On umps and strike zones
I was going to put up a big, picture-heavy post on how Marvin Hudson’s inability to call a decent strike hosed the game up, but two things:
1) he didn’t do that bad on Washburn and Aardsma, and McCarthy made out decently, though there were some bad calls. And overall, check out the normalized strikezone graph. He wasn’t calling the low strike for beans.
2) humans shouldn’t be calling balls and strikes. A guy squatting behind a plate can’t adequately determine if a 90mph pitch crossed a three-dimensional strike zone. The sooner the swap’s made, the better for the game.
To pre-empt the standard “you can’t be serious” comments I get: I am. That anyone should be trying to judge balls and strikes by eyeballing it is absurd. We know it doesn’t work: we’ve got all of baseball history to show that. If you want the strikezone called consistently, especially if you want it called by the rulebook, you’re on my side.
Arguing that umps should be doing this is saying “I support preventable errors affecting the outcome of games.” And then why not just have whatever system you implement make errors, say, 50% as often as human umpires? Or heck, if you like the errors, have them call 25% of pitches randomly.
Or re-write the rule book, and define the strike zone to be whatever the guy behind the plate thinks it should be, and have that day’s home plate ump give a quick talk about his artistic interpretation during the lineup exchange so both managers can brief their teams on what to expect. Acknowledge and celebrate the flaws.
Backbreaker
That’s a tough loss. Just like with Vargas last night, Washburn should get a medal for surviving Texas’ offense and ballpark. The offense was able to get a few longballs off of McCarthy, whose up-in-the-zone pitching style makes him the kind of righty we can actually score runs against, but the flaws of the offense got exposed late in the game.
You can’t have Lopez bunt Ichiro to second in the 8th inning with Junior coming up against a lefty. You just can’t do it. The odds of Lopez whacking a Guardado pitch are a lot better than Junior getting a base hit against a lefty or Beltre getting a base hit against a side-arming righty. I know Wak likes small ball, and Derek showed he’s been mostly doing an effective job of utilizing the bunt this year, but that was bad. It’s okay to play for one run in a tie game in the 8th inning, but bunting there doesn’t make sense. Not with Lopez at the plate against a lefty, Junior coming up, and a righty specialist warming up to go after Beltre.
Morrow… what can you say? His command sucks and he’s heavily dependent on the fastball. That doesn’t work against good hitting lefties, and the Rangers have a lot of good hitting lefties.
16-18, 3 1/2 out of first place. If they can’t beat Texas with Felix on the hill and an LHP starting for the Rangers… well, let’s just say they need to win tomorrow.
Game 34, Mariners at Rangers
Cy Young contender Washburn v. McCarthy.
A brief call for optimism
In this year’s off-season, with all the trades and small pickups, the front office only really spent a small amount of money on their new lineup.
Last offseason’s acquisitions:
Aardsma, $420k
Branyan costs $1.4m
Cedeno, $1m.
Chavez’s ’09 costs $2m
Griffey costs $2m (+incentives)
Gutierrez, $455k
Olson, $400k
Sweeney, $500k
Vargas, $400k
All their retooling required some talent swaps too, but focus just on that for a second: the new regime’s share of the payroll, if you will, comes in at around $10m.
Next season, between Batista, Washburn, and assume Beltre leaving too, another $31m in payroll will roll off the books.
The Bright Side
Yea, that sucked, but it wasn’t all that hard to see coming. As we’ve noted repeatedly, the Mariners roster is structured incorrectly, which leaves them essentially incapable of hitting pitchers like Scott Feldman. Sending the M’s line-up against RH sinker-slider guys is just going to result in failure. This isn’t going to get better until they make changes. The team will hit fine against lefties and hold their own against righties who pitch up in the zone (McCarthy tomorrow, for instance, they should do okay against), but they can’t hit this pitcher type. So, pretty much any time you see the M’s going against a Bartolo Colon/Sidney Ponson/Nick Blackburn/Shane Loux/Scott Feldman type, you can forget scoring a bunch of runs. Until this team tosses one or two of Yuni/Lopez/Johjima overboard and adds a couple of left-handed bats, this is what you’ll see.
But, at least we had Jason Vargas’ effort tonight. Expectations were understandably low, and while 400 foot outs are not a recipe for success, the M’s couldn’t have asked for any more from him than they got tonight. I loved the gameplan he took to the mound.
Look at all those change-ups. He threw 22 of them, and mostly did a good job of locating them. He knew the Rangers are a great fastball hitting team, and he has a below average fastball, so he didn’t even bother trying the whole “establish the fastball” crap. He went with his off-speed stuff, disrupted timing, mixed speeds and locations, and used the fastball as a complementary pitch. Against offenses with less power and more left-handed bats, he can throw the fastball a little more, but that wasn’t going to work tonight and he knew it. Just a smart, well pitched game by a guy who really had no business succeeding in that environment.
