Now What?
In the post below, Derek shows how the team’s playoff odds dropped 20% during the five game debacle of a losing streak, making the M’s now a 1 in 20 shot to win either the division or the wild card. They’re now 7 games behind a good Angels team for first place in the A.L. West. They’re only 3 games out of the wild card, but the other teams in contention for that single playoff spot are the loser of the Detroit/Cleveland battle, the Yankees, and the A’s. You’re not going to find anyone with any kind of rational thinking that believes the M’s are better than all those teams.
In reality, the pecking order of the American League has essentially been established. The Red Sox are the best team in baseball, and the Yankees, Indians, Tigers, and Angels are all a step or so behind them in the second tier in the A.L. The third tier features the A’s at the top, followed by the Mariners, Twins, and Blue Jays.
No matter how you want to look at it, the best this team could realistically argue for is being the 6th or 7th best team in the American League, depending on how you feel about Oakland’s ability to win with the back of a rotation of Chad Gaudin, Lenny DiNardo, and Joe Kennedy and a team that still can’t hit.
As noted, mathmatically, it’s not very likely that the 6th or 7th best team in the league can overcome the a significant deficit to pass a better team in front of them in the standings. The M’s playoff chances are, officially, a longshot. A 10% chance of making the playoffs isn’t a death knell, but it’s not exactly reason for optimism either. The M’s are, again, at a crossroads. The last time they faced a win-or-fold-your-tents series of games, they went on a tear and closed the gap in the division.
The M’s are now back where they started, however. Tomorrow, they begin a homestand that brings a bad Pirates team and a bad Reds team in for back-to-back series before Boston rolls into town. Essentially, the Mariners have 3 weeks to salvage their season. In the final 19 games before the all-star break, they have a lot of winning to do in order to make up enough ground to really consider themselves contenders in the second half.
If the Mariners are serious about getting back in this thing, there are some things they can do to put a better team on the field for the next three weeks and give themselves a better chance. We’ve talked about most of these, but consider this an official request.
1. Promote Adam Jones from Tacoma and stick him in the line-up everyday.
He’s a better player today than half the guys in the line-up, a kid who can hit for average and power while playing terrific defense on a team that badly needs another quality defensive outfielder. Raul Ibanez simply can’t cover enough ground to be a credible option in Safeco Field anymore, and the Mariners would gain a huge competitive advantage by sticking Jones in left field and splitting RF/DH duties between Raul Ibanez, Jose Guillen, Jose Vidro, and Ben Broussard. Mike Hargrove is systematically opposed to platoons, but in the interest of winning ballgames, he should simply get over his preconceived biases and do what’s best for the team. By installing Jones as the everyday left fielder and using the worn down veterans to give each other frequent offdays, the team would instantly improve it’s offense, defense, and bench. It’s a no-brainer of a move, the kind of talent addition that most teams only dream about getting from a mid-season acquisition. And the M’s don’t even have to make a trade to pull this one off. Show some cajones and make the move. Give us Adam Jones in the majors tomorrow night.
2. Stick Ryan Feierabend in the rotation.
In an ideal world, Feierabend could still be in Tacoma, but as sad as it is to say, right now, he’s one of the five best starting pitchers in the organization. To create a spot for him, shift Jeff Weaver to the bullpen to pitch mop-up work. At this point, things like contract and veteranness just can’t matter in the decision making process – today, Feierabend is a better pitcher than Jeff Weaver, and the M’s can’t afford to have a better pitcher sitting in the bullpen while the M’s lose another game where Weaver takes the mound.
3. Re-organize the bullpen.
Brandon Morrow’s command problems have finally caught up with him, and his velocity was down at the end of the road trip as well. He walked a high wire act through the first two months of the season, but let’s be honest, a guy who walks more than a batter per inning simply can’t be counted on in high leverage situations. With Sherrill and Putz, the M’s have a lights out pair of relievers who can handle the 8th and 9th innings. Hand the 7th inning over to Eric O’Flaherty and Sean Green, and let Morrow hang out in the low leverage situations with Jason Davis and Jeff Weaver. If his velocity doesn’t come back soon, stick him on the DL and give his arm a rest.
Three simple moves that allow the team to re-align their assets as an organization and put the team in the best possible situation to win ballgames. If it still isn’t enough to make up ground in these last 19 games before the all-star break, then you have your answer on whether you’re a contender or not, and you can commence trading off of the veterans.
