In praise of Vidro
Sincerely. I realized today while looking something else up that I hadn’t pointed out that Vidro leads the Mariners in walks. We’ve talked about why having a batting-average dependent offense can make for a streaky team, and I’ve been baffled why Vidro’s been able to keep up that high BABIP, but I don’t think we’ve pointed out what a huge deal this is. Sure, he’s not a base-stealing threat when he’s no, but he’s drawn 56 walks on a team that is by a ways the worst in the AL at taking a free base.
Vidro, all by himself, accounts for 17% – almost 1/5th – of the team’s walks. David Ortiz walks like crazy on the Red Sox, the AL walk-leading team (he has 97 of their 611) and doesn’t quite get to that proportion.
Fun side note: the Red Sox have five players who have draw more walks than Vidro.
Nick Swisher of the A’s has 94 of their 575, for 16% (16.3 to Vidro’s 16.5). Alex Rodriguez (82 of 540) doesn’t match it.
The M’s are mid-league offense, even adjusting for Safeco, their attack based almost entirely around batting average: they’re 4th in AVG, 6th in OBP (last in walks), 7th in SLG.
The team has only a few sources of any real power: Beltre, followed a ways behind by Ibanez, Johjima, Guillen, Betancourt. They’re not a power-hitting lineup.
Vidro is the team’s Beltre of walks. I know. But there it is. What’s all the more impressive about it is that he’s working in a team that actively encourages their players to hack early and often, and yet there he is… 56 walks. The confused and frightened and possibly post-cliff Sexson has 51, but the only other effective hitter in the lineup, Ibanez, has 43. Vidro’s the only person who’s really bringing plate discipline to the plate, and he’s been doing it despite a team offensive approach that makes it extremely difficult to do that.
That deserves some recognition, and applause. You have to wonder if he’d be even more effective if they weren’t trying to get him to swing at the first two pitches of every at-bat.
Game 140, Mariners at Tigers
Jeff Weaver v. Nate Robertson. 4:05.
Richie Sexson returns to the lineup.
Game 139, Mariners at Tigers
4:05. Batista v Verlander.
I wonder, now that the playoff race is pretty much done, if I’ll be able to sit back and enjoy the game without worrying every error is going to cost the team their chances. I wonder if they’ll finally spread some playing time around and…
Nope. Well then. Let’s watch some baseball.
USSM on KJR returns
After a one week hiatus, I’m back on the air with Groz at 2:20 pm. You can catch it live at KJR’s website.
Future Forty Update – End of Season
With the minor league seasons coming to a close, it’s time for our last monthly Future Forty update and a look back at the year that was in the farm system.
Big Steps Forward
Adam Jones – Really, I don’t think we need to say much more about AJ.
Carlos Triunfel – the best prospect in the system and one of the best alive proved he could hold his own at 17 years of age.
Wladimir Balentien – Refined the rough edges of his game, made better contact, and probably made himself prime trade bait.
Matt Tuiasasopo – Showed that he could actually drive the ball into the gaps, drastically improved approach at the plate, and re-established himself as a potential everyday major league player.
Solid Improvement
Michael Saunders – Turned athleticism into performance, though playing in High Desert certainly didn’t hurt.
Chris Tillman – Recovered from disastrous performances after promotion to California League, showed flashes of brilliance despite a general lack of command.
Kameron Mickolio – Added cut fastball, improved command, and went from interesting late-round steal to putting himself in contention for a bullpen spot in 2008.
Up and Down
Jeff Clement – had a few great months and a few terrible months, providing evidence to both his supporters and his critics. Still something of an enigma but continues to work hard.
Tony Butler – Arm and back problems led to reduced velocity and a couple stints on the DL, but when healthy, showed why he’s got as much upside as any arm in the system besides Felix.
Brandon Morrow – Showed a legit 98 MPH fastball that can overpower hitters at times, but also had very little idea where the ball was going or anything to complement the fastball. Move to rotation is likely going to include significant growing pains.
