John Levesque of the Seattle PI wrote a column about the M’s tinkering with the batter’s eye again. This time it’s “the application of a new material with a honeycomb texture later this month.” After talking about this, Levesque launches into a weird mocking-the-coddled-players thing.
The M’s failure to solve this issue with the ballpark continues to demonstrate the team’s inability as an organization to come up with long-term solutions that do anything but generate more money.
Seattle Media Watch
It’s interesting to look at what a paper does with an off-day. Check this out:
Seattle PI:
- David Andriesen turns out a profile on Aaron Taylor
- Levesque’s column (above) includes a reference to a stat other than batting average (he’s the former TV critic who tends to write particularly shallow columns). I mock Levesque sometimes, but I secretly hold out hope that he might turn into something good.
- John Hickey offers Ichiro up as a possible contestant in the HR derby based on Ichiro’s batting practice power. “Nobody hits the ball further in batting practice than Ichiro,” says John Olerud, who is, well, I’ve seen the M’s take batting practice and he’s totally wrong. Ichiro can park the balls just over the fence in right field, but Boone and others have more distance, height, et cetera.
- Shane O’Neill “taps into his network of major league scouts” to produce a “scouting the Orioles” feature that manages to offer almost no actual information. It’s almost all batting average, RBI, and those ratings are useless. Here’s a quote from Geronimo Gil’s:
“Long swingx. Likes to extend his arms; smokes mistakes out over the platex. Vulnerable insidex. Chases balls down and off the platex. Slow behind the platex. Lacks balancex. Reaches for ballsx.”
Copy editor asleepx.
- Baseball notebook has some around-the-league tidbits
- Answer Guy John Marshall answers questions about ball girls (“young women of high school and college age”) who must complete a period of indentured servitude before they get their positions, and how the infield fly rule doesn’t apply on bunt attempts (which, as a side note, I mentioned at length in a Prospectus article a while back).
- Jim Moore, Go2Guy, “Battling Steve Kelly to be the worst sports writer in Seattle” mercifully doesn’t write about the M’s today.
Seattle Times:
- Bob Sherwin has a half-baked column on the value of lefties. “They have a different angle and release point than right-handers and are effective to either side of the plate, particularly against left-handed hitters.” Um, no.
- Inside the Series is the Times version of the series preview. Includes (gasp) on-base percentage, even though the batting column is still batting-average sorted.
I spend my quarters on the P.I. for what that’s worth, and read Larry Stone (“Official Seattle Baseball Print Writer of the U.S.S. Mariner”) on the Web. Later today: a treatise on Box Melvin. I know you’re excited.
M’s Roster Review
The M’s have made a lot of roster moves lately, and I thought I’d take a second to talk about where the team is.
Rotation: Moyer, Meche, Pineiro, Franklin, Garcia (or put “#1 Ace Garcia” in front). One of the best units in the majors. We’ve been worried about Joel, but he’s come around pretty well. Now we’re worried about Meche. Franklin’s Franklin. If he keeps up this revival, Garcia’s probably going to visit me after the season’s over and punch me in the mouth, and I’ll be okay with it.
Bullpen A: Nelson, Rhodes, Hasegawa. I think Box Melvin’s worn these guys out, and the All Star Break could be a welcome respite for them.
Bullpen B: Mateo, Taylor, Soriano. Soriano’s awesome, he could easily do Hasegawa’s work in tight long-relief situations. Mateo’s a servicable righty. “A-ron” Taylor’s got stuff and, uh, closer experience, so Melvin might use him to allow a return to the traditional bullpen closer-setup/setup roles, which.. well, at least it’s something.
Everyday Lineup:
C: Wilson/Davis
1b: Olerud
2b: Boone
SS: Guillen
3B: Cirillo
LF: Winn
CF: Cameron
RF: Ichiro
Did anyone else notice that “an AL scout” is quoted in Gammons’ latest about how the Mariners take doubles and triples out of the game? You see anyone else doing that kind of analysis a while back? Like, say, us? Anyway…
Offensively, this is a top unit… with some serious issues. It’s pretty much Boone/Edgar/Ichiro/Cameron, with Olerud providing OBP and little else, Guillen hitting well for his position, and Davis another bat when Box remembers to play him. Winn doesn’t hit like a left fielder should, Wilson’s terrible, Cirillo’s not hitting (at home, yes, particularly).
