Mariners Face Should-be Natural Rival Pirates
| MARINERS (34-43) | ΔMs | PIRATES (46-30) | EDGE | |
| HITTING (wOBA*) | -13.8 (19th) | 2.6 | 21.5 (6th) | Pirates |
| FIELDING (RBBIP) | -19.4 (26th) | 2.1 | 23.6 (2nd) | Pirates |
| ROTATION (xRA) | 14.2 (9th) | -1.5 | -7.4 (18th) | Mariners |
| BULLPEN (xRA) | 3.2 (12th) | 2.7 | 8.0 (6th) | Pirates |
| OVERALL (RAA) | -15.9 (18th) | 6.0 | 45.7 (6th) | PIRATES |
By mascot, what’s more feared to a Mariner than a Pirate? I’ll tell you what isn’t the answer to that is a Padre. Unless the Mariners is like, enough with the missionaries already! But that hardly seems relevant to today’s age. Pirates still exist. Do you ever stop and realize that? Pirates still exist and are still terrorizing maritime trade. Yet we treat them as protagonists in multi-million dollar Hollywood blockbusters and millions dress up as them for Halloween. America once fought an entire war against pirates. The way history ends up getting treated is so weird.
Also, what? The Pirates are ludicrously good this season. Coming off a three-game sweep of the Angles (ha), the Pirates come to Safeco for the first time in six years.
Promote Brad Miller
Tomorrow marks the one month anniversary of Brad Miller‘s promotion to Tacoma. Given what he’s done in the 23 games he’s played down there, it might be time for another one. Take a look at his consistency as he’s climbed the ladder in the minor leagues.
| Season | Level | Age | PA | BB% | K% | ISO | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | (A) | 21 | 59 | 7% | 15% | 0.113 | 0.415 | 0.458 | 0.528 | 0.447 | 182 |
| 2012 | (A+) | 22 | 473 | 11% | 17% | 0.185 | 0.339 | 0.412 | 0.524 | 0.408 | 143 |
| 2012 | (AA) | 22 | 170 | 13% | 15% | 0.156 | 0.320 | 0.406 | 0.476 | 0.407 | 151 |
| 2013 | (AA) | 23 | 175 | 11% | 17% | 0.176 | 0.294 | 0.379 | 0.471 | 0.386 | 146 |
| 2013 | (AAA) | 23 | 109 | 13% | 15% | 0.217 | 0.348 | 0.422 | 0.565 | 0.427 | 154 |
Miller has hit at every level he’s been at, and he’s done it with basically the same set of skills and minimal variance. He draws walks, makes contact, and hits a ton of line drives. Don’t pay too much attention to those slugging percentage numbers, as they’re inflated both by minor league BABIPs and some hitter friendly ballparks. He’s got some gap power, but he’s not going to be a huge home run guy in the big leagues. That said, the rest of the package looks like it might be good enough that his home run total won’t really matter.
Miller is often compared to Kyle Seager, because they were both high performance/moderate tools guys in college, and they didn’t profile as impact players based on their athleticism. Both just started hitting better than expected when they became professionals, though, and Seager has developed into the Mariners best everyday player. Seager is an easy comparison for Miller because of their similar pedigrees, but it also misleads in some ways.
The primary difference between them is on defense. Seager has always been an average to above average defender, both at second and third base, and his glove was probably the one thing you could point to as a college player and say “that will get him to the Major Leagues”. Miller, though, is a bit of a question mark defensively. From a physical standpoint, he can handle shortstop. He’s not Brendan Ryan, but he moves well enough to cover the necessary ground and has a good enough arm to make throws from deep in the hole. However, Miller is extremely prone to making errors on routine plays. And not just the once-in-a-while variety. He makes a lot of errors.
In 212 minor league games, Miller has made 55 errors, which works out to a pace of 42 errors per full season. Error rates are higher in the minors than they are in the majors for various reasons, including lower quality infields, and it isn’t that strange for minor leaguers to make a lot of errors. Back in 1993, Derek Jeter made 56 errors in one season, and his career minor league fielding percentage of .934 is lower than Miller’s .942. But Jeter was a teenager coming up through the minors, spending his final year in Triple-A at age 21, and this is a more common problem for very young players.
