Game 10, Mariners at Rays
9:40 am, Batista vs Jackson.
Say hello to morning baseball. Of course, with the way Edwin Jackson and Miguel Batista command the strike zone, there’s a good chance this will turn into evening baseball, and maybe even midnight baseball. Not exactly a couple of Carlos Silvas here. Jackson and Batista are actually pretty similar pitchers, though I’d rather have Jackson at this point in his career.
Line-up:
CF Ichiro
2B Lopez
3B Beltre
LF Ibanez
1B Sexson
DH Vidro
RF Morse
C Johjima
SS Betancourt
Even with a RHP on the hill, Mike Morse gets the start in right field. Miguel better focus on getting a lot of groundballs today.
This Made Me Laugh
Behold – the most inaccurate baseball column you will ever read. From what I’ve heard, Seth Kolloen is a nice enough guy, but the P-I should demand a refund for this stinker. The hilarious part is that I actually agree with part of his premise, and John McLaren is overly attached to his veterans. I have been beating this drum myself for a while but I still can’t help but shake my head at how bad this article is. Let’s dive right in. We’ll shower when we’re done.
And now there’s an even more illogical addendum: Perform well, and I’ll mess with you.
On Monday and Tuesday, McLaren fiddled with the lineup. No, he didn’t replace any of the three hitters in his lineup who were batting below .115. Instead, he dinked around with the guys who actually were hitting.
For Tuesday’s game, Adrian Beltre moved from fifth in the batting order to third. Raul Ibanez moved from third to fourth.
Yes folks, John McLaren is messing with Adrian Beltre by moving him from the #5 spot to the #3 spot. Because, you know, we wouldn’t want the team’s best power hitter in a position to drive in Ichiro as often as possible. For as much as we get on McLaren, this was a good move, and I said so at the time he made it. By getting Beltre in front of Ibanez, we avoid the annoying Lopez-bunts-Ichiro-over, opponent-walks-Ibanez-to-get-to-Sexson situation that the previous line-up led to. He made the line-up better and took away a tactical weapon from the opposing managers, and this is what Kolloen chooses to criticize?
Brad Wilkerson, Kenji Johjima and Jose Vidro, none of whom are hitting a jockey’s weight, stayed in the lineup.
Not noted is the fact that all three of these players are better than the reserves on the bench. Seriously, the M’s bench sucks (it’s their own fault, but it’s also reality). Removing any of those three from the line-up makes that days team worse. Again, of all the things to get on McLaren about, and you pick one thing that he’s doing right.
Jim Leyland’s Tigers started out slow — none slower than Jacque Jones, who started the season on a hitless streak.
How long did it take Leyland to sit Jones?
Two games.
Ooh, a hitless streak. That sounds serious. Except, you know, that streak consisted of 8 at-bats. And, just for the record, here’s Jacque Jones’ 2008 performance through yesterday’s game: .222/.263/.222. If no Tigers have started slower, what does Seth think of Ivan Rodriguez, Placido Polanco, Miguel Cabrera, or Edgar Renteria? Believe it or not, Jacque Jones is outhitting all four of them. When he wrote the article, Jones was the Tigers fifth best hitter to date (which explains why they were 0-7 before tonight, but is still reality). However, Kolloen chooses to ignore the facts that Leyland hasn’t at all done what Kolloen is crediting him for doing. Leyland isn’t benching his struggling veterans to teach them that poor performance won’t be rewarded – he’s sticking with the guys who have long track records of success. Which is exactly what good managers do seven games into the season!
Yes, Jacque Jones got the 3rd game of the season off, while Marcus Thames played in his place. Do you think that maybe that had something to do with the fact that Thames has 44 home runs in 600 at-bats over the last two seasons for Detroit? Seriously, 44 home runs in just over a full season’s worth of at-bats. He’s a flawed player, but he’s a hell of an asset for a reserve, and giving him at-bats isn’t scandal in the making. Also, note that Jones has started every game since. Some benching.
But wait, it gets better. This is the best part.
And, as further motivation, Jones has a young teammate who’s ready to take his spot.
