Other Winter Leagues Starting Soon
Winter ball has started, and while we’re all presently reading as much into Hultzen’s Arizona Fall League debut as we reasonably can, there are a few other leagues that will be starting up soon here that will also be worthy of some attention or at the very least, something to get you through a panged winter of baseball withdrawal. Larry Stone got a preliminary list of who will be playing where, and while it doesn’t include the lesser leagues like Nicaragua and Colombia, it does give us a good idea of who will be playing in the Caribbean Leagues and Australia.
As usual, Venezuela got assigned the bulk of our players, and Stone highlights Alex Liddi and Michael Saunders as being the big ones while adding Vicente Campos, Edilio Colina, Jarrett Grube, Moises Hernandez, Cesar Jimenez, Jose Jimenez, Luis Jimenez, Johan Limonta, Mario Martinez, Yoervis Medina, Scott Patterson (currently with Team USA for World Cup/Pan Am), Stephen Pryor, Mauricio Robles, and Nate Tenbrink as other players scheduled to see time with just the Cardenales, who are turning into the Mariners South. Yohermyn Chavez, Francisco Martinez, Luis Rodriguez, and Jesus Sucre will play for other teams in the league.
I’ll start out by touching on the two names that Stone mentioned. The mind will probably drawn to Saunders’ name because he’s carried with him certain expectations as he’s moved up and we’re still waiting on him to make good on any of them, or maybe he’s become less of a figure in our fan consciousness thanks to the addition of all sorts of new shiny outfield toys. On one hand, I could point to him having another season that had him post interesting-looking numbers in Tacoma (a 71/50 K/BB in 291 PAs) and then flopping at the major league level, but on the other, we can’t undersell the personal issues he’s had either. It’s been a bad year for Mariners fans and Mariners players. Liddi had impressive power numbers in his limited time with the M’s, with two-thirds of his hits going for extras, but that 17/3 K/BB in 44 PAs was pretty horrific. I suppose what we’d be looking for him is some semblance of discipline and a reasonable level of hitting beyond that. I find it curious that he would be getting additional playing time this winter while Seager, the guy who more people are projecting to take the third base job, is not, but most would claim that Liddi needs more time to help even out his game.
The other names are probably not so relevant for a lot of people, so I’ll only touch on a few. Grube has pitched well for us since coming over from the independent leagues and could be a short-term pitching solution, but he’s also going to be thirty in November. Cesar Jimenez would be continuing his bullpen audition and hoping that he’s found a way of getting left-handers out. After going down with that elbow thing in spring training, Robles needs to get innings in as he only logged 32.1 all season and walked ten more than he struck out. Another player in similar straights would be Tenbrink, who didn’t play at all after late June. The dark horse is probably Pryor, who has an outside shot of pitching his way into a seventh-inning role out of spring training and has the stuff to hold up in higher leverage situations. It will also be worth seeing if Francisco Martinez can help to redeem the Fister trade, which isn’t looking so hot at the moment, or if Chavez could re-establish himself in anyway.
While going over the Cardenales site, I came across a few other news items that would probably be of some interest. One is that Tenbrink wasn’t the Mariners’ first choice to fill an outfield spot, and that they had originally wanted to send Casper Wells down there, but Wells is still ailing in some way or another and they decided to let him sit. The other is that the manager of Lara this season will be Pedro Grifol, who used to head the Aquasox teams in the Junes of yore. We’ll be grasping at whatever straws are available to us, but Pedro should be in position to be making better evaluations. Games for them will be starting up Wednesday.
Moving around to the other leagues, Stone has Leury Bonilla, Edward Paredes, Carlos Peguero, and Carlos Triunfel in the Dominican League. This is one of those times where I’d say “look elsewhere”, because unless you’re really curious to see if Peguero can fake some plate discipline for a while or if Triunfel will work to justify his seemingly inevitable placement on the 40-man, there are better options. Paredes still hasn’t developed command and Bonilla, bless his little heart, is mostly interesting when he tries to play every position on the field in a single game. Similarly, you should be able to pass up on the Puerto Rican Winter League. Sure, Daniel Carroll will be there, and he had a breakout season in the Cal League this year, remaining healthy for a full year for the first time ever, but even though he walked eighty-eight times (EIGHTY-EIGHT TIMES) he struck out in over a quarter of his plate appearances. I’m waiting on him doing something interesting in double-A. The Dominican League will start up next Friday and Puerto Rico has usually kicked off about a week after that.
