The Attrition War, Devil Rays
Part of a continuing series, follow-ups to the initial post detailing the Mariners history over the same period. For the Devil Rays and Diamondbacks, the comparison period is limited to years the club existed (and also by Baseball America’s listings).
Do the Mariners, in comparison to other teams, suffer a higher rate of injury to their pitching prospects than other teams? Here, I look at the Devil Rays.
Franchise Players
I’ve been working a lot lately, so perhaps I just feel the need to have a little harmless fun. So, I’m stealing a page from every roadtrip I think I’ve ever been on, and bringing up the totally pointless but still entertaining topic of franchise players. You know you’ve talked about this with your friends before or heard it on sports radio or on ESPN: If you were starting a franchise tomorrow, who would you take?
Well, I’m going to take that a step further. If I was starting a franchise tomorrow and given first pick of each player at a given position, this is how it would go. I’ve slotted players into roles that I feel their talent level matches, so no Josh Beckett as my fifth starter type picks. I’m giving myself a $100 million salary cap, by the way.
Catcher: Joe Mauer – perhaps the easiest call on the whole team.
First Base: Albert Pujols – okay, this might have been even easier.
Second Base: Rickie Weeks – just got called up from Triple-A. He’s going to be a star.
Shorstop: Alex Rodriguez – when a guy is this good, you’ll take his decline phase.
Third Base: David Wright – he’s Scott Rolen without the bad back.
Left Field: Delmon Young – tearing the cover off the baseball in Double-A as a teenager.
Center Field: Carlos Beltran – he didn’t have much competition, though I don’t love his contract.
Right Field: Miguel Cabrera – Perhaps the most talented player of the whole bunch.
Reserve Catcher: Humberto Quintero – you haven’t seen a kid play defense like this since Pudge.
Reserve Corner Infielder: Kevin Youkilis – the Greek God of Great Bench Players.
Reserve Middle Infielder: Alex Cintron – Solid glove, good stick, not good enough to complain.
Fourth Outfielder: Ryan Church – one of the more unheralded players in the game.
Fifth Outfielder: Jason Michaels – lefty masher, underrated centerfielder.
Utility Player: Bill Hall – mostly an infielder, but has the arm and athleticism to learn outfield.
Number One Starter: Roy Halladay – Closest thing we have to mid-90s Greg Maddux.
Number Two Starter: Mark Buehrle – Most underrated pitcher in the game.
Number Three Starter: Brandon Webb – Extreme groundballer finding control again.
Number Four Starter: Dan Haren – average stuff, good command, and an innings eater.
Number Five Starter: Brad Halsey – the very poor man’s Mark Buehrle.
Closer: Brad Lidge – I’m not sure how long he’ll be healthy, but I want that arm in my bullpen.
Righty Setup: Huston Street – Can go several innings and get big strikeouts when needed.
Lefty Setup: B.J. Ryan – Best lefty reliever in the game. And its not really close.
Middle Relief: Chris Ray – you haven’t heard of him yet, but he’s going to be ridiculous.
Long Relief: Julio Mateo – basically perfect for the role.
Spot Starter: Matt Belisle – swing guy who can work in relief or in the rotation.
The ’05 payroll would be in the $85 million range. Once I had to give raises and extensions to a few of the soon to be arbitration eligible types, I’d be getting near the $100 million cap.
So, there you go. For each of the 25 spots on on a roster, those are my “franchise guys”, the ones I’d take if given a choice among anyone in the game at their respective role.
What’s Wrong With Ichiro
For the first time since May 12, 2004, Ichiro’s batting average is under .300. He’s 7 for 42 in June, following up a poor May, and we haven’t seen Ichiro! be Ichiro! in nearly six weeks. With the offense struggling, all eyes go to the team’s best hitter. And, of course, theories abound, and everyone seems to keep asking the same question. What’s wrong with Ichiro?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Since 2002, these are Ichiro’s batting averages by month:
.316/.404/.353/.321/.282/.248/.243/.389/.386/.342/.242/.273/.255/.400/.274/.432/.463/.373/.356/.288/.167
Not including this month, Ichiro has had eight months in which he hit less than .300. That’s 40 percent of the months played. It should be expected that, in any given year, Ichiro has at least two months where he hits .300 or below.
Look at those variances above. From .243 to .389. .342 to .242. .255 to .400 to .274 to .432. Ichiro is what he is; consistently inconsistent.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this. In his major league career, 81 percent of his hits have been singles. That’s an astounding figure. The league average in 2004 was 66 percent. Only a few guys in baseball rely on the single as much as Ichiro. Luis Castillo, the biggest singler in the game, sees the same type of huge monthly swings in his average.
