Mariners Holding Their Own Against Top Teams
| MARINERS (6-8) | ΔMs | TIGERS (7-5) | EDGE | |
| HITTING (wOBA*) | -3.7 (20th) | 2.3 | 16.5 (3rd) | Tigers |
| FIELDING (RBBIP) | 2.5 (12th) | 0.4 | 1.5 (16th) | Mariners |
| ROTATION (xRA) | 1.3 (13th) | 2.0 | 5.7 (6th) | Tigers |
| BULLPEN (xRA) | -0.6 (18th) | 0.9 | -0.6 (17th) | — |
| OVERALL (RAA) | -0.5 (16th) | 5.6 | 23.1 (3rd) | TIGERS |
The Mariners split their four-game sets with Oakland and Texas but have dropped to Chicago and Houston. Because, baseball.
Still, the news of the day will not be the forthcoming bullpen move to replace Stephen Pryor, but that the Mariners have finally done what many of us long suspected and started building a partnership group for a regional sports network.
Few actual details are available, but I’m doubting that it makes the Mariners worse off in terms of revenue. As with other recent deals, this one is a doozy in length, lasting until 2030, so both parties had to feel comfortable with growth projections to lock in together for that length.
The Next Nine Days
I’m going to make two statements about the team that are both true, even though they might seem contradictory:
1. It is too early to make any rash judgments about the quality of the team based on the first 11 games of the season.
2. The Mariners might be in trouble.
A 4-7 start isn’t the end of the world. Losing a series to the Astros doesn’t prove that the team is terrible. Michael Saunders getting injured isn’t a death blow for the franchise.
However, things are going wrong for the Mariners at the wrong time. Saunders is definitely out for the next few weeks, and Michael Morse is out for at least a few days, maybe longer. The Mariners are going to spend the next few days starting both Jason Bay and Raul Ibanez, and they’re not going to have anything resembling a real bench.
And their next nine games are against the two best teams — in my view, anyway — in the American League, and Felix is only going to start one of those nine games. This could get ugly.
The Tigers and Rangers are good teams. Let’s just say, for sake of argument, that they’re both .575 clubs, which translates to about 93 wins per full season. And maybe you were optimistic about the Mariners heading into the season, and you thought they were a .500 team. Now, though, you’re taking away Saunders and replacing him with Endy Chavez, and you’re taking away Morse and replacing him with no one. If you think those guys are both average players — it would be hard to think the Mariners were a .500 team and that both of those guys were below average — than taking them off the roster would push the team down to a .475 club, or somewhere in that range. The fact that they’re playing short-handed since Morse isn’t going on the DL is another bump down, so maybe the roster until he returns is more like a .470 club, since they have no flexibility and can’t play the match-ups with this roster.
Now, take into account that the .470 projection includes Felix throwing about 16% of the team’s innings. Over the next nine games, he’s probably going to throw about 8% of the team’s innings, so you have to move the needle down even more. With Aaron Harang or Blake Beavan filling the space, now you’re closer to a .450 club.
What are the expected outcomes when a .450 club plays nine games against a .575 club? You don’t just take the winning percentages for each team, since those are against a broad spectrum of clubs. Good teams beat bad teams more than the average, so we can use a mathematical tool called log5 to estimate the outcomes of that kind of match-up. And log5 says a that a .575 club would beat a .450 club 62.3% of the time, which rounds out to a 3-6 expected record over the next week and a half. In other words, if these estimates held, the Mariners would go to Houston on April 22nd with a 7-13 record in their first 20 games.
Baseball is a weird game. Maybe the Rangers fall on their face and the M’s take the next three and this all looks moot by Monday. We just saw the Astros pound the Mariners, and the Mariners are almost certainly a better team than the Astros. Maybe this nine game stretch won’t turn out so bad.
But, it’s not ridiculous to suggest that the Mariners could easily go 1-8 or 2-7 during this stretch either. This is a rough part of the schedule, and the Mariners are bringing a rubber knife to a gun fight. Attendance is already setting record lows, and frustration is starting to build with the fan base once again. The Mariners spent a lot of time during the spring selling hope, based mostly on the import of a few guys who could hit home runs and meaningless spring training numbers. That hope is taking a beating right now, and given what’s coming up in the next 10 days, it might get extinguished completely.
It is early, but sometimes, the story of the season is written early on. For a team with a veteran roster full of guys on one year contracts, the Mariners don’t have six months to let things get sorted out. The Mariners need to start putting some wins on the board, but now they’re going to have to get those wins with the end of the roster going up against the likes of Yu Darvish and Justin Verlander. Good luck.
