Game 33, Mariners at Blue Jays
Joe Saunders vs. Brandon Morrow, 10:07am.
The M’s look to complete a sweep of the reeling Jays this morning behind Joe Saunders and an offense that’s legitimately hot right now. Opposing them is old friend Brandon Morrow, who appeared to take a big step forward last year as he seemingly solved his long-standing problems with men on base, posting an ERA under 3 despite his FIP remaining pretty much unchanged in his three seasons in Toronto. Like everything else in Toronto, it hasn’t worked out that way in 2013. Instead, Morrow’s taken a big step back in the early going, with an ERA and FIP over 5.
This isn’t necessarily luck – he’s suddenly become much more hittable this year, with a contact rate well above the league average and a plummeting rate of out-of-zone swings. But perhaps the biggest change has been how lefties have hit him. He’s a fastball/slider pitcher for most of his career, but he’s developed a pretty good splitter which acts as a change, and that’s given him something else to throw against lefties. His HR rates against lefties have been lower than those against righties since he’s been in Toronto, but his K% is the same (or perhaps a bit better against lefties). It’s not that he throws the split to get strikeouts – he uses it early in at-bats. But it may give hitters something else to think about, so they’re vulnerable to two-strike sliders. In 2012, he posted great results against lefties, but in hindsight, it’s possible a lot of that success was BABIP related (it was .226).
In 2013, lefties are torching him. It’s a handful of starts, but lefties are slugging .644 and have five HRs and 13 total XBH in only 83 batters faced. The contact rate issues mean his K rate’s dropped (although it’s dropped more against righties), and he’s walked over 12% of lefties. Now, this will regress towards the mean eventually, but the contact rates give me some pause. In any event, this is probably the best time the M’s could face Morrow, and they’re doing so in good park to hit HRs in, and with two incredibly hot lefty hitters at the top of the line-up. It’s enough to give an M’s fan confidence despite the whole Joe-Saunders-starting-somewhere-other-than-Safeco problem. Go M’s!
1: M. Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Bay, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Montero, C
9: Andino, SS
SP: Joe Saunders
The Rainiers had a turn-back-the-clock to the 1980s yesterday, wearing Tacoma Tigers uniforms. I had Mike Gallego and Curt Young flashbacks, but it apparently didn’t help the Blake Beavan, as the Rainiers were shutout by Charles Brewer and the Reno Aces, ending the R’s 10 game winning streak. Today, they’re wearing Tacoma Giants uniforms. I’m wearing a Tacoma Tigers shirt today, and I encourage all of you to visit the site using lynx or another text-base browser. Jimmy Gilheeney starts today against D’Backs #1 prospect Tyler Skaggs at 1:30 at Cheney.
Game 32, Mariners at Blue Jays
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. RA Dickey, 10:07am
Early game today on yet another glorious NW day. This is a good pitching match-up, and the M’s are as watchable as they’ve been in some time at the moment, but it’s going to be tough to stay inside and watch a game this morning.
Ex-Tacoma Rainier, reigning Cy Young winner RA Dickey came to Toronto in a blockbuster deal with the Mets. He’s coming off a career year in which his K% went through the roof, which helped him strand more runners and take advantage of the knuckleballer’s BABIP /
exception. It all came together for a 4.6 WAR year, but as Dave mentioned he’d been pretty good in his first two years with the Mets as well. The Jays paid a fairly hefty price to land him, but they were landing a dependable starter they could pencil in 3 WAR or so.
Like everything the Jays did in the offseason, it just hasn’t worked out. Dickey’s K% is down, but not dramatically so. His GB% has dropped in each year since 2010, and that’s hurt his HR rate, but again, it’s not abysmal. It’s more a case of each peripheral being a bit worse, and the sum total (and the interaction of the parts) producing a fairly ugly line. He’s had some neck soreness recently which may or may not have contributed to his poor results, but it’s not serious enough to keep him out of today’s game.
On the other side of the coin, Hisashi Iwakuma’s obviously one of the hottest pitchers in the game. It’s an open question as to whether his low workload due to his blister problem is actually a blessing – because he’s been so efficient (and because his BABIP is so low) he’s pitching almost as many innings. Like last year, Iwakuma’s got reverse platoon splits because of his change-up-like splitter. But unlike Ricky Romero or Steve Delabar, that doesn’t come at the expense of poor results against same-handed batters. Iwakuma’s been excellent against everyone this year. Still, it’ll be interesting to see if more managers start putting a bunch of righties in their line-up against him.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Ibanez, DH
6: Shoppach, C
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Chavez, LF
9: Andino, SS
SP: Iwakuma
The Rainiers ran their winning streak to ten games last night with a 7-6 win over Reno. The middle of their line-up, Nick Franklin and Eric Thames, were actually shut down by Aces pitchers, but Nate Tenbrink and Rich Poythress picked up the slack. Blake Beavan makes his 2013 Rainiers debut today.
The Jackson Generals play two vs Jacksonville; Roenis Elias and Chance Ruffin will be the starters. South African control artist Dylan Unsworth takes the hill for Clinton today.
What *IS* Jesus Montero?
OK, besides “really slow?”
