John Jaso Will Not Cool Off
John Jaso homered again last night, his ninth home run of the year. Hitting nine home runs might not sound like much, but keep in mind that Jaso only has 329 plate appearances this year, since he spent April on the bench and doesn’t play against left-handers. And, of course, John Jaso does things besides hitting home runs, like drawing walks, hitting doubles, and avoiding strikeouts, so he’s a much better hitter than his raw home run totals suggest.
And, at this point, his continued production throughout the season suggests that he might just be a better hitter than anyone has given him credit for. While there was some thought that his early success would be exposed as a fluke through additional playing time, that simply hasn’t proven true in any way, shape, or form.
| Month | PA | BB% | K% | ISO | BABIP | wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar/Apr | 20 | 5.0% | 15.0% | 0.333 | 0.286 | 164 |
| May | 67 | 13.4% | 10.4% | 0.161 | 0.240 | 103 |
| Jun | 52 | 17.3% | 19.2% | 0.140 | 0.406 | 162 |
| Jul | 65 | 15.4% | 16.9% | 0.200 | 0.333 | 164 |
| Aug | 81 | 19.8% | 11.1% | 0.188 | 0.264 | 146 |
| Sept/Oct | 44 | 15.9% | 9.1% | 0.139 | 0.290 | 145 |
His walks are up, his strikeouts are down, his power is basically holding steady, and his BABIP fluctuations are pretty normal. September is the fourth consecutive month where Jaso is running a wRC+ over 145 – for comparison, Prince Fielder‘s wRC+ this year is 146.
I posted an older version of this list a few months ago, but again, here are the batters who are hitting right-handed pitching better than John Jaso this year:
Robinson Cano, 192 wRC+
Joey Votto, 189 wRC+
Miguel Cabrera, 175 wRC+
Mike Trout, 173 wRC+
Andre Ethier, 164 wRC+
Prince Fielder, 164 wRC+
John Jaso, 160 wRC+
Jaso is hitting right-handers better than Joe Mauer, Josh Hamilton, and Ryan Braun, to name just a few. And while his track record suggests that this is likely a career year, there’s just nothing in his profile that looks like a big red flag for why this can’t continue.
We know that Jaso only swings at strikes, posting the fourth lowest O-Swing% in all of baseball at 20.8%. While this kind of patient approach at the plate has come under fire for its passiveness in local media coverage over the past year or so, the reality is that not chasing pitches out of the strike zone is directly responsible for Jaso’s production. Here are the percentages of his plate appearances this year that have ended in either a batter’s count, a pitcher’s count, or an even count, with the league average in the next column.
| Player | Ahead | Behind | Even |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Jaso | 38.3% | 26.4% | 35.9% |
| AL Average | 28.6% | 35.1% | 36.2% |
If Jaso had league average rates of hitters and pitchers counts, he’d have had 31 more plate appearances end with a pitcher’s pitch, rather than a hitter’s pitch. How big a deal is that? The league average hitter in the AL this year hits .299/.464/.512 when ahead the count, but just .206/.214/.308 when behind in the count. So, essentially, Jaso’s patience has resulted in 31 plate appearances where even an average hitter performs like an MVP candidate instead of like a decent hitting pitcher. And since Jaso is a better than average hitter, he’s received even a larger benefit, hitting .261/.568/.536 when ahead in the count compared to just .226/.233/.321 when behind in the count.
This is absolutely a repeatable skillset. This isn’t Mike Carp getting a bunch of balls to fall in last year. This is more Michael Saunders driving the ball to left field. This is a real thing, and a proven way of success for Major League hitters. It’s overly simple, but letting pitchers fall behind in the count and then whacking their fastball is basically the best plan any hitter can have at the plate. And that’s Jaso’s plan, which has been exceptionally productive and consistent this year.
Jaso’s not a perfect player. His problems against lefties mean that his overall numbers would decline if pushed into an everyday role, and apparently pitchers still grumble about the way he catches the ball, but yet the pros so far outweigh the cons that Jaso has established himself as one of the better catchers in baseball at this point. Even just taking his career numbers, he has a 115 wRC+ in 1,000 trips to the plate, which only eight catchers with 300+ PA have been able to beat this year. And if any of his power improvement this year is real, maybe he’s more of a 120 wRC+ guy, which puts him in the same category as guys like Miguel Montero or Carlos Santana.
