Game 147, Yankees at Mariners
Felix Hernandez vs. Phil Hughes, 7:10pm
Happy Felix Day! From 2009-2011, you’d be hard pressed to find a more consistent pitcher than King Felix. His FIP has swung between 3.09 and 3.02, and he’ll be worth 6+ wins for the third straight year. His pitch mix and velocity are quite consistent within the season too. Look at his pitch fx velocity graph here, for example: there are the occasional dips/spikes in velo (which may have more to do with pitch fx calibration issues than anything), but by and large, hitters know what they’re going to see from Felix. They just can’t hit it.
I bring it up because his opponent tonight, Phil Hughes, might be one of the more volatile pitchers in the league. There are a number of ways to measure volatility – this article at Beyond the Boxscore describes one, for example. But I’m not talking about a pitcher’s results, I mean: I have no idea what Hughes will throw tonight.
Phil Hughes was the #4 prospect in baseball in 2007, then got yo-yo’d between the bullpen and the rotation with a brilliant relief season in 2009 and a very solid year as a starter in 2010. Injuries have played a role in these moves, as he missed much of 2008 with rib/torso injuries. But a bout of dead arm this spring led to low velocity and ineffectiveness in April has led him to have one of the more experimental seasons I can remember. He toyed with a slider early on – a pitch he threw in 2009, but shelved in 2010 in favor of a change. His fastball averaged around 89 MPH in April, then 90 and even 92 later in the year. More than anything though, Hughes keeps working on his curve. It was a useful pitch for him when he was breaking into the majors, but he hasn’t been able to sustain that early success with it.
In April, his curve velocity was down considerably, along with his fastballs’. He returned to the big leagues with a new curveball grip to improve movement and velocity, and…nothing happened. Then, on August 2nd, he was throwing curves in the low 80s against the White Sox in his best outing of the year. I don’t think he changed the grip on it, but it took him a while to get the bump in velocity on it that he said he was after back in July. So what’s happened since August 2nd? His curve’s back under 73 MPH, and his FB velocity’s down a bit as well.
This seems like an awful lot of tweaking, but then you’d tweak everything you could too if you were getting torched like Hughes has this year. I think Hughes natural talent makes all of this more visible – he’s been scrutinized before he ever broke in with the Yankees, and his changing roles, injuries and yes, the team he plays for mean that we get to hear about every time he changes a breaking ball grip, or feels tightness in his shoulder, or gets extra work with the pitching coach. But the injuries have just brought him down to the level that many, most, pitchers inhabit every day.
Think of RA Dickey ditching his old breaking ball and coming up a forkball he dubbed “the Thang”…and getting pounded just as hard until he started throwing a knuckeball. Even between games, this sort of thing must be going on all the time – Jason Vargas talked about shifting from his slider to a cutter this year, and for people with less of a track record, the temptation to improvise and experiment must be pretty great. The pitching coaches may tell you that consistency and muscle memory is key, but it ain’t the pitching coach that’s going to call you into his office for a difficult discussion if your curve ball gets consistently pounded.
The point of this is: treasure Felix Hernandez. Phil Hughes was 18-8 last year, and the year before that was a shut-down late-inning reliever. Felix Hernandez was an amazing starter last year, and an amazing starter the year before that. Tonight, I’d guess he’s going to be an amazing starter. Never leave us, Felix.
The aggressive (and aggressively left-handed) line-up:
1: Ichiro
2: Seager
3: Ackley
4: Carp
5: Smoak
6: Olivo
7: Robinson
8: Ryan
9: Saunders
I know Bard caught recently, but they could’ve had 8 of 9.
The Byproduct of Aggressiveness
Over the weekend, the Mariners played four games against the Royals. The Royals pitching staff has the highest walk rate of any team in the American League. They also have the fifth lowest strikeout rate in the league, so overall, they’re just not very good.
The Mariners, in four games against that pitching staff, drew six walks and struck out 51 times. They struck out at least 11 times in each game of the series, becoming just the eighth team in AL history to accomplish that in four consecutive games. No AL team has ever done it in five straight games, so the M’s will go for that record tonight.
