Game 5, Mariners at Orioles
Batista v Loewen. 4:05 our time.
This is the first time we see the quite pointless Wilkermorse platoon in action:
CF-L Ichiro
2B-R Lopez
LF-L Ibanez
1B-R “Big Fork” Sexson
3B-R Beltre
RF-R Morse
DH-B Professional Hitter Jose Vidro
C-R Johjima
SS-R Betancourt
I’ll skip repeating my rant about the Wilkerson platoon. This should, if nothing else, be a potentially wince-inducing introduction to how bad outfield corner defense can get. Sorry, Miguel.
versus
2B-B Roberts
3B-R Mora
RF-L Markakis
1B-R Millar
DH-L Huff
LF-L Scott
C-R Hernandez
CF-R Jones
SS-R Fahey
Meanwhile, Loewen’s a heavy ground-baller, so as you’d expect doesn’t give up the home run often, good K rate, bad walk rate. Now generally, I’d say that’s as about as well-suited a pitcher as you could put up against the Mariners, except they have been drawing walks lately, so they might be to take advantage of that if they keep that up. Still, turning Ibanez into a pumpkin in the middle of that order will help them a lot.
What might be even more interesting is to see Sexson against a lefty. Over his career, he hasn’t had much of a platoon split at all (.264/.339/.518 vs .260/.365/.504) but if part of the problem is recognizing pitches and getting his glacial bat around in time to make contact, facing a left-hander might be substantially easier than righties. Last year, for instance, his OBP was fifty points higher against lefties, though his slugging percentage was only up ~twenty points.
McLaren’s Bullpen Not Old Enough
From the Times today:
“The mind-set’s so much different because we don’t have guys in those roles,” manager John McLaren said after the defeat, in front of 14,429 fans at Camden Yards, evened his club’s record at 2-2. “Usually, in that situation you think about [Sean] Green, but he has to go back [further in the bullpen]. If you go to him too early, you’re going to need him [later]. And if you need him, you don’t have him.”
“I think when your big boy goes out, it’s got more of an impact,” McLaren said of Putz. “I don’t know if one guy can replace him, to be honest with you.
McLaren later hinted that his team’s experiment with an 11-man pitching staff might soon be over. Not as quickly as tonight’s game, but soon.
“It’s something we’re going to have to talk about,” he said. “We have talked about it.”
If there’s one undeniable fact about John McLaren’s managerial tendencies, it’s that he absolutely craves experience in every single situation. More than talent, ability, matchups, logic, or reason, McLaren is most comfortable when he can go to a player who has performed some specific task in the past.
Right now, his bullpen is one of the least experienced in the majors, and it’s freaking him out. Four days into the season, and he’s already talking about how he doesn’t have the options that he wants, and it’s a given that the team will be back to having 12 pitchers on the staff within a few days. Last night, he obviously didn’t want to go to Cha Seung Baek down by one, but he felt like he had to, in order to save Sean Green for the later innings.
Well, can I just point something out here? The Mariners have played four games in five days since the season started. Ryan-Rowland Smith has thrown seven pitches to three batters. Mark Lowe has thrown nine pitches to three batters. In four games, with an off day to boot, Lowe and Rowland-Smith have combined to throw 16 pitches, and we’re talking about the team not having options in the bullpen?
Perhaps it’s not a lack of options, but it’s the fact that McLaren doesn’t like the options he has? Faced with four lefties coming up in the bottom of the 9th against Texas on Wednesday, with a three run lead, Ryan Rowland-Smith wasn’t even considered for the job. Why? No experience pitching in the 9th inning. Clearly, he couldn’t be trusted to get out a bunch of LH hitters who suck eggs against left-handed pitchers – he’s just not old enough. Or something.
There’s no question the injury to Putz weakens the bullpen. Rather than react to the situation by adapting to the talent on the roster and utilizing it in the best way possible to help the bullpen succeed, McLaren is instead choosing to whine that he’s stuck with a bunch of inexperienced kids that he doesn’t trust. Note that, in his mind, the lack of trust is the kids’ fault, not his own.
