Game 145, Red Sox at Mariners – Baseball as Comedy
Tyler Anderson vs. Nathan Eovaldi, 7:10pm
The Mariners have a team OBP of .301, and thus have a real chance to have a sub-.300 OBP and be in the thick of a playoff chase. This is the fundemantal incongruity that we’ve all been dealing with for the past 5 months. We can worry about the future, we can lament the loss of a key free agent pick-up on the M’s playoff odds, we can wonder what to make of Jarred Kelenic’s struggles, or we can laugh and clap. It’s time to laugh and clap. The M’s are not a great baseball team. They don’t really look like a *good* baseball team most of the time, and that’s the reason why they’re in historical territory for wins above their expected (ie. pythagorean or BaseRuns) winning percentage. Why is this so compelling?
Aristotle defined comedy “as an imitation of men worse than the average,” and if that isn’t nearly too on-the-nose to abandon this entire analogy, I don’t know what is. Last night’s game was tied in the late innings, and the first two M’s batters made outs. Up to the plate strode Jake Bauers, decidedly worse than the average hitter or MLB-caliber ball player. He slapped an easy grounder to first, but Kyle Schwarber booted it, and the inning rolled along. Not long after, Mitch Haniger hit a 3R-HR that won the game. The M’s beat their wild card rival, and moved to 12 games over .500, and a big part of that hinged on *Jake Bauers* who has a career 81 wRC+ and a 64 this year, rolled over a grounder, and it worked. For some of last night, the M’s had a line-up without a single .800 OPS hitter, until Mitch Haniger’s 4-4 night pushed him over. The M’s may end the year with a sub-.300 OBP. The story – THE story – of 2021 is Jake Bauers hitting an easy ground ball to 1B over and over and somehow reaching base.
This is, I think objectively, hilarious. What we’re seeing here is subversion: we see the set-up, we see some initial results that illustrate important things about that set-up, and then something random happens and the M’s win. Sports, with their combination of true talent levels and just the right amount of variance, kick off so many pat narratives because both components: evaluating true talent and randomness provided by variance – lend themselves to them. Think of all of the easy stories we had going into this year. They started before the year with the evil and miserly team President bragging of service time manipulation. You had the story of the next wave of talent trying to break through. You had the Wisconsin WonderBoy calling out the Org and the destroying AAA for a week or two. You had Jerry Dipoto’s vaunted rotation and his repeated predictions of a big “step forward.”
So much of those easy (but potentially compelling!) stories have just blown up. None of it’s gone according to those scripts. FINALLY freed from service time manipulation, Jarred Kelenic didn’t carry the M’s – he’s been terrible. The M’s young rotation didn’t rise to the occasion, they showed themselves as, uh, “men worse than the average.” So is the easy narrative that Dipoto’s bluster and spin failed and he was taught some sort of lesson? No! The team is 12 games over .500 and he got a promotion and contract extension! Why? Because Jake Bauers keeps hitting ground balls that get booted.
This sounds like an easy farce, something that almost mocks sports. By essentially eliminating the true talent part and running a season on 100% variance, they’re replacing the outsized efforts and talents of the Blue Jays or Yankees and their stacked rosters with the fart jokes that are Jake Bauers ground balls and that week where Luis Torrens only hit clutch homers. This seems like 5 months of a Mr. Bean video or a direct-to-video “American Pie” sequel.
But it’s not. The subversion goes beyond that. In the Rob Arthur BP piece I linked above, he notes that this kind of divergence between expected and actual record is increasing in recent years. Thus, this surrealist comedy involving whole swaths of a line-up below the Mendoza line could actually teach us something. Is it the shift in total innings towards (more volatile) relief pitchers that keeps allowing the M’s to Jake Bauers their way to “underserved” wins? Is it the over-the-top run suppression going on at T-Mobile (the inability of the M’s to hit at home is like a bit the M’s keep going back to, or a leitmotif if you’re a fancy intellectual) that keep more games (that would’ve been out of reach had true talent been allowed to express itself) within striking/variance distance? Is this knowable/resolvable?