The only other league we have information on yet is that starting in November, we’ll have Denny Almonte, Steve Baron, James Jones, and Jandy Sena in Australia playing for the Adelaide Bite. This season, Almonte cut thirty Ks off his 2010 total, which sounds great except that the drop from 192 to 161 is less impressive in a larger context of him striking out in nearly 30% of his plate appearances. Baron didn’t do much after spring training, being injured much of the time, but his overall line was pretty close to his 2010 line anyway, just with slightly improved peripherals. Jones has another season where he was abysmal in the first half (.617 OPS) and pretty amazing in the second (.931) with the improvements again coming at the expense of patience. Sena split his time mainly between Clinton and High desert this season and was mostly interesting in that his season K/9 was around four.
The overall picture looks pretty similar to a lot of winter league seasons you’ll see. There aren’t a lot of lower level top prospects that you want to keep tabs on, but there are plenty of nearer-term contributors that could be worth tracking. After a certain point in the winter, you take what you can get.
Danny Hultzen’s AFL Debut
I feel like I should say something about the two great NLDS games tonight, but I’m afraid I only caught the highlights. In the Arizona/Milwaukee game, they showed two plays, back to back – two late inning, crucial at bats by Willie Bloomquist and Yuni Betancourt. I’m old enough to remember Francisco Cabrera’s walk-off, but… really? I’ll just acknowlege that baseball is unpredictable and weird, and move on to something of interest to M’s fans beyond schadenfreude: Danny Hultzen’s pro debut.
Hultzen pitched two innings today for the Peoria Javelinas, so we don’t have much to go on. He threw 42 pitches, 31 fastballs, to just 9 hitters. In his 2 IP, he gave up 1 run on 3 hits, with 1 BB and 2 Ks, but he also added in 2 wild pitches (his run scored on his second consecutive wild pitch). It’s an odd line, honestly. As impatient as we all are for good news about M’s prospects, we’ll just have to wait and see how he develops with Peoria.
As he faced Surprise, we’ve got some pitch fx data to work with. Again, it’s two innings, it’s 42 pitches, and I’m not sure about the calibration of the cameras, but it’s something. Given Hultzen’s development over his college career, I think this’d be one of the more anticipated debuts in recent M’s history. Hultzen’s velocity spiked in his senior year, taking him from an 89-90 control lefty to a mid-90s behemoth who struck out 165 in just 118 innings. So… what’d he throw today? Pitch fx had him at 92 mph on average, getting as high as 93.8mph on a 2nd inning pitch. He got 6 swinging strikes (including a foul tip caught by the catcher), 2 on sliders, 3 on fastballs and 1 on a change-up.
He came in with the reputation for having a great change with a developing slider/slurve, and he certainly seemed more confident in the change – he threw it 8 times, compared to only 3 sliders. But he got swinging strikes (and strike-outs) on two of those sliders (the third was a foul ball), compared to one swinging strike with the change (he gave up a pop-up double on another change). Again, there’s not enough here to alter what we knew from the scouting report, so we can just say that his slider/slurve has significant break – it’s got significant downward and glove-side break. His change-ups broke into two groups – some with significant sink, and some without. Jeff Sullivan mentioned the same thing here. This’ll be something to watch for later; they could be two separate pitches, though I’m not sure what they’d be.
Some might worry that he wasn’t throwing the 95 he hit with some consistency (apparently) at Virginia this year. Obviously, we just don’t have enough information to really say with certainty what his stuff’s going to be like in 2012. It was a short outing, but it was also his first after a long layoff. It was in Arizona (and not the Midwest league in April), but as I mentioned above, we don’t know much about the pitch fx calibration. I’d just point out that the opposing starter, Texas prospect Neil Ramirez, looked about a tick slower than he did when he faced the M’s in spring training (when he gave up a HR on a 96mph fastball to Steven Baron of all people). So we’ll have to wait and see. It’s frustrating that he wasn’t touching 97, that his command wasn’t great, and that he gave up a run on a wild pitch, but he flashed some swing-and-miss stuff as well.
Personal lives
Occasionally we are reminded that people in baseball are still people and they have actual lives as well. We get neat human interest stories like Steve Delabar and Tom Wilhelmsen. Sometimes the news is not so good, like with Smoak and Saunders each losing a parent in the past year. Fortunately for the players, baseball has made some progress in recent years in instituting policies for things like bereavement and paternity leave.
