M’s Lose, Carp on DL
I decided to sleep rather than try to make it through another day bleary eyed. From the box score, that seems to have been the right decision. I’ll watch this thing later, but yeah, obviously this isn’t what the M’s needed to start the season. More of the same is not how you get fans interested again.
Also, apparently my attempt to give Eric Wedge credit for putting Carp on the bench was missing some information – he hurt his shoulder in game one, and was placed on the 15 day disabled list. That means that Carlos Peguero is now on the roster. I’ll just leave this paragraph there and not saying anything further.
This should theoretically open up playing time for Casper Wells and Kyle Seager. The M’s could move Figgins between 3B and LF and use those two to replace Carp depending on the pitching match-ups, and this could actually give them a better team on the field, honestly. That probably won’t happen though. We all know we’re going to have to watch Peguero flail around now. Man, and I told myself I wasn’t going to say anything.
Because the M’s have a week off before resuming regular season games, Carp basically is really more on the 7 day DL, since half the stint is just going to involve travel and the remainder of the Cactus League schedule. If the shoulder heals quickly, he won’t actually miss all that many games. These are the kinds of injuries that can linger, though, and we probably can’t assume he’ll just be back immediately.
Game Two, Mariners vs Oakland @ Tokyo
Vargas vs Colon, ungodly a.m.
Hey, remember how Mike Carp was going to be the everyday left fielder? Not saying that Eric Wedge has already changed his mind, but Carp isn’t playing in game two, even with a right-handed pitcher on the mound. Instead, Kyle Seager is getting his line-up spot, and Chone Figgins has moved to left field for the game.
Now, this is absolutely the right move, as Vargas is an extreme flyball left-hander, so there’s going to be a lot of balls hit out to left, and Carp isn’t particularly good at that whole defense thing. You could argue for Wells in left instead of Figgins, but Seager gets another left-handed bat in the line-up against a righty, and as much as I know everyone hates Figgins, we just have to realize that he’s going to be in the line-up most days to start the season. So, it was Seager or Wells, and against an RHP, going with Seager is probably the better option.
So, kudos to Eric Wedge for this move and running out a line-up that gives the team a better chance to win, even if it forced him to bench his “everyday left fielder” in game two of the season.
Figgins, LF
Ackley, 2B
Ichiro, RF
Smoak, 1B
Montero, DH
Seager, 3B
Olivo, C
Saunders, CF
Ryan, SS
Also, despite my statement earlier in the week, no live blog for this one. The game starts in four hours and I haven’t even gone to bed since getting up this morning to watch the first one. If I do make it out of bed in time to watch Game Two, I won’t have any ability to form coherent sentences. FanGraphs is doing a live blog again, though, so you could join in on that one, or just hang out in the comments here. Or sleep. That’s an idea too.
Game One Recap
This won’t be all that long, since I’m tired and have work to do, but a few notes from today’s opener.
Dustin Ackley is sneaky strong. He really destroyed that pitch from McCarthy for the home run. He looks a bit bigger this year as well, as he no longer has the frame of a 14-year-old girl.
Felix looked about as good as you’d expect. His change-up, especially, was lights out. The A’s don’t have a good line-up, but I’m not sure how many teams could have hit him today.
Mike Carp did not look so great in left field, and he swung at some ridiculous pitches. I know they want to give him a chance to play everyday, but Wedge is going to have to consider using Wells for more than just extra inning defensive replacement. Especially when a tough LHP comes in out of the bullpen.
Speaking of Wells, it was pretty surprising that he didn’t get to pinch hit for Saunders against Fuentes. Tie game, short porch in left, Fuentes really struggles against RHBs… that was an obvious move to make. Yes, you lose Wells as a defensive replacement for Carp, but you can always just move Figgins to the OF and put Seager at third. Why talk up Figgins versatility if you’re not going to take advantage of it?
