Game 133, Angels at Mariners
Santana v Fister. Nice of the weather to clear in time, too.
Pelekoudas quits
Mike Carp
With rosters expanding today, the M’s are widely expected to bring Mike Carp up from Tacoma and give him some playing time at first base in Russ Branyan’s absence. Because of Carp’s strong spring and beginning to the year in Triple-A, he got a lot of attention as the organization’s first baseman of the future, and we even got to see him get a few hacks in the big leagues during the summer. I’d imagine most fans have a pretty positive impression of Carp’s abilities – perhaps too positive, in fact.
Let’s start with the facts – Carp is a 23-year-old with a good approach at the plate but average power at best, and he’s not a particularly good athlete or defender. We like on base percentage as much as anyone, but his overall package of physical skills isn’t that exciting. Power isn’t absolutely necessary to be a good player, as guys like Sean Casey and Mark Grace had nice careers with the kind of gap power that Carp has demonstrated, but they were really good defensive players with extraordinary hand-eye coordination. That’s not Carp.
For his minor league career, he’s struck out in about 20% of his plate appearances. Part of that is because he’s willing to work counts and lay off marginal pitches on the fringes of the strike zone, but a bigger part is that his swing isn’t conducive to covering the entire plate. He doesn’t lack big time power because he’s got a level swing that is spraying line drives all over the field – he lacks big time power because he doesn’t have a particularly quick bat.
Even as a guy who will walk regularly, you have to either make a lot of contact or hit for power to be a good hitter. Carp doesn’t really excel at either. His biggest strength at the plate is his pitch recognition, but as a first baseman, he’s going to have to do more than draw walks to earn his spot in the line-up.
Carp is kind of in the Adam LaRoche model of first base prospects, offering enough skills to suggest he’ll have a big league career but lacking some key components to be the kind of guy you want to build around. He’s had some decent years, but for his career, he’s averaged about +1.5 wins per season, a bit below average for a major league regular.
That’s kind of what you should expect from Carp over the next five or six years. .270/.350/.440 with below average defense at first base makes him a major league player, but not a guy that should be counted on as a big part of the franchise’s future. If he gets hot and tears the cover off the ball in September, that will be nice to help the team win some games down the stretch, but don’t go penciling him in for a spot on the team next year just yet. The M’s need to get more production from their 1B/DH combo next year, and Carp probably isn’t the answer.
Game 132, Angels at Mariners
Saunders vs. French, 7:05 pm.
No Ichiro again today, sadly.
Lineups:
Franklin Gutierrez – CF
Josh Wilson (ugh!) – 3B
Jose Lopez – 2B
Mike Sweeney – Designated Hugger
Bill Hall – RF
Hannahan – 1B (pour one out for Branyan)
Jack Wilson – SS
Rob Johnson – whatever the heck it is that he does
Ryan Langerhans – LF
Angels:
Figgins
Abreu
Hunter
Guerrero
Rivera
Morales
Kendrick
Napoli
Aybar
This one is probably going to be painful.
A Comparison
Pitcher A: 2.3 BB/9, 5.6 K/9, 1.1 HR/9, 37% GB%, 88.3 MPH fastball
Pitcher B: 2.3 BB/9, 5.2 K/9, 1.1 HR/9, 38% GB%, 88.9 MPH fastball
Pitcher A – Ryan-Rowland Smith, in his eight starts since returning from Tacoma. Pitcher B – Jarrod Washburn’s 2009 season, Seattle+Detroit.
Seriously, I’m not sure these two guys could be any more similar. They both throw high-80s fastballs up in the zone, big slow breaking balls, and rely on their outfielders and the dimensions of Safeco Field to make them look good. When their fly balls stay in the park, they’re effective. When the ball heads over the fence, they’re not. They are the exact same guy.
There’s two lessons to be learned from this:
1. Replacing Jarrod Washburn wasn’t hard, and trading him didn’t open up any kind of hole in the rotation.
2. Ryan Rowland-Smith isn’t an ace in the making. Whatever you thought of Washburn as a pitcher, you should think it of Hyphen too. They’re the same guy.
As we saw with Washburn, there’s nothing wrong with having a pitch-to-contact flyball lefty in Safeco with a good outfield defense. The symmetry provided can add up to more than the individual sums. But while RR-S is a decent young arm, don’t buy too much into starts like yesterday. He’s Washburn 2.0.
Minor League Wrap (8/24-30/09)
This is the second-to-last wrap of the season, as the affiliates not playing into the post-season won’t be active after the seventh of September. In fact, the Arizona League playoff is tomorrow and Pulaski won’t play after this coming Tuesday, so the end of the recaps is already in wind-down mode.
To the jump!
