Game 66, Yankees at Mariners
Roenis Elias vs. Chase Whitley, 7:10 pm
So a couple nights ago, Marc hits me up on e-mail noting that I put up a Saturday game thread and, “since no good deed goes unpunished,” a phrase Marc repeated to me which my grandfather was also fond of, I’ll be taking over for the next three weeks.
Particularly in their pitching staff, the Yankees are featuring a lot of players I can’t remember hearing of prior to this series. Yankees fans likely don’t know who Whitley is either on account of him never having been much of a prospect. He was a two-way player at Troy and intrigued late thanks to his pitching development. What’s changed in his roughly four years in the minors is that his fastball has gained a little life, now averaging around 91, and he’s ditched his below-average curve in favor of a slider that has been a good pitch for him so far. The change, on the other hand, has not performed up to expectations and his splits give a decided advantage to left-handed hitters. Incidentally, we are running out another lineup that has seven of those. Today’s variation on the theme: Stefen Romero at DH, batting fifth.
RF Endy Chavez
CF James Jones
2B Robinson Cano
3B Kyle Seager
DH Stefen Romeri
LF Dustin Ackley
1B Logan Morrison
C Mike Zunino
SS Brad Miller
Unless you’ve spent the morning under a hole in the ground (that’s right), you probably heard that Jesus Montero has been called up as a spare 1B/DH with Michael Saunders heading back to the DL. If you want a positive take on that, I suppose that you could go with this:
Jesus Montero says he's learned to value the opportunity to play in Majors and wants to do what it takes to stay in big leagues now.
— Greg Johns (@GregJohnsMLB) June 12, 2014
Sounds lovely, does it not? And if you want more positive news, I could tell you that just last night, Montero walked three times, none of them intentional. It’s good to try to be wholly positive now and then. Now I’m going to be less positive.
Here’s some splits for you from Montero’s Tacoma tenure:
April (87 PA): .288/.322/.613, .390 wOBA, 23% Ks, 4.6% BBs
May (133 PA): .252/.353/.351, .314 wOBA, 18.8% Ks, 13.5% BBs
June (35 PA): .290/.371/.419, .340 wOBA, 17.1% Ks, 11.4% BBs
The defensive reports are roughly the same, “runs and defends well for a golem or a prize-winning pumpkin but it’s not so great when you consider that it’s coming from an alive dude.” Thus, you have a lot riding on Montero’s ability to have success with the bat. When I look at those splits, I consider the case of our old friend and former Double Play Twin Jose Lopez. Lopie was always rather aggressive at the plate and could be because he was good at putting the bat on the ball, but when you sat and tried to get him to take a walk, the power would start to disappear. Those were two thoughts that Lopie didn’t seem to be able to hold in his head at the same time as he was holding a bat.
Could Montero? To be honest, I never expected to see him as a Mariner again. I thought he was toast. Now we have him out there as perhaps our DH when we face left-handers. I see the decrease in strikeouts over the past few months and I feel something resembling hope. Maybe he redeems himself by solving the mysteries of the bendy pitch and we ride that heaving train into the playoffs. I don’t know anyone that seems to rationally think he will though.
It raises some questions about how exactly this team has managed so far. As much as we point to the Rangers falling apart and effectively becoming the Round Rock Express, the Mariners haven’t fared exceptionally better. We’ve been running out #6 and #7 starters for much of the season, our non-Cano offseason bat acquisitions of Corey Hart and Logan Morrison have provided negligible contributions, Guti wasn’t even a factor for more than ten minutes of spring training, and the injury/ineptitude of Smoak have had us starting Willie Bloomquist at first. I personally have been more excited to see Cole Gillespie bat than Dustin Ackley. Eat it, 2011 Jay.
So we continue to sit around and await the possible arrival of Ji-man Choi, who will definitely save us all. Go ‘Ners.
