Fall In Love With Carter Capps, Right Now
I’m not gonna lie to you: as much as I’m ashamed to admit this, I kind of took Carter Capps for granted.
Ordinarily, when you take for granted someone drafted out of that small a school, what you take for granted is that he’s going to suck. But the Mariners have long been high on Capps, and I have been, too. Once I heard the reports, I was interested. Once I saw the numbers, I was captivated. Once I saw the pitching with my own eyes, I was hooked. I’ve allowed myself to get ahead of myself, to the point where for a while now I haven’t really considered Capps to be a developing prospect. I’ve counted him as a good relief pitcher, with a promising present and a promising future.
I hate the behavior of assuming prospects. It’s always been a gamble to assume Jesus Montero and Justin Smoak, and we’re paying the price for having assumed Dustin Ackley. I’d chuckle at people who assumed Stephen Pryor, just because he threw a hard, straight fastball. But I can’t help myself with Capps, I’ve never been able to help myself with Capps, and it might be time that we all fall in love.
Here’s a fun fact: Capps’ velocity is down in 2013. Whatever. It’s early and he had velocity to lose. Here’s another fun fact: against Capps in 2013, batters have attempted 41 swings, and just 24 of those swings have made contact. I can’t overstate that it’s only April flipping ninth, but Capps has come right out of the gate and been unhittable. And he’s also been a little different.
I noted the velocity, and Capps is down from about 99 miles per hour to about 95 miles per hour. But he’s topped out above that, and it’s still the first half of April, whereas last year we saw Capps down the stretch. And there are other things, where I’ll try to keep from getting too technical.
In the early days of PITCHf/x, everything could be turned into a blog post. Everything was turned into a blog post, because everything was interesting, because everything was new. Look at this, we have charts of release points and pitch movements and pitch locations and pitch trajectories. So many of us did it. So many continue to do it, but to me it sort of feels stale, so just trust me on the statements I’m going to make. They’re going to save you some data interpretation.
Capps has always had an extreme arm angle, throwing from way over by third base. I don’t think it’s fair to call him a side-armer, but he isn’t too far away. In the early going this season, Capps has gotten even more extreme, dropping a little lower and shifting a little further to the side. We’ll have to stay tuned to see whether this keeps up, but for the time being it’s both subtle and noticeable. Perhaps Capps made a tweak.
But the bigger tweak is to the breaking ball. According to Ryan Divish’s twitter from last night, Capps has thrown both a slider and a curve. Last year, he threw a fastball at 99 and a breaking ball at 84, with sink and sweeping horizontal movement. This year he’s thrown a fastball at 95 and a breaking ball at 84, with less sink and less sweeping horizontal movement. In the spring he showed some breaking balls in the high 70s. What seems to be the case is that, last year with the Mariners, Capps was throwing a curve, and this year with the Mariners, Capps has thrown a slider. Between his fastball and his breaking ball, there’s been a smaller difference in speed, lateral movement, and vertical movement. It’s not subtle, and it’s noticeable.
Capps talked in the spring about falling in love with his slider, like he had himself a new and newly reliable weapon. Now, when you have a fastball/slider righty reliever, usually you plan on there being extreme platoon splits. And Capps might end up having extreme platoon splits, but here’s the thing about a slider released from Capps’ arm angle: it behaves kind of more like a cutter. At least, that’s what this taught me. From a Geoff Baker article in March:
Capps has also been honing his slider into what he calls a “slider/cutter” because it has elements of a cut fastball to it. He’ll throw it even when he’s behind in a count and “steal a strike” from both right-handed and left-handed batters.
Cutters are effective against opposite-handed hitters. That’s the whole Mariano Rivera thing, and they offer an alternative to learning a quality changeup. Relative to last season, Carter Capps has been throwing a different breaking ball, and he’s fond of it. Hitters are decidedly less fond of it, probably.
Now, things aren’t all that simple. With Capps’ breaking ball, it’s not always easy to tell whether he’s throwing a slider or a curve. When there’s inconsistency in movement, we don’t know if that’s deliberate or a mistake, a form of user error. Last night, Capps threw consecutive breaking balls to Chris Carter, completing a strikeout. Here’s one of them. It was 84 miles per hour. Here’s the second one. It was 86 miles per hour, with four more inches of sink, and more than two more inches of run. Was the second one a curve? If so, why was it harder? Did Capps just throw different sliders? Did Capps mean to throw different sliders?
Capps is generating some movement I might consider unpredictable. I don’t know if that’s accidental or intentional, and it’s got to be hell for his catchers. But it’s also got to be hell for the hitters, and the early numbers bear that out. Capps was untouchable in spring, when he was leaning on his new-ish slider. He’s been untouchable through a measly four regular-season appearances, but he’s looked different, and difference makes you think about sustainability. Carter Capps might have already arrived.
I almost didn’t write this post, because I didn’t go in with a prepared conclusion. I don’t have a singular “point”. Capps’ breaking ball is different, but I don’t know how much to make of that. I guess we’ll see. And I guess my point is that Carter Capps is so very exciting, so very watchable. Every team has electrifying young relievers somewhere in the system, because there are a lot of that player type. But not every team has a Carter Capps somewhere in the system, because there’s less of that player type. Capps might already be one of the most unhittable relievers in the major leagues. He’s a good weapon with a new weapon.
