Game 34, Mariners at Rangers
Erik Swanson vs. Kohei Arihara, 4:05pm
The M’s picked up a big win yesterday in perhaps the most unlikeliest of ways. No, the whole bullpen-being-a-fortress thing wasn’t new, but it was appreciated, especially after Chris Flexen didn’t have his best stuff. No, the M’s won a one-run game in large part due to a home run from JP Crawford. It was his first of the year, and I had said on twitter a few weeks ago that I simply couldn’t envision it anymore. You can go back and look at HRs he hit in his first few months with the M’s, and look at some long HRs he hit with the Phillies, but his approach has altered dramatically since then. It’s great to know he can still get into a pitch, and it’s more signs of life from the lower part of the order. The same could be said for Dylan Moore’s wall-scraping two-run shot.
Of course, the more the M’s look like a middle-of-the-road team on the road, the more it makes you wonder how much of their offensive woes are caused by T-Mobile park. The M’s focus on high fastballs, and look, they’re not great on high fastballs. But they rank 19th in the game – just the wrong side of average. If they hit them the way Toronto or even Baltimore (?) does, they’d be scoring more runs, but high fastballs are hard to hit. The big problem is bendy stuff. And because we’ve learned so much about how location and weather conditions impact not only the ball’s flight off the bat, but it’s flight on the way to the bat, I wonder if there’s something either meteorologically or visually off with T-Mobile.
The M’s looked completely lost against John Means the other day, but they’ve still hit him harder than anyone else has – I’d be the first to admit Means had better stuff in Seattle, but that’s not the only variable at play, and it may not even be the most important. This’ll be interesting to watch, and as I said the other day, it makes you not only wonder if we’ve missed some of the key components of what gets lumped into a “park factor.” Or maybe another way of saying it is: the changes to the ball itself and how the ball gets stored have shown us that there’s so much more to the venues that host MLB games. There’s so many factors swirling around that get averaged into a declaration that this place is a hitter’s haven, and this one isn’t. It also makes me wonder why MLB has gone to humidors in phases. Starting in Colorado may have made sense, but it seems like it may be having a marked impact in places like Seattle, Boston, and Citi Field in New York. Not only through the direct effects, but in how they interact with a slightly deadened ball. That seems like something you’d want to try to apply equally. I often wonder if you tweaked enough of these tiny dials, from the batter’s eye to the ball to the game time temperature, if you could make Evan White a legitimately good hitter. Forget park factors, how much of player development is the salubrious setting of these various environmental and site-specific dials?
Today, the M’s get a look at Kohei Arihara, the Japanese hurler who’s in his first season in MLB. He came over with a small fraction of the fanfare of Yu Darvish’s arrival in Texas, and to be fair, has had kind of a rough introduction. But like Darvish, he’s giving opposing hitters a *lot* to think about. According to his BrooksBaseball page (now updated for 2021, woooo), he’s throwing *seven* pitches this year. The kind of freak-outs we had about Darvish’s broad arsenal don’t happen as much nowadays (we get used to superhuman stuff too quickly, I think), but Arihara’s approach is very Darvish-like. He’s got a four-seam and sinker at 90-92, a cutter/slider/curve that walk down the velo scale from 88 to 82 to 74, and two change-ups – a traditional change with armside run, and a splitter with more vertical movement.
He started the season fairly well, and had a two-game stretch in mid-April in which he threw 11+ innings with no runs allowed, 2 walks, and 11 Ks. But since then, he’s lost it, throwing only 4 2/3 IP in two games, giving up 11 runs on 10 hits, 6 walks and 1 strikeout. We’ll see which version of Arihara we see today.
Erik Swanson gets the start today in what seems like it’ll be a bullpen day. There was a rumor that Robert Dugger may get the bulk of the innings when Swanson’s done. Swanson’s start has been a bit better than last year, when he simply couldn’t get anyone out or keep the ball in the park. All of this is small sample size, but he was so *consistently* bad last year, it made you wonder if he was tipping pitches. Hopefully, the M’s have that straightened out, and a reliever capable of multiple innings throwing 95-96 with a good slider should still have some success in this league.
