Weekend in Seattle roundup
I have to be up in 5 1/2 hours to catch a flight back to the east coast, so this won’t be a comprehensive wrapup of everything that I saw the five days I was in town, but here’s a quick recap.
Thursday’s USSM/LL event in Tacoma was a lot of fun, and of course, a big thanks goes out to Bill Bavasi for spending over an hour of his time on a day off hanging out with us and answering almost every question we threw at him. Part of the reason he’s willing to keep doing this with us (this is the third time we’ve had Bavasi for a get together) is because the chats are off the record, so some of the stuff will just stay with the 45 people who were around for the Q&A, but he did give us some interesting answers about different things that I’m okay sharing – namely, that we’ve been totally wrong about Wladimir Balentien’s option status.
I’ve been telling anyone that will listen that he’s out of options after this year and would have to stick on the 25 man roster next spring, but that’s not true – he qualifies for the fourth year option exception, and if the Mariners don’t trade him this winter, they can send him back to Tacoma next spring. And yes, Bill confirmed that there is no chance whatsoever that they begin 2008 with two rookies in the outfield (as we’ve believed all along), so you can stop wishing for a Jones-Ichiro-Balentien outfield next year. It won’t happen.
There was also the great humor of watching the people arrive about 15 minutes before first pitch only to find Bavasi standing in their row blocking their seats. Having no idea who he was, they actually asked him to move, then proceeded to completely ignore what was going on around them. Hilarious.
The game in Cheney was fun, though I spent most of my time answering questions rather than intently watching Robert Rohrbaugh shut down the Memphis Redbirds. A couple of guys definitely got their $25 worth. As Devin noted, I should have charged by the hour. But I was happy to do it, and hope those guys enjoyed it as well.
The Friday night event up in Everett was just as enjoyable, though for totally different reasons. The pregame Q&A guest was Bob Fontaine, the Mariners scouting director, and we got a solid half hour of his time before the season ticket holders booted us from their seats. Bob was great, and if you were there, you could tell he really enjoyed it as well. We’re definitely going to have him back for another (longer) Q&A at some point in the future, because as Derek noted right after it ended, we could have picked his brain all night.
The Aquasox then treated us to a night of interesting events, from the monstrous home runs from Gregory (don’t call him Greg) Halman and Kalian Sams to the physical assault of Jeff Sullivan by a yellow inflatable bird. I won’t spoil you with the details, as I’m sure Jeff will provide his own account, but let’s just say that we got pretty close to having to break up a fight between a 6’5 20-something and a mascot wearing glasses full of compressed air.
Saturday night saw Derek, Jeff, Devin, and I hitting up the Mariners game at Safeco. Best story of the night, among many – during Beltre’s first at-bat, a six or seven year old kid starts an “O-ver-ra-ted” chant, which didn’t particularly endear himself to any of us, all dyed-in-the-wool Beltre fans. About twenty seconds later, Beltre deposited a Dice-K fastball into the center field seats. Needless to say, we didn’t let the aforementioned child off the hook without retribution, and it’s unlikely he’ll be casting aspersions at our third baseman any time soon.
I also got the pleasure of meeting a good number of the commenters from both here and Lookout Landing and enjoyed the company of many good people. All in all, it was a successful good trip to the Northwest, and if you missed out on either of the USSM/LL events, you should make a point to come to the next one. We do our best to make sure you guys get your monies worth, and I don’t know of too many other teams that get to regularly sit down with their GM and Scouting Director and ask them anything they’d like.
Ugh – less than 5 hours before I have to get up for a day of cross country flying. I’m glad the last five days were worth it.
On Boston and New York games
I hate going to the stadium and finding it packed with visiting fans. I hate sitting around people who don’t know anything about the M’s. As a general rule, I’ve found Red Sox and Yankee fans by far the drunkest, rudest, crowds. Every time I’ve been at an M’s game and seen some minor incident – brushing up against someone trying to pass through one of the concourse choke points, for instance – turn into rudeness/a fight challenge, it’s been when the M’s play one of those two teams, and the affronted, loud party’s decked out in the other team’s gears (and it’s a handful of times, so yes, maybe it’s entirely random)(it isn’t). I hate that there are people who’ve grown up in Seattle and are Red Sox fans, and if I had to explain that one, I’m not sure where’d I start.
But…
I love that it’s tense. I love that there are M’s fans who heckle the Red Sox fans, and they give it back. I love that the M’s fans feel compelled to counter-cheer, and applaud good plays even harder. I love that when they come to town, we get good games worth watching. I love that attending those games feels like it matters.
Playoff musings
I was looking at the standings after today’s game, and there’s something interesting afoot. The division races are pretty much locked: either Cleveland or Detroit will win the AL Central unless something dramatic happens: they’re both way better teams than Minnesota. The M’s could still catch the Angels, but skip that for a second.
