Game 93, Mariners at Blue Jays
Dave · July 20, 2007 at 3:31 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Batista vs Litsch, 4:05 pm.
The M’s head north to take on Toronto as the road trip kicks off. The Blue Jays are pretty much the definition of a league average team, with some good hitters, some bad hitters, and an inexperienced rotation. Jesse Litsch, the kid going tonight, probably belongs in the minors, but he’s also exactly the kind of pitcher the M’s have struggled against the past 18 months. The main thing going for the M’s offense is that Litsch lacks any real outpitch, so with a pitch-to-contact guy on the mound, we should see a lot of balls in play tonight.
Standard line-up for the M’s.
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2 cheers for the Twins!!! Yipppeeee!!!
298- I don’t think Josh Peavy and John Beckett are very good pitcher, IMO.
I think that one of the points that Dave likes to make over and over is that you can’t use a single stat to tell the whole story. You can skew the RS/RA stat using your extreme example as much as you want, and I know what you are trying to say, but I don’t think the M’s are the only team that sees the effects that you are presenting.
In other words, the M’s aren’t the only team that has a bad 5th pitcher and therefore aren’t the only team that experiences your RS/RA example. Besides, even your hypothetical rotation has the sucky brothers of good pitchers Jake and Josh. 🙂
299 My point is two-fold: (1) RS/RA may or may not be usually reliable, but it has flaws that can cause it to be wildly incorrect. This is what my imaginary rotation showed. It is entirely possible for RS/RA to not only be a little wrong, but completely broken.
Therefore it follows that RS/RA is only useful for the most part, at best; it won’t be useful to the extent that you have a talent divide between your best and worst pitchers. And besides, as Dave never tires of pointing out, results-based analysis is inferior to other methods.
(2) My second point is that the M’s have had some very terrible pitchers and some very terrible games. You challenge whether they are worse than other teams’ bad pitchers and bad games. It is hard to know how to check this out easily, but someone could find out the answer if they had the time. Unfortunately…I’m going to sleep.
So someone else will have to do the work.
302 303 Yeah I meant to fix those
304-
But your example has two flaws: (1) the discrepancy between starters 1-4 and 5 never happens, and (2) you are looking at just one team, instead of looking at every team having a drastic falloff to the #5 starter.
You are looking at 2 games out of 162.
I understand what you’re saying, but in the grand scheme of things, RS/RA is a very good predictor of win/loss.
No one is disputing that the backend of the rotation is significantly weaker than the front. What I am disputing is the fact that every team faces this problem – it’s not just the M’s who have 2 significantly worse pitchers in the 4 and 5 hole than 1-3. The RS/RA predicter is a very good statistic to predict probable wins and losses. No one is professing it to be perfect, but over the course of the season, it does indeed even out
Games started by pitchers with ERA+ below 66:
Mariners: 19
Angels: 0
Tigers: 0
Indians: 12
Games started by pitchers with ERA+ below 75:
Mariners: 39
Angels: 34
Tigers: 0
Indians: 23
So, yeah, the Angels have two shaky spots, but not as shaky as the M’s…
Nwtrev: If you’re still on here, I just wanted to say “welcome”. Since I used to be one of those fans myself who would look at a guy’s average and say, “Gee, he’s hitting .275, that’s not too bad, is it?” without really looking at some of his other numbers, or say, what he’s doing or not doing in a particular situation, I didn’t think it was entirely out of the blue to ask that question about Vidro — it’s just that most of us on here have been razzing him all season long out of frustration over the fact that: 1) for a DH, we’ve expected a little more power from that position; 2) the number of GIDP’s he’s had (equivalent to if not MORE than his number of extra base hits, though he has been hitting one or two doubles of late) is alarming, especially for a guy batting in the #2 hole; & 3) his defense, which at one point years ago WAS above-average (he won a Gold Glove one season for the Expos), has sadly declined on account of knee injuries to the point that it’s of very little value these days. I’m sure some other regulars could probably add a few things that I’ve missed, but those are three of the main sticking points.
I’m sorry if you felt you got a little bit of a “baptism by fire,” so to speak. I was a frequent reader also who hasn’t been on here very long, either. Admittedly, I’m probably not the world’s biggest stats junkie…and I think I may have felt a bit intimidated at first to jump on here myself. But I’ve found that though I may not always agree with other people’s observations, I can often learn things about the game on here that I maybe wasn’t aware of.
Anyway, sorry if I’ve bored you with the long post, but again, welcome aboard!
P.S.: BTW, I noticed we were volleying that Detroit-Windsor thing back and forth. Are you from Michigan originally, also? Just curious. -S
I wouldn’t normally choose it, but I listened to the post-game report with Hudler (sp?) and Valle. The content of the show made me realize why I normally wouldn’t choose it.
Seriously, anyone connected to this team operates on the “Talking Points” school of public relations, and its freaking maddening.
Here are the talking points that I heard today:
1) Vidro is a good #2 hitter (Hudler, Valle, Rizzs, and some others…see a pattern?)
2) Richie will turn it around, and trading for someone to replace him is not the answer (say hello, Mr. Strawman!)
3) Super duper Veteran effect ™ will be upset, etc. when you bring up new guys (Valle, Nelson, Krueger)
Frankly, I’ve had enough. I like winning, and I know the team is winning, but this bamboozle-ment is not intellectually honest…and its crazy.
