Game 89, Mariners at Angels
Fister vs Pineiro, 7:05 pm.
I’m back in NC after my weekend at the All-Star Game, and will resume posting as regular again. Thanks for bearing with us, though Jay and Marc did a great job while I was gone.
As for the M’s, the second half of the season sees the focus officially shift to the future, so expect to see Smoak and Saunders in the line-up pretty much every day, as they are today.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 3B
Bradley, DH
Smoak, 1B
Saunders, LF
Johnson, C
Jack Wilson, SS
Jamey Wright Replaces Chad Cordero Too
In addition to the move outlined below by Marc, the M’s have also signed Jamey Wright as a free agent, and he will take Chad Cordero’s spot on the roster. Cordero rejected his assignment to Triple-A and is now a free agent.
Wright is what Sean White is supposed to be – an extreme groundball guy who gets hitters to pound his sinker into the dirt. The problem is that he doesn’t do anything else well, and his below average command and lack of an outpitch make him a pretty mediocre reliever. He’s nothing to get excited about.
Still, though, any day that involves Sean White going away is a good one.
Chris Seddon up, Sean White down?
The TNT’s Ryan Divish is reporting that Rainiers LHP Chris Seddon has been added to the 40 man roster and his heading north to join the Mariners. Not sure about the corresponding move, but it looks quite likely that Sean White’s lost his spot in the bullpen.
Seddon was a minor league free agent the M’s picked up from the Marlins organization. He’s been a decent innings eater, but a drop in his walk rate led to a half-decent FIP of 4.12 this year. His ERA is even better, thanks to a low BABIP and a marked improvement in his ability to get righties out. His stuff isn’t overwhelming, but with a reduced walk rate and a bit of improvement in his GB rate, he’s made himself a decent option to replace Garrett Olson. Man, I’m really selling this, aren’t I?
This is the latest step in what’s been a month or two of constant churn in the Tacoma bullpen. The M’s picked up all manner of indie leaguers, ex-MLB relievers and ex-prospects and given them each a bit of time to make an impression. Most haven’t worked out, as they’ve demoted a few guys to AA, and released Billy Traber (to make room for Dustin Ackley). This is what depth is for, and while it’s nice to see them make these moves quickly, I’d really like to see a bit more separation between the fill-in guys and the MLB bullpen. As it is, Seddon isn’t much different from 3-4 guys in the M’s pen, and that’s yet another example of why 2010 hasn’t gone to plan.
Here’s a video of an interview Mike Curto did with Seddon, and here’s a picture of Seddon in action. Here’s Divish’s blog post on the move.
Back to the Future: Mariner Edition
If you’re at all familiar with 1989’s smash-hit Back to the Future II — i.e., the pinnacle of American filmmaking — you’re probably also familiar with the part of that movie in which an elderly Biff Tannen (the 2015 version) steals Doc Brown’s time-traveling DeLorean in order to deliver a copy of Grey’s Sports Almanac to a young Biff Tannen back in 1955.
The Almanac, as everybody who’s anybody knows, is the source for “all sports facts [and] in-depth coverage of all major sporting events from 1950 to the year 2000.” The value of such a thing in 2015 is purely nostalgic; in 1955, however, such information is worth cash money. The young Biff soon realizes as much and uses the Almanac to (1) amass great wealth via gambling success, (2) build a giant, evil casino empire, and (3) forever alter the course of Hill Valley’s future, from one of smiling faces and winding roads to a horrid, crime-ridden dystopia.
In other words, the usual.
Though the narrative thread from Back to the Future represents an extreme version of such a thing, it’s actually not uncommon to hear a person — anyone, really — wonder aloud what it might be like to visit a younger version of himself and provide counsel. Said counsel needn’t be for financial gain, either — perhaps it’s merely to say, “You should love your mother more” — but the idea is the same: if we knew then what we know now, well, things would be different.
As we enter the honorary (if not actual) second half of the season, it’s only natural to look back on what has been. The Mariners’ season has probably not gone exactly the way the organization would’ve preferred — and it certainly hasn’t gone the way that most Mariner fans would’ve preferred.