With Green, O’Flaherty, Lowe, and Rowland-Smith, you have four solid relievers on this staff. If you can’t figure out how to use them efficiently enough to get through a single game against Baltimore after an off day, why on earth should we believe that you’re qualified to run a major league ballclub?
I’ll even make it easy for you. Rowland-Smith and Lowe can both get RH and LH hitters out – use them when the other team has a balanced mix of hitters coming up. Green and O’Flaherty are better against same handed hitters, so try to use them when you have a run of RH or LH hitters coming up if you can. You can’t get through the season by assuming that your entire bullpen is incapable of succeeding, so give them a chance. I know you wish you had your precious Rick White or Chris Reitsma around to blow the game, but you don’t, so try winning with the youngsters instead.
Sexson’s at-bats, quickly summarized
Since I spent so much time picking apart his awful game….
1st inning:
Curve up, called strike
“Cutter” way outside, ball
Fastball way inside, ball
Slop up, swings and misses, slop, slop in and down, swings and misses.
Strikes out.
All off-speed down the middle. Huh.
4th, v. Trachsel
Bunch of slop, mostly over the plate, and then Sexson doubles off a 86mph “fastball” way up and in.
6th, v. Trachsel
All off-speed, all off the plate except for the 85mph change inner-half and up, which he fouled off. Good that he didn’t go after that outside slop, as we’ve seen so far this year. Walks.
9th inning, v. Aquino
Three fastballs, the first way in, the second and third both up out of the strike zone, 93mph. Sexson homers on the second. Don’t throw a series of low-90s fastballs up over the plate.
It’s a weird day for Sexson. Being baffled by Trachsel – especially Trachsel’s crap over the plate – it’s strange to see him mashing stuff that’s up and in.
This day, on the whole, fits really well with the Jennings at-bats: Trachsel fed him off-speed junk around the zone, and Sexson couldn’t deal with it. However, put it up and in, and he’s swinging like mad, tonight with good results.
I’m going to say the same thing I said earlier this week: if that’s an effective approach, it’s one that nearly every pitcher in the majors can exploit. If the battles really come down to whether opposing pitchers can hit the outer corners with breaking stuff – and Sexson can’t discern balls from strikes or make effective contact when he swings at them – that’s brutal.
Here’s hoping that’s not the case or, at least, that they keep giving him meaty stuff to hit, telegraphing it repeatedly so he knows it’s coming, or they leave it up in his sweet spot.
Game 4, Mariners at Orioles
Washburn vs Loewen, 4:05 pm.
Good chance that this game won’t happen due to weather, but just in case, here’s a game thread for you all. In reality, we might not want this game to happen, as McLaren is planning on running out his Ibanez/Ichiro/Morse outfield of doom against the left-handed Adam Loewen, and is apparently not even noticing that noted flyballer Jarrod Washburn is taking the hill for his club. Morse/Ibanez is easily the worst defensive corner outfield tandem in baseball, and could provide some avert-your-eyes cringeworthy moments. Rain might be preferable to watching that, honestly.
Future Forty 2.5
Okay, so, the Future Forty update is going to go here shortly, once I can figure out how to upload the file in the new WordPress. But, I wanted to be able to publish this post so that you guys could start getting your questions in the comment boxes, and I’ll get to them in a little bit.
So, with the minor league seasons kicking off last night, I’ve updated the Future Forty and once again changed the format around a little bit. It still looks like the last version with players being grouped by projected roles rather than being ranked numerically, but I’ve made a few changes that I think are for the better.
1. Gone are the 1-10 rankings for risk/reward. Honestly, I wasn’t really using the bottom half of that scale anyway, as everyone on the list was basically somewhere between a 5 and a 10 in almost every scenario. So, since I was using a 5 point scale, I simply reduced it to 1-5 to allow the numbers to represent something – in this case, projected wins above replacement for a player in his prime. So, instead of Jeff Clement now being a “7 rewardâ€, which has some nebulous definition, he’s now a “3 win reward†player, which tells you that I think he’ll approximately a +3 win player if he fulfills his potential.
