Game 37, Padres at Mariners
7:05. Chris Young v Miguel Batista. Mike Cameron returns to Safeco Field (yayyy!).
Standard lineup for the M’s. Padres field two Giles (Gileses?), and play Branyan at DH.
I wanted to say something about the Padres being our natural rivals, but we’ve made the point about how ridiculous it (and the way interleague play works) for years, and I don’t see much point in repeating it.
Gil Meche, Opening Day Starter
I’ve been tinkering with this post for a while now, as occasionally people have written in to chide us for not writing it, and I beg your pardon.
We know the deal, Meche’s long history of inconsistency and frustration. Here at USSM, we thought Meche’s deal in Kansas City was crazy, and said so a number of times. Right now, it looks like everyone who said he had “ace stuff” and potential were right, and we were wrong.
Gil Meche today is 3-1 in nine starts (woo! KC offense!) with a 1.91 ERA. In 61 1/3rd innings, he’s been stellar: 47 K, 16 walks, 6 HR — it’s crazy. He’s getting later into games, too: his average is about 6 2/3rds each start, which is not super, but he’s not getting regularly chased out in the fourth and fifth.
But he’s not striking out more batters, and his home run rate is about what it was. What’s the deal, then? There are a couple reasons he’s been a lot more effective so far. One is under his control, and the other — well, I’ll get there.
His walks are way down. The last three years of his Mariner career, Meche walked about 10% of the batters who came to the plate, and so far he’s only walking about 6.5% — and that’s a walk a game. His best years in this respect – 2003-04 – he was at about 8.5% (conveniently, about halfway between this year and his 2005-2006 average)(not that that means anything).
The other is that Meche so far has been dramatically better at getting ground balls than he ever has. He’s running a 56.4% ground ball percentage. In 2006, it was 43%, and that’s a little higher than his career average. That’s huge. His whole career, he’s been a slight fly ball pitcher (.83-.97 G/F from 1999-2005), then in 2006 he ticked up a little bit into groundballing (1.11 G/F in ESPN’s stats). He’s at 1.98 now. Of pitchers with at least 40 innings thrown, he’s #9 in G/F ratio (Webb is at an unreal 3.81)
And that raises the real question: is that for real? Can that possibly be for real?
I don’t think so, and for two reasons. One, I haven’t been able to find a historical precedent for that kind of change. We can talk about pitchers who sucked for a while and then got better, but someone with that many seasons getting that much better, and not just better but so different in results?
The other is that there’s no good explanation for why this would be so. The stories I could find on Meche point to improved mechanics, particularly being able to repeat them. I’m always skeptical of these stories (if it’s that easy, why didn’t it happen at any time in his Seattle stint?) but what’s more, their purported benefit is in better velocity, location, and consistency. Not a new pitch, not a new approach, nothing of the sort — and if he had better location and velocity, you’d expect to see more strikeouts, which we’re not, and fewer walks, which we are.
Unless you want to argue that better location also means he can pound down in the zone, but (and I entirely admit this is subjective) having seen him and looked at some of his pitch charts, I don’t see it. That said, I don’t have systematic information, like 20% are up in the zone where 40% used to be, or anything of the sort, so feel free to offer more information on this if you can find it.
The end result is I look at this and think “I’m willing to concede that between the change in organizations and coaches, Meche could have found something in his delivery that was fixable — but even dramatic results from that don’t explain apparently unprecedented magnitude of the turnaround, and the incredible change to being a ground ball machine.”
So I don’t think this is sustainable. Meche may be better than the Meche we saw, even significantly so, but there’s no explanation that fills the gap between the Meche we saw and the results Meche has seen so far.
Ibanez’s decline
Jeff Sullivan looks at Raul Ibanez’s disappearing power with an insightful piece that’s a must read.
Check it out.
The Inconsistent Offense
Watching the team hit this year has been pretty frustrating for most of the season. On some nights, they look tremendous, attacking mistakes over the heart of the plate and racking up runs left and right. On other nights, too frequently, they look like a collection of schoolyard hitters who get themselves out chasing pitches out of the zone. Most of the frustration has been aimed towards Richie Sexson, but he’s not the only one leading an assault on the most outs made leaderboard.
But there’s one issue that hasn’t been talked about that much, and it’s at the heart of the Mariners inconsistency – this line-up is way too right-handed. The standard Mariner line-up features three left-handed hitters: Ichiro, Vidro, and Ibanez. They now hit back-to-back-to-back in the 1/2/3 spots and are then followed by six consecutive RH batters.
Here’s the Mariners regulars and their 2007 OPS vs right-handed pitchers:
1. Ichiro, .827
2. Vidro, .714
3. Ibanez, .649
4. Sexson, .658
5. Guillen, .634
6. Beltre, .697
7. Johjima, .799
8. Betancourt, .607
9. Lopez, .695
Yikes. If you’re a right-handed pitcher that dominates RH batters but has troubles with LH hitters (like, say, Bartolo Colon and his .578 OPS vs RH batters and .888 OPS vs LH batters), the Mariner line-up is a proverbial wet dream. Yea, you have to deal with Ichiro to lead off the game, but then you’re staring at a worst-case-scenario of a single from Turbo before you face the slow bat of Raul Ibanez, which is finally followed by six straight RH batters.
