The Risks
Another season is upon us, and I’m trying to take some joy in the fact that the M’s don’t have inflated expectations placed on them this season. That’s good and bad, of course, but the last several times people have expected big things from the M’s, they’ve delivered disappointment. Even just to change things up, I like the idea of the M’s as darkhorses more than what we saw last year, or 2015, or 2010, or 2008, etc. But just because their failure won’t be as spectacular now that no one sees them as having an inside track to a wild card berth doesn’t mean they can’t fail. A season like this is ripe for failures of a different, more insidious, kind. As I’ve done the past few years, let’s explore some of the things keeping me awake at night.
1: The pitching staff continues to hemorrhage dingers and sinks the team
No mystery here. This is not a bold call; it’s the response of pretty much every fan from talk radio to Fangraphs-addled statheads to everyone in between. The M’s used 40 pitchers last year to deal with a plague of injuries AND to paper over their utter lack of high-minors depth behind Max Povse and Andrew Moore, both of whom stumbled hard in 2017. After an offseason that saw them chase exactly no starting pitchers, the same situation’s essentially in place: the M’s have a so-so starting five, anchored by James Paxton, and then a number of question marks after that. If anyone stumbles, they’re back to Povse/Moore, or they can run 2016’s back-up plan and pluck Wade LeBlanc from the bullpen. It didn’t work last year (when the M’s ranked 23rd in fWAR), and it didn’t work in 2016 (when they ranked 18th).
The problem is not just that they’re not set up well to withstand injuries. Almost no team is. At issue is where they realistically need to be. Having a dead-on average pitching staff is a very reachable goal, it’s just not a goal that will translate into a playoff run. The stratification of the league combined with an aging offensive core means that the team really needs the pitchers to carry some weight in producing a sharply positive run differential. The M’s offense isn’t going to be one of the league’s elite groups, though they have a shot at being a bit above average. If that’s the case, then the pitchers need to keep runs allowed right around 700 for the year. In an environment where HRs are this prevalent, do you have a lot of confidence that they can accomplish this?
The M’s solution to a lack of SP depth is to focus on RP depth instead. By shifting innings from starters to relievers, you gain several advantages: you don’t pay the times-through-the-order penalty as much, you can benefit from platoon advantages more, and there’s the all-important fact that relievers give up fewer HRs (probably due to the first two points). That’s the theory behind spending most of their off-season war chest on Juan Nicasio, a reliever who could theoretically go multiple innings, and the theory that argues for an 8-man pen. The problem is that even with Nicasio and closer Edwin Diaz, the M’s bullpen doesn’t really look like a force. The injury to David Phelps clearly hurt, and that was just atrocious luck, but they now need big seasons from guys like James Pazos, who faded down the stretch in 2017, and Nick Vincent, who pulled off the Chris Young trick of giving up a million fly balls but very few HRs. Nicasio himself is coming off a brilliant season, but it comes after two mediocre-for-a-FA-reliever ones in 2015-16.
The M’s other solution is to point to a move they made last year: the acquisition of Mike Leake. Getting Leake in August from St. Louis obviated the need to make a splash for a FA starter, the thinking goes. He also may help limit HRs thanks to his sinker and ground ball profile. His durability is a huge asset, but he’s been so consistent that it’s hard to see how he’d break out now that he’s on the wrong side of 30, his 5-game stint with Seattle last year notwithstanding. Leake should help stabilize the rotation, but again, the rotation simply can’t hang around league average.
The club’s focus on outfield athleticism comes at a bit of a cost on offense (we’ll get to that). It’s all part of the plan I talked about a lot last year, in which the M’s benefit from a very low BABIP as their pitchers court fly balls that their speedy OF track down. If that’s going to work, the pitchers must do *something* different in order to prevent a repeat of 2017, a season that saw them yield 237 HRs. Safeco is no longer a HR-suppressing, pitcher-friendly place. The ball itself has changed to favor dingers. These were unforeseen factors when Jerry Dipoto was hired, but everyone knows them now. The M’s need to adjust, and that adjustment needs to come on the pitching side of the ledger. Are you confident they can make it?
2: The outfield doesn’t hit enough to lift the offense
In 2017, the Mariners outfield put up a collective 92 wRC+. They ranked dead last in baseball in home runs…in the year of the home run. Thanks to their glove work, they graded out a tiny bit below average overall, but the trade-off I mentioned above clearly came at the cost of offense. That’s what happens when you get Jarrod Dyson, and when Mitch Haniger misses time due to injury. The M’s OF is projected to be better than that this year, but they’re clearly built along the same lines.
There is probably no roster spot in which the club and projections differ more on than Ben Gamel’s. The Mariners clearly, clearly believe in the LF, and he rewarded that belief in the first half of last season, with his BABIP-enabled run. He fell off – hard – last year, and he’s now dinged up a bit to start 2018. The projection systems see a low-power, low-OBP corner OF, one who was a slightly-below average hitter even with a .340 BABIP and scoff. The M’s see a positive step, and a hitter who’s poised to break out. A repeat of last season would stabilize a position currently forecast as the game’s 28th-best, but the fact that we’re starting with Gamel nursing an oblique injury and thus counting on Ichiro! to get the M’s through April is not encouraging.
