Game Twenty-One Recap
Yay, 10-11.
Was that the least impressive three run rally in team history? Gutierrez’s RBI single was well hit, but Lopez had an infield double thanks to Tejeda’s white man hops, and then back to back walks force in the go ahead run. Yeah, they all count the same, but those were some sissy runs right there. As for the rest of it…
It’s funny how context changes everything. Had the Mariners come into this game on a four game winning streak and put up a whole bunch of runs in Chicago, no one would have thought anything of the offensive performance tonight. It was Zack Greinke, with the benefit of a ridiculous Tim Tschida strike zone; of course they didn’t score any runs. But, since they got came in with a four game losing streak and got shutdown by Kyle Davies yesterday, the seven shutout innings appear to be the continuation of a pattern. But don’t make more out of this than you should. Very few offenses can do much with Greinke’s pitches, and when he’s got an extra foot on both sides of the plate to work with, forget it.
Snell benefited from Tschida’s strike zone as well, getting some generous calls that helped him rack up some big strikeouts. Hard to believe that you can say this about a guy who put about 45 guys on base and only got 16 outs, but he didn’t pitch as well as his final line may indicate. If Snell was going to give Wak any second thoughts about putting him in the bullpen, that performance won’t do it. He showed all the same problems he’s always had – can’t get lefties out, struggles to command his fastball – and will now have to try to salvage his season in relief. We’ll talk about why he’s the kind of guy who might benefit quite a bit from moving to the bullpen later, but for now, let’s just say that I’m pretty happy that Snell won’t be starting again in five days.
Snell’s first inning jam wasn’t really his fault, though. After DeJesus started the game with a solid single, Snell got Scott Podsednik to hit a weak ground ball right to Chone Figgins. Except, Figgins was covering second base, because DeJesus was running on the pitch. I know Podsednik isn’t a pull power guy or anything, but I have no idea why Figgins was the guy covering in that situation. You generally have the middle infielder the hitter’s opposite side cover the base on a steal, and the M’s decision to have Figgins cover there cost them an easy out. We’ll have to watch to see if they do that with other slap hitters throughout the year, or if there’s a post-game explanation for why Jack Wilson wasn’t covering on that play.
The Royals really are the Mariners of a couple of years ago. Even their good hitters are swing-at-anything hacks, and the line-up doesn’t have very many good hitters. The Royals swung themselves right out of a bunch of rallies, and should have ran up a much bigger lead on Snell, given all the opportunities they had to score. If you want to remember how bad the organization was a couple of years ago, just watch the Royals play.
Let the temporary sabbatical on any complaints about the Mariners offensive woes begin. . .
Ugly win, but it is a win. Got to get another one tomorrow before Cliff Lee’s start!!!
We needed that after a Felix loss. I’ll take it, and look forward to the guy taking Snell’s turn moving forward.
Also, how does Tim Tschida have his job still? MLB needs to do something about some of these guys. That’s just stupid.
Well at least it is a win that they shouldn’t have had on paper. Besting the Royals on ‘Greinke day’ was a pleasant suprise.
there was one moment from the game i liked:
seeing Yuni bat with runners on base in a close game …
and knowing he wouldnt get the job done.
Seems only fair to win on Zack Day, since they won on Felix Day.
Good to get a ‘W’, but these guys still make me want to pull my hair out. It’s hard to believe we have so many on a single ML roster that can’t hit their weight.
Well, I guess a win is a win. Now if we can get RRS tomorrow then Lee and Felix, we could have 4 game win on our hands. But man, this offense is anemic.
Speaking of the strike zone — does anybody know what happened to BrooksBaseball.net? It looks like the whole site is down. The domain registration is still intact, so I’m wondering if he’s moving to a new host, or decided he couldn’t keep it going with all the bandwidth it was sucking up, or sold out to somebody?
Anyway, I had the M’s penciled in to take two out of three on this series — with the loss the start against Greinke, and one of the wins Felix day yesterday. So flip-flop those, and a win tomorrow leaves me happy.
This is what it looks like when
doves crythe Royals bullpen comes in to “finish” for Geinke.Looked pretty impressive to me. I hope everybody on the bench was watching when Griffey and Bradley took back to back walks to win the game. I’ve waited 10 years to see that.
I liked what I saw from Gutierrez today. 33 pitches today. Oftentimes when hitters get hot they wack away, but Guti looks like the hotter he gets, the more plate discipline he showed.
If he keeps up this level of concentration (I know he’s on a hot streak, but by concentration I mean his plate discipline), I think we have an all-star here.
Now I feel bad about beating them. Especially doing it against their bullpen, on the day their ace was pitching.
Guti will have a good shot, mostly on the merits of his defense, I think. He’s received a lot of good press by ESPN, among others, for his defense. That’s how Gold Gloves, All-Star Game appearances, and jobs as the Denver Broncos Quarterback are won.
AHAHAHAHA!
Well its early – but his walk rate is up and his K rate is down. He’s improved these numbers each of the last three years so its possible that what we’re seeing is a continuation in his progression as a hitter. His BABIP is pretty ridiculous right now – but if he can maintain his BB% and K% then heck, why not an All-Star? (ISO is also high – but not out of the range of his ability if you believe his 2007 season at all.)
Don’t know about you guys, but I’d like to start seeing more batting averages in the box score that don’t start with “.1”. I’m starting to get jealous of the Nationals’ lineup.
No kidding. I can see why Grenke likes FIP so much. I’d want to do whatever I could to isolate my performance from that team. What a disaster. Any credit Snell gets tonight should be shared with that atrocious Kansas City offense.
That team needs a hug. Know any good huggers with a Kansas City connection?