Wilhelmsen’s curve was really working, but he threw a ton of them. I have to wonder if the league will begin to adjust and begin to sit on his breaking ball at some point. The fastball is good enough that he doesn’t have to rely on the curve so much.
Overall, nice to see the M’s win the opener, but I don’t think they helped ease too many people’s minds about the offense. It would be comforting to see them jump on Bartolo Colon tomorrow.
Game 1: Mariners vs. Oakland @ Tokyo
Opening Day of 2012. I know it’s tougher to get excited about the game when it’s on at 3am, when we’ve got more spring training games to slog through and when it’s only March 27th. Er, 28th. But opening day is still opening day, and Felix is still Felix.
Here’s the first M’s line-up of the season:
1: Figgins (no, stay awake, it gets better)
2: Ackley (2b)
3: Ichiro! (RF)
4: Smoak (1B)
5: Montero (DH)
6: Carp (LF)
7: Olivo (C)
8: Saunders (CF)
9: Ryan (SS)
SP: KING FELIX
The M’s face off against Brandon McCarthy, twitter superstar and 2011 league leader in FIP. Yoenis Cespedes gets the start in CF, but hits 9th. Seth Smith, the OF acquired from Colorado for Guillermo Moscoso starts in the clean-up spot and plays DH. The name the A’s have selected to get the start today from their impressive collection of AAAA 1Bs is…Brandon Allen. Eric Sogard gets the start at 3B ahead of Josh Donaldson, which is funny because Eric Sogard gets an opening day start.
GO M’S! I NEED CAFFEINE!
UPDATE: This isn’t exactly news, but, for the good of the order: the M’s have moved Franklin Gutierrez and Adam Moore to the 15-day disable list.
Feel free to use the comments of this as the game thread, or follow along with Dave’s commentary in CoverItLive below.
State of the AL West, March 2012
The season kicks off tonight/tomorrow morning with an AL West battle. Sure, it’s not the AL West battle most baseball fans are interested in, but it’s a divisional game nonetheless. The experts are split on the particulars, but everyone’s got the Angels and Rangers very close together at the top, and the Athletics and M’s very close together 15 wins or so back. Let’s take a quick look at the division as the curtain rises on the 2012 season – we’ll look at each team’s projections, their top prospects, and what could go wrong/right in this campaign.
(Note: The composite runs scored/runs against and wins are simple averages of PECOTA, CAIRO and Davenport projections. You could certainly quibble with the inclusion/exclusion of one or many of these, but I had them at hand.)
Los Angeles Angels:
Composite RS: 721
Composite RA: 657
Composite Wins: 88
The Angels rode strong pitching to a surprisingly good 2011 season, as Dan Haren and Jered Weaver both notched top-five seasons by FIP in the American League. Their run production was mediocre, as the disastrous acquisition of Vernon Wells combined with Mariner-esque production from the catcher spot prevented the Angels from fully taking advantage of their pitching. They looked like a pretty good team with a top-heavy but thin farm system and poor management, but this off-season produced a massive overhaul that, coupled with a lucrative TV deal, puts the Angels on (essentially) even footing with the two-time AL Champion Rangers.
First, the Angels fired the man responsible for the Wells deal (Tony Reagins) and replaced him with Jerry Dipoto. Dipoto flipped hard-throwing but hittable pitcher Tyler Chatwood to Colorado for C Chris Iannetta, who’s nothing special but represents a massive upgrade over 2011 starter Jeff Mathis. To ensure that this move produced tangible results, Dipoto then traded Mathis to Toronto to prevent manager Mike Scioscia from being tempted to use his beloved, hitless wonder. Then, utilizing the new TV revenue, Dipoto acquired the biggest FA hitter AND pitcher on the market, bringing in a 1B named Albert Pujols along with the Rangers top starter in 2011, CJ Wilson.
