July 31st Isn’t Really The M’s Deadline
Wondering why there are so few rumors involving what the M’s might do between now and 1 pm pacific time tomorrow, when the trade deadline passes? It’s fairly simple – for the Mariners, this deadline isn’t really one. Besides Brandon League and maybe David Aardsma, the guys that the M’s are willing to move are players who will clear waivers in August.
At this point, the best the Mariners can hope for with Jack Wilson is that another team agrees to assume the rest of his contract – there’s no way they’re going to get anything of value back as well. If a team put in a waiver claim in August, the M’s would (or should, at least) just let him go. Tomorrow’s deadline doesn’t really affect Jack Wilson.
While the situation is a little different with Jose Lopez, it’s still likely that the M’s could trade him in August. Because of the buy-out in his contract, they’re not really looking for salary relief, but that option/buyout is also why they’d be able to deal him past the deadline. For most of the non-contending teams, a guy who they’d have to buyout of his deal this winter isn’t very attractive, so it’s unlikely that they’d make a claim. The only teams who would be interested in Lopez’s services for the rest of 2010 are those who need some infield depth on the cheap, and it would only take one team to make a waiver claim for the Mariners to work out a deal with that club.
Casey Kotchman’s the same way. You might get a team to bite on him as a defensive replacement for their first baseman and 1B depth down the stretch, but his performance and salary will let him slide right through waivers.
For Jack Zduriencik, the only guys he really has to move by tomorrow if he wants to trade them this year are Aardsma and League. Power arms under team control for several more years wouldn’t get past too many teams, so they aren’t August trade chips. But pretty much everyone else on the roster can be traded after the deadline, which is why the M’s are on the periphery right now. Teams are focusing on making trades for guys who won’t be available on August 1st. Once they get that settled, they can come back and talk to the M’s about the guys they have, and perhaps make a deal in a week or two.
Game 103, Mariners at White Sox
Pauley vs Garcia, 5:10 pm.
Tonight should be an interesting test for Pauley. Similar to Doug Fister, he pounds the zone with mediocre stuff and relies on getting hitters to get themselves out, which doesn’t work all that well in a ballpark where the ball flies pretty well. But, if he can get through this line-up, he’s got a pretty decent chance of sticking in the rotation for the rest of the year, and might post good enough numbers to wind up with a major league job next year.
Also, just figured I’d throw this out there, for people who need some good news: Josh Lueke, since coming over in the Cliff Lee deal, for Double-A West Tennessee: 7 2/3 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 14 K. Don’t be surprised if we see Lueke in September. The M’s could certainly use another reliever with an out pitch who can throw strikes.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Kotchman, 1B
Gutierrez, CF
Saunders, LF
Smoak, DH
Josh Wilson, 3B
Johnson, C
Jack Wilson, SS
A Run at History
We’ve all seen it, and it certainly doesn’t take a sabermetric fan to understand that they were watching something historic. I’ve always hated the ‘if he keeps up this pace’ caveat, but the numbers were absolutely stunning. Simply put, he’d left his peers behind and was competing with the record book. Most fans can rattle off the names by heart: Lima’s magical 2005. The memorable 2008 duel between Carlos Silva and his teammate Miguel Batista, with Brian Bannister challenging both. The murderer’s row of the 2007 Nationals: Mike Bacsik, Matt Chico and Jason Simontacchi. No, M’s fans, you didn’t imagine it: Ryan Rowland-Smith put them all to shame.
Yes, I felt the need to talk about Ryan Rowland-Smith’s move to the DL – hell, everyone else is doing it. RRS’s WAR in 2010 stands at -1.4, far and away the worst in the majors. That WAR total is nearly equivalent to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th worst pitchers’ totals combined. He’s done this in less than 100 innings. As a fan of Ryan’s, I’ve got no choice but to be fascinated. Here was a guy who pitched reasonably well last year – perhaps not quite up to his ERA or FIP, but solid (and quite consistently) nonetheless. And in 2010, he’s been further below average than Cliff Lee’s been above average. How does this happen?
