Cactus League Game Thread, 3/26/2010
Jay Yencich · March 26, 2010 at 1:22 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Last time out, French has been working on his change-up, and ran a 11/1 ground/fly ratio, which is kind of absurd considering that his ratio was at 0.37 in Detroit last year, 0.60 in Seattle, and about 0.71 before Sunday’s game in spring training. More groundballs makes French pretty interesting.
Geoff Baker also suggests that Tuiasosopo has made the team as a back-up infielder and that the team can live with him at short one or two times a week. I’m not really in agreement with the latter part of that assessment.
Lineup:
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
3B Lopez
DH Griffey
LF Byrnes
CF Gutierrez
1B Garko
C Johnson
SS Jack Wilson
LHP Luke French
Comments
21 Responses to “Cactus League Game Thread, 3/26/2010”
Wow Garko must feel great going into this game now that he’s been replaced by a hugging hit machine.
A distraught and emotionally crushed Ryan Garko just grounded out two pitches. At first to receive the throw, Miguel Cairo. Miguel. Cairo.
French has a 3/2 G/F through two innings now. Shame about the two runs in the first.
So are you suggesting the whole team might die if Tuiasosopo plays short a couple times a week?
It was pretty obvious he was going to make the team. He is the only one in camp that can play infield and outfield. With Griffey on the roster, and probably Sweeney too, they need some versitility. Tui is our Willie now, but with a better stick.
I don’t mean to be alarmist, but since it’s been suggested that Tui could play short, Cliff Lee has suffered a strained ab, Jack Hannahan has been unable to recover from his groin injury, and Doug Fister was hit in the forearm by a ball. At this rate, the entire team will be dead by June.
French got another two Ks and another grounder. Again, interesting.
baseball will always be a superstitious sport, despite evidence and data otherwise…
Another inning, another three groundouts. I think that about settles it. Luke French is getting his own post in the near future.
Anyone else holing out hope that French will replace Lee until he is ready?
BTW – USSMARINER Endorsed trade bait Kevin Frandsen has been traded to the Boston Red Sox.
Is French doing something different this spring, or is this just the temptation – oh, the TEMPTATION – to draw conclusions from small sample sizes?
Walk off grand slam, a great way to end the game.
Huh…
Griffey walk-off Grand Slam.
Good think MLB.TV Radio for KIRO crapped out before that happened…
I’m trying to figure that out, but it looks like I’ll have to deal with the ugliness of the SSS no matter what. From the looks of the pitch f/x xmls, which I’ve been trying to parse from today’s game, French’s change has gained two inches of vertical movement at the expense of about three inches horizontal movement, as compared to last year. I don’t know if I’m reading these exactly right, so don’t hold me to that.
Hm. Maybe Junior really has been just “watching pitches and gauging pitchers” all spring after all. About time he turned it loose against an NL pitcher he’ll probably never see again, though.
Looks like Silva is going to be in the starting rotation for the Cubs:
At least for 3 weeks:
My guess is it’ll be the Chef joining the Cubs bullpen when Lilly returns…
After all, a designated gas can is to Lou as Acme products are to Wile E. Coyote. 🙂
If I recall correctly, GO/AO tends to stabilise after only about 200 batters faced, so whilst the spring training is still small (58 BF) it not nearly as ridiculous as trying to gauge something like OBP from such a sample. These types of results, I would suspect, are also less likely to typical spring training sample errors as well.
I’ll look forward to seeing what Jay has to say especially from the Pitch f/x angle, but there’s certainly reason to be less skeptical about the sample size if that is showing effects to match both the results and his talk of working on that pitch.
wow–with this tweak to his pitching in spring training, French will be unhiittable!
(I’ll be lurking here all season folks. Try the fish and tip your waitress.)
I’m thinking there are folks around the league who read what Dave says.
They already took Bill Hall. Are they going to corner the market on utility players so we can’t have one?
Usually they just grab the ones we’ve tired of. Tug Hulett, Nick Green, and Chris Woodward are among them.