The addition of Wilson makes their top three starters the envy of baseball, as only the Phillies and Rays (and possibly the Giants) can boast similarly talented troikas. THis is reflected in their composite runs-allowed which is easily the best in the division. There’s still some question marks on the offensive side, though adding Pujols helps answer many of them. Wells was atrocious last year and Torii Hunter will turn 37 this season. Mark Trumbo, the surprise of 2011, no longer has a position (he’s playing a lot of 3B, where he may share time with Alberto Callaspo). Erick Aybar had a great year, but he’s been wildly inconsistent, following a 3.8-win 2009 with a 1.4-win 2010. Overall, they figure to improve on last year’s runs scored, and they project as an average to above-average defensive group.
Last year, I mentioned that Peter Bourjos’ was something of an enigma at the plate, and could turn into an elite, Franklin-Gutierrez-in-2009 level hitter, or add a bit of value as a disappointing Franklin-Gutierrez-in-2010 hitter. Unfortunately for M’s fans, Bourjos had a fantastic 2011, and is poised for the career we all thought Guti would have back in March of 2010. Bourjos is a phenomenal defender and he projects as a bit above an average hitter. Factor in the positional adjustment, and that makes Bourjos a 4-6 win player. The Angels also have one of the best prospects in all of baseball in CF Mike Trout. Trout struggled a bit in his call-up to the Angels last year, though the Angels cannily gave him several starts against an awww-F#%@-it Mariners team; he made his MLB debut against Seattle and then featured in a late-season series at Safeco where he was able to feast on Anthony Vasquez pitching. Trout’s the classic five-tool player and while he’ll begin the year in the minors, he could rack up several WAR spelling all three Angels OFs over the course of the year.
After Trout, however, things get a bit muddled. The Angels 2nd best prospect, Jean Segura, missed most of 2011 with hamstring issues. He’s a solid 2B/SS with contact skills and surprising pop, but the 22-year old hasn’t played above the High A California League (brief fill-in stint in AAA notwithstanding). Scouts seem to love his potential – and he ended up in the middle of BA’s top 100 prospect list – but there are a lot of question marks there. To be fair, the same could be said of the M’s Nick Franklin, who lost much of 2011 to a head injury and mononucleosis. Behind Segura, the Angels have starting pitcher Garrett Richards, a hard-throwing righty who made his debut in 2011, and then made his debut on the DL shortly thereafter. Presumed 5th starter Jerome Williams has battled injuries this spring, so Richards could end up starting the year in the Angels rotation, but his projections are pretty bad for 2012.
If everything goes right, this is an elite team – a 95-100 win behemoth that will go toe to toe with the Rangers and Yankees for the AL crown. The rotation’s top-heavy, but solid production from Williams/Richards/Ervin Santana would give them a league-leading runs-allowed, and if the Angels get some growth from Bourjos and Trout along with continued contributions from Trumbo and Hunter, the offense could score quite a bit more than they did last season. Vernon Wells could bounce back, and the bullpen could be better as the Angels allocate high-leverage innings away from Fernando Rodney and towards Jordan Walden. The Rangers get quite a bit of (deserved) credit for building an organization the “right” way, while the Angels have been harder to get a handle on – they swing from dumping Mike Napoli for one of the worst contracts in baseball to drafting and developing Bourjos and Trout.
If things go wrong, the back of the rotation will become an anchor, and a moribund Vernon Wells could become a distraction. Mark Trumbo could struggle at 3B and Iannetta’s hit tool could mean he’s not quite as big of an upgrade over Mathis as many thought. If any of the starting pitchers goes down, the team could suffer. The starters (and back-ups at certain positions) are neck and neck with the Rangers; it’s really only depth that separate the two teams. With Dipoto at the helm – and their revenue – this is an elite team, and one that can compete with Texas in every facet of the game except for the farm system. Damn it.
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M’s Finalize Roster
The Mariners just made three roster moves to shift from their 30 man roster down to the 25 man group that will start the season as active members on Wednesday. Because of the strange rules regarding the team’s roster beginning in Japan, they first announced 28 active members of the roster – all of whom are now eligible to be on the US opening day roster – and then deactivated three players from that roster to get down to 25 for the games in Japan.
