Jack Wilson to DL, Tui back up
Jack Wilson’s been placed on the disabled list retroactive to May 6th, and Matt Tuiasosopo’s been recalled from Tacoma.
More details later; this comes from Mike Curto on 850am (the Rainiers played an early day game today).
Game 32 Recap
No one expects a Game 32 recap!
I don’t know if it was the drizzle, the “12,614” fans, or the fact that this game featured the Orioles, but it was tough to get into. A fairly crisp (if predictably offense-free) start turned ugly in the 6th, but a win’s a win.
Thoughts:
* I never understood why David Hernandez wasn’t in Baseball America’s top 10 Orioles prospect rankings. His minor league K rates were great, and BA admitted he had the best slider in the organization. So how could Kam Mickolio be rated higher? Some said it was his lack of a change-up, but compared to Kam Mickolio, Hernandez is as polished as Greg Maddux. Others said it was that he was prone to lapses in concentration. That always seemed suspicious to me, but I think I get it now.
Hernandez was down 2 in the 6th and the rain had made the mound a bit muddy. He seemed to struggle with his landing foot and walked Josh Wilson on pitches that were nowhere near the strike zone. 2 outs, Josh Wilson on first, Ken Griffey Jr coming to bat. You could find the run expectancy for an average situation like that, but taking the specific players into account, I’d put it – charitably – at about 0. *Rob Johnson was in the hole.* Hernandez, though, lost the plot. He walked Griffey, tossed in a wild pitch, gave up a line drive single to Johnson (figures that he found the plate again with an M’s catcher hitting), and that was that. This game should’ve been closer, but I’ll admit I’m glad it wasn’t.
* Rob Johnson is unquestionably a better hitter at this point than Griffey. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a simple statement of fact that illustrates why The Nap doesn’t matter.
* In the 5th, the M’s loaded the bases with 2 outs, and Hernandez walked Ichiro to get to Chone Figgins. At one point in his AB, Figgins squared to bunt. One thought came to my mind: awesome. 2 outs, force anywhere, and Figgins thought the percentage play was a bunt. That’s the 2010 offense in a nutshell.
* Brandon League just doesn’t seem like the pitcher I thought we were acquiring. That’s not League’s fault, and it’s not Zduriencik’s; I just need an adjustment period. I thought we were getting a dominant strikeout pitcher, with moderate-to-questionable command and a great splitter. Instead, we got a command/GB reliever whose sinking fastball may be his best pitch. League came in with 2 on and 1 out in the 8th, facing Miguel Tejada. Jeff’s already recapped the AB here, but it really was a thing of beauty. People have been wondering (and I’m definitely one of them) why he doesn’t throw his deadly splitter more, but after seeing that AB, I’m not sure I care anymore. Those were 4 pitches with Brandon Webb-level sink and mid-90s velocity. Oh, and he’s walked 2 hitters in his last 10 appearances, covering 46 batters.
* Cliff Lee is really good. The strikeout of Wigginton with runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out cut the Orioles’ win expectancy by 9 percentage points. The Wieters at-bat that followed had an even higher leverage index, and Lee induced an easy ground ball with a well-placed change. Cliff Lee is very good at what he does – he’s able to miss bats when he wants to, and he’s seemingly able to get GBs when they’re called for.
Game 32, Mariners at Orioles
Lee vs Hernandez, 4:05 pm.
First off, don’t expect any recaps this week. I get the pleasure of being blacked out of Baltimore games thanks to MLB.tv’s insane territorial rights, and my family is flying out for the weekend, so I won’t be around much in the next few days.
Wak shakes up the line-up again, dropping Junior to seventh in the order. Langerhans plays first again, though at this point, you have to wonder if it’s because of Kotchman’s sore ankle or the fact that he hasn’t been hitting for the last few weeks.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 2B
Langerhans, 1B
Josh Wilson, SS
Griffey, DH
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
It’s Not The Fact That He Was Asleep
Interesting day, especially for those with deep interests in the sleep patterns of sports stars. I can’t wait until someone declares it the “Nap Heard Round The World”. In a lot of ways, this whole story is funny. In other ways, it reveals what everyone knows deep down inside.