In the next three weeks, the M’s have one final chance to show us they’re serious about winning, and they’re willing to step on some players toes in order to do so. Here’s to the organization sacking up and making some calls that might not be popular with some highly paid veterans, but put a better team on the field while they try to salvage the rest of the 2007 season.
Size of the swing
There are any number of caveats that should be inserted here, and like with WPA, I trust you to find and apply them on your own.
Mariners Playoff odds, overall, as predicted by Clay’s Monte Carlo method at Basball Prospectus:
June 13th, 29%
June 14th, 25%
June 15th, 20%
June 16th: 15%
June 17th: 12%
June 18th: 10%
The Mariners had been over 28% twice since April 20th. June 18th’s 10.538% is their lowest on the season.
The Schedule
After Friday night’s frustrating debacle, I decided to take the last two games off. The Mariners, apparently, thought that sounded like a fantastic idea, and followed suit. The road trip that started 5-0 with wins over good teams ends at 5-5 after getting swept by one of the worst teams in baseball. And swept in convincing fashion, a beatdown where the Mariners didn’t put up a fight and were outscored 24 to 7.
By all accounts, the team is exhausted. They have their first day off on Monday since June 7th, and that was their first day off since May 14th. They also didn’t have a game on April 24th, due to a rainout, and they had a normal day off on April 16th, as well as a postponed game in Boston on April 12th. Since the snowout series, the Mariners have played 63 games in 69 days. Tomorrow is the fourth day in two and a half months that they haven’t had to go to the ballpark to prepare for a game. That’s tough.
But, unfortunately, that’s also baseball. Lost in all the talk about the Mariners scheduling around the makeup games is that those games involve another team – the Cleveland Indians. Every time the Mariners jump on a plane to Cleveland, the Tribe also have to come to the park on what was supposed to be an off day for their club. So, for comparison, let’s look at the Indians schedule.
The Indians just played their 13th game in a row and are headed to Philadelphia for games 14, 15, and 16 before an upcoming off day on Thursday. Their last day off was June 4th, and before that, it was May 14th. That was the only day in May that the Indians didn’t play baseball. They also had a day off on April 16th. Since the snowout series, the Indians have played 65 games in 69 days, and by the time they get another day off, it will have been 68 games in 72 days.
The Indians are 40-28, first place in the A.L. Central, having outscored their opponents by 46 runs on the year. They’ve played two more games since the end of the snowout series than the Mariners have in the same amount of days. I’m sure they’re a tired bunch, but unfortunately, I can’t find any quotes in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer to prove it. Maybe they were too tired to give interviews?
Or, alternately, perhaps they’ve overcome their exhaustion and continued to win baseball games because they’re a good team. A playoff team. A team with a well constructed roster able to provide organizational depth when the preseason rotation falls to pieces.
The schedule has been tough on the Mariners. It’s been tough on the Indians, too. One of these teams has shown the ability to overcome the challenge and keep winning enough games to keep themselves firmly entrenched in a pennant race. The other is taking tomorrow off, regrouping, and hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates at Safeco Field on Tuesday night.
Two teams with tough schedules born out of bad weather. One is still in first place, while the other saw their playoff hopes put on life support this weekend. Perhaps it’s not the schedule? Perhaps it’s the roster.
Random Notes
Haven’t done of these in a while. So, on to the blurbs.
Daily Adam Jones Update: 3 for 5, double, steal. He still belongs in the Mariners line-up.
The M’s recalled Ryan Feierabend from Tacoma after the game last night, shipping Jake Woods back to Triple-A. Feierabend was already with the team in Chicago, as they flew him out Wednesday in case Miguel Batista wasn’t able to go deep in the game. Feierabend is expected to work out of the bullpen until the team finally throws Jeff Weaver overboard.
And, seriously, Jeff Weaver’s still not good. Results based analysis will tell you he calmed down and settled into a groove. It’s not true, though – we’ve talked about Weaver’s batting average on balls in play eventually regressing to the mean, and that’s what happened in innings 2 through 6. When you pitch to contact, sometimes guys will drive the ball and sometimes they won’t. It has a lot more to do with the hitter than the pitcher.
In case we weren’t sure, J.J. Putz has cemented himself as the best reliever in baseball. And, to boot, George Sherrill now has a great argument as the best LH reliever in baseball. Those two are lights out at the end of ballgames. Brandon Morrow, not so much.
The M’s should have already been looking forward to facing a bad Astros team this weekend. Well, that bad Astros team just got even worse – defensive wizard Adam Everett collided with Carlos Lee and predictably got the worst of it, breaking his leg, and is now on the DL for the next two months. Taking the best defensive player in the game off a team that was already going nowhere makes this an even easier series for the M’s. They really should take 2 of 3, and a sweep wouldn’t even be much of a challenge. Houston’s a bad baseball team.