I’m not really sure, but I *am* enjoying the fact that essentially everyone’s priors, everyone’s expected stories of this season have been dashed. I didn’t think the M’s would be good, but here they are in a wild card chase – and not one borne of a season in which 83 wins would get you to the playoffs. The optimists expected Kelenic/Raleigh/Sheffield to step up and dominate. Dipoto and Servais thought the rotation would keep them in a lot of ballgames and give their offense a chance. Everyone thought that talent would win out, but we all disagreed on where we might find it. Instead, this season has essentially shown us what success looks like in its absence, a kind of success in negative space or those double images of a rabbit and a duck. None of this is very predictive, and it may not last until the end of the season, let alone the next one. But I think that just heightens the comedy and entertainment value of this season. This is pure, absurdist genius, and the fact that it has no real author makes it one of the most compelling things I can recall. The M’s history has had so much tragedy and so much losing. I never really imagined they could weave that right into a successful season, but here we are. I’m laughing just thinking about it.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Kelenic, CF
7: Fraley, LF
8: Bauers, DH
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Anderson
Bauers DHing. Perfect.
Yes, Jake Fraley’s back from his rehab stint. Sadly, his return necessitated the DFA’ing of Jose Marmolejos.
Tacoma’s back in action against Sacramento to close out their series.
Arkansas faces Wichita tonight and former Jays/Mets prospect and current Twins prospect, Simeon Woods-Richardson.
Everett’s Taylor Dollard is on the hill vs. Spokane.
Modesto finally gets back to action after their Covid outbreak, and they’ll face Stockton.
Game 143, Red Sox at Mariners
Logan Gilbert vs. Eduardo Rodriguez, 7:10pm
Sorry for the outage; I’ve been camping and out of cell phone range, so it was something of a rude surprise to find that the M’s had dropped their series against Arizona. While the M’s weren’t shut out or anything, they again struggled to score and struggled to put a weaker team away as a result. If the M’s come up short this year, their inability to hit at home will be a big reason why.
We know who the M’s are at this point, for better or worse. They don’t score many runs (they average 4.25 per game, 23rd in MLB) and they’re merely middle-of-the-pack at preventing runs (4.65 per game, 16th in MLB). Digging deeper, the M’s offense gets so few hits, you’d *expect* them to score even fewer runs – BaseRuns puts the figure at 4.16 per game. Thus, combining their expected runs and runs allowed, the M’s are an astonishing 13 games ahead of the pace BaseRuns would expect. Some of that is their incredible bullpen, but a big chunk is their success in clutch situations, a factor we’ve mentioned essentially since the season’s first week. That luck still hasn’t run out.
But the run environment of T-Mobile can give and it can take. By suppressing scoring overall, it helps the M’s overcome a lack of talent on the pitching side, as well as a so-so defense. It can keep games close enough for the M’s clutch weirdness to show up, and thus we see the M’s doing so well in one-run games (yesterday’s excepted). It’s been enough to give the M’s a 10-games-over-.500 record at home at 41-31 *despite* scoring only 4.14 runs per game there. And it’s that low run environment that means some of those late-inning rallies are going to fall short.
It’s already incredibly difficult to evaluate what this season means. The M’s have four position players who’ll grade out at or above league average: Ty France, Mitch Haniger, JP Crawford, and Kyle Seager. Seager is likely gone after this year, and Haniger’s year has been hurt by some inconsistency, leaving him with a slash line that looks more like 2019’s down year and less like 2018’s awesome one. JP Crawford’s overall value is buoyed by his position, defense, and park – and you could say the same about Kyle Seager. Seager’s overall production is great despite a brutal OBP because he’s hit for so much power. Even in a career year for dingers, Seager’s production is only in the neighborhood of average because his BABIP and average are so low.
The M’s were never going to keep him around, and at this point, they probably shouldn’t: let Kyle choose his own adventure. Don’t tether him to a rebuild, and let him hit somewhere other than Seattle. At home, Kyle Seager has a sub-.600 OPS. Wanting him to return for next year is, frankly, cruel to Kyle.
All of this means that the one thing that this year was supposed to deliver – vital information on the M’s next core group of players – hasn’t really happened. The guys who were supposed to be pretty good were merely pretty good. The prospects… oh man, the prospects… have been atrocious. But again: how much can we separate out the T-Mobile effect, which is bound to be worse for players exactly like Kyle: fly ball hitters who derive much of their value from dingers. The version of Taylor Trammell we saw this year fits that description, and it’s a particularly apt summation of Cal Raleigh (poor Cal is hitting even worse on the road, though). Strangest, given his scouting report, is that it has applied to Jarred Kelenic. As in yesterday’s game, he’s shown pop at times, and perhaps more than some scouts thought he’d show – at least this yearly in is career. But what’s missing is the gap hitting, bat-to-ball skills that he’d shown in the minors. Kelenic has a .525 OPS at home. Sure, it’s bad on the road, too, but I still wonder how much of these struggles we’ve seen from the youngsters is due to an inability to get comfortable at home.
