Game 23, A’s At Mariners
Dave · April 24, 2011 at 11:02 am · Filed Under Mariners
Fister vs Anderson, 1:10 pm.
Justin Smoak returns to the team on Sunday, so hopefully this is the last laughable line-up we see for a while. He’s not a panacea, but this team really needs his offensive ability. The M’s are left running four LHBs out against Brett Anderson today, and it’s not like the five RHBs are all that frightening to southpaws. Anderson is one of the game’s premier pitchers, so Doug Fister is going to have to be spectacular to keep the M’s in this one.
Ichiro, DH
Figgins, 3B
Bradley, LF
Olivo, C
Kennedy, 1B
Ryan, SS
Saunders, CF
Wilson, 2B
Langerhans, RF
Guess I don’t need to worry about them tying this up and keeping me from my chores.
I haven’t played in FIFTEEN years, and I’m confident that I could’ve at least STEPPED IN FRONT OF it, instead of that side-saddle “ole” bullshit.
Please, Lord, I know he won’t be major-league ready at the time he’s drafted…but give us Rendon.
We freakin’ need some new answers at third base, organization-wide.
Remind me again why F’in Figgins is a Mariner?
Yeah, Rendon would look like a significant upgrade over Figgins at this point. Hell, Jeff Cirillo would look like a significant upgrade for that matter.
Is it just my eyes/impression or has Figgins as a sum this season been pretty bad at defense at third?
Or is it just in comparison to Ryan+Wilson being very good at SS and 2nd?
If he’s indeed been sucking, what’s up with this guy? He got his big paycheck so now he can suck and be an entitled bum? Wedge needs to give Figgins a wake-up call, and Jack Z better be on the manager’s side this time/not undermine him this time.
Screw Figgins, let’s bring up Liddi and see how he fairs. Hell, I’d take Tui at this point. Tui.
Eat the contract, Jack. Get Figgins out of here. Cust too. For a supposedly rebuilding team, this roster sure has a lot of crap-eating veterans on it.
Don’t matter if we can draw another two, three or four runs if our bullpen always screws up. We actually have a half decent starting rotation. I can’t imagine how frustrated they must feel. Oh and Figgins. Yeh I agree. I can’t support him any more.
Bet if he leaves he starts to bat again. Actually most players who leave seem to better their productivity. Hmmmm. Any way let’s hope for the next game.
Sam,
Just my opinion, obviously, but I do think a big part of the problem with Figgins is his attitude. I don’t know if it’s because he got his big payday or what, but he certainly seems to have an ego on him.
I personally wanted to see him gone after going after Wak in the dugout last year. That’s inexcusable, IMO. But somehow he ended up with a slap on the wrist and a day off.
Come to think of it, the way they handled that could be a big part of the problem. Maybe he now assumes he can do whatever he wants and won’t have to face any consequences?
Is it just my eyes/impression or has Figgins as a sum this season been pretty bad at defense at third?
Fangraphs has him at +2.6 fielding runs, which extrapolated over a full season would be something like a +15 player. That’s in line with his past at 3B.
The problem is you look at his ZiPS projections on the same page… and if they are right, he’s basically done as an offensive player, with wOBA at around Princess Willie’s career.
The defense makes him not a complete ride on the FAIL bus- basically he ends up being a 1-1.5 WAR or so player. The problem is that he’ll be making 9 million or so a year as a player who realistically should be a part time player covering OF, 3B and 2B and pinch running- basically Mark McLemore with less offense. Paying 9 million for that… well, we can’t blame THIS one on Bavasi.
The problem is that as much of an overpaid player Figgins is at this point, he’s still better than Tui at 3B, who’s not any better at anything in particular other than not being Chone Figgins.
Well said. That coupled with his inflated ego probably made him into the chunk of entitlement (feeling untouchable/unaccountable) that he looks like being today.
And the nasty part of it is that it seems that he has an inflated ego in combo with “chip on the shoulder” thing so he’s oversensitive to perceived slights, etc.
This may be the “Little Guy Syndrome” or something that Larue or Divish (or maybe Stone) speculated about before.
26 years … for me
I’m surprised at those numbers because he’s looked very VERY poor at 3b this year to me.
Wow, if FG’s defense (UZR?) is accurate than that’s different from what I expected from impressions (I haven’t watched all the games), and also could be due to a relative effect from watching Ryan/Wilson.
And we’ve really come down quite a bit when WFB is looking not so bad as an offense player (this phenomenon from last year actually, I think the average Mariner was worse than WFB) and 20,000 fans in Safeco is a huge crowd.
