Game 47, Mariners at Tigers
Washburn vs Rogers, 4:05 pm.
Before the game, McLaren announced that Jamie Burke is now going to be the personal catcher for both Jarrod Washburn and Erik Bedard, meaning that Johjima and Burke will split the catching duties 60/40.
“You’ve got to look at it two ways,” McLaren said. “If a guy is having success with one guy, you’ve definitely got to really weigh that heavily. That doesn’t lie. We’ve got kind of that situation with Burke and Bedard. It’s been a good combination and so we’re going to stick with it for a while.”
In this paragraph, John McLaren reinforces that he doesn’t have any idea how statistical analysis works. He sums up about 34 logical fallacies in a few sentences. He demonstrates ignorance of all the research done on the relationship between a catcher and a pitcher’s performance (there’s almost none), his inability to understand that the “hot hand phenomenon” is a horrible way to make decisions, and his remarkable lack of leadership.
Jarrod Washburn sucks. He’s a replacement level starting pitcher, not much better than guys sitting in Triple-A riding buses from Toledo to Durham. Jarrod Washburn doesn’t like pitching to Kenji Johjima, who the team is committed to as their starting catcher through 2011. A real manager, one with some semblance of authority and a willingness to do whats best for his team’s record, would tell the replacement level starting pitcher to learn how to like throwing to Kenji or sit in the bullpen and not pitch.
No other team in baseball would let a replacement level starter dictate the benching of their starting catcher. Not one.
John McLaren doesn’t deserve to be fired because this team is 18-28 or because they’re losing ugly. He deserves to be fired because he’s massively unqualified for a job that requires both real leadership and an understanding of how baseball works. Those are his two jobs; motivate his players and put the best team on the field. He’s incapable of motivating grass to grow and has no idea what his players can and can’t do. He neither leads nor understands, and it’s only in a backwards organization like this one that this guy could have ever been hired in the first place.
Go M’s.
Quote of the day
“”We’re happy with our defense in the outfield,” he replied.
— McLaren, to Baker
Normally, I’d shrug this off — I mean whatever, he’s not going to slag Ibanez publicly. But there’s every reason to believe this is what he actually thinks. Despite the team’s ineptitude at getting outs, they don’t sub out for Ibanez regularly and last year (as pointed out earlier in comments) they would sub for Jose Guillen and not Raul. There’s no evidence at all that they’re just trying to protect his reputation while making accomodations for his near-total immobility.
No, the M’s really are happy with their outfield defense.
They’re happy with a league-worst defense. I’m not.
Tracking the new call-up Vidro
So Clement didn’t work out so well and got sent down for this new guy, Vidro. Over the next 55 plate appearances, assuming he gets that long, I’m going to track how this call-up does compared to the guy he replaced.
So far: Clement, in 55 plate appearances, hit .167/.286/.250
Starting from May 16th, Vidro’s been red-hot, hitting .500/.500/.667 in six plate appearances. Only 49 more to go, but right now, you have to wonder why this kid wasn’t called up the first time.
A brief return to the Clement decision
I don’t buy that Clement deserved to be sent down because he wasn’t producing and you never know with these rookies, they’re so unreliable, it’s sink or swim or whatever blah blah blah.
Clement hit .167/.286/.250 in his time here. How did those reliable veterans you can count on do? Check a couple out:
Turbo hit .167/.167/.167 with his back spasm-y self
Betancourt hit .190/.190/.259
Sexson hit .161/.188/355
Beltre hit .156/.217/.250
Bloomquist hit .125/.300/.125
Cairo hit .222/.300/.259
Once again proving that over any arbitrarily selected time period, veterans are no more reliable production sources than your rookies.
There was no reason to send Clement back down. He was a good bet to hit better than the alternatives over that span of time, and he’s a good bet to hit better than them for any stretch after that.
Also, Cairo has no business being on this roster, and we’re reminded of that with every move.
Hey, Look At That
The spirit of Regression To The Mean decided to inhabit an overweight Venezuelan!
Game 46, Mariners at Tigers
4:05 our time. Silva v Verlander.
CF-L Ichiro
3B-R Beltre
2B-R Lopez
LF-L Ibanez
DH-B Vidro
1B-R Sexson
C-R Johjima
RF-R Balentien
SS-R Betancourt
Lopez-Ibanez-Vidro? Really?
Detroit:
CF-L Granderson
2B-R Polanco
DH-R Sheffield (with a batting average under Vidro’s!)
RF-R Ordonez
1B-R Cabrera
3B-B Guillen
LF-L Joyce
SS-R Renteria
C-R Rodriguez (currently the only listed catcher on the Tigers roster)
Four righties in a row (I had to go back to the roster page do double-check that) — no wonder they’re struggling so much.
We Don’t Care
A quick response to something that doesn’t deserve anything longer, from Baker’s Blog today:
But it wasn’t only this site that went quiet. Heard no debate about this anywhere else in the Seattle blogosphere the rest of the weekend. Funny, because other sites had plenty to say about the topic earlier in the week before Wagner spoke up and perhaps enlightened some people as to what actually does go on in a major league clubhouse.
