I’m not going to jump on the Box for today’s usage. I think it was “get guys work” day. With an offday tommorrow and a series full of blowouts, the “A” group of relievers hadn’t pitched much lately.
It will be interesting to see how the roles shift when Kaz returns this week. Hasegawa/Soriano/Mateo may be Group B, but you’d be hard pressed to find three better relief pitchers in the AL right now. Hopefully, Box O’ Rocks doesn’t waste them in low-leverage situations.
Seattle Times, Paper of Quality: You’ll note that on the front page of the sports section, Steve Kelley’s column includes Steve using “it’s” as a possessive when the possessive form of it is its, with no apostrophe. “It’s” is a contraction of it is. Way to go, Steve!
I’m dinking around with my next BP column and thought I’d share something. Here’s how many pitches it takes a Mariner starter to record an out:
Franklin, 4.8
Meche, 5.2
Pineiro, 5.3
Moyer, 5.5
Garcia, 5.6
That’s obviously an interesting but weird stat of not a ton of use. And yet — say you want each of these guys to go six innings. 18 outs…
Franklin’s thrown 87 pitches
Meche has thrown 94 pitches and I’m already yelling for him to get pulled
Pineiro’s at 95 pitches and I’m nervous
Moyer’s at 98 pitches and last,
Freddy’s at 101 pitches.
It omits a lot of stuff — how they’re getting defensive support (hit = have to face another batter), and so on. And it’s obviously not a measure of dominance, since it doesn’t tell you anything about how they’re getting the outs. But you can see something here that we’ve commented on earlier in the year: while Franklin’s not the most effective pitcher in the world, he’s so efficient with his pitches that he’s able to help the team in an entirely different way by going later into games.
Box Melvin’s amazing bullpen management continues: he had Rhodes warm up for a while then relieve Nelson to face *one batter* throwing *one pitch* and then pulled Rhodes, with a six run lead, to put in Hasegawa.
Rhodes and Nelson’s bullpen: mound ratio of pitches thrown must be 5:1 at this point in the season.
And another thing — given Meche’s tendency this season to fall apart suddenly late in the game as his pitch count increases, why did the Box leave him in so long with Soriano warm and Meche obviously struggling?
Rafael Soriano has arrived. His line for his last 10 appearances:
15 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 22 K, 0.59 ERA.
The M’s should give him a start next week, regardless of whether they’re sending Freddy to the pen.
For that matter, look at Julio Mateo since July 1st:
24 IP, 14 H, 5 R, 1 BB, 25 K, 1.88 ERA.
I mean, geez.