I would really hate to have to agree with this, but I can’t say that I can disagree with it. Tui … freakin Tui. Tui – bleh … but I don’t disagree with the thought process. How can I?
If Liddi wasn’t striking out 40% of the time in AAA, he could probably win the job by default within two more weeks of this pitiful stink-fest being exhibited by Figgins. Can Figgins move to CF and then be benched?
Wow – and not in a good way.
I wonder how he clocks in with Fangraphs in regard to hip checks/through the legs/matador ole’ dives out of the way and “bad hops” off the glove?
I appreciate you finding the stat and I do know that you know what you are talking about, but I would have to say that this might be the worst Fangraph stat in history. Either that,or Figgins has always been this bad except for when he played against the Mariners and literally wore us out. He is a god awful ML 3B.
Power power power thats what mariners
need!!!!!!!
Wow, that is hard to believe. It sure seems like a lot of stuff gets by Figgins, as compared to, say, back when Adrian Beltre played there for us.
I know one’s eyes can be deceiving, but it’s really hard to reconcile what I’ve seen of Figgins this year with the fact that Fangraphs has him pegged as a significantly good defender this year.
I’ve given up on Figgins. He reminds me more and more of Richie Sexson every day; no hit unless the pressure is off, and can’t field his position. Wasn’t he supposed to take off this year, now that he is back in his comfy 3B position? By mid-June, when there is REALLY no hope, he’ll find his bat and all the pundits will say, “But he had a good second half.”
Or even Jose Lopez for craps sake.
I am not sure what I am more impressed with from our 3B so far this season. His lack of driving in runs, his lack of setting the table for others to try to “drive in” runs or his bad defense. I think I would have to lean toward his bad defense because I did have an opportunity to see him shine in the other two categories for 3 months last season.
Then again, it might be a push in all 3 areas.
Speaking of crappy: How much worse could Josh Bard be as our DH? I know, rhetorical question. He wouldn’t be worse. Plus, he can actually play a critical defensive position. I realize it would require the team having to make a 40 man roster move – and with a team this good, those decisions are very difficult to make. I think Cust is probably faster than Bard. That must be the reason why they are keeping him around. He is more of a stolen base threat.
Is there any hope that this team could become more interesting? Not that much.
Using 2011 wOBA and ZIPS wOBA to categorize the hitters:
Better than expected so far:
Kennedy: .354 .301
Smoak: .388 .323
Langerhans: .355 .304
Gimenez: .316 .283
About as expected:
Ichiro: .335 .325
Bradley: .331 .331
Ryan: .280 .278
Rodriguez: .283 .298
Worse than expected so far:
Saunders: .264 .298
Cust: .254 .339
Wilson: .246 .281
Figgins .205 .303
Olivo: .176 .268
So any chances this team could do better this year at scoring runs hinge mostly on getting Guti back and whether any of those 5 guys at the bottom of the list bounce back.
One of these things is not like the other…
Hint: You’re lumping a young guy who we know is working on stuff with a bunch of 30+ year old veterans. Talking about a young player “bouncing back” seems a bit odd.
So insert a different phrase, say regress to mean or approach prediction rather than bounce back.
Conclusion is still the same, those 5 are the only place to really look for offensive improvement, and that sure seems unlikely.
I don’t know. Emotionally speaking, I don’t disagree with your points regarding those guys – even Saunders, since we simply don’t know if he’ll pan out or not (just like most other young players). The problem is my emotions disagree somewhat with what “the numbers” infer for a couple of them.
I don’t believe Figgins is ever going to be the guy we thought we were getting, but according to his stats he probably is going to rebound at least somewhat – his BABIP is still ridiculously low. Okay, that one’s not too hard for me to swallow; but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Olivo, though… his past performance indicates he’ll improve, but I’m not sold on it. (Warning: rampant speculation ahead) His BABIP is significantly lower than in the past, but he’s also older and built like a guy who could get very slow in a hurry. Also, I’m really wondering if he’s playing hurt, he seems like that kind of guy – the kind of guy teammates praise, even though objectively speaking he’s killing the team. Hopefully his almost non-existent ISO is just a small sample size blip, but if he’s hurt it could stay down there all season.
Cust, well we’ve all argued about him on this very subject ad nauseam. I’ve made up my mind that we’re seeing all we’re going to see from him, even though again – small sample size.
With Wilson, I’d argue he’s doing what we expected. He was never going to be confused with A-Rod or Jeter. 😀