Defensively, they’re outstanding.
Bench: McLemore, Bloomquist, Colbrunn, Mabry. This is awful. McLemore hasn’t hit all year, and his defense is terrible. It looks like age has finally caught up to him. Bloomquist can at least play the infield while he doesn’t hit — McLemore doesn’t offer the team anything this year. Greg Colbrunn, Professional Hitter, hasn’t hit well. I can’t believe that’ll last — he’s hit his whole career, he’s not that old. I wonder if more regular use would help him, but I’m as baffled as anybody. Mabry sucks. He offers a little left-handed pop, but he can’t play defense anywhere enough to spot start him.
As Jason pointed out, this is a bench that needed to pick up D’Angelo Jimenez. Jimenez would have offered a decent bat the team could have played anywhere in the infield, a huge upgrade on Bloomquist. They could also use a huge bat in the outfield to turn Winn into a decent 4th outfielder. And if you’re going to blow roster space on pinch-hitters, they should at least get pinch-hitters that can pinch-hit.
Back in the day — I’m thinking 2001 here — we used to complain that the M’s weren’t getting any offense from the 7-8-9 spots in their batting order. Did anyone happen to see today’s lineup? Batting 6th, Randy Winn (.666 OPS). Batting 7th, Jeff Cirillo (.600 OPS). Batting 8th, Dan Wilson (.600 OPS). Batting 9th, Willie Bloomquist (.536 OPS). Let us also not forget Mark McLemore (.613 OPS), who hit 2nd today. I know Boone had the day off and Guillen has a gimpy groin (side note: “Gimpy Groin” would be a good band name), but still. That’s five hitters who have no business whatsoever in the starting lineup. I won’t go so far as to say they have no business on a major league roster, but I’m close.
Oh, and Gillick missed out on D’Angelo Jimenez, too. The Reds picked him up for a minor league reliever. Yeah, the M’s don’t have any of those sitting around…
Congratulations to Mariner all-stars Ichiro, Edgar, Boone, Hasegawa, and especially Jamie Moyer.
Also, I unfortunately don’t have time to lay out the full explanation as to why, but it may be time to start being concerned with Gil Meche. His strikeout rate has fallen precipitously the past month.
Oh, and friend of U.S.S. Mariner Ivan Weiss was kind enough to drop me a line and tell me that Jamal Strong reached base all 6 times he was up tonight, and threw in a stolen base for good measure. That performance will raise his on base percentage from .290 to .441. Seriously. Gotta love small samples.
Official Seattle Baseball Print Writer of the U.S.S. Mariner, Larry Stone, has another installment of his cool series “Art of Baseball” today, available in your Sunday Times or online:
“Keeping Score,” “Mariners’ scorers take care to keep things fair,” “Ten great moments in scorekeeping,” and “Baseball’s rule book not exactly light reading” (this just in: “Headline Writer Not Exactly Good”. In any event, tons of good reading there — today’s Times contains two full pages filled entirely with Stone’s articles. (And in an entirely different section, my grandfather Larry Parker’s obituary). Congrats to Stone on his continued fine work, and to the Times (!) for giving Stone the space to write at length and so freely about baseball topics.
McLemore’s defense at short continues to be poor. In Moyer’s start there were a couple hits that any average shortstop would have gotten to, and his poor arm strength turned a ball he got to into a single. It’s ridiculous, seriously, there’s no reason he should ever be out there: to make up for the balls that get by him he’d have to go 10 for 5 at the plate, which is (barring multi-ball play) impossible.
