Cactus League Game 8 – Royals at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Stephen Woods 12:10pm
After yesterday’s performance by Yusei Kikuchi, it’s a bit easier to feel optimistic. He sat at 96 with his fastball, and those readings come from statcast, not a wonky radar gun. Of course, he teased at this last year, too – sitting 94 and touching 96-97 early in the year before losing a tick or two as the summer wound on. But it’s safe to say his average is up this year, and he’s also picked up speed on his slider, which is now a cutter-y 90-91. That should flatten out the movement on it, but then, Kikuchi’s slider never really had much to begin with. It could be a very effective pitch at higher velos, because it’s not slurv-y at all. Kikuchi’s problem was never stuff – it’s always been about consistency, and that’s not something we can see he’s fixed in a single spring start (or even in an entire spring). But if we’re going to look for encouraging signs, Kikuchi’s start yesterday would certainly qualify.
It’d be great for Marco Gonzales to follow Kikuchi’s sterling start with one of his own. He gets to face a Royals line-up that isn’t going to terrify anyone, as this great Patrick Dubuque piece (hilariously) details. This game’s on TV, so if you’d like to tune in and actually see what Gonzales’ approach might be, it’ll be on Root Sports. The Royals are forecasted to be essentially equal to the M’s, or perhaps even a game up (thanks to a weaker division), but how we think about the two clubs is quite different. This is the power of a great farm system, or, more cynically, this is the result of a year-plus all-out PR campaign to hype up the M’s prospects. Right now, both clubs look like cellar-dwellers, but the M’s are a *hopeful* kind of celler dweller, while the Royal sub-species has a number of young players, just young players from whom much less is expected. The Royals figure to be a lot worse than the M’s in 3-4 years, but this is the kind of thinking that’s gotten the M’s in trouble in the past.
The Royals starter, Stephen Woods Jr., was an 8th round pick of the SF Giants out of a SUNY campus back in 2016. He had a solid season in the NWL with Salem-Keizer, and then a good campaign in the Sally League that enabled him to be a part of the return for Evan Longoria. He missed all of 2018, but came back to have a solid half-year for Charlotte, the Rays affiliate in the Florida State League. But at 24 and with a decent injury history and having just hit high-A, the Rays waived him. The pitching-starved Royals picked him up in December, and he’ll likely get some high-minors seasoning this year. Not a lot of info out there, but the one thing that jumps off the page with the guy is the fact that he hasn’t given up many HRs at all. He’s given up 6 in over 230 career innings, and last year held batters to a slugging percentage under .300. That’s the FSL, though, perhaps the most pitcher-friendly circuit in affiliated ball. We’ll see how he deals with this line-up:
1: Long, Jr. DH
2: Crawford, SS
3: Seager, 3B
4: Vogelbach, 1B
5: Murphy, C
6: Gonzalez, RF
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Gordon, 2B
9: Siri, LF
SP: Marcoooooo
Yoshihisa Hirano, Taylor Guilbeau, and others should get an inning today. For those wondering about 5th-starter-contender Taijuan Walker, he’s been brought along slowly, doing simulated games and the like, but it sounds like he could make a Cactus League start on Wednesday.
Cactus League Games 5-6: Mariner Mitosis
Logan Gilbert vs Tyler Beede (SF) 12:10 and
Ljay Newsome vs. Ross Detwiler (CHA) 12:05pm
The M’s split up and take on the Giants and White Sox today in what looks like an interesting pitching prospect day. Ljay Newsome was something of a breakout star last year, rising from org depth to put himself on the map by striking out a ton of Cal League batters. His time at M’s gas camp gave him several more ticks on what had been an underpowered fastball, and he used his pinpoint control to run amazing K:BB ratios for most of the summer. His AA stint was a bit of a struggle, which helps account for the fact that the M’s didn’t protect in the Rule 5 draft, but he comes into 2020 on the radar. This isn’t his first big league camp, as he won a spot a year ago thanks to leading the org in controlling the zone, but it’s his first time as an actual quasi-prospect. He’ll go up against well-traveled arm Ross Detwiler, who pitched in exactly one game for the Mariners in 2018.
