Game 45, Padres at Mariners
Estes v. Hernandez, 1:10.
What a beautiful day to go see a ball game. Or hang around outside, or whatever.
Lineups when I get ’em.
Comments of the day so far
We racked up two great ones in under 20m.
Scraps, here:
The more of this I hear, the more it sounds like scapegoating. If the Mariners were winning, we wouldn’t be hearing it, and of all the reasons they’re losing, Johjima’s relationship with the pitchers can’t possibly be as important as team defense and the lack of hitting and the absurd levels of veteran entitlement and McLaren’s inability to manage a game.
Scapegoating always works like this. Things go bad, a little finger-pointing stars, and then it avalanches as the pent-up frustration gets focused on one target. And it’s usually an outsider.
Johjima is beginning [to] become the fall guy for this season. Is that really reasonable?
Steve T, here:
there is every reason to believe that that can effect performance
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.
Yes, there are factors like this that affect performance. We can tell, because we can MEASURE THE PERFORMANCE.
Saying stuff like “Bedard wasn’t sharp today because he couldn’t get comfortable with his catcher†is ANTI-KNOWLEDGE. It’s not just untrue; it’s blocking the view of the truth. It steps in and “explains†an event with reference to stuff that’s completely unknowable (Bedard’s mental state) without first trying to establish whether the event even took place or not.
If you want to make a serious study of the results of pitchers working with different catchers, go ahead. But do it the right way: make sure you’ve got enough data, make sure you’re accounting for other factors, and make sure you’re asking the question in the right way and looking for an answer in a place where it is possible for answers to be found.
Grabbing a tiny handful of numbers from somewhere — ah, it doesn’t matter from where, we just want a number here, so it looks like we’re doing science, right? — tells you nothing. It tells you WORSE than nothing, because it shuts down your mind and stops you looking for other possible explanations — including what is always the most likely explanation in cases like this: random chance.
Your “robot†example doesn’t apply. If I’ve had conflict with my boss, there’s no numerical way to adjudge my performance as a result. With Bedard there is. How’s he doing at getting hitters out? Leaving aside the sample-size problem, I didn’t even see that number there. You rarely do, with pitchers — what IS Bedard’s out percentage, anyways? [hint: 1-OBP].
This kind of baloney statistic really gets my goat, and it makes real statistical analysis look bad.
I refuse to do further research into this topic
at least until we have a larger sample to work with
I read the Times blog entry about the “startling” difference between Bedard’s Johjima and Burke starts, which uses some bad stats and… anyway, ends
Now, that note should also include the caveat that the starts with Johjima were earlier in the season. Bedard is known to start seasons slowly and he was also having trouble with his hip earlier. Still, the disparity is pretty striking.
Okay, so given W-L, ERA, K, and BB, but no innings pitched or other relevant information, we should apparently assume Johjima sucks. So I started writing a post where I sliced Bedard’s starts in increasingly thin slices, starting with
Let’s make some equally random comparisons
Wilkerson in RF: 6.1 BB/9 IP, 7.1 K/9 IP, 1.5 HR/9 IP
Wlad in RF: 2.7 BB/9 IP, 8.6 K/9 IP, 1.5 HR/9 IP
Now of course, Wilkerson was in right field early in the season, when Bedard was injured and whatnot… but it’s hard not to believe that Wlad helps Wilkerson walk fewer batters and strike out more.
And getting around to some hysterics about how who plays first base determines the outcome of Bedard’s starts. It was kind of silly, your standard reductio ad absurdum kind of thing.
The problem with doing any of this right now is that Bedard’s May 12th, 2-inning disaster start was caught by Johjima, and Bedard struck out 2, walked four, and gave up two home runs there. Any rate-based comparison makes Johjima look absurdly bad, while I don’t think there’s any way we can blame Johjima for that start (64 pitches thrown, 31 strikes).
If you tag him for that, Burke looks like a catching master in comparison. If you don’t, you’re kind of excusing that performance. The thing is, you simply can’t make any kind of reasonable decision on this season’s relative catching performances based on this small of a sample size.
And to come back around — in this context, where Burke’s starting over Johjima so this would seem to be intended as some kind of explanation of why Burke is “fast becoming” Bedard’s personal catcher, and particularly since Washburn offered his catcher up for sacrifice only days before, the right thing to do here is either make this a story — go get a quote from McLaren as to why, note that Burke starts more often on Saturdays, and so on — or don’t offer a little more information (relative games, innings pitched, and so on) to make it possibly meaningful and leave it at that.
