Game 38, Mariners at Yankees
Marco Gonzales vs. Masahiro Tanaka, 3:35pm
The less said about Felix’s start, the better. I’ll just say that whatever secondaries Felix throws, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that his fastball(s) simply aren’t working. That’s been clear for a while, but he’s got to do something about it now. Develop a cutter, maybe, like Sabathia, or pitch backwards like…today’s Yankee starter, Masahiro Tanaka.
Tanaka came over from Japan with a reputation for having a very good fastball to pair with a solid splitter. Whether it’s the new usage pattern, age-related decline, or what have you, Tanaka’s lived up to exactly half of that billing. His splitter’s his bread and butter pitch and he throws a ton of them, and while it isn’t quite as successful now as it was back in 2014, it’s a good pitch. His fastball? Noooo, not so much. In his career, batters are *slugging* .620 against his four-seam. He went to a sinker for a while, but after it got torched in 2017, he went back to his four-seamer. Neither pitch is all that great, especially now that his velocity’s down in the 91 range. What’s remarkable though is that this has not been a disqualifying flaw. Tanaka just…doesn’t really throw it often. Between the two pitches, he’s been around 25% – 30% fastball usage for a while now, throwing 2/3 sliders and splitters. This hasn’t quite insulated him from the HR binge, and his splitter’s seen quite a few dingers in recent years. But there he is, putting up 2.5+ fWAR and RA9-WAR seasons pretty reliably. There’s a lesson in Tanaka’s stat page.
Marco Gonzales was coming off of his best two starts of the year before a crushing defeat on May 1. Was that just a case of running into a hot-hitting team at the wrong time? Or are teams learning to recognize his cutter? That’s been his bread and butter, but the Cubs hit it hard. Can he get back to inducing called strikes with his sinker or foul balls with that cutter? This is turning into an important start, as the M’s need stability from this spot, and Gonzales has been a pretty streaky pitcher in his M’s tenure. Marco struggled in Yankee Stadium last year, but of course this line-up looks nothing like the Bronx Bombers who got to him last June.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Haniger, CF
3: Vogelbach, DH
4: Encarnacion, 1B
5: Santana, LF
6: Bruce, RF
7: Beckham, SS
8: Healy, 3B
9: Murphy, C
SP: Gonzales
The M’s made a minor trade (no, really) recently, acquiring former Nationals RP Austin Adams for lower-level flyer Nick Wells, who’d regressed in the M’s system. Adams strikes out a ton of batters, but has issues with control. He throws a straight bowling-ball-esque four-seamer and has an excellent slider to pair with it. He’ll be in Tacoma for now, who made a bit of room by waiving 1B Joey Curletta, who’s since caught on with Boston.
In one of the least surprising news items I’ve seen recently, Modesto’s Ljay Newsome was named the California League pitcher of the Month for April. Well deserved.
Justin Dunn starts game 1 of a doubleheader between Arkansas and Amarillo today, and Tyler Cloyd starts for Tacoma against Reno – good day for a game at Cheney. Modesto faces San Jose, and West Virginia have the day off.
Game 37, Mariners at Yankees
King Felix vs. CC Sabathia, 3:35pm
Happy Felix Day, friends.
Larry Stone’s got an interesting article on Felix’s changes this season, both mentally and mechanically. In particular, he focuses on a change in pitch mix, with the curve ball taking over from Felix’s less-successful change, especially given that Felix’s fastball can’t keep batters off of the cambio. And he highlights the fact that today’s opponent, CC Sabathia, is someone many of pointed to for Felix to emulate.
I don’t intend to quibble with everything in the piece, which you should read, but I did want to make a couple of larger points. First, I’m not sure that pitch mix is where I’d start if I set out to explain Felix’s improvements this year. Second, the lesson I take from CC Sabathia is that there is no single “reinvention” a pitcher makes when he loses velocity. CC’s been a survivor because he keeps changing. The CC of 2019 has a very, very different pitch mix from the CC of, say, 2016, and both would be unrecognizable to the CC of 2008. I think fans, and, I worry, the M’s at times, have built up this narrative that Felix can’t do X anymore, and if he just did Y, then everything would be fine. If pitchers could “just do Y” and survive throwing 89-90MPH fastballs, then the league would be full of such pitchers. It’s not. Change is a means, not an end; as soon as Felix finds a pitch mix that really works, he should be preparing to throw it all away and figure out the next one.
