Game 2, Angels at Mariners
James Paxton vs. CJ Wilson, 7:10pm
The M’s needed opening day, and they came out with a win against an opposing starter who really did, in Jeff’s memorable phrase, look like “a righty Barry Zito with the flu.” But if beating Jered Weaver behind King Felix *in Seattle* seems like a game you really ought to win, so too does this contest. As we discussed, Wilson’s fallen off in recent years too, and he started lower, too. Wilson’s career K% is inflated a bit by his years as a reliever for Texas. As a starter, it’s fluctuated a bit, from 22.5% in his one truly excellent year in Arlington in 2011 down to 19.8% last year. There’s been more movement in his walk rate, which was only 8% in 2011, but was up over 11% in 2014. Wilson’s a lefty with an assortment of pitches who is no longer a big strikeout guy, and deals with serious control issues. What he’s done fairly effectively up until 2013 or so was control the contact he gave up.
That’s tough to do, particularly if you start your career in Texas, but Wilson was up to the challenge. He throws six different pitches routinely, allowing him to utilize four pitches against righties, and a slightly different four pitch mix to lefties. Looking at his walk rates, you might expect pitching coaches to tell him to simplify his arsenal and throw strikes instead of throwing the kitchen sink, but Wilson’s pitched around high walk totals his whole career. What he HAS done is limit his BABIP (something some lefties have been better than average at, for whatever reason) and limit his HRs allowed. Last year, though, his BABIP hit .306, its highest level ever, and just above his previous career high of .300 from 2013. Combining that with his career high walk rate, and it’s a wonder that his FIP was “only” 4.31. Last year, he was above replacement (well, the way Fangraphs calculates it) because he kept his HR rate under 1.00/9IP. It wasn’t exactly LOW, and at 0.87, it was the highest it had been since 2008, and the highest level ever as a starter, but it was better than average. The problem is that it was only low at home. On the road, Wilson was a total disaster.
So why can’t the M’s figure him out? If he’s so bad, why has he limited the M’s to a career .669 OPS *in Seattle* and and a .593 OPS last year despite his abysmal overall road stats? A big part of the reason is that he’s left-handed. As he’s aged, Wilson’s platoon splits have widened, and I’d assume part of the reason his walk rate is up is that he’s consciously or sub-consciously pitching around essentially every tough righty. Moreover, the M’s lefty-heavy line-up struggled against left-handed starters, putting up an OPS+ of 80 relative to the league (against righties, they were at 100) – that was actually worse than they struggled in 2013, when their OPS+ against lefty starters was 85 relative to average. The M’s have had serious platoon issues for a few years, and that’s one of the big reasons Nelson Cruz is here. Tonight’s the first test of that – can the M’s knock Wilson around the way everyone else has in recent years?
Interestingly, James Paxton reminds me a little bit Wilson. He’s tall, throws harder, and is Canadian and not prototypically Southern Californian, but both are lefties that rely less on strikeouts than managing contact. Paxton’s K rate in his abbreviated 2014 was a touch below Wilson’s, though of course Paxton’s walk rate was, while high, below Wilson’s level as well. When Paxton’s on, he’s running low BABIPs, the way CJ Wilson did back from 2010-2012. As Paxton throws much harder, in a good defensive park and behind a solid defensive club, his BABIP has been extremely low as opposed to just “better than average.” And thanks to a combination of high GB rates, velocity and Safeco, Paxton’s HR rate is also remarkably low, leading to a FIP that isn’t as high as you’d expect given the walks. The question is how well Paxton can keep this up. We’ve seen velocity fluctuations from him before, but we haven’t seen the command lapses that plagued him in the minor leagues. As we talked about, he’s an extremely hard guy to project since the things that make him so exceptional are the things that sabermetric orthodoxy would tell you aren’t as “true” as things like strikeouts. Still, velocity is about as true as it gets, and as long as Paxton’s four seamer continues to generate ground balls the way it has in his brief big league career, he can be an effective starter. Because Paxton’s throwing motion is so vertical, so over-the-top, he should also fare much better against righties than, say, CJ Wilson. That’s been true thus far, and if it continues, he’ll be a borderline all-star many times.
The Line-up:
1: Weeks, DH
2: Jackson, CF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, RF
5: Seager, 3B
6: Ruggiano, LF
7: Morrison, 1B
8: Zunino, C
9: Miller, SS
SP: Paxton
A revamped line-up tonight, with five righties. Ideally, you’ve have another RHB or two, but it’s not too bad.
Jeff mentioned it in his post, but the Rangers nearly got no-hit by Sonny Gray in the opener yesterday in Oakland. Gray’s a great young starter, but to me, didn’t even look like he had his best stuff. Yovani Gallardo looked mediocre, and the Rangers line-up looked punchless. I think Prince Fielder will have a decent bounce-back, but his days as a preeminent power hitter are probably over.
One of the better pitching match-ups yesterday was the Astros/Indians game featuring Dallas Keuchel and last year’s CY Young winner Corey Kluber. Imagine what you’d think one year ago today if you were told that Keuchel/Kluber was an anticipated pitching match-up, and that Kluber and Carlos Carrasco just signed long extensions.
Speaking of extensions, the Red Sox inked Rick Porcello to a four-year, $82.5m deal running from 2016-2019. Porcello is very young (still), and has been remarkably steady in recent years, but hoooooly crap that’s big-time money for a guy with a career ERA and FIP over 4. Part of this is age, and a big part is just the inexorable inflation as cable tv money works its way through the arteries of baseball, but I also wonder if teams aren’t putting more of a premium on durability with the rash of TJ surgeries throughout baseball. Of course, this would mean reliably identifying traits that are linked to durability with enough confidence that would lead to contracts like this.
The M’s affiliates have all set (or just about set) their opening day line-ups. The full-season affiliates start their seasons this Thursday, April 8th. AA Jackson gets DJ Peterson and Gabby Guerrero to start the year, while class A Clinton will see Alex Jackson and Brazilian RHP Daniel Missaki. Patrick Kivlehan starts at AAA Tacoma, and High-A Bakersfield, the M’s new Cal League affiliate, gets the pitching prospects Edwin Diaz and Ryan Yarbrough.
2015 Clinton Lumberkings Preview
Did you miss reading thousands of words on things of interest to a narrow subset of the human population? Well good news! Though my prose writing/analytic tendencies are largely occupied with other stuff these days (there’s also going to be a book review on Poetry Northwest’s site sometime soon), I still geek out enough about baseball and prospect happenings that some weird glitch in my brain triggers and I think, “sure, it sounds like a swell idea to write exhaustively on a subject with an inherently high attrition rate! Wheeeee!”
The overhead perspective on this year’s Lumberkings team is that there are some intriguing arms in the rotation who have had a limited or uneven track records so far, the bullpen features a few guys who might be fast-tracked later, the team’s primary catcher won’t be a hitting liability, the infield features a sleeper at the hot corner and a few Latin hitters of some potential, and then the outfield has The Second Coming and some other dudes who I guess are all right by mortal standards.
I’m typing frantically to get some of the other previews in order later (work schedule is not especially friendly at the moment), but in the meantime, the diversions shall take us through talk of baseball’s spread through particular portions of Latin America, twins, names and how one might speculatively pronounce them, bloodlines, teammates, associations one might make based off of initials and positions, a guy who could be on the C/OF track who isn’t an elite prospect, and players whose OBP exceeds their SLG. This somehow ended up more on-track than past entries, despite still not being edited under my usually rather attentive standards. Well, let’s get to it then.
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Mariners Halfway To Going Wire-To-Wire
While I don’t necessarily agree with those who argue that Opening Day of the baseball season ought to be a national holiday, I do, at least, understand the sentiment. The wait is so long and the anticipation is so great, and the instant you see a baseball stadium get all dressed up, you slip into this warm state of comfort you forgot you ever felt. This is the feeling of belonging; this is the feeling of being at home. It doesn’t even matter where you are. It just matters what’s happening. Being in the car with a baseball game on feels more like home than home on any January 10th. All isn’t quite right, but it’s closer than it was.
