Minor League Wrap (7/12-18/10)
Pineda started on Sunday, which means that his next turn up in the rotation would be the beginning of the homestand, Friday night at 7 pm. Can you think of anything you’d rather be doing other than watching him and Ackley? I can’t.
To the jump!
Read more
Game 94, White Sox at Mariners
Danks vs Fister, 7:10 pm.
We’ll see if Fister can stop getting hit around so much tonight. Most of the White Sox best hitters are right-handed, so he’s got a shot to get a bunch of groundball outs with his fastball.
As for John Danks, he’s not as good as his ERA would suggest, but he’s a lefty and this is Safeco, so don’t expect the M’s to jump on him. Not that you expect the M’s to jump on anyone.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 3B
Bradley, LF
Kotchman, DH
Smoak, 1B
Bard, C
Jack Wilson, SS
The Case For Rob Johnson
Mike Salk is the co-host of the Brock and Salk show, which can be heard weekday afternoons on ESPN Radio 710. Starting on August 9th, they will be moving to the morning time slot, and you will be able to hear them from 9 am to 12 pm. You can read also check them out at their blog, where Mike puts his thoughts when he’s not contributing here. You will also find posts from me on their blog each Thursday.
Over the past few months, Mariners fans have disagreed on plenty of topics. But it seems that the one thing they agreed on is that Rob Johnson stinks. According to the calls, emails, texts, posts, and Tweets: he can’t catch, he can’t hit, and he shouldn’t be playing.
And yet he does keep playing.
So let’s assume for a moment that there is a good reason why. I set out to find it.
Before I go any further, I should come clean about the fact that I am a Rob Johnson fan. I think he is heckuva good guy and he has been very helpful to me over the past two years. He has always been willing to come on the show and has answered countless questions for me in the clubhouse about the game of baseball in general and catching in particular. I try not to let that get in the way of my analysis, but I will admit it sometimes gets clouded. That being said, I tried to take my personal feelings out of this and what you will read below is based on what others have told me, rather my own personal opinion. I won’t prove he deserves to play with stats (that’s not my role here), but hopefully the thoughts I’ve compiled will help you look at this in a more nuanced way.
Back to the question: why does Rob Johnson continue to get playing time despite the complaints of some fans?
Don Wakamatsu is the man responsible for awarding that playing time and he uses pretty simple reasoning.
“He fits our priorities, which start with getting the best out of our pitchers. And that starts with our best guys. Felix wants him; so did Cliff Lee. The pitching staff has a belief system in his game calling ability.”
Leaving aside Wak’s incessant use of “belief system,” he hits upon the best case to be made for Johnson: his pitchers consistently request him as a battery-mate. When we first learned about this last year, I was critical of the pitchers, saying that their relationship with him off the field should not factor into the decision. At the time, I thought the pitchers were making decisions because they liked having dinner with him or hanging out with him on the team plane.
I was wrong.
What the pitchers meant was that they liked the way he took time to build a professional relationship with them. He takes time to learn about their strengths and weaknesses. That is important to them.
***
This year, the requests of his pitching staff hit a different level. Both aces wanted to throw to him. Hernandez was understandable – the pair had grown comfortable with each other last season. But Lee was a little more surprising.
“He just has a good knack for the feel of the game,” Lee told me when I asked him why he had chosen Johnson. “ He understands the flow of what’s working and what isn’t. He sees what hitters are doing and it’s easy to get on the same page with him. He prepares well, but it’s more that he can make the adjustments.”
We have all heard that pitchers like to be comfortable with their catchers. And being on the same page seems to be a big part of that. But that doesn’t tell the whole story here. The thing that stands out in Lee’s statement is that Johnson excels in watching hitters and making adjustments to them. In a game of adjustments, that is important.
“It’s huge to watch a hitter,” explained Lee. “You watch their feet in order to tell what they’re looking for, then you adjust accordingly.”
Their feet?
