Game 40, Rays at Mariners
Brandon Maurer vs. Jake Odorizzi, 12:40pm
Early game today following last night’s crushing 9th inning collapse.
Jake Odorizzi was a first round pick by Jack Zduriencik’s Brewers in 2008. Aftter moving to Kansas City in the Zack Greinke deal, he wound up with Tampa as the second piece in the huge Wil Myers-for-James Shields deal that you may have heard about. Odorizzi had moved steadily up the minors, posting solid K rates, decent walk rates, but somewhat underwhelming ERAs. Most scouts saw the 91-92mph fastball, a slider and a work-in-progress change and slotted him as a back of the rotation kind of guy. While he never showed big platoon splits in the minors, major league lefties ate him alive in very brief cameos in 2012 and 2013 – a phenomenon Brandon Maurer knows pretty well.
This season, Odorizzi decided to make a change to his, uh, change. His change-up functioned like a slower sinker, with a lot of horizontal movement but not a lot of drop. As his fastball’s a very straight, rising FB, lefties had no trouble elevating the ball against him, and with a change up that didn’t move vertically, lefties were well positioned to do some damage against him. So, learning from teammate Alex Cobb, Odorizzi dropped his old change and picked up a splitter. So is he an Alex Cobb clone? (As the real Cobb’s out injured, the Rays could certainly use one). Well, no, not yet. In a month-plus of 2014, he’s already given up 3 HRs on his splitter, and lefties are still lighting him up. Worryingly, so are righties.
With any new pitch, there are going to be some adjustments. He’s trying to keep the pitch down and out of the zone, just like Cobb (and Iwakuma and Tanaka) does, but it can drift up and into the center of the plate at times. He’s also adjusting how many he throws. In his first start of the year, he threw over 30 of them. Since then, he’s backed off a bit, and will still show his slow curve to lefties as well. He’s been hit hard this year, but he’s also shown flashes; in his last start, he struck out 11 in five shutout innings against Cleveland (admittedly, not a strong hitting club). Young pitchers are always a work in progress. Young pitchers trying to master a new pitch are still in the process of being in progress. I have no idea what Odorizzi’s going to do today, but the M’s better stack the line-up with lefties.
1: Jones, CF
2: Romero, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Seager, 3B
7: Ackley, LF
8: Buck, C
9: Miller, SS
SP: Maurer
Hmmm. To bad about Saunders’ hyperextended knee. Saunders-over-Romero would be ideal.
Maurer’s splits are still a thing, apparently. Perhaps it’s due to facing an NL line-up, maybe it’s the luck of the draw, but the righty’s faced many more same-handed hitters so far this year. And that’ll continue today, as the Rays have five righties in their line-up. Joyce/Zobrist/DeJesus is going to be a tricky way to start, though.
Game 39, Rays at Mariners
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. David Price, 7:10pm
Two of the biggest names in the AL East have posted incredible K:BB ratios and sparkling xFIPs. David Price leads all of baseball with his K:BB of nearly *10*. A bit further back, but still impressive, is CC Sabathia‘s 4.8 mark. Both have seen their strikeout rate increase and their walk rate drop below 2/9 (Price is now walking a Cliff Lee-like 1 per 9 IP). Price’s RA is 4.86 while Sabathia’s sits at a grisly 6.07. Thanks to Chris Young and Roenis Elias, we’ve talked a bit about pitchers whose actual runs-given up comes in far shy of what their fielding independent stats would predict. In David Price, we have the poster child for the opposite phenomenon.