It’s not the fact that Junior was asleep on Saturday night that matters. If he was hitting .380, it would be the source of good natured jokes, and people would marvel at the greatness of a guy who could hit well while also apparently lacking the energy to watch his teammates play. If the team was winning, it would be written off as a non-story. In fact, I’d guess that if the team was winning, the two players who talked to LaRue never mention the incident, and it never sees the light of day. This is only a story because Griffey is not hitting and the team is not winning.
But he’s not hitting, and they’re not winning, and the fact that two teammates would talk to a reporter about Junior being asleep during a game is perhaps the more telling aspect of this story. If Griffey really commanded the respect of the entire clubhouse, and they loved having him around, no one talks about this to a member of the media. But they did, and that they were willing to bring this up to someone who they had to suspect would write about it suggests that perhaps Griffey’s influence in the clubhouse either isn’t as great as some would suggest, or perhaps more likely, that it only matters while a player is producing.
We’ve all played with that guy who tries really hard to be a leader because he likes to hear himself talk, but he doesn’t have the skills to back it up. In basketball, this guy always tries to run the offense and tell you where to go, but he ends up just jacking up an off-balance 18 foot fade away that barely catches rim. You know that guy – he’s at every gym, annoying the hell out of everyone. People hate that guy, because he doesn’t realize that he’s the reason the team is losing, even as he orders everyone else around. Everyone wants that guy to either show enough self-awareness to realize that he’s terrible or shut up.
That guy can’t be a leader, because he’s just not good enough, and no one respects anything he says because he can’t play. Junior is now that guy. While they may laugh at the pranks and the tickling, the other 24 guys on this roster are all extremely competitive players who badly want to win, and they’ve had a front row seat for the “Griffey Is Done 2010 Tour”. And when he’s constantly grounding out to second base or waving badly at change-ups in the dirt, he loses the credibility to tell anyone else what they’re doing wrong. His ability to lead the team is compromised by the fact that these guys realize he probably shouldn’t be on it. And that’s my guess for why a couple of guys were willing to talk to LaRue about the fact that he was sleeping during a game.
I don’t think the nap really matters. I don’t think the guys on the team are all that upset that he wasn’t available to pinch hit the other night. My guess is that most of them probably didn’t want him hitting in that situation anyway, so maybe deep down, they feel like he did them a favor. But I think there’s a reason that this became a story in the first place – it’s that everyone involved with this tragic experiment realizes it’s not working and it’s not going to work. The Mariners brought Griffey in to be an influence in the clubhouse, but you can only lead as long as you can back up your words on the field and play at a minimum level to where you’re not actively hurting the team.
Griffey can’t do that anymore. He’s a drain on the team’s chances of winning, and the guys on the team know it. They might like his personality, but I think that, deep down, they don’t really want him as their teammate. Not anymore. They might enjoy playing cards with him, but at the end of the day, they want a DH who can hit.
This story doesn’t get written about a clubhouse leader who really commands respect. That this story got written suggests to me that Junior is not that guy, and if that’s true, he has nothing left to offer this organization. It’s time. Hang them up, Junior.
Weekly KGA Radio Spot
I’ll be doing my weekly radio spot with the guys at 1510 KGA in Spokane at 5:15 pm. Unfortunately, there’s not much for us to talk about today, so we’ll probably just talk NASCAR or something.
Listen live here.
Now What?
After a disastrous home stand, the Mariners now head to Baltimore to try to get healthy off one of the league’s worst teams. However, this road trip won’t be interesting for the games themselves, but instead, how the team handles the inevitable roster decisions that should come at week’s end.
The weekend saw the Mariners get some much needed production from Ryan Langerhans (reached base nine times in 17 trips to the plate) and Michael Saunders (single, double, home run, and a walk in two starts), who split time in left field due to Milton Bradley’s absence from the team. While Bradley isn’t going to travel with the team to Baltimore, the initial “five to seven day” time frame given by the team suggests that there’s a good chance he’ll join the Mariners on Friday in Tampa, at which point, the M’s will have to make a move to get him back on the roster.