How easy is it to pitch to the Mariners in late game situations? Almost every team has a RH reliever that turns even good RH hitters into likely outs, and the good teams have guys like Scot Shields (.461 OPS vs RH batters) who turn right-handed bats into kindling. The M’s are kind enough to stack their RH hitters together, making for the easiest bullpen decision on earth for opposing managers.
Not surprisingly, the M’s are hitting .257/.318/.388 against right-handed pitchers this year, but when their heavily RH line-up has the platoon advantage, they’re bludgeoning left-handed pitchers to the tune of .293/.332/.481. The problem? The M’s have only faced 8 LH starters this year, and they’re now 6-2 in games when the opponent throws a southpaw at them. But they’re 12-16 when the opponent throws a right-handed pitcher.
Of their own accord, guys like Adrian Beltre, Jose Guillen, and Jose Lopez are valuable players. But when you assemble a team, you have to pay attention to building complementary parts. The Mariners have assembled a line-up of replicas. They’re perfectly built to beat up on guys like Kei Igawa and Nate Robertson, but by refusing to build any kind of effective platoons or balance the line-up with some left-handed power, the team has punted their offense against right-handed pitchers.
And there are a lot more right-handed pitchers than southpaws floating around.
The M’s have a dilemma to face – if they’re serious about contending this year, they have to rebalance the line-up. Getting Ben Broussard in the line-up against righties more often is a start, but he’s not going to fix this problem by himself. There’s no easy answers and no obvious spots to put a newly acquired left-handed hitter, but the lack of answer doesn’t cause this from being any less of a problem.
If the M’s keep running out this line-up, they’re going to feast on left-handed pitching and struggle mightily against right-handed pitching. And that’s simply not how playoff teams are built.
Game 36, Angels at Mariners
Colon v Washburn! Good Washburn Good Washburn Good Washburn
Ichiro – Turbo – Guillen – Sexson – Broussard – Beltre – Johjima – Betancourt – Lopez
v
Willits – Cabrera – Guerrero – Matthews – Quinlan – Hillenbrand – Izturis – Molina – Aybar
I was going to note which Molina, but Molina about covers it.
Also, the PTBNL in the Jason Davis deal has been named – 18 year old RHP Gregorio Rosario. Don’t lose any sleep over it.
Simple answers to questions
Baker on Sexson, and whether they should have pinch-hit for Sexson:
They have to hope he emerges from his sub-.200 slump by June instead of July or August and that’s simply it. You can’t chuck him now and rebuild the plan because Broussard as a full-timer is not going to get it done. Disagree? Then why aren’t teams lining up boatloads of prospects to acquire the low-cost Broussard?
Broussard’s paid $3.5m+ this year, for one, and there’s no need to give up quality prospects to find a cheap, reasonably effective 1B. Part of it’s that the teams where there was a need this off-season and spring, where Sexson might have been traded, found solutions, so there aren’t competitive teams with holes at first or DH looking to make an upgrade anyway. But moreover, it’d be like trading good prospects for a crappy DH – it’s not a move smart teams make.
Game 35, Angels at Mariners
Criminally underrated John Lackey vs not-quite-as-underrated Cha Seung Baek, 7:05 pm.
M’s put Julio Mateo on the temporary inactive list for Tacoma, though he won’t report to the Triple-A club. Basically, he’s still suspended, just with pay.
Standard M’s line-up.
Ichiro Being Ichiro
Jon Saraceno does a piece on Ichiro in the USA Today. It’s mostly about whether he wants to come back to Seattle or not, and the quotes honestly aren’t that positive. But when it veers away from his contract situation, there’s some really funny stuff. Such as:
On performance-enhancing drugs: “When you take steroids, it’s not as if wings grow out of your back, and you start flying all over the place and stealing home runs (from hitters). The word ‘cheating’ doesn’t apply for me regarding steroids.”
Tiger Woods’ athleticism: “Tiger is a great golfer, but … when you say athlete, I think of Carl Lewis. When you talk about (golfers or race-car drivers), I don’t want to see them run. It’s the same if you were to meet a beautiful girl and go bowling. If she’s an ugly bowler, you are going to be disappointed.”
He’s right about not wanting to see Tiger Woods run. I’m not so sure I care if a beautiful girl can bowl or not, however.
I know how he feels
“I like to go out to pitch every five days,” he said. “When you’re on the DL, you do nothing. I was so bored.”
Us too, us too.
Mariner fandom lacks something when Felix isn’t throwing. HoRam getting shelled? That HoRam is starting means Felix is only a few short days away. Why, you could almost — wow, that ball was hit ridiculously hard — count the hours until — another walk? — we get to see a good pitcher take the mound again.
Upgrading WordPress
Should be pretty smooth here. Update: yup.