Game 71, Cubs at Mariners
Wells vs Lee, 7:10 pm.
At this point, it’s probably wise to treat every start by Lee as if it could be his last as a Mariner. We’re five weeks from the trade deadline and the team is still 13 games out of first place, even with the recent winning streak. Every start Lee makes for Seattle is one he can’t make for a contender, and the offers are likely to be better now than they may be in a month. Remember, the Indians traded CC Sabathia on July 7th two years ago for that very reason. Maybe Lee makes his scheduled start next Tuesday against the Yankees, but if this weekend goes badly and some team offers Jack a deal worth making, maybe not. Take advantage of watching him pitch while you can – he won’t be here much longer.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Bradley, DH
Lopez, 3B
Gutierrez, CF
Josh Wilson, SS
Kotchman, 1B
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
In The Interest Of Fairness
During Jarrod Washburn‘s tenure as a Mariner, we spent a lot of time talking about him. Way too much for my taste, but he was something of a lightning rod, especially last year, as he became the biggest beneficiary of the Mariners decision to build a great defensive team. While people wanted to chalk up his improved ERA to “the Dolphin” or some other magical ability to get people to hit the ball right at his defenders, we staunchly stood our ground and said that he couldn’t possibly sustain his ERA with the way he was pitching. The low strikeout/high flyball combination can look good for a while, when the ball is staying in the park and fielders are running them down in the gaps, but it’s not the recipe for long term sustained high level success.
So, since we wrote that about Washburn, it’s only equitable that we write the same about Jason Vargas. Vargas is far easier to root for than Washburn, considering he doesn’t eat up a huge chunk of our payroll and complain publicly about his catcher, but in reality, they’re basically the exact same pitcher. As David Golebiewski wrote on FanGraphs the other day, it’s eerie how similar Washburn’s 2009 and Vargas’ 2010 seasons are. They are, for all intents and purposes, the same pitcher.
So, yes, Vargas was exceptional last night, and he’s had a fantastic run to start the season. Yes, he’s a perfect fit for the Mariners, given how his skills line-up with Safeco Field and the roster the M’s have put together. And considering that he’s still both young and cheap, the Mariners should pencil him into their rotation for the next several years. But, as we warned with Washburn a year ago, this ERA won’t last. It is built on a foundation of a .259 BABIP and a 4.9% HR/FB rate, both of which are among the lowest in the league and generally have very little predictive ability.
Even factoring in Safeco and the outfield defense, the best we can hope for from Vargas is a 4.00ish ERA going forward. That still makes him an asset, but he hasn’t turned a magical corner and become a front line starter.
Game 70, Cubs at Mariners
Dempster vs Vargas, 7:10 pm.
Since the line-up was posted on Twitter, I’ve gotten a few questions about why Jack Wilson is back at shortstop. The answer is actually pretty simple – he’s better than Josh Wilson. Yes, I know, Josh has gotten some hits and played decently in Jack’s absence, but keep in mind that he’s a career .242/.298/.344 hitter in 700 major league plate appearances, and he wasn’t much better than that in the minors. He had a nice hot streak thanks to some balls finding holes, but he is what he is a – a bench player. Jack Wilson is better than Josh Wilson, and when he’s healthy enough to play, he should spend most of the time at shortstop.
There’s also the argument to be made that the M’s should be trying to get out of the second year of Wilson’s contract by dealing him to a contender looking to patch a hole up the middle. It will be hard to convince teams to take Wilson’s $5 million contract for 2011 if they don’t get to see him play regularly, and the M’s may decide that they are best served going another (healthier) direction at the position and spend the money they would save somewhere else. If this is something they’re considering, than they need Jack Wilson to play often and play well.
There’s no reason for Jack Wilson to not be in the line-up on most days. Don’t overreact to a slight increase in batting average over six weeks of playing time.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B Josh Wilson, 2B
Bradley, DH
Lopez, 3B
Gutierrez, CF
Carp, 1B
Alfonso, C
Jack Wilson, SS
Saunders, LF
Sweet Lou and Fiery Managers
After the 2002 season, the Mariners and Lou Piniella parted ways in a strange fashion – the M’s traded him to the Rays (with Antonio Perez) for Randy Winn. You don’t see managers get traded very often, but he had market value even though he didn’t want to manage this franchise anymore. Since Piniella left, the team has run through a handful of replacements, none of whom have had much success, and all of whom fell short when measured up against Piniella’s charisma and goodwill with the fans. Because he yelled a lot and the team won while he was here, fans grew quite attached to Lou, and it is still quite common to hear people talk about how Wak needs to be more like Piniella and “show some fire” or some such thing.
I wonder if any of the people who think Piniella is a managerial genius are aware that he’s 496 and 542 since leaving Seattle, good for a .478 winning percentage? He’s now in his 7th season since taking off for greener pastures, and he’s finished last as often as he’s finished first. He wasn’t able to turn the Rays into anything while he was there, and he’s now in charge of yet another massively disappointing Cubs team.