Jeff wrote about this yesterday over at Lookout Landing, and Mike touched on it here last week, but the M’s have now become the biggest collection of hacks in baseball. The only teams with worse BB/K ratios are in the NL, where they have to use pitchers several times a game, and even their marks aren’t that much worse than what the M’s are putting up.
It’s easy to attribute all the hacking to youth, and point out that the team is playing a bunch of guys with little to no Major League experience, and to some extent, that’s true – the team’s low walk rates and high strikeout rates are attributable to playing guys like Carlos Peguero, Greg Halman, and Michael Saunders for significant portions of the year. But the organization also targeted Miguel Olivo as the veteran catcher they wanted over the winter, and he has perhaps the worst plate approach of any regular player in Major League Baseball.
At this point, it’s essentially an organizational pandemic. There’s basically one guy – Dustin Ackley – in the whole organization who has a good plan when he goes up to the plate. Justin Smoak has the makings of giving them two guys, but he still chases a lot of pitches he should let pass. Beyond those two, there isn’t a discerning eye to be found anywhere.
Right now, the M’s run out 7 or 8 guys on a nightly basis whose sole focus at the plate is to swing the bat. Eric Wedge has wanted an aggressive team all year, and now he has the most aggressive group of hitters in baseball. The problem is that this approach doesn’t work. It doesn’t score runs. It gives pitchers free outs.
Plain and simple, the Mariners are now far too aggressive at the plate, just like they were during the Bavasi era. They present little challenge to the opposing pitcher not just because they lack talent, but because they lack a good game plan when they step into the batters box. Swing hard is not a recipe for success.
Getting better hitters would help, certainly. We can’t lay the blame at the coaching staff’s feet for not being able to make chicken soup out of chicken crap, but at the same time, Eric Wedge and his staff are here to teach these kids how to become good Major League hitters. And, unfortunately, there’s little to no evidence that any of them are getting better at the plate as the year goes on. No one is having better at-bats, getting into more hitters’ counts, or taking more free passes. If anything, we’re seeing the opposite. Previously patient hitters like Chone Figgins, Franklin Gutierrez, and Mike Carp have all stopped taking free passes this year. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.
Aggressiveness is fine in the right context. Stupidity is not. Right now, the M’s approach at the plate has crossed the line into being the latter.
Game 146: Royals at Mariners
Anthony Vasquez vs. Everett Teaford, 1:10pm; 9/11 memorial before the game at 12:45pm.
Everett Teaford’s a great name; I had to check baseball-reference to make sure there wasn’t an Evertt Teaford who played in the ’30s with Burleigh Grimes and Bobo Newsom. Other than that, though, he’s not terribly special. He’ll be making his starting debut today after making 23 appearances in relief.
The lefty has a 91 MPH fastball and a curve/slurvey-slider that he throws frequently to lefties or righties. That arsenal sounds like it’d produce some big platoon splits, but thus far, he’s been terrible against both. You’d expect a decent amount of strikeouts/whiffs of lefties with a good FB and a slider, but instead, he’s given up 9 free passes against 8 strikeouts against them. He’s got a better K:BB against right-handers, but he’s given up a lot of hits and 4 HRs in 57 batters faced. The samples here are tiny, as you’d expect, but he had similar problems at times in the minors.
Anthony Vasquez gets the ball for the M’s. Wooooo.
The line-up features a DH with a wOBA of .273. Adam Kennedy, you have been upstaged. Wedge clearly wanted righties, and he wanted dingers, so we’ve got Casper Wells in center, Olivo at DH and Alex Liddi at 3B.
1: Ichiro
2: Ryan
3: Ackley
4: Carp (LF)
5: Smoak
6: Olivo (DH)
7: Wells (CF!)
8: Bard (C)
9: Liddi
Game 145, Royals at Mariners
This game could hope to be half as interesting as last night’s game.
Paulino vs. Pineda, 7:10 pm
Pitch face aside, Paulino doesn’t interest me much, but he may manage to give up a home run or two.
Pineda’s second start in August was the point at which he broke his previous season high in innings pitched and he’s getting a full month of starts on top of that. Last year, towards the end there were reports of his mechanics starting to fall apart a little and he lost some command as a result, so if I were around for this game (hint: I won’t be) I would be checking to see how he looked physically. Any evaluation should also take into account that recently he’s been warming up while he’s out there instead of prior to the game. I would throw in some kind of remark about Pineda’s past elbow problems, but that was in an era when the org was shutting down pitchers left and right at the slightest sign of trouble, which makes it difficult to judge the severity of said elbow issues.