Leyland has the Tigers’ equivalent of Adam Jones, center fielder Clete Thomas. But instead of carving up Triple-A pitching while the big club’s offense flounders, as Jones did last year, Thomas is up with the Tigers, taking the odd start away from veterans. And in four starts, Thomas has gone 7-for-15.
With Thomas lurking, what’s going through Jacque Jones’ mind?
Clete Thomas, Detroit’s equivalent of Adam Jones. This Clete Thomas, the 24-year-old who hit .280/.358/.405 in Double-A last year. The one who posted a .697 OPS in Class-A ball the year before. The Clete Thomas that ZIPS projected to hit .217/.274/.304 in 2008. No, seriously, that Clete Thomas.
Detroit traded away practically their entire farm system to get Cabrera and Willis. They stripped it bare, selling off everyone with talent except Rick Porcello, who they weren’t allowed to trade due to rules about recent signees. The Tigers farm system is one of the worst in the game at present. Baseball America didn’t rank Clete Thomas, their “equivalent of Adam Jones”, among the Tigers top 10 prospects. They thought less of Clete Thomas than former cast off Mariner relievers Yorman Bazardo and Francisco Cruceta.
Seriously – Clete Thomas is barely a prospect at all, and he’s about as close to Adam Jones as this column is to War And Peace. He’s Willie Bloomquist with slightly better outfield defense. Seth could have figured this out with about 45 seconds of research, or an email to anyone who knows anything about Clete Thomas. Instead, he really allowed himself to write that Thomas was Detroit’s answer to Adam Jones. A stupider comment won’t be published in any form in 2008.
Take a mulligan on this column, Seth. It was the Clete Thomas of baseball articles.
Game 9, Mariners at Rays
4:05 pm, Washburn vs Sonnanstine.
Ichiro CF
Lopez 2B
Beltre 3B
Ibanez LF
Sexson 1B
Wilkerson RF
Vidro DH
Burke C
Betancourt SS
Kenji gets a day off. Hopefully he remembers how to hit starting tomorrow.
Ichiro, High Leverage Base Stealer
During one of the off-season threads, a commenter and I had a discussion about Ichiro’s base stealing. Among those who aren’t Ichiro fans, it’s a fairly often repeated claim that Ichiro doesn’t run enough in situations that matter, and he pads his SB totals by taking bases early in games when the impact on wins and losses isn’t that large.
Well, thanks to the amazing Baseball-Reference.com, we can now disprove that myth once and for all. Here’s Ichiro’s career splits, now with Leverage Index added. Look at the breakdown:
High Leverage: 826 PA, 349 times on base, 67 steals, 19 caught, 25% Steal Per On Base
Med Leverage: 2606 PA, 1006 times on base, 147 steals, 37 caught, 18% Steal Per On Base
Low Leverage: 1784 PA, 684 times on base, 58 steals, 10 caught, 10% Steal Per On Base
About a 1/4 of the time that Ichiro reaches base in a high leverage situation, he takes off, compared to 1/5 of the time in normal situations and 1/10 of the time in low leverage situations.
I think we can safely put that false critique to bed.
What Do You Know?
Ryan Rowland-Smith does not suck, and despite not being a proven closer, is able to get people out in the 9th inning. Amazing. Maybe we should rethink this whole strict rules of bullpen usage thing?
Game 8, Mariners at Rays
4:05 pm, Bedard vs Garza
First off, Happy Birthday Felix! The King turned 22 today. Twenty-Two. Most hall of fame pitchers are still hanging out on minor league buses at 22, and Felix is heading into his third full season and establishing himself as one of the game’s best pitchers. Enjoy the b-day and please never leave us.
In other news, the M’s really should win this one. Matt Garza has a good arm, but he hasn’t figured out what to do with it yet, and Bedard’s good enough to shut down the Rays bats. Tampa’s a legitimate opponent, but for the M’s to contend, these are the types of games they need to win most of the time.