Felix Day wooooooooooo
Two games in a row? Dare I dream?
Game 44, Padres at Mariners
Bedard vs Wolf. 7:10. Nice night to go see a game, too.
Deep breath annnnd… exhale.
I hate this
I hate this so much. I saw Hoffman finish off the M’s an hour ago. I keep thinking about that last inning even though it really wasn’t all that meaningful, just the capstone to another loss. Then I start going over all the other losses I’ve already seen this season. I don’t know, folks, this is just ridiculous. I’ve gone from horror to humor to a head-shaking resignation and today was nice and sunny and I got a nice ride in even though two cars tried to clip me today at Eastgate, separated by only about 20s (both Mercedes drivers). This was a nice day for me, and I feel like I’d have been better off not having seen the game.
I love baseball, and I don’t want to watch tomorrow.
Dave and I do an M’s preview at Ducksnorts
Check it out if you’re interested, though it’s for the Padres side and you probably already know everything we’re saying about the M’s.
A couple of six game winning streaks
“All the Mariners need to get back in this is a couple of six game winning streaks.”
— fans
The M’s are 16-26, and the division leaders in the AL West are 24-19 and 23-19 respectively. That’s only eight games, right? How hard could it be?
M’s run off a six-game win streak starting tomorrow, sweeping both San Diego and Detroit. 22-26. Then they lose one to NY and start another six-game win streak (through the first game of the Detroit series at home). They’re at 28-27. Lose a game to Detroit on the 31st to set up the next win streak (28-28), win the first one of the next six (June 1st, still against Detroit) before they face the Angels.
The Angels, in the meantime, have fifteen games in that time. Figure they go 8-7. They’ll be at 32-26. Going into that series, having reeled off two consecutive six-game winning streaks and starting on a third, the M’s are 5 games back. And forgive me if I’ve blown this, I wrote it up while swapping back and forth between schedules.
Sweep three games against the Angels for games 2-4 of this streak.
M’s 31-28, Angels 32-29. Complete the six game win streak with two games in Boston, finish it with a loss, and June 9th they’re headed out to Toronto, 33-29, as the Angels recover from that drubbing with three games against Oakland, a great matchup in the suddenly fascinating three-way divisional race. They’ll come out at 34-29.
Three six game winning streaks starting tomorrow and the Mariners catch up to the Angels. 18-3. And then all they have to do is run with the Angels and Oakland for the rest of the year to get into the playoffs.
Bloomquist gets more clams than hits, is caught and fined
The limit’s fifteen, and he may not get that many hits all year at this rate.
From The Olympian:
A state Fish and Wildlife officer cited Mariners utilityman Willie Bloomquist on April 21 for unlawful recreational fishing for going over the state’s limits on razor clams while he was digging at Twin Harbors, according to a citation filed in Montesano Municipal Court.
Bloomquist, 30, has paid a $50 fine after being issued the citation, a Grays Harbor District Court official said.
The ticket issued to Bloomquist does not indicate how many clams over the limit he had harvested on April 21. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Craig Bartlett said Thursday that he could not reach the officer who issued the ticket to find out how far he was over the limit.
“The catch limits and other rules are in effect to protect our resources,†Bartlett said. “The rules apply to everyone, regardless of who they are.â€
And yet my favorite part of this
Mariners spokeswoman Rebecca Hale hadn’t heard of Bloomquist’s citation from Fish and Wildlife, and she had no immediate comment.
“Hi, Rebecca, I’m calling for a quick comment on a story I’m doing.”
“Yes, yes, the team’s off to a slow start, no, no one’s been fired, yes, we’re all concerned…”
“Sorry, no, I’m calling about something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Willie Bloomquist was cited and fined $50 for going over the razor clam limit.”
(long, long silence)
“I hadn’t heard that. I don’t have any comment.”
Off-day suggestion
If I may — it’s beautiful, sunny, and you can see a Seattle-area baseball team on a four-game winning streak if you head down to the Tacoma Rainiers game tonight. 7:00 against the hated Tucson Sidewinders.
And if you can’t make it, you can always listen to the outstanding play-by-play of Mike Curto. If you haven’t written annoying letters to the Mariner complaining about why they don’t at least toss him some of the normal team’s vacation games, you should.