Game 100, Indians at Mariners
Erasmo Ramirez vs. Zach McAllister, 7:10pm
Wooo, 100 games! Through 99 games last year, the M’s were 43-56. Through 99 games in 2011, the M’s were 43-56. In 2010, they were 39-60. It’s been rough in recent years, and the play of Brad Miller/Nick Franklin and the incremental improvement to today’s 47-52 mark is welcome. The M’s recent hot streak has seen them retake 3rd place from the Angels, and while that’s a somewhat meaningless consolation prize, I suppose we’ll take it. There have been no prizes in recent years, with the exception of every day of Felix Hernandez’s existence.
Erasmo Ramirez gets a second chance to lay claim to a rotation spot today. His first start wasn’t good, as he was wild and largely pitched without his change-up…the pitch that got him to the big leagues and that he used to great effect after joining the rotation in 2012. Only ten of his 100 pitches against Boston were cambios; he used it on over 22% of his 2012 pitches. Could’ve been a one-game fluke, but it was a pattern I noticed in his last start in AAA Tacoma, immediately prior to his start against the Red Sox. I’m not sure if he’s having trouble getting a feel for the pitch after his injury layoff, or if he’s not commanding it, or what. After that game in Tacoma, I speculated that Seattle may have asked him to throw more curves/sliders, but that obviously wasn’t it. In any event, that’s a pitch he’s going to need if he wants to get back to where he was down the stretch in 2012. His command is obviously critical as well – the Red Sox (a good hitting team, of course) didn’t chase pitches and forced Ramirez into bad counts (last year, 38% of his pitches came when he was ahead in the count compared to just 28% the other day).
I feel like I’ve talked more about Zach McAllister in these game previews than just about any other pitcher, with the exception of Jerome Williams. If you’ll remember from last year, McAllister garnered some attention by posting an almost absurd gap between his ERA (4.24) and his RA (5.60). His ERA and FIP were dead on, but McAllister allowed a ton of unearned runs. You can argue that this wasn’t his fault, but he’s now pitched 208 MLB innings, or about a full season. And in that time, he’s allowed 29 unearned runs. 29! CJ Wilson’s another guy who racks up unearned runs, but not even CJ can match McAllister’s pace. Ok, ok, this has nothing to do with the game, or his performance against the M’s, but for reasons I don’t really understand, I find this fascinating.
McAllister’s a fastball/slider/change pitcher who throws his four-seam around 70% of the time. In that respect, he reminds me a little of Doug Fister, who came up throwing nothing but fastballs and gradually morphed into a (very good) pitcher with command of several breaking balls.* He throws his FB about 92, and has fairly normal movement for a guy with a 3/4 delivery. Somewhat unusually, he uses it differently to righties and lefties. Against right-handed bats, he’s strictly by the book: he likes to keep the pitch down and away, though he throws middle-away too (perhaps because his command isn’t exactly pinpoint). But against lefties, he keeps the fastball UP and away, not down. As a result, his batted-ball profile changes a bit. Righties hit a few grounders, lefties almost none. It’s a somewhat unusual pattern, but something his teammate Ubaldo Jimenez has employed this year as well. Both of them have GB% that are lower vs. lefties than against righties. As of yet, it hasn’t really hurt him – that is, he hasn’t yielded a flurry of HRs to lefties, and his fastball’s appears to be one reason why. When the batter’s ahead, they are essentially guaranteed to see a four-seam FB. Despite this AND the platoon advantage, lefties haven’t annihilated his fastball. His change isn’t used enough to say much, but in the tiny sample, lefties haven’t had much of a problem driving it. It’s the FB that they’re only so-so against. That’s going to be interesting to watch tonight, as the M’s lefty-dominant line-up will see quite a few fastballs. And after years of being historically futile against FBs, the M’s are suddenly 2nd in MLB in pitch type run value against them.**
1: Miller, SS
2: Franklin, 2B
3: Ibanez, LF
4: Morales, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Saunders, RF
8: Zunino, C
9: Ackley, CF
SP: Erasmooooo
In the minors tonight, Jimmy Gilheeney starts for Jackson, who would just like to play a $#@%ing baseball game one of these days. Steven Ewing starts for Everett who play host to Tri-Cities. Tacoma played this morning, with Andrew Carraway starting against Tucson. Perhaps inspired by Erik Bedard’s bizarre outing against the M’s, the command artist walked five in five innings but didn’t give up a hit. He left with a 4-0 lead, and before the quips about his “guts” or pain tolerance, he’s just back from injury. Unfortunately, the bullpen allowed six runs to score in the sixth, and the R’s are currently behind. Josh Kinney did most of the damage, though the just-demoted Bobby LaFromboise let all three inherited runners score, then gave up a HR in the following inning. Ouch.
