Game 133, Astros at Mariners – At Least the Losses Sting
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Lance McCullers, Jr., 7:10pm
The M’s lost a heartbreaker to the Astros last night, a one run game in which the M’s had a late lead, only to cough it up. It’s a game that reminds us that in a playoff chase, there’s really no such thing as an encouraging loss, and that it’s an odd, perhaps mixed blessing that M’s losses in late August are still capable of inflicting emotional damage.
The M’s got another strangely effective Chris Flexen starts. For the starter with the second-lowest K/9 (among qualified pitchers), Flexen’s been remarkably steady this year thanks to a low HR rate and an extremely low walk rate. Doing one those things is relatively easy to do, even if it’s no guarantee of success. But doing them both simultaneously is pretty hard to do, as Yusei Kikuchi keeps finding out. Is it sustainable? Nobody knows, of course, but he’s one of a handful of pitchers who’ve been able to keep this trick up over 2021. Cole Irwin of the A’s has very similar stats, and is similarly hard to predict given his lack of a big league track record.
But there’s another guy who’s done this for years: Hyun Jin Ryu. Ryu’s K rate is a bit higher, but then, so’s his HR/9 this year. At his peak, Ryu’s simply too good to comp him with Flexen, but even this year in what’s been a comparatively mediocre campaign, Ryu’s keeping his walk rate under 2/9 and a so-so HR rate in a home park (or rather set of home parks) that have played very HR-friendly.
Today, the M’s turn again to the enigmatic Kikuchi. If you sort all qualified starters by K/9, as we kind of already did for the great Flexen content above, you’ll find Yusei Kikuchi at 21st. Looking at pitchers this way is essentially a way to say “show me the best pitchers this year” and thus there’s a huge correlation between strikeout rate and overall production (fWAR in this case). Corbin Burnes is on top of both leaderboards, for example. It’s hard to do, but you can definitely be merely average with a high K rate – there are a couple of players who’ve put up around 2 WAR already, guys like Nick Pivetta and Mike Minor. It’s still August, and 2 WAR isn’t bad, but it does show that K/9 doesn’t guarantee success. Still, there’s only one person in the top 30 with an fWAR of under 1: Kikuchi.
It’s been remarkable to watch the twists and turns of Kikuchi’s career, but at this point it’s no longer a slam dunk that the M’s pick up his option. Trying to replace a guy with his talent is a pretty big lift in an offseason that already has a long list of must-do’s, but the M’s might be considering it.
Lance McCullers has re-invented himself this year with a new slider. He seemingly toyed with one very early in his career, but it wasn’t all that different from his out-pitch, his hard curve. They were similar enough that they may just be mislabeled, but were infrequent enough that it didn’t really matter. But McCullers was noticing something: right-handed batters were beginning to figure out that hard curve. It was always his best pitch, and early in his career, he threw it nearly or even more than 50% of the time. It worked against righties and lefties alike, which helped him post low or even reverse splits. But that curve seemed to be wearing out; from 2018-2021, righties slugged .450 off of his curve, even while lefties remained confused, slugging just .290. Hence, the new pitch – a righty-destroying weapon with more horizontal movement and less vertical drop than the curve.
It was designed to do a job, and it’s done it beautifully. Righties, who’ve touched McCullers for a FIP nearly a full run better than lefties, are hitting below .200 and slugging below .300 off of him in 2021. The only problem? Lefties are doing more damage than ever. It’s not a major issue; he’s still pretty much as effective as ever, but he might need to spend this offseason reinventing his change. That said, it’s not the change that’s plagued him against lefties – it’s his fastball. Years ago, McCullers swapped out his four-seamer for a sinker, and it’s generally been a good pitch. But it’s got higher platoon splits than a four-seam, and this may just be part of the trade-off.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Marmolejos, LF
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Bauers, RF
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Kikuchi
Tacoma’s trying to pull off a six-game sweep tonight against Salt Lake. Per Mike Curto, there’s been only one six-game sweep in AAA-West this year, when Round Rock swept…Salt Lake. Given the way the FO likes to run their affiliates, only one member of MLB’s top 30 M’s prospects is on Tacoma’s roster (Aaron Fletcher), but Taylor Trammell just barely exceeded the MLB playing time cut-off, so he’s the big name still in Tacoma. Trammell swooned a bit in Tacoma after his second demotion, but he’s coming off of a hot week. By the raw numbers, Trammell had a .697 OPS in Amarillo in 2019. This season in Tacoma, he’s at .810. But context is a hell of a thing: by wRC+, which takes league and parks into account, the two seasons are nearly identical, but his Amarillo performance was slightly better, at 98 to this year’s 97. Darren McCaughan starts tonight’s game, and then the Rainiers are off for a big series in Reno, the team just ahead of Tacoma in the top spot in the division.
Arkansas starts a series with Wichita with Tyler Herb on the mound.
Everett hosts Vancouver, with Taylor Dollard pitching. Dollard dominated low-A, but despite a 6-0 record, he’s got a 6 ERA in Everett. He’s still got a gorgeous K:BB ratio of 51:10, though.
Modesto hosts Inland Empire.
Haven’t mentioned them much, but the M’s Arizona Complex league team is dominating the former AZL at 31-13. The story of the season has been the pitching, with the M’s leading the league in ERA in what’s a very, very good hitting environment. They’ve also yielded the fewest HRs.
Game 132, Astros at Mariners – Et Tu, Salvi?
