Game 127, Mariners at Rangers
Horacio Ramirez vs Jamey Wright. HOOOO BOY. 5:35 our time.
Interesting lineup:
CF-R Jones
DH-B Vidro
RF-R Guillen
LF-L Ibanez
3B-R Beltre
1B-R Sexson
C-R Johjima
2B-R Lopez
SS-R Bloomquist
On the other side, we get a AAA-worthy lineup, with Saltalamacchia at first.
Re-visiting playoff odds
A while back, I wrote up a short post on how the path to the playoffs for the M’s likely ran through the AL West, as the wild card competition was so stiff. Since then, the M’s have reeled off a set of huge wins, their rivals have slowed up a little, and suddenly this looks much different: they’re 3 games ahead of the Yankees in the wild card race, five ahead of Detroit. And they’re only one back of the Angels, making the AL West pennant a much easier task.
Which, as they say, is why they play the games.
The really good news as that the space between the M’s and the Yankees provides a huge cushion, much larger at this stage of the season than it might seem. Say you think the M’s, for all their success, are only a .500 team, and the Yankees much better (Yankees fans certainly seem to think this).
If the M’s go 18-18 in all their remaining games (including make ups), they’ll finish out at 91-71 (!). That means the Yankees need to go 20-14 to tie, which is extremely hard, even with the games against the Devil Rays in there. Unless the M’s go into a severe slump, they’ll force the Yankees to play extremely well to have a chance at this.
BP’s playoff odds put the M’s chances of getting into the playoffs right now at 59%, about equally split between winning the AL West and getting the wild card berth. I can’t remember when the M’s chances to get into the post-season looked this good. That’s great news.
Game 126, Mariners at Rangers
Felix Day! 5:35 our time, FSN. Felix faces once-greatly-desired free agent pitcher Kevin Millwood!
Over at the PI, John Marshall names his top picks of this year’s baseball books. I’m of course disappointed The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball isn’t on there (No love for the local? Really?), though it does look like they’re almost all hardbacks, and particularly — and there’s really no way to say this, having a book in competition, but I thought Shaughnessy’s book was just baaaaad, so it doubly hurts. Feel free to twist knives in the comments if you’re so inclined – it might distract from today’s standard lineup.
Brett Tomko
Not convinced that Horacio Ramirez should still be in the rotation (yea, me either) and still looking for potentially useful replacements? Well, we’ve got another one.
The Dodgers designated Brett Tomko for assignment this afternoon. He’s been a disappointment this year, running a 5.80 ERA while splitting time between the rotation and the bullpen. He’s never lived up to his reputation coming through the minors, but in recent years, he’d been a serviceable pitcher, including running a 4.73 ERA last year, 4.48 the year before, and 4.04 back in 2004.
Has he just declined to the point where he’s no longer useful? Let’s take a look.
2004: 7.7% BB, 13.1% K, 42% GB, 11% HR/Fly, 69.4% LOB%, .305 BABIP, 4.78 xFIP
2005: 7.0% BB, 13.9% K, 40% GB, 11% HR/Fly, 70.5% LOB%, .322 BABIP, 4.65 xFIP
2006: 5.9% BB, 15.5% K, 38% GB, 11% HR/Fly, 67.2% LOB%, .298 BABIP, 5.03 xFIP
2007: 8.8% BB, 16.6% K, 41% GB, 11% HR/Fly, 62.1% LOB%, .338 BABIP, 4.68 xFIP
Pretty consistent, eh? Walks are up a little bit this year, but so are the strikeouts, and the downward trend in his GB% has reversed, indicating that his stuff isn’t sliding into uselessness. He’s not giving up any more home runs than usual either, so he hasn’t turned into a guy who is just throwing meatballs down the heart of the plate.