“Yup. As a catcher, you need to call for the opposite of whatever the hitter’s feet tell you they are trying to do. And Rob is great at that.”
According to Johnson, “the feet are the window to the brain.” He believes “the hitters’ feet will tell you what direction they want to go. It’s especially helpful with guys who are cheating to try and cover a part of the plate.”
Former big league catcher (and current Single-A Bakersfield manager) Bill Hasselman agrees.
“It’s important to watch the whole body, but especially the feet and hips,” he told me. “Good hitters will usually have their front foot come down in the same place. But you can tell what they’re trying to do. If the foot is open, the hips are usually open and it means they are out in front and you can get them with something soft and away. If they are stepping across a little, you can try to cross them up with something hard inside. You can feel it in your peripheral vision. Sometimes you can just sense it.”
***
Pitchers prefer Johnson for more than just his ability to adjust in a game. They appreciate the way he calls a game and they like his defense.
As the staff ace, Felix Hernandez can throw to whomever he wants. He chooses Johnson because they are on the same page.
He believes Johnson “calls the right pitch every time. He always calls the pitch that I have in mind. He does it every time.”
OK. So Felix likes throwing to him. But, you might say, what is his frame of reference? He always throws to one guy so maybe they get in sync because they are so used to each other.
If so, consider David Aardsma, who comes into games in the ninth inning and inherits whichever catcher is already behind the plate.
“I love his knowledge of hitters and situations,” says Aardsma, who thinks Johnson does an excellent job. “It takes the pressure off me as a pitcher to know that my catcher knows what he is doing. It allows me to just concentrate on me. It allows me to focus on my delivery and my release point and worry less about pitch selection. But he almost always calls what I was thinking of anyway. And if there is a difference, I always see why he is calling what he is calling.”
Need a specific example?
“Just Sunday, he recognized that Howie Kendrick was looking for a first pitch fastball so we started him off with a slider away. He came out to the mound to talk about that one. Right before that, he got the sense that McAnulty was pressing so we didn’t give him anything to hit, especially with a base open. It worked. In fact, I would say virtually every big hit against me with Rob catching has been because I missed my spot, not because of a bad call. It’s always been a flaw of execution.”
***
If you are noticing a common thread in all of these quotes, it’s probably the importance of trust. What Wak refers to as his “belief system” is essentially what we all call trust. Pitchers are generally fragile creatures with self-confidence issues. Trust is important to them.
And I know what you’re going to say next. How can you have trust in a catcher when he continues to let balls get past him at an alarming rate? And how could you have gone this long without addressing our biggest concern?
Look, the passed balls are a strike against him. I’m not going to ignore that. But there are a few mitigating factors.
The first is injury. Let’s try not to forget that Johnson had surgery on BOTH hips just a few months ago (not to mention his wrist). This is the same guy who played through those injuries all of last year, not even telling his team about them until after the season was over. Debate the merits of his silence if you want, but realize that this is a tough guy who will play through pain.
“He is still re-educating his body from those surgeries,” according to team trainer Rick Griffin. “Whereas other guys might have spent the off-season getting stronger, he was just rehabbing.
“He really could have taken this whole year off. Jason Vargas had the same surgery on one of his hips and missed a whole year then took a while to get all the way back in the second year. You won’t see the real Johnson until next season.”
He’ll never admit it, but those injuries may have kept him from getting to a few of those balls that got past him.
And of those passed balls, his teammates aren’t too concerned.
“I don’t worry about his passed balls,” says Aardsma. “Many of them are either because of Felix or [Brandon] League. Those guys have balls that move all over the place. Felix might have more movement than anyone in the game – it’s like catching a knuckler. And League might be even worse. I catch him every day on flat ground and it’s almost impossible. Even he doesn’t know which way it’s going! I always have confidence throwing it on the dirt.”
So does Felix who says, “I believe he will block the pitch so I have the confidence to throw it in a tough spot. It’s not easy to catch me, you know?”
