Good news
Last nights game sucked. Lets just get that out of the way ahead of time.
That said, I wouldn’t worry about the offense. That was the third time this year John Lackey has shut us down, and in the previous two games following the beatdown, the M’s combined for 31 hits against Bartolo Colon and Jered Weaver. As we talked about last week, the M’s hyper-aggressive offense leads to high variability, and on any given night, against any pitcher, they can get either put up a goose egg or a 10 spot and it shouldn’t surprise us.
Also, much is being made this morning of Jose Lopez missing the tag on Gary Matthews at second base last night. Without making any excuses for Lopez (yes, a more aggressive tag would have helped), can we give Gary Matthews Jr some credit for making one of the best slides of the year? The pop-up slide isn’t exactly a routine fundamental that everyone can pull off, and that one was beautiful. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen a runner be able to pull off a pop-up slide that effectively to avoid the tag. Lopez could have made the whole thing moot by not waiting for Matthews to slide into his glove, but let’s be honest – 99.5% of the time, the runner does slide right into the glove, and no one says a word to Lopez about his tag.
This actually is becoming something of a bigger issue. The club has, over the years, been quite happy to let the media and fans know how unhappy they have been with Lopez’s work ethic, his conditioning, and his lack of concentration. It has essentially become part of the narrative. A couple of recent high profile mistakes in the field are now feeding into the already established belief (and one that has foundations in truth) that Lopez can hurt you at times with his faux pas. However, the problem arises when people begin to incorrectly value the actual cost of these mistakes.
For all the frustration you may have for Lopez missing the tag last night, he was still a plus with his glove on the night. His double play in the first inning was a thing of beauty, one of the toughest DPs you’ll ever see a second baseman have to turn. Thanks to improved footwork and somewhat above average range, Lopez is actually a defensive asset. This gets lost in all the “oh my god I can’t believe he didn’t get the tag down” hoopla. Yes, he made a mistake, but taking the stance that those are the kinds of plays that a team “can’t tolerate in a playoff run” is just missing the forest from the trees. If you take Jose Lopez out of the line-up, you’re actually degrading the defense. And this isn’t a defense that can afford to get any worse.
Game 129, Angels at Mariners
Lackey, who is awesome, against Batista, who is Batista.
M’s lineup is standard. Angels:
DH Willits (.400 OBP)
SS Cabrera (.349 OBP)
RF Guerrero (.399 OBP)
LF Anderson (.306 OBP)
3B Izturis (.333 OBP)
CF Matthews (328 OBP)
1B Morales (.305 OBP in ~60 PA)
2B Kendrick (.338 OBP)
C Mathis (.257 OBP)
Dave notes: Angels #9 hitters are hitting .231/.284/.298 this year. Can you imagine if we blogged the Angels? Holy moly.
If you wished McLaren was more creative, well, sometimes that’s not good. Wow.
I’m going to continue to frown at my stupid USB Flash drive until game time in the hopes it stops crapping out on me weirdly, so… play nice while I’m furrowing my brow.
Happy Big Series Day
Welcome to the start of playoff baseball. If the M’s are serious about playing in October, then we’ll need to see some good performances the next three days. For the Mariners, now two games behind the Angels, to give themselves a legitimate chance at winning this division, they can’t afford to give up ground. They need to close the gap, not widen it.
This is the most important three game homestand Safeco has seen in years. Here’s to hoping for a packed house and some big hits tonight.
Game 128, Mariners at Rangers
5:35, Washburn v Padilla.
BEN BROUSSARD IS ALIVE AND PLAYING FIRST!!!!
And Burke catches.
The Rangers lineup moves Saltalamacchia behind the plate and Wilkerson plays first.
Yankees lost to Detroit, Boston beat the White Sox, Cleveland beat KC
Responsibility for the loss
A quick thought that ties back into Mariners of the past: Ramirez threw 5.2 innings last night, got two strikeouts, walked three, so there were fifteen balls put into play, and one went over a fence. Despite Beltre’s error, the defense did a decent enough job turning those balls in play into outs. The M’s put twelve balls into play against Wright and seven of them went for hits.
The general baseline for a starting pitcher over five innings is about six hits, two walks, four strikeouts, and most of a home run (for 9 IP, you figure ~9H, ~4BB, 6K, 1 HR).
Ramirez didn’t have a good outing. He certainly wasn’t masterful. He was better than much of what we’ve seen of him, but this was not a magically fixed Ramirez, restored to the glory the M’s thought they’d acquired in the offseason. That sounds meaner than I meant it. And, the way the game played out, the M’s win if Beltre doesn’t make two throwing errors.
And yet we can’t assign blame to Beltre for the loss, for two reasons:
That Beltre making a play would have ended the inning should not relieve Ramirez of responsibility for giving up a three-run home run to Kinsler. I know this sounds obvious, but Beltre didn’t throw that pitch. The seventh, obviously, a little harder to make that argument, since the error went so far as to set up Kinsler at third for the sac bunt.
The distinction between earned and unearned runs is artificial and here, makes Ramirez look like a saint – he’d have thrown a shutout if it wasn’t for those errors, right?
Second,if you pitch to contact, you’re going to lose games like this. This is the Ryan Franklin live-and-die-by-the-sword problem: if you pitch to contact, trying to keep from walking guys, and your stuff isn’t swing-and-miss good, then you’re taking the chance that all those balls that are put into play will be turned into outs by the guys behind you. If it works, you put up some wicked lines and look like you’re dominating the competition, and if it doesn’t – either because the other offense puts the ball into play really hard or because the defense doesn’t come through – you get smacked around a little.
