Game 41, Mariners at Devil Rays
4:10 FSN. Washburn v Kazmir.
M’s present:
CF-L Ichiro
DH-B Turbo
RF-R Manhole
1B-R Sexson
3B-R Beltre
C-R Johjima
SS-R Betancourt
2B-R Lopez
LF-R Ellison
The Devil Rays offer:
CF-R Dukes
2B-R Upton
LF-L Crawford
3B-R Wigginton (not “Wiggington” remember)
SS-R Harris
RF-R Young
1B-L Pena
C-B Navarro
DH-R Cantu
Time to play “Would you swap ’em?” Even if you think Upton’s an eventual DH, do you give up Lopez and try and fill second somehow? And then the outfield…
The long stretch of road
At 19-21, the Mariners at least have Felix back. But this schedule is just crazy.
May 22-24, 3 games at Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay’s 18-25.
May 25-27, 3 games in Kansas City. KC is 17-28
So there’s some time against weaker teams, hopefully the M’s at least keep pace with the Angels ahead of
May 28-30, 3 games in Anaheim.
May 31-June 3, 4 at home v Texas.
June 4-6, 3 more at home v Baltimore
And then June 7th they get off before another road trip featuring another stuffed-in Cleveland makeup game.
That’s pretty brutal, and when it’s done, over a third of the season will be complete. If the team’s still five games behind the Angels and we haven’t seen improvement from – well, you know the list – slogging through those remaining games will seem almost as unappealing as these long stretches without any off days.
Game 40, Mariners at Indians
Baek vs Sabathia, 4:05 pm.
The Indians are a good team and Sabathia’s a very good pitcher. But at least he’s left-handed, so there’s a good chance we’ll put some runs on the board. Except that Willie has been so awesome this year, he’s earned a second straight start in left field.
I’m sure Jason Ellison is thrilled.
Perhaps if we had two hands and a flashlight
Baker, over at his blog, shares the opinion of an unnamed clubhouse insider–the M’s are crummy because they don’t have enough jerks. No, really.
He told me that what the Mariners lack, to put it bluntly, is more jerks. He didn’t use the word “jerks” — more like a word that rhymes with manholes. Anyway, this insider also didn’t mean jerks like the kind who go around getting into bar fights, driving drunk and such. Just guys with a little more edge to them. Put simply, the Mariners “are too nice” is what he conclude
Wait a minute, now. Weren’t the Mariners so good in 2001 because they didn’t have any jerks? I realize Baker wasn’t here then, but still. This whole thing gets back to the argument that winning breeds so-called “good chemistry,” not the other way around. Well not quite that exact argument, but similar.
Win… Or Go Home
It’s May 21st. The season is seven weeks old, and the Mariners have only played 25% of their season schedule to date. There’s a lot of baseball left to be played. Or, as you’ll hear people say all around the country, its early.
In most cities, that’s true. Not in Seattle, though. The Mariners struggles over the weekend while the Angels surged ahead have put them squarely at a crossroads. At 19-20, the M’s stand five games behind the Angels, and while five games doesn’t sound like a lot, it is a big lead. It would be one thing if the Mariners were clearly the most talented team in the division or had a hall of fame pitcher building up arm strength in Double-A while waiting to join the rotation. But that’s not the Mariners – this is a flawed team with issues hitting right-handed pitching and no answers in the back of the rotation.
This team can’t afford to dig any kind of significant hole. They are teetering on the edge of putting themselves into a situation that they can’t get themselves out of.
Cool Standings gives the Mariners a 4% chance of making the playoffs. The BP playoff odds report is a little kinder, putting the mark at 11%. Either way, that’s a veritable longshot.
This Mariners team isn’t good enough to run down a better Angels team late in the year. This Mariner team needs to keep on the Angels heels the entire year. The M’s simply have to begin winning ballgames starting today. With back to back series with Tampa Bay and Kansas City after the one game interlude in Cleveland, the M’s have a chance to make up some ground before they travel to Anaheim. They need a 5-2 or 6-1 east coast swing before they come back west to face the Angels, because a 4-3 or 3-4 trip against some easy opponents is only going to serve to put the M’s down 6 or 7 games in the standings and give the Angels a chance to drive a nail into the coffin of the M’s playoff hopes.
It’s only May, but it’s not early. The M’s need to win, and they need to do it this week.
Felix and rehab
Baker makes an interesting point on the Times blog:
All I’ll say about Hernandez is that he looks like a guy who could have used a rehab assignment before stepping back in to face major league hitters.
Here’s the interesting thing: I totally agree, and I totally understand why they didn’t.
I made the point during the first start, but Felix’s return, where he didn’t look fine, and really, as Baker notes, like someone who would have been better off with a rehab assignment or two, picking up innings working more easily even if that meant finding him a start in AA or wherever.
But! Felix’s short, tentative, ill return was better than any Jeff Weaver start this year. If you’d had the choice, ahead of time, between Weaver and that Felix start, you’d take Felix’s. The team, illusory or not, was competing for the division lead, and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference to Felix’s recovery if he worked there, with instructions to limit his use of breaking pitches, or did the same thing in the minors.
Similarly, today: in an ideal world, he gets a second start in the minors to get even better, work on his stuff, and it’s clear that while he’s better than he was the last time he took the mound, he’s still not quite all there.
But his start today was better, really, than anything we’ve received from any non-Washburn starter in the rotation this year. That’s a sad comment on how bad the 3-4-5 guys have been, but it also makes it entirely understandable why the team’s better off having a shaky Felix up and working out his issues here than they are with Weaver taking his turns and waiting.
Game 39, Padres at Mariners
Germano v Hernandez. Oh yeah.
