Never Forget To Be Patient
(Game thread posted just below)
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The Mariners are about to get underway in New York, and starting for Seattle will be Hector Noesi. The last time Noesi started in New York, he gave up five runs in seven innings, with five hits in two-strike counts. That was a game that got a hell of a lot of people frustrated. But this isn’t by design — Aaron Harang is a little bit hurt — and this also isn’t a post about Hector Noesi. Because another guy starting today for the Mariners is Brendan Ryan, at shortstop.
It was early on April 24 that Brendan Ryan was benched in favor of Robert Andino. From the linked article:
Just to clarify, I asked Wedge point-blank whether the pair were flip-flopping roles — Andino the starter and Ryan his backup.
“Yeah,” he said. “What I’m going to do is take it day-by-day, week-by-week and month-by-month, quite frankly,” Wedge said. “And I’m going to give Robert a chance to play and see where he takes it. I liked what I saw with his work and his approach this spring. I don’t feel like it’s been as good here in-season.”
The news caused a stir, because Ryan is better than Andino is. They’re basically identical hitters, in that they both suck, but Ryan’s a spectacular fielder while Andino’s an okay one, so in terms of overall value, Ryan comes out ahead, almost unquestionably. A lot of people didn’t understand why the Mariners were going to make themselves worse. It’s not like Andino is some kind of prospect. He’s 29 years old. He hasn’t been a prospect for more than half a decade.
This is going to be the Mariners’ 19th game since that news was delivered. Over that course, Andino has started at shortstop seven times, while Ryan has started at shortstop 12 times. The day-by-day breakdown, from oldest to newest:
- Andino
- Andino
- Ryan
- Ryan
- Andino
- Ryan
- Ryan
- Andino
- Ryan
- Andino
- Andino
- Ryan
- Andino
- Ryan
- Ryan
- Ryan
- Ryan
- Ryan
- Ryan
It’s not like Andino’s been hurt. He just started a couple times in a row in place of Dustin Ackley, who might be working on something on the side. But where it looked like Andino might take over as the Mariners’ regular shortstop, Ryan looks like the starter again just a few weeks later. He hasn’t earned it by hitting. Ryan hasn’t started to hit. But Andino also hasn’t hit, and this was probably more about trying to get Ryan to relax and take a step back.
Which is fine. With this move in particular, it’s not necessarily like the Mariners were ignoring Ryan’s defensive value. If the Mariners didn’t realize how much Ryan can do in the field, he wouldn’t still be on the team. I think the Mariners just wanted to give Ryan a break, which would be in their longer-term best interests. Ryan gets frustrated easily, and the Mariners don’t need for that frustration to consume him. Picking Robert Andino over Brendan Ryan for a little while isn’t the same as picking Andino over Ryan, just.
More generally, I think it’s important not to overreact to news like this. Sometimes a player needs to be dealt with, even if his numbers are better than those of his backup. I think a common, kind of similar issue is the matter of the opening-day roster — people spill a lot of emotion over who does and doesn’t break camp, even though the roster is constantly changing. A guy who makes the bullpen might be out of a job a week and a half later. It’s good to have opinions, it’s good to have analysis, but it’s important to be patient. Criticize what you want to criticize, but don’t get overly critical until it’s actually warranted. Until a bad situation has played out for too long.
I guess this is along the same lines as the post I wrote the other day, about young players getting days off. I don’t really trust baseball managers on their strategy, and I don’t really trust them on their analysis or interpretation of statistics. If there’s one area where I do most trust managers, it’s on the day-to-day handling of personalities. They have to decide when a guy needs a day and when it’s right to push him, and while they won’t always be right in what they do, that’s where they have the biggest information advantage over an outsider. That can’t be ignored, or overstated. There’s a reason I seldom complain about lineups.
Too often, people act like a controversial bit of news is a big deal. Few things are big deals. It’s always fine, and downright encouraged, to think critically, but try to save the strong words for when they most make sense. Have patience, in sports and in everything.
Game 40, Mariners at Yankees
Aaron Harang whoops Hector Noesi vs. Andy Pettitte, 4:05pm
Your Mariners begin play tonight tied for second place with the free-falling Oakland A’s. With the A’s off, the M’s have a great chance to wrest control of 2nd and jump into the fringes of the wild card chase. It’s somewhat funny that we all thought the addition of the Astros would give the AL West an advantage in the wild card hunt, but instead the AL Central has four teams ahead of Seattle, with one (the White Sox) only a game or so back.