The easy decision would be to just send Saunders back to Tacoma, give Bradley the LF job back, and soldier onward with the Griffey/Sweeney platoon at DH. But, the Mariners are not stupid, and they know just as well as we do that it isn’t working, and that they can’t continue to just punt offense from an offense-only position. And so, I don’t think that’s what they’re going to do.
This team needs a spark, needs some life, and needs to keep Milton Bradley’s bat in the line-up (they are 10-10 when he starts, 2-9 when he doesn’t). Saunders hit for more power in a weekend than either Griffey or Sweeney did in a month, and he can actually play the field. The organization thought he was ready to help them last summer, and despite a tough start in Tacoma, he’s clearly a better player than either of the current DHs on the roster right now. And this team needs better players than they have as they try to dig themselves out of the hole they dug the last two weeks.
So, unless he just looks abysmal in the Baltimore series, I don’t think Saunders goes back to Tacoma. My guess is that one of the two DHs lose their spot, and according to Larry LaRue, it’s going to be Junior (side note – can you imagine what would be getting written right now if Bradley, and not Griffey, was the one sleeping in the clubhouse during a game? Just saying).
The Mariners can’t continue like they have been, and the performance of Saunders and Langerhans have forced the team to admit that they have options. They can’t continue with Griffey and Sweeney, and I don’t think they will. When Milton comes back, I’m guessing we see a new line-up, and honestly, it’s long overdue.
Minor League Wrap (5/3-9/10)
Covering the minor leagues is odd business for a number of reasons. I’m going into my sixth year of doing it now, and the M’s have not made the playoffs once in that stretch. On one hand, I know that it’s good for the attention, because if the major league team isn’t doing anything, you have to look elsewhere, but on the other, it’s kind of uncomfortable because I’d rather be in a position where we’re not scouring A-ball rosters for signs of hope. More games like Sunday’s would be helpful, certainly, and I look forward to them as they come.
To the jump!
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Notes on Vargas, Griffey, League
The M’s – and their restive fan base – really needed a win today. Thanks to Josh Wilson (!) and Michael Saunders (!), the team’s win probability was above 90% from the 4th inning on.
It’s amazing to me how much one game can mean. Every one of us knows well that it’s possible to be a dispassionate observer of a team that we support – we did it pretty routinely from 2004 on. But while there were elements of black comedy in, say, the 2004 team, this recent losing streak was about as joyless a run as I’ve seen in a while. Can you really be excited about a beating the Angels at home to avoid a sweep? Yes – sheepish excitement is still excitement. I actually liked watching the M’s for the first time in a while; I’ve been hiding out in Tacoma watching the Rainiers a lot more than the M’s. I never thought I’d say I was glad to miss a Felix Day, but hey, I’m glad I missed this week’s Felix day!
And now, bullet points, faithful friend of the blogger:
1: Josh Wilson was the star of the game from a hitting and WPA perspective, but I’d give the first star to Jason Vargas, who’s on quite a tear. I talked about him a few weeks back, but as we get more data on him, what he’s doing looks less and less like a small sample fluke. Last year, his overall results put him in the pitch-to-contact category, but looking at his results by pitch showed that he’d developed a very effective change-up. Vargas got swinging strikes on 22.3% of his change-ups in 2009 compared to a league average of 12.1%. He posted an oSw% (swings on balls outside of the strike zone) rate above the league average.
This year, he’s throwing the change-up a lot more, and it’s every bit as effective: he’s getting swinging strikes on 22.4% of them now, and, as I mentioned before, he’s using it against lefties now too (lefties have swung and missed at about 30% of Vargas’ change-ups during his Mariner career. 30%!). Contact rate is a stat that stabilizes quickly, and we’re now approaching a year’s worth of data that indicates that Vargas’ change-up is a plus pitch. It’s always nerve-racking to watch a guy throwing 87 and give up fly balls, but it’s not exactly unprecedented. One comparable pitcher that comes to mind is Shaun Marcum of the Jays, who’s remarkably similar (right down to the year lost to injury) albeit right handed. Marcum’s contact rate is essentially equal to Felix Hernadez’s thus far, which is impressive for a righty junkballer. Vargas is no slouch either; his 78% rate ties him with CC Sabathia.
