Game 89, Cardinals at Mariners
Matt Carasiti/Wade LeBlanc vs. Jack Flaherty, 7:10pm
Hello – sorry for the delay in coverage, but I took what I personally think was a well-earned vacation to Hawaii. I’d say I apologize for the lack of content, but my heart wouldn’t be in it. It was great to recharge with the family and do something other than chronicle the struggles of my beloved Mariners, but as so often this year, the team played decently in my absence. They’ve gone 6-6 in their past 12 games, which counts as “pretty good” for this group. They backed up a 3-of-4 series win over Baltimore (yes, yes, low bar, I know) with a win in Milwaukee, which counts as solid opposition. Then, of course, they got swept by Houston, but there’s no real shame in that, and they played Houston fairly tough. The M’s had that ugly stretch where it seemed like they were giving up 10 runs per game and each loss felt like a laugher. They’re not doing that over the course of the past few weeks, and I guess that counts as progress.
The pitching staff has settled in somewhat after a disastrous May. Their overall line for the month of June isn’t worth getting excited about (team ERA/FIP over 5), but they looked better recently, and that’s borne out by their numbers. Finding hope in small sample variance from “avert your eyes” to “not the worst thing I’ve seen” isn’t great, but I’ve been desperate to see some evidence that the M’s can coach their pitchers to just mediocre performance, and that’s happened recently. Yusei Kikuchi looked as good as he’s looked in a while in his last start in Houston, and while the numbers don’t fully show it, he deserved a lot better out of that performance. Marco Gonzales’ velocity free fall has stopped, and he’s been trending up recently, though I’d still like to see him sit at 90 MPH. But it’s been the newcomer Tommy Milone who’s really been fascinatingly good, riding a career high K-rate with ultra-low groundball rates to post a very effective month. I hope he can keep it up, and I hope the M’s have helped him unlock something.
The bats, meanwhile, continue to be amazingly solid. He’s been hot recently and getting a lot of press, but JP Crawford has blown his projections out of the water, and he’s demonstrating that he can be much more than the average-bat+good-glove guy I thought he’d be at his peak. He still doesn’t have elite bat-to-ball skills, but if he keeps posting an ISO near .200, it doesn’t matter. This is remarkable, and I hope he can keep it up – he’s been a notoriously streaky player (a problem exacerbated or even caused by his injury woes). Dan Vogelbach will represent the M’s at the All-Star Game, and like the pitchers, he’s bounced back from a tough May to show that he can make adjustments as the league adjusts to him. The high average he showed in April is probably not going to be a feature of his game, but it doesn’t matter if he can combine patience and power like he has. The M’s needed a few players to take the leap, and make their old scouting reports irrelevant, and in Crawford and Vogelbach, they have two such players. I’m not convinced that’s anywhere close to enough for the M’s to really compete, but it’s a start. I think it helps the M’s avoid the worst-case-scenario outcome of really struggling in 2020-2021, but they’ve got a lot of ground to make up, and they need a superstar or two sprinkled about their roster. As eye-opening as these two have been, I’m not sure they’re there yet. Crawford is obviously closest to that mark, so it’ll be fun to watch him the rest of the year, but as amazing as another 3-4 WAR player would be, the M’s need a 6-7 *somewhere*. Deliver us from mediocrity, Jarred Kelenic.
Today, the M’s host St. Louis and their young potential ace, Jack Flaherty. Flaherty was famously a part of the most heralded high school pitching rotation ever, with Lucas Giolito and Max Fried, at Harvard Westlake in California. St. Louis drafted him at the end of the 1st round in 2014, and he made his big-league debut in September of 2017. He had good but not great K rates in the minors, but he broke out in his first full big league season last year, striking out nearly 30% of opposing batters, or 10.85/9 IP. A high walk rate and some mild dinger trouble kept him from the truly elite starters in the NL, but he was 22 last year. This, his age 23 season, has seen him regress somewhat severely. He’s walked fewer, but he’s missed fewer bats as well. His GB rate has fallen, but that’s pushed his HR rate into the stratosphere. As a result, FIP hates his campaign, while other measures, like BP’s DRA, is still broadly optimistic (but still sees his 2019 as worse than his 2018). He uses a straight, almost cutter-ish four-seam fastball at 94, a rare sinker, and a slider and curve. He has a change, but hardly ever uses it. His slider is his out-pitch, as it induces swings and plenty of whiffs. But it’s an unusual pitch in that batters can elevate it if they’re able to make contact. Thus, even in his excellent 2018 campaign, batters struggled against it…but hit 8 sliders for home runs. This year, it’s much the same – they’ve struck out against it a ton, but they’re slugging well over .500 against it with 6 HRs thus far. His four-seamer is similar: it’s an excellent pitch, it misses bats, but if batters put a good swing on it, they can drive the ball out.
Ex-M’s prospect Tyler O’Neill was just recalled to the Cards, and is batting 5th tonight. The kid from southern British Columbia should have plenty of family/friends at the game, but he’s having a rough 2019 after a promising debut in 2018. As always, contact is the big issue with O’Neill.
1: Smith, CF
2: Crawford, SS
3: Santana, RF
4: Vogelbach, DH
5: Narvaez, C
6: Seager, 3B
7: Nola, 1B
8: Williamson, LF
9: Gordon, 2B
SP: Carasiti, LeBlanc
The biggest story in baseball the past week was the tragic and as-yet unexplained death of 27-year old Angels pitcher, Tyler Skaggs. The game’s lost too many young talents to accidents and natural causes recently, and my heart goes out to Angels fans and of course Skaggs’ family, including his wife of about 1 year, Carli. The Angels postponed last night’s game, as did their AAA affiliate, Salt Lake, who was in Tacoma to play the Rainiers.
The July 2nd signing period opened today, uh, obviously, for international prospects. The most heralded of the bunch, OF Jasson Dominguez of the Dominican Republic, signed with the Yankees. The A’s made a big play to nab #2 ranked player Robert Puason, who’s been followed semi-obsessively for a few years. He’s a SS, also from the DR. The M’s have nearly $5.4 million in their bonus pool to spend, but didn’t sign any of the top-30 ranked players according to MLB Pipeline…at least not yet (a few are still available, or haven’t had their signing announced). They’ve made moves, though, including signing OF George Feliz for $900,000 and SS Luis Suisbel and Andres Mesa.
