Wrapping Up The Silva Thing
Last post on this, I promise. But, since Geoff responded, I might as well set the record straight. After Jeff and I both pointed out last night that the whole mechanical change thing didn’t cause Silva’s sinker to drop any more than it did in his last start, he had this to say:
As for whether or not Silva is spinning yarns about his sinker, first off, the effectiveness of a sinker won’t always correalate to how much it drops.
Now, keep in mind, this is what he wrote last night.
Silva has been working all year to figure out why his sinker isn’t working the way he’d like. It isn’t sinking much. That’s a big reason why he needed 100 pitches to get through five innings against the Tigers last Thursday.
Or, if you want a summation of how this conversation went:
Baker: Silva’s sinker hasn’t been sinking, and that’s why he’s been getting torched. But he fixed that, and look at how awesome he is now.
Dave/Jeff: Actually, his sinker didn’t sink any more last night than it did against Detroit.
Baker: Uhh, I didn’t mean the mechanical change helped give him more sink (even though that’s what I wrote), I meant it gave him better command.
Dave/Jeff: Yeah, okay, whatever.
I’m not going to argue against a moving target. If he wants to change his argument because we discredited his first one, that’s fine – his new one isn’t any better, but I’ll let you guys all see right through that one and leave it alone.
But, he did toss out one more point that I’ll address quickly:
Unfortunately, or perhaps, fortunately for you, I don’t keep a list of fan favorite players (Ichiro, Beltre, Bedard, Clement, Hernandez) or whipping boys (Sexson, Vidro, Batista, Washburn, Silva). We call them like we see them here. The popular and unpopular guys are all treated the same way.
If you notice, the group that he thinks we are biased towards have something in common, as do the group that he thinks we’re biased against – Group A is full of good players, while Group B is full of disastrously awful players. We like good players who help teams win, and unlike beat writers who focus on things like clubhouse intangibles and ERA, we actually can tell which players can help teams win and which players can’t.
The Beltre rumor
Yes, ESPN’s got a “Twins talk to the M’s about Beltre” rumor up. The Twins picking up that kind of payroll, though… I don’t think this passes a sniff test.
To go back to the trade value post of a while back — Beltre’s a tough sell, generally.
Update: as Mike points out, that’s based on the Twins having internal discussions that mentioned him, making this possibly the thinnest rumor since the Rays briefly discussed Bonds and were batted about by the national press for weeks (fun side note: look how the Rays DHs have done since then).
Bedard out until after the All-Star break, rotation fun
Out with the back issue. The M’s will almost certainly DL him — they can make it retroactive to July 5th, eligible to come back off and start against Cleveland, say the 20th (but I’ll get to that)
Meanwhile, it looks like Felix will come back Friday, making the next set of starts:
Batista vs Oakland
Dickey vs Oakland
Felix vs KC (wahahahahaha)
The Bus vs KC
??? (Silva?) vs KC
Then the All-Star break. You can see where necessity created this mess, but I wonder about the decision to start Dickey over Rowland-Smith.
Dickey, as a starter: 30.2 IP, 6.16 ERA, 41 H, 3 HR, 16 BB, 18 K
Dickey, as a reliever: 23 IP, 1.96 ERA, 17 H, 2 HR, 6 BB, 17 K
While RRS, on a really short leash, has at least performed a lot better than Dickey as a starter — and in the rotation the manager doesn’t get to forget he’s there for weeks.
Oakland, v lefties .244/.313/.345
Oakland, v righties .252/.329/.389
Meanwhile, KC:
v lefties .275/.336/.418
v righties .258/.308/.376
Ah. If you can’t get RRS the start against Oakland because he started on the 6th, it makes sense to think about pushing Dickey out there and trying to pick your spots in relief.
The really interesting thing to watch is how they patch this up post-break, if Bedard can come back. They’ll have Felix on long rest to re-start, and then they’ll need at least one start to get to Bedard, with three more spots to fill and not enough good pitchers to do it. And if they manage to deal Washburn off… you see how this gets hairy quickly.
Selected exchange from yesterday’s post-game post-post discussion
DKJ:
Any chance the FO is hoping Vidro, et al. will rip off a couple of XBHs, like Richie’s anomaly last night, and get some drunken and/or deluded team to give TWO bags of balls for one of these guys?
Steve T:
There isn’t a team in MLB that doesn’t have a big fat file on Vidro, full of completely black pages like the one in Tristram Shandy. He could hit four home runs tomorrow and Pelekoudas’s phone wouldn’t ring.
When Access Is Detrimental To The Truth
I’m going to disagree with Geoff Baker’s most recent blog post in a second, so let me begin with the standard caveat; I like Geoff, he’s a good guy, he’s a good beat writer, and the Times baseball coverage has improved dramatically since he was hired. This isn’t anything personal against him – he just wrote another post that lacks reality, so I’m going to add a little truth to the discussion.
