Game 81, Mariners at Tigers
Lee vs Bonderman, 10:05 am.
Most people I’ve talked to in the game believe that this is Lee’s farewell to the Mariners. Given that teams have already made offers and the M’s are working on counters, odds are pretty good he’s traded before his start comes up next Friday. So, if this is really it, thanks for everything Cliff – it was a short union, but a great one.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, DH
Lopez, 3B
Gutierrez, CF
Kotchman, 1B
Josh Wilson, SS
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
Game 80, Mariners at Tigers
Vargas vs Verlander, 4:05 pm.
Cliff Lee’s still here and will start tomorrow. I imagine that game will be more fun than this one.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Bradley, DH
Lopez, 3B
Gutierrez, CF
Kotchman, 1B
Bard, C
Saunders, LF (guess he’s finally a better hitter than the SS)
Jack Wilson, SS
Game 79, Mariners at Tigers
Fister vs Scherzer, 4:05 pm.
One of the criticisms of this blog that we hear most frequently is that all of our analysis is just fancy pants math, and that those who actually play the game don’t have any use for this crap. Don’t tell that Max Scherzer, the kid who is taking the hill for Detroit tonight. In this article, Scherzer talks about how his brother got him turned onto sabermetrics, and how he uses Pitch F/x and things like FIP and xFIP to evaluate how well he’s pitching between start. It’s not just for player valuation anymore – the places these new types of analysis are going are actually helping the players on the field. Exciting stuff.
Also, if you haven’t yet, watch this video – it is one of the coolest uses of Pitch F/x data you will ever see.
Ichiro, DH
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, 1B
Bradley, RF
Lopez, 3B
Gutierrez, CF
Jack Wilson, SS
Johnson, C
Saunders, LF
On With Brock And Salk Today
For the second week in the row, the M’s day game bumped me from my Thursday spot, so we’re doing our regular segment with the ESPN 710 guys today at 12:30.
Let’s Talk About Michael Saunders
Despite having just 119 plate appearances, Michael Saunders is second on the Mariners in home runs, just one behind team leader Milton Bradley. After last year’s debut performance where he didn’t hit for any power at all, watching him drive the ball with regularity has been very encouraging, and he’s showing some of the ability that made him the team’s best prospect. His tools are obvious, and he has the ability to become a good player, but there are also a few pretty glaring flaws that he needs to work on.
His two biggest problems are actually kind of the same issue, as both are the direct result of the type of swing Saunders takes. He doesn’t just swing the bat with his arms; He may turn his body towards the pull field when he swings more than anyone I have ever seen before. Rather than sitting back and letting his hips generate power, Saunders basically reorients his body during the swing and ends up essentially pivoting at the plate. It works, as when he gets around on a ball, he can give it a ride, but it comes with a pretty significant downside – he is extremely vulnerable to anything on the outer half of the plate, especially pitches down and away.
This creates two problems – one, his contact rate on pitches out of the strike zone is among the worst in the league. In what amounts to half a season’s worth of major league playing time, he’s made contact with just 41.6 percent of the pitches he’s chased out of the strike zone. Over the last year, the only batters with at least 200 plate appearances who have made contact less often on pitches out of the zone are Kelly Shoppach (a catcher), Elijah Dukes (out of baseball), and Kyle Blanks (struggling rookie). Right behind Saunders are guys like Ryan Howard and Mark Reynolds, two of the most prolific strikeout artists of all time, who compensate for their whiff rate with monstrous, 40+ HR power.
Saunders doesn’t have that kind of thump and never will, so he won’t have the same ability to offset the strikeouts that those guys do with production when he does make contact. Instead, he’ll have to simply get better at either getting the bat on the ball when he does chase, or simply chase less often. The latter is probably more likely to be a long term solution, but it’s not an easy fix for an aggressive young hitter. The Mariners will have to work closely with Saunders to convince him of the need to be more selective in what he swings at, and get him enough at-bats so that he can begin to discern which pitches are worth offering at.
The other problem that his swing creates is an almost total inability to handle pitches that are diving away from him. This shows up in both his performance against left-handed pitchers (13 for 79, 2 XBH, 1 BB, 33 K) and his performance on balls hit to left field (10 for 44, 1 XBH). The way he swings the bat just doesn’t leave any room for opposite field power, as the swing itself is made to turn on a pitch and drive it to right field. If he hits it to left, its an accident and almost certainly will result in an out. In fact, 27 percent of all his balls hit to left field have been infield flies, which are basically no better than a strikeout.
His extreme pull swing makes it very tough for him to go the other way with any authority, and so lefties who pound him away can rest assured that he won’t do anything with it, even if he does get the bat on the ball. While Saunders is a talented guy, he’s definitely never going to be an Edgar Martinez type, who just went with whatever he was thrown and confounded pitchers with his ability to use the whole field. Saunders is as much of an extreme pull hitter as Jose Lopez, and while it’s definitely better to have a left-handed version of that kind of hitter in Safeco, it still makes him pretty easy to pitch to, especially when he’s willing to swing at pitches out of the zone.
Put simply, for Saunders to be a successful big league hitter, he’s going to have to develop a better approach at the plate. He can do this, but it will take some time and patience from the team. Pitchers will exploit his weaknesses as the reports on him get around the league, and he’ll have to make adjustments. How long it will take him to make those will likely end up determining whether he’s able to hold down the LF job for the Mariners next year.