2014 Everett Aquasox Preview
I know I say this every years and mean it whole-heartedly every year, but writing an opening day roster preview for the ‘Sox at this stage is an exercise of limited utility. A lot of players haven’t signed, a lot of players will be eased into pro ball and appear later, some guys will only be here to get warmed up and then be off to California (the state) or Iowa. The team that opens the year will bear some resemblance to the team that ends it in that some players will stick around and do baseball until there is no more baseball to do. For now.
Acknowledging what the situation is, the only grade I can conscionably give the Aquasox is “incomplete.” No, that’s a bit lazy. I like the outfield and there are a few players in this group who have some of the best raw power in the system so long as you don’t ask about their contact skills. The group they have catching at the moment is interesting if not good. The infield isn’t going to be great, yet, but the pitching should hold up so long as they don’t walk everyone. One of the players on this roster may be the second coming of Leury Bonilla.
I’ve heard word this morning that Austin Cousino signed, but no, I don’t know yet if he’s going to be on this roster or if they’ll play him higher. Where the draft picks are assigned to play is often a mystery until it isn’t.
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Game 65, Yankees at Mariners
Chris Young vs. Masahiro Tanaka, 7:10pm
After a tough loss, the M’s now face the league’s best rookie (if that’s the right word for someone with so much experience), Masahiro Tanaka. It seems like we’ve been talking about his move to MLB for years (because we have), and the story dominated the off-season. Despite the hype, the incredible NPB stats, and the nine-figure contract, there was still some question about Tanaka’s upside. Everyone loved his splitter, and as it turns out, they were right to. But scouts seemed to agree that his raw stuff and velo weren’t at Yu Darvish’s level, and that it was possible that he’d settle in as a solid #3 starter, which has a lot of value, but not if you pay over $100m for one.
As it’s turned out, Tanaka looks quite a bit like the M’s own Hisashi Iwakuma – he’s using a four- and two-seam fastball, a slider to righties, and of course his splitter. Tanaka’s got a few wrinkles, like a cutter, but fundamentally, they have a very similar repertoire. Like Iwakuma, Tanaka’s been excellent, pretty much from day one, striking out lots of hitters, limiting walks, but giving up a fair number of HRs, especially on fastballs. So far, he’s even showing Iwakuma’s slight reverse splits, as righties have hit a few more HRs off of him, though it goes without saying that the sample’s tiny. Essentially, the Tanaka optimists are feeling pretty good right now, and those that saw him as a league-average pitcher don’t tend to bring that up so much. Tanaka looks like he’s well on his way to a ROY award, and the only question is whether he can continue to be a Cy Young front runner, or if Felix Hernandez completes his transformation into a sentient energy cloud, firing unhittable laser-change-ups at helpless mortals.
This is a tough test for anyone, but last night’s game illustrated some of the M’s injury-driven flaws. They just don’t have a healthy bench right now with Smoak ailing. Using John Buck as a pinch hitter wasn’t the worst thing given the context, but the context shows that the M’s are going to struggle to mount a rally if they’re behind late. So look fastball and get ahead of Tanaka early.
1: Chavez, RF
2: Jones, CF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Seager, 3B
5: Morrison, 1B
6: Ackley, LF
7: Zunino, C
8: Miller, SS
9: Gillespie, DH
SP: Young
Logan Morrison returns from his rehab stint in Tacoma. Justin Smoak moves to the 15-day DL; Smoak had been taking up a bench spot as the M’s hoped to get him healthy, but last night illustrated that they simply can’t hold players who aren’t capable of playing. John Buck PHing in a big spot looks completely insane, but injuries and the 7-man ‘pen made it…well, not ‘smart’ or ‘the best of a bad situation,” but something more like tolerable.
The M’s moved MiLB back-up catcher Manny Pina to the Tigers org for a PTBNL. I basically forgot about this move by the time I got to the ‘P’ in PTBNL. Best of luck to you, Manny, whoever you are.
I’m off for a few weeks, but JY will be around, and he’s a better writer anyway. Go M’s!