As with the pitching staff, the depth in the OF isn’t exactly encouraging. Guillermo Heredia may be better than he showed last year when he was fighting through injuries, but his overall season line was abysmal last year. The M’s continued their stars-of-2009 approach by signing Jayson Werth yesterday, but as a near-40 year old who missed all of spring training, he won’t be ready for a while and will start in Tacoma. While they picked up guys like Andrew Aplin, Cam Perkins and John Andreoli, when they saw they might actually need to play one of them, they instantly opted for Ichiro (and Werth) instead.
Mitch Haniger could become a star if he stays healthy. The problem is that this essentially MUST happen in order for this group to hit enough to provide a serious boost to the offense. Their top 5 hitters last year all played on the IF/DH, and they scored 750 runs thanks to big seasons from those guys. The OF needs to contribute more to help out a pitching staff that’s going to need to high-wire their way to ~700 runs allowed. Getting to 800 runs allowed in a year in which Nelson Cruz will turn 38, Robbie Cano is 35, Dee Gordon and Kyle Seager are 30 means that someone else is going to have to contribute with a huge season. Haniger’s the most likely suspect, and he could’ve had a big year if his 2017 wasn’t impacted by injuries. The problem is that his 2018 spring was also derailed by injuries, and thus he missed most of the Cactus League. Any time spent getting his timing back hurts the magnitude of his contributions. He is, therefore, a microcosm of the M’s OF: if he’s hurt, things get very bad very fast.
3: The competition got a lot better
The Astros have separated themselves from the pack, and the Indians and Yankees are in very good positions as well. The M’s are realistically fighting for a wild card with the likes of the Red Sox, Twins, Angels (and the rest of the AL West), and perhaps a surprise team or two. The Twins came from nowhere last year, and the Blue Jays could conceivably make some noise in the AL East. This is both a more realistic competition for the M’s and a crowded one. The Red Sox’ staff separates them a bit from the rest of this group, but there are still an awful lot of flawed-but-good teams hanging around the second wild card position.
Those teams have been busy. The Angels not only got Shohei Otani, but remade their infield by snagging Ian Kinsler and 2017 breakout star Zack Cozart. Thanks to a rotation that’s banged up and not terribly good, they’re not likely to run off and challenge the Astros, but the moves they’ve made and the projected return to health of Garrett Richards and Andrew Heaney mean they’re a formidable challenger for the M’s. The Twins’s starting rotation is about as questionable as the M’s, but they took a big step to shore it up when they signed Lance Lynn to a one-year deal. With Phil Hughes and Ervin Santana dealing with injuries, the club needs a big year from Jose Berrios, but that doesn’t seem like it’s asking for the impossible from the soon-to-be-24 year old. The Blue Jays helped their rotation by signing Jaime Garcia, and might sneak into contention this year behind a decent staff and an offense that will soon see the arrival of Vlad Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, both of whom figure to start out in the high minors.
The M’s were content to get Juan Nicasio and hope the rest of the staff avoided injuries, a hope that’s already been dashed by the diagnosis on David Phelps. To make matters worse, they’re facing the toughest schedule out of any of these contending teams. Playing the Astros 19 times hurts, but it points to the fact that the AL West has improved as a unit. While Texas’ schedule is even worse than Seattle’s, the projections have them neck and neck with Seattle to start, and a big season from Willie Calhoun and more-of-the-same from the ageless Adrian Beltre, and the M’s imbalanced schedule goes from bad to worse. Then there are the Athletics, a team without much in the way of pitching, but who built a powerful offense in the second half of 2017. Realistically, the M’s need to get a bunch of wins off of teams in their division, and if the Athletics hitters take advantage of the M’s pitchers’ fly-balling ways, the A’s may scuttle the M’s hopes.
Think of it this way: which AL West team’s outlook over the next 3-5 years would you swap with the M’s? Isn’t the answer pretty much all of them? I would never want to be a fan of the Athletics, but they look intriguing right now, albeit a bit imbalanced. The Rangers don’t look great and their best prospects are waaaay down in the low minors, but the same’s true of the M’s. The Angels have Trout and an absurdly-cheap wildcard in Ohtani. The Astros are the best team in baseball, just added Gerrit Cole, and still have Forrest Whitley, Kyle Tucker, etc. The M’s are in quite a predicament here, and while it’s not entirely of their own making, getting out of it is going to take years of very challenging work.
Nearly Opening Day Round-Up
One of the positive things about the most recent CBA was the change to baseball’s calendar, sprinkling in more off-days throughout the season. This is great for players trying to maintain focus and health through the long season, and it’s great for bloggers like me. The one thing it necessitates, though, is an early opening day. I don’t really mind that, and I’m looking forward to opening day despite the fact that my expectations for a really successful season are vanishingly low. I’m just excited to talk about something other than this odd, painful off-season.
But until Thursday, I need to address the flurry of minor moves the M’s made to prepare for opening day. We’ll also talk about some of the recent projection updates as well as a wrap-up on the provisions in the omnibus spending bill impacting minor league pay.