Dave’s post below lays out the ‘how’ but I still can’t figure out the ‘why.’ Yes, a pitcher who doesn’t throw hard isn’t going to last long when he can’t hit his spots. But it’s stunning the way these subtle declines in ‘skill’ or results can snowball: RRS gave up no HRs on curveballs in 2009, and he’s given up 4 so far in 2010. When he’s watching his best pitch from 2007-09 get hammered, it’s probably more likely that he’d start nibbling with his FB, fall behind, and have to get more of the plate, leading to more pitches getting hammered, and off we go. His slider’s actually getting *more* swinging strikes in 2010, and it hasn’t been hit as hard, but a combination of BABIP and poor location mean that it hasn’t worked either.
His fastball results make me think that for 95+% of pitchers, ‘locating the fastball’ is some hybrid between a skill and a result. That is, while it’s not impacted by defenders, batters or official scorers, we can expect quite a bit of variance in a pitcher’s ability to hit spots. This variance will not always be punished as savagely as it has in Rowland-Smith’s case, but it’s something to keep in mind. Pat Andriola took a look at Zach Greinke’s fastball in 2009 and 2010 in this article at fangraphs a few weeks back. If Zach Greinke can’t maintain optimal location, what chance to RRS have? Location is clearly part skill, but it’s not all skill.* You’re going to have pitchers whose fielding-independent metrics diverge markedly from year to year even after you smooth out HR/FB, LOB%, etc. Greinke’s FIP and tRA are up over a full run this year.
Finally, there’s the issue of Ryan’s personality and his popularity with M’s fans. Clearly, M’s fans didn’t give Carlos Silva or Jeff Weaver this much slack when they struggled (and neither struggled quite this much). RRS has made an impact with fans in part because he’s so willing to engage them. He blogged a bit and has a huge following on twitter, where he’s been candid about his struggles and also lets fans know where he’ll be hanging out (I think divulging similar info would’ve gotten Silva into a hell of a lot of fights). As Jeff wrote at LL, this has made it easier for fans to relate to him, and it’s made him unique – though obviously his back-story helped set him apart as well. I spoke with him while he rehabbed in Tacoma last year and he’s just as down to earth as everyone says. So I don’t think I’m alone in saying that Rowland-Smith’s struggles feel crueler somehow than, say, Casey Kotchman’s or Rob Johnson’s. It also means that when I look back at my own preseason projections, RRS’s stands out. Sure it was wildly, astonishingly wrong, but I keep asking myself if part of the reason it was wrong was that I wanted Ryan to succeed. If I’m honest, I think that was part of it.
All of this is why I’m glad Rowland-Smith has landed on the DL with whatever it is that they’re calling it (back strain, huh? Eh, at least they didn’t go with ‘tendinitis’). I sincerely hope that the mechanical tweak Rick Adair is working on helps, and I sincerely hope that his luck suddenly goes from unbelievably bad to unbelievably good. I hope a pep-talk from his old minor league teammate Rich Dorman gets him to forget about his results and work on what he needs to do to become a major league pitcher again. Mostly, I hope that this season’s absurd stats don’t define his career. The Angels have made me put up with a lot, but if RRS’ Mariner career ends the same week Joe Saunders gets flipped for Dan Haren, I really don’t know what I’ll do.
*: Three tangents: first, I’m betting this is partially why veterans aren’t anywhere near as consistent as traditionalists think they are. Silva as consistent innings-eater? Barry Zito as guy-worth-truly-insane-contract? There are a number of reasons why pitchers begin to suck, but this is probably a big one, and it’s something that won’t necessarily get picked up in BB rates. A guy without a lot of stuff can get pegged as having brilliant location, when in reality he may only have been the beneficiary of great ‘location results.’ Second: qualities like ‘stuff’ and velocity are important in that they provide a margin of error for variance in location. A 98 MPH fastball may not need to be well-located, but an 88 MPH fastball sure better be. Third, it’s always a good idea to think about sample size concerns. Location isn’t the only ‘skill’ metric that can fluctuate wildly over small samples. When Carlos Peguero had a wOBA of over .500 for a month, his K% and BB% numbers looked better. This proved that the hot streak wasn’t purely the result of a spike in batting average on balls in play, but it didn’t prove it was anything more than a hot streak. Since April, he’s struggled to wOBA over .340, and his K rate is back above 30%.
Game 102, Mariners at White Sox
Vargas vs Buehrle, 5:10 pm.
