Today’s news, PI bit
The M’s had a closed team meeting. From the PI:
Second baseman Bret Boone, with the permission of manager Mike Hargrove, called a “players-only” meeting to see if there isn’t some way to turn around the team’s slow start.
“It was time,” Boone said. “Enough is enough. Guys talked, said what they had to say.”
Bret Boone enters the clubhouse.
Boone: Okay, I”ve talked to Grove-y, he’s given me permission to hold a team meeting.
Team groans.
Boone: We need to find a way out of this slump. Anything you have to say, let’s hear it.
Silence.
Boone: Okay, I’ll start. Adrian, stop swinging for low, outside pitches you can’t hit.
Beltre: Why don’t you stop swinging at pitches over your head, little guy? At least I play defense.
Boone: Good, good, let’s get it all out there. Wilson, you want one of the big boys to show you what to do with that wood thing in your hands?
Valdez: I’ll show you what to do–
Chaotic brawling.
Really, what could have come of this? Let’s come up with some ideas for how we can turn this thing around. How abouuuuuttt… playing better? Can that kind of thing be turned on and off in a player meeting?
I have to admit that I’m happy to learn that at least someone cares that they’re playing this badly.
In this week’s PI bit, I check out the pitching to see which starter’s most likely to get axed.
Stats and Scouting
A few months ago, Pat Dillon asked me if I’d be willing to write one of the articles for the Everett Aquasox programs this year. Since Pat’s the coolest guy on earth and a big friend of the blog, I readily agreed, and he’s also given the go ahead for me to publish the article here on USSM. So, what you will find below will also be available in print form in the Aquasox program this summer, which you should all purchase when you go to Everett Memorial Stadium. In fact, buy three. Give them out to friends. They’ll make great stocking stuffers.
Anyways, the topic of the column is the balance of statistical analysis and traditional tools scouting. It is clearly written to people attending Aquasox games, but the topic is certainly relevant here, especially since we’re viewed as mostly statgeeks. Hope you enjoy.
Game 40, Yankees at Mariners
Frank Gorshin, best known for his role as Batman’s rival The Riddler, has died.
Gorshin didn’t just play Edward Nygma. The veteran actor and impressionist played the villanous Bele in a famous Star Trek episode featuring two aliens, each of whom had one side of his face painted black and the other side painted white. But see, they hated each other, because the colors were transposed — Star Trek’s second-most important critique of racism, right after William Shatner making out with Nichelle Nichols on national TV.
In honor of Mr. Gorshin’s most famous role, though, let’s use this riddling technique to dissect the rather dishonorable recent performance of the hometown nine in advance of tonight’s game.
Riddle No. 1: Riddle me this, riddle me that: a home run off Moyer will come from whose bat?
Riddle No. 2: What can you catch but not throw?
Riddle No. 3: This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays kings, brings disorder,
Destroys all, except Pat Borders.
The answers in reverse order are: time, a cold or Steve Blass disease, and “to be announced.”
Use this as a game thread for tonight’s Mike Mussina/Jamie Moyer matchup. TV: FSN. Radio: KOMO.
The Sweet Milk of Pythagoras
Jeff Angus, the Seattle Times’ newly-minted baseball statistics columnist, explains the Pythagorean Wins theorem and applies it to the Mariners’ season.
This won’t be news to many, but should be a salve against panic. Check the article for more if you’re interested, but here’s the upshot:
Studying the numbers suggests the M’s will play at about the pace preseason predictions posted, though perhaps not at the pace more passionate followers had hoped for.
Borders! Borders! Borders!
From Hickey, in the PI notebook today:
The Mariners are making a bid to acquire Borders, 42. If they decide they want the former Mariner (2001-04), the expectation is that they can have him. Sources in the Brewers’ front office say they will not block Borders’ return to the major leagues.
Even better:
Borders, because of an injury-free history and his knowledge of the Mariners’ pitching staff, is considered the heavy favorite.
I… I don’t even know where to start here.