Because it’s such a treasured event, and because at the end of the day we’re all just baseball fans, you hate for people to come away from the occasion disappointed. In a just world, Opening Day would be kind to fans of all 30 teams. Save the letdowns and the devastation for at least another game. Look around the league, and you see the Brewers lost 10-0. The White Sox lost 10-1, and the Rangers lost 8-0, very nearly getting no-hit. It doesn’t seem fair. You want there to be another way, a better way, but you just can’t always make everyone happy.
Which made this Mariners opener a particular treat. Usually, in a baseball game, half the fans come away happy, and half the fans come away sad. Rough for that latter half, on the first day of the season. But what we saw on Monday, that game had something for everybody. Everyone gets to consider their Opening Day a success. Angels fans got to watch their best player hit a home run, and then effectively hit another with a great play in the field. And Mariners fans got to watch their best player beat the crap out of the Angels. Thumbs-up all around. We’re all friends.
Look, I don’t have a great way to work this in, so this is going to function as a segue. The home opener in Safeco is always a production, and this year gave Safeco the rare opportunity to host both the home and season openers at once. As has been the norm, Mariners players jogged in from the outfield as they were introduced, with fog machines adding to the drama of the affair. As somebody who has written papers in high school, I understand that, if you look hard enough, you can identify hints of symbolism everywhere. There were definite hints in the intros. Here we see Robinson Cano, preparing to jog down the carpet:
The curtains part, and the fog drifts, revealing Cano as he lifts his head and prepares to be greeted. Everything fell exactly into place. There is, before Cano, a clear path forward, unobstructed by anything peripheral. For Robinson Cano, it’s always come easy. For Robinson Cano, it always looks easy. In truth, he’s the result of inconceivable talent and preparation, but when you see him he’s smooth as a man who knows he’s already won.
Two names later, it was Kyle Seager’s turn:
Kyle Seager always has to do shit the hard way. Curtains didn’t part? Guess he’ll part the damned curtains. Doesn’t look cool. Looks like he’s getting out of the shower. No one looks cool when they’re getting out of the shower. Kyle Seager never looks cool. Never will. It’s just not his “thing”. Doesn’t mean he can’t also get the job done. Doesn’t mean he can’t also be excellent. He’ll just always look like he’s working harder for it. Kyle Seager’s never going to not look like his middle name is Duerr.
So, that’s how Robinson Cano and Kyle Seager emerged from behind a Mariners curtain. Later, a game was played.
Years ago — years and years ago — there was an argument over which pitcher was better, between Felix Hernandez and Jered Weaver. And while Felix had the advantage of his debut, the reality was that the argument was justifiable. I mean, we used to argue about a lot of silly things. We used to get really emotional when we’d talk about Roberto Petagine. I remember that Felix/Weaver stuff. It was very much a “then” argument, and there were strong arguments to be made in Weaver’s favor. He really was an ace at one time. Felix, for his part, disappointed, as he took some time to get things to click. Felix had the stuff; Weaver had the run-prevention results. One thing the argument didn’t discuss much was the future.
And I don’t know what would’ve been argued. I don’t know how those futures would’ve been projected. Was a time when everyone thought Felix’s arm was a ticking time bomb. We’ve come a long way. But now we have the benefit of knowing exactly how things have taken place. Felix doesn’t throw as hard as he used to. That was never going to keep up. Thankfully, he figured out command, and he figured out a changeup, and he’s maybe the best starting pitcher in his league. And Weaver? Weaver doesn’t throw as hard as he used to. Today I saw him throw a pitch above 86 miles per hour, once. It seems like it should’ve been painfully obvious even a decade ago that Weaver would need to develop pinpoint command to keep things going smoothly. That command doesn’t seem to be with him. He’s working with a razor-thin margin of error. Today he looked like a guy who’d deserve the 6.00 ERA that’ll be by his name at least another few days.
Seth Smith doubled in the first. Fastball, 82, over the middle.
Austin Jackson doubled in the third. Curveball, 65, over the middle.
Smith tripled in the third. Curveball, 66, over the middle.
Cano singled in the third. Fastball, 83, over the middle.
Dustin Ackley homered in the fifth. Fastball, 81, over the middle.
Brad Miller singled in the fifth. Changeup, 74, at the belt.
Smith doubled in the fifth. Fastball, 83, at the belt.
You can’t count Weaver out, and you certainly can’t judge by one game at the start of a long season, but this was a game that would be thrown by a pitcher about to be cut. This version of Jered Weaver, throwing away his track record, might not get a major-league contract as a free agent. We just watched something like a right-handed Barry Zito with the flu, and Weaver used to be a guy who succeeded in part because he got hitters to swing and hit pitches on or beyond the edges. Nothing about Weaver today was about the edges. Except perhaps a career edge. It’s a long way down. Gotta watch your step.
As Weaver gets worse, Felix sustains. I don’t know how he does it, either, but, recognize our fortune. There was a time that Weaver might’ve been better. Imagine that. I know this gets awful jinx-y when you’re discussing two active careers, but look at them side-by-side today. At the moment, there is no comparison, not in stuff and not in ability. Today Felix faced 24 batters. Whiffed 10. Today Weaver faced 25 batters. Whiffed one. It was Mike Zunino, which doesn’t even count.
Once again, Felix coughed one up to Trout on Opening Day, getting a high fastball not high enough. Once again, it was reduced to a footnote, as Felix settled in just as his support did the same. Yeah, this could’ve gone a little differently. Smith’s game-tying triple in the third narrowly avoided Kole Calhoun. Smith’s insurance double in the fifth narrowly avoided a sliding Matt Joyce. With a couple more half-steps, who knows if those get down, and who knows what game we have? But on the other hand, that same sliding Matt Joyce collided with a not-sliding Mike Trout, and while Trout avoided any kind of injury, we’ve seen that play go tits-up. The Mariners were lucky to not have a double taken away. The Angels were lucky to not have their entire season crippled before the first seventh-inning stretch. Fun thought exercise: turn Joyce into would-be outfielder Josh Hamilton. Have Hamilton also not make the catch. This time, have Trout get hurt. Would Hamilton have been released on the spot? Probably not, but I can’t imagine he’d be allowed back in Anaheim.
Maybe that’s not a fun thought exercise. That’s a dreadful thought exercise. Kind of like having the Hamilton, Weaver, Albert Pujols, and C.J. Wilson contracts at the same time. That’s how you get Johnny Giavotella standing in against Felix Hernandez on Opening Day and trying his best.
Not everything went well for the Mariners. If everything went well for the Mariners, they might’ve won by twenty. The point is to make sure enough goes well, and this year, more than any other year recently, “enough” shouldn’t be too difficult a bar to clear. You saw some elements of a playoff team today. They didn’t all chip in as much as they could’ve, but this team has a lot of potential chipper-inners. Roster’s littered with ’em. Someday Nelson Cruz will probably get a hit.
Nine straight Opening Days, the Mariners have left us smiling. Nine straight Opening Days, I’ve written something to the effect of how, even though it’s incredibly early, every game matters, every single game matters, and when you’re 1-0, that makes it incrementally easier to be there in the playoffs at the end. It’s all about the probability, right? Winning on Opening Day improves the probability. Nine straight Opening Days of this. Try not to worry about what happened after the first eight.
Game 1, Angels at Mariners
Felix Hernandez vs. Jered Weaver, 1:10pm
Happy Felix Day, and happy opening day 2015.
The M’s face the team that most see as their primary competition for the AL West title. Given the expectations, this is probably the most anticipated opening day in years, but then, some of us get a queasy feeling in our stomach any time national writers place expectations on this club. Still, after so many Aprils when it really felt like the M’s had no shot, it’s nice to see the pendulum swing and, if anything, care *too much* about each early match-up. The division’s tight, and the M’s need to get a leg up on Anaheim while Garrett Richards is out. This can lead to over-analyzing every bullpen move, every sacrifice, every 1-2 pitch call, etc. That’s not fun, but it does evidence some investment in the outcome.
As we’ve talked about, the Angels won 98 games behind a powerhouse offense and a surprisingly good rotation. And as I mentioned last night, that rotation has a number of question marks heading into 2015. CJ Wilson probably engenders the most, but tonight’s starter, Jered Weaver, is close. I mentioned Weaver’s declining velocity in last year‘s opening day post, but if anything, that decline is picking up speed. Spring training is for getting work in, and it’s not iron-clad evidence of decline, but Weaver’s one start with gameday data this spring occurred on March 11th, and in that contest, Weaver’s four-seam fastball averaged 83.9mph. Bad pitch fx calibration? No, I don’t think so, as the start occurred in a Trackman park. Like most pitchers, Weaver’s velocity is down a bit in the early months of the year before peaking in August or so. Last year, he came out of the gate at around 86 before getting back to 88 in September. Not coincidentally, he was average or so in April before settling in with a brilliant May and a strong finish to his season.