Johnson leads the majors with eight passed balls. A few are from Felix, a few from League. One or two were crossups (when the pitcher threw the wrong pitch). I’m not arguing that he deserves a Gold Glove, just that maybe the defense is better than we give him credit for.
***
The last knock against him is his hitting. A .200 average with a .600 OPS is certainly nothing to brag about. Actually, it’s essentially indefensible.
But remember this. Catching in the big leagues is hard. Harder than playing any other position. It’s especially hard for a young player and even more so for one who is expected to run a pitching staff at times without the help of a veteran backup.
As director of player development Pedro Grifol told me, “it’s so hard to be a young catcher. They have to know 12 pitchers and their repertoires. They have to work on their receiving, blocking, throwing, controlling the running game, calling the game, reading advance reports and preparing for opposing hitters. Then we ask them to hit and drive in runs too!”
I’m not saying that excuses his hitting. Just that it might explain why it’s SO bad. Johnson is probably never going to hit .280 but he might hit .250. And if he does, his bat will be just fine.
***
“Catchers have to do everything,” says former catcher Wakamatsu. “They have to control the pitchers, the running game. They have to have the memory of an elephant – they have to remember what each batter did in the first inning when they see them again in the ninth. And Rob does that well.
Remember, he is only in his second full year and he’s still dealing with the recovery from his hip injuries. Catchers develop a little later and playing has helped him a lot.”
Johnson may never turn into a star. He may never even hold down an everyday job in the majors. But he’s also not the bum so many people think he is. He’s a guy that other players, pitchers and managers seem to like. And those guys see a lot of baseball. Maybe they’re on to something.
Game 93, White Sox at Mariners
Hudson vs Pauley, 7:10 pm.
These little blurbs become harder to write as the season wears on. I mean, I could spend a few minutes talking about David Pauley, but he’s a generic arm that probably won’t be in the organization in a few months, so what’s the point? So, instead, I’ll share a quick story.
Last week, I spent five days down in Anaheim covering the Futures Game and the All-Star Game for FanGraphs. The Wall Street Journal was kind enough to help me get a credential, so I milled with the media and did media stuff for a few days, hobnobbing with the likes of the great Larry Stone. It was certainly an interesting experience. The best part, though, was the Monday morning press conference when the managers announced the line-ups for the All-Star Game. Charlie Manuel, when announcing the NL line-up, said the following:
“Batting second, and playing second base, Martin Par-ough. Pair-doo. How do you say his name?”
Chuckles ensued, and then someone told Charlie how to pronounce Martin Prado’s last name. A minute or so later, he got to his starting catcher, who he called “Yeah-Dear” Molina. A few minutes later, he called his starting shortstop “Hansley”. Then, when a reporter asked him why he was starting Andre Ethier in center field (Ethier has the worst UZR of any outfielder in baseball this year and hadn’t played CF since college), he gave this incoherent rambling answer about Ethier having more votes. He then said something about not having a true center fielder, but that Ethier had played there recently, and so he could handle it. Of course, Ethier hadn’t played there recently; Manuel had either looked at the wrong player’s stat sheet (Corey Hart had played CF as recently as last year) or was just confusing the two players.
By the end of the press conference, I was convinced that Manuel knew less about the players on his team than every other person in that room, which is actually understandable. He’s pretty busy running his own team, after all. He’s 66 years old and one of the most country people involved in the sport (the word “bumpkin” was used to describe him several times last week), so I’d wager that he’s not exactly a wiz with the internet. None of the things he got wrong affect how he does his job. And, by all accounts, his players love him, so this isn’t any kind of criticism of Manuel’s qualifications to manage the Phillies.
But it was the most obvious indicator that if MLB wants fans to take the All-Star Game seriously, they should strongly consider just taking the players and managers out of the decision making process. Their job is not to effectively evaluate their peers, and when they try to do so, they’re generally terrible at it. Every time we get the results of some kind of player or manager voting, we usually have to strain to make it match reality. These guys are (mostly) good at what they do, but having a realistic perspective on the other 29 teams in the league is not what they do.