Game 80, Orioles at Mariners – Counterfactuals
Mike Leake vs. Paul Fry/Sean Gilmartin, 7:10pm
A few days ago, some folks were musing on what the Mariners would look like if they somehow missed out on Felix. Take away one of the only redeeming qualities of some painful M’s teams, and what do you have? Is it even really baseball at that point? Living through 2010-2014 was tough, but at least Felix was a light in the darkness. We also fell hard for some prospects who didn’t quite pan out, so presumably in addition to the near-term hopelessness, we’d have had our medium-to-long-term hopes dashed repeatedly enough to be as cynical as…well, as cynical as I am now.
But wait, said PNW Vagabond: maybe the team would’ve been better. Heresy! I thought, but then he pointed out that without Felix in 2006, the M’s may not have felt close enough to the division lead to perform their two-step, self-inflicted disaster of trading Shin-Soo Choo and Asdrubal Cabrera for nothing much. And without that, they probably don’t pull the trigger on the Bedard deal a year later. What would the team look like in 2010 if none of that had happened? You can quibble with any individual element (at the time of the trades in 2006, Felix was 9-9 with and an ERA of 4.60; it was just starting to come down after a brutal April and May), and you can quibble with the entire counterfactual process, and what possible value it has. I get it: there’s not really a point to imagining an M’s team without Felix, because thankfully, we got Felix. But it’s interesting to think about what decisions would’ve changed and why.
Today’s game against the Orioles is meaningless in isolation, so weird flights of fancy are all we can really do while checking Jarred Kelenic box scores. And thankfully, today’s pitching match-up gives us a chance to counterfactual one of the most minor trades of the Jerry Dipoto era: the trade that sent today’s starter/opener Paul Fry to Baltimore. In 2015, Fry – a late draft steal by the M’s out of a Michigan JC – struck out 113 in 80 relief innings across high-A and AA. He hit the AFL and struggled mightily with his control – a problem that persisted the next year in Tacoma, and then again in early 2017. In April of that year, the M’s flipped him to Baltimore for an international bonus pool slot. Baltimore hardly ever utilized their pool, and thus had a cottage industry of selling it off in exchange for so-so prospects. Just days before acquiring Fry, they got former Milwaukee SP prospect Damien Magnifico, another veteran of the 2015 Arizona Fall League with Fry. Magnifico was more of a known commodity, and thus the “slot value” that Milwaukee picked up was over $800,000. Fry, as a not-particularly-hard-throwing reliever, went for a later slot valued under $150,000. But still: the Orioles had a plan, the M’s valued that pool value, and a deal was struck.
At the time, I was pretty unimpressed. I know some of the prospect shine was off of Fry by 2017, but he seemed like a perfectly decent lefty reliever, one with a really good slider that – at least in the minors – was effective against lefties AND righties. Plus, he had an intriguing sinker that would make him into a big-time ground ball pitcher. Dipoto had picked up James Pazos, though, and there was Marc Rzepczynski on a two-year deal. Would Fry even get a shot? Moreover, what we didn’t know at the time was what the M’s would do in that year’s J2 signing period. Presumably, they had worked out deals with a bunch of prospects, and maybe they needed the flexibility to work something out with a kid they were really high on.
There’s definitely no one-to-one accounting for where this particular slot went in the M’s J2 spending spree, but we do know this: the M’s signed a kid who’s now one of their very best prospects, and one of the best players in the Sally League: Julio Rodriguez. Does that change our appraisal of the Fry trade? On the one hand, the M’s already had nearly $5 million to spend, and gave Rodriguez less than $2M. They signed Juan Querecuto and several other players on July 2nd itself, and still didn’t spend their pool. I presume they signed some players a bit later, so maybe it helped sign one of them. But who knows, maybe it helped them as they negotiated with not one but two of the top-30 international prospects. Or maybe it never got spent at all. It’s really hard to say. All I know is that in the most tenuous, perhaps dubious way, I kind of connect Julio Rodriguez, teenage phenom, and Paul Fry, lefty reliever on one of the worst teams in recent memory, and one-time M’s relief prospect. Would the M’s still have Julio without this trade? I think the odds are overwhelmingly high, but I wasn’t in the room, so I can’t say for sure.
The primary pitcher for the O’s is Sean Gilmartin, the one-time 10th overall pick by the Braves out of Florida State. This was a classic high-ceiling pick, as Gilmartin didn’t throw hard, but mixed his pitches and just looked like someone who’d be a solid, unremarkable 4th starter for a decade. He stalled out in the Atlanta system, but got a chance out of the Mets bullpen after he was popped in the Rule 5 draft. He was very effective in 2015, but then when the M’s wanted to move him back to the rotation, the wheels sort of fell off. He’s been a well-traveled guy since, without finding a lot of success. He was decent in AAA this year, so the O’s will call him up and see what he looks like in a longer stint. Gilmartin throws 88-89, and uses a change and slider (both in the high-70s) quite frequently. There’s nothing much in his movement profile that looks all that amazing, but that’s what you’d expect from looking at his stats.
Fry, for his part, sits in the low-90s with a sinking four-seamer that’s arrow-straight but with less rise than most. His best pitch is his slider, a fairly hard pitch at 84 MPH that gets tremendous sink and gloveside movement. Despite the low arm-slot and the repertoire that screams LOOGY, he didn’t exhibit big platoon splits last year (he’s doing so this year, though). The slider’s generally been an equal-opportunity pitch, and he’s struggled to miss bats more against lefties; this makes me think he’s got a deceptive delivery. But then, you can have deception and not take full advantage if your pure stuff isn’t good enough. I think Fry can be a perfectly cromulent bullpen piece, but I don’t think he’ll be much more than that.
