2021 Tacoma Rainiers Preview
It is opening day in Tacoma! I think it might also be the first time I’ve had a preview align with a player’s birthday? I was initially thinking about framing it in terms of “wow, you could either see a lot of further off prospects in Everett or some elite near-term contributors in Tacoma!,” but it would be naïve to suggest that you could plan on the best Rainiers being there for anything longer than a month. Besides, does freeway construction ever end in that stretch of I-5?
Thanks for sticking with me through more than ten thousand, madness-inducing previews cobbled together over five days. We have a largely speculative rotation from my end (sometimes I guess right, mostly not), the player I conceive of as least wanting to arm wrestle, an opportunity to casually reference cryptids, imported double play partners, and less poetry than one might think given the name of one outfielder, but few egregious puns (some of them multilingual) nonetheless.
Read more
2021 Arkansas Travelers Preview
The Travelers have come… Again! Okay outside of a Gozer the Gozerian reference, this team is probably the least star-studded roster in the system. That’s fine because mid-season promotions from Everett seem likely. Although dealing with a smaller roster, I somewhat dreaded this write-up and grew to appreciate the team as I went on. I worried minor league contraction would lead to streamlining and remove some of the weird stories and personalities I’ve long admired. That definitely is not the case here. I don’t know if they’ll compete, but they’re fun and interesting in their own way.
In addition to profiles, talk of a predominantly Irish rotation, astronomy comparisons, rogue baseball leagues, unnecessary math, and Hollywood connections. Let’s roll.
Read more
Game 32, Orioles at Mariners
Yusei Kikuchi vs. John Means, 12:40pm
An early game will decide this three-game series, as Yusei Kikuchi takes on Baltimore’s ace, John Means. Means is off to a great start, but the M’s got to him back in Baltimore in the first game of a double-header. The three runs in 5 IP are the most he’s given up in a game thus far. Like a lot of pitchers, Means has been extremely stingy with base hits; he’s given up 21 in his 37 innings on the year, including 5 dingers. HRs have been a lingering issue for him, as we saw when the M’s touched him for two of them, but he continues to be a quietly effective pitcher overall.
As I mentioned last time, his best pitch is a pretty odd change-up that doesn’t sink much at all, and actually mimics the movement of his rising fastball. Gravity pulls it down a bit, but it has backspin that keeps it from falling too far. As with his fastball, that rise helps generate fly ball contact, so he makes the familiar trade-off of a low BABIP in exchange for some dingers. When more fly balls find the seats, he can struggle, and that change-up won’t look all that great. This year, with the slightly dampened baseball and by taking a tick or two off of that change-up’s velocity, it’s again a great pitch. By run value, it’s been one of the better secondary pitches in baseball thus far, and the best change-up overall.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Murphy, C
6: White, 1B
7: Moore, 2B
8: Haggerty, LF
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Kikuchi
The return of Kyle Lewis and the slow, gentle awakening of some of the bottom-of-the-order batters has helped the M’s offense, but now they have to deal with the top of the line-up – ie. the only part that was working for the first three weeks – is slumping. Ty France now has just one hit and five walks in his last 34 PAs.
Game 31, Orioles at Mariners – The Minor League Season is Here
Justin Dunn vs. Jorge López, 7:10pm
Old heads may remember that the Orioles once had a highly-touted, flame-throwing righty named Daniel Cabrera. At times, he was even compared to the M’s young phenom, Felix Hernandez (or maybe, Felix was at one pointed ineptly comp’d to Cabrera, who debuted a year before the King in 2004). Cabrera threw 96, quite impressive for a starter at the time, and had a big, hard slider that flashed plus. If you saw him on the right day, you understood the hype. But such days were few and far between, as persistent control problems and an inability to hold runners left him a marginal MLB player. He got a lot of chances due to his talent, but struggled until injuries got to him, and then he didn’t even have raw velocity anymore. He was done by 2009.
Was that inevitable? Were player development strategies still in the (relative) dark ages only 15 years ago? What would Cabrera do if he came up now? It’s a weird counterfactual, if only because the number of people for whom the name “Daniel Cabrera” rings familiar is, by this point, pretty small. But in looking at tonight’s starter, Jorge López, I was reminded of Cabrera. So here the O’s are, with yet another starter sitting 95 and a track record of big league mediocrity. Is this another chance to get it right with a talented but underachieving talent? Or is Lopez what the back of his baseball card looks like – a journeyman without a real outpitch? Is this story about the Orioles, or about the fact that the entire league has moved so quickly that you can be a journeyman with a career ERA over 6 and still average 95 with your fastball?
