Game 27, Angels at Mariners
Chris Flexen Vs. Andrew Heaney, 7:10pm
After a taut 1-0 win to end their road trip, the M’s return home to face the Angels. Salvaging a game in that Houston series was important, and two scoreless IP by the bullpen in some high leverage spots help put the previous game’s ‘pen implosion behind them. And just as importantly, they kick off this series behind the guy who’s become the team’s de facto ace, Chris Flexen.
With Marco on the IL and with Justin Dunn and Yusei Kikuchi intriguing but still perhaps a bit inconsistent, Flexen’s becoming a linch pin in the rotation. Unlike with Dunn, there’s no bizarre BABIP thing to muse over (Flexen’s BABIP is freakishly *high*), so it’s really been down to his ability to limit walks and HRs. In his two most recent starts covering 13 IP, he’s struck out 10, and walked only one. He’s only allowed a single dinger on the year, and while his HR/FB ratio will regress over time, it’s nice to see that he’s posting an above-average GB%. Tough to know what to make of that in the season’s first month, but I wouldn’t have predicted that given his arm slot.
There’s nothing crazy to Flexen by pitch movement, velocity, spin, etc. He seems pretty close to average. But he really does seem to be a very different pitcher than the one who flamed out with the Mets. I’m never quite sure *how* a guy like Flexen (or Eric Thames, for that matter) reinvents themselves in the KBO, but it probably highlights just how important confidence can be for players.
Andrew Heaney takes the mound for Anaheim, and the veteran lefty is off to a solid start, striking out 29 in his first 20 2/3 IP. The key to his arsenal is a good change-up that’s become something of an out-pitch for him; it’s really helped him become a strikeout pitcher, as opposed to the pitch-to-contact guy he was at times in his first year or two. With his lower arm slot, Heaney really maximizes horizontal run on his pitches, including his fastball (which has average-ish velo). That fastball’s been excellent in the early-going, as has his slurvy curveball, an important pitch for him against lefties as well as righties (the change is essentially only for righties). He’s had normal platoon splits for his career, though they’re more even this year. Still figures to be a decent match-up for the returning Mitch Haniger and Ty France.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 1B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Torrens, C
6: Moore, 2B
7: Haggerty, LF
8: Crawford, SS
9: Murphy, DH
SP: Flexen
Haniger’s quick return makes you wonder if he was out with vaccine side-effects. If so, good on ya, Mitch. Today’s Tigers-Yankees game is the first one between teams that have both reached MLB’s 85% threshold of vaccination, meaning no one has to wear masks in the dugout. The M’s aren’t there, and from what Ryan Divish has reported, likely won’t get to that mark, at least not soon.
MLB released some very cool park factor data over at baseballsavant.com. I don’t think anything’s completely mind-blowing from poking around at the data for a while; T-Mobile is a pitcher’s park, with more neutral HR factors, but very low 2B/3B factors, and increases in strikeouts.
Game 26, Mariners at Astros
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Luis Garcia/Kent Emanuel, 11:10am
Last night’s loss was a tough one, in a sense. Any time the bullpen blows a lead late, and any time the M’s knock Zack Greinke out of the game and then *lose* is going to sting. This team isn’t good enough to overcome a lot of losses like that. But then, they’re not really trying to win anyway, so we’re free to pick through the wreckage of a single, mostly meaningless, April loss and find things to enjoy. Here’s mine: Justin Dunn is bizarrely good now.
I don’t mean it’s bizarre how dominant, how amazing he is. I watched deGrom last night, and Justin Dunn isn’t anywhere near that level. What I mean is that Justin Dunn has fixed the weird control gremlins that plagued his first season and his first game of this season, and he’s become a guy who can reliably keep the M’s in the game. And the way he does that – THAT’S what’s bizarre. Dunn has now tossed over 70 innings in the big leagues. That’s not a lot by any stretch, but it’s spread over three seasons and is not exactly nothing, either. His career BABIP is now .181. *.181!* That’s…that’s kind of insane.
Long-time readers here, and I’d put myself in this category, remember that one of things this blog talked a lot about oh…15 years ago or so, was that Jarrod Washburn was being overvalued by the M’s due to a low BABIP. Sure, he had a low BABIP a few years with the Angels, but that’s not something the pitcher controls – he’ll come to Seattle and regress, and the team won’t know why. Well, he kept it low his first two years here, and then when it crept up towards .300, he was done – not only in Seattle, but in MLB. The point is, this place had kind of an editorial line on BABIP. Justin Dunn would be seen as the luckiest bad pitcher in the game.
But I’m not here to bury Dunn, I’m here to bury the old editorial line. I don’t think this is sustainable, exactly, as Justin Dunn’s BABIP is *the lowest in MLB history* for anyone with at least 50 innings. There are only 4 players with a BABIP below .215 over that many innings. Two were forgettable relievers, and the other is the Astros’ Cristian Javier, whom the M’s just saw a few days ago. But even Javier’s above .200. We’re in uncharted territory here. So yes, it won’t stay *this* low, but would you take a Cristian Javier-type outcome for Dunn, particularly after his first start this year?