Logan Gilbert’s own breakout requires fewer modifiers. He was a first-round pick who put up gaudy K numbers in college. He was supposed to move fast after being assigned to West Virginia, and he…moved really fast, overwhelming the Sally League and then the Cal League, becoming one of the minors top young arms. He could very easily see himself in a Mariners uniform this summer if he can repeat what he did in AA for another few months. A 165:33 K:BB ratio exceeded the wildest dreams of most fans, and presumably the team as well. As such, it should be fun to see how he does against a line-up sprinkled with MLB vets. He’ll be opposed by Tyler Beede, like Gilbert a first-round pick who became a top prospect in 2014-2015. But unlike Gilbert, Beede kept running into problems on his ascent. His first taste of AA went poorly, and his first TWO attempts at AAA were worse. Predictably, he wasn’t sharp in his initial foray into MLB – a couple of games in 2018 – but he managed to top 100 innings with the Giants last year, and will get plenty of opportunities this year with a rebuilding/go-nowhere club.
I’ve already made a fastball comp to Justus Sheffield, but Beede’s 94 MPH heater has some of Sheffield’s sink, and a similar release point. The real problem, though, is that Beede doesn’t have an outpitch breaking ball like Sheffield. Beede/Sheffield have had nearly identical results off the fastball, but Beede mixes a curve, cutter, and a rare slider to little effect. The curve’s probably the best of the bunch, but he doesn’t lean on it the way Sheffield leans on his slider. Maybe he should?
Line-up vs. SF:
1: Long, 2B
2: Crawford, SS
3: Seager, 3B
4: Carlos Gonzalez, DH
5: Murphy, C
6: Kelenic, RF
7: J. Marmolejos, 1B
8: Bishop, CF
9: Siri, LF
SP: Gilbert
Line-up vs. CHA:
1: Fraley, LF
2: Smith, CF
3: Lewis, RF
4: Vogelbach, 1B
5: Wisdom, 3B
6: Lopes, 2B
7: Raleigh, C
8: Cowgill, DH
9: Walton, SS
SP: Newsome
Good to see another start for Jarred Kelenic, and one for catching prospect Cal Raleigh.
Cactus League Game 4, Mariners at Reds
Justin Dunn vs. Sonny Gray, 12:05pm
After a brutal slugfest versus the Cubs, and then a tidy pitcher’s duel against the Brewers, the M’s head to Goodyear to take on the new-look Reds. The Reds have some new players, but the story of their off-season has been a thorough overhaul of their player development. They brought in former Vanderbilt Pitching Coach Derek Johnson last year, and he seemed to make an immediate difference. The Reds pitching staff ranked #27 in baseball by Fangraphs’ WAR in 2018, but shot up to #9 last year. Not content with that, the Reds bolstered the coaching staff around Johnson by hiring local pitching development guru Kyle Boddy of Driveline Baseball to work as director of pitching initiatives, and promoting an old Driveline client, Caleb Cotham, to Director of Pitching as well as assistant pitching coach.
Today’s starter, Sonny Gray, was one of the beneficiaries of Johnson’s tutelage last year. After a down year-and-a-half with the Yankees, Gray looked like the pitcher who came up with the A’s years ago, tossing 175+ IP with an ERA of 2.87 and a DRA of 2.98. His FIP wasn’t quite *that* good, but he posted his best strikeout-minus-walk ratio of his career, and actually lowered his HR rate despite moving to a small ballpark in the year of the superball baseball. The velocity and movement on his pitches haven’t really changed. He’s still got a four-seam fastball with lots of cut (hence his high spin rates), no horizontal movement, and not a ton of vertical movement. His best secondary is his curve, with lots of two-plane break. Over the years, he’s mixed in a sinker, and with the Yankees, that essentially became his primary breaking ball. That changed last year…kind of. He throws his sinker a lot to right-handed bats, taking advantage of the pitch’s natural pitch-type platoon splits. But he hardly threw it at all to lefties, giving them a mix of four-seamers, curves, and sliders. Overall, he threw fewer fastballs and more breaking balls, and he threw fewer sinkers in particular. While platoon splits have never really been Gray’s problem, he was able to dramatically reduce hits and HRs overall while maintaining essentially even splits. Now: this may be the result of a drop in BABIP, just as his struggles in NY may have resulted from the opposite problem. But I think there’s more going on here, as shown in that K rate and K-BB%.