Often there’s an urge to try and read into these events an effect on someone’s performance, even though it’s impossible from the outside to know how people are being affected or predict how they will respond. On one hand, Smoak came back from his father’s funeral to hit some home runs and go on a bit of a hot streak, but afterward went into a prolonged slump over multiple months. Then again, at some point he hurt his thumbs too, which may have more to do with it. A lot of people basically gave Jose Lopez a pass for one really bad season due to some tragic family circumstances. Obviously, you sympathize with people in these situations on a personal level, but for evaluation purposes it’s basically a guessing game about whether something will carry over and how.
Along these lines, Geoff Baker has a story in the Seattle Times today that essentially boils down to “Chris Larson, the Mariners’ second-largest shareholder, is getting divorced.” Most of the implications it touches on – will he end up selling his stake, can he still make a capital call if the owners decide to boost payroll – are entirely speculative. We don’t even know that there will be a capital call, let alone what that means for Larson. Mind you, I’m not saying the story has no newsworthy information, there are some interesting details about team ownership and finances. And it’s not like the public will be told directly if there are changes in the team budget or ownership makeup, so we have to read the tea leaves using stories like this. But on some level, you have an unfortunate private matter being publicized simply because of someone’s position with the team.
So, the question I’m putting out there is, “What’s the point at which this kind of personal stuff is suitable for public discussion?” Some level of respect for privacy is still appropriate, surely, but these lines can be hard to draw. With Smoak and Saunders, reporters occasionally alluded to issues and it was kind of circulating in the rumor mill, but official confirmation only came when they actually left their teams (I believe Saunders was down in Tacoma when it happened). How do you react to this stuff, and does it affect your evaluation? For example, and I’m not in any way suggesting this is the case, but if Ichiro’s down season was being attributed to some major personal situation, would that make any difference in how you look at it? Also, should these issues be considered the same for owners and players, or are they distinct?
The Roster As It Stands
Before we get too far into discussing what moves the team should be looking to make this winter, we need to take a realistic assessment of what talent is already on hand, both for 2012 and beyond, as the inventory already here will dictate where the organization should focus on acquiring upgrades. While the team has enough quantity in place to go forward with a “let the kids fight it out and see who wins” strategy, there’s not enough quality already in place to make that a viable strategy at every position. In reality, the M’s are going to have to make some decisions this winter about which of these kids should be part of the 2012 team, and at the positions where there isn’t a good solution internally, they’ll need to make some moves to bring in talent from the outside.
Given what’s already here, this is how I would view the team’s roster for next year in terms of reasonable expected amounts of playing time if the team is interested in putting a respectable team on the field.
Position – Player – Plate Appearances
Catcher: Empty
First Base: Justin Smoak – 600
Second Base: Dustin Ackley – 600
Shortstop: Brendan Ryan – 500
Third Base: Empty
Left Field: Casper Wells – 200
Center Field: Franklin Gutierrez – 600
Right Field: Ichiro Suzuki – 600
Designated Hitter: Mike Carp – 200
Reserve Catcher: Miguel Olivo – 250
Reserve 1B: Mike Carp – 100
Reserve MI: Luis Rodriguez – 200
Reserve IF: Kyle Seager – 200
Reserve OF: Casper Wells – 100
By my estimation, those 10 position players should be penciled in for approximately 4,100 plate appearances. A normal team gets about 6,100 plate appearances in a season, so the M’s are about 2,000 PA short. That’s basically three full-time players – no easy task to acquire in one off-season.
Looking at the chart above, it’s easy to see where the holes are. Catcher and third base are the biggest holes, and the only two options on the Major League roster are both better fits for a reserve role. Olivo’s a decent enough back-up and Seager could be a useful utility infielder who backs up everyone around the infield, but if either of them are starting on opening day next year, the team likely has a problem.
The other open position is something of a hybrid between LF/DH. Wells has enough talent to justify a job as the right-handed half of an LF platoon and could likely serve as the team’s backup in CF and RF, but he hasn’t shown enough to be expected to be a full-time player. The rest of the left fielders we saw on display this year belong in the minors next year, and I wouldn’t be comfortable giving any of them a job on the 2012 team at this point.
With Carp and Wells both penciled in for part-time jobs, the team could acquire one guy who could split time between LF and DH, and the three of them could essentially combine to handle those two positions. Knowing that they’d have some DH availability could give the team the flexibility to pursue a guy who might not be a great defender but has enough offense to make up for it.
