Minor League Wrap (8/15-21/11)
No intro this week, except you should know that there will only be two more wraps after this and in the next one I’ll probably go over the DSL affiliate, which narrowly made it into the playoffs in spite of some late season incompetence.
To the jump!
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The Third Base Problem
A few months ago, the M’s off-season priorities seemed pretty obvious – the team was devoid of interesting left field options, and they needed to at least get a competent DH to help stimulate the offense. Since then, however, they’ve acquired Casper Wells and Trayvon Robinson and Mike Carp has shown enough power to at least be considered in the mix for playing time at 1B/DH next year. What were total organizational holes are now more question marks, where the team could make a case that it’s worth investing playing time in guys like Wells and Carp to see if they can find reasonably productive players who make no money, which would let them allocate their resources elsewhere when looking to upgrade the roster.
If the team decided to go that direction, that would leave third base and catcher as the glaring organizational holes, and the likely spots to target for upgrades this winter. The problem with trying to upgrade at catcher is two-fold, however – the organization already is paying Miguel Olivo $3.5 million next year, and they seem to actually like what he brings to the table. There’s also the fact that there are no good hitting catchers that are likely to be available, and it’s tough to see the M’s investing significant money on a non-impact guy to make Olivo a back-up. They might spend a few million to get another veteran to split time with him, but I doubt we’ll see Olivo forced into a strict backup role.
So, that leaves third base as the position where the team could focus their resources on improving. Chone Figgins is basically out of the picture at this point, having performed so poorly that I doubt anyone really wants to see him report to Peoria next spring. Kyle Seager still profiles more as a utility infielder than an everyday guy, and is certainly not going to be the kind of thumping big bat that the organization would like to add to the line-up. Alex Liddi has some power but isn’t really a Major League player at this point (and might not ever be), and after that, there just isn’t really anyone internally that the organization could point to and say that he’s the third baseman of the future.
So, despite the Figgins flop, it seems like the team may be in a position to spend some money to get an established third baseman this winter. The problem – I have no idea who they’d actually go after. Look at the list of the best third baseman in baseball this year – it’s not a very pretty sight. Kevin Youkilis is headed into the final year of his contract, probably can’t play 3B much longer, and there’s no reason for Boston to trade him. Pablo Sandoval is the Giants only decent hitter. Adrian Beltre just signed a huge contract with the Rangers. A-Rod? Longoria? Zimmerman? Not happening.
League wide, the third base position is just in a funk. There aren’t many good young 3Bs coming up, and the ones that have established themselves as quality players aren’t available. The 3B market this winter is basically going to be an aging Aramis Ramirez (if the Cubs don’t pick up his option) and a bunch of guys who wouldn’t make a difference.
So, the M’s have a hole that won’t be easy to fill. If they’re going to upgrade at third base this winter, they’re going to have to be creative. And if they decide not to upgrade at third base, but instead decide to stay in house, it’s tough to see exactly where they would spend the money they’ll have available.
All of the sudden, what was a pretty obvious off-season plan is now kind of murky. I don’t envy Jack Z.
Game 125, Mariners at Rays
Pineda vs. Shields, 10:40am
Happy Pineda morning! I sincerely hope we get a more watchable game then yesterday’s pathetic loss. After getting shut down by a mediocre pitcher on Friday, and then by an above-average one yesterday, the M’s try to avoid getting swept versus James Shields, the best starter (statistically) they’ll face. A long-time favorite of Dave Cameron’s, Shields has a great change-up that’s allowed him to neutralize left-handed hitters. Whereas Jeremy Hellickson’s still struggling against lefties, Shields’ xFIP against lefties is under 3.00, and his FIP is 3.22. He’s given up a few more HRs, but he’s struck out over a quarter of the lefties to face him.
The biggest outlier in his 2011 stats is his HR rate. Shields has always had a HR problem, but he hasn’t been hurt by it this year. This may be due to some HR/FB luck, or his improvement infield pop-up rate may be the result of an improved approach. It certainly wasn’t in evidence when Shields faced the M’s in early June. He yielded HRs to Jack Cust, Justin Smoak and two to Carlos Peguero en route to a 4 IP, 8 R, 3 BB, 4 K disaster start at Safeco Field – a game that probably bought Peguero another month on the big league roster.
The line-up:
1: Ichiro
2: Gutierrez
3: Ackley
4: Carp
5: Wells (LF)
6: Kennedy (3b)
7: Pena (DH)
8: Seager (SS)
9: Bard
The Rainiers are in Reno for Game 2 of their series against the first-place Aces. They came back from a 5-0 hole yesterday to take a 7-6 lead, then Cesar Jimenez gave up two in the 8th for the loss.
Jackson’s slumping too – they were swept in 4 games by Tennessee, and start a series against Mobile today with Andrew Carraway starting the first game.