That Old Time Feeling Returns
| MARINERS (4-6) | ΔMs | RANGERS (6-3) | EDGE | |
| HITTING (wOBA*) | -6.0 (23rd) | -1.2 | -2.2 (20th) | Rangers |
| FIELDING (RBBIP) | 2.1 (13th) | -10.1 | 6.8 (3rd) | Rangers |
| ROTATION (xRA) | -0.7 (17th) | 0 | 9.5 (1st) | Rangers |
| BULLPEN (xRA) | -1.5 (22nd) | 1.0 | 0.4 (15th) | Rangers |
| OVERALL (RAA) | -6.1 (20th) | -10.4 | 14.4 (4th) | RANGERS |
Well that was an unpleasant series. Both for those of us at home and for the very few that sought out attending in person. After not selling out the home opener, the Mariners saw consecutive record low numbers of visitors on Tuesday and Wednesday. The performances on those days probably didn’t do much to convince those that did attend to consider it time well spent. Not only were the games lopsided, but they also dragged on to nearly four hours each.
And now we have some fallout from it as Kameron Loe goes away and Aaron Harang enters, probably displacing someone out of the rotation, I’m assuming Blake Beavan. The implosion on Tuesday made the Mariners wary about who was going to handle innings, but that’s not the only way the roster was exposed during the series. A serious lack of bench depth and proper pinch hitting options manifested itself and now they have Michael Saunders’ injury to contend with and the possibility of some truly horrendous outfield defense arrangements.
Speaking of the bullpen, it appears not so stellar thus far, but there are some encouraging fundamentals lurking under the surface level stats. Despite only an average-ish walk rate as a unit, the Mariners’ pen has been throwing pitches in the strike zone at the second highest clip in baseball. And unlike the team that’s best at that, the Rockies, the Mariners’ pen doesn’t also suffer from the league’s highest contact rate. In fact, the Mariners are league average there. So as far as throwing strikes and missing bats, the pen seems fine.
What they have been struggling with is when contact is made, it’s been rock hard. Hitters are getting lots of fly balls and lots of those fly balls have been pulled. They’ll need to improve on that a lot or else Kameron Loe won’t be the only home run-induced casualty.
Questions for a New Minor League Season
Marc posted his own minor league introduction last week while I was busily filling out paperwork that had nothing to do with baseball, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I can’t also post something of my own that I will actively tell myself won’t go on for too long, but then will totally go on for way too long, you guys. Editor’s note: oh it went on all right
Here are some narratives that I’m looking at in the upcoming minor league season, translated as three questions for each team. Some of the questions are related to the development of actual prospects, but some are just things of general minor league interest. I’ve tried throughout to avoid certain things like “If Zunino wants to continue catching then he should improve on the things that the catching job entails”-type analyses, but in some cases it seemed pertinent to address some specifics. I write a lot, but prefer not to be wasteful, or to fail at being somewhat thorough. Here come nearly five thousand words written mostly yesterday.
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Meet The Astros
The Seattle Mariners have played the Houston Astros before. They met three times in 2002, they met three times in 2004, and they met three times in 2007. You might remember that 2007 series for the Astros pounding out a dozen hits off Felix in six innings. Or you might remember that, in that same game, Willie Bloomquist knocked an inside-the-park dinger. In the next game, the Mariners got throttled. In the next game, the Mariners got throttled. Those days weren’t kind, but those days are past, and now for the first time, the Mariners will meet the Astros as members of the same league, and of the same division. Let’s all familiarize ourselves with the new enemy, as the Mariners will play a new team in a new home ballpark.
The thing to know about the Astros is that they really suck. Two years ago, they lost 106 games. Last year, they lost 107 games, and a lot of people think they’re going to lose even more in 2013. I don’t know if they’re actually worse than the Marlins, but at least the Marlins have Giancarlo Stanton. The Astros have Jose Altuve, and Jose Altuve isn’t even that good. He’s Astros-good, in the way that last year Michael Saunders was Mariners-good. A competitive team would take Altuve, but he’s hardly be a cornerstone.
The Astros suck-diddly-uck. Bud Norris doesn’t suck, but he’s going to get traded if he’s worth half a damn. The Astros are starting Ronny Cedeno, who the Cardinals cut at the end of spring training so they could give the full-time shortstop job to Pete Kozma. In fact, as someone pointed out to me the other day, the Astros have a roster full of guys you might not have known were still playing major-league baseball. Cedeno is one of them. Phil Humber is another, and he’s starting tonight. There’s Erik Bedard, and Rick Ankiel, and Carlos Pena, and Jose Veras. The Astros’ roster is part random driftwood, part replacement-level nothing, and part potentially useful role players. It looks not unlike the sort of roster you could put together from end-of-spring-training cuts and free agents. Such a roster would blow.
