Game 110, Mariners at Royals – Competitive Windows
Yovani Gallardo vs. Trevor Cahill, 5:10pm
The M’s begin their biggest series of the year against the team currently in control of the 2nd wildcard, the Kansas City Royals. The Royals were in an odd spot this year – they faced the looming departure of most of their core players in free agency after this year, but they didn’t have the prospects to go all-in one last time. After they an atrocious start, it seemed like the final year of the Cain/Davis/Moose/Hosmer Royals would be a quiet one. But a blistering June/July pushed them back into playoff position, and so they’ve made some small moves to improve their odds this year, like picking up Trevor Cahill from the rebuilding Padres.
The Royals opening day payroll this year was $143 million, just a tiny bit less than the Mariners’. But while the M’s will return most of their core – their vets signed long contract extensions, and they’ve got a group of pre-arb players as well – the Royals are hurting. They owe a combined $59 million next year to the less-than-inspiring group of Ian Kennedy, Alex Gordon, Joakim Soria and Danny Duffy. Duffy, Sal Perez and Jorge Soler are all under reasonable-ish extensions (especially if Duffy can stay healthy), but pretty much everyone else is either unmovable (Gordon, Kennedy) or bad (Brandon Moss). They have holes all over the roster, and it’s not clear how they’ll fill them. All of that’s next year, though. For now, they’ve upgraded their rotation with Cahill and their bullpen with Brandon Maurer and Ryan Buchter. They don’t look like a contending team on paper with a worse-than-average offense AND pitching staff, but then, that hasn’t stopped them in recent years. They have one more year to perform one of their odd Royals magic tricks, and then it’s over.
The Royals predicament reminds me a bit of what the Rangers might be facing. For years, I’ve seen them as a formidable organization due to great player development married with elite amateur and pro scouting. It’s not enough that their prospect coffers always seemed to be overflowing, it’s that they’d go out and get diamonds in the rough from other orgs, too (Nelson Cruz comes to mind). If their prospects couldn’t quite turn potential into production, or if they got hurt, they could trade their prospects for Cole Hamels or whatever else they needed. That gave them a tremendous advantage, and they used it to go to the playoffs 5 out of the past 7 years. It wasn’t enough that they’ve been consistently, easily, better than the M’s – it’s that I couldn’t figure out when it was POSSIBLE for the M’s to overcome that deficit. It’s pretty clearly happened, though, as the Rangers magic touch with their farm system doesn’t appear to be working anymore. Trades for guys like Hamels, Jonathan Lucroy and others have shipped a ton of production elsewhere, and injuries to guys from Jurickson Profar to Chi Chi Rodriguez have played a role as well. After the trade of Yu Darvish, they have essentially no rotation outside of Hamels, and their top 4 prospects – *all* of whom were in BP’s top 101 – have struggled this year. Hamels, Elvis Andrus, Shin-Soo Choo and Rougned Odor are signed long-term, but their flexibility going forward looks pretty constrained. I’m not trying to bury them; Jon Daniels is a capable GM, and things looked bleak a few years ago. But the team was able to keep turning high-risk, high-reward prospects into hugely valuable trade chips, and if that’s not true anymore, or LESS true than it was, they’re in a bit of trouble. Nomar Mazara’s essentially repeated his rookie year, Odor’s OBP is .259, Martin Perez remains below-average and Profar seems destined to be a utility guy. The Astros emergence would’ve made it essentially impossible for the Rangers to keep controlling the West, but it really looks like their run as perpetual contenders is over.
All of this stands in contrast to the M’s push for controllable players. I haven’t liked all of Dipoto’s deals, but it is absolutely to his credit that the M’s have a better 2018-2020 outlook than they did before he got here. I mentioned the looming crisis last year, in that the M’s would lose several players to free agency, and clearly didn’t have replacements ready on the farm. Their core was/is aging, and it’s not clear that they’ll get star-level performances from Felix or perhaps even Cano in the years to come. But the emergence of Jean Segura, Ben Gamel and James Paxton means they’re not looking at a Royals-style apocalypse. They have plenty of holes to fill too, so it’s not like all is well, but the path from here to contention is navigable.
Enough about the future. Tonight, the M’s make a play for 2017 against the suddenly-vulnerable Royals. After a long winning streak, the Royals are coming off a sweep at the hands of the Orioles. The famously bad O’s rotation even shut them out yesterday. Trevor Cahill makes his second start in Royal blue; his first was something of a clunker, as he gave up 5 runs (and 2 dingers) in 4 IP to the Red Sox. Cahill came up with the A’s as a sinker/change-up/curve pitcher who got ground balls to overcome a lack of bat-missing stuff. He averaged 89 or so with the A’s in 2010-11, but his velo picked up by about 1 MPH after a trade to Arizona. Unfortunately, it didn’t help his results. After a great first year in the desert, he was hurt and then ineffective, and ended up losing his rotation spot in 2014. Time in the bullpen for Arizona and then the Cubs remade him, and he’s been a bat-missing expert since. His fastball velocity was up again in the bullpen, but he seems to have remade his change and curve, using them much more often and getting a lot more K’s. Even after moving back to the rotation this year, he’s set a career high in K% and K-BB%, and his change/curve combo is a big reason why.
He’s shown normal platoon splits over his career, but a lot of that is the result of two awful campaigns against lefties – one of them his rookie year of 2009. In many years, he’s been pretty even, and they’re even reversed a bit this year. That’s the power of a decent change-up, and it highlights that the M’s shouldn’t be too doctrinaire about platoon splits in setting their line-up.
1: Gamel, RF
2: Segura, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Valencia, 1B
7: Dyson, CF
8: Heredia, LF
9: Zunino, C
SP: Gallardo
Bryan Evans was staked to an early lead in NW Arkansas, but couldn’t hold it, giving up 3 HRs and 7 runs to the Naturals. That was enough for Josh Staumont, who’s still struggling a bit, but righted the ship after a tough first inning. CF Braden Bishop went 3-5, and is now batting .383 in AA in a bit more than 50 PAs.
Reggie McClain had a much-needed solid start in Modesto’s win over Rancho Cucamonga. McClain gave up a run in 5 IP, striking out 4.
Wisconsin edged Clinton 2-1, with Tim Viehoff a hard-luck loser in relief of Steven Ridings. Wyatt Mills K’d 2 in 2/3 IP, and has been lights out in Clinton the past few weeks.
Christian Bergman, Anthony Misiewicz, Tyler Jackson and Anjul Hernandez are probables in the M’s system today.
M’s Trade Tyler O’Neill to St. Louis for SP Marco Gonzales
The M’s made it pretty clear that they were trying to win now with their trade of prospects for set-up man David Phelps. Thus, it can’t be *too* shocking to see them part with their biggest high-minors trade chip, OF Tyler O’Neill, in return for some pitching help. What *is* shocking is that they’ve turned to ex-Gonzaga Bulldog Marco Gonzales to help their beleaguered rotation. Gonzalez made one start for the Cardinals this year, gave up about a HR per inning, and was unceremoniously optioned back to AAA. He made one start for them a year ago, got battered around, and was then optioned back to AAA. In a move that seemingly eliminates any possibility of claiming that this is a win now move, the M’s will cut out the “one bad big league start” middle-man and send Gonzales straight to Tacoma.
Jerry Dipoto said the club needed to be realistic and creative in their pursuit of a playoff spot in 2017 and the near future. They didn’t have a ton of minor league talent to deal from, and they need help rebuilding pitching depth that’s been hammered by injuries and ineffectiveness. I understand that given the league-wide need for pitching and the M’s mediocre farm system that they wouldn’t be buying name-brand starters, but I thought they would at least bring back an actual big league pitcher. After the Phelps trade, I argued that if they wanted a starter, Phelps might be a decent option, and one they obviously had the talent to afford. I’m not sure what the plan is with Gonzalez, or more accurately, *when* he’s supposed to add value. To be fair to the M’s, Gonzalez has 40+ innings and less than 1 full year of service time, so he’s under club control for a long while. But then, so was Tyler O’Neill. If, as everyone acknowledges, the price in talent rises at the trade deadline would the M’s pick *now* to pick up a long-term project?
Gonzales throws a running four-seam (and, rarely, a sinker) at about 90-91 and pairs it with his best pitch, a change-up, with fairly extreme armside run. Overall, the entire package reminds me a bit of former Mariner Mike Montgomery, back before Montgomery’s trip to the bullpen and velocity increase. Back when he first joined the M’s, Montgomery threw about 91 with a four-seamer that moved a lot like Gonzales’, and featured a change-up with nearly identical movement. Both are lefties of course. Both had been noted high-floor prospects, and then both spent time wandering the baseball wilderness – Montgomery couldn’t solve the high minors and was in danger of being released. Gonzalez had a great initial season with the Cards, and then spent 2015 struggling and dealing with shoulder pain, before missing all of 2016 with TJ surgery. Maybe that’s the reason for his struggles now, and maybe there’s some untapped potential there that the M’s could mine. But if the *Cardinals* couldn’t get maximum value out of a moderately-talented baseball rat, what chance do the M’s have?
