The M’s in contention
You may have heard me rant about Pythagorean wins before (if not: I’m not a fan), and here’s how this relates to the M’s being in second place, ahead even of Oakland: all of things that are supposed to indicate a team’s true strength, like adjusted standings or run margins, they don’t matter to a team’s standing any more than a PECOTA forecast matters to a player’s performance. No one comes to the team and says “you’re -6 in RS-RA, so you have to give back three games”.
They’re useful to some degree in thinking about a team’s strength, of course. The BP Adjusted Standings have the AL West as
Athletics 14-14
Angels 14-16
Mariners 11-13
Rangers 11-18
using “third-order wins and losses”.
But the wins are on the board, and it doesn’t matter that the offense is erratic, and the rotation’s been crazy. All they need to do now is play better, and if they push the right buttons, that can happen (if Weaver’s not going to turn around, swapping him for Baek makes the RS/RA entirely irrelevant). The A’s seem hell-bent on having at least half their Opening Day 25-man on the DL, so their RS/RA to date isn’t particularly applicable either.
In first, Angels remain the team to beat (as, uh, we thought it would be before the season once we gave it some thought). And if things continue as they have, yeah, they’d finish about four games ahead at the end of the season. But that doesn’t mean they will, or they will.
Contend, dammit, contend!
That I knew it was coming made it no less painful
Game 24, Mariners at Yankees
Baek vs Igawa, 4:05 pm.
RH no outpitch command guy vs LH no oupitch no command guy. Bombs away!
Indians get smarter
The Cleveland Indians, the team I’ve often described as the best run franchise in baseball, today announced the hiring Keith Woolner away from Baseball Prospectus to manage their statistical research and analysis department. Keith’s a smart guy, and was always very helpful to me, so I’m happy for him. He’s joining a first rate organization.
What does this mean for Mariner fans? Maybe nothing… or perhaps, the Indians are simply preparing themselves for life after Chris Antonetti, who essentially built the department that Woolner will now oversee.
Some team will get to see Antonetti in ’08 become a reality. Here’s to hoping it’s the Mariners.
Game 23, Mariners at Red Sox
Ramirez vs Matsuzaka, 4:05 pm
Fearless prediction – Matsuzaka throws at least one breaking ball tonight that is harder than at least one of Horacio Ramirez’s fastballs. Also, J.J.’s unavailable today, so if the M’s head to the 9th with a lead, we’ll see Brandon Morrow get his first save opportunity.
Raise your hand if you expect to head to the 9th with a lead today, though. Yea.
What Doyle Stands For
So, yea, Billy Beane traded for Chris Snelling last night. Now, this shouldn’t be any huge surprise – Beane is constantly looking for opportunities to make his team better both now and in the future, and when he has a chance to acquire a guy he feels is undervalued, he jumps on it.
Last week, he traded two players to be named later for Chris Denorfia, despite the fact that Denorfia is out for the season. Why? Because Beane believes that Denorfia can help them next year as a fourth outfielder making next to nothing, and he saw a chance to improve the 2008 Oakland A’s.
Then, the next day, he essentially bought Ryan Langerhans from the Atlanta Braves. Langerhans was a good defensive outfielder who has a history of being a decent enough hitter, but was in a terrible slump, and again, Beane saw an opportunity to help the A’s by picking up a guy with useful skills for nothing of value.
Yesterday, he flipped Langerhans to the Nationals for Doyle, who is a classic Billy Beane player. So, essentially, in the span of a couple of days, Beane picked up Snelling for some cash. With the injuries the A’s have suffered, he’ll get some at-bats at DH while Piazza is out and join the outfield rotation down in Oakland. The fact that Beane likes Doyle should be obvious – he can hit, he draws walks, he plays hard, and he was free. Beane looked at the things he can do to help a team and saw a potentially valuable player that cost him nothing.
Injuries have indeed taken a toll of Chris Snelling, and he’s unlikely to have the all-star career we all hoped he would have as he was coming up through the system. We know this. At this point, he’s probably a nifty role player, a guy who can help a team but shouldn’t be counted on as the everyday answer for a contending team. But our Doyle love was never just only about Snelling as a player and a person, but about what he stood for, and still does.
The dual Snelling trades over the last six months are a perfect contrast of two organizations. The Mariners fail to understand market dynamics or get beyond batting average and strikeouts when evaluating a player and make a disgusting deal that limits the franchise’s ability to contend both now and in the future. The A’s exploit the market, identify a player who is more useful than his current organization believes, and pick up a potentially useful player for nothing.
Doyle isn’t going to make the difference between the A’s and Mariners winning the AL West this year, next year, or any year. It’s what Doyle stands for. The A’s are an organization of smart, baseball savvy people who are constantly looking for any small advantage they can get over their competition in an effort to win every single year. The Mariners are an organization that throws money at bad players because of their incompetency and get taken to the cleaners by people who are better at their jobs than they are.
