2014 MLB Draft Open Thread (Rounds 11-40)
This thing is still going on? And it isn’t even halfway done? Okay, look, one of the issues in spreading the draft over three days is that by the time you get into third day or even parts of the second day, the enthusiasm by those outside of the industry is pretty much burnt up. If it’s left to just one day you can sort of psych yourself into plowing through it or run off the excess energy whereas falling into exhaustion and then starting up again half a day later feels like a less practical use of one’s time. And you’re pushing it into a weekend? The weekend should be there to recover from the draft. I don’t think anyone is listening to me but danged if these don’t seem like reasonable complaints. Also you’re never going to generate enthusiasm for something with this erratic a yield. But I see no real reversal to it.
Day two brought the M’s mostly pitching. They bookended with a good defensive CF and a bat-first catcher and in the middle picked up a lot of college pitching. Of the pitchers, we had one junior draftee, one Juco guy, and four seniors. This would suggest in a way that the M’s expect to spend a lot of money on the combo of Jackson and Morgan just to get them signed and are scaling back a bit in order to do so. For example, the 7th round pick last year got $10k from us, the 8th rounder got $20k, and rounds nine and ten split $10k evenly between them. If the Mariners can get similar value from some of their senior signings, then appeasing Boras Jackson becomes easier.
What do I think of what’s going on so far? You could go the route of saying that most of these players will suck, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Its the same rationale that would allow you lazily to say that x position player won’t stay at their most taxing defensive position or y pitcher doesn’t have enough to start. Or you could treat it as that regular, fresh influx of names and talents that distracts us from the larger issues going on, much like say, the news does. The draft succeeds in diverting our attentions from the fact that the Rays had lost ten in a row before Erik Bedard schooled us last night. Or it at least puts in an effort.
Yarbrough and Ratliff seem somewhat similar, lefties with better than average fastballs who might have the secondary offerings to keep starting, though Ratliff is more raw on that front (he doesn’t even have a Perfect Game profile, but Twitter suggests to me that he’s worked out with the Mariners so I guess they saw something). Altavilla and Kerski are both undersized right-handers who get “bullpen” tags as a result. Altavilla has better stuff by a good margin, but the effort in his delivery seems to scare people and the M’s have generally put their high-effort guys in the bullpen pretty quickly. Byrd seems to be similar to last year’s seventh-rounder, Tyler Olson, in that he’s a left-hander with a good record who pitches off his breaking ball. Miller reportedly has average-to-slightly-better stuff but lacks much decent command of it.
The look of things is so heavy on college players right now that it seems a little weird. Could the first two picks go through that much money? Do Cousino or Altavilla or Ratliff really expect that much? We’re in a position now where it seems like the M’s could go for a tougher sign guy and attempt to throw a lot of money at him, but since the new rules went into effect, we haven’t really seen the M’s try that all that much, let alone succeed at it.
Let’s get to it then. Another thirty rounds. God, I hope we draft Handsome Monica.
Draft Truths
We don’t know if the Mariners drafted well. Hell, the draft isn’t even over yet, although the important bits are. But, we don’t know if the Mariners did well, and in a sense, we never will. This might be the most important point: player careers represent solitary player-career outcomes. For each player, we get an n of 1, and complicating matters to an impossible extent is that there’s drafting and there’s player development, and they both combine to make a player product. Take Jeff Clement. Who could forget Jeff Clement? Clement didn’t work out. Did he bust because he was a bad pick? Did he bust because he was developed poorly? Did he bust because of simple bad luck, like, say, because of a series of injuries? How much of that was the Mariners’ fault? How much of that was the fault of the Mariners people who scouted and drafted him?
If it weren’t for Clement, the Mariners would’ve drafted Troy Tulowitzki. Tulowitzki, as it happens, currently leads the majors in WAR. Was Tulo destined for this, or has Colorado done him a lot of good? What would the Mariners have made with the same ball of clay? Maybe you feel like I’m over-thinking this, but given how much dialogue is exchanged over the amateur draft, it’s critical to realize to limits of our knowledge. We’re not literally clueless, but we’re damn close. The Mariners drafted players yesterday, and today, and they’ll draft more tomorrow, and those players will have futures, and we’ll never be able to say with certainty whether or not the draft was genuinely a good one.