Today marks the first of two really intriguing starters for Seattle. Today, Justin Dunn starts, while tomorrow it’s top pitching prospect Logan Gilbert. The Reds, of course, were the team Dunn faced in his…uh, less than stellar MLB debut. He’s had an off-season to put that behind him, and Dunn taking a huge step forward this year would do wonders to accelerate the M’s path to contention. On paper, the M’s rotation looks absolutely dire. Just getting to “below average” would be a real developmental win for the org, and with talent like Dunn, it’s an attainable goal.
1: Fraley, CF
2: Nola, C
3: C. Gonzalez, RF
4: Vogelbach, DH
5: White, 1B
6: Wisdom, 3B
7: Juliooooo Rodriguez, LF
8: Gordon, 2B
9: Haggerty, SS
SP: Dunn
Cactus League Game 2, Cubs at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Adbert Alzolay, 12:10pm
The M’s starters were a bit listless yesterday against Texas, but Evan White made a couple of good defensive plays, and Yusei Kikuchi’s mechanical tweaks seemed to allow his velo to play up a bit, but he still had some issues closing out innings – though a 1st inning error didn’t help.
Today, the Cubs come to Peoria, with prospect Adbert Alzolay starting. Alzolay opened eyes in the Northwest League years ago, but he’s struggled a bit in the high minors. He did make his debut for Chicago last year. He’s a righty with a FB around 94, and a curve/change mix behind it. Nothing really stands out movement-wise.
It’ll be interesting to see Marco Gonzales this year. In a long conversation with Ryan Rowland-Smith, Marco decried the increasing importance of velocity, and how it’s led many to underestimate him. He doesn’t need to sit 94, but man, I keep thinking he’d be more of a legitimate #2/#1 if he got back the MPH he lost a few years ago.
1: Fraley, LF
2: Nola, C
3: Seager, 3B
4: Wisdom, 1B
5: CarGo, RF
6: Lopes, 2B
7: Filia, DH
8: D. Moore, SS
9: J. Siri, CF
Cactus League Game 1, Rangers at Mariners
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Joe Palumbo, 12:10pm
After yesterday’s rain-out, the M’s will begin their spring training slate of games today in Peoria. They feature a line-up that figures to be pretty close to the one they’ll open the regular season with, and they’ll do it behind Yusei Kikuchi, the enigmatic pitcher whose development is critical to the M’s contention in a few years.
The Rangers head to Peoria in a battle of the cellar-dwellers of the AL West. The Rangers haven’t exactly done a full rebuild – the only real prize they traded away was Yu Darvish, and he only had a half-season of club control left. Instead, the Rangers are where they are because their once vaunted pipeline of talent – particularly international free agents – started to dry up, and thus they didn’t really have in-house replacements for the likes of Darvish or Adrian Beltre. They’d be challenging the M’s for worst record in the division if they hadn’t spent a bit of money on veteran starting pitching, a move that lifted their rotation last year, and kept them from the fate of the Orioles or Tigers. This year, they’ve doubled down on that approach, picking up Corey Kluber from Cleveland, Kyle Gibson from Minnesota, and the well-traveled Jordan Lyles. Their offense doesn’t project all that well, but on paper, they should have much better starting pitching than the M’s.