We talked about Mike Zunino last week, and how he’s showing that he might get to Seattle at some point next year. But, while we can be excited about what Zunino might be pretty soon, we should remember that the Mariners currently have a pretty good catcher right now, and one who deserves a dramatically expanded role next year. John Jaso is this team’s best hitter, and is a well above average Major League bat. He should be in the line-up against every right-handed pitcher, and with frequent pinch-hitting appearances, he should probably be pushing 500 plate appearances next year.
While there’s been a lot of focus on the guys who haven’t developed this year, John Jaso is the thing that has gone most right for the Mariners. They have a catcher of the future coming, but they also have a catcher of the present that’s already here, and deserves a chance to show what he can do as the primary catcher of a big league staff. If Zunino forces his way onto the roster next summer, then they’ll figure out what to do with too many good catchers. For right now, though, Jaso has established himself as a key piece of the team’s future.
Game 148, Orioles at Mariners
Hector Noesi vs. Chris Tillman, 7:10pm
The Orioles come to town with a 2.5 game lead over the Angels for the second wildcard. In a critical week in the American League, the Angels/Rangers face off beginning tomorrow, while the A’s and Tigers meet in Detroit. The White Sox and Detroit just played a make-up game today, and the White Sox won their 4th in a row to take a three game lead over the Tigers.
Meanwhile, the Orioles have to like the match-up; they get to face a sub-500 team while their Wild Card rivals play each other. They’re 5-1 against Seattle this year, and they start Chris Tillman, who’s been very good against Seattle (and not so great against everyone else). They’re also facing Hector Noesi, who was demoted after his last start, on the 4th of July. Back then, he gave up 4 runs in 5 innings – a line that was both bad and somewhat encouraging at the time. The Orioles have a chance to put some distance between themselves and the Angels, a fact that will lead to conflicting emotions in the mind of many M’s fans.
Noesi’s obviously been bad in the rotation; his once-promising season* wrecked by home runs, two-strike lapses and the worst kind of command problem a pitcher can have. The M’s want to see more of him this September to see if what he worked on in Tacoma has made a difference, as he’s going to be a fairly important piece for 2013. The M’s may not be able to resign both Jason Vargas and Hisashi Iwakuma, and they’re going to need a good starter for much of the year, especially if Hultzen and Paxton aren’t ready to go out of the gate. The M’s have some less-sexy candidates for that role if Noesi continues to disappoint, but Noesi offers a lot of added potential – the ability to be a decent #3, not just a stopgap #4/5 like Blake Beavan. If he wants to reach that potential, however, he’s going to have to improve his fastball markedly.
Pitch fx sources aren’t agreed on the border between Noesi’s two- and four-seamers, but Brooks lists the majority of them as four-seamers, which helps explain his fly-ball tendencies and his lack of ‘sink’ on most of his FBs. Using their pitch-types, Noesi’s given up a horrific 13 HRs and 26 total extra-base hits on just 158 fastballs put in play. This all adds up to a slugging percentage of .608 *despite* a low BABIP. That gives him one of the worst ISOs in baseball on the pitch. This is not a huge sample, of course, as we’re only looking at the results of balls hit in play. But this is his *fastball* here. There are 158 balls in play, and expanding the data to include 2011 doesn’t really help much. Last year, opponents hit .329 with a slugging percentage of .588 off his fastball. This is a problem.