It’s way too early in the season to take statistics seriously. I mean, the Astros have played just six games. But over those six games, they’ve posted a .308 BABIP. Not bad. They’ve also hit .199/.234/.286, with 4% walks and 36% strikeouts. For his career, as a hitter, Mark Prior hit .201/.231/.265, with 3% walks and 35% strikeouts. When J.J. Putz was amazing in 2006, he allowed a line of .207/.245/.284 with 4% walks and 34% strikeouts. The Astros, at present, are an experiment, but they’re not an experiment that’s meant to serve any real purpose — the next good Astros team will feature virtually none of this Astros team. It’s an experiment because the Astros couldn’t not run an experiment. They had to do something with the grant money. But no one’s going to learn anything from the results and the experiment the Astros actually care about is still in development.
See, the Astros are obviously rebuilding, and what the front office inherited is kind of like what Jack Zduriencik inherited, without the Felix Hernandez part. They inherited little talent and a ridiculous ballpark, and now it’s about making the best of things. What the Astros have done is assemble a decent farm system, and it’s still improving. Young talent will arrive, and young talent will continue to be brought in. There aren’t really pieces on the major-league roster the Astros could unload in a blockbuster, not anymore, but the priority is on youth and they’ll get their hands on some. They’ve already gotten their hands on some, and Carlos Correa is a good one. Jonathan Singleton is a good one. For the Astros, at least there are some things to look forward to.
And it’s important to consider the Astros’ future, since even the Astros would probably prefer not to address the Astros’ present. In the present, the Astros are a team to beat up on. A team that ought to lift the entire rest of the American League West. A team that’s going to make you wonder if one of your pitchers has turned a corner, since he just racked up a bunch of strikeouts. The Astros are going to make it critically important to always bear in mind the quality of opposition. Joe Saunders might strike out seven dudes tonight. Don’t pay it any mind. Astros.
But, with the Astros, I sense that they’re going to be the next Internet bandwagon. They’re starting from absolutely nothing, which makes them inoffensive, and they’ve already poached a lot of Internet analytical talent. They have a guy in the front office whose job title is Director of Decision Sciences. You probably recognize the names Mike Fast and Kevin Goldstein, and the Astros aren’t done hiring intellect. The Astros are putting together a sharp team of minds, and the Internet loves baseball teams that get creative and forward-thinking with analysis. For a time it seemed like the Mariners were one of those teams. A lot of us fell in love with the Rays some years back, and before that we fell in love with the Indians.
What that doesn’t guarantee is success on the Astros’ part. Turns out every team in baseball is pretty smart, and the Astros are unlikely to have a massive advantage over anyone else. The Internet will be biased because it will have lost some people it liked to the organization, but there are so many brilliant baseball minds out there, most of whom you’ve never heard of, and never will hear of. When the Astros start showing some promise, they’ll get a lot of support, a lot of positive articles written about them, and while that will be by no means unfair or unwarranted, it’s important to consider the hivemind aspect. As people get swept up in the Astros, more people will get swept up in the Astros without really thinking about it, and then that runs of the risk of the Astros becoming greatly overrated.
But they are headed in the right direction, seems like. From what I know, from where I sit, I’d rather have the Astros’ people in charge of a team than the Mariners’ people. At least, if the Astros fail, they’ll fail having tried new, innovative things. They’ll need to try new, innovative things to climb out from their present-day hole.
And it’s a deep hole. Such a deep hole. The 2013 Astros are awful, and the Mariners should slaughter them, even though the Mariners aren’t that great. This is the worst team the Mariners have been able to play against in years. But if the Mariners do manage to beat up on the Astros in the short-term, savor it. Appreciate it. Because it might not be long before the Astros’ course intersects with the Mariners’ course, and then there won’t be any more gimmes. Teams this bad don’t come around every day. But the Astros’ organizational focus isn’t on this team.
Game 5, Mariners at White Sox
Blake Beavan vs. Jose Quintana, 5:10pm
One of the big questions coming into the season was: how bad will the M’s outfield defense hurt the pitching staff? Jason Bay was a comically bad defender (by UZR) in his Pittsburgh days, and that was when he was 7-8 years younger. The last image we had of Mike Morse in an M’s uniform before he was shipped to Washington was of the newly-minted OF getting turned around by a pop fly and tearing some knee ligaments. Now, those two guys, both past 30, would patrol LF fairly regularly.