They’re a very different team with a very different narrative this season, but it all kind of reminds me of the Mets. The Mets score even fewer runs than the M’s, but give up just as few. They’re trapped in 2014 a bit, the peak season for pitchers in the past few decades. It hasn’t worked out for them, exactly (though they were leading a bad NL east for much of the summer), but they feel like they’re more or less as expected: a team whose pitching would carry them. They’re also a team who’s succeeded at home despite a more or less total inability to score runs there. The Mets are scoring just 3.7 runs per game in Queens (!), but are giving up a Dead-Ball-Era-style 3.37. Despite losing Jacob de Grom, they’ve managed to emulate 1968 baseball here in 2021.
But again, how much of this is dominant pitchers, and how much of it is the actual park? Sure, Francisco Lindor had himself a night last night, but he’s clearly underperformed this year, and a big part of that is a .238 home BABIP. Kelenic, incidentally, would kill for a home BABIP that high; his sits at .169. I’m just not sure that these things are purely bad luck. Citi Field and T-Mobile were notoriously difficult to homer in, and so both adjusted their outfield wall dimensions several years ago. More recently, both parks introduced humidors like the big hitters’ parks in Arizona and Colorado. These changes – reduced OF area making XBH harder to come by, humidors reducing fly ball distance – combine with the various changes to the baseball’s drag, and produce… we don’t really know. The fact that we still don’t know is frustrating, and it makes Jerry Dipoto’s job – already tough – that much harder. He’s going to have to untangle which guys are struggling due to factors outside of their control, and which guys are struggling due to deeper issues within themselves and their skillsets.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: France, 1B
4: Seager, 3B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Torrens, DH
7: Murphy, C
8: Kelenic, CF
9: Moore, LF
SP: Gilbert
Tacoma won the first game of a doubleheader today in Tacoma, beating Sacramento 8-4. They’re tied late in the game in the nightcap. Jake Fraley homered in his rehab assignment in Game 1, and Taylor Trammell is 2-2 with 2 BBs in Game 2.
Modesto’s still sidelined with that Covid outbreak, and it was a rough weekend for Arkansas, who got blasted by Springfield on Saturday and Sunday.
Game 131, Diamondbacks at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Madison Bumgarner, 7:10pm
For what feels like the 40th time this season, the M’s faced what felt like a must-win game, and despite an early lead, you could feel it slipping away. The Astros came back to tie, then take the lead, and extend the lead. The best part of the Astros bullpen awaited. And then, just as they’ve done so many times, the M’s found a way to win. It’s got to be frustrating for the Astros, who’ve outscored the M’s by a mile, but have a tendency to trade 11-2 wins with close losses. All of that means that the M’s are still neck and neck with the A’s, and behind the Blue Jays, who, frankly, have to lose some time.
As a reward, the M’s get to face the D-backs team that they just swept in Phoenix. Toronto unfortunately has a series in Baltimore, but then, the Orioles just snapped the Yankees long winning streak (that feels like it was 3 months ago), so who knows. Oakland continues to grapple with the White Sox, while Houston faces the Angels. The Red Sox are still dealing with a Covid outbreak that’s now sidelined Chris Sale, who’d just returned from the IL.
The M’s hottest hitter at the moment is JP Crawford, fresh off a HR in his last game. He remains a fascinatingly streaky player, who was incandescent in June, then atrocious for all of July and much of August, before jumping back to locked in for September. Every time I think we’ve seen enough to essentially say that the M’s need a replacement to really be a consistent contender, he teases this kind of hitting ability. And then once we’re all comfortable with him holding down the starting SS job for the next 4-5 years, he’ll go O-for-a-month. Strange.