Carter Capps makes his 2nd start in the M’s system for Clinton today. Ambioris Hidalgo gets the ball for Pulaski, as Alfredo Morales and Guillermo Pimentel try to recapture their early season form, while Tyler Marlette adjusts to wood bats (he’s 1-8 in two games so far).
Game, er, 124 – Mariners at Rays
Furbush vs. Hellickson, 4:10pm
(Please note: the Seahawks preseason game preempts the M’s on 710AM radio, so if you’re looking for the game, head to 770AM instead)
So, uh, THIS is game 124 I think. And again, the M’s face a solid young righthander who throws in the low 90s. Hellickson and Wade Davis were both highly regarded, but while Hell Boy’s tRA/FIP aren’t much to write home about, Hellickson’s probably surpassed Davis at this point.
The difference is that Hellickson has a legitimate plus pitch in his arsenal – the change-up – that Davis doesn’t. As a result, Hellickson’s able to get more strikeouts (though not as many as I would’ve thought) and thus keep his strand rate a bit higher. Hellickson throws his curve about 1/3 of the time, and gets whiffs on over 20% of them – that’s over 1/3 of all swings on his change. That sort of stuff has his change-up’s value up with teammate James Shields or Ricky Romero in the Fangraphs leaderboard. No, it’s not as good as Felix’s or Hamels’, but it’s up there.
You’d think this would help Hellickson stay out of trouble against lefties, but he’s run FIP/xFIPs in the 5s against lefties in his brief career. Oddly for a pitch with good arm-side run, Hellickson uses his change-up more often against *righties* and he’s generated more whiffs against righties than lefties. His big problem against lefties has been control. Hellickson had great walk rates in the minors, but they’ve been quite pedestrian this year, and he’s given up about as many free passes to lefties as he’s struck out. He hasn’t shown command problems against the M’s, of course, walking only 2 in 14 1/3 solid innings in 2 starts against Seattle (both walks came against lefties).
Like Charlie Furbush, Hellickson’s a fly ball guy, so he’s going to need to keep Carp/Wily Mo/Ackley in the ballpark. I’d love to see Pena attack the catwalks at Tropicana, but I fear Hellickson’s change might make this a poor match-up.
Wedge put together a lefty-heavy line-up today, as Dustin Ackley’s back after his day off:
1: Ichiro
2: Gutierrez
3: Ackley
4: Carp
5: Olivo
6: Rodriguez
7: Pena
8: Seager
9: Robinson
* Brendan Ryan came off the DL as Jack Wilson went on it, but Rodriguez gets his second consecutive start at SS (Rodriguez got the start, but Seager’s at SS tonight after Rodriguez took a pitch off his elbow in his first AB).
* Nick Franklin went 3-4 with a triple in his return to AA.
* Tacoma got swept at home by Omaha, and now head to first-place Reno for a big series – Mike Curto talks about it here. They’ve got a lot of ground to make up in 17 games, so they really need to win/sweep this series.
* Today’s a big sports day in Seattle, with the M’s game, the sole Seahawks preseason game and a Sounders match all competing for eyeballs.
Game 124, Mariners at Rays
King Felix vs. Wade Davis, 4:10pm
Happy Felix Day! Let’s focus there and not on the fact that Ackley’s sitting this one out.
The M’s travel across the country to St. Pete to take on the Rays, who, despite being talented and relatively successful this year, are playing out their season the same as the M’s. At this point, BP’s playoff odds gives them a 0.7% chance of grabbing the wild card. Rays fans can dream about top prospect Matt Moore getting a cup of coffee this September, as the consensus top pitching prospect is now 3-0 with 57 Ks in his first 34 2/3 IP for AAA Durham.
Once he’s up for good, today’s starter might find himself the odd man out. Wade Davis had a deceptively good start, with an ERA near 2.8 through May 3rd, but then his HR/FB luck ran out and he’s been hit pretty hard since. Now, the guy who was once a top 20 prospect in all of baseball needs to reinvent himself as he’s got a K rate is nearing Beavan territory, and Davis doesn’t have Beavan’s good control. On paper, this is a good match-up for the M’s.
That said, Wedge has chosen to rest the “struggling” Dustin Ackley, who’s 8 for his last 42 with only one extra-base hit in that stretch. Still, during this slump, he’s got an OBP of .346. During his worst stretch since his call-up, Ackley’s line looks a lot like that put up by Jack Cust, who was, depressingly, one of the M’s best hitters through mid-July. Kyle Seager gets the start in Ackley’s place; this should allow Seager to show off his versatility to the M’s while hitting against a righty who doesn’t miss bats.