Gonzales’ change-up racks up a ton of swinging strikes, but batters *also* put it in play a lot. They swing a lot, and when they make contact, it tends to be hit pretty hard. This is why he doesn’t show the righty-suppressing stats of someone whose change-up misses so many bats; he has better K rates against righties (in majors and minors), but also higher hit rates. His K rates against lefties have suffered because while he’s toyed with a slider and curve, neither are big-league quality quite yet. They may get there eventually, but they’ve been show-me offerings thus far, and his usage rates reflect that. There’s raw material here, but the M’s player development staff have a lot to do, and Gonzales is 25 already.
While O’Neill was the M’s top position player prospect, that doesn’t mean he’s seen as a premium prospect by the league. He battled contact issues, and while they’d gotten better, he’s always going to have swing-and-miss in his game. His power was evident in the Cal League and in his recent hot streak in Tacoma, but it wasn’t 70-80 grade. What the Cardinals are buying is a trajectory, a trend line. O’Neill was a very raw player out of British Columbia who switched positions, lost some time to injury, and then needed to learn to harness his impressive strength. And while his raw OPS or wOBA numbers weren’t amazing (though last year’s was pretty darn good), they showed growth. Combine a propensity to learn and adjust with a young age, and you’ve got someone who might be more interesting than the surface numbers would indicate. As a bat-first corner OF, O’Neill needs to hit a *ton* to add value. The growth from 2015 to 2016, and even the growth from April/May of this year to June/July shows why the M’s – and others – have interest.
He’ll now head to a team that’s had some success with players of this type. I’ve long thought of O’Neill as a pocket-sized Randall Grichuk, and while Grichuk’s struggled this year, the Cards got a surprising amount of production out of a slugger who showed far less minor league production than O’Neill. Tommy Pham struggled with contact in the minors, and it took him about 10 years of seasoning to get a shot, but I could see O’Neill putting up lines like Pham’s 2016 in fairly short order. The question is, can they help him do more, and get up to something like Pham’s 2017 line? O’Neill is not a perfect prospect, and there are still red flags splashed across his Fangraphs page. But the Cardinals got a cost-controlled, pre-arb OF they can take some time to develop, and all it cost them was a pitcher who likely wasn’t in their plans anymore.
Yes, O’Neill’s status as the top of a thin farm system may have worked against him here, but Gonzales ranked 16th in Fangraphs’ list of Cardinals prospects this year, and the Cardinals aren’t challenging the White Sox or Braves for preeminent farm system. I thought the M’s didn’t strike a hard bargain in the Phelps trade, but in comparison, this is probably worse. Put aside the M’s public statements about 2017, the high prices for deadline deals, or Gonzales’ former 1st-round-pick status. What do starters with a solid MiLB track record and very poor MLB numbers go for? Mike Montgomery (1st round pick) cost Erasmo Ramirez, an out-of-options guy the M’s would’ve had to release. Dillon Overton (2nd round pick) was a very good four-seam/change-up guy in the PCL in 2016, and then had a crappy cup of coffee in Oakland before the A’s let him go to the M’s for one Jason Goldstein, senior-sign catcher. Eddie Butler, once a top-100-in-baseball prospect (and a supplemental 1st rounder), was swapped straight up for a minor-league reliever. I’m sure there are examples of a top OF being traded for a project, but even there, you’d expect that project to have a bit more upside than Gonzales, who realistically is a #4 or so if everything works out.
The M’s have made some disastrous win now deals of MiLB outfielders, and while I’m not fond of this, I think it’s a far cry from Shin-Soo Choo-for-Ben Broussard. But this combines my frustration at Dipoto and Company’s ability to extract maximum value from their system with a more generalized confusion about the plan going forward. Rebuilding pitching depth is important in a system where Nick Neidert is still in the Cal League. Getting a post-hype prospect with plenty of club control makes some sense, too, in a vacuum – but it doesn’t seem to fit with the team’s desire to improve the 2017 club.
Many in the M’s twitter/blogosphere note that this is important information about how the league saw and valued O’Neill. O’Neill didn’t really have a place to play in the now-crowded Seattle outfield, so I understand making him available, but if THIS is how the market valued him, the M’s needed to wait and make a deal in the off-season. If the M’s were willing to swap him for down-the-road help, then making the trade *now* seems like very poor strategy. By waiting, the M’s could take more advantage of his second-half surge (assuming it continued) and wouldn’t have to pay a premium for a post-TJ command/control change-up guy, especially if he was never the answer to a particular 2017-specific problem.
The M’s don’t have – and haven’t had – a great farm system since Dipoto took over. He’s made plenty of trades from it, but simply hasn’t gotten a ton of value in return. In the past year, the M’s have dealt a number of top-10 prospects (yes, yes, top 10 in a weak system). Drew Jackson went to LA in the Chase de Jong deal. Luiz Gohara and Alex Jackson went to the Braves for Mallex Smith (swapped with Ryan Yarbrough for Drew Smyly), and Max Povse/Rob Whalen. Injuries have bit them, and Povse’s still a talented youngster, but the M’s have spent an awful lot of chips in order to take flyers on Whalen/de Jong/Overton/Bergman-type arms. The vast gulf between what it’s taken to acquire, say, Overton with what it took to get Gonzeles doesn’t seem to concern them. It concerns me.
Game 131, Mariners at Rangers
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Yu Darvish, 5:05pm
A week after facing Masahiro Tanaka, Hisashi Iwakuma once again takes the hill opposite a superstar countryman. Yu Darvish missed most of the year recuperating from the Tommy John surgery that he had shortly before the 2015 season, and his absence is one reason why the Rangers have some strange pitching stats on the year.
No team in the game has struck out fewer batters than the Rangers. No team except the Reds has a worse K-BB%. The Rangers’ team FIP ranks 28th. They’ve given up more contact than anyone else in the AL except the Twins. Their *bullpen* ERA is 27th in MLB. The Rangers lead the division by 8.5 games. We’ve talked about it before, but the Rangers are getting pretty hard to explain with the tools we typically use. Their run differential on the year is only +5, far worse than the M’s, and by BaseRuns, they’re actually negative. They’ve outperformed their pythagorean record by 11 games, and outperformed their BaseRuns record by 12. The bullpen has not only been terrible in blowout losses, they’ve given away a number of games (the M’s have been the beneficiary of a few), but at other times have come up huge.
The Rangers line-up has seen two of their cornerstone players, Shin-Soo Choo and Prince Fielder felled by injuries – in Fielder’s case, they’ve caused his retirement – and growing pains from their rookies, and it simply hasn’t mattered. This isn’t to say they’re a great offense – the M’s have scored far more runs – but like the pitching staff, they’ve scored runs *exactly* when they need them time and again. None of this sounds all that sustainable, but this is now year 2 of the Weird Rangers, the club with some obvious holes and with a so-so run differential that nonetheless keeps winning ball games.
They’re a much more formidable team in the playoffs than all of the preceding makes them sound for a few reasons. First is the return of tonight’s starter, Yu Darvish, who looks like he hasn’t missed a beat. His velocity is all of the way back, and he’s striking batters out at nearly the rate he did back in 2014. Second has been the deadline acquisition of Jonathan Lucroy, who ended up in Texas after nixing a deal that would’ve sent him to Cleveland. Lucroy leads MLB catchers in WAR, and while the Rangers cobbled together some decent production before getting him, they’ve clearly upgraded their true-talent. Add in the low-key pick up of Carlos Beltran, and the Rangers are clearly a better club than the one that posted a great record in the first half. Let’s just hope they aren’t as lucky.
1: Martin, CF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Zunino, C
8: O’Malley, LF
9: Marte, SS
SP: Iwakuma
The Bakersfield Blaze played their final regular season home game last night, as the team will cease operations after this year. I tuned in to hear Dan Besbris’ call, and the Blaze picked up the win, sending fans home happy. It won’t actually be the final game at Sam Lynn, as the Blaze will be in the Cal League playoffs, so here’s hoping that Bakersfield’s final act as a Cal League team is hosting the league trophy. The Blaze built a true Cal League lead of 11-3 with HRs from Justin Seager, Austin Wilson and Chantz Mack and then watched as the bullpen gave much of it away in the 8th, but their closer Thyago Vieira got the job done in the 9th, and the Blaze had an 11-8 win.
Tacoma’d built a big divisional lead, and saw Reno chip away at it, and Reno had taken the first two games in a critical head-to-head series, but Tacoma beat the Aces 4-3 last night to rebuild a 3.5 game cushion.
Cedar Rapids beat Clinton and Vancouver beat Everett, but at least the AZL M’s shut out the AZL Rangers in what we all hope is a foreshadowing of today’s big league game.