1: Smith, CF
2: Crawford, SS
3: Santana, RF
4: Vogelbach, 1B
5: Murphy, C
6: Narvaez, DH
7: Seager, 3B
8: Moore, 2B
9: Williamson, LF
SP: Leake
“Openers” certainly haven’t worked for the M’s, with Tayler Scott having a rough go yesterday. The M’s openers now have a collective ERA of 19.50, which isn’t great (thanks to Ryan Divish for the stat), but it’s not that the strategy itself is bad – it may just be the M’s personnel/implementation. That said, I’m always kind of confused when a team chooses to go lefty/lefty or righty/righty with their opener and primary pitcher. That’s exactly what the O’s are doing here, with two soft-tossing lefties. The M’s used hard-throwing righty Tayler Scott to open for classic lefty junkballer Wade LeBlanc, and while Scott scuffled, LeBlanc was great. The whole strategy seemed to start when the Rays used Sergio Romo – a righty specialist – to start games against the Angels to get the first PA against Mike Trout and maybe Andrelton Simmons out of the way before a lefty like Ryan Yarbrough pitched the next 5-6 IP. I’m not sure what the O’s are doing here.
Game 78, Royals at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Brad Keller, 3:40pm
Getaway day on a blustery, sunny day in the northwest, and the Royals are going for a sweep. I know I’ve been pessimistic and gloomy recently, and I’d kind of like to change that, but yesterday’s game was one of the more hopeless, most perfunctory losses I can remember. This wasn’t coming up short in a competition, this was a denied insurance claim – a loss to someone who didn’t know a competition was going on. Homer Bailey was once a great prospect, and is probably better than the 5+ ERA he brought into T-Mobile park, but my goodness, the offense looked utterly hopeless, and once again, Yusei Kikuchi seemed frustrated by his own ineffectiveness.
I’ve talked so much about his fastball results, but it’s worth noting the Royals didn’t really pick on his fastball. Jorge Soler hit a slow curve out to right center, and it looked like Whit Merrifield picked on an inside slider. There are a number of ways to be ineffective, of course, but I do wonder how much of his poor fastball results can be tied to pitch recognition. That is, is his fastball “bad” because hitters somehow know it’s a fastball really early? That can be the result of tipping pitches, but it can be different-but-related things, too, like falling into predictable sequencing. I still maintain there’s a good pitcher somewhere inside Kikuchi, and this staff’s inability to find and nurture that pitcher is a pretty telling failure. It’s magnified by the ineffectiveness of the entire bullpen, but Kikuchi feels worse because he’s pretty clearly the most talented pitcher the M’s have. If this is what you wring out of talented hurlers, then a plan to repurpose all of the M’s upcoming “financial flexibility” into free agent starters may not produce as much as it should. Fix your pitching instruction, M’s!
Today, the M’s face groundball maven and ex-Rule 5 guy Brad Keller, who turned in an out-of-nowhere excellent season last year after being plucked from Arizona’s system. His K rate’s never been that good, and it’s worse this season. To make matters worse, his barely-adequate control (For someone who doesn’t get many Ks) has deteriorated this year. The only thing that’s keeping him effective (and he’s been effective this year) is the fact that he avoids the long ball. He has two fastballs, both around 93, 94 MPH. He’s got a sinker (duh) that has a bit of armside movement and decent-ish sink, but it’s actually not his primary heater. He’s also got a four-seamer that’s arrow-straight, with a bit less-than-average rise. It doesn’t look like a pure fly-ball pitch, but it also doesn’t look like a ground ball machine. It gets above-average grounders, but it gives hitters a different look, with different movement in the horizontal and vertical axes. It’s an interesting pitch, all the more so because it looks *so much* like Kikuchi’s. Keller averages just less than 1″ of horizontal movement on his four-seam, and 8″ of vertical rise. Kikuchi is at 2.7″ and 8.9″, respectively. Keller averages 93.8 with his, Kikuchi’s at 93.4. In his career, batters are slugging .387 off of his four-seamer, whereas batters are slugging .604 off of Kikuchi in the early going. Both have good sliders, and both have change-ups that are rarely-used and not much to write home about. Kikuchi even has that solid slow curve, which Keller doesn’t throw. I…I don’t know. I’d love to know why a rando Rule 5 guy can make nearly the same basic pitches “work” and Kikuchi can’t. I don’t believe Kikuchi can’t, so I can’t understand why his results have been so much worse.
1: Smith, CF
2: Crawford, SS
3: Santana, RF
4: Vogelbach, 1B
5: Narvaez, DH
6: Seager, 3B
7: Murphy, C
8: Gordon, 2B
9: Moore, LF
SP: Gonzales
Tacoma beat Round Rock 3-1 behind a strong start from Sean Nolin and HRs from Shed Long and Robert Perez (who hit an inside-the-parker). They’re off today.
Arkansas beat Corpus Christi 6-3 behind a HR from Donnie Walton, and a 2B from new Traveler Mike Ahmed (brother of Nick Ahmed), and solid relief pitching. Justus Sheffield turned in 5 very good IP, giving up 1 earned, striking out 7, and only walking 2. The two teams are back at it today.
Boise beat Everett 7-2, with the Hawks jumping on AquaSox reliever Matt Martin to score all 7 runs. Starter Kelvin Nunez scattered 6 hits in 5 scoreless, striking out 2. DeAires Moses tripled, the only XBH out of Everett’s 3 total base knocks. Everett faces Boise again tonight, with opening day starter Juan Mercedes on the hill.
The AZL Mariners moved to 2-0 on their season by beating the Brewers 9-4. Rehabbing 3B Connor Hoover doubled and homered. RP Luis Curvelo pitched 3 scoreless with 4 Ks. The team faces the Dodgers AZL affiliate today.
Game 77, Royals at Mariners
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Homer Bailey, 7:10pm
After a series of games in which he faced the same team in fairly rapid succession, Yusei Kikuchi now faces the Royals team he last saw in early-mid April, at the height of the M’s blitzkrieg of the AL.