Bedard Rehab Start Liveblog
I’ll be honest: as nice as it is to see Bedard so close to the majors after his latest injury, this feels a bit anticlimactic. We’d hoped that the team could hang around .500 until Cliff Lee got back and then hang near the Rangers until the M’s ‘real’ rotation took over. Eh, 1 for 2.
Still, my excitement is building a bit. Let’s face it: this team’s been pretty bland in 2010, and another good player -another reason to tune in – helps the M’s watchability. Beyond that, it can give us a glimpse of what the team could’ve and should’ve been: good. Jeff Sullivan summed it up this way at LL last night, “Watching the Mariners right now makes me feel like I’m watching a successful version of the Mariners. A dangerous version of the Mariners.”
Erik Bedard is a guy who can help make the Mariners look dangerous, and I’m looking forward to watching him pitch against Texas or Boston or Tampa this year. All the more so because Lee will likely be gone, and it’ll again be tough to shut out the context, the lack of impact players and the holy-#$!@,-Josh-Wilson-is-starting-at-1B of it all. Bedard, like Branyan, is here to help make the medicine of 2010 go down easier. He cost us nothing in talent and very little in Salary. If he’s healthy, he’s amazing, and he’d be another small green shoot of ‘good’ in the scorched-earth landscape of 2010.
—Edit 6:10—
Figures. It’s raining – drizzling, really – as I type this in Cheney. Only Erik Bedard faces rehab setbacks from the weather. In July. I’m still pretty confident that we’ll get this game started, but I’m going to run down and make sure he doesn’t slip on slick dugout surfaces. Good luck, Erik.
—Edit 7:00—
Game on! Erik breezes through the first, retiring the Portland Beavers in order. FB was around 90, and that big, damnably-difficult-to-hit curve was on view as well. 1 K, a pop-up and a grounder to SS.
—Edit Pictures!!—
Read more
Couple Of Links
Two quick things for you today. First, my newest post is up over on Brock and Salk’s blog, and continues our conversation about Jason Vargas, BABIP, and how to evaluate pitchers. I’ve enjoyed this back and forth with Mike on a subject I know is tough for people to swallow.
Secondly, I did a video chat with the Bloomberg Sports crew, which you can see below. Nothing earth shattering, but check it out if you want.
Game 78, Mariners at Yankees
Rowland-Smith vs Sabathia, 10:05 am.
This probably won’t go as well as the last two days. Good luck, Hyphen – you’re going to need a lot of it.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Branyan, 1B
Bradley, DH
Lopez, 3B
Josh Wilson, SS
Langerhans, LF
Bard, C
Saunders, CF
Three Ways to Understand Cliff Lee
It’s becoming clear at this point that, owing to his absurdly low walk rate and his general ownership of every frigging major league batter, that the pitcher we’re witnessing right now in Cliff Lee is one that we’re unlikely to witness again before we shuffle off this mortal coil.
Though there’s obviously room to analyze Lee’s historic half-season, another very popular tact — one of which I heartily approve — is merely to enjoy it.
Thing is, though joy is easy to experience, it’s more difficult to articulate. Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
It’s with that in mind that I present this to you, the readers of U.S.S. Mariner — three brief attempts to understand (and celebrate) Lee’s accomplishment to date.
1.
I, one time, went to a funeral for a young woman I’d known in high school. She was in her second or third year at RISD when she died and it was a sad thing to’ve happened. Very sad. Except, towards the end of this girl’s funeral, a math teacher from our high school spoke. He was (and, I can only assume, still is) a spirited Greek person — like, actually from Greece — and he said about the young woman, “I think God took Addi [that was her name] because he wanted to have a new great artist in heaven with Him.” His message, more celebratory than sorrowful, was well received by everyone in attendance.
It’s with almost no part of my tongue in my cheek that I suggest this is a legitimate concern with regard to Cliff Lee. If God is in the business of snatching from us our most excellent specimens, then Mariner fans ought to worry less about Lee being traded to a playoff contender and more about him getting recruited for some manner of celestial baseballing league.
2.
After his most recent start — a complete game victory at the Yankees, mind you — really the only thing Lee would talk about is how he walked a batter. Literally, a batter. “I’m not too pleased about it,” Lee said. “My goal coming into the season is not to walk anyone for a whole season.”
Let’s play a game of This One Thing Is Like This Other Thing.
Ready? Let’s go.
That one thing Lee said is kinda like this other thing Bill James said, on the last page of the last Bill James Baseball Abstract Newsletter, as follows:
“I have a cold, cold horror of failing people. In many ways my life is dominated by a fear of disappointing people.”
Perhaps it’s been said before, but it can also probably be said again: to operate at the highest level in one’s field is very likely not a function of wanting or willing oneself to do well, but, much more likely, a function of not wanting to fail. Regardless of whether it’s disappointing other people (as in the case of James) or disappointing one’s own self (as with Lee), that doesn’t matter.
3.
Apropos the above — specifically, Lee’s comment about setting a goal of not walking anyone for a whole season — here’s the only possible reaction for a normal person to have: Cliff Lee is insane.
But Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay “Self-Reliance” — which, alot of people don’t know, is actually about Cliff Lee — in that essay, Emerson reminds us, “to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”
Perhaps a pitcher before now has suggested that it was his intention not to walk a batter for an entire season. However, if this is the case, I don’t remember it. Really, it’s as if Cliff Lee has invented this concept, has even dared to imagine that one could navigate his way through a complete major league season without walking even a single batter — and, in so imagining, has almost accomplished it.