Game 36 Recap
I’ve heard that back in the day, there were journalists out there who wrote two different stories in the late innings of tie games, one for if the team pulled it out and one for if the team lost. Through seven innings, I was thinking we were going to pull it out. Instead, we lost yet another one that we didn’t need to.
Originally, my preface here was going to be about how we eked out a run against a pitcher that ended up dominating us in the late innings. Now, I have to talk about the eighth inning. Jason Vargas threw four perfect innings to start the game out because the Rays happen to be terrible against left-handed pitching. Through the first four innings, Vargas’ pitch count was only thirty-two, twenty-two of which went for strikes. The Rays were swinging early and putting the ball in play. It wasn’t working out well for them.
Oddly, in the fifth, they opted to become more aggressive, with eleven of sixteen pitches going for strikes, and they managed their first hit of the game, but things slowed down in the sixth, with twelve of twenty-four being called strikes and only five of twelve in the eighth. One would think that a manager would recognize Vargas seemed to be getting tired, and that a low pitch count was not reason enough to keep him going out there into the eighth, but nevertheless, Wak did.
We all know what follows because we’ve seen it too many times lately. We have a lead, and in the eighth inning everything blows up. Upton and Navarro had back-to-back singles, Upton moving to third as he had previously stolen second off a slightly rusty Rob Johnson behind the plate (the first time a Rays runner had even been in scoring position). League gives up a single to Bartlett and then is pulled after a sacrifice bunt by Bartlett and an intentional walk to Crawford, and that brings up the Sean White vs. Ben Zobrist match-up that ends in a sac fly and the tying run scoring before Longoria lines out.
From there, the story pretty much writes itself, except in our case we had the added fingernails-on-chalkboard effect of the Fox broadcasters not shutting up about pop music. Gutierrez drew a leadoff walk and stole second in a turnabout play off John Jaso entering the game, and then he was left out there, stranded after getting into scoring position. Jesus Colome served seven pitches to Willy Aybar and then I stumbled back to my ethernet connection, numb, because I had known the loss had been coming since the eighth.
The rest of the game, I don’t have all that much to write about because frankly, it wasn’t interesting from our perspective. Tui somehow got the start at first against a tough right-hander instead of Kotchman and went 0-for-4, striking out twice and stranding three. Heck, I would have settled for Langerhans out there again. The offense was not good, and after Mike Sweeney’s third home run in as many days, James Shields turned in four perfect innings of his own before Adam Moore’s single.
Funny, because yesterday, I wanted to talk up Moore’s good points, and today he struggled to justify much of that. He grounded to short in his first at-bat and had an ugly K in the fifth, one of ten against Shields on the day. He did well to knock out Longoria when he hit the tapper to the left side, but mostly, what we’re going to remember is him bruising his heel, or knee, or whatever, and coming up hobbled after his infield single in the eighth. If he comes out for a pinch-runner then, even Rob Johnson as the case probably would have been, we’re sitting pretty with runners on second and third with one out on Ichiro’s should-have-been double. At that point, Figgins doesn’t have an easy double play to ground into.
Speaking of which, I also wanted to talk up Figgins’ good points today, but can’t easily. He had a double in the first, legging out a close one that he probably shouldn’t have attempted, and then got a bloop single stolen from him his second time up. His last two at-bats were a strikeout and a double play. Whatever confidence he might have gained from forcing the error and scoring on a wild pitch in the first was probably undercut by not being able to come through in the eighth.
A few other “highlights”, so to speak, included Lopez snagging two liners, one in the sixth against Gabe Kapler that he jumped up to snag, and one in the eighth against Longoria again that probably spared us further run scoring. If he hadn’t been posting a .436 OPS in May, we might be talking about these sorts of things a little more.
Anyway, it’s still light out, the weather is pleasant, so go out and enjoy yourselves. There’s no miracle in this one, just another frustrating loss where the M’s let a winnable game get away from them. It’s getting mundane.
Game 36, Mariners at Rays
Vargas vs Shields, 1:10 pm.
Well, we got our miracle yesterday – hope for another one.
Game 35 “Not Quite Dead Yet”
Hey, 14-21. Perhaps there’s hope after all.