Kikuchi remains enigmatic, with a fastball that yields too much contact (he and his opponent tonight, Homer Bailey, rank 4th and 5th lowest for whiff per swing on fastballs, for pitchers who’ve thrown at least 500 of them), but he’s showing signs of adapting, pitching around some hits against a great Minnesota line-up, for example.
Even further strides from Kikuchi may not ensure, you know, wins, as the M’s pen blew another lead last night. But it’d be a good sign of either Kikuchi’s ability to self-diagnose and correct issues, or the coaching staff’s ability to help…or both.
1: Smith, CF
2: Crawford, SS
3: Santana, RF
4: Vogelbach, DH
5: Narvaez, C
6: Seager, 3B
7: Murphy, DH
8: Gordon, 2B
9: Williamson, LF
SP: Kikuchi
Tacoma’s in Round Rock tonight with newly acquired MLB vet Sean Nolin on the mound. Tacoma’s remade their roster with lots of free agents with MLB time on their BBREF pages.
West Virginia’s in their all-star break, but the AZL just started last night with an AZL M’s Win over Chicago.
Game 76, Royals at Mariners
Tayler Scott/Tommy Milone vs. Danny Duffy, 7:10pm
This wasn’t the plan. Tayler Scott was a minor league free agent who’s biggest claim to fame was his nationality. A sinker/slider guy, he struggled with lefties in the minors, and despite mid-90s velocity, wasn’t exactly a prospect. Tommy Milone is a mid-high-80s velocity command and control fly baller trying to keep hitters off balance right when the ball change means batters can hit home runs even if they’re off balance. He, too, was a minor league free agent coming off a rough 2018 with Washington. This was supposed to be Erik Swanson or Justus Sheffield’s start. Even if you wanted to manipulate their service time, that deadline’s come and gone – you could bring them up and get an extra year of club control. The problem is they’re not playable right now.
Tayler Scott seems to have improved over the off-season, as he’s brought down his consistently poor walk rates while increasing his K rate. Using a sinker with Brandon Brennan-like run at 95 and then a good slider, it’s easy to see why he’d give righties fits. It’s also somewhat easy to see why lefties might like facing him. The Royals are a somewhat RH-dominant team with Jorge Soler and Whit Merrifield swinging righty, but only one of the first three batters Scott will face will do so swinging righty.
Milone, too, is having a surprisingly good season. His K rate is up even over his AAA mark, and he is still very stingy with walks. He still gives up plenty of HRs, but he’s been helped by a shockingly low BABIP, even for him, a guy who’s approach is based on limiting base hits. It’s amazing given that it’s the Mariners defense attempting to turn balls in play into outs. One key has been featuring his best pitch – his change-up – more. He’s throwing it as often as he throws his four-seam fastball, and, importantly, getting balls in play off of it. It’s not a real strikeout pitch, though when Milone gets whiffs, it’s probably on the change. The key is having more balls in play come via the cambio than the heater, and that’s worked thus far. With 0 strikes, batters hardly ever put his FB in play, likely because he’s trying to steal a strike or throw a ball. But his change gets put in play well over 20% of the time in such situations, and it rises if he’s got a strike on the batter. Only with 2 strikes does that rate drop, likely because Milone’s trying to expand the zone and get a chase.
1: Smith, CF
2: Crawford, SS
3: Santana, RF
4: Vogelbach, DH
5: Murphy, C
6: Seager, 3B
7: Gordon, 2B
8: Williamson, LF
9: Nola, 1B
SP: Scott/Milone
Encarnacion to the Yankees and What to Watch For
It wasn’t exactly a shock, but I’m surprisingly torn about the M’s trading 1B Edwin Encarnacion to the Yankees for SP prospect Juan Then. Encarnacion is older, isn’t signed to a long-term deal, and his value to the club was more about shedding the contract of Carlos Santana (which, at the moment, doesn’t seem like an anchor around the Indians) and acquiring a competitive balance pick in the process. They’d been trying to trade him for months, and it was something of a surprise when he made the opening day roster in Seattle. The fact that he’d been one of the better sluggers in the AL made the trade easier, then, but also somewhat bittersweet. Despite all of the dingers, there wasn’t a huge market for slugging 1B/DH types owed a fair-market salary. And thus, the guy the M’s got back was the secondary piece in their ill-fated acquisition of RP Nick Rumbelow. The M’s traded JP Sears and Juan Then for Rumbelow, then cut Rumbelow, and re-acquired Then for Encarnacion and some cash to balance out salaries. That…that’s not exactly how you draw it up.
If Then HADN’T had the backstory as a throw-in in one of the M’s ill-fated win-now trades, it might look better, though it’s hard to say a whole lot about 99% of prospects who haven’t faced full-season ball yet. It’s easy to understand why both 1) Encarnacion had no real value to the M’s stated goal of competing in 2020-21, and 2) had only a mediocre value on the market, but I’d argue that the move makes the M’s clearly worse in 2019 and doesn’t move the needle in 2021. That’s not a fatal flaw or anything – it’s good to have low-minors depth – but it IS a flaw.
I think all fans are fine with the idea that the M’s are taking a step back, and that they’ll be more competitive in 2021. I think the degree to which the M’s were going to be THIS bad, and post-Encarnacion, they’ll be even worse. For the step-back to be worth it, you have to believe that this group is capable of completing the turn around, and not just the tear-down. Raise your hand if you have that level of faith.
In the short term, this opens up playing time in the field for Dan Vogelbach and UTIL Austin Nola, who played 1B yesterday. But Nola’s real value isn’t at 1B, where his defensive chops are wasted. Nor is putting a glove on Dan Vogelbach a move that optimizes the team. Nola can play C, and it’s not clear that Vogelbach can actually catch, but sure, they can split time at 1B if we need them to. In the longer term, the solution is probably Evan White, who’s coming on after an agonizingly poor start.
