Let’s Talk About Michael Saunders
Despite having just 119 plate appearances, Michael Saunders is second on the Mariners in home runs, just one behind team leader Milton Bradley. After last year’s debut performance where he didn’t hit for any power at all, watching him drive the ball with regularity has been very encouraging, and he’s showing some of the ability that made him the team’s best prospect. His tools are obvious, and he has the ability to become a good player, but there are also a few pretty glaring flaws that he needs to work on.
His two biggest problems are actually kind of the same issue, as both are the direct result of the type of swing Saunders takes. He doesn’t just swing the bat with his arms; He may turn his body towards the pull field when he swings more than anyone I have ever seen before. Rather than sitting back and letting his hips generate power, Saunders basically reorients his body during the swing and ends up essentially pivoting at the plate. It works, as when he gets around on a ball, he can give it a ride, but it comes with a pretty significant downside – he is extremely vulnerable to anything on the outer half of the plate, especially pitches down and away.
This creates two problems – one, his contact rate on pitches out of the strike zone is among the worst in the league. In what amounts to half a season’s worth of major league playing time, he’s made contact with just 41.6 percent of the pitches he’s chased out of the strike zone. Over the last year, the only batters with at least 200 plate appearances who have made contact less often on pitches out of the zone are Kelly Shoppach (a catcher), Elijah Dukes (out of baseball), and Kyle Blanks (struggling rookie). Right behind Saunders are guys like Ryan Howard and Mark Reynolds, two of the most prolific strikeout artists of all time, who compensate for their whiff rate with monstrous, 40+ HR power.
Saunders doesn’t have that kind of thump and never will, so he won’t have the same ability to offset the strikeouts that those guys do with production when he does make contact. Instead, he’ll have to simply get better at either getting the bat on the ball when he does chase, or simply chase less often. The latter is probably more likely to be a long term solution, but it’s not an easy fix for an aggressive young hitter. The Mariners will have to work closely with Saunders to convince him of the need to be more selective in what he swings at, and get him enough at-bats so that he can begin to discern which pitches are worth offering at.
The other problem that his swing creates is an almost total inability to handle pitches that are diving away from him. This shows up in both his performance against left-handed pitchers (13 for 79, 2 XBH, 1 BB, 33 K) and his performance on balls hit to left field (10 for 44, 1 XBH). The way he swings the bat just doesn’t leave any room for opposite field power, as the swing itself is made to turn on a pitch and drive it to right field. If he hits it to left, its an accident and almost certainly will result in an out. In fact, 27 percent of all his balls hit to left field have been infield flies, which are basically no better than a strikeout.
His extreme pull swing makes it very tough for him to go the other way with any authority, and so lefties who pound him away can rest assured that he won’t do anything with it, even if he does get the bat on the ball. While Saunders is a talented guy, he’s definitely never going to be an Edgar Martinez type, who just went with whatever he was thrown and confounded pitchers with his ability to use the whole field. Saunders is as much of an extreme pull hitter as Jose Lopez, and while it’s definitely better to have a left-handed version of that kind of hitter in Safeco, it still makes him pretty easy to pitch to, especially when he’s willing to swing at pitches out of the zone.
Put simply, for Saunders to be a successful big league hitter, he’s going to have to develop a better approach at the plate. He can do this, but it will take some time and patience from the team. Pitchers will exploit his weaknesses as the reports on him get around the league, and he’ll have to make adjustments. How long it will take him to make those will likely end up determining whether he’s able to hold down the LF job for the Mariners next year.
Bedard Rehab Start Liveblog
I’ll be honest: as nice as it is to see Bedard so close to the majors after his latest injury, this feels a bit anticlimactic. We’d hoped that the team could hang around .500 until Cliff Lee got back and then hang near the Rangers until the M’s ‘real’ rotation took over. Eh, 1 for 2.