1: The injury to David Phelps – and some open 40-man spots – led to a series of moves as the M’s tried to rebuild their bullpen depth. That’s an understandable desire, especially if they need to get 600 innings or more from the bullpen. Given their starting pitching depth AND the health of the guys they’re counting on to provide it (Felix, Marco Gonzales, maybe Hisashi Iwakuma, etc.), they need to get a lot more innings from relievers, and to avoid wearing any one of them down, they need to spread that workload as broadly as reasonably possible. Thus, welcome Dario Alvarez, the fastball/slider specialist recently with the Rangers, who was claimed off of waivers, and Erikc Goeddel, a former Met who signed a MiLB deal with the M’s last week. Alvarez has shown ridiculous K% numbers in the minors and majors, but struggled mightily with his command and with occasional HR trouble. Gopher balls also doomed Goeddel, whose K% shot up last year, but since it was accompanied by an increase in HR/9, he wasn’t able to profit from his ability to miss bats. The M’s then traded for MiLB SP depth by getting Ashton Goudeau and Matt Tenuta from the Royals system.
Alvarez’s slider is a legitimate outpitch, and he should tear up the PCL until he’s needed, but my pick for the best single pitch of this batch of new org depth is Goeddel’s splitter. The pitch plays very well with Goeddel’s fastball, and, like a good splitters should, generates a ton of swings, even if it’s thrown out of the zone. Batters have hit .152 off of the pitch (with a .256 SLG%) on the 501 of them Goeddel’s thrown in his big league career. Like many pitchers, Goeddel started to struggle when batters decided to look for fastballs and just hit those. In the last two seasons combined, batters have hit 9 HRs and are slugging .621 off of Goeddel’s FB. Lance Painter now gets to work on how to improve both Goeddel’s and Alvarez’s fastballs while preserving their outpitches.
The M’s minor league strength, and that is such a low bar that I know many of you are snickering just reading that phrase, is its relief pitching. That’s not a surprise; it’s is the easiest form of minor league depth to acquire in the draft – draft a decent starter out of college, make them a reliever, and figure out which ones gain the most velocity. Guys like Art Warren opened a lot of eyes over the last year (along with Matt Festa and Seth Elledge), so unlike essentially any other position, the M’s have actual home-grown talent that they can turn to for depth. But the moves to acquire Alvarez/Goeddel show that the depth they’ve developed isn’t quite enough. I suppose you have to applaud them for seeing a problem and addressing it, but we’re looking at another year where the minors are absolutely filled with depth acquired from waiver claims (Goeddel/Alvarez), minor trades (Goudeau/Tenuta) and minor league free agents. I’ve said all off season that the M’s are clearly banking on their ability to teach players to make big leaps in their ability levels, leaps that no projection could ever foresee. It’s odd to make that kind of a bet and have to fill the upper minors with late-March acquisitions. If your development is so good, wouldn’t you want to maximize the time they had to work with players? If the cupboard’s bare enough that you’re scrambling through the pile of released/waived guys, are you sure you couldn’t find another free agent or two that could help?
2: The M’s path to contention is pretty clear: they’re in the small group of clubs positioned to fight for the second wildcard. The Astros are several cuts above, and it’s hard to imagine a perfect storm that would produce an M’s divisional championship. Thankfully, the M’s don’t NEED to be better than the Astros for 162 games to make the playoffs. They’re not going to be better than the 2nd place team in the AL East, most likely, as you’d have to figure that the reloaded Yankees and the still-the-same, still-good Red Sox can both earn playoff spots. Realistically, the M’s are competing with other teams in the West, namely the Angels, and the 2nd place team in the Central, most likely the Twins. There’s one spot available, and given the way the divisions shake out, the M’s strength of schedule looks to be a serious, serious headwind.
Fangraphs’s playoff odds takes schedule into account, and thus the same projections produce two fewer wins for the M’s. Oh, and 1.5 MORE for the Twinkies. It’s a situation where every game may matter quite a bit, and the division-weighted schedule means Seattle play a slate of games against better opponents than teams in the AL Central. There’s nothing to be done, here, but it makes it more frustrating that the Twins made a series of moves aimed at improving their club in the off-season, building on what was presumably a surprise contending year last year. The M’s…did not, really, though you can see what it’d look like if things worked out.
3: A big part of THAT is their bet on Dee Gordon, elite CF. This great Wall St. Journal article notes the M’s use of Statcast data to measure certain skills that they believe translate well to CF – his reaction on pop-ups, his sprint speed, etc. If Dee Gordon adds value on defense, he can be a very valuable addition. He’s a better hitter than Jarrod Dyson, and if they’re not giving away runs in the field, those batting runs can really add up, especially considering he’ll play more than Dyson did.
The only problem is the set-up for this story of ingenuity and creativity: the idea that the M’s couldn’t find a great CF in free agency. The M’s kicked off this grand experiment – and after seeing him in the Cactus League, I think it’ll work – only because they completely misread the market. They dangled a multi-year offer to Jon Jay, only to watch Jay sign a bargain 1-year deal in KC. They then watched #1 CF Lorenzo Cain sign a 5-year, $80M deal for an AAV of $16M. Gordon’s got 3 years with an AAV of $12.3, not including a team option, on his deal. Gordon’s less of a commitment in dollars and years, but the idea that the M’s simply couldn’t get close to Cain seemed sound in November, but proved to be incorrect.
