Game 88, Yankees at Mariners
Last game before the All-Star Game, which COUNTS this time and yet still doesn’t really matter all that much for us.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
CF Gutierrez
3B Lopez
1B Kotchman
DH Smoak
C Bard
SS Jack Wilson
LF Saunders
Saunders ninth again. Also I bet you thought we were done seeing Kotchman. Think again.
Hyphen vs. Sabathia. Hyphen has a good recent history against the Yankees, and Ichiro and Death to Flying Things have hit Sabathia in the past. Baseball!
If this game ends up going awry, you could also tune into the Futures Game, where Alex Liddi and Carlos Peguero will be hitting 4-5 in the World lineup. Game time on that is 3pm PDT.
Game 87, Yankees at Mariners
Second to last game before the All-Star Break. Happy Felix Day to one and all.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Branyan
3B Lopez
CF Gutierrez
1B Smoak
LF Saunders
C Johnson
SS Jack Wilson
P Felix
Luke French was sent back to the minor leagues after last night’s game to clear room for Smoak. I wouldn’t expect French to pitch in the Triple-A All-Star Game after four innings last night.
Fun fact: Smoak and Saunders trail only Detroit’s Brennan Boesch for home runs among AL rookies. And we’re going to have the opportunity to see both in the heart of the order for years to come! Today is a good day.
Game 86, Yankees at Mariners
After all that, we still have baseball to play. You kids like baseball, right?
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Branyan
3B Lopez
CF Gutierrez
1B Kotchman
LF Saunders
C Johnson
SS Jack Wilson
P Pauley
We thought we were going to see Pineda vs. Lee tonight. That’s a good one!
Saunders moves up in the order again, so for those of you keeping track at home it’s Bard/Josh Wilson > Saunders > Johnson/Jack Wilson. It’s important to know these things.
This promises to be a thrilling game of competitive, closely played baseball. Anything could happen!
Why Branyan makes sense (economically)
This team is horrible to watch offensively. They’re hitting .239/.308/.344. At this rate, they’ll be outhit by the 2008 61-101 team (.265/.318/.389). They’re even with the inept 1983 Mariners squad that hit .240/.301/.360. And if you go back and look at that team, they had Steve Henderson for an offensive mainstay. This year has Ichiro! and Gutierrez and they’re still terrible.
They’re not an exciting small-ball team that makes announcers drool onto their microphones: they’ve got two good runners in Ichiro! and Chone, then Gutierrez is adept, aand… yup. They’re a singles-hitting, low-walk, no-power offense where you can go do something else for 2/3rds of the lineup and not miss anything, ever.
I’m not going to argue here about whether or not the team took the right gambles. But even in bad seasons, Safeco Field’s drawn well for home games in the summer. There’s a vast number of fans who attend 3-5 games a year in person when the weather’s nice. They’re vaguely aware if the team is doing well, or terrible. When I talk to them about the team, they ask “so what’s going on with the Mariners sucking it up this year?” and want to talk about where to sit when they take visiting relatives.
The M’s want people who come to a few games a year to have a good time, and see the team win. They want the stadium experience to be lively: a lot of music cues, scoreboard activities, jarring bursts of 115 db noise piped directly into your eardrums, and there’s only so large a bow you can put on this sow before it falls on its side and can’t get up. We’re there. I went to a Felix start where the crowd seemed half-asleep the whole time as he put on a clinic. When the team gets a single and the fanfare kicks up like we just landed humans on Mars or defeated the zombie Nazis and the crowd yawns in response, you’re in trouble.
Branyan solves for that, a little. Kotchman may on balance end up being as good a player, but his offensive value is entirely in cheap singles and walks, and that’s not drawing enthusiastic applause. No one’s going to come home from a game and say “it was so great when Kotchman hit that dying quail to shallow left to advance the runner” but they’ll absolutely talk about the moonshot. And if they want the ugly single, there are still four or five more hitters each night who’ll do their darnedest to serve one up.
The M’s know more about this than anyone. They might well be prepared to avoid trading off good players unless there’s a can’t–miss offer so they play .500 ball the rest of the summer in front of the fatter crowds, and reap the word of mouth benefit, get people thinking maybe they were just off to a slow and unlucky start and might have been in it if only Lee had stayed healthy, and next year they could put it all together.