The margin for error is very small, as the trail of lefties in the Moyer mold that came up and failed with the M’s attests (anyone remember Bobby Livingston?), but Vargas’ run is one of the few highlights of the year so far.
2: We all know Ken Griffey’s no longer a major league hitter, but his struggles with breaking balls are now about as painful to watch as an Adam Moore AB. Hell, Steve Kelley wrote a column this year about how Griffey looks for FBs almost exclusively at this stage of his career, so this isn’t groundbreaking stuff. Still, I didn’t expect this level of futility: on pitches below 87 MPH, Griffey is 0-14 on balls in play, with 14 swinging strikes. I’m a bit surprised Matt Garza threw him a high fastball, but then we’re all aware that declining batspeed has rendered Griffey useless against plus FBs too: on balls in play, he’s 3-14 against FBs at 93 MPH or more, and he’s struck out in over 20% of his plate appearances against a pitcher with a 93+ MPH FB.
His window is small, and it’s getting smaller. I know Dave and others are incensed with Sweeney and his presence on the team, and I also know the team’s unlikely to do anything with Griffey, but this can’t continue. The argument that he brings in casual fans sounds plausible, but Derek pointed out that it wasn’t actually true last year, and it’s *really* not true this year. A team this limited offensively can’t afford to punt outs, and it’s doing so up and down the line-up. The catching situation is dire, but that just makes it more important to get offense from the DH spot. Oh, and the premise of the Kelley column about Griffey rarely seeing fastballs anymore? Not close. He’s seeing considerably more of them now, more than he’d seen since 2002.
3: You may have heard about a new statistic that Fangraphs is keeping track of as an alternative to the deeply flawed ‘save.’ You can read about how the idea came about here; this essentially went from a rant about saves to a metric on Fangraphs in less than a week. Using win-probability data, a reliever gets a ‘shutdown’ by bringing WPA up by 0.06, and a ‘meltdown’ by dropping WPA by 0.06. This means that many relievers, not just ‘closers,’ have the opportunity to notch a shutdown.
The M’s leader in both shutdowns and meltdowns isn’t the closer, it’s Brandon League. While he hasn’t come in the highest leverage situations (he’s beyond Lowe and Aardsma), he’s managed 5 shutdowns and 4 meltdowns. The latter figure ties him for 2nd most in baseball.
League had a solid game today, but he’s clearly not been as effective as he was last year. His ERA may not have been eye-popping, but his xFIP and tRA were well above average thanks in large part to a new splitter that ended the year as the best pitch in baseball by swinging strike rate. Unfortunately, the pitch just isn’t the same this year – his swinging strike rate on the pitch has been halved. It’s still pretty good, but we all thought we’d acquired a guy with a great out pitch, not a decent one. I’m hoping it’s just a small-sample oddity, but I feel like I’m going to that particular well pretty often these days (seriously Chone: please remember how to hit).
Game 31, Angels at Mariners
Santana vs Vargas, 1:10 pm.
The Mariners fired hitting coach Alan Cockrell today, in a “we have to do something” move that probably just won’t matter. By and large, it’s almost impossible to find a hitting coach that has any kind of track record of making a real difference. Nothing against Alonzo Powell, but I doubt he’ll be a trailblazer in that regard.
Happy Mother’s Day. Do something fun with your mom and tell her you love her.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 2B
Griffey, DH
Langerhans, 1B
Josh Wilson, SS
Saunders, LF
Moore, C
Mike Sweeney Is An Idiot
Fernando Rodney walked the bases loaded. Fernando Rodney threw Mike Sweeney eight pitches. Zero of them were strikes. Mike Sweeney made an out anyways.
Mike Sweeney is Yuniesky Betancourt without the defensive value.
