Reasons For Optimism
This season has sucked. The team has played badly and provided almost no entertainment value. Their playoff chances are gone, and at this point, there’s not much left to root for. Fans are angry, players are frustrated, and there’s only so many posts you can write about how poorly this team was constructed.
So, I’m throwing a curveball. Here are the reasons to believe that this team will play better the next four months than they did in the first two.
1. Jarrod Washburn and Carlos Silva have LOB% of 61.5% and 61.6% respectively. Those are the 4th and 5th lowest totals in the American League. Thankfully, LOB% isn’t very predictive, and there’s no reason to think that this is a true change in ability for either of these guys. Both guys have true talent strand rates of closer to 70%, and when their ability to leave runners on base regresses toward the mean, both guys will improve their ERAs quite a bit.
2. Adrian Beltre has a .239 batting average on balls in play despite a line drive percentage of 20.5%. His career BABIP is near .300, and considering how well he’s hitting the baseball, there’s no reason for the ball to continue to find fielders gloves at this rate. Beltre’s skillset makes it likely that his performance will improve as the year goes on.
3. The Mariners are hitting .228/.323/.390 as a team with runners in scoring position, 13th out of 14 AL teams. While the offense isn’t good, it’s better than that, and there’s no reason to believe this is a line-up of unclutch hitters who can’t perform well in scoring opportunities. That number should also improve as the year wears on.
4. Brandon Morrow.
The cloud is dark, but there are some silver linings. This isn’t the worst team in the AL, and they won’t continue to play this badly all year long.
“Watching their offense is like watching an oil painting. Then I checked today, and they’re last in the majors in ERA as well.” – Jerry Crasnick … ESPN
Regardless if the ESPN talking heads are proper evaluators … there is no question it really cannot get much worse than this. I agree … they cant play this bad all year.
Dave curious to your thoughts on what the M’s should do with RF for the rest of the year. Is it stupid platoon Wlad and Reed for the rest of the season? Could Wlad benefit from going back to Tacoma? Is Reed worth putting out there every day? Does Victor Diaz have anything to offer?
Is the potential for an underperforming team to return to the mean really a reason to be optimistic? I too am tired of harping on how bad this team is, but none of this makes me feel much better.
Reasons to be pessimistic:
1. Brandon Morrow.
I’m concerned about Putz – he’s not looking right and I can see the M’s converting him to be their closer if Putz goes on the DL. I’m really hoping Putz turns it around so they don’t feel the urge to permanantly lock Morrow into the bullpen.
I’ll wear the pessimist hat, then. If Washburn and Silva’s LOB%, Beltre’s BABIP, and the team’s, um, clutchiness regress to the mean, then management, which does not believe in regression to the mean but which overvalues recent performance, will see it as evidence that the ship has righted itself or as something to build on. In other words, nothing a proven veteran and some clubhouse leadership can’t fix. But I say this as a person whose marginal happiness bears a non-linear relationship to marginal wins: less utility for each marginal win until we get about four games from the playoffs, and then wildly greater utility after that.
#4 Yeah if Putz ever puts together a stretch of 5-6 good appearances together before the trade deadline the Mariners really should ship him off to a contender looking for relief help.
They aren’t this bad, but if part of their “regression to the mean” involves things like Jose Vidro playing enough to vest his option…
What scares me is that we’re well into the “false hope” phase of things, where the invariable comparisons to the 2005 Astros (“They were under .500 at the All Star break!”) will show up if this team wins 7 out of 10. No, guys, this team is NOT the Miracle Braves, 1995 isn’t happening again, and so on… but I suspect the front office will clutch at ANY straw possible to avoid accountability for their bad decisions going in to 2008.
I’m pretty sure I want them to both fail miserably. I’d rather see
Baek/Dickey/Feierabend start. They probably both have about the same true talent level as Washburn and Silva.Yeah, this doesn’t make me happy. I’d rather the team finish 65-97 than 75-87. Something radical might happen that way.
Does anyone else remember Morrow hitting 100 last year? I know he was always well in to the 90’s, but where did the extra zing come from? He’s really showing his best stuff right now. If he could borrow Felix’s curve for a season we might have the best 1-2-3 in the game.