Jackson was rained out, which is pretty much the only way to avoid losing to them. They’ll play 2 today. Interesting prospect match-up of Taylor Jungmann facing off with the Generals’ Andrew Moore in game 1.
Tacoma’s Zach Lee gets the start in a big, big game against Fresno, and the R’s need him to post a solid start. Since joining Tacoma, he’s 0-7 with an ERA of 7.04. Fingers crossed. Reno’s in Sacramento.
Game 7, Nomar MazaRangers at Mariners
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Colby Lewis, 7:10pm
What a difference three games makes. The M’s capped a painful three game sweep at the hands of Oakland with the most painful game of all, an extra-innings one-run loss in a game Felix tossed seven scoreless with 10 Ks. It’s not that any one game means a whole lot in the standings, it’s just the kind of game that gives this scarred fanbase some flashbacks to the Bad Times of 2010-12.
The M’s offense, riding high after the opening series, was wholly ineffective against the A’s. The M’s batting average on balls in play tanked, in part because the A’s seemed to shift a bit better than the M’s. To be clear: the M’s defense has looked atrocious, but they’ve done a decent job of turning balls in play into outs. But the A’s were able to beat the shift several times, from Jed Lowrie’s two opposite field grounders to Yonder Alonso’s bunt in yesterday’s game. Meanwhile, the M’s offense has been really hurt by the shift. The M’s are hitting .184 into the shift, in part because they’ve got the second-highest GB% when the shift is on. The highest, Kansas City, has an even *lower* average in the shift. Teams know which M’s to shift, and to date, those M’s hitters have hit accordingly. The other big problem with the offense was their putrid performance with men on base. In both cases, though, a freakishly low BABIP is part of the problem. The shift thing is concerning, because it hints at a *reason* the M’s BABIP might be low, but the M’s have had their share of bad luck thus far as well.
Today, they take on Texas, whom they obviously enjoyed hitting against in the opening series of the season. Colby Lewis starts, and just like last time, that makes for a solid match-up for the M’s. The big story of the game isn’t the M’s sweep or Lewis, or ‘Kuma, but rather the Rangers newest call-up, catcher Brett Nicholas. The 27-year old backstop was drafted back in 2010, and slowly worked… Ok, in actuality, the big story is the Rangers promotion of one of the top position-player prospects in the game, Nomar Mazara. Mazara’s first game was yesterday in Anaheim – the Rangers hit him second in the line-up. I can’t think of the last time a 20-year old call-up hit 2nd in the line-up. In Mike Trout’s debut (against the M’s), he batted 9th. Carlos Correa hit 6th, as did Miguel Sano. Kris Bryant batted 4th in his first game, but he was 23. Mazara’s approach and ability to drive a variety of pitches has had scouts drooling for years, ever since he signed the highest international signing bonus ever in 2011, right before the new bonus cap system went into place. After a couple of slow years (and aggressive assignments), he began settling in and putting up solid, but not eye-popping numbers. Still, scouts have given Mazara’s bat and overall talent for hitting grades that are absolutely in that Correa/Sano class. In his debut yesterday, he had hits in his first three PAs, with the third a home run off of Jered Weaver. Rangers fans probably expected to see Mazara at some point this year, but his early arrival and dominant debut were unexpected bonuses, and take the sting out of losing Shin-Soo Choo to a hamstring injury.
As I talked about in the minor league preview, Texas’ AAA affiliate in Round Rock was a loaded group, and they’ve still got Joey Gallo waiting another call-up. They may add to it by promoting CF Lewis Brinson, a guy I’d have right about equal with Mazara in terms of overall value (Brinson’s a CF, which helps balance out Mazara’s more advanced bat). Gallo is somehow still only 22, and Jurickson Profar is at Round Rock as well, trying to show he can stay healthy and contribute.
Here’s tonight’s line-up:
1: Aoki, LF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Lind, 1B
6: Smith, RF
7: Iannetta, C
8: Marte, SS
9: Martin, CF
SP: Iwakuma
I don’t really want to, but I suppose I should address this stupid click-baity fan loyalty ranking thing. Nathan at LL already remarked that it’s irrelevant, but I just wanted to point out that this kind of thing is designed to be controversial and generate click-throughs and pageviews. How? By imbuing a series of survey results with a big, overarching, vaguely moralistic heading. The marketing group (there’s your first hint, people) responsible for measuring “Loyalty” asked some fans about how entertaining they are (?), how “authentic” they are as a team (??), and some other dubious “metrics” and summarize the whole thing as “loyalty.” They do so annually, which leads to the insanity/inanity of seeing certain fanbases jump up* (or tumble down) in the rankings on a year-to-year basis. The genius here is the headline, and the vague whiff of “science” to it. There are like, metrics and stuff, and sub-categories, and people from the marketing group that would be happy to talk to your reporters. As a culture, we can’t stop consuming this stuff, even as the social sciences undergo a reproducibility crisis, and even as people demonstrate exactly how to turn nothing into viral stories. No, the M’s are not a disloyal fanbase. Safeco wouldn’t have been packed with yellow-shirted crazies yesterday if that were true. No one would be reading this if that was true (uhhh, never mind, let’s go back to the Felix thing).
In much happier news, I got to see the Rainiers nuke the Albuquerque Isotopes yesterday, 13-1. The game wasn’t as close as the score indicates, actually. Stefen Romero launched a long, long HR, Boog Powell had hits and scored runs in each of the first two innings, and Chris Taylor was on base four times. You get the picture. Lost in all of the run-scoring was a great outing by Adrian Sampson, who went 6 scoreless innings, yielding just one hit. He sat 90-91 for the most part, touched 92 frequently, and showed a change and workable slider/breaking ball. Donn Roach makes his first start today as the R’s open a series with El Paso. The Chihuahuas have an interesting team – a pitching staff anchored by veteran Jeremy Guthrie, an IF made up of several ex-prospects like one-time Ranger prospect Mike Olt, ex-Giants prospect Nick Noonan, and ex-Dodger prospect James Loney. Then, they have actual prospects in the OF, led by top-100 guys Manual Margot and Hunter Renfroe. LF Alex Dickerson is something of a prospect himself, and made his big league debut last season.
Jackson finally lost to Mongtomery, 9-2. Brett Ash and reliever Ryne Harper struggled, and the offense didn’t score until the 8th inning. Guillermo Heredia had three hits, and Tyler O’Neill had two. The Generals were rained out today.
Bakersfield dropped another close one, losing 3-1 to Visalia in extra innings. The Rawhide tied the game at 1 in the 9th, then scored 2 in the 10th to win. Tyler Pike pitched very well, which is incredibly encouraging, given his struggles over the past two years. 1B Kyle Petty had three singles for the Blaze. Left-hander Eddie Campbell takes the mound for Bakersfield tonight.
Clinton beat Kane County 4-3, with a 2-run rally in the 7th capped by another Ricky Eusebio hit. Eusebio is now 6-13 on the year. The relievers for the L-Kings were great, especially Joey Strain, who went two perfect innings to close it out. Prospect Nick Wells starts for Clinton today; the lanky lefty was part of the return for Mark Lowe last year.
* This year, Pittsburgh jumped up 10 spots in loyalty. Loyalty is essentially *defined* by the persistence or durability of a connection or affiliation, but Pittsburgh’s loyalty jumped 10 spots in a year. That’s an awesome loyalty measure you’ve got there. The Cubs, who sell out every game, are 16th. It is nonsense on stilts, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
Game 3, Mariners at Rangers
Wade Miley vs. Colby Lewis, 11:05am
After a triumphant, decisive win last night, the M’s have a great opportunity to win an early series at a divisional rival’s place today. Wade Miley makes his first official start for the M’s in something of a tough situation for him. At a very high level, he’s a middle-of-the-order guy who’s struggled at times with the home run, so playing in a park like Arlington’s going to challenge him (and everyone else, of course). That said, this *specific* game has some positives as well. First, Texas’ line-up has been re-jiggered a bit to get more right-handed bats in there. That makes sense given Miley’s pretty normal platoon splits, but it also means that the Rangers are throwing out something of a B team line-up, particularly down the batting order.
Shin-Soo Choo and Prince Fielder are two of the Rangers’ best bats, but they’re also lefties. Miley will need to be wary of Adrian Beltre, but other than that, he’s going to face Ian Desmond (playing CF!!), Brian Holoday, Ryan Rua, Justin Ruggiano and Hanser Alberto. Rougned Odor’s another tough out, but he too bats lefty, making Miley’s job a bit easier. Choo’s platoon splits are fairly extreme, and it’s something that’s tugged his overall value down a bit, but Prince Fielder’s are sizable, too. This is a divisional game in a hitter’s haven, but this is still a favorable way for Miley to get his M’s career going.
