Game 11, Rangers at Mariners – Brash Talk
Robbie Ray vs. Jon Gray, 6:40pm
The M’s open a series against last-place Texas after beating the Astros in a fascinating early-season contest. It wasn’t perfect: the bats that did so well in games 1 and 3 were silent against Justin Verlander, and despite general better play and flashes of the talent that got them here, Kelenic/Rodriguez are still scuffling. But there’s a general competence, a length to the line-up that we haven’t seen in recent years, and the good will the M’s won in that series against Houston is something that should stick around for a while. This is a solid team, and when their starting pitching is even decent, they can beat good teams. Robbie Ray’s had a good and a so-so start, but I’m not too worried about him. He’ll be fine, and he’ll give the M’s a chance to win against just about anyone.
But Matt Brash…
So, if you look over at Fangraphs, Brash is currently listed with a negative WAR. BaseballSavant says he’s been lucky on balls in play. The walk rate’s too high. He looks OK by Baseball Reference and Baseball Prospectus, so what do we make of a brilliant start and a wild start – two vastly different paths to the same general outcome? I think the thing to take is that Matt Brash is exactly what we thought he was coming out of spring training: the most talented pitcher on the team, yes including Robbie Ray, and one of the absolute best prospects around. He struggled mightily with his command in his home debut, but even when his velo was down and he couldn’t find it, he remained nearly impossible to hit. When batters do make contact, it was mostly on the ground; Brash’s GB% rate through two starts is over 60%. He won’t have starts like his MLB debut every time, but what do you think is more likely: that Brash will walk 5-6 per 9 innings in perpetuity, or that he’ll retain the slider movement that currently has him with the best horizontal movement of any starting pitcher in the game, edging out Shohei Ohtani?
Scouting is extremely tough, and only a handful of people get meaningful looks at most minor leaguers on their way up. Even those people might see a guy on a bad day, or could be influenced by everything from draft round to previous scouting reports, or what have you. Bias is, essentially, baked in, and while we can try and root it out, for people like us on the outside, you have no real way to gauge it. Every year there are plenty of pop-up prospects who shoot through three levels or what not despite being picked in the 25th round, or being a senior sign. There are always guys posting eye-popping numbers in (especially) the low minors thanks to a decently honed change-up. Scouting can help break through the limitations of just scouting a stat line, and they can add important context like, “The guy with the good change in low-A tops out at 86 w/the fastball” or “The guy who popped 4 HRs last week on breaking stuff has a swing that can be measured with a sun dial.” But I’m still trying to figure out what happened when Brash gets ranked behind, say Emerson Hancock. You have a stat line, you have eyes on a few of the wickedest pitches out there, and you’re (presumably) still bearish on his prospects because…what, injury risk? Small college? It can’t be anything on the field.
Part of the issue is tied up with how disrupted “normal” pitcher development curves have become not only after Covid arrived, but after modern pitch design and training evolved. Jarrett Seidler has a great article at BP today about Matt Brash east, the Mets Tylor Megill. Megill was a senior sign guy the Mets picked out of Arizona (where he barely pitched) to save money in their draft pool. He did fairly well, but a low-90s three-pitch mix guy had “middle relief” as a best-case outcome. Just like Brash, he was left out of the alternate site in 2020, but spent that time getting stronger. Last year he showed up in the big leagues with mid-90s velo, and the ability to miss bats at the major league level. I get the sense that even then, non-Mets fans had no idea who he was or why he was a candidate for a rotation that added Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt in the off-season. After refining his delivery, he’s now throwing just fractionally harder than Brash and has been great in the early-going (despite kind of a rough one in his third start today against San Francisco).
The problem wasn’t Megill’s: he did everything right. The problem was that people could actually *see* the changes, *see* that he wasn’t the same mid-relief guy he was throwing 92 in high-A, and, critically, figure out what it meant. Throwing 97 doesn’t make him a can’t miss starter. Pitchers miss all of the time, and it’s one of the sadder parts of this game we love. It is now essentially impossible to predict what a given pitching prospect will do in 2 years. They could transform themselves into a 100mph-throwing behemoth with a high-spin breaker and skip two levels, or they could be selling medical devices, and they almost feel like equally likely outcomes. There is more information, more help, more technology, and it feels like for the first time that stuff is working to *help* players instead of to compute or tabulate their value. That makes scouting simultaneously harder and more important for teams. But we also have to trust what we’re seeing, and what batters are doing. Brash wasn’t the skinny kid out of Niagara throwing 92, but it felt like every scouting report or ranking was still anchored in that no-longer-relevant past.
So, the M’s face ex-Rockies hurler Jon Gray tonight. Gray’s an interesting one; a player who’s alternated between really good and really bad seasons. 2017 and 2019 were the former, 2018 and 2020 were the latter. Pitching in Denver is never an easy task, so it’s not surprising that he’s had a high BABIP or occasional problems with the long ball. He misses plenty of bats thanks to a truly excellent slider, or perhaps better stated: TWO excellent sliders. Add them together, and it’s been one of the most valuable pitches in the game in recent years, per MLB.com.