Late edit: The West Tenn Diamond Jaxx’ website says that Jack Wilson will be rehabbing with them starting tomorrow when the roadtrip to Mississippi begins. The Mariners official site confirms.
* Doug Fister had six walks coming into the game, and this was advertised as one of the things he’d need to keep up in order to win this one. He got to a full count on Jason Bartlett and threw eight pitches before he induced the ground out. This at-bat was a rough summary of how Fister was pitching today. While he did manage to get first pitch strikes in for over two-thirds of the batters he faced, he struggled to put them away and left after just five innings, having walked three. To be fair, one of his walks, the one to Brignac, basically wasn’t if you take a look at it…
Not a great outing for him, though watching him fool Longoria badly on a 88mph pitch in, and then get him to K on a checked swing up in the eyes, that was nice.
The run that scored against Fister was among the stranger ways I’ve seen to get on the board lately. First there was the double to Bartlett, which is something I suppose, but then Saunders threw a dart to the left of the second base bag that Figgins couldn’t line up with, and so the ball ended up spiking and bouncing away. After that, Fister got a cleat caught in the mound and ended up with a balk that resembled some unintentional whirlwind move that scored Bartlett from third. That was annoying.
* As disheartening as the losses in Baltimore were, this game served as a reminder of how much better the team is with Gutierrez in the lineup. The first inning home run on a pitch into his wheelhouse was a decent enough example of that, especially considering that was the first home run Wade Davis had given up to a right-handed hitter all season, but so was the sixth inning walk, where he stole second and alertly went to third as the throw went astray. Smarter baserunning always helps.
* One of the comments made during the game was that neither Johnson nor Moore has really taken the title of starting catcher, due to both weak hitting and frequent mistakes behind the plate. After tonight’s game, I figure a number of people out there will want to give that title to Moore after seeing a double and a home run in the box score. Frankly, I don’t know if those two aren’t caught in a ballpark where the ball doesn’t carry as well, but their location, to right field in both instances, raises an interesting point. You look at Rob Johnson’s hitting charts, in Safeco at least, and you’ll see that only four of the balls he’s hit have gone to the right side. Moore, while logging nine fewer at-bats at home, has five, and three of his four balls in play tonight went to the right side. That ability may be more conducive to future success in Safeco.
* In May, Casey Kotchman has hit .056/.190/.083 in 36 at-bats. The Rays still opted to walk him intentionally in the sixth in order to bring up Josh Wilson. That should tell you what other teams really think of Wilson’s recent hot hitting.
* Kanekoa Texeira had to face the 4-5-6 hitters in the Rays lineup in the bottom of the sixth. He frisbeed in two pitches around 90 mph to get two quick inside strikes on Longoria, and then struck him out two later on a pitch in the dirt. He then struck out Carlos Pena, a left-hander, on eight pitches, and Upton on five pitches, the last two of which were swings out of the zone. The seventh inning featured three pitches to get through the likes of Pat Burrell and John Jaso, and after the walk to Brignac, one more to Bartlett to end the inning. We like Texeira.
* Sometime in the sixth inning, seeing a number of pitches being dropped in around the dirt and barely snagged, a small child behind home plate screamed “HE CAN’T EVEN GET A HOLD OF IT!” Though this was one of our better games behind the dish all season, clearly the child had not been watching much Mariners baseball this year.
* We shouldn’t fault Kelley for the dinger to Longoria because it was a decent pitch to a fantastic hitter. All you can really do in that case is tip your cap to the guy. Against Carlos Pena, Kelley managed a strikeout on five pitches all around the zone, and B.J. Upton was knocked out with just four. Kelley is still one of the Mariners better relievers when used properly.
* I know that the condensed game for this one will include the highlights of the home runs by Gutierrez, Moore, and Sweeney, but I really do hope that Sweeney’s stolen base, his first in four years, manages to make it in there too.
Another edit: We now have more home runs than the Cleveland Indians. LOOK OUT, AMERICAN LEAGUE.
Game 35, Mariners at Rays
Fister vs Davis, 4:10 pm.
The M’s are badly in need of a miracle this weekend.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
6-4-3, DH
Lopez, 3B
Kotchman, 1B
Josh Wilson, SS
Moore, C
Saunders, LF
Some Not So Fun Math
The Mariners are 13-21, 6 1/2 games out of first place. They have 128 games left to play.