Colby Lewis gets the start for Texas. The righty now throws in the high 80s, and has been dogged by platoon split issues of his own for many years. A more pressing concern has been health, as Lewis had Tommy John a few years ago. Impressively, he topped 200 IP last year for the first time in years, so he clearly put in the work, but I think that also says a lot about the dire situation the Rangers were in in 2014-15 with their pitching staff just decimated by injuries that Lewis was required to stabilize the rotation and become a workhorse.
Lewis throws a rising four-seam fastball and a lot of sliders at 83-84. He’s got a decent curve ball, but, like his change, he uses it sparingly and mostly against lefties. Lewis has great control, which is probably what’s kept him in the big leagues. Against lefties, he gets very few strikeouts and thus has a very high career FIP against them, but at least he doesn’t give up free passes. The M’s offense *liked* facing fly-ball pitchers (and Lewis is an extreme fly-ball guy) last year, and figures to do well against them again this year: Nelson Cruz, Robinson Cano and Kyle Seager love pitches they can elevate and drive. It’s not dispositive, but it’s nice to see that Seager and Cano in particular have clubbed Lewis over their careers.
1: Martin, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, RF
5: Lind, 1B
6: Smith, DH
7: Sardinas, LF
8: Clevenger, C
9: Marte, SS
SP: Miley
Marte’s defensive lapses have been unfortunate, but it’s easy to chalk up to nerves. Something to keep an eye on, perhaps. Luis Sardinas, the utility man brought in in large part for his ability to play a competent SS, has now seen time at 1B and LF. The M’s will give the lefty-swinging Steve Clevenger his first start – a great move against a guy like Colby Lewis. Finally, after a spring in which pretty much no one could get him out, it’s great to see Seth Smith race out of the gates. As an M’s fan, it’s often hard to separate the beauty of a hitter’s swing from the results it produces, and I’m not sure I can, but I will just say that I love watching Seth Smith hit.
So, last night’s game was an entertaining one. After several innings in which pitching had the upper hand, the M’s broke through against the bottom half of the Rangers bullpen, getting to Federal Way’s Tony Barnette and then absolutely destroying Tom Wilhelmsen. Like many of you, it wasn’t as fun to see Wilhelmsen self-destruct as it would’ve been to see, I don’t know, Shawn Tolleson, but the M’s line-up looked much more potent than we’ve seen in a while. In a sense, that’s been the most surprising aspect of the first two games: the M’s got away from the all-HRs, no-glove approach and yet they’ve produced six HRs in two games with some pretty shoddy fielding thrown in. Whatever works.
Revisiting the M’s Top Prospects of 2006
I mentioned it in a game thread a few days ago, but seriously, you really have to read this Sam Miller piece at BP that looks at what’s become of the Rays top 30 prospects ten years later. It’s the fourth in a series of posts Sam’s done, detailing the outcome of the top farm system in baseball ten years previously. What’s fascinating is not just that many prospects bust, but, and this should’ve been obvious, what teams DO with their prospects vary widely. The Brewers group of 2003 (a group put together largely by Jack Zduriencik) got solid production from the very top of their list – headed by Prince Fielder, JJ Hardy and Rickie Weeks – but struggled to do much with everyone else, and if that isn’t some pretty big foreshadowing of the Zduriencik era in Seattle, I don’t know what is. The Angels did a bit better *despite* the fact that their top prospects at the time – Dallas McPherson and Brandon Wood – are legendary prospect busts. But they had a deep system, and thus got plenty of production from Kendrys Morales, Howie Kendrick, Erick Aybar and the like, and they made a few smaller moves with that cohort, including flipping Kendrick for today’s pre-arb starter, Andrew Heaney. The Rays article represents a very different approach. Instead of keeping their top prospects together, they were very selective about the players they kept, and after that, traded liberally with anyone who’d listen. What this means is that, even ten years later, the Rays still have a bunch of prospects and cost-controlled players they acquired in exchange for earlier prospects, who they acquired in exchange for the prospects on that original 2006 list. As a result, they’ve put up far more WAR as a result of their original list, many of their *current* prospects are in the organization as a result of the original prospects.
The Rays were remarkable in that they ID’d the right players to sign (Evan Longoria) and the right players to sell high on (Delmon Young), and then they kept parlaying one set of acquisitions into another, turning Delmon Young into Matt Garza into Chris Archer. The Angels weren’t quite as adept as that, but their deep system still provided the basis for 5-6 years of contention, thanks to the infield tandem of Kendrick and Aybar. So, what would the M’s look like in this kind of analysis? What would we learn, apart from the basic fact that baseball, like life, is pain, and that point-in-time errors cascade through the seasons, bringing old ghosts and new torments together in a Grand Guignol of… sorry, got a bit carried away. I’m not going to lie: doing this means reliving some of the most painful, most self-destructive moments in recent M’s history. This might hurt a bit.
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The State of the AL West
Spring Training looms, and with the exception of the somewhat odd Khris Davis deal, the AL West clubs seem to have settled in on the rosters they’ll take to Arizona. We’ve also got some early projections of each team, and now that the hot stove is down to a very low simmer, we can start to make more educated guesses about playing time. Put the two together, and we’ve got some early looks at the state of the division. If your initial reaction to this is indifference or a rueful scoff, I get it; the projections were pretty enamored with the M’s last year, and that didn’t work out so well. I think there’s always some value in seeing how the teams stack up on paper, knowing that chance and luck will make most of these look silly by August, if not sooner.
Going a step further, I think it’s interesting to compare the projections and see where they agree and disagree about the M’s and their competitors. As we’ve seen in recent years, the parity of the AL as a whole means the relative position of each team within the division means a little bit less – there are no great teams and no truly awful ones. EACH of the projection systems we’re looking at today sees the best and worst teams separated by 10 games or less. You can legitimately make a case for any of these teams, though obviously the case is a bit easier for the Astros and M’s than it is for Oakland.
This compression/parity/mediocrity/whatever you want to call it has a few ramifications. First, if true talent isn’t going to decide the division, then chance and how teams respond to it means more. That is, teams will need to decide very quickly what counts as a slow start, and what is an unacceptable level of performance in a tight race. The M’s have been remarkably poor at this in recent years, but given the samples, it’s almost impossible to separate noise from signal. The Rangers’ faith in Shin-Soo Choo and Elvis Andrus was rewarded last year, while the Athletics’ freakishly unlucky bullpen* never saw their luck change as their innings piled up. Second, differences in individual forecasts are similarly more important. Fangraphs’ projection for Nelson Cruz is pretty terrible, while CAIRO’s is more bullish. For Kyle Seager, they’re reversed. A lot of this has to do with how they apply aging curves (Nelson Cruz’s WAR by age is almost unprecedented outside of the steroid age), but regardless of why, each individual projection (and thus each individual season or performance) has a larger impact on how the teams rank within the division. Finally, with the division so bunched up, a big part of a team’s playoff odds come down to the strength of the division as a whole vis a vis the others divisions.
Each system sees the teams as tightly bunched up, but there’s some disagreement about *where* they’re bunched up. In CAIRO, the teams are centered on around 79 wins. The Astros 83 projected wins actually paces the division. This contrasts sharply with Clay Davenport’s projections, which see the AL West as perhaps the best division in baseball: the Blue Jays lead the league with 90 projected wins, but then spots 2-4 are all AL West clubs. To CAIRO, the teams are sharing 393 wins pretty evenly, but the Davenport projections show them fighting over 420 wins. Fangraphs comes in right at the midpoint. In a system with this much parity, small differences can get magnified. This isn’t just a mathematical oddity; how the clubs in the West and Central stack up impacts the M’s playoff odds. By CAIRO, if you don’t win the West, you’re pretty much out of luck. The Davenport win totals show three AL West teams with very good odds to make the postseason.
One final comment before we get to some tables: the other thing that parity does is put more emphasis on playing time estimates. Every team projection has an objective part and a subjective one. The projections endeavor to give us an objective look at true talent, but a human’s got to input some playing time estimates, and that’s both tough to do before spring training and hugely important to the overall winning percentage the model spits out. Fangraphs has their own estimates at their “depth chart” page, as does Clay Davenport on his projection page. CAIRO, the projection system from SG at the Replacement Level Yankee Weblog, doesn’t yet have these estimates for every team. He’s done one for the Yankees, which is fair enough, but not for the AL West teams. Using his awesome CAIRO spreadsheet, I’ve taken a stab at it for each club in the West. Fair warning: I’m sure fans of the other clubs might quibble with my guesses.** You tell ME how the A’s are going to use Khris Davis and Mark Canha. It’s just a guess, and it’s still only mid-February, but it’s important to acknowledge that small changes to the line-up – even bench players – move the needle by a win or two.