The fact of the matter is that Piniella, like pretty much every other manager on earth, wins with teams that have talent and loses with teams that don’t. He doesn’t get more out of his players than anyone else. He doesn’t inspire his men to greatness. He doesn’t make brilliant tactical decisions or teach bad players how to become good ones. Right now, in fact, he’s making a debacle of the Cubs catching situation by benching Geovany Soto (who is really good) in favor of Koyie Hill (who is really bad).
I get that people love to watch Lou Piniella because he’s entertaining. I get that the media loves him because he’s a fantastic post-game quote. He’s an affable, charismatic guy, but that doesn’t make him a great leader. Between the two guys running the clubs at Safeco over the next three days, I would much rather have the guy in our dugout than in theirs. Wak doesn’t need to be like Lou, because he’s not that kind of guy, and because Lou Piniella just isn’t that good of a manager to begin with.
Leadership
Mike Salk is a co-host of Brock and Salk, which you can listen to weekdays beginning at 11 am on ESPN Radio 710. We’ve agreed to contribute to each other’s sites this year, and he brings a perspective to the game that we don’t generally write about.
When the Mariners decided to call a players only team meeting last week, it got me thinking about the importance of leadership. It may be the hardest trait to quantify. There is definitely no stat for it. It’s a label that gets applied typically to veterans, disproportionally to Caucasians, and usually to guys that hustle and speak well to the media. But that doesn’t mean we label the right guys.
So… who are baseball’s leaders? What to they do to help a team? And, why is leadership so different in baseball?
To start with, it seems to come in three forms.
-Quiet leadership by example.
-Vocal leadership in front of the team (team meetings)
-Vocal leadership behind the scenes, where the leader pulls another player aside for a quick talk.
The quiet leadership is easy to spot but harder to accept by those outside the clubhouse. Teammates point to Ichiro and Franklin Gutierrez as “leaders” because they arrive early to the park and conduct their business the right way.
“You see a lot more guys who lead by example,” explains Ryan Langerhans. “It’s much tougher to be a vocal leader. But Guti is a good example of a quiet guy who leads by example. He is always prepared. Always. He knows how to play this game the right way.”
That’s fine, but does it help a team through a tough spot? Does it help a young player eliminate mistakes or correct bad behavior? Does it offer encouragement when someone needs it?
That often takes a vocal leader, which are a lot tougher to fjind. That’s partly because it takes a certain type of personality to lead, but also because the culture of baseball tends to try to silence players. I figured players were reluctant to speak up because of a fear of standing out, but Josh Wilson explained it much more clearly.
“It’s maybe a little tougher to lead vocally in this league because it’s a game of failure,” reasons Wilson. “It’s hard for guys to stand up in front of their teammates and say ‘do better,’ especially when they know they could be in a slump next. The ups and downs make it so hard. And you have the split between the pitchers and hitters – guys don’t want to start blaming anyone or else the finger could get pointed right back at them. It’s real tough to play the blame game in this sport.”
That seems to be the central problem with leading in baseball and why it’s so hard to find a truly great leader. Football, basketball and most other team sports have an accepted level of consistency. Good players can, for the most part, play at a similar level throughout a season. Even more, their level of play can often be traced directly to their in-game hustle or pre-game preparation.
But baseball has slumps. Slumps unlike any other sport. And if you happen to be in a trough rather than a peak, it can be very tough to feel like a productive member of the team, let alone an authority figure.
It’s almost as if baseball players are too self-conscious to stand up in front of their peers.
But there are guys who have been through it before and know that someone needs to pass on words of encouragement or advice to the younger players. That’s why many leaders simply take a teammate aside for a quick conversation.
“Being vocal isn’t always about speaking at a team meeting,” offers Langerhans. “Often it’s just pulling a young player aside for some advice. Sometimes it’s baseball related, sometimes it’s how to deal with management, or the media or whatever.”
Ah, the media.
Baseball players worry about the media so much I sometimes wonder if they would need all the leadership if they could simply play without us buzzing around them.
“Having a leader is even more important now in the era of the 24 hour news cycle,” according to bullpen coach John Wetteland. “Guys have to know that they’re protected. In an era in which anyone with an opinion can say whatever they want and have access to an audience, there is something even more than a microscope. Guys need a safe place and a good leader can help foster that.”
—
Ask a few Mariners about leaders they’ve been around and some of the names won’t surprise you. Coming up in the Florida system, Vargas was immediately exposed to a trio of young leaders when he first came up to the big leagues and was confronted with Josh Beckett, AJ Burnett and Dontrelle Willis. He says all three commanded respect and were excellent resources for all of his questions.
“The most important thing about leadership on a team is having veteran guys to ask questions of,” he says. And all three helped in some way. Being around Beckett myself, I would guess his advice was dripping with sarcasm and more than a little cynicism. But the best advice Vargas got was from Willis who warned him, “Don’t be nice! Not on the mound.”
Wilson has been in six organizations and can point to a handful of guys. Todd Helton stands out to him as does Mike Sweeney, Todd Jones and Mike Lowell. Langerhans came up with Atlanta where I expected veteran Chipper Jones to run the clubhouse, but he mentions John Smoltz as the true leader of that team at the time.