Part of my renewed optimism is that we’ve learned a heck of a lot since Washburn came north about BABIP and the control that pitchers have over it. Pace DIPS theory of 20 years ago, pitchers definitely can influence it, as studies from Mike Fast and others have found. Now, to be clear, the way Dunn is going about it is a bit different. He’s not reliably avoiding hard contact. He’s pretty middle-of-the-road there. But it seems like his fastball is just *odd* enough that batters are split between topping it and getting underneath the ball. Not enough to create a bunch of infield flies, but enough to produce solid fly balls to the outfield – but not more than that. Can he keep it up? I mean, stranger things have happened, I guess, and a recurrence of the control problems would make his BABIP less valuable (because batters could get on base another, easier, way). But a version of Dunn with a BABIP consistently in the .250 range (in other words, dramatically worse than he’s done thus far) would have real value for a middle/bottom of the rotation guy.
Today, the M’s face another Astros prospect starter, this time Luis Garcia. Garcia made the jump from high-A to the big leagues last year, as the Astros had a wave of pitcher injuries and departures, and he pitched pretty well. He overcome some wildness – wildness that he’d shown in the minors – and didn’t really miss a ton of bats, but he rode a…freakishly low BABIP to low runs-allowed totals. So far, so Cristian Javier. And really, the similarities don’t end there. Garcia throws a four-seam fastball at 93 from a below-6-foot release point, generating 9″ or so of “rise.” He throws a good, hard, change with lots of armside run (unlike the fastball, which is straight) and which dips below the fastball’s plane. Then, to complement that, a breaking ball with lots of GLOVEside run and sink. Garcia has a cutter as well that stays straight, but dives down compared to the fastball, so he’s got the full range of armside, gloveside, and no movement pitches. This is pretty much exactly what we talked about with Javier the other day, and at least a bit, with Dunn. The fastball has sneaky rise for a pitch that’s not thrown over the top or even really 3/4, and then the breaking stuff sweeping across the zone might heighten the confusion. It’s the same basic repertoire that we saw from Jose Urquidy, too, though Urquidy’s release point is slightly higher. The Astros have a “type.” Whether that’s a type to target in international free agency, or a type to mold through player development, I don’t know.
Reminds me of something I talked about years ago: the Yankees type. It’s essentially the same formula, with the same shape fastball and then a change with lots of armside run and just a ton of breaking balls across the zone. Luis Severino rode it to Cy Young votes, and David Robertson used his cutter to essentially fit the pattern, but we’ve seen it from everyone from Domingo German to Nick Rumbelow.
Lefty Kent Emanuel is also listed as a probable. The rookie made his debut the other day and threw 8 2/3 innings in relief for his first MLB win. He gave up only 2 runs to the Angels, striking out 5. He throws a sinker, change, and slider, and unlike Garcia, Javier, and Urquidy, doesn’t get a ton of fly ball contact. He’s a ground ball guy, and that showed in his debut. Drafted in 2013, Emanuel has had a long, slow climb through the Astros system, finishing with parts of three years in the hitter-friendly PCL, including the scarred wasteland that was the PCL in 2019. After missing very few bats and getting hit hard, something seemed to click for him in 2019 – perhaps the only pitcher alive who had fond memories of pitching in the PCL in 2019. He throws about 91, and gets lots of horizontal movement on his stuff, so this is probably a decent pairing of probable pitchers – a hard, 94mph arrow-straight righty followed by the 91mph running sinkerballer lefty.
1: Haggerty, LF
2: Seager, 3B
3: France, 2B
4: Marmolejos, DH
5: White, 1B
6: Crawford, SS
7: Moore, RF
8: Trammell, CF
9: Murphy, C
SP: Kikuchi
Kyle Lewis is getting a scheduled off day, so nothing nefarious there. Mitch Haniger is again out of the line-up, though things don’t sound too serious. The news is less good on Marco Gonzales, who’s just been placed on the IL with forearm tightness, which is one of those innocuous sounding injuries that never fail to scare the crap out of me. Remember, that was the initial diagnosis for James Paxton. It may just be exactly what they say it is, but the overlap between “forearm tightness” and elbow problems simply can’t be ignored. The M’s have activated Domingo Tapia.
Game 25, Mariners at Astros
Justin Dunn vs. Zack Greinke, 5:10pm
Well, the M’s have lost the first two games of this series, and now face the prospect of losing their hot-hitting RF. Mitch Haniger was just scratched from the line-up. It could be nothing, but we’re used to not worrying too much when Haniger goes out of the line-up, and then weeks later we learn it was something much worse. Hopefully none of that’s the case here, and it’s just vaccine symptoms or something; we’re seeing a lot of days off for guys after their second dose, and that’s a pretty good reason to miss a game.
Cristian Javier was quite tough yesterday, and now the M’s face Greinke, who *also* held them scoreless for 7 IP when the Astros were in Seattle. On the plus side, it’s been great to see Marco Gonzales put his first two starts of the year behind him and pitch more or less like himself again, but his high-ish walk rates remain a bit of a concern and may prevent him from reaching the heights he got to in 2020.
Shannon Drayer was one of many around the beat to talk about high strikes and their role in suppressing batting average this year. It’s a good point, and after checking it with statcast data, it does seem to be true: Pitches at the top of and just above the zone have always been good for pitchers, but the wOBA-against on them has plummeted this year compared to recent years. And a big part of that isn’t just swings-and-misses on ever-faster fastballs (I’m watching Jacob deGrom as I type this), but rather a decline in batting averages on balls in play. That, in turn, seems to be driving a big decline in BABIP overall. We’re getting an odd mix of 1980s-style BABIPs and walk rates with heretofore inconceivable strikeout rates and 2018-ish HR rates.