To be clear, Gordon is no slouch, and the team might actually like Gordon’s superior value on the basepaths as part of a more Royals-of-2015 style offense (an offense that, ironically, included Cain). The M’s were below average last year in walk rate, and by bringing in Gordon and Ryon Healy, they’re only going to drop further this year. With Gordon’s bat-to-ball skills, they’ll probably also drop in team K%. If the M’s are going to produce a well-above average offense, they’re going to need a high batting average. Guys like Gordon are absolutely critical to that strategy, and Gordon’s speed is going to need to counteract some of the BABIP-suppressing effects of Safeco Field, with park factors that limit hits (especially 2B/3B) and walks, and boost Ks. The M’s OF – with Gordon, Gamel, Heredia, Haniger (and Ichiro!) – is not going to be a huge source of HRs, and (Haniger aside) won’t be pulling up the team OBP unless they do so through a high average.
As it happened, the M’s had more options than they would’ve thought. They’ve now got Dee Gordon, and that could really help if Gordon adds value in the field and hits at least .310 or so, even if it’s an empty .310. I know you didn’t come here to read about batting average, but in this case, that’s how the M’s offense can bail out a shaky pitching staff. The M’s hit .259 the past two years, after several years below .250. With scoring where it is, and HRs set to rise yet again, the M’s are going to need their creativity to pay off in BABIP and old fashioned batting average.
4: Whatever happens this year, the M’s – the business/corporation/anti-trust-exempted entity – will be fine. Owners receive a windfall in their share of the sale proceeds of BAMTech to Disney – the streaming video monster that was once known as MLB Advanced Media. Moreover, team valuations continue to grow at an insane rate, as even struggling teams see revenue and sale prices rise. Ex-Commissioner Peter Ueberroth famously chided owners for choosing to try to win at the expense of the bottom line, but the nice thing about where baseball finds itself is that you don’t have to try to do *anything* and you’ll probably make money. Revenue’s rising faster than salary inflation, and the recent CBAs have focused on *limiting* expenses on amateur talent, so this is the system the two sides have agreed on. It’s not bad for *major league* players, but it’s an amazing deal for owners.
That’s the context into which word came out that baseball’s lobbyist had included a provision in the recent omnibus spending bill to clarify that minor league players are not subject to federal minimum wage laws. Some headlines on this have been a bit hard to parse, but to be clear: minor leaguers weren’t covered by minimum wage/overtime rules already, though they had a lawsuit wending its way through the court arguing that they SHOULD be covered by minimum wage/Fair Labor Standards Act. By getting this provision included, baseball hopes to preempt the lawsuit, arguing that the law now unambiguously states that players are NOT subject to the FLSA.
I know minor league teams often run a tight operation, and that dollars need to stretch pretty far, but not only do major league teams pay minor league player salaries, the idea that MiLB players get no pay during spring training and poverty wages during the long season is completely absurd. There is no reason – none – that MLB teams can’t invest in the players they’re counting on as organizational depth or potential MLB contributors. With bonuses limited, and penalty fees racking up when teams exceed the international bonus pool caps, the teams are already paying millions into a black box that’s supposed to help players (but which no one seems to know what to do with). It seems that any team that wanted a competitive advantage could simply pay minor leaguers a half-decent salary and reap the rewards of players who can afford to eat meals or not take extra jobs just to make ends meet. Would that turn every 33rd rounder into a Real Prospect? No, but if it did it for even one of them, it’d pay for itself for years.
The fact that this happened in the very year in which teams receive tens of millions in completely free, revenue-sharing-exempt money is galling. This is a bad look for MLB. I keep thinking the players would have a better collusion case on the fact that minor leaguers work for free *in every camp* than they would questioning why, say, Mike Moustakas’ market didn’t develop. The problem here is that minor league players aren’t at the table, and so it’s not clear what would happen if a club suddenly decided to give them a decent wage. We see a similar dynamic at play when we hear Alex Anthopoulos’ ridiculous reasoning for why Ronald Acuna won’t be starting the season in Atlanta. Everyone knows it’s a lie, and even fans understand/support the reasoning – they want an extra year of Acuna’s cost-controlled services in the future, when the Braves might actually be good. The players association has made some grumbling about this, especially when the same thing happened with Kris Bryant a few years ago, but fundamentally, what would a “fix” look like for these two bargaining partners? Remember that Acuna – right now a non-member – would take the position of a member. Would the agreement be to *extend* the time a team would have to blatantly lie to fans and everyone why a prospect was sent down? Would that be better?
The relationship between players and owners may be broken. The relationship between minor leaguers and everyone has been broken for years. I’m not sure how to resolve this situation, and I wish I had more confidence that we’d see a good resolution when the next agreement gets signed.