So can the M’s make up for that deficit by developing their young position player prospects? I mean, sure, anything’s possible. But before they bring up Julio and Jarred, they’re going to need to figure out what the likes of Braden Bishop, Kyle Lewis, and Jake Fraley have to offer. The former two start today’s game, but I imagine we’ll see Fraley push Bishop for a starting position in the regular season. Bishop and Fraley were utterly overmatched in their first taste of the big leagues, but that’s not a death sentence or anything. Lewis started extremely well, but may have to show that he can limit Ks…unless his power can rival that of the Rangers whiff-prone Dingerman, Joey Gallo.
At this point, the Rangers are projected to finish with about 12 more wins than Seattle, and for that to happen, they’ll probably need to tap some of their starting pitching depth, particularly with some older and injury-prone starters (like Kluber). That’s where today’s starter, Joe Palumbo, comes in. Palumbo, Kolby Allard, and Ariel Jurado figure to back up the starters, and of that depth group, Palumbo’s the guy with the best pure stuff or bat-missing ability. A lefty, his four-seam fastball comes in at around 94-95 from a low-ish arm angle. His primary breaking ball is a curve at around 79, and while he’s got a slider and change, he uses the fastball/curve combo most often. All in all, he reminds me a bit of Justus Sheffield; Sheffield’s release point is even lower (which may just be due to his height), so he’s got similar FB movement to Palumbo. Sheff’s low spin rate means the FB gets even less vertical movement than Palumbo’s, but neither are even average in terms of vertical rise. Their sliders are similar too, I suppose; Palumbo’s only thrown four of them, so it’s hard to tell. Palumbo showed more bat-missing in the minors than Sheffield, but he too walked too many. And despite the movement similarities, Palumbo’s a fly ball pitcher, a fact that got him into trouble in his brief MLB call-up. If I worked for Texas, I might encourage him to throw that slider a bit more, even just as a change of pace. Sheffield’s able to get grounders with that pitch, and Palumbo needs *something* given the fact he’s a fly baller in Texas.
1: Long, 2B
2: White, 1B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, RF
5: Vogelbach, DH
6: Murphy, C
7: Crawford, SS
8: Smith, CF
9: Bishop, LF
SP: Kikuchi
The M’s picked up one-time Padres OF prospect Rymer Liriano today. He had a great 2011 in low A, then missed a year due to injury in 2013. Back with a vengeance in 2014, he rose to get his first MLB call-up with San Diego that year. After a so-so 2015, he again missed a year due to injury in 2016. He got a few games for a go-nowhere White Sox team in 2017, and was last seen in the Mets org last year, where he struggled. Hey, depth!
Show Me a Sign
Given the baseball news this winter, I should’ve titled this something different. The M’s begin their cactus league games this weekend, and despite what looks like a rough season, the M’s have some optimism about them. The primary source is, of course, the outfield tandem of Jarred Kelenic and Julio Rodriguez, two of the better prospects in the game. For a number of reasons, some baseball-related, and some very much not, neither will break camp with Seattle, and likely won’t play at all until the super 2 deadline next year at the earliest. But it’s still good to see these two players, thrust into the role of franchise co-saviors, turn some heads. Logan Gilbert’s doing similar work on the mound, too. All of that means there’s reason to hope that the next wave of young Mariners might actually be the one to close the gap between the frightful current state of the club and their rivals.
Over the past few days, baseball sites have issued playoff odds and projected standings for 2020. As you’d expect, the picture is especially bleak for Seattle. ZiPS projected standings came out this morning, and foresee the darkest timeline: a 100-loss M’s club. Fangraphs’ projections have them at 66-96, right where Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA sees the M’s finishing. The ever-optimistic Clay Davenport’s got them at 68-94, pretty much exactly in line with where Caesar’s Palace set the over/under line (67.5 wins). Based on everything we know now, based on the statistics, age, growth, attrition, etc. of the roster, the M’s simply aren’t in the same class as the rest of the league.