To go from 30 down to 28, Carlos Peguero and Chance Ruffin were optioned to Tacoma, and Guillermo Quiroz was re-assigned to minor league camp. This actually brought them to 27, but the team also had to include Kevin Millwood on the 28 man roster, since he’s scheduled to open the US part of the season with the team. Munenori Kawasaki and Erasmo Ramirez also had their contracts purchased, but they were already on the travel roster, so this just gets them on the 40 man. Subtracting Peguero, Ruffin, and Quiroz while adding Millwood pushed them from 30 to 28.
To get down to 25, the team deactivated Millwood, Hector Noesi, and Hisashi Iwakuma for the two games in Japan. While all three will be added back to the roster before the team resumes play over here, their spots for the first two games will go to Alex Liddi, Steve Delebar, and Charlie Furbush. Those three will be eligible to play in the first two games, and then are all likely ticketed for Tacoma before the team opens play in Oakland next week.
From what I’ve gathered, it sounds like the team simply believes that Ramirez is capable of getting big league hitters out right now, and they’re going to break him in as a reliever. They’re not converting him to the bullpen like the team did with Brandon Morrow, but they believe he can get his feet wet as a middle reliever and still be able to move back into the rotation if an opportunity presents itself. This used to be a very normal way to break in rookie pitchers (Earl Weaver is a big proponent of the plan), so don’t freak out and think the team is wasting Ramirez in the pen. They just don’t think he has much left to learn in the minors, and believe that having a strike-thrower in the pen will be an asset.
It’s possible that they could still change their minds before next week and give that last bullpen spot to Furbush, but everything I’m hearing says that Ramirez has made the squad. Will be interesting to see how Wedge chooses to use him, since they’re already carrying Iwakuma as a long guy.
Wednesday and Thursday Game Chats
For those of you who think that 3 am is a fantastic time to be awake and watching baseball, I’ll be hosting live chats during both of the games against the A’s on Wednesday and Thursday morning. We’ll set up a game thread for both as normal, so you can make comments just like before, but we’ll also embed a CoverItLive window in the game thread for ongoing commentary as the games go along. The chats will be hosted both here and on FanGraphs, so it will be a mix of people hanging out and enjoying some early morning baseball.
So, if you’re one of the crazies who is going to skip out on sleep to watch the M’s play in the middle of the night, you can come hang out with us here. It should be fun.
Japan Exhibition Game One
The first of the M’s two exhibition games – this one against Hanshin, current home of Kenji Johjima – kicks off in about a half hour. The M’s are running out the regulars, and my guess is they’ll probably play the whole game.
Figgins, 3B
Ackley, 2B
Ichiro, RF
Smoak, 1B
Montero, C
Carp, LF
Olivo, C
Saunders, CF
Ryan, SS
Hector Noesi gets the start. Since they’re carrying extra pitchers and he hasn’t been fully stretched out, I’m guessing he’s looking at a five or six inning appearance.
A Quick Guide to Pronouncing Japanese Words
Edit: I’ve made a few corrections, most importantly on “E,” but there are also clarifications on the “n/m” and double consonants. I’m just some gaijin who hasn’t had any practical outlet for the knowledge in the past ~ten years, so thanks to those of you who dropped by with comments.
I’ve been listening to the Mariners spring training games on the radio this past week [ed. note: when they aren’t preempted by the 24-hour football news cycle] and it’s been bugging me. I know, the team is in Japan now, and the announcers were obligated to make some references to Japanese baseball, but when I’m sitting here and the “Han” in “Hanshin” rhymes with “pan” in English or the “Yom” in “Yomiuri” rhymes with “mom,” it’s like daggers in my ears. So, to ease us through this period, I’m drafting this based off of my four years of taking Japanese in high school. I’m sure someone with actual fluency could do a better job, but I’m the one with the keys to… the keyboard. Yeah.
