Game 101, Blue Jays at Mariners
Laurie, who is in possession of a ridiculous bandwith quota and who is also not afraid to use it, is guest-hosting tonight’s thread. Head on over to Marbledog and knock yourself (and, quite likely, her server) out. While you’re over there, please thank her for this generous offer as we recover from the day’s fireworks.
Hello Doooooooooooooooyle
Chris Snelling is going to join the Mariners this evening in time for tonight’s game against the Blue Jays. Carl Everett has been designated for assignment to create room on the roster.
And there was much rejoicing.
[DMZ update: Here’s the team announcement]
Game 100, Blue Jays at Mariners
7:05, Halladay v Meche.
Notes: Lopez returns, bats 3rd. Everett’s still the designated out-maker, batting ahead three people who hit better than he has.
So let’s look at the Blue Jays lineup for a second
CF-R Reed Johnson
LF-L Frank Catalanotto
1B-L Lyle Overbay
3B-R Troy Glaus
C-B Gregg Zaun
RF-L Eric Hinske
DH-R Bengie Molina (whaaat?)
2B-R Aaron Hill
SS-R John MacDonald
There are some weird choices in there, too.
New arrival…
Long time readers may recall this post, dated two years and two days ago. Along similar lines, I’m pleased to announce the arrival of the newest M’s fan, Noah Robert Barker, born today at 8:24am. I’d have a picture for you, but WordPress is arguing with me at the moment. (Take that, WordPress!).
Alex Rodriguez and the uniform with pinstripes
I understand why Alex wasn’t embraced by Yankee fans. For all of his talk about embracing the pinstripes, he spoke with the same somewhat robotic insincerity that’s been his public face for years, a mask that he grew into that free agent year. Everything he says runs through the self-censor loop, because he’s been so consistently and so harshly punished for verbal slips before, and then he’s criticisized for not being frank and open.
In any event: Alex isn’t having a good year, and it’s certainly not the year the Rangers and Yankees are paying him to have.
From my distant view, this all looks insane. There’s the Yankees broadcast crew, possibly prodded from outside (see rumors), hashing on him, ESPN has been frantically whipping the flames of this conflict as a former GM (who once tried to sign Alex, failed, and then attacked him) and now analyst attracts more and more attention by, over and over, whipping Alex for real but mostly perceived shortcomings. The Yankee fan base seems easily-led and almost irrational, spouting off about how he lacks the soul to play in New York, or the courage to face pressure, and so on, until you want to be sick.
I wonder if this makes future signings or trades that require consent harder. If I was a player, knowing that any bad month or week might be fanned into a wildfire of hatred, I wouldn’t want to play there, no matter how good the money was. It wouldn’t be worth it.
In any event, for a reasonably intelligent view on this, I recommend Steven Goldman’s Pinstriped Blog, on the Yes Network site.
Here, a first view on what was happening, and here, even better, at length answering emails from readers on the situation.
As for the Mariners, if the Yankees did call, offering one of the best players in baseball for pennies on the dollar, well, you take that deal.
You do.
New and improved Gil Meche
Larry Stone, o’er at the Seattle Times, writes of Meche’s success and the choice it presents the team right now.
“My whole thought process has changed,” Meche said Monday on the eve of a tasty showdown tonight with Roy Halladay. “Whether people think it’s a fluke, I know the feelings I’m having on the mound are different than I’ve ever had before.”
If you haven’t already read it, I recommend Dave’s post “What is Gil Meche?” on the stats behind the turnaround, and reasons to be skeptical that it’s sustainable.
Random Notes
Lots of minor points to make today, so let’s go to the notes format.
1. ESPN has fired Harold Reynolds, almost certainly for something not pertaining to his performance on the job. I’d be stunned if the M’s don’t do some checking on this and, if they’re satisfied that it wasn’t a huge deal, offered him a job. It’s very easy to imagine him broadcasting Mariner games later this year and in the future. Honestly, anything that isn’t Dave Henderson is a huge upgrade.
2. Tangotiger, one of the smartest baseball minds out there, has done a quick-and-dirty analysis on playoff odds if a team’s current winning% didn’t match their actual true talent level. BP’s playoff odds report and coolstandings.com both use past data to project the team’s odds of making the playoffs, but run into problems if a team’s past performance isn’t a perfect estimate of how they’ll play going forward. With the M’s almost certain to replace the giant sucking hole of Carl Everett before the end of the month and replace him with a real hitter, it’s very easy to say that the M’s will be a better team than their winning percentage to date would project. Here’s a summary of Tango’s point:
As I’ve shown, to have an even shot at a team that is leading the division, and you are in the bottom, and you are down by 3 wins, you simply need a team to be a true +.050 wins better than the leading team.
With the uncertainty level existing in all forecasts, you can make such a plausible assertion (every now and then).
3. Rafael Soriano’s shoulder is still bothering him, and he won’t be available tonight. The disabled list is a real possibility. The next arm up from the farm is almost certainly going to be LHP Eric O’Flaherty, who is pitching extremely well for Double-A San Antonio. He doesn’t have the same stuff that Mark Lowe does, but he throws 90-93 from the left side with a solid breaking ball and has shown both extreme groundball dominance and the ability to miss bats. If and when O’Flaherty comes up, he could easily stick for the rest of the year. It’s not improbable to think that this team’s bullpen in September will go something like Putz-Soriano-Sherrill-Lowe-O’Flaherty-Woods-Mateo, with Julio finally being relegated to the mopup duty he deserves.