Speaking of somewhat funny, tonight’s pitching match-up would have been a must-see game in 2006. Aaron Harang peaked with a pair of five-win seasons in 2006-07, while Andy Pettitte sandwitched five-win seasons around an injury year in 2003/2005*. While Pettitte’s had an up-and-down campaign thus far, he’s coming off a bizarrely effective 2012 (after retiring in 2010), and he claims to have made mechanical adjustments that led to a successful start five days ago. We’ll see. Aaron Harang has *really* been up and down, and apparently, it doesn’t matter, as he’s been scratched with back stiffness. The thought of skipping Harang’s spot in short-porchy Yankee Stadium is a great one, but be careful what you wish for, M’s fans. Today marks the 2013 starting debut for ex-Yankee Hector Noesi.
This is the spot where’d I’d point out that Pettitte, especially during his comeback, has been death on a stick against lefties, largely thanks to an effective cutter. I’d also point out that Hector Noesi is HECTOR NOESI, and that his lack of HRs allowed is just sitting there, taunting me and muttering about the Gambler’s Fallacy. On paper, this is just a weird, weird looking game. If the past few days are anything to go by, Noesi will throw a shutout and Ibanez will homer off of a Pettitte cutter.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Bay, LF
3: Seager, 3B
4: Morales, DH 1B
5: Morse, RF
6: Ibanez, DH
7: Montero, C
8: Ackley, 2B
9: Ryan, SS
SP: :deep breath: Hector Noesi
While it’s tempting to gorge on the incongruity of it a game like tonight’s M’s game, I’m going to head to Cheney Stadium for the first of a four game set pitting the Rainiers against the Memphis Redbirds. Before the season started, I targeted this series as the match-up of the two potentially most prospect-laden teams in all of minor league baseball. If you think I’d like to backpedal from that statement now, well, thanks, that’s very kind of you….just a little…yeah, there we go. I thought Taijuan Walker would be assigned to Tacoma, that Hultzen would be healthy and that Carlos Martinez would be in Memphis. But Walker’s in AA, Hultzen’s in the training room and Martinez skipped AAA and is in the Cardinals bullpen. Still – these games feature two of the absolute best position-player prospects in all of baseball in Mike Zunino and Oscar Taveras. Pitching for Memphis is another top prospect, RHP command-artist Michael Wacha, who would probably be in St. Louis now if the Cards rotation wasn’t already incredible. If you feel like getting out to a game this weekend, you should probably head down to Tacoma and check it out. Jimmy Gilheeney starts for Tacoma in Hultzen’s place tonight, but the whole series has a lot of interesting match-ups to watch as MLB’s #1 and 2 (or thereabouts) minor league orgs face off.
[Edit to add: another reason to check out the game tonight? Franklin Gutierrez will DH in his first rehab start.]
* Pettitte’s biggest WAR year? Way back in 1997, when the M’s were setting HR records, making the playoffs, making regrettable trades for Heathcliff Slocumb, and when a young Andy Pettitte put up a 7 win season for a solid team but lost to Jaret Wright and the Indians in the ALDS.
A Farm System Podcast, with Jay!
Jeff was otherwise occupied, but I wrangled Jay (aka JY) into my digital audio lair and held him hostage to talk about the minors. We touch on both a high level overview of the minor league philosophy of the Mariners and their player development and also get into some specific player details. I hope you enjoy.
Podcast with Jeff Jay and Matthew: Direct link! || iTunes link! || RSS/XML link!
The Big Inning
Most importantly
I don’t know a damn thing about Preston Claiborne. Never heard of him in my life. Until today, anyway, and now I can tell you that he’s a pitcher on the New York Yankees. A few years ago he was drafted in the 17th round. Today he retired Dustin Ackley for the third out of the top of the first inning. Another thing I know about Claiborne is that he wasn’t today’s scheduled starting pitcher for New York. That was Phil Hughes, and Hughes didn’t get scratched shortly before game time. He took the mound, and he yielded to Claiborne, after having registered two outs. He did not leave hurt.
Hughes was pulled after allowing seven runs on six hits, two walks, and a dinger. He faced ten batters and got two of them out. The dinger was a grand slam by Raul Ibanez, as he followed up yesterday’s also-impressive dinger, and though I’d rather have Ackley dingers than Ibanez dingers, I’d rather have Ibanez dingers than no dingers, and I’m not going to allow myself to overthink this. Instead of playing favorites, I’m just going to settle for the fact that the Mariners hit a grand slam and knocked out the Yankees’ starting pitcher in the first. That’s a good way to recover from last night’s crushing disappointment, or what must have felt like a crushing disappointment to the players. Seven runs in an inning for the Mariners is more than they’ve scored in all but six full games.
