M’s on World Baseball Classic rosters
Larry Stone’s got a complete rundown o’er at the Times. 21 players on 10 provisional rosters — but none on the U.S. team.
The M’s still have that “grievance” against Felix pitching for Venezuela and Blackley for Australia (Blackley coming back from injury).
Bloomquist gets two years
And not in baseball limbo for being terrible but a two-year contract to play for the team.
While we don’t know how much it’s for… if it’s close to $1m/per, it’s a bad deal. If it’s about $500,000, it’s excusable.
We’ve written a ton about Bloomquist here, but the short version is that he’s a decent bench guy: he can swipe a base, play a lot of defensive positions without killing you anywhere, and he’s not utterly hopeless with the bat. There’s utility in that. He seems like a good enough guy (though of course, you don’t really know) and there seems to be a lot of fans who like him.
I mostly agree with Bavasi, who said:
Bloomquist gives us a lot of versatility coming off the bench or from a starting role. He helps us in a variety of roles, including the ability to steal a base and play almost any position on the field.
He’s a starter? He hasn’t been good when he’s had a chance to start. He hasn’t been good against advanced competition for any sustained period in his career. At this age, we’ve seen what he’s capable of and it’s not much. His defense at any position isn’t good, which means that playing him regularly hurts the team badly.
In the grand scheme of Marinerdom, it’s not such a big deal (unless they gave way more money than is realistic).
Fun Bloomquist fact: with Willy and his scrappy, infectious play, the M’s are 225-261 (.463). During the long, lost-in-the-desert pre-Willy period, they went 1,860-2,065 (.474).
Was Franklin mostly good? No.
O’er at the Hardball Times, there’s an article that takes a look at Pat Gillick’s contention that Ryan Franklin’s actually a good pitcher who just had some bad outings (no and yes, he certainly had bad outings).
It’s interesting to see what happens when you subtract those “couple bad starts” from pitcher lines. I do disagree with where he starts to go when trying for an explanation, but as it’s admittedly not a serious study, there’s no need to get worked up over it.
And I love putting “general baseball” as the tag on a Ryan Franklin-related post.
Dave Fleming
The Rise and Fall of Dave Fleming
A look at a historical Mariner figure using modern tools
Dave Fleming had the lowest ERA of any Mariner starter in 1992, when at the tender age of 22, he went 17-10. He was a big left-hander drafted in the third round of the 1990 draft from the University of Georgia. At Georgia, he’d been an All-American and helped his team win a national championship. In 1989, Fleming went 13-3 with a 2.08 ERA. While he’d debuted in 1991, he only pitched in nine games, so it’s reasonable to count that stellar 92 as his rookie season. His most notable trait for me was that he’d throw a crazy slow looping curve I loved watching (Livan Hernandez will try this sometimes, and it still cracks me up) that would produce funny reactions from batters (“Did he really just throw that?”). I was a big fan.
His success in 1992 didn’t come out of nowhere, either. In Baseball America’s Top 10 prospect list for 1991 had him as the fifth-best prospect in the Mariner system (#6? Bret Boone) and for 1992, he was #6 (#5? Bret Boone) in a year where he was behind Roger Salkeld, Shawn Estes, and Mike Hampton in a pitching-deep year.
|
Year |
Team |
Level |
IP |
H |
BB |
K |
K/BB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1990 |
San Bernardino |
A |
79.2 |
64 |
30 |
77 |
2.3 |
|
1991 |
Jacksonville |
AA |
140 |
129 |
25 |
109 |
4.4 |
|
|
Calgary |
AAA |
16 |
11 |
3 |
16 |
5.3 |
|
|
Seattle |
|
17.2 |
19 |
3 |
16 |
|
|
Minor league total |
|
|
235 |
204 |
58 |
202 |
3.5 |
That’s pretty sweet, though it doesn’t give us a huge sample size. Players who put up a 4.4 K:BB ratio over a season at any level are good.
