Tonight’s bullpen
Lowe’s the only one out by virtue of having pitched in three straight, leaving
RHP Aardsma
RHP Batista
RHP Jakubauskas
RHP Kelley
LHP Olson
RHP White
Olson hasn’t pitched in three days. Batista and Jakubauskas both have pitched once, and Batista’s was two games ago.
Making your bullpen deptch chart look liiiikke…
LHP Olson
RHP Batista
RHP Jakubauskas
RHP Kelley (only 24p the last two nights)
RHP Aardsma
RHP White
Yow.
Beltre out, again, wince-inducing
According to Shannon Drayer (on Twitter! how are we supposed to cite Twitter inline?), Beltre’s got a torn testicle and in the next two days we’ll know if it requires surgery, which would sideline him for a month. I shuddered just typing that.
Also, we don’t know about Wilson’s hamstring yet, and Josh Wilson’s been activated. Baker says Jack’s injury is a “Grade 1 tear” but it sounds like they might keep him active. Not sure what the roster moves are going to end up being.
That Was Some Good Baseball
Forget chicks dig the longball. While avoiding the strong desire to go to bed, Amy watched the last five innings of the game with me and my mom last night and proclaimed “that was fun.”
Say what you want about the offense, but there’s something to be said for watching a bunch of terrific defensive players put on a show. We can officially stop calling Jack Hannahan a third baseman now – he’s just a really good defensive infielder, no matter where you stick him. Kotsay’s diving double play was something else. Ichiro’s throw. Johnson’s throw. Beltre charging the bunt.
For as much as we’ve been banging the drum for defense for years, I think everyone who watched last night’s game gets it. The pitching was good, but the defense stole the show. Run prevention – it’s not just about the guy on the mound.
Game 114, White Sox at Mariners
News! Getcha red hot news here! Bedard’s going to have surgery, so that’s curtains for this season. Labrum and shoulder issues aren’t the career-ending sentence they were even a decade ago, but yeeeaaghhhh. Silva threw a bullpen session, no reports back from that yet looked good, which means who knows what (good good? Silva good? good for a guy coming off the DL after so long?), so maybe he’ll be ready to step into that second-staff-ace role the team’s been lacking.
Anyway — FELIX DAY!!! FELIX DAAAYYYY!!!
Oh, and Rob Johnson’s back in the lineup, if you’re a fan of passed balls, battery bromances, and intangibles in general.
7.
Enough Is Enough
Miguel Batista has kind of slogged his way through the 2009 season as the outcast in the room. He’s not happy working as a middle reliever, yet due to his salary, there was no way the M’s would be able to move him to a team who wanted to use him in a different role. So, as an aging, overpaid guy, the M’s have just put him in the innings-eater role, bringing him in when they just need someone to save the arms they actually care about. For the first few months, he did that inoffensively enough, though he was intolerable to watch, as always.
Lately, though, Batista has combined his molasses like timing with ridiculously awful pitching. In his last 7 appearances, he’s pitched 6 2/3 innings, allowed 14 hits, walked 7, struck out 7, and allowed 4 home runs. That’s… not good.
With just six weeks left in the season, the M’s have no more use for Batista. They’re not getting any value out of using him. He won’t be here next year. He’s absolutely painful to watch, so he’s not helping the fans get any enjoyment out of the team. He’s just taking up space, and it’s time to say goodbye.
Justin Speier, just released by the Angels yesterday, would love Safeco Field, where his home run problem would be somewhat limited. You could give him Batista’s spot immediately and make a nice little upgrade, while also finding a guy who you might want back next year. Or, you know, just promote Randy Messenger or something. Anything’s better than watching Miguel Batista anymore.
A more reasoned post on platoon splits
That last one was uhhhhh… not constructive, I know.
Here’s the thing: when you pinch-hit a dude, the dude doesn’t hit as well as they do normally. Or, as Tango puts it in The Book, “a pinch hitter would have to be significantly better than the player he is hitting for in order to make the substitution worthwhile.”
Pretty much, it’s ~25 points of OBP. Or ~35 points of wOBA, if that’s how you roll.
Then the average platoon split amounts to ~17 points for righties and ~27 for lefties.
Now, let’s do the math. Jenks is a right-hander. Sweeney cannot hit. So here’s about the overall line you want for the left-hander you’d be swapping in:
.000/.002/.000
Actually, okay, Sweeney’s hitting .248/.306 /.393. So you want to swap him out for anyone on the bench hitting either that line as a lefty, or significantly better than that as a rightie.
Here are the guys the M’s had sitting on the bench:
Lefties:
Griffey
Langerhans (remember that guy? Yeah, he’s good)
Hannahan
Righties
Johnson, assuming his sore elbow isn’t affecting his hitting
Woodward (remember kids, don’t just write your post and publish! you’ll do the roster circa two weeks ago and be wrong!)
So the lefties, then: pretty much there were three, count ’em, three players on the bench who would have been good pinch-hit options.
I know Don’s not a big pinch-hitting guy, and there’s probably some clubhouse/intangible/whatever justification for why. But I just do not care. The team’s wasting high-leverage opportunities late in games where they have to get hits to avoid taking the loss, and it’s driving me batty. If — as we’re to believe by all accounts — Wakamatsu is a great people manager, those moments are where he can spend that credit to the team’s best advantage. And isn’t Sweeney supposed to be the consummate professional and teammate, willing to sacrifice for the team?
I don’t get it.
Hi Don! A quick note on “pinch hitting”
You’re allowed to send players not currently in the lineup to the plate instead of players in the lineup. It’s called “pinch-hitting”. For example, if you have an absolutely horrible right-handed hitter (except that he doesn’t hit) up against a right-handed pitcher in a situation where failing to get on base probably ends the game, and you have one (or more!) good left-handed hitters on the bench, you can “pinch-hit” for the right-hander and increase your chances to win.
Check it out! It’s in the rule book and everything.
Game 113, White Sox at Mariners
Fister! Fister! Fister!
Rios may make a late appearance — according to the Times and elsewhere, he’s supposed to be in uniform tonight.
M’s go with last night’s lineup… except…
RF-L Ichiro!
CF-R Gutierrez
2B-R Lopez
DO-0 Sweeney
3B-R Beltre
1B-L Branyan
SS-R Wilson
C-R Johjima
LF-L Saunders
Sooooo Johjima gets a chance to work with the new pitchers who weren’t around to have Washburn poison their minds, is that it?
And Sweeney… what am I going to tell you?
The vagaries of divisional alignment
If we’re lucky, we’ll get to see Alex Rios play in this home stand against the White Sox. The White Sox claimed him on waivers, picking up his massive (though not that unreasonable) contract as part of their effort to capture a division title.
The M’s, you have no doubt noted, are a couple games ahead of the White Sox in the wild card standings.
Game 112, White Sox at Mariners
I so hope French beans someone to start the game. Just to make the series spicy. Get Guillen suspended for 100 games for having his whole staff thrown out for retaliation and seeing Podsednik start the second game against Felix.
Anyway! French, who is performing like Washburn while Washburn performs like… not even like French, really.
NEW LINEUP ALERT
RF-L Ichiro!
CF-R Gutierrez (“To Tony!”)
2B-R Lopez
DH-L Griffey
3B-R Beltre
1B-L Branyan
SS-R Wilson
C-R Johjima
LF-L Saunders