Miller is 23, and he played three years of high level college baseball at Clemson. You don’t generally see a lot of players at his age and experience making this many mental mistakes. And that’s really what they are. He’s not just butchering plays left and right because he is being asked to do something he physically can’t do; pretty much everyone who has watched him on a regular basis has said that the errors come as the result of simply whiffing on routine plays when he has plenty of time to glove the ball or make the throw. He makes his fair share of difficult plays; it’s the easy ones that tend to give him problems.
There’s actually a pretty decent Major League player with a similar problem right now; Ryan Zimmerman, the Washington Nationals $100 million third baseman. Zimmerman was a defensive wizard in college and drew comparisons to Evan Longoria, but a combination of shoulder problems and getting in his own head have made routine throws from third base to first base an adventure. The Nationals might have to eventually move Zimmerman to first base just to take the pressure off of him making the throw across the diamond.
This isn’t to say that Miller has “Steve Sax syndrome”, but from most accounts, his defensive problems are mental, not physical. This is either something you beat and it goes away, or it beats you and you change positions. In other words, there’s no real reason to treat Miller like Seager or Franklin — guys who just didn’t have the physical skills necessary to play shortstop and were moved to 3rd and 2nd respectively to compensate for their lack of range — because he’s either a shortstop or he’s an outfielder.
Given Miller’s potential at the plate and the organization’s hole at shortstop, having him stop making these routine mistakes would be in everyone’s best interests. Having a left-handed hitting shortstop who can provide some real offensive value would be a big boost to the team’s talent level, and the best case scenario involves Miller and Franklin teaming up to be the long term double play combination for years to come. Moving him to the outfield might make the defensive issues go away, but that decision should only be made once the organization is convinced that Miller’s error issues aren’t fixable.
And, really, they probably won’t be able to make that determination while he’s in the minor leagues. The only way to judge whether Miller can avoid the routine mistakes under the pressure of a Major League game is in a Major League game. And really, they should be incentivized to give him as a long a look at shortstop as they can afford to.
The 2013 season affords them that chance to take a look. The Mariners season isn’t going anywhere, so if they stick him at shortstop and he makes 25 errors, it’s not going to be the difference between a playoff berth and watching October baseball on TV. You can take some flyers in seasons like this, because the downside if they don’t pay off aren’t as low as they are when you’re trying to win.
The working assumption is that Brad Miller will be called up once the Mariners trade Brendan Ryan to a contender in order to free up a spot for him in the line-up, but I’m not sure I see the point of waiting. Teams know exactly what Brendan Ryan is. They don’t need to watch him play for the next five weeks to know that he’s a plus glove/no hit player who fits perfectly as a part-time player and defensive replacement on a contender. You’re not going to hurt Brendan Ryan’s (minimal) trade value by making him a part-time player now, letting him teach Miller the fundamentals of the position, and serve as a mentor to the kid on defense.
The Mariners already committed a roster spot to Henry Blanco for the sole purpose of having a guy who can teach Mike Zunino the finer points of catching. Ryan might not be the same kind of respected veteran leader, but if you had a young shortstop with defensive issues, who else is better equipped to show Miller how to field the position? Give Miller a month with Ryan around to help him conquer the mental side of playing shortstop, plus give yourself another month to evaluate whether or not he can be your everyday shortstop in 2014.
If you wait until after the trade deadline when Ryan is no longer an impediment, you’re reducing your evaluation time by 30%, and for what gain? Miller’s spent the better part of two years in the minors after spending three years playing high level college baseball. He doesn’t need to spend any more time in Tacoma. He’s not getting fooled by Triple-A pitchers. At this point, it’s not so much about Brad Miller learning as it is the Mariners learning about Brad Miller.
Can he play shortstop? That’s the question that will hang over his head until he’s called up and we see how he responds to the pressures of making the routine play in front of a large crowd. If he’s not a shortstop, better to learn that now and make the OF conversion next spring than to have to figure that out in-season next year and then try to make the IF-OF conversion while meaningful games are being played.