The Basics
Unlike a lot of the other languages in the region, Japanese is not tonal as spoken, which means that you can generally count on vowels doing the same predictable things over and over [with a few exceptions I’ll get to later]. Therefore, there’s no straining your ears over the difference between the third and fifth inflection of any given sound and trying to determine what that means for the whole sentence. It’s easy.
Where English tends to group things around letters, in Japanese it tends to be organized around syllables. Vowels are syllables on their own, and vowels preceded by consonants are also unique syllables. Again, there are a few exceptions here which we’ll arrive at in the advanced portion, but for the most part, that’s what you need to know to move forward to pronouncing these syllables. English would have us go the aeiou method, but Japanese as it was taught to me goes aiueo and I’m going to follow that.
A – This one should be somewhat familiar from the days when we had Sasaki closing for us, and Kawasaki making the team, it may still be present in your mind. When the doctor makes you stick out your tongue and say “ah,” it’s the same idea, shorter sound. As an English reference point, think of the a in “father” and you’ll be as close as you need to be.
I – It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone try to pronounce it Itchiro, so I think we’ll be okay here. “I” in Japanese is a long “e” in English. “Ichi” rhymes with “peachy” (or “Pee Chee” if you’re still in primary school). I don’t know if Ichi is generally peachy, but here we are.
U – I’d expect that this one shouldn’t be too hard either. “Suzuki,” right? Both of those u’s are doing the same thing. My clever baseball analogy is that some people have been known to “boo” certain players and the “oo” is the same sound the “u” makes in Japanese. Or, when you “ooo” and “ahh” over something, you’re approximating the Japanese sounds for “u” and “a,” respectively.
E – This one is a little less common, and the exposure we’ve had to it so far is the “e” in “Munenori.” The important thing to remember is that we already have something making the long “e” sound, so it’s clearly not that. In this case, it’s the short “eh” that you hear in words like “bed,” or “head,” or the “eh” one uses as an interjection to indicate disinterest in a given topic (not at all like the Canadian “eh?”). What I had written previously fell apart on a pretty common word, “sensei:” the “sen” is the same as it is in “sent,” whereas the “sei” sounds more like “say.”
O – We have the “ro” in “Ichiro” to help us out here. The Japanese “o” is pronounced like the long “o” in English, so “row,” “go,” etc are all applicable here.
Combinations! – Of course, you’re not always going to see the vowels in isolation. Sometimes they’re sitting right next to each other! What then? Generally, the same rules apply. If you see two of the same vowel, as happens in some cases, it’s just a longer version of the same sound. The exception here is the “o” sound which, when drawn out, usually takes a “u” next to it, but this doesn’t really change how you say it (there are a few exceptions to take on a case-by-case basis). The only areas that people might trip up on are the “ai” and the “ei,” where the pronunciation has become so close that it’s not as distinct anymore, but has become a unit of sound. “Ai” sounds like “eye” does to the English speaker, whereas “ei” is the same sound you get in “play” or “neigh.”
Advanced Stuff
What’s written above will get you through the next week or so without any issues. But it won’t get you all the way there, so if you really want more, here are some additional bits.
Dropped Vowels – This comes up most frequently in the formal case of the verbs, which all end in “-masu,” but it appears in other places often enough to at least make mention of it. The “u” in “-masu” isn’t pronounced consistently, and in some cases the ending sounds more like “moss” would to an English listener. At the same time, don’t expect other “u’s” to disappear like that; the ending “u” for the island of “Shikoku” is still pronounced.