Give the votes strictly to the media – they’d do a much better job picking the All-Stars than the combination of players, managers, and fans. I stood in a room full of guys who knew that Ryan Howard had no business in Anaheim last week, and really had no business starting at DH against a left-handed pitcher, but they were the ones asking the question of “the insider” who didn’t know that. It was pretty interesting to watch. The media has gotten smarter at a much faster pace than the guys on the field.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, DH
Lopez, 3B
Gutierrez, CF
Bradley, LF
Smoak, 1B
Johnson, C
Jack Wilson, SS
The Crossroads That Is 2011
There are 70 games left in the 2010 season, but no one thinks they really matter much anymore. Yes, it’s nicer to win than to lose, and no one is just going to give up and roll over, but the team is playing for the future and everyone knows it. The question, though, is whether that future can begin next year?
Based on players currently in the organization, the 2011 roster looks something like this:
C; Moore
1B: Smoak
2B: Ackley
SS: Jack Wilson
3B: Figgins
LF: Saunders
CF: Gutierrez
RF: Ichiro
DH: Bradley
Starters: Felix-Vargas-Fister-Pineda-RRS
I don’t think anyone would look at that team and think it was a legitimate contender. There’s two guys who have never played in the majors in starting roles, three young guys still trying to find their way as regular position players, and a rotation full of question marks behind Felix. Oh, and the bullpen isn’t great either.
The team will have some money to spend, somewhere the $10 to $20 million range depending on what the budget is and who else they trade away in the next few weeks. But, there’s almost no way to turn that team into a contender by adding a couple of pieces, because the strength of the team in young talent may also be the thing that keeps them from winning next year.
There are some potential foundation pieces in place. Smoak, Saunders, and Ackley could all hold down their respective positions for years to come. Pineda could give the team another dynamic power arm that it lacks behind Felix right now. Moore could still be a useful catcher. These guys have enough talent to be real building blocks – guys you don’t want to block with veteran players. They all should come to camp next spring with a chance to win a job on Opening Day. You could bring in insurance policy types who can push them and serve as placeholders if they’re not ready, but you’re not going to bring in an established quality player that will get in the way if the kids prove that they’ve little left to learn in Triple-A.
So, what positions can the Mariners realistically try to upgrade at? C, LF, 2B, and 1B are off the table because of the kids. 3B, CF, and RF are out because you’ve got guys under long term contracts at those spots. That leaves, essentially, shortstop, designated hitter, and the rotation as potential points of upgrade this winter.
Even if the team decided to bring in two established starters to go with Felix, Fister, and Vargas, you’re still looking at four spots on the roster that you can really make significant upgrades at (the bench and bullpen don’t matter enough to count). And at two of those, you have guys already under contract for 2011 – Jack Wilson and Milton Bradley.
Bradley is unmovable, beyond just releasing him, which the team probably won’t do unless they have someone they expect to hit better as the DH. They don’t have that guy right now, and its unlikely that they’ll spend much money this winter to bring in a guy who doesn’t play defense, and is likely at the end of his career. So, the Mariners only option is, essentially, try like crazy to move Jack Wilson’s contract in the next couple of weeks, freeing up money and a position to seek an upgrade this winter.
There’s a problem with that, too, though – good shortstops aren’t exactly laying around waiting to sign low money deals to play in Seattle. The big free agent shortstops this winter will be Derek Jeter – and, honestly, I’m more likely to take the field for the Mariners on opening day next year than he is – and a bunch of guys who aren’t any better than Jack Wilson. The team could try to trade for a young shortstop, but they did that last summer, and they found that Wilson was the best guy they could get. The best case scenario for picking up a guy in trade would be a guy like Ryan Theriot, but he’s basically just the same thing that Wilson is at the plate, only with less glove.