Not every struggling player is a redemption story waiting to happen, and not every struggling player is a microcosm of player development challenges in an org or in a league. I can’t quite tell if López is doomed to be the guy he’s been thus far, but it’s getting a little late for a transformation of his results. Of course, that’s what people said about Brandon McCarthy or, reaching back further, Jamie Moyer.
Lopez pitches off of a 95 mph sinker, but also throws a high four-seamer to give batters a different look. He doesn’t use one or the other based on the handedness of the batter; he’ll throw both to anyone. It’s more about where in the zone he wants the ball to end up – four seamers up, sinkers down. His breaking ball is a curve at 82, and he also has a change-up in the high 80s that’s reserved mostly for lefties. Each of these pitches has, at one point, had decent results. But he’s never been able to have consistent success, undone by an inability to put batters away, HR troubles, and, like Cabrera, real problems stranding runners. His career slash line against with men on base is .319/.381/.506.
Justin Dunn had perhaps the best outing of his young career against this club a few weeks back. Yesterday’s post about the M’s low BABIP is, of course, exemplified in Dunn, the odd BABIP savant. I’m now kind of fascinated to see if he’s able to keep this up, and to see a bit more about *how* he can. Statcast’s expected stats have consistently portended doom for Dunn, but here he is, control-troubled yet effective-ish. That’s a lot of caveats packed into a summary, but I seriously have never seen anyone like this.
One reason I think I’ve been wary of Dunn (and Justus Sheffield, too) has been his lack of a change-up. He toyed with one last year, but seems to have shelved it this year. That leaves him to face lefties with only a fastball, slider, and, increasingly, his slurvy curve ball. A 12-6 curve might have minimal platoon splits, but sliders often graded out (along with sinkers) as extremely platoon-y pitches – this all goes back to the brilliant work of Max Marchi 10-15 years ago or so, and which I’ve talked about a lot in my time here. That’s why people always talk about starters needing a third pitch – if you come up with a fastball and slider and are not named Randy Johnson, opposite-handed hitters may figure you out. Dunn’s curve has little vertical movement, but sweeps across the zone, much like a slider, but he hasn’t been hurt by that, just as Sheffield has fared much better against righties than I would’ve thought.
It seems like that old wisdom about how batters hit sliders may be changing. This shouldn’t be surprising, given how much about pitching we’ve learned in the last decade, and how different batters and pitchers train. In a twitter convo today, Driveline/Cincinatti Reds Kyle Boddy said this:
https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fdrivelinebases%2Fstatus%2F1389653394420166656&widget=Tweet
Makes me a bit more optimistic about Dunn.
1: Haniger, DH
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Torrens, C
6: White, 1B
7: Crawford, SS
8: Moore, RF
9: Haggerty, LF
SP: Dunn
Hope you’re enjoying the great JY’s Minor League Previews. I sure am; it’s an annual tradition, and something I look forward to each year. I’ll write my usual nonsense about the Rainiers for their opening day tomorrow (AAA-West’s scheduled off day is Wednesday, whereas every other league will take Monday off). They’re the perfect intro for today, one of my favorite days of the year: Minor League baseball’s opening night. Except AAA-West. Let’s take a look at the games in the M’s org tonight:
The Modesto Nuts face the Stockton Ports, the low-A affiliate of the Oakland A’s. Noelvi Marte – a young SS prospect – is the big name to watch for on the Nuts, but in this series, he’s got company. A’s #6 prospect and one of the top talents in the 2019-20 J2 signing period Robert Puason will play SS for the Ports. Only 18, Puason is a year younger than Marte, and is slightly taller, though he lacks Marte’s power.
There’s no starting pitcher listed yet, but the game begins at 7:05. The top pitching prospect on the team is Connor Phillips, a righty, but Slovak-Canadian Adam Macko, and former 2nd rounder Sam Carlson looks to finally make an impact in full-season ball now that he’s finally healthy. [EDIT] The pitching probables are up now: it’ll be Josias De Los Santos, a 21-year old righty, for the Nuts, against Osvaldo Berrios of the Ports.