Beyond velocity, though, there’s the matter of his home/road splits that we talked about last night. Weaver’s known for his rising fastball and the extreme fly ball rates it produces. Like Chris Young, his game is based around managing fly ball contact and running low HR/FB ratios – it all adds up to a pitcher who routinely outpitches his fielding-independent stats. Given his home park, you might assume that this approach works well in any park that suppresses home runs; anywhere that a fly ball produces fewer runs would seem to be a great park for Weaver and Chris Young. For whatever reason, that hasn’t been the case for Weaver.
Weaver has started 17 games at Safeco field, and has faced some of the most anemic offenses in recent baseball history. If any park in baseball would seem tailor-made for Weaver’s approach, it’s Safeco. And yet Weaver’s career batting line against in Seattle is .286/.331/.486. In one of the toughest offensive environments in the game, the M’s have hit like Adrian Gonzalez or Justin Upton in 2014. Sure, Weaver’s career stats are pulled down by struggles early in his career (though that just meant he was getting hit hard by Yuniesky Betancourt). After several good years, the old pattern has returned. In his last six starts at Safeco, he‘s given up 8 HRs, including four in two games last season. These are the kinds of games the M’s need to win if they want to take control of the division. They were great in the second half last season, but this year they need to start faster than they have in the past.
The opening day line-up:
1: Jackson, CF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Morrison, 1B
7: Zunino, C
8: Ackley, LF
9: Miller, SS
SP: KING FELIX
The Padres had one final trade in their off-season, trading for Craig Kimbrel and Melvin “BJ” Upton last night in exchange for prospects Matt Wisler, Jordan Paroubeck and the expiring contract of Carlos Quentin. Much of the focus of the trade thus far has been on the Braves’ ability to shed the contract of Upton, who produced essentially 0 WAR in two seasons in Atlanta. People have questioned why the Padres would need a closer at this point, but given their busy off-season, adding the game’s best reliever (it’s him or Aroldis Chapman) seems like a decent move in a two-wild-card environment. The Braves shed a lot of salary in what’s now unambiguously a rebuild, and given the moves THEY’VE made this off-season, they had less need for a lights-out closer than just about anyone. But given their roster at the end of the year, I’m a bit confused about why they decided to tear the whole thing down. This wasn’t an aging ballclub by any means – many of the players they’ve shipped out, including Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, Kimbrel and Evan Gattis were under 28. Alex Wood and Julio Teheran, two of their top young starters, were both 23 last year. Heyward, 1B Freddie Freeman and SS Andrelton Simmons were all above-average players at age 24 last season. They finished a bit below .500 in 2014, but this is the kind of young core most teams would kill for. Instead of building around it, they’ve traded it all away, and while they’ve achieved a modicum of cost savings, it’s not like Heyward or Kimbrel were costly players in this era. They’ve acquired plenty of minor league talent – given the two Upton trades, they now employ a good chunk of the Padres’ top end-of-2014 prospects, but they don’t have a signature, key guy that’s an obvious part of their next young core. Max Fried, part of the first Upton haul, has a very high upside, but the young lefty missed almost all of 2014 with a forearm problem, and then had TJ surgery late in the year – he won’t pitch at all in 2015. Last night, the Braves picked up the Pads new #1 or #2 prospect, RHP Matt Wisler, a guy with solid command and the kind of make-up scouts rave about. What that hasn’t yet translated into is dominant stuff, as HR problems in the admittedly-HR-friendly PCL pumped his FIP and ERA over 5 last year. You don’t evaluate prospects based solely on stats, but the Braves gave up a lot of MLB talent and have a large collection of prospects with some very solid attributes and a whole lot of question marks. Instead of a good young club with a few holes, they’re now a decent staff with a questionable line-up that needs Nick Markakis (signed to what looks now like a completely bizarre four-year deal) and Eric Young, JR to produce. Sure, if you’re rebuilding, it seems smart to shop your closer. I’m just not clear on why Atlanta recreated Sherman’s march to the sea on their own line-up.
As a working stiff, I’m not thrilled about the early start time. I’ve heard from plenty of fans who like it, and for those of you heading to the game, I’m sure it works well, but I doubt I can watch any of it, and that’s disappointing.
Go Felix, and Go Mariners!
The M’s 2015: The Upside
The variance around projections doesn’t just run one way. While it may seem hard to believe for M’s fans since 2003, the team could just as easily outpace its projected win total as undershoot it. Similarly, their divisional rivals have the same sorts of risks that we talked about yesterday. By the projection systems, the AL West is a tight three-team race, with ZiPS/Steamer showing the M’s about a win in front of the Angels, while BP’s PECOTA has the Angels on top by a bit. Clay Davenport’s projections look quite a bit different, with the A’s a game up on the M’s, with the Angels further back). ESPN’s “Experts” projections show the M’s as the clear favorite, with the Angels in 2nd. So, *people* tend to like the M’s more than the projection *systems* and there are a number of reasons for that. It’s also worth remembering that while the M’s were good last year, the Angels won 98 games and still employ Mike Trout. Still, just as there are areas where the M’s are vulnerable, there are specific projections that the M’s have a good chance of surpassing. Here are a few areas where the M’s might get more production than forecasted:
1: Tai. Juan. Walker.
It’s not that Walker’s forecast is *bad* so much as the walk rate pushes his from “excellent” to “average-y.” Last year in the Majors, Walker’s walk rate was near 4 per 9 IP. In AAA, Walker’s walk rate has been near 4 per 9 IP as well. Sometimes projections use complicated regression and aging algorithms, and some times they just look at what a pitcher’s put up in the past. This is a sensible way to project young pitchers, and arguing against it on the basis of spring training stats or 90th percentile wishcasting is generally a bad idea. And yet…Walker’s unrecognizable from the guy who debuted in 2013, and he’s changed markedly from last year too.
His new mechanics (going from the stretch exclusively) seem to have simplified his entire motion and given him much better control. Carlos Carrasco made a similar change, and had even more dramatic results last year, and while no one’s projecting *that* from Walker, it’s extremely easy to see him put up a BB rate nearer to 2 per 9 than 4. That said, it’s not just about control improvements. While the stretch doesn’t seem to provide more deception by itself, there’s something deceptive about a 96mph fastball from such an easy delivery. In the spring, his whiff rate is up slightly, but it’s his ground ball rate that’s up significantly. A sneaky-fast four-seamer and a ground-ball machine split are a good way to keep Walker’s GB rate up and his HR rate down.
The focus coming into spring was the change in his cutter/slider, but he hasn’t thrown enough of them to say much about that. Instead, the story is that he simply hasn’t needed it – simplified mechanics and a simplified arsenal have positioned him well, and a healthy, effective spring have positioned him well going into the season. ZiPS and Steamer see an ERA/FIP nearer to 4, but with half his starts in Safeco and another chunk in Oakland/Anaheim, even the occasional grooved fastball won’t hurt as much. With lower walk rates, it’s easy for biased fans like ourselves to see him beating that projection handily. At 150 IP with lower walk rates, even a HR rate above last year’s can get him closer to 3 WAR than 1-1.5 he’s looking like now.
James Paxton would work here too, as the lefty has similar projections to Walker. The difference is that those projections are based on some regression in Paxton’s HR rate; there’s nothing odd about his K:BB projections. And while Paxton’s been great at limiting his HRs thus far, I’ve been stunned at just how few fly balls he gives up. It’d be easy to see that continuing, but since I have no idea how he’s doing it, I can’t complain too much about the projections. If I had to bet, I’d take the over on Paxton too, but I think Walker has the best chance to blow his projection out of the water.
2: OF Depth
Thanks to the black hole of CF and a down year in LF, the M’s posted the worst OF batting line in the AL, and finished 29th in MLB last year. As a team, they had issues with left-handed pitching for the second consecutive year. While Lloyd McClendon hates to use the word, the M’s are positioned well to use platoons to their advantage, especially in the OF corners. Seth Smith and Justin Ruggiano aren’t great players, but they can be quite useful. This alone puts the M’s in a much, much better position than they found themselves in last year.