I mean, there’s Dustin Ackley. He’s got a career WAR just an inch higher than Tulowitzki’s 2014 WAR. Everybody in the world loved Ackley at the time. Was that actually a bad pick, or did the Mariners develop Ackley poorly, or did Ackley just mess himself up somehow? If the whole process were to repeat 100 times, how many times would Ackley end up the disappointment he is today? We’re about at the point where we can stop pretending he’s going to figure stuff out tomorrow or the next day. He’s 26 and he doesn’t do the two things that were supposed to be automatic.
The Mariners have a very bright, dedicated scouting staff. The same could be said of pretty much every other team, and each organization has its good and bad apples. The Mariners know a hell of a lot more about each of these players than we do, as they’ve been personally scouted for weeks or months or years, and as many of them have been personally engaged with. It’s kind of exciting to know that the Mariners have someone who believes strongly in literally everyone getting selected. It generates a lot of fan confidence. Just about every player selected by every team has someone who believes strongly in his skills. Most players are drafted with conviction. Most players ultimately go nowhere. It’s not a whole event built around lies, but it is founded upon focusing on upside while pretending the downside isn’t there. Every pick is a long shot, but the scout that internalizes the probabilities is the scout that lies awake, questioning the necessity of making his 5am flight to Merced. Scouts need to be believers in order to stay scouts.
Let’s call everything equal. Everything isn’t equal, but we don’t know how. What’s great about the draft is that it brings talent into the Mariners organization. And, because the Mariners were bad last year, they ought to add more talent to the organization than most of the other teams. If you don’t really know anything, you have to assume talent follows assigned bonus pools, and the Mariners have one of the bigger ones of those. So, the Mariners’ system is taking a step forward. It’s not a step being taken in isolation — everyone in baseball gets better. But the Mariners should get more better relative to most of the rest of the league. In theory they lose ground to the Astros and a few others, but you can’t always get what you want. And we didn’t really want the kind of season that would’ve left the Mariners picking first on Thursday anyway.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting amped about the actual players. Alex Jackson is talented enough to have been selected sixth overall in the country. It’s easy to imagine him as a big-leaguer. Gareth Morgan has enchanting power potential. Austin Cousino could be a long-term center fielder. Everyone that gets drafted has strengths, and everyone that gets drafted early has particularly promising tools. Analyze away; go nuts. Talk about Jackson as an outfielder vs. Jackson as a third baseman. Talk about Morgan vs. Giancarlo Stanton. This whole endeavor is a distraction, so you can focus on whatever you want. Don’t ever let anyone criticize you for your interests. It’s good to just be interested.
But, really, this isn’t about the particular players, so much as it’s about just having new players. That’s the exciting part, the part that panders to the side of every fan who loves making trades in fantasy baseball. The draft means change, change in an uncertain and potentially really good way, and personnel change is an addiction. We can tire of the same players, but every year, around this time, there’s a wave of new players, some of them possibilities to vault into the organization’s top ten prospects. They arrive right when certain other players might be disappointing. June is kind of prospect high tide. It’s always coming, so the cupboard’s never bare. Or, the sand is never without its seashells, or something. Every single year, no matter what, the draft allows us to be more consumed by the baseball hobby we’ve chosen and stuck with. And much like spring training, as fans are concerned, the draft is all upside. There are never clearly visible mistakes. There are always potential All-Stars and regulars.
Talented baseball players are being selected by the Mariners. Many of them will sign. Some of them are among the very most talented baseball players to be entering the professional ranks. We’ll never know how well this drafting went, because starting tomorrow the progress is out of the scouts’ hands. They’ll all get started on preparing for June 2015. It’s going to be up to the coaches, and it’s going to be up to the players. If the Mariners just went to the grocery store, now someone needs to blend the ingredients, because you don’t want to serve a raw potato.
According to the order of things, the Mariners should come out of this a little more talented than a lot of their competition. Reality never quite follows the order of things, but, good luck determining why. That Alex Jackson sure can hit, though, probably.
Game 60, Mariners at Rays
Chris Young vs. Erik Bedard, 4:10pm
The M’s head to Tampa in the extremely rare position of being in better shape than the Rays. The M’s have won 5 straight, leading to lots of chatter in sports radio and elsewhere about making moves to add another bat. Kendrys Morales is no longer toxic, as the draft’s (almost) over. The M’s still have some trade chips to play if they want to, though to be honest, this spring has done some damage to the market value of guys like Nick Franklin. But look at Tampa – their playoff odds have tumbled, and as Eno Sarris wrote about today, they’re approaching the deadline looking more like sellers than buyers. We all know that David Price is on the block, of course, and it’s possible they could move him in July. There’s no big, obvious flaw here – their rotation’s middle of the road (though a bit unlucky) and their line-up’s worse than it’s been, but it’s not an obvious train wreck. But they start today 14 games back of the Jays, and firmly in last place of the AL East.
