Game 32, M’s at Twins
11:10 our time. Bedard versus Blackburn.
Edit by Jay:
Baker with the lineup. Gutierrez sits today as Chavez and Balentien both get starts.
RF Ichiro
2B Jose Lopez
DH Ken Griffey Jr.
3B Adrian Beltre
1B Russell Branyan
LF Wladimir Balentien
SS Yuniesky Betancourt
C Rob Johnson
CF Endy Chavez
Let’s go out there and win for the first time in a week.
Game 31, Mariners at Twins
Hernandez vs Liriano, 4:10 pm.
Happy Felix Day! No, seriously, we need a happy Felix day more than we’ve needed anything in a while. That we get to face an LHP – even a good one like Liriano – qualifies as extra good news. The team could really use a win, and the best way for this team to win is to have Felix on the mound for us an a lefty on the mound for the opponents.
Line-up is posted in the thread below, but it’s basically the anti-LHP line-up.
Silva DL’ed; Morrow activated
The M’s cleared a roster spot for Brandon Morrow by putting Carlos Silva on the DL with a made up injury – I’m sorry, inflammation – so that he can go to Peoria and work on some stuff. Jason Vargas will take his spot in the rotation, beginning with a start on Tuesday against the Rangers.
Also, line-ups are already out for the game tonight, so I’ll toss those up now, but we’ll still have a game thread later.
Ichiro, RF
Lopez, 2B
Sweeney, DH
Beltre, 3B
Balentien, LF
Branyan, 1B
Johjima, C
Guiterrez, CF
Betancourt, SS
Rumor Of The Day
From Chico Harlan of the Washington Post, discussing the Nationals bullpen problems:
OK, so who’s next in line if the Nats are looking for (more) replacements? Trades are always a possibility, but a tough one. This season, for reasons that only smarter people can explain, relief pitching has been brutal across baseball. In 2008, MLB bullpens had a combined 4.08 ERA. This year, it’s 4.39. When you’re talking about averages spread across so many teams, that’s an incredible jump. Which is one of the reasons why the trade market isn’t so hot. The other reason, of course, is what the Nats have to offer. They could presumably trade one bad contract for another — say, Austin Kearns ($8 mil) for Seattle reliever Miguel Batista ($9 mil); this trade possibility has been discussed — but that’s the extent of it. Mostly, help will have to come from within the system.
Kearns is right-handed and the M’s don’t exactly need another right-handed hitting outfielder, but still, this is one of those say-yes-as-fast-as-possible type moves. Why the Nationals would even consider swapping Kearns (who is hitting .261/.414/.522 right now) for Batista is beyond me.
A Fun Comparison
Disclaimer: College statistics don’t mean all that much. This is more for fun than any kind of serious analysis.
Dustin Ackley, 2009, North Carolina: 190 AB, 76 H, 11 2B, 3 3B, 15 HR, 39 BB, 22 K, .400/.508/.726
Evan Longoria, 2006, Long Beach State: 201 AB, 72 H, 13 2B, 2 3B, 11 HR, 40 BB, 29 K, .353/.468/.602
Longoria, obviously, has turned himself into a monster of a hitter. He’s currently hitting .362/.411/.741 for the Rays, and he’s probably the best non-Pujols player in baseball. When he was drafted, he was looked at as a premium defender with a good but not great bat.
Ackley doesn’t have Longoria’s power or defensive abilities, but I do think that we might have undersold his offensive ceiling a bit. There’s Nick Markakis upside with him (though that’s the best case scenario), and right now, he’s pulled himself away from the pack for me. If the draft was tomorrow, I’d be lobbying for Ackley fairly hard. The M’s could really use a young guy with those offensive skills.
What A Game
Now that was fun. Lots of good news coming out of this one. Brett Lorin continues to pitch like an ace, moving to 3-0 with a complete game shutout. No, he can’t keep his ERA at 1.00 forever, but let’s enjoy it while it lasts. He’s making it easy for the hitters with the way he’s throwing.
Speaking of hitters, Denny Almonte continues to make a monstrous statement. 2 for 4, a couple of doubles and a walk leaves him with a .310/.367/.670 line for the season. Nothing like having a switch-hitter with some serious power in the line-up.
This win pulls us within half a game of first place Kane County, and with the way this team is pitching, you have to think this could be a really fun year for the boys in Clinton.
Oh, wait, you were expecting us to talk about the game in Minnesota? Why would we want to do that?
Game 30, M’s at Twins! Twins!
Sorry. My fault.
