Bavasi Signs on with the Reds
Like many other out-of-work, old school general managers, Bavasi finds himself as a special assistant in a different franchise. Good luck in Cincinnati, Bill.
Ryan Rowland-Smith, Starter
While it hasn’t been officially announced yet, everyone expects Ryan-Rowland Smith to get the call as the replacement for Miguel Batista in the rotation tomorrow. While we’ve endorsed the move, we haven’t laid out what we expect from Rowland-Smith and where we see his future value as a starter.
RR-S has several distinct characteristics – the most obvious of those is his extreme flyball tendencies. He primilary throws a four seam fastball, and he locates it up in the zone more often than not, which leads to a lot of fly balls to the outfield. In fact, his 31% career GB% as a major league reliever is one of the lowest totals you’ll find in baseball. Generally, we prefer groundball pitchers, because all things equal, you’d rather have a pitcher keep the ball on the ground than risk letting a batter turn on one of those misplaced high fastballs and launch a home run. However, that doesn’t mean that flyball pitchers are inherently bad – Johan Santana is a flyball pitcher, for instance.
Most good flyball pitchers succeed by racking up the strikeouts. Balls up in the zone are harder to make contact with, and the four seam fastball is thrown a bit harder than its two seam cousin, so there’s a pretty decent correlation between flyball rates and strikeout rates. That’s been true of Rowland-Smith as well, as he’s whiffed 84 batters in 94 innings since joining the M’s last year. His ability to miss bats has offset his ball in play tendencies and mediocre command.
So, what will a move to the rotation do? Like we mentioned in the Morrow thread, there’s a pretty big difference between starting and relieving, and some pitchers aren’t well suited to making the transition. Rowland-Smith, however, shouldn’t have to make as many adjustments as Morrow will, because even while being used as a reliever, he used a starting pitcher’s approach.
He mixes four pitches (fastball, slider, curve, change) and has specific attacks for LH and RH hitters. He uses his change-up primarily versus right-handed batters, and it’s the pitch that allows him to avoid the lefty specialist role. In fact, he’s been better against right-handed hitters than lefties during his time in Seattle, thanks in large part to how effective his change-up already is.
Against lefties, he uses the slider as his second pitch, going away from the even breaking ball distribution he has against opposite handed hitters. The slider is a true strikeout pitch against LH hitters because he’s able to keep it running down while staying on the inside part of the plate. Because he throws about 37% breaking balls to lefties, and his curve is inconsistent, he can occasionally hang one that gets whacked, but this will actually be minimized as a starter since most managers will instinctively load their line-up with RH hitters on days he’s starting.
So, we shouldn’t see RR-S have to pitch that much differently than he was as a reliever, and since he was already having to pace himself to get through multiple innings, he’ll see less of a drop in velocity than Morrow will. He’s going to have to cut down on the walks if he’s going to be able to go more than 5-6 innings, though, and he knows this, so we’ll probably see him give in more often and throw strikes in situations where he was willing to walk a hitter as a reliever.
Overall, I think we should expect something like a 10% BB% (a little higher than average), an 18% K% (a bit above average), and a 30% GB%, which will lead to him giving up between 1.0 and 1.2 HR/9. Basically, Jarrod Washburn with a few more walks, a few more strikeouts, and a few more flyballs. He profiles as a #5 starter who probably won’t be efficient enough to work deep into games, and honestly, there’s not a lot of upside for much beyond that. Safeco will help him quite a bit, as those right-handed hitters putting the ball in the air will get a lot of long flyouts to left center, but on the road, it could get a bit dicey.
So, why are we endorsing the move to the rotation? Because the Mariners, more than anything else they’ve done wrong in building their roster, have to realize that it’s foolish to keep throwing long term, big money contracts at back-end starting pitchers. The Washburn/Silva/Batista contracts, as well as trading for Horacio Ramirez, have crippled this franchise the last two years. If Rowland-Smith can post a 5.00 FIP and give the team 140-170 innings at the back end of the rotation for the league minimum, then the M’s can hopefully learn that #5 starters are just really easy to find, and there’s no reason to expend valuable resources on mediocre veterans when their performance can be replicated by a lot of guys stuck in Triple-A.
In short, Ryan Rowland-Smith isn’t the savior of this rotation, and we don’t expect him to turn into anything more than a role player, but it’s the ability to get useful performances from guys like RR-S that allows good franchises to throw a lot of money at superstars and still be able to keep a reasonable payroll. RR-S isn’t great, but to this organization, his success as a starter could quite valuable.
Game 115, Rays at Mariners
Sonnanstine vs Felix, 7:10 pm.
Happy Felix Day!
I love Felix (obviously), but let’s put the cards on the table; I’m rooting for Tampa Bay all weekend. I won’t be sad if the M’s win, obviously, but my preference would be a sweep by the Rays. Postseason baseball will just be so much more fun if it’s Evan Longoria, Scott Kazmir, and James Shields playing the vaunted underdog role with either Boston or New York sitting at home during October.
Tampa Bay is, right now, the most fun team in baseball. They’ve got a crazy amount of youth, they’re winning for the first time ever, and they’re doing it with a new breed front office that understands how to put a team together. This is their 1995, just without the absurd comeback. They won yesterday with a 6 run ninth inning capped off by Carlos Pena’s walk off bomb.
Baseball needs Tampa Bay in the playoffs. I’m rooting for anything that helps them get there, and if that means the M’s go 0 for 4 this weekend, so be it.
Get The Hint, Brian
Mr. Cashman,
You really should have traded for Jarrod Washburn. Since you failed to do so, we have had to see fit to strike down both Joba Chamberlain and now Andy Pettitte after we already took out Chien-Ming Wang and Philip Hughes earlier this year. Your starting rotation is now Mike Mussina and four guys from an MTV reality show. You’re in a pennant race. You’re really going to throw Ian Kennedy, Dan Giese, and Alfredo Aceves this weekend?
