Echoes of Columns Future
Many of you have gotten your wish, as manager Don Wakamatsu confirmed that Carlos Silva would not make his next turn in the rotation, and will pitch from the bullpen for the forseeable future. Silva’s been a divisive figure among Mariner fans since coming over after his 2007 campaign with the Twins that made him the #1 free agent pitcher on the market, signing a four year, $48m contract to solidify the rotation.
Unfortunately for him, a fan base that’s never forgiven Alex Rodriguez for taking the money and running in free agency expected so much of him it would have been impossible to meet expectations — and the backlash led to a situation where he could do no right, and went to the mound every start for a crowd that expected him to lose.
He never had a chance this season. Booing practically started after the last out of the previous game was recorded. But he did everything he could, everything anyone could have asked for. He dropped weight and adopted a new, rigorous workout schedule (which players like Ichiro are lauded for) and still they called him fat. He did everything to try to help heal a divided clubhouse by holding a party at his Minnesota home and reaching out to his teammates, and he was still mocked as fat. Silva was never given credit for the things he did well. People would rather dwell on his honest comments on the team’s problems with accountability last year than see how his sense of humor and generosity contributed to this year’s unity. And it carried into the view of his performances — even when there were encouraging signs of progress, he was met with defeatism and negativity. It’s hard to succeed under those circumstances.
But don’t question his dedication. He didn’t have to work so hard to get into better shape for this season — he’d have been paid whether he did or not. He did it because as much as many of you would like to forget it, he’s a competitor, a former rock of the Twins rotation. Remember how heavily his winless streak weighed on him, how he pitched through shoulder stiffness trying to grind out starts, and particularly think about how badly he wanted to stay in that April 25th start that ended up breaking his streak. Even the Silva so many have been so disappointed with still have his team a chance to win: the team had a winning record in his starts when he lost his rotation spot.
And while players like Ichiro are continually defended, every excuse made for their slow starts or poor performances, when Silva goes up against a fastball-hitting team he can expect mockery, not sympathy or support. If the team had been a little better about finding him good matchups, we might not even be having a conversation about whether his spot was in jeopardy.
As much as his detractors like to throw around terms like “sunk cost†it’s clear from the fan treatment of pitchers who’ve done just as much damage to their chances (cough, Corcoran) that his contract was as much an issue as his performance. It’s not hard to think that if he’d come to Seattle as a bargain, whether he’d have been a pleasant surprise, with fans looking forward to seeing him contribute in the future, instead of the current unpleasant situation, with over two years and $24 million left on the contract, saddled with unreachable expectations the previous front office put on him.
Hopefully, he can make the right adjustments in the bullpen, but it’s likely that the only way he’ll find success and Mariner fans will be able to move on is for him to be traded or released and get a new start with a new team, where hopefully he can find the support he needs and find the success that’s eluded him during his time in Seattle.
Game 28, Mariners at Royals
Silva vs Ponson, 5:10 pm.
The last stand of Carlos Silva. Even if we lose, we win.
New line-up tonight, as Wak changes things up just for the heck of it.
Ichiro, RF
Chavez, LF
Lopez, 2B (because the right-handed hitter with a .303 OBP needed to be moved up)
Branyah, 1B
Beltre, 3B
Griffey, DH
Johjima, C
Gutierrez, CF
Betancourt, SS
Ponson isn’t good, so at least we got all four of our LH bats in the line-up tonight. Hopefully our fatso is better than their fatso.
An Opportunity Arises
Usually, when teams get frustrated with one of their own underachievers, they don’t get a chance to trade that guy away and get anything of value back. It either turns into a dump-the-contract kind of situation where the team gives the player away, or they go in another direction and just let that guy sit on the bench while everyone regrets the situation.
Thanks to a move by the Minnesota Twins this afternoon, a window may have just opened for the Mariners.
The Twins, more than any other team in baseball, value contact hitting. They hate strikeouts – it’s an organizational philosophy that is preached at their kids from day one. They want aggressive, high contact guys who hit for average and are willing to sacrifice power to get that. They also care very little for statistical analysis, and give no heed to any of the newer defensive metrics out there. They evaluate defense by scouting reports and tools. They’re a small ball, speed and defense kind of team, and as long as Ron Gardenhire‘s the manager, they always will be.