Evaluating Wakamatsu’s use of the sac bunt
Wakamatsu’s use of the sac bunt before is worth a much more in-depth discussion than we’ve given it so far. The sac bunt is wildly overused, certainly, but it’s also an effective tool at times. What are the M’s doing with it?
There are eleven plays scored as sacrifice hits:
Gutierrez has four
Endy Chavez has three
Kenj, Yuni, Jose, and Rob Johnson have one
Now remember, that’s sacrifice bunts. If you bunt and get on, unless you reach by error it’s not counted as a sac. If the bunt is on for a pitch and then taken off, it’s not in the books so I can’t go back and look to see what the situation was. And (and this’ll be important later) if you bunt for a hit and it fails but advances the runner, you get the sac hit. So if Chavez has a green light to bunt for hits, the manager will take the credit and blame for sac bunts he didn’t order. I’m focusing here on the 11 SH on the book. Oh, and I’m going to use WPA a lot, so if you’re unfamiliar with that, run over here first.
And the last thing before we start, here’s my super-high-level summary of where I am on the bunt: no one but a pitcher should bunt before it’s late in the game, when it can be a good tool in close games.
So, by game:
4/7 vs. Twins
M’s visiting, lead 4-3, 9th inning, 1 out, runner on first. Chavez bunts to advance Balentien.
This is almost a wash. This was counter-intuitive to me, but bunting while ahead’s a much better move than you’d think. Late inning bunts in close games are better than bunting in the second. Not a great move, but Chavez isn’t a great hitter and Gutierrez was up next. WPA-wise, it’s -.011, as close to a wash as you get.
Okay bunt.
4/9 vs Twins
M’s visiting, lead 1-0, 3rd inning, no outs, runner on first. Gutierrez sacrifices Chavez to second.
Generally speaking, you should never play for one run at the expense of the chance at many runs until the sixth inning at the very earliest. The WPA here comes out to -.016, and that’s still not so bad. It’s “flied out with no one on†important. And if you think Gutierrez isn’t an average hitter, it starts to look good.
Okay bunt.
4/10 vs A’s
M’s visiting, lead 5-4, 9th inning, no outs, runner on first. Kenji bunts Branyan to second.
Again, bunting while ahead, surprisingly productive historically. Here we have to consider what we think of Kenji’s hitting. If you see Kenji as hopeless at the plate, this is a good move. If he’s an average hitter, it’s essentially a wash. I’m torn here: I really want to say that until we see Kenji hitting well again, you have to assume the bunt’s the right move. I’m going to say that, actually. The straight WPA is -.007
Good bunt.
4/11 vs A’s
M’s visiting, up 7-5, 9th inning, no outs, runner on first. Gutierrez bunts to advance Chavez.
Straight WPA here is -.003. It’s a wash if Gutierrez is average. Another batter dependent move, and certainly not a bad one.
Okay bunt.
4/14 vs Angels, bunt one
M’s at home, tied 2-2, 7th inning, no outs, runner on first. Gutierrez bunts to advance Johjima.
I don’t like this one. WPA’s -.020, beyond which you’re advancing Kenji in the hope that what, he can score from second on a single? And behind him is Yuni the ground ball machine, which makes advancing on a sac less likely. And while the score’s tied, you’ve got two innings left for the A’s to score – I don’t get it.
Bad bunt.
Bunt two
M’s at home, 2-2, 10th inning, no outs, runner on second. Betancourt bunts to advance Gutierrez to third.
As it turns out, this wins the game. But it’s a good bunt even if it gives up the out to move the runner along. One run wins the game, and moving Gutierrez over makes that one run more likely. Now… the WPA on 10th-inning moves starts to get weird, because the sample sizes drop off so hugely, but this is probably a +.030 bunt. Really – it’s as good a move as two or three of those bad ones.
Moreover, after Betancourt you’re looking at Endy and Cedeno.
Good bunt. Reaaaally good bunt, and it turned out wildly better than that.
4/15 vs Angels, bunt one
M’s at home, 0-0, 4th inning, no outs, runner on second. Lopez bunts to advance Branyan to third.
I don’t know about this one. It’s a bad idea to play for one run so early. But the next three batters were Kenji, Betancourt, and Gutierrez. You’re probably not hoping for more than a single from any of those guys, and Branyan’s slow, but he could score from third. But Lopez isn’t a bad hitter, and it’s not a force out situation where you’re worried about seeing Branyan doubled off. On the other hand, it’s Jered Weaver.
The book says it’s a -.014 play.
Okay bunt.
Bunt two
Then behind 3-2, 6th inning, runners on first and third. Gutierrez bunts to move Betancourt to second.