The problem is that his four-seam fastball has been one of the worst, sapping the value derived from his slider. Gray apparently calls it a four-seamer, it’s been a four-seamer his whole career, but either intentionally or not (fear of Coors field?), he’s essentially throwing a sinker. It has the seam-shifted wake properties, the movement properties, of a sinker, and it’s been easier of lefties to hit. It’s not purely a platoon split issue so much as it’s just a poorly-designed pitch, and it might be interesting to see if the Rangers tweak it.
Despite adding Gray, Garrett Richards and, uh, Martin Perez, the Rangers remain in last in pitching WAR, and have an ERA well over 6. Their BABIP-allowed is the highest in the game, and they pair it with the highest HRs-allowed rate, too. Their starters, while not exactly great, have been so-so; they have a very high K rate in the early going, though it’s hard to know what to make of that when teams haven’t faced many opponents. But the relievers…ooohh, the relievers. This has been a problem in Arlington for years, and again, their new acquisitions haven’t helped. Just today, the Rangers DFA’d Greg Holland, the former ace reliever who’d signed a one-year FA deal with the Rangers this off season. Some of the starters that got bumped to the bullpen – Kolby Allard in particular – have also been off early.
Corey Seager’s been as-advertised, and the Rangers catching duo of Mitch Garver and Jonah Heim has been an early bright spot on the 2-7 club. But Marcus Semien’s off to a slow start, which can hurt, given the fact that Seager and Brad Miller (another guy off to a solid start at the plate) are left-handed. Semien’s slugging below .200 at the moment, as is Kole Calhoun.
1: Frazier, 2B
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Suarez, 3B
5: Crawford, SS
6: Rodriguez, CF
7: Kelenic, RF
8: Toro, DH
9: Murphy, C
SP: Ray
So Mitch Haniger’s out on the Covid IL, with the M’s bringing up UTIL Donovan Walton a few days ago. Today, however, Luis Torrens tested positive, and the M’s have made a 40-man move, selecting 1B Mike Ford from Tacoma. I wrote about Ford in the spring, the one-time Rule 5 pick the M’s made, who, after returning to the Yankees, had a great 1/2 season. It’s been rough sledding since, but he looked good in Tacoma, hitting for power, drawing walks, and even working a couple of pitching appearances in the opening week (Tacoma’s pitching stats are hide-your-eyes bad, so it’s not as improbable as it sounds). I’m glad the undrafted guy out of baseball powerhouse Princeton is getting another shot, albeit only for a short while and likely off the bench. I do worry that he’ll lose his 40-man spot once someone gets healthy, or when rosters are trimmed down at the end of the month, but I’m sure he’d rather get a shot in MLB now and risk the weird signed/DFA’d/signed/DFA’d life of a minor league vet with some service time.
The M’s also acquired local kid and one-time Reds pitcher Riley O’Brien. O’Brien throws in the low 90s, with a curve and change. He’ll report to Tacoma.
Speaking of Tacoma, they went up 9-0 in the first inning this past Sunday in Albuquerque, then held on for a 12-11 PCL-Classic win. Penn Murfee got the save, and has yet to yield a run, which is something on a team whose collective ERA is over 8. Today, the R’s open up a series against Sugarland at Cheney Stadium.
Arkansas is in Corpus Christi to take on the Hooks. Minor League vet Connor Jones takes the hill for the Travs against rising Astros pitching prospect, Misael Tamares. The Travs aren’t hitting well at the moment. Their .218/.318/.338 line is second-worst in the Texas League. They are second in ERA, though – nice to have George Kirby around.
Everett, too, is scuffling a bit with a collecting .196 batting average, though *no one* is hitting in the cold and wet Northwest league thus far. Everett is the only team with an ERA over *4*. The AquaSox host Tri-Cities today, and have promising righty Isaiah Campbell on the mound. Campbell’s given up just one run in 10 IP thus far.
Modesto hosts Rancho Cucamonga today. The Nuts are in last at 3-6, thanks again to an offense that hasn’t gotten it going thus far. The Cal League, like the NWL, is off to a low-scoring start, so the Nuts have company, but still: a sub-.700 OPS is rough in what is generally a hitter-friendly circuit. The pitchers haven’t been great overall, but they are leading the league in K’s.
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6 Responses to “Game 11, Rangers at Mariners – Brash Talk”
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I dared suggest Brash could be in the conversation as the Mariners number 1 or 2 starter before the break. He won’t likely rack up a lot of innings, but they can get away with that with an 8-man bullpen for the majority of the season, as long as the rotation stays healthy and Flexen figures out how to induce ground balls again.
This is not a comment that minimizes the game to numbers…
How effective is this ownership at tempering the over-confidence of punks who gloat and/or grandstand and/or seem less likely to focus and DEVELOP? It’s becoming a concern.
The book on Brash has been that he’s an undersized two-pitch guy. So prospect analysts will look at that and assume he’ll end up a reliever and suffer some injuries.
It doesn’t account for the true dominance of Brash’s stuff, but the lower rating isn’t completely irrational.
^Three-pitch guy. Fastball-slider-curve, with a changeup that needs work and shady command.
The fastball slider are plus. I didn’t realize his curve was considered major league viable before this year….
His curve is a plus pitch as well. It’s been every bit as effective as his slider through the first two starts.