More on Ichiro!
Nate Silver has a good free piece over at BP on Ichiro and offensive batting average on balls in play. Since we’re being inundated by a bunch of ridiculous “Ichiro isn’t as good as you think” type articles, this one is a breath of fresh air.
Me vs Ichiro!
For the first time since I took semi-organized baseball back up over softball, I had more hits tonight than Ichiro! (1-2, 1 HBP, 1 BB, 1R) and got to catch a couple of innings too. I know, it’s lame, but it was the last game of the year and I finally got some good hacks in, played some catcher and only made, uh, one really bad throw… I’m a happy dude tonight.
And I’m hella sore this morning — it was just over 50 last night, and that ball snaps in your hand when it’s that cold, blocking the ball hurts, and, uh, I got my gong rung once (folks, don’t catch without serious equipment, that’s my public service message for you)… and this morning I’m dying.
I have no idea how Pat Borders, or even Dan Wilson do this for so long: catching hurts.
Ichiro! in paper of record
An Artist Who Makes the Field His Canvas. Talks about Ichiro’s unique swings and style.
They also have this photo about “the left-handed advantage” which says that lefties are closer to first and so have an easier time getting hits… which isn’t actually true. You can look up overall splits and see that they’re within a point or two of each other.
The good one is the “Suzuki’s Swings: Unorthodox and Unstoppable” graphic.
Anyway, check it out. NYT is registration-required, but… Bug Me Not.
Ichiro! is fast
Pitcher’s made his move, Ichiro! takes off and he gets what, two, three miles of distance between him and first before the pitcher’s even gotten rid of the ball. If Ichiro! had played before Rickey Henderson, in an age before endless pickoff moves and pitchouts, he could steal bases until stealing bases no longer amused him.
Ichiro! and why baseball debate sucks
Dave’s post on Ichiro and the MVP has inspired me to write something I’ve been chewing on for a while. Here’s why I think the dialogue between the scout and stat crowds has gone so badly. It’s not because one side is more arrogant, as they’re both arrogant, or because some people have termed it a war, which it’s clearly not. It’s not anything close.
It’s the nature of argumentation we’re having. It’s like.. okay, I’m going to use a politically tainted example here, but bear with me:
“John Kerry served in Vietnam dishonorably, didn’t earn his medals, wasn’t under fire…”
“But all available evidence points to those being… well, lies, frankly. There’s a ton of evidence and testimony that none of that is true… and why is this an issue anyway?”
“Of course you’d say that, you’re a Democratic tool of the liberal media.”
You see what happened there, it’s totally obvious. The attack is facts + you’re an idiot for arguing the other point.
The stat/scout debate takes this to a new level.
“I think Ichiro’s a great player, and I enjoy Mariners games in no small part because he’s so much fun to watch.”
“Ichiro is overrated, because he doesn’t do the things great hitters do. You only think that he’s a great player because you’ve been trained to overrate contact hitters and told over and over that his defense is good, even though there’s no evidence for that.”
It’s a whole three-pronged attack:
– You’re wrong, for these reasons (reasons can be fact-based or subjective, doesn’t matter)
– Your whole argument is stupid anyway, I don’t know why you bother
– You poor thing, though, you don’t even know what you’re arguing because you’re the product of a whole set of beliefs given to you by another bunch of morons
It’s totally understandable that the reaction to this kind of argumentation is hostility.
It happens in reverse:
“Willie Bloomquist is the most valuable player on the Mariners because he contributes in ways that don’t show up in the statistics. He makes other players better and adds energy to the team, but I guess you don’t see that because you’re too busy looking at your spreadsheet. This is exactly the kind of think you would know if you went out and watched a game once in a while, instead of listening to the sophistic arguments of the stathead community.”
Except that I’ve never heard sophistic worked into that sentence. Same deal:
– You’re wrong
– You’re a moron
– You sad thing, you’ve been seduced by the dark side and don’t even know what you’re saying
Take RBIs. We know facts about RBIs: they’re not a good measure of a player’s hitting ability, as they’re dependent both on the rest of the team and even within that, the player’s position in the lineup — but at the same time, a guy with 120 RBIs is almost certainly better than the guy with 12.