So why the high ERA? A lot of balls in play turning into hits and an inability to strand guys once they’re on base. Guess what – those aren’t nearly the repeatable skills that the walk, strikeout, and groundball rates are, and they paint a totally different picture than ERA does. His skillset hasn’t changed much at all – just the results have, and if you’ve read the blog for any length of time, you know that skillsets predict future performance far better than past results, especially in things like batting average on balls in play and stranding runners.
Basically, Brett Tomko’s 5.80 ERA is the exact opposite of Jarrod Washburn’s 3.20 ERA back in 2005. Stranding runners wasn’t a repeatable skill then and it’s not one now. There’s no reason to believe that Tomko will continue stranding just 62% of his baserunners going forward, and when you adjust your expectations for a normal strand rate, Tomko profiles out as a perfectly adequate 5th starter.
In fact, I could put together a rather compelling case that Tomko is a very similar pitcher to Miguel Batista, and projections for their performance the rest of the season should be nearly identical.
Would you pick up a Miguel Batista clone to replace Horacio Ramirez if he was made available for nothing? Yea, me too. Horacio Ramirez has never been as good as Brett Tomko is right now, and this is yet another possible move the M’s could make to strengthen their team for the stretch run.
Bring back Brett Tomko.
Weekly Self-Promotional Post
Yep, my least favorite post of the week is back, reminding you that I’ll be on KJR in about 15 minutes (2:20 pm) to talk Mariners baseball with Groz. I’m just not so good at this self promotion thing.
August Offense
Since I haven’t finished the second post on projecting players yet, but don’t want to have another day with no substantive posts, here’s a stub.
M’s offense, by month:
April: .266/.310/.413, 736 PA, .147 ISO, 5.3% BB, 14.5% K, .283 BABIP, 97 sOPS+
May: .291/.345/.433, 1162 PA, .142 ISO, 6.9% BB, 12.4% K, .309 BABIP, 108 sOPS+
June: .290/.348/.416, 1053 PA, .126 ISO, 7.1% BB, 16.2% K, .323 BABIP, 102 sOPS+
July: .262/.320/.374, 1045 PA, .112 ISO, 7.4% BB, 16.2% K, .294 BABIP, 84 sOPS+
August: .333/.374/.527, 748 PA, .194 ISO, 5.2% BB, 14.6% K, .354 BABIP, 131 sOPS+
For those not familiar with the terms, ISO is Isolated Slugging, or SLG-BA, which basically tells you the power that a player (or team, in this case) is hitting for. For instance, looking at SLG, you’d think the team hit for more power in May than in April, but that’s actually not true – the SLG was just inflated by an increase in singles. BB% and K% should be self explanatory, and help show just how aggressive this team is. BABIP is batting average on balls in play, essentially removing home runs and strikeouts from the equation, and show how often a ball that stays in the field turns into a hit. And sOPS+ is the team’s park adjusted OPS compared to the league for each month. So, in April, the team hit 3% worse than average, then improved to 8% above average in May, 2% above average in June, fell apart to the tune of 16% below average in July, but has owned August, hitting 31% better than the rest of the league.
As you can see, the increase in offense has been driven by two forces – an increase in power (I’m looking at you, Raul) and a huge increase in BABIP (Yep, that’s Vidro). With those two reaching unprecedented levels of production and the rest of the offense not taking a nosedive, the M’s have turned into a veritable run scoring machine.
We’ve talked about the sustainability factor of those performances, but here’s the thing – this hyper aggressive approach comes with significant variance, but that variance comes with a built in upside – over any period of weeks, the M’s can absolutely blister the ball. This is basically the blueprint the White Sox used to score their way to a World Series title – swing the bat a lot, get a lot of hits, have parade.
If the M’s make it to October, their offense is good enough to win the whole thing. On Groz’s show a few months ago, I commented that the big chore would be for this team to just make the playoffs, because if they got in, they’re built very well for October play. And I think that still holds very true.
Game 125, Mariners at Rangers
Weaver vs Loe, 5:35 pm.