After last night’s game, Baker talked to Carlos Silva about why his results were so much better than his first couple of months as a Mariner. Silva pulled out the trusty old mechanical change, which, as we’ve noted before, pitchers use all the time to take credit for positive results they have nothing to do with. Here’s the whole quote:
Silva has been working all year to figure out why his sinker isn’t working the way he’d like. It isn’t sinking much. That’s a big reason why he needed 100 pitches to get through five innings against the Tigers last Thursday.
It turns out, Silva made a between-starts mechanical adjustment. Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, an ex-sinkerballer himself, felt Silva was squeezing the ball too hard. So, instead of holding his hands up near his chest as he began his windup — which Silva felt caused his arms to press together and his fingers to grip the ball tighter — he held them at waist level tonight.
“We’ve been trying so many things,” Silva said of the work he’s done between starts with Stottlemyre. “We’ve been working so hard.”
Silva had even apologized to Stottlemyre after one recent loss, figuring all his hard work had been wasted by a poor outing.
Silva needed a few innings to get used to the mechanical change tonight. Unfortunately for him, that’s when all the game’s runs were scored. But a team needs to score to win. That’s not his fault. By the middle innings, though, he felt as relaxed on the mound as he has all season.
As always, Baker took what Silva said at face value and printed it as fact – remember the “Silva learned a split-finger” stuff that he was pushing during the off season, which was complete crap, as Silva hasn’t thrown a single splitter as a Mariner – laying the blame for Silva’s early season struggles directly on the lack of movement on his sinker and giving credit for the mechanical change to helping his sinker dive more tonight, which was the cause of his improved performance.
Unfortunately, it’s just not true. Thanks to Pitch F/x data, we can quantify just how much Silva’s pitches move both horizontally and vertically, and we have the data for both 2007 and 2008. The vertical movement is “movement in z” in PFX terminology, with a lower number indicating more vertical movement (thinking of it as an axis helps). The sink on his fastball is virtually identical to what it was last year.
In fact, if you go game by game, you’ll see how the reality just doesn’t match the theory – Silva had far more sink on his fastball in games he got shelled (May 4th vs NY, July 3rd vs DET) than he did in games where he got outs (June 28th vs SD, July 8th vs OAK).
You don’t even have to look at Pitch F/X data if you want to explore whether Silva had more sink than usual last night – just look at where Oakland hitters put the ball. He got all of 8 groundouts against 11 flyouts. Apparently, all that extra sink helped the A’s hit the ball in the air, except that runs completely against everything we know about sinking fastballs.
And what about his April performance, where Baker wouldn’t stop talking about how great an acquisition Silva was because he worked deep into games and was a true seven inning pitcher? In April, he ran a 47% GB%. Since then, when he’s been routinely pounded, his GB% has fallen all the way to 46%. Oh, wait, that’s the same.
And, for all this talk about how his sinker hasn’t been working, in his three starts from June 10th to June 22nd he racked up GB% of 64% (vs TOR), 60% (vs FLA), and 63% (vs ATL). He was getting groundballs left and right for that three game stretch, and with the sinker working, he posted a 5.02 ERA during those three games, not even getting out of the 5th inning in two of those starts.
I’m sure Carlos Silva actually did make a mechanical adjustment – I’m not accusing him of lying. I am saying that trying to draw a correlation between the mechanical adjustment, increased movement on Silva’s sinker, and the results he got tonight is total crap, and the kind of completely wrong analysis of pitchers we’ve come to expect from the M’s and most of the local media. Silva didn’t get a bunch of outs tonight because he lowered his hands – he got a bunch of outs tonight because the A’s have a bad offense, and as we’ve been telling people for years, pitch to contact strike throwers are wildly inconsistent from game to game, as the results of their performance are almost completely in the hands of their opponents.
Now, maybe it’s not as good of a game story to say that Silva got a bunch out outs because he faced a line-up where Emil Brown was hitting cleanup, but Geoff, can you stop accepting whatever people on the team tell you at face value and printing it as fact when it’s easily refuted by actual evidence? If Miguel Batista goes out there on Wednesday and throws a no-hitter, then explains in the post-game interview that the success was due to a new found secret that will revitalize his career and make him an ace at age 37, are you going to print that too?
Oh, wait, I’m sorry, you already did that a few months ago.
Silva’s off season splitter, Batista’s magical discovery, Washburn’s phone call to his college coach, and now Silva holding his hands lower… how many explanations are we going to have to sit through before everyone just says “hey, wait, this stuff is crap and never amounts to anything”?