We can debate the utility of RBIs using facts. But we don’t.
“Joe Carter was a historically great hitter, as you can see from his many RBIs.”
“Carter batted in the middle of the lineup of some great offensive lineups, but if you look at his offensive stats, he wasn’t outstanding and certainly doesn’t seem to qualify as a historically great hitter, no matter what criteria you use for that.”
“But Joe Carter was a huge clutch hitter and won championships.”
“Again, we can look at his stats and see that compared to others…”
“When they needed a hit, he got one. Did you ever see him play?”
… and we’re off to the races. That’s almost word-for-word an actual conversation I’ve had. I’m not a big Carter fan.
I wonder if this is even avoidable, if there’s a way to keep these kind of arguments that touch on belief issues substantive. I think there is, but it requires a patience and energy by the debater that is hard to invest and rarely rewarded. It requires a dedication to elevating the level of conversation that requires too much work. It requires time and an ability to argue at length, to discover the “why” behind your opponents beliefs and intelligently discuss the foundation of their argument. Done well, done politely and respectfully, objective truth can be arrived at, even it’s a complicated and grey truth of compromise.
Time isn’t in abundence for a television or radio guy with 20 seconds to sum up what’s wrong with the Tigers this year, though, but that’s not the limit of why this kind of quick, easy wave-of-the-hand argumentation pervades sports discussion. If you read enough press coverage of baseball (or anything, really) you know that there’s a predictable story pattern, where an event occurs and reporters, columnists, and editorial pages line up to crank out an easy set of column-inches. There are easy controversial tacts to take, and easy standard themes to hit.
If you pay attention, you can pretty accurately predict the column topics of many regular writers and the arguments they’ll make. They’re on autopilot. These are the showcase name writers for major newspapers, websites, stathead and clubhouse insider alike, and you could skip weeks of their columns and catch up by reading the headlines you missed. There’s no reward for them to make a continual fight for reasoned dialogue that doesn’t escalate the insults and contempt.
If anything, employing this trident of argumentation makes them safe. It keeps people at bay, because even incorrect facts can and are defended by this. You say Joe Carter didn’t hit that well in the clutch? Well, your stats are wrong because you don’t understand the magic of Joe Carter. This is how the two sides have dug their trenches, and those who have dared to stand up and charge across no-man’s land have been met in large part by indifference or when noticed, machine gun fire. Steve Goldman wrote a column at Baseball Prospectus about how many stathead truisims are proofs of long-held pearls of baseball wisdom. Jonah Keri wrote a great column about a day at the ballpark talking stats and scouting with a bunch of baseball organizational guys. Nobody seems to notice — BP for instance still seems to be regarded as some fortification on a hill, taking potshots at scouts who pass by.
I didn’t expect that these attempts to defang the debate and show people the common ground and goals of the two sides would bring about any kind of great wall-comes-down, LaMar-and-Beane-dancing-in-the-street festival of love. But for nothing to happen, for the autopilot guys to have slept through it, is disappointing. If you love your work, if you want to be a better writer, a better fan, and even a better person, trying out new ways of looking at things should be an important part of your job.
I wrote this in the 2002 Baseball Prospectus:
Along with Vladimir Guerrero, Cliff Floyd, and Chipper Jones, Ichiro is hugely productive despite not seeing many pitches: these guys swing at and hit the first good pitch they see. Jones somehow managed to walk nearly 100 times, but the others weren’t even close. Ichiro is one of the best reasons in baseball to buy a ticket. While he’s not as productive as some other players—and was a lousy MVP selection—Ichiro’s crazy bat artwork, base-stealing, and his sometimes brilliant defense all combine to make him an entertainment bargain.
I believe, and will check when I have a chance, the MVP thing was inserted by my editors. Two years ago, I was calling Ichiro! hugely productive as an impatient singles hitter. Today, I don’t even want to talk about it.