I know the M’s said that they’d focus on contention in 2021, but that’s now really, really close. Worst-to-first teams happen, but they happen extremely rarely. A whole lot of ground work was supposed to be completed by now, and there’s not a lot of evidence for it. More than anything, that’s what 2020 needs to show us. That while players like Justus Sheffield or JP Crawford or Yusei Kikuchi showed fleeting glimpses of being legitimately good MLB Players, inconsistency and mechanical issues held them back – and that those things won’t hold them back going forward. We still don’t know what to make of players like Kyle Lewis and Evan White, between park effects in Arkansas and up-and-down power numbers over their careers. You can understand why the projections wouldn’t look kindly on the M’s, and if you squint, you can convince yourself that the projections don’t know enough to be relevant. But we need to see it on the field. Arguably, we needed to see it last year, but hey, it’s a new campaign: it’s time for many players to blow their projections out of the water. If they don’t, it’s going to sting for a while.
The reason is that the AL in general is pretty good, and there are several teams rich with developing talent that are developing into contenders right when the M’s self-identified window opens. Those teams are already better than the M’s in current-MLB talent, so if the M’s don’t improve their base talent, not even Kelenic/Rodriguez can help them being defenestrated by the White Sox/Angels/Blue Jays. As I mentioned in the last post, the past year has offered a host or reasons for optimism. Coming into last year, I worried that the gap between the M’s and Astros would continue to widen, as near-term prospects like Josh James and Forrest Whitley helped them improve (or replace talent lost to free agency/trades) faster than Seattle. I worried that the Red Sox and Yankees would create lasting dynasties that pretty much always captured two of the AL’s playoff spots, while Tampa could be a perennial 90+ win team threatening to take the other wild card. Cleveland’s lull was replaced by Minnesota arriving ahead of schedule, and the Jays had no pitching, but two of the game’s best prospects arriving and doing damage in MLB. The White Sox long-simmering rebuild finally started to bear fruit, as Yoan Moncada looked good, and Lucas Giolito became an utterly unrecognizable and effective starter.
But looking back, so much broke FOR the Mariners. The Astros’ scandal has cost them their GM, SP Gerrit Cole left, and Josh James was so-so in the bullpen. Forrest Whitley lost yet another season to mechanical issues and ineffectiveness, and despite the emergence of Yordan Alvarez, there’s hope that the pipeline of talent that’s made them the league’s best team is starting to dry up. The Red Sox are embroiled in their own scandals, and sold off/traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers. They are clearly weaker in 2020 than we would’ve expected a year ago, and while the Yankees are better, they remain injury-plagued and older than the rest of these teams. The Indians looked to be building a dominant rotation on the cheap, but another injury to Mike Clevinger means they may not be ready to dominate in the early-going, and their offense won’t inspire terror in opposing teams. Minnesota was great last year, and has gotten better, but they’re split between young, streaky players (Byron Buxton) and older players (Nellie Cruz, Josh Donaldson). They could be great, but you could argue they’re built more for 2020 than 2021.
So is there a realistic path to contention in 2021? No, not really. Not that I can see, anyway. The Astros, Yankees and Twins figure to be in contention for the division in 2021, with the Angels, A’s, Rays, White Sox, Blue Jays, Red Sox, and Indians fighting with Seattle for the two wild cards. All of these teams were better in 2019, and all of them are projected to be better in 2020. And not by 5-6 games: in most cases, the gap is simply massive (15-20 games or more). The M’s can chip away at that gap by spending money in free agency next winter, and with players like Betts or JT Realmuto on the block, they could add a lot of talent. But they have to build up the talent level of the team in order for Betts or Realmuto to raise them to contention.