For more on the drop in averages, check out this Brendan Gowlowski piece at FG, which I would recommend even if he didn’t cite me in it. I mentioned the possibility for some very low BAs on the Mariners before the season started, and well, yes, the M’s can’t hit for average. The silver lining here is…neither can anyone else. I thought this would be a real competitive disadvantage for the M’s, and it is to a degree, but it’s been minimized by the struggles the entire league has had.
1: Haggerty, 2B
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Marmolejos, “RF”
7: Trammell, LF
8: Torrens, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Dunn
Game 24, Mariners at Astros
Marco Gonzales vs. Cristian Javier, 5:10pm
The M’s have lost back to back games for the first time since April 5th/6th, and have their work cut out for them in today’s game against Houston and righty slider specialist, Cristian Javier. Yesterday’s game felt like it could get away from them at any point, especially after the Astros scored twice in the first, but Justus Sheffield held them around, and the bullpen was again pretty solid. It’s just that the bats couldn’t get going against Jose Urquidy or the Astros ‘pen, and hey, that’ll happen some days.
Cristian Javier signed for $10,000 out of the DR years ago, but got on prospect radar by…well, pitching really well at every stop. In his minor league career, he tossed 377 innings, giving up just 225 hits and striking out *512*. He’s not overpowering; he averages 92-93 with his four-seam fastball, but it pairs well with a sweeping, frisbee slider. He has a slow curve and a change-up, but he doesn’t really use either one very much. For a long time, this appeared to limit his ceiling, and while he cracked the Astros’ top 10 prospect lists, a lot of people have pegged him for a bullpen role long-term. Fastball/slider relievers are common. Fastball/slider starters who don’t throw Randy Johnson-fast are less so.
But since joining the rotation in 2020, he’s been great. His career spans less than 70 innings, but he’s striking out more than a batter an inning, and has an RA9/ERA right at 3. He’s been great in two starts this year, with his slider wreaking havoc on opposing batters. I think this is what people hope Justus Sheffield can one day do consistently, and Sheffield can look like a great starter at times. Sliders tend to have large platoon splits, and one that moves so horizontally should have fairly extreme splits. On paper, it looks a lot like ex-M’s reliever Carson Smith’s (an old USSM favorite), as it’s thrown from a lower arm slot. But that approach got Smith boxed in to a set-up role, but it hasn’t limited Javier. Why?
Well, I think this is the pitch of the year around this blog, but I think it’s because Javier throws one of those Freddy Peralta fastballs. I mentioned this when the M’s faced Peralta in the spring, and how it looks like Josh Hader’s, and how Justin Dunn’s is kiiiinda similar if you squint. Well, Javier’s is very similar. Despite releasing the pitch at about 5.5′ off the ground, it *moves* like an over-the-top, backspinning four seamer with *less* armside run than average and more vertical movement. At his arm slot, you’d expect a pitch that looks like…well, like Justus Sheffield’s sinker, or maybe his old four-seam. There’s nothing wrong with those pitches, as they have a lot more armside run. But the ability to shut *off* that run and replace it with rise on the fourseam, and then use the more normal break (both horizontally and vertically) on the slider is pretty cool. It means his slider has about 9″ of difference in break than his fastball, and 10″ different horizontally. This is similar to Peralta and Dunn, and it helps explain why he isn’t getting punished by left-handed bats. Not *all* sliders are fun to hit for opposite-handed bats.
And like Jose Urquidy and many Astros starters this year, Javier is generating next to no ground balls. His BABIP doesn’t look like it this year, but his career BABIP is now at .214. Again, that’s kind of scary in a juiced baseball environment, but if the ball isn’t quite as bouncy this year, it could work. The Astros’ group of Urquidy, Javier, Greinke, and Odorizzi are among baseball’s most grounder-averse rotations in the game. I wonder if they give Lance McCullers the stink eye after he gets another flurry of worm burners.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, DH
5: Marmolejos, 1B
6: Haggerty, LF
7: Trammell, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Gonzales
Evan White gets a day off. Despite reducing his K rate, he’s simply not hitting enough. His last extra base hit came on the 16th, 35 PAs ago. JP Crawford’s exit velocity now ranks 138 out of 140 qualified hitters.
Game 23, Mariners at Astros
Justus Sheffield vs. Jose Urquidy, 5:10pm
After handling the Astros fairly well at home, the M’s meet a more-or-less full strength version today in Houston. Jose Altuve should make his first appearance since the Covid scare sidelined he and several of the Astros best hitters.
Jose Urquidy was unheralded as an Astros prospect, as he was seen as more of a command and control guy in a system that had ultra-high end talent like Forrest Whitley and a series of pop-up guys sitting in the high-90s, from Josh James to JB Bukauskas. Even the comparatively pedestrial pitchers like Framber Valdez has a huge outpitch and a tick or two more on their fastball.
But there was Urquidy, pitching in the 2019 World Series as prospect after prospect either flamed out, got hurt, or got flipped at the deadline. Not only was he on the postseason roster, he was thriving – and touching 97, while sitting 93-94. There was more in his arm than scouts and perhaps even Urquidy thought, a bit like the M’s Ljay Newsome, who was signed as a strike-throwing under-6′ righty throwing 87, but has become a perfectly adequate arm throwing 93 consistently.