Bedard with 9K, 0 H through 5 innings (69 pitches)
Texas fighting back in the final inning!
Hrm.
If taking two games out of the stat introduces wild swings, perhaps you’re trying to make it do too much. Wide variance makes it hard to see “true” levels of talent…
Huytler. and FWIW, that may be the worst post-game combo that KOMO fields; mon-thur it will be Tom Glasgow with either Valle, Norm Charlton or Bill Haselman and the always reliable Shannon Drayer.
313: I agree…Tom H. is SUCH a freaking front-office Kool-Aid drinker, it’s not funny! He really ought to stick to doing the PA announcements at the Safe, which is something he’s okay at.
Shannon Drayer is, by far, the hardest working and most professional member of that bunch. She’s certainly come a long way from the days when she had to put up with Mitch Levy’s sexist BS on KJR!
260- I live in Chicago…Concerning Baseball in Chicago, if you want to watch baseball with real baseball fan’s you head to the Southside to watch the Sox. I was there one time and the fan’s were calling Edgar a busboy and asking him to bus there table and get them some more water. Sick, but funny in a typical Southside way. the stadium was lucky to be 1/3 full in those days, and if you bought some Hormel hot dogs you could go two for one and get great seats. nothing to do after the game around the stadium but jump on the train immediately and get home safely.
If you want to feel an incredible tingle when you walk into a vintage park, then sit surounded by the cream of Midwest young womanhood in halter tops on a sunny day you head to Wrigley. Of the 40,000 in attendance only 5,000 are watching the game, and not each other. You can only get a ticket from a scalper who will charge you around $100 for a bleacher seat. Before and after the game you are smack dab in the middle of one of the worlds greatest party spots with 100’s of bars to choose from in a very safe area of the Windy City.
For some reason I choose Wrigley unles the M’s are in town.
315: That reminds me…a few years back, I was listening to a game from Commisk/Cellular in which the Sox were absolutely handing us our rear end on a platter. Anyway, during a pregnant pause by Neihaus, you could ACTUALLY hear some drunken lout in the background yelling, “Hey everybody…did you see the Cubs lost today?!” — followed by a chorus of “HOORAY!”
Guess it was one of those “had to be there” moments, but still too funny! 🙂
Waybackwhen: Dave, I think you missed my point. My feminism would be offended at the fact that sans real knowledge, I’d just have to sit around like, well, a token chick.
Stitch n pitch doesn’t really bug me.
MSB: are you going to one of these minor-league-whosit-whatsits?
Oh yeah.. YAY for the win and the Angels’ loss! Woohoo!
Actually goined a game on the An-hells tonight…WOW.
Stars must be alignin’! 🙂
Also, forgot how to spell GAINED!…
320 – Looks fine if you’re from Australia
309: No joke on the talking points. I kept thinking that they were reading from a script. It felt like they knew fully well what’s being said on the internet and were waging a PR campaign to keep casual fans at bay.
My other thought was that they are protecting the veterans/team interests in order to keep their relationship positive with the veteran players. My favorite quote, “If they bring someone new in before the deadline, it better be a proven player otherwise it will upset the team chemistry.” I forget who said this, but it was a direct AJ counterpoint.
Perhaps that’s too sinister… but objective analysis really seemed lacking.
From the AP recap:
Batista blamed his wildness on dehydration, saying he hasn’t felt well since the Mariners flew into Toronto on Thursday.
“You definitely know you’re in trouble when your pitching coach comes out and says, ‘You’ve got to throw your changeup harder,” Batista said. “I go, ‘My changeup? That was my fastball.”
that’s quite funny. At least he has a sense of humor about it. He’s lucky he didn’t get torched.
Damn.
I think that’s made me a Batista fan for life.
Holy cow we are lucky Bedard didn’t start.
The media makes it act like Bedard came outta nowhere this year. For a good 3-4 months stretch last year, he was amongst the best in baseball.
Him getting that stiff neck and not facing us was flat out awesome.
3) Super duper Veteran effect â„¢ will be upset, etc. when you bring up new guys (Valle, Nelson, Krueger)
I have this feeling that McLaren probably knows what he should do, but is afraid to do it because the team was winning when he took over. If he makes some moves, and then through random variation the team goes into a slump, he knows he will be blamed. So it is safer for him to do nothing.
Either that or he’s also been drinking the aging veteran kool aid.
(I make it a point to ignore Krueger on the pregame shows. It must be nice to have a job where all you have to do is slick back your hair, sit in a chair for a half hour, and make stuff up. And, no one ever calls you on it or asks for any evidence.)
My god, Krueger IS looking like Micheal Corrleone these days, isn’t he?!
316- There are plenty of you had to be there moments, and comments in both Chicago ballparks. The fans are pretty damn funny. I prefer Safeco from a comfort and aesthestic point of view, but even though Seattle is now a true baseball town, there is a little more history and tradition back East which makes it interesting when you attend.
Actually, Toronto is south of Seattle.
I want to, but as I won’t know if I can until the end of next week, I may be out of luck this time …
having run into Krueger a couple of times during day events, his hair always looks like that.
are we still about toronto south of seattle. mapquest it. Seattle is the northern most MLB city
oh crap. i’m a jackass. toronto IS south of seattle
creepers… i shouldn’t drink vodka sodas during Ms day games