The team improving over the last four months is the last thing I want to see. Anything that could be used to justify the moves of Bavasi and McLaren are NOT a good thing. I hate rooting against my team, but I feel compelled to do so.
Phrasing makes us feel better without actually saying very much. Optimist’s double speak.
There are two tiers of bad in the AL. My tiers so far – a fair number of surprises:
Boston
Chicago, Rays, As
Yankees, Indians, Twins, Angels, Blue Jays
Orioles, Rangers, Detroit
Mariners, Royals
Maybe the Ms move up a tier going forward. We’ll see. More likely is some shifting amongst the top three tiers.
I wonder if this upcoming series against LAA isn’t a pretty big deal – if they get knocked around, then it’s going to be hard to head out on the road with any level of optimism about their chances and they might start looking to make wholesale changes. If pull 2 out of 3 or sweep, then I could see them continuing to act as though they are a contender for at least a few more weeks.
As shitty as it is, I want this team to fail miserably this year as I believe it is the only way we will see the wholesale changes necessary to actually turn this around. Bavasi’s tenure has been the most miserable era of any team I’ve routed for (I was too young back in the day to appreciate the real suckitude of the M’s way back when…).
That would be “rooted for”. Sorry, DMZ.
I have yet to see any reason why the offense is better than what they’ve performed.
@Yeti
Yes, Morrow hit 100 last year.
Yay for reason 4! I can’t believe how incredibly awesome he looks just about every time out!
Last year Morrow’s higher speed pitches were usually up and away. What’s impressive this year is that he’s hitting the high numbers with complete arm extension and keeping the ball down. He’s got a lot more control of his fastball this year.
All I want for the rest of this season is to play a more entertaining brand of baseball than the 1st third. Despite the horrendous approach at the plate vs. Wakefield, the 1-0 Boston game was one of the most enjoyable games of the season.
You go, Brandon Morrow (aka “Reason #4”)! Notice he got a new glove? Man, it’s embarrassing when you watch so many games you notice things like that.
Got my JJ Putz Flamethrower Express train car. Put it on the track and was puzzled… I thought it would be faster… not as fast as last year’s car…
I’m pretty sure I want them to both fail miserably.
8- Seeing Silva fail accomplishes exactly what?
Aside from the Beltre optimism, this just makes me feel worse. What good comes from the team improving over the course of the season? Vidro vesting? Bavasi making asinine trades for the playoff push a la 2006? Bavasi remaining employed by the club another year? Lower draft picks? No thanks.
I can enjoy Mariners games waiting for the next bizarre exhibition of futility as long as I can have faith that wholesale changes will be made. But I have no interest in them working their way back to mediocre just so I can see the same crap next season.
One thing I’m wondering is how Morrow’s recent performance stacks up against that time early last season when he was pitching well. Also, how does his stuff, and location, stack up when he pitches a second inning? The Texas performance makes me wonder about that.
As a team they’re hitting .252/.309/.385 overall, roughly the same as “with runners in scoring position”… I’m with jro: what makes you think they’re “better than that”?
That is precisely my fear. I’m pretty much at the point where I would rather see them keep failing miserably – in hopes that it’s a catalyst for future change. My only fear then is that – considering their long history of inept player evaluation – they will be unable to identify what exactly needs to be changed, and end up trading away our few good players for another worthless baseball model. So really I’m afraid we’ll get screwed either way. But then, I’ve never yet been accused of being an optimist.
Optimism? I dunno. I really don’t want to root against the team I love but if they regress toward the mean I fear no change will come, and that is what this organization sorely needs. I’m sure it’s not easy being a GM in Seattle, but I’m sure there is one out there that could field a competitive team year in and year out with the resources the M’s have. Bavasi hasn’t done that once in five years. With the resources he’s had that is staggeringly, mind- bogglingly, unacceptably bad.
Where do you find those stats for Beltre?
@planB
the 24 point difference in average is pretty big. Especially when most teams hit better than their overall line with RISP.
Morrow’s career seems almost entirely in the organization’s hands. If groomed properly, his ceiling is damn high. I wish I could be optimistic that we weren’t going to screw up his development worse than we already have…I just can’t be happy seeing him throw ~55 meaningless innings in a meaningless season when he could be developing a second/third pitch in appearances longer than 30 pitches in Tacoma.
