Some Good News
Because you don’t need any kind of special insight from me on how badly this team has played the last few weeks, let’s look at one player who is actually giving reason for optimism – Kanekoa Texeira.
With some really good pitching in his last few outings, Texeira has now racked up 11 strikeouts in 12 1/3 innings pitched, showing that he can miss bats with that nasty breaking ball of his, which complements his groundball sinker fairly well. Due to the GB+K combination, Texeira’s currently sporting a nifty little 3.06 xFIP. Even better, he’s proving that his ability to get lefties out in the minors wasn’t a fluke.
He’s faced 26 left-handed hitters so far this year, allowing just five hits, walking two, striking out six, and running a 56% ground ball rate against opposite handed hitters. His numbers are better across the board against LHBs than RHBs, which is what he showed in the minors as well. His xFIP against LHBs is 2.59, which is about what you’d expect from a lefty specialist.
Yes, it’s all a tiny sample, and most of his performances have come in low leverage situations where he wasn’t facing the best hitters the opposing teams had to offer, but the simple fact that he’s showing that he can get left-handed hitters out and get swinging strikes with his breaking ball has to be encouraging. With Mark Lowe on the DL, the bullpen needed someone to step up and give them good innings, and it sure wasn’t going to be Sean White. At this point, Texeira and Kelley should be sharing the 7th inning duties, with Brandon League setting up David Aardsma in case the team ever goes into the ninth with a lead again.
Amidst all the other problems, one positive has emerged – it looks like the M’s have found a pretty decent reliever with Kanekoa Texeira.
Also his first name is fun to say which adds to the likability factor, and his laid back attitude.If only he averaged 2K’s per inning we could call him KK for short.
I have to say I was skeptical like everybody else. For all the issues this team is dealing with, it’s good to see another example of Jack’s prowess for finding talent.
So with the initial success that he’s had I imagine that he’ll be on the team all year, or at least I hope he will be. Do you think at some point he could be a starter or is he looking like a career bullpen guy?
Of course, the one guy who’s most likely to leave the bullpen a lead has been Fister. I’ve been to two games at Safeco this year and he hasn’t given up a run. He will eventually, but no reason to do it today, right?
Awesome…
Can he hit?
At this point, Texeira and Kelley should be sharing the 7th inning duties, with Brandon League setting up David Aardsma in case the team ever goes into the ninth with a lead again.
The Mariners with a lead going into the ninth?
I guess it’s always good to prepare for every possible situation, however remote it may seem.
The M’s having a lead in the ninth is about a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence these days.
And even then, they’ve blown them… /pessimist
At the margins (and the Mariners’ offense if officially marginal), the “saving a run is as valuable as scoring a run” does have this problem: if you never score, you can never win.
Someone had to step up and make the obvious joke. Thanks for volunteering!
So the only good news is that we found a reliever…the easiest position to fill…
Awesome.
He has a point though. The first thought I had after reading Dave’s post was “I wonder how decent of a batter we could get for him in a trade?”
He’s a Rule 5 draftee, so he has to be. Only way to send him to the minors would be to trade for his rights first.
Doesn’t look like that will be a problem for two reasons:
The good one is that he’s pitching well enough, at least now, to deserve to stay on the big league roster.
The bad one is unless Jack Z pulls a miracle acquisition, the M’s aren’t going to be in the playoff hunt, so keeping the odd reliever is of little consequence. Apologies to all those who still think we could compete for the division title – I don’t.
Yeah, that 4.5 game lead with only 133 games to go is a bit daunting.
Any chance he could be a starter? With those splits, his GB%, and an out pitch he could make a good starter in 2011.
hahaha great response
Given the entirety of his professional starting experience in four years of pro ball was six spot starts with AA Trenton last year (alongside 35 relief appearances), in which he logged a total of 22 innings, it’s not likely.
Here’s Kanekoa’s career minor league splits:
http://www.minorleaguesplits.com/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?pl=444427
Yep, thanks for the laugh.
It’s my second favorite comment this week…trailing only, “every run is like Christmas”.
Thanks for the info Gomez.
Kanekoa Texeira has impressed me with a quality that is hard to quantify, but never ever hurts a good relief pitcher: Poise.
I agree that there haven’t been a whole bunch of things to cheer about, but I love the fact that two of our best firemen are from Hawai’i.
Cheer up!