High-A (!) Everett makes their first ever full-season start tonight in Hillsboro, home of the Diamondbacks-affiliated Hops. Matt Brash takes the mound for Everett, the first in an absolutely loaded starting rotation. As JY detailed, there’s George Kirby, Emerson Hancock, Brandon Williamson, Isaiah Campbell, and Juan Then. We may see some piggy-backed starts this year just to get innings for all of these guys. For the position players, Julio Rodriguez all but ensures this will be an affiliate to watch on a regular basis, but 3B Austin Shenton, C Carter Bins, OF Zach deLoach, and IF Kaden Polcovich are worth watching, too. Tonight, Brash faces off with Luis Frias, who was brilliant in what was then the short-season Northwest League in 2019. The contest kicks off at 6:35pm, and is on MiLB.tv, unlike the AquaSox home games :(.
The AA Arkansas Travelers renew their long-simmering civil war with breakaway republic Northwest Arkansas tonight. The Travs aren’t as prospect-laden as some of the other affiliates, but figure to be pretty competitive with some experienced pitchers like Ian McKinney from the left side and Darren McCaughan from the right. Undersized righty Devin Sweet put together a really good 2019 season before the world changed, so it’ll be good to see him again – the same could be said for reliever/swing-man/low-arm-slot guy Penn Murfee, who looked good in a random AAA appearance I got to see. The position players are headed by three guys for whom the prospect sheen has worn off a bit, but still have some talent and have presumably been desperate for an opportunity to play again: IF Joe Rizzo, coming off two years in the Cal League, and OFs Dom Thompson-Williams, part of the James Paxton trade package, and Keegan McGovern, who scuffled in his first taste of High-A ball. Tonight, newcomer Alejandro Requena (who has some AA experience in the Phillies org), takes the mound for Arkansas opposite Royals prospect Jon Heasley. The KC system is really deep on the mound, so Heasley doesn’t get the publicity of an Asa Lacy or Jackson Kowar, but he performed pretty well back in 2019. This game starts at 5:10 Pacifc.
2021 Everett Aquasox Preview
In the newly configured six-team high-A West League, will the Aquasox ever lose a game? This is both a joking question and a serious quandary. The minor leagues are generally about learning and dealing with adversity. It’s hard to imagine runs scoring often against this pitching staff. Maybe the short porch in right at Everett Memorial will inflate some totals. Maybe the ‘pen is too wild. Maybe the offense won’t keep pace regularly, though it would surprise me. I suppose there aren’t many plus defenders on the roster. Still, there’s only so big a spread of talent this year, in this league, and to stack the deck like this seems merciless. The other five teams better hope for some in-season promotions to double-A or these long, six-game series will feel like entire months are passing them by.
Below, in addition to profiles, fortunately and unfortunately timed surgeries, apt college mascots, more bloodline picks and local connections, and references to antiquated job titles.
Read more
Game 30, Orioles at Mariners – Run Prevention Rabbit Holes
Erik Swanson vs. Dean Kremer, 7:10pm
The M’s host the lowly Orioles tonight, kicking off a three-game series that really seems to start a few weeks against the underbelly of the sport. Sure, sure, there’s a two-gamer against the Dodgers mixed in, but after the Orioles, the M’s face the AL West-cellared Texas Rangers, then after that palate-cleanser with LA, they face the .500 Cleveland team – a team perpetually challenged to hit enough to match their solid pitching – and then the Tigers, the club with the worst record in the league.
As I talked about recently, the M’s are doing quite well (having won yet another series yesterday) despite the fact that it can be kind of hard to say exactly *why*. Coming into the year, the team clearly identified starting pitching as the club’s competitive advantage. The starters would keep the club in games even when their offense wasn’t clicking, and would minimize the number of innings the revamped bullpen would need to throw. It…it hasn’t worked out that way.
Due to a combination of injury and inconsistency, the starters haven’t been the real strength of the club. The top of the line-up was amazing for the first three weeks, and the bullpen has been rock solid all year. Just as the top of the line-up (and here we’re really talking about Ty France) began to slump, the bottom of the lineup awoke, and has helped the club in recent games. But the bullpen’s been there all year, despite the fact that they’re not striking out many batters, and still walk a few too many. I wrote last time about the quiet retirement of the old mantra “control the zone,” and wondered what would replace it. Maybe the answer is: defend the zones.
