Went down to the old ballpark last night to see the game; came away unimpressed, as you might imagine. Also, it was pretty darned cold for it nearly being June. Anyway.
Jason Johnson — he of the 6.02 ERA entering the game and 4.91 career ERA entering this season — shut the M’s down. Before Scott Spiezio’s homer (3-0 pitch, Johnson tossed him a fat fastball), they had three hits, none of which left the infield. Both of Ibanez’ hits probably should have been outs, and Pat Borders worked his way aboard with a bunt base hit. If you hadn’t seen it, you probably wouldn’t believe it. But hey, credit to Borders for seeing the defense playing back on him. The whole thing reminded me of Tom Berenger (as veteran catcher Jake Taylor) laying down that bunt at the end of Major League.
Pineiro was horrible early, only throwing strikes with roughly half his pitches, but sure settled down after the first few innings. I noticed that when he was going well, he was working much quicker, not wasting nearly as much time between pitches. It’s hard to say which way the cause and effect goes, though. Was he pitching better because he was working quickly, or working quickly because he started pitching better and feeling more comfortable on the mound? I dunno.
Overheard at the ballpark, 5/22/04 edition: On Spiezio, “This guy is so clutch.” Spiezio with runners in scoring position, 2004: .242/.250/.364, 0 homers. Yup.
I don’t fault Melvin for going to Putz in the 8th. I mean, look at the right-handed alternatives — Mateo has been hittable this year, and Hasegawa has been horrible. That should have been a Soriano inning, of course, but that’s not an option right now.
Carlos Guillen didn’t get nearly the ovation I thought he would, or that he deserved for that matter. I think people don’t realize that he was both a decent hitter and a strong fielder during his time here, though with what we’re seeing out of Aurilia this year you’d think they’d notice all the more. But hey, we’re fed the line about Guillen being fragile and (perhaps only implicitly) not being any good in the clubhouse, or being a bad influence on Freddy Garcia, so hey, good riddance.
I have two other questions:
This team’s made up of veteran leaders, and they’ve got great clubhouse chemistry, they’re all hard workers, combined with a player’s manager. If chemistry is such a key ingredient to a winning team, if it’s what makes marginal teams play over their heads and good teams great, why do the Mariners suck so badly?
If Paul Molitor’s such a great hitting coach, why do the M’s look so helpless at the plate? They’re flailing at first pitches, no one’s walking, they’re not working counts or even (and this is really subjective) looking for their pitch.
If I have time this week, I’ll see if I can’t run some stats on the difference in hitting approaches.
Man, we just got brutalized. Say one thing about Melvin’s bullpen management, at least it makes it long and painful.
Another brutal homestand. It’s been interesting to see the fans turn on the team, though: where once people were almost uniformly cheery and gave me dirty looks if I said something not-quite-positive enough, now there are boo birds throughout the stands and some players don’t get any applause at all when they’re up (Aurilia!), though we’re not at the point where the crowd’s really jumping on specific players. Even Cirillo never got a severe bad reaction on the intros.
I was at the game, so all I saw was a weird disappearance of Olerud and then a long period of stalling, which I figured was due to Olerud being in the bathroom. What was the official explanation, anyway?
Update!
Niehaus said it was bathroom-related at the time, after the game Melvin said that Olerud and Aurilia were “locked in the video room.” Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
Some bad news on the minor league front: Justin Leone got hit on the wrist with a pitch last night and could be out of action for an extended period of time. Considering that before the HBP he had launched his 12th and 13th homers of the year, raising his SLG to .651 (including a ridiculous .389 ISO), he was making enough noise to get a look in the inevitable overhaul that is coming. It’s too bad this is probably Leone’s peak year, and instead of being given a chance to help the big club, he was mashing pitchers in Tacoma. Time to hope the injury isn’t too serious.
Edit: Just learned that it is just a bruise, and he’ll miss about a week. Hooray.
So, have we reached the point yet where after a big win — like last night’s 11-0 laugher — we don’t have to say, “This might be the win that gets them going!” Because really, there is no such win when you’re talking about an old, bad team.
Doug Pappas passed away today at the age of 43. I conversed with him a few times during my season at Baseball Prospectus, and I enjoyed him as a person and a writer. He will be missed.
Ramon Santiago was actually called up on the 11th, it turns out. He just hasn’t been used since the 15th — he played three straight games (12-13-14) and then not again. I’m confused about that pattern… but then, I’d be pulling Boone & Co in blowouts to put the bench in there. If Boone (say) gets taken out on a double play in the ninth protecting a nine-zero lead, this season’ll get a lot worse.