White, Jake Fraley, and Justin Dunn offer a trio of potential starters who can impact that all-important 2021 team. Juan Then will be in AA then, if things go according to plan, so he’d be further off. The M’s could get some contributions from Kyle Lewis, and presumably Shed Long and JP Crawford will be hitting their stride and carrying the load offensively and defensively. With Mitch Haniger and Vogelbach, that’s not an awful line-up. It’s just probably not enough. That’s where the financial flexibility that’s the real key to the Encarnacion move comes in, but again, you’ve got to assume that the M’s use it wisely when FA pick-ups haven’t been their strong suit. You’ve got to assume that every prospect hits AND that the M’s fill in around them in free agency, AND that the Astros strangely get worse as Bregman/Correa hit 26-27. It’s not impossible, it’s just a tall order.
The issue, as with everyone else, is player development. There was a lot of discussion on Twitter the other day about ex-M’s SS Ketel Marte, who hit his 20th HR of the year for Arizona. Ketel Marte is now a power hitter, a fact that, let’s say was not foreseen by experts. Marte’s just the latest and perhaps most physically unlikely guys who’ve dramatically altered their ceiling through a swing change, or a difference in coaching philosophy. I’d been kind of down on Marte as he came through the M’s system, thinking that his walk rate would plummet once pitchers understood he couldn’t hit it out of the park even if they let him hit from 2B instead of home plate. I’m not trying to re-litigate the M’s/D-Backs trade here, I’m just using him as an example of someone who was profoundly altered by good player development. He wasn’t a factor in the D-backs evaluation of their “competitive window” a few years ago, but he sure as hell is now.
The point here is that player development determines a team’s “competitive window” much more than a bunch of front office guys looking over a roster and making a pronouncement. You can’t simply ignore the actual players in your org, but unless you know how your player development group works, and what their track record is, identifying a competitive window is kind of useless. The A’s had no business competing in 2012 and 2013, and they had no business competing in 2018. They did because Matt Chapman went from so-so glove-first guy to an MVP candidate, just like Josh Donaldson before him. Matt Olson hit, and Blake Treinen turned unhittable for a few months. Luck played a huge role, sure, but luck wasn’t the major factor in Marcus Semien going from a mediocre defender at 2B, to a disastrous, hide-your-eyes bad defender at SS, to a decent defender, and finally into a great defender. There was no window open, but their PD went and shoved the thing open anyway.
There are enough positive signs that if you really, really want to, you can convince yourself the window’s opening. The M’s have had a hard time navigating the minors-to-majors transition for pitching prospects like Justus Sheffield and Erik Swanson, but again, maybe you tell yourself that that’s where all of their financial flexibility will go. But even the optimists would probably like one more key piece, the way Kris Byant’s arrival turned the Cubs into a juggernaut, or the way Corey Seager/Cody Bellinger did for LA recently. You may not believe that the gap between the M’s and their rivals is actually 30-40 games, but you have to admit that it could help if the M’s finished that far back. Edwin’s departure hasn’t really changed much, but with Edwin gone, I think we have to at least entertain the idea that it’d be better if the M’s didn’t win a whole lot more games.
No team should go into the year planning to suck, and I’d argue that the M’s didn’t really do so this year. They thought they’d built a flawed but ultimtely fair-to-middling team. They haven’t, though, not while their pitching is still suspect and their best pitcher over the past month is ticketed to follow Encarnacion out the door. It’s not quite clear right now what clawing back to a 75-win pace or whatever would get them. Sure, I think we all want to see JP Crawford continue his hot streak and completely alter our/my view of his offensive ceiling. I’d like to see Shed Long find a position and hit well, too. As long as those things happen, I’m not too concerned about the team’s record. I AM concerned about their 2021 deadline, though.
Game 72, Mariners at Athletics – And Opening Day in the Northwest League
Marco Gonzales vs. Chris Bassitt, 6:37pm NOT 7:05 as I had previously posted!
There are not a lot of surface similarities between tonight’s two starters. Bassitt’s a righty, Gonzales a lefty. Bassitt throws 94 with a lollypop curve that may be the game’s slowest non-knuckleball pitch. Gonzales throws 88 with a change-up that was once a true weapon, or at least projected to be. And that made Gonzales a first-round draft pick, while Bassitt lasted until the 16th round out of a non-power-conference school.
All of that said, I think it can be kind of interesting to view them as two sides of the same coin, or maybe as a couple of different pathways through a pitching career in the modern game. Both debuted in 2014, at the tail end of the little batting ice age, when run scoring and home runs were way down. Both posted ERAs right around 4 that year, with Bassitt’s mediocre K:BB offset by the fact he didn’t allow any dingers. Gonzales missed more bats, but missed the strike zone too much, leading to a surfeit of walks. He also allowed a few HRs, but his fly-ball ways and a good defense behind him limited BABIP and runs-allowed. Gonzales’ injury woes kicked off the next year, and he was lost to TJ surgery until 2017. Bassitt had a fine 2015, as it marked his highest IP total, split between AAA and Oakland, the team the White Sox traded him to in the Jeff Samardzija deal.* His line was again helped by HR-avoidance, and his K:BB and overall stuff weren’t much to look at, but he produced. And then he, too, followed Marco into TJ surgery and rehab.
At this point, Bassitt’s 30 years old, three years older than Gonzales. His velo’s finally back up to the 94 he sat at in 2014-15, and he’s made some subtle changes – like taking some velo off of his curve, using a few more four-seamers, and turning his slider into more of a cutter – but he’s now pitching better than ever. His whiff rates are up to career highs on essentially all of his pitches, and that’s pushed his K rate way up as well. He’s stopped walking so many batters, so his K-BB% is 4 percentage points higher than last year, and about 9 percentage points higher than when he broke in in 2014. We’ve learned so much about player development since 2014, and Bassitt may be a great example – a non-prospect, or minor prospect, late-bloomer with lots of time missed due to injury and no real stand-out pitch becomes a serviceable middle-rotation guy thanks to velo development/maintenance and a new plan of attack. Meanwhile, Gonzales, who’s further from his surgery, younger, and more of a heralded prospect, is stuck in neutral, with an RA/9 over 6 (thanks defense!), and a velocity down at least 2 MPH from 2017. His last start was encouraging – as was Yusei Kikuchi’s – but you can’t keep looking at opponents like Bassitt and feeling good about what’s going on with the M’s. Gonzales (and Kikuchi) are flat-out better than they’ve pitched this year, and I expect they’ll climb out of this slide at some point. But when his velocity, K%, BB%, and GB% all decline, and when there’s no recognizable sense that things are changing, you tend to adjust where you think he’ll regress towards once he does pull out of this tailspin. This doesn’t look like a #2 starter, any more than Kikuchi does. And while there was considerable marketing puffery from the M’s in making Marco out to be more of an ace than he realistically is, it’s undeniable that some team could get solid #3 production from him. I hope the M’s can one day.