Greg Halman – Horrible in Wisconsin, but when shipped back to Everett, made big strides. It’s scary how much he looks like Alfonso Soriano when hitting, and while he won’t be that good, he’s got a similar skillset.
More Down Than Up
Alex Liddi – One of my favorite bats in the system, Liddi failed to make enough contact to do any damage to MWL pitchers and has a lot of adjustments to make. Still very talented and worth keeping an eye on.
Rob Johnson – Mariners still love his leadership and catching skills behind the plate – I remain convinced that he’ll never hit high level pitching.
Doug Salinas – Age is the main thing on his side, as he rarely topped 90 MPH and showed a couple of 62-68 MPH breaking balls that have no chance of getting real hitters out. Stuff did not match the hype.
Overall
You can’t categorize 2007 as anything other than a big win for the farm system. The top talents had successful seasons almost across the board, the best arms avoided surgery, and a few guys took steps up from interesting to legitimately intriguing. There’s no doubt that the organization has more young talent in it now than it has in any year during the Bavasi era, which has only seen significant improvement in minor league development since he took over as GM. Bob Engle, Bob Fontaine, and their staffs deserve every plaudit that can be thrown at them – the Mariners have a lot of talent on the way to Seattle.
However, that doesn’t mean everything is perfect. As an organization, they still fail in installing any kind of real approach to hitting, and the club continues to churn out a plethora of the exact same types of hitters they already have on hand. When you look at the major league line-up and see Adrian Beltre, Jose Guillen, Jose Lopez, Yuniesky Betancourt, and Kenji Johjima, you see five shades of the same thing – right handed, highly aggressive line drive pull hitters. When you look at Adam Jones, Wladimir Balentien, Carlos Triunfel, and Greg Halman you have (to differing degrees) four more right-handed, highly aggressive line drive pull hitters.
With a couple of exceptions, this is the kind of player the M’s are both developing and pursuing at the major league level, and while they’re valuable players and good prospects in their own right, it’s time for the organization to diversify. They have a park that harms right-handed pull hitters moreso than any other player type, but significantly rewards left-handed flyball power hitters. Jeff Clement is the only guy in the organization who fits that mold, and it’s not even a given that he’ll still be a Mariner past this coming offseason.
The M’s scouts are doing a great job of finding talent – now they just need to find different kinds of talent. But, make no mistake, the farm system is in good shape, and the Mariners have a significant quantity of high ceiling guys that could add real pieces to the major league roster in the next several years.
As always, feel free to use this thread for any questions you may have, and I’ll do my best to answer as many as I can.
See ya, Rick
I’m not sure what the point is, with rosters this full, but anyway. He’s 38, stank in Houston and stank here. Anyway, so yeah, that’s the M’s for you: first you’re being thrown into extremely high-pressure important game situations you’re entirely unsuited for and then you’re discarded like all the empty cans of Febreeze used on the Moose costume every week.
Youth, again
Hi!
So Geoff takes issue with my post on the Braves, illustrating that it’s possible, and good, to work youth into the lineups of contending teams. A couple points to pick on before I move to a whole other point, though:
As was mentioned, the young Braves were all Rookie of the Year contenders, which implies they got most of a full season to work their way in. With Jones, we’re talking about a 3 1/2 week “sink or swim” indoctrination, which is hardly the same discussion. Not even in the same ballpark.
The post wasn’t intended to prove that Jones should play. That’s just a given. It was intended to offer a larger example of how a successful franchise, while competing, can still develop their young players and get them playing time so they can blossom into beautiful flowers.
And I’ll point out that refuting that list of RoY candidates misses the larger point of the post. I used RoY voting because it was handy, but you can go through those teams and see how they continually found time for players mid-season and in smaller roles as they prepared them to start, as well as sometimes handing them starting jobs. Giles is a great example of this.
Anyway, to youth and Jones.