I posted this on twitter this afternoon, but here’s something depressing – the five lowest wOBAs in baseball over the last 30 days:
1. Justin Smoak, .171
2. Ivan Rodriguez, .175
3. Miguel Montero, .227
4. Ichiro Suzuki, .231
5. Franklin Gutierrez, .231
Jose Lopez is 11th at .260. Rob Johnson (.230) and Jack Wilson (.240) don’t have enough plate appearances to qualify, but have been equally atrocious. There’s no way these guys will continue hitting this poorly, but man, what a rough month.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Branyan, DH
Smoak, 1B
Bard, C
Josh Wilson, 3B
Saunders, LF
Jack Wilson, SS
The Problem With RRS
We’ve gotten a lot of emails asking for a post about Ryan Rowland-Smith’s problems, so by popular demand, here you go.
This one just isn’t that complicated, though. There’s no great insight to be found here – it’s just as simple as the fact that he hasn’t had any command this year. His skillset can work, but it requires that he be able to pound the strike zone, get ahead of hitters, and then be able to mix in slow stuff to get them to chase pitches out of the zone. Guys with 88 MPH four-seam fastballs can’t be continually throwing fastballs when behind in the count, because hitters will just tee off on them. And that’s exactly what’s happening to Hyphen.
His first strike percentage is down from 61 percent a year ago to 58 percent this year. By falling behind in the count, he’s getting himself into situations where hitters don’t have to look for the change-up or the breaking ball. His fastball isn’t good enough to get by MLB hitters when they know its coming.
The flyball, no strikeout lefty skillset can work, but you need pinpoint command to be able to pull it together. This year, Ryan Rowland-Smith has had far less than pinpoint command, and he’s suffering the consequences. In reality, last year’s strike-throwing ways were probably an anomaly – he’d never shown that kind of command in the minors, and it now looks like an outlier rather than improvement. The M’s are probably best served by just putting him back in the bullpen, hoping he can get a few extra MPH on his fastball in shorter stints, and let him settle in as a lefty reliever.
Unless his ability to hit his spots improves dramatically, he won’t succeed in a major league rotation.
Game 101, Mariners at White Sox
Rowland-Smith vs Floyd, 5:10 pm.
In a rush, so not much to say about this one, other than bet on Chicago – this is the wrong environment for RRS to try and fix his HR problem.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, DH
Lopez, 3B
Smoak, 1B
Saunders, CF
Josh Wilson, SS
Bard, C
Langerhans, LF
Accepting Randomness
I try to avoid linking to things I write other places, because I don’t want to become a self-promoter and I figure most of you probably know how to find my stuff at FanGraphs, WSJ, or ESPN anyway. But, I’m making an exception today, because my afternoon post over at FG is the kind of thing that I would have written here a few years ago, and I think it has quite a bit of relevance to the 2010 Mariners season. The post is entitled Accepting Randomness. Here’s the first few paragraphs, and you can read the rest over there.
Most of the conversations about the Dan Haren trade boil down to how a person feels about pitcher evaluation. There are clearly still a lot of people that simply believe that whatever happens is the pitcher’s responsibility, so if he gives up a bunch of hits and some home runs, he’s doing something wrong and that should be held against him. High BABIP or HR/FB rates are evidence of throwing too many hittable pitches, or that his stuff has deteriorated, or that his command isn’t as good as it was, or some other explanation that we haven’t yet figured out. But, whatever it is, it’s definitely something, and it’s definitely real.
These opinions are generally held because of the outright refusal to accept randomness. The idea that something could happen repeatedly, without cause, is very hard to for a lot of people to swallow. But it’s true, and it’s a very important concept to buy into when trying to project the future performance of baseball players. Random happens.
Game 100, Mariners at White Sox
Hernandez vs Danks, 5:10 pm.
Happy Felix Day.
As has been pointed out in several different places recently, Felix is having essentially the same season he had last year. His numbers are almost identical across the board in every meaningful category. His walks are the same, strikeouts the same, home runs the same, runner stranding the same. Everything is about as identical as you could possibly get as a follow-up to last year’s performance, with one exception – last year, Felix won 19 games, and this year, he’s won 7.