So, let’s take a look at how Fangraphs, Clay Davenport and CAIRO see the AL West as of Presidents Day 2016:
| Team | Wins -FG | Wins – Dav | Wins -Cair |
| M’s | 84 | 87 | 80 |
| Astros | 85 | 87 | 83 |
| Athletics | 77 | 83 | 78 |
| Angels | 80 | 86 | 75 |
| Rangers | 80 | 77 | 77 |
The Astros are generally, though not uniformly, the best team, with the M’s a close second. The other three teams are a few wins back, though it’s worth pointing out that the systems disagree on the Angels more than the other clubs.
Looking at run differential helps highlight how each system sees the AL West vis a vis the other divisions:
| Team | RunDif FG | RunDif Dav | RunDif Cair |
| M’s | 23 | 53 | -12 |
| Astros | 34 | 57 | 16 |
| Athletics | -34 | 23 | -31 |
| Angels | -10 | 47 | -58 |
| Rangers | -8 | -34 | -21 |
The M’s (and Astros’) run differentials stand out. By Davenport, the M’s are projected to score the 2nd most runs in the AL, behind only Toronto. By CAIRO, the M’s improvement in runs per game is much more modest – about 0.05 runs per game as opposed to 0.5. Both systems have identical forecasts for runs allowed, though. Fangraphs and Davenport are very close to each other regarding each team’s runs scored, while CAIRO’s much more bearish. On runs allowed, it’s Davenport and CAIRO that are nearly indistinguishable, while Fangraphs sees a lot more runs charged to AL West hurlers.
One final area of agreement: Fangraphs and CAIRO both see the M’s defense as a net positive, with the bulk of the contribution coming from the OF. Putting Nelson Cruz at DH and Leonys Martin in CF is a 1-2 win swing on its own, and the M’s D is forecasted to save around 5 runs by Fangraphs or 12+ by CAIRO. Martin’s defense is going to be important with so many fly-balling relievers, so it’s critical that Martin hit enough to stay in the line-up. I know he was hurt last year, but the projection systems all see him as a Brendan Ryan-type hitter/player. If he’s significantly better, the M’s are in much, much better shape. If not, they’ve swapped out a black hole at C and 1B for one at CF.
(FG = Fangraphs, Dav= Clay Davenport, Cair = CAIRO. I had nothing to do with creating these systems, I’m just using them. Huge thanks to SG for the editable playing time tab in his CAIRO spreadsheet.)
* I’ll come back to this in a future post, but one of the most significant sources of variance this season – and every season – is relief pitching. Not just “Does Steve Cishek bounce back, or nah?” but in a larger sense: how important to team success is a bullpen? The A’s “unlucky” bullpen absolutely sunk a team that was putting together a decent season by run differential (and it made Evan Scribner available to Seattle), while the Pirates and Yankees’ bullpens propelled them to contention. Depending on your point of view, this is either a huge part of “chance” – random good seasons from volatile set-up men can get you Baltimore’s 2012 or Oakland’s 2015 – or an important way to actually beat projections.
** Some obvious issues with my estimates here: Alex “Chi Chi” Gonzalez wasn’t forecasted, but his not-so-hot forecast shouldn’t do too much to the Rangers’ overall win projection. I have no idea how the A’s OF rotation works now, but gave Davis and Canha plenty of PAs. Wouldn’t be surprised to see the latter moved before opening day. The back of each bullpen is pretty speculative, but with so few innings at stake, it shouldn’t matter too much.
Dae-Ho Lee and Roberto Petagine
I should wait and post this on February 22nd, but if I keep trying to find the time to post, I’ll just miss it and go another month without providing any baseballing opinions. So: *nearly* ten years ago today, on February 22nd, 2006, the M’s made a low-key minor league signing of a guy who’d just been released by the Red Sox organization. Roberto Petagine got a sip of coffee with Boston in 2005, appearing in 18 games, but spent most of the year demolishing the International League for Pawtucket: an OBP of .452, and a SLG% of .635. Sure, he was 34, but though few knew his name, this wasn’t exactly a shock.
Between 1999 and 2004, Petagine was one of Japanese Baseball’s elite. The Venezuelan signed with Yakult, and in his first season in Japan led both the Central and Pacific leagues in HRs, OBP, SLG% and OPS. Ichiro was 25 that year, and easily led the Pacific League with an OBP of .412. Petagine’s was .469. Hideki Matsui hit 42 HRs and slugged .631, but Petagine hit 44 and slugged .677. Petagine was the only player to exceed 100 walks. You get the picture. There were some great domestic and imported players, but Petagine was, generally speaking, the most dominant offensive force for the next few years. In his first year with Yomiuri in 2003, Petagine missed 40 games (in a 140-game season), so he didn’t take the HR crown, but still posted the best OPS and OBP in the league. Petagine led with a .457 mark, while Kosuke Fukudome came in 2nd all the way back at .401. He slumped a bit – for him- the next year, losing the OBP crown to Greg LaRocca, and putting up an OPS of only .970. Still, the guy who signed a minor league deal with Boston that offseason was nearly as big a star as Matsui had been – and of course it was Petagine that Yomiuri turned to in 2003 when Matsui left to join the Yankees.
For those of us who had some cursory knowledge of the NPB then, this was no ordinary minor league signing. This was an undervalued talent, and one that could clearly help an M’s team that was coming off two straight poor offensive seasons. Even the skeptics had to acknowledge this was a high-upside, zero-downside move. Still, there were warning signs: where was Petagine going to play? The M’s 1B was a surprisingly effective Richie Sexson, coming off a 2005 that saw him hit 39 bombs and post a 144 wRC+. DH had been a problem, but the M’s appeared to have solved that by signing switch-hitter Carl Everett. Behind him was corner OF/Util lefty Matt Lawton. If he was going to play, he could spell Sexson every now and again or beat out Lawton and hit dingers.
As it happened, not even the lack of production from his would-be competitors would ensure Petagine got a real shot in the bigs. Carl Everett was horrific, Lawton was worse, and Petagine was planted firmly on the bench, used sporadically as a pinch hitter. This, combined with the M’s odd just-sort-of-hanging-around form of contention led to two of the worst trades of the Bavasi era, which is saying something. Off went teenage SS Asdrubal Cabrera for right-handed Petagine-replacing DH Eduardo Perez*, while Shin-Soo Choo followed Cabrera to Cleveland in exchange for lefty DH Ben Broussard. Petagine was finally released in late August, having had 2 plate appearances since June 29th. The M’s, you’ll be shocked to hear, did not make the playoffs. Petagine never appeared in the majors again.
After sitting out 2007, Petagine came back in 2008 at the age of 37. He started in Mexico, knocked the crap out of the ball, and then moved to the Korean league, where he posted an insanely high OBP yet again. The following year, 2009, saw Petagine put up another monster year for the LG Twins: a slash line of .332/.468/.575 and yet another OBP crown at the age of 38. The KBO was an insane offensive environment that year – as it has been most years – but Petagine still stood out. A young Jung-Ho Kang hit 23 HRs that year and posted an .857 OPS, while 26 year old 1B Dae-Ho Lee hit 28 HRs and topped .900. Petagine’s OPS was 1.043, of course. After that, Petagine played one final half-season in Japan before calling it a career. Meanwhile, Lee improved dramatically in the next few seasons, culminating in a dominant 2011 that saw him win a batting title.
Lee then moved to Japan, right in the midst of the NPB’s extraordinary shift in run environment. In Lee’s first year in Japan, 2012, the average Pacific League team scored 3.37 runs per game; in the Central League it was 3.14(!). The 2010 Mariners are the worst offensive ballclub in decades, and they scored 3.2 runs per game. The NPB in 2012 was pitcher-friendly, is what I’m getting at. Lee’s OPS was 2nd best in the Pacific League, and the 1B out-homered Wily Mo Pena. The following year, scoring was up dramatically – around 4 runs per game over both years (this was the year of Wlad Balentien’s single-season HR record, and a scandal involving a “juiced” ball), and Lee again posted excellent – though not in Petagine’s class – numbers.
But it’s hard to compare Lee and Petagine directly given this volatility in NPB’s run environment. In Petagine’s first year, NPB pitchers gave up 0.9 HRs per 9 innings, and teams scored about 4.4-4.5 runs/game. In 2012, the HR rate was just 0.5, but rebounded all the way to 0.9 again just a year later. Scoring came roaring back as well, with Central League scoring exceeding 4.2 runs/game in 2014, before collapsing again to 3.4 in 2015. Just to get confusing, Pacific League scoring *didn’t* spike in 2014, but also didn’t collapse in 2015. The M’s obviously have the tools and experience to make sense of this run environment and Dae Ho Lee’s place within it; I’m going to offer a shrug and just hope he can help.