Like Sabathia, there’s no mystery about this – it’s not sequencing, and while his BABIP’s higher than it’s been, that’s not the problem either. The problem is home runs. Sabathia had never run a HR/9 above 1 in his long career until 2013. So far this year, it’s nearly 2. Similarly, Price hadn’t run a HR/9 over 1 since 2009, a year in which he threw 128 innings and was a four-seam/slider pitcher. In recent years, he’s been a sinker/cutter/change-up guy, and his GB% started creeping up while his HRs allowed dropped accordingly. Price was excellent last year, as his new attack-the-zone philosophy produced a great K:BB ratio while he also limited homers. But something changed: batters, especially righties, stopped hitting his sinker on the ground. His GB/FB ratio vs. righties went from 1.8 to 1.2, and in a tiny sample of 2014, it’s dropped below 1. He didn’t pay for it in 2013, as fewer of those fly balls went over the fence; his HR/FB last year was the 2nd lowest of his career. That hasn’t happened this year.
Many point to Sabathia as a bounce-back candidate due to his excellent K:BB ratio and insane HR/FB% of 23%. Sabathia’s getting plenty of grounders, but whatever doesn’t bounce seems to leave the yard. While Price’s K:BB is even better, his HR/FB isn’t historically out of whack. It’s high, and I fully expect Price to post better runs-allowed numbers than he has to date. He’s an excellent pitcher, after all. But the question is what does he look like with a perfectly normal HR/FB of 10-12%? With a sinker that isn’t making batters top the ball, he’s going to give up some elevated contact. If he can keep that contact in the park, he’s an ace. But what if home runs are the price he pays for a 1.01 BB/9? Again: a big chunk of his awful HR/FB so far this year has come from the 3 HRs *lefties* have hit off of him. He still dominates lefties, and they still have a 2 GB/FB ratio. That may be luck. But his GB% has dropped on all of his pitches against righties, and his sinker – like all sinkers – is much more effective against lefties. I’m not saying that Price is going to end up like Cesar Ramos, whose sinkless sinker produced an offensive explosion for the M’s last night. But I think it could keep him from being a true #1. Hell, you could argue that, when he’s healthy, Alex Cobb has been the better pitcher. And Chris Archer’s neck and neck with Price right now, though of course that’s more a compliment to the Rays depth than an indictment of Price. In any event, I’m not going to cry about the M’s missed opportunity to acquire Price in trade.
Iwakuma can teach Price a thing or two about succeeding in MLB despite an elevated HR rate, and HR/FB ratio.
1: Jones, CF
2: Romero, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Seager, 3B
7: Ackley, LF
8: Zunino, C
9: Miller, SS
SP: Iwakuma
The Rainiers played an early game today in Las Vegas. It was school day, with thousands of kids packing Cashman Field, each armed with a vuvuzela. Please, keep Rainiers announcer Mike Curto in your thoughts tonight. With rest and with physical/mental therapy, he WILL get through this.
Cam Hobson pitches for AA Jackson today, while the enigmatic Tyler Pike goes for High Desert. Pike’s a top-10 M’s prospect, but a very odd 24:25 K:BB ratio isn’t helping his stock. Gabriel Guerrero’s stock is still rising, however – BP had some good things to say about him here ($).
Game 38, Rays at Mariners
King Felix vs. Cesar Ramos, 7:10pm
Happy Felix Day
It’s was a gorgeous day in the Northwest, Felix is pitching and the M’s are above .500. Seems like a pretty good evening for a ballgame.
Lefty Cesar Ramos was a first rounder (pick 35, so just barely) in the 2005 MLB draft that M’s fans try not to talk about. The Padres picked him, and for a while, everything looked OK. Ramos was primarily a FB/CU pitcher who had pretty good stuff, but generally pitched to contact. It wasn’t a huge surprise that he wasn’t striking anyone out in the minors, but I think people hoped he could be a back-of-the-rotation guy eventually. Upon reaching AAA, though, his control – one of his calling cards – began to desert him. He bounced to the big leagues for brief fill-ins, but couldn’t stick, and his performances in AAA weren’t getting any better. The Pads tried him in the pen, and then, following a poor showing in 8 IP with the big club, packaged him with prospects for SS Jason Bartlett of Tampa Bay.