Here’s a simple question that gets harder to answer the closer you look at it: Are the Mariners good at defense? By BABIP-allowed or a simple defensive efficiency view, the answer is an obvious yes. By BABIP, the M’s have allowed the fourth-fewest hits on balls in play in MLB, and the second-fewest in the AL. By the advanced defensive metrics, they rank below average by a few runs. No, the advanced metrics aren’t disparaging the defense of JP Crawford or Evan White – they were the reason those two won gold gloves last year, and are pretty impressed this year. The problem spots, as has been fairly obvious to those who’ve watched the games, include 2B and, especially, the outfield. But if they’re making way more plays and the M’s pitchers are allowing more balls in play in the first place…how do you grade out below average?
I checked the statcast data to see if the pitchers are allowing particularly softly-hit balls in play that turn into simple chances. Nope. By average exit velocity, the M’s have given up quite hard contact. This is consistent with the fact that the M’s have the second-largest gap between the production they’ve allowed (by wOBA) and the production statcast thinks they SHOULD HAVE allowed judging by how hard and how high batters have hit the ball. There’s nothing special about the quality of contact the M’s have yielded, but they’ve been pretty special in turning that contact into outs.
So is this just an overly technological way to say they’ve been lucky and leave it at that? Well, I’m not sure we can say that yet. I mean, the simplest thing to do for any saber-blogger is to intone the mantra “regression to the mean” and leave it at that. But what are some of the reasons why a team would see such a gap between expected and actual results on balls in play? I can think of four big ones. First, their home park. T-Mobile and Coors Field: not the same. Second, positioning. If the M’s are putting their fielders in good spots *and* helping their pitchers direct contact to those spots, you might see persistent effects that look like luck to the uninitiated. Third, their defense may be better than they’re getting credit for by metrics like UZR. The “small sample” objection applies to essentially all of these, but it definitely does apply to a month of advanced defensive metrics that can be swayed by a handful of chances that were harder than the system thought, or by things like Jose Marmolejos playing more OF in April than he will going forward. Finally, fourth, yeah – this really could just be random chance.
The first three of these aren’t going anywhere. And of these, the park effect may be underappreciated here. We’ve talked a lot about the way the league has attempted to dampen the baseball, which is part of the reason there’s a gap between actual and expected production for the entire *league*. That slight muting of the ball’s bounciness has helped knock down HRs league wide, at least compared to the insane levels of 2017 and 2019. Given that T-Mobile was already death to doubles-and-triples, that’s going to help the pitching staff, and keep on helping the pitching staff. Not only that, but T-Mobile has a humidor to keep the balls more consistently humid before use. This was the technology introduced at Coors Field, then spread to four other parks around the league for 2020 (BOS, ARI, NYM, SEA). It’s spread to another 5 this season, and I think this is a really under-reported aspect of run scoring.
The M’s aren’t striking people out, but they are getting into some deeper counts. And when they do, all of these contact-suppressing factors have been amped up. The M’s are allowing the second-worst production on contact that occurs with two strikes despite again posting far-above-average exit velocities on that contact. The gap between actual and expected production is even higher with two strikes than it is overall. They’re not striking people out, but this has worked out to the next best thing.
Essentially, the M’s and, presumably, their baseball ops staff – including John Choiniere, who’s already been recognized for his exemplary work on IF positioning – are creating something of a “heads I win, tails you lose,” sort of scenario. The park and baseball dramatically reduce the production on fly balls. The infielders and positioning helps knock down the value of ground balls. Yes, clearly, there’s some luck here, especially if they keep giving up particularly hard-hit contact. But there’s a lot more non-luck at play than you’d think. Keeping this up – maintaining a low BABIP even compared to the already low league-wide BABIP – is going to be important if the M’s want to stay in contention and, critically, offer prospects like Logan Gilbert a gentler, more favorable introduction to the big leagues.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Marmolejos, 1B
6: Moore, 2B
7: Crawford, SS
8: Murphy, C
9: Trammell, LF
SP: Swanson – it’s a bullpen day, so he’ll probably toss a couple innings, and then we’ll see a parade of other relievers.