Reasons for pessimism:
Mariners’ record: 21 – 36 (.368)
Mariners’ 3rd order record: 22.6 – 34.4 (.396)
So if we take their current record and play at our 3rd order adjusted level for the rest of the year we end up with 62-63 wins.
Wow.
Schadenfreude.
@metz 123
I’m in total agreement about just wanting to see some entertaining ball. I understand the feeling of wanting the team to spiral out of control in hopes of a rebuild, but what if we just see the same crew next year anyway? It’s a likely scenario. I think the best we can hope for is seeing these guys play games that keep us engaged. From what we’ve seen the last few games it seems to be becoming a trend, and I’ve really enjoyed them. Sure Putz blew it last night, but a couple weeks ago we wouldn’t see a two run shot in the bottom of the 9th that would hint at a comeback.
And with luck the organization starts to see the errors of paying #1/#2 starter money to #5 level free agents.
“The team improving over the last four months is the last thing I want to see.”
Don’t worry about it because if previous years are any indication, instead of looking towards next year and playing Clement, Balentien etc, they will just keep trotting out Cairo, Vidro, and Sexson and throw out some bizarre statement about ‘honoring the pennant race’ and ‘not tanking the season’ or some BS like that. When in actuality playing those three will get them the same results as deliberately trying to lose games.
Stupidest organization in MLB and maybe in professional sports.
I hope that something like Silva, Washburn, and Batista failing miserably will make the Mariners FO decide to change their mind about who they want to give money to.
That, and I think Dickey/Feierabend are more fun to watch and it will decrease the average weight of our starting rotation.
The Mariners are hitting .228/.323/.390 as a team with runners in scoring position, 13th out of 14 AL teams. While the offense isn’t good, it’s better than that, and there’s no reason to believe this is a line-up of unclutch hitters who can’t perform well in scoring opportunities. That number should also improve as the year wears on.
As a team the Mariners are hitting .252/.309/.385., which ranks 12th out of 14 AL teams (by OPS). A ranking of 13th out of 14 w/RISP isn’t significantly different from what would be expected.
In fact, if the Mariners ranked significantly higher, say 8th to 10th, we would be expecting them to regress downward.
I can’t root for losing. Every time I try, as soon as the team gets a hit I start pulling for them. I can’t help it.
Anyway, I don’t believe a 100-loss season will lead to “radical changes”. That’s only going to happen when the team is sold. So I might as well just hope for one miraculous season sometime.
#33:
That’s just not true. If previous years are any indication, we should expect the team to start jettisoning veterans, as they did Everett (.227/.297/.360), Boone (.231/.299/.385), Olerud (.245/.354/.360).
Players who perform at those kinds of levels and who are in the final year of their contracts are consistently dumped. Thus, if the Mariners hold true to form we should expect both Sexson and Vidro to be dumped unless either of them shows some sudden and significant improvement.
Players performing at those levels and who have more than one year remaining, though, normally stick around until sometime in the final year of the contract. Examples there are Cirillo being dumped offseason, Sexson coming back this year, and the molded corpse that was Scott Spiezio.
My reason for optimism:
When the new GM and Manager come in and look around, first thing they will see is that the worst hitters on the team are at DH and First. At that point, they will start laughing. And rubbing their hands with glee.
I’m in the same boat about rooting for a loss. I just can’t get root against Felix or Ichiro! or AB or Kenji, etc. Though I can root against specific players who need not be named because of their obviousness.
I also agree with most of the second paragraph. Whether they end up at .300, .500, or .650, I can’t see any reason to think the management won’t just right off the bad times as bad luck.
However, I don’t want a miracle season, because anything short of that and I think Bavasi and Mac are gone. I just don’t think they’ll be replaced with anything significantly better.
The depressing thing is that I’d like to come up with clearly worse organizations than the Mariners, I can’t. The only combination of rich and inept I can think of that rivals the Mariners is the Clippers.
Oh, wait: the Knicks.
Yeah, derails much easier, too.
I’d rather them finish last. Lookout Landing sold me on Steve Strasburg.