Jeff wrote a good post about Jesus Montero wherein he contrasted his Baseball America prospect rankings and Miguel Cabrera comparisons with the cold, sterile fact of his Mariner performance. In the comments, Scraps asked: “Have we asked Baseball America?” That is, have the prospect ranking pros seen enough to change their early assessments? Are these growing pains magnified by the *need* of the M’s fanbase to see one of the lauded team centerpieces break out? Or are they an indication that the skills Montero showed in the minors simply won’t play at this level?
Obviously, there’s no way to know for now, but I took scraps’ advice and reached out to Conor Glassey at BA and Jason Parks at Baseball Prospectus. Both publications had Jesus Montero among their top 10 prospects in baseball rankings; this isn’t a Baseball America issue, and it’s not a Baseball Prospectus issue, nor is it a case of the Yankee hype machine turning Dioner Navarro into an elite prospect. *Everyone* had Montero as an elite bat with poor to piss-poor defense from the C spot.
Conor supplies us with the case for optimism:
“I still believe in Montero. He was the youngest player to hit 15 HR for the Mariners since Alex Rodriguez in 1998. It’s difficult to catch and transition to the big leagues as a hitter. Montero’s .685 OPS isn’t all that different from Matt Wieters’ .695 during his first full season, and he was two years older than Montero at the time.”
And what about Jason Parks? OK sure, he wasn’t the guy putting Montero in the top-10 pre-2012, but it wasn’t solely Conor’s call for BA either. In any event, here’s your pessimistic viewpoint:
“I watched Montero a lot this ST and he ripped average pitching, just like he did in the minors. But stuff could beat him, especially good breaking stuff. The elephant in the room when it comes to scouting is that projection is abstract, and no matter how sure you are about the player, you can’t accurately simulate or forecast what a minor leaguer will do at the major league level until they arrive at that level. Montero had all the signs of an impact talent, but he hasn’t made the necessary adjustments at the highest level and I’m not sold that he can. He will always be able to hit bad balls, but not being able to deal with plus stuff is always going to be an issue, and its quite likely that he just isn’t wired (neurologically speaking) to recognize and react on the same level as other top bats in the game.”
How do we evaluate this? Well, I’m not entirely sure. But as I’m blogger, I guess I can always go with a trusty Fangraphs table. The problem is trying to narrow down a comparable group. Since 1990, ten players have made at least 200 plate appearances as rookie catchers at age 22 or younger. The group’s a pretty illustrious one, with Joe Mauer, Ivan Rodriguez and Brian McCann among the ten. There are some (familiar) cautionary tales in there too, of course, like Ben Davis. So: we’ve learned that it is exceedingly rare to come up and get much more than a cup of coffee at the age Montero did last year. It also highlights the problem with catcher comparisons: there are essentially two different groups. The first is the pure catchers; the fact that Ivan Rodriguez didn’t really hit at age 19 misses the point. Then there are the bat-first guys that teams hope can stick at the position in the big leagues, even if they’ll never really dominate. Michael Barrett and Jarrod Saltalamacchia belong in this group – as does Montero.
At other positions, it’s not terribly rare for a 21-22 year old to play, as the M’s have seen recently in facing Mike Trout and Manny Machado. But at catcher, it’s not terribly common – something Conor emphasized above. Expanding the age range gets you more players – the college catchers like Buster Posey, Jeff Clement, Mike Piazza, Matt Wieters up through Yasmani Grandal. By wRC+, Jesus Montero’s rookie campaign with Seattle was the 15th best of the group (of 65 players). The raw numbers were much worse, but in context, Montero had a surprisingly good season, even comparing him to older, college-trained catchers. If you eliminate the guys with elite on-base skills (Mauer, Alex Avila, etc.) and the whiff-prone (Salty, Napoli, Clement), you’ve got a decent looking set of comps from Miguel Montero, AJ Pierzynski, Javy Lopez, Eli Marrero and Ryan Doumit. Again, this shows that catchers often do develop later, and that, like all players, they improve at the plate with MLB experience. And Jesus Montero’s first season featured better hitting (adjusted for context) than any of the aforementioned group.
The larger point of course is that Jesus Montero probably isn’t a catcher at all, and thus it doesn’t matter if his bat may compare well with Wilson Ramos’ or even Miguel Montero’s. Catchers generate so much value because of their scarcity; this makes Montero’s 123 wRC+ elite. But give the same hitting stats to a 1B, and he’s barely above average (Paul Goldschmidt’s 123 and position got him 2.8 WAR last year). Add in the base-running penalty because, well, you know, and the gap between where Jesus Montero stands now and where he needs to be looks massive. To have any hope, the power projections that many saw in the minors need to start showing up. His blast in Houston shows that he’s got power, but he’s going to have to show he can drive breaking balls, at least occasionally (he hit a cutter out of Safeco on 4/27, which was pretty encouraging).
The name I keep coming back to is Ryan Doumit (aka “No-Mitt”), the “C” who came up with Pittsburgh, and has bounced between catching, 1B and corner OF spots with the Pirates and now the Twins. While Doumit developed late (as the Pirates kept trying to improve his defense), at his peak around age 27, he was a well above average hitter who paired good contact skills with some power. Improvement in plate discipline with significant growth in ISO he moves into his mid-late 20s…this is a good blueprint for Montero, and it’s good to see that MLB’s been able to wring some value from a catcher-in-name-only in the recent past. But at the same time, we’re assuming fairly big improvement in both power and contact, and we *still* don’t have a legitimate impact bat. Doumit still catches more than he plays other positions, and that helps get his value up towards average. If Montero moves off the position for the majority of his PAs (as he’d have to with Zunino on the team), it’s going to be awfully tough for him to add meaningful value above an average player. So, any time you want to push that ISO over .200 or so, that’d really help, Jesus.