A substantial upgrade at shortstop is essentially not realistic. The team could potentially pursue a guy like Carlos Pena to DH and dump Bradley, but does anyone think that the line-up above, with Pena added to the mix, is the makings of a winner? And would Pena even want to stop playing the field regularly at this point in his career? The answer to both of those questions is probably not.
And so, we’re left with the reality that the Mariners have reached a point where they’re not really playing for 2011, but instead, they’re playing for 2012. They’ll lose $20 million in commitments when Bradley and Wilson become free agents, the young kids will have hopefully matured or proven themselves not worthy of full-time jobs, and they’ll still have all the useful pieces that are on the team now. Realistically, that’s probably their next chance to contend – the year when Ackley, Smoak, Saunders, and Pineda could be contributors rather than kids still adjusting to the big leagues and they have the resources to go out and add some talent at positions like SS and DH.
Who knows – maybe Jack will make some moves in the next few months that surprise me and steal enough talent away to turn this team around before next year begins. I just don’t see how he could pull that off, though. Right now, I think this team realistically will need another year. They’re playing for the future, but they’re not playing for next year.
Game 92, Mariners at Angels
Vargas vs Santana, 12:35 pm.
The M’s #2 starter takes the hill, though this is now not nearly as exciting as it was the first half of the season. After a strong start to the year, Vargas has mostly been what he was before, and needs to throw strikes in order to succeed, because he’s not racking up the strikeouts any more. If he can avoid the walks, though, he can still be an effective starter, so look for him to pound the zone today against an Angels team that doesn’t hit lefties all that well.
Oh, and hey, Justin Smoak!
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 3B
Bradley, DH
Smoak, 1B
Langerhans, LF
Johnson, C
Josh Wilson, SS
Game 91, Mariners at Angels
Rowland-Smith vs Saunders, 6:05 pm.
Two not-good lefties face off. The only three interesting hitters on this team right now are left-handed (or, in Smoak’s case, he’s a switch hitter who is much better from the LH side). You probably have something else more interesting to do.
A Series of Unrelated Items!
It’s too bad the exclamation point is completely played out. Thanks to the unstoppable forces of the internet and sarcasm, you can’t use one without implying irony or misplaced enthusiasm. I’m not attempting to do that, I’m just trying to gussy up a links post, because some of this stuff is really interesting. The rest of it is Mariners-related.
1: With all the pitch fx data out there, it was only a matter of time before we started to get solid data on pitch types, and how each pitcher’s results (by pitch) differ from league averages. Fangraphs started showing league averages in the pitch fx sections of player pages, which was cool, but if you want to know what the league average whiff rate was on a slider, well that was tougher. Trip Somers’ site added those data, but what about HR rate? What about batted balls? Harry Pavlidis’ post at The Hardball Times has you covered. I keep coming back to this after months, and it still raises new questions.
The slider has the best raw results, while the change looks great from a FIP standpoint. Of course, the slider’s always been a pitch with a serious platoon split – but why is that?
2: Well, it may be because off-handed hitters see it early. I find the last two graphics in this Dave Allen post fascinating. Having platoon-split data by pitch is wonderful, and having a plausible explanation for why it exists is a perfect accompaniment.
3: Some of you may have seen Colin Wyers’ article at Baseball Prospectus asking a simple question: how do we know how good defensive metrics are? Are they better than they were, and if so, how much?
This started over a year ago with some investigations into UZR’s year to year reliability, and then Colin started to investigate bias in the play-by-play data itself. The article today sums it up: if we have issues with the data (that persist over time), what does reliability really mean? What are we measuring? The question spurs great responses from the usual suspects (Tango, Mike Fast, et al.).