Questions for a New Minor League Season
Marc posted his own minor league introduction last week while I was busily filling out paperwork that had nothing to do with baseball, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I can’t also post something of my own that I will actively tell myself won’t go on for too long, but then will totally go on for way too long, you guys. Editor’s note: oh it went on all right
Here are some narratives that I’m looking at in the upcoming minor league season, translated as three questions for each team. Some of the questions are related to the development of actual prospects, but some are just things of general minor league interest. I’ve tried throughout to avoid certain things like “If Zunino wants to continue catching then he should improve on the things that the catching job entails”-type analyses, but in some cases it seemed pertinent to address some specifics. I write a lot, but prefer not to be wasteful, or to fail at being somewhat thorough. Here come nearly five thousand words written mostly yesterday.
JUMP CUT
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Game 8, Astros at Mariners
Joe Saunders vs. Philip Humber, 7:10pm
Welcome to the AL, Houston. Yes, we *do* have lots of strikeout pitchers over here. We’re going to be helpful though and not really show them to you. Just to keep things sporting, you’ll face Joe Saunders tonight and you’ll get Blake Beavan in a few days. It’ll be just like old times – balls in play, running the bases. If you feel like it, you could pull a double switch, just for the hell of it. Old times’ sake and all that.
Phil Humber’s last start against the M’s was something. His perfect game looked like a coming out party for a guy who’d quietly put together a three win 2011, and had a better breaking ball and improved velocity in early 2012. Shortly thereafter, however, everything collapsed. His velocity retreated back to the 91 or so it had always been at, and his problems with homers returned with a vengeance. The bump in strikeouts was still there, but it was hard to notice with all of the runs he was allowing. His last appearance against the M’s came in relief, as he’d lost his starting job a few months after his perfect game (I feel like I should repeat that. Perfect game to swing man to DFA’d in like 4 months.) and he was awful, giving up a HR and a pair of walks in 1/3 of an inning. He’s now trying to reinvent himself with the rebuilding Astros.
He kept the slider he picked up from Don Cooper in Chicago, and now throws it a Maurer-esque 30% or so. Combined with his curve and change, he throws at least 50% slow stuff. For a slider/curve guy, he’s typically run fairly high platoon splits, but they’re somewhat hidden in his defense-independent stats. In his brief career, Humber’s allowed a .343 wOBA to lefties while holding righties to a Mariner-y .295. But this isn’t driven by HRs, or rather, the *split* isn’t driven by gopher balls: he’s ecumenical with those. Instead, lefies just get a ton of line drives and the resulting hits to go along with their allotment of homers. Righties hit homers, but that’s about it. FIP cares nothing for these “line drives” and “base hits,” so his career split is 4.53 v. lefties and 4.49 vs. righties. Essentially dead on. If you’re a died-in-the-wool DIPS fan, you’re going to expect the BABIP difference producing the wOBA splits to regress (if he stays in MLB). If not, you see this as evidence that DIPS isn’t 100% reliable. More evidence on that front came in today from Russell Carleton, by the way. Personally, this is a great match-up for Ackley and Smoak, though I said that once before and saw them struggle.
Joe Saunders will hopefully find the baseball to be pleasingly resin-free at Safeco. No powdery substances, no problems, right? Right, Joe? Please?
Line-up:
1: Saunders, RF
2: Gutierrez, CF
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, LF
5: Seager, 3B
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Montero, C
8: Ackley, 2B
9: Ryan, SS
SP: Saunders
The Jackson Generals rotation has been lights out with the exception of Taijuan Walker. Another shutout today against Jacksonville, this time with James Gilheeney getting the start. Carson Smith got his first AA save. Julio Morban continues to impress with a 2B and a steal today, but he left the game in the 3rd with a slight groin injury. Something to keep an eye on.
Can’t wait to see Safeco’s new video board and how they use it.
Go M’s!
Meet The Astros
The Seattle Mariners have played the Houston Astros before. They met three times in 2002, they met three times in 2004, and they met three times in 2007. You might remember that 2007 series for the Astros pounding out a dozen hits off Felix in six innings. Or you might remember that, in that same game, Willie Bloomquist knocked an inside-the-park dinger. In the next game, the Mariners got throttled. In the next game, the Mariners got throttled. Those days weren’t kind, but those days are past, and now for the first time, the Mariners will meet the Astros as members of the same league, and of the same division. Let’s all familiarize ourselves with the new enemy, as the Mariners will play a new team in a new home ballpark.
The thing to know about the Astros is that they really suck. Two years ago, they lost 106 games. Last year, they lost 107 games, and a lot of people think they’re going to lose even more in 2013. I don’t know if they’re actually worse than the Marlins, but at least the Marlins have Giancarlo Stanton. The Astros have Jose Altuve, and Jose Altuve isn’t even that good. He’s Astros-good, in the way that last year Michael Saunders was Mariners-good. A competitive team would take Altuve, but he’s hardly be a cornerstone.
