Today’s Mariner news
(as I sit around hoping someone’ll tell me Snelling’s okay)
So Reese isn’t even hanging out with the team anymore and isn’t expected to put on a M’s uniform again, ever. Bucky’s rehabbing and hitting.
Corey Brock examines the M’s pitching injuries in the News-Tribune.
John Hickey on Spiezio and — well, let him tell it:
There really isn’t a delicate way to phrase it, so let’s just blurt out the question:
Why is Scott Spiezio still a Mariner?
M’s tickets no longer scorching hot by Morosi in the PI is interesting but…
However, attendance has sagged so far from its summit in the not-so-distant past that it may spoil the team’s chance to turn a profit this season.
Come onnnnnnn. Morosi, though, examines this later in the same piece, and it becomes clearer that while that early sentence states that as fact, it’s all in the budgeting.
Without counting on similar boosters this season, the club established its 2005 budget with a projected attendance of 2.5 million. Aylward said the pace is now “at least” 2.6 million, which has left the organization “encouraged at the possibility of turning a profit.”
There’s a reason to attend — encourage the team about their chances of being profitable! Even though there’s really no question about their profitability.
All of that omits the real issue of how much money the team’s really hauling in, but — and I mean no offense to Morosi — I’ve long given up hope of having a local paper really call the team out on their accounting and profit/loss claims. The best I hope for is that (as Morosi does here) they make it clear that the numbers are all created and supplied by the team.
It also doesn’t raise the question of “attendance” versus “butts in seats” which aren’t the same, but it does look at other secondary indicators of popularity, like TV ratings, and examines the possibility of a drop-off.
Blyleven on Felix
Nice interview at Baseball Analysts with someone who started out as young and had a great career.
Week #20 in Review
King Felix makes his Safeco Field debut, and oh yeah, the Mariners played 5 other games this week…
Vital Signs
Wins: 49. Losses: 64. Games out of first place: 16.5.
The Mariners drop another game in the standings. And they are staring up at the Athletics who now lead the American League West. And though they have still yet to be officially eliminated from the playoff picture (August still isn’t half way over), according to Baseball Prospectus’s playoff odds, the M’s now have a 0.00128% chance of making the playoffs. It’s now a 6.5-game chasm between the Mariners and the Rangers in third place. They are 3.5 games below their projected wins according to third-order wins.
Runs Scored: 488 (13th in the American League, tied for last with Kansas City). Batting average: .257 (last). On-base percentage: .315 (last). Slugging percentage: .393 (last). Home runs: 93 (13th, thank you Kansas City). Bases on balls: 311 (11th). EqA: .248 (last).
Runs allowed: 518 (7th). Staff ERA: 4.38 (8th). DIPS ERA: 4.74 (13th). Strikeouts: 604 (last). Bases on balls: 369 (11th). Home runs allowed: 123 (10th). Starters ERA: 5.01 (11th). Relievers ERA: 3.10 (3rd). Defensive efficiency: 70.5% (4th).
Mariners won their first series in two weeks, and they were two strikes away from their first sweep since the close of the first half. They went 3-3 on the week, despite being out-scored 20-16. They were out-slugged in home runs 5-3, but drew more walks than the White Sox and Twins 17-15. It’s a sad thing to hold your oppoenents to a .601 OPS and still get out-scored.
Heroes
Richie Sexson went 5-for-23 (.217/.280/.609). Sure, 5 hits in a week is nothing to get too excited about, but when all five go for extra bases, that’s a productive week. Proving that getting to first base just isn’t enough, Sexson slugged 3 doubles and a pair of home runs. But thanks to Ichiro!, Willie Bloomquist and Raul Ibanez (who were getting on base ahead of Richie at a clip of .357, .308 and .240, respectively for the week), those 5 XBH produced only 4 RBI for Sexson. And props go out to Doyle for his first major league longball since May 29, 2002. Dude hits home runs as often as George Lucas makes Star Wars prequels. Only Doyle home runs are better. And hopefully will happen more often now.