I begin to think the Mayan legends about 2012 just might be correct when the M’s actually come back to win a game which Zack Greinke started…
The M’s went crazy…the M’s went nuts!! 🙂
Griffey went 1/3, BB, fouled out to left, popped out to SS. Move those legs!?
Least impressive still gets a win in the win column. It’s a one run win, which they haven’t had too many of this year…in a game a CY young pitched. Take it and RUN!
Oh man that was an ugly win! But a win is a win! If they can pull it out of their butts tomorrow and come back with a series win to finish the road trip that would be huge! Then Cliff Lee pitching Friday against the Rangers without Nelson Cruz. Things are looking up considering the M’s offense is still not very good.
We could have a pretty clean slate on Friday…. possibly at .500, possibly as close as 2 games back, Cliff… it’d be like a do-over Opening Day.
Offense still needs help, though.
I’m not sure where to ask this so I’ll just ask it here… Do we know who is going to pitch on Saturday? Will we skip Vargas’ start to go Lee then Felix?
Sissy runs? If you enjoyed winning all those one-run ball games last year, expect at least 50% of this year’s to be on “sissy runs.” That’s how our team was built, and I can’t wait for the first time I hear an opposing commentator refer to us as “pesky.”
Homeruns be damned! I’ll take 1920’s classic baseball any day of the week!
I don’t think this team was built on the premise of getting RBI doubles that go 60 feet.
Weekend rotation: Lee, Felix, Vargas
Vargas on Sunday instead of Fister? Interesting. Any reason why except that they don’t want to start lefties for three consecutive games?
Nope, that will be the reason.
It might be more accurate to say that the team is built on the premise that if anyone is going to get a 60 foot double, it will be the Mariners.
Their good hitters are swing-at-anything hacks? Really? Maybe I’m looking at the wrong numbers, but don’t Billy Butler and David DeJesus draw some walks?
I don’t know… This team was clearly built on the premise that it would be involved in a lot of close low-scoring games, which, in contrast to high-scoring games, are much more likely to be decided by a single relatively random event such as a lucky bounce, one bad pitch, or a bad call.
And Alberto Callaspo too! I thought he posted about an average walk rate.
From Matt on Fangraphs:
I mean, yikes. The M’s would probably do better letting Felix bat when he pitches.
DAMellen:
I thought the same thing initially then looked up the stats on Fangraphs. Neither of the three you mentioned (Butler, DeJesus and Callaspo) have really been anything to right home about on the BB% front. They are average at best for their careers. When you’re surrounded by guys like Yuniesky Betancourt and Jose Guillen I think you tend to look a little worse, however, just by proximity.
Also – each of the three are currently down from last years numbers in walk rate indicating that, at least right now, that team is leaning heavily on the free swinging approach. So for tonight’s purposes – Dave would be correct – about the only one who has any plate discipline going for them is Alex Gordon. I think some guys will improve on their walk rate this year – but as a hole the Royals don’t much care for walk rate and one shouldn’t really confuse any of them (save maybe Gordon) for well disciplined hitters.
I suppose…but I still wish we’d dealt Betancourt for Butler when we had the chance. I think he’s gonna be fierce. I’m telling you, by 2012, he’ll be one of the most feared hitters in baseball.
This is a NL lookalike roster. Perfect roster for the NL west. Not to mention the DH is producing about as much as pitchers hitting in the NL. Too bad we are in the AL.
It would be so nice to see this team offensively break games open, to ease the pitching staff. Some runs have been the result of a misque by the opponent. The offense has done a great job capitalizing on those extra-outs. But they haven’t created enough runs without help. Scoring 3 runs or less the majority of games is not conducive to winning,
I don’t necessarily disagree – I think he has a good future ahead of him. I sure wouldn’t mind having his bat on the team. To me he looks a lot like the second coming of Mike Sweeney (if you look at his productive Royals years, anyway.) Very good hitter for average, some pretty good pop and won’t strike out. Also, if you look at the walk rates early in Sweeney’s career they’re very comparable to what Butler has done. It took a few seasons before Sweeney turned into a really good OBP guy – then inexplicably dropped that approach in 2004 and started hacking. (Which makes you wonder why he doesn’t draw more walks now that he’s and older, supposedly wiser, version of that former player.)
Actually, according to a recent Fangraphs article by Matthew Carruth our DH situation would currently rank in the bottom tear of NL pitcher production at the plate. So not quite as much as some of the pitchers are producing in the other league.
Not to, you know, add fuel to the fire or anything. Just sayin’.
Remember that rumor this offseason about some sort of Jose Lopez for Liriano deal with the Twins? How bad do you think Jack is regretting not going down that route now! Felix/Lee/Liriano/Bedard/RRS rotation and we could continue scoring 2 runs a game and be ok.
So, we should DFA Vargas and Fister to make room for Griffey and Sweeney in the rotation? Or instead of DFAing them, do we just go with a 9-man pen?
That or DFA Griffey and Sweeney and just let our pitchers hit.
(I’m only half kidding of course.)
Lineups for today’s game are out. We have an Ignitor sighting!
9-L Ichiro!
4-S Figgins
8-R Death to Flying and Things
5-R Lopez
7-S Bradley
0-0 Mascot
3-L Kotchman
2-R Johnson
6-R Wilson
1-L RR-S
Vs
9-L DeJesus
7-L Podsednik
3-R Butler
0-R Guillen
5-S Callaspo
2-R Kendall
4-R Princess Willie
6-R Yuni
1-R Meche
Yuni, Bloomie and, er, Gillie (Mechie? Mechie-the-Pooh? What is Randy Winn doing these days anyway)
It’d be a reunion, if the M’s had anybody besides Ichiro left from those days.