The most notable change the M’s seem to have made with Noesi is getting him to use his change-up more. This is partially the result of the fact that he’s facing more lefties now than he did as a bullpen arm in the Bronx, but it seems to be at least partially strategic. He’s used the change-up more frequently to lefties this year, and he’s using it against righties as well, something he didn’t do last year. His slider’s still a decent pitch too. Despite the fact that he’s been punished for mistakes with both the slider and the change-up (three HRs each), they don’t seem systematically flawed the way his FB does. The slider/change generate whiffs and grounders – the fastball outcomes seem divided between several species of bad. This is bizarre, almost Henderson-Alvarez-level puzzling. It doesn’t *look* bad per se, it’s not slow, and it’s not straight. Here’s where the M’s pitching coaches can earn their pay. If he’s tipping the pitch, they need to figure that out. If he needs to work on his 2-seamer, then that work needs to start happening. If the movement of the pitch is taking it into too many sweet-spots, then he needs to talk to Felix or even Jason Vargas about getting more cutting action on his four-seam. What he’s doing isn’t working, and the offseason rumor of increased velocity hasn’t really panned out either. He’s been bad, but he seems fixable, and it’d change the outlook for the team in 2013 if they’re able to actually fix him.
Just as Yu Darvish predictably regressed to the mean and had a good outing against the M’s, I’d love it if Chris Tillman stopped coasting to easy wins off the M’s. I know he’s wanted to, as he put it, “stick it up [the M’s] butts a little” but he’s made his point. Time for the M’s to hit him. In his career, he’s actually had more trouble against righties than lefties, so it’s good to see Montero behind the plate and Guti in CF.
The line-up:
1: Ackley
2: Gutierrez
3: Seager
4: Montero (C)
5: Jaso (DH)
6: Saunders
7: Smoak
8: Thames
9: Ryan
SP: Hector Noesi
* – Literally once. One time. It was promising on April 14th, 2012.
The 2013 Bullpen
When discussing a team’s core building blocks, we generally focus on the position players and starting pitchers. They produce a majority of the value on any given club, and because of the fickle nature of relief pitching, it’s foolish to think that your good relievers today are still going to be good relievers tomorrow. They’re inconsistent, they get hurt, and they’re just generally an unpredictable bunch. There’s a reason why so many teams treat their bullpens as fungible assets.
But, I have to say, I don’t remember any team in recent years putting together a bullpen that is both as good, as deep, and as young as the Mariners have right now. There are certainly other good bullpens out there, but the Mariners actually have so many useful relievers right now, they’re going to have to dump someone before the 2013 season opens, and figuring out who that should be isn’t exactly an easy task.
For reference, the average swinging strike rate of American League relief pitchers this year is 9.8%. The Mariners currently have eight relievers above that line.
Stephen Pryor – 14.0%
Carter Capps – 12.8%
Charlie Furbush – 12.3%
Josh Kinney – 12.3%
Lucas Luetge – 11.9%
Shawn Kelley – 11.5%
Oliver Perez – 10.8%
Tom Wilhelmsen – 10.1%
Yes, that’s right, the team’s best reliever — the guy who throws 99 and has perhaps the best curveball in baseball — has the worst swinging strike rate of the regular relief corps. Of course, swinging strike rate isn’t the be-all, end-all of pitching, as there’s also throwing strikes, getting ground balls, and in Wilhelmsen’s case, freezing people with ridiculously good curves in the strike zone. However, getting swinging strikes is a huge part of a bullpen’s success, as outs are significantly more important than efficiency out of your relievers, and the ability to generate a swinging strike is a pretty good proxy for high quality stuff.
The M’s essentially have two types of relievers right now: flamethrowers (Wilhelmsen, Capps, and Pryor) and slider-heavy match-up guys (Luetge, Furbush, Perez, Kinney, and Kelley). This is, to some extent, an ideal bullpen, in that you have three guys who have the kinds of fastballs that should allow them to pitch full innings without worry too much about the match-ups, and then you have five specialists who are pretty tough on same-handed batters, and can be mixed and matched effectively when needed. Of course, eight relievers is one too many for April-August, so someone will have to go away before the start of next year. The best bets there would be either Oliver Perez (free agent) or Josh Kinney (arbitration eligible), though if Perez is willing to re-sign for $1 or $2 million, I’d rather have a third lefty with some velocity rather than a situational right-hander. Cost will likely be a factor there, though, and some other team might offer Perez enough money to make that decision easy for the Mariners.