The pitcher makes an error, Johnson scores, and Gutierrez gets to first. I uh… I totally love this play. Seriously. I will trade an out for a run every day of the week. Now I’m not wild about this because Ichiro’s on deck. But Ichiro’s a ground ball machine, and if you pull it off you’ve removed the double play, and if Johnson’s thrown out there’s a good chance you end up with Betancourt at 3rd and Gutierrez at 1st. I dig it.
Good bunt.
4/17 vs the Tigers
M’s at home, trailing 3-1, 5th inning, runners on first and second. Johnson bunts to move Branyan to third, Lopez to second.
Okay, remember when I said the sacrifice was a bad move early in the game except for pitchers? Rob Johnson hits like a pitcher. He’s terrible. Especially in that situation, where the M’s have three straight hits off Verlander and they’re about to turn over the order.
Good bunt.
4/25 vs Angels
M’s visiting, 0-0, 1st inning, no outs, runner on first. Chavez bunts to advance Ichiro! To second.
Bad. Ortega was nothing special, Ichiro can run on his own, and… the first inning on the road against a filler starter just doesn’t make sense. WPA says -.018 but that requires an average pitcher on the other side. As the M’s would prove by rocking Ortega, there was no reason to give him free outs.
Bad bunt.
4/28 vs White Sox
M’s visiting, 0-0, 1st inning, no outs, runner on first. Chavez bunts to advance Ichiro! To second.
No! Stop bunting early! Argh! (-.018)
Bad bunt.
The totals:
4 good bunts
4 okay bunts
3 bad bunts
That’s good. Really. A manager who does this well picking his spots helps his team.The frequency may be cause for concern, but he’s being smart about it. The only legitimate complaint is the early-game bunting, which is inexplicable. It’s not Don Baylor-in-Colorado crazy, but the weight of baseball history shows it doesn’t help teams win games. And if he’d stop that, it’d be great. And if some of those are just Chavez laying down unsuccessful tries for bunt singles, Wakamatsu looks even better.
I did a little Excel work summing this up and then working with the assumptions in each situation. With pretty conservative estimates I come up even, and it’s not hard at all to come up on the plus side. If you’re interested, there’s a ton of really interesting research on this stuff (James Click in particular has some great bunt articles on Baseball Prospectus and in the Baseball Between the Numbers book, and I’d also recommend the chapter in Tango’s The Book)(affiliate links) and I’d welcome additional thoughts and suggestions for follow-up.
I’m not a bunt guy, and I came around: Wakamatsu’s generally been really smart about picking his spots and getting the most for his out. I admit, so far this year I’ve done a lot more tearing my hair about over bunts that weren’t so bad than I have applauding bunts that on closer analysis look pretty good. When I line them all up like this, I find myself reassured.
(this article took ~3h to research and write up)
Game 29, Mariners at Royals
11. Washburn v Bannister. Stupid inconvenient time zones. Why can’t the Earth be flat? Or a torus, or something?
RF Ichiro
CF Gutierrez
2B Lopez
1B Branyan
3B Beltre
DH Griffey
LF Balentien
C Johnson
SS Cedeno
Vargas and Olson
We’ve now seen both Olson and Vargas work a few innings in the big leagues, and their respective charts are above.
The fastballs are pretty similar – 89 MPH average velocity, topped out at 91. Both of these guys have below average heaters. Olson’s breaking ball is slower with quite a bit more vertical bend, while Vargas’ is more of a side-to-side slider. They both have a low-80s change.
Vargas pounded the strike zone quite a bit more than Olson did, though that could easily just be a function of the line-ups they were facing. Remember, Vargas was facing the worst offense in baseball and Giambi and Cust had already been removed from the game. Not exactly a scary bunch of hitters.
The interesting thing, to me, though, was how Vargas didn’t vary the height of his pitches much at all. Look at that strike zone plot. 41 pitches, and he missed low four times, while never missing high. He was off the plate on either side 12 times, but the vertical range of pitches was basically the strike zone for Vargas. He would move in and out, but not up and down.
Olson, on the other hand, was more than willing to miss the strike zone entirely. He was burying that breaking ball down and away from LH hitters, and then was more than willing to go up and away or down and in on RH bats with the fastball. Unfortunately, it didn’t work very well – he threw 18 pitches outside the strike zone to right-handed hitters, and all 18 were stared at for balls.
The breaking ball down and away to LH hitters was a good pitch for him – he got six strikes on pitches out of the strike zone down there. But against righties, they just waited for him to come in with the fastball. There wasn’t any real deception there.
To me, this is a pretty easy choice. Vargas to the rotation, Olson stays in the pen as a long reliever or left-on-left guy.