If the Mariners win — and they’re in good shape — they’ll catch the A’s for second place in the AL West. Of course, a better way to put it might be that the Mariners would catch the A’s for fourth place, with the Rangers occupying the first three places, but at least the Mariners are more or less meeting expectations, while the A’s and Angels are falling short of them. If you can’t climb the tree, maybe the tree will fall down. In a wind storm. This wasn’t well thought through.
Least importantly
It’d been a while since the Mariners knocked a pitcher out in the first inning. You have to go back to August 28, 2007, when the Mariners blitzed Ervin Santana. In the span of seven batters, Ichiro and Adrian Beltre tripled, Jose Guillen doubled, Kenji Johjima singled, and Jose Vidro and Raul Ibanez walked. That game was part of Lollablueza, and I remember standing and cheering in my room as Santana trudged slowly to the Angels’ dugout. That was one of the last times the Mariners played a truly meaningful baseball game with real playoff implications. Of course, after the Mariners went up 5-0, they scored one run the rest of the way, while the Angels scored ten. The Angels won 10-6, they swept the Mariners on the Mariners’ own field, and the Mariners found themselves in a tailspin that got humiliating before it ever mercifully ended. There are a bunch of ways to fall out of a playoff race, and the 2007 Mariners might’ve found the quickest. Because of course a seven-run first inning in New York had to come back to Lollablueza. You just couldn’t let me fully enjoy this, baseball.
This was the first time the Mariners have knocked a pitcher out in the first inning during the Jack Zduriencik Era, if you have a thirst for symbolism.
Somehow even less importantly
On April 9, Brandon Maurer got knocked around by the Houston flipping Astros, facing ten batters and getting two of them out. That was the 53rd time in Mariners history that a Mariners starting pitcher failed to make it out of the first. Today was the 54th time in Mariners history that an opposing starting pitcher has failed to make it out of the first. The Mariners are winning statistical competitions you didn’t even know existed. Granted, some of these were due to injuries, and not performance, but don’t examine too closely. Just be happy with the broken deadlock in the Mariners’ favor. Think about this the way you think about a Raul Ibanez grand slam. Which is to say, smile, and think about it only very briefly.
Game 39, Mariners at Yankees
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Phil Hughes, 4:05pm
So, last night’s game sure was a kick in the mouth, wasn’t it? Felix dominated, but came out with a classic Mariner no-decision. In addition, he tweaked his back and had to come out after the 6th. Then, the bullpen self-immolated with a big assist from the home plate umpire. And of course, Raul Ibanez decided to kick Dave and I extra hard by putting up two hits including a homer. People asked me what I thought of the home run off of CC Sabathia, and honestly, I thought it was awesome/hilarious. To be honest, I was still giggling a bit from Ibanez’s 2nd inning infield single (!). I mentioned it on twitter, but Ibanez’s performance last night was the greatest troll in this blog’s long history. I’m sorry Mr. Unethical!!! pizza dude, you’re now in second place.
It highlights that everything we talk about – from Nick Franklin’s possible promotion, to Tai Walker’s chances of making it a MLB starter to line-up decisions – comes down to probabilities. The people who say that you can’t know anything, and that baseball’s too unpredictable to be reduced to a spreadsheet are completely right, of course. None of us would actually like baseball if this truism wasn’t, er, true. So while it’s frustrating to see a team put out a sub-optimal line-up, reducing their chances of winning from, say, 55% to 48% or whatever, that doesn’t mean we can’t root like hell for an anomalous event. If Brendan Ryan hits three home runs tonight, I think I might actually, physically die, but if he hit two home runs tonight, I’d find it hilarious and welcome and beautiful. I would not like to build a team that depended on such rare events, however.
So let’s talk a bit more about Nick Franklin and his chances to outhit RyAndino. Dave’s post below is well-reasoned, and the overall point is clearly, clearly right: you need to regress Ryan/Andino’s performance before you can figure out how much better/worse any replacement (Triunfel, Brad Miller, Nick Franklin) would be. The problem is that projections have a narrower spread than actual MLB players. There are perfectly valid statistical reasons for this, and it’s one reason you essentially never see anyone forecast to hit 40-45 HRs. Projections are going to have a higher floor than baseball players, and some of that is because part-time players won’t get the opportunity to regress towards the mean, and some of that is because teams find a few guys on their midst who are, in fact, *ex*-baseball players.