Game 33, Mariners at Rangers
Vargas vs Feldman, 5:05 pm.
Ichiro, RF
Lopez, 2B
Griffey, DH
Beltre, 3B
Branyan, 1B
Gutierrez, CF
Johjima, C
Betancourt, SS
Chavez, LF
As I mentioned in the piece this morning, this is a brutal situation for Vargas to try to stake out a claim to a rotation spot. The Rangers are going to throw a line-up of seven right-handed hitters, Josh Hamilton, and Chris Davis at him. There’s simply no soft spots to let him work around guys who can hurt him. Everyone in this line-up can hurt him. Plus, it’s Texas, where the air is not exactly known for knocking down fly balls.
So, the M’s are going to have to put up runs tonight. Unfortunately, they’re facing yet another right-handed sinker ball guy, and this pitcher type is the one the M’s are least suited to hit. Just like Padilla, Colon, Ponson, Blackburn, and all the other right-handed starters of this ilk that have shut down the M’s, Feldman’s sinker is a pretty good pitch against righties and a meatball against lefties. The offense is going to have to come from Ichiro, Griffey, Branyan, and Chavez. Hopefully, they can get a couple home runs early and get into the Rangers bullpen.
Quick snipe
We get asked about Ibanez a lot. Here’s a terrible article about his early time in Philly.
“Raul’s a winner,” Werth said of Ibañez, whose Mariner teams averaged only 72 wins per game.
That’s a lot of wins/game. That’s the kind of overperformance clubhouse chemistry advocates claim.
Anyway, it’s a fine example of after the fact justification. Hey, he’s up in UZR? Let’s go reason hunting
One of the knocks on Ibañez was his defense, but he has had a renaissance on Philadelphia’s south side. Using the ultimate zone rating, a measure of how many runs a player saves or costs his team defensively, Ibañez cost the Mariners nearly 34 runs the last two seasons. This season, however, he has saved nearly six runs for the Phillies, which ranks third among all major league outfielders, trailing only Jay Bruce and Mike Cameron. Ibañez has only average speed, but Victorino praises how observant his teammate is to tendencies and how well he uses the scouting reports. Ibañez’s cerebral approach to fielding includes noting the cut of the grass to predict which way a ball is likely to skip.
Why didn’t any of those things help him in previous seasons? No clue! How did he manage to be so, so bad for so long and then suddenly a defensive whiz? Pony power! Was he injured or something and hiding — no, not Raul! Never.
When you look at defense, look at the long term. Three seasons if you can get it. And two seasons of absolute suck followed by thirty games of relative performance still mean you should consider him a crappy defender, certainly until some reason why his abilities changed is advanced.
And yes, I’m tired of the “why did you let go of Ibanez (or Bloomquist)????” questions.
Short Hits
Consider this post a place for me to dump a bunch of short blurbs on thoughts that I’ve had over the last few days.
A few weeks ago, we announced a USSM event for the east coast crowd, to be held on May 17th at the Champps Sports in Durham. Due a scheduling conflict, we’ve had to move that back to May 31st. Same location, same deal, just a bit over two weeks from now instead of this coming Sunday. We’ll do another post as we get closer to remind everyone.
Speaking of North Carolina, for those who missed it, Dustin Ackley played a bunch of center field over the weekend for the Tar Heels. The arm looked good enough and the athleticism played in the outfield as most expected. Right now, he’s a pretty easy call for the #2 pick, I think.
While we’re talking about guys I wouldn’t mind having in the organization, can we have Chris Burke back please? Since the Padres re-acquired him from the Mariners, he’s been their semi-regular shortstop, logging 52 innings at the position and totaling 32 plate appearances as a hitter. He’s hitting .259/.375/.409, and he’s drawn four walks and has four extra base hits. In 117 plate appearances, Yuni has two walks and six extra base hits. Oh, and Burke’s been just fine at shortstop defensively as well. There’s nothing that Yuni does better than Chris Burke. We gave away the wrong guy.
Jason Vargas gets his first start for the M’s tonight. I like Vargas, and I think if given a chance, he’ll stick in the rotation all year. I just ask that everyone not judge him on tonight’s performance. The Rangers offense is just ridiculous, and playing them in Texas is as formidable a task as you could face. They’ll probably start seven right-handed bats tonight, and as a team, their RHBs are hitting .342/.384/.564 against southpaws. If Vargas can get through six innings and allow four runs or less, he should be congratulated.
