Game 139, Mariners at A’s
Cahill vs. Beavan, 1:05 pm
Back when Beavan was first called up, I think the immediate comparisons made for him were to Doug Fister. Both are giants, had great command of fastballs unimpressive in velocity, didn’t really have other signature pitches, but got by on throwing strikes without actually striking dudes out and inducing some groundballs here and there. So how’s that comparison working out now?
Fister 2009: 61.0 IP, 14.1% Ks, 5.9% BB, 19.9% LD, 41.3% GB, 38.8% FB, 14.1% HR/FB, 5.10 FIP, 4.43 xFIP, 5.28 tERA, 4.11 ERA
Beavan 2011: 65.2 IP, 9.1% Ks, 3.7% BB, 23.3% LD, 39.7% GB, 37.1% FB, 11.6% HR/FB, 4.83 FIP, 4.46 xFIP, 5.56 tERA, 4.11 ERA
What we’ve seen so far with Beavan is a guy who is even more extreme on the balls in play than Fister, striking out and walking fewer batters overall. There has been more solid contact with him, chipping away from the groundball and flyball totals, but so far as the ERA-styled stuff is concerned (disclosure: I rarely use the advanced stuff, and have no idea if I’m using it well), they’re appreciably close to being the same overall value out of the gate. Now, Fister actually added some velocity, about a mile and a half on the fastball, from the time he got promoted and slowly shifted from relying on his change-up as a secondary offering to using the slider a lot. Beavan relies even more on the fastball than Fister did (68% to Fister’s 61.4%) and has yet to show any real preference for an offspeed pitch, but he does have better life on the fastball at present (90.7 to Fister’s 88.2 back in the day) and his high school days of throwing 96 have led to rumors that he’s back to throwing at least 92-3 during just about every spring training for the past few years. Where Beavan goes from here, if he goes down that same path Fister did or does something else, I don’t know quite yet, but we can hope that he’ll keep eating innings for us in the meantime.
RF Ichiro!
CF Gutierrez
2B Ackley
DH Carp
1B Smoak
C Olivo
3B Seager
LF Wells
SS Rodriguez
Beavan is fine as back of the rotation inning eating fodder. Once again, the back end of a trade Jack Z makes yields something interesting…
As long as he pitches better than Anthony Vasquez. Good god, Vasquez sucks so bad.
This seems to have been the wrong week to talk about Beavan not walking anyone/being good.
Just came in. What’s with the pink today? I thought they already did breast cancer awareness back at Mother’s Day.
Oakland has Breast Cancer Awareness Day this week.
YAY!
The amount of Geoff Baker tweets in the last couple hours is annoying. Geoff Baker is annoying. I would rather hang out with Chone Figgins than Geoff Baker.
Thanks, henryv. I guess you can’t have enough breast cancer…Er, wait, that doesn’t sound right.
If Ackley isn’t the second coming, he does a good impersonation of it.
Ack attack!
Ichiro may very well get a 5th at bat in the 9th.
If not, I will be slightly more agitated than I normally am anyways.
I would give a team ANY 2 of our 47 outfielders in Seattle or Tacoma for a good MLB-ready catching prospect.
LOL! That was an unconscious tribute to Old Dave’s tendency to call a ball a homerun when it’s a flyball by Newer Dave.
Robinson’s got to work on his throws. Not that it mattered there, but that was a bit of a loop-de-loop throw.
I’ve been noticing that he has a weak arm but a very fast release. I think he has realized it, and so has made it a point to get rid of the ball faster.
It does seem to have that Johnny Damn noodle quality. If he could get more accurate, and like you say, a fast release, he’ll at least not be Ibanez awful.
Ow. Don’t swing at those balls on the outside of the plate.
Who’s left for the outfield?
I would rather see Wells and Robinson then Guti. Injury prone sissy.
I think calling Guti an “injury-prone sissy” is about the same as calling Lou Gerhig a “disease-prone sissy”.
Lou Gehrig – what a wimp!
I still don’t get what people see in Lueke, but then no one is really pitching well right now out of the bullpen.
Lou Gerhig had a .340 lifetime average and 2,000 rbis. Please don’t compare him to Franklin.
Count on the Mariners to make lemons from the lemonade of too many outfielders.
To join in the ragging from the on air crew about Lueke throwing a first pitch fastball. Shouldn’t Olivio been telling him not to throw one? It’s time like this that we miss the genius game caller that was Rob Johnson.
Henry I was going to defend Guti but I saw your post and can’t think of one thing that’s better, well played sir. How can anybody even say that bout him?
Sure, when he was healthy – but once Gehrig got sick, his batting average plummeted dramatically. Then he totally quit. Wimp.
Then Gutierrez needs to quit if he can’t play at a major league level with his ailment. Gehrig had the decency not to drag his team down.
Seriously Panda? So all time numbers show that he’s not a whimp. That’s about the worst conclusion I’ve heard on this site
Damnit, Ackley. If you keep this up, we’re going to downgrade you from deity to just savior.
Don’t feed the trolls!
Hey so this is the first game I’ve watched since Smoak has returned. How has he looked so far? Any impressions?
Hasn’t been hit in the face by a single ball!
It’s looking up, for sure!
If Kennedy gets any more at bats on this team I’m going to scream.
How ’bout if he started at 1B and hit 6th?