Urquidy is still around, and still pitching pretty effectively in 2021, but he’s changed pretty substantially from the guy we all saw in 2019. This year – and I wrote about him last week – he’s throwing just 91-92, and he’s throwing less of his great change-up and more of his slider. That hasn’t been a good trade for him, as batters are still baffled by his cambio, but have found the slider a little easier to hit. Part of this may just be the result of how easy the ball is to pick up for righties. As mentioned last time, he has massive, kind of hilarious reverse splits in his career, with lefties unable to do much of anything and righties feasting. The slider usage may be a way to target them, and make them hit something other than his fastball.
If it’s done anything, the change in velocity has helped him limit pulled contact, which is generally the worst kind to allow for a pitcher. But he’s got a plan: he’s throwing his change and slider higher in the zone this year, and thus he’s seen a ton of pop-ups and soft fly balls. This has pushed his GB% – already quite low – to absurdly, Emilio-Pagan-style lows. The idea would be that this would push his BABIP down, as all non-HRs would be easy-to-catch flies, and with his low walk rate, you’d have a guy who’d continue to give up fewer runs than his FIP would suggest.
He’s tossed four starts, but…the plan isn’t working. His BABIP is *up* this year, as are his walks allowed. He’s giving up weaker contact, and his strikeout rate is up, but it hasn’t mattered in the short sample that is 2021. This may just be a lot of bad luck, but he’s one walk away from tying the 8 he gave up last season (he faced 25-30 more batters last year) and he’s already matched his hits-allowed from last year. In the meantime, this is a pretty good match-up for the M’s righties. They’ve done better against righties, and their right-handed bats like Ty France and Mitch Haniger don’t mind facing same-handed hurlers.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Trammell, LF
7: Moore, 2B
8: Torrens, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Sheffield
Nick Margevicius’ start lasted only 1/3 of an inning yesterday, and that came a week after he had to be lifted from his start with discomfort in his arm. He’s now on the IL with shoulder discomfort, and will have an MRI to see what the problem is. For now, Robert Dugger, one-time M’s prospect turned Miami Marlin, turned M’s prospect (kind of) again, is up from the Alternate Site and is available tonight. It’s sounding like Ljay Newsome, who was great for four scoreless yesterday, may take Margevicius’ spot in the rotation. They could conceivably move back to a five-man rotation given the off-days scheduled in May.
Yesterday’s game was a fascinating one. Their starter was knocked out in the first. Drew Steckenrider gave up an additional run, and the Red Sox kept putting runners on throughout the game. It was the kind of game that I felt would end with a position player on the mound for Seattle and maybe a double-digit deficit on the board. A loss is a loss, and I understand it’s all the same in the standings, but I was very impressed with Seattle’s effort in what sure looked like a laugher. They scraped some runs across later on and made it a very interesting game in the late innings.
The team’s been very fun to watch. Please note, this is quite distinct from “good.” They’re still a comically top-heavy line-up, and recent games have pushed them below league average at the plate. It’s tough to think they can keep up scoring about a half a run more than their base runs would predict. But I will take a team that seems lucky and able to compete in late innings over a team that simply can’t come back and seemingly knows it. I know it’s hard to armchair psychoanalyze players from home, bringing in emotional words (“fight” “compete”) to layer over what are often random events. We can talk about luck taking the place of improvement and talent, but this is entertainment, and for right now, I’m entertained by this club.
There are warning signs all over: Kyle Lewis is struggling in the very early going, and Evan White’s still not right. Tom Murphy and Dylan Moore are looking like shadows of themselves. I’m well aware. But we M’s fans *know* losing baseball teams and lost baseball games. A loss like yesterday’s is not anywhere near the noxious types of loss we’ve experienced far too often. Sure, you can point to the reasons why it happened, or why the comeback fell short. But between Newsome’s performance and the odd fact that Tom Murphy has scored 5 runs despite just 5 hits and 2 walks. The entire bottom of the line-up struggles, but as soon as Tom Murphy gets on base, they knock him in, or get it to Mitch to do the dirty work. For some long, fortune has seemed to have out and out hatred for the M’s; there was a real maliciousness to the M’s bad luck. This year? It feels like friendly teasing. I’ll take it.
Game 22, Mariners at Red Sox
Nick Margevicius vs. Eduardo Rodriguez, 10:10am
After a comprehensive and impressive win, the M’s go for a huge road series win against a good team. It’s going to be tough; this isn’t an ideal match-up, but the M’s line-up has been better than advertised by the likes of…uh, me, and put up a decent number of runs. May that continue!
Chris Flexen put together a brilliant start yesterday, scattering four hits in 7 IP, giving up just one run, and striking out seven. He gets dinged by statcast and other sites for not racking up swings and misses at times, but you wouldn’t know it from watching Boston try to hit him. He picked up 16 swings-and-misses to go along with 10 called strikes, easily outpacing Nate Eovaldi, who touched 99 and has knockout stuff.
The key for Flexen has been his cutter at 90-91 – it’s the pitch he went to most often, and he generated most of the whiffs with it. It had the most balls in play off of it, but most of it was only moderately well-struck. And because hitters have to look for it, I think it helps his comparatively underpowered fastball play up. They’d let the fastball go, obviously looking for something else, or they’d foul it off. In all, the Sox only put two fastballs in play. If a pitcher can generate contact on pitches *other* than four-seamers, that’s a good thing: batters do the most damage on fastballs. Cutters, even very “fastball like” versions of the pitch, get improved results.