Thank you for reading this not-as-good-as-Jeff’s Montero article.
Game 31, Mariners at Blue Jays
King Felix vs. Ricky Romero, 4:07pm
It’s been a weird 12-13 months for Ricky Romero. He was Toronto’s opening day starter in 2012 following a 2011 in which his ERA was below 3. There were some mixed signals that were perhaps buried by his lovely RA – a very high strand rate, lower K rate, higher HR rate, but fundamentally, Romero was a solid lefty starter who used a very good change-up to get ground balls and enough strikeouts to pitch around so-so control and command. In 2012, he essentially collapsed – his walk rate spiked, his strikeout rate fell, and he simply couldn’t get out of innings. It all added up to nearly 6 runs per 9, and no guarantee of a spot in Toronto’s revamped rotation in 2013.
Late in spring training, the Blue Jays (who’d added Josh Johnson, RA Dickey and Mark Buehrle) took the extreme step of sending Romero to the minors to work on salvaging his command. Not just AAA, though. Instead, the Jays sent Romero back to high-A ball, in the pitcher-friendly Florida State League. He’s made one start at that level, and now injuries have forced the Jays to bring him back and hope that he figured something out against the Brevard County Manatees. When we last saw Romero, he threw a 91mph fastball, a curve to lefties and a change-up to righties. Because the latter was a heck of a lot better than the former, Romero’s got reverse platoon splits for his career, with lefties battering him for a .370 wOBA while righties have hit just 3.08. This isn’t just BABIP either, as his FIPs follow the same pattern. It would have been somewhat frustrating to see Wedge deploy a righty-heavy line-up in a game like this, but injuries to Franklin Gutierrez and the inability of Raul Ibanez to hit pitched baseballs have taken the guesswork out of it. Michael Saunders and Jason Bay start because there’s really no other option right now. In any event, the M’s need to be patient and work counts to see if Romero’s command has returned.
HAPPY FELIX DAY!
1: Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Bay, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Montero, C
9: Ryan, SS
SP: King Felix
James Paxton starts for Tacoma tonight against Reno, while the M’s affiliates in A and AA have both been rained out. Jeremy Bonderman had his first good outing for the Rainiers last night in Tacoma’s 8-0 win (their ninth in a row). John Stearns takes over a team that’s cruising right now, somewhat similar to the last time Tacoma had its manager called up to the majors unexpectedly.
Clinton OF Jabari Henry’s received some national attention for his hot start. After yesterday’s two-HR game, he’s now the proud owner of a .397/.511/.616. That .511 OBP edges out Nick Franklin’s .500 for best in the org, and it’s actually leading all of the minors. The FIU product is obviously gunning for a promotion to the Cal League, where he could team up with Jabari Blash to form a rare double-Jabari outfield.
On Nick Franklin and Promotions
I guess this is the off-day topic du jour: should the Mariners promote Nick Franklin, who was hitting .400/.524/.600 in Tacoma before his 0-4 night tonight? Marc emailed me to find out if I had a take, so I guess I should weigh in. I will note, though, that my opinion is basically ambivalence.
I think you can make a pretty good case that Nick Franklin is a better player, right now, than Robert Andino, because Robert Andino is basically a scrub, so the bar we’re asking Franklin to clear is very low. So, if the only question that mattered was whether or not Franklin would make the 2013 Mariners better, then yes, I’d probably support calling him up, and either jettisoning Andino — who would almost certainly clear waivers, given his salary, so putting him through waivers doesn’t guarantee you’d lose him — or dumping Ibanez and giving the team a little more flexibility on the bench. But, I think we all know the latter has no chance of happening, so we’ll set that aside for now.
But promoting a player from Triple-A isn’t simply about whether he’s better than a bad player on the big league roster, especially for a team in the Mariners situation. I know there’s some optimism returning now that the Mariners spent a week beating up on bad pitching staffs — their last 10 games have come against the teams rated 27th, 29th, and 30th in the majors in xFIP, and the Blue Jays are rated 28th, so this is the softest possible schedule to hit against — but the chances of the 2013 Mariners making the playoffs are essentially slim to none.
Dan Szymborski re-ran his ZIPS projections on May 1st, and he had the Mariners with a playoff probability of 2.5%, down from 10% on opening day. While you can say that April was just one month, it was a month that made it exceedingly unlikely that this team would put together a surprise run to October this year.
So, I don’t think the Mariners should be attempting to maximize 2013 wins at all cost right now. If they’re going to promote a player from the minor leagues, it should be because his development will be more fruitful facing Major League competition than facing minor league competition. And I don’t think I can say that’s true of Nick Franklin.
Yes, the batting line is fantastic, but please keep a few things in mind:
1. It’s not even 90 plate appearances. Weird things happen in a month. Carlos Gomez is currently the fourth best hitter in MLB. Lucas Duda is hitting as well as Prince Fielder. 90 plate appearances, at any level, simply do not tell a real story. Nick Franklin has been very good in Triple-A for a month, but he was pretty bad there for a few months last year. There are signs that he’s improving, which is good, but it’s not like he’s dominated PCL pitching.
