Game 45, Mariners at Orioles
For tonight’s game thread, I would like to call your attention to awamori, the delicious distilled rice liquor from Okinawa.
Like a strong, smooth, sake, the libation is first-rate. Occasionally, though, they change it up a little. As any reasonable person might expect, this involves putting a poisonous habu snake inside the bottle, making habu awamori.
It’s like the joyous combination in a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, with booze and venom in place of chocolate and crushed goober peas. Hey, you got a deadly viper in my alcohol! Hey, you got spirits all over my poisonous, fanged friend!
As a habitual liquor enthusiast, you accept the risk that alcohol may slowly kill you. It’s kind of the price of admission. A venomous viper turning up in your libation of choice — bearing fearsome fangs and a more direct form of poison — is a bit of a shock to the system.
[The effect is even more pronounced if, when drinking with a pal, you switch a snake-free bottle with a snake-full bottle while he or she visits the restroom. Surprise!]
Similarly, we expected bad pitching could wreak havoc with the Mariners’ season. So far, it has. But the hitting hasn’t been any kind of tonic, either. Well, maybe an illness-inducing one. Two great tastes that taste brutal together. Hey, you got Aaron Sele in my rotation! Hey, you got Wilson Valdez in my lineup!
For those keeping score at home: yes, I am comparing the Mariners’ recent pitching and offensive performance to a mind-numbing, tissue-destroying elixir. Lately, it seems appropriate.
As for the snake liquor, I have an uncle who enjoys all distilled beverages, the barley pop and other brain cell-murdering delights. Have you tried that habu awamori? I asked him one night. Yes, he replied. How is it? I followed up.
I’ll never try it again, he said.
There is a lesson in there that I will try to distill while watching Jamie Moyer take on Rodrigo Lopez. 4:05 p.m. TV: FSN. Radio: KOMO.
Fink on friends for reduced sentence!
The “Drug Free Sports Act” has a crazy 2-year penalty on first test, but skip that for a minute.
From the Associated Press article:
The legislation offered by Davis allows for reduced penalties if a player can prove in an appeal he didn’t know he was using a prohibited substance or if he were to provide information on someone else violating the drug policy.
First, how do you prove that? Produce a tainted supplement? Couldn’t you just taint it yourself?
All kinds of problems there. But the really disturbing part —
if he were to provide information on someone else violating the drug policy
This has so many possible unintended consequences that it’s crazy. The first thing I thought of was that it would behoove a player to get their friends to violate the drug policy so you could fink on them. Then I started to think what you should do is fink on someone for something they didn’t do — using a drug with a really short cycle, for instance, or something undetectable like HGH.
It’s a huge incentive to lie, cheat, and steal to save your own hide, and a particularly misguided piece of a bad bit of legislation.
The Little Unit
The Little Unit had been pitching in an indy league — and by “pitching,” I mean he had worked in one pre-season game — since being released by the M’s this spring, but the Brewers bought his contract this week and assigned him to Brevard County of the Florida State League.
Here’s a quote from his now-former manager, Ozzie Virgil Jr., “We pitched him this week for an inning in a spring training exhibition game against the San Diego Surf Dawgs and he was unhittable with his fastball at 93-94 and a curveball that should be illegal.”
I’ll, uh, believe it when I see it. And even then I probably won’t believe it.
(Dave asked that I clarify — it’s not that I don’t believe the radar readings, but rather that he’s pitching at all. It’s been so long that it’s hard to imagine, that’s all.)
Joel Pineiro’s Release Point
Last night, Joel Pineiro gave up one run in 5 1/3 innings, lowering his ERA from 6.75 to 5.93. In some circles, that’s enough to be called a successful outing. Take a look at some of the post-game quotes:
From the Times:
“I struggled the first two innings,” the right-hander said. “Then I got a bit of a feel for the mound and got a rhythm going and I felt much better after that.”
“The first part of that game just drug on,” Hargrove said in his best Texas twang. “We had [catcher Miguel] Olivo speed it up to get Pineiro going a bit. We just had him call pitches quicker.”
In addition, Pineiro started to throw his changeup more in the third, and it worked well.
“I wound up throwing it more than I usually do and maybe that’s one thing I have to do from now on,” Pineiro said. “I felt that what Bryan [Price] and I worked on those 10 days paid off.”
From the P-I
“About the fourth inning, I started getting ahead of hitters,” Pineiro said. “I think maybe not pitching in 10 days affected me the first few innings. But after that I things started to click.”
If you missed the game and just read the recaps, you’d think Pineiro showed some improvement from his skipped start and that perhaps the side sessions with Price led to improved mechanics. It’s just not true, though.
Pineiro was a mechanical mess last night. Jeff Sullivan did the video capture breakdown again for last night, but this time, I don’t think the problems with his delivery can effectively be seen in still frame images. The biggest problem Joel was having was a pretty common one among minor league pitchers: the variable release point.