Either way, though, the Mariners essentially have a full, deep, talented bullpen for 2013 ready to go. They don’t need to add any free agent veterans to help mentor the youngsters. They don’t need to go looking for a middle guy who can soak up innings. While it’s unlikely that each of these pitchers will perform as well next year as they have this year, the foundation is in place for a pretty terrific bullpen, and it’s unusual in that none of them are anywhere close to making any real money.
Kinney and Shawn Kelley are the only two under team control for 2013 who will be eligible for arbitration, meaning that the other five can all have their contracts renewed for something close to the league minimum. Kinney and Kelley probably won’t make more than $750,000 to $1 million, given their service time and MLB performances to date, so they won’t be far from the league minimum either. In reality, the Mariners should be able to put an entire bullpen together for next year at a total cost under $5 million in salary.
Lots of teams have put cheap, young bullpens together before. Lots of teams have put good bullpens together before. It’s a bit more rare to put a bullpen together that that is good, cheap, and young at the same time, however.
The Mariners still have a lot of work to do with their position players and in the starting rotation. However, when it comes to the bullpen, they’re essentially set, and this does give them a pretty nice advantage heading into the off-season.
Game 145, Mariners at Rangers
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Yu Darvish, 5:05pm
This battle of former Sawamura Award winners (including the midly controversial 2008 award, when Iwakuma beat out Darvish) is an intriguing one. Iwakuma’s been very good recently, and his recent comments about wanting to stay with the M’s underscore the fact that he’s pitching for a contract; avoiding HRs in Arlington will help his case for a longer-term deal. It doesn’t make logical sense that keeping the Rangers in the ballpark in September should help Iwakuma get a third year on his contract, but we’re now at a point where we can see how well Iwakuma’s shoulder’s holding up, and how he adjusts to the grind of the 5-day rotation. So far, he’s passed these tests with aplomb.
Darvish already has his long-term deal, and in the Mariners, he has his bizarre kryptonite. It may not last, just as Bob Uecker’s great season against Sandy Koufax was followed by utter failure against the Dodger ace, but it’s bizarre. Darvish has made three starts against the M’s, and pitched a total of 16 innings. In those 16 IP, he’s yielded 20 hits, given up 14 walks (and plunked two batters) to 14 strikeouts and he’s given up 17 runs. His RA on the year is 4.46, but take the M’s out, and it falls to 3.92. His overall K:BB ratio is 2.31:1, but remove his three games against Seattle and it’s 2.56:1. These aren’t wild swings, but they’re not negligible either. He’s given up 20% of his runs and 16% of his walks in his 9% of playing time against Seattle – the team that’s last in the AL in runs scored, OBP and 5th from the bottom in BBs.
Despite his struggles against the M’s, he’s still a remarkable pitcher to watch and think about. His pitch fx profile here lists seven distinct pitches, and it could be at least 8 given the fact that he has two different curve balls. His velocity is very good, the movement he generates looks physics-defying, and he has a plethora of pitches with which to attack lefties or righties. Why isn’t he elite yet? By Fangraphs, he’s already racked up 4 wins, so you could make a case that it’s just bad luck that prevents us from acknowledging his greatness. His fielding-dependent stats reflect the fact that he’s been awful with men on – his strand rate is under 70%, which is tough to do when you strike out so many hitters.
Some may point to relative struggles against lefties, but he’s given up fewer HRs to them, and their success could be BABIP-driven. His K% is virtually identical against righties and lefties. Lefties clearly have a better slash line/wOBA against him, but righties have hit more HRs. There’s not a lot there. While an RA near 4.5 isn’t great, especially for someone making so much, context matters. Darvish is playing against major league hitters for the first time, and he’s striking a hell of a lot of them out. Against everyone but Seattle, he’s limited HRs and hits. While there’s some potential that his HR rate may increase, it’s easier to see him improve. But here’s hoping the M’s batter him one final time.