There’s a couple discussions here: one, did the M’s clear a spot for Jones at the start of the season? No, and I don’t think it’s at all fair to expect that the team would go into the year with an outfield spot open for him in case he was. You don’t know, right?
Then: once it became clear in, say, May/June, that Jones was dominating Tacoma, did they make a role for him? No, and here you can throw some garbage at the screen and boo them or whatever. It’s clear that they could have, especially with Ibanez’s slump and horrible defense all year, and could have found a way to put Jones out there a couple times a week.
Now, there’s the final argument, which is: having failed to clear a spot for him to start the year, and having failed to get him regular playing time, should the M’s have played Jones down the stretch in important games?
Dave and I have both argued at some length and frequently at some volume that you do. You put the best team on the field. And I’d argue the Franceour isn’t a particularly good comp for Jones, but anyway —
Baker’s argument against playing Jones down the stretch, and I’ll quote two paragraphs for the point:
So, which of those monthly OPS totals would Jones bring to the table these final few weeks if the M’s throw him in the lineup every day? Don’t know? Neither do I. Neither does the team. If Jones were to put up a .688 these next few weeks, in-place of the .800 by someone else on the team, it would potentially be a disaster.
But as I said, maybe he puts up a .900. It’s a risk. And it doesn’t matter what his minor league predictor stats say. This is too small a sample period for anyone to predict how he’d do every day with any accuracy. At the beginning of the season, or even in July, it’s a different story because there is margin for error, or an off-month for a rookie trying to adapt. In Francoeur’s case, he took the league by storm, then cooled off. But who’s to say what order Jones would perform in. I know this is becoming a tired debate in some respects. But I’m just pointing out the issues I’ve yet to see covered and to explain my feelings on the Braves. I agree that any team loaded with young talent should try to use it or trade it. Just not right now, not this late.
We’ve made this point too before: you don’t know what any player is going to put up in any situation anyway. Rookie having “an off month trying to adapt”? Vets have off months. If you’re looking at two players, one a veteran hitter and the other a far superior talent (not that that’s the comparison we’re making w/Jones v Ibanez, but bear with me) you want the better hitter. All players are different, all situations different, and so on and so forth. You can find months where horrible hitters tore it up, and great hitter stank up the joint.
You want the better hitter. You do. In the same way, you want the best team you can field. That team has Jones in the field.
But let’s say you take this whole argument, and you say “well, we could play Jones and improve the outfield defense a ton and he might hit some, he might not, I totally discard minor league track records and scouts and think that he has to prove himself at the major league level even though he can’t prove himself at the major league level because I’m going to play veterans because I totally discard minor league track records and scouts so I guess he’s screwed and we should trade him for pitching or something but veteran pitching because as I mentioned– BUT instead, I’m going to play Raul for this critical stretch against the Angels and whenever, because he’s hot for August and the team needs him and we can’t afford to try a rookie.”
Ibanez went 9-34 with no power at all from August 27th to today’s game. .265/.324/.265 over that stretch of nine games.
How can that be? Adam Jones is hitting better than that on the season, and he’s pretty regularly mocked as not being major league ready on the basis of his 35 at-bats. Is Ibanez not major league ready?
Shouldn’t veteran consistency have come through? Isn’t that what you count on? How could Raul fail so? If you’re supposed to count on veterans in these kinds of circumstances because you can’t afford a cold streak and veterans go cold like that, what then? What’s left?
Veterans are no different than any other hitter. They hit, and they don’t, and just like you want a good veteran hitter over a bad one, you want a good young hitter over a bad veteran one.
And, just to re-iterate, the case I’m making is not that Ibanez should be out of the lineup entirely. I’ve been arguing, and I think Dave largely agrees with me, that a player as talented and as ready as Jones can help the team, and if someone can help the team, you find a way to make the most of that, and it doesn’t matter if it’s June or September if you want to win.