Chris Flexen vs. Luis Garcia, 7:10pm
I never really expected a playoff chase this year, so I didn’t spend a lot of time wondering how one might end. You could’ve given me a *lot* of guesses before I’d have surmised that it might end at the hands of the Kansas City Royals, or, specifically, by Salvador Perez. Perez spent 2014-2019 as a reliably below-average batter. That includes the fact that Perez missed 2019 in its entirety because of Tommy John surgery. Perez had to come back from rehab as a catcher in his 30s *and* learn how to add value at the plate, something that had eluded him for hundreds and hundreds of games. And…he…just, you know, did it. A guy worth -50.5 batting runs from 2014-2019 is now at +27.9 in roughly one season’s worth of play since. It is baffling, the kind of thing that baseball loves to throw at people who like to think track records or long-term reliable indicators of potential mean things.
Of course, not even the fact that he’s good now would’ve prepared us for what he’s done. He’s now homered in 5 straight and will cruise to over 40 HRs this year. This, though, is perhaps somewhat easier for we M’s fans to understand. The M’s have thrived all year due to clutch performance and odd, put-the-team-on-his-back hot streaks. Who can forget the Two Weeks of Torrens in July? Or the 19 game stretch in June where JP Crawford hit .382/.430/.618? Think that wasn’t odd and frustrating for M’s opponents? You live by the hot hand, you apparently die by it, too.
Now, having seen their still-small playoff odds halved by the vile Monarchists who play in a mis-named city, the M’s have to welcome the Houston Astros to town. Yes, the M’s have played Houston very tough this year, and yes, their single greatest game of 2021 occurred at T-Mobile, against this team, and against tonight’s starting pitcher. Nothing’s written in stone, as we’ve just discussed. The Red Sox woes have kept the M’s playoff hopes alive, which is better than the alternative. But with the offense struggling again, the M’s missed a golden opportunity to finally put real distance between themselves and Toronto. The M’s keep having to look in the rear view AND scoreboard watch the teams in front. Toronto is good, and it would be nice if they’d just go away.
Luis Garcia has been a revelation for the Astros this year. After a brilliant first month, he’s been remarkably consistent, with an ERA in the 3’s in every subsequent month. I mentioned when the M’s faced him early on that he had great pitch movement for a guy with a sub-6′ release point, and while the great movement stuff is still true, he’s raised his release point throughout the year, and is above 6′ now. Not by a mile, but it’s interesting that his K% has really jumped after this change. Garcia had an 18% K rate in his 2020 cup of coffee, but is now closing in on 30% this year. How? Along with the release point change, he’s changed his pitch mix. He’s now throwing a lot more cutters, and that slider-y pitch has been his best, with the highest whiff rate of any offering.
The one saving grace here is that Garcia still isn’t throwing many cutters to lefties. I’d wondered if he started throwing more of them because he’s had some trouble with left-handed batters this year. His slider’s a great out-pitch, but he only throws that to righties, so maybe a harder cutter might be better against southpaws? Nope, he’s now throwing multiple soul-stealing pitches to righties, while relying on his change, curve and fastball to get lefties out. It’s not that he’s not missing any left-handed bats, but rather that the ball goes pretty far when they make contact. That’s something the M’s will need to do today – punish Garcia’s mistakes, and have their lefties do some damage.
Kyle Lewis was supposed to go out on a rehab assignment today, but felt some soreness after his last workout, and thus that idea’s been shelved for now. It’s another of the ominous signs surrounding the M’s next core: Lewis’ health is now a full-fledged concern years after his horrific knee injury, Evan White has been ground to a fine powder by major league pitching *and* his hip gave out, and as bad as White’s debut went, Jarred Kelenic’s might be worse.
In better news, the M’s brought back opening day Mariner Jose Marmolejos, who’s spent the last several months laying waste to AAA-West pitching. With an OPS well over 1.100, it was beyond time to see what he can do for this line-up, though he’s now lost his primary position, first base. Thus, he’ll go into the rotation for LF; he starts tonight. Jimmy Yacabonis was DFA’d to make room on the 40-man. Props if you remembered that Yacabonis was even on it. He was added to the roster only the other day when Keynan Middleton was surprisingly outrighted. Yacabonis pitched one game in an M’s uniform, that fateful smoke-filled game where he loaded the bases in the first inning and was saved by Kyle Lewis’ great grand-slam-robbing catch.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Marmolejos, LF
7: Torrens, DH
8: Kelenic, CF
9: Murphy, C
SP: Flexen
Game 128, Royals at Mariners
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Brad Keller, 7:10pm
A wonderful benefit of the M’s odd playoff push is that each successive series gains in importance. Imagine seeing this series on the schedule before the year began; you would’ve yawned – two out-of-it teams play out the string, hopefully with some of their big prospects getting their first taste of the big leagues. The Royals have done their part, and are…out of it and playing out the string. Their top position-player prospects are in AAA, but some of their young pitchers have debuted already. But the Mariners shrugged off the emotional trade of their beloved closer and continue to win series after increasingly-important series. This set now isn’t a late-summer snooze, it’s the M’s best chance to gain ground on the A’s and Yankees, who are now playing each other.
The M’s playoff odds remain poor, but they’ve finally surpassed the Angels’, whose latest swoon has pushed their odds to 0. The Angels are in the process of losing a series to the abysmal Orioles. It was LA that broke the Orioles long losing streak, and it is LA that’s currently losing to Baltimore 13-1. The Blue Jays are still hanging around, but are in 4th place in their division and 2.5 games behind the M’s.
