Saturday book event at Jackson Street Books
Hey, the canceled Third Place Books event is going to be re-scheduled for late next month, it looks like. In the meantime:
Tomorrow at 2pm, I’m at Jackson Street Books. I understand there will be light refreshments served.
On the 26th, next Thursday, I’m in Portland at Powell’s at Hawthorne that evening. Portland wooo!
On the 28th, a week from tomorrow, I’m at Elliot Bay books at about 3pm.
And if you can’t go, there’s no reason not to buy a copy, and we can work out some way to get it signed.
And if you’re read it, please do go out and review it at Amazon or Barnes and Noble — reviews help a lot.
The M’s are insane
Eric O’Flaherty is coming up from Tacoma and will join the team in Anaheim. Brandon Morrow will move from the bullpen to the rotation and make Felix’s scheduled start in Texas on Monday.
Yes folks, Brandon Morrow is going to make his first major league start, on the road, in the bandbox that is whatever they’re calling The Ballpark in Arlington now.
Brandon Morrow threw an inning on April 3rd, an inning on April 10th, and an inning on April 14th. During spring training, his longest outing was two innings, he threw 8 1/3 total innings in the month of March. In his professional debut last year in the Arizona and Cal Leagues, his longest outing was three innings.
The last time Brandon Morrow threw more than 3 innings in a ballgame was May 5th, 2006 against the Stanford Cardinal.
And now, he’s being asked to go into a severe hitters park and make his first major league start, after having spent the entire spring being used as a reliever, and then sitting on his hands for the better part of April.
This organization is ridiculous.
Anatomy of a really dumb series of moves
Today’s game offers us some unwelcome insights into how Hargrove thinks, and how that thinking costs the team games (I recommend Geoff Baker’s entries here, and here, which are likely as close to transcriptions of Hargrove’s brain process as we’re likely to get).
The situation before Hargrove starts making decisions:
1b: empty
2b: Alexi Casilla (who is crazy fast)
3b: Jason Bartlett
The M’s lead 2-1 and have one out.
Up next:
C-L Mauer
RF-R Cuddyer
1B-L Morneau
DH-R Redmond
Notes on those guys:
Mauer has a huge platoon split: 04-06, he hit .275/.337/.334 against LHP and .342/.427/.535 against RHP.
Cuddyer’s hit significantly better against lefties than righties (his OPS split is .845/.788) but it’s not that huge.
Morneau’s not as bad as Mauer, but he’s got a split vulnerability (.262/.304/.457 v LHP, .290/.360/.536 v RHP).
Redmond’s a less-good Cuddyer: .795 OPS v LHP, .678 v RHP.
In the bullpen:
RHP Sean Green
RHP Julio Mateo
RHP JJ Putz
RHP Chris Reitsma
RHP Sean White
LHP George Sherill
Also, RHP Brandon Morrow, who Hargrove seems to have forgotten (side note: Morrow would now have three starts under his belt had he not broken camp with the team, instead of 3 innings).
Assumptions: Washburn’s done and needs to come out.
Desired outcome: get out of the inning with as few runs scored as possible.
Potential strategies:
No roles. Put Putz in. This is a critical juncture in the game, so you want your best reliever out there. Putz can get strikeouts and keep the ball in the infield. He’s effective against lefties. But this isn’t even a possibility, since Putz is the closer. Hargrove brings him in much later in the game, with the M’s way down.
Assume the closer is sacred. So we don’t get Putz, because Putz must be saved for a possible close situation later. Who do you want? There seem to be two obvious choices:
– Bring a lefty – which means Sherill – to face Mauer. Mauer’s a kitten versus lefties, hopefully you get a K, or an easy pop-out. A fly out might score Bartlett and advance Casilla, but you’re already in trouble there. Either way, you could then intentionally walk Cuddyer, even, and face another guy who has trouble with lefties in Morneau. Given Sherill’s spring, it would clearly take some stones to make the move, and maybe you’d even rather there was a different lefty here… but there isn’t. Tough call to make.