But not as strange as the sudden end of Luis Torrens’ catching career. The guy had a brutal defensive start to the year, and I’d thought that part of the reason they sent him to Tacoma was to work on his defense away from the cameras. Instead, he’s come back and never caught an inning. The M’s raved about his ability to pick up the staff when they brought him over from San Diego, and while he’s never been good at controlling the running game, that tends to be overrated. They haven’t mentioned anything about it, but he just DHs pretty much all the time now, after a brief spell at 1B.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: France, 1B
4: Seager, 3B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Torrens, DH
7: Murphy, C
8: Kelenic, CF
9: Moore
SP: Gonzales
The Rainiers are now 3 games up in the AAA-W-W thanks to a 5 game winning streak. They’re at home facing Sacramento tonight after beating them 10-4 last night.
Arkansas’ Matt Brash (who Jerry Dipoto toyed with the idea of bringing up to the big league bullpen in a radio hit last week) was back in action, and helped the Travs beat Springfield. It was a quiet night for Brash, who went 5 1/3 giving up 3 R on 3 H, 3 BB with 5 Ks. Brandon Williamson starts tonight’s contest.
Eugene got the better of Everett, 4-1. Kai-Wei Teng of the Emeralds went 6 IP with 1 R and *13 strikeouts* – the Frogs K’d 16 times overall. Ouch.
Modesto’s game was canceled due to a Covid outbreak on the Nuts, and today the M’s have said that they’re suspending the entire series to do contract tracing and halt the spread. I’m kind of stunned this hasn’t happened already this year, but it’s too bad that this happened so late in the year.
Game 140, Mariners at Astros
Tyler Anderson vs. Jose Urquidy, 11:10am – Broadcast is NOT on Root, but is on Youtube.
After another crushing loss to the Astros, the M’s turn to their erstwhile ace, Tyler Anderson for today’s getaway day match-up. Anderson’s made seven starts, and is already the M’s third most valuable starting pitcher by fWAR. It’s all the more remarkable because he can’t lean on tons of strikeouts to try to impress fWAR’s fielding-independent system. His already-good control has taken another step forward with Seattle, and he’s become near-elite at avoiding the barrel of the bat. For a pitch-to-contact guy with below-average velo, he simply has to avoid hard contact. No one can avoid it forever, but Anderson’s hard hit% and barrel rates are in the top 10-15% in baseball this year. No walks, mis-hit contact = success.
It’s also something that may be harder to count on. I think Anderson’s done enough here that the M’s should definitely explore a multi-year deal for him, but this was Marco Gonzales’ profile, too, and while he’s turned it around admirably, he’s been less successful despite only a slight drop in his average exit velo/hard hit%. For Marco, his walk rate increased from barely-detectable to merely good, and his hard hit rate went from amazing to simply “above average.” The problem has been that those hard hit balls have been hit much harder and further. That may simply be luck – the price of doing this kind of business as a pitcher – or it could be a very slight diminution in his skills/true talent. Marco’s still helped, but this season is *why* his success hasn’t felt quite as assured as it would if he struck out more batters. When contact management is all you’ve got, it’s got to be consistently great, and I’m not really sure *anyone* can be consistently great contact managers.
Still, the M’s are going to have a lot of innings to fill next year, and I think Anderson might be a solid 3rd starter, even if his good season may raise the price a bit. The money they’ll save by not picking up Yusei Kikuchi’s team option shows that they’ve got money budgeted for it, but they can’t stop at Anderson. They’ll need a lot more, and I’m sure they know that. They’ve targeted guys just like Anderson and Gonzales because they may be undervalued precisely because they DON’T rack up tons of strikeouts; no one’s confusing these guys with Jacob de Grom. But given where the team sees themselves and their oft-stated/re-stated contention window, it may be time to throw your ideas of what’s under or over-valued out the window and open up your wallet.
The same is true for the offense, of course. The Blue Jays got perhaps the bargain of the year in signing Marcus Semien to a one-year deal (the competition for this would be the Blue Jays signing Robbie Ray to a one-year deal), and now they’ll have to see if they can keep him. The fact that the Blue Jays, too, see their contention window wide open complicates things for the M’s. They can want to spend money and sign free agents, but they *need* to get them to sign on the dotted line to play in Seattle. Toronto’s already ramping up spending, and the Yankees and Dodgers are always going to compete for top-tier talent. This is where it’s vital that Jerry Dipoto gets what he wants. A part of that is convincing ownership, but he’s also got to convince those players and agents.