If the team added three starting caliber players – one at C, one at 3B, and one at LF/DH – to that group of position players, you could actually have the makings of a decent group of talent.
Now, for the pitching.
#1 Starter – Felix Hernandez
#2 Starter – Michael Pineda
#3 Starter – Jason Vargas
#4 Starter – Empty
#5 Starter – Blake Beavan
Closer – Brandon League
RH Setup – Tom Wilhelmsen
LH Setup – Charlie Furbush
Middle – Shawn Kelley
Middle – Chance Ruffin
Middle – Josh Lueke
Long – Empty
Despite all the talk about pitching depth, the M’s actually have some problems on the pitching staff as well. Danny Hultzen and James Paxton are talented kids, and they might be options for the rotation in the second half of 2012, but you can’t count on them being able to carry a spot all season long. Behind Vargas, the team doesn’t really have any quality Major League starters, and they’ll likely need to add an starter this winter to fill out the rotation.
The bullpen could be mostly set except for one small fact – the team should be looking to trade Brandon League. Closers are generally overvalued, and headed into his final year before free agency, the M’s would be better off moving him and using his roughly $5 million salary elsewhere. Of course, they’re unlikely to hand the closer role over to any of the kids currently penciled into the setup roles right now, so moving League might necessitate a move for a reliever with a bit more experience who could be given the chance to close.
Put it all together, and the team is probably looking at needing to acquire a third baseman, a catcher, an LF/DH type, a starting pitcher, and maybe a solid reliever who they could make into a closer. Even if they move League and shed his salary, they’re still looking at something in the $20 million range in terms of budget flexibility, and they’d be looking at getting four players and a reliever for that.
Obviously, just targeting free agents and throwing money at them isn’t going to work – you can’t get four Major League regulars and a potential closer for $20 million on the open market. The only way to get that kind of quantity of talent from the outside is to focus on trading for players whose salaries are not set by public bidding. Of course, teams aren’t exactly looking to move their cost-controlled young stars, so the M’s will have to get creative to pick up players who can fill these holes without busting the budget.
Over the next week or so, I’ll talk about a few of the guys I’d like to see the team target who could fit that profile, and what types of players they might be able to land to fill those spots and stay under budget.
Arizona Fall League Kicks Off Today
The Arizona Fall League kicks off today at 11:35 as the M’s prospects with the Peoria Javelinas take on the Salt River Rafters. Not sure who’s getting the start, but I’d expect to see Danny Hultzen fairly soon.
You’ve seen JY’s write-up of the M’s prospects involved so you know what to watch for: how will Danny Hultzen do against more advanced hitters swinging less advanced bats? Is Adam Moore still ambulatory, because M’s catchers put up a combined OBP of .252, and… well, semi-ambulatory will do. Chih-Hsien Chang’s true talent lies somewhere between the .439 wOBA he put up in the Red Sox system this year and the .236 he had with the M’s, but we’d all love to see some signs that it’s closer to the former than the latter.
The M’s are fortunate to have a member of their player development team coaching for Peoria. Tacoma hitting coach Alonzo Powell (who had the misfortune of attempting to coach the M’s for the second half of 2010) will have the same position for the Javelinas, meaning he’ll have a bit more time to work with guys he might see in 2012 like Chang and Nick Franklin. It’s just a few months, so it’s not like he’s going to transform anyone, but he’s a good instructor, and it might speed up the process a bit if he’s seen these guys face live pitching before they get to AAA.
As I mentioned before, player development is going to be absolutely critical for the M’s if they want to close the gap with Texas (and Anaheim). Beyond money (Seattle’s outspent Texas on MLB payroll every year since 2004), Texas has simply done a better job of turning raw talent into MLB wins. After graduating Michael Pineda and Dustin Ackley, the Rangers have the edge in minor league talent, so the M’s are going to have to get a lot more out of their talent than they have in the past. The AFL is a step in that process, and the M’s need to make something of it (like last year, when they used the AFL to get Dustin Ackley used to playing 2B).
Beyond Peoria, the team to keep an eye on is probably the Scottsdale Scorpions. They’ve got the Angels top prospects in Mike Trout and Jean Segura, the Giants last two first-rounders in speedster Gary Brown and shorstop Joe Panik (who I can’t believe isn’t a punk rock singer). Matt Purke, the lefty from TCU whose draft stock took a hit after an injury will make his pro debut, and they’ve also got some young outfielder named Bryce Harper. Ex-Mariner OF Tyson Gillies looks to get back on the field after injuries and a sketchy arrest kept him off the field for most of 2011.