I don’t think so. Claim Jarrod Washburn on waivers. We can’t make this any more obvious.
Signed,
The Baseball Gods.
My New Favorite Player
Denard Span impressed the hell out of me this week.
Game 114, Twins at Mariners
Blackburn v Washburn. Early start.
Jarrod’s still here? Dammit.
Morrow As A Starter
So, now that the M’s have decided to stretch Morrow out and turn him back into a starter, it’s time to look at what we should expect to see when he gets back to Seattle and joins the rotation. Pitching out of the bullpen is totally different than starting, so it’s not quite as easy as just taking his relief performance and extrapolating that over six or seven innings of work. He’s going to have to pitch differently, and that will have an effect on his results.
First, off, the fastball velocity is going to go down. Right now, his average fastball is 96.3 MPH, but he’s able to throw max effort on every pitch without worrying about stamina. As a starter, he’s going to have to pace himself. Most hard throwers like Morrow lose between 1-3 MPH off their average fastball when they move to the rotation, so Morrow’s going to have to adjust to throwing a 93-95 fastball instead of a 95-97 MPH fastball. As a guy who pitches up in the zone, that extra velocity can make a difference, and he’ll have to realize that trying to blow everyone away with a four seam high fastball isn’t going to work.
Secondly, he’s going to have to reduce the amount of fastballs he throws in general. Right now, about 76% of all of his pitches are fastballs, and that’s just too high. The starters who throw that many fastballs are all sinker ball types (or Vincente Padilla, but he’s not the role model we’re looking for), and since Morrow’s fastball produces flyballs, he’s going to have to reduce the number he throws. This will be especially true against left-handers, where his change up will become a necessary pitch. Fastball/slider pitchers tend to really struggle against lefties, because both pitches move in on LHBs. To get them out with consistency, he’s going to have to trust his change-up and use it far more frequently.
Finally, he’s going to have to improve his command. It’s gotten significantly better than it was last year, but it’s still not good – he throws strikes about as often as Felix does, and I think we all have yelled at Felix to throw more strikes at some point or another. He won’t get the groundballs that Felix does, so that means fewer double plays, and the walks will be more of a problem. His command should improve some just by nature of not throwing as hard, but there needs to be improvement beyond that incremental step forward. Four seam fastball guys with bad command don’t generally become aces.
If he can make these adjustments, he should be able to be a solid #2 or #3 starter. His upside in the rotation is probably along the lines of Matt Cain. Certainly, the M’s have to hope that’s what he turns into, and if he reaches that potential, he’ll have quite a bit more value than he did as a late inning reliever. However, there are risks.
Injuries are obviously a concern. Morrow’s never handled any kind of real workload in his life, and they’re going to have to be very careful to not try and put too many innings on his arm too quickly. Realistically, he probably shouldn’t be allowed to throw more than 50-60 innings or so the rest of the year. If you assume he burns through 15 of those in Tacoma getting stretched out, that only leaves about 3-5 starts in Seattle before the best course of action is to just shut him down.
Bullpen to rotation conversions can work. Chad Billingsley, Adam Wainwright, Kelvim Escobar, Zach Greinke, and Joba Chamberlain all made the move successfully, but they all had significant minor league experience as starters. Morrow may take a little longer to know how to get batters out for six and seven inning stretches, and his arm isn’t as tested over full season of starting as the others were.
Patience and risk management will be key here. Don’t expect Morrow to come up and dominate. There’s a learning curve, but it’s one that the organization will be better off for having him go through.
So, uhh, Sean Green?
If anyone has an explanation for why the M’s turned to Roy Corcoran in the 8th inning of a one run game when Sean Green hasn’t pitched since Saturday that doesn’t involve the word “injury”, I’d love to hear it.
Also, the media is going to whine like hell about the M’s blowing a lead because they optioned Morrow to Tacoma before Putz was all the way healthy. Ignore them – the team made the right decision.
Short random thoughts from Coors Field
— Coors Field feels in many ways like an earlier draft of Safeco Field. I don’t mean that all in a negative way — it shares many of the same cues and touches I’m so familiar with, and at the same time it’s clear that Safeco Field allowed them to do some of the same things (the walking-and-viewing concourse, communal rail-watching areas, fan views into the bullpens) in a different (and I’d say better) way
— beer is slightly cheaper
— while it is Coors Field, the good beer selection’s quite nice (they have Newcastle in bottles)
— Jill, after the game: “Wow, that was great. Is this what going to a real game’s like?”*
— the Nationals are so, so terrible
— at one point in the game, Ian Stewart, Garret Atkins, and ScottJeff Baker were all in the game, with Stewart playing the position they all once seemed doomed to logjam at
— most common jerseys spotted: Helton, Holliday, Tulowitzki
— Stubhub doesn’t always work out
— the scoreboard graphics look rough
— between innings they don’t go with videos so much as packed ads
— “Cotten-eyed Joe” plays here too. They go almost as nuts for it
— Hydro race replaced with hog race. Pigs ride Harleys. Footage looks like it’s being rendered on someone’s Ti-99/4a (it’s below the quality level of those creepy fox ads for home-base businesses)
Game 113, Twins at Mariners
Baker v Dickey. Sometimes in these posts, I point out how the M’s have hugely overpaid for a random talent, but here, Dickey’s the random talent. Considering the M’s got a Dickey/Silva talent for free or on a multi-year, $bazillion dollar deal, well, we should at least applaud the good value pickup as we cringe at the other future.