Game 64, Yankees at Mariners
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Vidal Nuno, 7:10pm
This is fun. The M’s are playing like a very good team at the moment, and they’ve completely dominated some good clubs in the process. They’re not simply beating up on the dregs of the big leagues – if anything, the dregs are proving stubbornly tough. But against the Angels/Yankees/Tigers, two teams they’ll compete with for the Wild Card, and one team that’s one of the elite squads in the AL, the M’s are a combined 11-4.
Today’s opponent, Vidal Nuno, is a lefty with a pretty good backstory. Drafted in the 48th round out of noted baseball powerhouse Baker College, he pitched in the Indians org for a year and a half before he was cut in 2011. He caught on with the indie league Washington WildThings, then moved into the Yankees system whereupon he shot through the ranks, posting excellent numbers at each level. He made his MLB debut last year in a handful of starts, and has bounced between the pen and the rotation with New York throughout 2014.
Physically, nothing really stands out about Nuno; you can see why he went in a draft round that no longer exists. He’s under 6′, and his fastball clocks in around 88-89mph. He throws a slider to righties and lefties alike, and also has a curve ball and a change which he’ll reserve for right-handers. None of these pitches generates a lot of whiffs, but the overall package isn’t completely awful – he’s barely below the league-average K rate at 18.5%, and his walk rate is just a touch below average as well. In the minors, he shut down lefties, striking out over 35% of them. In his miniscule big league sample, he’s struggled a bit. It may be due to his lack of deception and fastball velocity (lefties have done most of their damage off Nuno’s heater), and it may just be terrible luck – again, he nuked lefties in the minors, and has faced only 59 lefties in just over 300 career batters faced. Teams are aware of what he did in the minors, and they’re aware he’s primarily a FB/SL pitcher, and they’ve set their line-ups accordingly.
His approach seems to be to throw his two-seamer away to righties, and then throw his slider (and to a lesser extent his curve and change) down and in. He’ll aim his four-seam fastball a bit more ecumenically, and has thrown it up in the zone fairly often – a fact which helps explain his awful HR rate at the moment. It’s an interesting inversion of the old pitching coach wisdom of throwing hard stuff in and breaking stuff away, and quite frankly, the jury’s out on whether it makes sense for Nuno to blaze this particular trail, but you’d have to assume it’s a continuation of his approach in the minors – the approach that got him from the Frontier League to the bigs in about a year and a half.
Hisashi Iwakuma’s off to another great start in 2014, with just three unintentional walks and 36 strikeouts in over 50 innings pitched. His K rate’s down a bit, but it seems like an intentional change, as he’s thrown far more two-seamers this year, while throwing very few four-seamers. In his first season, about 6 of every 10 fastballs he threw were four-seamers. That was down to just over 5/10 last season. In 2014, it’s more like 2 of every 10 fastballs. This blizzard of sinkers has produced Iwakuma’s highest GB%, and while it hasn’t eliminated his HR problem, it certainly hasn’t exacerbated it. More interesting to me is that by featuring the two-seamer so much, he’s all but eliminated the velocity and horizontal movement gap between that pitch and his primary weapon, the splitter. His sinker comes in at 88-89, while the splitter’s at 85. This is the kind of thing standard baseball theory typically sees as a problem, but Iwakuma’s had an up-close look at what can happen when you ignore this old saw. Felix Hernandez has cut through the league by throwing a sinker and a change-up at essentially the same speed, and if anything, his change-up is *more* effective now than it’s ever been. Similarly, Iwakuma’s splitter’s been all but unhittable this year despite the gap. Interestingly, at least to me, is the fact that both of them have posted somewhat poor results on their sinker – batters are hitting .353 on Felix’s sinker, and they’re at .347 against Iwakuma’s. Sure, a lot of that has to do with the fact that both use the pitch when they’re behind; it’s their alternative to walking anyone.* Still, both pitchers have arguably never been more effective, and it’s great to see Iwakuma incorporating this lesson from Felix.