Heading into the season, we had the team pegged as about an 83 to 85 win “true talent” team, which works out to about a .520 winning percentage. If the Mariners win 52 percent of their remaining games, they will finish with a record of 80-82. If our opinion of the team was exactly the same as it was on Opening Day, we would now expect the team to finish just below .500.
Of course, the last six weeks of baseball provide some evidence that there are reasons to think that this team might not be a true talent 83 to 85 win team. Milton Bradley didn’t stay under control. Jack Wilson didn’t stay healthy. Rob Johnson didn’t learn how to catch over the winter. Even leaving aside the slumps of guys like Chone Figgins and Jose Lopez, which have been big problems but should theoretically not continue for much longer, there are some structural issues with this roster that weren’t true in March. I’d probably argue that this is more like a 78 to 80 win true talent team right now, given how the roster has shaken out.
If I’m right, and the Mariners play like their “true” selves the rest of the year, they’d finish 75-87.
How wrong do we have to be for the Mariners to win the AL West? With 128 games to play, the team would have to play .601 baseball the rest of the year to finish at 90-72. Texas is good enough to win more than 89 games, and so I don’t think we can assume that anything less than 90 will get it done. .601 baseball is basically the level the Phillies have played for the first six weeks of the season. Right now, a .601 winning percentage would rank 6th highest in baseball. Even good teams have a hard time playing .600 baseball for four and a half months. And 90 wins is no guarantee of a playoff spot.
95 wins probably gets you in. It’s tough for me to see two AL West teams finishing with more than 95 wins, so we’ll say that’s the magic number to where you can be pretty darn sure you’ll be playing in October. The Mariners would have to play .640 baseball the rest of the year – about the level that the Yankees have played in the first six weeks of the season – to finish with 95 wins. That’s basically winning two out of every three games, all year long, starting today.
Like I said yesterday, I’m not trying to sound melodramatic, but the Mariners chances of making the playoffs now stand somewhere between five and 10 percent. They’re probably closer to five percent, honestly. It’s pretty bleak.
The point of this isn’t to be Debbie Downer, but rather, to suggest that the Mariners have probably played themselves out of a position to make the kinds of trades that people have been calling for. The numbers don’t add up to make a prospects-for-veteran swap make sense. Even if you could get Houston to trade Lance Berkman, this team has played themselves out of position to give up what it takes to get a guy like that. With trade season getting ready to open up, the Mariners can’t be “buyers” in the traditional sense. They shouldn’t make another Cliff Lee trade – there aren’t good enough odds of winning this year to justify it.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t make any moves and try to salvage the season. They aren’t so far out that you can pull the plug and just call it a rebuilding year. But they have to change the type of trades they may have been looking at. Instead of moving prospects for a big thumping bat who will walk away in a year or two, the team should be looking to make moves for guys that can help in 2010 and beyond – guys who make this roster better, but can also offer some longer term value.
Just as an example, the M’s should absolutely be burning up the phone lines in Detroit trying to get Ryan Raburn from the Tigers – a 29-year-old right-handed super utility player with a pretty solid bat and a good glove in the outfield who can also fill in at 2B/3B when needed. He makes the league minimum, is arb eligible for the first time this winter, and the Tigers just optioned him to Triple-A out of frustration with his slow start. ZIPS projects him for a .344 wOBA going forward, which would make him the second or third best hitter on the team, and he’d be a perfect complement to Saunders in LF while also offering a bat who can play multiple positions and have enough thump to improve the offense.
He’s not Lance Berkman, but he’s the kind of guy the Mariners should actively be trying to acquire. He won’t save this season, but there’s a pretty good chance that it’s not able to be saved, and the team doesn’t have a strong enough farm system to waste assets on a guy who won’t be here past this season.
They have approximately six weeks to turn this thing around and get back into the race, at which time they’ll have to figure out if they’re close enough to contention to keep Cliff Lee. They can’t just sit around and wait for guys to start hitting until then, but neither has this team earned the right to have the front office trade more future for present. That’s just not a wise trade anymore.
Whether they’re better than this or not, the 13-21 start has put the season on the brink.
Game 34 Ragnarok
I turned the radio off for a meeting, with the M’s win probability at 94%. Walking to lunch, I saw that they’d lost.