The present column displays what I believe the player’s win value would be if they played in the majors in 2008, relative to replacement level. This should help give an idea of who is capable of contributing to the major league club in some form. The risk ratings are also now scaled 1 to 5, but still represent relative risk for each prospect. A risk factor of 5 is significantly less likely to live up to his projection than a risk factor of 1.
2. I’ve created a new group called “International Prospects – Guys Who Signed for $ And I Know Nothing Else Aboutâ€. Every summer, the M’s spend millions of dollars on teenagers from other countries, and the club’s best prospects often come out of that group a year or two later. I’ve never felt comfortable talking about these guys, simply because I don’t know anything more about them than you do, but it’s also always felt weird to omit them while including replacement level guys like Cesar Jimenez. So, I just gave them their own category, giving you names to follow as potential prospects to watch, without trying to offer any insight on their abilities without the necessary information.
3. And finally, I’ve tossed everyone (except Brandon Morrow, who I’m making an exception for) off the list that has more than one full season in the major leagues. Yes, Felix is still part of our future, but you don’t learn anything from seeing him at the top of this list, and he just takes up a spot that could go to someone you may not know about. Guys like Lowe, Rowland-Smith, and O’Flaherty will stay on for 2008, but they won’t be back next year.
And now, for the player comments.
With Tillman, Butler, and Mickolio now in Baltimore, the pitching side of the system is really, really weak. Juan Ramirez and Phillipe Aumont are both high ceiling, high velocity right handers, but both begin 2008 in Wisconsin and are at least 2-3 years from Seattle, and probably 3-4 years before they’re helping this team win anything. After those two, though, it’s a cornucopia of guys who might be a #5 starter if everything breaks right. The team is stocked up on lefties who throw 86-90 and don’t have a true outpitch, but when those guys are your best hope for arms from the farm in the next two years, it’s not a good thing.
On the other hand, though, the team has a pretty good stock of position players. Everyone knows about Clement, Balentien, and Triunfel, but there’s a crop of pretty interesting guys behind then as well. From Gregory Halman (personal favorite, Alfonso Soriano clone) to Michael Saunders (others like him more than I do, but he’s got some skills) and Danny Carroll, there’s some real outfield depth in the organization, which could come in handy in the next year or two. The infield doesn’t have quite as much talent after Triunfel, but there are a few guys who could turn into useful parts, and with Tui, Chen, and Mangini at the upper levels, it might not take more than a year or two to see some returns from that group.
Overall, the farm system is in decent shape, but certainly took a hit from the Bedard trade. If the international guys (DeJesus and Noriega especially) pan out, that will give the team even more depth in future position players, though the team probably won’t be able to get much pitching help from the minors for several years.
Opening Day in Tacoma
With the M’s having an off day (and potentially not having any games for a few days – weather in Baltimore is terrible right now), you can still get your baseball fix as the Tacoma Rainiers kick off their season down at Cheney Stadium tonight at 7:00 pm.
Ryan Feierabend takes the hill against Greg Smith and the Sacramento Rivercats to kick things off, with R.A. Dickey going tomorrow night if you want to make it down to watch the knuckler.
Clement, Balentien, Tuiasasopo, and Chen give the team four prospects in the starting line-up, and guys like Norton, Reed, and LaHair should help keep the team competitive. If you’re into cold weather, head on down to the stadium and check out the Rainiers this weekend. If you’re more of the feel-your-extremities kind of person, you can stay home and listen live as Mike Curto reminds you why he’s the best baseball broadcaster in the Northwest.
And, for those wondering, there will be a new Future Forty coming tomorrow to celebrate the return of the minor league season.
Silva’s Pitching
So, Carlos Silva last night – that was pretty impressive, no? 7 innings, 3 hits, 1 run, 3 walks, 5 strikeouts against a pretty good line-up made up of a lot of lefty hitters. Certainly, the M’s will take more of that kind of performance from all of their pitchers. But how did Silva do it? Let’s take a look at his approach last night through the eyes of the Pitch f/x data.
On the evening, Silva tossed 116 pitches in total. Here’s the breakdown of pitch types, percentage of each pitch, and average velocity.