The difference, of course, is the performance of his teammates. He hasn’t gotten support from his offense or his bullpen, so his wins are down. And this is why almost everyone is rejecting wins as any kind of useful statistic at this point. Well, everyone except the Arizona Diamondbacks, because if you haven’t heard, they shipped their ace Dan Haren to the Angels for Joe Saunders and some not-close-to-the-majors prospects. Dan Haren is really good, and Joe Saunders is pretty lousy, but over the last three years, Saunders has more wins (43 to 41).
The Angels took advantage of an Arizona franchise that’s a walking disaster right now, and by adding Haren for the next three years, they just made the AL West that much harder to win. With Weaver, Pineiro, Santana, and now Haren, the Angels actually have a good pitching rotation again, and all four of those guys will be back next year. Blech.
Yet another reason to build for 2012. The M’s are now staring at an even bigger mountain to climb for contention next year. Screw you, Jerry DiPoto.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 3B
Kotchman, 1B
Bradley, DH
Saunders, LF
Johnson, C
Jack Wilson, SS
Minor League Wrap (7/19-25/10)
This one is on time! I don’t really know about the ones in the coming weeks… Well, let’s get to it, shall we?
To the jump!
Read more
The Fight
I leave for the weekend – it was great, thanks for asking – and, of course, a player gets in a fight with the manager in full view of the TV cameras. Figures. As the guy in charge of the big Mariner blog, I feel like I’m supposed to write about this. I just don’t know what to say about the situation that you should really care about.
The baseball media (and yes, I include blogs like this one in that genre) does a good job of offering insight into certain areas of the game. We also are basically useless when it comes to amateur psychology. Regardless of the level of access or the ferociousness of opinion, very little of what is speculated about offers any real knowledge about what may happen. Really, let’s just look at the facts of this situation.
Chone Figgins, lauded clubhouse leader and great team chemistry guy, got into a public fight with Don Wakamatsu, calm and rational manager known for how much his players like him. Or maybe liked him. They seemed to last year, though not so much this one. Clubhouse relations have appeared to deteriorate after Ken Griffey Jr, lauded clubhouse leader and great team chemistry guy, sulked about playing time and retired mid-season after being relegated to the bench role he’s deserved for half a decade. Meanwhile, Milton Bradley, notable hothead and clubhouse cancer, has been a boy scout for the last few months, even as the season went down the drain and his personal performance went in the toilet.
The labels that these guys were affixed with run counter to how they’ve acted in almost every single case. The guys whose value in the clubhouse was so highly talked about have been the ones causing problems, and now, we’re being told that a clubhouse full of veteran team leaders lacks leadership.
Blogger, reporter, radio host, in the end, we’re all pretty much equally awful at predicting anything that has to do with how baseball players will interact with each other in the future. The usual approach is to take a guy’s reputation from where he’s been and assume it will dictate his actions no matter where he goes or how time changes, but that assumption falls on its face all the time. This team was supposed to have great chemistry, in large part due to guys like Figgins and Griffey. From most accounts, that just hasn’t materialized.
Rather than trying to expand on this point, I’ll just let Jim Leyland take it away, from when he was asked about the Washington Nationals last month:
“It’s not what Pudge brings into the clubhouse,” Leyland said. “It’s what Pudge brings on to the field. He’s hitting .336! That’s the kind of production you want. [Shucks], I can find a nice bunch of guys you want in the clubhouse. I can find that. He’s producing. That’s what’s good. That’s how I look at.”
“They didn’t bring Strasburg up because he’s a nice guy,” Leyland said. “They brought him up because he’s a big talent. He has a chance to be an unbelievable pitcher and he’s won two games already.
“Take all that clubhouse [stuff] and all that, throw it out the window. Every writer in the country has been writing about that [nonsense] for years. Chemistry don’t mean [anything]. He’s up here because he’s good. That don’t mean [a hill of beans]. They got good chemistry because their team is improved, they got a real good team, they got guys knocking in runs, they got a catcher hitting .336, they got a phenom pitcher they just brought up. That’s why they’re happy.”
Jim Leyland isn’t interested in playing amateur psychologist. He’s just going to assume that winning teams are happy teams. I am too.
When the M’s start winning regularly again, I’m sure Chone Figgins and Don Wakamatsu will get along just fine. You can speculate about what it means if you want, but in the end, none of us really have any idea.