Game 67, Mets at Mariners
Glavine vs Meche as the M’s go for the sweep.
Boone benched
I hate to upstage the Game Thread, but this is quite noteworthy.
Boone was not in the lineup Saturday night against the Mets and manager Mike Hargrove said the veteran second baseman would not start during the final six games of the Mariners’ homestand.
It’s only a matter of time now. Does anyone think he’ll still be with the M’s after the AS break?
Game 66, Mets at Mariners
Franklin vs Pedro. Yea, that’s fair.
Meet the Mets
Living in New York now, I have a different perspective on the Mets and Yankees than I used to. Still hate the Yankees, of course, but I’ve sort of adopted the Mets for the time being (don’t worry, there’s no conflict at all this weekend).
A couple of things:
As a rule, fans hate Kaz Matsui. He certainly hasn’t been the middle infield version of Ichiro! as everyone hoped, and he’s more or less the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong with the Mets. He gets booed when he’s hitting at Shea and routinely looks awful at the plate. And what do you expect — he’s hitting .234/.284/.321 on the year and making $7M.
Matsui’s OBP is five points higher than that of Jose Reyes, who his leadoff. Yes, the Mets employ a .279 OBP in the #1 slot. Reyes has walked eight times in 287 at-bats this season and is hitting .258/.279/.383 — but the fans love him. Maybe it’s his defense at short, maybe it’s because he’s young and barely making above the minimum, but he appears to get a free pass while Matsui is ripped on a daily basis.
The fans have also been pretty hard on David Wright because he’s made 11 errors already at 3B. Frankly, if they get sick of him, any team in the league would take a 3B hitting .300/.400/.500 at the tender age of 22. Wright’s a stud, better than Hank Blalock and two years younger to boot. I’ll make the Beltre for Wright swap tomorrow, defense be damned, no questions asked.
Pedro goes today. I don’t know about you, but it’s still weird to see him in something other than a Boston uniform. Mets fans say the same thing. He’s been really, really good this year, nearly back to his early Boston days. I suppose it goes without saying that the M’s have their work cut out for them today.
Finally, I hope Mike Cameron is able to make an appearance this series — he’s in for quite an ovation, I’m sure.
Game 65, Mets at Mariners
You know the drill; sorry we’re late.
Lopez up, Dobbs down
Jose Lopez has been called up from Tacoma and is starting at third base tonight. Greg Dobbs was optioned back to Triple-A to make room for Lopez on the roster.
Realistically, with Boone almost out the door and certainly done, Lopez is probably the team’s best option at second base. Getting Dobbs off the roster is just a bonus.
Week #12 in Review
Vital Signs
On this Friday we find the Mariners 28-36. Still in third place. Slipping another game back of the Angels. The gap is now 8.5 games. According to Baseball Prospectus’ adjusted standings, the M’s are underperforming by about three games, which means the M’s really aren’t that far from being a .500 team at this point.
Not at all a good week on the run-scoring front. The offense is now solidly last in the league in scoring runs, with a walloping 265, which is roughly how many the Rangers score each homestand. The Mariners have hit 46 home runs, 13th in the league, and much closer to last place Oakland than next up Tampa Bay. Their 186 walks rank 6th in the league. However, to offer some perspective, they are closer to last place than 3rd place. As a team, they are hitting .254/.316/.384 compared to the league average of .265/.328/.417. They are 13th in the American League in OBP and 13th in SLG. Their .257 EqA ranks 23rd in all of baseball, tied with Arizona.
This is most definitely not a recipe for a successful club. The salty, lemon juice on the gaping wound? The 2004 Mariners scored 4.3 runs per game. The 2005 Mariners are scoring 4.1 runs per game.
The defense has allowed 286 runs, which makes them the 7th best team in the American League at keeping runs off the board. The gloves are turning 71.4% of balls in play into outs, which is the 2nd best rate in all of baseball. Overall, the pitching staff continues to trim some tenths off the ol’ ERA, cutting it down to 4.29. The starters again improved and are now hovering the league average mark at 4.79. The bullpen arms are still a strength with a 3.27 ERA.
I was really hoping for a win last night, for more than the obvious reasons. It would have been the Mariners’ first season sweep of the year, and coming on the heels of the Nationals’ sweep would have been a good angle. As it is, a 2-4 week just isn’t that interesting to talk about. The good news was the pitching had a 2.95 ERA. But to allow less than 3 runs a game and win only 2 of 6 is an embarrassment to the offense. The Mariners were unbelievably outscored 19-16 by the Nationals and Phillies, despite the fact that they out-homered their opponents 6-1. It does to help to have runners on board to score those runs. The Mariners surrendered more base-on-balls than they took 25-19.