The Royals come to Seattle with one of the weaker line-ups in the AL. Kansas City has the lowest walk rate of any team in baseball, and the 4th worst isolated slugging. Dayton Moore has a type of baseball he likes, and doesn’t seem to mind how well it works. He won a world series doing it his way, so I can’t completely make fun of it, but at least that team had otherworldly defense, especially in the outfield. Now, the Royals can’t hit for power, can’t draw any walks, *and* can’t catch very well. It’s a rough combination. Their pitching has been decent, though they’ve been the primary victims of the Royals’ poor defense. They do have three solid players up the middle with Salvador Perez, Nicky Lopez and Whit Merrifield, but things drop off after that. They’ve given at least 100 PAs to players who’ve accumulated negative WAR, and projected middle-of-the-order guys Hunter Dozier and Jorge Soler have completely imploded.
The pitching was supposed to be a strength, especially after they added Mike Minor. They’re not out and out bad, but they’ve disappointed. One of the under the radar/breakout starters last year was Brad Keller, a guy with no real out pitch and a low K rate. He pitched well in his rookie year in 2018 and was even better last season, but there was a lot written about him before this year due to the seam shifted wake, and how his pitches seem to move differently than they would if the Magnus Force/spin were the only thing acting on them. The whole seam shifted wake discussion can be hard to understand, so giving the concept a face and helping to explain what could be seen as anomalously good results was important. It’s not that he throws 98 mph, or has otherworldly rise on his fastball. It’s not that he throws a deadly slider with tons of break. It’s just that the ball ends up 5 inches from where batters – and even Statcast – thought they would. Great story!
And then he started pitching in 2021. Whatever’s going on with his spin, it is…not confusing to batters anymore. By MLB’s expected stats, based on how hard and at what angle batters have put balls in play against Keller, his expected ERA thus far is 6.31. His actual ERA is “only” 5.43, and while his FIP is lower, FIP doesn’t see that Keller’s barrel rate is one of the highest in the league.
Keller throws a four-seamer and sinker at 94, a good slider with lots of vertical drop, and a rare change-up that’s very firm, at 89-90. The slider’s the best of the bunch, and it’s now the pitch he’s using the most, at over 30%. Because of its slurvy, curve-like movement, it’s not a pitch he needs to worry about throwing to lefties. If anything, he’s been *more* successful against lefties. Righties are not striking out against him, and that’s helping push his walk rate up. He was never a real control pitcher, but his BB% has crested 10% this year, which is part of the reason he’s struggled.
The M’s need to take care of business against the Royals. They did it against Texas, who is admittedly a far worse team, but they need to keep this momentum. Given their ultra-low batting average, the M’s always feel like they’re an ill-timed slump away from falling out of contention. But by the same token, they’re a well-timed run away from surpassing the A’s and the flailing Red Sox, too. Everything continues to come up roses for the club, and so we’ll just hope that keeps happening. This club would look very different with either Kelenic or Raleigh hitting like major leaguers, and maybe things can click for them back at home against sub-par opposition.
The same can be said for Yusei Kikuchi. The M’s are a more dangerous team when he’s playing up to his potential, and their future prospects look weaker when Kikuchi has games like he did in Houston. But he’s back at home and he’s facing the anti-Astros in the “swing softly at everything” Royals.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Fraley, LF
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Raleigh, C
9: Bauers, DH
SP: Kikuchi
One of the M’s biggest breakout prospects of 2021, Matt Brash, starts for Arkansas tonight. Brash overwhelmed the High-A West, but has been even better in AA, going 2-1 with a 1.91 ERA in 6 starts with 48 Ks in 33 IP. Emerson Hancock got the win for Arkansas last night, a 4-3 victory over Corpus Christi. Hancock remains the bigger prospect name, but has missed far fewer bats thus far.
The best team in the M’s system is probably Everett, who lead the High-A West by a game, and who’ve amassed a +164 run differential. It’s been nice to see them stay hot despite losing Julio Rodriguez to the Olympics and then to Arkansas. But they keep on winning, as they did last night by a score of 8-1 over Spokane. OFs Cade Marlowe and Kennie Taylor are helping pace the offense.
Tacoma was off yesterday, and kick off a series against Salt Lake tonight at Cheney.
Game 123, Mariners at Astros
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Lance McCullers, Jr., 5:10pm
It’s officially getting interesting. The M’s did what they needed to do by sweeping the hapless Rangers in Arlington. However, the seemingly-invincible A’s and Astros – teams who’ve had a seeming lock on playoff spots since late May – slipped up. The A’s were playing the White Sox, so yeah, that’ll happen. But the Astros were an extra-inning game away from getting swept by the Royals. They’re now 7-9 in August, while the M’s have gone 10-7. The M’s faced the Astros during the infamous/famous? trade of Kendall Graveman, and it looked like the M’s were throwing in the towel. Even then, though, the point wasn’t that the M’s could catch Houston; they were 7 back then. The point was that they were just 1 game behind Oakland.
The M’s are no longer a game out of the Wild Card, but the division has narrowed considerably. The M’s are now 5.5 back of Houston, and 3 behind Oakland. Oakland’s grip on the Wild Card is slipping as New York’s hot streak continues, and as the Blue Jays and Red Sox lurk nearby. Sure, the Sox are in free fall, but often a streak has more to do with your opponents as any kind of self-inflicted or psychological wound. That’s why it was encouraging to read John Trupin’s overview of the M’s remaining schedule at LL. Let’s be clear: having a bunch of games with divisional opponents could go well or not so well, but they have the opportunity to do some damage. Then, they have a softer non-divisional schedule than, say, Oakland.