I’m not ready to say that Brendan Ryan is totally kaput as a major leaguer. The man still appears to have good range in the field. But is it crazy that a 31-year old with a best-part-of-a-decade long career of having a bat that *nearly* outweighs his amazing glove may have tipped over the line and become replacement level? The two players I associate with Ryan most are Jack Wilson and Adam Everett, two amazing fielders and not-so-hot hitters who had long careers thanks to their defensive exploits. Everett was beset by injuries at 30, but stuck around to have a half-decent half-year at age 32 in Detroit, but was done as a regular at 29. And even at 31-32, Everett made much more contact than Ryan. At 31, Wilson had a great year in the field and a bad-but-acceptable year at the plate (split between Pittsburgh and Seattle). The following year, his performance in the field and the plate slipped, and he only got into 61 games. In 2011, at 33, he was essentially done. Here’s the funny thing though: you know what his ZiPS/Steamer projections are? For this year, 2013? About a .254 wOBA. Essentially right at Brendan Ryan’s rest-of-season projection. Brendan Ryan’s ROS projection essentially ties him with retired, formerly awful hitters. The Wilson Line is basically the projection system’s floor.
The point here is that we need to know what mean to regress Ryan/Andino’s toward. This is where scouting could help, but there’s probably no way to definitively resolve the question. It’s possible, and it’s looking more possible each day, that Brendan Ryan just isn’t an everyday player anymore. That’s tough, because he’s still likely an asset in the field, but it’s possible that the non-slumping version of Ryan just isn’t worth waiting for. Robert Andino is younger, but offers less defense, and his declines in contact and K% are starting to become concerning. In any event, he’s a replacement level player, and not getting younger. Nick Franklin likely isn’t a SS, but at this point I doubt his lack of range is going to be the difference between the M’s finishing at .500 or not. At some point, the M’s need to figure out who *can* play SS going forward. No matter how they do from now through September, Ryan and Andino are not in the running.
The M’s face Phil Hughes tonight, a fly-balling righty. As you’d imagine, a guy who pitches in New Yankee Stadium and has ground ball rates right around 30% has a bit of a home run problem. He’s got decent stuff, however, so he’s managed to carve out a frustrating but decent career. He’s been a fastball-curve-change guy his whole career, but seems to have switched to a slider thus far in 2013. That hasn’t helped his platoon splits, and it’s a bit early to know what to make of the change. It’s clearly something he worked on; this isn’t a pitch fx algorithm glitch, he made this change deliberately. He’d had a cutter for years that wasn’t quite MLB-caliber, but he’d all but abandoned it by 2012. The change in 2013 is using the slider in lieu of his hook – particularly to righties. In any event, he’s got to worry about his fastball, as he gave up 25 HRs on the fourseam last year, and he’s at 6 so far this year in just over 40 innings. Let’s go Seager/Saunders.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Ackley, 2B (!)
3: Seager, 3B
4: Morales, DH
5: Morse, RF
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Ibanez, LF
8: Montero, C
9: Ryan, SS
SP: Iwakuma
You Cannot Replace Past Performance
One of the most common questions I get asked is why won’t the Mariners bring up Nick Franklin to play shortstop, considering how poorly Brendan Ryan and Robert Andino are hitting right now. This seems to be the primary question Mariners fans are asking every writer, as Larry Stone also tackled this subject yesterday, noting that the Mariners SS tandem is hitting worse this season than the average NL pitcher. As Stone notes, even if Nick Franklin were the worst defensive shortstop in baseball, the upgrade from his offense over what the Mariners have gotten would more than outweigh the drop-off in glove work.
But here’s the thing – when you exchange one player for another, you are not replacing what they’ve already done, but you’re replacing what they’re going to do in the future. It’s one thing to note that Ryan/Andino have hit like pitchers in the first six weeks of the season, but that’s not the future baseline you work from. No matter how down you are on these two, there’s no reason to think that they’re going to keep hitting this poorly.