While this seems pretty technical – and it is – I think Fast’s article at THT does a great job of laying out why it matters and why it’s important that these questions get a fair hearing. In comments, Tango and others point out that Wyers’ question isn’t the same as a conclusion. The take-away here isn’t: defensive metrics are worthless. It’s, how do we know how good they are? We can look at how UZR’s constructed, and we note the more granular data we collect these days, and both seem like they’d add a lot. But how do we know? Is this equivalent to moving from using ERA to tRA (a massive, huge improvement)? Or is it marginal?
One of those statements that I’ve never understood (think “Ichiro hurts this team by…”) is something to the effect that the ‘stats guys’ care only about confirming each others results; that it’s a club of people telling each other they’re smart. The on-going debate over defensive metrics shows how ridiculous that claim is, and it does so as quietly and effectively as Ichiro doing whatever Ichiro’s doing renders the vague, inchoate complaints about him meaningless.
4: In last night’s 3-2 loss, the M’s left Casey Kotchman in to face LOOGY-masquerading-as-closer Brian Fuentes. Apathy can affect players/staff as much as it affects M’s bloggers, but it’s still a rather remarkable decision. I know the team’s got injuries (Russell Branyan’s run-in with a rogue hotel coffee table being the most recent and the most bizarre), and the go-to guy for a situation like this – Mike Sweeney- is on rehab with the Rainiers. But how about Milton Bradley? How about Josh Wilson? Dave mentioned on twitter that Fuentes’ FIP v lefties is 0.53 and against righties it’s 6.39. If you’re trying to win the game, you pinch hit. If you’re trying to ‘showcase’ Kotchman, you pinch hit.
Incidentally, reason this season has been awful and surreal #459: I’m writing about how Josh Wilson should’ve been given a high leverage AB.
5: It may be nothing, but divisive prospect (“5 tools!” “Makes Wlad Balentien look like Kevin Youkilis!”) Greg Halman has cut his K rate markedly in July, and hasn’t struck out in 13 PAs, which would seem like a vanishingly small number for anyone but Greg Halman. Halman’s flourished in the PCL, with 20 HRs and a wOBA of .400 and solid CF defense. He’s clearly not ready for the majors at this point, but in a season of disappointments on the big club, Halman heads the list of surprises on the farm. We’ll see how long this ‘improvement’ keeps up, but it’s nice to finally see a tolerable K-rate to go along with the prodigious power, even over a short sample. You can quibble about a decline in walk rate, but he’s been hitting so well that it seems more like nit-picking. Matt Mangini and Halman’s seasons in AAA are among the biggest surprises of 2010. Too bad the biggest is that Chone Figgins has been a replacement level player thus far.
Game 90, Mariners at Angels
Hernandez vs Weaver, 7:05 pm.
Happy Felix Day.
I spent a good amount of time with Rich Lederer down in Anaheim last weekend. Lederer, if you’re not aware, is one of the world’s largest Jered Weaver fans. I am one of the world’s largest Felix Hernandez fans. We’ve gone back and forth on their relative merits over the years, but we still get along pretty well, and Rich was great the whole time.
That said, I’d love to send a taunting email in about three hours, so here’s hoping for a 10-0 beatdown. Go to work, guys.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 3B
Kotchman, DH (3rd time in his career)
Smoak, 1B
Saunders, LF
Johnson, C
Jack Wilson, SS
A Tale Of Two Fisters
Doug Fister, first nine starts of 2010:
BB%: 4.1%
K%: 10.7%
Strike%: 64%
Doug Fister, last five starts of 2010:
BB%: 5.6%
K%: 12.1%
Strike%: 67%
Effectively, Fister’s pitching exactly the same as he was earlier in the season. The difference? His first nine starts, he had a .235 batting average on balls in play, and his last five starts, its .337. Balls that were being hit at people are now finding holes.
He wasn’t an ace in April, and he’s not junk now. He is what he is; a strike-throwing back-end starter whose performance will fluctuate with the randomness of BABIP. Don’t worry about his recent struggles too much. Just like his early season success, it won’t last.