The line-up:
1: Ackley
2: Saunders (CF)
3: Seager
4: Jaso (DH)
5: Montero (C)
6: Carp
7: Peguero
8: Robinson
9: Kawasaki
SP: Iwakuma
Assorted Minor League News
The Jackson Generals, the last Mariners affiliate standing, faces elimination tonight against the Mobile BayBears in the Southern League championship. Taijuan Walker struck out 9 yesterday in just 5-1/3 innings, giving up no runs and (even better) no walks, although he did leave after 80 pitches with what were reportedly blister issues. It might well have been his last inning anyway, but unfortunately the bullpen couldn’t hold the lead for him, and then Matt Davidson hit a 2-run homer off Jonathan Arias in the 10th.
Mike Zunino, now Baseball America’s short-season leagues Player of the Year, had two hits in the game. Others recognized by BA include Carter Capps as the reliever on their Minor League All-Star team, with Stefen Romero as a second-teamer at 2B. Classification all-stars in the system include Capps at AA, Zunino and Patrick Kivlehan for Everett, and Tyler Pike (the guy they got for not signing Kevin Cron) from the AZL squad for the rookie leagues.
Also announced by the Mariners is that they have extended their agreements with the rest of their affiliates so all of them will be sticking around through at least 2014. It would be great if they could get away from the distortions of High Desert, but I don’t know that there were any better options, only Lancaster which is just as bad if not worse.
Game 144, Mariners at Blue Jays
King Felix vs. Henderson Alvarez, 4:07pm
Henderson Alvarez is a mystery. The M’s have enough mysterious underachievers, so I’m particularly glad that Alvarez’s bizarre hittability is someone else’s problem. Alvarez gets ground balls, and at this point throws harder than Felix Hernandez. Alvarez has taunted Jays fans by touching the high 90s with his fastball on (rare) occasion, but has posted a replacement-level season. This isn’t a Daniel Cabrera situation, where good stuff is undone by wildness. This is a case where stuff that looks decent on TV (or pitch fx) produces consistently bad results.
Alvarez has 0.1 fWAR, or 0.3 fielding-dependent wins – both his FIP and his ERA are awful. But there isn’t a clear, Hector Noesi-style culprit at work. Just about every component is bad, outside of his GB%. Among qualified pitchers, Alvarez’s K% is dead last. His K/9 and contact rates are also dead last (he’s tied with Bartolo Colon in contact rate, but Bart’s not in baseball anymore). His HR rate is 12th worst. His walk rate is solid, but it isn’t in the neighborhood of other very-low-K pitchers from Blake Beavan to Scott Diamond to Clayton Richard. This produces the 2nd worst K:BB ratio; only his teammate Ricky Romero (whose fall-off-a-cliff 2012 is truly amazing) has been worse. The guys who are most similar in terms of low-K, meh K:BB pitchers are boring back-of-the-rotation guys like Kevin Correia or classic sinkerballers like Tim Hudson or Jake Westbrook. Alvarez gets grounders too, but gives up so many HRs it hardly matters.
The bigger question is why. Correia’s a righty who throws 90mph. Alvarez routinely reaches back for 95, and sits at 93 comfortably. His slider looks OK, and while he’s been slightly better against righties, he’s still been bad. He’s got even less to attack lefties with, which explains how he gave up a lead-off homer to Chone freaking Figgins the last time the M’s visited Toronto. I’m tempted to compare him to other pitchers whose stuff looked better than their results, from Brandon League to Miguel Batista to Yu-Darvish-against-the-Mariners. But all of those guys put up good numbers from time to time even if they perhaps fell short of what many thought they *should* do. Alvarez is fascinating in an Aaron Cook sort of way, despite his pitches looking absolutely nothing like Cook’s. Cook is a pitching machine draped in a uniform; I’m half-convinced that his 2012 season is a Folger’s-style hidden camera prank on MLB (“We’ve replaced the Red Sox #4 starter with a batting practice pitcher from a nearby community college. Let’s see if anyone notices.”). Alvarez is the guy who looks amazing in side sessions, and the kind of guy who will never lack a job. But both are remarkable for the way that they’ve opted out of baseball’s ever-increasing K% style. They do their own thing, and as unsuccessful as it is, there’s something admirable about that.