4. That Lopez-Beltre scuffle I mentioned in the game thread has been uploaded online so you
can see for yourself and decide whether this was playfighting or an actual disagreement of sorts. Thanks to Jeff Sullivan for getting this up. If you’re not reading his Lookout Landing blog, you’re missing out, big time.
5. Despite any rumors you may hear, Gil Meche isn’t close to being traded. If the M’s deal him (which gets less likely with every win), it won’t be til this weekend, when they’ve had a full opportunity to evaluate their chances of making a run this year. And the talent they’re asking for in return, anyways, is likely to preclude a deal. At this point, I think Meche ends the season as a Mariner.
6. Somewhat related, as of today, the M’s are buyers, not sellers. That could change over the next week, but don’t be surprised if the M’s go trolling for another Eduardo Perez type move in the next few days. David Dellucci would make all kinds of sense right now.
Game 99, Blue Jays at Mariners
7:05. Joel Pineiro v Casey Janssen. Getting either pitcher’s name wrong in the thread gets you a 24-hour ban, because it’s Monday.
This lineup brought to you by those dumb split-ended sparkplugs:
RF-L Ichiro!
2B-R Willie “The Ignitor” Blooooooooomquist
3B-R Beltre
LF-L Ibanez
1B-R Sexson
DH-0 Everett
C-R Johjima
SS-R Betancourt
CF-R Jones
Fun fact of the day!
2006, the post-collapse switch-hitting Carl Everett versus righties: .241/.309/.388 (232 AB)
2003-5, right-handed platoon player Eddie Perez versus righties: .239/.303/.351 (188 AB)
Fun with numbers
At some point, I plan on doing a long post on Adrian Beltre. I don’t have time for it right now, so instead, I’m just going to present a series of numbers. You draw your own conclusions.
Monthly breakdowns:
April: .189/.284/.233, 11% BB, 23% K, .250 BABIP, 21% LD, 44% GB, 31% FB, 4% IF
May: .264/.302/.355, 4% BB, 18% K, .326 BABIP, 19% LD, 41% GB, 35% FB, 5% IF
June: .324/.387/.611, 8% BB, 18% K, .417 BABIP, 22% LD, 31% GB, 46% FB, 1% IF
July: .264/.329/.444, 10% BB, 19% K, .333 BABIP, 16% LD, 44% GB, 33% FB, 7% IF
Home/Road Splits:
Home: .241/.299/.354, 7% BB, 17% K, 17% LD, 44% GB, 35% FB, 4% IF
Road: .286/.356/.481, 9% BB, 22% K, 23% LD, 35% GB, 39% FB, 4% IF
Last 9 games (vs Toronto, New York, and Boston):
.341/.400/.610, 10% BB, 20% K, .438 BABIP, 19% LD, 33% GB, 36% FB, 11% IF
Since May 1st:
.286/.341/.472, .361 BABIP, 7% BB, 18% K, 20% LD, 38% GB, 38% FB, 4% IF
That’s 290 at-bats, by the way.
2004:
.334/.388/.629, 8% BB, 14% K, .328 BABIP, 18% LD, 41% GB, 35% FB, 6% IF
XBH/FB, by year:
HR/FB, 2002 – 10%, 2B+3B/FB, 2002 – 15%, XBH/FB, 2002 – 25%
HR/FB, 2003 – 13%, 2B+3B/FB, 2003 – 19%, XBH/FB, 2003 – 32%
HR/FB, 2004 – 23%, 2B+3B/FB, 2004 – 15%, XBH/FB, 2004 – 38%
HR/FB, 2005 – 11%, 2B+3B/FB, 2005 – 21%, XBH/FB, 2005 – 32%
HR/FB, 2006 – 6%, 2B+3B/FB, 2006 – 26%, XBH/FB, 2006 – 32%
Okay, I lied – a little commentary. No matter what you think of Adrian Beltre, there’s absolutely no way that 6% HR/FB number is going to continue. That’s Scott Podsednik/David Eckstein territory. As you can clearly see, his overall rate of extra base hits per fly ball isn’t any different than it was in ’03 or ’05, but the distribution of those hits is skewed heavily towards doubles and triples this year. This isn’t a perfect metric (it’s essentially a proxy since I don’t have play-by-play data), but it makes a pretty obvious point – Beltre is just missing home runs this year. Both of today’s balls are out of any other park in the majors, except maybe Comerica.
I’m not saying Adrian Beltre’s going to hit like this all year – a recurrance of April is still a real possibility. I am saying that people who tell you that he’s hopeless and has no chance of improving don’t know what they’re talking about.
Game 98, Red Sox at Mariners
Jon Lester vs Jarrod Washburn.
Lester’s local and has a good arm, but he’s not throwing strikes regularly since showing up in the majors, so the M’s would do well to work the count and get to the Sox bullpen early.
No Carl Everett today – huzzah!