N’s and M’s – Alert readers would have picked up on the fact that I referenced “Hanshin” and then talked about syllable groupings around the consonant-vowel pattern. “But what are those N’s doing there?” someone asks, still scratching their head. N is the only consonant that has its own little character in the two syllabic forms of writing, which you might also see come up with the main island of “Honshuu.” If I were to write “hanshin” using one of syllabaries, it would come out as ha-n-shi-n. “Han” is not a thing unto itself. One weird feature of this system is that there are cases where you might see the “n” transcribed as “m,” as happens with “shimbun,” which is the word for “newspaper.” This is probably some error of messy handwriting or typography that we foolishly persist in; there are no actual stand-alone “m”s.
Other Consonant Groupings – This is another thing that you probably noticed going through. In Japanese, you also have substitutions and replacements going on within the consonant-vowel tree, so instead of there being a “ti,” you have “chi” instead. “Tsu” takes the place of “tu,” “shi” replaces “si” as “ji” replaces “zi,” and “fu” takes the spot of “hu.” In traditional Japanese, “a,” “u,” and “o” are used most frequently and some consonant trees lack the other pieces. The “y” tree doesn’t have a “yi” or “ye” in the system used for native sounds, nor is there anything in the “w” tree beyond “wa” and “wo,” which is basically a particle where the “w” isn’t really pronounced.
There are also syllables that combine two sounds, like “kyu,” which is represented with “ki” and then a subscript “yu” (as you would find in “yakyuu,” their word for baseball). You can also get “shu” this way with a “shi” a subscript “yu.” This eventually extends to such sounds as “rya,” “ryu,” and “ryo” which are really difficult for English speakers to make. My geographic examples here are “Ryuukyuu” and “Kyuushuu,” the former an island chain and the latter the island in the southwest corner of the four main islands.
Double Consonants – This is sort of misleading and I lack the linguistics background to do it proper justice, but here’s a shot. I looked it up in the Wikipedia and they described it as a “gemination,” which probably does not mean much to any of you, but it has to do with consonant length. Say you’re stringing words together and one word ends with the same consonant that the next word begins with (Wikipedia gives me the example of “calm man,” someone else later suggested “bookcase,” which I think works better). You don’t elide that, but pronounce both the ending “m” and the beginning “m” distinctly. In Japanese, there’s a little subscript character that they use to indicate this, such as in the case of the northern island of “Hokkaidou.” TIF says that “hok-kai-dou” is probably a good approximation, but it’s not easy to explain without hearing it.
That’s it for today’s lesson. I hope that you found it helpful, or at least that you are not more confused now than you were coming in.
30 Man Roster for Japan Trip Announced
The M’s waited until the last possible minute to announce the group of 30 that they’re taking to Japan, but the roster is finally out. The group includes:
Catchers: Miguel Olivo, John Jaso, Jesus Montero, Guillermo Quiroz
Infielders: Justin Smoak, Dustin Ackley, Brendan Ryan, Chone Figgins, Kyle Seager, Munenori Kawasaki, Alex Liddi
Outfielders: Mike Carp, Michael Saunders, Ichiro Suzuki, Casper Wells, Carlos Peguero
Starting Pitchers: Felix Hernandez, Jason Vargas, Hector Noesi, Blake Beavan, Erasmo Ramirez
Relief Pitchers: Hisashi Iwakuma, George Sherrill, Tom Wilhelmsen, Shawn Kelley, Lucas Luetge, Brandon League, Steve Delebar, Charlie Furbush, Chance Ruffin
You’ll note that Kevin Millwood isn’t on the roster, as he’s not going to fly over to Japan. He’ll be added to the roster once the team gets back to the U.S. and prepares for their opener down in Oakland. That means that there will be a pitcher on the roster in Japan who will then get optioned out after they get back – my bet would be on that guy being Erasmo Ramirez, but they might not make that decision until they get over there.
In terms of guys flying over there who will only be in the exhibition games, you’re looking at Quiroz, Liddi, Ruffin, Delebar, and either Peguero or Wells. Let’s hope sanity carries the day and Wells ends up on the team.
Also, for those few remaining die hard Cesar Jimenez fans, the team announced that he cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A today.