Going back a little deeper, Wetteland points to Kirk Gibson as one of the best leaders.
“Gibby was a great leader because although he was purposeful, he also kept it fun,” remembers the quirky Wetteland. “Those lemonsuckers get tiresome over 162 games. There is a time and a place for being serious, but you have to have some fun in this game or you’ll go nuts.”
And here we are back to the nature of baseball. It wasn’t a goal of mine to prove that baseball is different from other sports but the theme seems to be carrying over from my last piece to this one. Because baseball is played every day with lots of downtime and even more travel, chemistry becomes more relevant than in other sports. Because baseball is a game built around dealing with failure, you need leaders who can help you through the bad times.
—
I was the first to scoff at the Mariners team meeting last week. It seemed like it was too little, too late. I wondered why any young player would possibly buy in when it was being conducted by a pitcher about to be traded, an infielder who had just complained about being dropped to ninth after not producing, and an outfielder who had abandoned his team just a month earlier.
I stand by comments. But maybe I missed one aspect.
“Team meetings are to make sure everyone still cares,” Josh Wilson explained to me. “I’ve been on teams where at the end of a long year where we are way out of it, people just play for themselves and their own stats. Guys get selfish. We don’t want to be that team – especially not now. Not this early.”
It’s about staying together and playing hard even when you’re out of it.
“And staying together and gutting out the end of a year can have a good positive effect on the next season. If you know that as a core team you fought together and battled and refused to give up, it really does help.”
I don’t know if Wilson is right. I don’t know if it caries over to next year. But it doesn’t really matter what I think. If the players believe it helps, then it will help. And if there is any chance that it has a positive effect on the team, then it was probably worth everyone’s time.
I just wish they had tried it a little sooner.
Rainiers on TV again
David Pauley takes the mound for the Rainiers tonight, and with no Mariners game, it will be on FSN at 7 pm. Tune in if you’re interested in seeing some baseball. There’s even the exciting chance that you might see Michael Pineda sitting on the bench eating seeds. That’s tough to top.
Minor League Wrap (6/14-20/10)
Everett did indeed start play on Friday, but you won’t see them below here because three games is just not enough to work with, so I’ll do a week and a half of Aquasox next week and most of a week of Pulaski, which starts on Tuesday. I’ll have a roster preview for them when I get it. Peoria starts today, but if you weren’t around last season, I just update some interesting statlines for the week rather than looking at individual games because the climate is too much of a mess to make any meaningful conclusions about what’s happening.
To the jump!
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Pineda to Tacoma
I could have held off until tomorrow, but it might as well be mentioned now that RHP Michael Pineda is in Tacoma according to Mike Curto and will be taking the mound in the Salt Lake City series.
From a practical standpoint, it makes sense because the Rainiers are going to be playing six games in a four-day span thanks to some earlier weather cancellations. We can also justify it from the Mariners’ perspective because the first half is over for the D-Jaxx and Pineda will probably be part of the team’s near-term future, so they might as well keep a close eye on him and give the local fans a taste of what’s to come. If it all goes well for him and he doesn’t run into any trouble or pass any alarming innings milestones, there’s a chance he makes a few appearances with the Mariners in September, since he needs to be added to the 40-man in the offseason.
From a fan standpoint, you should all go see him. Pineda is the best starting prospect we have in the system by a pretty good margin. He throws a low-to-mid 90s fastball, has a good grasp of what do with his change-up (though he doesn’t use it enough), and even without a tremendous slider, he was still leading the D-Jaxx with 78 Ks in 77.0 innings. His command is so good that he’s only walked four in 26.2 innings this month. When he’s healthy, he’s really, really good.
Since he started on Friday, the usual five-day rest schedule would put him on pace to take the mound again on Wednesday, barring any decisions on the Rainiers’ part to throw him in for one of the doubleheaders to lower expectations in his first outing. I’ll keep you posted if that changes any.
Game 69, Reds at Mariners
RR-S vs. Harang after a couple of hard acts to follow.
RF Ichiro!
2B Figgins
DH Bradley
3B Lopez
CF Gutierrez
SS Josh Wilson
1B Carp
C Alfonzo
LF Saunders
Jack Wilson was activated today, after a Tacoma stint where he was hitting pretty well and was even attempting to steal a few bases. Now the Mariners are going to have to decide whether to play him or occasionally intriguing Josh Wilson and oh my goodness this is one of the more interesting things we have to talk about regarding this team. Tui goes back to Tacoma to work more on defense or something.
We also found out today that Ian Snell has cleared waivers and accepted his outright assignment to Tacoma. A guy that once struck out 177 in 208.0 innings while running an ERA+ of 116 for the Pirates is now roughly on the same level of Jesus Colome and every other reclamation project we had in the past year or so that didn’t pan out. At least we still have Aardsma, right?
Josh Bard has also been seen rehabbing for Tacoma. This is probably good news.
Game 68, Reds at Mariners
Happy Felix Day!
RF Ichiro
2B Figgins
DH Bradley
3B Lopez
CF Gutierrez
SS Josh Wilson
1B Kotchman
C Johnson
LF Saunders