In fact, I don’t think it’s going to be *too* much of a problem, though let’s be clear: no one’s winning a gold glove here.* One reason is that the M’s probably won’t yield anywhere near as many fly balls as they did last year. The M’s posted the 27th highest GB% in baseball last year, about a percentage point higher than last-place Oakland – the M’s had only one true GB-guy as a starter in Hisashi Iwakuma, but he didn’t take a turn in the rotation until the season was half over. This year, Iwakuma figures to pitch more, and Jason Vargas has been replaced by Joe Saunders, whose career GB% is about 10 percentage points higher. But the biggest change could come in the 5th spot. 2012 Blake Beavan (like 2011 Blake Beavan) was an extreme fly-ball pitcher. After a mechanical adjustment and a new, higher arm slot, Beavan got a flurry of ground balls in the spring. Will it carry over? If it does – if his GB% looks more like the league average and less like Chris Young’s – then the M’s corner OF may have less to do this year.**
The other reason I don’t think it’s going to be too much of a problem is that the M’s OF defense wasn’t actually all that good last year. Not only did the M’s see their CFs post oddly poor numbers, the M’s had to suffer through a depressed Chone Figgins logging several hundred innings in LF/CF. Now, while this “2012 versus 2013” comparison can’t actually tell us if the M’s OF defense is good, bad or indifferent compared to the *league* average, it does show that we may not see the kind of drop-off that many of us expected. Sure, there could be a drop off here or there, particularly in RF, where the M’s won’t get a half-year of Ichiro, but this could be balanced by some standard regression toward the mean from Saunders/Guti in CF. I’d still really like the ground-ballier version of Beavan, though. Better safe than sorry, and better to have Brendan Ryan field the ball in play than anyone.
Jose Quintana’s a left-handed starter who seems unremarkable in just about every way. His FB’s 91. He throws a cutter and a curve; neither is terribly noteworthy. He doesn’t get a ton of strikeouts, and he doesn’t have Beavanesque walk rates. Even his W/L record last year was 6-6. I suppose we could talk about how he posted excellent results after his call-up in May, but faded badly down the stretch? He did those things. Uh, ok, moving on – He’s somewhat interesting in that he was pitching with the Yankees Dominican Summer League team at age 20 (already having been cut by the Mets a few years prior), and didn’t actually reach the US affiliates until he turned 20. He posted solid but unremarkable numbers as a reliever, and got cut. The Yankees moved him to the rotation, and he had a great season in the Florida State League, and so they cut him again. The next year, 2012, he began in AA and ended up making 22 good-ish big league starts. That’s something, right? Overcoming adversity, never giving up, laughing at the Yankees player development system? Not every game is Felix versus Chris Sale or something.
Have a line-up:
1: Gutierrez, CF
2: Saunders, RF
3: Morales, 1B
4: Morse, DH
5: Montero, C
6: Seager, 3B
7: Bay, LF
8: Ackley, 2B
9: Ryan, SS
SP: Beavan
* Not Gutierrez, you ask? No. He’s been hurt several times, passed 30 years old, and may not play enough to stick in the minds of voters. The playing time consideration may have been a factor in JJ Hardy beating out Brendan Ryan last year. I don’t think Guti’s anywhere near bad (you hear me, UZR? You take your 2012 math and shove it.), but he’s not the defender he was in 2009.
** There’s a school of thought that says that as total chances go up (if there are a lot more FBs), then those chances will tend to be easier. That is, if you’ve got pitchers that no how to induce contact at particular launch angles, you’ll get more easy flies and fewer liners and long HRs, because if pitchers consistently gave up contact like that, they’d never be in the majors. UZR actually accounts for this to avoid OFs with a lot of chances posting amazing UZR numbers. Still, there’s a possibility this impacted, say, Josh Reddick’s eye-popping defensive numbers. No such luck for the M’s, though, as Guti/Saunders combined to lose 17 runs, according to UZR. This has been a Blake Beavan game write-up that’s only obliquely about Blake Beavan.
The Mariners Kick off a Series in Chicago
| MARINERS (2-2) | WHITE SOX (2-1) | EDGE | |
| HITTING (wOBA*) | 0.7 (14th) | -2.8 (20th) | Mariners |
| FIELDING (RBBIP) | 3.0 (7th) | 1.0 (9th) | Mariners |
| ROTATION (xRA) | 2.0 (4th) | 1.8 (5th) | Mariners |
| BULLPEN (xRA) | -1.0 (24th) | 0.7 (11th) | White Sox |
| OVERALL (RAA) | 4.6 (11th) | 0.8 (15th) | MARINERS |
Hello there, you may not be familiar with my series preview breakdowns. I did these, in evolving formats, for years at Lookout Landing and I hope to continue doing them here. I’ll do so even if only for my own benefit since the above and below charts are informative for me and I like to get the periodic checks on how the composite units of the Mariners are doing.