The Astros suck-diddly-uck. Bud Norris doesn’t suck, but he’s going to get traded if he’s worth half a damn. The Astros are starting Ronny Cedeno, who the Cardinals cut at the end of spring training so they could give the full-time shortstop job to Pete Kozma. In fact, as someone pointed out to me the other day, the Astros have a roster full of guys you might not have known were still playing major-league baseball. Cedeno is one of them. Phil Humber is another, and he’s starting tonight. There’s Erik Bedard, and Rick Ankiel, and Carlos Pena, and Jose Veras. The Astros’ roster is part random driftwood, part replacement-level nothing, and part potentially useful role players. It looks not unlike the sort of roster you could put together from end-of-spring-training cuts and free agents. Such a roster would blow.
It’s way too early in the season to take statistics seriously. I mean, the Astros have played just six games. But over those six games, they’ve posted a .308 BABIP. Not bad. They’ve also hit .199/.234/.286, with 4% walks and 36% strikeouts. For his career, as a hitter, Mark Prior hit .201/.231/.265, with 3% walks and 35% strikeouts. When J.J. Putz was amazing in 2006, he allowed a line of .207/.245/.284 with 4% walks and 34% strikeouts. The Astros, at present, are an experiment, but they’re not an experiment that’s meant to serve any real purpose — the next good Astros team will feature virtually none of this Astros team. It’s an experiment because the Astros couldn’t not run an experiment. They had to do something with the grant money. But no one’s going to learn anything from the results and the experiment the Astros actually care about is still in development.
See, the Astros are obviously rebuilding, and what the front office inherited is kind of like what Jack Zduriencik inherited, without the Felix Hernandez part. They inherited little talent and a ridiculous ballpark, and now it’s about making the best of things. What the Astros have done is assemble a decent farm system, and it’s still improving. Young talent will arrive, and young talent will continue to be brought in. There aren’t really pieces on the major-league roster the Astros could unload in a blockbuster, not anymore, but the priority is on youth and they’ll get their hands on some. They’ve already gotten their hands on some, and Carlos Correa is a good one. Jonathan Singleton is a good one. For the Astros, at least there are some things to look forward to.
And it’s important to consider the Astros’ future, since even the Astros would probably prefer not to address the Astros’ present. In the present, the Astros are a team to beat up on. A team that ought to lift the entire rest of the American League West. A team that’s going to make you wonder if one of your pitchers has turned a corner, since he just racked up a bunch of strikeouts. The Astros are going to make it critically important to always bear in mind the quality of opposition. Joe Saunders might strike out seven dudes tonight. Don’t pay it any mind. Astros.
But, with the Astros, I sense that they’re going to be the next Internet bandwagon. They’re starting from absolutely nothing, which makes them inoffensive, and they’ve already poached a lot of Internet analytical talent. They have a guy in the front office whose job title is Director of Decision Sciences. You probably recognize the names Mike Fast and Kevin Goldstein, and the Astros aren’t done hiring intellect. The Astros are putting together a sharp team of minds, and the Internet loves baseball teams that get creative and forward-thinking with analysis. For a time it seemed like the Mariners were one of those teams. A lot of us fell in love with the Rays some years back, and before that we fell in love with the Indians.
What that doesn’t guarantee is success on the Astros’ part. Turns out every team in baseball is pretty smart, and the Astros are unlikely to have a massive advantage over anyone else. The Internet will be biased because it will have lost some people it liked to the organization, but there are so many brilliant baseball minds out there, most of whom you’ve never heard of, and never will hear of. When the Astros start showing some promise, they’ll get a lot of support, a lot of positive articles written about them, and while that will be by no means unfair or unwarranted, it’s important to consider the hivemind aspect. As people get swept up in the Astros, more people will get swept up in the Astros without really thinking about it, and then that runs of the risk of the Astros becoming greatly overrated.
But they are headed in the right direction, seems like. From what I know, from where I sit, I’d rather have the Astros’ people in charge of a team than the Mariners’ people. At least, if the Astros fail, they’ll fail having tried new, innovative things. They’ll need to try new, innovative things to climb out from their present-day hole.
And it’s a deep hole. Such a deep hole. The 2013 Astros are awful, and the Mariners should slaughter them, even though the Mariners aren’t that great. This is the worst team the Mariners have been able to play against in years. But if the Mariners do manage to beat up on the Astros in the short-term, savor it. Appreciate it. Because it might not be long before the Astros’ course intersects with the Mariners’ course, and then there won’t be any more gimmes. Teams this bad don’t come around every day. But the Astros’ organizational focus isn’t on this team.
The Mariners Arrive Home
| MARINERS (3-4) | Δ Ms | ASTROS (1-5) | EDGE | |
| HITTING (wOBA*) | -4.8 (25th) | -5.5 | -16.1 (29th) | Mariners |
| FIELDING (RBBIP) | 12.2 (1st) | 9.2 | -1.0 (17th) | Mariners |
| ROTATION (xRA) | -0.7 (16th) | -2.7 | -4.7 (30th) | Mariners |
| BULLPEN (xRA) | -2.5 (27th) | -1.5 | -3.5 (29th) | Mariners |
| OVERALL (RAA) | 4.3 (11th) | -0.3 | -25.3 (30th) | MARINERS |
Haha, oh boy, Astros! That didn’t take long, guys. Now watch them take the series against the Mariners.