I like Ichiro! and I always have. It is some measure of how bad the tone of debate is that I cringe when someone writes about Ichiro! from any viewpoint. I don’t want him examined for purposes of making a larger point about the state of media coverage of contact hitters. I don’t want to be told I’m dumb for enjoying his play. I know, as a reasonably well-informed baseball fan, that my opinion is my own to cherish or discard, freely formed, and while informed by it is not the product of the local media, or their attackers from afar.
And I, like Dave, think there’s a great argument to be made for Ichiro! as statistical hero as well. I don’t want to read about how Ichiro! didn’t pick up the clubhouse enough, doesn’t get the clutch hits, and how I’m somehow an unsophisticated fan for not noticing his failure to contribute intangibly to the team, glued to a computer screen watching his hit count go up.
What kind of screwed up world is it where I don’t want to read analysis of my favorite player on my favorite team? I read anything you put in front of me. When I was a kid I read the ingredients on a box of cereal if I didn’t have a random section of the newspaper to look at over breakfast. I haven’t read any of the Ichiro! articles, pro or con, that Dave mentions. Doesn’t that say all that can be said about how bitter this debate tactic has made our world? How can we all enjoy baseball so much and yet dismiss and heap contempt on people who share that love with us?
So to those who employ this three-pronged attack, obvious and implied: lay down your trident. Let’s make baseball discussion worth having.
Game 159, A’s at Mariners – Good Bye, Felix
King Felix vs. Sean Manaea, 7:10pm
Happy Felix Day. I’ve written that a hell of a lot over the past 9-10 years, and this is the last time I’ll get to do that. Happy Felix Day. There’s something kind of magical about it, it’s child-like simplicity, its naive hopefulness. So much of being a sports fan is complicated, and let me tell you, those complications do not go away when you’re a fan of a team that seems stuck in neutral for 18 years. But that’s what was so great about it. Forget all of the complicating factors, forget billionaire owners, forget “club control”, forget the churn of attrition and arm injuries and general failure that baseball brings. Hell, forget about the team’s record, and forget about their place in baseball’s landscape. Go back to basics: the guy in our colors throws the ball past the guy on the other team, and we all cheer. Like many of us, he’ll cheer on the Seahawks. Like us, he couldn’t seem to imagine trying to recreate this somewhere else, or with some other pitcher. We stick with our guy, and every fifth day, cheering for the M’s is the easiest thing to do in the world.
It was never that simple, and I think we all understand that intellectually. Sports aren’t generally where you turn if you’re trying to get intellectual, but I think we all knew that Felix wasn’t perfect, and that he didn’t conjure lollipops and rainbows from the sky. I’m not sure he was the best pitcher ever to suit up for Seattle, but he was – by far – the easiest to root for. And to be honest, that’s probably made real criticism of him harder to stomach, as fans rush to shield him from judgment. I’m guilty of this. That’s why I liked reading Ryan Divish’s retrospective on Felix in the Times – it was kind of like eating a bunch of kale or something. At this point, the arguments aren’t exactly new, but it’s helpful to read through the back and forth of the team trying to convince their star that something was wrong, and Felix thinking that he could do it alone, because that’s what had worked up until 2016-17 or so. I’m not here to convince you that Felix is blameless. I would like to say that the personality that made Felix a superstar at age 19 may have gotten in the way of his ability to be a superstar at age 35. That’s a part of the legacy, maybe.
Something sticks out, though. Divish wrote of Felix that, “He loathed losing more than he enjoyed winning — and he really enjoyed winning.” If that’s true, then why didn’t he reach out sooner, when the losing became all too common? I’ve written here a lot about how much Felix has evolved over time, and how he was more effective at 93 on his fastball than he’d been at 97-98. But when nothing worked, why didn’t he look for help? It seems like he sized up the people asking him to change, and thought that they didn’t know enough to help him. We’ll never know, but…he may have been right.