However you control for the league, Lee seems like a solid hitter, albeit one in his decline phase, which isn’t really a shock considering his age (he’ll turn 34 this season). I think, broadly speaking, that Petagine may have been the superior hitter, but Lee has a better chance to play and contribute, considering the M’s primary 1B is a lefty with serious platoon split problems. Moreover, his competition as the right-sided platoon guy is not covered in glory: Jesus Montero’s history is, uh, checkered, and Gaby Sanchez is coming off a poor 2014 in Pittsburgh, and an equally bad 2015 in the same league Lee’s coming from. Dae-Ho Lee hit 31 HRs, and was named the Japan Series MVP. Sanchez hit .226/.328/.392 for last-place Rakuten. There’s a path to a roster spot, and a path to meaningful at-bats for Lee.
But a path isn’t the same thing as a job, and an opportunity isn’t the same thing as a fair shot. I was legitimately excited about Petagine 10 years ago, and it’s easy to laugh that off as the optimism of the stat-sheet scout. But Petagine had 32 plate appearances for the M’s in 31 games, so even the optimists can bring out the old college socialist bromide: Petagine didn’t fail, Petagine was never actually attempted!** I don’t know what to think anymore. I loved Balentien, but he got more of a shot and did less with it before going to Japan and hitting like Babe Ruth. Dae-Ho Lee was solid for many years in the NPB, but with his K% creeping up as inexorably as his age, he may not make enough contact to really help. That said, check out his Davenport translated batting line: .266/.327/.426. It’s not gaudy, but it’d help.
I have no doubt that if you’d run Petagine’s translations back in 2006, they’d have said he’d do even better (just checked, and yes, it’s true). Ultimately, Petagine never really got a shot to prove those forecasts wrong. Whether it was a long-looking swing, his age, the outlay to bring in Everett, or the then-prevalent assumption that *anyone* could roll out of bed and hit 30 HRs in Japan, Petagine never played. I like Dae-Ho Lee, and I sincerely hope John McGrath is right that we’ll look back on this move as a big one. Lee may adjust easily to the big leagues, but before he can worry about adjusting to new pitchers, parks and a new baseball, he’s going to have to win over a manager the way Petagine couldn’t.
* Perez himself was an NPB veteran, spending part of 2001 with Hanshin. Perez got in about 50 games and washed out, hitting .222 with little power.
** We sabermetric fans often wrestle with two mutually exclusive ideas, and deploy either one as needed when praising our Tampa Bay overlords. First, small samples don’t mean much. Second, smart teams move quickly to correct deficiencies, and don’t let them fester for years like Justin Smoak or Dustin Ackley. How can you “move quickly” if you don’t have a large sample size? I don’t know, ask Billy Beane Andrew Friedman.
More Small Moves: Adam Lind Acquired, Jabari Blash Taken in Rule 5 Draft
Seriously can’t keep up with Jerry Dipoto this month, so I took a couple of days off of kvetching about minor M’s roster moves. Back at it, then. The biggest move of the past few days is the acquisition of 1B Adam Lind in a trade with Milwaukee. The M’s add a righty-killing bat at the very reasonable cost of three A-ball and below pitchers. Yesterday, the M’s lost OF Jabari Blash in the Rule 5 draft, with the A’s taking the slugging righty and then shipping him to San Diego. Here’s a not-so-brief run-down on these moves:
1: Adam Lind is a career .274/.332/.466 hitter in over 4,000 plate appearances for Toronto and Milwaukee. Sure, he’s a 1B/DH, but that’s not bad – it adds up to a 112 wRC+, solidly above average. Why was he acquired for a package of pitchers *headlined* by a a small righty who’s tossed 6 games above rookie league ball and then had Tommy John surgery? Chances are, if you know anything at all about Lind, you know he’s got some of the widest, most persistent platoon splits of any player in baseball. In a great post about the Lind and Scribner pick-ups at Fangraphs, Jeff Sullivan finds that Lind’s platoon splits are the largest in the game since 2002, easily eclipsing Seth Smith’s, Shin-Soo Choo’s, and Garrett Jones’.
You’ve got to keep that in mind, but the M’s seem aware, as Scott Servais has talked about the need for a platoon partner. RHB Jesus Montero would seem the likely candidate for the job, but the M’s could make another minor deal for a righty-hitting 1B, or they could move Nelson Cruz to 1B if a righty-hitting OF becomes available. I don’t mind platoons; I think getting the platoon advantage is a small, easy way of putting your team in the best position to succeed. There are obvious downsides, from squeezing the roster to a potential lack of flexibility and effectiveness in critical late-game situations. That said, I think platoons can help overall production and allow for an effective bench with hitters beyond the standard backup C and random UTIL/pinch runner.
However, with this move in particular, there’s another factor to keep in mind. Even at 32 (Lind will turn 33 in July), Lind destroys righties, but how much he plays – how many plate appearances he gets – is often a function of how many left-handed pitchers he faces. When he came up, the Blue Jays played Lind every day, and he typically saw around 72-75% right-handed pitchers, give or take. As the magnitude of his platoon issue became apparent, the Blue Jays got more intentional about how to deploy him, and that percentage rose above 80%, approaching 90% in 2014. That and recurring back problems limited him in many seasons with the Jays: he got just 318 PAs in 2014 and 353 in 2012. Last year, with the Brewers, Lind played a full season and *still* managed to face righties in 80.4% of his PAs. The question is: will that sort of usage be possible in Seattle?
Here is an admittedly rough look at platoon splits by league/division. In the table, you’ll see the total number of PAs vs. LHP by division for 2014 and 2015. To do this properly, you’d probably use a percentage of total PAs or something, but I haven’t done that – this is just adding up the raw PAs by year and team (and then rolling it up to the division level):
| PA vs. LHP, 2014 | PA vs. LHP, 2015 | |
|---|---|---|
| AL West | 8,868 | 9,701 |
| AL Central | 8,864 | 8,805 |
| AL East | 8,402 | 8,663 |
| NL West | 8,277 | 7,684 |
| NL Central | 7,203 | 7,490 |
| NL East | 7,617 | 7,224 |
In 2014, no team faced a left-handed pitcher more than the Seattle Mariners. In 2015, the Rangers led baseball, and the M’s were 5th, one spot below the Astros. In 2015, the Brewers ranked 21st in PAs vs. lefties, with the Cubs and Pirates down at 25-26. In 2014, the Brewers ranked 26th with Pirates last in baseball. This is something I’ve found fascinating since reading this article back before the 2014 season: the NL Central just doesn’t really have many lefties, and may not focus as much as others on bullpen match-ups. They’re not alone, as the NL East shows similar tendencies. The other thing that jumps off the page is just how many more PAs vs. lefties you see in the AL. Apparently, one way for pitchers to deal with the DH is to specialize, but the effect (the AL West faced lefties 30% more than the NL central last year, and 23% the year before!) is so big, it can’t be all about interminable LOOGY/ROOGY appearances.
Look at the likely starters in the AL West next year. The Angels may have 3 lefty starters (CJ Wilson, Hector Santiago, Andrew Heaney), and the Rangers could have 3 as well (Derek Holland, Cole Hamels, Martin Perez). The A’s have 2 in Sean Nolin and Rich Hill, and while Houston has only 1, he’s pretty good and faces a lot of hitters (Dallas Keuchel). Whoever Lind’s caddy is will get plenty of action, and that means Lind won’t see as much action in 2016 even if he’s 100% healthy all year. This is a factor, but let’s be clear: Lind’s price was very low – both in terms of salary and the talent needed to acquire him. Lind’s platoon splits make him affordable, and even if the M’s may not be able to squeeze as much value out of him as the Brewers did, there’s still a valuable skill-set in there.
For their part, the Brewers are doing the same sort of thing. In Daniel Missaki, Carlos Herrera and Freddy Peralta, the Brewers picked up three righties with very good K:BB ratios whose physical size make them unlikely candidates for top prospect lists. Missaki, whom the M’s signed out of Brazil, tossed 7 IP of a combined no-hitter for Clinton (maybe the only good thing that happened to that team in 2015), but then tore his UCL soon thereafter. Missaki has a career K:BB ratio of 111:26, and was even better in his abbreviated 2015 (34:5), but is listed at 6′, 170, and if you could discount questions about his durability based solely on his size, his TJ surgery will be harder to explain away. Freddy Peralta repeated the Arizona league this year, putting up a 67:8 K:BB ratio, but he’s actually smaller than Missaki, listed at 5’11” 175. Herrera was in the Dominican League where he posted a 73:15 K:BB ratio, and is listed as 6’2″ (a comparative giant!) and 150lbs. These are three lottery tickets, and they all have the same statistical/physical profile.
2: Jabari Blash was one of the most entertaining members of the workmanlike 2015 Tacoma Rainiers. The giant 6’5″, 220lb LF/RF knocked 32 HRs between AA and AAA, hitting one of the longer HRs I saw in 2015, and slugging .640 for Tacoma in 228 PAs. PCL or no, that’s going to attract attention. If we think we know what Jerry Dipoto likes in relief pitchers, and if we think we know what the Brewers see as undervalued assets in the low-minors, we also know what the new M’s front office sees as big red flags. Jabari Blash has contact problems, and there may not be a more damning statistic than that, at least as far as the M’s GM is concerned. Blash’s K rate last year was 25.8%, and 27.6% in AAA. That was actually an improvement on his 30%+ mark in almost 200 PAs for Tacoma in 2014, when his season was cut short for a PED suspension.
