Situational hitting is just hitting
Quick pointer to Geoff’s very long post about the M’s situational hitting woes.
There is no one answer here. But one fact seems indisputable: this entire team needs work in some aspects of situational hitting. A team that’s the worst in the league at knocking baserunners in should adopt no less of an attitude.
I dispute that that’s a fact. They need to work at hitting, not “some aspects of situational hitting”. The M’s suck at advancing runners because they suck at hitting. They’re at or near the bottom any way you want to sort the teams. They don’t hit for average, they don’t get on base, they don’t hit for power. It’s Ichiro, Branyan, Gutierrez, and a collection of average-to-sucky guys.
Teams that don’t hit don’t hit with guys on base. There’s no approach, no spring training drills, that teams that can’t hit can use to become way more awesome with runners on. Advancing the runner with a bunt is generally a wash because you’re giving up an out, and you know the rest of this argument. And conversely, teams that hit don’t have to figure out why they’re not scoring enough runners, because they score because they’re hitting… tada! Triumph of the obvious.
There’s some variation, of course, because the sample size for hitting is huge and the sample size with guys on second is small, and leans heavily on hitters who are up when the good hitters are on, and so on and so forth. But you can predict a team’s hitting with men on next year with this year’s hitting better than you can with this year’s hitting with men on.
None of which is to say that this isn’t painful. But the correlation between hitting and hitting with runners on is nearly perfect. There’s no need to overthink this, or for the team to (as they did in past years to disastrous results) go find a guy they think is a good situational hitter.
A Good Cause
Last year, I posted a link to the fund-raising website of my then-fiancee-now-beautiful-wife, who was participating in a marathon to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You guys responded in such a remarkable way, I figured I’d offer you an encore – sort of.
This time, it’s not my wife, but fellow Mariner blogger Jason Churchill, who is doing the Light The Night walk for the LLS on September 26th with his fiancee. If you’d like to donate to LLS to help fund research to wipe out these two diseases, Jason’s fund-raising page can be found here.
On Beltre and real estate
So whenever we mention Beltre, and particularly in the context of what may happen after the season, we get a couple emails about how he sold his house in Seattle a while back and that proves he’s out of here.
I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s true, and I don’t care if it’s not. Unless someone’s talked to Beltre and said “hey, what’s the scoop with selling the house?” and Beltre said “I know I’m leaving after this season, and didn’t want to bother selling it after I’d signed somewhere else” we don’t know. Maybe he didn’t like the place. Or maybe he thinks there’s a lot of danger in prime mortgages and he’s better off selling now and renting a nice downtown place for a while with his long-term future uncertain.
We don’t know. I didn’t know he had a Seattle house – the press guide said he lives in Arcadia, California, and that was good enough for me. I want to see him play, not hang around the closest mall hoping he’ll invite me over for beers or something.
And maybe this does mean he’s at least not so in love with Seattle that he wants to stay here, in the house he owned, even if he knew he might be playing next season in a different uniform. And maybe that means he might not want to come down on price if he negotiates with the team. That’s as far as I’m willing to go.
Even if we take that as known, that doesn’t mean that the door’s closed after this season because we can’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe Beltre likes Seattle, hates hitting in Safeco, likes the team, likes playing for Wakamatsu, likes having a bunch of random blogs singing his defensive praises. And this off-season he finds that he can make x signing somewhere else and x signing here. Or x+y for signing here. Not even Beltre knows what’s going to happen when the season ends.
There are perhaps three groups of people who can even advance the conversation, and none of them are going to help:
– Beltre and Beltre’s confidants (say, his wife) who may know if he wants to play somewhere in particular.
– Beltre’s agent, who has probably talked to him about what might happen with arbitration. Like Beltre, not going to talk because they want the M’s to bid either way (unless they want to leave and want the M’s to decline arbitration, but that’s not going to work)
– The M’s, if they approached Beltre and or Beltre’s agent about an extension and got a clear flat refusal (which again would not be in Beltre’s best interests)
Maybe the M’s are stocking up on guys who can play third because they did get that answer, and maybe they’re stocking up because it’s smart. But they don’t know what’s going to happen, and neither does anyone else.
So whatever. Let the guy make real estate deals in peace, if he’s making real estate deals.
M’s, Defense, and Statistics
Read this. It’s a fantastic article, and sums up how an organization should go about evaluating these things. It’s not just stats, and it’s not just scouting. It’s both, and they work together.
Minor League Wrap (8/17-23/09)
I’m around for questions this time, so if there’s anything important left over from last week, shoot.
To the jump!
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Game 124, Felix Day in Cleveland
I’ve been a baseball fan since I can remember, and I still can’t quite get used to games that start at 9, 10 AM, where your beverage of choice is coffee instead of Coke, or a beer.
A couple notes on Felix while perusing his Fangraphs page: his groundball percentage this season’s as low as it’s ever been (at 51.7%, last year was 2nd-lowest by a hair at 52.1%), which is significantly off his career numbers. His HR rate, though, is also way down, bettered only by his 2005 partial-season mark, when he was a groundout machine.
Or look at his pitch type distribution, for that matter, and how much different the precentages of breaking pitches is.
It’s sometimes a wonder to me that Felix has managed to get here, considering how many managers (four) and pitching coaches he’s had in his years as a Mariner. And thank goodness he did.
Happy Felix Day.
Much Ichiro! goodness
Brad Lefton in the New York Times on Ichiro, technique, infield hits, and flirtation:
“Chicks who dig home runs aren’t the ones who appeal to me,†he said. “I think there’s sexiness in infield hits because they require technique. I’d rather impress the chicks with my technique than with my brute strength. Then, every now and then, just to show I can do that, too, I might flirt a little by hitting one out.â€
Game 123, Mariners at Indians
The M’s bullpen is supposed to be rundown, “achy” with Jakubauskas unavailable. And yeah, if you’re a fan of winning, this might get tough, since in terms of guys who haven’t pitched in 2/3 it’s Lowe, Batista, and Kelley.
And it is Fister. The Indians aren’t quite the offensive juggernaut the 2009 Yankees are though, so if Fister’s orders are to go six or seven at any cost, maybe it won’t work out as badly as it did for Snell.
Game 122, Mariners at Indians
4:05 PST, French vs. Huff.
The Hidden Value Of Bill Hall
While the focus on Hall since his acquisition has been his struggles with the bat the last few years, the largest part of his likely value to the team will come through his defensive flexibility. This isn’t something that we’ve talked about too much on the blog because it’s a minor detail that only comes into play when you’re expecting to field a winning team, and we haven’t had many of those to write about, but having a couple of guys who can play almost everywhere is a pretty valuable thing.
With Langerhans, Hannahan, and now Hall on board, the Mariners have two backups at every single position on the field other than catcher. Langerhans and Hall can both cover all three outfield spots, while Hannahan and Hall can both cover 3B/SS/2B, and Hannahan and Langerhans can both cover 1B. With just those three players, the Mariners now have a left-handed and right-handed backup option at every single non-catcher position on the field.
The flexibility offered by those three allows the M’s to do a bunch of things with the roster. They could platoon at DH again if they wanted (though I don’t think they’ll want to), as they have the ability to carry two guys with no defensive value. They could get a no-glove switch-hitter whose just around to pinch-hit. They could carry an extra pitcher when the bullpen gets a little worn down.
Hall, Hannahan, and Langerhans all signify that the Mariners are looking to build a roster in 2010, rather than just a big collection of talent. They fit together in a way that gives Wak an incredible amount of flexibility in how he uses his bench. By covering all the back-up jobs with just three players, the M’s have given themselves an extra roster spot to play with.