I suppose we should touch on last night’s loss. It was painful to see Paul Sewald, who’d been dominant this year, and especially dominant against Houston, lose the lead in the 9th. The game had proceeded just as about 90% of M’s wins this year have done: the M’s looked hopeless early, then fell behind, and then strung together extra base hits at precisely the time when those hits would do the most. They took the lead despite being out-hit, out-hit for power, and despite mostly great pitching from the opponent. They mastered sequencing, just as they’ve done so many times. By BaseRuns, this was a loss 90% of the time, but BaseRuns doesn’t incorporate Fun Differential. They got an insurance run and handed the game to their best reliever, and, well, sometimes the Astros are just gonna Astro. The only positive here was the the Yankees free-fall continued, the Red Sox lost again at home, and Oakland lost badly to Chicago. There’s no real harm done, but it was a missed opportunity to really gain some ground.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Torrens, DH
7: Kelenic, Cf
8: Murphy, C
9: Marmolejos, LF
SP: Anderson
The Rainiers smash-and-grab in Reno continued, with a 4-3 win to close out the series. Tacoma won four in a row in erstwhile-first-place Reno to take a 2 game lead in the AAA-W-W (A cubed, W squared?). Closer Ray Kerr, a high-90s closer who was an undrafted free agent several years ago, continues to impress – he got the save last night.
Julio Rodriguez homered in Arkansas’ loss to Springfield. Uh, that’s *Springfield’s* Julio Rodriguez. Arkansas’ Julio Rodriguez went 0-5, but his slash line is still .359/.474/.508 in AA.
Cade Marlowe homered in Everett’s 9-6 loss to Eugene. That’s his 24th between Modesto and Everett, and it’s brought him up to 100 RBIs on the year (he’s also got 21 stolen bases). Noelvi Marte hit clean-up in his hi-A debut and went 2-4. Taylor Dollard continues to rack up K’s, but he’s given up 12 HRs now in 11 games/61 IP.
Modesto’s replaced Noelvi Marte with Milkar Perez, who’d opened eyes in the Arizona Complex League. Perez, a 3B, is 19, and went 1-4 in his first full-season game. CF Corey Rozier, a 12th-round pick this year, is pushing for a promotion, hitting .417/.492/.602 in just over 100 ABs. He’s got an 18:18 K:BB, too, and 13 SBs in 27 games with the Nuts.
Game 139, Mariners at Astros
Logan Gilbert vs. Jake Odorizzi, 5:10pm
Well, last night’s game was brutal. Yusei Kikuchi was off, and didn’t make it out of the second. The bullpen scuffled, albeit with the lesser lights of the pen logging the innings and taking their lumps. Houston again pounded the M’s, and the put the game out of reach immediately. Kikuchi *just* pitched a gem against this same line-up, but looked like a completely different pitcher, with his velo down and his control non-existent. It all culminated in this Ryan Divish recap where he says the chances of the M’s picking up his four-year option are now at zero. I hadn’t remembered that Kikuchi has a player option when/if the M’s opt out of taking the next four years. That might be an intriguing decision for him. It’s valued at $13 M, and I’m not sure he’ll get a lot more than that even if it’s spread out over 2-3 years. I imagine that he’ll attract serious attention from clubs if he becomes a free agent, but I’m not sure that he can command a ton of guaranteed money coming off this second-half collapse.
It’s a sad story. I thought Kikuchi was a great pick-up, and I found the Scott Boras-devised contract, with its multi-year extension and options intriguing. I think it’s ultimately worked more or less as intended, as Kikuchi got several years to show his value without the M’s committing to him for six years. He’s shown tremendous ability to increase his velocity, he’s shown the ability to quickly make changes to his repertoire (adding a cutter, modifying his change on the fly), and to make little adjustments as needed. What he hasn’t mastered is consistency, but I bet 29 other pitching coaches in the league would love to try to help him do that.
Today, the M’s try to see if Logan Gilbert can carry over the momentum of a solid start against these guys where Kikuchi could not. Like Kikuchi, Gilbert has seen them a few times recently, and while one appearance was great, the other was painful. A big part of that is that it’s tough to keep what’s probably the best line-up in the game bottled up indefinitely, but I’m still pretty convinced a bunch of this is T-Mobile.