In the wild card, the straight listings run:
Detroit 61-49, .555
Seattle 60-49, .550 -0.5
New York, 61-50, .550, -0.5
Minnesota 57-53, .518, -4
Detroit should really be “AL Central runner-up, .560 or so”. Whoever wants to win the wild card will likely have to put up a record that would win the AL Central.
Anyway, here’s the same race, but with expected win-losses based on runs scored and allowed (from mlb.com):
New York, 68-43
Detroit 61-49
Minnesota 57-53
Seattle 54-55
Obviously teams don’t get credit in the standings for how many games they should have won or lost: the only thing that matters from here on out is how well they play for the remaining games. But it’s hard to look at the Yankees, who started horribly and have played extremely well for months now, and wonder if there’s another team besides Detroit in that bunch that can keep up. The Yankees offense is putting up almost six runs a game (seriously — 660 runs, 111 games, 5.95 runs a game)(M’s are at 4.83). For all the abuse the pitching’s taken, it’s in the middle of the AL pack, and when you score six runs a game… yeah.
There’s the problem. With 50 games left to play, if the Yankees keep this up, they’ll win another thirty games. The Tigers/Indians can put that together, too, so the wild card question becomes “can the M’s keep up that pace?”
That’s tough. Which is why it may actually be easier for them to take the division. Really. Here’s their schedule against their potential competition for playoff spots:
August 27th: 3 game series against the Angels
August 30th: 1 game makeup in Cleveland
September 3rd: 3 games in New York
September 7th: 3 games in Detroit
September 20th: 4 games in LA
September 25th: 4 games against Cleveland
The Angels might be as good as Detroit/Cleveland, but there’s only one of them. The M’s get seven games against the Angels, and if they go in with a 3.5 game gap in the standings… that’s where the opportunity is.
This is why you can look at the postseason odds right now and see the M’s playoff chances through the division title are about four times better than the wild card. Many things have to break right for the M’s to see their wild card competition fall away, but the Angels… well, it pains me to say this after this week’s games, but I hope Boston hands them an even more embarrassing beating than we had to endure.
Game 109, Red Sox at Mariners
Batista vs Beckett, 1:05 pm.
Line-up today:
1. Ichiro, DH
2. Vidro, 2B
3. Guillen, RF
4. Broussard, 1B
5. Beltre, 3B
6. Ibanez, LF
7. Jones, CF
8. Burke, C
9. Betancourt, SS
There are a lot of things I could point out that don’t make any sense about that line-up, but I’m going to focus on the one that could kill the M’s today – Jose Vidro playing second base.
Jose Lopez has been a terrible hitter since April. He’s stopped hitting for power, still has a lousy approach at the plate, and hasn’t improved a lick since he came up from Tacoma 72 years ago. He’s frustrating to watch and a problem at the plate.
But here’s the deal – Jose Vidro was traded from the NL to the AL for a reason. He can’t play the field anymore. Never a great defender, he’s now the middle infield version of Adam Dunn. His knees are shot, his range is totally gone, and he’s a significant minus defensively. Even if you’re the worlds biggest Vidro fanboy, you have to be able to watch him fail to move on easy groundballs and realize “hey, that guy shouldn’t be paid to use a glove.”
Miguel Batista is on the mound. He’s a contact pitcher with groundball tendencies. He’s facing an offense that can put up runs in bunches. He’s opposed by a guy who will finish in the top ten in Cy Young voting. And to support him, we’ve given him the worst defensive left field alive (non-Manny division) and the worst defensive second baseman alive to hang out next to the below average right fielder and first baseman. This should go well.
The Mariners do not understand the value of defense or how to appropriately measure it. Sticking Jose Vidro at second base is yet another shining example of this organization’s inability to realize that catching the ball is a big part of run prevention.
On a day when you expect a lot of balls to be put in play, you make a bad defense even worse. This is the team we root for.
The value of outfield defense
After tonight’s game, I can’t help but feel that anyone who doesn’t think outfield defense isn’t important hasn’t been watching the M’s lately.
Also, given the Red Sox lineup, their performance against Washburn, why in the world do you bring in the relief version of Washburn to relieve Washburn?
Jones and role-playing
Hi all.
There’s been a lot made of what the team intends to do with Adam Jones, who is awesome, and whether they’re going to play him all the time, some of the time, never, or what. McLaren’s made some comments, and whatever.
Here’s the thing: what McLaren, or Bavasi, or anyone, says about the team’s plan should be discarded immediately. The only thing we should pay attention to in the next few weeks is when Jones actually plays, and how he does.
We know a couple of contradictory things: McLaren’s been spouting about how little he intends to use Jones. But despite McLaren’s comments, they didn’t call Jones up to play him once a week, or use him as a defensive replacement to carry the destroyed legs of Ibanez/Guillen. McLaren’s clearly also trying to manage the veterans, who haven’t been hitting or fielding, as best he can, which would prevent him from exposing plans to fit a full-time player in the roster. And yet the team’s trying to get into the playoffs for the first time after years of entirely unsatisfying play, and if Jones is playing well and clearly helping them at that, they’ll play him even if the plan really was to have him play twice a week, which it isn’t.