In other news, Blogger continues to hack me off, as it’s now denying that I paid for Blog*Spot Plus, even though you’ll clearly note there are no ads on the top of the page and I was able to do things like look at stats up through last week. Of course, my only recourse is to log an issue on Blogger Control, where issues go unreviewed forever and you sort of sit around and wait until it’s accidentally resolved, presumably because someone with immediate family at Blogger discovers they can’t look at the stats for their wind chime blog. I hate wind chimes. Also, the neighbors let their yap-o-tronic corgi out at seven this morning. Seven! And that dog can bark constantly (random 2-3 barks, 5s-90s pause between barks) all fricking day. What kind of inconsiderate clods…. anyway.
Having Blogger denying I paid, which in turn denies me support, makes me feel like I’ve just given Castro a trillion dollar bill.
“Give what back?”
For the minor league geeks:
Clint Nageotte’s line tonight: 9 1 0 0 0 14
For the uniniated, thats a 1-hit complete game shutout with no walks and 14 strikeouts. He gave up a single to Josh Kroeger in the 4th inning, but that was the only batter to reach. He retired 27 of the 28 batters to come to the plate, and half of the El Paso at-bats resulted in a short walk back to the dugout as the ump yells “strike three.”
This kid’s pretty good.
As you may have noticed, the White Sox acquired Roberto Alomar a few days ago. To make room for him on the roster, they designated D’Angelo Jimenez for assignment… if they’re really that down on Jimenez, the Mariners should act quickly to snatch him up. He’s 25, a switch-hitter, will take a walk, can handle shortstop adequately, and would be an infinitely superior player to have on the roster than Wee Willie Bloomquist. Long-term, Jimenez would be a nice guy to have around as well.
If you don’t have any plans for the the 4th of July evening, let me make a suggestion. The Everett Aquasox are hosting Eugene tommorrow night, and 17-year-old phenom Felix Hernandez is making his first professional start. There will be a fireworks display after the game, and there are still lawn seats available for $5.00 a pop. Seriously, don’t sit at home and watch TV. You’ll have a blast at the game, and you’ll be able to tell people that you saw Felix Hernandez before he was Felix Hernandez.
A while back, I mentioned that I’d done some work on defense, statistically and using simulations, on the effect of defense, and specifically how they build on improvements. If you upgrade your centerfielder from someone who catches no balls to someone who catches all balls possible for the position, you turn all those hits into out, but that’s just the start. In turning outs into hits, you also eliminate the opportunity for other hits and runs.
Think of it this way: if you turn a two-out double into an out, you eliminate the chance the ~1/3 chance that the next guy gets a hit, possibly driving the first guy in, and then the 1/3rd chance the next guy gets a hit: you eliminate all chances for a rally.
In the same way, though, offense piles on. If you upgrade a terrible hitter to an excellent hitter, you don’t just turn outs into hits, you also give the next guy in the lineup more trips to the plate, and hopefully in 1/3rd of those he’ll get hits, and when he doesn’t make an out, the next guy comes up, and so on, and so on.
And in that way, a player’s impact goes far beyond their individual statistics, and while every baseball event seems isolated, it is in fact not at all isolated, and has a cascade effect. This has nothing to do with today’s game.
We here at the USS Mariner don’t endorse many things. The exception to that is Rett Johnson, who’s so good we give him our full endorsement. That said, we’re not afraid to speak out against things we’re certainly against. Today that’s the folks over at Orbitz, who apparently have a monopoly on Internet pop-up ads. Looking through the day’s boxscores over at ESPN just now, I got an Orbitz pop-up ad on five consecutive pages and six out of seven. Your little games aren’t cute — throw the baseball! hit the golf ball! light these fireworks! — and they certainly don’t make me ever want to visit your freaking site, OK? Geez.
Oh, and another thing we’re against is Joel Pineiro throwing 123 pitches when the M’s are up 13-0. He was already at 111 through 7 with the score 6-0, at which point the M’s made it 9-0. I know the bullpen has been shaky lately, but this is no time to get crazy, Mr. Box.
Side note: In going to check Pineiro’s pitch count and how many pitches he threw in the 8th inning just now, I got Orbitz ads on five more ESPN pages in a row. Bastards!