If you split team batting by home/away, you’ll find two very different M’s teams. At home, the M’s are “hitting” .210/.293/.364, for a wOBA of .288, and a park-adjusted wRC+ of 89. They strike out at a 26% clip, and have a BABIP of .259, worst in the game. They are by many metrics the absolute worst offense in the game. Away, they’re…well, not exactly great, but they’re perfectly fine, with a .235/.308/.395 line for an OPS above .700, and a wOBA of .306. They strike out under 25%, and are generally MLB-quality. One big problem here is that they’ve hit the ball in the air a lot: their home GB% is the second-lowest in baseball behind the Dodgers. The Dodgers, like the M’s, have a brutal home BABIP, but it doesn’t really matter, because they’re more than capable of hitting home runs. The M’s have a bunch of fly-ball hitters who hit for power, but not enough to overcome the fact that any fly ball in Seattle that’s not a HR is essentially a guaranteed out. Jose Marmolejos’ BABIP is .182, Dylan Moore’s is .217, Cal Raleigh’s is .239. These guys don’t strike out at an alarming clip, but with those BABIPs, even an average K rate is going to nuke your offensive production. Of course, Kyle Seager is very much in this camp as well, and it’s driven down his BABIP for the past five years. This year, though, he’s hitting enough HRs to pull his overall production above league average *despite* an average of .212 and an OBP of .286.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Torrens, DH
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Bauers, LF
SP: Gilbert
Game 138, Mariners at Astros – Hold Fast
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Lance McCullers, Jr., 4:10pm
The Mariners once again picked themselves off the mat, shook off what looked for all the world like a wrenching, playoff-chase-ending series, and fought on. Sure, it helps to face the out-of-it Diamondbacks, but those were each hard-fought wins, and it’s often been those “bad” teams that have inflicted some damage on the M’s. Well, bad teams and the Astros.
This has not been a friendly ballpark for Seattle, going back to the days before the Astros become a juggernaut. Sure, some electronic trickery had *some* part in that, but the biggest problem has been that Houston’s put out far more talented rosters. They still do. But as we’ve seen time and again, from the last Astros series in Seattle to the recent sweep in Phoenix, the M’s bullpen becomes an equalizer. If the M’s starter gives the team any kind of chance, the bullpen gives the team every opportunity to take it.
The M’s playoff odds have increased recently as they’ve passed the Oakland A’s for 2nd in the AL West. They had been in 3rd place (or worse) every day from May 9th to September 4th. Even so, the primary beneficiary of the A’s losing streak – according to the projections – is Toronto, a club that is legitimately red hot, and are coming off an 8-0 win against New York today. The Jays will have a rough schedule, but they are in the midst of playing a bunch of playoff contenders, and they are *destroying* them. In a normal world, the Jays would be 10 games ahead of Seattle, but thankfully, nothing is normal.
That helped clarify who this bizarre M’s team reminds me of. There are no perfect parallels in a sport whose offensive environment has changed somewhat dramatically over the past 10-20 years, but there are a few echoes. I’d initially thought of the 2005 Padres, a team that won the NL West with an 82-80 record. That team had a below-average offense, Jake Peavy-and-then-not-much in the rotation, but baseball’s best bullpen. That pen (Trevor Hoffman was the closer, sure, but it was Scott Linebrink’s big year) helped the club overcome a 77-85 pythagorean winning percentage, but they were quickly eliminated in the playoffs.
Some of the great Giants teams were more great-in-clutch-situations than out-and-out great. The 2010 team had a great pitching staff and a line-up that rated as below-average, but had some very good performances up and down the line-up. The 2012 was the least-M’s-like, with an offense that helped prop up a so-so pitching staff weighed down by a mediocre pen (who, of course, played out of their minds in the playoffs). The 2014 team is closest, with a slightly below-average line-up, but even that club had big offensive threats like Buster Posey, and they had a great starter in Madison Bumgarner.
But that 2014 team *beat* the club that might be the best analog to this year’s weirdly awesome Mariners: the Kansas City Royals. The 2015 team that won it all actually had a good offense, with one Alex Gordon’s last great years, and Kendrys Morales and others driving in runs. The 2014 version of the Royals just couldn’t hit. And despite an utterly dominant bullpen, the club still had a K rate in the bottom third of MLB, thanks to starters who were allergic to whiffs. OPS is not a perfect stat, and the run environment was dramatically different back in 2014, but the Royals made the playoffs without a single starter posting an OPS over .800 that year. That’s…that’s incredible. That 2005 Padres team had a bunch of sub-800 guys, but also a peak Brian Giles season. The Giants had Posey or Mike Morse or Pat Burrell. It’s hard to score without someone hitting well over .800, but the Royals managed to score just enough. It helped, of course, that *nobody* scored in 2014, but even for that year, they stood out. I bring it up because the M’s are one cold snap from Ty France away from finishing without an .800 OPS slugger. In 2021.
