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
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Outstanding job by the “Bullpen”.