I’m going to throw out one more analogy I think is particularly apt: Matt Kemp. Matt Kemp got spotty playing time last year for the Dodgers (52 games, 153 AB) and this year, at 22, they gave him some time in April, but he banged his shoulder into a scoreboard trying to make a catch in April, and went down to Las Vegas to hang out for a while. A long while. Matt Kemp’s not the defensive player Adam Jones is, but they’re not that dissimilar hitting prospects: a lot of Ks, nobody knows if they’re ever going to walk a lot, but they’re aggressive in the strike zone and put a charge into the ball when they make contact.
Anyway, when Kemp’s ready (and they really take their time), there’s a problem: the Dodgers are in contention and they’ve got an outfield: in left, veteran leader Luis Gonzalez, hitting .282/.362/.431. In center, Juan Pierre (.291/.325/.349) and in right, Andre Ethier, not quite as young, but played well last year and doing well again (.289/.354/.448).
The Dodgers, in many ways, faced an even worse situation than the Mariners did, with no DH to help shift defensive alignments, and without a June pretext for shifting things.
So what’d they do? We know what the M’s did, faced in June with a similar situation. The Dodgers kept trying to find ways to play Kemp, and even though it meant their outfield rotation’s had some fits and starts, and Kemp’s still sitting on the bench 2-3 times a week, since he came back up and played again June 8th, they’ve managed to get Kemp 215 plate appearances.
Kemp’s hitting .338/.372/.537 with Dodger Stadium as his home park. By VORP, he’s the third-most valuable hitter on that team. He’s a huge reason the Dodgers are in the NL wild card race.
There’s no way to know if Jones would produce like he’s capable of if he’d gotten the same opportunity. They’re different players, in different leagues, facing different situations, and so on. But other teams, faced with the same kind of dilemma, found ways to work similar players who can help into their lineup.
Finding Jones playing time wasn’t going to transform Horacio Ramirez into a good pitcher. Or Jeff Weaver. It wasn’t going to solve Sexson’s hitting issues. On the grand scale of things that deserve some blame for the slip from contention, or if you prefer the failure to seize the opportunity they had, it’s not that big a deal. It’s a game or two.
But I don’t at all agree that game’s not worth trying for, just as I don’t agree that there’s any reason not to field the best team possible, or that veteran hitters are any more reliable over short, arbitrary stretches of the season.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh Vidro
Hey, remember back like a month ago, when I wrote that whole summary post of the state of argumentation on Vidro, and I said that he was getting hits on a really high percentage of his balls in play and there didn’t seem to be any skill-based explanation for why that might be, so it could well be luck?
Yeah. Just wanted to check in.
However, it’s worth examining this in an attempt to look at how big a swing that is. If Vidro got hits at his career rate, and his infield hit rate was a little more reasonable, here’s his line:
.286/.351/.355
How’s Vidro been hitting since then, in his 80-some PA since then?
.278/.349/.417, not including today’s 0-4 performance.
Yeah. Now, that’s obviously just good timing to take a sample – it goes up if you include the other two games of that Minnesota series, and then Chicago… but we still haven’t seen any good explanation for why Vidro was getting hits like a Taveras-type slap-and-dash hitter, despite having little footspeed (better than he started the season with, certainly) and it appears in the last month that yeah, maybe as depressing as that is, this is the Vidro signed for next year.
If you do have a great explanation for why Vidro should be able to get hits on balls in play at a rate far above anything warranted by his skills or speed, please, I’d love a reason to be optimistic. We’ll pair it up with “he’s wearing down late in the season and would have done better with more consistent rest” and put that up for the best-case scenario for next year’s preview.
That’s A Wrap
If you had told us in March that we’d still care about the outcome of Mariner games until September 5th and Ichiro would re-sign to a below market contract before the year ended, we’d have all taken that, I think.
2007 – a successful season that is now over.
Game 138, Mariners at Yankees
4:05 Seattle time, FSN. Washburn v Hughes.
M’s give us the standard+Broussard lineup.