This blog is inextricably tied to Felix. In its first year of existence, long before I ever got here as a writer, it gave Felix his nickname, as Divish’s story notes: “The U.S.S. Mariner, a must-read blog for the advanced-thinking fan, first used it July 17, 2003: ‘All hail King Felix. Hernandez worked five innings last night against Spokane, allowing just one run on two hits and striking out five. He also walked four, but it’s important to remember that he’s only 17 and facing much older competition, including some college players. I’m trying not to get too excited about him, but it’s difficult not to with the way he’s pitched so far.'” That name stuck, and all of us in the burgeoning M’s blogosphere knew him by that name long before he debuted in 2005. Beyond the nickname, though, this blog and Felix are forever linked by an open letter.
In June of 2007, Dave Cameron and Jeff Sullivan had grown weary of the King looking a bit less than regal. After his breathtaking half-year in 2005, Felix settled in as a perfectly fine, above average, starter for some so-so M’s teams. He had a decent FIP, but he posted an ERA of 4.52 in 2006, and then scuffled after a great first outing or two in 2007. Dave had identified an over-reliance on fastballs early in each game, and wrote to then-pitching coach Rafael Chaves about it. Shockingly (at the time), Chaves not only saw it, but brought it to Felix. Felix made some adjustments, and while he wasn’t appreciably better in 2007, he was better in 2008 before truly settling in as a dominant force in 2009. The letter was framed around Felix’s desire to establish his fastball before his command had reached a level that would allow him to do so without getting hit hard. You, the M’s, needed to intervene and tell him not to trust his velocity alone. I still wonder if it wasn’t Felix who wanted to establish the fastball, though. What if it’d been his team, or his catcher, or just the overall message that he’d imbibed? What would that letter look like to Felix then? I’m still amazed that Chaves did what he did, and I’m glad Felix quickly became less predictable, a few years before the entirety of the game made the same judgment and stopped throwing so many fastballs.
Late in 2007, the M’s signed Venezuelan righty Carlos Silva to a four-year deal to solidify their rotation. 2007 had been an unexpectedly good year, and the M’s needed a veteran presence with Jamie Moyer and Jeff Weaver gone. Silva was the first Venezuelan pitcher Felix had gotten to play with, as his idol, Freddy Garcia, was traded away about a year before Felix made his debut. Silva was no one’s idea of an ace, but had solid seasons in 2007 and 2005 thanks to his control and ground ball tendencies. Immediately upon donning an M’s jersey, he lost it. He managed two injury-plagued seasons here, posing a 6.81 ERA in 183 2/3 IP. To his credit, Felix never followed in Silva’s footsteps of blaming his defenders for errors, moaning about Ichiro!, or instigating fights. But he was right there where his countryman utterly lost it. Trust us, the M’s said to Felix. We can help you.
It continued like that for years, as Felix fashioned himself into the league’s best starter. This isn’t to say none of his coaches helped – I believe that they did. But they came and went, and Felix stayed. Rafael Chaves didn’t make it to 2008, when Mel Stottlemyre sr. took over. After that debacle, Rick Adair became the coach. Carl Willis took over in 2011, and lasted through 2013, when Rick Waits took over. Mel Stottlemyre Jr. took over in 2016, and of course this year, Paul Davis assumed the reins. That’s 7 coaches since the open letter, and that’s three GMs and who knows how many assistant coaches and performance specialists and baseball ops folks. Were each of these people telling him the same thing? They couldn’t have – the problems were different (or non-existent), and philosophies change. When it really came time to make wholesale changes, I worry that there wasn’t enough trust on either side: Felix had learned that coaches came and went, and coaches had learned that Felix didn’t have much time for them.
All of this is to say I can’t quite blame Felix, even as I’m sad at how this is ending. I’m really glad the M’s have opened up an expanded King’s Court, and that we’ll have a chance to send him off while he’s wearing an M’s jersey, unlike with Griffey, A-Rod, Randy Johnson, etc. But this undercurrent of sniping between the M’s front office and Felix has made the end of his M’s tenure sad. He’s been blamed for failing to step up when the M’s needed him in playoff races like 2018’s (for a while) and 2016’s. Those failures were collective ones, of course. And they sit atop years and years of other, equally collective, failures that make Felix the best pitcher not to appear in a playoff game in the divisional era. Those failures mount not because the M’s are uniquely bad (though it’s felt like it at times), but because other teams figured out how to re-shape pitchers and individual pitches and, even MORE importantly, how to communicate that to athletes. The Astros and now the A’s get more out of their pitchers. That’s been true for a couple of years now, and it’s made the gap between them and the M’s quite wide (even in the M’s good 2018 season). I know Felix may have been bull-headed about new ideas, but this cannot have escaped his notice. Houston isn’t calling Justin Verlander out, they’re making him better. I’m at the point where I just want someone to make Felix better, and I don’t care if it isn’t the M’s.