And for now, as baffling as it may seem at the baseball level, there’s a story they get to tell now, which is “hey, we realized this was a team without power, and you wanted a big bat, right? Here’s a bat you know and love…”
You may be rolling your eyes at that. But if you attended one of the low-scoring home losses where the team seemingly stranded a dozen runners, there’s a good chance you’ll reconsider going next time. And similarly, if you’ve been cursing them for not pursuing Branyan in the off-season*, maybe you feel validated now, and will head to the park.
I know all of that seems vague and foo-foo. And as the most dedicated and tortured fans, we don’t see a lot of difference between losing 85 games and 90, much less 90 and 95. But it’s there, and you can read up on this if you’re interested. The best explanation is Nate Silver’s chapter “Is Alex Rodriguez Overpaid?” in Baseball Between the Numbers, and while it’s true the difference is far greater for wins 81-95 or so, it’s also true that below that it’s fairly consistently $1m/win. There’s a lot of follow-up research that’s added to this, but that’s the crux of it: every loss lowers revenue a little, and every win brings it up. And that comes from all of the small bits of aesthetic arguments: someone who watches the team play horribly on TV is less likely to tune in for the next game, and if they spend $100 to take their spouse out to the park and watch the M’s get beat up by the Orioles, they’re less likely to spend that next time.
From a pure supported-by-research side, if the M’s get a win upgrade from Branyan over Kotchman in the rest of the season, they’ll make $1m — and there’s no reason not to, if the Indians as rumored are picking up salary. And it makes sense that for the M’s in low-attendance seasons, where such a huge chunk of the actual people-in-seats attendance happens late, that they’d value putting a marginally better team on the field so highly, even when it seems pointless in the long term.
In the long term, though, if they can keep fan interest up and it gives the business side confidence to spend on payroll next year** and beyond, then the whole economic reason to give Branyan a shot starts to make sense for the team’s baseball future as well.
* and let’s just again dispel that myth: the Mariners made Branyan a one year offer, guaranteeing him the starting job even though he had a herniated disk and his long-term prospects were uncertain, with a one year option we don’t know the details of but which likely vested at 400 plate appearances or was similarly health-based. Branyan wanted 2-3 years guaranteed for a lot more money. When they agreed they couldn’t come to terms, the M’s made their very public “No really, we’re not re-signing Branyan” comments in order to clear up the wide perception that he wasn’t really on the market. Branyan then explored the free agent market and found nothing near what he wanted and in the end settled for something substantially worse than the M’s came out with.
** I know. It’s the reality of the situation, though, and I’ve long since given up trying to convince teams that budgeting this way is often counter-productive.
Game 69, Reds at Mariners
RR-S vs. Harang after a couple of hard acts to follow.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Bradley
3B Lopez
CF Gutierrez
SS Josh Wilson
1B Carp
C Alfonzo
LF Saunders
Jack Wilson was activated today, after a Tacoma stint where he was hitting pretty well and was even attempting to steal a few bases. Now the Mariners are going to have to decide whether to play him or occasionally intriguing Josh Wilson and oh my goodness this is one of the more interesting things we have to talk about regarding this team. Tui goes back to Tacoma to work more on defense or something.
We also found out today that Ian Snell has cleared waivers and accepted his outright assignment to Tacoma. A guy that once struck out 177 in 208.0 innings while running an ERA+ of 116 for the Pirates is now roughly on the same level of Jesus Colome and every other reclamation project we had in the past year or so that didn’t pan out. At least we still have Aardsma, right?
Josh Bard has also been seen rehabbing for Tacoma. This is probably good news.
Game 67, Reds at Mariners
And what will the Reds fans do now that Griffey is gone?
Lee vs. Cueto, 7:05 pm PDT
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Bradley
3B Lopez
CF Gutierrez
SS Josh Wilson
1B Carp
C Johnson
LF Saunders
Jose Lopez, our #4 hitter is batting .231/.242/.354 this month, with most of his hits coming in the early part of June. I am strangely numb to such revelations about our lineup. That Carp is hitting ahead of Saunders just seems funny to me at this point. Hey, Divish says we could activate Sweeney if he feels good after batting practice tonight. Baseball!
Cueto is better than his ERA would lead you to believe. This year, he’s cut the rate at which he’s been giving up home runs to three-quarters what it was last season. He’s also striking out more and giving up fewer walks. Sure, he’s no Cliff Lee, but a pitcher doesn’t have to be to get through our hitters.
Opening Day Game Thread
It’s Opening Day and Felix Day #1.
The weather forecasts for Oakland looked fairly dicey, but things look good for now, and the chance of precipitation actually declines later in the evening.