There’s a new column that I hope is displaying correctly. It should be an upper case Greek letter delta which is typically used to denote change. That column is the amount the Mariners have changed since the previous series preview.
Now that there’s a semblance of sample size, I feel comfortable adding in some individual hitting breakdowns. From hereon, they will cover the previous two weeks’ worth of games. Most of the above should be self-explanatory except for Qual+. Basically what Qual does is look at a hitter’s batted ball profile and compare the run value of that profile to the league average. Roughly it’s a measure of the quality of a hitter’s batted balls and put on the familiar 100 is league average scale.
| Batter | PA | P/PA | Slash line | nBB | K (sw) | 1B/2B/3B/HR | Sw% | Ct% | Qual+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M Morse | 31 | 4.5 | .310/.355/.828 | 2 | 10 (10) | 4 / 0 / 0 / 5 | 53 | 60 | 177 |
| K Seager* | 30 | 4.4 | .192/.300/.308 | 4 | 4 (4) | 2 / 3 / 0 / 0 | 40 | 83 | 100 |
| K Morales^ | 26 | 3.4 | .280/.370/.480 | 1 | 3 (3) | 4 / 2 / 0 / 1 | 50 | 80 | 145 |
| J Smoak^ | 25 | 3.7 | .190/.320/.190 | 4 | 4 (4) | 4 / 0 / 0 / 0 | 40 | 78 | 154 |
| M Saunders* | 24 | 3.8 | .250/.375/.550 | 3 | 3 (2) | 2 / 1 / 1 / 1 | 42 | 84 | 107 |
| F Gutierrez | 24 | 3.8 | .304/.333/.652 | 1 | 6 (6) | 3 / 2 / 0 / 2 | 47 | 70 | 99 |
| J Montero | 22 | 3.5 | .182/.182/.182 | 0 | 4 (4) | 4 / 0 / 0 / 0 | 49 | 76 | 143 |
| D Ackley* | 22 | 4.5 | .050/.227/.050 | 2 | 3 (1) | 1 / 0 / 0 / 0 | 41 | 93 | 124 |
| B Ryan | 20 | 3.5 | .294/.400/.294 | 3 | 5 (5) | 5 / 0 / 0 / 0 | 36 | 76 | 107 |
P/PA = pitches per PA [avg~3.8], nBB = uBB + HBP, Sw = swinging [avg~45%], Ct = contact [avg~78%], Qual+ = a measure of quality of batted balls [avg=100, higher is better]
You’ll notice that the Mariners almost universally rate above average in Qual despite having an overall poor hitting line. Currently the Mariners are running one of baseball’s lowest BABIPs but they have an average line drive rate and a well above average rate of pulled fly balls, which are the two best batted ball types historically.
It’s early and still a small sample, but that would suggest that the Mariners have been unlucky in having some balls fall in. It may be self-delusion, but at least it’s something to help you talk you off the ledge on Montero, Smoak and Ackley who collectively have batted like they play for the Astros (haha, buuuuuuurn).
It’s a bit amazing that Brendan Ryan has the team’s lowest pitches seen per plate appearance yet also the team’s lowest swing percentage and not even a stellar contact rate.
| MARINERS | Δ Ms | ASTROS | EDGE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| INFIELD | 5.3 (2nd) | 1.9 | -1.1 (20th) | Mariners |
| OUTFIELD | 6.9 (2nd) | 7.3 | 0.1 (14th) | Mariners |
| RBBIP | 0.227 (2nd) | .018 | 0.309 (17th) | Mariners |
| OVERALL | 12.2 (1st) | 9.2 | -1.0 (17th) | MARINERS |
It’s early. It’s early. It’s early.
There’s like no way the outfield defense stays this good. The gigantic increase over the past series might have been related to the wind at US Cell making fly balls more catchable than normal for that park.
08 APR 19:10 – JOE SAUNDERS* vs PHILIP HUMBER
Go stuff yourself, Phil Humber!
Joe Saunders did not have a great Mariner debut, but I’m not concerned yet. It’s one start which is all you need to know to dismiss any worries unless the worry was about how Saunders would pitch in the future after his arm literally came detached in that one start. That didn’t happen so we’re all good.
But I’d be remiss to just dismiss via sample size. The main peeve from the March 3 start was Saunders walking four batters. That’s quite uncharacteristic from Saunders who last had a walk rate worse than league average back in 2006.
I noticed on Saunders’ StatCorner page that his strike% — the percentage of his pitches that I evaluated as landing within the typically called strike zone — was at 49%, a decidedly average rate. And then I noticed that of pitches within the zone not swung at, 14 in total, I categorized five as being called a ball. A typical rate would have had just two of those called balls, so some combination of factors potentially cost Saunders three strikes. Three strikes isn’t overwhelming, but it ain’t nothing either.
I’ll note that none of the mentioned pitches occurred during an at bat in which the hitter walked, so perhaps it had no impact, but we can never rule out cascading effects. Curiously, the home ump that game was Doug Eddings who is regarded as having one of baseball’s largest strike zones.