The line-up:
1: Ichiro
2: Gutierrez
3: Kennedy (3B)
4: Carp
5: Wells (DH)
6: Olivo
7: Rodriguez
8: Seager (2B)
9: Robinson
In the minors, the AA Jackson Generals have shuffled things around after James Paxton was shut down. IF prospect Nick Franklin returns today from the DL/AZL rehab, and seeing how he closes out his season will be one of the big things to watch down the stretch. He’s been out since late June with a concussion and mononucleosis. Rich Poythress is also on the DL with a back injury, which is too bad considering the progress he made since his horrible start to 2011. Yoervis Medina (1-13 with an RA of 8.00) replaces Paxton in the Generals rotation.
Tacoma’s trying to stay in the PCL playoff hunt, but they’re slumping at the wrong time. Jarrett Grube starts tonight against Omaha at Cheney.
Jose Campos, one of the top prospects in the NWL, gets the ball in today’s matinee in Vancouver. Campos has 63 Ks to 9 BBs in 62 innings, to go with a good GB rate and very good raw stuff.
Casper Wells Day-to-Day, James Paxton shut down
Casper Wells took a Brandon Morrow fastball to the face tonight, but his nose is somehow, impossibly, not broken. He turned his face, and the ball just glanced off his nose such that it left it bloodied but essentially unscathed. The play looked ugly, but a broken nose would’ve resulted in a lot more blood and gore. A shaken Wells spoke to reporters after the game, and Eric Wedge said that he was day-to-day; no DL time.
Meanwhile, lefty James Paxton, who was a late scratch for AA Jackson, has been shut down for the year according to, er, Paxton, via Jackson radio guy Chris Harris. Honestly, it makes sense given Paxton’s winding path to the high minors (and some back pain). Shutting him down after 95 innings could also allow him to play in the Arizona Fall League along side Danny Hultzen; we’ll see. The M’s have a lot of options for the AFL this year, and the Peoria Javelinas should be a fun team to watch this November.
Game 122 – Blue Jays at Mariners
Beavan vs. Morrow, 7:10pm
This is one of my favorite pitching match-ups of the season. Not only do we have a couple of young starters facing line-ups that feature interesting prospects, we’ve got an object lesson in different approaches to analyzing baseball. No, seriously.
Every bit as enigmatic/frustrating as he was in Seattle, Brandon Morrow enters tonight’s game with an ERA of 4.55, a tRA of 3.96 and a FIP of 3.08. Blake Beavan’s sporting an ERA of 3.59, a tRA of 5.27 and a FIP of 4.46. Morrow’s strikeout rate is in a dead heat with Justin Verlander’s for the best in the AL. Beavan’s would be the worst, if he qualified (Sean O’Sullivan’s is a tiny bit worse amongst the guys with less-than-50 IP, just to remind everyone of one of the most disheartening losses of the year). Morrow’s ERA is below average despite great fielding-independent stats, while Beavan’s ERA is much lower than his fielding-independent stats would predict.
While Beavan’s benefited from a low BABIP, Morrow hasn’t been troubled with a freakishly high one. Instead, he’s suffering from poor sequencing. While Beavan’s stranded nearly 80% of runners, Morrow’s down at 62.5%. With the bases empty, Morrow’s FIP is 2.67. With RISP, it rises to 4.14.* Beavan’s, predictably, goes the other direction. It’s at 5.00 with no one on, but drops to 3.17 with RISP. These are one-year samples, and they’re absurdly tiny in Beavan’s case, but I’m not trying to make a point about their true talent or their psychology (“Morrow can’t handle pressure!”). I’m just asking: what do YOU do with these numbers? If we’re going to determine who’s been the more valuable pitcher, you have to make a choice about what value means to YOU. We all make slightly different determinations, whether explicitly or implicitly. If you want to focus on actual runs given up by the actual Brandon Morrow/Blake Beavan, then you might come up with something like rWAR at baseball-reference, which has the two essentially tied with 1 WAR despite Morrow’s huge advantage in innings pitched. If you want to isolate certain features of their performance – the components that are least impacted by their teammates, say – you’d come up with something more like fWAR at Fangraphs, and you’d rate Brandon Morrow ten times more valuable than Beavan. Ten times!
When someone says they hate WAR, they’re probably just implicitly weighting different factors. That is, they may just hate FIP. Or ERA+, or UZR, or RF, etc. Just disregarding fWAR/rWAR entirely can be problematic, as it can lead you to weight things differently for different players based on who you grew up idolizing, who got that huge double that won a game you attended, or who is Chris Jakubauskas. But you CAN do it systematically and come up with very, very different numbers that are just as “real,” just as sabermetric-y, as b-ref’s or Fangraphs.
* – For someone with better results with no one on, you’d figure Morrow would ditch his childish habit of walking everyone.
The line-up that will try to get Morrow into RISP-situations:
1: Ichiro
2: Gutierrez
3: Ackley
4: Carp
5: Wells
6: Robinson
7: Seager
8: Bard
9: Wilson
It’s starting to feel almost like a set line-up. Bard’s in for Olivo after the latter had his “bell rung” last night.