Cactus League – The Avant-Garde Rockies at Mariners
Mike Leake vs. German Marquez, 5:40pm
Another night game in the Cactus League as the M’s host Colorado tonight in Peoria. Mike Leake looks to build what’s been an absolutely brilliant start, and faces off with hard-throwing righty German Marquez. Marquez throws a four-seam fastball at about 96 MPH, pairing it with a hard curve, an occasional change, and a rarely-used, but effective-in-spots sinker. Marquez added plenty of velo in 2017, and was a generally effective/league-average-or-better starter for the Rockies, so he’s worth talking about in his own right, but I want to talk about the system that gave us German Marquez. The Rockies are doing something, and Marquez is just one example.
I mentioned this last year when the M’s and Rockies squared off in interleague play, but the Rockies have overhauled their approach to pitching. Playing at altitude requires you to think very carefully about your approach, or else you end up with the Rockies pitching staffs of the pre-humidor era, the nadir of which intersected with the steroid era. Over 1999-2000, the Rockies hurlers allowed 458 home runs, and put up a collective ERA of 5.66 with a FIP of 5.32. *After* the humidor, the Rockies have been, I think, underappreciated for their HR-suppressing ability. The Mariners have given up more HRs than the Rockies in most years since 2004, and that’s continued into this most recent HR explosion. Other teams looking to reduce HRs have attempted to minimize the pitches that go for homers most often: four-seam fastballs. The Astros throw a ton of pitches low in the zone, and feature a steady diet of non-fastballs. Same with the Yankees, who threw shockingly few fastballs in 2017, a strategy which led them to give up about 50 fewer HRs than their batters’ knocked. The Rockies know that ground balls are the surest way to avoid HRs, but they’ve taken a completely different approach to producing them: they throw a blizzard of…four-seam fastballs.
The Rockies led baseball last year in ground ball rate. They also led baseball in the percentage of four-seamers thrown, and by quite a ways. This strategy’s been kicking around Colorado for a while, as they led baseball in four-seamers from 2010-2015 (the little HR ice age), too. But they’d never come close to their percentage last year, and had a four-seam percentage 10 percentage points lower as recently as 2015.
To be clear, the Rockies are not the only team that’s tried a steady diet of four-seamers. The Rays were the prime example of this approach in recent years, as they had pitchers with high spin rates (and lots of vertical rise) trying to generate fly balls in a HR-suppressing ballpark with an OF patrolled by Kevin Kiermaier. The approach made their breaking balls/splitters more effective, and played to the strength of their defense. The Rockies are the first to use this approach to get *ground balls* – and they’ve been shockingly good at it. It hasn’t made them a great overall staff, and they’ve given up some HRs and plenty of extra-base hits, but so much of that comes from their spacious park. They’ve turned middle-to-back-of-the-rotation pitching prospects like Marquez, Antonio Senzatela and Kyle Freeland into…middle-to-back-of-the-rotation major league pitchers. And not just “eh, that’ll play in Colorado, I guess,” but legitimate league-average production. I would really like to know how.
The Mariners have talked a lot about fastballs this off-season. It’s been a subject on the Wheelhouse Podcast several times, and so we now scrutinize each new addition’s fastball metrics, from spin to movement to approach. Given the run environment, or more specifically, the home run environment the game operates in, each team *should* spend time thinking about how to use each pitcher’s arsenal to limit hard-hit, pulled contact. The M’s clearly do. But here’s the problem:
| HRs Allowed | |
|---|---|
| M’s, 2016-17 | 450 |
| Rockies, 1999-00 | 458 |
The M’s pitchers have yielded essentially exactly the same number of HRs as the abysmal Rockies’ staffs of 1999-2000. Whatever the M’s have done, it hasn’t worked. Yes, yes, injuries. And what about the new ball? The Reds gave up way more! That’s all very true. But if you’re in the same neighborhood in HRs-allowed as pre-humidor Colorado…yeesh.
I guess I hadn’t realized just what a difference it’s made, as the Rockies haven’t had a season with over 200 HRs allowed since 2002 (they gave up exactly 200 in 2004). The M’s have gone above 200 a few times, including 2004 and then blowing past it these past two seasons. Part of this is the fact that the dimension changes in Safeco have made for a very different environment, but part of it seems to be that the M’s approach is either not quite working, or is not well-suited to Safeco. Not sure which at this point, but the M’s really may want to look at what Colorado’s doing. An M’s staff with Colorado’s HR rates would be a formidable one.
No word on who’s coming off the 40-man to make room for Ichiro!. Ryan Divish reports that it’ll be a reliever. Armstrong/Morin/Moll/Bradford have to be nervous.
Line-up:
1: Gordon, CF
2: Segura, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Zunino, C
7: Ford, 1B
8: Perkins, RF
9: Andreoli, LF
SP: Leake
Will There Be Enough for Martin/Dyson to Do?
Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, everyone.
So, with the trade of Mallex Smith, the M’s are back down to 2 or 3 CFs, with Mitch Haniger – a competent CF himself – playing RF. There’s nothing wrong with defense first OFs, and in general, I subscribe to the idea that a run saved is essentially equal to a run scored. As M’s fans, we’ve seen an object lesson that putting two all-world defenders next to each other in the OF doesn’t reduce either one’s productivity: Mike Cameron in CF and Ichiro! in RF remains the single best OF duo I’ve ever seen, and the M’s pitching staff reaped the benefit.