This is all an avoidance of talking about the lineup which will spur its own comments.
RF Ichiro!
SS Ryan
2B Ackley
LF Carp
1B Smoak
DH Kennedy
C Olivo
3B Seager
CF Saunders
Aggressiveness
Looking over the stats for a few different Mariner outfielders this year:
Carlos Peguero: 155 PA, 54 SO, 34.8 K%
Casper Wells: 103 PA, 36 SO, 35.0 K%
Trayvon Robinson: 95 PA, 35 SO, 36.8 K%
Greg Halman: 91 PA, 32 SO, 35.2 K%
Other than Peguero having a few more plate appearances, because he’s the one who got the biggest extended stretch of regular playing time back when the team had fewer options, those are some alarmingly similar numbers. We’ve discussed numerous times that for all their tools and raw power, Peguero and Halman will never be useful major leaguers with their current approach. It’s worth noting that neither was called up even when rosters expanded in September (although I don’t want to overemphasize that fact, considering that Michael Saunders is not all that far below this crew). While strikeouts are not necessarily worse than other kinds of outs, failing to make contact on this level generally makes it impossible to hit for a high average because you’re just not putting the ball in play enough. Both Halman and Wells have seen their batting averages collapse after hot starts with the team, illustrating how this plays out and reminding us of how much longer batting average takes to stabilize – two years or so, while all these guys are already approaching if not past the point where their strikeout rates would stabilize.
Now, the similarity in approach is not complete, because Wells and Robinson do walk more often: 6.8% and 6.3%, compared to 5.2% for Peguero and an appallingly bad 2.2% for Halman. Walk rate also takes a bit longer to stabilize than strikeout rate, so these numbers aren’t the final word, but it’s consistent with their past performances. Still, even those slightly higher rates are not exactly all that good.
For some finer detail, check out their plate discipline stats from Fangraphs:
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Game 143, Royals at Mariners
Looks like no thread went up for last night’s exciting Furbush vs. Williams pitching match-up/Liddi’s debut. Whoops.
Hochevar vs. Vargas
The 2005 draft gets a lot of press for being that time when everything went right for everyone but the Mariners and the Cubs (Mark Pawelek!) and valuable players were had by most. People don’t talk about the ’06 draft in the same way, for a number of reasons. Hochevar was supposed to set an uncomfortable precedent by going back to the independent leagues instead of signing with the Dodgers and then pitching himself into first overall. To date, Brandon Morrow accumulated more WAR as a Mariner than Hochevar has over nearly six hundred innings with the Royals.
Greg Reynolds, who went second to the Rockies, was a polished pitcher with good stuff who was thought to be able to move quickly because he had great command of his heater and solid secondary offerings. To date, he’s logged fewer than a hundred innings in the majors and has had a negative WAR. Brad Lincoln, another top five prospect who was regarded as near major league ready, went to the Pirates and had an oblique injury and TJ postpone his debut until June of last season. His positive contibutions this year haven’t yet negated the negative ones from the previous season, and he’s struggling to strike batters out at a reasonable clip. And who could forget that Andrew Miller, the top ranked prospect by most, dropped to the Tigers due to his demands, was traded twice, and now has parts of six seasons in the majors where at no time has he been a positive contributor. Also the Orioles drafted Billy Rowell. This guy.
Morrow was picked over the local guy who went on to make good. In a sense, even if he had done well for us, he probably would have always been regarded as getting in the way of a more obvious pick. But for all his struggles here, he turned out way better than a lot of the guys selected early in that draft.
RF Ichiro!
SS Ryan
2B Ackley
LF Carp
1B Smoak
DH Kennedy
3B Seager
CF Robinson
C Jimenez
Minor League Wrap (8/29-9/5/11)
I couldn’t think of any special matter to cover in the final intro, especially considering that we only have one squad headed to the playoffs, so I’ll just drop the note that we had three guys named Pitcher of the Week by their respective leagues and then get to it. Some of the write-ups for certain guys this week are rather long, so break it up if you have to. I know I had to take breaks when writing it!