Thanks to a brutal travel schedule that has the M’s playing 44 games in 45 days, which began last weekend with the White Sox series and has already included three games on the notoriously tough Metrodome turf and a couple of flights as the M’s head into the sweltering heat of Texas in August, John McLaren mentioned that this road trip would be a good time to use his bench to keep everyone fresh. Which explains tonight’s line-up. Wait, that’s the standard line-up? Oh.
Moving on to a topic that doesn’t make me want to run a cheese grinder across my forehead, the Mariners face Kameron Loe tonight. For my money, Loe is one of the more underrated pitchers in baseball. Over the last three years, he’s established himself as a heavy groundball guy who throws enough strikes and misses enough bats to be effective. However, he’s played in front of some lousy defenses in a park that isn’t exactly friendly to contact pitchers, so people haven’t caught on yet, but he’s got a similar skillset to Jake Westbrook, and I wouldn’t be surprised if things started clicking for him sooner rather than later.
2007 Fans Scouting Report
Tom Tango is back for another go around for his fan’s scouting report. Rather than just re-write the explanation, I’ll just quote last year’s post on the subject.
Friend of USSM and extremely smart guy Tom Tango is putting on his annual Fan Scouting Report. With all the work done to try to quantify defensive analysis, Tango is taking the Wisdom of Crowds approach. None of us are defensive experts, but if you’ve read the wisdom of crowds thesis, you realize that we all have our own small insights to add, and when you get a large representative sample, you can end up with some very good information.
By bringing together a lot of people who watch a lot of baseball, he’s compiled ratings based on the popular consensus of how good defensively players are. The data certainly isn’t the be-all, end-all of defensive analysis, but it’s very good information to have.
So, if you’d like to participate, go fill out the survey. However, please read the instructions. Tom takes a unique approach to evaluating defensive skills, and one that I whole-heartedly agree with; he wants to know what kind of skills a player has, and not how those skills compare to the relative merits of the other players who man that position. Or, as he states it:
Try to judge “average†not as an average player at that position, but an average player at any position. If you think that Chone Figgins has an average arm, then mark him as average, regardless if you’ve seen him play CF, 1B, 2B, or 3B.
DO NOT CONSIDER THE POSITION THE PLAYER PLAYS!
DO NOT CONSIDER THE POSITION THE PLAYER PLAYS!
DO NOT CONSIDER THE POSITION THE PLAYER PLAYS!
Position-independant defensive analysis is superior, in my opinion. Do we want to slag Derek Jeter’s defense at shortstop because his range isn’t good, relatively, to other shortstops, while giving Troy Glaus a pass because his defense at third isn’t as bad compared to other 3B? No – Jeter’s a significantly better defensive player than Glaus, but that gets lost in the shuffle of defensive position rankings.
So, let me encourage you guys to go fill out the survey. Tom’s been extremely helpful to us, and this is a great chance for us to return the favor.
Basically, what he’s asking you to do is rate the players you’ve seen play more than 10+ games this season in terms of different skills. Since we’ve all watched a lot of Mariner games, that’s where our opinion will be most useful. But if you live in another city and catch a lot of games from other teams, too, feel free to fill in the data for non-Mariner players.
This isn’t the be-all, end-all of defensive analysis, but it’s another little piece of evidence we can look at when trying to put the puzzle together. So, check it out.
Out with the old
In with the older. John Parrish will be DFA’d today, making room for 38-year-old Rick White on the roster.
Yep. Rick White. The M’s are hellbent on having someone with experience in their bullpen, and it apparently does not matter if they can get major league hitters out or not.
Game 124, Mariners at Twins
Batista vs Silva, 10:10 am.
As promised, a couple of changes in the line-up today. Bloomquist at second in favor of Lopez and Broussard DH’s for Vidro, so Beltre moves up to the #2 hole. The good news – Vidro and Lopez’s simultaneous days off means that we’re probably done with the Turbo as an infielder experiment. Thank God.