Now, the Royals could do one thing better than anyone, and that was play defense. That’s not really the M’s strength, as they grade out poorly by, say, UZR or OOA. They’ve had to do…whatever this is purely through sequencing, but they keep doing it, and the bullpen keeps giving them extra chances, like Yohan Ramirez’s escape in extra innings yesterday, or Paul Sewald’s season against Houston.
I thought that 2014 Royals team was pretty bad, but they made it all the way to the 7th game of the World Series, and they won it all the following year. It doesn’t matter how something looks or even how sustainable it is. You just need to win.* The M’s desperately need to keep this momentum going, even though they’re entering their house of horrors in Houston.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: France, 1B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Marmolejos, DH
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Bauers, LF
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Kikuchi
You know who else is enjoying a playoff push? The Tacoma Rainiers, who’ve ridden a hot streak into a tie for first in the AAA-West, uh, West. The R’s are facing the team they’re tied with, Reno, right now. Tacoma’s got a late lead.
Arkansas’ Matt Brash predictably won the AA-Central’s Pitcher of the Week after starting a no-hitter.
SS Noelvi Marte’s been promoted from Modesto up to Everett.
* At the team level, or from the front office’s view, sure, sustainability matters particularly for a growing/young team like this one. But the M’s won’t be disqualified from the playoffs due to run differential.
Game 135, Mariners at Diamondbacks
Tyler Anderson vs. Madison Bumgarner, 6:40pm
Sorry for the delay on this post; I’ve just had a busy day with work and family obligations.
The M’s head south to take on the thoroughly beaten-down Arizona Diamondbacks. The D-Backs had a respectable start to the year, then went into a tailspin that they’ve never quite pulled out of. They come into tonight at a pretty shocking 45-90, just slightly better than the Orioles. The D-Backs collapse is a little harder to fathom than the Orioles, who have a clear/obvious reason why they can’t win: they don’t really have any MLB-caliber pitchers. The D-Backs *do*, with tonight’s starter a good example. Zac Gallen, Bumgarner, Merrill Kelly, Luke Weaver – why is a club with solid pitchers who’ve logged some innings doing with a team ERA over 5?
The answer is that none of those guys I mentioned is a reliever. The D-Backs have the game’s worst bullpen, and it’s absolutely killed them when they find themselves in close, winnable games. In this respect, they are the anti-Mariners in 2021. Of course, their line-up has been atrocious too. Not worst-in-the-league bad, but surprisingly close when you strictly look at batting (they can catch the ball pretty well). A lot of this has to do with long stints on the IL for the best player, former Mariner Ketel Marte. Marte is hitting .344/.395/.549, which is ridiculous, but he’s done so in only 65 games. If he hadn’t gone down after starting the year on an absolute tear, this season could’ve gone differently.
Oakland and Boston have big leads at the moment, but at least Oakland is playing Toronto. The Blue Jays and their enviable run differential are too close for comfort, so maybe facing the A’s will open up the gap the M’s have enjoyed over Toronto. On the down side, both Boston and Oakland won yesterday when the M’s were off. Rude, in my opinion.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: France, 1B
4: Seager, 3B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Murphy, C
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Moore, LF
SP: Anderson
So, we have to talk about Matt Brash. Brash has been on an absolute tear in AA after a mid-season promotion, and today garnered the kind of viral fame that pretty much all pitchers want in 2021: a Pitching Ninja GIF and tweet. The righty out of Canada – acquired from San Diego in exchange for Taylor Williams last year – tossed 6 no-hit IP in the Travelers’ combined no-hit win against Wichita. That brought his line with Arkansas down to 44 IP, 22 H, 16 BBs and 69 Ks. That’s video-game stuff. Logan Gilbert opened a lot of eyes in AA in 2019, but his line was nothing – nothing – like this. And while the M’s have had some control/command guys who’ve dominated at levels for months, none of them have the raw, wicked, physics-defying pitches shown in that Pitching Ninja tweet.