It’s somewhat telling that Blash couldn’t quite crack the big league roster despite having the RH-power that Jack Zduriencik craved, and despite a very good minor league walk rate. By some statistical models, Blash was an intriguing, if old-for-his-level prospect. Tweaking the assumptions slightly produces a much less auspicious set of comparisons. Ex-Fangraphs scouting guy/current Atlanta Braves scouting guy Kiley McDaniel wasn’t high on Blash heading into 2015, but it’s worth noting that he showed some real improvements throughout the year, hence the insane slash line in Tacoma. That said, I have my doubts, given how high his hands were before his swing and how far his (really long) arms had to move to get the bat into the zone. Like, say, Carlos Peguero, Blash has good batspeed, but it takes a long time for the bat to get to that top speed. As I said last September, this is the kind of guy some team will stash on their bench, using him sparingly as a bench bat and really working with him on his hitting. I was kind of interested to see what Edgar Martinez would do with him, but he’s Mark Kotsay’s uh, Alan Zinter’s project in San Diego for now. Defensively, he has a plus arm, but wasn’t a great route-runner.
Okay, no discussion of Blash is complete without mention of his glorious name. Jabari Blash and Jabari Henry are the only two Jabaris I can find in pro baseball history, which makes the fact that they were in the same organization – *and in the same OF for part of 2015* – all the more remarkable. It’s easy to forget that, coming into 2015, it was Jabari HENRY that everyone was interested in. Henry hit 30 bombs in the Cal League in 2014, while Blash whiffed 30% and then got suspended in AAA. Henry hit .170/.284/.347 for Jackson, so to say that Blash is the Jabari of choice these days is quite an understatement. That said, it’s nice to have a spare Jabari with Blash off to San Diego. Henry is much smaller than Blash, but both are RHB OFs with some power and a lot of patience at the plate.
As nice as it is to have two Jabaris on one team, the M’s weren’t the first club to consider the possibility that Jabaris were a potential market inefficiency. In 2009, the Texas Rangers drafted Blash in the 9th round (#274) and then drafted Henry in the 39th round out of HS (#1174 overall). Neither player signed, leaving Blash on the board for the M’s to draft in 2010, and allowing Henry to play 3 years of college ball before drafting him in 2012. Take THAT, Rangers. Interestingly (maybe? not really?), the Rangers not only failed to sign a single Jabari, but they couldn’t ink their first-rounder, Texas HS hurler Matt Purke. Purke went to TCU before blowing out his arm and slipping to the 3rd round in 2011.
The Mariners, The Rangers and the L Word
The M’s finished off their series in Arlington today against the first-place Rangers. The fact that the Rangers are in first is one of those things I find fascinating given their pre-season projections, their injury issues and the months and months that saw Shin-Soo Choo and/or Elvis Andrus hitting like replacement level players. The more you look at the Rangers’ campaign, the more fascinating it gets.* There’s been a lot of talk this year about variance – about a team’s base runs not correlating all that well with their actual W/L record (or run differential), about a team’s performance with runners in scoring position or close games, or any number of reasons that traditional pythagorean records have failed in their assessment of a club. To fans of said clubs, this is either evidence that advanced metrics have, in the charitable version, holes and blind spots, or, in the less-charitable (and less-credible) version, biases against this or that specific team. Because the Mariners are where they are in the standings, and because they seem to be there rather frequently, I thought it’d be a good idea to take a closer look at how and where the Rangers have excelled – to take a forensic look at *which* advanced metrics lead us furthest from their actual record, and how the M’s look in comparison. The point here isn’t to make the Rangers look bad – this is an attempt to figure out what’s going on. I’ll admit I’ve tended to watch the Rangers when they face the M’s, and that view hasn’t done a lot to illuminate the Rangers’ strengths. I’ve watched a limited set of games, so I’ll turn to some less-limited numbers.
The first thing we have to acknowledge is that there are far, far more ways to be “clutch” than are commonly identified. A few years ago, the Orioles won far more games than their overall WAR would’ve implied, and the reason was largely due to a great bullpen performance that produced an insane record in 1-run and extra-inning ball games. At the time, sabermetric fans scoffed, but O’s fans thought that the combination of a great tactical manager in Buck Showalter paired with a preternaturally dependable closer (Jim Johnson, who is just as remarkable in more recent years, but for much worse reasons) meant that this variance from their pure pythagorean record (the O’s won 11 games more than their pythag) wasn’t so much luck as a specific kind of skill. The next year, the St. Louis Cardinals actually *under*performed their pythag, but their incredible run differential seemed out of proportion to their overall batting line. By position player WAR, they were so-so, and though they were above-average in park-adjusted batting, they lagged clubs like the Angels and A’s. Despite all of that, they outscored the Angels and A’s by 50 and 20 runs…despite the fact that AL clubs get to use DHs. The Cards scored 77 more runs than 2nd place in the NL (the Rockies) because their were out of their minds with runners in scoring position – they put up an unreal .330/.402/.463 line that lapped the field. We haven’t seen anything like it in recent years, and the fact that it was “unsustainable” won’t take away the NL Pennant the cards won that year.**
When we talk about teams “beating” their lines or run differentials, these are the teams that leap to mind – not only are they recent, but they follow some established, identifiable pathways to improbable win totals. But this year’s Rangers simply don’t look like this. They’re 11 games over .500, but their pythagorean record is 74-74. Thanks to a sub-par pitching staff, the Rangers have given up exactly as many runs as they’ve scored, and before this series began, they were 7 runs in the red. So, is this a Baltimore thing where they’ve won close games and had tons of comebacks? Short answer: no. The Rangers do not have an amazing record in 1-run games, and they don’t have tons of comeback wins. On those measures, they look remarkably like the M’s. It’s not Cardinals-style performance with runners in scoring position either. The M’s have been awful, but when you park adjust, the Rangers have actually fared worse. If you prefer RE24, which just tallies the change in run expectancy for each event, both teams are solid, but the M’s pitching staff fares (predictably) worse.
| Team | OPS w/RISP | RISP wRC+ | One-run wins | Comeback wins | Bat. RE24 | Pitch RE24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mariners | 0.685 | 81 | 27-24 | 29 | 31 | -97 |
| Rangers | 0.694 | 87 | 26-20 | 27 | 41 | -42 |
From the data in the table above, I think you’d expect the Rangers to lead the M’s, but you’d probably expect both teams to be below .500. Looking at the *contextual* stats, neither the M’s look particularly good. That can happen to good teams, and it’s been a big reason why the A’s have struggled despite a GOOD run differential. So let’s take a look at some overall numbers as well:
| Team | Runs Scored | Runs Allowed | wRC+ | Pos. Player WAR | Pitcher ERA- | Pitcher FIP- | Pitcher fWAR | Pitcher rWAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mariners | 597 | 667 | 101 | 14.7 | 107 | 105 | 9 | 9.6 |
| Rangers | 666 | 666 | 95 | 17.1 | 100 | 105 | 10 | 13.7 |
The thing that jumps off the page to me is how similar the M’s look. Neither team looks particularly good, mind you, and at least the Rangers have an ~70 runs-scored advantage, but these teams look like they’d be closer than the 8.5 game advantage the Rangers actually have. This isn’t to take anything away from the Rangers or to insinuate the M’s have been horrifically unlucky. What it DOES say is that we’ve looked at a lot of numbers and *still* can’t quite identify why the Rangers are 12 games over .500. By ERA they’re not so great; they look better when you park adjust (which ERA- does), but if you do that, you have to park adjust their overall batting line, and that makes them look somewhat feeble.
Like a lot of people, including former co-blogger Dave Cameron, have been talking about this a lot, and the conclusion that he’s come to, and the conclusion that Rangers fans really, really hate hearing, is that it’s purely luck. What the data imply is that the Rangers’ ‘skill,’ if you will, is that they score runs in games when they need them, and then don’t score (or do much of anything) in losses. When you put it like that, it sounds crazy, and even looking at their batting and pitching lines in wins and losses, there’s no evidence that they perform any different than other teams. By the numbers, there’s no obvious way around the conclusion that their peripheral numbers don’t support their actual win/loss record. But that’s not interesting. So let’s do this instead: if there WERE some non-luck reason(s) the somewhat similar-looking M’s and Rangers should be 12 games over and 6 games under .500, respectively, what would it(they) be?
1: The park adjustment is missing something.