And if he is a shortstop, and he keeps hitting like he’s been hitting since he became a professional, then it helps the 2013 Mariners too. So, let’s not bother waiting until some contender gives the Mariners a C- prospect in exchange for Brendan Ryan. Just make the move now and give Brad Miller three months to show whether or not he can be the long term answer at shortstop.
Game 77, Athletics at Mariners
Jeremy Bonderman vs. Jarrod Parker, 10 minutes ago (sorry)
Parker was brilliant in his rookie campaign, but he’s regressed quite a bit this season. Jeremy Bonderman’s BABIP’d into quite a run of late.
Line-up:
1: Chavez
2: Franklin
3: Seager
4: Ibanez (DH)
5: Gutierrez
6: Smoak
7: Zunino
8: Saunders (LF)
9: Ryan
SP: Bonderman
Game 76, Athletics at Mariners
Aaron Harang vs. Dan Straily, 7:10pm
The M’s playoff chances are no better today than they were yesterday, but I can’t muster any cynicism. It’s a perfect day in the Northwest and Everett, Tacoma and Seattle are all playing at home. Stop reading this and go catch a ball game.
M’s 2nd round pick Austin Wilson’s signed and in uniform for Everett’s double header against Hillsboro. Looks like he’s not in the line up for game 1 (though 1st rounder DJ Peterson’s starting) but may play game 2. The M’s *other* Brazilian hurler, Thiago Vieira starts game 1 with Tyler Olson pitching game 2.
Tacoma kicks off a homestand tonight with James Paxton on the mound. Looks like Erasmo Ramirez is still slated to start tomorrow.
Dan Straily, the great out of nowhere story for the A’s last season, tore through the minors piling up absurd strikeout totals. His cup of coffee with the A’s was underwhelming given his MiLB numbers, but promising despite his HR/9 coming in at 2.5. A 90% strand rate helps make up for a multitude of sins, I guess. This year, the HR rate is normal, so his FIP looks ok, but an equally absurd strand rate of under 60% means he’s given up a ton of runs.
He throws a rising fastball at about 91, a slider (to righties) and a change (to lefties). The latter’s been ok, but he’s prone to hanging
it. His major problem, especially against lefties, is that MLB hitters are barreling his fastball. He may have made some adjustments, but he’s still a fly balling righty throwing 91.
A year ago, AJ Griffin followed right in Straily’s footsteps: late round pick tearing through the minors and putting in some credible work for a playoff A’s team. Griffin was also a flyball pitcher with a rising fastball and even less velocity. Straily got more K’s in the minors, while Griffin’s been better in MLB. If you’d like to work in MLB, definitively answer why Griffin’s done well, why Straily’s been up and down, and, for good measure, why Blake Beavan has been so much worse than both.
Line-up:
1: Chavez
2: Franklin
3: Seager
4: Morales (DH)
5: Ibanez
6: FRANKLIN GUTIERREZ?
7: Smoak
8: Blanco
9: Ryan
SP: Harang
You read that right, Guti’s off the 60-day DL and playing CF. See what I mean about cynicism being essentially futile today? To make room on the 40-man, the M’s DFA’d Eric Thames and placed Mike Morse on the 15-day DL retroactive to Friday.
A Moment In Time
Fewer things in this world are certain than you think. At least, I think so, but I’m not certain of that. Right now, though, at this writing, I can tell you with certainty one thing that’s certain: we’re into the last third of June. And I can tell you another thing that’s certain: at this writing, Munenori Kawasaki owns a higher wOBA than the Seattle Mariners.
Some people might read that and think, yep, that says it all. It doesn’t say it all — it doesn’t say close to it all — but it says a lot more than your average sentence. The Mariners are in a bad situation these days, and it’s unclear what’s going to happen to the people in charge, meaning it’s consequentially unclear what’s going to happen to the roster. How bad is the Mariners’ situation? The priority, last winter, was to beef up the team offense. The team offense isn’t beefed up. The team offense is being out-wOBA’d by Munenori Kawasaki, who we all thought of as a mascot.