In 2018, easily Felix’s worst season as a pro, he threw 33% sinkers, 24% change-ups and 28% curves (the rest were the odd four-seamer or slider, etc.). The change and curve had shockingly similar results, with the change yielding a few more base hits, while the curve gave up fewer hits in total, but more HRs. So, what’s that look like now in his new-look 2019? Felix is NOW throwing 33% sinkers, 18% change-ups and 36% curves. That’s a noticeable difference, but given when in the count he uses each pitch, it’s not as big a change as it might seem. Despite throwing way more curves, he’s given up a similar number of balls in play against each. And just as in the past, the single most effective pitch in Felix’s arsenal is still the change. The shift is more about getting to use it in more favorable counts, and stealing strikes with first-pitch curves. I don’t want to minimize or hand-wave this shift, but I want to make sure we put it in perspective. The change is still his out pitch, and he uses it so much more when he has two strikes (part of the reason his results on it are so good). But he’s now able to take some of the pressure off of his sinker on the first pitch or when he’s behind. That’s great, but I’m not sure it’s as big of a shift as the M’s or the article may make it seem.
CC Sabathia, like Felix, is one of those rare birds still in the game that began their career firmly in the pre-pitch fx world. Thus, we don’t see young CC’s velo and pitch mix using the same tool as we see…everyone else’s until 2007, which was CC’s *seventh* full season in MLB. He still threw 95, and threw those 95 MPH four-seamers over 60% of the time, with changes and sliders making up the rest. By 2010, he was still four-seam dominant, but had a sinker and had begun mixing in a curveball. That was still the pitch mix he used in 2013, when age and 3 MPH off of his fastball caught up with him. It took a while, but he eventually swapped out his four-seamer, by this point at 90 MPH or so, with his sinker. That kept him in the league, but it didn’t make him terribly useful, but then his new-found cutter showed up, and he had another tool to keep batters guessing. By 2017, he’d become cutter/slider dominant, with the sinker more of a grace note and the four-seamer essentially gone entirely. That brings us to the present, with CC’s velocity at 89, and a pitch mix of 50% cutters and another 1/3 sliders. To lefties in particular, CC will throw about 2/3 sliders.
CC faced the exact same problem as Felix: his secondaries were still effective, but he couldn’t GET to them, because batters were destroying his fastballs. First, he shifted to a sinker, much as Felix did when HE stopped throwing 95. But he didn’t stop there: Sabathia kept tinkering, kept adapting, until he found that his cutter could keep righties at bay, and somehow not blend into his slider. So much of this looks “wrong” from a strategy point of view; I’d be nervous as hell about throwing a slider-ish pitch as your main fastball when your primary weapon is a slider, but I’m not CC Sabathia, and I’m not watching batters react to it. I can imagine some pointing to his FIP and saying that it’s *still* not working, and he’s just forestalling the inevitable with strand rate and luck. But *all pitching is forestalling the inevitable*. The point is that he’s taking his time and continuing to adapt. My hope isn’t that Felix copies CC, but that Felix learns not only from this off-season, but from waaaay back when he had to adjust his pitch mix early in games, or any of the other changes he’s made. It can’t be a one-time thing, and any cursory glance at his past shows at hasn’t been. It’s uncomfortable, sure, but that’s part of the coaching staff’s job – not to make everything easy, but to make it seem like the ideas came from Felix, not from some distant brain trust or an out-of-patience manager.
1: Haniger, RF
2: Beckham, SS
3: Encarnacion, DH
4: Santana, LF
5: Bruce, 1B
6: Healy, 3B
7: Narvaez, C
8: Bishop, CF
9: Gordon, 2B
SP: FEEEELLLLLIIIIXXXX
Game 36, Mariners at Indians
Erik Swanson vs. Cody Anderson, 10:10am
Erik Swanson is perhaps not the intriguing starter with the fastball that plays up that we saw in his first start against Cleveland. But he’s also not the replacement-level guy getting battered around the park against San Diego and Texas. Swanson’s been kind of a throwback in that he’s throwing fastballs over 2/3 of his pitches. That was the norm a generation ago, and it’s oddly hanging on up in Milwaukee with the likes of Freddy Peralta, but baseball, as a game, is moving away from heaters.
Take Swanson’s opponent, for example. Cody Anderson throws a 94 mph fastball with decent movement, but he *really* wants to throw his change up and slurvy curve. In the past, he’s tried to set them up with fastballs, but after an injury/rehab and some poor MLB results, it looks like he’s changed his plan. He’s thrown all of 5 IP at the big league level, but he’s now pitching off of his change, and will mix in fastballs – not the other way around. Does this work? I don’t really know, but the “traditional” approach didn’t work, nor did it save him from injury, so you understand Anderson’s shift here.
In the past, that change helped him run reverse platoon splits, and he may continue to run reverse K:BB ratios at the big league level. But as with everything else, home runs will determine your overall line, and thus it’s harder to say if he’ll *really* have reverse splits.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Haniger, RF
3: Encarnacion, 1B
4: Vogelbach, DH
5: Bruce, LF
6: Beckham, SS
7: Narvaez, C
8: Moore, 3B
9: Bishop, CF
SP: Swanson
Good day for M’s pitching in the minors as Damon Casetta-Stubbs starts for West Virginia and Darren McCaughan starts for Arkansas. West Virginia, Modesto, and Tacoma all lost last night, but Arkansas got the M’s affiliates on the board with a 7-4 win over the Amarillo Sod Poodles, as Dom Thompson-Williams went 3-4 with a dinger.