Today’s rehabbers include Mike Morse, who knocked a double vs. Tucson, and Franklin Gutierrez, who’s 0-3 as the DH today.
* And, I’d guess that part of Fister’s fastball-reliance was due to pitching coach Rick Adair’s belief in establishing/commanding the FB.
** Yes, I’ve been wary of using pitch type run values in the past, but at a team level I think it could be relevant.
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65 Responses to “Game 100, Indians at Mariners”
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That was a little lucky, terrible baserunning by the Indians.
Dodged a bullet, that time. Nice win.
$8 off all tickets tomorrow night. At this rate, I might have to make a trip over the mountains!
HA! That game was awesome
It’s nice to see another team’s mistakes coming back to bite them. That run in the first was basically bad baseball by Cleveland and the pinch runner kind of lost it.
Bottom line is tonight we won this game with solid defense and a couple breaks. Cleveland put the ball in play most of the night and we made very play.
I have to say also…..does Zunino make a huge difference behind the dish for the M’s? He has stolen more strikes since his call up than we have seen in quite some time.
He also knows how to stop balls from going to the screen. We lose this game with Rob Johnson behind the plate.
It is really nice to watch a defensively competent catcher. It’s been SO LONG since our primary guy wasn’t a train wreck back there… Maybe since Dan Wilson? I don’t recall Johjima being great in defense, and certainly most everybody since then has been horrid.
Robby gives a pretty good postgame interview too.
I should say, I grew up in the Bay Area, and was a big Giants fan in the late 80’s and early 90’s when he was playing second for the Giants. I don’t know if he would be any better than Wedge as a manager, but he has a better personality, and for what its worth, he was lot better player as a professional.
Or Montero, or Shoppach, or Blanco or even Jaso. Memories of Danny Wilson. Westy is right on with that call.
Johhima was a pretty good defensive catcher, maybe not quite as good as Wilson, but he was very good. Much better than Johnson, Moore, Olivo and the rest of the parade of horribles. His bat was a lot better than them too.
Totally forgot about Olivo. I’ve seriously had high school catchers better than him.
I remember Joh’s bat… I just didn’t have any memories, positive or negative, about his defense.
Didn’t they claim Joh couldn’t frame a pitch or something? And then pitchers didn’t trust him, blah, blah…
Careful what you wish for, guys. After they sent him packing back to Japan, it went really downhill.
Ben Davis! I’ll never forget him taking a ricochet off the plate to the cup and went over like a redwood felled by an axe!
Yup, at the moment that a lot of Mariner fans were rejoicing that Johjima chose to go back to Japan (and it must be admitted that he had an overly generous contract), I warned that within a year Mariner fans would be lamenting “Where have you gone Kenji Johjima, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you”.
And sure enough, the Mariners have had several years of truly atrocious catching. Defensively and offensively. I remember going to a game where the Mariners visited the Angels and a friend, looking at the video screen when the players’ batting averages were being displayed, asked why the Mariners were using a catcher who was batting .190. My reply was: “Because their other catcher is batting .150!”
Johjima was nothing special as a catcher but at least he was above replacement level.