USSM stuff
A couple of brief things and a longer one after the fold:
– I’m looking at some possible changes to commenting, like threading and the dreaded registration step. More on that as it happens, but we’re being (we believe) hand-attacked by comment spammers trying to get past that (sometimes annoying) spam-check box that has foiled them entirely since Dave Pease shared it with us. Dave Pease, by the way, awesome, and his generous donation made it dramatically easier to run the site.
– I’m working on fixing a couple of back-end things. If you notice weird site behavior, I’m probably being electrically shocked behind the scenes. Please don’t hit reload repeatedly.
– We’ve been thinking about upgrading our hosting for a while. It would mean much faster response times, better availability, none of the weird database errors you get sometime when Mr. Corcoran posts two different comments at once, causing the server to choke, and so forth. But this requires money, which leads me to…
Read more
Game 39, Yankees at Mariners
Pavano v. Mateo! 7:05, FSN.
I like they they put up the wrong “Scouting Report” and Fairly kept on “Uhh.. he’s not Ryan Franklin, but hopefully he can go deep into the game…”
Descriptions of Sele’s start last night
We’ve generally tried to lay off talking about what others write about the Mariners, but in my daily sweep for Mariner-related news, I became confused, and a little frightened.
“Sele’s solid start unable to cool Yanks” — MLB.com headline
Right-hander Aaron Sele did his part Monday night to cool off the Major Leagues’ hottest team.
He held the rampaging Yankees to one run over six innings, departed with a one-run lead, and then watched as a dropped throw at first base — which would have completed a double play and ended the seventh inning — opened the door to a grand slam that saddled the Mariners with a 6-3 loss before 37,814 at Safeco Field.
In the Seattle PI, after a long description of the Martinez/Sexson play:
Before, the crowd saw Seattle starter Aaron Sele at his best (six innings, one run), not to mention a scintillating performance by New York’s Chien-Ming Wang, who was at least as good, maybe even better than he was in earning his first big-league win against the Mariners at Yankee Stadium last week.
Finnigan in the Times is the only one who
notes anything odd
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/2002277505_mari17.html —
Sele left after six innings, his best start of the year except for six walks that endangered him most of the evening.
The AP story has the stats and then a quote:
Aaron Sele bounced back from a rough outing last week at Yankee Stadium, where he lasted only 2 2-3 innings and gave up seven runs in a 7-4 loss. He allowed one run and five hits over six innings in this one with five strikeouts and six walks — one intentional.
Sele struck out the side in the sixth, closing out the inning when Derek Jeter whiffed on an inside fastball.
“He was effectively wild,” Seattle manager Mike Hargrove said. “He kept a very hot ballclub on the ropes by doing it that way.”
Did I see a different game than everyone last night? Did I fall asleep and dream a different game? I saw Sele nibble and walk the hitters who didn’t tee off on him, barely escape being blown out of the stadium, and then suddenly strike out three hitters in a row at the end.
This is a product of the way stories are written: the event that changed the game is central to the story, and that didn’t involve Sele, so his start gets summarized quickly, and the easy summary is that he only gave up a run and wasn’t part of the final outcome.
It also helps to conceal the fact that Sele looked bad. Fortunately, the Mariner brass may take fan sentiment into account, but they’re also seeing him pitch, and they saw the same game I did.
The King
Coming off his most dominant start of the year, King Felix is on the hill now down in Albuquerque. The Isotopes, despite their loony nickname, have been whacking the ball all over the park this year, though I think I could hit .350 down there.
If you want to listen to the broadcast, tune in now.
Go Felix.
Edited to add: Felix took a liner off his foot in the second inning and left the game.
Madritsch out until September at least
Almost unnoticed, Madristch has talked about a timetable, and it made me sad. From MLB.com:
“The best-case scenario would have me coming back around the first of September, and the worst case would be pitching in the Instructional League,” he said. “The way I look at it, I’m not going to the Instructional League (in Arizona).”