We’ll see. Jones did well last night, so they’ll probably throw him another start as soon as they can figure out a pretext to do so (rest someone on Sunday, say) and then if he’s still on fire, they’ll throw him playing time in Baltimore. His path is obviously made clearer if he’s tearing it up, and then McLaren will go in front of reporters and say “What can I do, the kid’s made a spot for himself, everyone likes winning,” and shrug.
You don’t have to have faith or lack faith in the front office at this point. Complaining about playing time they haven’t had a chance to not allocate to him yet isn’t useful. Let’s wait and see how this plays out, and we can dissect the statements later.
Dave on KJR
Here’s your weekly reminder that I’ll be on KJR today at 2:20 pm with Groz. You can listen live here. Hopefully, I still have something of a voice left after last night after about eight solid hours of talking at the first USSM/LL event.
Slate on Ichiro
It’s Adam Jones Day!
Hopefully.
I saw one of Adam Jones’ three games in Everett back in 2003 (which is a fine reason to go check out Aquasox games). I’d heard that his eventual position was on the mound, so I was more interested in seeing his arm than anything (also on that 2003 team, Felix Hernandez). And he had a cannon for an arm that fired rockets with lasers on them.
I left interested, wondering how things would turn out, and followed his progress as his hitting skills seemed to improve at every level. Last year I got to see him again, as he made the transition to the outfield, saw how quickly he was coming around to being a good defender, especially considering he’d only just converted, and it made me happy.
We saw him struggle in his call-up, when he didn’t hit and Hargrove decided he didn’t like the rough defense he saw, so he was going to get squeezed for playing time. Jones’ 2006 line was a poor .216/.237/.311, and I think that did a lot to dim his star in the eyes of general M’s fandom. I heard that his hot start in Tacoma might have been a fluke, and whatever else.
But here’s the thing: Jones was 21 last year. He hit .287/.345/.484 in Tacoma. This year, he went on to show that it wasn’t a fluke, either:
2006: .287/.345/.484
2007: .314/.382/.586
The only thing that didn’t take a big step up was his plate discipline: Jones attacks the ball. He doesn’t walk that often (though his rate’s not horrible) and he strikes out a lot. But when he makes contact, the ball goes places in a hurry. 44% of his hits so far this year have been extra-base hits. 44%!
Look at his ISO (isolated power, SLG-AVG) which will serve us decently here: it’s .272. If he put up a .272 ISO in the majors, he would be one of the ten best, behind Miguel Cabrera (.279), Barry Bonds (.277) and Justin Morneau (.276).
And, unlike somebody like, say, Prince Fielder, or Adam Dunn, other guys who hit for that kind of power, he’s a good outfield glove.
Yeah, so… Have I mentioned I’m a huge fan? I love watching the way Jones plays.
We’ll see if he can translate his steady impressive hitting progress into success at the major league level this time and seize a starting job. And we don’t know how they’re going to get him into the lineup, though all signs are the organization’s committed to seeing him play regularly, which is good.
But Jones is another one of the players I’ve followed for years. I’ve enjoyed seeing him move up the farm system, finding greater and greater success, and I hope everyone else will get to see the Jones I, and the other fans who’ve seen him cut a swath through the minor leagues, have been lucky enough to see.
Adam Jones up on Friday, vets grumbling
Here’s Geoff Baker’s blog entry on this. Includes several quotes of Guillen being pissed off about it. Check it out, seriously.
MLB.com (“Fox News for baseball”) has the story, which follows their 7/31 story by Patrick Brown which included the line “As the old adage says: If it ain’t broke, don’t’ fix it.”
The new story gives us
“I would prefer not to talk about Adam’s role at this time,” McLaren said. “We’ll talk about that on Friday.”
Jason Ellison will be moved to make room.
As others said in comments, it’s unreasonable to expect people who are so driven they become elite athletes to think someone else can do their job better than they can, to recognize when they’re hurting their team, and so on. Almost no baseball player ever retires early.
Baker raises a particularly interesting issue for why they may not have made the move earlier: McLaren as a new manager needed time to earn the players’ trust (which you’d hope he’d have done as bench coach but never mind that) before doing something like this.
In any event — the M’s offense has some huge holes in it. Adam Jones is a huge bat. We’ll see how well he does, of course, but minor league performances are outstanding predictors of major league performance, Guillen’s opinions aside. The outfield defense has a huge hole in it. Adam Jones plays good outfield defense.
Moreover — no other team, contender or not, has a player like Jones in the minors. Any comparable prospect this year on any team has been called up. The Tigers managed to find room for Miller, and on and on. For all the talk about how you don’t want to be in a pennant race with a rookie, what you really don’t want is to be in a pennant race with a team that’s not as good as it could be, and that’s what the M’s have been fielding for a while, out of fear for team chemistry, the team’s trust in McLaren, or whatever.