It begs the question: if certain people with ties to the Mariners could travel back via DeLorean to their pre-season selves, what advice would they give and how would it affect the future as we now know it?
A couple of attempts:
Time Traveler: Dave Cameron, Captain of the USS Mariner
Message from the Future: Future Cameron informs Past Cameron that Ken Griffey Jr. will amass 100 plate appearances before the end of May, that Milton Bradley will have an early-season freakout, that Chone Figgins and Jose Lopez will more or less forget how to hit a baseball, that Ian Snell will pitch exactly like Ian Snell, and that Sean White will be utilized more than is decent in a high-leverage capacity.
Effect: Confident in the overall health of the organization, Cameron keeps his cool; however, he makes a note to dose himself heavily with some manner of prescription benzodiazepine before sitting down to watch his Mariners.
Time Traveler: Jack Wilson, Mariner Shortstop
Message from the Future: After accidentally pushing the wrong button, Wilson finds that his time-traveling DeLorean arrives not at his, but at Josh Wilson‘s, house.
Effect: Jack tells Josh how the two of them will combine for only 0.5 WAR by the All-Star break. Also, they decide to become blood brothers.
Time Traveler: Cliff Lee, Happiest American Man
Message from the Future: Knowing that they’re basically the awesomest guys ever, Future Lee and Past Lee just kinda sit quietly together, each with a beer in hand, and consider the possibilities of a universe in which there are two Cliff Lees.
Effect: World peace or something like that.
Time Traveler: Mike Sweeney, Designated Hitter
Message from the Future: Future Mike tells Past Mike that he’ll slash .263/.327/.475 and will accrue 0.5 WAR though just 110 plate appearances — that he will, in short, bear a shocking resemblance to a league-average DH. Future Mike further advises Past Mike “not to pass out” upon hearing this news.
Effect: Past Mike passes out. Wouldn’t you?
Time Traveler: Ian Snell, Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma
Message from the Future: Future Ian Snell throws a rock through the window of Past Ian Snell’s home. Attached to the rock is a note that reads “Throw strikes, jerkface.”
Effect: Hardly any — except for the Past Police find and arrest Future Ian Snell, at which point the latter becomes permanently trapped in the past. (What? It could happen.)
Ackley, Two Others Join Rainiers
In a move that didn’t really surprise anyone who saw the details of the Lee trade, which included one 2B Matt Lawson, the M’s promoted 2B Dustin Ackley to Tacoma. The news? It was Ackley, plus LHP Edward Paredes and RHP Anthony Varvaro.
Let’s talk Ackley first because the suspense would be too much to bear otherwise. Ackley started out the year doing pretty awful, hitting just .147/.289/.227 in April. The separation on the OBP was pretty awesome, but otherwise it did not seem that much was going in his favor. Of course, this was entirely an aberration because Ackley had a .180 BABIP in that month, and being a left-handed hitter possessing strong contact skills and a bit of speed, you should be expecting him to be regularly sitting above .300. In subsequent months that was the case and he was hitting .303/.475/.447 in May and .294/.387/.451 in June. The left-right splits aren’t that great, as he’s .225/.375/.270 against southpaws to .280/.395/.435 against right-handers, but it’s also his first pro year, he’s being rushed, and I will threaten internet violence on the first person who suggests that the M’s should now consider him to be a platoon player.
The defense hasn’t been coming along as well as everyone has hoped. Remember all of those lovely quotes in the press during spring training, fawning over him and claiming that he looked like so much of a natural out there that they mistook him for another player entirely? That hasn’t held up. He’s made thirteen errors in seventy games on defense and has struggled like you might expect any player would at a tough level learning a new position. We knew that it would be more defense holding him back than offense, so this should be surprising. I’m not worried. The M’s aren’t worried. Ackley himself doesn’t seem to be worried, as back in April he was helping Pineda learn English using a Rosetta Stone program. He’s about as focused as you could hope from a player when it comes down to it. He’ll get it in time.