Tommy Milone starts for Tacoma, who’ll be playing their first game in the Copa de la Diversion as La Familia de Tacoma against Los Mariachis de Mexico (FKA the Albuquerque Isotopes).
Game 34, Mariners at Indians
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Shane Bieber, 4:10pm
The M’s embark on a 10-game road trip that’ll see them play the Yankees and Red Sox after they finish this three game set with Cleveland. This is big, as the bats have been faltering, the pitching staff under siege, and the defense…no, let’s talk about something else.
Yusei Kikuchi’s coming off of his first shortened start, which means he should be well-rested, or perhaps appropriately rested. He’s not been an ace, but he’s been solid for the M’s thus far, and by BP’s DRA stat, he’s been their most valuable starter. This, of course, is something of a low bar, though to be fair, it rates Felix decently. It just doesn’t have much time for Marco Gonzales, to say nothing of Mike Leake, who rates as the single LEAST valuable pitcher in the game. But this isn’t about DRA, it’s about Kikuchi. As a lefty with a 93 MPH fastball and a quality slider, he shouldn’t need to make too many adjustments in order to become an effective middle-of-the-rotation starter. What he needs, and what the M’s are hopefully giving him, is a roadmap to get there.
I’ve been saying a lot this year that his fastball’s being hit too hard. No, it’s not a Paxton-like blazing heater, but it doesn’t need to be. Anyone else out there with a similar fastball who’s made it play at the big league level? Meet Tampa’s Jalen Beeks, a hidden-starter for the Rays – a guy who pitches several innings after an opener. He’s small, but sits 93 with his four seamer that’s a dead-ringer for Kikuchi’s by pitch tracking data. To top it all off, he’s even got the same hidden-ball delivery:
Beeks had some control issues in the minors, mostly in the Red Sox system, and he brought that with him to the majors last year. Between the walks and some dinger issues, his fastball wasn’t good enough for him to get to his best pitches (his best pitch is a change-up, for the record). This year, he’s moved about 2′ on the rubber – back towards 3B, so he’s delivering the pitch pretty much right on the center line instead of coming from out towards 1B. That seems to have helped him control and command the pitch, and thus he’s getting more first-pitch strikes (though he throws plenty of 1st-pitch curve balls, too). Moving over also helps him keep his FB in on righties, something that’s hard for many lefties.
By contrast, if you look at a heatmap of Kikuchi’s FB usage to righties, it fills the zone. This is a great recipe to never walk anyone, and indeed, Kikuchi’s is toeing the company line regarding the zone and the control thereof. Compare that to Beeks’ usage. I should mention here that Kikuchi’s release point is slightly lower, but very similar to Beeks’ in 2018. I wouldn’t mind seeing Kikuchi make a similar shift on the rubber and see if that helps him keep his fastball in under RHBs’ hands as opposed to starting from far away from right-handed bats and traveling in to them.
Today, the M’s face Shane Bieber, who was a tricky match-up for them when they saw him at home a few weeks ago. He’s since had a solid start against Houston and a disaster against Atlanta, so perhaps the league is booking him somewhat.
1: Gordon, 2B
2: Haniger, CF
3: Vogelbach, DH
4: Encarnacion, 1B
5: Santana, LF
6: Bruce, RF
7: Narvaez, C
8: Beckham, SS
9: Healy, 3B
SP: Kikuchi
The M’s have their lefty-heavy line-up in there to face the right-handed Bieber. The Tribe’s got Francisco Lindor back, which is good, as their replacement SS that we saw in Seattle were pretty darn awful. The injury news is still generally poor for Cleveland, who just lost Corey Kluber to a potentially fractured forearm when he was struck by a line drive. With Clevinger and now Kluber out, it gets harder for Cleveland to hold off the charging Minnesota Twins.
Logan Gilbert was promoted to High-A and made his debut with Modesto last night. He had a rough first couple innings, then settled in; his final line was 4 1/3 IP with 5 H, 3 R allowed on 2 BB and 7 Ks.
Justin Dunn and Arkansas took apart Frisco last night 13-2. Dunn went 7, allowed both runs, and struck out 6 against no walks (33:B seasonal K:BB ratio). Jake Fraley had 2 HRs and looks pretty ready for Tacoma, especially if Bishop is going to be in Seattle a while.
Tacoma blanked Salt Lake 4-0 on bullpen day, as Tyler Cloyd, Robin Leyer, David McKay and Parker Markel combined to 4-hit the Bees. The Bees’ pitchers struck out a ton of R’s, but couldn’t prevent Shed Long from going deep.
