The Encouraging Start Of Dustin Ackley
When April ended, Dustin Ackley’s season line for Tacoma read as .211/.336/.305, and the skeptics came out of the woodwork. His slender frame makes it easy to explain poor performances as simply the product of a guy who doesn’t hit the ball all that hard, so even pointing out that his line was driven by a crazy low BABIP wouldn’t satisfy them.
Thankfully, Ackley has responded with a monstrous May performance – after yesterday’s four hit game in New Orleans, his line for the month is now at .344/.453/.590. That said, a rebound in BABIP and a small power spike over two weeks shouldn’t be enough to shift opinions on his timetable or his eventual ceiling, and just as the April concern was misguided and premature, so too would be calling for his promotion based on an even smaller sample of success.
However, there is one area where Ackley is showing real improvement, and it’s something that should be quite encouraging to the Mariners – his ability to hit left-handed pitching. Ackley struggled against southpaws in college and in his professional debut last year, showing little to no power and essentially hoping for a walk to get on base. This year, however, he’s doing quite well against LHPs, with a line of .256/.434/.436. He’s still drawing a ton of walks as usual, but he’s also showing a bit of power, as five of his 10 hits against southpaws have gone for extra bases.
Being able to handle lefties was one of the main things he needed to work on down in Tacoma this year (along with his defense at second base), and the fact that he’s showing progress in that area is great news for the M’s. Ackley’s never going to hit for the kind of power that will make him a masher against right-handed pitcher, so he can’t really afford to post a huge platoon split. He has the swing and the plate coverage to be the kind of hitter who can succeed against same-handed pitchers, but he just hadn’t done it up until this year.
We’re still only talking about 50 plate appearances, but he’s doing things against southpaws that he hasn’t done before. That’s a pretty good sign for the future, and gives more reason for optimism that he might be able to make an immediate impact once he comes up from Tacoma.
Game 40, Mariners At Indians, Round 2
Pineda vs Tomlin, 10:05 am (maybe).
If the rain holds out, then Michael Pineda will take the hill against a team that gave him some pretty big problems in spring training. The Indians can run a bunch of left-handed bats out there in a row, so today could be a good test for him – if they play.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 3B
Smoak, 1B
Cust, DH
Olivo, C
Peguero, LF
Ryan, SS
Saunders, CF
Wilson, 2B
Game 40, Mariners At Indians
Bedard vs White, 10:05 am.
The M’s really need to win one 10-3 pretty soon so that we can all stop having ninth inning anxiety. What a lousy week.
Brandon League is getting the day off today, having thrown (poorly) four times in the last five days, but Wedge says he’s still the M’s closer. It’s the right call – recent struggles or not, he’s the best reliever in the bullpen.
Dan Cortes goes back to Tacoma to make room for new addition Jeff Gray. Also, note the #4 spot in the line-up today – hallelujah.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 3B
Smoak, 1B
Cust, DH
Olivo, C
Peguero, LF
Ryan, SS
Saunders, CF
Wilson, 2B
Game 39, Mariners At Indians
Fister vs Carmona, 4:05 pm.
The M’s claimed reliever Jeff Gray off waivers from the White Sox today – he’s your standard variety sinker/slider right-hander who throws strikes, gets ground balls, and doesn’t strike anyone out. Not the worst thing to have around, especially since Wedge is apparently allergic to using either Wilhelmsen or Cortes – this might give the team the ability to actually have more than a four man bullpen now.
Also, David Aardsma has opted for rehab instead of surgery. He’ll take a month off, then resume rehabbing. He’s still looking a second half return if he can make it back, and I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 3B
Smoak, 1B
Cust, DH
Kennedy, 2B
Peguero, LF
Ryan, SS
Saunders, CF
Gimenez, C
Why We Can’t Overreact To Last Year
One of the main problems with last year’s team is that they got absolutely nothing from the first base position, so they were unable to generate any offense from a position where most teams had a guy who could pound the baseball. Casey Kotchman was the most notable failure, and his .217/.280/.336 line has been used as an example that Jack Zduriencik’s theory on roster construction is flawed, and the team is focused on acquiring the wrong kind of players.
One year later, Casey Kotchman is hitting .360/.435/.453 for the Tampa Bay Rays. He leads the AL in batting average (among hitters with at least 80 plate appearances), and his success is one of the reasons the Rays are in first place in the AL East.
Baseball is weird and players are inconsistent. Sometimes, good players have bad years, and bad players have good years. It happens. Andrew Friedman isn’t a genius for finding Casey Kotchman this winter, and Jack Zduriencik wasn’t a moron for giving him a job last winter. Both teams took low cost flyers on a guy who has some skills and some flaws, but they’re getting very different results from essentially the same decision.
Last year, the M’s ended up on the wrong side of a lot of bets. They won’t always get the 2010 version of Kotchman instead of the 2011 version. Things like this tend to even out over time, and given enough decent decisions, the M’s will get some unexpected good results out of guys as well. The key is to keep making good bets on players and not overreacting when they don’t pan out.
Judge the process, not the results.
Game 38, Mariners At Orioles
Vargas vs Britton, 4:05 pm.