In the minors tonight, James Paxton had his start for Jackson skipped/moved, so instead of seeing one of the best non-Matt Moore lefties in the minors, Generals fans get Moises Hernandez tonight.
Forrest Snow starts for the Rainiers against Omaha and Jeff Suppan, Nathan Reed faces off against Inland Empire, Steven Landazuri goes for Everett against Eugene, and Dylan Unsworth’s currently battling Greeneville in the Appy league.
Chance Ruffin is named
Imagine waiting 18 days before your parents gave you a name. I trust Chance Ruffin’s parents didn’t wait that long to give him a name, but the Tigers and Mariners did. (Then again, when you’re 18 days old, how much do you care? Chance Ruffin is 22, so he’s probably all kinds of annoyed that nobody wanted to give him a name. I suppose they can say it’s his own fault for waiting until the signing deadline last year to put that name on a contract.) Anyway, Ruffin is now officially the player who was to be named later from the Fister-Pauley-Wells-Furbush-Martinez trade.
Ruffin comes straight into the bullpen, taking the place of Aaron Laffey, who has been designated for assignment. Laffey has looked pretty bad lately, and the team seems to have soured on him. This leaves them without a left-hander in the pen (Ruffin is right-handed), but Laffey wasn’t really a lefty specialist, and lefty specialists are overrated.
Guys who now figure to be part of the bullpen to start off 2012, based on the current roster: Ruffin, Brandon League (if he isn’t traded), Shawn Kelley, Josh Lueke, maybe Dan Cortes. There’s enough flexibility that some low-cost spring training invites could work their way in, but the existing base is enough that nobody should have delusions that signing free-agent relievers is a big priority for the offseason.
Sanchez and Leal signings official
Just because the signing deadline has passed, doesn’t mean they can’t keep signing players. Jay covered this a little while ago, and now the Mariners have officially announced the signings of two 16-year-old Venezuelans, RHP Victor Sanchez and OF Jose Leal. Bob Engle says they considered Sanchez the top-rated international prospect available.
Previously reported bonus amounts were $2.5 million and $1,925,000, respectively, which of course the team’s announcement doesn’t comment on. Anyway, clearly they’re considered key acquisitions, but it will be 4-5 years before they’d even start to appear in the picture as potential contributors, so just tuck them away in the back of your brain for now.
Both of these guys are from Venezuela, and there’s no word on signings from the Dominican Republic or elsewhere. The team may announce more international signings at some point down the road. Still nothing new on OF Helsin Martinez (who was rumored to have signed last month, a report that Engle refuted) that I know about.
Game 121, Blue Jays at Mariners
Vargas vs. Mills, 7:10pm
Jason Vargas and Brad Mills face off tonight in a match-up of soft-tossing lefties trying to keep the ball in the stadium. Both have pretty good change-ups, and that’s nice, because neither’s going to do much with their fastball. Mills’ averages a hair under 85 MPH, which isn’t good, and what’s worse is that he has trouble commanding it.
Will wonders never cease? This line-up looks awfully familiar:
1: Ichiro
2: Gutierrez
3: Ackley
4: Carp
5: Wells
6: Olivo
7: Robinson
8: Seager
9: Wilson
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s amazing how much easier it is to fill out a line-up card when you’ve got hitters. Wells vs. Mills seems like a good match-up for the M’s.
The Rainiers open a series against the Omaha Storm Chasers tonight at Cheney. I’d circled this one at the beginning of the season, as Omaha had what looked like the best assemblage of talent in the minors – Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Danny Duffy, Mike Montgomery, Johnny Giavotella, etc. Well, all of the above except Montgomery are now playing in Kansas City. They’re still pretty good, but it looks like they’re relying more on vets (Jeff Suppan!) and once-prospects (Vin Mazzaro, Kila Ka’aihue, Robinson Tejeda). That’s fine, as I want the Rainiers to keep up their scoring pace and lead the PCL in runs scored. Reno’s got a commanding lead at this point, but given that Wily Mo Pena now plays for Seattle instead, I don’t think the lead is safe.
Clinton and the entire Midwest League has a day off for travel and for roster shenanigans as they prepare to add players who signed at last night’s deadline. Should be fun to see where some of the new guys end up.
The Jays not only lost last night’s game, they also failed to sign their first-rounder, pitcher Tyler Beede. There’d been a lot of talk that they’d worked out a pre-draft deal – rumors which GM Alex Anthopolous angrily scuttled earlier (he’s been doing a lot of that these days). Anthopolous has had an amazing year, and they were able to sign their sandwich pick for a $1.65m deal (so it’s not like they’re totally empty handed), but losing Beede has to sting a bit.