Getting to the bullpen arms, we come to Varvaro, who dropped to the 12th round in ’05 due to Tommy John surgery. Varvaro was a starter his first three years before switching to relief full-time last season. He ended the year in the Arizona Fall League, where he started to show better command with a 13/3 K/BB in 13.1 innings. While not at the same levels for the D-Jaxx, he’s gone from walk rates of six and over seven in 2008 and 2009 to one under five this year, and if you knock out April from that span, it’s under four. Varvaro might still be a year off, so no one should be expecting him to step in soon, particularly in a high-leverage role. He is, however, trending positively at a tough level to do so.
Paredes shares some similarities with Varvaro in that he has good stuff, bad command, and gave up starting last season. While he’s had his struggles against right-handers, Paredes downright vicious against same-handed batters and had walked fewer than one and struck out more than twelve per nine innings, a separation he started to distinctly show last season. The knocks on him is that he’s almost certainly a strict left-on-left guy down the road and, contrary to Varvaro, his command has been trending worse after a great April. I wouldn’t expect him to step in next season either, but we’ll see I guess.
The only other moves that have gone along with this thus far are that Beavan, Lueke, and Lawson joined the Diamond-Jaxx and LHP Billy Traber was released in Tacoma. This means that someone’s getting forced out of the rotation to make way for Beavan, but the last two spots there have been in flux all season so it’s really no big deal.
All-Star Game LiveBlog
For those of you interested in such things, I’ll be liveblogging the all-star game for FanGraphs from my perch here in Anaheim. I’ll start at 4 pm pacific time, and you can come hang out and watch the game with me here.
Minor League Wrap (7/5-11/10)
I’m still waiting to hear anything at all w/r/t international signings. It’s been a big deal this year with a few top prospects going down with identity or steroid issues. Whoops. At least Walker and Wiswall debuted this week.
To the jump!
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Game 88, Yankees at Mariners
Last game before the All-Star Game, which COUNTS this time and yet still doesn’t really matter all that much for us.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
CF Gutierrez
3B Lopez
1B Kotchman
DH Smoak
C Bard
SS Jack Wilson
LF Saunders
Saunders ninth again. Also I bet you thought we were done seeing Kotchman. Think again.
Hyphen vs. Sabathia. Hyphen has a good recent history against the Yankees, and Ichiro and Death to Flying Things have hit Sabathia in the past. Baseball!
If this game ends up going awry, you could also tune into the Futures Game, where Alex Liddi and Carlos Peguero will be hitting 4-5 in the World lineup. Game time on that is 3pm PDT.
Game 87, Yankees at Mariners
Second to last game before the All-Star Break. Happy Felix Day to one and all.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Branyan
3B Lopez
CF Gutierrez
1B Smoak
LF Saunders
C Johnson
SS Jack Wilson
P Felix
Luke French was sent back to the minor leagues after last night’s game to clear room for Smoak. I wouldn’t expect French to pitch in the Triple-A All-Star Game after four innings last night.
Fun fact: Smoak and Saunders trail only Detroit’s Brennan Boesch for home runs among AL rookies. And we’re going to have the opportunity to see both in the heart of the order for years to come! Today is a good day.
Smoak and Mirrors: a Look at Splits
Now that I’ve attracted your attention by using an obvious pun that we’ll be seeing frequently over the next five and a half years or more, let’s get down to business.
One of the rationales coming mostly out of Texas as to why this trade might not end up as bad for the Rangers as it presently seems is that Smoak is not the player we believe him to be. He’s overrated, in large part because he’s a future platoon guy. Sure, his billing has been nice and all, but years down the road, the joak joke is on us because he’s just not that good from the right side.
This argument is not without merit. The author of the article I cite brings up a number of his college splits as evidence in support of his point that Smoak is a very different hitter from the right side. History is also behind him. Just as it’s easy to bet against most minor leaguers to make any kind of contribution at the major league level, it’s also a pretty sure claim to say that a switch-hitter will eventually choose one side or the other. Very few players seem to be able to maintain consistent performances from both sides of the plate.