There’s not a team in baseball more apt to value Yuniesky Betancourt than the Twins. He fits all of the things they like in a player – he’s fast, he’s got good defensive tools, he’s almost impossible to strike out, he hits the ball on the ground, and he’s a high average hitter. The things that he fails at – drawing walks, working counts, living up to his defensive reputation – are the things that the Twins value less than anyone else in baseball.
Betancourt and the Twins are a match made in heaven. He’s their kind of player. No other organization in the game will see as much value in Yuni as the Twins.
And as of today, the Twins could use a middle infielder.
They just demoted starting second baseman Alexi Casilla to Triple-A, as he’s gotten on Ron Gardenhire‘s last nerve. He made some fundamental mistakes over the weekend, dropping a throw on a relay from the outfield, and has always struggled to live up to Gardenhire’s expectations. The fact that he’s hitting .167 to start the year didn’t help.
To replace him on the roster, the Twins called up Matt Tolbert, who is more of a corner infielder than a middle guy. They’ll give Casilla’s playing time to Brendan Harris, but he profiles more as a utility player than anything else. A Punto-Harris middle infield tandem is not exactly the stuff that the Twins dream of.
Jack, get on the phone. Call Bill Smith and tell him that you’d like to talk about acquiring Casilla. Point out that your team is too right-handed, and you wouldn’t mind adding a switch-hitter to the roster. Do the whole change of scenery thing. When Smith asks what you’re willing to give up, make it sound like it kills you to part with your starting shortstop, but throw out the old “I know I have to give something to get something” line, and see if he’ll throw in Jose Mijares just to make it easier on you.
Alexi Casilla isn’t a great player – he’s basically a switch-hitting Yuni with a few more walks – but there’s no doubt that this team is better with Cedeno at SS and Casilla as the utility guy than they are with Betancourt at SS and Cedeno backing him up. You ship out the biggest defensive liability on the team, replace a hacking right-handed bat with a slightly more patient left-handed one, and shed some future contract obligations in the process. If Smith is willing to give you a decent second piece to “even the deal”, all the better.
Yuni to Minnesota. Make it happen, Jack. Gifts like this don’t come along all that often.
Dave On ESPN 710
I’ll be on the air with Brock and Salk at 11:25 am. 710 AM or listen live online.
Definitely some interesting topics to cover.
Well, That Complicates Things
Remember how I mentioned on Monday that the Texas series was more meaningful than usual games in May, because 17-10 with a 4+ game lead in the division made the “buy or sell” question seem a lot more cut and dried? At 15-12 with Silva taking the hill today and a beleaguered bullpen who just lost their best pitcher, welcome to confusion-land.
The M’s now stand just two games ahead of the Angels with 135 games to play. That’s not exactly a tough hole to climb out of, especially with reinforcements coming. John Lackey had his first rehab start for Salt Lake last night (against Tacoma, ironically), and could rejoin the Angels rotation next week. Ervin Santana isn’t far behind, and Vladimir Guerrero is running the bases and could be back on the team by the end of the month.
I don’t think the Angels are a great team, even with those three, but they’re a better team than the Mariners. The we-can-contend-this-year logic was based upon taking advantage of a broken Angels roster at the start of the year and building up a sizable lead that would take LAA the rest of the summer to overcome. Losing these last two games, with Felix and Bedard on the hill, put a pretty serious dent in that plan.
So now the M’s go forward with Silva-Washburn-Jakubauskas in the upcoming three games, and all three of those games feature right-handed starters for the opponents. Just like Vicente Padilla, Sidney Ponson does just fine against righties but gets tortured by lefties – unfortunately, the M’s just don’t have enough LH bats in the line-up, so Ponson faces his easiest possible matchup today. Same deal with Bannister tomorrow. Don’t be surprised if the M’s offense continues to “struggle”, but it’s not a slump, it’s a platoon match-up problem, and it won’t end until the team either addresses the ridiculous right-handedness of the position players or the team faces a bunch of left-handed pitchers.