Right now, he’s drawing walks and he has a high BABIP. The BABIP is almost certainly not going to carry over, and the walks aren’t that likely to either, unfortunately. Walk rate has one of the weakest correlations of any statistic between the minors and the majors. That he’s making better contact and controlling the strike zone is certainly a positive development, but it doesn’t mean he’s going to do that exact same thing when he faces big league pitching.
2. It’s the PCL. You have to heavily discount offensive numbers for everyone in Tacoma because of the league they play in. It is the most hitter friendly league in the entire sport. The difference between the run environment in Tacoma and in Seattle is as stark as any you’ll find. Not only is Franklin facing minor league pitching, he’s facing minor league pitching in ballparks where is downright scary to throw a strike.
People underestimate park effects for non-HR events. You hear that a guy got hurt by Safeco when his long fly ball gets caught at the warning track, but people don’t talk about the rest of the things that go along with high run environments. Because there are more baserunners, it’s more likely that a hitter will face the same pitcher multiple times, and hitters perform better against pitchers they’ve already faced that day, with the improvement increasing each time around the order. Most Triple-A teams don’t have great middle relievers, either, so high scoring games lead to the worst pitchers on the staff getting onto the mound at increased frequency.
It’s not as simple as noting that Franklin only has three home runs so the PCL effects aren’t helping him. It’s a great league for hitters for a variety of reasons, and you have to account for those whenever you’re looking at any PCL hitter, not just the guys like Carlos Peguero or Mike Carp.
3. Nick Franklin has primarily been playing second base. His start at shortstop tonight was only his seventh of the year at the position, even though the obvious playing time for him in Seattle would be at short. Put simply, there aren’t that many people who think that he’s physically capable of playing shortstop in the big leagues at an acceptable level. Now, I think it’s at least somewhat humorous that the Mariners might not be willing to play Franklin at short while also catching Jesus Montero and using guys like Michael Morse and Raul Ibanez in the outfield, but if Franklin is to shortstops what Jesus Montero is to catching, then playing him there probably won’t help the team in a meaningful way and may very well hurt his trade value.
There’s an old phrase that goes something like this: “Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” A lot of people think Nick Franklin probably can’t play shortstop long term, but sticking him there in the big leagues will essentially give every team a chance to see his shortcomings for themselves, on a pretty grand stage. Especially if you’re scouting the Mariners and you get Franklin one day and Brendan Ryan the next, or if Ryan comes in as a late inning defensive replacement, the contrast is going to be highly unflattering.
The Mariners already traded Nick Franklin once. Assuming they’re not ready to give up on Dustin Ackley, I wouldn’t be surprised if they expected to try and trade him again at some point in the future. Brad Miller is the current shortstop of the future, so Franklin would just be auditioning to play out of position for a while until Miller took his job — which he might be ready to do later this year, if he can stop making so many errors, anyway — and the potential damage that might do to Franklin’s trade value has to be a consideration.
Nick Franklin would probably make the Mariners a little bit better, if they dumped Robert Andino in order to call him up. He would probably make the Mariners no better, or not significantly better, if they dumped Brendan Ryan in order to call him up. He would not make the Mariners drastically better, and the difference in 2013 value probably wouldn’t have any meaningful positive impact on the franchise long term.
You don’t call Nick Franklin up because you’re tired of Brendan Ryan making outs, or because you just want to try something different. That’s not a good thought process. That’s an emotional reaction to frustration, and it isn’t how the Mariners should be deciding who is on the roster. You call up Nick Franklin if you think you have an everyday job for him that he’s capable of succeeding in. I don’t know too many people who think Nick Franklin is ready to handle an everyday SS job in the big leagues. It won’t hurt him to spend more time in Tacoma. It won’t hurt the Mariners to keep playing Brendan Ryan at shortstop.
If they make the switch, I won’t be outraged. After all, they’ve already rushed Brandon Maurer into a rotation spot he’s not ready for, and they’re asking Jesus Montero to play a position he can’t physically play, and there’s no way Franklin’s defense at short can be as embarrassing as Ibanez’s in the outfield. But I’m not sure calling up Nick Franklin actually solves any problems for the Mariners unless your view of a team’s problems are so narrow that they’re constrained to “we need more offense from the shortstop position.” That shouldn’t be how the organization views it’s problems. The Mariners roster needs more talented players, but it needs those talented players to be put in a position to succeed. Forcing a round peg into a square hole simply because you really want the peg to be square doesn’t work.
Nick Franklin’s real value to the Mariners is insurance in case Ackley continues to suck or a trade chip in case he does not. Could they play him at short for a while and get away with it? Maybe, and it might even get them an extra win in a season where an extra win won’t matter. But I don’t see a compelling case to push Franklin into a role he’s probably not suited for in order to chase that kind of upgrade.