Felix Hernandez is pitching for the M’s, so I don’t even need to push the fiction that Alvarez is worth watching just because he’s different. Felix Hernandez is a mystery, and he is exceedingly rare as well. He is also 500x more watchable than Alvarez, or really any other pitcher in baseball save the Verlander, Strasburg, Kershaw elites.
The line-up:
1: Ackley
2: Gutierrez
3: Seager
4: Jaso (C)
5: Saunders
6: Smoak
7: Jimenez (DH)
8: Peguero
9: Ryan
SP: Felix
That’s 7 lefties in 9 spots.
The Southern League Championship Series continues tonight between Jackson and Mobile, with Tai Walker on the hill for the Generals against ground-baller Bradin Hagen of the BayBears. The Generals dropped game 1game 2 last night by a score of 7-2 despite two hits from both Stefan Romero and Brad Miller. They won game 1 8-1 behind a dominant James Paxton start. As an aside, I find it somewhat disappointing that Bear Bay hasn’t pitched for the BayBears.
High Desert’s season ended on Tuesday with a Cal League playoff loss to Lancaster. In all, the M’s affiliates in the Northwest League, Midwest League, Cal League, and Southern Leagues made the playoffs.
Game 143, Mariners at Blue Jays
Millwood vs Romero, 4:05 pm.
The last time the M’s faced Ricky Romero, Wedge rolled out a lefty heavy line-up, because Romero’s the odd LHP with a significant reverse platoon split; it was perhaps the most forward thinking thing Wedge has done all year. Romero actually pitched decently that night, though, so he’s scaling back a bit tonight, starting Olivo behind the plate and Robinson over Thames, which moves Saunders to RF for the night. He’s still starting the three regular left-handed everyday guys and Carp at first base, so it’s not totally abandoning the left-on-left match-up that Romero is so bad at, but it would have been nice to see Jaso in the line-up again.
Ackley, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Seager, 3B
Montero, DH
Saunders, CF
Olivo, C
Carp, 1B
Robinson, LF
Ryan, SS
A Couple of Quick Notes on Free Agency
Yesterday, I published a piece over at FanGraphs that looked at the relationship in 2012 between opening day payroll and team winning percentage. This year, it’s at its lowest levels since the days of collusion, there is more parity in baseball this year (related to team salary, at least) than there has been in 20+ years. There are more teams currently in playoff position in the bottom half of team payroll than in the top half. The top five teams in winning percentage all rank outside the top five in opening day spending, and only one of the top five by winning percentage even ranks in the top 15 of spending.
So, yeah. This isn’t a normal year, and this probably isn’t the start of any kind of trend, but the data is pretty clear – you simply cannot make a judgment about a team’s ability to contend by looking at how much money they spend on their roster. The ROI on additional spending above league average this year was next to nothing. In general, teams that attempted to contend through lavish free agent spending fell on their faces, and teams that made smart investments on undervalued players are doing very well. The lesson, as always – there’s a right way and a wrong way to build a baseball team. Throwing a lot of money at the biggest names in free agency is the wrong way. Anyone who tells you differently is simply ignoring the facts.
But, of course, that doesn’t mean that teams shouldn’t spend money in free agency. They just need to spend it on the right players. Last year, I advocated for trading for Joey Votto, or if that wasn’t possible, signing guys like Edwin Jackson and trading for a guy like Angel Pagan. The Reds, Nationals, and Giants have reaped the rewards of making those smart moves this year. The team has room in the budget to make some upgrades this winter, and they should absolutely use it. The main question is always “who should they spend it on?”
I’ll be rolling out my usual Off-Season Plan post here in a few weeks, but if you’re interested in perusing the various options, we’ve also created a pretty great tool for you to use – the 2012 Free Agent Custom Leaderboard. From this page, you can filter and sort to your hearts content, looking at all the various options that will likely be available for purchase this winter, and because it’s a sweet FanGraphs Custom Leaderboard, you can filter by age, ranges of years, position, for certain minimum performances, or pretty much anything else you want to do.
