Game Nine Recap
Yay, 3-6. So this is what it feels like to win on a non-Felix day.
Milton needed that. The team needed that. Everyone needed that. Welcome to Seattle, Mr. Bradley. Do that more often and you can make a nice little home for yourself here.
Brett Anderson is tremendous. If I had to start a franchise with any pitcher in baseball, Brett Anderson would be in the discussion for the guy I would take. I’d probably end up with Felix or Lincecum or Greinke, but I’d seriously consider Anderson. He’s that good. For all the problems the offense has had, facing him twice in the last five days hasn’t helped.
Doug Fister showed what can happen when you throw strikes in a pitchers park, especially when facing a bad offense. He challenged the A’s, commanded his change-up, and generally pitched pretty well. He won’t be able to do that regularly, but it was a nice performance anyway.
Nice to see Figgins hitting the ball hard three times off of left-handed pitchers, who have traditionally given him problems, but that caught stealing in the 7th inning was bad. Yes, Kurt Suzuki made a remarkable play to catch the ball and get back in position to throw him out, but there’s no reason for Figgins to take off until he’s sure the ball got away from Suzuki. There’s no chance that Suzuki’s going to be able to track the ball down and throw him out once it gets by him and goes to the backstop, so getting a good jump doesn’t matter. On that play, you’re either going to be out by a couple of steps if he caught it or safe without a throw if he didn’t. Already in scoring position, wisdom is the better part of valor, and that was not a wise play by Figgins.
I’ve given Mike Sweeney a lot of crap the first week, so let me just say this – he had two really good, important at-bats tonight. In his first nine trips to the plate this year, he saw a total of 23 pitches, and hacked his way into a lot of easy outs. In his last two at-bats tonight, he saw 12 pitches, drawing a couple of walks, and giving the team chances to score runs. The second walk came against Brad Ziegler, a side-arming right-hander who just destroys right-handed hitters. It’s obvious that I don’t think Sweeney brings enough to the table to be worth the roster spot on this team, but when you hear announcers talk about professional at-bats, those two trips to the plate were what they mean. I tip my hat to Sweeney to him for those last two walks.
Chris-
I suppose it’s because we tend to take the offense for granted (meaning, we think we know what to expect there). With this lineup, we all went… “Hmmm, okay, so how ELSE can we win games.” And defense and pitching are where we’ve rested our hopes.
I for one am HUGELY happy for Milton. And the offense. (6 hits and 2 walks in 6 innings against a really good young starter!) I’m a big fan of Bradley. I think getting him for Silva will go down as one of the least talked about, but biggest trades Z made. We got rid of a huge albatross contract (note: Silva is about to miss his next start with a “sore shoulder”), and got back a good on-base guy with some power. Basically, trading contracts.
I like Bradley’s grump factor. I think it’s hilarious that he flipped off the Rangers fans (he’s gonna get hazed everywhere, and more than any other guy on the team– so, it’s not like the fans are minding their own business and Bradley goes off on them unprovoked).
He gives the team an edginess we’ve missed (ditto: Lee’s spring training head shot).
And I love 3 run shots to right field (and hard hit doubles in the corner earlier in the game). I think guys are on the cusp of stopping the “I’m gonna take care of this slump” thinking, and will likely start simply doing what they do best and not worrying about the outcome so much. That’s when I think we’ll see the 3-5 runs a game we’re hoping for.
(Read somewhere that Wak had a sit down with Bradley after the Texas incident and he confessed he was trying too hard to redeem himself, every at bat, every moment. That’s when Wak sat him a game, and moved him from the cleanup spot.)
I disagree with your Figgens comment. Baserunners are taught to read the ball in dirt or a ball WAY off the plate like this one was. It was actually a great read by Figgins. I think if you ask any coach, they say Figgins was doing what he is suppose to be doing. Suzuki made an unreal play and great throw while off balance. 99/100 times he doesn’t make that throw.
As Ron Burgandy would say, agree to disagree……..but Figgins was right.