This is two stories. This is the story of Kawasaki, and this is the story of the 2013 Mariners, and this is where they come together. I don’t know where things are going to go henceforth. Kawasaki might lose all his playing time to the returning Jose Reyes, and the Mariners might do, I don’t know, anything. But this is what’s true after almost three months. It’s laughably inconceivable, we thought. Funny thing about certainties.
Kawasaki just hit his first big-league home run. It could easily be his last big-league home run, and it wasn’t by any means a moonshot, being measured as the shortest home run of the day. But what matters isn’t that Kawasaki didn’t hit the ball 450 feet; I didn’t know if he could hit the ball 350 feet, and in Toronto, Kawasaki has become a different sort of icon. He was beloved in Seattle for his antics. His personality was unlike anything we’d ever seen. They love his personality in Toronto, too, and that part of Kawasaki hasn’t changed, but he’s also produced as a real-life ballplayer. The Jays could’ve been devastated when Reyes got hurt. Kawasaki hasn’t been Reyes, but he hasn’t been last year’s Kawasaki. Last year’s Kawasaki was so bad Eric Wedge couldn’t bench Brendan Ryan even when he wanted to, because he felt like he didn’t have a backup.
Going deep at home gave Kawasaki an opportunity for a curtain call. It gave him an opportunity to feel appreciated as a player, and not just as a sideshow. They love him there, they love him to death. There are a lot of comparisons made between fandom and relationships. Lose a superstar and it can be hard to watch him succeed somewhere else, because that was your partner, and now he’s happy on greener pastures. I don’t find it at all weird with Kawasaki. I’m thrilled for him and I’m thrilled for Toronto, because it was never a serious thing between us. Kawasaki was a one-summer fling, and there wasn’t long-term potential. You don’t miss that without long-term potential, and it’s great that he’s delighting a new audience. It’s great and it’s great in part because of the improbability.
There were people who wanted the Mariners to hang on to Kawasaki, but almost none of those people cited actual, legitimate baseball reasons. He seemed, to me and to so many, like a simply inadequate baseball player. There was nothing in his bat and his glove wasn’t special, so he had an 80 personality and a 20 skillset. No part of me figured to miss Kawasaki’s on-field ability, and I was pretty surprised when he wound up with a major-league job. Then he wound up starting. Then he wound up being fine, mostly because he stopped swinging, but also because the swings were better. This is another case where I don’t know why we even bother. Last year I evaluated Kawasaki as one of the worst players in baseball. I was so sure of myself, and I loved the guy anyway. It was meaningful to me, that I could love him despite the complete lack of anything valuable. He’s out-hit the Mariners. He’s out-hit some presumed core Mariners. When Kawasaki left, I knew at least he wasn’t good. Turns out he’s less not good than I thought.
Early last year, somebody dropped by Lookout Landing and claimed that Kawasaki would surprise everybody and bat something like .300. It was laughable, and it became even more laughable in retrospect over the course of the season. The idea of Kawasaki batting .300 was like the idea of Jesus Montero batting .400. Kawasaki now is nowhere in the vicinity of .300, but the more general point is that someone saw skills. Skills exist in there, to the extent that he could be out-hitting the Mariners.
So it’s sweet, to see Kawasaki deliver. It’s sweet to know he’s thought of highly, because he deserves it and because baseball is better with Munenori Kawasaki playing a part. It’s bitter when you drag in the Mariners comparison. You want to feel good about the baseball toy that came to life, but you can’t help but notice your assortment of broken machines.
It gets said every year that the Mariners underwhelm, but this team is approaching unwatchable, if it’s not there already. There are, of course, bright spots, and this isn’t, of course, as dreary as 2008, but baseball games are an investment and there are so many of them and the Mariners are bad in so many of them, too many of them. I know I personally don’t remember the last time I wanted to watch the Mariners, and any viewings have been out of some sick sense of obligation. You can tell yourself you’re watching for the prospects, and there’s a lot of youth going around, but that gets tired. You can tell yourself you’re watching for entertainment, for simple good baseball, but that gets tired. There’s no substitute for baseball that matters. The Mariners don’t matter, again, and teams that don’t matter are hard to watch for the season’s last months. At least on a regular basis.