I’d hate to see them start winning too, especially if they wait until July (or later) to do so. That would give management cover they don’t deserve.
However, there are guys it would be nice to keep – Beltre and Bedard, to name two – who’d probably be more inclined to stay if the team could get somewhere near .500 and have some hope for the future.
About Bedard though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baseball player who appears to enjoy the game less than he does. Was he this way in Baltimore too?
Brandon Morrow is great, but… isn’t his success in the bullpen making it less likely he’ll ever start, or have we given up on that already?
Count me in the camp that isn’t absolutely convinced that our best move would be to turn Brandon Morrow into a starter. (I’m watching the Yankees experiment with Joba closely…as I’m not certain that I’d have made THAT move, either.)
When we had Putz & GS52, then having Morrow in the bullpen was a luxury at best and a huge missed opportunity in any event.
With GS52 gone and Putz not living up to his recently acquired reputation…is it worth revisiting to consider where Morrow would best help this club?
I’ve never seen Morrow as having the body-type of a work horse. I believe that I’m remembering correctly that he came to the M’s having already had an injury in college. In recent outings, he certainly seems strong when given the task of getting up to three outs…and less solid when sent out for inning number two.
(And I grant you all of the following: Lincecum doesn’t have the body-type of a work horse, either and he’s excelling as a starter. I can’t imagine that there are ANY pitchers who haven’t had some injury issues…and that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of being effective starting pitchers. And not only is “recent outings” a classic “small sample size” error, but it also fails to acknowledge how poorly the M’s build and use their young pitching talent…as in “This new chef seems to make french fries very well, because we’ve kept him on the french fry machine since we hired him. I don’t know how well he’d do making a whole meal…” I grant you all that. Thus, I can’t say that I know that Morrow should be kept in the bullpen any more than I can say that I know that Morrow should be developed into a starter.)
My question is: does the statistically-enlightened fan KNOW, as a dead-lock certainty, that “Morrow should be a starter” or is there an argument to be made for the benefits of some metal band covering “The Sun Will Come Out To-MORROW” so that can be played in the top of the 9th inning when our new lights-out closer comes in?
Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.
coasty 141 wrote:
“…curious to your thoughts on what the M’s should do with RF for the rest of the year. Is it stupid platoon Wlad and Reed for the rest of the season? Could Wlad benefit from going back to Tacoma? Is Reed worth putting out there every day?”
I didn’t see Dave (or anyone else) answer this, so I’ll take a stab.
I think you can make a case for more time for Reed. I’m just not sure it should come a Wlad’s expense. As long as DH is the offensive black hole it is – and I see no reason to expect that to change – then the more logical move is to play Reed in LEFT and let Wlad continue to play everyday until he proves he can’t. SSS aside, the numbers right now for Wlad against RHP don’t look good (.197/.250/.380 in 71 AB) but it is far too small a sample to judge him just yet.
I do favor giving Reed some more extended time now that he seems healthy (something I don’t think he was for the vast majority of his time in the Bigs before now) and see what he can do, as he’s entering what should be his prime. He may prove he is nothing more than a fringey 4th/5th OF, but what is the harm in finding out in this season that is going nowhere on a fast train? We all already believe Raul has no business playing LF anyway, and even the Mariners FO has to believe that his future is probably at DH. He turned 36 yesterday, ferchrissakes.
So what’s wrong with seeing what BOTH of Reed and Balentien can do, all while preventing Vidro’s opition from vesting and improvomg the DH spot at the same time?
I’ll pitch in some reasons for opimism. Check out Silva’s, Batista’s and Washburn’s FIP and DER numbers. All three are pitching “better” than there ERA would indicate but are getting less than stellar help from their teammates behind (and according to Mr. Washburn IN FRONT of) them.
Now, I’m not saying they don’t suck. All three are capable back end guys. But Bedard is not pitching nearly as well as he’s capable of (for whatever reason) so yet again Felix is out on an island by himself.
Right now the M’s are the worst fielding team in the AL. For the pitching to really improve change must come from the men with the not-so-golden gloves.
Sorry, that should read “all three are piching better than THEIR ERA…”. My bad. Please moderate to my suitable shame.