Line-up:
1: Bloomquist, 1B
2: Jones, CF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Gillespie, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Zunino, C
7: Saunders, RF
8: Ackley, LF
9: Miller, SS
SP: Iwakuma
SIX lefties in the line-up today, though the M’s injury issues don’t leave them a whole lot of choice. It’s not the worst match-up in the world, especially if they look to get to Nuno early in the at-bat. He throws a lot of first-pitch fastballs, and lefties have seen that pitch better than righties – again, with the caveat that the sample size for lefties is vanishingly small.
The Rainiers are in Memphis today, with Matt Palmer on the hill against Zach Petrick. Clinton’s at home against Burlington with Jose Flores on the hill for the Lumberkings.
* This is actually an interesting strategic problem; what level of damage can you accept on one pitch if it makes another bullet-proof? I’d love to see the swing rates and whiff rates on change-ups/splitters immediately after a sinker as well.
Podcast: Felix the Juggernaut
Monday morning podcast(s) continues/begins.
King Felix King Felix King Felix King Felix King Felix King Felix King Felix King Felix King Felix King Felix King Felix King Felix
Podcast with Jeff and Matthew: Direct link! || iTunes link! || RSS/XML link!
Thanks again to those that helped support the show and/or StatCorner work in general last week, and in the past, and hopefully in the future. It’s truly appreciated.
Game 63, Mariners at Rays
Erasmo Ramirez vs. David Price, 10:10am
I should talk about this game, about David Price, or the frustrating arc of Erasmo Ramirez’s short career, but I can’t. As an M’s fan, the fact that another game is just about to start hours after the last one ends is brilliant. It’s an absolution, a cleansing, and many, many M’s games have required this process. It’s not even the hope that the next game will be better, it’s just that you can’t let yourself linger on a painful closer meltdown, or one of those games that foregrounds how much better some team is than the M’s.
This, then, is the opposite of that. I’m kind of angry that Erasmo Ramirez, even David Price, are going to step onto the same mound and perform routine baseball actions on them while the last notes of Felix’s symphony are still in the air, still trying to push the roof off of the stadium. I love Jeff’s post below because it hit on something that became clear in yesterday’s game. The Rays knew not only what was coming, but where it would be, and they couldn’t hit it. Someone on twitter mentioned that the Rays were just swinging – swinging like they had no idea what was coming, a fastball, a slider, a change-up, a honeybee, an oily rag. Their swings left that impression, I guess, but I was struck at how *obvious* it all was, at least the ends of the at-bats. Felix was going to throw a change-up, and it would be from the knees to just off the ground. Felix and Zunino all but TOLD the batters exactly what he would throw, at what speed, to what location, and it was like knowing made it harder to hit it. Like some weird Felix’d version of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
So I’m angry that these teams are playing at 10 in the morning, and that we’ll have to talk about Price’s trade value or Erasmo Ramirez’s something or other today. I’m oddly jealous of every other sport, where the transcendent has room to breathe, where it has its own news cycle.
Fine, here’s your line-up:
1: Bloomquist, 1B
2: Jones, CF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Romero, LF
5: Zunino, C
6: Seager, 3B
7: Gillespie, RF
8: Buck, DH
9: Miller, SS
SP: Erasmo, whatever.
15 Strikeouts In 16 Screenshots
Sometimes you just don’t need a .gif.
1
Today’s Fun Fact
Earlier against the Rays, Felix Hernandez did something extraordinary. He set a new career high in strikeouts, and he became just the fourth Mariners pitcher ever to record at least 15 strikeouts in a single start. Felix was brilliant, obviously, and while sometimes achievements are only revealed to be brilliant upon in-depth analysis, Felix’s brilliance would’ve been apparent to a blind dead person. Joe Maddon thought Felix was better today than he was when he threw his perfect game. Felix was just putting fools away, and while I’m not saying all the Rays players are fools, everyone’s a fool trying to bat against Felix Hernandez. At least, for now, as Felix is pitching at an inconceivable level.