Singles, are, by nature, the least reliable type of hit. The difference between an infield single and a 6-3 putout is usually a tenth of a second. A ball finding a hole might get under the fielders glove by less than an inch. Have a run of balls that just don’t quite find the hole and all of the sudden, your singles are outs and you’re hitting .250. Extra base knocks, however, are almost always hits, and a player who drives the ball will be far less suceptible to the swings of random variation.
Every time Ichiro goes through a prolonged slump like this, new theories arise. Remember when the Yankees had figured out how to pitch him down and in? As human beings, we like answers, so we try to figure out what Ichiro is doing differently, what he’s doing wrong, what he needs to fix. We don’t like that the answer is random variation. It’s not a satisfying conclusion, and it doesn’t make us seem like minds who understand the game. Random variation is very real, though, and while it may not be a sexy explanation, it is the correct one.
Ichiro is going to have months where he hits .270. He’s also going to have months where he hits .450. He’s a player of extremes, probably the most valuable in the game when he’s going well and replacement level when he’s not. You live with months like May because you know a month like August of 2004 is coming. With Ichiro, you take the good with the bad, because in the end, it’s an extremely valuable package.
Getting to competitive
The Mariners are 9.5 games behind the Angels right now. If the Angels slack off and play .500 baseball from now until the end of the year, they’ll finish at 86-76. If the Mariners take a much larger step up to play .500 ball, they’ll finish at 76-86. The Rangers playing .500 gets them to 84-78.
The Mariners, to meet a stumbling Angels, would need to win 60% of their games for the rest of their season. That’d be a tremendous turnaround, and let’s be frank — even if we call Felix up and he’s the best pitcher on the staff, even if they find out Beltre’s been replaced by an evil robot and the real Beltre is freed from captivity (where he was able to keep his skills up and so on), and Ichiro goes back to being Ichiro! there isn’t a .600 team in this Mariners squad, struggling to get out.
There’s nothing that says the Mariners can’t or won’t make up a ten-game margin over a hundred games. But the odds are stacked so far against the team being competitive this year that it’s reasonable to give up on that.
Moves intended to make the team more competitive this year, at any cost to the next good Mariner team, should be avoided. I understand they’re probably feeling enormous pressure to scrape for the break-even mark any way they can, but I’d be much happier knowing the front office was looking to build a good team in the long-term than knowing my late-season tickets might keep the gap on the division leaders under ten games.
Game 61, Mariners at Nationals
The most painful part of last night’s postgame show was Mike Blowers trying to to defend the decision to send up Greg Dobbs to pinch-hit in the seventh inning when a fly ball would have tied the game.
As you might expect, his first argument was the tired canard that “this is a hard job, to sit around for a while and then have to hit without getting warm.” (Strangely, some players appear to be able to do this better than other players. I wonder why that is?)
Bizarrely, he followed that up with a “maybe Grover was saving his better pinch-hitters for the eighth or ninth inning, for when you really need to get a run home.” I swear I am not making that up.
It would be cheating to include a pitcher in the following comparison, so I’ll just present the following lines:
.152 .171 .212
.145 .174 .236
One player is the Mariners’ first pinch-hitter off the bench. The other was sent to the minor leagues for his wretched hitting. You guessed it, you’re looking at Greg Dobbs and Miguel Olivo.
Consider the depressing lessons, if any, in today’s game thread. Ryan Franklin (2-7, 4.77 ERA) versus Junior Armas (2-3, 4.91 ERA). TV: FSN. Radio: Komo.
Marlon Anderson
Do yourself a favor and catch some sort of sports recap show tonight — Marlon Anderson of the Mets just hit a pinch-hit, inside-the-park homer off Francisco Rodriguez in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game at two, ending in a collision at home. I think he might need stitches. The whole thing is fun to watch, including the part where he blows a bubble with his gum while rounding second base (you might not see this depending on the angle). I kid you not.
Game 60, Mariners at Nationals
LHP Jamie Moyer v RHP John Patterson. 4:05, KSTW-11.
Looks like Ibanez in left and Winn in center again. I’d have looked at a NL road trip as a chance to give all three LF/CFers (Ibanez, Winn, and Reed) some time off, but that’s me.
Game 59, Mariners at Nationals
Joel Pineiro vs. Sun-Woo “Sunny” Kim, 4:05pm, FSN and KOMO.
Kim’s making his first start of the year, taking the place of Tomo Ohka who was just traded to the Brewers for 2B Junior Spivey. The surprising Nationals (34-26, 1st in the NL East) needed Spivey to fill in for longtime 2B Jose Vidro, who’s expected out with an ankle injury until at least the All Star break.
Washington’s smoking hot, having won seven straight and nine of ten to take a 1.5 game lead in the division. The M’s, meanwhile, have won eight of eleven. But I don’t need to tell you that when these two clubs get together, you can throw out the record books. They flat DO NOT like each other.
Jeff Clement pic
Below the “more” tag. Thanks to Jon Wells from the Grand Salami.