Since this may be new to you, I’ll run through what each row means. Hitting is judged on each team’s park-adjusted wOBA to date. I’m using the wOBA from my site, StatCorner.com, so that answers any questions on why it might be slightly different than FanGraphs.com or whatever your preferred site shows.
xRA is laid out in a really long post here, but the simple take is that it’s xFIP meets tRA. That is, it’s xFIP plus batted ball types and whether or not the batted balls were pulled or hit the other way.
| MARINERS | WHITE SOX | EDGE | |
|---|---|---|---|
| INFIELD | 3.4 (2nd) | 5.3 (1st) | White Sox |
| OUTFIELD | -0.4 (15th) | -4.3 (26th) | Mariners |
| RBBIP | 0.245 (8th) | 0.263 (10th) | Mariners |
| OVERALL | 3.0 (7th) | 1.0 (9th) | MARINERS |
Fielding is judged by looking at how often each team allows a ball in play to result in a runner on base via either a hit or error. There’s more explanation available, but the 10,000-foot view is to take all the balls in play, adjust them for the park (yes, it has an effect), and then for each type (e.g. grounder, liner), figure out how often they should turn into outs and the cost (in run value) of not turning them into an out. Then add it all up. It can’t be used to judge individual defenders, but I’m not convinced of any metrics’ worth at doing that anyways.
Above, I split the fielding into infield and outfield units based on who I judge is responsible for fielding each batted ball type. Unremarkably, the Mariners are already showing a divergence between their infield defenders and their outfielders.
05 APR 17:10 – JOSE QUINTANA* vs BLAKE BEAVAN
I used to include what I thought were pretty cool illustrated and interactive charts here for each starting pitcher. Alas, they rely on external javascript to build and WordPress is so so lame. If anyone has experience in this manner, please get in touch with me. I’m going to continue working toward some presentation solution, but for now, here are the dates, times and starting pitchers!
06 APR 10:10 – DYLAN AXELROD vs FELIX HERNANDEZ
07 APR 11:10 – CHRIS SALE* vs HISASHI IWAKUMA
You Are Going To Like Michael Morse
The Mariners, at this writing, have played four games of the 2013 regular season, and they’ve gone more or less as expected. Felix pitched well, Iwakuma pitched well, Saunders and Maurer pitched less well, and the offense mashed some dingers. Thursday afternoon, the M’s dropped to 2-2 after starting out 2-0, but there’s little shame in splitting a road series against the defending division champs. Now then, this isn’t actually about the Mariners, but rather one particular Mariner, a new one and also an old one. I work for FanGraphs, and I love it, and FanGraphs has live-updating leaderboards. Which means their leaderboards have already taken into account Thursday’s action. I’m looking at the leaderboards, and what I’m seeing is that Michael Morse has already topped his 2010 WAR, and his 2012 WAR. Michael Morse has played four games.
Granted, the present WAR doesn’t yet include UZR, because it hasn’t even been a week, but because it hasn’t even been a week UZR isn’t going to say anything. And granted, in 2010 Morse wasn’t that valuable, and in 2012 he wasn’t that valuable either, at least by this measure. But Morse has made one hell of an impression, standing with a league-leading four dingers. The Mariners acquired Morse because they liked the idea of having his power, and it took one series for Morse to demonstrate all of which he is capable.
Because we’re Mariners fans on the more analytical part of the internet, precious few of us loved the trade that sent John Jaso away. Many of us loved John Jaso, and his position and his team control, and Morse is a one-year guy with dingers and only more dingers. But in fairness, when that deal went down, we knew only what it was like to watch a good John Jaso. We didn’t know what it was like to watch a good Michael Morse, and we’ve been given a glimpse in the season’s first week. We weren’t perfectly objective at the time and we’re not perfectly objective now, but safe to say Morse is going to win himself fans.
Morse will forever be associated with the trade, at least until or unless something else happens, but that’s not his fault, so that shouldn’t be used as a reason not to like him. If you absolutely hated the trade, that’s a mark against the front office. It’s not a mark against the guy the front office acquired, since he had nothing to do with the negotiations. Morse should be allowed to make his own impression, and he’s got a lot of the elements necessary to become a fan favorite.
It should be noted at this point that Munenori Kawasaki was something of a fan favorite, so sometimes fans don’t pick the best players. But baseball is simply entertainment and people like who they like. You know what scores points? Dingers. Morse has four. He drilled a low-outside fastball out to right field. He lined an inside fastball off the plate out to left field. He clobbered two inner-half fastballs out to straightaway center. Oakland’s is not a hitter-friendly ballpark. Morse made it look like one. He hits the ball as hard as it looks like he would hit the ball if you just glance at his body and frame. Michael Morse isn’t playing tricks on you.
But that one year, Jose Lopez hit 25 dingers. You know what really scores points? Impressive dingers, and Morse has already impressed. He’s hit the season’s third-longest dinger, he’s hit the season’s third-highest dinger, and the other two dingers were line drives on pitches most hitters wouldn’t have knocked over a fence. You remember how certain segments of the fan base fell in love with Russell Branyan, Wily Mo Pena, and Bucky Jacobsen. Morse hits what might be referred to as statement home runs, and he’s got himself a bat flip. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a Mariner with a bat flip, a Mariner who was that confident about his strength. I’m not saying a bat flip makes a player, but it’s indicative of likable traits.
