Minor League Wrap (6/8-14/09)
Aside from our draft, which was decent, the big minor league news of the week was uber-prep player Bryce Harper enrolling in the College of South Nevada so he’ll be eligible for next year’s draft, assuming he passes his GED, of course. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s the fellow who has moved beyond baseballs in batting practice and is now using beans. He also hit a 570 foot home run at one point, and he’s a lefty to boot. So, next year, the Nationals might have the most touted battery in recent memory, while the M’s continue their up-and-down season and end up picking around ten or so.
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Game 63, Mariners v Rockies
12:10. Hammel, I think it’s interesting to note, was one of the floating excess pitchers Dave and I wanted the M’s to go after when it looked like the M’s were going to need rotation help, and then the M’s had too many pitchers for the rotation, and now we’re back to famine.
Per the Times, the lineup looks like:
RF-L Ichiro!
1B-L Russ Branyan
3B-R Adrian Beltre
2B-R Jose Lopez
DH-L Ken Griffey Jr.
SS-R Yuniesky Betancourt
C-R Guillermo Quiroz
CF-LF-R Franklin Gutierrez
P-R Jason Vargas
Yes, I’m stealing Mike Snow’s joke.
Rockies
CF-B Dexter Fowler
2B-R Clint Barmes
1B-L Todd Helton
3B-R Garrett Atkins
RF-L Brad Hawpe
LF-R Ryan Spilborghs
SS-R Troy Tulowitzki
C-R Chris Iannetta
P-R Jason Hammel
Fun question to contemplate: are there four future Hall of Fame members in this game? Two and a “wait and see”? Three and a “wait and see”? One? I’ve been tossing this over in my head since I saw the lineups.
Game 62, Mariners and Rockies vs. Mother Nature
Morrow’s reconversion to starting begins, according to the National Weather Service, in a tornado watch. Also, in the National League park, now Griffey is back out in the field. In windy conditions and the big Colorado outfield, I can only imagine the potential for misadventures out there.
Morrow v. Marquis, whenever it starts. Update: Supposed to start at 5:50
RF-L Ichiro
1B-L Branyan
3B-R Beltre
DH-L Griffey
2B-R Lopez
SS-R Betancourt
C-R Burke
CF/LF-R Gutierrez
P-R Morrow
Condolences To The Johnsons
The Mariners placed Rob Johnson on the bereavement list today, and Larry Stone reports that it’s due to the passing of his mother in law, who died in a car accident last night. Our thoughts and prayers are with Rob and his family.
Interpretations welcome
This morning I was chewing on a question about how other teams are approaching games with the Mariners, researching on Fangraphs and I found this:
The M’s see almost as many fastballs as any team (they’re 6th, at 62.7%, the Cubs the low at 56.5%). And they see fewer changeups than any other team (their 7.6% is last… the Braves are first at 12%). Now, is that because teams think they’re so weak hitting (generally) that you just want to pound the strike zone and let them make outs?
And does this in part help explain some of Branyan’s success? So far this season, if you fed the team a diet of fastballs, only Branyan and Ichiro! wouldn’t starve for hits. I didn’t think it was likely, but when you look at what hitters have been seeing it’s hard to make sense of it. Of the regulars, here’s the fastball order, and what they do with it
Griffey, 71%, bad
Ichiro, 66%, good
Branyan, 64%, crazy good
Chavez, 63%, really bad
Gutierrez, 62%, bad
Lopez, 60%, horrible
Beltre, 59%, bad
Betancourt, 58%, bad
Johjima, 58%, bad
Balentien 55%, really bad
The minimalist pitching plan for the M’s would be “fastballs to everyone except Branyan, Ichiro” and you’d do pretty well with that right now. And I know that Ichiro and Branyan are going to see at least 55% fastballs. I don’t get it.
The only explanation I’ve come up with is that teams are regularly pursuing poor options to get those two out because they’re buying into commentator-reality where a man on means you have to throw fastballs continuously. Gutierrez at the bottom’s meant Ichiro hitting with a runner on reasonably often, and Branyan gets Ichiro. Still, this requires teams to actively decide that they’re going to pick a strategy with less likelihood of success for no good reason, and I can’t bring myself around to lean on that.
So I welcome thoughts.
Morrow to start in Bedard’s place
Limited to 60 pitches. Larry Stone:
“The main thing is, I’m going to try to be conservative with my pitches and give them the best start I can, and the most innings I can, to make it easier on the guys after me,” he said.
Five innings, he said, would be “ideal.” Combining our Cal educations, we figured out that would mean an average of 12 pitches an inning — not easy to accomplish.
Hee hee hee. I uh… I’m unreasonably excited about seeing Morrow start again. If you got tired of me cheerleading for him last season, you might want to stay away from the site that day.
Game 61, Mariners at Rockies
Since we’re in interleague play and get to enjoy watching pitchers hit, here’s a thought. Jarrod Washburn has a career OBP of .326 in 50 PA. That’s higher than everyone else in tonight’s lineup except for Ichiro and Branyan.
RF-L Ichiro
1B-L Branyan
3B-R Beltre
2B-R Lopez
CF-L Chavez
LF-R Cedeno
SS-R Betancourt
C-R Johnson
P-L Washburn
In other news, Bedard is a scratch again to-Morrow.
