Game 57, Rays at Mariners
Mike Leake vs. Sergio Romo/Austin Pruitt, 7:10pm
Ah, the Rays. The team dealing with some formidable budget issues is always an interesting club to follow, and tonight’s a perfect example: they’ll start Sergio Romo for a few batters, and then he’ll give way to Austin Pruitt. This has been the approach the Rays have taken in recent weeks, with Romo or another reliever starting, and then handing the ball to the presumptive starter for 5-6 IP. Ryan Yarbrough has pitched the 3rd-most innings on the team, just behind actual, old-school starting pitchers Blake Snell and Chris Archer, and he’s ahead of Jake Faria despite starting only 3 games to Faria’s 10.
With so many bonuses and contract clauses related to innings and games started, this looks like an easy way to suppress someone like Yarbrough’s salary in the arbitration process. It is. The questions coming out of this little experiment (and, to a lesser extent, the Angels’ 6-man rotation) are: will arbitrators and teams change incentive clauses/evidence presented in arbitration, and the ol’ standby: does this actually work? Romo started a couple of consecutive games not long ago and did quite well, and it get the Rays’ lefty starter out of some tough ABs against opposing right-handers. That’s a real issue, and it probably helped the Rays at the margin, but the issues the Rays are dealing with sort of dwarf the edge that this flip-flopped pitching order gives you. They recently dealt their closer to Seattle for prospects, and shipped a starting OF to boot, presumably to save salary. Colome/Span were two of the Rays costliest players; Span’s annual salary for 2018 was the highest on the club, for example, and Colome’s salary ranked higher than Kevin Kiermaier (whose extension will give him big raises soon) and just barely below Chris Archer’s.
Speaking of that trade, the M’s and Rays have swapped a hell of a lot of personnel in recent years, kicked off by the big trade early in Jerry Dipoto’s tenure as GM that sent Brad Miller and Logan Morrison to Tampa in return for Nate Karns. They’ve kept at it, with newly-acquired Mallex Smith and the aforementioned Ryan Yarbrough traded for Drew Smyly before 2017. Even old friend Jesus Sucre was traded to Tampa for a PTBNL, and then of course there’s the recent deal involving Colome/Span and Andrew Moore. The Rays have 4 players on their active roster that were acquired from Seattle, and 2 more are on the 40-man.
You know about Sergio Romo. Short, underpowered righty but armed with a good, swervy slider. So: let’s talk Austin Pruitt. A righty, Pruitt throws an arrow-straight four-seamer at around 92-93, and has a good hard cutter-ish slider at 88 that features solid downward break. He’s also got a curve that’s also fairly firm (around 82-83) and a change-up. He must have some deception, because he’s been much better at striking out left-handers over his short career. The key seems to be his curve, which is just better against lefties than it is against righties, which is a bit unusual. Lefties do fine against his straight fastball, so he’s throwing an awful lot of change-ups this season. Righties get a steady dose of sliders, so righties will see plenty of bendy pitches from both Rays uh…starters. Aside from the curve to lefties, Pruitt’s missing a decidedly 1980s level of bats, with a K% under 14%. He did fine on that measure in the minors, so I’m not sure if this is an adjustment period, or if it’s an approach thing. Is it too conspiratorial to suggest that the Rays would want their pitchers to pitch to contact as another way to save money in arbitration?
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Segura, SS
3: Seager, 3B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Haniger, RF
6: Gamel, LF
7: Healy, 1B
8: Heredia, CF
9: Freitas, C
SP: Leake
David Freitas came back up when Chris Herrman went on the 10-day DL. Mike Zunino’s slowed by an injury in last night’s game, but he’s available to pinch hit tonight.
The bigger roster news today was that LOOGY Marc Rzepczynski was DFA’d today. LHP Roenis Elias has taken his place on the roster; as Ryan Divish wrote, with Wade LeBlanc’s emergence, they don’t really need to stretch Elias out as a starter right now.
You kidding me Diaz! it look’s like hes reverted to his old no control self. Both Angels and Astros won tonight, can not afford to lose this game if you want to keep pace.
Other teams are catching up to his fastball. Let’s see how he adjusts later in the season. Come on offense.
Good thing I can sleep in tomorrow! 6-0 in extra innings. Wow. Great job fellas!
Unbelievable, the Mariners will enter the third of June in first place. Yes it’s by percentage points, but first place!
1st Place Mariners
That’s worth repeating.
1st Place Mariner’s.
Nice view up here…
Why are there so many more W’s than L’s next to where it says Mariners?
Must be a typo.
Let’s go Red Sox *pukes in mouth*…. Could wake up tomorrow with a 1 game lead in the division, 2 months into the season…and Houston coming up next. Next 3 games are easily the biggest games of this season to date.
Up by 1 Yowza!
Mariners play at the Astros in a 2-game series Tuesday and Wednesday.