The Blue Jays and White Sox offer two glimpses at paths that rebuilding teams have taken, and are cautionary tales about a rapid rebuild. The Jays thought they’d have a team on the very edge of the second wild card last year, at least if their uber-prospects Bo Bichette and Vlad Guerrero Jr. were able to have immediate success in the majors. Bichette was transcendent, and while Guerrero was more up-and-down, he put up a 105 wRC+ at age 20, which isn’t too bad. They got a near best-case version of their top prospects, the Canadian equivalents of Kelenic/Rodriguez, and they were still abysmal. They traded off Marcus Stroman, and now have a very deep array of pitching prospects, but a nearly-as-deep stable of pitching prospects couldn’t save their 2019 season. Lourdes Gourriel was as-advertised, Cavan Biggio showed flashes, but the base-level talent wasn’t good enough to lift the club to .500, let alone contention. Even with a full year of their top prospects and age-related growth/development, they don’t appear ready to challenge Tampa, let alone New York. They do seem a year ahead of the M’s pace, though, and while you could plot a course for the M’s to pass them in 2021, it seems more likely that that extra year will keep them ahead of Seattle in a future wild card race.
The White Sox had a contending team, but decided to blow it all up, selling off Chris Sale and Jose Quintana (on cheap extensions) and acquiring J2 superstars to build up their farm system. This began in 2016, and this is really the fourth year of the complete rebuild, as Sale went to Boston before the 2017 season. For much of this time, the Sox have looked stuck: Moncada, the headline return for Sale, wasn’t awful, but high Ks and meh power sapped his value. Giolito, the big return for OF Adam Eaton, was even worse. In both cases, their 2018 was worse than their 2019; they simply weren’t developing on schedule. But everyone took a step forward in 2019, with Eloy Jimenez sticking in Chicago, Moncada breaking out, and Giolito putting together a great year. This year, Luis Robert’s ready to debut. Given where both Cleveland and Minnesota are, I’m not sure they’re quite ready in 2020, but they look to be a solid wild card-contending club in 2021. The moral here is that unless the player development group is a fine-tuned, well-oiled machine, even top prospects don’t improve in a linear fashion: there are ups and downs.
What’s the moral here? The Blue Jays big prospects hit immediately, while the White Sox prospects took longer. In both cases, poor talent surrounding those prospects meant that the clubs couldn’t contend even when the prospects broke out. For both, pitching was a key problem, as was depth in the line-up. The M’s want to greatly accelerate the timeline to contention that these teams are on, AND pass them by next year. The two clubs’ histories show why that’s a tall order. If it DID happen, it would require the M’s starting rotation to be a source of strength, and not what looks like a massive, gaping hole. Justus Sheffield and Yusei Kikuchi need to be good from day one. Justin Dunn needs to make the next big step forward, and Marco Gonzales needs to recapture some velo and become a legitimately good MLB starter, not just a good Mariners starter. Shed Long and Evan White need to be solid players, and JP Crawford needs to gain some consistency. Whatever happened to Mallex Smith and Dan Vogelbach last year needs to stop, immediately, as they’re probably gone fairly quickly if they don’t adjust. One of the OF prospects like Jake Fraley or Braden Bishop needs to show that they’re capable of being a solid fill-in. That’s a lot of what-ifs, but none of them are all that unlikely on their own. The M’s need a whole bunch of them to happen at once, though. That would be a sign that the M’s oft-preached values of development and coaching are actually causing changes at the big league level. That would be a sign that the problems that have left them in a position where they’re forecasted to be a league doormat *a year before their self-identified contention window* have been solved. Show me something, M’s.
M’s Get a Few Breaks, Still Project Poorly for 2020
The on-again, off-again trade between the Red Sox and Dodgers for Mookie Betts was finally completed the other day. The Dodgers get much better in 2020, and the Red Sox win the financial flexibility pennant. After Twins prospect Brusdar Graterol’s medicals held things up, the Dodgers finally acquired the fireballer along with a catching prospect while the Twins continue to solidify their grip on the AL Central by picking up Kenta Maeda. The Dodgers and Twins get richer in baseball terms, while the Red Sox get richer in a more literal fashion. What’s this got to do with the Mariners? Well, the original deal had the LA Angels acquiring Joc Pederson and Ross Stripling from the Dodgers. That component didn’t survive last weekend, and thus the Angels are down a solid starting pitcher as well as a big corner OF upgrade. Combine that with the fallout of the Astros sign-stealing scandal (from the firing of their GM to draft penalties) and you can argue that this off-season went as well as it possibly could have from an M’s point of view, especially if you take it as a given that the M’s were never going to target free agent talent. The M’s stock vis a vis the leaders of the AL West improved, not through any action the M’s took, but because a trade got messed up and because the League levied punishments on the divisional colossus. Not bad.