Ryan is truly one of the worst hitters in baseball, but that’s been true of him for basically his whole career, and he’s had extended slumps not that different from the one he’s in right now. For instance, from June 25th to September 20th of 2008, he hit .145/.244/.171 over 86 plate appearances, then had a few good games right before the season ended and followed up the second half collapse with the best offensive year of his career in 2009. From June 6th to July 22nd in 2010, he hit .141/.196/.192 over 111 plate appearances and nearly lost his job as the Cardinals everyday shortstop. They stuck with him, though, and he hit .266/.307/.320 over his final 219 PAs during the rest of the year.
Hitters as bad as Brendan Ryan and Robert Andino are going to have long stretches where they look totally helpless at the plate. They’re scraping the absolute minimum acceptable offensive line for a Major League player, so when we watch them hit and then watch other big league hitters actually do some damage, it can be easy to suggest that Ryan (and Andino) will never hit any better than they are right now, because of their total lack of offensive skills.
The reality is that terrible hitters can underperform too, so right now, Ryan and Andino are underperforming even their own low level of expectations. And it won’t last.
What you actually want to compare Franklin against is what you’d get from Ryan and Andino in the future, not what they’ve done in the first month and a half in the season. You’re replacing future production, not past performance. And while Ryan and Andino are terrible hitters, they are terrible hitters who should be expected to hit better in the future than they have so far.
You can see daily updated forecasts for every player on the Mariners roster at the new FanGraphs Depth Chart page. From now through the end of the season, the forecasts call for Robert Andino to post a .269 wOBA, while Brendan Ryan posts a .258 wOBA. Those numbers suck, but Nick Franklin’s forecast wOBA is .298, a 30-40 point improvement, not the 100-150 point improvement you’d get if you ran the calculation versus past performance.
The easiest way to translate wOBA into runs produced is that two points of wOBA equals one run per 600 plate appearances. So, 30-40 points would be 15-20 offensive runs over the course of a full season. We have less than a full season remaining, so now, the gap is more along the lines of 10-15 runs.
Do you really think it’s unlikely that a guy who scouts think belongs at second base really can’t be 10-15 runs worse with the glove a guy who is among the best defensive shortstops in baseball? Even if we think Ryan has declined some defensively, or is taking his offensive issues into the field with him, you’re looking at a guy who is probably at least still above average, so conservatively, you could call him +3 to +5 runs over the rest of the year. Do you really not think Nick Franklin might be a -10 shortstop over four months? Do you remember Yuniesky Betancourt?
I know it’s frustrating to watch Ryan and Andino make outs, and having a complete offensive black hole at the bottom of the line-up is the kind of thing that makes you think that anything would be better than the status quo. But, in this case, I think the Mariners have made the correct evaluation . Brendan Ryan and Robert Andino aren’t this bad at the plate, and the offensive gap between their current tandem going forward — the only time period that matters — and what Franklin would provide in the future isn’t nearly as large as you might think.
If the Mariners had a time machine and could go back to Opening Day, then yeah, they should use it to swap out Franklin for Ryan or Andino, and the upgrade they’d get from making that move would be substantial because of how bad the veterans have been. But that’s not how things work, of course, and no change now can undo what has already happened. You can only evaluate what you expect to happen going forward and put the players you expect to perform the best in the future on the field. Right now, the reality is that the future offensive production gap won’t be nearly so large as the current one, and given the defensive difference, there’s not really a huge upgrade to be made by making the switch.
Whatever
The strike that ended the game:
It hardly matters. For one thing, it was Mariano Rivera against Michael Morse. For another, even as a ball, it still would’ve been a full count. And there was nobody on base, and Kelly Shoppach was up next, and I’ll repeat that it was Mariano Rivera. The Mariners, almost certainly, weren’t going to rally in the top of the ninth. But that was the game’s final strike. The pitch was inside the right-handed batter’s box, very slightly. Add Jerry Layne to the list. Unless he was already on the list, which he probably was, because all the umpires are already on the list. I don’t remember what the list looks like because it’s gotten way too long.
Lots of hitters strike out against Mariano Rivera. I guess at least this way Morse gets to go to sleep knowing that Rivera didn’t beat him.
A Reminder Of Somewhat Critical Importance
Some time ago, a report came out of somewhere suggesting that, within the Mariners organization, there was disagreement concerning Jesus Montero’s playing time. The Mariners have since downplayed anything of the sort, and of course we should expect that there would be some disagreement, since an organization includes a lot of people and a lot of people have a lot of opinions. Disagreement only matters if it gets ugly, and right now there are no signs of an organizational schism. Outside of the schism between the second and third slots in the starting rotation.
