Aardsma
My noon post over at FanGraphs is about David Aardsma. If you don’t want to follow the link, I made the same argument over there that I did when we acquired him – that we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s pitching well, since he was a pretty good reliever before he got hurt last year.
However, I wanted to expand on Aardsma a bit here. He was a pretty decent reliever for the M’s in April and May, limiting the long ball and getting enough strikeouts to minimize the walk problem. But man, he’s been something else in June.
8 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 15 K.
He’s faced 28 batters this month and struck out more than half of them. He’s just blowing people away lately. This hasn’t been his high-wire act, where he throws a bunch of pitches out of the zone and tries to get hitters to chase them. He’s just throwing fastballs in the strike zone and hitters can’t catch up to it. For the last couple of weeks, he’s been a true relief ace.
Will he keep pitching this well? Probably not. His command is still poor, and it’s almost impossible to get by on one pitch for too long. He’s not a Joe Nathan/Mariano Rivera/Jonathan Broxton shut down reliever where we can expect him to keep doing this all year. But, he’s got the ability to be that kind of shut down guy in stretches. He doesn’t have the command to do it consistently, but when David Aardsma is throwing strikes, he’s lights out.
For all the talk about how great of a pickup Russ Branyan was (and it’s all true), Jack deserves a bunch of credit for picking up Aardsma and being willing to go into the season with a bullpen that the media was convinced was going to be terrible. Once again, more evidence that bullpens can be developed for nothing, and good teams don’t spend assets to acquire veteran relievers. Talent > Experience. The Mariners have spent the smallest percentage of their payroll on the bullpen of any team in baseball, and being able to get quality work out of guys like Aardsma is why that works.
Aquasox Game Thread
With no game for the Mariners or the Rainiers, let me direct you to the Aquasox home page and suggest you listen to Pat Dillon call Everett’s game against Vancouver. Luke Burnett, all 6’8/240 of him, takes the mound against Vancouver at 7:05 pm. The Aquasox have their home opener tomorrow, so you can listen to tonight’s game to get a head start on the roster before you head up to Everett tomorrow night.
Ryan Langerhans
With Endy Chavez’s season cut short and the team deciding that Michael Saunders could use some more time in Triple-A, the M’s are down an outfielder. Wlad will get the chance to play regularly, but the team can’t seriously go forward with Ronny Cedeno or Chris Woodward as the 4th OF. The team needs a legitimate outfielder on the bench to give the team a major league player to stick in the line-up if someone needs a day off or has to leave a game early. Given the construction of the team, it would really help if that outfielder was left-handed and could get on base a little bit. With the team’s success being heavily dependent on quality defense from the outfield, it would also be nice if that left-handed hitting outfielder had some range. And, with Saunders potentially being ready in the not-too-distant future, that guy shouldn’t cost a lot to acquire, since he might be a very short term fill-in.
Where would you find a left-handed hitting, quality defensive outfielder with decent OBP skills who won’t cost much to acquire? In Syracuse, New York, going by the name Ryan Langerhans. He’s about 49th on the Washington Nationals depth chart, and has basically no hope of getting any playing time in D.C. this year. That is despite the fact that he posted a .353 wOBA for the Nationals in 139 plate appearances last year while playing outstanding defense for them in RF/LF. He was worth 0.8 wins in about 20% of a season, and yet, because MLB is still so tied up in batting average (Langerhans hit .234), he couldn’t land a major league job this winter.
He’s absolutely perfect for what the M’s need. His preseason ZIPS projection had him as a .239/.341/.375 hitter, which would make him about the fourth best hitter on the M’s right now. ZIPS doesn’t know that he’s gone down to Triple-A and started whacking the baseball this year, hitting .279/.383/.508 and showing the best power of his career. He’s drawn 30 walks and has 23 extra base hits in 216 plate appearances for Syracuse, and those secondary skills combined with his range in the outfield make him a very useful role player.
It’s not like he’s some minor league wonder who can’t hit major league pitching. His career line in the big leagues is .233/.335/.378, and that’s dragged down by a disastrous ’07 season. In 2005, 2006, and 2008, he’s been a solid average-ish hitter, and his defensive numbers are terrific (career +27.2 UZR in 2,000 innings in LF/RF), which match up with all the scouting reports about his athletic ability.
Even with the miserable ’07 included, Langerhans has been about a +1 to +1.5 win player per 150 games over the course of his major league career. His minor league numbers suggest he could be even better than that. We’re talking about a legitimate, quality outfielder, with the exact skillset the M’s need right now. And he’d cost as little as anyone on earth to acquire – the M’s could give the Nationals free tickets to the aquarium or a neat picture of the Space Needle or something, and voila, quality fourth outfielder with left-handed stick, good plate discipline, and good defense could be theirs.
Ryan Langerhans please.