Elsewhere, 2011 #1 pick Gerrit Cole will pitch for Mesa, and the A’s Grant Green will begin his transition from SS to outfield for Phoenix. The A’s also sent injury-plagued starter Tyson Ross to Arizona along with one of their top prospects, power-hitting OF Michael Choice who, predictably, loved hitting in the California League this year. This trio of Oakland prospects is about as talented as you’ll find, but they’ve all got quite a lot to prove. Ross has to show that his delivery won’t put too much stress on his oblique, Green has to show that he can play a new position and hit for more power than he did in 2011, and Choice has to show that he has fewer holes in his swing than Trayvon Robinson.
The stadia in Peoria and Surprise have pitch-fx installed, so we should get some great information on Hultzen’s velocity and repertoire fairly soon. The league scoreboard’s here, and you can follow along on gameday. The MLB playoffs have been pretty entertaining thus far, but if you’re eager to start looking forward, you’re in luck.
And Now We Look Forward
Normally, the end of a baseball season isn’t something I would celebrate, but I join Marc is saying that I’m glad the 2011 season is over for the Mariners. There were some positives but more negatives, and for the last few months, the team just wasn’t a particularly compelling product. So, now, we look forward to 2012.
We start that off today with my final piece of the season over at Brock and Salk’s blog. Here’s the gist of the point:
With the M’s loss last night, they finished the season at 67-95. They ended the season with just a few actual Major League players in the lineup and the starting pitcher was perhaps the worst hurler in the history of the game. Given their struggles over the last few years, it’s common to hear people talk about why this team is several years away from contending, and how next year will probably be more of the same.
It doesn’t have to be however.
Need an example? The Arizona Diamondbacks are the NL West Champions, having finished the year with a 94-68 record that easily outpaced the rest of their division rivals. Their record in 2010? 65-97, worse than what the Mariners put up this year. And it’s not like they just had a down year due to injuries and then bounced back — they went 70-92 in 2009, giving them 135 wins in the two seasons prior to their dominance this year. That’s pretty darn close to the 128 wins the Mariners have compiled the last two years.
You’re going to hear a lot of people talk about what the Mariners “need to do” this winter. Some people think they need to raise payroll and sign Prince Fielder. Others think they need to commit to the youth movement and let the kids have a full year to show what they’re made of. While those sides don’t agree on specifics, they both come from the point of view that there’s a right path and a wrong path. I’d argue, however, that future performance is not written in stone nearly as much as people might think, and that staking your ground on one particular way of approaching this off-season isn’t a great idea.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss the different options the organization has, the pros and cons of each, and talk about how the team might look depending on what way they choose to go. I just hope everyone realizes there’s not just one “right way” to approach this off-season.
Game 162, Athletics at Mariners
Anthony Vasquez vs. Gio Gonzalez, 7:10pm
The final game of the season comes on a day with two great playoff races in the balance. The M’s and A’s aren’t involved, so this was always doomed to irrelevance, but somehow the contrast between David Price pitching for the Rays playoff life and Anthony Vasquez trying to avoid ending the year with more HRs than strikeouts just feels…magnified.
This season hasn’t been what any of us wanted. Even before the year began, we had to deal with the passing of Dave Niehaus. We hoped for a bounce-back from Milton Bradley, but watched a recently-great hitter descend into madness. We watched Franklin Gutierrez shuttle from doctor to doctor and diagnosis to diagnosis before coming back and attempting to major league pitching. We saw Justin Smoak struggle with a bruised hand, a broken jaw and heartbreak. We’re now dealing with a new acquisition battles an unknown neurological issue affecting his balance and sight. We no longer had to wonder what an “old” Ichiro would look like. I said earlier in the year that this was better, somehow, than the experience of watching the 2010 team – that the lack of expectations and the rookies made it a lesser evil than watching the 2010 team slowly disintegrate. I still believe that, but I’ve watched the Rangers move up another level, I’ve seen the Angels compete after their big off-season acquisition became one of the most expensive replacement level players ever. And then I tune in to watch Adam Kennedy DH against Gio Gonzalez, and well, that #3 pick in next year’s draft better be awesome. I will miss watching the M’s, I will look forward to 2012, but I will not miss this season.