09 APR 19:10 – BRANDON MAURER vs ERIK BEDARD*
Welcome back, Erik Bedard!
10 APR 19:10 – BLAKE BEAVAN vs BRAD PEACOCK
Umm, Brad Peacock?
Peacock’s first start for Houston saw 11 batted balls against him and not one of them were hit on the ground. That’s not going to stay there obviously, but Peacock has never been even close to a neutral groundballer. Humber and Bedard both slightly have flyball tendencies but Peacock has a fetish. It could make for a display of Safeco’s new cozier confines.
First Week Thoughts
This post is going to be shorter than I planned because Ryan Divish beat me to much of what I was going to say. Man, is it good to have him back on the beat. If you’re prone to overreacting to seven games, go read his post.
As for things I have to add, I’ll note that the fastest statistics to have meaningful value are things that measure swing data — on FanGraphs, we call these “Plate Discipline” stats. I prefer the PITCHF/x plate discipline stats because they’re updated nightly, while the BIS plate discipline stats lag a day behind due to the manual entry that is required to create them. So, with the caveat that no numbers — not even plate discipline stats — should be taken too seriously through seven games, here’s a quick table of the Mariners hitters’ swing related stats for week one.
| Name | PA | O-Swing | Z-Swing | Swing | O-Contact | Z-Contact | Contact | Zone |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Morse | 31 | 34.6% | 78.3% | 53.2% | 42.9% | 70.2% | 60.0% | 42.6% |
| Kyle Seager | 30 | 23.1% | 56.7% | 40.2% | 60.0% | 92.1% | 83.0% | 50.8% |
| Kendrys Morales | 27 | 28.3% | 67.4% | 47.8% | 61.5% | 87.1% | 79.6% | 50.0% |
| Michael Saunders | 25 | 17.0% | 70.5% | 42.9% | 62.5% | 90.3% | 84.6% | 48.4% |
| Justin Smoak | 25 | 22.2% | 65.8% | 40.2% | 66.7% | 84.0% | 78.4% | 41.3% |
| Franklin Gutierrez | 24 | 29.4% | 68.3% | 46.7% | 46.7% | 82.1% | 69.8% | 44.6% |
| Dustin Ackley | 22 | 31.4% | 50.0% | 40.4% | 87.5% | 95.8% | 92.5% | 48.5% |
| Jesus Montero | 22 | 19.4% | 73.8% | 48.7% | 42.9% | 83.9% | 76.3% | 53.9% |
| Brendan Ryan | 20 | 35.1% | 37.5% | 36.2% | 61.5% | 91.7% | 76.0% | 46.4% |
| Raul Ibanez | 12 | 24.2% | 46.4% | 34.4% | 37.5% | 92.3% | 71.4% | 45.9% |
| Robert Andino | 11 | 21.1% | 42.3% | 33.3% | 75.0% | 90.9% | 86.7% | 57.8% |
| Jason Bay | 10 | 19.1% | 40.0% | 29.3% | 50.0% | 87.5% | 75.0% | 48.8% |
| Kelly Shoppach | 7 | 14.3% | 64.3% | 39.3% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 50.0% |
The table is sortable, by the way, so clicking on any of the headers we reorder the list by that column. O-Swing and O-Contact are for pitches that PITCHF/x labels as outside the zone, while Z-Swing and Z-Contact are for pitches in the strike zone. Swing rate and contact rate are for all pitches, and Zone% is what it sounds like – the rate of pitches a batter is seeing in the strike zone.
There are a few interesting things to found here, though again, with the caveat that the samples are too small to be predictive in any real way.
The first thing I’ll point out is Michael Saunders’ swing decision numbers. He’s chased the fewest pitches out of the strike zone of any of the regulars, and yet he’s swinging at more strikes than anyone not named Morse or Montero. A few years back, Saunders was frustrating primarily because he’d look at strikes and swing at balls, and that’s a recipe for lousy hitting. For the first week of 2013, he swung at strikes and let the balls go past. That’s kind of neat, because last year, he simply became more aggressive in the strike zone without making the adjustment on pitches out of the zone. If he can become more discerning in which pitches to swing at, that would be a nice boost for the team.
The second thing that jumps out to me is that Michael Morse is doing a pretty amazing Josh Hamilton impression. Last year, I wrote a bunch of pieces at FanGraphs documenting Hamilton’s remarkable run during the first few months, when he was among the league leaders in both offensive production and wild swing-at-anything approach. Hamilton was selling out on every swing, chasing pitches indiscriminately in an effort to hit everything out of the ballpark. The result was a lot of power and a lot of whiffs. It got to the point where it became obvious that pitchers should just never throw Hamilton a strike again, since he wouldn’t make them pay for missing the zone. They made the adjustment, he never really did. And it was one of the reasons Texas let him go over the winter.