Sunday lineup of curiosity:
CF-L Ichiro
DH-B Turbo
RF-R Guillen
1B-L Broussard
3B-R Beltre
SS-R Betancourt
2B-R Lopez
C-R Burke
LF-R The Ignitor
It’s interesting, at least.
This just in
Today is Felix Day.
Game 38, Padres at Mariners
Greg Maddux, future Hall of Famer, versus Horacio Ramirez. While Maddux is certainly not the absolutely amazing pitcher he used to be, you have to wonder what he might do to carve up this SHOCKING MARINER LINEUP!!
CF-L Ichiro!
DH-B Turbo
RF-R Guillen
1B-L Broussard
3B-R Beltre
C-R Johjima
2B-R Lopez
SS-R Willie “The Ignitor” Bloomquist
LF-R Ellison
What did Hargrove say about lineup changes? That once you started making changes, it was a sign of desperation or something? I forget.
Vidro, steal maker
A math-filled exploration into how serious Vidro’s DP problem is. Stats drawn from ESPN’s splits, Fangraphs, and Baseball Prospectus.
Run Expectation (2006)
Runner on first, no outs: .93 runs
Runner on second, no outs: 1.15 runs
No runners on, two outs: .11 runs
32% of balls Vidro puts into play go for hits
49% of balls Vidro puts into play are grounders
Using what I can get out of ESPN’s splits:
He had 30 PA with someone on first
He had 13 PA with runners on first and second
He has 4 PA with runners on first and third
= 47 PA where GIDP was a possibility if there were zero or one out.
He came up with runners on with two out 20 times, and runners on 74 times. That’s 27% of the time (I thought it would be 33% too)
Of those 47 PA, ~13 should be with two outs, so he came up 34 times with a DP possible. He hit into a double play 7 times, so about 20% of the time he has the chance, he’s GIDPing. That doesn’t even count situations where the runner went on the pitch in order to try and stay out of the DP.
For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to use “runner on first, no outs” for the run calculations here.
Man on first, no outs, Vidro swings away
7.3% of the time, he walks (.93 runs expected –> 1.58 runs = + .63 runs)
25% of the time, he singles advancing the runner one base* (.93 runs expected –> 1.58 runs = + .63 runs)
7.2% of the time he strikes out (.93 runs expected –> .56 runs = -.37 runs)
20% of the time, GIDP (.93 runs expected –> .11 runs expected = -.82 runs)
41% of the time, he’s out without wiping the runner out by popping out, flying out, or hitting into a fielder’s choice (.93 runs expected –> .56 runs = -.37 runs)
*using his runners on split here, a .246 average, which is low
Average value of a Vidro PA with a runner on first: -.14 runs
Yaaahoooooooooo! Making some pro-Vidro changes: assume he hits .300, that his non-GIDP outs advance the runner, say, a third of the time, put the power in… I came out at -.1 run/PA with a runner on.
Every time Vidro is up with a runner on first and no outs, the most optimistic scenario I came up with is that he costs the team a tenth of a run.
Vidro is the team’s designated hitter.
The Sacrifice Strategy
Say there’s a runner on first, and Vidro lays down a bunt every time to advance the runner at the cost of an out, and he’s 100% successful at laying down that bunt.
Bunt moves the runner to second: .93 runs –> .74 runs = -.19 runs/PA
You could have a reasonably practiced pitcher pinch-hit for Vidro, lay down a sac bunt, and they’d only be a little worse than Vidro in hurting the team’s chances to score. Vidro is the team’s designated hitter.
All Stolen Base Variant
Ichiro’s career stolen base rate is 81% (244/303). Why not, if he’s on first, have him steal every time to remove the double play? Assume, for purposes of this calculation, that having every other team know that he’s going reduces his success rate substantially.
66% of the time, Ichiro reaches second (+.23 runs)
33% of the time, he’s thrown out (-.64 runs)
= you lose .04 runs/attempt
However… then it changes the whole Vidro at-bat:
Vidro up, Ichiro on second
(using the more pro-Vidro %s)
7.3% of the time, he walks (1.15 runs expected –> 1.58 runs runs = + .43 runs)
30% of the time, he singles advancing the runner one base (1.15 runs expected –> 1.81 runs = + .66 runs)
7.2% of the time he strikes out (1.15 runs expected –> .74 runs = -.41 runs)
20% of the time, out that advances the runner (1.15 runs expected –> .96 runs expected = -.19 runs)
36% of the time, he’s out without wiping the runner out by popping out, flying out, or hitting into a fielder’s choice (1.15 runs expected –> .74 runs = -.37 runs)
Every Vidro PA is now +.03, a swing of at least +.13 runs/ab just by removing the double play
No steal, Vidro’s at least -.1
Steal works, Vidro’s now +.03
Steal fails, Vidro’s PAs also become worth ~.04 (you can just take my word for it or work it out yourself)
The gap between having Ichiro successfully steal second to remove the double play is about the same run value as having Vidro bat normally and having a pitcher lay down a sacrifice bunt in the same situation.
Having Ichiro steal then carries a substantial value to the team above the value of moving 90 feet, by removing the possibility of the double play. So much so that it’s a good move to have Ichiro steal second even if his success rate will be significantly lower: sketching this out, it looks like it’s a good move to have him run all the way down to about 60% success, where normally you want a 75% success rate from your first-to-second stolen bases.
Consider that for a second: our designated hitter is so slow, so unproductive, that it makes sense for the team to pursue what would under normal circumstances be detrimental strategies because they are less harmful than having our designated hitter hit normally.
I sketched this all out a couple of hours, now that I look at the clock, and I still can’t believe that that’s right, and yet… there it is. If there’s a better way to approach the problem, I’d love to hear it. Or, as we say, patches welcome. For more, check out the Fangraphs play log for Vidro.