So, you don’t need to get analytical to appreciate what Felix is pulling off. But I do want to throw one thing your way, to function as a Felix-loving supplement. Felix’s whole game, mostly: trying to pitch down in the zone. That’s the goal, and today, out of 100 pitches, Felix threw 61 of his pitches no higher than two feet off the ground. Many of those were in the zone, low; many of those were beyond the zone, low, yet still good pitches. Curious about significance, I went over to Baseball Savant. I looked for Felix’s highest single-game low pitch rates, from 2008 to the present day. Here’s a table of the top ten:
| Rank | Game | Rate | Catcher |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6/2/2014 | 65.8% | Zunino |
| 2 | 6/8/2014 | 61.0% | Zunino |
| 3 | 4/11/2014 | 58.7% | Zunino |
| 4 | 6/20/2013 | 58.6% | Blanco |
| 5 | 4/16/2014 | 58.3% | Zunino |
| 6 | 5/23/2014 | 56.9% | Zunino |
| 7 | 3/31/2014 | 56.3% | Zunino |
| 8 | 4/26/2014 | 56.1% | Zunino |
| 9 | 8/23/2013 | 55.8% | Blanco |
| 10 | 5/18/2014 | 55.7% | Zunino |
Sunday’s performance: No. 2, since 2008, and probably of Felix’s whole career. The only start with a higher rate of low pitches: Felix’s previous start, in which he dismantled the Yankees. In fact, look over the whole table. You see eight starts from this season alone, and two from last year, caught by Henry Blanco. You don’t find a start from before last season until No. 14, and then not again until No. 20. Felix has always wanted to work down. Now he’s doing it more than ever, and though I’ve indicated this before, it’s worth a quick re-visit. Implied is that Felix has better command than ever. Implied is that Felix has more trust in his catcher to get strikes than ever. Implied is that Felix is constantly executing.
Felix started out great this year. Then he hit something of a rough patch, lasting perhaps as many as five starts. Within that slump, Felix was ill and he lost a lot of weight. Anyhow, he’s clearly back to normal now, where by normal I mean this year’s normal, which is abnormally amazing. Of note: during the five-start skid, Felix threw 46% of his pitches at two feet or below. In the other nine starts combined, he’s thrown 56% of his pitches at two feet or below. Here’s what those starts look like together:
| Stat | Slump | God |
|---|---|---|
| GS | 5 | 9 |
| IP | 31 | 67 |
| H | 36 | 46 |
| BB | 9 | 8 |
| K | 21 | 85 |
When he wasn’t at the top of his game, Felix was late-career Pedro Martinez. The rest of the time, he’s been prime-of-career Pedro Martinez. That’s what we saw today. That’s what we’ve been seeing a lot of. You can’t excuse Felix’s whole slump just because he was sick for a part of it, but even 2000 Pedro Martinez had a six-run outing, and a start in which he gave up three dingers. More often than not, Felix and Mike Zunino have worked together to generate Pedro-level results. I know that sounds insane, but, Felix has been kind of insane. Look at what he just did to the Rays, and then look away at something else, and then look back again at what he just did to the Rays. Consider how amazing you know that is. Consider you’re already burdened with the bias of expectations. Hitters against Felix are swinging underwater.
You know what FIP is. FIP- is like ERA+, where FIP is adjusted for park and compared to league average. An FIP- of 100 is average, and an FIP- below that is better than average. Kenley Jansen has a career FIP- of 55. Aroldis Chapman’s at 57. Mariano Rivera came in at 63. Felix Hernandez right now on the year is at 51. Felix Hernandez is a starting pitcher. Felix Hernandez is our starting pitcher. And he’s the biggest reason why the Mariners are presently in a playoff position. Where, in a one-game playoff, the Mariners could conceivably hand the ball to Felix Hernandez.
Game 62, Mariners at Rays
King Felix vs. Chris Archer, 10:40am
Happy Felix Morning!