Fastballs: 70 thrown, 60% of all pitches, 89.9 MPH starting velocity
Sliders: 26 thrown, 22% of all pitches, 82.8 MPH starting velocity
Changeups: 20 thrown, 17% of all pitches, 80.1 MPH starting velocity
If you compare that to Silva’s Player Card from last year or his pitch type data from Fangraphs, you’ll notice that he threw more sliders than usual last night. Last year, he threw about 8.7% sliders. Had he followed that percentage last night, he would have thrown 10 sliders the entire game. He threw 26.
The extra sliders came mostly in lieu of his fastball – he only threw about 60% fastballs last night, significantly down from his career norms. Silva has pretty impeccable command of his fastball, so it’s not overly surprising then that he would miss the plate more often on a night when he was throwing more sliders and less fastballs. But facing a LH heavy line-up, I’d actually have expected him to throw less sliders than usual, considering that it’s not a great pitch against LHB. So, did he attack lefties with the slider, or was it something else? Let’s take a look at the pitches based on batter handedness.
Vs LHB
Fastballs: 51 thrown, 66% of pitches thrown
Sliders: 6 thrown, 8% of pitches thrown
Changeups: 20 thrown, 26% of pitches thrown
Vs RHB
Fastballs: 18 thrown, 46% of pitches thrown
Sliders: 20 thrown, 51% of pitches thrown
Changeups: 1 thrown, 3% of pitches thrown
Against lefties, he actually pitched pretty much like he always does – 2/3 fastballs, then mostly change-ups and an occasional slider when going off-speed. The pitch selection last night against southpaws matches what he did last year almost to a tee.
Against right-handers, however, he threw actually more sliders than fastballs. When Kinsler, Young, and Laird stepped up to the plate, he was going after them with a ton of sliders, and it worked pretty well – those three were a combined 1 for 9 against him. Interestingly enough, he only threw one change-up in the 39 pitches he tossed at right-handers. Last year, one of every seven pitches he threw right-handed hitters were change-ups. One in 39 seems to be a pretty deliberate move away from that. We’ve seen Felix relegate his change to mostly LHB, so I’m curious if there’s an organizational tendency to not throw change-ups to same handed hitters. Something to keep an eye on going forward.
Anyway, in looking at this, last night starts to make a little bit more sense. The low GB% (37.5%) and higher BB% (4.3 BB/G) and K% (7.3 K/G) rates all fit with the idea that Silva intentionally threw more breaking balls and less fastballs than a normal Carlos Silva start. His fastball is the pitch that he has the most command over, and it’s also the pitch that gets him the most groundballs. By eschewing the fastball somewhat in lieu of more sliders, we’d expect him to throw more pitches out of the strike zone and give up a few more balls in the air. That’s exactly what happened.
So, while a quick look at the box score might lead us to think that Silva had below average command last night, I’d argue that’s not really the case – he made a conscious choice to try to induce less contact than usual by varying his normal pitch selection against right-handed batters, and the plan certainly worked, as we saw from the results.
Also, interestingly, no sign of the famous split-finger fastball that he talked about working in during the second half of 2007. Larry Stone asked him after the game and he admitted he didn’t throw any last night. So, don’t go ascribing his performance to a new fourth pitch. He was still a three pitch guy, but he just used those three pitches a little differently than usual.
Off-day cornucopia of goodness
If, like me, you’ve got nothing better to do than sit around, cough, and maybe go see a doctor today, it might be worth noting that both Comcast and DirecTV are running a free week of MLB Extra Innings, which means…
9:05, White Sox @ Indians. Danks v Westbrook. Warning: White Sox broadcast crew.
10:05, Nationals @ Phillies. Bergmann v the Ageless Jamie Moyer
10:05, Royals @ Tigers. Greinke v Bonderman. See what may be one of the finest offenses assembled in years! And the Royals.
10:10, Angels @ Twins. The Other Santana v Slowey. Boo the Angels! Boo them!
4:05, Rays @ Orioles. Sonnanstine v Trachsel. The dark horse AL East team and Adam Jones. Plus, if you loved seeing Vicente’s slowness, you’ll swoon over Steve Trachsel’s glacial pitching pace.