To the jump!
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Game 141, Mariners at Angels
Happy Felix Day! The six-man rotation (may it die a swift and terrible death) means that even when the schedule has you facing the same team twice in a row, your pitching opponent will be different. So instead of the fine Felix vs. Dan Haren matchup we enjoyed last week, this time it has to be Felix against Ervin Santana.
Another thought to consider – we already have seven-man bullpens, imagine if the six-man rotation caught on too. You’d need more than half of your roster for the pitching staff, and you’d be left with absolutely no bench. Once you make sure you’re carrying the standard three catchers, there’s room for literally one guy, who apparently has to be able to somewhat capably play all of the positions in the field. Wait, I see a market opportunity for Chone Figgins! (And don’t tell me you can cut down on the bullpen if you go with a six-man rotation. The deeper you have to dredge to find starters, the crummier they will be, and you’ll need that bullpen more than ever.)
RF-L Ichiro
SS-R Ryan
2B-L Ackley
DH-L Carp
1B-B Smoak
C-R Olivo
3B-L Seager
LF-B Robinson
CF-L Saunders
Let’s Talk About Alex Liddi
Yesterday, the Mariners made semi-history when they promoted Alex Liddi to the Majors. While there have been other Italian born Major Leaguers, Liddi is the first in a long time to actually have been raised in Italy, as the Mariners signed him as a 17-year-old after scouting him internationally. Because of his power and the organization’s overall lack of that particular skill, he’s gotten a decent amount of attention as a prospect, and I’m sure many of you are hoping to see him play quite a bit in September.
Personally, I hope we don’t see too terribly much of Liddi this month, because I’d argue that regardless of what happens this month, he needs to spend 2012 back in Tacoma. I know it’s tempting to look at the 30 home runs he hit for the Rainiers and hope that he could provide some thump from the third base position for next year and the future, but when you look at the context of the PCL this year, Liddi didn’t actually have that great of a season.
For the season, he hit .259/.332/.488, good for an .821 OPS. The average hitter in the PCL this year hit .286/.359/.448, good for an .807 OPS. Always a good hitters league, this year the PCL was the best offensive environment to be found anywhere in the sport. Four teams averaged in excess of six runs per game, and only two averaged less than five. It was just a great year to be a hitter in the Pacific Coast League.
When you adjust for context, Liddi’s overall offensive performance simply isn’t all that impressive. He showed no real improvement in his ability to make contact, and a 27% strikeout rate in Triple-A is a legitimate concern. While he’s more selective than a guy like Carlos Peguero, often times an inability to make contact with minor league stuff indicates a more serious issue that can be exploited at the Major League level.
While Liddi made significant strides with the glove this year, he’s still a guy whose value will be tied to well he hits in the big leagues. Right now, there’s not much of a reason to think he’s ready to hit big league pitching.
If he gets regular playing time in September, there are basically two potential outcomes – he performs well and generates unrealistic expectations about his potential ability to contribute to the 2012 roster, or he struggles mightily and loses some of the sheen from what is (at least on the surface) a pretty successful 2011 campaign. Either outcome is probably not in the organization’s best interests.
Liddi is young enough to still have time to improve on his weaknesses and potentially develop into a useful big league player, but he’s just not there yet. Giving him regular playing time down the stretch will likely either generate unfair expectations or harm his confidence, and I’d rather avoid both of those outcomes.
Let him play once a week, use him in blowouts, and give him a taste of the Major Leagues. But, the best use of playing time at third base is still to continue to evaluate Kyle Seager on a daily basis, and I’d rather not see Liddi take any PT away from a guy who could legitimately fill a role on the 2012 team.
Mysterious happenings
In a duel with fellow trade deadline acquisition Ubaldo Jimenez, Doug Fister struck out 13 Cleveland Indians today. That’s just crazy.
Before this, Fister had never even reached double digits in strikeouts before. He only had more than 7 once in his whole career: that was 9 Orioles on May 30, which happens to be last time he was awarded a win as a Mariner. Let’s just say the Tigers can never complain about the Jarrod Washburn implosion ever again.