Branyan’s Regression
Over the last couple of weeks, both here and at FanGraphs, I pointed out that Russell Branyan was due for some regression. In April, his batting average on balls in play was .405. In May, it was .391. Those are just not sustainable numbers, regardless of how well you’re swinging the bat. The normal range of true talent BABIP is something like .260 to .360, with slow sluggers on the low end and slap-hitting speedsters on the high side. There was just no way that Branyan was going to keep posting a .390 BABIP.
And, we were totally right. Branyan’s BABIP in June has crashed down to a more normal .316. Take a look at how it’s affected his monthly totals:
April: .333/.415/.614
May: .317/.412/.614
June: .290/.410/.613
Hilariously, Branyan has responded to the regression in his ball in play hit rate by cutting down on his strikeouts and hitting the crap out of the ball, even more so than earlier in the season. As you can see, it would have been basically impossible for him to be any more consistent in his OBP/SLG performance by month, even if the way he’s getting there changed.
Branyan has been everything we hoped Jeff Clement would turn into, but with better defense at first base. For all the consternation of Clement’s lack of development/injury problems/whatever, we’ve got a guy who is continuing to prove that he’s one of the better left-handed power hitters in the game. This signing couldn’t have possibly worked out any better.
Game 60, Mariners at Orioles
Olson v. Uehara, 4:05? (weather permitting)
RF-L Ichiro
1B-L Branyan
3B-R Beltre
DH-L Griffey
2B-R Lopez
SS-R Betancourt
LF-R Balentien
C-R Quiroz
CF-L Chavez
USSM Goes To Safeco
We’ve told you to hold the date a couple of times, but here are the details of the next USSM event.
Saturday, August 8th, 5 pm, Safeco Field. We have reserved 300 seats in sections 321/323 for a USSM group outing to Safeco Field for the Mariners-Rays game that evening. In addition, when you purchase a ticket to join our group for the game, you’re also invited to join us for a pre-game Q&A with the Mariners front office and your local blogging community (Derek, myself, Jeff Sullivan, Matthew Carruth, and Graham MacAree will all be there). One week after the trade deadline, the guys who run the baseball club will be spending a good portion of time talking to us and answering your questions. After that, we’ll all head upstairs and watch the game together.
The total cost for the event, including your ticket to the game, is $25. This is, quite frankly, a steal. You get to watch the M’s play the defending American League champs and get a chance to talk to the decision makers of the ballclub for the price of a normal ticket. We’re happy to partner with the Mariners to provide this opportunity for you guys.
To buy tickets to the game/event, go here and follow these instructions:
2. Select “Find Tickets†then enter USSMARINER as your promo code and click “Verify†(ignore the “e-mail address†option).
3. You will need to use the “Create an Account†option on the right side of the following page. This is a Seattle Mariners Group Account (NOT a Ticketmaster account) and will consist of your e-mail address and a unique password that will enable you to order tickets for future Mariners events. Note: If you have previously purchased through this system and already have an account created, please proceed with your existing account information.
4. You will be able to locate your seating, purchase your tickets, and print your tickets instantly- all from your home or office computer!
5. Join us for a pre-game event from 5:15-6:45pm in the Ellis Pavilion! Please enter through the door along 1st Avenue located next to the Third Base Entry. Entry into this pre-game event is limited so purchase your tickets early!
6. To order more than 25 tickets or if you require wheelchair seating, please call Yoko McCann at (206) 346-4505
Your tickets will have a special marking on them which will allow you entrance to the pregame Q&A. The room where we’re having the pregame Q&A can only hold 300 chairs, so we’re going to have to restrict entrance to the Q&A to people who have purchased tickets through our group event. If you’re a season ticket holder and already have tickets for that game, my advice would be to sell them and just buy a ticket to come hang out with us. We’ll be more fun, even if your seat might not be as good.
Once you’ve purchased a ticket for the event, you’re almost done. In order to be able to communicate with everyone and keep a firm head count for the chair setup, we’re going to ask that you fill out the form below with your name and email address for each person you buy a ticket for. If you’re bringing someone but don’t know who yet, just add a “Your Name’s Guest” entry, so that we can know that your contact information accounts for more than one person. If you’re bringing multiple unknown guests, just number them “Your Name’s Guest 1”, “Your Name’s Guest 2”, etc…
Finally, when you’ve done that, and you have a ticket in hand and have let us know you’re coming, we’d like to ask you to consider potentially kicking in a few dollars via paypal to help cover our costs for the event. When we do these, we add our overhead into the cost of the event, but since we’re having you pay through ticketmaster this time, that’s not an option. I’m forking out a decent amount of cash to fly out to Seattle, and Derek, Jeff, Matthew, Graham, and myself are all paying our way into the event just like the rest of you. If you feel like you want to send $5 our way to help defray some of our costs for this, that’d be great. We love hosting events like this, and we think you enjoy them too, so it will be easier for us to keep doing them if we don’t go in the red in order to pull them off.
So, that’s the USSM event in August. Pregame Q&A with the M’s front office and a ticket to watch to the M’s-Rays game with 300 other USSM readers for $25, plus suggested $5 donation to help offset our costs, and don’t forget to fill out the form so that know how many to plan for and can communicate with you guys if need be.
See you all in August!