Game 52, Rangers at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Jordan Lyles, 7:10pm
The M’s try to keep some momentum going after a legitimately good win against a flawed-but-surprisingly-decent Rangers club. Chris Flexen pitched his best game in the majors, keeping the Rangers scoreless for 7 innings, and the bottom of the M’s order, heretofore a source of more embarrassment than run production, came through. Let’s hope it sparks something for guys like Tom Murphy.
Today’s game is a match-up between two former top prospects who seem to have settled in to back-of-the-rotation status. As I mentioned the last time these two faced off, Lyles was once the top Houston Astros prospect, before they were in the AL, and way before they became a player development force. Lyles has been a pitch-to-contact starter for years, in Colorado and now Texas, but has consistently – and severely – underperformed his FIP. His career FIP is 4.63; not great, but something you can live with in the 4-5 spot, especially given Lyles’ durability and rougher pitching environments. But his ERA is 5.25 in over 1,000 innings. Again, maybe beggars can’t be choosers in places like Colorado and a rebuilding Texas club, but that’s a fairly big discrepancy.
The problem is that Lyles can’t strand runners. His career mark is under 66%, and that’s despite a late-career improvement. He had a legitimately good year in 2019, spurred by improvement in that problematic metric, but he still hasn’t been able to reliably get out of innings. The problem may have something to do with his approach: the pitchers who strand 80%+ are guys like deGrom, Verlander, and Snell – guys who can get strikeouts with men on base. That’s harder for someone like Lyles, whose fastball is only 92-93, and is perhaps his worst pitch.
Lyles has responded to the erosion in his fastball’s results by embracing his inner junkballer. Against righties, he’ll throw more sliders than fastballs. That slider’s a hard one at 85-86, and has great vertical drop compared to his fastball. It generates a higher proportion of swings than his fastball does – and it’s not just the slider. Both his change (fairly normal) and curve (not normal) do too. This is essentially the Zach Plesac plan, of having a show-me fastball, and either keeping it out of the zone or throwing the bendy stuff in order to get weak contact. As batters generally have worse outcomes when they put non-fastballs in play, it kind of makes sense, especially if you’re struggling to out and out MISS bats.
His fastball’s now kind of fascinating to me. It gets comparatively few swings against it, and then the results of those swings are starkly divided between whiffs (he’s got a decent whiff rate on it now for seemingly the first time in his 11 years in MLB) and hard, hard contact (he’s given up 7 HRs on it already). All in all, the results aren’t pretty, but he could probably live with that if the rest of the plan was working. It’s not. His breaking stuff is being put in play, and too many of them are falling in for hits.
That’s my worry here. One of the big reasons for the offensive desert we’re watching in 2021 is a drop in BABIP, which is a topic Rob Arthur explored today at BP. What’s worse, there’s no place in the game that BABIP is lower than at T-Mobile park. A big part of *that* has been a reduction in the value of fly balls, or all non-grounders. A trend towards playing CFs deeper than before (and it looks like guys who are new/don’t appear to be as fast are positioned the deepest) coupled with the deadened ball has cut down even more on extra-base hits, which were always in short supply at T-Mobile. Now, it’s essentially impossible to get a base hit on a fly ball in Seattle without it going over the fence. It’s not like the M’s OF defense is world-class. It’s not bad, by any stretch, but it’s just not the first group you’d think of when you see how few balls drop in for hits.
All of this is good news for Lyles, who has a GB% well below 40%. It’s less helpful for Justus Sheffield, though he, too, is getting a few less grounders this year. The problem for Sheff hasn’t been base hits, though, it’s been homers. After giving up just 2 in 2020, he’s already given up 5. Worse, 4 of them have come off of sliders, which has been his outpitch since he was in the minors. It’s been effective against lefties and righties alike, and that’s allowed him to throw a lot of them, especially when ahead in the count.
But batters seem to be developing an approach against him: they’re sitting on the slider. To be fair, this isn’t exactly new. Sheffield’s always struggled to generate a lot of swings on the sinker (or, before that, his four-seam), but just like with Lyles, that’s not necessarily bad. If he can get called strikes, or if he can get weak contact on the slider – which batters swing at nearly *60%* of the time – then this is a feature, not a bug. Unfortunately, none of that is working right now. In 2020, poor results on the slider – which batters couldn’t lay off of – propelled him to his best season. So far this year, he’s not getting many called strikes on the fastball, and batters are battering the slider. Some of this may just be bad luck, but given that his slider’s the most likely pitch he throws to be hit in the air, it’s a calculated risk: more fly balls lead to more outs in play, but also more home runs.
1: Kelenic, LF
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: France, 1B
6: Crawford, SS
7: Godoy, DH
8: Murphy, C
9: Walton, 2B
SP: Sheffield
The Rainiers are back in action tonight in Reno. Darren McCaughan gets the ball for Tacoma against former Rainier and ill-fated trade return Zach Lee.
Tulsa beat Arkansas in 13 innings last night by a 6-2 score. It was a pitchers duel most of the way through, with Ian McKinney’s 6 scoreless innings starting it off. He K’d 8, giving him 37 Ks and just 8 walks in 23 IP thus far. He’s still just 26, and probably needs to be the next guy up to Tacoma if they can find a way to play normal baseball and not just operate as Seattle’s off-site overflow bullpen. Today, Penn Murfee starts for the Travs.
Everett got walked-off by the Vancouver Canadiens-of-Hillsboro (they’re sharing a stadium with the Hops while the border remains closed) 5-4. The Frogs managed just four singles, but made them count, and also took advantage of three Vancouver miscues. Today’s starter was supposed to be George Kirby, who hasn’t appeared since May 14th, leading to some worries from M’s fans like Darren Gossler (whose payroll tracker I’m sure you’ve seen). Earlier today, Kirby was shown as the starter, and if you look at MiLB.com, he still is. However, the M’s Player Development twitter, which posts starting line-ups, has the starter as 2019 6th rounder Michael Limoncelli. That in and of itself is noteworthy, as Limoncelli underwent Tommy John before the draft, causing him to fall to the M’s in the 6th. This’ll be his professional debut. Hopefully, Kirby will come in after Limoncelli throws an inning or two to get back into the swing of things. It’s something to keep an eye on, though, especially if Kirby’s pushed back again. There’ll be no Julio Rodriguez, though, no matter who pitches: he’s joined the Dominican Republic team in the Olympic Qualification tournament. The R’s Eric Filia will be on Team USA.
Modesto detroyed Visalia, 9-3, thanks to 3 hits from Cade Marlowe and a 5 IP, 10 K performance from Adam Macko. The Nuts scored 5 in the first, 1 in the second, and 2 in the third to put it out of reach. Visalia is just 5-16 on the year. It’s not going to get any easier for them: today’s starter is strikeout maven, Taylor Dollard.
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I might be alone in this thought, but I’m not sold on Sheffield or Dunn as starters.
And I’m kind of getting annoyed with Seattle’s PR hyping them, among others, as the future.