One of the most fun things to watch about Greg Maddux in his prime was that the point in his delivery when the ball left his hand was almost exactly the same on every single pitch. Fastball, curveball, change-up, it didn’t matter. Whether it was the first pitch or the last, his release point never changed, and that was the key to his impeccable command. The point of release is the cornerstone of command.
Last night, Joel Pineiro had at least five distinctly different release points that I could spot from my television, without any video equipment to slow or rewind the action. In normal live speed action, it was clear that his release point was all over the map, and yet, somehow, this isn’t a concern?
In the first inning, Pineiro was clearly attempting to get more velocity on the ball. Brian Roberts led off the game and saw a 91 MPH fastball up and away, with Pineiro clearly releasing the ball early. The second pitch was nearly identical, a 90 MPH fastball away. The third pitch was a 91 MPH fastball that Pineiro was able to get into the strike zone and actually released the ball at a semi-normal time in his delivery.
He then faced rookie Jeff Fiorentino, and the mechanics went to hell again. Early release, fastball up and away. Early release, fastball up. Early release, curveball up. Early release, fastball away. Four pitch walk.
He wasn’t “missing his spots”. From when he released the ball, it had no chance of being a strike. His fastball was getting out of his hand before his body was in proper position at least 60 percent of the time.
Pineiro had more success with the curveball, allowing his body to rotate before letting the pitch fly, but even still, he was early at least a quarter of the time. Whether it was a clear revelation that his release point was more consistent on the offspeed stuff than with his fastball or not, he threw significantly more of them as the game went on. This helped alleviate some of the command issues he was having early, but also made him, essentially, a junkballer. Joel Pineiro’s not going to get major league hitters out without his fastball.
Now, this is a fixable problem. In my minor league travels, I see this all the time. It’s rare that a kid in Double-A or below can repeat his delivery with any kind of consistency. But, it takes time, and this isn’t the kind of thing that changes overnight. It’s a gradual process of muscle memory and getting comfortable with your throwing motion. Joel Pineiro clearly does not have that. He’s a kid searching for his mechanics, experimenting on the mound, and trying to find something, anything, that works.
If the team knows why he’s lost three MPH on his fastball and is overhauling his delivery to try and get it back, they’re not saying. But right now, the only way he bears any semblance to the Joel Pineiro of 2003 is the tilde on the back of the jersey. He’s basically an entirely new pitcher, and to be frank, not a very good one. The ten days on the side retooling his mechanics did him no good last night. He’s got a long, long ways to go before he can take that delivery and be successful regularly against big league hitters.
Quick recap
I’m going to have a longer post on this tomorrow, but I wanted to get this up tonight before I went to bed: Joel Pineiro was awful tonight. It might be tempting to look at his 1 ER in 5 1/3 innings and pull something optimistic out of it, but that was as bad as I’ve seen a major league pitcher look, mechanics wise, in a long time. His release point made him look like a converted outfielder throwing off a mound for the first time. That was painful.
Also, I’d be hard pressed to imagine that, in the history of baseball, a team trailing by one run in the 9th inning has sent three hitters to the plate with the following lines:
.150/.181/.250
.176/.216/.235 (pinch hitter, none the less)
.210/.248/.269
The fact that the M’s have three players on the roster with those lines is bad enough. That they don’t have anyone, ANYONE, on the roster who could even be perceived as an improvement for any one of the three spots, is absolutely amazing.
The 2005 Mariners bench will be taught for years in Things Not To Do When Building A Roster seminars.
Game 44, Mariners at Orioles
RHP Pineiro v LHP Chen. 4:05, KSTW. We get to see the original, and possibly greatest, of the new wave of baseball stadiums. Oriole Park at Camden Yards also manages to be distinctively part of Baltimore in a way Safeco Field is not (what unique feature of Safeco Field would not be possible in any other city?).
Interesting pitching matchup — Pineiro’s coming off his “minor league assignment” (cough) so we’ll all be watching closely to see if he’s made the improvements in his mechanics that the time off was supposed to get him. And we’ll be watching Bruce Chen, who for once may evade the second of his twice-a-year trades by being too effective to trade. Dave mentioned that D’Angelo Jiminez has left two teams under strained circumstances, but if you want bridge-burning goodness, check out Chen’s career. Team after team bites on the promise and spits out on taste.
I predict that the Ricoh scouting report will be as generic as ever. Both pitchers need to get ahead in the count early and avoid (the big inning and/or the home run), which can come if both keep the ball down in the strike zone.
How hard would it be to put together a couple of interesting, short tidbits on pitchers to make the game more interesting? Here’s the USSM scouting report:
Pineiro: Watch for a more fluid, consistent delivery and release. He’s been working on moving the ball around the plate, so look for him to throw a lot of strikes. If he’s succesful, we should see some strikeouts and also a lot of balls in play.