Still, my excitement is building a bit. Let’s face it: this team’s been pretty bland in 2010, and another good player -another reason to tune in – helps the M’s watchability. Beyond that, it can give us a glimpse of what the team could’ve and should’ve been: good. Jeff Sullivan summed it up this way at LL last night, “Watching the Mariners right now makes me feel like I’m watching a successful version of the Mariners. A dangerous version of the Mariners.”
Erik Bedard is a guy who can help make the Mariners look dangerous, and I’m looking forward to watching him pitch against Texas or Boston or Tampa this year. All the more so because Lee will likely be gone, and it’ll again be tough to shut out the context, the lack of impact players and the holy-#$!@,-Josh-Wilson-is-starting-at-1B of it all. Bedard, like Branyan, is here to help make the medicine of 2010 go down easier. He cost us nothing in talent and very little in Salary. If he’s healthy, he’s amazing, and he’d be another small green shoot of ‘good’ in the scorched-earth landscape of 2010.
—Edit 6:10—
Figures. It’s raining – drizzling, really – as I type this in Cheney. Only Erik Bedard faces rehab setbacks from the weather. In July. I’m still pretty confident that we’ll get this game started, but I’m going to run down and make sure he doesn’t slip on slick dugout surfaces. Good luck, Erik.
—Edit 7:00—
Game on! Erik breezes through the first, retiring the Portland Beavers in order. FB was around 90, and that big, damnably-difficult-to-hit curve was on view as well. 1 K, a pop-up and a grounder to SS.
—Edit Pictures!!—
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Couple Of Links
Two quick things for you today. First, my newest post is up over on Brock and Salk’s blog, and continues our conversation about Jason Vargas, BABIP, and how to evaluate pitchers. I’ve enjoyed this back and forth with Mike on a subject I know is tough for people to swallow.
Secondly, I did a video chat with the Bloomberg Sports crew, which you can see below. Nothing earth shattering, but check it out if you want.
Game 78, Mariners at Yankees
Rowland-Smith vs Sabathia, 10:05 am.
This probably won’t go as well as the last two days. Good luck, Hyphen – you’re going to need a lot of it.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, 1B
Bradley, DH
Lopez, 3B
Josh Wilson, SS
Langerhans, LF
Bard, C
Saunders, CF
Three Ways to Understand Cliff Lee
It’s becoming clear at this point that, owing to his absurdly low walk rate and his general ownership of every frigging major league batter, that the pitcher we’re witnessing right now in Cliff Lee is one that we’re unlikely to witness again before we shuffle off this mortal coil.
Though there’s obviously room to analyze Lee’s historic half-season, another very popular tact — one of which I heartily approve — is merely to enjoy it.
Thing is, though joy is easy to experience, it’s more difficult to articulate. Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
It’s with that in mind that I present this to you, the readers of U.S.S. Mariner — three brief attempts to understand (and celebrate) Lee’s accomplishment to date.
1.
I, one time, went to a funeral for a young woman I’d known in high school. She was in her second or third year at RISD when she died and it was a sad thing to’ve happened. Very sad. Except, towards the end of this girl’s funeral, a math teacher from our high school spoke. He was (and, I can only assume, still is) a spirited Greek person — like, actually from Greece — and he said about the young woman, “I think God took Addi [that was her name] because he wanted to have a new great artist in heaven with Him.” His message, more celebratory than sorrowful, was well received by everyone in attendance.
It’s with almost no part of my tongue in my cheek that I suggest this is a legitimate concern with regard to Cliff Lee. If God is in the business of snatching from us our most excellent specimens, then Mariner fans ought to worry less about Lee being traded to a playoff contender and more about him getting recruited for some manner of celestial baseballing league.
2.
After his most recent start — a complete game victory at the Yankees, mind you — really the only thing Lee would talk about is how he walked a batter. Literally, a batter. “I’m not too pleased about it,” Lee said. “My goal coming into the season is not to walk anyone for a whole season.”
Let’s play a game of This One Thing Is Like This Other Thing.