On top of the power — and that’s really Morse’s whole game — the guy has personality. He’s energetic, and he’s a good interview, and he seems to do everything with enthusiasm and a certain flourish. I remember, over the past few years, watching a lot of Giants games and seeing how much fun those players seemed to have in the dugout. Granted, those were good Giants teams, and we’ve been watching bad Mariners teams. Of course a dugout is going to be a little more animated when you’re destined to win the World Series. But it’s fun to have enthusiastic, personable players. As much as I love Dustin Ackley‘s hit tool, I could happily go the rest of my life without ever hearing him speak. The Mariners have some perfectly nice guys who can be stiff as a door frame. Morse adds color, in the way that Felix Hernandez adds color even independent of his actual pitching. This is going to sound stupid, but it’s fun to see players look like they care, and it’s fun to see players look like they’re having fun. Raul Ibanez is here to provide veteran experience and leadership, but Morse is going to provide observable character.
And one shouldn’t overlook the fact that Morse is apparently absolutely thrilled to be in Seattle. This is a guy who the Mariners dealt away for a backup, a guy who only found success somewhere else, and this is a guy who got traded back to Seattle from a title contender. The Nationals are probably the best team in baseball; the Mariners are probably not. Morse easily could’ve reacted the way that Cliff Lee initially reacted. But Morse didn’t just go along with things — he told everyone he could get a hold of that he was beyond ecstatic with things. Unless Morse is a hell of a convincing liar, he wants to be a Mariner, and again, we get another parallel with Felix. One of the things that sets Felix apart in our hearts is his loyalty to the city and the organization. A lot of players seem like they’d be happy anywhere, just so long as they’re playing, and free agency typically bears this out. It renders as somewhat silly the idea that we should support a specific team in a specific place, since the players don’t really care. A guy like Felix, or Morse, indicates that there’s something special about this team, and it’s satisfying when loyalty feels like it’s a two-way street. Put another way: who the hell would want to be a Mariner? Michael Morse does, and that’s an unusual characteristic.
Morse isn’t going to average a home run every game. Sustaining that sort of rate is impossible, but there are going to be stretches where Morse makes it look like it’s possible. We’re in one of those stretches now. Every time he comes to the plate, a home run is going to be a distinct possibility, and his will be plate appearances to which we can look forward. A deficit is never that much of a deficit is Michael Morse is coming up. Power really does change the feel of things, in a positive way, for the team with the power.
What I’m not saying is that we’ll all come around and agree that trading Jaso for Morse was the right thing. That’s been analyzed to death, and there’s no reason to change that analysis now. That’s not how analysis works. But prepare yourself to either love Michael Morse, or like him, if you don’t already. He’s got a lot of likable elements to him, and even if the end result is something like a 0-2 WAR, it’s probably not going to *feel* like he was that mediocre of a player. It’s going to feel like Morse makes a significant impact, and he’s going to liven up what’s been a stiff team. You have to appreciate Morse’s unusual blend of traits. If he were homegrown, he’d already be a fan favorite.
Now, it’s going to be weird when the Mariners extend Morse for a bunch of years and we’re forced to try to like him into his decline phase. That’s never an easy ride. But for the time being, Michael Morse is going to do a lot of things to make you like him. Go ahead and like him. It’s the right thing to do.
Game 2, Mariners at Athletics
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Jarrod Parker, 7:05
Jarrod Parker was one of the most important reasons the A’s were able to beat expectation by a cool 20, 25 wins or so in 2012. The key acquisition in the Trevor Cahill trade, Parker was a top prospect who’d lost some luster following Tommy John surgery. His velocity had mostly returned, but the A’s needed him to rack up innings, and that seemed like a tall order. As it happened, the A’s top two pitchers in innings pitched were the rookie hurlers they got in two less-than-lauded trades. Parker (and Tommy Milone) steadied the rotation while Bartolo Colon went down for performance-enhancing drug use and Brandon McCarthy went down with a skull fracture. By the end of the year, they were effectively veterans alongside the mid-season call-ups like AJ Griffin and Dan Straily.
Parker uses a low-90s four-seamer and sinker, a slider and the rare curveball, but his bread and butter pitch is his change-up. When batters swung at it, they whiffed nearly half the time. Half! It’s a major reason why Parker, unlike so many young phenoms, doesn’t exhibit any real platoon splits. He throws it some against righties, particularly if he’s ahead in the count, but lefties get a steady diet of the pitch, and they struggled against it, tallying 20 hits (no HRs) and 8 walks against 58 Ks. The M’s are going to have a lefty-heavy line-up out there, since that’s the by-the-book play, but the hitters need to look for a fastball early and not have to expand the zone later in the at-bat. Helpfully, Parker throws first-pitch fastballs almost 70% of the time to lefties.