Line-Up:
CF Ichiro
2B Lopez
3B Beltre
LF Ibanez
1B Sexson
RF Wilkerson
DH Vidro
C Johjima
SS Betancourt
I like Beltre hitting 3rd and Ibanez fourth, and I hope that move is permanent. Ideally, this would setup well if the M’s wanted to bring in a LH hitting left fielder (Kenny Lofton, still a free agent), move Ibanez to DH, and platoon Vidro/Sexson at first base, as Lofton’s bat would fit in well in the #2 hole ahead of Beltre.
Just a suggestion.
M’s defense so far
For all of the talk about how the defense will come around, that it’s a strength of the team (please note I don’t believe either of those things, but they’ve been mentioned in the broadcast over and over), the M’s right now are in the middle of the pack in terms of overall, raw balls-in-play-into-outs, at .716, 17/30. Last year a normal team ran about .695 — but the season’s early, obviously.
And last year on the year the M’s were 27 of 30, at .678, with essentially the same defense except Ibanez was a year less gimpy and RF swaps out. So there’s pretty good reason to expect that despite predictions from Blowers & Co., you’re unlikely to see this level of defense, absolute or relative, sustained for the rest of the year.
2-5
Early trade results: Baltimore acquired three saves, a couple of base hits, and some good outfield defense in exchange for a bad hip. Advantage, Orioles.
Seriously, though, it’s another one run loss. Yes, Eric O’Flaherty had about as bad a first week in his new job as humanly possible, McLaren’s not inspiring confidence that he’s any better at this than he was last year, and the offense still looks horrible at times, but the team has been outscored by a whopping two runs in seven games. If you break an ankle jumping off the bandwagon now, it’s going to be harder to climb back on with a gimpy wheel when the breaks start going the M’s way.
Game 7, Mariners at Orioles
Silva v Cabrera.
DUN DUN DUNNNNN! LINEUP CHANGE! AWHOOOGA!
See if you can spot it.
CF-L Ichiro!
2B-R Lopez
LF-L Ibanez
3B-R Beltre
RF-L Wilkerson
1B-R “Big Fork” Sexson
DH-B “Professional Hitter Jose” Vidro
C-R Johjima
SS-R Betancourt
I look forward to hearing McLaren lectured in the post-game press conference about it being too early to make changes, much less panic (PANICCCC!!)
The Orioles field:
2B-B Roberts
3B-R Mora
RF-L Markakis
1B-R Millar
DH-L Huff
LF-L Scott
C-R Hernandez
CF-R Jones
SS-R Hernandez
Random side note: all this talk of Panic made me really want to go run Future Crew’s Panic demo, which was amazingly sweet for the time and had great music (like almost all their demos). Won’t run, though. Update: yay for comments! It’s on YouTube which is not nearly as cool as actually running it, but still cool. Watching this and marveling at how awesome it is for how bad the computers were (and no graphics acceleration!) makes me feel really old.
Calm Down
Yes, the Mariners have lost three in a row to the Orioles. But man, reading through the comments, you’d think McLaren attacked Felix with a knife in his sleep. Can we inject a little sanity into this process?
Look, no one’s been more critical of the job the organization in building the 2008 Mariners than I have. All winter, I talked about my concerns about how the team was going to score runs, play defense, and win on days when Felix and Bedard aren’t pitching. This roster has problems – we’ve known it for months, and it’s not a big surprise.
But really, the team has scored 23 runs and allowed 24 in six games. That is not cause for panic. It’s just not. Nothing (besides Putz’s injury) that has happened since opening day should have changed your opinion about this team one ounce. If you weren’t freaking out a week ago, you shouldn’t be freaking out now.
This isn’t to say there aren’t valid criticisms of the roster or the way it’s being handled. There are, obviously. But one of the main criticisms of the blog (fairly or not) is that we don’t get particularly excited about the team doing well when it’s not sustainable. The flip side of that should also be true – there’s no reason to freak out when the team loses a one run game. It’s not proof that this team is terrible; it’s proof that one run games can go either way.
We call out the organization and the local writers when they do things that aren’t up to the standard we expect. In turn, we need to hold ourselves to a standard above firing the manager because the team is 2-4 in six games. Rationality works both ways.