Bartlett went on to produce -0.9 WAR for SD, while the Rays have converted Ramos into a decent reliever/swing man. His control is still AWOL, his velocity’s down since 2010-11, and his FIP has been bad, but he’s given the Rays some decent innings, and can make spot starts like tonight. He throws a four-seamer, but he’s primarily a sinker/slider guy these days, with a change-up that he’ll throw right-handers. Of note, he had a pretty good GB% (SSS alert!) with the Padres, and the Rays got him to throw his sinker instead of his rising FB. So it’s a bit odd to me that Ramos now looks like a clear fly-ball pitcher – his sinker now gets fewer grounders per pitch, or grounders per ball in play than his four-seamer did years ago.
Ramos has walked *14* batters in five very brief starts, so the M’s should be patient. He’s never made it six innings in his career (again, he’s mostly been a reliever), but the right approach will get the M’s some at-bats against the back end of the Rays bullpen.
Felix has been frustrating to watch in recent starts. He’ll look great for a while, then succumb to a big inning. He’ll strike out a number of hitters, then do whatever that was against the A’s five days ago. Right now, his strand rate’s at 66.7%, the lowest rate of his career. Hitters have a .310 wOBA against him with men on, compared to just .260 with the bases empty. Is it a lack of focus? Boredom? I’d forgive him that, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. With runners on, Felix strikes out MORE hitters and walks FEWER. His FIP’s great. The big difference is BABIP, and while it’s a bit simplistic to say that BABIP=luck, it’s pretty clear that sequencing and luck have been Felix’s undoing (Ok, that’s too strong – “the things that have made him look less regal”), not something more meaningful like terrible command or tons of HRs. Felix needs his D to pick him up a bit, and frankly, Felix’s D needs Felix to pick them up, too. Get some K’s, Felix.
1: Jones, CF
2: Romero, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Seager, 3B
7: Ackley, LF
8: Zunino, C
9: Miller, SS
SP: El Cartelua
In the Minors, Tacoma continues its series against Las Vegas with Erasmo Ramirez taking on Jacob deGrom – both of whom will almost certainly play in the Majors later this season. Perhaps the bigger story is the return of AA righty Victor Sanchez. The zaftig righty went on the DL with “forearm tightness” about a month ago, but he’s scheduled to start tonight against Tennessee.
Podcast: The Mariners are above .500!
Monday morning podcast(s) continues/begins.
The Mariners played 8 games the past week and ended up 5-3, good enough to get over .500. In fact, it gave us so little to complain about that Jeff and I ended up complaining about baseball and sports itself instead. Because endless pitching changes are just the worst.
Podcast with Jeff and Matthew: Direct link! || iTunes link! || RSS/XML link!
Thanks again to those that helped support the show and/or StatCorner work in general last week, and in the past, and hopefully in the future. It’s truly appreciated.
If you grab these from either the direct or XML links (i.e. not from iTunes), you might get a malware warning. There’s an issue with podtrac, the service I use to track metrics, that is being resolved. Rest assured that the podcasts themselves are fine, the podtrac links above are simply re-directs to StatCorner.com
Game 37, Royals at Mariners
Roenis Elias vs. Jeremy Guthrie, 1:10pm
Happy Mother’s Day
The M’s have a terrible wOBA and wRC+, and if you’ve watched the team at all, that can’t come as a surprise. Their pitching’s been very solid, albeit not exactly at Tigers-starting-rotation level. There are a couple of ways to look at this: 1) they’ve been lucky in sequencing on both sides of the ball, but they don’t have the talent of Texas/Oakland/Anaheim. 2) This team battles, their starters keep them in just about every game, and the M’s are eminently watchable in mid-May.
There’s a lot of reasons to question the M’s run or see the holes in the squad, but today’s a day to just enjoy the fact that Chris Young was excellent last night and beat Yordano Ventura. That Roenis Elias is on the hill and I’m confident about that. Baseball is really strange.