This is a flavor of measurement error; that, somewhere in the process of neutralizing and contextualizing all of these stats, Fangraphs and Bbref screwed something up. In this case, there’s a big difference in the raw stats and the park-adjusted ones. Maybe the park factors have missed something important – they may still be relying on pre-dimension-changed Safeco numbers, for example, or Texas’ may be inflated by a couple of scaldingly hot years in the recent past. Thanks largely to Nelson Cruz, the Mariners actually have a higher ISO than the Rangers – are the M’s getting more credit for that than it’s worth? Always possible, but this seems extremely unlikely. Or rather, if it affected their batting line, you’d figure it’d affect each team’s pitching WAR as well.
2: A low run-scoring environment has put a premium on things like base-running and the bullpen.
The Rangers are a good base-running team; they’ve earned nearly 12 runs above average in base-running according to Fangraphs, good for first in the AL and 3rd in baseball. The M’s, meanwhile, have the worst mark in MLB, at nearly 22 runs below average. That’s a big gap – it’s essentially as big a gap as you can get, and it just doesn’t seem like it’s anywhere close to big enough. Could there be some sort of reinforcing effect at play? A pitcher’s park PLUS bad base-running makes it exponentially more difficult to score runs, or something? Maybe, but it seems like that would show up either in the park factors themselves or in the base-running value measures.
As far as the low run-scoring environment goes, I wondered if it wasn’t a particular problem for the M’s. Recent research by David Smith concludes that a shockingly high chunk of what we call home field advantage stems from the fact that home teams outscore their opponents by a lot in the first inning. The theory is that pitching first is something of an advantage, because even if you give up some runs, the opposing starter has been sitting on the bench for a long time – essentially, the home starter goes right from warm-ups to the mound, while the visitor doesn’t exactly know when he’ll be called upon to pitch. This shows up in high run-scoring enviroments as well as low, and it persists even if the home team has just traveled. So: if the M’s were really bad at scoring overall, might they not enjoy this benefit? Is that what’s causing this gap between batting RE24 and runs? Er, no. The M’s haven’t scored a ton of runs in the first inning at Safeco, but they’ve given up even fewer. Their differential looks exactly like it should, only the numbers are lower – which is what we’d expect.
So, the bullpen. Both of these clubs have poor overall marks for bullpen performance. The Rangers’ ERA and FIP are slightly higher, but they have a small lead in WAR (1.6 to 1.3) thanks to park adjustments. Neither team is above average in any of these stats, and both are in the bottom half by strand rate, too. The distribution of pitcher WAR is different, with the M’s having both the most valuable reliever (Carson Smith) as well as the *least* valuable relievers (Joe Beimel, Fernando Rodney). The M’s have given more innings to guys having awful years, but it’s not a huge gap. Still, this is an area where depth could come into play. The M’s haven’t found a good replacement for either Mark Lowe or Charlie Furbush – Beimel was supposed to stand in for the latter, and that really didn’t work out.
3: Depth and batting order black holes.
For years, the M’s have under-scored their base runs, and for years, the M’s have struggled with offensive sinkholes towards the back of their batting order. Mariner catchers this year are hitting an unfathomable .157/.208/.260, good for a wRC+ of 29. Remember 2013, when the M’s had to rush Mike Zunino to the majors because no one could hit? They posted a wRC+ of 63 that year. This is historically awful, but could it account for the gap between RE24 and runs? Maybe, but the Rangers have struggled with some black holes (though not quite as black) too. Their CFs rank 29th in baseball in wRC+ thanks to the implosion of Leonys Martin. In fact, their OF as a whole ranks 29th, as Jake Smolinski, Ryan Rua and Ryan Strausborger have all scuffled. The Rangers have just one OF with more than 2 WAR (Choo), while the M’s have 4.
But what’s helped the Rangers is that they’ve been better about swapping out ineffective players with good ones. They didn’t go from Zunino to Jesus Sucre, they went from Carlos Corporan to Robinson Chirinos. Jake Smolinski (and Joey Gallo and Ryan Rua etc.) weren’t cutting it, so the Rangers traded for Will Venable, and they sat Martin in favor of Delino DeShields. This hasn’t always worked (Venable and Josh Hamilton haven’t done much, and Drew Stubbs has been awful), but it’s worked enough. This contrasts with the M’s, who still haven’t found a real starting catcher, and whose bullpen has gotten noticeably worse in the second half, not better.
The bullpen is perhaps a better example of this, as the Rangers have figured out who to turn to in high leverage situations. Lefty Sam Dyson and righty Jake Diekman have *only* pitched in the 2nd half, while Tanner Scheppers and Ross Detwiler haven’t been able to do more damage. That’s probably helped, but it’s worth remembering that even in the 2nd half, when the team is a combined 16 games over, they still don’t have a great run differential. Thanks to their recent sweep of Houston, it’s finally in positive territory, but it’s not great. Still, one could argue that the M’s – as a team in a low-scoring park – have been especially hurt by their bullpen’s second-half struggles. That would imply that the Rangers, with THEIR home park, haven’t needed their pen as much, which makes it harder to argue bullpen depth and sorting out the good from the bad *isn’t* the cause of their surge.
4: Good players underperforming and then bouncing back.
Many Rangers fans argue that their seasonal stats look bad due to the first half, when Adrian Beltre and Shin-Soo Choo were both hurt and bad. Prince Fielder carried them, but could only do so much. That’s similar to the predicament the M’s were in, where Nelson Cruz was dominant, but had no one to drive in thanks to Robinson Cano and Kyle Seager’s struggles. In the 2nd half, Choo’s been the best hitter in the AL West with Beltre not far behind, but Fielder’s regressed significantly. Meanwhile, the M’s got solid production from Cano and Seager, but Cruz hasn’t really dropped off. At least on the batting side, the M’s have benefited from (positive) regression and their offense has been one of the league’s best, particularly once they started getting production out of the lead-off spot – it may seem hard to remember, but the M’s OBP from their 1st hitters has impacted by several starts from Rickie Weeks and Logan Morrison.
Yet despite the fact that the M’s have a higher wRC+ in the 2nd half, the Rangers have scored more runs. The same (or different?) effects that led the Rangers to yield more runs from each batting event has held true in the second half, despite the massive swings in the performance of several of their star players. Baseball!
5: Run scoring, and how runs translate to wins, is messy at the team level.
I’d love an actual explanation, and for those who think this answer is essentially hand-waving, you’re pretty much right. But if you’ve got other theories, I’d love to hear them. The Rangers have scored a higher percentage of their total runs in wins (73%) than the M’s (65%), but it’s hard to attribute that to skill. You can argue that the Rangers have simply been better at beating the teams they *should* beat, but the M’s and Rangers are both 4 games over .500 against teams with sub-.500 records.
Because the M’s record is so driven by their poor performance at home, and because this isn’t the first time the M’s have struggled at home, I kept thinking that Safeco was part of the reason why the M’s look so different from the Rangers. But look at the M’s run differential on the road: they’ve been outscored by 47 runs on the road…and yet they’re 38-36. The weird devil-magic that we ascribe to the Rangers seems to be the same stuff that’s allowed the M’s to post a .500 record despite a pythagorean record far, far worse than their home mark.
Apparently, this kind of thing happens every now and again, and because it does, it seems harder to credit the Rangers with some innate advantage in runs-per-win. That doesn’t mean this post is dispositive, and if you’ve got alternative theories as to what the Rangers have done, I’d honestly love to hear them. I’d hope teams have a better idea about why this happens, though I’m sure they’re also able to quantify just how much luck/sequencing goes in to a team’s record.
While luck and randomness seem to play a big role, I do wonder about park effects. In isolation, the effect may not be large enough to matter, but I wonder how large the effect can get once you layer on crappy base-running, a sub-par bullpen and the like. Again, this seems like the kind of thing that would be dwarfed by the overall talent of the club, but the point of this post was to call attention to just how close the M’s and Rangers seem to be at everything but the whole “wins and losses” thing. Yet another thing I’d ask a GM candidate who wanted to take the reigns.
The Rangers have outplayed the M’s, at least when the Rangers don’t actually PLAY the M’s. The gap doesn’t appear to be large or the result of clear and consistent advantages in true talent. That’s encouraging for M’s fans, of course – this could be us someday. On the other hand, the Rangers are doing this without Yu Darvish, Jurickson Profar, Matt Harrison, etc., and their surge is correlated with 2B Rougned Odor’s hot-streak. Both clubs are getting production from young players, and both teams are dealing with adversity. The Rangers have been fortunate in some ways this year, but that doesn’t mean the M’s will be favored next season.
* Your mileage may vary. Maybe I’m easily fascinated.
** This year, of course, the Cards are doing something similar, but on the pitching side. With men in scoring position, Cards pitchers have given up a .263 wOBA, a mark that’s above all of 2 qualified batting lines. With RISP, the Cards turn the entire NL into Alcides Escobar-with-flu-like-symptoms.