Today’s game pits two oft-injured hurlers against each other. Both Bedard and Young’s career record for innings pitched in a season came back in 2006. That’s not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but the AL silver sluggers for OFs that year went to Jermaine Dye, Manny Ramirez and Vladimir Guerrero. The pitching gold gloves went to Kenny Rogers and Greg Maddux, which describes essentially every year from the late 80s to, oh, about 2006 or so. Both Bedard and Young had effective 2007s, with just a few less starts/innings than the year before, but as M’s fans remember well, 2008 kicked off a period of almost perpetual rehab and reinjury. Both suffered serious shoulder ailments, requiring multiple surgeries. A weakened Bedard’s actually pitched a fair number of innings as a BOR starter/swingman, while Young’s surgery habit proved difficult to break.
Bedard’s no longer a strikeout machine, and his walks have crept up, but he’s been decent for Tampa. Young’s been shockingly good for the M’s, despite the disappearance of his most noteworthy (and unlikely) skill – avoiding home runs. Young’s FIP almost matches his career worst mark, set in an injury-plagued (duh) 2009, and it’s not just the K:BB ratio. It’s that he’s given up 11 home runs in just 10 starts and 63 IP. But those 10 home runs have produced a grand total of 12 runs. Eight were solo shots, and two came with one on. Great, so it’s the old saying about Ryan Franklin circa 2003 – Sure, he gives up HRs, but he’s such a smart pitcher, he only gives up solo homers. There are few less-complimentary comparisons on this blog than the dreaded Ryan Franklin one, but really, is the idea of a skill in avoiding HRs situationally any more or less ridiculous than a skill in yielding OF fly balls that somehow don’t go past the OF? Chris Young makes very little sense, and I’m just going to enjoy it while the M’s are hot and we’re all excited about the M’s new draft picks. Yay Chris Young! Yay Alex Jackson! Yay Mariners!
1: Jones, CF
2: Saunders, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Buck, C
5: Seager, 3B
6: Smoak, 1B
7: Romero, DH
8: Gillespie, LF
9: Miller, SS
SP: Chris Young
That’s five lefties in the line-up against the left-handed Bedard. It’s not crazy though; in recent years, Bedard’s run reverse splits, and even looking back over his entire career, he was never particularly dominant against lefties. In fact, it’s *righties* who’ve been helpless against Bedard’s signature pitch, his curve ball. Lefties have hit it fairly well, and both lefties and righties have fared fairly well against Bedard’s fastball.
I wrote a long post about the Rainiers nationally televised game on CBS Sports Network last night, and I awoke to see that it never posted; wordpress notes vaguely that it simply “missed schedule.” Yeah, I noticed that too, wordpress. Anyway, did you hear about the game? Did you watch it? If you were able to find CBSSN, would you watch another MiLB game of the week, or are you pretty much *always* going to pick a big league game (even if it’s not the M’s) over a minor league one? I’m really curious to see how MiLB’s deal with CBSSN works out, and I hope the regional sports networks pick up a few more MiLB games (the way ROOT did with the Portland Beavers several years back). I’ll fully acknowledge that the market may not be all that large, though I think it’s considerably bigger than it was even 10-15 years ago.
The Rainiers lost, though, to the Albuquerque Isotopes, 6-0. They’ll get at ’em again at Cheney Stadium tonight with Andrew Carraway on the mound.
2014 MLB Draft Open Thread (Rounds 3-10)
Phew, that was some first two rounds, right? Remember that selection where the guy who we didn’t think would be picked was picked? That was really something. All right, so after last night I didn’t have that much time to look into things so my commentary will be limited, which means under 500 words. Maybe.
Two things surprised me so far. One was Kolek over Rodon. I had myself convinced that the Marlins would either take Rodon on what he would add to the franchise as a Cuban-American or they’d steal Jackson from us. Neither happened. The other was exactly how far Gettys and Gatewood slipped. These were fellows who were top ten picks coming into the year and one wonders, with the new CBA that I’m so fond of referring to, if they sign or go to college knowing that they could be in the top five three years from now.