I used to wonder how people graduated to the point of no longer having a one favorite team. How people just tracked all of baseball, picking a bunch of rooting interests, instead of focusing on one club. I focused on the Mariners, primarily and almost exclusively. But it’s a funny thing that happens when your team sucks. Teams that suck are dreadfully off-putting almost all of the time. So you’re left having to make a decision: either you step away from baseball, or you search everywhere for what might be rewarding. It becomes less about getting something out of your investment in a team, and more about getting something out of your investment in a sport.
This is what leads people to bandwagon. They don’t want to say goodbye to baseball — they just want to distract themselves from a team that’s not good. And it’s not always about cheering for other teams. It can be about cheering for other specific players, players you might find curious or interesting or delightful. I’m searching for reasons to give a hoot. Munenori Kawasaki has been one of them. Kawasaki hasn’t made me feel good about the Mariners, but at least he’s made me feel good about baseball, which is the next-best thing. The Mariners, this season, have drained my interest. Kawasaki has busily poured water into the bucket. Or probably energy drink. Or perpetual-motion cocaine. It’s cocaine, except instead of the come-down, more cocaine.
At this moment in time, Munenori Kawasaki has a higher wOBA than the Seattle Mariners. That sentence is why I hate baseball. That sentence is why baseball’s all right.
Game…sigh…75. Athletics at Mariners, I guess
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Bartolo Colon, 7:10pm
He looked again at the 8.5×11″ sheet that functioned as his ticket. “I miss old tickets” he thought, the latest in a litany of complaints he’d considered because he didn’t want to come out and say the real reason for hesitating. Iwakuma’s great, he thought. 2nd best pitcher on the team, having an incredible year. And Bartolo Colon. Could be a pitcher’s duel. Nothing like the tension of a pitcher’s duel. Offense held in check for 5, 6 innings, every at-bat, every ground ball or can of corn bigger than it should be – like every event is wearing a crisp charcoal suit.
You can put a charcoal suit on yet another three-pitch K (last pitch a foot outside) if you want to, he thought, just make sure you put it underground next. Didn’t we just do this? Iwakuma pitched, too. Extra innings without runs. Every event not magnified, not greater than itself – every event just *tired*. It was an ode to sleep, performed by the exhausted. “Excitement” doesn’t just rise over time in a game like that. It rises for a while, and then you get a bit restless, and then it’s all you can do to stop yourself from hating them – you’ve grounded out weakly four times and the fact that it’s close, the fact that this game is statistically improbable, doesn’t make me feel any better when you do it a fifth time.
Colon doesn’t miss bats. Puts the game in motion. Lots of chances. They can play spoiler a bit, with Oakland and Texas in a real race. Always liked Jaso. I’m still really curious to see what Kyle Seager’s ceiling is. I wonder if Nick Franklin will hit 20 HRs one year. How is it that a player can go from high-K to low-K in one year while moving up to the majors? The M’s had prospects, we were just confused over which ones they were. No matter. Montero can’t catch? Zunino can. Ackley can’t be a centerpiece middle-infielder? OK, we’ve got Franklin. The plan’s delayed, that’s all. A’s and Rangers were always going to be tough in 2013. And what can you say about Iwakuma?
Nothing that we haven’t said about Felix. The only good thing about last night was that it wasn’t at home. I hated seeing the crowd in a frenzy after seven straight hits, but I will have nightmares about that happening here. King’s Court stunned, K cards half lifted, hanging around the midsection like a shield. One kid near a field mic still yelling because she’s too young to understand that the M’s aren’t going to come back, that while Felix may not do this again for a long time, we just caught a glimpse of the end. The only thing to do is to be quiet. We go to games to *stop* seeing glimpses like that. That’s what we’re here for, unless Franklin Gutierrez is playing, and then we have an odd kinship with the glimpses – like we have something in common with someone as extraordinary as Franklin Gutierrez. And anyway, Felix has his Mark Trumbo. We hate Trumbo for it, but at least we know it, and we know his role, and hope any of his successes are short-lived and not-enough. We don’t know who Iwakuma’s Trumbo is yet, and that just makes it worse.