Game 30, Orioles at Mariners
Aaron Harang vs. Wei-Yin Chen, 7:10pm
The M’s made a personnel move today, sending Blake Beavan down to Tacoma and recalling lefty Lucas Luetge. This season’s been an absolute disaster for Beavan; his attempt to change his arm slot has to rival Dustin Ackley’s abortive swing change for the least successful tweak in baseball. Since he came up in 2011, Blake Beavan actually adjusted his arm angle twice. He moved it upwards in 2012 too, but that didn’t seem to do much. The pre-2013 tweak got more attention, in part because he went outside the org to work on the change and because it was thought that the change would help his consistency from pitch to pitch. During the spring, his delivery did seem to be more over-the-top, but the actual adjustment was fairly small. It was no bigger than his 2011-to-2012 change, and while it made his pitches move slightly differently, it certainly wasn’t a mechanical overhaul.
So far during the regular season, Beavan’s given away most of that increase in his vertical release point – it’s now pretty much exactly where it was in September of last year. More worryingly, while a more over-the-top delivery can produce a downward plane and reduce platoon splits, it hasn’t helped Beavan against *right* handed hitters. In his 2011 campaign, Beavan got killed by lefties (.370 wOBA), but held righties to a stingy .287 wOBA and a 4.30 FIP. That’s not great, especially as the wOBA was BABIP driven, but it’s not awful. In 2012, after increasing his vertical release point, his wOBA to righties was up to .319 while his wOBA against lefties remained terrible. So far in 2013, he’s gotten killed by right-handers. Beavan never struck out many righties, despite throwing plenty of sliders and curves, but his low BABIP may have been related to pop-ups and high flies he was able to generate. At this point, I might have Beavan go back to a much flatter, more low-3/4 arm angle and see if he’s able to get righties out again.* It’s also quite possible that his entire 1+ year record of being moderately troubling to right-handed hitters was a BABIP mirage, in which case there’s not a whole lot to do.
That’s an awful lot about a minor transaction, and I realize I probably write about Beavan too much as it is. But it’s actually odd how many similarities you can spot between Beavan and tonight’s Oriole starter, Wei-Yin Chen. Like Beavan, Chen’s been an extreme fly-ball pitcher – his 35.6% career GB rate is actually a tiny bit lower than Beavan’s 37.1%. He throws a four-seam fastball at 90-91mph, that’s generated a touch over 11″ of vertical movement, giving it the appearance of ‘rise.’ Beavan throws a four-seam fastball at 91mph getting just under 11″ of vertical movement this year. Sure, it’s not perfect as Chen’s a lefty and 90-91 from a lefty’s qualitatively different than 90-91 from a righty, but this illustrates just how fine the differences in command, deception and consistency are and the differences they can make in results. Chen struck out about 19% of the batters he faced last year, whereas Beavan…did not.
Chen’s K% is down so far this year, but he’s faced a pretty tough group of opponents: Tampa, Boston, the Yankees, the Dodgers and finally Oakland. Despite that, his RA is sterling and his FIP’s lower thanks to a drop in his Beavan-esque HR/9. That said, this is a better match-up for the M’s than Jason Hammel. It’s not a great match-up, and the Orioles line-up is still tough against a righty who’s giving up more hard contact than Brandon Maurer. I’m going to watch the Chris Davis at-bats through my fingers. OK, nevermind, this isn’t a great match-up at all. Aaron Harang looked sort of intriguing in his first start, but really, really looked like a guy who’d just been DFA’d by the Rockies recently. C’mon M’s. Poach a game.
1: Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Bay, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Montero, C
9: Andino, SS
SP: Harang
I’d be tempted to put Montero at 6th, but this line-up makes sense against a lefty like Chen.
Jimmy Gilheeney was excellent in his AAA debut, throwing 6+ shutout innings with 9 Ks. Nick Franklin went 3-3 and is now batting .410/.538/.623, which is a pretty decent batting line. He’s certainly making things interesting for the FO. Andrew Carraway gets the start tonight against Tucson – it’s his first appearance since losing his no-hit bid late in the game in Las Vegas. Taijuan Walker takes the hill for Jackson, Trevor Miller starts for High Desert and Tyler Pike gets the ball for Clinton. Good day in M’s prospect land.
* Since the beginning of 2012, Beavan’s used a sinker a lot more, and his four-seamer less often. Correlation is not causation and all of that, but the sinker’s generated terrible results. I suggested he throw it more going into 2012, so it’s not like it was a terrible idea…it’s just a terrible pitch. Going back to a four-seam/curve/change/slider repertoire couldn’t hurt, I suppose.
A Quick Note About Brandon Maurer
Marc talked about this in the game thread last night, and lots of other people have noticed this before, so I’m not breaking any news here, but Brandon Maurer has a pretty serious flaw, and it was on full display last night; he’s got nothing to throw left-handed batters.
Maurer has four pitches, but he’s primarily a fastball/slider guy. He throws his slider a lot, in fact. Among qualified starters, PITCHF/x only has three pitchers throwing more pitches classified as sliders than Brandon Maurer this year. As you probably know, the slider has the biggest platoon split of any pitch in baseball. There’s a reason every situational reliever in baseball throws a million sliders. It’s why the Mariners have a bullpen full of match-up guys who just come in and throw slider after slider.
The slider is not a good pitch to opposite handed hitters, but it’s great against same-handed hitters. Pitchers who throw a lot of sliders tend to have huge platoon splits. Brandon Maurer has huge platoon splits.