All that they can control now is slaying the Astros, a team that has lived in their heads now for years. Everyone in both clubhouses knows full well that Houston is better. Their line-up is neck and neck with Toronto’s for the best in baseball, and now that they’ve shipped off glove-first CF Myles Straw, it’s a little scary how few chances for the starter to breathe they present. Worse, this is Houston *at home* where the pitchers can’t rely on T-Mobile’s HR- and BABIP-suppression. They’ll need to do this the hard way.
On the other side of the ball, the Astros have overcome some injuries and have a perfectly average-ish rotation. Their FIP/ERA is better than Seattle’s, but not by a ton. However, there’s a minor problem in the bullpen. That’s clearly the weak link on the team, which was pretty obvious in the M’s unreal comeback against them in July. It’s also why the Astros were so active at the deadline trying to upgrade it, another thing that’s pretty obvious to M’s fans. In addition to getting Kendall Graveman, they’ve added Phil Maton and Yimi Garcia. Their closer, Ryan Pressly, looked to be slowing down last year, but has been brilliant in 2021. The problem was getting to him; the Astros have more “meltdown” appearances by the M’s and about 40 fewer “shutdown” appearances that improve the team’s win probability. They have the offense that allows them to win laughers, so they haven’t NEEDED as many clutch bullpen appearances, but they’ve been pretty poor in those 6-8th innings, something Graveman and Garcia are there to rectify.
In addition to the new faces, they’re also relying on Cristian Javier, last year’s breakout rookie starter, in the pen; Javier got the save the other day in Kansas City. It’s an interesting move, and one they kind of previewed in the playoffs last year.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Fraley, LF
7: Torrens, DH
8: Kelenic, CF
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Kikuchi
Game 122, Mariners at Rangers – The Mystery of Marco
Chris Flexen vs. Spencer Howard, 11:05am
A couple of years ago, I wrote about Marco Gonzales and how the three major WAR formulations simply could not agree on how to value the guy. In 2019, Gonzales’ K:BB ratio wasn’t great, but he yielded few home runs in the season absolutely dominated by dingers; as a result, his FIP was brilliant. It didn’t penalize Gonzales for allowing more base hits than most pitchers, just as long as he didn’t walk too many or give up homers. In that season, Gonzales yielded plenty of unearned runs – 16 of them in all – that drove a pretty big gap between his ERA, which just pulled those 16 runs off the board, and his RA/9, which kept them. Baseball-reference’s bWAR thus had him in the middle of the pack for most of the year, but a brilliant finish got his bWAR (RA/9) and fWAR (FIP) pretty close to each other.
Then there’s DRA. BaseballProspectus’ pitching metric counts all outcomes, including singles/walks/errors/you name it, and then tries to account for context from park to weather to umpire. It *hated* Gonzales’ 2019, figuring that any random minor leaguer could’ve done as well or better – it took a great end to the campaign to dig him out of negative WAR, and he finished right at 0: replacement level.
But that was a weird year, right? Tons of unearned runs, a great HR/FB ratio, DRA waking up on the wrong side of the bed? Well, here we are almost exactly two years later, and it’s happening again. Kind of. Marco Gonzales has, with an assist from the hapless Texas Rangers it must be noted, worked his ERA down to 4.10, an unthinkably low number given how he began the year (his ERA was 6 as recently as July 1). He’s given up zero unearned runs, and thus bWAR is pretty impressed, showing him at 1.4 after yesterday’s commanding performance. But all those HRs Gonzales wasn’t giving up in the juiced-ball world of 2019? They’re here now. His HR/9 stands at 1.72, and that, coupled with the highest walk rate in any full season for him, has pushed his FIP over 5. fWAR has him at 0.7, solidly below average, but not replacement level. WARP, the WAR based on DRA, remains unmoved. DRA sees this season as a near carbon copy of 2019, but ever so slightly less. DRA throws up in its mouth a little before pronouncing its verdict: -0.4 WAR.
If the takeaway here is just that DRA doesn’t work or something, it’s worth pointing out that MLB’s new statcast-based ERA estimator, xERA, is a near match to WARP/DRA. Based on how hard batters have hit the ball, and then adding in walks and strikeouts, xERA figures Marco *should* have an ERA of 5.7, pretty close to DRA’s 5.91. There are multiple ways to believe Marco’s been a great middle-of-the-rotation rock and multiple ways to believe he’s…not.