1: Chavez
2: Franklin
3: Seager
4: Morales
5: Ibanez
6: Smoak
7: Zunino
8: Saunders
9: Ryan
SP: Iwakuma
Taijuan Walker’s performance last night earned him a promotion. He’ll pitch Tuesday evening at Cheney Stadium.
In other heralded-prospect news, Brazilian lefty phenom Luiz Gohara makes his US debut tonight for Pulaski.
Last night, Edwin Diaz struck out 9 in 6 scoreless innings (giving up just one hit), but the game went scoreless into extra innings, where the P-M’s lost. A fitting introduction.
Mariners Fandom Continues to be Emotionally Abusive
| MARINERS (32-42) | ΔMs | ATHLETICS (43-32) | EDGE | |
| HITTING (wOBA*) | -16.4 (20th) | -8.2 | 17.5 (10th) | Athletics |
| FIELDING (RBBIP) | -21.7 (26th) | -11.5 | 19.4 (4th) | Athletics |
| ROTATION (xRA) | 15.7 (7th) | -5.8 | 12.3 (10th) | Mariners |
| BULLPEN (xRA) | 0.5 (15th) | -2.8 | 4.1 (9th) | Athletics |
| OVERALL (RAA) | -21.9 (19th) | -28.3 | 53.4 (5th) | ATHLETICS |
What a disaster of a series performance! And versus the Angels no less, a team I think I despise over all else in baseball, though that’s a variable and subjective assessment.
In Happier News
Taijuan Walker last night: 26 batters faced, 6 hits, 0 BB, 1 HBP, 12 K
Taijuan Walker, last three starts: 72 batters faced, 12 hits, 1 BB, 1 HBP, 28 K
That’s a 39% strikeout rate over his last three outings, way up from the 25% strikeout rate he was posting in his previous 11 starts. And, obviously, the one walk in three starts is terrific for a guy who has had command problems.
I think, in general, the Mariners pitching prospects have been overhyped. James Paxton is probably a reliever if he’s anything in the big leagues. Danny Hultzen is not a sure thing from a health or performance standpoint. Brandon Maurer needs to develop his curve or change-up or he’s going to profile as a bullpen piece. There’s not a lot of good pitching depth behind those guys, as you’ve seen at the big league level.
Walker, though, is legit. The Mariners should resist the urge to rush him, but I wouldn’t be surprsied if he was pitching in Seattle early next year.
Game 74, Mariner at Angels
King Felix vs. Tommy Hanson, 7:05pm
Ah, Tommy Hanson. Going into 2009, he was the 4th best prospect in baseball according to Baseball America. He put up a 4+ WAR season for Atlanta at 23, and would’ve been one of the most valuable commodities in baseball heading into 2011. This off-season, he was sent to Anaheim in exchange for a so-so relief pitcher. He’s still only 26, and is in his first year of arbitration, but essentially every single number is trending in the wrong direction.
From 2010-2013, his FIP has gone from 3.31 to 5.02. His K% went from 20.5 all the way up to 26.3% before cratering this year at 15.4%. His fastball velocity’s gone from 94mph to 89mph. O-swing? 28.3% to 24.8%. You get the picture – he’s a pitcher in decline. In Hanson’s case, it’s probably health related. The Braves were willing to cut him loose because he’s suffered from shoulder problems that first appeared late in 2011. Many, including some in the Braves, pointed to his odd pitching motion, in which he starts slowly before whipping his arm over the top. In fact, he altered those mechanics last season with the Braves, removing a ‘pause’ in his delivery to maintain momentum and hopefully ease the strain on his shoulder as it accelerates his arm. Obviously, the Braves weren’t thrilled with the results.