Vs RHB: 17 2/3 IP, 16 H, 1 HR, 2 BB, 16 K, .250/.304/.359
Vs LHB: 12 IP, 19 H, 4 HR, 6 BB, 2 K, .359/.424/.717
A lot has been made about how bad Maurer was early, then how he “found it” for three starts, then “lost it” again last night. In reality, what actually happened is that he faced two teams with a decent number of LHBs in his first two starts, then had three starts against the RHB-heavy Rangers and Angels, then had to face a bunch of lefties again last night. His up-and-down performances have basically been tied to how many left-handers the opponent has been able to stack against him.
In general, right-handed starters are going to face more left-handed hitters than right-handed hitters, since most teams have enough hitters from boths sides to play the match-ups and get the platoon advantage against pitchers with big splits. For a pitcher to succeed in the rotation, he essentially has to be able to keep opposite handed hitters at bay, at least to a reasonable degree. The way most pitchers do that is with a change-up, which has a reverse platoon split.
Brandon Maurer has a change-up. When facing lefties this year, he’s thrown it 43 times. It has produced terrible results. Opposing batters have swung and missed at his change-up just twice, and they have a higher contact rate against his change-up (93.8%) than they do against his fastball (89.2%). Maurer knows his change-up isn’t a very good out pitch right now, which is why when he gets to two strikes against left-handers, he’s actually throwing 55% sliders and only 3% change-ups. When he wants a swing-and-miss, even against a lefty, he goes to a pitch that dives right into LHBs hot zones.
The difference between his slider against RHBs and LHBs tells the story. Per BrooksBaseball, Maurer has gotten 20% called strikes and 22% swinging strikes on his slider against right-handers. Against lefties, he still gets 19% called strikes, but the swinging strike rate drops to 10%. At-bats by RHBs that end with a slider result in a .194 average and .278 slugging percentage. At-bats against lefties that end with a slider result in a .438 average and .750 slugging percentage.
Brandon Maurer’s slider is a real weapon against RHBs, but he can’t keep featuring it against lefties like he is now. It is not an out pitch against opposite handed hitters. Pitches that move horizontally towards a hitter generally do very poorly. The change-up, curveball, and splitter do well against opposite handed hitters because they move up and down, not side to side.
Maurer has a curve ball, but he doesn’t throw it very much, and his change-up isn’t very good right now. He’s young, so it’s certainly possible that these pitches will develop and give him weapons against LHBs in time, but right now, he’s basically a righty specialist being asked to start. When he runs into RHB heavy line-ups, he’ll look great, because his FB/SL combination is very good against RHBs. When he runs into LHB heavy line-ups, well, you’ve seen what happens.
I like Brandon Maurer, and I think there’s potential for him to turn into a good starter at some point. But, right now, Brandon Maurer is at least one pitch shy of being a good big league starter. Either the change-up or the curve need to take a big step forward, or else he’s going to keep getting pounded by line-ups that have good left-handed hitters. There are a lot of good left-handed hitters in baseball. Asking Brandon Maurer to get them out right now is simply not fair to him, nor is it helping his development.
In the minors, Maurer could simply be told to throw x number of change-ups and curveballs each game in order to further develop those pitches. In the majors, his job is to get hitters out, and so he leans on the pitches he trusts the most. The problem is that he’s not really pitching that well, and featuring his fastball and slider on a regular basis won’t help his change-up or curveball get any better.
Unfortunately, the Mariners don’t really have any pitching depth. Aaron Harang would probably be on the chopping block if the team had any decent Major League starters in Triple-A, and they’d need two MLB starters in order to dump Harang and get Maurer more time in the minors. It is not clear where the Mariners can find another decent big league starter — Erasmo Ramirez doesn’t sound like he’s anywhere close to returning, and given the quiet nature of the team’s updates around him, I suspect we might not see him at all this year — much less two. So, Brandon Maurer is probably going to stay in the rotation, and he’s probably going to keep having these up-and-down performances based on how many LHBs the opposing manager can stick in the line-up against him.
Hopefully, his change-up and curveball can improve at this level, even without getting a lot of in-game practice. He needs more than just his slider.
Game 29, Orioles at Mariners
Brandon Maurer vs. Jason Hammel, 7:10pm
I keep thinking about Jeff’s post yesterday about Carlos Peguero. We’ve all written him off a bit in part because his flaws seem too significant to overcome. Like, he could make huge strides in his contact rate over the next couple of years and that would get him to “severe problem” level as opposed to “hopeless.” Jeff mentions Chris Davis, who, once upon a time, *was* Carlos Peguero (albeit with small-sample success in the major leagues as opposed to small-sample comedy). Even last year, Davis put together a solid season despite a 30+% K rate. This year, his K% is way down at 23%, his contact rate is up over 5 percentage points, and he’s off to a brilliant start. It’s not just Davis – Eno Sarris has a good piece on platoon LF Nate McLouth whose swing rate is way, way down in the early going, leading to a halving of his K% so far (it’s also netted him a lot more walks). Sure, part of the way the Orioles have gone from a bottom-10 to a top-10 team in K% was just jettisoning Mark Reynolds, but it certainly appears that the Orioles have helped some of their players make some significant plate discipline changes.* I’d love to figure out what, if anything, the Orioles did, or if it’s just a case of players maturing on their own.