Some pitchers are just like this, I guess. As I mentioned in 2019, Sam Miller wrote a great piece about this same phenomenon and Robbie Ray. But what makes me laugh about this one is that, for all of his metronome-like consistency (Marco’s ERAs with the M’s run 4.0, 3.99, 3.10 in a short season, and 4.10 now), his peripherals are constantly changing. No, he’s not going to suddenly become a strikeout pitcher, but he had an amazing FIP in 2018, but BABIP pushed his actual runs allowed higher. His K:BB ratio was worse in 2019, and he still gave up lots of hits, but effectively managed contact, as seen from a xERA that was a near match to his actual ERA. Everything worked in 2020, especially his contact management, but that’s precisely what’s left him in 2021: he’s giving up more barreled contact than just about anyone, and for the past month or so, it simply hasn’t mattered. There’s always something to debate about Marco, apparently.*
Marco’s changed his pitch mix somewhat, moving further away from his old “four pitches are equally likely to be thrown” approach and really leaning on his fastball. In August, it’s worked to perfection, as batters are only hitting .125 off of it. Of course, that’s three games against the Rangers in the month out of four total starts. Still, that fourth was against the Yankees, and it was an absolute gem. He’s also adjusted the way he tunnels his breaking stuff. In the beginning of the year, he threw his fastball near the middle to the top 1/3 of the zone, but kept his curve and cutter well below the center of the zone. Particularly with curves, that’s often seen as an ideal approach, as the high fastball and curve are at a similar height when the batter has to decide whether or not to swing. Now that he’s throwing the curve and cutter higher, he’s traded a few percentage points in swings-and-misses for better results on contact.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Fraley, CF
7: Murphy, C
8: Bauers, RF
9: Moore, LF
SP: Flexen
A day off for Jarred Kelenic who got hit by a pitch last night, but that fact isn’t behind his omission here – it’s just a scheduled off day (per Ryan Divish) with the M’s facing a lefty.
I talked about Spencer Howard the last time we saw him, but he remains a hard-throwing lefty who put up dominating lines in the minors but who hasn’t been able to throw enough strikes in MLB. He’s got an ERA nearly 6 *despite* not allowing many home runs this year and…wait a minute…yes, by bWAR he’s dead on replacement level, while fWAR is intrigued by his better-than-average FIP. DRA/WARP is right in the middle, thinking he’s been much better than his runs-allowed, although worse than his FIP, which is just starry-eyed over his HR/9. The range here is very small, which probably makes sense given that Howard’s thrown all of 33 2/3 IP this year.
* In a twist that I sure as hell didn’t see coming, all four ERA estimators get quite close when describing Marco’s 2018 season. His FIP was very low, so fWAR likes it most, with bWAR coming in lowest, but DRA/WARP and xERA are again nearly identical, and in between the other two. The range is only 2.7 to 3.5.
Game 121, Mariners at Rangers – New CBA Offer Just Dropped
Marco Gonzales vs. Mike Foltynewicz, 5:05pm
The unbalanced schedule already forces some odd stretches like this one where the M’s face Texas 9 times in a couple of weeks. But it means individual starters get extremely familiar with some line-ups…and vice versa, of course. Mike Foltynewicz has already started five games against the M’s. *Five*. He’ll make his sixth tonight. He’s actually fared somewhat better against Seattle than everyone else, but it hasn’t mattered – he’s 0-3, and the Rangers are 1-4 in those games.
As we’ve talked about, the problem for him hasn’t really been stuff. He doesn’t throw as hard as he once did, but he’s limiting hits and walks, at least against Seattle’s low batting-average line-up. But the home runs….oh, the home runs. He leads the majors in dingers yielded, holding off his teammate Jordan Lyles, who’s making a run at it recently. And because of the unbalanced schedule, he keeps facing players who’ve done well against him. The most HRs Folty’s given up to any player in his long-ish career is 3, and that’s to JP Crawford *all of them coming in 2021*.
I’m sure Foltynewicz isn’t pleased about this, but then, he’s still got his job. The Rangers have committed a small-ish amount of money to him, and while he’s pitched poorly, the team is in tear-down mode, and so they don’t much care what they get from him. He’s there, he’s a sunk cost, Texas is making a run at the #1 overall draft pick, their pitching prospects are a bit further away…go get ’em, Mike! Maybe this’ll be the day something clicks.
The unbalanced schedule also means it’s more difficult to evaluate Tyler Anderson, as he’s faced Texas a shocking 3 times in 4 Seattle starts. As much as Folty probably wants to stop seeing JP Crawford, slugger extraordinaire, Anderson is probably enjoying these games.
Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich have a big story today in the Atlantic about the owners’ first offer in CBA negotiations. Rosenthal tweeted that the centerpiece is a kind of salary floor: “MLB proposes salary minimum of $100 million funded by new tax on teams spending $180 million or more.” Players would love to see a salary floor, and putting an end to the Tampa-style process of teams ditching players when they hit arbitration (like Diego Castillo, for instance), and teams rolling with a tiny payroll because they don’t see a path to contention in a given year. A floor would help find lower- to mid-tier free agents a lot more suitors, and that would clearly help. But this is just a non-starter for the players’ union.
The current competitive balance tax or luxury tax threshold is around $210 million, and while it is clearly NOT a salary cap, it often operates like one. Teams would do anything, like trade Mookie Betts, to stay below it, and its creation essentially ended the Yankees’ practice of paying top dollar for a bunch of free agents. Its job was to constrain spending, and it ended up being far too good at it. Some of this is optics; it gives owners a rationale for not spending money. But another part is competition: it’s one thing to tax payroll overages; it’s another thing for those overages to get handed out to your competitors in Tampa/Oakland.
Reasonable people can differ on the degree to which they buy this, but Tampa’s rise as a more-than-competitive team exacerbates whatever underlying annoyance the structure of the current revenue sharing process instills. The problem with the new proposal, then, is that it takes this annoyance and cranks it way, way up. We don’t have details, of course, so it may not be as stark as its presented in a tweet, but teams will absolutely stay under this $180 million threshold if their overages are essentially given directly to teams under the $100 million floor. There are other problems, like the fact that at the rate discussed in the article, there’s not enough overages *now* to get teams under $100 M (hi Mariners!) to the limit. Put it in place, and many of the teams currently over $180 M (which, again, is where the Luxury tax was at nearly a decade ago) would jump below.