The Jackson pick gives the Mariners a player who will likely be their top prospect in the winter. What I can add that I haven’t already is that the rock-back-and-forth mechanism in his swing looks to have been toned down quite a bit. The Other Ripkin Brother and Cornelius Clifford Floyd were talking about it as they went over the hitters and Jackson mechanics have gone from what I pointed out to more of a lift-lead-foot, plant, and-swing thing. It’s still a hitch that could be exploited a bit, but the severity of the issue has been diminished. One hopes it can be fixed entirely.
I have less commentary on Gareth Morgan. One of the first things I noted was that someone, in reply to the MLBDraftTracker tweet announcing his pick, made a Stanton comp, which I can only assume means that he’ll change his name on arriving in the majors. From what I’m reading, he seems to have extraordinary hitting tools but limited skills and is lacking the speed to play outside the corners. The former isn’t entirely surprising given that he’s from Ontario. One hopes that they’ll be able to get him a little more focused and disciplined in his approach, but he’s committed to NC State and who knows if he’s signable.
Regarding the draft so far for the M’s? Well, I don’t know why you’d ask two picks in, first off. But secondly, it’s interesting to note that thus far the M’s have not dipped into pitching and that they have bucked the perceived strength of the draft. I seem to remember them doing the same in the past. Be it contrarianism or some other inclination, I still expect them to go into pitching pretty quickly in day two, and have more faith in their development of said pitching since they’ve had some success teaching breaking balls. Since they went HS with the first two, they may also go college in their pitching in an effort to keep costs in line. It’s also worth noting that the M’s had three corner OFs in their top ten draft picks last year and we’re only adding to it. Depth can turn into strength, can turn into the surplus that you deal from.
Three through ten, starting at 10 am.
2014 MLB Draft Open Thread (Rounds 1 & 2)
So today’s the day, or “a day” (ugh), or perhaps you just weren’t paying attention up until now. Luuuuucky. With the sixth overall pick, sometime this afternoon the Mariners will be selecting some guy who might be their top prospect going into next season. Then later, with pick 74, they’ll pick some other guy who is probably an okay baseball player too. Better than you, at least. From there, we’ll drift into players that most of us have never heard of and go on until there are forty rounds of selections. Remember that there used to be fifty, and that there was also a January draft until 1986 and prior to that there was a brief August draft. You can never have too many. Or you could, and so they stopped.
Here are the basics of what you need to know. The draft will go on with large intermissions from today (Rounds 1 & 2 w/ comps), through Friday (3-10) until Saturday afternoon at some point (11-40). Friday and Saturday, coverage will begin at MLB.com at 10 am, but today, coverage complete with talking heads in conversation begins at 3 pm with actual selections coming at 4 pm. Because if there’s anything America loves more than the events themselves, it’s an hour of speculation and mental foreplay. I don’t know why this doesn’t extend to everything. The Thanksgiving Day parade should be preceded by predictions of marching order and possible rogue balloon entrants who were seen rising in the final months. Movie previews should have retired actors, directors, and screenwriters projecting what might happen based off of the summaries they read on IMDB. When I’m eyeing some gal at a reading or show or bar, I want a gallery of pick-up artists, therapists, and survivors of good and bad relationships giving odds on the possible outcomes of our striking up a conversation.
Here are some bullet points pertaining to what you might need to know:
* This draft class is partially the result of the new CBA’s allotment of fixed draft pools. Basically, the players exiting college right now were high schoolers in the last year before the new rules kicked in, and that year there was a lot of wild spending on prep players as a sort of last hurrah. This means the college ranks are a bit thin right now, but will normalize in years to come.
* The strength of the draft is largely in pitching, both high school and college. There have been a few Tommy John casualties as there often are (Hoffman, Fedde) and others whose mechanics still give pause (Freeland), but the top portion of third-party draft boards features a lot of pitching right now. We don’t know that the actual selections will play out like this. Maybe teams will be more eager to replenish with injuries rampant in the minor leagues this year, maybe they will be more shy about selecting more pitching. It’s possible too that because the hitting class is considered weaker, that hitters may be overvalued and teams will be more inclined to burn that pick early on hitting, knowing that they could get comparable pitching later. These are factors we all end up considering the day of.