One week in, and Michael Morse’s numbers are Hamilton-esque. He leads the league with five home runs, but among players with 20+ PAs, he has the seventh worst contact rate. After striking out four times yesterday, Morse noted that pitchers are using his aggressiveness against him, so there’s every reason to expect him to make some adjustments and tone down the whiffs. His career contact rate is 75%, so he’s not going to keep swinging and missing at his current clip. I’d imagine when you’re hitting home runs everyday, it’s probably hard to convince yourself to not swing at everything. But, the homers will slow down, so it will then be on Morse to start taking more pitches and forcing pitchers to give him better pitches to hit. This is the constant battle for aggressive power hitters. It’s nothing to be concerned about, nor am I trying to downplay the fact that Morse had a very productive first week. It’s just interesting to note that they spent a good chunk of the off-season trying to get Josh Hamilton, and one week in, the guy they got instead hit just like Josh Hamilton.
Finally, I’ll note that you still shouldn’t be too worried about Dustin Ackley. His 92.5% contact rate is 8th best in the majors, and pretty much any hitter who can make contact 90% of the time can be reasonably productive as long as they aren’t also chasing pitches out of the strike zone. Even if Ackley never develops any power, his current offensive skillset isn’t so different from a guy like Marco Scutaro, and he’s been a useful, underrated middle infielder for years. I know it’s annoying to watch him keeping rolling balls over to second base, but there just aren’t examples of guys with Ackley’s skillset who didn’t eventually see better results than he has in the last year and change. The power remains a question, and if he doesn’t drive the ball regularly like he did when he first came up, he might not ever be more than an average second baseman, but you shouldn’t be jumping off the bandwagon yet. He’ll be okay. Give him time.
Game 7, Mariners at White Sox
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Chris Sale, 11:10am
The White Sox beat Felix and ruined a perfectly good Felix day, so the M’s need to return the favor and get out of Chicago with a series win. It’s a tall order. Sale is dominant against lefties, and despite significant platoon splits, he’s pretty good against righties as well. The human foul pole gets well above average velocity and movement on his fastball, dropping to a low 3/4 delivery and firing 94-95mph darts. He mixes in a very good slider that he throws around 30-40% of the time, and which he uses against lefties and righties alike.
The big difference driving his large splits by FIP is home runs. Lefties don’t hit many, and righties hit a few. So if the M’s have a chance here, they’re probably going to need a HR from Morse, Morales or, if you’re still in the ‘he’s changed!’ camp, Smoak.
Iwakuma’s got his own HR problems, but he was brilliant in his first start against a lefty-heavy line-up. The White Sox don’t have as many lefties, but he’s still going to have to be careful with his fastball to guys like Konerko and Rios. More of the same, Hisashi.
Line-up:
1: Gutierrez, CF
2: Bay, LF
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Montero, C
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Seager, 3B
8: Andino, 2B
9: Ryan, SS
SP: Iwakuma
If you’re going to get Ackley some rest, this is the game to do it. Of course, this is his 2nd time sitting against a lefty in a week. Boy am I glad the M’s don’t have any more of those ‘part-time’ players. This does mean that the M’s might have a better answer against Sox closer Addison Reed than bringing on a cold Jesus Montero. I understood the decision, but Reed is essentially the worst possible pitcher for Montero to face, particularly coming off the bench.
So a day or so after I write that the M’s OF defense won’t be TOO bad for a variety of reasons, yesterday’s loss turned (in part) on some poor defending and a terrible throw on a sac fly that gave Chicago its 4th run. I still believe the M’s won’t be legitimately awful, but that doesn’t mean the M’s are going to have some ugliness in high-leverage situations.
Go M’s!
Game 6, Mariners at White Sox
Felix Hernandez vs. Dylan Axelrod, 10:10am
Happy Felix Day! Which do you prefer: a morning of Felix dominance that gives you the afternoon and evening to reflect on and marinate in his genius? Or a full day to look forward to Felix; being able to slough off the daily indignities of work and life because Felix looms a few hours away?
Dylan Axelrod made several starts for the White Sox last year after slicing through the upper minors. He’s a 30th round pick out of UC Irvine who started out in the system as a reliever, before taking to the rotation in 2010. He commands four pitches and limits walks, while his outpitch slider allows him to get a fair number of Ks (and have issues facing lefties). All told, he’s something like a poor man’s Brandon Maurer – he’s got an 88-89mph fastball, but he only uses it 45%-50% of the time, with his slider around 35-40%, and a curve ball and a change-up to round out the arsenal. Like Maurer, he didn’t really have HR issues in the minors, but he gave up a fair few last year, though of course his home park probably played a role in that. This should be a good match-up for Kendrys Morales and may be the kind of opponent Smoak and Ackley need to get it going a bit. Franklin Gutierrez gets the night off after a night game both to give him a rest and because this isn’t an ideal match-up for him. The M’s saw him in the spring; here’s hoping they do a bit better today.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Seager, 3B
3: Morales, DH
4: Morse, RF
5: Ibanez, LF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Ackley, 2B
8: Shoppach, C
9: Ryan, SS
SP: King Felix
Other random tidbits:
Julio Morban’s off to a hot start for AA Jackson, with 5 hits in two games. Gabriel Guerrero’s still finding his feet with Clinton, going hitless in his first couple of games. His uncle Vlad Guerrero just signed a contract with the Long Island Ducks, where he’ll be joined by former Cy Young winner Dontrelle Willis.