But don’t platoon players introduce a problem of their own? Now when someone has an injury, the replacement isn’t really geared to playing every day. Having a healthy right-handed platoon OF doesn’t really matter if you’re facing a righty that day. It’s true, and in years past, the club’s lack of OF depth has been a serious issue. With Michael Saunders hurt, the M’s turned to everyone from Cole Gillesie to Stefen Romero to Endy Chavez in the OF corners, and they simply weren’t up to the job. In 2013, when Michael Morse went down, they turned to Jason Bay, Carlos Peguero, Franklin Gutierrez and, of course, Endy Chavez, and the results were similar. The starters have underwhelmed, but the back-ups have been atrocious. It’s not like having an every-day OF protected the club – injuries have forced them to use sub-standard filler, and they’ve paid the price for it.
For the first time in a while, the M’s upper-minors depth is concentrated in bat-first corner defenders. Ketel Marte aside, the M’s have DJ Peterson and Patrick Kivlehan in the high minors this season, and while neither has played much in the minors, I think we’re all ready to move on from the Endy Chavez contingency plan (evidently, so was Chavez, who declined an assignment to Tacoma and became a free agent). These are inexperienced players, particularly in the OF, and neither is a franchise savior. What they are is very different kind of players than Romero, the last IF-to-OF conversion the M’s tried, and very different from Carlos Peguero, whose K% and swing made him hard to comp to just about anyone. Peterson offers big-league power and solid all-around bat to ball ability, while Kivlehan has completely re-made himself from a mistake hitting 3B with huge K% issues to a solid all-around bat. It’s not the Kivlehan’s stats are eye-popping, it’s that the trend line is going up. Even last year, his wRC+ went from 123 in high-A to 140 in AA (and it stayed there in the AFL). Let’s be clear, it’s not like the either is – or should be – projected to out-hit Michael Saunders, and ZiPS doesn’t even see them outpacing Stefen Romero. If you were *counting* on one or both of them contributing in 2015, that’d be a big problem. But with additional seasoning in the minors, the M’s can see first how they fare in the OF, and second how their bats are faring against tough pitching.
Beyond that, the M’s have pieces to deal for short-term help. They can move Marte, who realistically has no shot at a big league job in Seattle. If the price is right and his wrist checks out, they could deal Chris Taylor (or Brad Miller). If Paxton and Walker look good and guys like Jordan Pries look good, the M’s could move Roenis Elias. And that’s only if one or both of Smith and Ruggiano are hurt, Kivlehan, Romero and possibly Peterson fall on their face *and* the M’s are still in the race. The M’s have options in the OF, and for the first time in a while, they’re not bad ones.
3: The M’s rivals have down-side risks, too.
We’ve already gone into great detail about the areas the M’s are vulnerable to underperformance, but the A’s and Angels have plenty of their own. The Angels, for example, had surprisingly good starting pitching last year, with a top-10 staff by FIP – a few spots ahead of the Mariners. Garrett Richards led the staff, but the team stayed hot after Richards’ injury thanks to Matt Shoemaker and veterans CJ Wilson and Jered Weaver. Shoemaker was the most successful of the three, but the trio combined to go 45-22 and stabilize a staff rocked by injuries to both Richards and Tyler Skaggs.
At home, the three had very different approaches, but each had tremendous success in keeping the ball in the ballpark. Shoemaker was a revelation, with more than 5 strikeouts for every walk, and a HR/9IP rate of 0.66. CJ Wilson’s slide into mediocrity continued, but he kept up appearances at home, with more than 2 strikeouts per walk and a low HR rate producing a FIP in the mid-high 3’s. For a back of the rotation guy – never mind his salary, that’s Wilson’s role – that’s not awful. Weaver fell somewhere in the middle, with a solid K:BB ratio (though not the equal of Shoemaker’s) and an exceptionally low HR rate. While his velocity has continued to slide, Weaver’s home stats showed some reasons for optimism – that his arm angle and FB rotation might allow him to continue to be successful. Unfortunately, the Angels, like every other team, play road games.
Shoemaker’s HR rate doubled from 0.66 to 1.32 – while he continued to pound the strikezone, batters exacted a much higher price. CJ Wilson was below replacement level, with a walk rate over 13% compounded with 1.47 HR/9IP – this resulted in a FIP just about 5, and an ERA that was worse. Weaver’s HR/FB magic failed completely, and batters teed off to the tune of over 2 HR per 9IP. Weaver’s road FIP was 5.59, and while his ERA was better than that, it wasn’t good. As solid as the Angels rotation was at home, it was Richards and then a lot of slugfests on the road. The Angels offense was a potent group, but even they couldn’t salvage many of these starts, and thus the Angels, who had the same road record as the M’s, finished 11 games ahead.
Of course, huge splits of any kind aren’t some iron-clad guarantee that the Angels got lucky somehow in 2014. They’ll play half their games in Anaheim in 2015, too, and they still get to visit Oakland and Seattle several times – a good thing if your problem is home runs. For years, Weaver’s game has been based on dominating at home for whatever reason, and being average-to-a-bit-better on the road. When he was great, like in 2011, Weaver was a near-ace on the road, and nearly-unhittable at home. Since then, his road numbers have fallen quickly, while he’s managed to keep him home stats decent. In a tight division, the Angels can’t afford to just punt road games, and if Weaver’s FB falls to Zito-level velocity, then his remarkable string of “beating” his expected HRs allowed might not continue. CJ Wilson has pitched around poor platoon splits and HR issues for years, but at 34, it’s not clear he’ll be able to do so forever, especially not if he continues to walk so many batters. Matt Shoemaker, of all people, showed more pure bat-missing stuff last year, and it’s possible he could be effective in a poor-man’s-Iwakuma sort of way even if his home run rate regresses. But it’s also possible that a guy who hasn’t yet succeeded at the AAA level and dominated teams who’d never seen him before returns to earth the way Kris Medlen did in 2013.
The projection systems can see this too, for the most part; no one’s simply taking Shoemaker’s rate stats and extending them out to 200 IP in 2015. Still, there’s the potential here for a more systemic collapse, particularly if Weaver’s home form falters. Jeff had the great idea to tailor Weaver’s schedule to maximize his home (and daytime) starts, and the Angels could try that – but they can’t do it for all three of these guys. Shoemaker and Weaver already had more home starts than road ones, but if anyone needs their schedule moved around, it looks like it’s Wilson. The Angels attempted to build some depth behind the vets by trading Howie Kendrick for Andrew Heaney, and they hope to get Skaggs back at some point, but while Heaney’s a solid prospect, the loss of Kendrick means there’s less offense to help bail out the rotation. The Angels could get regression in the right direction and see the troika’s road stats move back towards average, Wilson’s control could improve a bit, and Shoemaker could do…no, he couldn’t, the entire idea of Matt Shoemaker is already the most Angels thing in history, or at least since Scott Spiezio was good. But if they don’t, the Angels may not be the good-to-very-good club ZiPS and PECOTA see, and that’d open the door to Seattle.
For Oakland, the problem’s really on the offensive side. If anything, the projected pitching WAR for the A’s looks low, though they once again rely on a number of young, untested arms. But after dealing their biggest offensive threat for a decent buy-low candidate and a promising teenage SS prospect, the A’s new look offense looks much more suspicious to the eye than the projection system. To me, the A’s have issues at 1B, SS, 3B and the OF. This isn’t to say all of these positions will be black holes, or even below average. Rather, it’s that the projections seem bullish on players with some red flags, particularly injury issues.
At 1B, the A’s have ex-Met Ike Davis penciled in. Davis famously hit 32 HRs in 2012 and then suddenly misplaced his power, accumulating 20 HRs total in the two seasons after that. His playing time slipped, which explains part of it, but then, the fact that he wasn’t hitting also explains the lack of playing time. One of the things the Mets seem to have concluded is that Davis is an extreme platoon hitter. In his career, Davis has a .577 OPS against lefties, and thus in his almost-sort-of-bounceback campaign last year, Davis had only 35 plate appearances against lefties compared to nearly 400 against righties. We talk about Ruggiano as a platoon OF, but Ruggiano can actually hit righties a bit, and *actually faces them occasionally*. While the projections don’t love Davis (and given the NL-to-AL move, the power-sapping ballparks in the AL West, and the glut of lefty pitching teams can throw at the A’s, that’s understandable), they like him enough to give him 490 PAs, with Billy Butler getting most of the rest. If Billy Butler playing defense is a better option, something’s gone wrong.