Read more
Roster Expansion Stuff
With the arrival of September 1st on Tuesday, the rosters will expand and the M’s will inevitably bring a few kids up from the minors to finish the season in Seattle. Over the last 24 hours or so, there have been a few developments that will probably affect who comes up and who doesn’t.
First, Branyan’s bad back and Griffey’s bum knee means that they probably won’t wait until Tacoma’s season ends to bring up Mike Carp – he’ll almost certainly be up on Tuesday. Who will be joining him?
Not Brandon Morrow. He left his start on Saturday night with “arm tightness”, and while the team is calling it precautionary, you have to believe the M’s will be careful with Morrow down the stretch, especially considering how well the rotation is doing without him. They’re not going to force an opening for him to pitch on the big league squad if he’s not 100%.
Garrett Olson will be coming back up, however, and Jason Vargas may as well, though the team won’t want to raid Tacoma too badly since they still have a season to finish. The team usually brings up a third catcher, though with neither Jamie Burke or Adam Moore on the 40 man roster, that isn’t a certainty this time. The 40-man roster is full, and with Silva set to rejoin the team at some point during the next month, they will already need to clear a spot for him – they’re not likely to want to open up another spot if they don’t have to.
Expect Matt Tuiasosopo to get called up once Tacoma’s season ends. Since he missed a few months, they’ll want him to play as much as possible, and he’ll have a better chance to do that in Triple-A than he will in the majors.
So, that brings the final tally to something like this: Carp/Olson on Tuesday, Vargas and Morrow TBD, Tui after Tacoma’s season ends, and that may be it. Don’t expect a big group to join the team when rosters expand, especially with Morrow’s status now up in the air.
Game 131, Royals at Mariners
1:05. What a nice day to hang out at Safeco Field, huh? Man. Unless you’re a Mariner.
Currently on the 60-day DL:
Bedard, Chavez, Feierabend, Jiminez, Silva
Currently on the 15-day DL:
Beltre, Branyan
Currently “day to day”:
Ichiro!
Two of the team’s three best offensive players are out (well, unless you count the hot version of Lopez). Two of the team’s best defensive players are out. The good news is Silva’s recovering well! Maybe we’ll get to see him when rosters expand! In the bullpen! Because watching Batista pitch isn’t painful enough.
Game 130, Royals at Mariners
Meche and Snell were both regarded as head cases in their organizations. Meche was plagued by shoulder issues while the team thought him a whiner for not pitching through the pain, and eventually grew so frustrated they put back him in AAA with instructions to pound the strikezone and turn into a pitch-to-contact guy. The Gil Meche that left Seattle had been turned into an innings-eating pitching machine, who in his last year put together some success, and as Dave said in August
I’ll repeat what I said three weeks ago; Gil Meche is clearly not an ace or any kind of frontline pitcher, I don’t want to give him a mulitiyear contract in the offseason, but I’m also glad they didn’t trade him, because the 8% BB/20% K flyball pitcher in Safeco Field is an effective starter who can help this team try to win the division. He’s going to give up some home runs, but that’s just part of the package.
By the time he left, I was so tired and frustrated with the whole situation (Meche, the team, Meche v the team, “Meche has turned it around”) I wrote things like
I hope the sucker that decides to give Meche a huge long-term free agent deal because they think they can fix him is in our division, because I would love to watch him get regularly shelled by the team for the next 3-5 years.
Ha ha! Good one, Derek.
I should send all our 2004-2006 Meche (heck, our 1999-2006) writing to people who complain we’re too stat-obsessed: it’s a catalog of excitement, complaint, worry, wavering, poring over stats trying to figure out what happened when, long examinations of team and Meche statements to construct injury (and injury denial) timelines.
What’s strange about his Royals lines is that they’re so varied in pitch value. Most pitchers have more or less the same strengths year-to-year. If someone has a good curve, or a fastball with deceptive movement, that doesn’t go away.
Look at Meche’s pitch type values. In 2007, the bulk of his value came from his changeup and his curve, and in 2008 it was by far from his fastball (historically a pretty poor pitch for him). This year, neither are doing well. I can’t think of another pitcher with a run of success with this kind of variance in where the success comes from.
And now, the M’s are starting a pitcher in a situation not that far from in-the-doghouse Meche stuck in Tacoma… and I guy they sought out in trade as an interesting gamble, even though his parent organization had shrugged their collective shoulders and all but given up on him.
I look forward to this game.
Game 129, Royals at Mariners
After last night’s loss, I sat there, shaking my head a little, and sighed. Then I looked at the next game’s pitching matchup and I smiled. That’s Felix Day for you: I don’t care how he’s been doing lately, every time I see his name up for the start I look forward to it.