Week #11 in Review
Bring on the interleague craziness!
It took the Mariners the entire month of May to win two series. Not only have they won their first two series in June, they’ve now won four in a row.
Vital Signs
On this Friday we find the Mariners 26-32, sitting firmly in third place. They still find themselves in third place in the AL West, and gained a game on the division-leading Angels, who now sit 7.5 games over the M’s. The adjusted standings over at Baseball Prospectus suggest the Mariners are a little less than a game unlucky. Lady luck is finally beginning to shine her face on the M’s as they have now won 8 of their last 11, including a record of 6-1 in games decided by just one run in those games.
The offense is tied with the Royals for 11th in the league, scoring 249 runs, comparable also to the Tigers and A’s. Their 40 home runs rank 13th in the league and their 167 walks tie them for 7th, square between divison leaders Chicago and Baltimore. Meanwhile, their .316 on-base percentage ranks 11th and their .383 slugging percentage ranks 13th. As a team, they are hitting .254/.316/.383 compared to the American League average of .260/.330/.414. While the Mariners are getting their hits at about the league average (thank you, Mr. Ichiro!), their ability to draw walks and hit for power are still lagging far behind the rest of the league. Their .258 EqA ranks 23rd in all of baseball.
The defense has allowed 267 runs, which makes them the 8th best team in the American League at keeping runs off the board. The gloves are turning 71.3% of balls in play into outs, which is the 4th best rate in the American League. Overall, the pitching staff is looking league average, with a staff ERA of 4.43. The starters continue to slowly shave the runs of their ERA, trimming it down to a 5.09 ERA, while the bullpen continues to be solid with a 3.12 ERA.
May we please continue with opponents with aquatic mascots? The Mariners took 4 of 6 from the Devil Rays and Marlins, despite outscoring them just 29-25. While they hit just 3 home runs all week (thank you, Mr. Ibanez), the pitching staff allowed just a pair of long balls. And, they were out-walked 22-15. For the week, they hit .271/.332/.386.
Good contact. Bad contact over the fence.
Heroes
Raul Ibanez continues his hot hitting, going 9-for-23 (.391/.417/.696) with a double and a pair of home runs. He led the team in total bases (16) and RBI (6). If there’s any word of caution in regards to Ibanez, its that his recent hot streak is mostly batting average-driven. He has just 5 walks over the last two weeks.
And congratulations goes out to Mike Morse, for not only collecting his first major league hit, but a perfect 7. He went 7-for-18 (.389/.450/.500).
Aaron Sele made a pair of starts and allowed just 15 batters the courtesy of first base in 12+ innings. While he walked only 1 in those starts en route to a total of 4 runs, he struck out only 5. I’ll take those wins while I can get ’em, but I ain’t pinning my future hopes to it.
Not-so-much Heroes
From too-hot-to-handle to too-cold-to-hold, Jeremy Reed went just 1-for-14 (.071/.071/.143), the only consolation being his one hit was a double.
Gil Meche walked 5 Marlins in 5 innings in a 5-4 loss Wednesday night. It was his roughest outing since the end of April. He allowed 4 runs.
Coming to a stadium near you
As a former resident of both Snohomish County and Fairfax County, this is the matchup I’ve been waiting for. Nationals vs. Mariners. And I’m still lamenting that the year I move from the DC area, not only does the District get a team, but also the Mariners play in RFK.
The streaking Nats have won 7 straight and sit atop the NL East, despite a run differential of -3. I saw Washington play in Cincinnati two weeks ago, and this is a team that struggles as mightily as the Mariners to score runs. They’re 13th in their league in scoring. It’s the pitching that’s carrying the Nationals, but the Mariners will miss out on staff ace and workhorse Livan Hernandez. Instead, they’ll see Tomo Ohka (54 IP, 11.1 VORP), John Patterson (53 IP, 17.8 VORP) and Tony Armas (37 IP, 3.2 VORP).
You thought the Mariners had troubles with the bottom third of their lineup. The Nats are getting an OPS of .623, .641 and .493 from the bottom third of their order (understandably, that is a pitcher at #9).
And just for kicks, consider this: Livan Hernandez is hitting .206/.229/.324 in 34 at bats. All Mariner pinch hitters are “hitting” .237/.256/.316 in 38 at bats. The Nationals’ pitching staff has 2 home runs. The Mariners’ bench has 0.
Next, the Mariners will host the similarly streaking Philadelphia Phillies. They Phils have won 7 of their last 8 series, including 13 of their last 15 games. Their offense is second only to the Cardinals in the National League, despite Jim Thome only hitting .205/.365/.333.
Last week, the Mariners caught the Devil Rays, and let’s face it, they’re still the Devil Rays, and the Marlins, who are struggling as of late. This next week will show a truer test of what the Mariners are or are not capable of doing on the field.