It’s too bad, because a salary floor isn’t a bad idea. It just shouldn’t be tied to what *other* teams spend, and shouldn’t be funded by a luxury tax. Or at all; it’s just a floor, a rule. Players thought that the current structure with some indirect subsidies of low-spending teams via high-spending ones would help their members – that it would drive more spending overall. But we know now that it didn’t; payroll hasn’t kept pace with revenue growth, as richer teams studiously avoid the luxury tax and as Oakland/Tampa/etc. keep doing OK despite not materially changing their long-standing practices. The new proposal doesn’t directly address tanking, another thing that players may want to target, and so you might just see teams swapping the MLB equivalent of expiring contracts to stay at the minimum but still be delightfully noncompetitive.
Why would owners propose something that they hate? If the robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul part is so odious, why make that the centerpiece? Again, we don’t have the details, but this would clearly seem to constrain total spending more than today’s already-constrained level. A de facto cut in the luxury tax would be good for several ownership groups, even if it might annoy a few others. But if the floor is *funded* out of the luxury tax, then it may just be an empty promise: if subsidies are doled out from the revenue generated by the tax, then if there’s no revenue, or nowhere near enough, then you have a salary floor in name only. And that probably sounds pretty good: an offer that looks like a lot bigger deal than it is.
This is just an initial offer, leaked out to the media to start a conversation and put the players on the defensive a bit. It’s not a best/final offer, and so it doesn’t really matter. It’s a bit worrying, though, given that they’ll have to come to agreement some time between now and spring training.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Fraley, LF
7: Torrens, DH
8: Kelenic, CF
9: Raleigh, C
SP:
Game 120, Mariners at Rangers – Previews of 2022?
Tyler Anderson vs. Taylor Hearn, 5:05pm
The M’s return to Texas now for a series that will hopefully feature fewer Jonah Heim walk-offs. The Rangers remain atrocious, but they are coming off an impressive series win against Oakland.
One of the concerns I’ve had and have talked about at length here is: for as obviously lucky as the M’s were in 2021, they don’t look obviously better in 2022. That is, if the M’s were 7-10 games over .500 *because of* breakout performances by Jarred Kelenic, Justus Sheffield, Logan Gilbert, and Justin Dunn, that would give you more confidence in the idea that the club’s talent level is building, and all they’d need to do is fill in around it. Instead, what’s happened at times is that mid-level players and veterans have essentially provided the production that the M’s have missed due to the growing pains of Kelenic, Cal Raleigh, Dylan Moore, etc.
But is that really the story? Nathan Bishop had an interesting conversation on this point on Twitter this morning. Yes, luck has played an oversized role this season in the team’s success (they have the second most one- or two-run wins in baseball behind the Yankees, and a .590 winning percentage in all one- or two-run games). Yes, the best three position players (France, Haniger, Seager) average 30 years of age right now. But the emergence of France at the plate combined with him finding a position changes how we view 2022, at least a little bit. That may mean Evan White is blocked, but I’m not sure Evan White has a place on a contending team right now. Before the year, I said Ty France was the most important position player for the 2021 Mariners because it seemed like he was one of the few players who could conceivably hit for average and thus drive in, say, JP Crawford when he gets on. That’s precisely what’s happened, as France’s average and wRC+ lead the club’s regulars. It’s a mild disappointment that he’s doing at at 1B and not 3B/2B, but that’s tempered by the fact that he’s been excellent defensively there, and it’s honestly a big step up from where he was most often at the beginning of the year: designated hitter.
Abraham Toro is not going to stay a .340/.440/.560 hitter, but his hot start allows the M’s to finally envision someone staying at 2B for more than 4 months. A line-up with the best version of Toro/France is a much better one than a line-up with Moore/White, and that’s a clear upgrade the M’s have made in the past year. Toro’s looked better defensively than I would’ve expected as well. Logan Gilbert, too, has come up and been at least a league average starter from day 1, and something better than that after a couple of rough outings in his first two starts. He’s not perfect, and has things to work on, but while the M’s position player transitions from the minors remain a bit troubling, Gilbert’s has gone pretty much as-expected, which is a good sign for a team that’s going to need production from the likes of George Kirby and Emerson Hancock in the near future.
If there’s a concern it’s that we’ve seen these hopeful signs before. Last year, Dylan Moore shook off the utility player tag and posted a legitimately good season in the bizarre sprint that was 2020. He’s collapsed this year, though, as his strikeouts returned without the solid BABIP he managed last year. Moore was only playing 2B last year because the breakout half-season of 2019 was put up by Shed Long, Jr., who posted a 111 wRC+ and showed serious power before his shin injury cost him 2020 and much of 2021. Tom Murphy was the M’s best player in 2019, and hasn’t come close to repeating that level this year. That can’t keep happening if the M’s want to actually build towards something. France’s solid 2020 *and* 2021 gives M’s fans confidence, and I suppose the industry scuttlebutt that Toro was much, much better than he’d shown does too. But we still need to see it on the field, and we need those guys surrounded by much more talent.