The Orioles line-up is a pretty good one, and they’re the reason Baltimore’s 15-11. The line-up seems particularly well-matched to right-handed starters, where McLouth can play/lead-off, and then the middle of the order includes Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, Chris Davis and Matt Wieters – that’s three lefties in the middle, with another lefty leading off. All of this is to say: this is a much tougher test for Brandon Maurer than the Texas Rangers were. The Rangers and Angels are absurdly weighted towards right-handed hitters. The Orioles are a bit more balanced, as Nolan Reimold can sub in for McLouth against lefties. That’s not to say the task is hopeless – I’m sure Maurer is more confident than he’s ever been, and he’s pitching in a park that saps power, which is still a strength of the O’s line-up. Maurer still has just one strikeout against a lefty, versus a FIP darn near 8. It’ll be interesting to see if he goes to his change-up more; his slider’s been poor against lefties, even as a change of pace, so even showing the change-up may help set up his fastball.
The Orioles start Jason Hammel, the reclamation project (they’ve got a lot of those, looking over the roster) whom they turned into a sinkerballer last year. The major change in his approach make career numbers less relevant, but he’s essentially a sinker/slider guy now, with the occasional change-up and curve to lefties. Last year, his slider was a swing-and-miss weapon, generating strikeouts and grounders alike. This year, it’s not generating whiffs, and thus his strikeout rate has tanked. It’s only been a month, and god knows a few struggling Angel pitchers got back on track in this park last week, but it’s possible Hammel’s still not 100% from the knee injury that sidelined him last year. It’s not just the strikeouts and whiffs: his GB% and velocity are also way down. He’s been reasonably successful thus far thanks to a low BABIP, but he doesn’t appear to be the breakout pitcher he was in 2012.
Having Michael Saunders back at the top of the line-up makes me a lot more confident. The M’s wOBA against righties and lefties is about the same, but that’s driven by BABIP. The M’s hit for more power, strikeout less and walk more against lefties. Saunders brings balance to the line-up and can actually get on base for Morales and Morse. In fact, Saunders/Seager/Morales at the top of the line-up is a pretty good way to start off against a guy like Hammel.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Bay, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Shoppach, C
9: Ryan, SS
SP: Maurer
Wonder if that whole “Andino is now the starting SS” experiment is already over?
The M’s signed OF Corey Patterson to a minor league deal today.
Jimmy Gilheeney’s pitching for Tacoma tonight at Cheney Stadium; he’s up from AA taking Danny Hultzen’s spot while Hultzen rests his ailing shoulder. M’s are saying all the right things about the rotator cuff strain, and that Hultzen will be back in a few weeks to a month, but I’m still nervous about anything in the shoulder area.
Victor Sanchez made his second start for Clinton today, and had another solid start, going 6IP and giving up 3R on 6H with 3Ks. Not a lot of missed bats, but two quality starts for an 18-year old in full season ball is nothing to sneeze at. Why you’d sneeze AT a stat line, I have no idea. Just seems like a really odd reaction.
* So what about Adam Jones, whose K% is higher than it’s been in years? Well, his swing and o-swing rate is down, his whiff rate is down, and his contact rate is higher than it was last year.
The Mariners Got Very Lucky This Winter
Over the winter, the Mariners made a strong play to sign Josh Hamilton. According to Ryan Divish, they offered Hamilton a four year, $100 million guarantee with two options that could vest easily, each tacking another $25 million onto the deal. If both options vested, the total contract would have been worth $150 million over six years. The Angels ended up signing Hamilton for $125 million over five years, all of it guaranteed.
And a month in, that contract looks like an unmitigated disaster. As I note in that piece over on FanGraphs, Josh Hamilton has been a below average hitter for the last five months, spanning a total of 543 plate appearances. Over the last calendar year, he’s been the equal of Jason Kubel at the plate. In that last year, Hamilton has been a less valuable player than Michael Saunders.
There’s an old adage about how the best deals a GM makes are often the ones he doesn’t make. That was certainly true with Bill Bavasi, who got outbid for Barry Zito back when he threw $100 million at the soft-tossing lefty only to see him sign with the Giants. I know there were a lot of people who were upset that the Mariners missed out on Hamilton this winter, but everyone should be thanking their lucky stars that the Angels outbid them right now.
I don’t think Hamilton is going to keep hitting .200 all year, and he will eventually get hot and launch a bunch of home runs, but that contract already looks like a bad investment, and it’s just getting started. For all the talk about how the Mariners need to step up and spend money to prove that they’re trying to win, let’s be thankful that the front office has not followed the Angels lead down the path of overrated and overpaid declining old guys. The M’s roster has a lot of problems, but at least those problems are fixable.
What the Angels are going to do in a few years when they’re paying Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton a combined $60 million per year to be average players is going to be pretty interesting, especially given that they probably have the worst farm system in baseball right now. The Angels were supposed to be mortgaging their future for some present greatness, and then they’d use the revenues from all that winning to offset their future problems. That plan might work if you’re winning, but right now, the Angels are a mess and their 2013 season might result in the same kind of organizational reboot that I think the Mariners are headed for. Only their reboot is going to have to work around a few hundred million in bad contracts, and they have little help coming through the farm system.