Doyle represents the different states of the Mariners and the A’s. I only hope that someday soon, the M’s may employ people who can turn those dynamics upside down.
Doyle to the A’s
For Ryan Langerhans, word is.
HOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooly mackeral.
Attention Vidro fans, Doyle haters: this is not your thread. Seriously.
Game 22, White Sox at Mariners
Danks vs Batista, 12:35 pm.
If you haven’t heard yet, Felix’s scheduled start this weekend in NY has been postponed until next week. The M’s will throw Cha Seung Baek on Friday, Jeff Weaver on Saturday, and Jarrod Washburn on Sunday against the Yankees.
In other words, win today, because this weekend could be unbelievably ugly.
The Most Consistent Pitcher of All Time
Lest this thread turns into another “Dave hates the Mariners!” whinefest, let me get this out of the way – I’m glad we won, I’m glad we’re over .500, and I’m looking forward to today’s game. Go M’s.
Now, Jarrod Washburn’s three true outcome stats for each of the last three years:
2005: 2.6 BB/G, 4.9 K/G, 0.98 HR/G
2006: 2.6 BB/G, 4.9 K/G, 1.19 HR/G
2007: 2.6 BB/G, 4.9 K/G, 1.15 HR/G
His walkrate and strikeout rate this season are exactly the same as they were each of the last two years. That’s consistency of a ridiculous nature. Almost every pitcher has some year to year variation in their peripherals, but not Washburn – he’s cemented himself as the 2.6 BB, 4.9 strikeout, 1.1 HR guy. No regression analysis needed here. Of course, his ERA’s have bounced all over the place – 3.20, 4.67, and now 2.88. Why is that? Let me throw some more numbers at you.
2005: 81.8% LOB%, .289 BABIP
2006: 69.6% LOB%, .290 BABIP
2007: 78.9% LOB%, .208 BABIP
As we’ve discussed ad nasuem, Washburn threw up an unsustainable rate of stranding runners in 2005, leading to a superficially low ERA. He wasn’t getting hitters out any more than usual – he was just getting them out with guys on base. Some people called it clutch pitching – we called it an outlier, based on all kinds of historical evidence that there’s not some kind of clutch pitching gene that Washburn has, allowing him to pitch out of jams like he’s Johan Santana. Not surprisingly, his percentage of runners left on base tumbled last year, despite being the exact same guy he was in 2005, and his ERA went up. It turns out that we didn’t irrationally hate Jarrod Washburn – we just recognized that his success was built on a house of cards, and it was going to tumble.
So, now, I guess we get to have this same conversation all over again. Jarrod Washburn is still the exact same guy he was the last three years – seriously, look at those rate stats – but so far, in 2007, hitters are hitting the ball at his defenders and making outs. I shouldn’t have to tell you guys that a .208 batting average on balls in play is unsustainable. When he starts facing hitters who aren’t getting themselves out at every opportunity, his ERA will rise fairly significantly.
I wish Jarrod Washburn was having some kind of breakthrough season where he established himself as a quality #2 starter. He’s just not – he’s establishing himself as the most consistent pitcher of all time, and a walking example of why using ERA to evaluate pitchers is a bad idea.
So, when you read stuff like this quote:
“The big thing now is that he’s got command of all his pitches and he’s hitting his spots,” Hargrove said. “He’s been doing that in all his starts. He’s 2-2 now, and he could very well be 4-0.”
Remember that Mike Hargrove doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Jarrod Washburn is Jarrod Washburn – the outside influences that have a substantial effect on a pitcher’s ERA don’t change that.
Game 21, White Sox at Mariners
Vazquez vs Washburn, 7:05 pm. Two pitchers doing well so far go up against each other in a battle of… I don’t know. Something.
Did you know that Ted Williams pitched mop-up in 1940 for the Red Sox and recorded a strikeout — of eight time All-Star Rudy York? It’s true. This fun fact brought to you by not having the lineups yet.
Also, a couple of years ago, the White Sox won the World Series. They had a pretty balanced line-up and could hit the ball out of the park. That team doesn’t exist anymore, and this White Sox offense is terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible.
As a team, they’re hitting .225/.317/.379 while playing in one of the best offensive home parks in baseball. And that’s with Jim Thome (.340/.553/.680), who is now on the disabled list and won’t be playing against the M’s. Konerko and Dye have reverted back to their mediocre selves, while role players such as Crede, Erstad, and Pierzynski have just been downright horrible.
I fully expect to be reading all about Jarrod Washburn’s latest masterful performance in tomorrow morning’s papers. If he keeps facing Triple-A line-ups every start, he might just run away with the Cy Young award.