Nick Margevicius has been hit fairly hard, but his FIP’s better than his ERA due to a fairly impressive K:BB ratio for a lefty throwing in the high 80s. His fastball’s been his best pitch by far, which is kind of strange. I talked up his slider last time out, and he barely threw it, preferring to throw a barrage of slow, rainbow curves in the low 70s. That pitch certainly may make his fastball look tougher, but on its own, it hasn’t quite worked. Hitters are slugging .571 off of it, and if you look at the expected stats, Margevicius has gotten quite *lucky* off of the balls in play he’s allowed. To be fair, the results haven’t really been there on the few sliders he’s thrown, but I think it’s one dinger spoiling everything. It was a solid pitch last year, and I wish we’d see more of it. Not sure that we will today, given Boston’s strong right-handed hitters, but maybe he can work it in against Rafael Devers.
Eduardo Rodriguez was one of the most prominent players in any sport to not only contract Covid-19, but to have one of the many longer-term issues that can be associated with it. Specifically, Rodriguez suffered myocarditis, and inflammation of the heart which can often lead to scarring. That can seriously impact longer-term health, but the fact that he’s playing suggests it may not have gotten that far. Still, Rodriguez had a severe case, and I’m very glad he’s been able to come back. He’s long been a guy who’s been able to consistently generate weaker contact, and the key to that has been his excellent change-up. Batters have hit .232 off of it in Rodriguez’s career, with a .337 slugging percentage. In the early going this season, they’re hitting even worse, with a paltry .217 SLG%. He’s using it more often, as you would if you had a pitch that hitters found it nearly impossible to drive, throwing more of it than his four-seam fastball. That’s new; it’s always played off of the fastball as opposed to being the main course, so we’ll see if he tries to get back to a more “normal” pitch mix for a starter. He also throws a slider and cutter, with the latter becoming an increasingly important part of his repertoire. That’s been important, because he’s simply never really been able to figure out his slider. He’s like a lefty Erasmo Ramirez in that regard, I guess. But better: he’s been great in his first three starts this year, and was better than average in 2018 and 2019 as well. Not that it’s mattered if an opposing starter holds the M’s in check; they can just wait for some set-up guy to make mistakes and pounce.
1: Haniger, DH
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Moore, RF
7: Haggerty, LF
8: Murphy, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Margevicius
Game 21, Mariners at Red Sox
Chris Flexen vs. Nate Eovaldi, 10:10am
It’s getaway day in Boston, as the M’s and Red Sox play the decisive game of this three-game set. The Red Sox had what looked like a fairly easy win in hand yesterday, but Kyle Seager made it interesting in the ninth with a three-run HR against previously-dominant Matt Barnes.
Neither starter was all that sharp yesterday, a fact that shouldn’t come as a huge surprise given the struggles both have had in recent years. I’m still pretty confused about Yusei Kikuchi and why he goes through periods where he seems easy to square up. Martin Perez has been easy to square up for some time, so that’s less of a mystery. Kikuchi’s first two starts were marred by some HRs, but they were ultimately quite promising. He had 16 strikeouts and just 3 walks in his first 12 IP. But in the two starts since, he’s tossed 11 2/3 IP with only 4 Ks and 6 walks. The cutter that had been his best pitch last year simply isn’t missing any bats; batters whiffed on it on just over 1/4 of their swings last year, but he got none last night. Boston’s line-up is deep and very good, so we can perhaps give him a pass. But the M’s will need him if they’re going to keep this strong start going.
Chris Flexen has been excellent in the early going, and I’m interested to see how he attacks this Red Sox line-up. Flexen’s perhaps been a bit lucky with HRs thus far, as he’s given up plenty of fly balls, but just one dinger. But he’s been equally UNlucky on balls in play, with a BABIP up near .400. As is the case so early, that’s essentially the result of his last start, a very good one against the Astros, in which he gave up 10 base hits in 6 IP. That sort of thing could happen again here in Boston, with a great line-up and a hitter-friendly park. But Flexen’s shown that he can pitch around baserunners and, critically for him, limit walks. It’s just that he’s going to have to get used to it if he doesn’t improve his putaway pitches and get some more whiffs. He’s not getting many batters to chase, and has a very high contact rate against him – he’s not fooling batters. But he’s also not getting blown off the mound. It’s a strange mix of outcomes, but as long as it works for him, that’s probably ok. He’s your one-man antidote to three-true-outcomes baseball.
Nate Eovaldi is one of the hardest-throwing starters in the game. He’s averaging 97 on his fastball this year, and has for some time. It was one of the bigger mysteries in the game why Eovaldi could have such elite velocity and not get and strikeouts in strikeout-friendly MLB, but he seems to have figured it out. He mixes in a 93mph cutter, a slider, a curve, and even a splitter/change. That cutter’s been one of his better strikeout pitches, and it really is pretty similar to Kikuchi’s. The split and curve give him options to change eye level and work vertically in (and out of) the zone, and everything plays much better now that he’s improved his control. Since the start of 2020, Eovaldi’s got the 4th-lowest BB/9 among starters, behind Zach Plesac, Zach Greinke, and Clayton Kershaw (Marco Gonzales is just behind at 6th-lowest).
He’s much improved, but he’s not a really dominant, K-heavy pitcher in the way that Shane Bieber or :speaks reverentially: Jacob deGrom is. I missed a good chunk of yesterday’s M’s game, because I try to catch some of every deGrom start; he’s become must-watch TV. I haven’t seen a pitcher on a run quite this good since peak Randy Johnson, and I do not say that lightly.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Marmolejos, DH
5: White, 1B
6: Trammell, CF
7: Torrens, C
8: Haggerty, LF
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Flexen
Game 20, Mariners at Red Sox
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Martín Pérez, 4:10pm
Yesterday’s game was a bizarrely compelling triumph. I still can’t tell if it was a super simple underdog-comeback story, like a sports-based Disney film aimed at tweens, or a complicated, but ultimately satisfying foreign film aimed at adults. At one level, the M’s couldn’t get any hits, but then got a bunch at exactly the right time, punctuated by the 10th inning HR that gave them the final margin of victory. It’s baseball; it’s not that complicated. They were behind, then they tied the game, then they won in extras.