But this hits at something I want to talk about more generally. Montero is a young player, and people always want young players in the majors to play as often as possible. Now, from Ryan Divish:
Even if Montero isn’t in the line-up, that doesn’t mean progress isn’t being made. At the big league level, a day out of the line-up for a “work day” can be quite beneficial. With Montero, those work days include plenty of work on drilling, refining and ingraining certain catching fundamentals.
“That’s why we give him good work days,” Wedge said. “Those are huge. And for him, a young player, he has to step away from it. It’s such a grind.”
We’ve given the Mariners crap when we’ve thought they were wrong, so it’s only fair to highlight when they’re doing something right. And though this isn’t rocket science, the Mariners are right to give Montero some breathers. Less specifically, Wedge is right on — days off aren’t days off. Every day is a work day, and it’s just that sometimes, that work day doesn’t involve a game against another team.
Whenever — whenever — a young player is out of the lineup, people bitch. In part they bitch because they selfishly just want to see the young guy play, since young guys are interesting and exciting, but they also bitch because they think sitting is bad for a player’s development. Fans want young players to develop. Fans figure development comes from playing in games against high-level opponents. What good does it do to have a young player sit on the bench, when he could be getting more regular reps in the minors?
Playing baseball isn’t just about playing baseball games. It’s also about everything that goes on in between, and there is so much work that gets done outside of the nine competitive innings. Of course, there’s no substitute for standing in against CC Sabathia or Mike Trout or whoever, but that doesn’t mean it’s wasted time. Playing a guy too much might wear him down. It might get him feeling overwhelmed, the way you might feel about work if you never got weekends. Sometimes a break is necessary to clear the mind and recharge. And sometimes time off is how you implement important changes and tweaks.
In the majors, players learn real fast about their strengths and weaknesses. So it becomes a priority for the weaknesses to be addressed, and it’s not like they’re only addressed during game action. They’re considered in practice, and should there be adjustments attempted in throwing or hitting mechanics, those can take time to sink in and start to feel comfortable. You’re basically re-writing muscle memory, and if you try to change a guy in the afternoon and then play him at night, you run the risk of having any progress erased. In higher-stress situations, players are likely to revert to what’s most familiar, and that might not include the latest tweaks. Those tweaks need to be repeated, so they can come naturally. That’s the course of improvement.
It should go without saying that there’s a balance, and there would be such thing as a young player in the majors who isn’t playing enough. If you promote a young hitter and just sit him on the bench, he won’t get enough opportunities to put his skills to the test. It’s important to participate in competitive action, and better to have a developing player play a bunch in the minors than not very much in the bigs. But just because a young guy is in the bigs doesn’t mean he has to play all the time. Just because a young guy gets a lot of days off doesn’t mean his team is crippling his development. There’s always work being done, and we don’t know nearly enough to be able to justify criticism of a team for sitting a prospect. If anything, young guys would be the most prone to feeling overwhelmed. And when one feels overwhelmed or generally stressed out, little of substance gets accomplished. Focus and development don’t automatically follow from playing as many major-league innings as possible.
Fans always want to see the younger players every day. You can’t blame them; the younger players are the players with spice(!). But sometimes it’s in a guy’s long-term best interests to “watch a game,” as they say. Sometimes to watch a few games, while putting a lot of work in on the side. We generally suck at considering long-term best interests, when they disagree with the immediate preference. Give baseball people a break. Everybody wants their young players to get better. Baseball people don’t always make the right decisions, but it’s not like fans are player-development experts themselves.
Game 38, Mariners at Yankees
King Felix Hernandez vs. CC Sabathia, 4:05pm
It’s nice to be back after a short vacation break, and it’s nice to get back into baseball with a pitching match-up like this one. Both are Cy Young winners, both have been exceedingly durable and successful, and both were, at one time, the owner of the richest contract ever handed out to a pitcher. There’s another similarity as well: just as last year, Felix’s missing velocity in April was a big story, so too is Sabathia’s sudden drop. Felix’s velo had been slipping for years, and while it was down substantially in April of 2012, he soon recovered much of that missing zip, and his fastball velocity by August looked pretty much exactly like his fastball velocity in the previous year. CC’s velocity decline has been more rapid and more severe. From 2008-2011, Sabathia’s average four-seam fastball velocity *for April only* was 94mph (the range goes from 93.7-94.4). That dipped in 2012, to 92.5 mph. This year? 90.7. That’s a drop of over 3 MPH in two years, with a particularly large drop-off this season.