Clay Chandler takes his Sally-League-Leading 0.31 ERA into Greensboro today, while Ricardo Sanchez takes HIS Texas-League-leading ERA into Frisco to face the RoughRiders. Jon Niese is leading no leagues, but will lead the Rainiers against Albuquerque tonight at Cheney Stadium. Modesto heads to Stockton to face the Ports in a series beginning tonight.
Game 33, Cubs at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Jon Lester, 3:40pm
It’s a day game today, pitting Gonzaga product Marco Gonzales against Bellarmine HS product Jon Lester. As always, the most conflicted man watching this game must be M’s head groundskeeper Bob Christofferson, who coached Lester as a youngster.
I continue to marvel at Marco Gonzales’ transformation this year. His velocity is still down – noticeably- from 2018, which was down from 2017. Instead of confusing batters with 4 pitches each thrown 25% of the time, Marco’s more selective, with three pitches in his tier 1 arsenal, and then 2 more a tier 2 “every once in a while” group. What’s interesting is what’s dropped away: it’s his curve, which, to me, was his best weapon last year. And while he used this pitch mix to keep batters off balance in the first half of April, he’s since gone on a bit of a strikeout binge, and odd sight for a pitcher throwing 88 in 2019.
At the heart of this is the change Marco made last year, when he finally started to separate his fastball into two separate pitches. His fastball had given him HR problems in 2017, and even in spot duty last year, his new, rising four-seamer still produced 3 HRs. He gave up only 1 on his sinker (really the remnant of his old “fastball”) in nearly twice the pitches, though. How? You can’t homer if you don’t swing, and batters, for whatever reason, are really reluctant to swing at Marco’s sinker. I’d love to understand this more, because batters cannot swing enough at his change and cutter. With 2 strikes, you’d expect batters to swing, and against his change and cutter this year, opposing batters’ swing rate is around 70%. For his sinker, though, it’s *still* below 40%. To sum up: Marco Gonzales throws more strikes than anyone, and when batters have two strikes against them and Gonzales throws an 88 mph sinker, they eye it like an intensely picky eater inspects an unfamiliar food. This is fascinating.
Lester is such a great match-up today, because they’re similar in a lot of ways, but have such a different approach. In his younger days, Lester would touch 95, but is now 90-91, or where Marco was last year. He throws the exact same 5 pitches, but in a different mix and with a very different strategy. Lester pitches off of his four-seam and cutter, with the other three (curve, change, sinker) clearly a step below in terms of usage. To righties especially, he throws a four-seam or cutter over 70% of the time. The point here isn’t that these are necessarily his best pitches, but he seems to want each change or curve to really “count” and be as unfamiliar to the batter as possible (probably good for a guy who’s pitched as long as Lester has). He’s had decent enough results with his Big 2 pitches, but what his usage pattern has done is to make the change/curve more effective. Since the start of 2018, batters are slugging under .300 on those pitches.
Still, it’s an open question whether this is all results-based thinking. He had the same approach in 2017, and had (by his standards) a poor year because a few more of those curves went over the fence. This year, it’s still too early to say much, but he’s running a 95% strand rate. Neither pitcher is untouchable, but both are amazing competitors and get the most out of their raw stuff.
1: Haniger, RF
2: Santana, LF
3: Encarnacion, 1B
4: Beckham, SS
5: Voglebach, DH
6: Healy, 3B
7: Murphy, C
8: Bishop, CF
9: Gordon, 2B
SP: Marcooooo
Damon Casetta-Stubbs is now up to 12 1/3 IP on the season and has yet to give up a run. The Vancouver product got the win in West Virginia’s shut-out in Lakewood last night. Jarred Kelenic homered, so it was a good day all around.
The Rainiers blanked Forrest Snow’s Salt Lake City Bees by an identical score of 2-0 in a shortened game. Tommy Milone got the win, and Kris Negron supplied the power with a HR.
Ljay Newsome, who really has to be the story of the early going in the M’s system, tossed 7 brilliant innings at Lancaster, going 7 IP with 1 R on 6H and no BB and 8 Ks. Sadly, the bats couldn’t do too much against the JetHawks Antonio Santos, and so the game went to extras tied 1-1. Because the minor league rules are the minor league rules, the game ended 8-3 in the 13th. Both teams failed to score in the 10th, but then BOTH scored a single run in both the 11th and 12th. And then the JetHawks, who just couldn’t read the bloody room, scored 5 in the 13th. Gauche.
Arkansas lost to Frisco earlier today, but Justus Sheffield takes the hill for Tacoma in Salt Lake, so tune in to that one after the M’s game (Gametime is 5:35 for that PCL contest, by the way).