But…like, it’s *weird.* This is the level of commentary that you’ve come to expect from this fine blog for decades. Seriously – I talked pre-game about how Pivetta’s got good stuff, but horrific results *especially* in terms of hits and HRs, but Justin Dunn’s raw stuff, while not as electric, was tougher to square up. Then the Red Sox square the hell out of Dunn, who pitched around hard hits all night, but kept his team in the game. Meanwhile, Pivetta gave up no hits into the 6th, before two walks and a double tied it up. The teams did look fairly equally matched, but it played out in such a different way than I would’ve expected, but in a way we’ve seen quite often in the early going this year.
One important part of that – the repeated late-inning comebacks after the bats have looked anemic for 5-6-7 innings – is the disastrous relief appearance. I’m certainly not saying this is new, like relievers haven’t had off days before Covid. I watched the 1990s Mariners, so I know all about crappy relief outings spoiling good games. But I’ve been struck this season by this phenomenon wherein one reliever (sometimes more, but often just one) comes into a game and utterly gives it away.
On Twitter, there’s a famous maxim about the Main Character. It’s “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.” Every day there’s some outrage, major or minor, and then loads of people dogpile on that person for whatever transgression they’ve made. I keep thinking that the goal of a reliever, especially a non-closer, is to never be the Main Character in the baseball game. That’s for starting pitchers, the batter who goes 3-5 with 3 extra-base hits, etc. A middle reliever can pitch fantastically well, but their goal is for the current score to remain the same: the story’s already there, they’re just trying to advance the plot. They’re the text onscreen in a movie that says, “Two Years Later.” If everyone is talking about the non-closing reliever, chances are that reliever has done something pretty bad.
Yesterday had a few main characters, but you can’t talk about the game without mentioning Darwinzon Hernandez, who faced 7 batters and allowed 4 runs in the 10th (yes, yes, one was a fake run because of the new extra innings rule). Because the inning started with a sac bunt, and because Tom Murphy flied out after Sam Haggerty (!) gave the M’s the lead with a double, he had two outs and was facing JP Crawford, who is *slugging* .254 as I type this. The lefty reliever in a one run game was facing a *lefty* hitter who’s grown remarkably punchless. Walking Crawford would put two on for Mitch Haniger, a right-hander with a slugging percentage several multiples of Crawford’s. There is one thing that Hernandez cannot ever do, but he did it. He paid a hefty price for it.
Seriously, how many games have we seen like this? It started on *opening day* when the Giants let a big lead go, giving up 6 runs in the 8th inning, but it was split over several relievers. Still, you’ve got to mention Jose Alvarez, who simply walked the bases loaded, and then walked it off with another free pass. Six days later, it was Matt Foster’s turn to be the main character, as he came in with two on and a 4-1 lead, and left with the White Sox trailing 8-4. Alex Colome a few days later, giving up 3 runs in the 9th to lose it for Minnesota. I’m not counting a reliever giving up a run to lose a tie game. That happens, and while it’s hugely important in win probability stats, it’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about a pitcher who comes in and very clearly doesn’t have it, and the inning just snowballs. I feel like we’re seeing more and more of them this year.
This may be biased by the fact that I’m watching the M’s, who’ve had a few thus far. But I feel like they’re happening all the time. I tried to look this up on Sports-Reference Stathead feature using RE24 and aLI (average Leverage Index), but it wasn’t giving me all the games; it didn’t have last night’s or opening night’s, both of which qualified. So I’ll keep trying to quantify it, but this is my theory: bullpen usage has changed such that there are now more relief appearances and relief innings in each game. The need for starters – and all pitchers, really – to pitch vastly more innings than they did in the Covid-shortened 2020 season magnifies this problem. The need for more pitchers pitching more innings plus the extra roster spot has led teams to go with 14-man staffs and super-deep bullpens. All of this means that we’re increasing the chance of finding the one guy who simply doesn’t have it.
Does that mean teams should change pitchers less? If your reliever pitched excellently in the 6th, maybe think about them pitching the 7th as well? Maybe, I’m not sure. But I do think it highlights that there’s a downside to the way essentially every team is turning to ever more relievers to fill out their roster. That said, I’m not sure that we can blame this on the 26th man; this isn’t just an issue with marginal middle-relievers. But I feel like the first 5 innings of a game mean less, somehow – like a lead isn’t safe until the game’s over. That’s flying in the face of the research I mentioned earlier about how later-inning lead changes have grown *less* common as managers don’t leave tiring starters in and instead give the ball to almost fungible 96mph power arms in the pen.