Brash started out the year as the least-heralded member of the absolutely stacked Everett rotation. Our preview gave him short shrift, noting he might move to the pen. Instead, he outpitched them all (George Kirby may have something to say about that, but Brash had a superior K rate). But since ascending to AA, something’s changed – he’s utterly dominant, and is on one of the more dominant runs I’ve seen in the high minors in years. In his last three starts, he’s thrown 18 IP, given up 4 hits (!) and struck out 32. It’s remarkable. I’ve seen MLB.com put him in the top 10 M’s prospects (at #10), but at this point that’s too low.
Game 134, Astros at Mariners – Dipoto and Servais Extended
Logan Gilbert vs. Jake Odorizzi, 1:10pm
Last night’s win was another odd, late triumph – the kind of game the M’s have specialized in all season. After a few games of failing repeatedly in bases loaded or runner on third, less than two out situations, the M’s…repeatedly failed in those same situations again. But here’s the thing: they keep *finding* themselves in those situations. So, when Abraham Toro got another shot in the late innings, he took advantage, hitting a grand slam off of the guy he was traded for, Kendall Graveman. That’s led to a lot of “we won the trade” talk, and while one at-bat doesn’t win or lose a trade, it may have tipped the scales.
At the time of the trade my worry was that it left the clubhouse gutted and weakened the one area of strength the M’s had. Yes, yes, they had plenty of other arms, but top-flight, MLB-closer-level arms? Graveman’s been great for Houston, and clearly solves one of their remaining problems, but the M’s needed reliable help at the plate, and Toro’s numbers didn’t suggest that sort of thing. Thus far, he’s been solid, averaging out a two week spell where he hit everything, and then two weeks when he didn’t. But I think you HAVE to be more bullish on Toro today than on the day of the trade; I sure am. I don’t know if he’s a multi-year starter, but that’s the thing about the trade: the M’s traded a free agent to be. It’s right to focus much more on 2021 when evaluating it. Have the M’s had some late-game meltdowns? Yeah, a few, but they’ve also had games changed by Toro’s bat, including last night’s. It was poorly handled, the timing sucked, etc. etc., but the fears I outlined haven’t materialized. I’ll take the L on that one, as long as Toro maintains a MLB-average hitting line. (But better would really be appreciated).
The big story today is that the M’s have announced contract extensions for GM Jerry Dipoto, who gets a promotion into the newly created role of President of Baseball Operations. Manager Scott Servais also will stick around, though we still don’t know the terms. The M’s probably needed to do something, with the team on the outskirts of a playoff push and with an absolutely critical off-season looming. If the M’s want to capitalize on the unexpected good fortune here, and if they want to continue to sell the idea that real contention is just around the corner, they simply have to upgrade significant portions of the roster. To do THAT, they need a GM with a mandate from ownership, and an out-of-contract GM wouldn’t have one. It’s either re-up Jerry, or try to run a search for a new GM in the middle of that critical offseason. Unless they had someone lined up, that’s simply a non-starter.
So now it’s up to Jerry to press his case to majority owner John Stanton. They’ve sold many on the might of their farm system and how much talent is on the way, but this year has shown them that players often don’t hit the MLB ground running. They need a solid line-up around young players, and they seriously need to investigate WHY so many prospects seem to struggle upon making it to Seattle. I think it was Joe Sheehan who once said that the only way to evaluate a GM is on how often he gets what he wants. Sure, sure, it’s great to WANT the right players; Jerry really wanted Shohei Ohtani, and I still think that utterly changes how we look at this current core. But he fell short. Jerry, I think, *wants* the resources necessary to really upgrade the roster in free agency and in trade, but it’s not enough to want them. He needs to get them. He can’t fall short this off-season.
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: Gilbert
With the rosters expanded by two, the M’s have called up Justus Sheffield from his rehab assignment in Tacoma, and IF Kevin Padlo, a waiver claim from Tampa about a month ago. Padlo has…not set the world on fire in Tacoma, though to be fair he’s shown a decent eye. Most importantly, he can play on the IF, and the M’s thought they might need another body there after Ty France took a high-90s fastball off of his arm in last night’s contest. Scott Servais was apparently ready to go with Marmo at 1B in this game, but France talked him out of it.
Sheffield will work out of the pen from here out, at least in 2021, but potentially longer. That’d be a disappointment, given his prospect history and the fact that he looked pretty solid for a chunk of the abbreviated 2020 season. It may also be the best way to get some kind of value out of him. Hoping he gains a tick or two and becomes an intriguing multi-inning option.