Chen: He’s been mixing his curve and his fastball when he’s effective. He’s supposedly paying attention to scouting reports now, so watch him try and work Mariner hitters by the book.
Mike Cameron
Not sure if anyone noticed this or not, but Cameron has been hitting like crazy since missing the entire month of April: .367/.472/.700 in 60 at-bats with 10 walks and nearly half (10 of 22) his hits going for extra bases. He’s even getting to play a bit of center lately with Carlos Beltran banged up. Go Mike go.
Ichiro! the anti-celebrity
May be nothing you don’t know as an Ichiro! fan, but one fact jumped out at me — an indirect quote from his agent:
Attanasio figures the 31-year-old Ichiro turns down close to $30 million to $35 million in endorsements each year.
This article also seems to go to the heart of something we’ve written about before — that Ichiro! isn’t interested at all in celebrity, which is a strange and ugly thing (the better you are at your craft, or at least better-known, the more trouble you’ll have eating dinner in public). It’s not so much that he’s image-conscious as that he wishes to have no image beyond his on-field actions, and he’s dedicated to the perfection of his on-field actions.
The one thing that I caught that I don’t at all agree with is this, on Ichiro’s particular interview style, where he always uses his interpreter and thinks about each question:
But when his responses are interpreted back moments later, they are disappointingly devoid of any great insight.
That’s not really true. They’re like zen koans. Take for instance the two paired in the article:
“I think there is another level,” Ichiro says. “Where there’s a possibility, I just can’t see it right now. I think that’s the fun of baseball. You just don’t know if there’s a next level, you can’t see it. You just have to go and work at it.”
Does that mean there is a pressure to be perfect? Again Ichiro pauses.
“You know, I don’t think I know what a perfect player is,” he says. “You don’t know really what to do to get there. But you want to be that perfect player. I sometimes think you know you can’t be perfect as a baseball player. But I think there is always pressure on players to have confidence in themselves, who go out and try to play well. Of course, there is not going to be pressure on those who don’t have confidence. But there is always pressure.”
That’s not devoid of insight. If anything, compared to the easy cliches of a post-game Boone interview, they’re the path to enlightenment. I could write a whole other post on what Ichiro might mean here — and sometimes, I think what’s overlooked is that Ichiro gives the questions the answers they deserve. Talk to Ichiro about a single, and he’ll tell you he swung at a slider and ran it out, or something equally simple. Ask him about the relationship between a player and their equipment, and you might get a treatise (and your time extended).
Anyway, check it out. Ichiro! rules.
New Ichiro feature
Ol’ Les Carpenter sure is mining familiar ground in his new gig at the Washington Post. First, Lou Piniella; now a feature on Ichiro. And it’s a good one, covering familiar ground well and opening up some new windows into the world around him.
But only the world around him.
Colleagues know how little Ichiro likes to reveal personal details about himself, so they just don’t. That, in itself, is revealing. They won’t even talk about the stuff that would make for great public relations.
“I can’t say anything about this because Ichiro wouldn’t want me to, but he does extraordinary things, extraordinarily private things philanthropically,” [Howard] Schultz says.
Indeed, Bob Melvin comes off like he’s worried about finding an ahi tuna head in his bed if he says the wrong word:
After discussing Ichiro a few weeks ago in the visitor’s office at RFK Stadium, his former manager in Seattle, Bob Melvin, grows quiet. “I don’t think I said anything that he wouldn’t like, but if you think I did could you please make sure to leave it out,” he says.
Personally, I think that not touting one’s charitable giving is a very classy thing to do. Plus, how about foregoing the near-total salary of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in pander funds every year? According to Carpenter, “Ichiro’s agent, Tony Attanasio … figures the 31-year-old Ichiro turns down close to $30 million to $35 million in endorsements each year.”
This doesn’t surprise me. In a climate where many choose ducats over dignity, Ichiro’s never been like that. Even if western stars take advantage of the Japanese market to make decorum-impaired advertising, it’s not something to expect from baseball’s most private superstar.
When I think of Ichiro, I think of Joe DiMaggio, and not because of the hitting streak. I think of all the mystique surrounding the Yankee Clipper, a man focused on playing the game precisely — also a man who wouldn’t let himself be embarassed by wild tales in the media, guarding his privacy jealously even after he married Marilyn Monroe.
The analogy isn’t perfect at all: the Clipper wasn’t playing in a foreign country, after all. But there’s a common undercurrent there. Common to them, rare to us.
Felix watching
The Mariners have the day off, it’s supposed to be a nice day, and King Felix is taking the hill in Cheney Stadium tonight.
Seriously, you have no excuses. Get thee to Tacoma tonight. 6:05 pm Pacific time first pitch.