The A’s picked up Marcus Semien in the deal that sent Jeff Samardzija to Chicago, and seem to have installed him as their starting SS. Their IF coaches have done a tremendous job, but while Semien’s young, this seems like a stretch. For the White Sox, Semien split time between 2B and 3B and didn’t seem like an obvious candidate to move up the defensive spectrum. While he played SS quite a bit in the minors, he was shifting to 2B and 3B often, beginning in the Carolina league. Eno Sarris had a good article at Fangraphs about the A’s confidence in Semien, but many of the other players who’ve moved from utility-guy to SS were clear defense-first guys, from Adeiny Hechevarria to Brendan Ryan. If Semien is more of a 2B-pressed-into-SS, and if Butler gets more reps against lefties than assumed, the A’s defense as a whole could struggle. Meanwhile, even with the positional adjustment, Semien’s bat has question marks following a year in which he K’d 27.5% of the time, and hit for less power than his MiLB numbers would suggest. Since 2013, Semien’s had surprising pop for a middle infielder, and while he hasn’t been Brendan Ryan-esque, he’s played in a very hitter-friendly park and put up a .140 ISO. He’s obviously developing, but playing half his games in Oakland isn’t ideal.
That brings us to 3B, and perhaps the biggest deal of the winter. The A’s had 5-win 3B Josh Donaldson heading to arbitration, but instead flipped him for a package built around 3B Brett Lawrie and SS Franklin Barreto. The latter won’t be in the bigs for a few years, so the A’s ability to challenge the M’s rests in part on Lawrie bouncing back from two sub-par, injury plagued seasons and replacing Donaldson’s production. Right now, Lawrie’s projected for 3.5 fWAR in 560 plate appearances, shockingly close to Kyle Seager’s 3.9 in 616 plate appearances. Is Lawrie Seager’s equal on a per-PA basis, but we’ve just missed it because he’s been hurt? The short answer is no, and the longer answer is hell no. First, Lawrie’s slash lines are aided both by his home park and generated in very few games. Lawrie’s never made it to 560 PAs in the bigs, and hasn’t done so at all since AA in 2010. The A’s are confident that they can contain his hyper-aggressive style in order to keep him healthy, but they can’t change where they play. In his career, Lawrie has a .183 ISO and a 119 wRC+ at home compared to a .139 ISO and an 89 wRC+ on the road. Given his aggressive approach at the plate, Lawrie needs to hit for enough power to make up for a lack of walks. Like Semien and Davis, that’s a tall order given his new park and division. I think Lawrie’s a solid player, and a good buy-low candidate (though why you need to offer an all-star, borderline MVP candidate to get back a buy-low candidate is another question), and I can see him staying healthier than he’s been and putting up league-average or better numbers. What I can’t see is him challenging Seager’s production.
The A’s OF has seen a lot of turnover, but it’s been a solid group in recent years, with Josh Reddick and Coco Crisp anchoring the group. Crisp has aged surprisingly well, and given the A’s a better-than-league-average bat in CF in each of the past three years. Reddick has been more volatile, but produced a sneaky-good 2014 after a down 2013 campaign. The issue here is somewhat obvious given recent headlines – both Crisp and Reddick start 2015 on the DL, and injury problems are starting to mount up for both players. The A’s have some depth in Craig Gentry, and neither Crisp nor Reddick injury will keep them out for long, but the A’s are getting an early preview of what it looks like to lose both at the same time. With Sam Fuld playing CF, Craig Gentry is essentially the back-up for all three OF slots. He can’t play everywhere, so the A’s may open with Gentry, Fuld and Zobrist in the OF. Zobrist’s versatility covers a multitude of sins, but ideally, Zobrist plays on the IF, obviating the need for Eric Sogard starts. They could play Mark Canha in the OF, but Canha is both a 1B by trade and someone who’s hasn’t played a big league game as of today. They’re the A’s – they’ll figure it all out by late May, and maybe Crisp and Reddick play the rest of the games without incident. But a bad start may prove difficult to overcome if the Angels and M’s play up to their potential, and if the A’s fall behind, they could opt to trade Zobrist for prospects instead of trading Barreto for big league reinforcements.
Podcast(s): Reviewing March, and More
We are back. With two podcasts! We had so much to discuss having been gone for awhile that I attempted to cleave our discussion into two parts; the first is almost all Mariners while the second is more general MLB talk plus some stuff on hiking and Jeff’s vacation. As usual, there remain random digressions throughout but hopefully this is some sort of coherent order for y’all. Apologies for the necessary edits.
Podcast with Jeff (@based_ball) and Matthew (@msea1):
Direct link! for the Mariners heavy recording.
Direct link! for the more general MLB recording.
For all the ‘casts: iTunes link! || RSS/XML link!
Thanks again to those that helped support the show and/or StatCorner in general last week, and in the past, and hopefully in the future. It’s truly appreciated. And thank you to our sponsor for this episode, TodayIFoundOut!
If It Goes Right
We tend to forget all of our memes as soon as we adopt new ones. They’re ephemeral things, which can make it a trip when something comes along and jogs your memory. Like, every so often, I’m reminded of Chris Jakubauskas, and then I’m reminded that some people used to call him the Jakubaustrich, and that was as recent as 2009, and that’s always a little bit flooring. Every old meme is ridiculous. We never think of our current memes as ridiculous. Something to think about. Anyway, the reason I’m bringing this up: used to be, for a few years, it was popular to compare the Mariners to the Royals. More than that, it was popular to say the Mariners were the Royals, if perhaps delayed by a year. The two organizations operated the same way, and the two organizations seemed doomed to the same unremarkable fates, the same sequences of the same fourth- and fifth-place finishes. People compared the Mariners to the Royals, and this was intended as a criticism.
Then people stopped. The comparison would’ve taken on new meaning after the Royals got to the World Series. But, well. In hindsight, we should’ve stuck with it. All the bad Mariners were all the bad Royals. The 2014 Mariners were the 2013 Royals. And the 2015 Mariners are the 2014 Royals. The comparison is still alive. It might be stronger than ever. The parallels just aren’t what they used to be, in terms of the takeaway message.
You, me, that guy, this girl, all those people who’ve been milling around SoDo — we’re fans of a good baseball team. This is important. Read that sentence fragment again, and then, read that sentence fragment again. Here, I’ll repeat it: we’re fans of a good baseball team. This is an identity we’re still working to cultivate. It’s the complete opposite of the identity we developed over the course of a long and dark decade. Thing about being irrelevant and disappointing for so long is that you get your thicker psychological skin. Your sense of humor spins off in a very particular direction, as you learn the ins and outs of coping with a pastime that only ever lets you down. We identified with failure. We made jokes at our own expense. We were the sad-sack people who rooted for the sad-sack team, the people others felt bad for, the team nobody hated. The identity we had — the identity in which we found comfort — it’s no longer appropriate. It’s a little like one of those What Not To Wear episodes where the 43-year-old mother of two dresses like she’s in junior high. The mother needs to dress her age. We need to behave in accordance with our circumstances. Nobody feels bad for us. Our team is now hated, by people other than us.
Clearly, this has been a long time coming. The regular season goes for a while. This one was preceded by several months of projections claiming the Mariners would be good. Before that, the Mariners of 2014 very narrowly missed the playoffs. This is by no means an overnight sensation, so we’ve had about a year and a half to recognize our changing situation. But a year and a half is nothing compared to the years we spent asking ourselves why this hobby was a hobby. It’s going to take a long time for it all to sink in. It’s going to take a long time for our identity to re-sequence. What’s the rule with break-ups — one month of recovery for every year you’re together? Might be there’s a similar principle, adjusting to a sports team no longer being really good or really bad. You’re forgiven if you still aren’t used to this, if you still don’t identify with this. Just, be aware of what’s coming. We’re fans of a good baseball team. If it hasn’t yet, this is going to change you.