The idea that elite defenders don’t necessarily take plays away from nearby defenders is a longstanding one, and it’s critical to Dave Cameron’s view of the Dyson/Karns trade. Quoth my erstwhile boss, “Now, though, there’s reason to think the 2017 Mariners might have the best outfield defense in baseball, or at least be in the conversation. Dyson, of course, was part of the Royals great wall of defense, and now he’s going to be roaming the fairly vast left field in Safeco.” He points out that the Royals OF racked up 135 runs above average by UZR and 121 by DRS in the past three years, while the M’s were solidly in negative territory. It’s not as simple as flipping the latter numbers for the former, so, really: how many runs are out there for the M’s to gain?
This is, sadly, a really difficult nut to crack. There are a number of different ways to look at this, and fortunately, a number of data sources to pore over. All of them have strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately, there’s no silver bullet here; there’s no equation that’ll spit out the runs the new-look M’s OF *will* save in the future. Futures are slippery like that. But we can try and examine the various factors that influence fly balls and figure out how the 2017 M’s might differ from their OFs of the past few years.
What might influence the number of balls an OF sees? There’s the total number of balls in play their pitchers give up; of those, the percentage that are hit in the air; how hard/where they’re hit; the physical size of the OF they’re attempting to cover; and a bunch of atmospheric/weather-related factors that are sadly going to be well outside the scope of this. Just from this partial list, you can see a number of reasons why the M’s of 2017 might be in a slightly different space with regard to OF chances than the Cameron/Ichiro!/Winn group of 2002 or so. The strikeout rate league-wide continues to grow, meaning there are balls in play, and the M’s have helpfully cut down their LF area which, as we’ve already seen, has had the effect of reducing the numbers of doubles and triples that batters hit. Still, a reduction in the number of chances still leaves plenty of room for the M’s to improve, right? The M’s trailed the Royals in OF UZR last year by 55 runs.
Let’s start by looking at total OF chances, as seen on Baseball-reference.com. The 2001 M’s saw 1,228 chances, 2nd most in the league. The American league average back then was 1,125, and the AL’s K% was 16.5%. Last year, the M’s saw 1,061 chances, a bit more than the league average of 1,045 – in related news, the AL K% was up to 20.9%. Taking a 3-year rolling average, the M’s have lost over 200 chances per year from 2003 to 2016. Obviously, the rise of strikeouts is a big contributing factor, as we can see from the fact that the league average itself has dropped by 62 chances per year. But the other part of this is Safeco’s dimension. From 2003-2012, the M’s averaged 1,188 chances/year and their average rank in the AL was 4.67. Since then, the M’s averaged 1,042 chances and have never topped 1,100; their average rank in the (now larger) AL is just 11th. Again, the confounding factor here is that the M’s have been almost intentionally bad defensively since the walls were brought in, so it’s tough to pull these various threads apart. However, it’s probably not a coincidence that the number of chances drops precipitously right when the dimensions changed, and that it’s pushed Seattle from a park that saw many *more* chances than the average park to one that’s seen fewer than average.
But that’s just chances – how about a broad measure that gets at converting chances into outs, like defensive efficiency? Baseball Prospectus tracks defensive efficiency, and breaks it up between fly balls and ground balls. Here, the trend is the opposite, with teams generally getting better and better at turning fly balls into outs. In 2003 (the first year they have good data), the M’s fly ball efficiency (the percentage of fly balls they turned into outs) was .876, good for best in the AL. Last year, the M’s ranked 6th in the league…but with a .906 mark. What’s going on here? The culprit appears to be a general trend towards classifying more balls in play as line drives. “Fliners” that could be called either fly balls or line drives were once largely grouped in with fly balls, are now called line-drives. That’s going to make it really, really hard to look at these numbers over time, but we can try, and we can look at other teams within the same year. So, the percentage of balls in play has dropped by 10 percentage points over time, and as a result, those easier FBs remaining turn into outs more and more often. In fact, the M’s and Royals were nearly identical in 2016 – the Royals FB DE was .912, just one spot ahead of the M’s in the AL. Again, looking at 3 year averages, the clear trend is towards a lower percentage of fly balls, but the biggest single drop in the 3-year rolling average for Seattle is the first year that the average was made up of post-dimension change seasons. By *this* measure, which is super high-level and not attempting to account for the difficulty of chances, the M’s and Royals were more or less equals in turning FBs into outs last year. Interestingly, the M’s have been consistently *good* in this measure since 2013, despite being just atrocious by UZR/DRS. In 2014, for example, the M’s had a .919 FB DE, 3rd best in the AL. They had a -4 run UZR that year. The M’s AL rank has been fair to middling since 2013, but the M’s 2013-2016 average is .9035, percentage points better than the…Kansas City Royals, who clock in at .9028.