One guy who might want to look first pitch fastball and swing the bat is Dustin Ackley. I know, I know, part of the reason he’s valuable is that he’s got a discerning eye and he can make pitchers work by fouling off pitches and laying off borderline balls. But Ackley hasn’t been able to utilize those skills to regain his footing if he falls behind. If he puts the first pitch of an at-bat in play, he’s great – he’s hit .377 with a .597 slugging percentage. But he’s done so only 78 times. He’s got 13.6% of his total bases from the 7.5% of the time he’s put a first pitch in play. After falling behind 0-1, his OPS is only .580, though of course *Everyone* has a crappy OPS after falling behind. But even if he takes the first pitch for a ball, he’s hitting .235/.364/.358. With two strikes, his OPS is .473, which looks a bit like Brendan Ryan’s .490. The standard caveats apply: his career is still in the “small sample size” realm, and splitting it up by count or whatever just magnifies that. So take the preceding as something to watch, rather than as something we *know.*
Hisashi Iwakuma is going to be critical to the M’s chances this year. As the best blend of talent and experience in the rotation behind Felix, the M’s need him to pitch the way he did after taking a rotation spot last year. I know I’m a bit more sanguine about pitcher depth than Dave, but that doesn’t mean Iwakuma’s replaceable. He’s the biggest ground-ball guy on the staff, which is huge if you plan to trot out Morse or Bay in LF. The M’s combination of Hultzen and Ramirez can slot in for someone at the back of the rotation, but replacing a #2 is tough for any team in baseball. All of this to say: Iwakuma’s right shoulder needs to hold together this year. The veteran righty is now over a full year removed from shoulder soreness, but he’s also about to turn 32. Fingers crossed.
Today’s line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Ibanez, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Montero, C
8: Ackley, 2B
9: Ryan, SS
SP: Iwakuma
2nd game, and the first without Gutierrez, as the M’s continue to bring along slowly following his leg tightness. Again, if you’re going to make the fateful Ibanez-for-Gutierrez move in the line-up to face a righty starter and get Guti some rest, *this* is the day you do it. Keep it on the ground, Hisashi.
The M’s had a successful open house at Safeco Field last night, using the new video board to broadcast the game to about 15,000 fans. The weather undoubtedly helped, but I’m stunned there were what sounds like long lines to get into Safeco to watch a game on TV (albeit a really, really big one) and check out the new park. The pictures and comments I saw via twitter and blogs were universally positive. With the next ‘Supreme Court’ for Felix taking place on the 11th, it seems like a decent time to point out that the M’s communications/outreach staff seem like the best in baseball. This is not a bad attempt to curry favor or anything; with the comments Dave and I have made about the Jaso trade, it’d take a hell of a lot more than this to restore their view back to ‘indifference.’ It’s not the front office advantage I’d most prefer, but it’s the front office advantage we’ve got, and I feel like we should acknowledge them. Nice work, Kevin/Jeff/Rebecca/Randy/et al.
Your reminder: the full-season minor leagues open on Thursday. The Rainiers start the year in Fresno, while the Jackson Generals begin 2013 in Jacksonville, FL. High Desert begins in the almost-as-crazy conditions of Lancaster, while Clinton starts in Burlington. All of the full-season clubs and the M’s began the year on the road. Hmmm.
Some quick numbers from Felix’s opening day gem: Felix threw 24 change-ups in the game (the pitch fx pitch selection numbers mentioned during the broadcast were way off, a product of the algorithm having trouble differentiating Felix’s change and sinker), and got 10 swinging strikes. He got three ground-outs and one pop-up when the A’s put the pitch in play. As Felix’s FB has gotten a bit slower, it’s also gotten straighter. His four-seamer’s horizontal movement’s dwindled until he essentially had none to speak of for much of last year; his four-seamer acted more like a cutter, which presumably made the arm-side run on his sinker look more impressive. At least for last night, his four-seamer had more run than we’ve seen. I have no idea if this was a conscious adjustment, a pitch fx calibration error or just an outlier based on just 14 pitches. I can’t wait for Felix day again.
New Mariners Win Like Old Mariners
For the Mariners, this was an offseason of change. There was change within the front office, somewhat in terms of personnel, but more in terms of philosophies. And this was reflected by change on the roster, as the Mariners added some experienced dinger hitters in an effort to add experience and dinger hitters. These Mariners just set a club record for dingers in spring training, and there’s been talk that for the first time in years, the Mariners have a legitimate core of the lineup. So on opening day the Mariners beat the A’s 2-0 thanks to excellent pitching and a groundball single.
Feeling like a pessimist? Argue that the changes didn’t make any difference. Feeling like an optimist? Argue that the Mariners didn’t even need the additions to chip in to win. Feeling like a realist? Argue nothing because it’s been one game of a baseball season. Do you remember how long these things are? Imagine how long you think a season is. Multiply that by seven and then add 40 more games. Don’t worry right now about the big picture. Worry about the little picture, in which the Mariners just won a regular-season baseball game. A game it feels like they’ve played a dozen dozen times before against the Oakland A’s alone.