* The mock draft consensus has been unusually consistent over the past few weeks in that the M’s are still projected to take top HS bat C/3B/RF Alex Jackson. Nothing has [yet] come up at the last minute to dissuade anyone from that. But bear in mind that this isn’t a lock either. There were mutterings of the Marlins perhaps trying to work a deal with him at #2, and no one rightly knows what the Cubs are up to at #4. If he slips past those two, he’s probably ours, but that’s a big if.
* Say that he doesn’t. In that case, the most likely pick seems to be Hartford left-hander Sean Newcomb, who seems to me like a less-developed James Paxton. There are other possibilities as well. This org looooves their shortstops, so if Nick Gordon gets past the Twins, he is also absolutely in play for us. If one of the top prep arms (Aiken, Kolek) or Rodon drop down, which seems improbable, they are also in play. The players that have linked to the M’s before but seem less likely at this moment are LSU right-hander Aaron Nola (high-floor, three good pitches), who may be in play earlier, and NC State shortstop and Rodon teammate shortstop Trea Turner (elite speed, good defense, swing like an uprooted tree wielded by a wimpy tornado).
* The Mariners, on account of sucking last year, were awarded a competitive balance pick at the end of the supplemental second round, which means that they’ll be making the last selection of the day at 74. The current administration has never not picked a position player in the second round, but who knows what happens here? Our normally allocated second round pick went to the Yankees because of Cano and Morales’ not-signing elsewhere.
My personal board, which is weighted for likelihood, looks like this:
1) Jackson [Weight transfer and timing may be an issue, but talent matches our needs well]
2) Newcomb [Lacking secondaries, but low mileage and org had success teaching curves]
3) Conforto [Fits our positional and power/OBP needs well, but I’m worried they’d rush him]
4) Freeland [Love the command, finish unnerves me]
5) Gordon [Great defensive actions, good offensive ceiling, but best at short]
6) Nola [The same basic pick the M’s have made four of the last five years]
If I’m not weighting my selections, I like Touki Toussaint a lot and think that this organization would be a good match to develop him to near his ceiling, but no one has put him this high and pitching still scares a lot of people. I also have an avowed interest in Michael Gettys because he really does have elite physical tools, but do I trust the Mariners to succeed in developing someone with a hitting ability this raw? No. I do not.
There’s reading material abounds. You can go through my earlier preview or read through Marc’s interview with Chris Crawford. Read Tony Blengino’s insights into what really goes on in the draft room! Or you could sift through some thousands of mocks and players profiles all over the internet in the hours leading up to the event because you’re a wizard and/or own a time machine.
I won’t be here for this draft. Just like the last one, I have somewhere to be that coincides with the start time. But rest assured that wherever I am, I will be reacting with proportionally inappropriate emotion.
The Seattle Mariners Are In The Playoffs (That Don’t Exist)
If the season ended right this second, Brian Cashman would be like “what the hell?” And the Seattle Mariners would prepare to play a baseball game against the Angels in Anaheim, for the right to go to Oakland in the ALDS. Depending on things, the Mariners could line up to have Felix start the one-game playoff, giving them the greatest competitive advantage. And then if Felix was good for eight innings against a strong lineup, and if the Mariners could produce just enough runs, Lloyd McClendon could hand the ball to Fernando Rodney with a one-run lead, while the Rally Monkey jumped around on the scoreboard…
This is a time to feel good. There have been times to feel other things, like when the Mariners lost 11 of 14 games, but now they’ve gone 7-3 against the Angels, Tigers, Yankees, and Braves, who are a combined 16 games over .500. Put another way, that’s two division leaders, one wild-card team, and another team the Mariners just knocked out of wild-card position. Up next: a much easier time, possibly. The Rays have been dreadful, and here come four games. The Yankees are okay, but they’re not close to 100%. Everybody on the Rangers is hurt, and everybody on the Padres is a flavorless rice cake in a little cylindrical uniform. The Royals are the Mariners’ downside, and the Red Sox haven’t been themselves. The Mariners don’t play a team currently in playoff position until July 11. That’s a lot of games away.
Basically: the Mariners did well against a rough stretch. Now they have an easier stretch. The last time we thought they had an easy stretch, they lost five of six to the Astros and Marlins, but the Marlins aren’t that bad and the Astros picked it up and we can make excuses all day long because we’re protective of the good feelings we get to feel from time to time. You don’t need to let us have this; we’re going to have this, no matter what. The Mariners don’t suck and we’re fun-loving people.