Damn it. There I go again, complicating this by trying to assign blame, or deflect criticism. This is supposed to be simple. Felix is on, and we’ll watch and yell, and hopefully he’ll frustrate the high-flying A’s. They’ll be playing a postseason game again, and good for them or whatever. But Felix is ours, and for one last time, you can’t have him. He’ll be someone else’s soon enough, and then his family will have him. But I’m so thankful I got to watch his career here. It’s been revitalizing, and it’s shaped how I interact with baseball and the Mariners. I watched him in the PCL in 2004, sitting next to the scouts giggling as he broke off that Royal Curve. I remember refreshing my browser on the day of his MLB debut, a game which wasn’t even televised. I remember his first few home games, when it seemed there simply wasn’t a ceiling for his kind of talent. And then I remember his untouchable 2010-2014 run, punctuated by his perfecto in 2012. I started writing here – the place that put the King in King Felix – in 2010. Since then, I’ve yet to write up a playoff game, and I’ve seen a lot more losses than wins. But I got to see that run, and I got to talk about it, analyze it, wish upon it.
Sabermetrics and internet writing about it predates Felix of course, but their growth overlapped so strongly, and I’m just glad I was there for it. Felix was the one-man counter to the idea that saber-inclined writers didn’t care about the players, or couldn’t *feel* what made the game fun. I still write about the game, but I’m 100% positive I’ll never root for a player the way I do for Felix. A big part of that is just age; there are other uberprospects around, but I’m not in my 20s anymore. I don’t have the energy to expend emoting anymore, and to be honest, it takes more and more to summon it even with Felix. It’s here now, though. Thank you, Felix, and good bye.
1: Long, 2B
2: Crawford, SS
3: Lewis, RF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Nola, 1B
6: Narvaez, C
7: Santana, DH
8: Moore, LF
9: Smith, CF
SP: KING FELIX
Go M’s. Go Felix.
Cactus League Game 9, Mariners at Royals
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Brad Keller, 12:10pm
A year ago at this time, I talked about how home runs were becoming more important to scoring, and thus the M’s emphasis on stringing base hits together didn’t sound like a great plan, especially if they couldn’t figure out how to arrange a pitching staff capable of keeping the ball in the yard. I focused on HR differential as opposed to the M’s vaunted “Control the Zone” metric, and noted that the M’s were giving up more HRs than they hit. So, thus far this spring, the M’s have hit 12 dingers and yielded just 8. Kyle Lewis can’t stop hitting the snot out of the ball, and meanwhile no one can touch Justus Sheffield. I’ve said it already this spring, but I don’t think the M’s could have looked any better.
Does that change their projections for the season? Eh, no, not really, but 1) it’s fun to see, and 2) you can dream on changes in PD that could produce such wonders as Dee Gordon drawing 2 walks in a game and sporting on OBP north of .500. Yes, yes, tiny samples, I get that. But I’m just not sure we’ve seen even tiny samples in which Gordon’s looked this patient, or Lewis this dangerous. Justus Sheffield looks like a different pitcher from his scouting reports, set aside his disastrous couple of innings in the Bronx. Domingo Santana looks like his 2017 self and nothing like the 2018 model.
Brad Keller is a righty with an arrow-straight four-seamer that almost looks cutter like, and then a sinker with a bit of armside run. His breaking ball is a solid slider, and he’s developing a change. He can get it into the mid-90s, but doesn’t miss a ton of bats – instead, he uses his odd four-seam movement and decent command of his slider to generate ground balls and avoid dingers. It all added up to a surprisingly good season for the Royals last year – not bad for a Rule 5 pick. It’s interesting – he doesn’t do the typical sinker/slider thing of pounding the knees with low and sinking pitches. Instead, he’ll throw any pitch in any location. Something about his delivery and then the movement on his pitches allows him to get ground ball contact pretty much everywhere. Sure, he’ll get a few more at the bottom of the zone or below, but I’m still kind of amazed a guy can get a fair number of groundballs throwing four-seamers in the middle of the zone. Elevate, Mariners, elevate!