I mentioned that Dan Fox was doing some really cool work with the advanced gameday data from MLB.com, and that he was going to have some great stuff about Felix shortly. The article I was referring to was published at BP yesterday. If you’re a subscriber, it’s required reading. If you’re not, here’s the basic summary – everything we’ve said in the Charting Felix series is demonstrably true, and Felix’s velocity and movement is significantly down from his opening day start against the A’s. The pitches just aren’t breaking like they did in his first start, and he’s not throwing as hard. It’s something to be concerned about, honestly.
Ibanez at DH
In thinking about “how you wedge Jones into the lineup” (see thread below) one of the commonly-mentioned ways is to DH Ibanez and then make Vidro disappear. That wasn’t my solution, but one of the things that’s raised in objection is, as Paul said at Mariner Morsels:
Raul Ibanez also is more comfortable when he’s playing the field, and the potential discomfort he may have could affect his hitting.
Paul doesn’t see these as major risks, but it’s worth addressing.
First, Raul says he prefers to play the field. I don’t think that means much. Bad pitchers want to be starters, or closers. Bloomquist wants to play every day. It’s entirely understandable, but we’ve seen Ibanez DH for the M’s before, and he did just fine.
Second, there’s no evidence that players hit significantly worse or better at DH. We heard similar things about Vidro, but it’s just not there. You can go hunt through those threads if you’re particularly curious, but the short version is that offensive performance isn’t affected by a DH move. What slight decline you do see in some cases is the guy being shifted to DH because of injuries and age.
A player’s preference shouldn’t affect a team’s thinking in a situation like this. If Jones every day in left upgrades the team significantly for the rest of the way, that makes them a better team and more likely to win the division/get into the playoffs/be more competitive when they get there.
Adam Jones Is Still Ready For The Majors
Coming into today’s game, Adam Jones was hitting .317/.392/.581, in large part due to his surge since the calendar changed to May and he got over the wrist problem that sapped his power in April. Tonight, he continued his torrid June pace, going 4 for 5 with another home run.
Since May 1st, Jones is 56 for 163 with 14 home runs. That’s a .344/.420/.700 line.
.344/.420/.700. 27 of his 56 hits have gone for extra bases. Did I mention that he’s turned himself into a pretty good defensive outfielder? And he can run? Or that he has the best outfield arm in the organization?
He’s better than Raul Ibanez, Jose Guillen, Jose Vidro, Richie Sexson, and Ben Broussard. Better than all of them. If the Mariners are serious about making the playoffs, Adam Jones should be on the 25 man roster. Getting him into the line-up isn’t going to be easy for Mike Hargrove, but he’s not paid to do an easy job, and the Mariners can’t let the 4th or 5th best hitter in the organization sit in Tacoma for much longer.
It’s time for Adam Jones to be a Seattle Mariner.
Thank you for not managing
We’ve carped about Hargrove’s instruction of Lopez for — well, it seems like years. I still don’t understand why he ever got it into his head that Lopez would be better off grounding out weakly to the right side every time he came up to bat, but I don’t know anyone who followed the whole saga without seeing their blood pressure tick upwards with each out.
We ranted about this repeatedly here — a random sample from this pre-season Q&A:
Q2: How do you see the next couple years for Jose Lopez panning out?
There are two things that happen. Either he keeps grounding out to the right side to Hargrove’s applause and he sucks, or either he rebels or they let Lopez be Lopez and he hits really well. If you get the latter, he’ll be a pretty good player.
Jose Lopez, hitting for some power, is a really good piece of the team. He gets his power when he really turns on a pitch, which is not that frequent – but it’s never when he’s concentrating on grounding out to the right side.
I don’t know if Hargrove’s been distracted, or if at ground-out 100 he patted Lopez on the shoulder, told him he’d proven himself and moved on to other tasks. I don’t really care. Because it’s meant that Lopez, once again yanking balls over the fence and off the walls in left, is a good second baseman. Offensively, he’s in with the second tier of AL second basemen (Hill/Castillo/Pedroia). He’s not Upton, but then he’s not carrying Upton’s glove. Which is good.
At home, all three of his home runs are dead pull, two of his four doubles are in almost the same location (the other two are down the left and down right field lines). And it’s the same story on the road: almost all his extra-base hits are pull. His singles are better-spread out, and that’s always been the case. It’s interesting that the way he’s doing it aren’t much different – his ground ball/fly ball rate’s about the same, he’s not hitting any more line drives than we’ve seen the last few years. But he’s getting more for his contact dollar at the same time the strikeouts are down and he’s walking more.
