Game 97, Mariners at Astros
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Erik Bedard, 4:10pm
Ah, Erik Bedard. Misunderstood? Unlucky? Guy with a flukish career year? Overly associated with Bill Bavasi? Like many of you, I actually like Bedard – I really enjoyed the brief stretches of healthy Bedard from 2009-2011, and if there weren’t enough of them, well, we can’t really hold that against him any more than we get angry at Franklin Gutierrez. He appeared to take a clear step back last year, as his ERA topped 5 and his walk rate crept back up over 4/9. This earned him a DFA from Pittsburgh, but saber-inclined fans pointed to his OK FIP and the fact he didn’t appear to have any health problems as a reason to take a flyer on him. Houston did, and they’ve been rewarded with a small uptick in velocity and new, hellish horizontal movement on his pitches. Unfortunately, his FIP’s finally regressed back to where his ERA was last year.
At his peak with Baltimore, he ran Iwakuma-like 48-49% ground-ball rates, along with great K rates. He never had Iwakuma’s command, but he missed more bats and didn’t have Iwakuma’s home run problem. Well, he’s got it now. Through the years, Bedard’s GB% has moved downward in two big jumps. It dropped precipitously upon his arrival in Seattle, then held steady at around 42% for several years. This year, it’s a Beavanish 35%. Houston’s not the park where you’d want to be a fly-ball pitcher, though, to be fair, his home park hasn’t really hurt him yet. The bigger problem has been his steadily diminishing ability to get right-handed hitters. Like Iwakuma, Bedard ran reverse splits at his peak, and his career FIP is still worse against lefties than righties. A great curve and a change will do that (or a splitter, in Iwakuma’s case). After years of dominating righties, he’s now struggling, having yielded 30 XBH to them so far in 2013 and a wOBA of .349. In 2012, his wOBA against was .342; this is a small sample, but it’s not miniscule.
The M’s obviously have a very left-handed line-up these days, but Bedard’s been worse against lefties too. In any event, this will be a great test for Brad Miller and Dustin Ackley. Miller’s coming off his best game as a big leaguer, and while it’s extremely early, I’m already starting to wonder where he’ll place on next year’s Fangraphs trade value list. Dave mentioned that he toyed with the idea of including him *this* year, which would’ve been premature, but it’s a testament to how good Miller’s looked. A lefty-hitting, gap-powered shortstop with the ability to be an above-average MLB hitter this year/next year is incredibly valuable. If he avoids the Dustin Ackley career path, he’ll be someone to build around for a decade. It’s absurd how optimistic one really good shortstop can make me.
1: Miller, woooo
2: Franklin, 2B
3: Ibanez, LF
4: Morales, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Bay, RF
8: Zunino, C
9: Saunders, CF
SP: Iwakuma
Tai Walker had another good outing last night, throwing 5IP and giving up 1R, to *raise* his ERA to 0.86.
The big starters in the M’s system today are all in the low-low minors, as Tyler Pike takes the hill for Clinton of the Midwest League, and Luiz Gohara starts for Pulaski in the Appy league.
Comments
69 Responses to “Game 97, Mariners at Astros”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Condor!!
That hill out there is so dumb, though. They really need to get rid of that.
I kind of like having Saunders bat last – all the fastest guys are together that way.
Not just the hill – also that flagpole!
Who designed that park?!
Hoping we hit a HR in the final inning, so that we can keep the streak alive.
What a catch Condor!
One hit and we still win.
Woo hoo!
One hit and Bedard stuck with the tough luck loss. That is some Mariners ish right there.
^ Yeah, he probably had flashbacks – Bedard may have been confused as to which locker room he needed to head to afterwards.
Nice WIN, that is a few in a row.
Seems things are different since the young guys arrived.
Besides an isolated event, anybody have anything POSITIVE to say?
I’ll start.
Smoak, Franklin, Miller, Seager, Zunino.
That is a Pretty Good Future.
These guys will NOT be traded, they have a chance to grow together as a unit. As Mariners.
I’m happy to see Saunders coming back around the past several weeks. I’m also happy to see Kuma have a solid game.
No dingers?!?!? What a disappointing game…
Saunders’ hit would’ve been a dinger in a lot of parks – but the Astros have a hill where a fence should be.
After 97 games…
2013 Mariners: 45-52 RS 387, RA 437 (diff -50)
2012 Mariners: 42-55 RS 384, RA 397 (diff -13)
Last year’s team was apparently somewhat unlucky.
This year’s team has finally pulled ahead of last year’s team in runs scored! But they’ve really taken a hit defensively – at least if you believe runs allowed is (in part anyway) a proxy for that.
These guys will NOT be traded, they have a chance to grow together as a unit. As Mariners.
You don’t know that. The M’s have done some pretty stupid things, I wouldn’t put anything past them.
I am suspicious of any mid-season run differentials from last year, due to them scoring 31 runs in 2 games.
But, yeah, I would say the M’s got pretty unlucky, losing a lot of 5-4, 3-2 and 2-1 games.
They also had 3 stretches of losing 3 1-run games.
The 2012 M’s were perfectly designed to lose one run games. It’s hard to win games when no one can get on base and everyone can strike out.
And of course “the 2013 M’s” isn’t a single item. The team that was trotting out Montero/Shoppach, Andino/Ryan and Ackley at second doesn’t really mean much today.