Felix Hernandez can own this space here for the pitching hero of the week. 8.0 – 5- 0 – 0 – 0 – 6 – 0. There’s his line for his second major league start. Making it against the Twins doesn’t hurt just one bit. Just imagine if Felix could pitch against his own Mariner lineup? On second thought, don’t. On third thought, buy your tickets for Monday’s game now. Against the limp Kansas City lineup, King Felix will look like a hot knife through butter.
Not-so-much Heroes
Cursed catchers! Yorvit Torrealba goes 1-for-10 (.100/.100/.100). But then Raul Ibanez (.174/.240/.261), Adrian Beltre (.182/.280/.227) and Yuniesky Betancourt (.167/.211/.278) each provided their own respective misery at the plate.
The suckerpunch of Wednesday’s game has been mentioned in this space earlier. And while Jeff Nelson got tagged for the loss in the game (he did walk Lew Ford to start the inning, losing a 10-pitch battle, and then plunked Shannon Stewart, handing the Twins the winning run in scoring position), it was Shigetoshi Hasegawa who allowed three runners on base and watched four cross home plate before he even recorded an out. His line for the week: 0.2 – 3 – 2 – 0 – 0 – 0.
Coming to a stadium near you
This weekend the Mariners host the Los Angeles Angels. While they are just a game back of the A’s for the division lead, and own the wild card by 2.5 games, they’ve gone 13-13 since the All-Star break. They come from Oakland, where in any normal universe, they would have swept the A’s, but the A’s, of course being in their altered state of A’s conciousness, stole the last two games in the 7th inning from the Angels. LA stands at 9th in the league in scoring and 2nd in the league in run prevention. Pitching matchups will be Moyer/Washburn, Harris/Colon and Meche/Lackey.
On Monday, the Royals come to town. The Royals come to town! The Royals, who are buried 36 games out of first place! Never mind that that Royals score runs just as often (or not so often) as the Mariners and allow them at a rate topped only by Tampa Bay. Never mind that they’ve lost 13 straight now. Go buy your tickets for Monday’s game right now. I’m serious. Dead serious. Because I have three words for you: Felix versus Greinke. Which leads to the challenge question of the week: When was the last time two such heralded prospects playing for such irrelevant teams squared off against one another?
Felix versus Greinke.
You have no excuse to not be there.
Doyle’s okay. Or not.
I know I winced when he looked like he pulled something yesterday, but it’s no big deal. Or at least that’s the word on the street. More information as it becomes available.
Soooooooooo information that’s become available is conflicting.
Update update: the conflicting information is in itself bad news.
Cameron nooooooooo
Former Mariner and USSM favorite Mike Cameron ran into Carlos Beltran and was knocked out — they had to use the cart to get him off the field. Story here.
Man.
New Joel
It wasn’t the trip to Tacoma, he hasn’t changed breakfast cereals… if you listened to either broadcast for more than two seconds, you know that the New, Improved Joel now holds his hands way up at the start of his delivery.
August 5th: 6.1 IP, 8H, 2R, 2HR, 1BB, 4K, 104p, 67 strikes
August 11th: 7.2 IP, 7H, 2R, 0HR, 0BB, 4K, 98p, 72 strikes
That’s 42 outs recorded, 8 by strikeout… and 15 hits. 2 were home runs, so 47 balls in play. 32% went for hits, which is about normal for this year’s Mariner defense.
If, by some miracle, putting his hands up was the amazing mystery solution to all of Joel’s problems, that would be awesome. This version would put up average starts, a dramatic improvement from the Joel we’ve seen almost all of this year.
That said, two starts does not make a new pitcher. I remain skeptical that after all the work they’ve done with him, all the things they’ve tried, that something like hand position early in the windup has dramatically improved his mechanics, that those mechanics have resulted in a more effective pitcher, and that Pineiro will be able to consistently maintain them.
Felix Hernandez, Groundball Machine
After two starts, Felix Hernandez has taken Seattle by storm. He has a 0.69 ERA, and we’ve run out of adjectives to explain how great he looked on Tuesday. Ron Gardenhire referred to The Royal Curveball as “a curveball from hell”, for example.