That’s strange, but now that we’ve got Statcast data, why not look at that? This way, we can avoid classifications (liner or fly ball or pop-up?) issues and control for things like number of chances and even the speed of the ball. The downside is that it’s only available for 2016 and 2015, and 2015 data haven’t been playing nicely this past week. We shall press on: I took a look at all balls in play fielded by an OF, and combining all fly balls, line drives and pop-ups. The Mariners dealt with 1,691 balls in play that met these criteria last year – helpfully, that’s nearly identical to the Royals’ 1,695. Across MLB, the percentage of these balls that fell in for hits (BABIP) was .432. The M’s bested that mark, posting a .418 mark, not quite as good as the Royals’ .407. Here, the Royals really are an elite club, ranking 4th in MLB. But the M’s, despite their awful UZR, come in 8th, and 4th in the AL. By SLG%, the gap is even bigger, with the M’s 9th in the league, giving up around 40 bases more than the Royals, who rank 3rd best. That’s significant, but again, it’s not gigantic. In fact, the gap in total bases is a bit less than the total gap in UZR or DRS *runs* in 2016. And again, the M’s are clearly above average compared to other MLB teams. Of course, last year was…weird. If you add in HRs and don’t focus only on balls in play, Safeco gave up a much *higher* than average SLG% on contact. But what if the combination of marine layer (however attenuated or El Nino’d it was) and smaller park will result in a *consistently* high floor for OF defense? The M’s worst defense in recent memory was clearly the 2015 group, but just looking at total chances and BA compared to the league average, they don’t seem completely terrible.
I can pull my head out of a spreadsheet every once in a while, and I actually enjoy watching a ball game. I can say that by the eye test, the 2015 M’s were terrible, and that the Royals of recent vintage look incredible; Cain/Gordon/Dyson is about as good, maybe AS good, as Cameron/Ichiro/Winn. Moreover, even if there are fewer than there used to be, there’ll still be 1,000 or so balls in play for the OFs, and the M’s should endeavor to catch them. But the more I look at it, the more I think it’s probably worth trying to quantify exactly how many balls Dyson/Martin will get to that Martin/Smith+Heredia+Gamel didn’t/couldn’t. It’s more than zero, I’ll stipulate that. But I’m also not convinced it’s a gigantic number, and given the persistently low number of chances – and the correlation between chances and UZR – that the M’s will save 40-50-60 runs with this defensive enhancement. Does that matter? I don’t know, ultimately. The M’s can still tinker with that number, as they control how FB or GB-minded their pitching staff is. With Drew Smyly in the fold, they may yield more flys than in the past, but again, they can only improve by so much: they ranked 6th in baseball last year in FB%.
Still, I think it’s interesting that some teams pretty consistently rank near the top in FB% allowed. Examples include the Angels and Rays, who rank #1 and #2 in FB% given up over the past 4 years combined. As a result, their OFs have made hundreds more plays than the M’s group over that time. Part of that is the like of Kevin Kiermaier patrolling the OF, but a large part of it is the sheer number of chances they’ve had. Given this imbalance, and given that this imbalance looks a whole lot like a coherent strategy, I understand the Rays’ desire to stick Mallex Smith next to Kiermaier. I understand somewhat *less* the Angels trade for Andrelton Simmons, given the paucity of chances he’ll get. Simmons is still great, no matter what uniform he’s wearing. And Jarrod Dyson’s (almost) equally incredible. But like Simmons in Anaheim, I wonder if *some* of that transcendent skill will be wasted in his new home park.
Game 111, Tigers at Mariners
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Michael Fulmer, 7:10pm
The M’s fete The Kid and pass the Astros, Ichiro! knocks his 3000th hit, and A-Rod will play his final game this week and take a job as an advisor to the Yankees. Yes, yes, we’re supposed to oppose cheap nostalgia, but none of this was forced or cheap, and I’m still kind of giddy about Ichiro. (We’re also supposed to downplay round number mania, but who cares: Ichiro!)
Tonight’s game is a fascinating match-up between a resurgent Iwakuma, and the young Tigers phenom who continues to impress. Can’t remember if I mentioned Fulmer before, but he was the big get when Detroit traded Yoenis Cespedes to the Mets. He features a straight, rising four seamer, a sinker with a half a foot more horizontal run than his straight fastball, a good slider, and a very interesting split-change thing that may be his best pitch.
Early on, he got attention for a scoreless streak, and thus had astronomical strand rates and a microscopic BABIP. Since then, regression’s gone to work on those two stats, but they’re still above average and Fulmer’s still pitching really well. Er, it helps if you overlook a recent bout of HR troubles (4 in last 3 starts).
His K rate isn’t all that impressive, but the change has helped him post well above average GB marks. It’s also a prime reason why he’s been so tough on left handed bats; he’s got reverse splits through his first 100+ IP.
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Martin, CF
8: Zunino, C
9: Freeman, SS
SP: Iwakuma
Mike Freeman makes his first big league start at SS. I know he’s versatile, but this seems like a force – getting a lefty bat in yo face a righty. But O’Malley’s a switch hitter, so perhaps this is just about resting O’Malley, which is not a phrase you thought you’d hear when this season started.