Heroes
Michael Morse is still smoking hot. And I don’t mean that in a a junior high fangirl sense. He was 11-for-21 (.524/.560/.714), leading the team in hits (11), total bases (15) and RBI (4). Maybe that’s not saying much, but four starters logged an OPS under .600 for the week. Blech.
Maybe we should just credit the defense, because it’s the gloves that are making the pitchers look so amazing. Joel Pineiro pitched 13 innings in two starts and allowed just 3 earned runs on 13 hits and a walk. The red flag is–and this is where the defense comes in–he struck out only 2.
Not-so-much Heroes
Bret Boone just stinks right now. He had a week of 2-for-19 (.105/.227/.158). He struck out in a third of his at-bats.
The one breakdown of the pitching staff came Friday night when Shigetoshi Hasegawa completely melted down and added a pair of runs to his ERA in a mere 25 pitches. He entered a 3-3 game in the eighth inning. The next time the Mariners came to bat, they were staring at a 9-3 deficit. The only out he recorded was a sacrifice bunt. He non-intentionally walked a pair and allowed a trio of singles. To his credit, it was Matt Thornton who walked in a pair of those runs, but it was Shiggy’s inability to retire them that put them on base to begin with.
Coming to a stadium near you
This coming week the Mariners forego the day-off and play three with the New York Mets before playing host to the Oakland A’s in four. Just when you thought Pedro Martinez moving to the National League would automatically grant the Mariners an extra win in the standings, here they go playing the Mets in interleague. The Mets are 6 games back and last in the NL East despite playing .500 ball. As a friend of mine put it, “Take the AL All-Star squad, call them the Mets and they would be a .500 team.” They are 10th in the NL in runs scored and 7th in runs against.
There once was a day when a series between Oakland and Seattle meant something. It still means something. Just not something important. The A’s are 12th in the AL in runs scored and 9th in runs against.
Live Game Notes
While in attendance for all 12 innings of tonight’s ordeal, certain observations came to me in no particular order. Out of respect for baseball’s non-linearity, they are presented as such.
* Adrian Beltre’s hamstring must really be hurting if he wasn’t available to pinch-hit for Dave Hansen or Rene Rivera at any point in the game, especially that last inning.
* Umpire Michel Foucault did a fantastic job tonight in deconstructing the notion of a stable strike zone. Often, officiants reify the static rulebook norms into oppositional binaries of “balls” and “strikes” in a clear exercise of disciplinary power. Tonight, these totalizing expectations were dismantled in a singular 12-frame act of micro-political resistance.
Read more
Game 64, Phillies at Mariners
Brett Myers (2.24 ERA in 88 IP) and Joel Pineiro (6.20 ERA in 61 IP).
Myers 32.7 VORP is 6th among all major league starters, better than Johan Santana or Jake Peavy.
I won’t mention the “S” word, but bigger miracles have happened.
Success of Sele
In his last 6 starts, Aaron Sele has compiled the following line:
40 1/3 innings pitched
35 hits
2 home runs
10 walks
18 strikeouts
1.56 ERA
And here’s his outcomes as a percentage of batters faced:
Walks – 6 percent
Strikeouts – 11 percent
Home Runs – 1 percent
Ball In Play – 82 percent
That’s the epitome of pitcher using his defense. The strikeout rate isn’t good, but the walk and home run rates are low enough that it allows you to be successful in stretches. It’s the Jamie Moyer plan, essentially. And it can work, especially when you’re pitching in front of a good defense and have half your games in Safeco Field.
If Aaron Sele keeps pitching like he is now, we would expect him to post an ERA in the 3.75-4.25 range in the rest of his starts (his DIPS ERA for his last 6 starts is 3.83). The 1.56 ERA is a mirage based on a low number of balls in play going for hits and a home run supression rate that isn’t sustainable, but much like early season Julio Mateo, just because his ERA doesn’t match how he’s pitching, that doesn’t mean that he’s pitching poorly.
If you want an interesting comparison, here’s a look at the percentage numbers for 2001 Aaron Sele:
Walks – 6 percent
Strikeouts – 12 percent
Home Runs – 3 percent
Balls In Play – 79 percent
Pretty darn similar to what we’ve seen the last 6 starts, and Sele posted a 3.60 ERA in 2001.
Much like Ryan Franklin in 2003 and Jamie Moyer the past few years, Sele is succeeding because he’s leveraging his teammates strengths as much as humanly possible. But in the context of the Mariners defense and Safeco Field, it’s a great idea for pitchers who simply can’t get hitters out on their own anymore. Whether he can continue to throw strikes at this prolific rate is up for debate, and I’d lean towards “probably not”. However, the lousy strikeout rate, in this instance, isn’t a death blow.
If he can keep this up for another month, I’ll gladly admit we were wrong, that Sele was a nifty little investment, and I’ll take joy in analyzing the decent little prospect we’ll be able to get for him at the deadline.