1: Jones, CF
2: Miller, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Seager, 3B
7: Ackley, LF
8: Romero, RF
9: Zunino, C
SP: Elias
Game 36, Royals at Mariners
Chris Young vs. Yordano Ventura, 6:10pm
Back on April 18th, I mentioned that The pitching match-up between Chris Young and Nate Eovaldi had a chance to feature a rare gap between average fastball velocities of 12mph. Not for the first time, real life decided not to use my handy storyline and went with something boring. Chris Young had, for him, a lively fastball at nearly 87, while Eovaldi sat just above 97. It’s about as big a delta as MLB offers, but while Mark Buehrle still stymies hitters, we’ve got to do better. Thanks to Yordano Ventura, we will.
Ventura’s the talk of the AL, as he’s fixed the two issues that tarnished his first few MLB starts last year: walks and HRs. Ventura wasn’t dominant in MiLB largely due to the former malady, and I think many expected his HR rate to stay kind of high (Iwakuma high, not demote-him-now high) thanks to a FB that generated fly balls. This year, though, Ventura’s showing that a truly elite fastball makes its own rules. He’s striking out over 10/9, limiting HRs, and throwing strikes.
His curve has long been visually stunning, but with improved command, it’s turned into a real weapon. Batters swing and miss plenty, but they also top it for grounders, which helps Ventura keep his GB% over 50. But to me, the big improvement has been with his change up. It gets essentially the same number of whiffs and the same GB rate as the curve, giving him a third very good pitch, and allowing him to dominate lefties and righties alike.
The M’s offense could use a break after seeing two solid performances from Duffy and Vargas. Ventura, however, is not a break. Ventura is quickly moving from one of the most intriguing young arms to one of the best pitchers in the league. Sure, it’s really only been a month at that level, and maybe if the M’s are patient, his command could get a bit sloppy. Could easily happen. But right now, I’d rather face Sonny Gray or Yu Darvish.
1: Jones, CF
2: Miller, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Buck, C
7: Ackley, LF
8: Saunders, RF
9: Bloomquist
SP: Young
Tough to face a guy like this with something of a second-choice line-up, but Seager’s illness forces their hand. Jones has been better than expected, but seeing him lead off is a reminder of just how bad M’s #1 hitters have been on the year – a combined .233/.287/.336 line.
3B Patrick Kivlehan, the ex-football player the M’s took out of Rutgers a few years ago, has been promoted to AA. Given his age, he absolutely needed to force a promotion. Well done to him for doing so – he was killing the ball. Of course, now DJ Peterson has the 3B role to himself, a fact that may have played into this move.
The big game in the minors is the rematch between Andrew Carraway and the Rainiers against Noah Syndergaard and the Las Vegas 51s. The first game was a pitchers duel the R’s ended winning in the 9th. Syndergaard is a flame thrower, and deservedly one of the top prospects in the minors, but the R’s made him work. Carraway was inefficient, but ended up with better results. Fun match up, and one with a massive FB velocity gap of its own.
Game 34, Royals at Mariners
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Danny Duffy, 7:10pm
Danny Duffy was arguably the most heralded member of the Royals vaunted 2010 prospect class. A lefty with a plus fastball, a curve and a change, Duffy made the bigs in 2011. Since then, he’s teased Royals fans with flashes of brilliance (a 96 mph fastball will do that) and frustrated them with command problems and injuries. He’s come back from TJ surgery, but his elbow is still problematic. He had a UCL sprain in the minors, had his elbow surgery in 2012, and made another elbow-related DL trip late last year.
His FB is Paxtonesque in velocity and movement – he gets a lot of vertical ‘rise’ which means it tends to be hit in the air. He hasn’t paid for it in home runs, probably due to the elite velocity, but his arsenal does produce platoon splits. Against righties, and he faces an inordinate number of them, he’s had pretty serious control issues.
1: Saunders, CF
2: Romero, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Seager, 3B
7: Gillespie, LF
8: Miller, SS
9: Zunino, C
SP: Iwakuma
Speaking of Paxton, he’ll throw a bullpen session tomorrow. And Taijuan Walker will throw on Sunday.