And yet, it hasn’t materially impacted the M’s predicament, one nicely summarized by the just-released PECOTA-based projected standings from Baseball Prospectus. As of this morning, the M’s project for 66-96, securely in last place, some seven wins below the Rangers, and 32 behind the still-colossal Astros. The reason is clear: PECOTA thinks the M’s do not have a capable major league starter, and the bullpen is basically CJ Edwards and a bunch of fungible AAAA guys. BP’s pitching metrics were remarkably bearish on the M’s starters – and Marco Gonzales and Yusei Kikuchi in particular – last year, but they were similarly unimpressed by the seasons turned in by Justus Sheffield and Justin Dunn. An optimist can pretty easily see how to add 10-15 wins to this projection: assume a bounce-back from Kikuchi, more of the same from Marco, and some improvements from Sheffield and perhaps even Logan Gilbert, and you’ve got a rotation that won’t embarrass itself the way PECOTA thinks it will. Of course, even with all of that, they’d just barely scrape .500. It may be a very long year.
Let’s take a look at Clay Davenport’s projections instead. Davenport’s generally been the most optimistic of the projection systems, as it saw the M’s winning 83 games last year (PECOTA forecast just 72), 87 in 2018, and 86 in 2017. They’ve projected the M’s to be over .500 each year since 2014; surely, this is the place for optimism, right? Well, Davenport’s got the M’s at 68-94, with the problem again on the pitching side of the ledger. The M’s are forecast to allow more runs than all AL teams save for Baltimore and Kansas City. The offense is also a concern, though, with low batting averages/OBPs sinking the run-scoring despite solid seasons from Mitch Haniger and Kyle Seager. After a dalliance with a high-average/low-power offense in 2018, the M’s will sink or swim with guys like JP Crawford and Dan Vogelbach, whose patience can partially make up for low averages. Then there’s the fact that all systems see a decline for Tom Murphy, and don’t see Evan White/Kyle Lewis as completely ready to be above-average corner IF/OF bats in 2020. PECOTA’s a bit higher on Vogelbach than most, but much lower on Mallex Smith.
It’s one thing to forecast a slash line correctly, it’s another thing to get playing time right (especially with teams that have made so many roster moves, like the M’s), and it’s yet another thing to assess what that production *means*. Mallex Smith’s line is virtually identical between PECOTA (.249/.316/.362), Davenport (.250/.321/.370), and ZiPS (.250/.319/.364). But between slightly less playing time, park adjustments, and the run value of the entire league, you get a big swing in what those numbers mean. By ZiPS, that OBP-heavy line is worth 1.6 WAR. Davenport sees him at 0.6, while PECOTA thinks it’s just about replacement level.
No one really thinks this year’s going to be exciting due to a playoff run or contention. The only that matters, I suppose, is finding out which players, and especially which pitchers, blow their projections out of the water. Of course the error bars are much wider on guys like Sheffield and Dunn (to say nothing of Gilbert or George Kirby), as they’ve got less experience to project from. But the M’s have to start hitting on prospects and turning them into star-level players. All the financial flexibility in the world won’t mean as much come next year if the M’s still need 3-4 starters and 3-4 position players to compete. The good news is that the division isn’t completely running away from them, at least not right now. But the gap remains, and other teams have young players who’ll be around to frustrate the Kelenic/Rodriguez fever dreams of M’s optimists. Sheffield and Dunn need to make the projections look foolish, and Evan White needs to hit early and often. It won’t matter much this year, but it’s the only way to get to a point where the M’s next wave could be decisive in shifting the balance of baseballing power.