(Yes, I know, Britton is an LHP. But, I want to rant about this, and we all know Olivo isn’t moving down in the line-up against righties any time soon.)
Miguel Olivo vs RHP, 2011: .162/.222/.203
Brendan Ryan vs RHP: .188/..243/.232
Chone Figgins vs RHP: .218/.277/.241
Jack Wilson vs RHP: .279/.319/.302
NL Pitchers at the plate, 2011: .135/.162/.170
Against right-handed pitchers, Miguel Olivo has been marginally better than a random National League pitcher, and worse than all of the team’s no power, slap hitting infielders who you would never consider hitting fourth in the line-up. Stop it, Eric Wedge. You want to help this offense score more runs? Stop hitting Miguel Olivo fourth against righties. It’s stupid.
Ichiro, RF
FIggins, 3B
Smoak, 1B
Olivo, C
Cust, DH
M. Wilson, LF
J. Wilson, 2B
Rodriguez, SS
Saunders, CF
Felix Interview With FanGraphs
David Laurila, the newest member of the FanGraphs staff, recently conducted an interview with King Felix and Carl Willis. It’s worth checking out, if only for this line:
DL: Are strikeouts important?
FH: I don’t try to strike out people, but sometimes they swing and miss.
Don’t ever leave, Felix.
Game 37, Mariners at Orioles
Happy Felix Day!
RF Ichiro
3B Figgins
1B Smoak
C Olivo
DH Cust
2B Kennedy
LF Peguero
SS Ryan
CF Saunders
P Felix
Peguero starts again with the right-handed pitcher on the mound. This probably makes sense considering that last year was the first in which Mike Wilson demonstrated no platoon splits. Prior to that, he had always been substantially better against left-handers, as one might expect. I’d be surprised if he didn’t start tommorow, though.
Ryan Langerhans cleared waivers and accepted his assignment to Tacoma earlier in the day. It’s still kind of surprising every time it happens.
Game 36, Mariners At Orioles
Pineda vs Arrieta, 4:05 pm.
If you were hoping David Aardsma was going to be back shortly, you can forget that – Shannon Drayer reports that Aardsma has a “grade 2 sprain of his UCL”, which is the ligament that gets replaced in Tommy John surgery. He’s going to see Dr. Lewis Yocum, and while I’m certainly not a medical expert, it seems like surgery is probably on the table. There’s probably a pretty good chance that Aardsma’s season is over.
As we talked about below, the M’s have a new line-up today thanks to Bradley’s release. Justin Smoak is your new #3 hitter.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 3B
Smoak, 1B
Olivo, C
Cust, DH
Kennedy, 2B
Peguero, LF
Ryan, SS
Saunders, CF
Rearranging The Line-Up
With the team tossing Milton Bradley overboard yesterday (because they’re Mariners – get it? That will be my last sailor related pun of the year, I’d bet), one thing is for sure – the batting order is going to have to change. Despite Eric Wedge’s insistance that Justin Smoak was going to remain in the #5 spot, that seems to be unlikely, as there’s no more veteran presence to point to who has experience in that role. Now, the team will actually have to use talent to determine who hits where.
So, let’s give it a shot. We’ll start with the line-up against righties, since that’s going to be the one that gets used more often. This is my suggestion for what the line-up should look like, not necessarily what Eric Wedge will go with.
1. Ichiro (L), RF
2. Figgins (S), 3B
3. Cust (L), DH
4. Smoak (S), 1B
5. Rodriguez (S), 2B
6. Olivo (R), C
7. Saunders (L), CF
8. Wilson (R), LF
9. Ryan (R), SS
Bench: Gimenez (R), Kennedy (L), Wilson (R), Peguero (L)
My call for Luis Rodriguez to take over as the starting second baseman only gains momentum now that the team is showing that they’re willing to shift away from veterans who have no future here. Give Rodriguez a few hundred at-bats to see what he can do. I know hitting a utility infielder fifth isn’t ideal, but he’s actually got some pop, and as an extreme flyball guy who makes good contact, he might just collect a good amount of sac flies behind the teams OBP group.
Wilson gets the starts in left by default, even though I’d imagine Peguero will probably get some playing time as well. I’m not a big Mike Wilson fan, but he has fewer holes in his swing than Peguero right now, and if you sandwich Saunders between two RHBs, you might be able to limit the times that an opposing manager will go use an LHP against him in tough situations. Since you can’t really pinch hit for Saunders with this roster, that’s kind of important.
Against southpaws, I’d go something like this.
1. Ichiro (L), RF
2. Figgins (S), 3B
3. Olivo (R), C
4. Smoak (S), 1B
5. Wilson (R), LF
6. Cust (L), DH
7. Rodriguez (S), 2B
8. Ryan (R), SS
9. Saunders (L), CF
For all the talk of getting the team another right-handed bat, swapping out Bradley and Langerhans for Peguero and Wilson didn’t actually do that. The team still only has one RH bat to share time at LF/DH, so either Peguero or Cust will have to play against southpaws. Not ideal, but it is what it is.
Is it a good line-up? No, of course not. It’s probably not even any better than the one that the team ran out over the weekend. But, until Dustin Ackley arrives, Franklin Gutierrez returns, and they import another MLB-caliber hitter or two, this is probably the best they can do.