The final line-up of 2011:
1: Ichiro
2: Robinson (CF)
3: Ackley
4: Smoak (1B)
5: Carp (LF)
6: Kennedy (“DH”)
7: Liddi
8: Seager (SS)
9: Gimenez
Game 161, Athletics at Mariners
Blake Beavan vs. Trevor Cahill, 7:10pm
It’s not rational or anything, but my view of the M’s in 2011 and 2012 is highly impacted by how long it’s been since Justin Smoak has homered. In May, I thought this team wasn’t ready for prime time, but that the young core was intriguing. In August, I thought this team was bereft of hope; that if peak Ichiro and Felix weren’t enough to get the M’s over the top, then two or three Dustin Ackley’s wouldn’t matter either. Some of this is reactionary and emotional, sure, but this was a team that started a struggling Adam Kennedy at 1st and occasionally hit him 3rd in the line-up.
Thanks to Smoak’s homer last night, I’m feeling a bit better now. This team needed a productive Smoak to be relevant (some might say “watchable”) in 2011, and they’ll probably need a productive Smoak to be relevant in 2012. For so much of this year, he’s looked like a Southern Mike Saunders. It’s not just that his struggles hurt the team’s chance to win – they hurt our ability to hope.
Hope got another boost today as Taijuan Walker was named the Midwest League’s top prospect today by Baseball America. I’ve been perhaps too excited by Walker since he debuted for Clinton this year, so it’s great to see BA honor him like this. It’s not just me! He shouldn’t be able to do what he’s doing! He could get better!
I suppose we should discuss tonight’s game. Trevor Cahill had a sub-3.00 ERA last year that was driven partially by a very low BABIP. This year, despite the exact same FIP (4.19), his ERA’s jumped by over a full point. He’s still a guy who can get ground balls and get enough swinging strikes, but his command hasn’t been there this season, and that’s contributed to his slide. He’s had a particular struggles against lefties this year, and while that’s probably not indicative of his true talent, it’s enough that managers are trying to get more lefties in the line-up against him.
Blake Beavan continues his run as one of the most whiff-phobic pitchers in the league. His walk rate’s similar to Brandon McCarthy’s, but his K rate’s more similar to a pitcher from the 1980s. I would love to see Beavan explore developing a sinker/cutter like McCarthy did – here’s an object lesson in how to go from AAAA guy to an extremely valuable #3 starter. Of course, Beavan hasn’t struggled like McCarthy has, and pitchers who’ve had success might not see the need to overhaul their approach. But then again, it was only a year ago that Beavan was getting battered by PCL hitters, and he’s already made some adjustment. I’d think Beavan more than many guys understands just how fine the line is between being dead meat in AAA to semi-respectability in MLB, so he might want to start exploring ways to better himself before the next wave of pitching talent reaches the majors.
The line-up:
Ackley gets a night at DH, which allows him a bit of a rest and allows Seager to demonstrate his ability to play all over the IF. Good move.
1: Ichiro
2: Rodriguez (SS)
3: Ackley (DH)
4: Carp (LF)
5: Smoak (1B)
6: Olivo
7: Seager (2B)
8: Liddi
9: Saunders (CF)
Game 160, Athletics at Mariners
Jason Vargas vs. Brandon McCarthy, 7:10pm
The M’s season mercifully comes to an end with a three-game series against fellow punching bags, the Oakland A’s. Like the M’s, the A’s have a terrible offense and a solid pitching staff; the A’s FIP is just slightly better than the Mariners’. This won’t shock anyone – pitching was supposed to be the strength of both teams back in March. But while the M’s staff’s been led by the deliciously consistent Felix Hernandez, the A’s are enjoying an out-of-the-blue 5 win season from… Brandon McCarthy.
Coming into the year, McCarthy was an oft-injured journeyman, a fly-baller with so-so command, mediocre velocity and a rare shoulder condition that leaves him vulnerable to stress fractures. He signed a one-year free agent deal with Oakland for $1m and set about reinventing himself. Of course, stories about pitchers tweaking their mechanics in spring training are the new, more detailed twists on the hoary old “best shape of his life” cliche. He was going to ditch his four-seamer and pitch to contact with a sinker and cutter, apparently, and he’d lower his arm angle to ease the wear and tear on his shoulder. Evidently, some small fraction of those spring training stories are significant.