The Mariners outfield has posted a UZR of +15.3 so far this year. The infield has posted a UZR of -6.5. I know the pitching staff will need some attention for 2010, but this really better be the last year I have to watch Lopez and Betancourt. Man, do they suck.
Walking The Tightrope
The Mariners 1-6 stint last week did a number on their playoff odds. With the Angels surging even before the reinforcements arrive, this was a bad time for the M’s to fall on their faces. The contend-this-year plan was basically predicated upon getting an early lead and hanging on for dear life, as it’s hard to find too many people who think this team can actually chase down the Angels from behind in a pennant race. Now that the M’s are looking up at Los Angeles in the standings, I’d imagine people are once again getting comfortable with the idea that this team is probably not headed for October baseball, and that the franchise should be valuing 2010 over 2009 at this point.
For Zduriencik and crew, this presents something of a challenge. They cannot punt 2009 this early in the season, especially as the organization tries to get fans back to Safeco this summer. The team has played well enough to still be in contention through mid-May, and baseball is a weird game – just as they ran off six straight losses last week, they could run off six straight wins this week. They aren’t in a position to tell the guys in the clubhouse or the fans “Hey, I know you’re only 1.5 games out of first place, but we’re going to make some moves to get better for the future at the expense of the present. Thanks for a good five weeks.”
On the other hand, they have two volatile assets in Erik Bedard and Jarrod Washburn. They’ve ridden some high quality innings from those two to their strong start, and this rotation would be an absolute disaster without them. They’ve both been pitched like All-Stars so far, and given the constant demand in the game for quality left-handed starting pitching, the M’s could potentially get some real value back for both of them – yes, even Washburn. His salary is less of a hindrance now that free agency is over, and he’s pitched himself back into being movable.
However, the window of opportunity to trade these two for value could literally close at any minute. Bedard’s health is a constant question, and all it would take is a twinge in his shoulder that requires a short DL stint and he’ll move from “best pitcher available at the deadline” to “I’ll just sign Ben Sheets instead, thanks”. Every pitch that Bedard throws, his trade value is at risk. He could elevate his status a bit with continued success and health through May and June, but the downside is a lot larger than the upside. You might get a little bit better package for Bedard by letting him continue to prove he’s healthy and back to ’07 form, but the incremental increase in potential value has to be weighed against the risk that the value disappears entirely.
Same deal for Washburn, though for slightly different reasons. We’re not as concerned about him tweaking his elbow, as he’s generally a durable guy. However, his strong start to the season isn’t built on entirely sustainable improvements. Yes, he’s pitching better than he has in the past (that 3.11 K/BB rate is all Washburn), but his HR/FB% is 5.8%, and he can’t keep it that low. A few extra flyballs sailing over the fence, and his ERA could jump to 4.00+ pretty quickly. It’s a lot easier to get a team to swallow his contract and send back a prospect when he has a sub-3 ERA. It’s a start-to-start thing to see if he’ll be able to keep limiting the long balls, and like Bedard, his value could take a big hit with one bad night.
There’s a fine line that the M’s front office has to walk here. They have to keep Bedard and Washburn for at least a few more weeks while the team is still within spitting distance of first place. However, they also need to be in a position to move very quickly on a deal if they determine that they won’t be winning the AL West this year. The risk of holding Bedard and Washburn too long is very real. These guys are not CC Sabathia. You can’t assume that they’re going to hold their current value for two more months.
I know Zduriencik has publicly stated that the team hasn’t even considered trading players away in July, and I believe him. I’m sure that their work the first five weeks of the season was almost entirely focused on helping this team win as many games this year as they could. However, the job of a front office is to manage the long term health of the franchise, and so now, they have to prepare for multiple scenarios. They can’t wait until July to make some phone calls and lay the foundation for deals involving the volatile assets. Beltre, you can wait on. There’s no hurry with guys like him or even Batista/Branyan/Chavez, all of whom could potentially be dealt later this summer if the team falls apart or the Angels just run away with this thing.
But Bedard and Washburn are a different animal. Keeping them comes with a potentially huge opportunity cost, and the organization has to be able to avoid overplaying their hand.
I’m not punting 2009 yet, but I’m really hoping that Zduriencik has already started having preliminary conversations with teams like the Dodgers, Mets, Blue Jays, Phillies, Cardinals, and Brewers. Depending on how the next couple of weeks go, the organization might be best served pulling the trigger on deals for both Bedard and Washburn around the beginning of June.
Minor League Wrap (5/4-10/09)
I was going to make some comment about getting more readers when the M’s weren’t winning, but then they pulled it out in the ninth today, despite Morrow’s efforts to throw it away and Yuni continuing to be awful. I suppose the attention will ramp up as the draft comes along, but then I’ll be looking at more teams to write about, which is a frightening idea.
To the jump!
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