Ichiro and the failure of Seattle
Ichiro! is my favorite Mariner. I may have seen better seasons (I think of Randy Johnson’s 1995-1997 run, in the days I would cut out of school and bus down to the Kingdome) but Ichiro… I would go to games and see him play dead ball baseball in the 2000s and do it so well he was a star. Ichiro! did the impossible. He would climb a wall, seem to hang there, and then turn to turn a home run into an out. He could be fooled by a pitch a swing and then somehow slow the bat to punch a single into shallow right. I could watch some of his replays over and over and shake my head.
I saw him swing right-handed, and it his swing was perfect.
I have a friend who wouldn’t cheer for Ichiro! this post-season, because he thought he was an example of a player who didn’t perform until he was on a contender. That’s been a constant criticism of Ichiro! — that he cared when he was on the Japanese national team, but showed no emotion in the regular season.
I know. And yet, let’s say Ichiro! plays best when he feels challenged, that his contributions are meaningful. Even Griffey said that he reserved his greatest plays for when he thought it mattered, didn’t he?
Isn’t this a failure of Seattle?
We had one of the greatest players ever, Japanese or otherwise, and the franchise wasted him. He saw the playoffs once, in his first year, and then never again. And yet he contributed throughout. Some contend he was overpaid, but did he ever seek free agency? Did he ever sulk and seek a trade? Did he not always seek to stay here first?
Ichiro! was a great match for Seattle. He is intensely private, contemplative, and we are, generally, a fan base that respects our players. There is not the media blitz of other markets, though he has certainly had issues on that front.
He has his choice of where to go this year. By all indications, he is going to New York, where already he can enjoy headlines like “Youkilis and Ichiro are fine, but can you picture them in the Canyon of Heroes?”*
How did we get to this point? Since 2001, it has, essentially, been Ichiro, King Felix, and a collection of incompetents. Ichiro! wishes to compete, and given his druthers, he thinks that’s New York. Even being able to learn from the coverage Matsui, and a decade of experience with Seattle, where you probably know or could easily find out where he lived but did not, he appears ready to sign with our arch-enemy.
Ichiro! is exactly the kind of player the Mariners should have an advantage in recruiting and retaining, and we wasted his career. No matter who the GM was, who the manager was, no matter what the extenuating circumstances — we had Ichiro, a Hall of Fame, impossibly talented player, every year since 2001, and he saw the playoffs once.
That the franchise had this opportunity and could make nothing of it doesn’t just reflect badly on the last decade, it will take a lot to overcome in the future.
I hope it happens.
* you would be honored to have Ichiro! in your stupid canyon
Game 57, Mariners at Angels
Vargas vs. Santana, 7:05 pm PDT
Gosh, there’s some baseball on today, isn’t there? On the TV and the radio and everything.
RF Ichiro!
2B Ackley
3B Seager
1B Smoak
DH Jaso
LF Carp
C Olivo
CF Saunders
SS Kawasaki
With a right-hander on the mound, the Mariners are going with their lefty-heavy lineup. One might prefer Montero considering he’s had multiple hits in four of his last six games, but Olivo is still around and he hit the dinger yesterday. Let Zunino’s being drafted serve as a reminder that the sun will soon set on the second Miguel Olivo Era.
Smoakamotive won AL Player of the Week. I hope he continues to chug along.
Game 36, Mariners at Yankees
Pettite vs. Millwood, 10 am
It would feel weird to me if I was looking at this and didn’t put a lineup up even if I don’t expect much posting traffic. In short, Pettite was out of baseball for a while, and then he came back fairly recently. The Mariners are sending their left-hander lineup to hit against him and haven’t had good results through three. No one has had a hit! Shouldn’t they have a scouting report on this guy? Unbelievable! But Millwood didn’t allow anything until the bottom of the third either so…. something. I don’t know. I anticipate silly home runs later.
2B Ackley
LF Wells
RF Ichiro!
C Montero
1B Smoak
3B Liddi
DH Carp
CF Saunders
SS Ryan
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there.
Game 22, Mariners at Blue Jays
Morrow vs. Millwood, 1:07 pm
Probably the only thing that I don’t like about baseball’s rigorous schedule is that we don’t get much time to sit around and marvel over how awesome last night’s performance was. We only got seventeen hours or so and then it’s on to more baseball which does not carry with it the promise of similar fulfillment. Baseball, you are such a chore. I have things I should probably be doing and you won’t let up. And day games? Where do you get off? I bet Wedge won’t even let us see Jaso tomorrow.
LF Figgins
2B Ackley
RF Ichiro!
1B Smoak
3B Seager
DH Montero
CF Saunders
C Olivo
SS Ryan
Game 16, White Sox at Mariners
Well, it can’t be worse than last night’s game, huh?
Philip Humber starts for Chicago against the surprising back of the rotation star, Blake Beavan. Humber’s a FB/SL/CU guy who finally put together s solid season in 2011 after being labeled a bust in pro ball after a brilliant college career at Rice. M’s go with their lefty line-up today, meaning Kawasaki starts in place of the struggling Brendan Ryan.
Game time is 1:10 – here’s the line-up
1: Figgins (LF)
2: Ackley
3: Ichiro!
4: Smoak
5: Seager
6: Montero (DH)
7: Saunders (CF)
8: Olivo (C)
9: Kawasaki (SS)
SP: Beavan