They can only control the former, of course. If the Mariners view themselves as legitimate contenders for the AL West this year, Zduriencik and company are going to have to be willing to make some changes to the roster. I know I sound like a broken record, but the team can’t continually run out five or six right-handed bats – who all have exactly the same weaknesses – against other teams’ right-handed starters. It’s just offensive suicide.
Beltre will hit eventually, and there’s nothing the organization can really do about it if he doesn’t anyway. Gutierrez has been one of the shining beacons of hope in the first month of the season. But the Betancourt-Lopez-Johjima/Johnson grouping are both a huge problem and one that is conceivably addressable.
Yuni needs a day off or five. Here’s his second at-bat against Padilla yesterday:
I don’t care that Ronny Cedeno isn’t the long term answer at shortstop – that’s the kind of approach that has to earn Yuni a day on the bench and a lecture about being an idiot at the plate. He’s the easiest out in baseball. If you can’t fix him, you at least don’t have to play him every day.
Unfortunately, finding a left-handed hitting shortstop is hard. Finding one that would be available in trade right now is almost impossible. The team is basically stuck with a right-handed bat, be it Yuni or Cedeno, at the SS spot.
That leaves second base and catcher. It’s a lot easier to find a left-handed hitting second baseman, and there are some that should be available. Adam Kennedy is hanging out in Triple-A, hitting .295/.382/.462 while waiting for about 45 people to get injured so he can join the Rays. The Braves could probably be talked out of Kelly Johnson, given the right offer. The D’Backs season is basically over, so Felipe Lopez will be available in the not-too-distant future. There are options here.
The team should not be married to Jose Lopez. He’s not that good. He hits lefties decently enough, but his approach at the plate is still miserable and his power is average at best. He’s a +1 to +2 win player whose potential is mostly a myth, and he’s a terrible fit for this roster. Swapping out Lopez in order to get a LH bat in the line-up at second base should absolutely be on the table.
But, there are reasons why this might not be the best time to trade Lopez. The timing of it is tough to pull off, no doubt. It wouldn’t be the easiest thing to do, and the safer route is to let him keep playing and hope he starts hitting some line drives pretty soon.
That leaves the catcher spot. Kenji’s not going anywhere with his contract, but Rob Johnson… he just isn’t a major league player. I know the team loves his personality and the way he interacts with the pitching staff, but at some point, they have to view this rationally, not emotionally. The staff isn’t performing any better with him behind the plate than they are with Kenji. He’s not good at blocking balls in the dirt or throwing out runners.
And he’s one of the worst hitting position players in major league baseball. He has no power, a lousy approach at the plate, and oh yea, he’s right-handed. He’s better than his .216/.241/.314 line so far, but not that much better. He’s an offensive black hole on a team that can’t afford any more of those.
I don’t want to drag out the Jeff Clement argument any more than we have to. I don’t think Clement’s a major league catcher long term either. Pragmatically, we probably need to view him more as a 1B/DH prospect or trade bait than any kind of catcher-of-the-future. That said, he’s somewhat capable of squatting behind the plate and receiving pitches while also stepping to the plate in the left-handed batters box and working some counts. He’s struggled pretty badly in Tacoma since he became a new father (he’s not sleeping much at home, so don’t be surprised that he’s playing better on road trips), but his slumps still dwarf the offensive production of Rob Johnson.
If the team isn’t willing to make a move at second base yet, or thinks they need to give Lopez some more time to get out of his funk, then they are forced to consider swapping out Clement and Johnson, regardless of how much they like Johnson’s work with pitchers and think Clement had a bad spring. If the team wants to try to win baseball games this year, they can’t let sentiment get in the way of logic too often – the margin for error isn’t big enough.
The first 25 games, the team was a nice story. If they want to continue to be a nice story for the rest of the summer, changes are needed. Otherwise, we’re still playing for 2010, and we might as well start letting the world know that Bedard, Washburn, and Beltre will be available in the summer.