I’m sure this goes without saying, but, gosh, it’s one thing to expect a pretty good baseball team, and it’s quite another to actually see one. You remember the preseason projections. I think, as far back as November, I wrote about why the Mariners might be the best team in the American League. The projections were encouraging, and they were encouraging across the board. Steamer liked the Mariners. ZiPS liked the Mariners. PECOTA liked the Mariners. Clay Davenport liked the Mariners. Vegas liked the Mariners. Baseball analysts and commentators liked the Mariners. Scouts liked the Mariners. The Mariners were not an underdog. The Mariners were not a surprise. The season they’ve had — this is a season that we all knew could happen. I remember a tweet from sometime in March, and I think it was posted by Peter Gammons, and he cited a scout who saw the Mariners in spring training and said they looked like the league’s best ballclub. The response wasn’t, “what on earth?” The response was, “sure”. The scout wasn’t exactly going out on a limb.
We knew the Mariners looked strong. We knew they had both talent and depth. But there’s another thing we also knew: the error bars around preseason projections are enormous. When we thought the Mariners could be a playoff team in 2008, they lost 101 games. When we thought the Mariners could be a playoff team in 2010, they lost 101 games. Those memories aren’t easy ones to dismiss. Those were the most recent years in which we began all optimistic, and they wound up with names like Tug Hulett and Chris Seddon. As baseball fans, we root for players, not projections, and sometimes players under-perform. Sometimes players develop ankylosing spondylitis. You’d think that it might be a little less enjoyable to go into a year where success isn’t surprising, and that’s probably true when you get to the point where you really do take perennial success for granted, but, none of us were actually doing that. We’ve not been in position to take winning for granted. Maybe five years from now. But the projections were always at odds with that aforementioned identity. And when there’s a disagreement between the gut and the numbers, you’ll feel the gut more than you’ll feel the data. We wouldn’t be able to accept the Mariners as a good team until they played like an actual good team. An actual playoff team. A playoff team like the playoff team they are.
It’s stark how different the feeling is when the baseball team you follow is playing for something. The games matter, every single day. Games thrill you or upset you, every single day. On the penultimate day of the 2014 regular season, I remember watching the end of a Mariners/Angels game at a bar, and then Austin Jackson hit that incredibly stupid game-winning forceout. He made contact that was too bad for the Angels to turn an inning-ending double play, and that’s how the Mariners survived into their final nine innings. It didn’t matter. It didn’t have to be pretty, and it didn’t matter who was responsible. I left that bar and just about skipped for ten blocks. It was genuine elation at minutes before midnight, and it was elation because the Mariners still had a chance to go to the playoffs, because of a game they won.
Sure, it ultimately didn’t work out, but 2014 gave us a few glimpses of what 2015 would be like. There was more than occasional elation. There was a very real sense of hanging on just about every pitch, and while it would be romanticizing things to say that was always the case, when the games you’re watching are important, you’re less likely to notice how slow they might be going. You’re less likely to notice if it’s, say, Willie Bloomquist driving home the run instead of Robinson Cano. All you want is a win, and it doesn’t matter how it happens, and a slow pace might be appreciated so that you can give your heart a breather. You remember, last offseason was the offseason of speeding up the pace of the game. A noble goal, absolutely, but the people to whom that matters most are professional baseball writers and fans of bad teams. Fans of good teams don’t have complaints. The biggest complaint might be that the next game isn’t here yet.
To get more personal for a paragraph, I moved to the Pacific Northwest in February 2010. Like many, I’ve fallen in love with it here, and more than anything else, I’ve been delighted by the summers, and the opportunities they’ve afforded for incredible hiking and other-worldly camping. Some summers, it seemed like just about every weekend I’d be leaving the city and leaving the grid to get lost somewhere in the woods or the rock. I never feel more centered than I do when I’m out there, and in no time that developed into my primary passion. This became the summer of staying in. More and more, I found myself torn, choosing between getting outdoors and watching the Mariners. This was my least-active summer of all my summers here. Hiking was always the excuse for abandoning the Mariners. The Mariners became an excuse for abandoning the trails. Now, I don’t think that’ll be long-term sustainable — one needs to go into the world — but that reflects the appeal of the ballclub we were given. The Seattle Mariners are an entertainment venture, and this year they’ve actually looked it.
I remember being so annoyed by the obvious marketing. All the ploys I’d see on Twitter to get you to go to a game and hand over all your money. The team’s a business, and businesses succeed by collecting what you’ve earned, and when you start to see through it, it’s repulsive. Out there, there are so many agendas. But then, people generally do know when they’re being marketed to, and it didn’t seem to diminish any of the enthusiasm. The Mariners are always trying to sell themselves, but this has been a baseball team people wanted to be sold. There was nothing sinister afoot. No one had to be convinced to go to a game and get a beer and a hot dog, because beer is delicious, and hot dogs are delicious, and games are where you can watch the Mariners win around 40,000 other people. Sometimes some of them wear yellow and they’re loud as fuck.
The King’s Court gave us our first glimpse of a kind of playoff atmosphere, even within dead seasons. Felix was a draw — watching Felix pitch was an experience. This team has delivered other experiences, more often than once per five days. Nelson Cruz really does hit the ball differently, like a full-season version of pre-injury Michael Morse. James Paxton isn’t Clayton Kershaw, but we’ve been able to see the influence. Robinson Cano is the kind of steady hitter we hadn’t seen since Edgar Martinez, and it seemed like he had two hits every day. Every time Fernando Rodney came jogging in, it felt like a rock concert. All Brad Miller did was develop into the best all-around shortstop in the AL. And there was, you know, the general team experience. Cheering every run, every out, and every win. Didn’t matter whether Felix was pitching or not. Felix didn’t start any of those four games against the Angels that the Mariners swept going into the All-Star break. Didn’t mean it wasn’t maybe the most enjoyable series of baseball the Mariners had played in, man, I couldn’t even tell you. Felix helped to get us through the darker days. In the brighter ones, he was always going to be just a part of the whole.
It’s been months of baseball at the best that baseball can be. Which, if you step back, is kind of amazing, if you consider what we’ve talked about. Right around when the Mariners signed Cano was when Geoff Baker published that article bringing down the front office, and we’ve all previously pondered the question of whether we wanted these people to be in charge anymore. We all felt like, even just a few years ago, the Mariners were stuck in the bottom tier. At that point, if you recall, the Mariners seemed almost hopeless, and the Rangers seemed like a model franchise. It’s not that everyone was totally wrong. Baseball will surprise you. For their part, the Rangers have been undone by a few bad decisions and a lot of bad luck. But, front-office evaluations and organizational summaries are things we talk about to fill the time between baseball seasons and baseball games. All we care about is the baseball team we like the most winning more games than it doesn’t. This team has. Things were unquestionably dark. It can just be hard to appreciate how soon the light of dawn can arrive. Baseball moves quicker than a five-year plan.
Five years ago, the Mariners wrapped up a 61-101 season they began with title dreams. They began it with Felix Hernandez and Cliff Lee and Chone Figgins before Chone Figgins was a bad name to invoke in a sentence like this. It was more than just a damaging season — it was a season that forced the organization to go back to the drawing board. It was a season that, reportedly, altered the way the front office operated. It was a season we wouldn’t be able to forget if we tried, even though it was also a season we stopped paying attention to by the time it was half of the way over. It was a season that made success feel more distant than ever.
As this season has wrapped up, this season also has not wrapped up. It’s simply given way to a later season, a special season, a season the Mariners get to begin by dealing with the Blue Jays. And maybe that’s the way it’ll end, who knows, but getting here was the point, and the season has been a success, no matter what happens. First place is first place, and most good teams fall short of the World Series. For years, Safeco has been invaded by Blue Jays fans traveling down from the north, and they’ve been loud and Mariners fans have tried to be loud in response, as if the teams or the games even mattered. This is going to be a little different. There won’t be so many opportunities to think about being as obnoxiously loud as possible. The fans’ll be too busy being as obnoxiously loud as possible.