Since 2008, now, the Mariners and A’s have played 96 times. In 19 of those games, one of the teams was shut out. In 96 of those games, at least one of the teams looked entirely, woefully inept. The A’s might be coming off a playoff berth, but when they get together with the Mariners, all that old familiar magic is rekindled, to the possible delight of some.
When I used to recap regularly, I think after every opening day I’d say the same thing: even though it’s only one win, it’s a meaningful win. If you expected the Mariners to win X% of 162 games, now they’d win X% of 161 games plus one win. Every win matters and you never know when they’ll really matter. This is the Mariners’ seventh opening-day win in a row. After the previous six opening days, they’ve gone 431-535. I can’t pretend to be super excited anymore, not over one win, but I can be generally pleased, over one win and over having the baseball soundtrack back. I didn’t expect today to feel as refreshing and enjoyable as it did. Not just the Mariners, even; all day, there was real baseball on TV, and it does make me feel a little more centered.
How meaningful is this win? Again, this is the seventh straight year the Mariners are starting 1-0. Last year, they started 1-0, and Dustin Ackley hit a dinger. The year before, they started 1-0, and Chone Figgins hit a dinger. The year before that, they started 1-0, and Rob Johnson hit a dinger. Tonight, nobody hit a dinger, and Felix Hernandez was excellent. There’s nothing to read into, nothing to extrapolate — the meaning is that Felix was excellent and that every fifth day, the Mariners aren’t actually at a disadvantage. This was a game on opening day that easily could’ve been a game in the middle of August. It didn’t feel special; Felix felt special, and the game felt mostly normal. Be happy to have baseball back, and to have one fewer day of possible complaining.
I’m not going to make a habit of doing this. I might not do this five times — it’s one of the main reasons I left Lookout Landing in the first place. I’m moving on from nightly Mariners recaps, but tonight gets an exception because tonight is opening night and there’s only one of these a year. Or, three of these, for Major League Baseball as a whole. Something has to be written about Felix dominating again on opening day, even if this is starting to feel like old hat. It would be weird for the outcome of the game to not be acknowledged.
Felix was actually perfect into the bottom of the fourth, when he coughed up a double to John Jaso. Prior to the game, Felix gifted Jaso with a Rolex out of gratitude for catching last year’s perfecto. This is precisely why Felix equipped that Rolex with a self-destruct mechanism operated remotely. The A’s didn’t get their second hit until the sixth, and it sucked. The third hit came in the eighth, and it was legitimate, and then Felix issued a walk when he was fatigued. Up until the end, Felix was incredibly strong, and his changeup was so lethal it literally killed six guys, the game stopped for ambulances and everything. Felix did have to grimace through some bullpen anxiety, and this easily could’ve wound up another no-decision, but the memory of all those no-decisions makes this winning decision all the more sweet. In that way the Mariners have actually been good for Felix’s psychological health.
Felix would’ve allowed a run were it not for Brendan Ryan in the fourth. With two down and a runner on third, Yoenis Cespedes bounced a grounder up the middle that Ryan fielded on the outfield grass. He spun and threw a strike to first, across his body yet strong and on the fly. Cespedes was retired by a step and Ryan returned to the dugout unencumbered by carrying a heavy Gold Glove in his pocket. It was Ryan who made the defensive play of the day, and it was Ryan who went 1-for-1 with two walks. Brendan Ryan said he wanted to play more like David Eckstein, and it was mission accomplished tonight, as Ryan was annoying.
As for Jaso, if you miss him, he popped out, he doubled, he struck out on ten pitches, he allowed a stolen base, he missed a few borderline strike calls, and he was pinch-hit for against a lefty reliever. So Oakland got the same John Jaso experience we all basically got to have last season. It’s a fine experience that doesn’t measure up to the Felix Hernandez experience. The Mariners’ new regular catcher, Jesus Montero, had a ball foul-tipped so hard off his mask in the ninth inning it gave the ROOT Sports camera feed a concussion. Kenji Johjima used to make a habit of getting hit in the junk. Jesus Montero is making a habit of getting hit in the head. He and Franklin Gutierrez are not allowed to be friends.
The Mariners scored on a walk, a single, and a single. They did nothing else, although in fairness Brett Anderson is terrific. Tonight it was enough. Most nights it will not be enough, but most nights the Mariners probably won’t be limited to two runs. Mariners relievers threw just 12 strikes out of 27 pitches and that’s how this game actually got interesting, but it’s good they did that in retrospect, because it made things more electric. The Mariners now have the same record as the Astros. Happy opening day.