The game is so, so hard. I don’t want to focus too much on relievers losing the plot, so let’s talk about today’s starter. Martín Pérez has been facing the M’s for about a decade now, and while he was an uber-prospect for years around 2010, he’s become a journeyman lefty bottom-of-the-rotation guy now. It’s his second year in Boston, but he was on three clubs in three years before this. The lefty throws a four-seam and sinker, but last year focused heavily on a high-80s cutter and a change-up at 84. This essentially gives him two pitches with ~similar speeds and opposite horizontal break. He can mix in a curve, too. He never missed bats in Texas, his first team, and while he’s striking out a few more now, he’s still below average. His game is to generate weak contact, and at least by statcast, he’s doing so, and has been pretty effective at it since 2019. It just hasn’t shown up in his overall results. He hasn’t pitched in super friendly parks, but you just wouldn’t peg a lefty with 4-5 pitches and at least SOME record of weak contact to be seemingly perpetually on the wrong side of 5 with his ERA.
The culprit here is stranding runners. It’s simply never been a strength. Batters have hit .267 with the bases empty off of him in his career, but .304 with men on. His K rate goes down, and while his HRs do too, his walk rate increases. With no one on, he’s a so-so journeyman. With men on, he’s worse. So take some pitches, and pounce on mistakes in the strike zone, M’s.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Murphy, C
7: Moore, 2B
8: Haggerty, LF
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Kikuchi
Game 19, Mariners at Red Sox
Justin Dunn vs. Nick Pivetta, 4:10pm
The M’s open a three-game series in Boston today with the AL East-leading Red Sox. Boston’s tied for the best record in the AL with the suddenly unbeatable Athletics, and they’ve done it by excelling in pretty much every phase of the game. Their offense leads MLB in each of the triple slash categories, and thus leads MLB in wRC+, wOBA, or whatever else you want to use. That offense is led by JD Martinez, who’s red hot and having an impressive bounce-back season; he’s tied for the AL lead in HRs with Mike Trout, Nelson Crus and a few others, and look: if it’s an offensive stat and you’re hanging around Trout and Nellie, you’re doing fine. But after a somewhat slow start, the entire group around Martinez has really picked it up. Xander Bogaerts is hitting for average, rookie Bobby Dalbec is coming on after a very rude introduction to MLB pitching in the first week, Rafael Devers is hitting for power, and journeyman infielder Christian Arroyo has been productive.
But it’s not just a good line-up. Their pitching staff has an ERA under 4 and a FIP even lower. The Sox have an ERA of 3.73 and a FIP of 3.28, whereas the M’s have an ERA of 3.87, but a FIP of 4.36. That divergence isn’t a huge surprise, as the staffs are, in a sense, opposites. It all starts with velocity: the Red Sox have loaded up on toolsy, hard-throwing pitchers, and this is key, *whether or not they’ve actually been successful.* The M’s under Jerry Dipoto have pretty famously eschewed velocity in favor of pitchability. Thus, the Sox come in with the 2nd highest average FB velocity in the game, while the M’s are perfectly fine to remain down in 28th. The Red Sox ace is Nathan Eovaldi, he of the 98mph average heater who for years struggled to miss any bats with it. The M’s have Marco Gonzales, tossing up 87mph sinkers and 84mph cutters to confuse hitters into mishits.
If Eovaldi’s the ace, then today’s starter, Nick Pivetta, is perhaps the purest distillation of the Red Sox approach. Pivetta is what you’d come up with if you asked sabermetrically-inclined baseball analysts to come up with a pitching approach. No, he doesn’t throw 105 or anything, but Pivetta throws a 95mph fastball with good rising action at the top of the zone, and uses that to disguise a hard curve that generates a ridiculous amount of downward break. Plus velocity, plus movement, clearly trying to tunnel both pitches, and then mixes in a change and slider in the mid-80s to give a different speed/movement look. It’s not wonder he’s been the sleeper pick of pitching twitter for years now.
In 421 career innings, he’s striking out over a batter per inning, or just shy of 25% of hitters faces. His walk rate’s not great, but nothing terrifying. How many All Star games has he been to? Well, :pulls collar: about that. In those 421 innings, he’s given up 264 runs. That’s a 5.64 RA9 and a 5.34 ERA over that span. He was bad enough last year that the Phillies let him go, and the Phillies were desperate for pitching last year. They’d simply seen enough.
In an era in which strikeouts are up sharply, base hits have become something of an endangered species. But not when Pivetta’s around; he’s given up 441 hits and 74 dingers. Despite looking great in terms of velo and movement, something’s not quite right with Pivetta’s fastball. Coming into the year, batters were hitting .308 off of it, and slugging .552. Righties and lefties alike hit well off of it, and while they struggle more with his curve, the ones they *do* hit tend to go a long way.
You can see why the Phillies tired of this, but you can just as easily see why the Red Sox wanted him. This is too good an arm to give up on, and after watching Eovaldi come into his own, it’s no surprise the Red Sox wanted to bet on their own player development group here. He’s got a career-high walk rate, which isn’t great, but he’s not hemorrhaging runs in the early going, so I guess that’s a good sign? I’d love to learn more about the Red Sox pitching approach, because they’re doing something fairly well. Rule 5 reliever Garrett Whitlock was plucked from AA, and in his first 9 innings has given up just 3 hits, no runs, no walks, and struck out 11. He, too, throws 95. Veteran Matt Barnes is posting his best year, with 16 Ks, 2 walks, and one run in his first 9 IP. Sure, Martin Perez is still struggling, but he’s been doing that for a decade; they’re not miracle workers.