Fleming’s major league career then takes a strange course after that first year. The next year he was only average, then then quickly got much, much worse. He was traded from the 1995 Mariners to the Royals (for Bob Milacki). He pitched in nine more games and then was out of baseball by 26. Five seasons.
| Year | IP | H | HR | BB | K | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1992 |
228.3 |
225 |
13 |
60 |
112 |
3.39 |
|
1993 |
167.3 |
189 |
15 |
67 |
75 |
4.36 |
|
1994 |
117 |
152 |
17 |
65 |
64 |
6.46 |
|
1995 |
80 |
84 |
19 |
63 |
40 |
5.96 |
Or, another way:
| Year | BFP | H/BFP | HR/BFP | BB/BFP | K/BFP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990-1* | 1044 | .214 | .058 | .209 | |
| 1992 | 946 | .237 | .014 | .063 | .118 |
| 1993 | 737 | .256 | .020 | .091 | .102 |
| 1994 | 561 | .271 | .030 | .116 | .114 |
| 1995 | 374 | .225 | .051 | .168 | .107 |
* estimated composite, based on
available minor league information
What ended Fleming’s career? In 1995, the Mariners thought that something was wrong with Fleming’s mechanics, though Fleming felt there was something wrong with his arm (or so Fleming said later). He was traded to the Royals, they found a rotator cuff tear. Surgery ended his season and career: he attempted to come back first with other teams and later, independent teams (accounts differ on what happened post-surgery, and what teams he played with when. This is likely editing for highlights more than actual confusion, but worth noting).
Looking back, it’s not hard to see that he was injured in 1995. But it’s interesting how neatly the deterioration is, and how it gets worse each year. He walked more and more batters, and they hit home runs off him with ever-increasing frequency. Even when his strikeout rate returned to what it had been in 1994, there was little else left in his game. But the surgery was described as a “small tear” and general looseness: would a developing tear, over years, account for his ever-growing performance problems? Even if you chop those minor league rates severely, it’s obvious in particular that his control went downhill quickly, which would seem to be a red flag for injury issues.
We can’t know. We don’t even know how little the small tear was, or how the surgery went and what they did. Given that Fleming was a college pitcher from a team that won a national championship overuse is an obvious suspect: the Mariners managed to get the last two good years out of his shoulder and then that was that.
But it’s more complicated: Dave Fleming was badly overused that first season. He finished 15th in Pitcher Abuse Points (using the latest refined version). His average start went over a hundred pitches, which by itself isn’t cause for alarm, but he and threw 140 pitches in one start. His breakdown for the year:
100 or less: 11 starts
101-109 pitches: 5 starts
110-121 pitches: 9 starts (this is where we start getting into the harmful)
122-132 pitches: 6 starts
133 pitches or more: 5 starts
Bill Plummer rode Fleming extremely hard that year on his way to a 34-98 finish (and a well-deserved firing). Fleming threw six complete games, some of them for no real reason. He finished a two-hitter against the Indians with a 6-0 lead, which I can understand, but his next start, he then threw a complete game against the Orioles.
This gives us a much more complete picture – Fleming pitched a ton for his college team, and while we don’t have pitch counts, it’s reasonable to assume that Georgia in the late 80s worked him pretty hard, as did almost every college program. He went into the M’s system, and his first full year on the roster he’s effective and also whipped all season long. After this, he was never quite the same and sinking fast. Three years later, shoulder surgery ended his career.
We can’t know how Fleming would have done if colleges had been more enlightened, or if the Mariners had babied their 22-year-old stud. But I can’t help but look at those years and wonder whether 1995 might have played out differently if there’d been another quality starter in that rotation from the start of the season. And I wonder too, when I was at those games in 1992 and cheering for Fleming to finish his shutout (he had four, still tying Randy for the franchise record) was I seeing a great talent, wasted pointlessly?
Update below the break Read more
Mariners fandom, as seen through poststructuralism
Third in a series of highfaluting articles that came out of discussions about how to cope with being a Mariner fan. You can blame Jeff for encouraging this kind of content.
We are not fans, and being fans is not part of us. “Fan” is a socially and culturally-defined role that we fill at certain times. During these times, we are different people, with different values, desires, dislikes, all the way to different social systems.
We may act as fans in ways that we would not act “normally” (which is to say, occupying other roles). We may have fan-friends who we don’t associate with outside of those times when we occupy the fan role. Encountering those people unexpectedly creates tension and unease unless we give in and return temporarily to our fan role, and act in a manner appropriate to that role.
Read more
Mariners fandom, as seen through logical positivism
Second in a series of high-faluting articles that came out of discussions about how to cope with being a Mariner fan. You can blame Jeff for encouraging this kind of content.
True fandom is grounded not in the unquestioning belief in a team and the infallibility of everything it does. The meaning of our fandom is built on
verifiable facts, stacked one on top of another. Each fact must be verifiable, and so the fan must be both scientific and suspicious. Emotional ties are neither true or false, but meaningless.