Ready? Let’s go.
That one thing Lee said is kinda like this other thing Bill James said, on the last page of the last Bill James Baseball Abstract Newsletter, as follows:
“I have a cold, cold horror of failing people. In many ways my life is dominated by a fear of disappointing people.”
Perhaps it’s been said before, but it can also probably be said again: to operate at the highest level in one’s field is very likely not a function of wanting or willing oneself to do well, but, much more likely, a function of not wanting to fail. Regardless of whether it’s disappointing other people (as in the case of James) or disappointing one’s own self (as with Lee), that doesn’t matter.
3.
Apropos the above — specifically, Lee’s comment about setting a goal of not walking anyone for a whole season — here’s the only possible reaction for a normal person to have: Cliff Lee is insane.
But Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay “Self-Reliance” — which, alot of people don’t know, is actually about Cliff Lee — in that essay, Emerson reminds us, “to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”
Perhaps a pitcher before now has suggested that it was his intention not to walk a batter for an entire season. However, if this is the case, I don’t remember it. Really, it’s as if Cliff Lee has invented this concept, has even dared to imagine that one could navigate his way through a complete major league season without walking even a single batter — and, in so imagining, has almost accomplished it.
For The Record
I didn’t have a problem with Felix pitching the ninth tonight, even with a 7-0 lead and his pitch count sitting at 102 after eight innings. The fact that the game was out of hand meant that he didn’t have to throw at anything near max effort, and the Yankees made it even easier by sending up scrubs to hit for Teixeira and Rodriguez. It was a pretty easy inning that didn’t do much to tax his arm.
The team should still make a point to try to limit his workload over the rest of the season, but again, not all pitches are created equal, so don’t freak out about the 115 he threw tonight. This was fine.
Game 77, Mariners at Yankees
Hernandez vs Vazquez, 4:05 pm.
Happy Felix Day.
No pitcher in the AL has thrown more pitches than Felix Hernandez this year. In his last nine starts, Felix has thrown 1,028 pitches, which would equal out to about 3,750 over a full season. Last year, only Justin Verlander threw that many pitches. And, to top it off, the workload is only getting larger, as Felix has averaged 117 pitches per start in June.
Pitch counts aren’t the be all, end all of keeping pitchers healthy. But, they shouldn’t be ignored either. Over the last month or so, as Wak has lost faith in the bullpen, he’s asked Felix and Lee to shoulder a very heaven burden. With the season down the drain, it’s time for the M’s to back off and give their young ace a bit of a rest. The results of the games this year don’t matter anymore, but if Felix blows out his arm, there’s a good chance that the Mariners won’t be playing meaningful baseball next year either.
It’s in everyone’s best interests to keep Felix healthy, and part of that is keeping his pitch counts reasonable. I’m not advocating yanking him every time he gets to the 100 pitch mark, but it would still be wise to stop sending him out in the 8th or 9th inning when he’s already in triple digits. Let’s save some bullets for next year, eh?
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, 1B
Bradley, DH
Lopez, 3B
Gutierrez, CF
Jack Wilson, SS
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
Game 76, Mariners at Yankees
Lee vs Hughes, 4:05 pm.
The last time Lee pitched in Yankee Stadium, he threw a complete game, gave up a single unearned run, didn’t walk anyone, and struck out 10. That was Game 1 of the World Series, and perhaps the performance that solidified his place as the premier left-handed pitcher in baseball. He returns to the Bronx in one of his final auditions for other teams – if he pitches well again tonight, it will be almost impossible for his trade value to get any higher.
So, enjoy it. As always, this could be the last time we get to see Cliff Lee pitch in a Seattle uniform. It’s been a treat.