So, next time you look at the Mariners roster and wish it was better, just remember, you could be an Angels fan…
Game 28, Orioles at Mariners
Joe Saunders vs. Zach Britton, 7:10pm
The Orioles famously won 93 games and won the wild card (while playing in the toughest division in baseball) last season despite being picked last by nearly every major baseball outlet/scribe. There were a number of reasons they outperformed their runs scored/runs allowed – an insane record in one-run games and in extra innings, for example. In related news, their cobbled-together bullpen was a force. Adam Jones broke out and Mark Reynolds was solid enough on offense. One hidden source of wins enabling them to hold off the Angels was, well, the Mariners. The O’s went 8-1 against the M’s as their starting rotation, which was in shambles after Jason Hammel’s injury, flat-out dominated Mariner hitters (a .610 OPS-against, a 3.3 K:BB ratio, etc.). Sure, sure, the M’s were eminently dominatable, but so were Baltimore’s starting pitchers. Zach Britton was hurt, Brian Matusz ended up in the bullpen, Tommy Hunter started giving up HRs in pre-game warm-ups, they ended up giving starts to Dana Eveland, because why not…. get past Wei-Yin Chen and it was ugly.
Zach Britton was responsible for some of that ugliness after coming back from a shoulder injury that plagued the end of his 2011 campaign. Since the All-Star Break in that year, Britton’s been ineffective, hurt, or both – giving up well over 5 runs per 9IP thanks in large part to poor command. As is usually the case, the picture’s a lot better looking at FIP. His velocity’s still there, and his strikeout rate’s even improved. But between shoulder woes and his patchy 2012, he began the 2013 campaign back in AAA Norfolk. There he worked on refining his sinker, which he apparently threw about 80% of the time. His ERA was great with Norfolk, but that was despite hitting/walking eight batters and getting only five strikeouts total in three starts. I don’t think he’s going to model himself after Aaron Cook in the big leagues, but this adjustment may be a good idea. He mixed in several four-seamers with his sinker last year, and that was easily his worst pitch. Five of his six HRs came on four-seamers despite the fact he threw it much less frequently. In his brief career, opposing hitters are slugging .667 on the pitch. Ditching it, and going with his slider and change to back up the sinker seems like it’s worth a try.
It’s an especially good move against Seattle. The M’s have struggled mightily against ground-ball pitchers thus far, posting only a .445 OPS. They’ve faced some decent GB pitchers (Lucas Harrell), but I don’t think I’ve been as down on the M’s as when they were absolutely throttled by Derek Lowe (whom I honestly thought had retired). Britton’s probably the most GB-heavy starter they’ve faced, too. On the plus side, he’s a lefty, and the M’s have fared better against lefty starters than righties. But it’s easy to fashion a post-hoc justification* for their awful splits: a team that relies on power so much is going to struggle when fewer balls are hit to the outfield. Mike Morse’s career splits against high grounder pitchers are terrible, and he’s a huge part of the offense.**
Michael Saunders is back from the DL and leading off tonight. As expected, the M’s sent Carlos Peguero back to AAA Tacoma to make room.
Man, Joe Saunders home/road splits are…severe. I’m glad this series is in Safeco. It’s absurdly early, but thus far, “New” Safeco’s playing pretty much *exactly* the way Jeff Sullivan predicted. Safeco’s seen 1.86 HRs per game, not too far off the league average of 2.04 – and a substantial increase over its 1.4 mark last year. But the total run environment hasn’t changed all that substantially. Mariner pitchers have been flat-out dominant at home, striking out nearly 25% of opposing batters, and posting a FIP barely over 3. Unearned runs push their RA9 to 3.57, but that’s still excellent. On the road, their K% drops to 18%, and their FIP is *5.17*. Their RA9 is basically *two full runs per game higher* on the road. Yes, this is clearly influenced by the parks they’ve played in (Texas-y ballparks), but this pattern – a so-so rotation that looks great at home, not so much on the road – was exactly what we saw last year. This was our Bayesian prior! Still, it’s kind of funny to see it play out again, just the way it did in 2012. At home, M’s pitchers are a bit like 2012 David Price. On the road, they’ve been a bit like 2012 Ubaldo Jimenez.
Line-up, now with infinitely more Canadian Content
1: M. Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, 1B
4: Morse, RF
5: Montero, C
6: Smoak, DH
7: Bay, LF
8: Andino, 2B
9: Ryan, SS
SP: J. Saunders
Yes, so Dustin Ackley sits against a lefty. I understand the move, and if he needs a day, then I’d rather have it come against a lefty than a righty, but we’re playing BOTH Andino and Ryan again. The whole ‘The M’s hit well but just got unlucky with men in scoring position’ theory founders when line-ups stack Smoak near Andino and Ryan.
* Yes, post-hoc rationalizing of an odd statistic you come across isn’t the best way to go about things. This has been your up-front acknowledgement/warning that this isn’t terribly serious analysis. Just something I’m going to keep an eye on.
** It’s somewhat counter intuitive, I guess, but Dustin Ackley’s fared better than his overall average against GB pitchers. He tops four-seamers, but sinkers drop onto the sweet spot of his bat – his HR rate is actually higher against them than it is for fly-ballers. Kendrys Morales is essentially the same hitter against all pitcher types, as is Justin Smoak, albeit a worse one.