Well, there’s one area of Felix’s pitching that I think deserves a little more attention than it has received. His groundball dominance has been nothing short of amazing to watch. According to ESPN’s tracking (via Stats Inc), through two starts, Felix has induced 26 groundballs and allowed 6 flyballs, for a 4.3 to 1 ratio. The Hardball Times, which gets proprietary play-by-play data from Baseball Info Solutions, has his mark at 5.4 to 1. And, according to Baseball Prospectus (which, I believe, is simply measuring groundouts and flyouts), Felix’s mark stands at 5.0 to 1. Due to the differing methodologies by the three sites, finding uniformity is nearly impossible. But, regardless, they’re all generally measuring the same thing, and by any of the three measures, Felix’s G/F rate so far has been remarkable.
I knew he was a dominant groundball guy in the minors as well, so this performance wasn’t a huge surprise. The question that came to me, however, is how well could we accurately determine what his “true” groundball/flyball ratio might be going forward from such a small sample size. Since we know that pitchers have strong consistent abilities to influence G/F rates, we’re fairly certain that Felix’s groundball dominance is a repeatable skill. But, we don’t know if the insane groundball inducing power he’s held over hitters through two starts will continue at this level. It’s almost certain that Felix is going to be one of the more dominant groundball pitchers in the game, but is he going to be a groundballer of Derek Lowe proportion or Brandon Webb proportion? Or will he just create his own new level of groundballing not yet seen, which is what he has done through two starts?
There’s no perfect way to answer this yet, and the small sample size police are going to run over this thread, I’m sure, but my theory is that dominant groundball tendancies in a small sample are indeed evidence of a trend that we can expect going forward. For instance, I don’t expect to ever see Julio Mateo induce 12 groundouts and 0 flyouts in an outing. That kind of performance is just beyond his skillset and the way he pitches. So, what I decided to do was to look through the gamelogs of some major league pitchers and attempt to determine the variance of their G/F ratio in a particular game versus their established G/F rate for the season. If we see that there is little variance from game to game, we can assume that this is a repeatable skill and Felix’s absurd groundballing ways may indeed continue to the point that he becomes the most groundball friendly starter in major league baseball.
On to the evidence.
Momentum Is Tomorrow’s Starting Pitcher
From last nights game thread, and funny enough to go up on the main page:
dw said:
August 10th, 2005 at 7:15 pmLast night was like going to dinner at a posh steakhouse, running into Bill Gates, and having him buy you dinner and a bottle of $1000 Bordeaux.
Tonight is like going to dinner at a fast food place, running into your ex, and having her throw a $1.29 cup of Coke in your face.
Indeed.
Game 113, Twins at Mariners
Ahhh, would it be that it was next Monday again, and I was posting details about pre-game meeting and beverage intaking (this will happen, by the way… patience).
RHP Brad Radke v RHP Joel Pineiro. 7:05, standard stations.
Hmmm…
Ichiro, RF-L
Bloomquist, team sparkplug/2B-R
Ibanez, DH-L
Sexson, 1B-R
Beltre, 3B-R
Reed, CF-L
Betancourt, SS-R
Snelling, LF-L
Gonzalez, C-R
That’s last night’s lineup exactly, so if anything goes differently, it’s the starter.
Perspective.
Jamie Moyer – 22 starts, 134.1 innings, 20.0 VORP
Ryan Franklin – 20 starts, 132.2 innings, 16.9 VORP
Felix Hernandez – 2 starts, 13.0 innings, 6.5 VORP
Jeff Harris – 1 start, 10.2 innings, 4.0 VORP
Gil Meche – 23 starts, 128.1 innings, 0.1 VORP
Joel Pineiro – 20 starts, 123.2 innings, 0.0 VORP
Aaron Sele – 21 starts, 116 innings, 0.0 VORP
Sample size, schmample size. In just two starts, Felix is now the M’s third best starting pitcher on the year.