Interestingly, according to the FanGraphs playoff odds, the Mariners’ odds haven’t really changed since the start of the season. They began as roughly a 1-in-3 shot, and they stand today as roughly a 1-in-3 shot. What that hides, additionally, is they have a third the shot at winning the division, while the wild-card odds have gone up about ten percentage points. Put that way, the Mariners’ odds have gotten a little worse. But they’ve also gone 24-15 since their last bad slump, so the odds have an upward trajectory, and what we really care about is that it’s June now and we can be just as interested as we were at the beginning of April. That’s really always the goal. We want for the season to be interesting for as long as possible, because it’s a long season. We’ve made it two months, sometimes hanging on by a thread.
More wins than losses after 59 games. More runs scored than runs allowed. 31-28. Last year, at this point, the Mariners were 26-33. The year before, at this point, the Mariners were 26-33. The year before that, at this point, the Mariners were…31-28. So this isn’t totally unprecedented. From that point on, the 2011 Mariners went 36-67. Never forget how quickly the rug can be taken out from under you. Those Mariners seemed borderline competitive until they were one of the worst teams in baseball. In retrospect it should’ve been easy to see coming, but it’s never that easy at the time. It could happen again! Probably won’t, but it could. Stay grounded. But, have fun. I probably don’t even need to tell you.
The oddest thing is how oddly this has happened. Think about the presumed keys to the Mariners having a successful season. Taijuan Walker hasn’t pitched once. James Paxton’s thrown fewer innings than Joe Beimel. Robinson Cano’s been good, but not totally himself yet. The winner of the Brad Miller/Nick Franklin competition has been other teams. Miller, Franklin, Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak, and Abe Almonte have combined for a 0.4 WAR. Corey Hart sets that to zero by himself. Or, Stefen Romero sets that to zero by himself. Endy Chavez is on the active roster literally right now. Willie Bloomquist started the game today at first base. The Mariners ran out ridiculous lineups today, and last Saturday. They won both times.
To offset the negatives, Felix has decided to kick things up another level. Whoever Roenis Elias is keeps getting better seemingly every week. Compared to Elias, Chris Young has a lower ERA. The bullpen somehow has the third-best ERA in the American League. Kyle Seager and Michael Saunders are on pace for career-best seasons. Mike Zunino’s defense is so good we can sort of overlook his .2-something OBP. James Jones is on the team and not terrible. The Mariners are pretty good defensively by UZR, and by the numbers that Matthew tracks.
It’s all either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. The team probably won’t keep hitting so much better with men on base. We don’t know if Paxton’s going to come back, and there are some obvious over-achievers, and it doesn’t help that some of the young guys haven’t gotten better. But then, the Mariners have gotten here without needing everything to go right. Imagine if they weren’t among the league worst at shortstop and DH. Imagine if they were even just adequate. What if Miller’s recent signs of life are legitimate?
As always, you can see the upside and downside. As always, there are under-achievers to balance out certain over-achievers, and vice versa. Not as always, the Mariners are over .500 and in the race with another four months left. That’s what’s most critical in the bigger picture: the Mariners made it a third of the way. There’s not a team vying for the wild card that doesn’t have questions, and it’s not like the Mariners’ questions are more pressing or dire than the rest. The Royals can’t hit. The Yankees don’t have some of their best pitchers. The Rangers lose a player an hour. The Orioles have had a bottom-third rotation and bullpen. The Indians have had a godawful defense.
The projected rest-of-season winning percentages for teams vying for the Mariners’ wild-card slot:
- Red Sox: .533
- Indians: .522
- Rays: .517
- Mariners: .505
- Royals: .496
- Orioles: .494
- Yankees: .493
- Rangers: .489
- White Sox: .447
- Astros: .445
- Twins: .437
And the Mariners have some sort of lead in the standings over all of them.
As proven by recent history, 31-28 after 59 games doesn’t mean much. It doesn’t mean the Mariners won’t suck. It does mean the Mariners haven’t sucked, and it does mean you get to want to watch Mariners games on television when the beautiful weather is trying to persuade you to go for a walk. Walk earlier. Walk later. Don’t walk at all. There’ll be plenty of time to be outside when the Mariners aren’t actively playing competitive, meaningful baseball. Maybe that’ll be July. Maybe it won’t.