4:10, Pirates @ Braves. Duke, the pitcher Derek followed too closely, against MIKE FREAKING HAMPTON!!!! If you thought the M’s spent money foolishly, may I present Exhibit A in the counterargument?
It’s almost worth being sick for.
Sexson Sexson Sexson
Building off Dave’s Sexson post yesterday, I just wanted to throw today’s pitches up for contrast, using stills of MLB’s fine Gameday tracking to demonstrate something.
“Mystical Fork of Supreme Flatness” by qnr, creative commons licensed
I mean, uhhhh…. let’s take a look at Sexson’s at-bats today, and see if there’s anything they can tell us.
First, a disclaimer: I don’t have any idea how pitchfx is classifying these. Pitches with identical breaks and speeds are sometimes down as different types. I don’t know.
First Inning
This is the weird one of the day. Ibanez is on second.
1: Watches an 87mph pitch a little up and in
2: Takes way inside
3: Takes right down the middle, takes. With a runner on second, Sexson lets an 88mph flat fastball down the middle of the plate go. It’s called a ball.
4: Swings and misses at something off the plate
5: Takes way inside
6: Fouls off an 80 mph slider on the up-out corner.
7: Takes a faster version of that same pitch for the walk.
Here’s the odd stuff: that 3rd pitch. You’d think he’d crush that.
Then, 6-7: he’s fouling off an 80mph pitch without a ton of break on it? Okay, so maybe he just didn’t have the timing right — but then served the same pitch again, but faster, he didn’t even offer.
I don’t get it. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. He’s a free-swinging power-hitting masher, both of those should have been delicious. If he’s swinging at 80mph breaking stuff in that spot but passing on 88mph breaking stuff in the same location, I’m worried.
Fourth Inning
Swings at the first pitch, a pretty nice thigh-high 85mph slider. He grounds to third.
You would think your #4 hitter would crush that pitch.
Fifth Inning
Sexson’s up against Jennings, who is being cuffed around and just walked Ibanez. Sexson swings at and misses an 80mph slider that looks pretty meaty, lets two pretty obvious balls go by, and then given a second 80mph slider in almost exactly the same place, pops out to short.
Even when given slow breaking pitches without much break, Sexson’s grounding to the left side of the infield. Ugh. If Sexson can’t hit those, I don’t know what we can expect him to hit. Jennings repeatedly gave him chances to hit weak breaking stuff and Sexson did nothing with them.
Now it’s not as if the other right-handers handled that pitch much better. Beltre, given the same pitch in the 4th, grounded out to third. Lopez repeatedly swung at similar pitches even farther up in the zone. But Jennings threw a lot of weird stuff at Sexson — only two fastballs in three plate appearances — and it worked.
Eight Inning
Jamey Wright puts up a pretty weak fastball, which Sexson watches for a strike. Sexson then swings at a second fastball in, up, and off the plate, managing to pull it to third base.
Ugh. If these are serious gaps in Sexson’s game, every team with an advanced scout is going to hang golden sombreros on him by feeding him breaking pitches on the outside corners and letting him get himself out swinging or weakly grounding out. They don’t even need to challenge his bat speed right now.
Update: Look at Sexon’s pitch f/x data for last year if you want to be even more worried. Josh Kalk built a sweet tool for this.
What Just Happened?
Let’s review what we just saw.
1. Carlos Silva, a guy with great command who never walks or strikes anyone out and whose main weakness is left-handed batters, facing a line-up predominantly made up of left-handed batters, playing in a park that favors left-handed hitters, gives up just three hits in seven innings while struggling to throw strikes but getting out of any trouble with clutch strikeouts.
2. The guy with the least power in the line-up, Turbo, destroying a fastball and hitting it a country mile for the team’s first home run of the year.
3. Brad Wilkerson, one of the slowest guys on a team of slow guys, stealing second base off the guy who led the American League in CS% last year.
4. Miguel Batista, the team’s 5th starter and another guy who struggles against left-handed hitters, retires three consecutive lefties in a row to record a save and end the game.
What a weird, weird ballgame. Huzzah for the win, though.