This season, Hanson’s made a couple of adjustments – or at least, his pitches seem to indicate a conscious effort to tweak his declining results. First, he’s now a slider/curve dominant pitcher who mixes in a fastball. He’s gone from about 55-60%+ fastballs to around 45% and declining. Those fastballs have become sliders, and he’ll throw the pitch to righties and lefties alike. The second change is more interesting: while he was always an over-the-top pitcher whose fastball had a lot of vertical movement, he’s currently throwing the fastball with the most ‘rise’ in all of MLB. His Angels teammate Jered Weaver is always near the top of that particular table, and he illustrates what can happen when a fastball has freakishly large amounts of vertical movement: lots of pop-ups, harmless fly balls and weak contact. Theoretically, it can help set up a change-up, but Hanson’s is just a show-me pitch he throws about 1% of the time. In general, all of those fly balls can be risky. In Anaheim, that may be a risk worth taking. It’s clearly worked for Weaver, but it seems to be clearly counterproductive for Hanson. His HR/9 has risen each year (it’s basically what’s driving his FIP upwards), and is currently nearly 1.6. Moving to Anaheim may have helped, but moving to the American League…hasn’t.
The other thing a lot of vertical movement can help with is platoon splits – it’s like the opposite of sinkers and their large splits. Weaver’s platoon splits are essentially even, despite his whippy delivery that starts off well to the 3B side. Hanson’s splits are indeed lower so far than his career numbers, and perhaps a bit lower than you’d expect for a guy with Brandon Maurer’s pitch mix. But that’s not all great news – in this case, it’s just an indication that righties and lefties are both hitting well off him. He’s still got splits, and they should be regressed heavily, but this isn’t a match-up where trotting out a right-handed hitter is an unconscionable mistake. Ah, who are we kidding? The M’s are beat up right now and don’t really have the ability to trot out different line-ups even if they wanted to. Morse isn’t starting, but there are non-Hanson related reasons for that.
By FIP, he’s essentially been replacement level this season. But by ERA, he’s adjusting just fine, and having a comeback season. His ERA is over a full run lower than his FIP, thanks to a great strand rate, the highest of his career. With no one on base, he’s been absolutely atrocious, but with RISP, he’s…well, I don’t know if HE’S been great, but his BABIP has been extremely low. That looks like luck, but I do find it kind of odd that Joe Blanton shows the same pattern, as does Jason Vargas. I can almost hear an old-timey pitching coach yelling at his hurlers to “challenge” batters and “make the hitter beat you” with no one on, but poor CJ Wilson’s been brilliant with no one on and worse with runners on base (thankfully, he faced the Mariners last night).
Line-up:
1: Chavez, RF
2: Franklin, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Morales, DH
5: Ibanez, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Saunders, CF
8: Blanco, C
9: Ryan, SS
SP: El Cartelua
DJ Peterson debuted in last night’s Everett win, but he went 0-3 with a walk.
The Rainiers play in Colorado Springs tonight with, uh, Hector Noesi getting the ball. Good luck, Rainiers, and good luck pedestrians of Colorado Springs.
Taijuan Walker starts for AA Jackson against Mobile, Anthony Vasquez continues his comeback with Clinton, and Lars Huijer starts for Everett.
The rookie-level Pulaski Mariners begin their season this evening against Burlington of the Royals org. 2012 3rd-round pick Edwin Diaz gets the opening night start.
Harang or Bonderman: A Poll
Here are the stats for the two Mariners starters who are in the running to get tossed out of the rotation whenever the Mariners decide to bring Erasmo Ramirez back from Tacoma.
| Name | IP | BB% | K% | GB% | HR/FB | BABIP | LOB% | ERA | FIP | xFIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeremy Bonderman | 24.2 | 7% | 8% | 46% | 13% | 0.215 | 86% | 3.28 | 5.48 | 5.14 |
| Aaron Harang | 59.2 | 4% | 22% | 36% | 12% | 0.319 | 64% | 5.73 | 4.18 | 3.87 |
I’m not offering any analysis besides putting those numbers up for you to see.
Which one do you think is going to pitch better going forward?