Some of us were exchanging perplexed tweets about this while it was going on, but the Spring Koshien high-school baseball tournament just ended with 16-year old Tomohiro Anraku making headlines for throwing 772 pitches in a week. He opened with a 232 pitch 13-IP complete game, then a few days later threw 159 in another complete game. He rounded out the week with 130+ pitch complete games on back to back days (!) before pitching in the final. Exhausted, and with his velo down 6-8 MPH or so, he got pounded and his team lost 17-1. Apparently, this has set off some discussions in Japan about high-school workload, particularly around these tournaments. Just in time, too, as the Summer Koshien starts in a few months.
Jeremy Bonderman makes his Tacoma debut today in Fresno, while Hector Noesi begins his attempt to look nothing like Hector Noesi (at least the Noesi we’ve seen in the Mariner system) for AA Jackson. Matt Anderson starts for Clinton; he’s an interesting arm the M’s signed as a free agent last year.
Go M’s!
Franklin Gutierrez Is Baseball
Here’s one thing that’s true about baseball, by design: for every single season, there is a World Series champ. It’s not like there’s ever a year where the commissioner is like “well actually no, no one deserves it this time.” Somebody has to win. Somebody gets a trophy and a dog pile.
Here’s another thing that’s true about baseball, not necessarily by design: in every single season, every single team has a chance of winning it all. Some teams, of course, have better chances than others. And teams like this year’s Astros and Marlins test the extremes of probability. But even the Astros and Marlins have some chance. It is not literally impossible that the Houston Astros are the 2013 world champions.
We all go in with some understanding of our favorite teams’ chances. This year, Nationals fans have high hopes. Mariners fans have lower hopes, justifiably, but hopes are there, present, even if the hope rationally feels somewhat unreasonable. These days a lot of us look at preseason standings projections, and those projections spit out records and playoff odds, but unstated in the projections is the fact that the error bars are huge. Dave has written about this before, but a projected .500 team is really projected to win something like 70-92 games. Maybe the bars are wider than that. If you expect that the Mariners are a high-70s win team on true talent, then that doesn’t mean they can’t finish last, and that doesn’t mean they can’t finish with baseball’s best record. We aren’t actually that good at predicting the baseball future. The error bars overlap in so many infinite ways that any combination of outcomes has a chance of coming true.
And it’s the uncertainty on which we depend as fans. Baseball would be a hell of a lot less popular if we always knew what it was going to do, where it was going to turn and where it was going to twist. Uncertainty leaves room for emotion, for biases, for daydreaming. For being a fan, basically. All of us, every single one of us has the opportunity to let our imagination get out of control, and it’s all based on one simple principle: every single player in the major leagues is amazing.
Yeah, the Astros look dreadful. But in truth, the Astros are amazing, and the talent differences between the Astros and the, I don’t know, Reds, individually, are barely there. The players on the Astros are among the very best baseball players in the entire world, and if you watched them just practicing in your neighborhood or something, you’d be blown away. All of them can pitch really well, and all of them can hit really well. Who’s a guy who sucks? Rhiner Cruz? Rhiner Cruz can throw almost a hundred miles per hour. Rhiner Cruz doesn’t suck. Rhiner Cruz is amazing.
Everybody in major league baseball is great at baseball. Which means everyone’s always capable of having an outstanding game, which means any team can always beat another team. Robert Andino? Unbelievably skilled. Dustin Pedroia? You can’t even fathom how skilled.
Because everybody is amazing, we get to think about upside. Downsides are always present as possibilities, but we try to think about them less. Take just about any team, and consider giving them a 95-67 record. A team that finishes 95-67 probably has an excellent chance of winning the World Series. What would it take for that team to win 95 games? Break it down individually. Maybe this pitcher needs to sustain his gains, or take a step forward. Maybe this hitter needs to break out, or this position player needs to stay healthy. It might be a leap to, say, give the Padres 95 wins. But all that big leap is is a bunch of combined littler leaps, and none of the litter leaps, individually, looks all that far-fetched. Why couldn’t Jedd Gyorko have a solid rookie season? Why couldn’t Chase Headley repeat, once he’s healthy and back in the lineup? It’s so easy to believe in the players by themselves, which makes it so temptingly easy to believe in groups of the players, no longer by themselves.
Even if we don’t want to admit it, at the beginning of every season, some part of us is thinking about the World Series. That’s why we care about wins, after all. Wins wouldn’t mean anything were it not for the playoff structure, and the playoff structure wouldn’t mean anything were it not for the championship. We won’t actually give up on the title until our team is eliminated, mathematically or effectively. Until then, we’ll think about the races. Until then, we’ll think that it could be the year. We’ll look for reasons to believe ours is the team of destiny.
Everybody gets to believe they might be in for an amazing season. Everybody willingly participates in this borderline delusion, and in fact without it, baseball would be duller than it is. Everybody starts with dreams. Ultimately, almost none of those dreams come true. For roughly 97 percent of dreamers, those dreams get dashed at some point. Maybe they’re dashed early on, when a team stumbles out of the gate and never finds a groove. Maybe they’re dashed later, after a crippling losing streak, or a series of injuries, or a bunch of close losses. Maybe they’re dashed in the playoffs. But only three percent of everybody gets to smile at the end. Everyone else is left to consider how they should’ve seen it coming. Most dreams, in hindsight, are nothing but dreams, no more substantial, no more fruitful than a wish on a dandelion.