The M’s pulled out another win yesterday as Alex Cobb continues to struggle. With Cobb, Jake Odorizzi and David Price underperforming their peripherals, you could make the case that Chris Archer’s the best Rays starter at the moment. Archer, the righty the Rays got from Chicago in the Matt Garza trade, has the best FIP of any starter (though they’re all bunched pretty tightly around 3.5) in the Rays rotation. He’s got an above average K rate, and while his walks have been higher than his colleagues’, the real story has been the way he’s limited HRs.
That sounds great – Archer’s been effective in a season-plus of work, but he’s struggled with HRs, especially to lefties. He’s shown Sean Green-like platoon splits coming into 2014, making right-handers look like the average pitcher, while he made all lefties something like Mike Trout or Joey Votto. This year, he’s seeing more lefties than ever, and suddenly he’s effective against them. The major change he made this year is throwing a lot more sinkers instead of four-seamers, which helps explain the rise in his GB rate, and, by extension, some of the decline in homers.
But it’s not enough on its own. Archer’s still fundamentally a fastball/slider pitcher; his career splits may have been inflated by bad luck, but he *should* have some fairly large splits. The fact that he’s given up exactly zero homers to lefties may be due to some improvement in how he uses his slider to them, but it’s much more likely to be a fluke. So far, so standard-sabermetric theory and all. That said, Archer’s slider is pretty interesting, and throughout his career, he’s struck out more lefties than righties. Archer’s slider is thrown around 87mph, about 8 mph slower than his plus fastball. It clearly breaks gloveside, as a slider would, but the thing that stands out is its vertical drop. It drops 8″ relative to his sinker, or 11″ relative to his four-seam. A splitter, like Cobb’s or Iwakuma’s, is an effective pitch to righties and lefties because the horizontal break isn’t terribly important. It’s a little bit like a sinker’s or a regular fastball’s, which should produce platoon splits, but it doesn’t. Archer’s slider may work in the same way; maybe the vertical drop essentially overwhelms the horizontal “slide” and renders it a more neutral pitch.
The line-up:
1: Chavez, LF
2: Jones, CF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Seager, 3B
5: Zunino, C
6: Ackley, DH
7: Gillespie, RF
8: Miller, SS
9: Bloomquist, 1B
SP: King Felix
Game 61, Mariners at Rays
I’m still sitting here, typing away at draft-related stuff, so why not throw up a thread? I’m not going to be as in-depth as Marc here, but I can do something.
The lineup again has a new look, with the order running with Chavez in left, Jones in center, Cano at second, Seager at third, Zunino behind the plate, Ackley at DH, Gillespie in right, Miller at short, and Bloomquist at first. Production-wise, we could’ve been batting our first baseman ninth the past month anyway. Saunders is out because his right shoulder is barking at him again. Smoak is out not due to lack of performance but a sore quad which has slowed him down from “stone in Racetrack Playa” to “possibly a pre-climate change glacier.” Ji-Man Choi should be back into Tacoma within the next couple of days. I am merely saying.
On the mound for the Mariners is beloved enigma Roenis Elias. I swear, I knew about him before this year. On the mound for the Rays is right-handed change-up artist Alex Cobb. Note that this year he’s allowing a .160/.192/.280 line against left-handers and a .288/.379/.397 line against right-handers. It seems like justification to play Gillespie to me [he hit a dinger as I typed this!], but I also probably would have thrown Romero out there to see what happens. The change is Cobb’s only consistently above-average pitch for his career, so playing strict L/R splits seems less than wise.
Today’s game start was delayed by the tribute to Don Zimmer. I wish I had something more substantive to say about someone who has had such an impact on baseball all around the world. I’m trying now to learn more about him via Wikipedia and have picked up that, before he even made the major leagues, he was hit in the head by a pitch and knocked unconscious for nearly two weeks during which time they had to drill multiple holes in his head to relieve pressure. Batting helmets have added so much to the game.