The M’s are getting pretty close to decision time. If they’re going to try to sneak out a division title, then they have to do some things to make it more likely. If they’re going to stick with the roster they have, then we’re probably sellers in July.
Roster Stuff
Garrett Olson was scratched from his scheduled start tonight and will join the team in Kansas City tomorrow. Kelley looks DL bound, but even if he’s okay, Stark isn’t long for the major league roster, so there’s a spot in the pen opening up.
The thing to watch is how this will affect the Silva/Vargas decision after tomorrow’s game, though. With Kelley being swapped out for Olson, Wak might be more inclined to shift Silva to the pen to fill a RH reliever role and let Vargas take his spot in the rotation. Otherwise, you’re shifting a lot of people around to try to make Olson fit into Kelley’s roster spot, and since both he and Vargas are seen as LH multi-inning guys, having both in the same pen is a bit redundant.
In other words, don’t be surprised if Silva ends up in the bullpen even if he isn’t a total disaster tomorrow.
Game 27, Rangers at Mariners
Matinee! Padilla vs Erik “The Interview” Bedard! 1:40pm! And my afternoon schedule has a bunch of meetings! Yay!
Dave adds: You know how I keep harping on the roster being too right-handed and how it’s costing us wins?
Padilla, career vs RHB: .241/.300/.370
Padilla, career vs LHB: .299/.381/.484
The Mariners are starting seven right-handed bats and two left-handed bats today.
Yea.
You Gotta Take An Aspirin With These Guys
The Mariners have played 26 games so far. 12 of them, or 46% of the total, have been decided by one run, including the last four in a row. One run games are, essentially, a coinflip. A bad call, a lucky bounce, a tricky hop – these are the things that decide who wins one run games. The outcomes of those games don’t really prove anything. If you play too many of them, that just means you aren’t good enough to blow out your opponent and you have some areas to improve upon.
I know it’s tempting to look at the loss last night and the loss on Saturday as blown opportunities. They’re games we probably should have won. But likewise, we had no business winning the games on Friday or Sunday, and we really have no business being 3-2 in games started by Carlos Silva. That’s just how baseball works, though. You’ll win some you shouldn’t and lose some that you feel like were right there for the taking, but if you’re a really good team, you’ll win a lot more blowouts than you lose and the one run games won’t matter all that much.
I know it’s tempting to draw conclusions about the character/mental strength/will to win after a bunch of close games, but hopefully the last four days have illustrated the reality of baseball – the winner of one run games often has little to do with the moral fiber of the guys on the field, and a lot more to do with random chance.
Game 26, Rangers at M’s
Happy Felix Day!
Millwood vs Hernandez, 7:10 pm.
Ichiro, RF
Not Gutierrez, LF
Sweeney, DH
Branyan, 1B
Beltre, 3B
Lopez, 2B
Johjima, C
Gutierrez, CF
Betancourt, SS
Junior has an “inflamed colon”, so he’s out for the game. Sweeney steps in at DH, and Beltre and Branyan flip-flop spots in order to keep a little more L-R-L balance in the middle of the order. I’d bet they’ll switch back once Junior is healthy enough to play again.
Other than that, pretty standard line-up. Remember when Wak was trying to keep everyone guessing with his line-up of the day? He’s basically settled on a generic order at this point. Oh well.
These games feel more important than your normal May match-up against the team that is, probably the worst in the division. Whether this team is “for real” or not, the further they can distance themselves from the rest of the division as early as possible, the better, because there’s a bar that this team needs to be above come July in order to avoid trading away Bedard-Beltre-Washburn. Wins in April and May actually matter more to this team than wins in August and September, because there’s a bonus or penalty that will be enforced on the roster come the summer depending on the team’s win-loss record.
Given that, and with Felix and Bedard pitching the next two days, the M’s have a chance to get a 4+ game cushion over everyone else in the division. That might not sound like a lot, but given the mediocrity of the other three teams in the AL West, a 4 or 5 game lead in May means that you’re almost certainly within a game or two of first place come July 31st. Worst case scenario, you have a melt down and lose 6-8 games in the standings in two months. If you have a 5 game lead over the other three teams, that melt down still probably leaves you in second place and a single series away from retaking the lead.