I talk up Brandon League’s sinking FB and he does this to me. 2 94-95 MPH pitches with good sink, 2 home runs, ball game.
Yay Felix, Saunders and Langerhans. Even Sweeney chipped in with a home run to CF. But a recap is pointless; all I want to do is mock the team (but it’s already been done, better, by Jeff) or rant about their failings (and I can’t top this).
It’s gorgeous out. Let’s all forget this kidney stone of a game ever happened, and try not to think about how much better both Texas and Oakland look right now. It’s May 13th, and the numbness is setting in.
Game 34, Mariners at Orioles
Hernandez vs Millwood, 9:35 AM.
Happy Felix Day. I hope.
I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but if the Mariners lose this game, we’re going to have to deal with the potential reality that the season might be just about over. Following this match-up, they head to Tampa Bay for three, and realistically, winning one of those games will be an accomplishment with this roster. Bradley apparently won’t return to the team until some point during the next home stand, which means the team is probably looking at another week of makeshift ridiculous Triple-A line-ups.
Meanwhile, Texas just added Derek Holland to their rotation and look like they could be on the verge of running away from the Mariners. They are already 5 1/2 games up, and if the M’s lose this one and can’t overcome Tampa this weekend, they could easily start next week seven or eight games out of first place. At that point, they’d have to play something like .620 baseball the rest of the way to catch Texas. This roster isn’t capable of playing .620 baseball for four months straight.
It’s May 13th, and the Mariners are facing a game that is pretty close to “must win”. Lose today, and we get precipitously close to the point of asking what the team could get for Cliff Lee rather than trying to figure out what bats the team could add to fix the offense. The Mariners need this one. Badly.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Kotchman, 1B
6-4-3, DH
Lopez, 3B
Langerhans, CF
Josh Wilson, SS
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
Game 33 Recap
Well this is no fun.
I caught some of the post-game show on KIRO, and found I agreed entirely with Matt Pitman’s read on the situation: Ryan Rowland-Smith is a great, great guy, and he’s incredibly easy to root for. He’s also not helping the team right now. I thought RRS would be good for nearly 2 WAR this year, a prediction that now looks certifiably insane. Did I overestimate him because I like him? Is this just an aberration or another dead-arm period that affected him last year at this time? Is this, as Ryan’s hinted at himself, just a period of self-doubt, where he’s out-thinking himself and struggling with his confidence? I don’t really know, but it’s painful to watch.
Ryan Rowland-Smith’s fastball averaged 87 MPH today, exactly the same as he averaged in his last start. I went back and looked at some of his starts down the stretch in 2009, and while the data aren’t consistent, they’re telling. In his last start of the year, he went 6 2/3 IP against Texas, throwing 104 pitches. He topped out that day at 93, and hit 92 with his 100th pitch (and again with his 102nd!). Can you even imagine RRS hitting 92 now? This is as difficult for me to visualize as a Griffey home run off of a curve ball. Velocity isn’t the key to Ryan’s game any more than it is for Jason Vargas, but he really doesn’t pitch well at 87.
Coming into the year, we all thought the curve was RRS’s out-pitch. He’d run up consistently good pitch values on it, and he used it enough to command it. The first game out, the A’s clearly waited on the slow curve and hit it hard. He had a modicum of success with his change-up that night, so he’s since thrown more change-ups and fewer curves. RRS threw a total of 3 curve balls tonight, but it didn’t matter: his change-up didn’t fool the O’s, and it ended up his worst pitch on the night. Now, these are all tiny, tiny samples, but it’s looking like he comes into a start with a game plan, with pitches he wants to use to get swinging strikes and outs, but the pitch just isn’t good enough. I thought his early struggles with the curve were survivable given the success he’s had with the change and slider, but today’s game makes me think that ‘success’ has been BABIP luck. Like I said, this sucks.
Ken Griffey Jr hit a sacrifice fly to right field in the ninth for a meaningless run. As is so often the case, the at-bat will be seen completely differently by different fans, based entirely on what they thought of Junior going into it. The pro-Griffey camp may see it as the beginning of a turn-around: down 1-2, he fought off two tough off-speed pitches, then *pulled* a 96 MPH fastball deep to right. Pessimists will see this as confirmation that Griffey’s power is completely shot: a 96 MPH fastball imparts a lot of momentum, and Griffey’s swing can no longer hit one out under the best of circumstances. Honestly, I thought it was a good AB, and the fact that he got around on the pitch impressed me. There may be more in the tank than I’d previously thought, but not enough to justify the roster spot.