The M’s 2015: The Risks
With opening day tantalizingly close, and the M’s set to open their most anticipated season since 2010, er, 2008, in a long time, the M’s remain the favorite in a revamped AL West. As we know, of course, projections don’t win actual games, and everything from trades to injury to breakout years and collapses mean that the season won’t play out the way PECOTA/ZiPS/Steamer/baseball writers see it. The M’s could be much, much better than their projection, and we will retroactively identify and scoff at the deficiencies in the projections. Alternatively, the M’s could underperform significantly, as anyone who’s followed this team for a while knows. So today and tomorrow we’ll take a look at some of the areas that could cause the M’s actual win total to diverge from the projection consensus of somewhere around 87-90 wins. We’ll start today with some of the reasons the M’s might underperform, because pessimism feels like an old comfortable old jacket at this point.. Ahhhhh.
1: Mike Zunino’s grasp of the strike zone remains tenuous
Mike Zunino did a brilliant job behind the plate last year, and the more we learn about catcher framing, the more we understand that Safeco field isn’t the only thing making the M’s pitchers look better than they otherwise would. He’s a leader, has the tools to become a perennial all-star, and just turned 24 last week. He also put up a .254 on base percentage last year, knocking 22 HRs but costing the M’s runs on offense thanks to his all-or-nothing approach. Zunino is both a catcher, and a catcher who hits freakishly few ground balls, so his BABIP is never going to be very high, but however many HRs you hit, striking out in a third of your plate appearances AND putting up a low BABIP is a recipe to getting reaaallly familiar with the Mendoza line.
There are two distinct issues here. The first, and the one that’s working very hard at correcting, is his strike zone judgment. Last year, he swung at nearly 40% of out-of-the-strike-zone pitches, up 10 percentage points from his call-up in 2013. As a result of this ecumenical approach to swinging, his K:BB ratio tanked – his 0.11 BB:K ratio was tied for the worst in MLB for anyone with at least 300 PAs. If this number is below the 0.16 put up by Javier Baez last year, you have a serious problem. What’s worrying is that it doesn’t appear that opposing pitchers have fully plumbed the depths of Zunino’s obsession with swinging. They threw him a slightly below-average number of strikes last year, but there’s some room for that number to drop. Pitchers understand that Pablo Sandoval *wants* to swing, and thus he gets far fewer strikes than average (or Zunino). As long as his O-swing stays around 40%, he’ll see his strike percentage drop, as pitchers learn there’s no need to risk strikes.
Second, it’s obviously a problem if Zunino swings and misses at breaking balls diving out of the zone. His other problem, though, is hitting them. Scott Lindholm had a great article on hitting pitches out of the zone a few months back at Beyond the Box Score. Within that is a great Tableau visualization/table comparing each batter’s BA and SLG% for in-zone pitches and out-of-zone pitches. It’s well worth diving into and playing with. What it’s showing you is that there are a few different ways to be a good hitter. For those hitters with massive, massive gaps in in-zone vs. out-of-zone production, you need to do serious damage on strikes. So, Jose Abreu, Devin Mesoraco, Giancarlo Stanton, Steve Pearce, Adam Dunn are all clustered near the top. Freakish, 70-80 grade power helps, but so does plate discipline – that’s why Dunn and Stanton are here.
That’s not the only approach, however. Sandoval has a predictably small gap. If he had his approach and wasn’t successful, he’d have washed out of the league years ago. As it is, he’s actually a pretty decent bad-ball hitter, and while his stats are worse, they’re not atrocious when he hits a ball. Same thing with Adam Jones, another guy with a poor BB:K ratio and some pop. He doesn’t really recognize the strike zone all that well, but he can hit bad balls well enough that the discipline issue isn’t critical. The final approach is just being good at everything, and that’s where we find Mike Trout, who destroys strikes and is suprisingly decent on balls, especially given his well-known struggles with high fastballs. In any event, just as you can be effective with a really small gap between strikes and balls, or with a really huge gap, you start to see the flip side of the coin, the evil Spock approach that could produce similar results. For example, if you’re not strong enough to do serious damage on strikes, then you’re going to have a Sandovalian gap but without Sandovalian production – this is the sad state that, say, Endy Chavez and Justin Smoak find themselves in. With Smoak in particular, it’s not that he didn’t recognize the strike zone – he was pretty good at that. It’s that even when he got his pitch, he couldn’t do much with it. And what the gap doesn’t tell you is the rate at which you put balls and strikes into play. Thus, having a very large gap isn’t helpful if you put too many bad pitches in play. Unfortunately, this is the situation Zunino finds himself in. He’s not yet good enough to SLG *enough* on balls that 2-strike counts aren’t a kind of death sentence. But unless he tightens the strike zone, he’ll keep seeing more and more balls.
The good news here is that Zunino and the M’s are very aware of the problem, and Zunino’s spent the spring giving us reasons to believe he’s made serious strides in plate discipline. It’s tempting to look at his spring and his birthdate and assume that this is something he’s rapidly growing out of, and that he’ll improve his BB:K over time like most hitters. But the cautionary tale here is that of another young catcher whose power helped him overcome a terrible BB:K ratio for a while, but who never improved on his first full season in the big leagues. Look on the works of JP Arencibia and despair, M’s fans. Arencibia blew through the low minors and then had a bit of a hiccup in his first taste of AAA. Returning to the level and the deliciously hitter-friendly Cashman Field, Arencibia uncorked a slash line of .301/.359/.626 in 2010. In 2011, he was the Blue Jays starting C, hit 23 HRs, and though the .282 OBP wasn’t ideal, Arencibia could improve on his plate discipline with time, right? Instead, he’s been unable to make adjustments, and his BB:K ratio got worse. His o-swing% started high, but climbed a bit more in the years that followed, culminating in an abysmal 2013, with a BB:K ratio of 0.12, a .194 average and a .227 OBP. He was a 27 year old catcher who hit 21 HRs, and the Blue Jays didn’t make him an arbitration offer, effectively cutting him. He’s now in the Orioles’ minor league system. Oh yeah – the spring before that career-nuking 2013 season? The one where his approach cratered? That spring, Arencibia hit .439/.477/.902.
That’s a worst-case scenario, clearly, but it’s a bit terrifying that Zunino’s o-swing and BB:K is ALREADY where Arencibia’s ended up in 2013. He’s younger, and honestly, his spring has produced some reasons to think he can get a lot better at the plate in 2015. It’s great that the coaching staff have worked on this so much with Zunino, because as we saw with Zunino from 2013 to 2014, or Arencibia from 2011 to 2013, it’s not enough to say that experience will take care of the problem. Fixing the problem takes care of the problem.
2: The bullpen acts like a bullpen, and puts up very different numbers this year
OK, you could write this about any team, in any year. High variance isn’t the point of a bullpen, but it seems to be the price we pay for the highly specialized and generally highly effective modern reliever corps. In 2014, the M’s had the lowest bullpen ERA in baseball. They had the best strand rate, even platoon splits, and a very high strikeout rate. While FIP didn’t love them for a few reasons, they were clearly an asset for the club, and you see that clearly in their 4-in-the-AL win probability added. The bullpen is largely unchanged this year, so can we chalk up another sub-3.00 ERA? The problem is that in 2013, the M’s had the *worst* strand rate in baseball and a terrible ERA *despite* an even better K rate than they had last year. Some of this is just sequencing – the difference in the bullpen’s FIP from 2013 to 2014 isn’t *that* big, but the M’s were unlucky on balls in play and sequencing in 2013, but very lucky on balls in play and sequencing in 2014.
So far, so orthodox. Regression to the mean, people! But this isn’t purely about luck. The specific relievers the M’s have come with a specific set of skills, and a specific set of concerns. The M’s got a brilliant rookie season from Dominic Leone last year, as the righty used a 95mph fastball to rack up a 25% K rate and an ERA hovering around 2. The issue isn’t so much that he “beat” his FIP, it’s that he was never a huge swing-and-miss guy in the minors. In 2013, he had one of the lowest swinging strike rates for the Jackson Generals, and his K% in the A+ and AA didn’t approach the mark he put last year. Some times pitchers figure something out and become far more hittable than they were in the minors (or in college), but it’s equally likely that an out-of-nowhere reliever can put up great numbers and then struggle to sustain them – Mark Lowe in 2006, Julio Mateo in 2003, etc. Dominic Leone has the tools to be good for a while, but it was just odd that big leaguers found him harder to square up than the California League. Spring training generally means nothing, but it makes me squeamish to see Leone give up 17 hits in just seven spring innings. Obviously, if your fourth or fifth righty in the pen is your problem, you’re living right. If Leone tanks, the M’s can swap in Carson Smith and not miss a beat. If it was *just* Leone, that’d be one thing.