In happier news, the Everett AquaSox open the Northwest League season today. The Sox start with a series in the Tri-Cities to face the Dust Devils, a Padres affiliate. Everett’s roster’s worth watching, largely due to the pitching infusion the draft’s brought the org. #1 and #2 picks George Kirby and Brandon Williamson will suit up for Everett, as will Bellingham-native and 5th-rounder Austin Shenton. Today’s game’s started by Juan Mercedes, who’ll face off against Dust Devils’ Nick Thwaites, a 19-year-old 2018 draft pick who was solid in the AZL last year. Mercedes is 19 as well, but only got a handful of AZL innings last year. He had more of a track record in the DSL, where he pitched the previous two seasons.
Speaking of teenage hurlers, Deivy Florido gets the start for West Virginia today against Hagerstown.
The biggest story of the minor leagues today involves the Rainiers, who’ll start Felix Hernandez (Happy Felix Day) against new AAA team, the San Antonio Missions. Old heads remember the M’s had San Antonio as an affiliate back when they were a AA Texas League franchise, and they were one of the stops Felix made on his way up to Seattle, pitching for them in 2004. The 2003 Missions was one of the better MiLB teams the M’s had; they went 88-51, posted nearly a +200 run differential, and featured a young Jose Lopez and Chris Snelling. Aussie lefty Travis Blackley went 17-3 with a 2.61 ERA in 160+ IP, Clint Nageotte was a huge prospect, Cha-Seung Baek was solid in 50 IP, Bobby Madritsch came out of the indie leagues to dominate on his way to the majors, and their second indie league steal, George Sherrill, started his ascent by being essentially untouchable in 27 IP (his ERA was 0.33). Shin-Soo Choo was around with Felix in 2004, and 2005 brought Adam Jones and Ryan Rowland-Smith, and then 2006 saw Jeff Clement, Wlad Balentien, and Matt Tuiasosopo (Asdrubal Cabrera skipped AA and went right to Tacoma). Fun times!
1: Smith, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Santana, RF
4: Vogelbach, 1B
5: Narvaez, C
6: Beckham, DH
7: Crawford, SS
8: Gordon, 2B
9: Williamson, LF
SP: Gonzales
Welcome back, JP Crawford! He’ll take the 25-man spot of Brandon Brennan, who hits the 10-day IL with a sore shoulder. Felix starts his rehab assignment, and Shed Long’s been optioned back to Tacoma in exchange for Matt Festa.
Every time Edwin Encarnacion’s not in the starting line-up from here on out, we’ll all frantically search twitter to see if a deal’s announced. Nothing yet.
* It’s never going to get as much attention as one of those huge, franchise-making deals, but holy crap has this deal turned into a massive steal for the A’s. Samardzija was in his last arb year, meaning the Sox were only paying for one year. The A’s got a so-so 2B in Marcus Semien, who went from nearly-unplayable SS to defensive ace and lead-off hitter. They got C Josh Phegley, who’s (finally) putting it together, with a batting line north of league average as the A’s primary backstop, and they got Bassitt, who’s showing that he’s perhaps more than rotation depth. The Sox got a down year, and then watched Samardzija leave in free agency in the off-season before 2016, one marked by open feuding between players and management, and a hastily-organized rebuild that continues to this day.
Game 71, Mariners at Twins
Gerson Bautista/Tommy Milone vs. Jose Berrios, 5:10pm
It’s rough out there for us few, proud Mariners-watchers. A grand process is underway, I’m sure, but it doesn’t make spending 3 hours a night with them feel any less bizarre. After last night’s loss, the M’s are 28-42, a horrible record that feels worse both because of the M’s 13-2 start and because that start makes catching up to the Royals/Orioles/Marlins/Blue Jays for the #1 overall pick feel *almost* as impossible as winning a wild card. We can tune in to see how the young core is faring, but Mitch Haniger’s just out of the hospital, JP Crawford is still out, Marco Gonzales and Yusei Kikuchi are in free-fall, and even Brandon Brennan is slumping. I don’t know, friends.
Edwin Encarnacion’s been delightful, but that all but assures he’ll soon delight some other team. Dan Vogelbach’s righted the ship after a mediocre May, but even as his BB:K ratio is back over 1 in June, he’s not hitting for power. I’ll take it, to be clear, and it’s either his emergence or Omar Narvaez’s that’ll be the saving grace of this painful year. But that doesn’t make the current games must-see TV. Even in close games, like last night’s, it’s hard not to be pessimistic, and that’s a pretty rough way to enjoy baseball, and it’s a self-defeating kind of entertainment. The A’s won today, and are a game over .500; the Rangers – the actual RANGERS – are 6 games over. The M’s have finally built an enviable farm system, and they’ve got a handful of what seem likely extraordinary coaches, like AA manager Mitch Canham. I’m pretty certain they’ve got a bunch of players down there who’ll have some sort of big league career. That’s great, that’s a start. How will this org go about ensuring that those careers are good ones? How can they continue to develop players once they get to Seattle?