– Bring in an effective righty who isn’t Putz. Almost certainly you want Reitsma. Given how the next set of hitters do against righties, though, tough call between Sherill and Reitsma.
Walk Mauer and hope for a double play. I almost never like intentional walks, but with only one lefty in the bullpen (and that being Sherill, who you might understandably be reluctant to gamble on) let’s say this a valid strategy.
What then? You’ve loaded the bases with the intention of getting a double-play, which requires a ground ball and reliance on your infield. Who do you look to?
By 2006 G/F ratio
—
RHP Sean Green 2.48
RHP Chris Reitsma 1.68
LHP George Sherill 0.59
RHP Julio Mateo 0.51
RHP Sean White (?)
(excludes Morrow, Putz)
Mateo is the pitcher least likely to succeed in this situation. Equally clearly, if you want an experienced veteran groundballer to pound the strike zone with breaking pitches to get a grounder, Reitsma is your guy.
There’s an argument that Hargrove was looking to a batter-pitcher matchup and liked Mateo. That may be possible. But if that’s the case, it’s a further evidence that Hargrove can’t make these decisions. Mateo can get groundouts. But he doesn’t. He’s not that good at it. He has a pitch you might think should get a groundball – Hargrove clearly does – but Mateo does not throw it well enough to be effective with it.
And the rest is much the same. Once Mateo’s in there and gives up a double to Cuddyer, Hargrove has a similar choice, and choses to walk Morneau with Mateo instead of bringing Sherill in to defang him. The double play is set up again, and Mateo is no more suited to get a ground ball here than he was the last time. He predictably fails to get one. Finally, he gets Josh Rabe to ground to short – and then is removed for Sherill. In terms of G/F ratio, this is about what you’d expect from Mateo.
There’s a further argument here, that you can’t use Reitsma early because he’s reserved for later innings, to which I make the same counter-point: with two men on, facing the heart of the Twins lineup, putting a bad pitcher in there means that there’s no lead to protect later in a neat 8th-9th fashion, no save situation for Putz, nothing. If this adherence to roles is really so strict that in a crucial situation in the 7th the two best-suited pitchers are barred from helping the team win a game because they’re going to be used in less-meaningful situations later, that is a gift to every opponent the team faces, a significant disadvantage the team is taking on willingly, for no better reason than the modern book on reliever usage is rigid, and the team follows its dogma.
Is the team really better off having Putz and Reitsma watch from the bullpen as Mateo lets inherited runners score and squanders games, ensuring they don’t get in?
Are they better off letting other teams know that if they can work a starter for enough pitches and chase them from the game early they’re guaranteed a gift-wrapped chance to put up a nice, crooked number on the board?
And how can the M’s management tolerate having a manager this inflexible who, even in choosing poor strategies, finds the most destructive way to implement them?
A little perspective
For the first time all year, I didn’t watch one pitch of the game today. I left the house about a half hour before the game started, and I didn’t get back until after it was over (which is why you didn’t get a game thread – sorry about that). I wasn’t taking an intentional day off from the team or boycotting Jarrod Washburn. Instead, I went to the hospital to see a little girl named Skylar.
She’s six years old, and she’s in the pediatric ICU at Baptist Medical Center here in Winston Salem. On April 5th, she was in a car that got into a collision that caused a large accident, and in the process, her neck was separated from her spine. She has limited movement of her right side, almost no movement in her left side, and is unable to talk. She’s six years old, but she’s a fighter, and she’s going to make it through.
For a few hours, I forgot that Felix Hernandez existed. His strained flexor couldn’t have been further from my mind. It didn’t matter.
No one’s a bigger fan of Felix than I am, and I get a lot of joy out of watching him pitch. But man, spend a few hours with a girl like Skylar, and you’ll care a lot less. Some things in life matter more than others. I want Felix to get well, but I want Skylar to get well a lot more.
Everybody breathe
Preliminary reports are that there is no structural damage. Official word coming shortly, but it sounds like Felix is okay.