Now, as with Felix in 2012, this big drop hasn’t really manifested itself in poor results. His K% is down from 2011-12, but it’s right about where it was in 2010. The same goes for O-Sw%, or contact rate. From what we can tell, CC’s largely (heh) the same pitcher he’s been for the best part of a decade. It’s just he’s not blowing FB by anyone anymore. That said, there’s a reason why people get nervous about velo drops: they are often harbingers of injury*. Again, I’m *less* likely to worry about this type of thing in the short to medium term now because the Felix experience of 2012 is so fresh. You all remember everyone talking about how he was going to need surgery, or his time as an ace was over. People tut-tutted about his workload or about his his breaking balls, and then Felix kept on Felixing and the declinists shut up. That could happen here, too. But it’s just stunning to see CC Sabathia’s average velocity come in behind Hyun-Jin Ryu’s, Mike Leake’s, Wade Miley’s and Jose Quintana’s.
Of course, the one thing that CC’s always been able to do (and is still quite capable of doing) is detonate left-handed hitters. His best pitch is a hard slider at 84mph, and while he throws it to lefties and righties alike, it’s absolute death on lefties. Lefties are slugging .229 on the pitch since 2007, and they’re 2-14 with 10 Ks this year. When an at-bat ends with a slider, lefties have 87 hits and 18 walks compared to *329* strikeouts. Lefties own a career wOBA of .281 off of him, or the career wOBA of Matt Treanor. You probably know where this is going, don’t you?
Eric Wedge has tapped veteran leader Raul Ibanez to be his designated hitter today, matching the wily veteran against the left-handed Sabathia. Sure, the platoon splits here are staggering, but grit doesn’t slump. Snark aside, like many of Wedge’s moves, there’s the kernel of a recognizable, logical argument in there somewhere. It’s just hard to see past the 800lb gorilla that’s waving its arms and singing Pat Benetar tunes. Most of us would focus on the anomalous sight – the gorilla with a penchant for 80s rock. Wedge may be applying his laser-like focus to Ibanez’s 2012 home/road splits. Ibanez famously had a late-career resurgence by targeting new Yankee Stadium’s short right-field porch. He hit 14 HRs there in less than 200 at-bats, good for an OPS near .900 and a free-agent contract with the M’s. Indeed, this park is great for lefties, and Mike Saunders and Kyle Seager have to like their chances. But the other part of Ibanez’s great season last year was that he was strictly platooned. 85% of his PAs came against righties. How many of his 14 home HRs came off lefties? Well, none of them. That’s not to say he couldn’t hit one tonight. But if you’re making a line-up to give your team its best chance to win, it’s exceedingly hard to argue that Ibanez should DH against CC Sabathia as opposed to, say, Jesus Montero.
Line-up:
1: Saunders, CF
2: Bay, LF
3: Seager, 3B
4: Morales, 1B
5: Morse, RF
6: Shoppach, C
7: Ibanez, DH
8: Andino, 2B
9: Ryan, SS
SP: King Felix
Happy Felix day, everyone.
Yes, yes: the M’s have scored fewer runs than their overall wRC+ or total batting line would predict. This has led to a focus on sequencing and, taking things a step further, luck (or lack thereof). But look at the bottom of that line-up and ask yourself how odd it is that the M’s have fewer runs than you’d expect given their total number of hits and walks. Ibanez/Andino/Ryan, versus CC Sabathia. There’s luck, and then there’s a line-up with a dead spot in it – a bottom of the line-up that seems scientifically designed to strand baserunners. Now sure, Ryan and Andino will most likely regress towards the mean a bit, and Ibanez may too. But it stings a bit to see Felix out there in Yankee Stadium with a chance to knock-off the bombers AND CC Sabathia…and to see the bottom of that line-up.
So I’ve been gone, and I’m just catching up on baseball again. Jeff’s articles below are great, and I wanted to take a look at the claim that Morse and Morales aren’t swinging at more pitches (which seems to possibly be a proxy for “pressing” in coachspeak). I like to use the Brooks Baseball data to help account for pitch-fx oddities and pitch type algorithm screw-ups, so let’s take a look at his hitting profile. In his career, his swing rate’s fairly high, and it’s noticeably higher low in the zone and low OUT of the zone. Normalizing for all right-handed hitters, the pattern’s the same, just more extreme. Morse *really* likes low pitches. Selecting just 2013, the pattern’s essentially unchanged. Same for Morales. Here’s the career swing rate by zone, and here’s 2013. There are occasional differences, as there would be with so few pitches in 2013, but the overall picture is clear: Morales like to swing at pitches, and he has continued liking to swing at pitches in 2013.
