chris Shelton is the guy without a job, but punting him before a string of LHPs doesn’t make a lot of sense. Roy Corcoran is the most vulnerable reliever, but if they’re going to use Jakubauskas to start on Sunday, then they’d be down to a six man bullpen for the weekend, and none of the Hyphen/Bedard/Jak trio can really be expected to give you 7+ innings. They could option Olson to Tacoma, but there’s a 10 day stay required in Triple-A after being optioned, so the M’s wouldn’t be able to bring him back if they moved a pitcher or two at the deadline, and they’re not likely to want to be put in that situation.
Lots of tough calls for the M’s this weekend.
This Is Getting Fun
51-44 after a couple more one run wins. No, the win 2-1 plan isn’t going to work long term, but wins are wins, and the M’s are getting the games they badly need. Now, if the Twins could just go ahead and do a number on the Angels, that’d be nice.
How about Ryan Langerhans, by the way? Another hit and an HBP today, plus a couple more nice catches in center field. It really is amazing that he languished in Triple-A to start the season. Every team in baseball could use a good defensive outfielder who understands the strike zone and has some power. He’s close to a league average major league player, and the M’s got him for free. These are the kinds of pickups that good teams make.
The guy playing next to Langerhans, though? Less impressive. And no, I don’t mean Ichiro. Whether the M’s decide to go for it or not, they should still move Wladimir Balentien to someone who wants to give him a chance to learn how to hit something besides a fastball. He’s just totally lost on soft stuff, and even against a LH pitcher, he looked abysmal trying to hit anything that moves. With Langerhans here and Saunders coming, Balentien doesn’t have a future in this organization. Offer him to the Pirates for Ian Snell or the Nationals for Josh Willingham or something.
David Aardsma, June + July: 21 innings, 7 walks, 29 K. Yeah, he still gives up a lot of scary fly balls, but a 4.00 K/BB rate with no platoon split? That’s a relief ace.
And finally, Washburn. What else is there to say? Keep pitching well, Jarrod. It’s only good news for us.
Game 95, Mariners at Tigers
Washburn vs French, Rain Delay, Start Time Unknown
Washburn gets a bit of a test today, agianst a line-up with some bats that can thump lefties and Franklin Gutierrez sitting on the bench. Comerica’s dimensions will help him, but Langerhans/Balentien are no Gutierrez/Chavez, so Wash is actually going to have to pitch well today.
With the Angels playing out of their minds, the M’s have to keep winning. 6+ games back and it’s sell time.
Ichiro, RF
Branyan, 1B
Lopez, 2B
Sweeney, DH
Balentien, LF
Langerhans, CF
Johnson, C
Hannahan, 3B
Cedeno, SS