Adam Moore looks completely lost at the plate right now. His swing doesn’t look capable of driving the ball, and a bloop single or a seeing-eye GB is basically the best-case scenario in each at-bat. Alonzo Powell needs to work with him, and soon. There’s ability in there, but his approach puts him on the defensive. He looks like he’s mimicking someone else’s swing (as a kid, I loved copying Mickey Tettelton’s swing, which is basically the opposite of what Moore’s doing these days).
Ian Snell was his usual enigmatic self. He averaged 93 MPH and touched 95 with his FB, and his slider had nice break. The Orioles – the Orioles – hammered both of them. I thought that he had a chance to re-invent himself as a 2-pitch reliever with a FB set-up by a slider. His FB’s generated such poor results that he may need to throw the slider 40/50/60% of the time to survive, but the stuff was clearly there. Now I’m not so sure. There are plenty of theories as to why Snell’s FB doesn’t make batters miss, but now we have to wonder why his slider’s hittable too. I like Snell and wanted him to succeed badly, but the early returns on his ‘change of scenery’ aren’t encouraging. He’s slowly (or not-so-slowly as the case may be) becoming a likable Miguel Batista. This recap is pure sunshine.
Uh, Langerhans looked great – at least we’ve got a player with actual positional flexibility. After a day at 1B, he moved to CF and threw Miguel Tejada out at home on a single. He’s hitting well recently! I’m… scraping here.
The M’s still have a chance at the playoffs thanks to the division’s mediocrity and the number of games left to play. If you’re hoping for a late charge though, it’s time to start rooting for whoever’s playing Texas. The Rangers talent looked a touch better than the M’s to start, but they’re not running away with things thanks to Chris Davis’ death-rattle, Justin Smoak’s learning curve and Julio Borbon’s inability to get on base. They had as many disappointing starts as the M’s, but their depth is allowing them to work through them. They’re starting to look scary. OK, MORE scary.
Let’s Hope Zduriencik’s Not Mike Rizzo
After beating the Mets today, the Washington Nationals are improbably one of the better teams in the National League, record-wise. Some of this is smoke and mirrors – most notably, Ivan Rodriguez’s insanely unsustainable performance – but surprisingly, not all of it. Coolstandings has their playoff odds at 10% with current talent.
In related news, Stephen Strasburg will make his seventh professional start today…in Syracuse. I understand the business reasons for holding Strasburg down, but this is a team that will need every possible break to keep running with the heavies in the National League. In a couple of days, the Nationals will have crossed the threshhold for getting an extra year of club-control out of Strasburg (for comparison’s sake, Evan Longoria came up on May 6th a few years ago). If they want to ensure they’ll avoid super-two status, though, they will need to wait it out another month.
This situation sucks. It has already deprived us of the opportunity to watch a rookie of the year race that might have rivaled Magic v. Bird, but that’s just sentimentality speaking. More importantly, this is a team that won’t remain competitive unless a lot of things break right. They cannot afford to hold their best pitcher down much longer. I understand the people who will point to the Nationals’ negative run differential and say they don’t really have a chance to contend, but there are a lot of Nationals fans who would rather not write the season off in May, especially when the team is only a half-game back in the Wildcard standings.
With Dustin Ackley currently hitting the Mendoza line, the Mariners will not have to worry about this until 2011 if ever. If the issue comes up, though, I really hope Zduriencik will choose to put the best team on the field instead of trying to think 6 years ahead.
Game 33, Rainiers at Orioles
Rowland-Smith vs Bergesen, 4:05 pm.
The Mariners have the night off today – the Tacoma Rainiers have been recalled from Triple-A to take on the Baltimore Orioles. Or, at least, that’s what it looks like according to the line-up.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Kotchman, 1B
Lopez, DH
Tuiasosopo, 3B
Langerhans, CF
Josh Wilson, SS
Moore, C
Saunders, LF
Unfortunately, the team did not also recall Mike Curto to announce the game tonight, despite the fact that it’s Tacoma Night in Baltimore.