Edit: Official News is “flexor strain”, won’t throw for 5 days, will be re-evaluated after that. “As good news as you can get”, per the doctor. Whew!
USSM scalability and general geekery
During the first inning, I got to see load go from 1 to 15 to about 60, and then stay there for four innings. At one point, I actually blocked new connections for a while until the load dropped, then let people back in — and it jumped back to 60 again.
As Dave says, there’s got to be a solution for this. But I haven’t found it yet. So if you’re interested in another one of these technical wonkery threads, read on.
Read more
Time to pray
Felix left tonights game with “tightness in his right elbow”. That’s about the worst news possible. Now we just hold our breaths and hope like crazy, because without Felix, rooting for this team is about as much fun as having your eyelids ripped out.
Game 10, Twins at Mariners
Happy Felix day! Carlos Silva represents the opposition tonight.
Autopilot Hargrove uses the same line-up as always. Broussard in for Guillen in right field. If you’re ever going to put Broussard out there, do it with Felix on the mound, because he’s not going to get many chances.
So, Felix Day #3. The last two starts, I had a feeling we were going to see something special. Tonight – I’m kind of worried, to be honest. Not in a “I think he’s going to get shelled” kind of way, but in a “he’s going to give up runs eventually” kind of way. And, if Felix has a weakness, its still left-handed hitters, and the Twins have a couple of the best in Mauer and Morneau. It’s not hard to turn on a fastball and pull it down the right field line at Safeco, so if Felix gives up a home run and raises his ERA all the way to 0.74 or something, I won’t be shocked.
Of course, I also won’t be shocked if he strikes out all 27 guys he faces. He’s Felix. Anything’s possible. Either way, Felix Day is appointment TV, and you couldn’t pry me away from this game with an army of chariots and swarms of locusts. I love Felix Day.
ESPN broadcasts Yankees game
Thank goodness this week’s Wednesday game is the Indians @ Yankees (4:05). For too long the Yankees have been ignored by both Fox and ESPN in choosing games to broadcast, and this presents a rare opportunity for national fans who don’t have the Yes Network to see this interesting and too-often overlooked team. Kudos to you, ESPN schedulers, for bringing us this unique treat. May your daring programming choice be rewarded by many intrigued fans who will be turned on to see this unfamiliar team take the field.
Other upcoming nationally broadcast games
Friday: Yankees at Red Sox, ESPN
Saturday: Yankees at Red Sox or Cardinals at Cubs, Fox
Sunday: Yankees at Red Sox, ESPN
Monday: Yankees at Tampa Bay, ESPN
M’s lock up Lopez
The M’s signed Jose Lopez to a four year deal through the 2011 season today, buying out all his arbitration years (but not his first year of free agency) and giving them some cost certainty with one of their better young talents.
If you’ve been to either of the USSM feeds where Bavasi talked, you know he’s a huge fan of locking up large groups of young players to long term deals. He did this same thing when he was with the Angels, and they estimated that they saved about $35 to $40 million. It’s a sound strategy, and one that I’m glad to see the Mariners continue.
It’s also a significant investment in Lopez, and a good sign that the organization was still willing to commit to him despite a lackluster second half and a poor start to 2007. Lopez still has the talent to be a well above average second baseman, and getting him signed now is a low risk, high upside move. If he breaks out and turns into an all-star, the club has saved a fortune, and the cost is low enough that even worst case scenarios aren’t financially debilitating. There is some downside, as Lopez has been dogged by a reputation of being a less than hard worker through the years and his conditioning has been up and down, and giving guaranteed money to a guy with work ethic issues can backfire in your face. But Lopez has matured quite a bit in the past couple of years, and it shouldn’t be that big of a concern.
The M’s have now signed Putz, Betancourt, and Lopez to multiyear deals. Felix has been making public noise about getting one since 2005, so you know he’s angling to be next in line. It will be interesting to see how the M’s handle Felix’s situation, but I would think its totally plausible that they get something done with him before the season ends.