1: Haniger, RF
2: Lewis, CF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, DH
5: Crawford, SS
6: Torrens, C
7: Moore, 2B
8: White, 1B
9: Haggerty, LF
SP: Swanson
I caught the Rainiers/Chihuahua prospect-topia game last night at Cheney. Logan Gilbert outdueled MacKenzie Gore in what turned out to be an 8-2 R’s win. Gilbert was perfect through 2, but gave up a couple of singles to start the third, and El Paso pushed a run past on a safety squeeze when Cal Raleigh couldn’t quite hold the throw from Jantzen Witte at 3B. The R’s were patient against Gore, who went to a ton of 3 ball counts, and walked a few, including Jarred Kelenic. This pushed his pitch count up, but through 3, he had the lead. It all kind of fell apart for Gore in the 5th, when he followed the walk to Kelenic by hitting Braden Bishop, and then giving up a 2R double to Donovan Walton. He was charged with another run after a sac fly brought Walton home.
Gore sat in the low 90s, but touched 95 multiple times in the early going. He was more consistently 91-93 in the 4th/5th, and ultimately threw 94 pitches through 4+ innings. Gilbert hit 96 in the early going, but settled in around 94, and was ruthlessly efficient. He threw 5 IP with just the one run, using 67 pitches to get 5 Ks and no walks. He allowed contact, but almost none of it was all that hard. Gore nearly allowed a HR to Cal Raleigh, who hit the very top of the wall in left-center, and had baserunners on all the time, but to his credit, was able to work around it. Gore isn’t overpowering, but there’s something tricky about has fastball – it looked considerably faster than the gun. Still, you couldn’t ask for more: Gilbert looked like a polished, veteran pro against a good El Paso team. Jarred Kelenic faced perhaps the toughest lefty in the minors, and singled twice and walked. The R’s were patient, and Cal Raleigh worked well with Gilbert.
Logan Gilbert
MacKenzie Gore’s Mark-Langston-ish wind-up. [/caption]
Cal Raleigh
The R’s are back at it tonight in Tacoma, and you can get a vaccine in the R-Bar. Game starts at 5:05.
Arkansas posted a rain-shorted 4-0 win in 5 IP. Penn Murfee started and went 3 2/3 with 6 Ks, and Reid Morgan went the rest of the way. Devin Sweet starts for Arkansas tonight.
Everett lost to Hillsboro 7-2 after an off game from George Kirby. He gave up 3 runs on 6 hits, no walks and 4 Ks through 3 2/3. Juan Then makes his 2021 debut tonight for the Frogs in Hillsboro.
Modesto beat Stockton 2-1, as Taylor Dollard’s M’s debut couldn’t have gone better. The Cal Poly product struck out 10 in 4 scoreless, walkless innings; he gave up just 2 hits. The Ports’ Jake Walkinshaw was also scoreless through 5, but the Nuts scored a run in the 6th and another in the 8th to win it. Sam Carlson makes his long-awaited low-A debut tonight. The former 2nd round pick in 2017 threw 3 IP in the AZL after being drafted, and hasn’t thrown a pitch since, sidelined with TJ and other ailments. Hopefully, that’s all in the past.
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Philip Humber, Felix Hernandez, John Means – all day games. At some point there was a bunch of attention to mucking around with the backdrop in center for the batters’ eye, but it’s clear there is an unresolved imbalance that won’t be addressed by pitting humidors against marine layers.
This is getting ridiculous.
Promote Gilbert, limit his innings/pitch counts until he’s stretched out.
Then look at external options.
Torrens’ gaffe proved costly, but there were a few questionable choices that could have made a difference, and I’m still glad it didn’t go into extras.
Credit Texas on their defense tonight.