I mentioned that the Clinton Lumberkings came back from a 12-4 deficit a week or so ago. Last night, they outdid themselves with a truly historic comeback. Down 16-1 in the fifth, Clinton rallied to tie it up. The game went to extras, and they scored three more runs and won 20-17. Their 2B earned a save in the game, reminding me of the time Scott Savastano hit a walk-off HR for Tacoma, making himself the winning pitcher. Well done, Lumberkings. They had to do it without OF Austin Wilson, who I think is nursing an injury.
Gmae 33, Mariners at Athletics: the Nightcap
Erasmo Ramirez vs. Drew Pomeranz, 7:05
Happy, uh, Felix Day, right? I’ve waited to mention that until AFTER the M’s won today’s first game, 6-4. The hesitation’s due to Felix’s decidedly un-Felix performance. He wasn’t terrible, but this was the first time since August of 2008 that he failed to strike anyone out. It’s Felix’s third K-free game, behind that 5-IP game against the White Sox and his terrifying 4/18/2007 game against Minnesota in which he left with an injured shoulder. We’ve seen it before, so I’m not sure why I’m always surprised by it, but Felix is incredibly streaky. Think back to the run he was on in 2012 – the run that encompassed his perfect game. Over 14 starts, he had a 1.40 ERA with a K:BB ratio near 6. He followed that with six awful starts in September: 53 hits in 35 innings and an RA around 7. He had a great stretch in the middle of last year, before another bad September. This happens to all pitchers, of course, but because Felix is so *good*, his highs are just higher than nearly anyone else’s. And his lows are easier to spot and over-analyze. His velocity didn’t appear to be concerning; it was lower than his seasonal average, but it matched his last game in Oakland a month ago, which leads me to assume the system in the coliseum’s a bit cold.
Game 2 features a scrambled rotation thanks to this quickly-arranged double header. The M’s go for the DH and series sweep behind Erasmo Ramirez, just recalled for this start. Ramirez got some work in, and had a solid start for Tacoma against a good Las Vegas club, but his 3 HRs in 11 2/3 innings show that his HR problems weren’t solved over night. He’s playing in a ball park that’ll help that problem, but Erasmo looked lost in the early part of the year. Here’s hoping he’s improved his approach, particularly with runners on – his 69% strand rate needs to come up if he’s going to stick in the rotation.
Speaking of strand rate, the A’s starter, Drew Pomeranz, wins the Chris Young award for April. The righty, and former #5 overall draft pick in 2010, put up a 4.72 FIP in relief for Oakland but a sparkly 1.98 ERA. How does a guy with control problems (lifetime BB/9 of 4.55) AND HR problems (lifetime HR/9 of 1.20) put up a nice ERA, even over a miniscule sample? A strand rate of 98.6% is a good place to start. The big lefty is essentially a two pitch pitcher with a 92mph rising FB and a big curve ball. He gets a lot of vertical movement on the FB which, together with the phrase “Ex-Colorade Rockie,” explains the HR rate. The curve’s been an effective pitch for him overall, but his lack of a change-up or cutter means he’s been hurt by right-handed bats. He’s seen over 3X as many righties as lefties in his career, and that percentage stands to increase unless he can bring his .222/.378 career wOBA splits down a bit. Sure, you need to regress that, but unless the RHB number comes down (as opposed to the lefty wOBA increasing as their .217 BABIP rises), he’ll continue to be a replacement-level pitcher.
And there’s some evidence that the A’s are already changing him. For one, his FB’s suddenly getting more ground balls. I’d chalk that up to noise if it wasn’t for the fact that I *just* mentioned the same thing regarding Scott Kazmir, and while I didn’t mention it, I *could’ve* about Jesse Chavez too. Not sure what’s going on there, but with the A’s, the default assumption is that it’s intentional.