That’s what we got last night. So yeah, Beltre looks like a goat for a day because two of his rare errors came on the same night and were the difference. But we don’t get to pick and choose when those things happen (“Hey Beltre, we’re up by 10 — plunk the Moose on your next throw to first! Plunk him! Do it!”).
Pitching to contact’s a gamble, and when the M’s run a good defensive alignment out there, it’s a pretty good one. It didn’t work out last night. I don’t think we need to flog Beltre for it.
Yours sincerely,
Chief Beltre Defender Derek
“Since 2005”
Game 127, Mariners at Rangers
Horacio Ramirez vs Jamey Wright. HOOOO BOY. 5:35 our time.
Interesting lineup:
CF-R Jones
DH-B Vidro
RF-R Guillen
LF-L Ibanez
3B-R Beltre
1B-R Sexson
C-R Johjima
2B-R Lopez
SS-R Bloomquist
On the other side, we get a AAA-worthy lineup, with Saltalamacchia at first.
Re-visiting playoff odds
A while back, I wrote up a short post on how the path to the playoffs for the M’s likely ran through the AL West, as the wild card competition was so stiff. Since then, the M’s have reeled off a set of huge wins, their rivals have slowed up a little, and suddenly this looks much different: they’re 3 games ahead of the Yankees in the wild card race, five ahead of Detroit. And they’re only one back of the Angels, making the AL West pennant a much easier task.
Which, as they say, is why they play the games.
The really good news as that the space between the M’s and the Yankees provides a huge cushion, much larger at this stage of the season than it might seem. Say you think the M’s, for all their success, are only a .500 team, and the Yankees much better (Yankees fans certainly seem to think this).
If the M’s go 18-18 in all their remaining games (including make ups), they’ll finish out at 91-71 (!). That means the Yankees need to go 20-14 to tie, which is extremely hard, even with the games against the Devil Rays in there. Unless the M’s go into a severe slump, they’ll force the Yankees to play extremely well to have a chance at this.
BP’s playoff odds put the M’s chances of getting into the playoffs right now at 59%, about equally split between winning the AL West and getting the wild card berth. I can’t remember when the M’s chances to get into the post-season looked this good. That’s great news.
Game 126, Mariners at Rangers
Felix Day! 5:35 our time, FSN. Felix faces once-greatly-desired free agent pitcher Kevin Millwood!
Over at the PI, John Marshall names his top picks of this year’s baseball books. I’m of course disappointed The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball isn’t on there (No love for the local? Really?), though it does look like they’re almost all hardbacks, and particularly — and there’s really no way to say this, having a book in competition, but I thought Shaughnessy’s book was just baaaaad, so it doubly hurts. Feel free to twist knives in the comments if you’re so inclined – it might distract from today’s standard lineup.
Brett Tomko
Not convinced that Horacio Ramirez should still be in the rotation (yea, me either) and still looking for potentially useful replacements? Well, we’ve got another one.
The Dodgers designated Brett Tomko for assignment this afternoon. He’s been a disappointment this year, running a 5.80 ERA while splitting time between the rotation and the bullpen. He’s never lived up to his reputation coming through the minors, but in recent years, he’d been a serviceable pitcher, including running a 4.73 ERA last year, 4.48 the year before, and 4.04 back in 2004.
Has he just declined to the point where he’s no longer useful? Let’s take a look.
2004: 7.7% BB, 13.1% K, 42% GB, 11% HR/Fly, 69.4% LOB%, .305 BABIP, 4.78 xFIP
2005: 7.0% BB, 13.9% K, 40% GB, 11% HR/Fly, 70.5% LOB%, .322 BABIP, 4.65 xFIP
2006: 5.9% BB, 15.5% K, 38% GB, 11% HR/Fly, 67.2% LOB%, .298 BABIP, 5.03 xFIP
2007: 8.8% BB, 16.6% K, 41% GB, 11% HR/Fly, 62.1% LOB%, .338 BABIP, 4.68 xFIP
Pretty consistent, eh? Walks are up a little bit this year, but so are the strikeouts, and the downward trend in his GB% has reversed, indicating that his stuff isn’t sliding into uselessness. He’s not giving up any more home runs than usual either, so he hasn’t turned into a guy who is just throwing meatballs down the heart of the plate.
So why the high ERA? A lot of balls in play turning into hits and an inability to strand guys once they’re on base. Guess what – those aren’t nearly the repeatable skills that the walk, strikeout, and groundball rates are, and they paint a totally different picture than ERA does. His skillset hasn’t changed much at all – just the results have, and if you’ve read the blog for any length of time, you know that skillsets predict future performance far better than past results, especially in things like batting average on balls in play and stranding runners.
Basically, Brett Tomko’s 5.80 ERA is the exact opposite of Jarrod Washburn’s 3.20 ERA back in 2005. Stranding runners wasn’t a repeatable skill then and it’s not one now. There’s no reason to believe that Tomko will continue stranding just 62% of his baserunners going forward, and when you adjust your expectations for a normal strand rate, Tomko profiles out as a perfectly adequate 5th starter.
In fact, I could put together a rather compelling case that Tomko is a very similar pitcher to Miguel Batista, and projections for their performance the rest of the season should be nearly identical.
Would you pick up a Miguel Batista clone to replace Horacio Ramirez if he was made available for nothing? Yea, me too. Horacio Ramirez has never been as good as Brett Tomko is right now, and this is yet another possible move the M’s could make to strengthen their team for the stretch run.
Bring back Brett Tomko.
Weekly Self-Promotional Post
Yep, my least favorite post of the week is back, reminding you that I’ll be on KJR in about 15 minutes (2:20 pm) to talk Mariners baseball with Groz. I’m just not so good at this self promotion thing.