News Item: Josh Bard activated from DL, Eliezar Alfonzo DFA’d. Oh, and welcome back, Russell.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, 1B
Bradley, DH
Lopez, 3B
Gutierrez, CF
Jack Wilson, SS
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
The Problem With The Protection Theory
Of all the reasons given for re-acquiring Russ Branyan, perhaps the one that resonates most with people is the hope that having a guy who can hit the ball 450 feet may help the underachievers in the line-up to perform better. There’s no doubt that Chone Figgins, Jose Lopez, and Milton Bradley have all been miserable at the plate this year, producing far less than they did a year ago, and beyond any reasonable expectation of their performance for 2010. Now, with Branyan in the line-up to provide some power, a good amount of people are hoping that those guys will get better pitches to hit, and their production will rise over the course of the season because of it.
There’s two problems with this, however. The first one is that there’s no evidence to support the protection theory. It has been studied many times, and there’s been no link found between the performance of a batter and quality of the player hitting behind him. It’s a theory based on speculation, not on data, which should always make you take pause.
However, that’s not the only issue, nor the one I want to focus on, because making the data argument just leads us back down the tired road of people suggesting we’re too tied up in numbers (read: facts) and miss the human aspect of the game. So, instead, let’s talk about that human aspect, and the side that never gets brought up when the protection theory is espoused – the pitcher.
Pitchers want to get hitters out. In general, pitchers who get to the major leagues and stick around are pretty good at this singular job. It’s what they do, and what they get paid for. However, a key assumption of the protection theory is that major league pitchers are dumber than a box of rocks.
Seriously, here’s the basic theory – if there’s a good hitter on deck, pitchers will want to avoid pitching to that guy with a runner on base, so they’ll throw more strikes in order to avoid walks. These strikes are apparently meatballs, and because the batter in front of the feared hitter is now getting good pitches to hit, he’ll get more hits and get on base more often. The theory demands the pitchers actually pitch in such a way that they fail at the original stated goal, which is to avoid pitching to good hitters with runners on base. Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that pitchers are dumb enough to not notice that this suboptimal pitching strategy allows the guy in front of the good hitter to get more hits, as they just continue pounding fastballs in the strike zone that Mediocre Hitter X can whack.
Seriously, this is the backbone of the theory, and it doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would a pitcher rather give up a hit to a mediocre batter than a walk? They wouldn’t, and they don’t. If a pitcher saw that the way he was attacking guys in front of the sluggers was allowing more baserunners (a necessary result of the idea that guys like Figgins will perform better than they have been), then they would pitch differently, because they would actually be faced with more situations where the slugger had a chance to drive in runs, not less.
With just a few exceptions, pitchers are not dumb. If they can get Chone Figgins to hit .230 by pitching him the way they are now, sans home run hitter behind him, they’re not going to suddenly start pitching him in a way that will let him hit .280. That’s counterproductive to their entire goal. If the protection theory was legitimate, and pitchers did indeed throw meatballs to guys batting in front of big sluggers, they would quickly figure out that this wasn’t a very good idea, and that they would be better off pitching each hitter in a way that gives them the absolute best chance of getting that guy out, regardless of who is on deck.
Which is exactly what they do. This is how pitchers work – get the guy out at the plate, worry about the next guy when he steps in. They do not throw easily whacked fastballs down the middle because they’re living in fear of the guy on deck. It’s just not reality.
Chone Figgins, Jose Lopez, and Milton Bradley should hit better the rest of the year, but it won’t because pitchers are finally giving them pitches they can tee off on due to the presence of Russ Branyan.
Pineda/Rainiers Game Thread, 6/28/10
Since Tacoma is having issues with their radio stream, you can tune into the Sacramento River Cats feed, where Curto is co-broadcasting with Sacramento’s usual guy.
What you’ve missed:
Rainiers taking a lead a two-run shot by Tui.
The first inning: Pineda striking out leadoff man on six pitches, then fly out, and then another strikeout on seven pitches.
Lineup:
SS Woodward
LF Tuiasosopo
1B Nelson
RF Winfree
DH Carp
C Moore
2B Hannahan
CF Halman
3B Mangini
P Pineda!