Justin Dunn is an odd mirror image of Pivetta. Dunn, like Pivetta, throws a 95mph fastball (ok, more like 94), and a hard curve. Both have sliders, too, and esp. now, neither one is exactly a master of control or command. But whereas Pivetta’s heater – with more movement per statcast – gets hit hard, Dunn’s is trickier to square up. Both yield a ton of elevated contact – they both have very high average launch angles, as you can see from their very low walk rates. Both can struggle with HRs as a result of their approach. But while Dunn wasn’t exactly a soft-tosser when acquired, he didn’t light up a radar gun or scouting report, either. While Dunn may have closed the gap with Pivetta, that hard curve of Pivetta’s is a scouting dream, with super high spin rates and plus movement. By comparison, Dunn’s is much slurvier, much more horizontal, and perhaps harder to mirror with his fastball. Again, though, it’s Pivetta who’s had a harder time of it. Sure, Dunn’s walked too many, and may not stick in the rotation long-term, but he hasn’t been giving up anywhere near the hits and runs that Pivetta has (in a much smaller sample, to add the requisite/automatic caveat).
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Trammell, LF
7: Torrens, C
8: Moore, 2B
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Dunn
Game 18, Dodgers at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Julio Urias, 1:10pm
Last night’s win was genuinely impressive – the easy choice as the best game of the season. They did it by jumping on their opponent’s starter, not something we’ve seen a lot of, and they held on through great bullpen performance and strategy. Dustin May was dealing, as we saw from all of the strikeouts, but when they got pitches to hit, they hit them very hard. There were a few times I thought Justus Sheffield was wobbling, but he came through it, and then, when he got in a jam and had to come out, the bullpen put out the fire. It wasn’t about pouncing on some reliever who didn’t have it that night, it wasn’t a weird, improbable late-game collection of hits. They just outplayed the Dodgers. It was amazing.
Now, they get the opportunity to do so again. Marco Gonzales hopes to take what he learned in Baltimore and apply it in this much more difficult setting. Marco’s a difficult guy to pin down, I feel. There’s always something people like me point to when he’s going well, but then he’ll change that thing, and still pitch pretty much like Marco Gonzales. Part of it is that it’s so difficult to pin down what “command” really is, and part of it is the reality that very, very few pitchers have the kind of consistency/stability that we attribute to them after the fact by looking at seasonal stats. Lucas Giolito was dominant early this year, and got knocked out in the first is last game out. Baseball’s volatile, and pitching is the most volatile component.
In 2018, I thought Gonzales was great despite pedestrian stuff because he simply didn’t have a pattern. All of his pitches were, in essence, equally likely. Fastball 25%, curve 25%, change 25%, cutter 25%. He was more confusing, harder to guess about, than other pitchers. Got it. Only now, he doesn’t pitch like that anymore. He didn’t in 2020, and that worked just fine. I used to think he needed to align the release points for his fastball and change, but he didn’t, and it didn’t matter. Marco was simply amazing at generating weak contact despite refusing to be chased out of the strikezone in the midst of the home run era. All of that is awesome, but it makes it harder to pinpoint things to fix now that all of the contact he’s generating is scalded.
Fangraphs has a post today on Dodger starter Julio Urias’ changing curveball shape. It’s been more of a 12-6, vertical pitch in the past, but is now has extreme horizontal sweep. It’s done well, but not especially so thus far. The key to Urias’ game is his change-up, and how he uses it to neutralize righties. In his career, he’s got fairly prominent reverse splits, and this is generally borne from his ability to get weaker contact from righties. The big thing that jumps out isn’t K rate, it’s that he’s able to limit righty home runs despite not being any kind of ground ball pitcher.
Normally, that would scream “fluke,” but I’m not sure it is. Change-ups are the one pitch that can *reliably* get swings even when thrown out of the zone. Sliders do too, sure, but mostly on two-strike pitches when batters have to protect and expand the zone. As I said for years, this was the key to Hisashi Iwakuma’s success – getting a ton of swings on his splitter (a type of change-up) even though everyone in the entire stadium knew that it would come in below the zone. Some years, Urias holds batters to an extremely low batting average on cambios, and some years he doesn’t. It actually doesn’t matter all that much, because they’re essentially all singles. He’s given up 38 singles in his career off of change-ups, but only 8 extra-base hits. By keeping them down and away to righties, it’s quite hard to elevate it.
But all of that’s good against righties. While reverse splits are weird/cool, they can be an indication that you can’t reliably get out same-handed bats. And that’s probably why Urias has been working so much on his curve. In his career, it’s been his worst pitch. Another actually effective pitch against lefties and righties would really make him a complete starter.
1: Haniger, RF
2: Lewis, CF
3: Seager, 3B
4: White, 1B
5: Murphy, C
6: Torrens, DH
7: Trammell, LF
8: Moore, 2B
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Gonzales
Welcome back, Kyle Lewis! The M’s activated Lewis off of the IL, sending Braden Bishop to the alternate site. As is so often the case in baseball, the great news that Lewis is back is balanced by the fact that Ty France is not. France took a fastball off of his right forearm last night, and later had to come out when he tried throwing, only to find that he couldn’t.
Evan White at clean-up: I’m still not a fan of it. White’s K rate has plummeted this year, and that’s impressive and worth noting. Unfortunately, it’s come at the expense of all traces of power. The one hopeful sign amidst last year’s disaster was that when he DID make contact, he hit the ball quite hard. More contact, more hard contact, good results. But somewhere in the process of cutting his K% in half, he lost the hard contact part, as his average exit velocity is in the 4th percentile in MLB. He’s a completely different hitter this year, but it all leads to the same overall result. His wOBA last year was .261, and it’s .277 this year. Neither are anywhere close to OK for a 1B, or a clean-up hitter.