Anyone notice that Tim Hudson circa 2004 has turned into some kind of weird Ryan Franklin/Shigetoshi Hasegawa circa 2003 mixture? After his win today, he’s 5-1 with a 2.90 ERA, right in line with his usual dominating career. But look at his peripherals; 3.95 strikeouts per nine innings? Among the 92 pitchers who qualified for the ERA title last year, only Danny Graves and Nate Cornejo posted strikeout numbers lower than that. Usually, a strikeout rate like that indicates some kind of red flag warning, especially considering Hudson’s rate last year was 6.08 K/9. But, looking further, Hudson’s pitching really, really well:
7.55 innings per start.
.39 HR/9 IP. Seriously, he’s allowing a home run every third start.
1.32 BB/9 IP. On pace for 36 walks on the season.
1.07 baserunners per inning.
2.29 GB/FB ratio.
.252 batting average against on balls in play.
He’s pitching deep into games, keeping everything in the park, and not letting runners reach base thanks to being an extreme groundball pitcher and getting some help from his defense. With the emergence of Roy Halladay in Toronto as a super efficient innings horse who uses his defense and the resurgence of low strikeout veterans Tom Glavine and Steve Trachsel in New York, I’m wondering if Rick Peterson and the A’s pitching gurus figured something out about how to pitch. The old adage is that strikeouts are gold for pitchers, but if they’ve found a way to get outs without working deep into counts, allowing their starters to pitch huge innings totals without heavy workloads, the M’s won’t be catching the A’s this decade.
Heeeeeeeeeey remember those Mariner pitcher reports I did? Aw yeah.
Here’s the Mariners pitchers, with what happens, percentage-wise, with each batter they face:
Names bfp k% bb% hr%
Garcia 235 17% 6% 2%
Pineiro 233 15% 8% 4%
Franklin215 11% 7% 3%
Moyer 212 14% 8% 6%
Meche 153 17% 13% 3%
Villone 116 16% 12% 2%
Hasegawa 88 11% 14% 1%
Mateo 84 18% 6% 2%
Jarvis 64 11% 8% 6%
Guardado 63 24% 5% 2%
Putz 45 24% 11% 0%
Myers 43 12% 9% 0%
Soriano 22 14% 14% 0%
AL pitcher averages: 16% K, 9% BB, 3% HR
You can see that as a staff, the Mariners are average. They’re held back a little by the bad strikeout numbers put up by Franklin and Hasegawa (which are still better than I’d feared).
High K is Guardado, with 24% of batters faced (and he’s staff-best at not giving up the walk, too — seriously, if anyone in this bullpen has value right now, it’s Eddie). Mateo’s pitching well, Garcia’s bthe best of the starters.
What’s interesting about Meche is that you can see his problem stick out: he’s getting the strikeouts as long as he’s on the mound, but he’s been giving up twice as many walks as Freddy. Seriously, that’s all the difference between the two of them so far this year.
How does this compare to last year? That’s a great question. It’s the barely different.
The Mariners staff last year got 16% strikeouts instead of 15%, they gave free passes to 8% of the batters they saw, and the home run rate was steady. The largest difference (and this is significant) was hit rate: the Mariners let 21% of opposing hitters get a non-HR hit this year, and last year only 19% got hits (w/HRs the difference is the same, 22-24). That’s… what, a hit a little more than every other game? 122 hits a year, uhhh.. that’s a lot of wins over the course of a season, and that’s all defense: everything under the control of the pitchers is pretty much the same as last year.
Particularly victimized: Kevin Jarvis (31%) though let’s be honest, he wasn’t helping himself with that low K rate and super-high HR rate. Pineiro and Mateo (24%) Hasegawa (23%).. the super-lucky JJ Putz has enjoyed his early success in part because he’s gotten great defense: only 9% of batters got a hit off him. Guardado at 13% has also gotten lucky.
If the Mariners wanted to start to turn this team around without making any kind of large organizational changes, they’d call Ramon Santiago up from Tacoma and install him at short. ERAs would drop, the offense can’t get much worse anyway, and suddenly the team’s hanging on in more lower-scoring games.
One other thought after watching tonight’s awful loss after Randy’s perfect game: remember that guy in the Seattle Weekly who said he was going to force feed me my stats after the Mariners won the World Series? Do you think he’ll force feed himself the stats when they don’t? Because Baseball Prospectus 2004 is what, 600 pages, and that might not work out for him. Or is there no accountability in this world?