1: Long, 2B
2: Crawford, SS
3: Santana, LF
4: Vogelbach, DH
5: Healy, 1B
6: Lewis, CF
7: Ichiro!, RF
8: Moore, 3B
9: Freitas, C
SP: KIKUCHI
Cactus League Game 3 – Mariners and Rockies
Wade LeBlanc vs. Jon Gray, 12:10pm (no tv)
The M’s face off with the Rockies, who’ll send Jon Gray to the mound. Wade LeBlanc gets the start, but the story of the day is getting our first look at two of the big prospects acquired in the James Paxton trade. Justus Sheffield figures to follow Wade, and then we should see Erik Swanson.
Sheffield’s opened eyes in camp, but I’m still curious to see if his command’s improving or if he’s able to generate some whiffs with his slider and sinking fastball. That’s not really been a problem in the minors, though even there, his K rate isn’t exceptional in this day and age. The issue is opposite handed batters; Sheffield’s K rate was much lower against righties. The slider is a pitch with large platoon splits, and it’s possible his arm angle exacerbates that. It’s also possible that his change-up comes along and renders concerns about the slider-to-righties thing moot. I’d take that.
1: Dee Gordon, 2B
2: Mitch Haniger, RF
3: Jay Bruce, 1B
4: Kyle Seager, 3B
5: Ryon Healy, DH
6: Ichiro! LF
7: Crawford, SS
8: Fraley, CF
9: Lobaton, C
SP: Wade LeBlanc
Hope to see Crawford make some solid contact, see if Seager’s re-worked physique comes with a re-worked approach at the plate and see what Ryon Healy does today. The downside of course is that this more traditional/”real” line-up means Shed Long, who homered yesterday, is relegated to the bench.
2018 Tacoma Rainiers Preview
Tacoma write-ups are usually a little bit harder for me to do despite the proximity and accompanying interest. Part of it is fatigue by the time I get to this point, but in this case, you can look up and down the roster and see a lot of guys who have spent some time in the majors and are known commodities in that respect. There’s not much left for me to do in the way of projection or speculation and their value is mostly determined by the needs of the major league team over much that they’re able to prove individually. This proves especially true in thin systems, which is where the organization is at presently.
The rotation is certainly interesting for what it could provide in the near and longer terms, likewise the ‘pen, though that has a less prospect-oriented look to it. Still, where the depth looks to be right now is far better than where we were a season ago, much as we like to make fun of Jerry for his near compulsive trading. The look of the infield is likely to change a little in the coming days, but the outfield I imagine is pretty set and will feature more guys who can run things down. We’re quite far removed from the 2010 Rainiers and I can’t imagine our current front office putting up with playing first basemen in the outfield because dingers.
It’s the last preview and gets a little loopy in spots, but I remain composed during talking about the interesting starters and almost brand-new bullpen. Then it’s broken hitting stats, Batman, dogging on the Mets, and trying to ascribe a D&D alignment to some poor dude’s baserunning.
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Game 1, Indians at Mariners
King Felix vs. Corey Kluber, 7:10pm
Happy Felix Day, and a blessed Felix Year to you and yours.
I was just re-reading last year’s opening day post, and I guess I’d forgotten just how optimistic I was/most everyone was a year ago. The Astros’ death star wasn’t yet fully-operational, and the successes of 2016 were so recent and so predictive, or so we thought. Everything feels different this year, right down to the fact that some people were actively affronted by the fact that Felix got tonight’s start over James Paxton, a pitcher who’s pretty clearly superior at this stage. I understand that Paxton is better, but I know that there hasn’t been an athlete so fiercely/bizarrely loyal to the Northwest than Felix. I know that baseball is more life-affirming when Felix is stomping around the mound, jawing with Adrian Beltre, and getting excited by a great defensive play behind him. I know that baseball’s long season feels especially laborious when Felix is either struggling or injured or both, even as I realize that watching peak Felix coincided with some depressing M’s teams.
