Game 29, Angels at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Dylan Bundy, 1:10pm
The Angels blasted the M’s out of the park yesterday, jumping all over Ljay Newsome early and building a 10-1 lead. Nice to see the M’s mount a little comeback to make the scoreline a little better, but they were simply never in the game. It happens, and it happens more when you’re on your 8th-choice starter, as Newsome was taking the rotation spot vacated by Nick Margevicius, who was taking the rotation spot vacated by James Paxton. Newsome’s been fine, but it simply wasn’t his night.
The M’s are still hanging around, despite some ominous stats. They now have the 4th-lowest OBP in MLB at just .291, and their average is down to .211, as Mitch Haniger and Ty France cool off slightly. The bottom of the lineup has shown some signs of life recently, but they’ll need to do so more consistently to help boost the M’s run production. Their pitching staff has mostly been solid, but they now rank dead last in strikeout rate. No, strikeouts aren’t everything, but they can cover for a multitude of sins, and some of the M’s outfield arrangements have been somewhat sinful.
Their K-BB% isn’t great (it’s better than dead last, though!) which reminded me that we don’t hear the club preaching the mantra of controlling the zone anymore. This probably isn’t the time, but it does make me wonder if it’s been replaced by some new organizational focus. That’s more pertinent now that we’re mere days away from the start of the minor league season. The revamped and slimmed-down minor leagues feature some great talent, and we’ll dive into that soon, but I just wonder if they’re instilling controlling the zone, or if they’ve moved on, or perhaps incorporated that into a broader array of performance indicators. The daily box-score like summaries the M’s send out for the scrimmages the teams have played to date include things like exit velocity, but not traditional things like hits and runs.
Today, the M’s face Dylan Bundy, who had a great 2020 season and revitalized his career after a disappointing run in Baltimore. Formerly a phenom with a dynamite fastball, he’s now more of a junkballer with a low-velo FB, but a great mix of five pitches, headlined by a very good slider. Especially to righties, he essentially pitches off the slider, mixing in a fastball as a secondary, and also using a curve. To lefties, he features more of his high-spin, high-in-the-zone fastball, with breaking balls and a change-up.
Those high FBs and even the slider can generate some fly balls, but Bundy posted an extremely low HR/FB ratio last season. That luck hasn’t stuck around thus far, and while T-Mobile still isn’t a *great* place for HRs, we could see some more today. Justus Sheffield knows all about regression in a sparkling HR/FB ratio, as his was under 5% last season (!), and he faces a very tough line-up with two amazing RH hitters in Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 1B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Marmolejos, LF
6: Moore, 2B
7: Crawford, SS
8: Torrens, C
9: Haggerty, RF
SP: Sheffield
Just a day or two after acquiring C Jacob Nottinham from the Brewers, and before he could make an appearance, the M’s DFA’d and returned Nottingham to the Brewers in exchange for cash considerations.
Nice bounce-back for Sheffield. It’s still pretty amazing how Seattle has won or had a lead late in so many games considering how flat the offense is overall.
The offense and team is in “better lucky than good” mode, by Pythag W-L as well as in “clutch” (2 outs, RISP, high leverage situations).
It’s probably not sustainable but they don’t make you give the wins back, so let’s see where we are in a few weeks. Seeing some kids actually perform like Sheffield and good team defense is better than some previous iterations of Mariners. Sure wish they had invested some more in MLB performers in 2021 though.