Aaaah, Dustin Ackley. I’ve been a bit more pessimistic on our erstwhile prospect/franchise player, but that doesn’t mean watching him struggle (and get benched to let Robert freaking Andino start at 2B) is any fun. It pretty much would be unprecedented for a guy with such good contact skills to flame out as completely as Ackley’s doing this year, but it’s also really, really hard to succeed if you can’t draw walks or hit for power. At this point, Ackley isn’t drawing any walks because he’s incapable of punishing pitchers for living in the strike zone. That can’t change unless he fundamentally alters his approach (take fewer pitches) or taps into a lot more power than we’ve seen. Essentially, both require him to be something completely different. That’s not impossible, of course. Michael Saunders was completely, thoroughly terrible for a few years, and needed to become a completely new, non-crappy baseball player, and lo and behold, he seems to have done it. It’s just really rare. He’s 25, the age Saunders was when he figured things out. You don’t want to turn 26 without figuring things out (sorry, Justin Smoak).
There’s a potentially interesting debate over WAR (no, seriously) brought up by Jon Heyman’s twitter queries going on. Colin Wyers has a piece at BP arguing that Heyman’s essentially right to point out some of the…oddities in early-season WAR, and argues that WAR should regress fielding metrics to account for their greater volatility (they tell us less about a player’s true defensive talent). You should read it. There are things to quibble with all around, and I think sabermetrics has been better about responding to critiques from sportswriters than Wyers intimates here (see the harmonizing of replacement level by Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference). But the overall point seems solid – too often, we (raises hand sheepishly here) attack a decent question because it comes from the “wrong” kind of fan/observer/reporter. This really *can* turn neutrals off, as they see these frameworks as closed boxes that no one’s allowed to tweak or question. And it’s a shame, because while I actually agree that a regression of in-season defensive numbers would be awesome, I firmly believe that the defensive run numbers are a relatively small component of the actual arguments about WAR. They are in Heyman’s example, and improving the metrics we have sounds great to me. But that just highlights that WAR *can be* a really useful way to think about player valuation, and a great way to hone in on exactly how different people value different skills. Or it can be a totem, a sacred cow that we either rally to defend, no matter what, or mock and disdain without looking into it. Just personally, I run into a lot more of the latter than the former in my day to day life, but that doesn’t mean “they started it” arguments work here.
I was looking at the standings today, and noting how freakishly similar things stand to the way they were a year ago. One year ago today, the M’s were a bit under .500 and sitting in 3rd place behind the Rangers and the roughly.500 Oakland A’s. The Angels were really struggling, and sat quite a ways back in fourth. Today? Yeah, all of that still applies. Sure, the division’s been child-proofed by having a new floor installed made of soft, non-toxic Astros, but other than that, 2013 looks a hell of a lot like 2012.
* Not that pitchers really need harbingers of injuries. The act of pitching puts someone at greater risk of injury, so we’re just arguing about degrees of risk here.
The Mariners Shot at .500 Runs Into New York
| MARINERS (18-20) | ΔMs | YANKEES (24-14) | EDGE | |
| HITTING (wOBA*) | -9.9 (23rd) | 1.7 | -9.7 (22nd) | Yankees |
| FIELDING (RBBIP) | 9.7 (6th) | 2.7 | -4.0 (20th) | Mariners |
| ROTATION (xRA) | 10.2 (8th) | 2.4 | 5.4 (10th) | Mariners |
| BULLPEN (xRA) | 2.1 (12th) | 1.4 | 11.0 (1st) | Yankees |
| OVERALL (RAA) | 12.1 (13th) | 8.2 | 2.6 (17th) | MARINERS |
It seems far-fetched for the Mariners to actually be rated a better team than the Yankees here. I don’t think it is. First, the above categories do not capture everything about a baseball team. They capture a lot, and they capture what I feel comfortable with, and am able to, quantify on my own.
Secondly, other systems agree that the Mariners have slightly under performed their record while the Yankees have over performed theirs. The gap between the two teams in actual standings is six games. Baseball Prospectus’ third-order standings, which uses expected runs scored and allowed adjusted for opponents has the two team just two games apart.
The Yankees are coming off a double header yesterday. Perhaps that little extra fatigue can play into the Mariners favor this series.