I didn’t put it in the “the upside” post below this, maybe because I don’t want to be reminded when I go back and look and see how those predictions did. But while it’s not exactly likely, I’d give just about anything to watch Felix post a back-from-the-dead ace-style season. For a number of reasons, people point to 2018 as a critical one for the M’s: their aging core will start to break up after this year, as Nellie Cruz is a free agent, and the M’s last, best shot at contention runs into the ahead-of-schedule rebuilds from several challengers. The Astros and today’s opponents have build impressive clubs, and are still breaking in talented rookies. As a result, many people – myself among them – think that the M’s need to win the wild card to declare this season a success. They’ve leveraged their meager farm system, they went all in on Ohtani and came up short, they sat on the sidelines in the most team-friendly free agent market in memory – they’ve pretty much shown that 2018 is a make or break year, even as they’ve hesitated to hedge against the risks that fans see.
But there’s an exception, I think. If Felix returns to form and pitches the M’s to meaningful baseball late in the year, and if the M’s long-dormant farm system shows signs of life, I think I’d take that. To be fair, this consolation prize feels about as far-fetched as the M’s fending off the Twins/Angels/Red Sox/whoever and winning a wild card slot, and let’s be honest: the entire idea of winning the wild card is itself a consolation prize. The M’s are not one of baseball’s elite teams, and won’t be one for a while, but they employ Felix Hernandez. On opening day *five years ago* I wondered if we/I weren’t falling into a trap that Felix was “enough” for a beaten-down fanbase who’d essentially stopped demanding contention. In the five years since, even after the addition of a second wild card, the M’s playoff drought stretches on. I want the M’s to build a perennial contender, and I’d love to see Felix start a postseason game in Seattle. But I’ve seen the M’s fail with awesome Felix, and I’ve seen the M’s fail without awesome Felix, and the former is better.
The Indians went to the World Series two years ago, and won 22 games in a row last year. With Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, and the most strikeout-inducing pitching staff the game’s ever seen, they look like they’ll be contention for years. Like the Astros, their success isn’t simply the product of high draft picks going supernova, like Lindor. The Indians have done a better job of developing talent than most, and today’s starter, Corey Kluber, is a perfect example. An afterthought on draft day, and then a small part of a minor trade, Kluber never had any kind of prospect sheen. He had a solid pitch mix, with a low-90s sinker, a decent change, a very good, sweeping slider and then a harder cutter, and it got him to the big leagues in 2012. He wasn’t amazing, but he seemed like he could miss enough bats to become an innings-eater. Instead, some relatively minor changes have turned him into one of the game’s best pitchers, and one of the few pitchers able to keep his HR/9 under 1 even as baseball looks more and more like a home run derby.
He’s done it by making a series of adjustments. I’m not sure how conscious a process this is for Kluber, or if it’s just something he and his pitching coaches work through as needed; Felix famously avoided video and never seemed like a cerebral pitcher, but he did the same thing for many years as his upper-90s fastball left him. The first big move that Kluber made was to drop his arm angle a bit. This move, which happened between 2012 and 2013, saw him gain a tick on his fastball, but more importantly, it magnified the gap in horizontal movement between his sinker (his primary fastball) and his slider. His sinker still wasn’t great, but batters couldn’t quite figure out his breaking stuff. He started throwing even harder in 2014, and that’s when he really became the Cy Young hurler we know today: his slider’s break was a foot and a half different from his fastball’s, and dropped 9″ more than his sinker did. Batters slugged .123 off of that slider in 2014. By 2015, his velocity dropped back again, and thus the movement gap between FB/breaking balls wasn’t what it had been. So, he started throwing his four-seam fastball, and built that gap back up again. After throwing less than 4% 4-seamers in 2014, he was over 20% in 2015, giving him a pitch that had a gap of 12″ in vertical movement from his slider and a still-impressive 6″ from his cutter. In 2016, with his movement and velo again retreating somewhat, and Kluber’s performance fell back as well. But he was back with a vengeance in 2017, throwing a blizzard of sliders/cutters and cutting back on his fastballs.