Minor League Roundtable #2
It’s been too long, but we’re finally ready to post our second minor league roundtable discussion between Jay Yencich, Marc W, and myself. We started off with a conversation about Joe Dunigan in early May, but then got side-tracked by the draft, so we finished it off last week talking about Aaron Pribanic, Doug Fister, and Tyson Gillies. Hope you enjoy.
Minor League Wrap (6/15-21/09)
Dave adds: We’re happy to announce that Jay has agreed to join us full time as a USSM author. He’s done a fantastic job with the recaps, and we were so impressed we asked him to take on a larger role. He’ll still be doing the recaps through the season, but he’s also going to be doing more posts on the goings on below the major league level and generally boosting the site’s coverage of the team’s farm system. We’re really happy to have Jay on board as an author. Welcome to the team, Jay.
A few quick notes before we get things rolling. First off, the Midwest and California League All-Star Games, with M’s farmhands well-represented, will be taking place on Tuesday, not that you would miss a match-up against our hated interleague rivals for the world. Second, Everett and Peoria have started play, with Pulaski also getting going on Tuesday, so be patient as the recaps adjust to the added workload. The first half is over. Let the endurance run begin.
To the jump!
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Game thread
Wooooo
Five hundred. Fiiiiive hundred.
34-34. Yeah, the offense is bad, and the pitching’s shaky and Bedard’s injured and our middle infield is hoooorrible. And yeah, there’s some luck here too. But folks —
.500
Last year they’d lost 34 before May was out and didn’t win 34 until July.
It’s been a long, horrible year since they were legitimately .500 (this day in 07 they were 36-32), and as a bonus to seeing the team’s return to respectability, we’re seeing the foundations of a team that can win sustainably, too.
We don’t know what’ll happen next, if they’ll sell, or buy and sell, or how the season will go… but to see them claw their way back up after that May collapse makes me happy.
Game 68, Diamondbacks at Mariners
I ended up seeing Chavez’s injury a dozen times yesterday, between the game and watching the post-game show, and… I don’t have anything good to say for the game thread today. Endy’s out, Wlad’s in, Vargas is starting, and I’m sad. I know this kind of thing’s entirely unpredictable, and I’ve been trying not to, but to have Yuni involved, and walk away unharmed, after all the frustration of the season, it’s almost too much for me to maintain a wall between Yuni, the player who is underperforming and hurting the team eight ways, to Yuni, the guy who is cursing the team.
I can’t be alone on this, can I? We’re only human, and fans so we’re irrationally emotionally involved with this stuff. If he lets the bat go on a swing and gives Gutierrez a concussion tonight, at this point I’d just shake my head and put it on his tab.
If (as it’s gone so far this season) Yuni responds to this by fielding every ground ball in play and goes 4-5 with four home runs, it’d be a good first step to working off this karmic debt.
Chavez has a Torn ACL
Geoff Baker with the story. Not only is the anterior cruciate ligament torn, but it’s possible that there’s further damage to the other ligaments and a bone fracture. Great.
Baker also notes that Zduriencik has made the call that Saunders not be called up. They want to see him play more in Tacoma, and given the shoulder surgery at the end of last year and the slow start to June, along with the usual arbitration clock concerns, that’s a reasonable decision. Left field will be manned by Wlad, with guest appearances by Cedeno and Griffey.
In the meantime, Josh Wilson, who was picked up off waivers from the Padres earlier in the week, will take the spot on the roster until Lopez comes off the bereavement list, and then they’ll have to decide which of their infielders is heading out.
Update from Baker: MCL torn too, meniscus damaged, deep bone bruise, probably out to start 2010. For a player whose game is speed-reliant, it’s difficult to fully characterize how much this sucks.
Aumont Joins Diamond Jaxx
There’s a press release up at an external site, but if you don’t like that, you can confirm the roster. This doesn’t look like a temporary move for today’s doubleheader either, as they released a player to make room for him.
So, what have we learned about our ’07 first-round pick in the past few months? Aumont struggled out of the gate, with some mediocre command marring his April performances and leaving him with a 9/6 K/BB in 10.1 innings. This improved significantly to a 16/2 in 14.1 May innings, but it was coupled with a few more of his hits leaving the park. In June, his performances were more towards the middle; his control wasn’t quite as good, but his home run rate wasn’t quite as bad and hitters were having some difficulty making contact off of him. It would seem that he’s been in the process of adjusting back and forth over the past few months in response to what’s happening around him, which is definitely a good sign.
One more item of interest is that the difference in his splits versus lefties and righties is almost imperceptible, save for a couple of things. He gets twice as many groundballs against same-handed batters than he does opposite, which could help explain the higher home run rate versus lefties and the higher ERA with it. There’s also a slight increase in walks, which would be expected with him. Otherwise, the numbers are identical.
It really makes you think about what he might be able to do in the rotation, doesn’t it?