Game 66, Mariners at Blue Jays
0937h. Felix Hernandez v Shaun Marcum.
Wow. Scheduled to run on FSN. I mean, yay Felix and all, but that’s right at the start of the work day. How are we supposed to pull this off?
Bloomquist at third! Vidro batting third! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Triunfel Goes Yard
Teenage wunderkind Carlos Triunfel hit his first home run as a professional for High Desert tonight. The kid needed it, too, as he was just 3 for his last 34 heading into the game. And yes, he played second base again. Not many people have ever thought he’ll stick at shortstop, but this isn’t a permanent move yet – they’re just giving him experience at second base as well.
In other High Desert notes, Gregory Halman blasted two more home runs, giving him 19 on the season in just 243 at-bats. As I’ve noted here before, Halman is a dead ringer for Alfonso Soriano at the plate, and his skillset is almost as extreme – ridiculous power and no concept of pitch recognition. His 14/72 BB/K is actually an improvement over his numbers from last year. He needs a lot of work on his approach, but considering that he’s got 19 home runs and 22 steals on June 10th, it’s hard to argue that there is a better power/speed guy in the organization.
The source of not hitting with runners on is not hitting
Today’s obvious observation, inspired by this McLaren quote, via Baker:
“We’ve had a tough time in this series with runners in scoring position,” McLaren said. “It’s been a tough go for us. We know we need to do a better job.”
I understand the frustration with stranding runners. Given a rare situation where the team is more likely to score a run, it’s disappointing to see nothing happen. But the cause of this problem isn’t because there’s some skill the M’s are missing, like “advancing the runner” or “hitting to the right side of the infield” or whatever. It’s that the offense sucks.
The M’s hit .249/.306/.377 normally, .248/.320/.389 with runners on, and .227/.321/.376 with runners in scoring position. AL average is .261/.330/.404, and with runners in scoring position is .266/.351/.406. So the M’s RISP performance is almost exactly what you’d expect it to be.
Beyond that, if you want to look at causes of their runner stranding, how about this: there is one — one — ONE, DAMMIT, ONE — player on the team who gets on more than a league average hitter, and it’s Ichiro. He’s usually followed by Lopez, who hits for average and not much else. Behind them it’s an absolute crapshoot: Ibanez if you’re lucky, or Beltre, but often Vidro, or Cairo, or some other zero. The guys who can get on base are isolated in the lineup from any one else with any offensive value. I know a lot of people are skeptical about the value of lineup construction, but some of these McLaren creations have come about as close to the worst possible choice.
The problem isn’t that the Mariners don’t hit with runners in scoring position. It’s that they don’t hit, they don’t have runners, the runners aren’t in scoring position, and the hitters who can get on and get into scoring position have to watch from the basepaths as inept batters following them make out after out.
Game 65, Mariners at Blue Jays
4:07, Silva v McGowan.
For all of the initial talk about Lee Elia continuing Pentland’s approach except with some minor difference I’m not so sure about, Elia’s already came out saying that he wants to see his batters improve their plate discipline. With that in mind…
Mariner Leaders, BB, total
Beltre and Ibanez, 27
Ichiro! 23
Sexson, 20
Vidro, 12
Balentien and Wilkerson, 10
… wait, I’m sorry…Wilkerson is tied for 5th-most walks on the Mariners? They threw him off the team for not hitting. And as bad as that punchless .232/.348/.304 is, it’s still more productive than three current regulars: Balentien, Vidro, and Johjima.
Elia has a challenge ahead of him, certainly.
(interesting fact — Wilkerson doesn’t show up on the M’s sortable stats page on MLB.com)
In Happier News
Thank God we didn’t trade for Dontrelle Willis. After being the worst pitcher anyone has ever seen so far in 2008, he was optioned to Single-A Lakeland today to overhaul his mechanics and try to remember how to throw strikes.
If the “[Expletive Dave Samson]” quote from Bavasi had a negative effect on our ability to trade with the Marlins, then we should induct “[Expletive Dave Samson]” into the Mariners hall of fame. This season has been horrible, but at least we haven’t had to watch D-Train fall apart.
I’ve got a slightly longer writeup on Dontrelle’s situation over at fangraphs. /end self promotion.
On Johjima’s power outage
I haven’t written much about Johjima, while taking time out of my day to take potshots at Vidro, McLaren, Ibanez’s defense, Sexson, and pretty much everyone except Ichiro.