One of the things that’s always been noteworthy about Kluber is his command of his slider and cutter. These are not chase pitches; he’s able to throw them for strikes whenever he wants. His slider, a pitch he threw more of than any other pitch last year (OK, tied with his sinker), was called a ball less than 25% of the time he threw it. It generated swings on nearly 60% of pitches, which is absolutely insane for a breaking pitch, and those swings came up empty *half* the time. Kluber won his second Cy Young thanks to the pitch that led him to record at least 8 Ks in 14 straight starts, and post a season with a K% of 34.1% with a walk rate under 5%. Kluber’s become a generational talent, seemingly out of nowhere. How much of last year’s startling level of play can he sustain? Will his velocity drop again? Will he throw his slider even more, a la Lance McCullers of Houston, or will he throw more cutters, the way he did in 2015?
Like last year, the M’s open up against one of the best teams in the game. It’s nice to see how the M’s stack up, and it’s also nice that the M’s don’t HAVE to compete with the Indians/Astros. If you want the M’s to compete toe to toe with the best in the game, you’re probably not reading this, and you gave up on this club years ago. But it’s nice to have these yardstick series early on, so we can see how the M’s new contact-oriented approach fares against the team that allows the least amount of contact. We’ll see how Felix looks against a formidable line-up, and we’ll get to see some early indications on how the M’s bullpen might be deployed.
Random predictions:
1: M’s finish 82-80. A great year from James Paxton isn’t enough.
2: HRs continue to climb, as the league sets a new all-time dinger record, along with another strikeout record.
3: At least three teams end the year in arrangements other than the typical 5-man rotation; the Angels 6-man, the Rays 4-man, and someone else tries either piggy-back starters or goes to the pen so often that the distinction between “SP” and “RP” grows kind of meaningless.
4: Teams shift less on the infield, and more in the outfield.
5: The Athletics are better than people think, as are the Braves.
6: Carlos Correa/Bryce Harper win MVPs, and, to be extra boring, Kluber/Kershaw win Cy Young. Garrett Richards/James Paxton, two oft-injured potential aces receive votes, though.
The line-up:
1: Dee Gordon, CF
2: Jean Segura, SS
3: Robinson Cano, 2B
4: Nelson Cruz, DH
5: Kyle Seager, 3B
6: Mitch Haniger, RF
7: Ryon Healy, 1B
8: Mike Zunino, C Mike Marjama, C
9: Ichiro!, LF
SP: KING FELIX
[EDIT: Zunino’s scratched with a sore side; please don’t be an oblique problem.]
Ichiro! Felix!
Go M’s! I’m not the most optimistic fan, but cheers to all of you who are, and a head nod and a clink of the ol’ whisky glass to my fellow pessimists. We’re all M’s fans, and that’s easiest to see on a night like this. God, I’ve missed baseball.
For further reading, check out the Times’ preview section centered on the elephant in the room: the M’s looooong playoff drought.
Mike Curto’s got you covered if you’re interested in how Tacoma’s roster’s shaking out with all of the late moves the M’s made as spring training ended – Gordon Beckham left, then came back, Jayson Werth will join them soon (and I hadn’t realized Werth’s dad played on the 1978 PCL Champion Tacoma Yankees), and Ben Gamel may be rehabbing. With the MLB schedule pushed forward, there’s now much more of a break between opening day in the majors and opening day in the minors.
Mike Marjama’s mini-documentary/video over at Uninterrupted is really worth your time. The M’s catcher opens up about his struggles with body isssues, which led to an eating disorder that could’ve killed him, and his journey back to health. Lookout Landing had a great story on it, and they’ve embedded the video. Check it out.
New M’s beat writer TJ Cotterill has a great interview with M’s skipper Scott Servais at the TNT.
Shannon Drayer has a great article on the new Felix who’ll be making his 10th opening day start tonight.