When you click through that link, one thing will probably stand out immediately – there is an absurdly deep crop of available outfielders this winter. Of the top 13 position players in 2012 WAR set to hit the market, 10 of them are OFs. Teams looking for a CF can pick between Michael Bourn, B.J. Upton, Angel Pagan, or Shane Victorino, or teams more looking for a bat in the outfield can aim for Josh Hamilton, Nick Swisher, Melky Cabrera, Jonny Gomes, Ryan Ludwick, Cody Ross, or Torii Hunter. And this doesn’t even include potential trade targets such as Justin Upton, Shin-Soo Choo, or Jacoby Ellsbury.
Put simply, this is the deepest group of available outfielders we’ve seen in years, and the idea that this is a bad market to be a buyer doesn’t apply to teams looking for help in the outfield. You know, like the Mariners. In fact, given their organizational weaknesses and the types of players available, this is perhaps the best kind of free agent market the Mariners could hope for. They’ll have a ton of options available to pursue, many of whom should come at reasonable prices, and won’t have the kind of leverage to be able to say they don’t want to play in Seattle. The Mariners need at least one outfielder, and this free agent class is overflowing with outfielders, several of whom would be great fits for the team.
Don’t buy into this notion that the Mariners missed their opportunity to spend when Prince Fielder went to Detroit. There are better options available this winter, and the team has a great opportunity to be rewarded for their patience. With some smart off-season maneuvering, there’s no reason that the team can’t get a larger upgrade by spending a fraction of the money this winter than they would have gotten from throwing a huge sum of money at Fielder last winter.
Game 142, Mariners at Blue Jays
Ramirez vs Morrow, 4:05 pm.
Erasmo Ramirez makes his first start since late June. The plan is apparently to have him get a few more starts before the end of the season, but the team isn’t going with a strict rotation of pitchers, so it’s hard to know when those will be. My guess is that a good outing tonight probably makes it more likely that Ramirez pitches again sooner rather than later.
Ackley, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Seager, 3B
Jaso, DH
Montero, C
Saunders, LF
Thames, RF
Carp, 1B
Ryan, SS
Let’s Talk About Mike Zunino
When the Mariners drafted Mike Zunino back in June, it was considered to be the right pick mostly because it was the safe pick. Zunino was touted as a high floor prospect with minimal risks – he projected as a legitimate catcher with some power, and his work ethic suggested he might be able to get to the Majors pretty quickly. There were questions about his offensive upside, though. Would he hit for average? Was the power going to be more than just good for the position? The lack of any one prominent tool kept scouts from being too effusive in their praise, and so he ended up being cast as a good, safe, low-risk selection.
Then he signed his pro contract and was assigned to Everett, where he showed himself to be the best hitter in the Northwest League by a mile, posting a ridiculous 235 wRC+ in his time there. But, it was short season ball for a guy who had three years of SEC experience, and Everett’s a pretty nice place to hit, and his overall line was inflated by a .413 BABIP, and it was just 133 plate appearances. It was a great performance, but there were enough caveats there to keep the enthusiasm in check.
Then, the Mariners promoted him to Double-A Jackson to finish the season. Including the first four games of the playoffs, he’s put up a 204 wRC+ in 75 trips to the plate – the only other player to hit better in the Southern League this year was a 24-year-old outfielder who was repeating the level, and needed a .471 BABIP to do it. Now, it’s getting harder to come up with caveats. At 21-years-old, he’s actually younger than most of his competition at this level, and very few college players can go straight to Double-A and dominate within months of being drafted. Jackson’s not a huge hitter’s park. His BABIP has mostly normalized, and now sits at a not-totally-crazy .336. Compared to his Everett numbers, his strikeout rate is actually down and his power is up, meaning that while the wRC+ might not be quite as high, he’s probably hit better in Jackson than he did in Everett.
There’s still the sample size issue, as Zunino’s professional career still spans just 200 plate appearances, but there’s some evidence now to suggest that Zunino was just underrated in the draft. And with every passing day where he destroys quality pitching in Double-A, the talk about whether Zunino could actually break camp with the Mariners next year gets a little bit louder.