So here’s the short version: Johjima’s performance at the plate so far has been just abysmal. But some this is that I’ve felt a lot like I do about Beltre: Beltre’s been smashing the ball around, hitting line drives, and they’ve been caught. His batting average looks bad, but he’s doing fine, I’ve got no complaints.
Similarly, if you look at Johjima, you see much the same thing: he’s still not taking walks, he’s striking out about as often, and the huge difference in terms of average/on-base percentage is that the balls he’s putting in play aren’t getting hits (this year his batting average on balls in play is .236, after being at .292 and .291 the previous two seasons). Normally, I’d just shrug that off.
What worries me is the missing power. What power he had hasn’t shown at all:
– He’s not hitting line drives nearly as often, and his ground ball and fly ball rates are both up
– When he’s hitting line drives, they’re not going anywhere: only 3% turn into home runs. That’s awful. Vidro gets twice that (this year, last year he was at 4%)
The only real difference between this season and the last two is that Johjima seems to be swinging at and making contact with a lot more pitches out of the zone. If you look at Fangraphs’ data, you see the one thing that really spikes this year is his “O-Contact” which is the number of pitches outside the zone they make contact with when swinging.
More baffling, though, he’s not swinging at those more often — he’s just hitting them a lot more often, not making good contact, and they’re going for outs. We’ve all seen this (and ended up screaming at him, or the TV, to please knock that off).
Is it a quirk of the season to date? When everything else seems stable except for one weird stat, my instinct is often to shrug and chalk it up to chance. Johjima’s stance isn’t changed from last year, and I haven’t been able to find anything about him switching to a longer bat, for instance, and if there’s a change at work it doesn’t seem to be affecting much else about his game. And yet between these two things:
– he’s making a lot more crappy contact on crappy pitches, and
– overall, his power numbers are way, way down, more than I’d even expect from the contact issue
I am worried. But I don’t have anything to offer that might help. I think I keep hoping that it’s just a random fluke, because the worst case is that the M’s just signed a catcher to a lucrative extension as his hitting game started to fall apart. We have enough bad news to dwell on already.
Game 64, Mariners at Blue Jays
4:07. Washburn v Lisch.
I know many of you out there are a little upset with the Mariners right now, and unsure of what the future holds.
But rest easy, because Jarrod Washburn’s contract runs through 2009 (at $10m). And so does Miguel Batista’s (at $9m) deal. And Silva’s here through 2011 ($11m for next year), and thank goodness, because he’s got the ERA under six of this bunch.
That’s $30m for what will be 103 years of baseball experience. Ahhhhh. A back-end rotation that goes a hair over five and a third innings a start. A semi-rotation that can’t buy a strikeout but, fortunately, gives out ball four passes a little less than you’d expect.
What’s more, each of them will remind us a season past: Washburn of the 2006 campaign that made his contract seem superficially a good deal, Batista, of the off-season when signing Miguel Batista to a three year deal seemed like one of the more reasonable pitching contracts and of his participation in the 88-win team that convinced the front-office they were a contender… and Silva, best of all, this year’s disaster, a reminder that no one in the organization’s learning anything about anything.
What’s with that :07, anyway? Is there some kind of US:Canadian conversion issue at work here? Was :05 too soon after dinner but :10 ran into the kids bedtimes?
Actually, turns out that’s toxic and really, really bad for you
Baker, quoting Elia:
“In everything in life, sometimes change is better,” he said. “Sometimes you make an omelette in a baggie and put it in boiling water and it comes out just as juicy and even better than if you fry it.”
I’m serious, munching on eggs saturated with melty long-chain polymers turns out to be bad for your health. Don’t do it.
Shouldn’t they put the defense coach on the block next?
Everything they said about the offense’s performance is just as true about their abysmally bad defense. They need to get someone in here that can whip this team’s run prevention into shape.
The first head rolls
Hot word this morning is Pentland’s been fired. Possibly that Lee Elia, who totally rocks, is taking his place.
Which is crazy, since just last week they’d completed the benching-and-reteaching of Sexson with such success, and the — yeah, you know the whole rest of the joke here already.
I was going to make a historical analogy with the Reign of Terror, but interestingly (to me, anyway) I couldn’t figure out who the first person to put their head on a block that September was.
Anyway, at least the Jacobins had the good sense to get the King first, rather than going after his undersecretary for cobblestone supply.