I’m very encouraged by Jarred Kelenic’s improvement in recent weeks, and it certainly looks real. I still have to say that this season is, at least at this point, a pretty clear failure for him. Many, many players have gone on to great careers after a poor rookie campaign; you can probably put Edgar Martinez in that group. But the odds get steeper among player who’ve looked completely overmatched. No one expects young players to come up and star from day 1, though it does happen sometimes. But Evan White’s 2020 was a massive red flag, and, thus far, it’s a pretty big step up from Kelenic’s numbers. Javy Baez and Jackie Bradley, Jr. are two players who’ve gone on to very nice careers who got kind of steamrolled by MLB initially. Both have excellent gloves, and both – for all of their amazing play – remain a bit up-and-down. I’m not truly worried about Kelenic, but I want to see him get his overall line up considerably from where it is to help me sleep better at night.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: France, 1B
4: Seager, 3B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Fraley, LF
7: Torrens, DH
8: Kelenic, CF
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Anderson
Game 117, Blue Jays at Mariners
Chris Flexen vs. Robbie Ray, 7:10pm
Marco Gonzales complete game two-hitter over the Rangers underscored first that Marco’s much improved from the version we saw early in the year. Second, it underscored that Texas can’t hit. Marco had to pitch well, of course; even a bad team can have a decent night. But fundamentally, they’re simply not consistent or deep enough, and thus the Rangers are absolutely abysmal as a team. The challenge for the M’s now is to keep this roll going of limiting hits and runs…against one of the best line-ups in the game.
The Blue Jays have an MVP candidate (non-Ohtani division) in Vlad Guerrero, Jr., one of the best young shortstops in Bo Bichette, and now have George Springer healthy and raking. The club has the second-highest average in MLB, and they’re tied (with San Francisco?) for the highest ISO. They put the ball in play AND they hit for power. It’s just not a line-up with a lot of holes; Randall Grichuk bats 8th tonight and has a below-average wRC+, but has 19 HRs and is a dangerous hitter. This is a real test for Chris Flexen.
The weirdest thing about the Jays is that they had one serious line-up weakness in Rowdy Tellez, who hit his way to a DFA, moved to the Brewers and now no one can get him out. People just *connected* to this team, even if they’re not actually on it, can’t stop hitting.
Robbie Ray has been a tantalizing, frustrating talent for years. He balanced very high strikeouts with very high walk rates, and medium-high HR rates. If some fly balls stayed in the yard, or if his BABIP was low, he’d look like an ace in the making. If his BABIP rose, or if, like last year, his home runs-per-fly-ball rate increased, it got ugly. The worst thing was the trend. He posted his best year in 2017, and things slowly got worse until 2020, when they got much worse very quickly. This year, buoyed by the best walk rate of his career (by a mile), he’s putting together a brilliant campaign. His HR rate is still very high – and that seems like the best avenue for the M’s tonight – but the BABIP gods have smiled on him, and he remains highly skilled at missing bats.
With Arizona, he was generally a three-pitch guy, with a mid-90s fastball paired with a slider and curve. In years past, the curve was his best secondary, but these days, he’s switched over to the slider. In fact, the four-seam and slider are the only pitches he throws more than 5-8% of the time (he has a rare change and a sinker). When he gets hit, it tends to be struck pretty well. Batters are hitting under .200 off of his slider, with just 28 hits total. But 12 of them have gone for extra bases, including 7 HRs. It’s a real weapon, and a swing-and-miss pitch, but I suppose some of them are cement mixers and hang in the center of the zone.
This is a huge series. The Jays are 2 games ahead of Seattle in the Wild Card, and 1/2 game back of the Yankees. The M’s playoff odds can get a bit better this week, or they can essentially be dashed. Just win, Mariners. I’m hoping the pandemic and border issues can keep the Jays “home field advantage” a bit more muted this year, but I’m kind of bracing for a bunch of celebratory Canucks.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: France, 1B
4: Seager, 3B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Torrens, DH
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Moore, LF
SP: Flexen
Game 116, Rangers at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Mike Foltynewicz, 1:10pm
The M’s luck returned, at least for a night, as they beat Texas 2-1 on a walkoff “single” by Luis Torrens, scoring a suddenly-hot Jarred Kelenic. The M’s have talked up Kelenic’s hot streak, and how he’s been better than league average (by some margin) over his last 50 PAs. That’s true, and it’s welcome, even if it’s a very small sample. Is it sustainable? What’s driving it?
The biggest thing in recent weeks is that Kelenic’s making more contact. He made contact in his initial call-up, but got BABIP’d to death, hitting below .100. That would regress, but a decent chunk of that was that he wasn’t hitting the ball all that hard, and was topping too many grounders to the pull side. Upon returning to the bigs, his contact fell away, and he spent most of July swinging and missing. That was a real concern, but he’s suddenly evening out his Ks and BBs, and has become a much more reliable contact hitter.
Contact is only one part of it, though. He’s got 5 XBH in August after racking up 5 in every other month, and that’s showing up in his exit velocities. Making more contact and making louder contact is a very good combination. His OPS just climbed over .500 last night, so to say that there’s more work to be done is understating things. He’s still having a huge challenge with left-handed pitching, something the M’s id’d as a work in progress before the year. And while I’d like to see him doing better there, I think it’s *somewhat* understandable that he’d struggle after never seeing *this* kind of left-handed stuff before in his life. The bigger concern has been his performance against righties.