The M’s DFA’d Brandon Brennan, the 2019 Rule 5 pick who intrigued early on in that season with his hard sinker and glorious change-up. But an injury to his arm, some wildness, and the development of other pitchers has left him something of the odd man out, and he’s been picked up by the Boston Red Sox. I’m sorry to see him go despite his struggles with health and consistent effectiveness, as I think it’s always cool to have a real ground ball pitcher, and I just think the run on his change made for tough ABs for opposing hitters. Ah well. Good luck to him.
2021 Modesto Nuts Preview
Despite being out of posting-shape, the impulse to get reacquainted with the system after a year off drove me to start working these up and see how far I could manage to go. The Year 2021 in Minor League Baseball looks a heck of a lot different than the Year 2019: The Cal League has been demoted to low-A in the classifications, short-season ball outside team facilities has been eliminated entirely, and rosters at the lower levels have been expanded to thirty, taking some of the edge off of contracting an entire level of competition. Oh yeah, and the Mariners are also officially the owner of the Modesto franchise, something they should have done a decade or more ago but better late than never?
My general sense of the team here is that the rotation will consistently provide something to watch, but the bullpen may be erratic and lacks a clear shape at present. I expect the majority of the team’s offense to come from Marte plus the outfielders. Below, I will talk about one unconventional background and far more baseball bloodlines, Mustangs and Aggies, PNW connections, players who are proximate to but not the big prospects from their respective states, and will have one more opportunity to use the word “Marlovian” in a baseball column.
Read more
Game 29, Angels at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Dylan Bundy, 1:10pm
The Angels blasted the M’s out of the park yesterday, jumping all over Ljay Newsome early and building a 10-1 lead. Nice to see the M’s mount a little comeback to make the scoreline a little better, but they were simply never in the game. It happens, and it happens more when you’re on your 8th-choice starter, as Newsome was taking the rotation spot vacated by Nick Margevicius, who was taking the rotation spot vacated by James Paxton. Newsome’s been fine, but it simply wasn’t his night.
The M’s are still hanging around, despite some ominous stats. They now have the 4th-lowest OBP in MLB at just .291, and their average is down to .211, as Mitch Haniger and Ty France cool off slightly. The bottom of the lineup has shown some signs of life recently, but they’ll need to do so more consistently to help boost the M’s run production. Their pitching staff has mostly been solid, but they now rank dead last in strikeout rate. No, strikeouts aren’t everything, but they can cover for a multitude of sins, and some of the M’s outfield arrangements have been somewhat sinful.
Their K-BB% isn’t great (it’s better than dead last, though!) which reminded me that we don’t hear the club preaching the mantra of controlling the zone anymore. This probably isn’t the time, but it does make me wonder if it’s been replaced by some new organizational focus. That’s more pertinent now that we’re mere days away from the start of the minor league season. The revamped and slimmed-down minor leagues feature some great talent, and we’ll dive into that soon, but I just wonder if they’re instilling controlling the zone, or if they’ve moved on, or perhaps incorporated that into a broader array of performance indicators. The daily box-score like summaries the M’s send out for the scrimmages the teams have played to date include things like exit velocity, but not traditional things like hits and runs.
Today, the M’s face Dylan Bundy, who had a great 2020 season and revitalized his career after a disappointing run in Baltimore. Formerly a phenom with a dynamite fastball, he’s now more of a junkballer with a low-velo FB, but a great mix of five pitches, headlined by a very good slider. Especially to righties, he essentially pitches off the slider, mixing in a fastball as a secondary, and also using a curve. To lefties, he features more of his high-spin, high-in-the-zone fastball, with breaking balls and a change-up.
Those high FBs and even the slider can generate some fly balls, but Bundy posted an extremely low HR/FB ratio last season. That luck hasn’t stuck around thus far, and while T-Mobile still isn’t a *great* place for HRs, we could see some more today. Justus Sheffield knows all about regression in a sparkling HR/FB ratio, as his was under 5% last season (!), and he faces a very tough line-up with two amazing RH hitters in Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 1B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Marmolejos, LF
6: Moore, 2B
7: Crawford, SS
8: Torrens, C
9: Haggerty, RF
SP: Sheffield
Just a day or two after acquiring C Jacob Nottinham from the Brewers, and before he could make an appearance, the M’s DFA’d and returned Nottingham to the Brewers in exchange for cash considerations.