Jose Berrios pitches off of his sweeping, slurvy curve ball, a low-80s offering that breaks almost a foot gloveside, cutting a diagonal arc across the hitting zone. It’s a cool pitch; it’s effective and visually interesting, and the fact that he’s using it more than ever (and more than any other pitch) is understandable. But what makes Berrios a good young pitcher is the quality of his two fastballs, a four-seam and sinker. With plenty of armside movement thanks to his whippy, low-ish 3/4 motion, they’re a good counterpart to his breaking ball, and they help him pitch about as well against lefties as he does against righties, no small feat for a guy with his mechanics/profile. Unlike some of his teammates, he hasn’t gained a bunch of velocity this year. Instead, he’s succeeding by using his sneakily effective heaters to get strikes. Berrios had a decent walk rate, but he’s slashed it this year to under 5%. Whereas he used to throw fastballs away/off the plate to lefties, he’s challenging them this year. It’s working: he’s got a lower SLG% against with his fastballs than he does with his curve. He’s given up more HRs on the curve than he has on both his FBs combined, which is remarkable given the fact he uses the curve as a putaway pitch with two strikes. He’s given up *4* 2-strike dingers with the curve, and none off of his fastballs. I guess if you’re looking for a way to approach this battle, just target obvious counts and sit curve. That’s not ideal, as it means there are already 2 strikes, but hey, I’m trying to make myself watch this game. Cut me some slack.
1: Smith, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Encarnacion, DH
4: Vogelbach, 1B
5: Santana, RF
6: Narvaez, C
7: Gordon, 2B
8: Long, LF
9: Moore, SS
SP: Bautista, then Milone
Shed Long, LF? Why not. Seriously, how bad could it be? What would we see that we haven’t seen before? This gamer has been rather dark, and I apologize for that. It’s that kind of season, I suppose.
Bautista throws 98, Milone throws 88. For that reason alone, I kind of like this pairing for opener and starter. I’m still dumbfounded that Milone has now tied Yusei Kikuchi in fWAR, and has a lower DRA than Kikuchi, per BP.
Game 70, Mariners at Twins – A Tale of Two Cities, One of Which Comprises Twin Cities, But For Our Purposes Will Be Referred To As A Sin..
Mike Leake vs. Martin Perez, 5:10pm
I take a break for work and family obligations, and lo and behold, the Mariners notch a series win! I should avoid talking about them even more! The Mariners head to the Twin Cities to kick off a series against the surprising Twins, owners of the largest divisional lead in the game, and one of baseball’s best records.
Their offense – which is second behind Seattle in HRs, despite 200 fewer PAs – gets a lot of the credit for their start, and deservedly so: they’re slugging .515 as a team, 45 points higher than second-place Houston. But the real shocker has been their pitching staff, which ranks 7th in team fWAR thus far after ranking 20th in last year’s 78-84 season. They were projected to rank 14th by FG’s preseason polls, and somewhere near there by BP’s PECOTA, which saw them giving up slightly more runs than Seattle’s staff. What’s interesting is that they didn’t really make any big additions to the rotation. Jose Berrios, Jake Odorizzi, and Kyle Gibson all pitched perfectly fine, more or less, last year, and the Twins let Lance Lynn walk, picking up Martin Perez and Micahel Pineda on the cheap. So what’s happened?
A lot, really. But let’s start with the fact that both the M’s and the Twins hired new pitching coaches in the offseason (so did a bunch of other teams, of course). On paper, both teams made outside-the-box, new school hires, with the Twins’ Wes Johnson coming directly from the college ranks, from Arkansas and before that Dallas Baptist. The M’s hired Paul Davis from St. Louis, where he’d been the director of pitching analytics. Now if you know anything about Johnson, or if you’ve ever heard of Dallas Baptist in a baseballing context, you probably know that he places a premium on velocity, and the development of velocity. And from watching the Mariners over the past few years, but *especially* in the post-Paxton era, uh…do NOT place a big premium on velocity. The result is a rotation-wide increase in velo for the Twins, and a drop for the M’s.
But wait, that’s cheating, right? The M’s lost their top velo starter and figure to give more IP to Wade LeBlanc and Tommy Milone. Sure, but even if we compare the holdovers *to themselves* we still see a drop. It’s most notable with Marco Gonzales, but it’s true for Mike Leake, and it’s true for Wade LeBlanc (barely, but still). Meanwhile, the Twins didn’t exactly get younger. Their rotation is comprised almost solely of well-tenured vets, with the exception of Berrios, who has a track record of his own. Berrios is young, but Odorizzi and Perez are in their late 20s, and Gibson’s 31. Odorizzi’s the holdover whose results have been the most transformed, going from a so-so 2018 to a transcendent 2019 thanks to much better fastball results and a devastating cutter to go along with his old standby splitter. But those changes have been pretty small at the micro level – they’ve all just snowballed (along with luck) to produce massive changes in results. But as I’ve already written about this year, the guy who looks nothing like his previous self is Perez.
Since early May, he’s not only held on to his velocity gains, he’s continued to rely on the cutter he learned from Odorizzi. The combo of better velocity and a new pitch (though it’s not THAT different from old versions of his slider) has made him a completely different pitcher. He and Odorizzi are the primary drivers of a top-tier rotation despite a middling projection. How much praise for these kinds of results do we allocate to Mr. Johnson, and how much to the pitchers themselves (especially if Odorizzi showed his cutter grip to Perez, and not Johnson)? I don’t really know, but I’d be pretty happy about the job Johnson’s done if I was a Twins fan.
I’m not though. I’m trying to figure out who’s to blame for the fact that the M’s rotation – which was projected to be slightly worse than Minnesota’s, but within the margin of error (the gap was less than 3 fWAR) – is slumming it with Baltimore as the league’s worst. We knew the bullpen was completely inexperienced, and could be bad, but the rotation was full of known commodities. Instead, Marco Gonzales has regressed, and Leake and LeBlanc are outpitching some really concerning peripherals. Perhaps most damning has been the performance of Yusei Kikuchi, the one starter who has some velocity to work with, and whose slider should be the kind of outpitch that Leake and Marco just don’t really have. Worse, the depth pieces that they acquired in the offseason have imploded at the big league level as well. Justus Sheffield and Erik Swanson were supposed to add over 1 fWAR, but they’re currently closer to negative 1. Velocity’s gone down for the veterans. Results are worse than expected for the rookies. Ooookay.