Game 59, Mariners at Braves
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Mike Minor, 9:10am (??)
Eaarrrrrly game here. Mike Minor’s a lefty with a FB that scrapes 90 mph, but who posts an above average K rate thanks to a good curve and change, along with what looks like some deception in his delivery. The change is good enough that he has extremely small platoon splits, and he’s able to pound the zone reliably and limit walks. He’s down to essentially two weaknesses. First, home runs. Pitching half his games in Turner Field, Minor shouldn’t have a 1.11 career HR/9. Second, the poor fellow underwent urinary tract surgery this offseason, which is why he’s only making his seventh start of the season. Baseball is unpredictable, and I like to think that each of these game previews can be different or unique in some way, but if I never have to read the phrase “scarring around his urethra” again, I’ll be a happy blogger.
1: Bloomquist 1bwhaaa?
2: Chavez, CF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Romero, RF
5: Seager, 3B
6: Zunino, C
7: Gillespie, LF
8: Miller, SS
9/SP: Iwakuma
Trevor Miller, Scott DeCecco start in the minors today. Tacoma’s got a rare day off.
2014 MLB Draft Preview with Chris Crawford
The first round of baseball’s amateur draft kicks off on Thursday, June 5th. You’ve seen JY’s list of names to be aware of, and you’ve no doubt heard some discussion about local players thanks to the brilliant seasons of Oregon State and, shockingly, the University of Washington. As we’ve done the past two years, we’ve attempted to summarize some of the big issues in the draft in a Q and A with Chris Crawford, proprietor of MLB Draft Insider, a writer for ESPN, and now the head honcho of a new site, DraftTotheShow.com. The draft changed markedly with the imposition of bonus pool caps in 2012, and we’ve seen teams, players and agents struggle to come to terms with how to value draft picks (some of which now CAN be traded) and the consequences of free agents signing with new teams. You can argue that teams now clearly OVERvalue draft picks, and that their reticence to sign a, say, Stephen Drew, is foolish. Then, you look at the value of pre-arb players, or the new team-friendly extensions like the one Jon Singleton just signed, and you start to argue it the other way. The draft isn’t necessarily *better* than it’s ever been, but it’s certainly more complex and interesting.
So let’s get to it:
1: Who will the M’s select at #6? Who SHOULD they pick?
As I mentioned — or at least should have mentioned — in the last time we did this, the Mariners are one of the more secretive organizations in baseball. I have been told that they are considering several guys, but the name I have heard that they’re hoping fall to them the most is Alex Jackson, a catcher/outfielder out of Rancho Bernardo High School. I’ve also heard names like LSU right-hander Aaron Nola, Olympia High School (Orlando) shortstop Nick Gordon and a plethora of others that are being considered, but it sounds like if Jackson is still on the board, he’s the guy.
And if that’s who they do take, I don’t think it’s a bad choice. This is a terrible offensive class, and he’s the only guy that I think could have a plus hit-tool and plus power tool in the entire class. I can already hear Mariner fans groaning about taking another catcher, but Jackson will likely move to the outfield and he’s a good enough athlete to play a solid right field. He won’t be able to help until 2017, but, the upside and floor are too high for me to pass.
Read more
Game 58, Mariners at Braves
Erasmo Ramirez vs. Gavin Floyd, 4:10pm
The M’s head south to face the NL East-leading Atlanta Braves. Erasmo’s up to make this start, as we mentioned after Brandon Maurer’s demotion.
I’ve heard lots more M’s chatter recently in the national press, on local radio, and just in conversation than I’ve heard in years. Well, more POSITIVE chatter, anyway. People think the team’s decent, and could be better than decent if they can find another bat in free agency or trade. Everyone recognizes that starting pitching has been an unlikely strength. Felix is Felix, but many of us were terrified about the back of the rotation. Roenis Elias and Chris Young have been key components of the M’s success to date, and they’ve certainly helped cover for an offense that’s been a weird combination of lucky and terrible. Sure, Elias was good in spring training this year, but not as good as either Maurer or Carter Capps last year. Essentially no one saw as a steady contributor, well on his way to an above-league-average season.