He’s more than halved his walk rate while improving his K rate. His new sinker’s greatly improved his ground-ball rate, which has helped him control HRs. His new cutter’s a legitimate swing-and-miss pitch, and to top it all off, he’s throwing harder than ever before. The cutter’s particularly interesting to me. It appears he’s throwing it much more often than gameday’s algorithm thinks (it’s hard to distinguish it from a four-seamer), and he’s generating whiffs and keeping it low in the zone. It all culminates in one of the unlikeliest great seasons in recent memory, and yes, I know that Doug Fister *also* has 5 wins. Brandon McCarthy, the Brandon McCarthy many thought was a bust and AAAA roster filler, leads the American League in FIP.
In some ways, McCarthy’s emergence is bad for the M’s. He plays for a divisional rival (though it was only a one-year deal! Jack – call his agent!) after all. But the takeaway for me is that large-scale transformation is possible, and it’s possible a lot quicker than many of us thought. That’s not exactly earth-shattering to fans of the team that employs Steve Delabar, but I think many of us view a pitcher’s skillset as essentially fixed. A guy’s a fastball-curve guy who gets fly balls, or he’s a sinker-slider-grounder guy, and you can’t go from one bucket to the next. That’s still largely true, but McCarthy offers proof that it’s not a hard and fast rule. The M’s *need* to get more out of the raw talent they have in the system, and someone in Pedro Grifol’s shop really needs to study this test case.
The M’s line-up:
1: Ichiro
2:Rodriguez
3: Ackley
4: Carp
5: Smoak (1B)
6: Olivo
7: Robinson
8: Liddi
9: Saunders
Frozen in time
Today in the Seattle Times, Geoff Baker has a helpful overview of the team’s ownership structure. It includes a list of the 17 participants in the ownership group and identifies those who sit on the board of directors (not completely clear is whether the board has any members without an ownership stake, or “independent directors” in corporate parlance, but from what’s been revealed in the past I don’t believe so).
Howard Lincoln is of course the most visible of these on a regular basis, since he acts as the team CEO as well, and as you probably know already, Hiroshi Yamauchi is (via Nintendo) the controlling shareholder. They are both significant people to be aware of in understanding team decisions – witness the Johjima extension a few years ago, or the noises already being made about Ichiro’s next contract. But perhaps the more important aspect this article gets across is just how fundamentally corporate this ownership group is. It’s embedded in their decisionmaking, how they present themselves publicly, the affiliations and even the personalities of the individual members.
What that means is that the team is inevitably going to be run using business principles and priorities, more than to gratify personal ambitions. We can argue about whether individual or corporate team ownership is a better model for operating a baseball franchise, but at any rate these characteristics aren’t going to change significantly unless the team is sold to a different person or group. Even if they had the resources, these owners probably would never spend like the Steinbrenners, but the team is also somewhat protected from the personal vagaries of things like a really messy divorce. This is also part of what leads to awkward expressions suggesting the team values being competitive (but profitable) over winning championships.
One other point to take from the article is that the ownership group has been remarkably stable. Death has produced the same amount of turnover within the group as has the sale of individual shares. And in describing who the owners are, it’s striking how often words like “former” get used. Even Yamauchi and the other Nintendo guys are largely retired or have emeritus roles at the company (although the way Japanese companies operate, they have much more influence than, say, Chris Larson has over the Microsoft of today). Some of the owners have gone on to second acts in business, particularly those in the wireless industry, whose institutions have morphed and evolved more frequently in the years since. But overall, it’s not just that the group looks like a Microsoft/Nintendo/Boeing consortium; considering that it was formed in response to calls for local business leaders to save the team from moving out of town, that’s to be expected. In reality, it’s a Microsoft/Nintendo/Boeing consortium that’s stuck in the early 1990s (remember McCaw Cellular?).
So if you wonder why the team takes detours from its rebuilding process to indulge in things like a Griffey farewell tour, it’s not just because the fans demand it, or that he has a great relationship with Chuck Armstrong. To a significant extent, the direction in which these owners have been taking the team is still defined by the times and the environment in which they bought it. I’m not saying that they’ve completely failed to adapt; payrolls did go up as the team brought in greater revenues from Safeco Field, and bringing in Zduriencik was somewhat of a shift from the past. But to really restore the Mariners as a competitive franchise, additional strides forward are required. The ownership group has been in place for nearly two decades; it’s time that they figure out how to move everyone beyond the glories of the first decade, and support further changes if they want the team to be relevant in their third decade.