Again, I’m not sure how to apportion blame, and it probably doesn’t matter. But I’m not sure how to feel good about Davis’ performance. I can say that the front office hasn’t done him any favors with the team they’ve assembled for him to coach. I don’t blame him for the M’s overall poor velo averages: that’s on the FO, who obviously prefers other indicators of success, and that’s their prerogative. I AM concerned with how Kikuchi’s and Gonzales’ seasons have progressed, and I remain concerned that there’s something fundamentally wrong in the strategy – in how they’re taught to attack opposing hitters. I can’t prove any of that, but if I was Davis, I’d think of ways to argue the inverse – that it’s only the strategy that’s saving Seattle from Orioles-style awfulness. I think that’s a hard argument to make, personally.
1: Smith, CF
2: Santana, RF
3: Encarnacion, 1B
4: Vogelbach, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Murphy, C
7: Williamson, LF
8: Gordon, 2B
9: Moore, SS
SP: Leake
Leake was almost traded prior to his last start, so we’ll see if he’s around much longer. After a brutal May, he’s turned it around, and his ERA is looking more and more like the one that he’s produced pretty much without fail for years and years. He’s not flashy, and I think I’ve been too hard on his pitch-to-contact style. You have to tip your cap to someone who can be this consistent given the changes in the game and given the ravages of age.
Welcome back, Dee Gordon. With the 2B’s activation from the IL, RP Matt Festa’s optioned back to Tacoma.
Logan Gilbert took the loss in Modesto’s 3-1 loss to Visalia, giving up 3 runs (2 ER) in 4 IP with 4 Ks. Tacoma beat Nashville by the same score thanks to solid start from Jon Niese and a dominant 9th from Dan Altavilla. Darren McCaughan starts for AA Arkansas tonight, with Vancouver, WA native Damon Casetta-Stubbs taking the mound for West Virginia. Tacoma’s got a travel day.
Game 64, Astros at Mariners
Andrew Moore vs. Wade Miley, 7:10pm
The M’s welcome back their one-time prospect, Andrew Moore, who’s making just his third start in the organization, having had a great start and a so-so one in AA. This was, of course, Yusei Kikuchi’s spot, but the M’s decided to skip him instead of having another of those abbreviated starts where he acts as a kind of opener.
Moore was seen as an overachiever, a guy without a big fastball or breaking balls who succeeded through determination, vertical movement, and a willingness to go after anyone. That produced remarkably low walk rates at times, but he was essentially undone by home runs in his brief tenure with Seattle back in 2017. Traded to the Rays, he faltered; he somehow gave up 26 runs in his 17 1/3 IP, including 9 HRs. Waived by the Rays, he latched on with the Giants, but after another disastrous start for them, he was on the market again, and the M’s decided to give him another shot. When he was first coming up, he threw an arrow-straight four-seam fastball with tons of vertical rise. This wasn’t the product of elite spin, but rather elite spin *efficiency* that took all of his average-ish spin and put it to use as movement. That’s the key to his incredibly low GB%, but all of that elevated contact (and there’s a lot of contact, as he wasn’t able to miss many bats) resulted in HRs. I’m curious to see if he’s taken anything from his time in the Rays org, or if he’d just like to forget that ever happened.
Speaking of spin rates, I have an article up at BaseballProspectus.com on the weird fact that batters seem to be adjusting to high-spin fastballs. In the past several years, all of the talk about “spin rate” and its desirability was borne out by data: batters’ production tanked if the spin rate was over 2,400 RPM, with higher whiff rates AND lower HR rates. In 2019, that’s changed, and pretty dramatically. HR rates for high-spin fastballs are now higher than the rates for medium-spin fastballs, and while the high-spin FBs still take the cake in whiff rate, the gap is shrinking. Is this small sample oddness, or are batters adjusting to spin? It’ll be interesting to follow this throughout the year.
The draft continues, and be sure to check out JY’s posts below. All told, I don’t really know anything, but I’m still struck by the focus on pitching, and collegiate pitching at that. The club could use some up the middle infielders, but hey, they’ve actually seen/scouted players and I’m just a pessimist on the internet. LookoutLanding’s draft coverage has been good and extensive, and you should check that out, too. Gotta say, I wasn’t thrilled when a NL scout told LL that 1st rounder George Kirby reminded him of Kyle Hendricks or Mike Fiers, but who knows…you’d certainly take those results, even if the comp makes you think a bit less of the raw stuff than other scouting reports. We’ll see.
1: Bishop, CF
2: Haniger, RF
3: Encarnacion, 1B
4: Santana, LF
5: Narvaez, C
6: Seager, 3B
7: Beckham, DH
8: Long, 2B
9: Moore, SS
SP: Andrew Moore
I’m sure you’ve seen it by now, but last night’s loss featured a remarkable play that’s somehow emblematic of the M’s in 2019. With runners on the corners, Yuli Gurriel hit a slow chopper to Moore’s right. Moore quickly grabbed it and threw home to try and get Alex Bregman, but C Omar Narvaez was running up the first base line, anticipating a 6-4-3 DP chance. Moore’s play was graceful and well-executed – the throw was on the money, even though he was off-balance, and it was in time to get Bregman…if anyone had been there to catch it. You understand Narvaez’s decision-making too. Catchers are supposed to back up 1B for plays on the IF, and with one out, the M’s had a chance to turn 2 and get out of the inning. It reminded me a lot of the M’s strategy building a fly-ball oriented staff and limiting BABIP only to watch the HR surge make that strategy look foolish. Or implementing a step-back that required their young, solid core to really step up and improve. Or creating a ball-in-play, average-and-defense team when strikeouts and dingers made that strategy less effective than it would’ve been in previous eras. Or picking up relievers coming off of bad seasons on the cheap and waiting for regression, and instead getting a lot of injured players, or watching as regression instead came for players they were banking on to be leaders. It’s not that this FO is out and out bad. They showed great footwork going into the hole. They’ve employed some good strategies, or things I would’ve wanted them to do. Their throw was accurate, and had some oomph behind it despite their momentum taking them away from the target. It’s just that no one was there.