Carlos Silva is what he is – a guy with a mediocre sinker and no outpitch whose entire approach to pitching is throw-the-ball-over-the-plate-and-pray-it-doesn’t-get-whacked. On those nights where it doesn’t get whacked (and he will have those, just like Washburn will, simply due to the randomness of balls in play), we don’t need to be given a new excuse for why this time it’s actually something they can continue to do.
Just call a spade a spade – a bad pitcher threw a bunch of mediocre sinkers to a bad offense, and tonight, they hit a lot of flyballs that the outfielders could catch. That’s it – that’s the game story.
What in the world is going on?
Is there some reality-distortion field around Vidro that makes him appear like a major league hitter when you get too close? Does he emit some delicious pheromone that makes managers drool? Does he have pictures?
He is the worst designated hitter in the American League. He batted fourth tonight. Here’s Vidro against the next-worst designated hitter with over 200 PA, Billy Butler:
Butler: .263/.325/.347
Vidro: .216/.263/.315
That’s a big gap. That’s the Huff-Thome gap, or the Thomas-Butler gap.
Just over .200 with some walks and the once-a-month extra-base hit from the team’s designated hitter, batting cleanup.
And yet we’ve seen two supposedly sane managers bat him cleanup not out of necessity or
If you want to see the team try and climb back to respectability this season, you should be incensed every time Vidro is in the lineup, angrier still the higher up he bats.
It makes no sense, absolutely no sense.
Also, what Dave said.
Uhh, Yeah
I am shocked, just shocked, that a line-up that had Willie Bloomquist’s .632 OPS hitting second, Jose Vidro’s .578 OPS hitting fourth, and Miguel Cairo’s .568 OPS hitting 9th could only manage two hits against Justin Duchscherer. I mean, really, who could see a team that starts three of the worst hitters alive struggling to score runs?
This organization is still dumb.
Game 90, Mariners at Athletics
Silva v. Duchscherer.
One of those two was last year’s free agent sweepstakes winner.
A’s Trade Harden
Subheadline: Establish Market Value For Good Pitchers With Injury Problems.
Subsubheadline: It Isn’t Adam Jones, George Sherrill, Chris Tillman, Tony Butler, and Kam Mickolio.
The A’s punted the 2008 season, giving the Angels the A.L. West, by trading sometimes healthy Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin to the Cubs for a pu-pu platter of interesting players with limited upside. In return for two good arms with bad injury histories, they got RHP Sean Gallagher, OF/2B Eric Patterson, OF Matt Murton, and minor league C Josh Donaldson.
Gallagher is a decent 22-year-old who isn’t that far away from being a useful #4 starter. He commands three pitches and throws an occasional change-up, and while he’s got slightly better stuff, he’s probably going to have a Joe Blanton career. Useful, but not much star potential, and he’s the main guy in this deal.
Murton, we’ve talked about as a potential M’s target – solid role player, good defensive corner OF who can hit lefties. Could be a league average player if given the chance, but not enough power to be more that that.
Eric Patterson is Corey’s younger brother, but not the same type of player – gap hitter, decent idea of what to do at the plate, but can’t really field second base well and was moved to the OF to try to find a spot he could fit in with Chicago. The A’s probably move him back to second base and groom him as Mark Ellis’ replacement next year. That’s some kind of defensive drop off to go from Ellis to Patterson, but the bats are similar.
Donaldson was a second round pick last year who hasn’t hit in his first year in the pros, but he’s got some long term potential. A nice gamble, but not a guy you want to count in your plans anytime soon.
So, the A’s get a mid-rotation starter who isn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon, a part time outfielder, a guy who might be able to keep second base warm for a few years while not killing them, and a catcher who is years away from the show.
That’s about what an injury prone, talented pitcher a year and a half away from free agency should command in a trade. It’s a fair return for both sides, and it continues to illustrate just how ridiculously stupid the M’s offer to Baltimore was. If you’re in favor of trading Bedard before the deadline, you should expect to get back a package worth a little less than this deal, since Harden is currently pitching circles around Bedard and the A’s gave up Gaudin as well.
Current GM Handicapping
A semi-random gauge of who’s likely to get the job. Based on current press coverage, rumors, substantiated and un, educated guesses, and so on. We claim no insight into front office machinations. Please, no wagering.
For names and brief resumes, check our potential GM candidates post.
| Who | Percent |
| LaCava | 30% |
| Woodfork | 20% |
| DePodesta | 10% |
| Pelekoudas | 7% |
| Antonetti | 5% |
| Avila | 5% |
| DiPoto/Hinch/Hoyer | 5% |
| Ng | 5% |
| White | 1% |
| Evans | 1% |
| Forst | 1% |
| Towers | 1% |
| Field | 10% |
“Field” is everyone not listed.