1: Saunders, CF
2: Romero, RF
3: Cano, DH
4: Smoak, 1B
5: Gillespie, LF
6: Seager, 3B
7: Bloomquist, 2B
8: Buck, C
9: Miller, SS
SP: Ramirez
Given Pomeranz’s splits, this line-up is pretty sub-optimal. I completely understand if the M’s don’t think Hart’s up to playing twice in one day, but Hart’s the perfect match-up here.
Trevor Miller, Chance Ruffin and Jose Flores in the minors tonight.
Game 31, Mariners at Athletics
Roenis Elias vs. Jesse Chavez, 7:05pm
More on last night’s prospect showdown later. Tonight, it’s a meeting between two of the least likely effective starters. Chavez has been a so-so to worse reliever for years, and Elias has been a so-so starter in the minor leagues – a guy whose path to the big leagues depended on a rash of injuries to starters, their back-ups, and the depth behind those guys.
Elias “succeeded” somehow with a 15:11 K:BB ratio by limiting hard contact and home runs. In his last two starts, though, his K:BB ratio’s up to 16:5. It’s impossible to know what to make of Elias or his seeming transformation in the past ten-fifteen days: he’s a tabula rasa, and apparently most of the data we had on him wasn’t all that predictive. He’s learning on the job, and while he’ll stumble every now and then, he looks capable of infinitely more than I would’ve thought back in February. I say “infinitely” advisedly, as I tried to look up his ZiPS projection from this spring. There wasn’t one. You can only project so many players, and Anthony Fernandez was on the 40-man and all… I checked the Steamer projections, but he had all of one inning.
Chavez DID have projections, and they were awful. 0.2 WAR by ZiPS, 0.3 by Steamer. He’d previously been a control-challenged fastball/slider guy, but a shift to the cutter seemed to help him harness his stuff a bit better in 2013. Still, you wouldn’t have pegged Chavez to be the A’s best pitcher through a month plus, even with Sonny Gray’s emergence. Damn it.
1: Saunders, RF
2: Jones, CF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Seager, 3B
7: Ackley, LF
8: Zunino, C
9: Miller, SS
SP: Elias
Mariano Rivera’s book apparently had some less-than-flattering comments about Robbie Cano. First his hitting coach, then the team’s HOF closer…we’ll see what Jeter says about is erstwhile DP partner after he retires. Clearly, people didn’t care for certain aspects of Cano’s preparation/hustle/whatever, though I’m still struggling to figure out how it cost them runs/games.
Game 30, Mariners at A’s
Chris Young vs. Scott Kazmir, 7:05pm
This game’s as important as any early-May contest, I suppose, but I think a lot of northwest fans might be interested to note that top prospect Noah Syndergaard’s starting tonight against the Rainiers in Tacoma. Catch Chris Taylor face actual MLB-level pitching, and plus velocity from the right side. The M’s couldn’t really find a spot for Nick Franklin, who started off the 2014 season on a hot streak, but Chris Taylor is making things even more complicated.
Ok, ok, back to the big league game for a bit. Scott Kazmir was famously difficult to forecast this off-season. He was a lackluster member of the Sugar Land Skeeters recently, and the fact that he’d made the Indians roster came as a shock to most. He looked OK, but had mediocre results in the first half, like teammate and fellow comeback story Ubaldo Jimenez. In the second half, he was an effective #3. So: forecasting him going forward, or forecasting what he’d make on the free agent market, how do you weight his performance record? What do you DO with the fact that his career was *over* 18 months ago? It was a slightly more extreme version of the questions regarding the top of the free agent pitching market, namely Ervin Santana (who was abysmal in 2012) and Jimenez (who was replacement level in 2012 too). It’s tough to tease out how much the ambiguous nature of their recent performances played into their contracts, and how much of it was due to the draft pick compensation attached to signing Jimenez/Santana. Santana’s been absolutely brilliant and stands to make more money next year while Jimenez looks pretty much exactly like he did in 2012 again. Meanwhile, Kazmir’s been among the best bargains of the off-season.