We know full well that, for most people, the dream won’t come true. Yet we know full well that, for some people, it will. We want to be able to hang onto the dream for as long as is possible. It’s the existence and preservation of that very dream that gives baseball its soul. When the dream is alive, our fandom’s alive. When our fandom’s alive, this whole investment makes actual sense.
It’s only been a few games, but I can’t help but notice that Franklin Gutierrez is batting .412 with a couple of dingers.
Game 5, Mariners at White Sox
Blake Beavan vs. Jose Quintana, 5:10pm
One of the big questions coming into the season was: how bad will the M’s outfield defense hurt the pitching staff? Jason Bay was a comically bad defender (by UZR) in his Pittsburgh days, and that was when he was 7-8 years younger. The last image we had of Mike Morse in an M’s uniform before he was shipped to Washington was of the newly-minted OF getting turned around by a pop fly and tearing some knee ligaments. Now, those two guys, both past 30, would patrol LF fairly regularly.
In fact, I don’t think it’s going to be *too* much of a problem, though let’s be clear: no one’s winning a gold glove here.* One reason is that the M’s probably won’t yield anywhere near as many fly balls as they did last year. The M’s posted the 27th highest GB% in baseball last year, about a percentage point higher than last-place Oakland – the M’s had only one true GB-guy as a starter in Hisashi Iwakuma, but he didn’t take a turn in the rotation until the season was half over. This year, Iwakuma figures to pitch more, and Jason Vargas has been replaced by Joe Saunders, whose career GB% is about 10 percentage points higher. But the biggest change could come in the 5th spot. 2012 Blake Beavan (like 2011 Blake Beavan) was an extreme fly-ball pitcher. After a mechanical adjustment and a new, higher arm slot, Beavan got a flurry of ground balls in the spring. Will it carry over? If it does – if his GB% looks more like the league average and less like Chris Young’s – then the M’s corner OF may have less to do this year.**
The other reason I don’t think it’s going to be too much of a problem is that the M’s OF defense wasn’t actually all that good last year. Not only did the M’s see their CFs post oddly poor numbers, the M’s had to suffer through a depressed Chone Figgins logging several hundred innings in LF/CF. Now, while this “2012 versus 2013” comparison can’t actually tell us if the M’s OF defense is good, bad or indifferent compared to the *league* average, it does show that we may not see the kind of drop-off that many of us expected. Sure, there could be a drop off here or there, particularly in RF, where the M’s won’t get a half-year of Ichiro, but this could be balanced by some standard regression toward the mean from Saunders/Guti in CF. I’d still really like the ground-ballier version of Beavan, though. Better safe than sorry, and better to have Brendan Ryan field the ball in play than anyone.
Jose Quintana’s a left-handed starter who seems unremarkable in just about every way. His FB’s 91. He throws a cutter and a curve; neither is terribly noteworthy. He doesn’t get a ton of strikeouts, and he doesn’t have Beavanesque walk rates. Even his W/L record last year was 6-6. I suppose we could talk about how he posted excellent results after his call-up in May, but faded badly down the stretch? He did those things. Uh, ok, moving on – He’s somewhat interesting in that he was pitching with the Yankees Dominican Summer League team at age 20 (already having been cut by the Mets a few years prior), and didn’t actually reach the US affiliates until he turned 20. He posted solid but unremarkable numbers as a reliever, and got cut. The Yankees moved him to the rotation, and he had a great season in the Florida State League, and so they cut him again. The next year, 2012, he began in AA and ended up making 22 good-ish big league starts. That’s something, right? Overcoming adversity, never giving up, laughing at the Yankees player development system? Not every game is Felix versus Chris Sale or something.
Have a line-up:
1: Gutierrez, CF
2: Saunders, RF
3: Morales, 1B
4: Morse, DH
5: Montero, C
6: Seager, 3B
7: Bay, LF
8: Ackley, 2B
9: Ryan, SS
SP: Beavan
* Not Gutierrez, you ask? No. He’s been hurt several times, passed 30 years old, and may not play enough to stick in the minds of voters. The playing time consideration may have been a factor in JJ Hardy beating out Brendan Ryan last year. I don’t think Guti’s anywhere near bad (you hear me, UZR? You take your 2012 math and shove it.), but he’s not the defender he was in 2009.
** There’s a school of thought that says that as total chances go up (if there are a lot more FBs), then those chances will tend to be easier. That is, if you’ve got pitchers that no how to induce contact at particular launch angles, you’ll get more easy flies and fewer liners and long HRs, because if pitchers consistently gave up contact like that, they’d never be in the majors. UZR actually accounts for this to avoid OFs with a lot of chances posting amazing UZR numbers. Still, there’s a possibility this impacted, say, Josh Reddick’s eye-popping defensive numbers. No such luck for the M’s, though, as Guti/Saunders combined to lose 17 runs, according to UZR. This has been a Blake Beavan game write-up that’s only obliquely about Blake Beavan.