Even if he’s been a little lucky on the home runs, this is a far, far more effective version of Lopez, one that plays to his natural ability: Lopez has never been a guy who walks 10% of the time, but he’s always had good power potential pulling the ball (, and a second baseman who can field his position well and hit 30 doubles and 15-20 home runs is quite valuable. Certainly more than a weak-hitting ground-out machine who happens to be “going the other way”.
Having Lopez contribute to the team, rather than just make outs, has been a big part of the team’s improved offense. I’ve been hoping that I’d see some quote explaining what’s going on Hargrove or Lopez to look at and test, but I haven’t seen it. So whatever it is – whether it’s negligence or preoccupation or if the team made a conscious decision to let Lopez be Lopez – I’m glad to see it.
Crazy
We deal in probabilities a lot here on the blog. Sometimes, a game could care less about probability. Jarrod Washburn walks 5 guys in 6 innings and only gives up 2 runs, he he gets an RBI single. Ryan Theriot and Felix Pie destroy pitches for 300 foot flyouts. Carloz Zambrano pinch-hits. Jose Vidro almost goes yard, then Turbo actually scores from second on a single by Willie Bloomquist while not running hard all the way or sliding into home plate. Alfonso Soriano draws a four pitch walk.
This game was a middle-finger to probability. It was crazy, it made no sense, and it was awesome.
To borrow from Lookout Landing, Putz wooooooooooo.
One Run Games
The Mariners just finished up winning their fourth game in a row, all over quality opponents, on the road. They’ve made up some ground in both the division and wild card races, and have pushed themselves to eight games over .500. They’ve done it with the awesomeness of J.J. Putz, a resurgence from Raul Ibanez, and a bunch of clutch hits.
If you hadn’t noticed, all four wins have come by one run: 6-5, 6-5, 4-3, and 8-7. The Mariners are now 10-7 in one run games after going 20-24 in such contests last year. That kind of swing will make a big difference on the team’s final record.
Because one run games are often decided by a good bounce here or a bad call there, one run W/L records are often disconnected from the actual ability of a team. The Washington Nationals are probably the worst team in baseball this year, getting outscored by over a run per game, but they’re 12-9 in one run games. The Indians, Angels, and Red Sox look like the three best teams in the AL to date, and as a group, they’re a combined 27-21 in one run games. Last year, the Yankees won 97 games, but were just 24-22 in one run affairs.
Basically, winning one run games is awesome, and doing so over teams like San Diego and Cleveland is even better. Any win against those teams is a good thing, and there’s no end-of-season adjustment for run differential when they’re handing out playoff spots. So, yea, there are all kinds of reasons to have enjoyed this four game stretch, with some weaker opponents coming up, this has the potential to turn into a nice long winning streak.
But, if you see somebody writing about how these last four games have proven the character, heart, and guts of this team, just ignore them. Just like last year’s team wasn’t a bunch of selfish jerks for struggling in one run games, this team isn’t a bunch of heroic lionhearts for winning them. I’m all for winning as many one run games as possible, but I’m not interested in assigning character representations to these guys based on how they do in games that are decided by such small margins.
I’d rather deal with the reality of on the field performance and leave the clubhouse leadership/chemistry ramblings to others. And, the reality is, this team is mashing the ball lately. After last night’s game, the team is now hitting .318/.374/.443 in June, averaging 6.5 runs per game, and getting production up and down the order. As mentioned, Ibanez has given those of us who thought he was done the finger, hitting .364/.417/.682 in the last 10 games, while Jose Lopez and Kenji Johjima continue to make a push for inclusion in the all-star game. Yuniesky Betancourt is on another one of his singles-fest hot streaks, while Jose Guillen just keeps being a solid hitter and Ichiro continues to be Ichiro! Sexson and Vidro continue to struggle, but that’s not new, and the rest of the team is making up for their out-making ways.
When the M’s built this line-up, they pointed to the depth of the offense being a key point, and in that sense, it’s paid off. The M’s have gotten more production from their 7-8-9 guys than any other team in baseball, and it’s helped offset the fact that their 2-3-4 guys have been pretty horrible.
The M’s still have the kind of offense that goes in streaks, and I’m sure we’ll be railing about their frustrating approach as some no name A-ball pitcher shuts them down with an 83 MPH fastball later this year, but for now, it’s fun rooting for a team that can score runs in bunches.