He had fairly neutral GB/FB ratios and he’d had home run problems off and on since 2008, so he looked like a good candidate to pitch well in Oakland. But since joining the A’s, his GB% is up dramatically, from the low 40s to the mid 50s. Small sample weirdness? Maybe, but a pitcher’s ground ball rate stabilizes early on; Russell Carleton found it stabilized (r=.7) at around 150 batters faced. Kazmir’s faced 151 thus far. An updated version of Carleton’s work by Derek Carty, using a slightly different methodology, found that GB rate stabilize after 105 balls in play. Kazmir looks to be around 106.
There’s nothing that stands out as an explanation for this change in the pitch fx data. He’s not using a different pitch, or targeting a different part of the zone. He’s still the same sinker/slider/change that he was last year, and he’s throwing just as hard. He always showed fairly dramatic platoon splits for grounders – with lefties pounding the ball into the ground while righties elevated it. But he’s faced four times as many righties this year as he has lefties, so that’s not it. The other dramatic difference in his stat line is his walk rate, which is under 5% for the first time in his career. Even when he was at his best, from 2005-07, he had so-so command, and a walk rate over those three years near 10%.
Chris Young is having perhaps his most Chris Young season, which is saying something. Coming into the year, he was known for being 1) tall, 2) an extreme fly-ball guy but who could 3) generate lower BABIPs due to all of those fly outs without 4) giving up tons of HRs somehow, no one really knows why, but it all adds up to 5) a guy with actual runs allowed coming in lower than the fielding-independent metrics would assume. So far, he remains exceedingly tall; his GB rate is just 24%, below his own absurd career average of 27%; his BABIP is .211, below his own absurd career average of .253; he’s given up HRs on 6.7% of fly balls, below his low-but-not-absurd average of 8%; and he’s got an ERA of 3.04 and a FIP of 5.46 and a whatever’s-beyond-absurd xFIP of 6.27. I know allusions to animated series are the lifeblood of baseball blogging, so to put it in old internet meme terms:
Phase 1: Throw 85mph fast straightballs up in the zone.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit.*
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Romero, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Hart, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Gillespie, LF
7: Smoak, 1B
8: Miller, SS
9: Zunino, C
SP: Young
As you’ve no doubt heard, the M’s have sent down CF Abraham Almonte and recalled CF James Jones. Jones was off to a solid start in Tacoma, but so’s just about everyone. He’s fast, he’s got a howitzer of an arm, but he’s a lefty. In theory, Almonte’s switch hitting helped balance the line-up against lefties like Kazmir. In practice, of course, Almonte just didn’t hit. Defensively, I don’t know that I’m qualified to say if this is an upgrade or not. I thought Almonte was a solid to plus fielding CORNER OF, but I think his range was better than I’d predicted in the big leagues. On the other hand, whether it was concentration lapses or positioning, he made more unforced errors too. When I’ve seen Jones, it’s mostly been in the corners too – the R’s have Endy Chavez and Xavier Avery to rotate through the OF positions – and he’s looked solid. He had some nice starts in the spring as well, but it’s tough to know how it all adds up. Best of luck to Jones, who obviously was up for a brief call-up earlier. That he’s made it this far shows some solid work by the M’s much-maligned player development system, considering nearly everyone saw Jones as a pitcher coming out of LIU.
I’ll be in Tacoma to check out the Syndergaard, one of the Mets top prospects, and one of the top righties in the minors. Andrew Carraway gets the start for Tacoma. Jake Zokan, Jimmy Gillheeney and Eddie Campbell start in the minors as well. OF Austin Wilson, the M’s 2013 draft pick, was named the Midwest League Player of the Week last week, collecting six XBHs and nine total hits in seven games.
* The M’s are only 2-2 in his starts, despite the lack of runs allowed, and they lost in his only relief appearance. None of this is Young’s fault, of course, but that’s a pretty fielding-independent way of looking at things for a guy who famously cannot be evaluated by fielding independent means.