Your first 2010 M’s starting line-up:
1: Ichiro!
2: Chone Figgins, 2B
3: Casey Kotchman, 1B
4: Milton Bradley, LF
5: Ken Griffey, DH
6: Jose Lopez, 3B
7: Franklin Gutierrez, CF
8: Rob Johnson, C
9: Jack Wilson, SS
On the hill for the Athletics is Ben Sheets who 1) hasn’t thrown a pitch since 2008 and 2) makes more than the rest of the Oakland pitching staff combined.
The A’s DFA’d Jack Cust the other day, which means their clean-up hitter is Kevin Kouzmanoff. Yep.
Let’s go M’s.
2010 Opening Day Roster Set
Official press release, with some official misspellings.
That means your 2010 Mariners are as follows:
Starting Nine:
C: Rob Johnson
1B: *Casey Kotchman
2B: #Chone Figgins
SS: Jack Wilson
3B: Jose Lopez
LF: #Milton Bradley
CF: Franklin Gutierrez
RF: *Ichiro!
DH: *Ken Griffey, Jr.
Bench:
C: Adam Moore
1B/DH: Mike Sweeney
IF: Matt Tuiasosopo
OF: Eric Byrnes
OF: *Ryan Langerhans
Rotation:
RHP Felix Hernandez
RHP Ian Snell
LHP Ryan Rowland-Smith
RHP Doug Fister
LHP Jason Vargas
Bullpen:
RHP David Aardsma
RHP Shawn Kelley
RHP Brandon League
RHP Mark Lowe
RHP Kanekoa Texeira
RHP Sean White
The Mariners will start the season with Erik Bedard, Cliff Lee, and Jack Hannahan on the DL.
The big loser in this is probably Jesus Colome, who impressed this spring by walking three and striking out twelve in 12.1 innings, when the usual mark for him might be something like six walks and eight Ks. I’d say that this is indicative of the fact that the M’s are willing to exercise restraint and not take spring training results at face value, but then again, Sweeney. If things don’t go so well, expect to see a lot of Kelley, Texeira, and White, who were so thoughtfully stretched out beforehand.
The runner-up for big loser (loser of the year?) is probably Josh Wilson, as the M’s opted for the offensive potential of Tui over a more proficient glove. Of course, once Hannahan comes back, we could see things get rearranged.
Also, MLB.com is televising the final spring training game for free, if you can’t make it until tomorrow.
Cactus League Game Thread, 3/26/2010
Last time out, French has been working on his change-up, and ran a 11/1 ground/fly ratio, which is kind of absurd considering that his ratio was at 0.37 in Detroit last year, 0.60 in Seattle, and about 0.71 before Sunday’s game in spring training. More groundballs makes French pretty interesting.
Geoff Baker also suggests that Tuiasosopo has made the team as a back-up infielder and that the team can live with him at short one or two times a week. I’m not really in agreement with the latter part of that assessment.
Lineup:
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
3B Lopez
DH Griffey
LF Byrnes
CF Gutierrez
1B Garko
C Johnson
SS Jack Wilson
LHP Luke French
Cactus League Game Thread, 3/13/2010
Here we are again with another exciting day of baseball that sort of matters but…. yeah…
There are some news bits this morning though.
* Via the Seattle Times, we have four cuts this morning in 1Bs Brad Nelson and Tommy Everidge along with OFs Mike Wilson and Greg Halman. So, anyone hoping that Everidge’s early hot hitting would somehow leave the Mariners with a different 1B platoon from what we are expecting, sorry.
* Via Drayer, Bedard has been throwing for the past ten days from 120 feet and is showing no ill effects from his August surgery. He is scheduled to throw a bullpen ten days from now. Don’t get too excited now.
* Via the Everett Herald, Hannahan has a strained groin and will be out for the next week to week-and-a-half, which means that he’ll be getting less time on the middle infield and Tui and the other J. Wilson might have a chance to make impressions in the meantime.
* Via just about everyone, the Mariners will be heading down to Tucson for two games after today, and they aren’t bringing many regulars with them. We’ll be seeing Ackley, Carp, and Tui, but not Ichiro, or Figgins (both of whom have played the last four games), or Griffey. In addition to this, Adam Moore will be catching Felix tomorrow, which I think is a first. Rob Johnson will be catching Cliff Lee on Monday.
Lineup!
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
3B Lopez
DH Griffey
LF Byrnes
1B Kotchman
CF Gutierrez
C Moore
SS Josh Wilson
RHP Fister