So let’s have a look at those career minor league splits, shall we?
vs. LHP: 130 AB, 28 H, 6 2B, 3 HR, 25/15 K/BB, .215/.304/.331
vs. RHP: 311 AB, 101 H, 18 2B, 3B, 12 HR, 65/65 K/BB, .325/.443/.505
It seems like they might be on to something, right? Here are two reasons not to jump the gun just yet.
If you’ve followed my work here for a while, you’re probably familiar with my stance that 130 at-bats is not really an adequate sampling of anything. In Smoak’s case, I’d argue that these 130 at-bats might be even less representative than they normally might be. There are six hitters that were drafted in the first round of ’08 that have already spent some time in the big leagues: Pedro Alvarez (2) of the Pirates, Buster Posey (5) of the Giants, Gordon Beckham (8) of the White Sox, Jason Castro (10) of the Astros (hehe), our man Smoak (11), and Ike Davis (18) of the Mets. Of this group, not only is Smoak the lone switch-hitter, he’s also spent the second least amount of time in the minor leagues with 599 plate appearances, behind Beckham, who comes in with 259 appearances. Alvarez (820), Posey (750), Castro (917), and Davis (769) all spent much more time in the minor leagues honing their craft.
Additionally, you can look at where they played. Smoak got fourteen games in with Clinton in the Midwest League the year he was drafted, and a rehab appearance in the rookie leagues aside (he had a ribcage injury last year, another important note), it was double and triple-A from then out. The number two pick of the same draft, Alvarez, spent half a season in advanced-A before he hit the high minors. Posey was at San Jose for two-thirds of a season before moving up to Fresno. Castro had thirty-nine games in a short-season league in ’08 before he too spent half a season in the Cal League on his way to double-A. Davis spent twenty more games in the short-season league in ’08, but otherwise his development plan was no different.
What I’m getting at here is that Smoak, relative to his peers from the same draft, not only had to deal with switch-hitting, he was also rushed. You can give him a little credit for coming out a good college program, but pitchers at double and triple-A are going to look nothing like what he’s accustomed to seeing in the NCAA. Those are minor league veterans out there, and they know how to exploit less experienced hitters. They wouldn’t be at the level otherwise. Combined with his acknowledged weakness from the right side, this created an environment where Smoak was almost certainly going to fail.
The second part is partially conceptual work. Let’s look at those numbers again.
vs. LHP: 130 AB, 28 H, 6 2B, 3 HR, 25/15 K/BB, .215/.304/.331
vs. RHP: 311 AB, 101 H, 18 2B, 3B, 12 HR, 65/65 K/BB, .325/.443/.505
There’s one important detail I’ve omitted from these lines so far, and that’s batting average on balls in play. Against left-handers, it was a paltry .245, where against right-handers, it was .380. There are a number of factors that could have contributed to this. One would be to take the “weaker from the right side” to its most literal level for comedy’s sake and suggest he’s simply not strong enough to get the ball out against left-handers, but given that this theory doesn’t pass the eye test and Smoak hit a 365 ft home run against the Astros in June 18th and a 400 ft shot against the Athletics on May 3rd, both from the right side, we might be able to put that one to a quick rest.
So what else is there? His groundball rates from both sides are roughly 45%, the five percent shift from line drives to fly balls against left-handers wouldn’t account for it, particularly when his line drive rate was close to 20% anyway, so what is it? Well, remember what I said about those crafty southpaws at higher levels? Twenty percent of his flyballs last year never left the infield, compared to about six percent against right-handers. Lefties were giving him a steady diet of jam pitches and let Smoak get himself into trouble.
That might be one thing to watch out for in Smoak’s continued development at the major league level. His ability to fend such pitches off, or at least lay off them, might end up making a considerable difference in what we can expect out of his career. But while we can acknowledge that he may never be the same hitter from the right side, suggesting that he should be a platoon player, based off a year and a half of experience at baseball’s highest levels, is foolishness.