Read more
Batted Ball Stuff, and More Felix Worship
If you’ve been reading the blog for long, you know that I often express my love for two things; batted ball statistics and Felix Hernandez. It’s been awhile, so let’s do some catching up.
Studes has two articles, one a week old and one current, that are just full of awesome information using graphs of batted ball data. You really should read both articles, but in case you’re in the mood for a summary:
He shows that there’s a direct correlation between batter strikeouts and the value of their fly balls, displaying the trade off hitters must make when deciding what type of swing to employ.
He also relates this to pitching, showing that strikeout pitchers generally give up weaker fly balls than contact pitchers, thus having the overall effect of lessening the value of the outfield flies against them. Groundball pitchers are just the opposite though; usually, when they give up a flyball, it’s a mistake, so the run value of their outfield flies allowed is higher than the average.
There’s also stuff in there on relief pitchers and batting average on balls in play and a really neat new chart of displaying a pitcher’s performance. With a little bit of goading on my part, he put up this chart for King Felix, and it’s a perfect segue into more love for Felix.
Look at that chart. 67 percent of all batted balls against Felix in the majors last year were grounders. If someone got bat on ball, there was a 2 in 3 chance that it was a worm burner. The major league average is just 44 percent. In fact, if you look at outcomes as a percentage of batted balls, Felix is off the charts on all three of the main categories. He gave up outfield flies on just 17 percent of batted balls, compared to 31 percent for the league average. His LD% was 14 percent compared to a 21 percent league average.
I heart King Felix.
Mariners fandom, as seen through Materialism
First in a series of high-faluting articles that came out of discussions about how to cope with being a Mariner fan. You can blame Jeff for encouraging this kind of content.
Fans without a team are in a state of anarchy, almost unbeing, restless and chaotic, a life almost not worth living. It is natural then that these fans seek out teams that they can follow and believe in, even in places where their favorite sport is not popular. Otherwise, they may fall into cheering at silly, trivial things, like the changing colors of traffic lights, or racing clouds. Read more
Baseball Between The Numbers
Friend of USSM and general man-about-town Jonah Keri has a new article at Baseball Prospectus about their new book, Baseball Between The Numbers. Jonah uses Bruce Sutter’s election to the Hall of Fame as an opportunity to talk about some of the chapters within.
You’ve heard us talk about the new volume before, at and immediately after the BP/USSM event a while back. Now, you can pre-order the darn thing.
It’s too bad we don’t have a post category for “commercialism,” because I’m going to use this same time-hook to plug the book again. If half of Jonah’s excitement about the project is justified, then I’m sure I’ll enjoy it twice as much as anything I’ve read lately, non-Okinawa category.
Here’s a summary excerpt:
Baseball Between the Numbers covers 29 seminal baseball debates that will get both casual fans and hard-core statheads whipped into a frenzy. The book includes the chapter “Are Teams Letting Their Closers Go to Waste?”, which tackles the very topic that sparked huge differences of opinion in SutterGate. Following in the tradition of John Thorn and Pete Palmer’s “The Hidden Game of Baseball,” the work of Bill James and other influential thinkers, Baseball Between the Numbers brings new analytical tools to bear, with BP’s unique writing style adding a twist.
That ‘graph’s not my favorite bit from Jonah’s article, though. That would be this:
If you’re a member of the media and would like to request an advance copy of the book, please e-mail Jonah Keri by clicking here.
Ah, the fringe benefits of being a world famous baseball blogger/freelance writer/whatever. Jonah, just dial 1-900-2-JEFFY and I’ll give you the address.
Between The Numbers has jumped in sales over the past few hours, and so has Baseball Prospectus 2006, which is offered as a package with the forthcoming title. You can be the first kid at your school, house, basement or block party to have read it.
Unless you invite me to your block party. Which you should.
Attention Travelers to Asia
As Ichiro gets focused to play in the World Baseball Classic, those of us who occasionally fly east might turn our thoughts to scheduling.
If you’re going to Japan anyway at some point next year, let’s say, why wouldn’t you plan on being there March 3-5? That’s when Ichiro and his Japanese squad play in the first round of the tournament. South Korea, China and Taiwan will also play games in the other T-dome, the one not in Tacoma.
The story I link, from the Mainichi Shimbun, is pretty standard fluff about how Ichiro is excited to play in the classic, will aim to win, and then will prepare for the regular season. But the thought of watching the inaugural WBC in Tokyo is pretty exciting.