That’s still a longshot at best. For one, the Mariners don’t really need to rush Zunino, given that John Jaso has shown enough this year to justify a larger role in 2013, and the team could use the start of next year to evaluate whether Jaso can be the everyday catcher against right-handed pitching. If he can, that’s a pretty nice asset to have, even with Zunino is breathing down his neck. This isn’t a scenario where the Mariners have a huge gaping hole that needs to be patched. Jaso has earned an extended look behind the plate, and gathering more information about his abilities as a regular catcher is in the organization’s best interests.
Beyond that, there’s also the fact that putting Zunino on the opening day roster next spring would essentially be unprecedented. If we give Zunino credit for approximately 100 plate appearances in the Arizona Fall League, he’ll go into next spring with about 300 professional PAs under his belt. For reference, Buster Posey, Matt Wieters, and Yasmani Grandal — the three best college catching prospects to come out of the draft in recent years — all got ~700 minor league plate appearances before they were called up.
To find a catcher who was drafted out of college and got to the Majors with essentially a half season of pro experience, you have to go back to Thurman Munson in 1969. The Yankees took him with the fourth overall pick out of Kent State in 1968, then had him finish the season in Double-A, where he was the league’s best hitter. Due to military commitments related to the Vietnam War, he only got 115 plate appearances in Triple-A during the first four month of the season before the Yankees called him up in August. He played sparingly and eventually was sent back down to rejoin Triple-A Syracuse for their playoff run and didn’t grab a regular job with New York until 1970, when he posted a +5.4 WAR season and was the Rookie of the Year.
In terms of pro experience, Munson didn’t have much more than Zunino will have next spring when he was named the Yankees starting catcher, but we’re talking one example from 40 years ago, and Munson didn’t even grab the job the spring after getting drafted. Guys just don’t go from catching in the College World Series one summer to starting in the big leagues the next spring.
In reality, it makes sense for Zunino to begin the 2013 season in Tacoma. The organization can give him more time to develop, let him face another level of advanced pitching, delay his free agency by a year, and give John Jaso a real shot to show what he can do as a regular catcher simply by not pushing Zunino in a historically unique way. If he destroys the PCL for the first few months of 2013, then the team can start to make plans to open up the catching job for him. Besides, as we saw with Danny Hultzen this year, a high draft position and supposed polish from playing college ball doesn’t mean that a guy has nothing to learn in Triple-A. A few months in Tacoma for Zunino is in everyone’s best interests.
But, the reality is that Zunino has forced himself into the team’s 2013 plans. Rather than spending money on a better Miguel Olivo replacement to share time with Jaso behind the plate, the team is probably better off getting a more traditional back-up catcher who can be easily discarded if Zunino forces his way onto the roster by next summer. Zunino’s ascent has basically ended any need to continue with the “Jesus Montero is a catcher” charade, and the club can move forward with him as either a first baseman or designated hitter next year. And, while Montero, Dustin Ackley, and Justin Smoak are reminders that prospect status and offensive performance in the minors doesn’t always translate to immediate big league success, the bar for quality offense from a catcher isn’t all that high, and Zunino’s overall package of skills suggests that he’s probably going to be a pretty good Major League player pretty soon.
Zunino is worth getting excited about. If I had to bet, I would put money on him taking the team’s starting catching job at some point next year, and being an above average Major League catcher by 2014. For me, Zunino is the organization’s best prospect, a better blend of risk and reward than any of the pitching prospects and easily projecting as the best position player on the farm. He’s a better prospect than Justin Smoak ever was, and he’s destroying anything Dustin Ackley ever did in the minors. It’s still early, and more exposure to higher level pitching could shine a spotlight on issues we’re not currently aware of, but it’s hard to find too many flaws with Zunino right now. The defensive skills to stay behind the plate are there. The work ethic is there. The power is there. The plate discipline and contact skills appear to be better than advertised.
Don’t count on Mike Zunino breaking camp with the Mariners next spring. That’s likely too aggressive, and the organization doesn’t have to push him. But given what he’s done in Everett and is doing in Jackson, don’t be surprised if Zunino turns out to be better than that high floor/moderate ceiling “safe pick” we were told the team was getting back in June. Right now, Zunino looks like a potential star in the making.