I can definitely agree with that. I have this vague feeling that the series against Baltimore next week is going to be hilarious to watch, in a good way, if hitters get relaxed and have patient and productive at-bats. Then we can get back to Ichi and Figgy on base every half an hour and opposing pitchers who are up to 70 pitches by the 3rd inning. 🙂
Does anyone remeber Fister’s Curve being that good? I thought that really looked like a plus pitch. How does one go about evaluating a pitch used like that in a game to determin its value using pitch FX?
I just wanted to add that I was at the game last night, and there was a lot to get down about, but Fister pitched the game of his life. The group in 118 was getting really pissed for him! Thank God Milton and his .085 stepped up! Go M’s!
I for one will not be sorry to see the A’s go away for awhile. Which they will, after tonight’s game.
Milton also understands regression to the mean:
Of course he could have added the corollary: Talent will also overwhelm good luck no matter how hard you work.
One item of note for the peanut gallery on the Figgins/Suzuki play: Dave was a catcher in HS, so he may know an extra thing or two about what it takes for a baserunner to wisely take off for 3rd on a catcher taking a wide pitch.
Figgins should have waited for the ball to physically get by Kurt before taking off, because he would have easily been safe if that ball got by him… but if Kurt hangs onto it he is dead meat because he’s not getting much of a jump on the forthcoming throw.
I don’t want this to sound harsh (as I apparently did in an earlier comment thread), so please don’t misread my tone. I also am not trying to sound like I think I know everything…I don’t come here to argue, I thoroughly enjoy the useful information and dialogue.
That being said, I’ve coached the game for 15+ years (no, not little league…I’m a college coach and I’ve worked for both USA Baseball and Major League Baseball International), and the idea that Figgins’ play was a bad one is incorrect. I’ve stated why in previous comments, so I’ll try not to go into too much detail, but something to add is that Dave and other commenters assume that there are only two outcomes to Suzuki’s effort on the pitch: he either catches it or it goes to the backstop. This is not accurate. In fact, the play that Figgins is anticipating (like he would a ball in the dirt) is in-between. What if Suzuki knocks the ball straight down to the ground? What if Suzuki knocks the ball five feet in front of the plate? If Figgins waits to see what the ball does, he will not make it to 3B even if it’s on the ground. However, if he reads the catcher lunging or blocking on an abnormally bad pitch he gets a couple of extra steps toward 3B that are usually the difference in being safe. With one out, the baserunners are trying to get to 3B, it is the ideal situation to be aggressive between 2b/3b.
Two more things: regarding the risk/reward in that situation, any comment that the reward doesn’t outweigh the risk is impossible to make. There are no statistics (that I’m aware of, and if they exist I’d love to see them…I mean that sincerely as it might change the way I view this play) that quantify runners taking the extra base on bad pitches that are blocked by catchers. They go down as wild pitches or even passed balls in the scorebook. This is not the same as a steal, so risk is different. And while I can’t definitively quantify this, at my level baserunners are almost always successful on this type of play (we’ve been thrown out once in two seasons out of probably three dozen attempts). The only times we see it unsuccessful are when the catcher has the good fortune to have the ball bounce straight into his glove or when the runner waits to see what the ball does before taking off.
Regarding people who played high school baseball as having some kind of insight (this is not to knock Dave, as he didn’t throw this out there), let me say that it is a very rare high school player indeed who has a clue about the nuances of the game. This is a play that you just don’t see that often in HS ball, and it’s rarely even taught or emphasized by HS coaches (often too many basics to focus on in practice first). This idea came up in an earlier post on USSM about Kotchman’s bat speed and made me chuckle (the opinion of someone who had been a standout HS baseball player used as some sort of evidence). Even guys at the highest levels of ability don’t always understand the game that well (Joe Morgan comes to mind…he almost single-handedly makes the casual baseball fan dumber). The HS kids we see when recruiting know next to nothing in terms of playing the game, and so their experiences as HS players are fairly useless in evaluating many of finer areas of the game.
Again, I’m not trying to sound condescending. I don’t think I’m smarter than anyone here or anything, but Figgins’ play was a good read that simply didn’t work out.
Man, League way to make me eat my words when I was questioning the effectiveness of your pitches yesterday. You will not hear that drivel coming from my mouth (key board) again. Color me convinced and welcome to the M’s.