Again, it may be changing, and that’d be great. But this odd collapse when prospects *have* the platoon advantage seems odd to me, and it seems familiar. Evan White’s wOBA is .199 against lefties, good for a wRC+ of just 24. Kelenic’s done much better recently against righties, but his wOBA is still just .254, for a wRC+ of 64. Remember, Kelenic’s wRC+ projection was better than 100, and *With the platoon advantage* it now 64 (which is much better than where it was!). Kyle Lewis’ career OPS is over 100 points better against righties; with the advantage, Lewis’ wRC+ drops from 128 to 100. I’ll take 100, mind you, but it seems odd that we’d see so many youngsters come up and struggle in the same way.
The other way they struggle? Yes, at home. That’s part of why it was so great to see Kelenic get that big 9th inning double last night – at home, he’s hitting just .114/.239/.190. His OPS is .150 points better on the road.
The down side of last night’s comeback win was that it was necessary at all. The Rangers have pitched pretty well this series after showing no signs they were capable of doing so. Even with the low run totals, they’ve snuck in a couple of “we have no idea what we’re doing here” bases-loaded-walks. The M’s need to be punishing Rangers pitching, not playing down to it. They’ll have some critical games with Toronto coming up, and they won’t see pitchers this bad in those games.
The M’s aren’t playing all that well, but I suppose I’d take improvement in Kelenic even if it means that the bullpen is no longer bullet proof. Paul Sewald has slipped in recent weeks, though of course it was going to be tough to be almost literally unhittable forever. Today, he goes on the paternity list, so a good season just gets better for him. Like Kelenic, the improvement from Marco Gonzales means a heck of a lot more to the M’s chances in 2022 than their 2021 record in one-run games. Hopefully, he can keep it going today.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Kelenic, CF
7: Raleigh, C
8: Fraley, LF
9: Moore, RF
SP: Gonzales
Game 115, Rangers at Mariners
Tyler Anderson vs. Spencer Howard, 7:10pm
Last night’s game seemed like a perfect encapsulation of how the last two-three weeks have felt. Luck, a thing that’s propelled the M’s to an unlikely playoff race, has moved on, and thus you see the M’s loading the bases with no outs in the 9th and somehow not scoring, followed by the inevitable gut-punch in extras. All the things the M’s did for 3-4 months – get the timely hit, dominate extra innings – they failed to do last night.
In a sense, this is just what regression towards the mean *is*, and when we’re talking about performance in close/late games, it’s not pretty. It hurts. But beyond that, luck had a wonderful way of papering over some of the problematic aspects of the team. The whole “can’t hit until there are runners in scoring position, late in a close game” thing was objectively hilarious, but when it’s stops, you’re left with only those sad first two words. Logan Gilbert is, essentially, as advertised. But Jarred Kelenic’s growing pains are tougher to understand, and while he’s looked better recently, the entire year has to go down as a concerning one. Taylor Trammell is both easier to understand and much, much closer to his projections, but Cal Raleigh’s struggles consistently driving the ball is a bit of a head scratcher.
They’ll need to be active in free agency, and they’ll need to add good players to the staff and the line-up. This was supposed to be their springboard year to contend for real in 2022, and while they’ve been much more successful than I and others expected, the WAY they’ve been successful makes 2022’s outlook a bit murkier.
The Rangers, though…this team is just actively bad. Without Joey Gallo and some of their more successful relievers, the Rangers can bring to mind those awful Astros teams of 8-10 years ago. They’re beginning to build a good farm system, and they’ve got some interesting arms who haven’t quite turned talent into performance yet. One of them, Spencer Howard, starts tonight. The erstwhile Phillies top prospect always struck people out in the minors after being drafted out of Cal Poly, but had trouble with his control. The raw stuff was there: he throws a 95 mph four-seam, and mixes in a slider, a curve, and he’s learned a cutter this year. But the weirdest/potentially best offering is a slow change at 79. We’ve seen so many Felix-style hard change-ups that it’s always kind of a shock to see someone with *this* big of a disparity between fastball and change velo. Jharel Cotton did this when he came up with Oakland, and had a nice first half-season before dropping off the map.
At this point, Howard’s change is still working fairly well, as batters are having a hard time making contact. But when they make contact with *any* of his pitches, they tend to do well. Some of that may be bad luck, but Howard doesn’t miss enough bats to get away with it. His K/9 is great, it’s essentially right at 10. But his K% is only “pretty good.” This is another one of those great example cases, where we see exactly how Howard gets his outs, but bringing in all of the walks and balls in play changes the picture a bit.
It hasn’t worked for him yet, either in Arlington or in Philadelphia, but it’s a good high variance move for a team that desperately needs to improve. Essentially all year, the Mariners had the worst batting average in MLB, but a slight improvement in that category paired with Texas’ tanking means the two teams enter tonight’s game tied. Both clubs are hitting .222, with the M’s having an edge in both OBP and SLG%. Texas has leapfrogged Baltimore and Pittsburgh to become the worst hitting team in the game, and their pitching staff ranks last by fWAR, too (though I think Arizona and Baltimore fans may disagree).
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Kelenic, CF
7: Raleigh, C
8: Fraley, LF
9: Bauers, DH
SP: Anderson
Tyler Anderson continues his live-game audition for a multi-year deal. He’s been pretty much as-advertised, and I wonder if the M’s make a run at keeping him around. I also wonder what it’s like to walk into a clubhouse that’s as emotional and hurt as the M’s must’ve been. Such a weird situation all around.
I see there’s a move to bring Jose Marmolejos back given that the M’s are getting nothing out of Jake Bauers. I don’t think I expect too much out of Marmo, but given the low bar and that he’s absolutely raked in AAA-West, I guess it’s worth a shot.