But as nice a surprise the rotation’s been for Seattle, look what’s going on in Atlanta. Tonight’s starter, Gavin Floyd, is 31, and returning from TJ surgery. In his final few years on the South Side of Chicago, Floyd first underperformed his fielding-independent stats, then saw his fielding independent stats tank along with all the rest of his numbers. In particular, his platoon split problems were just too big to hide – it didn’t matter what he did to righties if lefties were approaching 2 HR/9 off of him. The Braves brought in the recuperating Floyd as well as such luminaries as Aaron Harang, and somehow, they’ve got the 5th best FIP of any rotation. Sort by ERA, of course, and they’re number 1. We talk so much about the Canos and the Choos of the market, guys who are clearly, obviously better than Chris Young and Aaron %$#ing Harang, but it’s hilarious to see this game frustrate attempts at small-sample prognostication. The M’s can use Endy Chavez at DH and get big hits from Willie Bloomquist to beat Scherzer and the Tigers. The Braves can pick up old, failed starters and watch them post brilliant peripherals along with sparkly runs allowed. This game makes no sense sometimes, and I think we’re all glad about that.
Tonight’s line-up is heavily left-handed, as it should be. Floyd’s overall numbers have improved across the board, but he’s still got platoon splits.
1: Jones, CF
2: Saunders, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Seager, 3B
5: Smoak, 1B
6: Ackley, LF
7: Buck, C
8: Miller, SS
9/SP: Erasmooooo
Tonight our 3rd annual draft preview posts – check it out after the game. The amateur draft kicks off this Thursday.
Game 57, Mariners at Yankees
King Felix vs. David Phelps
Happy Felix Day!
David Phelps is remarkably unremarkable. Bouncing between the bullpen and the rotation, he’s put together a decent 2014 thus far despite well below average whiff rates. How does a guy who can’t make anyone miss strike out 21% of the batters he faces? How does a guy who relies on a sinker, slider and curve to left-handers post reverse platoon splits? Phelps has a change-up, and it’s not without its utility, but he throws it less than 10% overall; lefties are more likely to see a slider than a change-up. His sinker’s around 90-92mph, and lefties have put up a .525 slugging percentage on it in Phelps’ brief MLB career. Nothing about this profile looks like it would pose a problem for lefties, and, to be fair, he was Maurered by lefties in his first call-up in 2012. But last year, he K’d 23% of lefties and only walked 8%. That was a far sight better than his performance against righties – the batters you’d assume might find a same-handed slider difficult to contend with. This season, he’s striking out a few more lefties, and while his walk rate’s regressed, so have the homers. Phelps still isn’t great, and there’s plenty in the data that suggests his success to date – such as it is – won’t last. And the overall sample here is still very small – it all needs some regressing. But it’s odd, and I keep thinking good teams *know* when a pitcher’s getting lucky against groups of hitters and when he’s doing something repeatable and effective to neutralize the platoon advantage. For Phelps, a lot of it is his curve ball, which is easily his best pitch. But the answer’s probably a lot more nuanced than that – Phelps’ results overall don’t match up with the components, and it’s interesting to think about how/why that might be. The A’s, presumably, know why Tommy Milone’s effective despite possessing the physical size and velocity of an 11th grader. I’m not saying that guys like Milone or Phelps are how championships are won, but nurturing effective depth beyond your starting 5 is clearly critical, and while the M’s have been terribly unlucky this year, they’ve also struggled with this.
1: Jones, CF
2: Saunders, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Smoak, 1B
5: Seager, 3B
6: Zunino, C
7: Ackley, DH
8: Chavez, LF
9: Miller, SS
SP: El Cartelua
Lots of lefties in the line-up against the righty Phelps. Of course, Phelps has started to run reverse splits, and has even splits over his career. This isn’t equivalent to the Scherzer situation, although hey, that looked like insanity on paper, but the M’s came out of the game and the series with a win. I can’t believe that actually happened, and I just hope it’s a turning point.
Seriously, congratulations to Roenis Elias, who shut out a very good line-up and did what even Hisashi Iwakuma wasn’t able to do. Elias has been up and down, but his success against right-handed batters has been jaw-dropping. I, perhaps because of Maurer’s struggles last year, expected him to scuffle against heavily-RH line-ups, and he just hasn’t.
The story of the day has to do with the Astros’ extension/promotion of 1B prospect Jon Singleton. This is really interesting; despite the fact that we all know/understand/tacitly approve of teams toying with service time to extend their control over players, we’ve never seen it acknowledged by teams so publicly.