It’s not, though. Not while Danny Farquhar’s velocity seemed to be down this spring. It’s always impossible to know what to do with that – maybe he was working on something, maybe he was tired one day and that screwed up the overall averages. Still, let’s remember that Farquhar was a frequent guest of the waiver wire, and struggled to latch on until he started throwing 95. Sure, the big change was a mechanical overhaul, and it’s not like Farquhar’s throwing sidearm again, but this is a guy who threw 89mph for years, and then induced his small frame to throw 95. His velocity dropped by over 1mph last year, and he proved he could still be effective at 94. However, Farquhar averaged 92.6 in Arizona. If he’s around 92 in Seattle, can he still avoid HRs the way he’s done the past two years? Farquhar’s smart and knows several pitches. He ditched his sinker in 2014, and though his four-seamer wasn’t quite as good in 2014, his cutter could compensate. Changing his approach – switching back to the four-seam and curve, say – can help him accommodate lower velo, but it’s not a fix. If he comes out throwing 95-96 again, then the point is moot. For the M’s sake, let’s hope he does.
That brings us to Tom Wilhelmsen, the most enigmatic/important of the M’s relievers. The Bartender led the bullpen in WPA last year, and he paired the biggest workload with the lowest ERA. We all know what he’s capable of, and that’s part of the reason his 2013 was so disappointing. Wilhelmsen struggled with his control all year, and that made his top-shelf stuff play down. He didn’t get as many strikeouts in part because he was behind in counts. His overall results were much better in 2014, but it’s worth remembering that he didn’t entirely solve the problem. His walk rate was still over 11%, and his K rate was good, but not in line with his excellent FB/CU combo. For a variety of reasons, Wilhelmsen’s been inconsistent, trading months with off-the-charts performances with months where he couldn’t find the zone. What helped him tremendously last year was his insane .200 BABIP. A pitcher with great velo can run lower-than-average BABIPs, but .200 just isn’t sustainable. To compensate, he needs to get back to the form he showed in 2012, with a 27% K rate and a walk rate safely under 10%.
So, finally, we’ve got the Fernando Rodney experience. Rodney is 38, and coming off a year in which his fastball lost 1.5MPH. It’s still a good pitch, and the change-up is mind-altering, but this is still the guy who was cut in 2011, and whose grasp of the closer job seemed shaky in April/May. His dominance the rest of the way was a huge part of the M’s run to contention, and if they want to get past the Angels/A’s, another year from the archer would really help. I’m wary of all non-Felix pitchers, though, and 38-year old closers are rare enough that it’s tough to feel absolutely safe about this. As Fangraphs and others have noted, the M’s could have the best bullpen in baseball this year. If one or two of the guys listed here struggles, they could still have an excellent group that adds value to the team overall. But the potential – however remote – is there for a more systemic collapse, or at least regression, that spells the difference between the division and a one game crapshoot, or the playoffs and another frustrating season. We need those arrows to be real.
3: The *good* Austin Jackson never returns
In the aggregate, we can say something meaningful about player aging curves, but that doesn’t help you understand an individual player. It’s nice to know when the median player peaks, or how gradually the average player (who is allowed to decline on a major league roster) declines. In the face of all of these averaged, combined numbers, we have the actual records of thousands of individual cases – and while that can help us understand just how uncommon a particular career arc is, it by definition can’t help identify the statistical anomalies, the great players who defy aging and those whose aging seems to run in fast-forward.
Since his 2010 debut, everyone has *known* what would doom Austin Jackson’s batting stats. After posting a sky-high .396 BABIP in 2010, it’s been easy to assume that his stats would regress. The problem is that Jackson continued to post sky-high (if not quite as high as .396) BABIPs, while also making each ball in play do a bit more damage. Not only that, but Jackson transformed himself from an extremely high K% hitter to someone with essentially average K rates. All of this speaks volumes about Jackson’s ability to adapt and change his approach. That’s good, because it’s crucial that he make further adjustments.
As we all saw in 2014, the version of Austin Jackson that the M’s acquired from Detroit turned out to be a terrible hitter. Jackson’s K% crept back up to 25% after the move, but that’s still below his K% in Detroit in 2010 and 2011, when he was a moderately effective hitter. His BABIP was low for him, but not extraordinarily low for the league. Instead, Jackson’s problem was that his contact produced shockingly weak results. I mean, NL pitcher-esque results. With the M’s, over 236 plate appearances, Jackson produced an ISO of .031, or exactly the same as NL pitchers managed in 2014. As many have pointed out, his production on fly balls was particularly poor. But anything abnormally poor should regress to the mean as surely as the M’s bullpen’s strand rate, right? Wellll, this is where the difference between a population and a specific player becomes pretty important.
Jackson’s ISO on fastballs dropped from .189 in 2012 to .073 in 2014. It is essentially impossible to remain a legitimate MLB starter at that level. James Jones’ SLG% on hard pitches was .080, for reference, and James Jones is not, as of this date, a legitimate MLB CF. Because Jackson’s been effective in 2012-2013, the projection systems forecast something of a bounce-back for 2015. It makes sense – if you average his production over the previous three years, you come out with a pretty good CF.
Only that ignores the fact that his ISO and BABIP have been moving in tandem. Jackson’s sort of the flip side of Mike Zunino, in that his plate discipline has actually gotten better over the years. He’s swinging at fewer balls, swinging at fewer pitches overall, and making more contact. This is the blueprint of a hitter who gets more selective in order to do more damage on each ball in play, only Jackson has left out the all-important do-more-damage-on-each-ball-in-play part. Like we talked about with Zunino, pitchers are going to notice they aren’t getting punished for leaving pitches up or in the zone, and that’s going to put even more pressure on Jackson’s walk rate. Jackson’s walk rate was as low as it had been since 2010 last year, but pitchers started to throw him a few more strikes in 2014. If they continue to do so, and if Jackson can’t run the .350+ BABIPs that sustained his first few years in the league, then he’s in trouble. He’s either got to do much more damage on balls in play, or he’s got to be extraordinarily selective (and great at defense). Unfortunately, he’s already exceptionally selective, so there just isn’t a whole lot of room for improvement there.
There IS, obviously, room to improve his ISO and his production on balls in play. Angel Pagan looked like he was winding down at age 29 before leading the Giants to a World Series title at age 30. Marlon Byrd wasn’t really a decent player *until* he was 29-30. Brian McRae’s career arc followed Jackson’s, with some early struggles, some success around age 27, some bad years after that, but then a nice bounce-back at 30. Clearly it’s possible to be productive after a year as barren as the one Jackson just suffered through. But not everyone manages it, and the problem is that after shipping Michael Saunders to Toronto, the M’s just don’t have a plan B.
Last year, the M’s turned to James Jones when Abe Almonte proved himself unable to handle the CF job. When his lack of pop and/or discipline proved too great an obstacle, the M’s traded for Jackson. That Jackson proceeded to put up a half year even worse than Jones’ line puts the M’s CF depth into question. At this point, the M’s have Jackson as the unquestioned starter, with Justin Ruggiano and Jones behind him. Ruggiano is a competent back-up, but he’s generally a platoon player hitting from the right side. Jones can hit lefty, but hasn’t proven he can hit at all, at this point. The M’s lack of a half-decent CF spot doomed their 2014, and their plan for 2015 is essentially, “What are the odds THAT happens again, right?”
Again, none of this is to suggest that Jackson is doomed, or that a bad year from Jackson (or Zunino, or Leone) will doom the M’s. It’s just that there are certain positions where you can kind of see the weak points in the armor. One problem the M’s have had in recent years has been unbalanced line-ups, with some decent players, some so-so guys, and then some automatic outs. Each year, the M’s have attempted to rid their line-up of Brendan-Ryan-style out machines, and they’ve done a decent job of it. Having one up-the-middle-defender put up an awful batting line won’t harm the M’s, but two might. One plus a bullpen decline might prove critical. Obviously, the M’s have some upside risk as well, and all of the risks we’ve talked about have equivalents in their divisional rivals. But if the M’s underperform, I’m betting these three issues will prove critical.
What do you think? What are you worried about for 2015?