You know why we didn’t talk about this ridiculous “talks to the media after the game” story anymore, Geoff? Because we don’t care. Do you know why we don’t care? Because it doesn’t matter to us.
You care, because it matters to you. It doesn’t matter to us. We don’t care if they talk to you or not. We don’t care if you want to equate talking to the media to being accountable. That’s your distinction, based on your experience as a reporter. People who aren’t reporters won’t draw that same distinction because they don’t care if ballplayers talk to the media or not. It doesn’t matter. You want it to matter, but it doesn’t. You can talk about accountability and playing together and being 25 guys going after the same goal all you want, but it’s all crap to give you something to write about because you just don’t want to write that this team isn’t any good because Jose Vidro, Richie Sexson, and Jarrod Washburn suck eggs.
And, really, if Billy Wagner’s on your side, you probably want to change sides.
Triunfel’s suspension
Yes, Carlos Triunfel is suspended indefinitely and is not on the High Desert roster. I’ve been hoping that something would come out we could write up, but there’s nothing, so — the M’s best prospect is suspended indefinitely and we don’t have anything to tell you.
Battle of the ex-contenders
As I try not to dwell on the fact that the M’s just sent Clement down so they could hand the DH spot to someone hitting even worse than Clement, I was looking ahead to this week and another collapsed season. The M’s face the Tigers on Tuesday. The Tigers have an even worse record than they do. Both teams were widely expected to contend, the Tigers more so than the M’s. And yet they’re much different.
So as I compared the Padres to the M’s, check this out:
Batting average: .259 Tigers, .248 Mariners
OBP: .336 Tigers, .306 Mariners
SLG: .406 Tigers, .383 Mariners
The Tigers offense is well above average even just looking at their raw stats.
Where they’ve really fallen down is the pitching. It’s right there with the M’s. Here’s the problem with this upcoming series, though:
Game 1: Silva v Verlander
Game 2: Washburn v Rogers
Game 3: Batista v Bonderman
We’re out our good starters.
It’s strange, though — seeing the Tigers show up in the top couple of teams in all the tasty rate stats, it’s jarring to see their place in the standings. Looking at BP’s Adjusted Standings, for instance, check out the “EQR/EQRA” line, which is based on runs scored/allowed based on their hitting stats, and they’re 20-23, three games up (the M’s gain .6 this way).
That’s a lot of bad luck. I hope the M’s can coast past before Detroit wakes up.
Clement down, Reed up, Mariners still dumb
The best thing that could be happening would be
Ibanez –> DH
Reed –> LF/RF (with Wlad to left)
And the more painful option would be
Reed to bench
Vidro to DH
Updated: Hickey confirms that it’s the more painful option. THANKS MARINERS! Let no win go untreasured there. Why did I even bother considering that they might be making a positive move here?
Clement wasn’t hitting, certainly, but in a way this is just Adam Jones’ callup last year redux: Clement proved his bat was ready for the major leagues and there wasn’t much left for him, offensively at least, to learn in Tacoma. None of that’s changed unless we’re going to argue that failure in the majors gives him a to-do list of flaws to correct (if so, I’d love to know what that is).
To Reed… Reed came over in the Garcia trade, didn’t hit, didn’t hit, and has been stuck in Tacoma ever since.
Right now he’s hitting .349/.413/.557 in Tacoma. Last year he hit .300/.354/.452.
Who knows what to make of that. He certainly plays capable outfield defense, which the team desperately needs even as an outfield sub.
I favored using Reed or Jimerson as a backup OF from the start, but now — this goes to the heart of one of the few basic disagreements I have with Dave and many other baseball people, and I’ll illustrate it with an example where I was totally wrong.
Take Sean Douglass. Baltimore farm system product, racked up some huge strikeout numbers and nice ratios in the minors without having scout-lauded stuff. Then he pretty much sucked in the majors over his couple of years bouncing back and forth.
I’m totally in favor of giving players like that a shot if there’s an opportunity. All players have holes in their games that some people think will keep them from being effective – heck, Minnesota gave up on David Ortiz (released him!) and once you look at them with that knowledge, it’s easy to see it reinforced.
Reed’s 27, these are his peak years, and he’s now gone from really nice prospect to almost inexplicable major league washout (even the wrist thing doesn’t do those seasons justice) to frustrated AAA masher. I don’t have a complicated explanation for the why. I’d just play him and see what happens.
The side effect of this is that when someone like Douglass doesn’t succeed, I have conversations that go
“I told you he didn’t have a major-league quality out pitch.”
“Yeah yeah yeah.”
If Reed can hit and play a corner outfield position, it’s a huge boon for the Mariners.
If he can’t hit and play a quality defensive substitute and be a lefty pinch-hitter and spot starter, that’s a boon for the Mariners.
I’m all for giving him a shot and seeing what happens. The M’s suck right now — they can only improve.
The bad news is that again, the team will have cut someone more useful in order to hold on to Vidro and Cairo, who are both useless players on this roster.