17-10 going into Wednesday’s games against Kansas City will feel a lot different than 15-12. I know, it’s just May, but these are pretty big games for the M’s. Let’s hope we get Good Felix and Good Bedard and spend Wednesday trying to figure out which prospects we might be willing to part with this summer in order to upgrade the roster.
I Have Come To Praise Franklin Gutierrez
Coming into the season, we knew Gutierrez could play defense. After the Putz trade was announced, we spent thousands of words telling anyone who would listen that the Mariners just acquired Mike Cameron-lite, an elite defensive center fielder who would more than make up for his offensive shortcomings with spectacular defense and the results would be manifest in improved results for the pitchers.
That’s all been true, and obvious to anyone who watched the games. If you haven’t figured out by now that Gutierrez is one of the best defensive players in baseball, I don’t know what to tell you. If you haven’t realized that defense matters and the three centerfielders plan can yield positive results, you might want to start following basketball or something.
But I’m not here to talk about Franklin Gutierrez’s defense. I’m here to praise the man’s offense, and beg for him to be reinserted into the #2 slot in the batting order.
Forget the results for a second. Gutierrez had a good weekend, and his seasonal line is now above average for a hitter. Obviously, if he could keep that up, it would be the best mark of his career to date. But it’s easy to talk up a guy’s offense after a good week early in the season inflates his season totals. Let’s talk about how Gutierrez is approaching each at-bat.
On a team full of hackers, Gutierrez stands out as an oasis in the desert. His swing percentage for 2009 is 37.6%, second lowest on the team (only Endy Chavez swings less at 36.9%). Lopez, Beltre, and Betancourt swing about 55% of the time. That 18% difference is what enables Gutierrez to work the count, get into situations where he can sit on a fastball, and make the opposing pitcher work. He hasn’t drawn 10 walks so far by accident. Pitchers aren’t scared of Gutierrez, but he’s making them throw strikes. Not just one strike, but multiple strikes in every at-bat. If you aren’t around the plate, you’re going to throw Gutierrez a lot of pitches before you end up putting him on base.
Gutierrez and Betancourt have seen the same amount of balls and strikes this season – 51.8% of the pitches thrown to Gutierrez have been in the zone, compared with 52% to Betancourt. Gutierrez has 10 walks and is seeing 4.00 pitches per plate appearance, while Yuni has yet to walk and is seeing 3.31 pitches per plate appearance. That’s all approach. That’s why Gutierrez has made 7 less outs despite having a batting average 20 points lower, and those extra outs are extremely valuable.
Wakamatsu began the season with Gutierrez in the #2 spot, and he had the right idea – he’s the perfect hitter for that slot on this team. With Ichiro leading off, you want a patient hitter in the #2 spot in order to give him an opportunity to steal bases. With Griffey hitting 3rd against RHP, you want a guy in the #2 spot who can hit LHPs, in order to minimize the opponents ability to get easy platoon advantages late in games. Managers also like a #2 guy who can bunt, and since it’s the spot that will get the second most plate appearances on the team, you’d like the guy to be a competent hitter.
Patient approach? Whacks lefties? Good bunter? Decent hitter? Check, check, check, and check.
Gutierrez is perfect for the #2 spot in the order against both RHPs and LHPs. Against RHPs, you have 1/3/5 LHBs, so having Gutierrez’s ability to hit LHPs will deter opposing managers from bringing in a LOOGY to go after the top of the order. Against LHPs, he’s one of the better hitters on the team, and you want his patience and gap power driving the ball as often as possible.
Endy Chavez had a nice start to the season, but he’s a #9 hitter, and the fact that he’s left-handed makes him an even worse fit for the #2 spot between Ichiro and Griffey.
Franklin Gutierrez has earned his way back up to the top of the line-up. With the way he’s approaching his plate appearances, he’s earned the reward. Move him back up, Wak.