Game 30, Orioles at Mariners – Run Prevention Rabbit Holes
Erik Swanson vs. Dean Kremer, 7:10pm
The M’s host the lowly Orioles tonight, kicking off a three-game series that really seems to start a few weeks against the underbelly of the sport. Sure, sure, there’s a two-gamer against the Dodgers mixed in, but after the Orioles, the M’s face the AL West-cellared Texas Rangers, then after that palate-cleanser with LA, they face the .500 Cleveland team – a team perpetually challenged to hit enough to match their solid pitching – and then the Tigers, the club with the worst record in the league.
As I talked about recently, the M’s are doing quite well (having won yet another series yesterday) despite the fact that it can be kind of hard to say exactly *why*. Coming into the year, the team clearly identified starting pitching as the club’s competitive advantage. The starters would keep the club in games even when their offense wasn’t clicking, and would minimize the number of innings the revamped bullpen would need to throw. It…it hasn’t worked out that way.
Due to a combination of injury and inconsistency, the starters haven’t been the real strength of the club. The top of the line-up was amazing for the first three weeks, and the bullpen has been rock solid all year. Just as the top of the line-up (and here we’re really talking about Ty France) began to slump, the bottom of the lineup awoke, and has helped the club in recent games. But the bullpen’s been there all year, despite the fact that they’re not striking out many batters, and still walk a few too many. I wrote last time about the quiet retirement of the old mantra “control the zone,” and wondered what would replace it. Maybe the answer is: defend the zones.
Here’s a simple question that gets harder to answer the closer you look at it: Are the Mariners good at defense? By BABIP-allowed or a simple defensive efficiency view, the answer is an obvious yes. By BABIP, the M’s have allowed the fourth-fewest hits on balls in play in MLB, and the second-fewest in the AL. By the advanced defensive metrics, they rank below average by a few runs. No, the advanced metrics aren’t disparaging the defense of JP Crawford or Evan White – they were the reason those two won gold gloves last year, and are pretty impressed this year. The problem spots, as has been fairly obvious to those who’ve watched the games, include 2B and, especially, the outfield. But if they’re making way more plays and the M’s pitchers are allowing more balls in play in the first place…how do you grade out below average?
I checked the statcast data to see if the pitchers are allowing particularly softly-hit balls in play that turn into simple chances. Nope. By average exit velocity, the M’s have given up quite hard contact. This is consistent with the fact that the M’s have the second-largest gap between the production they’ve allowed (by wOBA) and the production statcast thinks they SHOULD HAVE allowed judging by how hard and how high batters have hit the ball. There’s nothing special about the quality of contact the M’s have yielded, but they’ve been pretty special in turning that contact into outs.
So is this just an overly technological way to say they’ve been lucky and leave it at that? Well, I’m not sure we can say that yet. I mean, the simplest thing to do for any saber-blogger is to intone the mantra “regression to the mean” and leave it at that. But what are some of the reasons why a team would see such a gap between expected and actual results on balls in play? I can think of four big ones. First, their home park. T-Mobile and Coors Field: not the same. Second, positioning. If the M’s are putting their fielders in good spots *and* helping their pitchers direct contact to those spots, you might see persistent effects that look like luck to the uninitiated. Third, their defense may be better than they’re getting credit for by metrics like UZR. The “small sample” objection applies to essentially all of these, but it definitely does apply to a month of advanced defensive metrics that can be swayed by a handful of chances that were harder than the system thought, or by things like Jose Marmolejos playing more OF in April than he will going forward. Finally, fourth, yeah – this really could just be random chance.
The first three of these aren’t going anywhere. And of these, the park effect may be underappreciated here. We’ve talked a lot about the way the league has attempted to dampen the baseball, which is part of the reason there’s a gap between actual and expected production for the entire *league*. That slight muting of the ball’s bounciness has helped knock down HRs league wide, at least compared to the insane levels of 2017 and 2019. Given that T-Mobile was already death to doubles-and-triples, that’s going to help the pitching staff, and keep on helping the pitching staff. Not only that, but T-Mobile has a humidor to keep the balls more consistently humid before use. This was the technology introduced at Coors Field, then spread to four other parks around the league for 2020 (BOS, ARI, NYM, SEA). It’s spread to another 5 this season, and I think this is a really under-reported aspect of run scoring.
The M’s aren’t striking people out, but they are getting into some deeper counts. And when they do, all of these contact-suppressing factors have been amped up. The M’s are allowing the second-worst production on contact that occurs with two strikes despite again posting far-above-average exit velocities on that contact. The gap between actual and expected production is even higher with two strikes than it is overall. They’re not striking people out, but this has worked out to the next best thing.
Essentially, the M’s and, presumably, their baseball ops staff – including John Choiniere, who’s already been recognized for his exemplary work on IF positioning – are creating something of a “heads I win, tails you lose,” sort of scenario. The park and baseball dramatically reduce the production on fly balls. The infielders and positioning helps knock down the value of ground balls. Yes, clearly, there’s some luck here, especially if they keep giving up particularly hard-hit contact. But there’s a lot more non-luck at play than you’d think. Keeping this up – maintaining a low BABIP even compared to the already low league-wide BABIP – is going to be important if the M’s want to stay in contention and, critically, offer prospects like Logan Gilbert a gentler, more favorable introduction to the big leagues.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Marmolejos, 1B
6: Moore, 2B
7: Crawford, SS
8: Murphy, C
9: Trammell, LF
SP: Swanson – it’s a bullpen day, so he’ll probably toss a couple innings, and then we’ll see a parade of other relievers.
The M’s DFA’d Brandon Brennan, the 2019 Rule 5 pick who intrigued early on in that season with his hard sinker and glorious change-up. But an injury to his arm, some wildness, and the development of other pitchers has left him something of the odd man out, and he’s been picked up by the Boston Red Sox. I’m sorry to see him go despite his struggles with health and consistent effectiveness, as I think it’s always cool to have a real ground ball pitcher, and I just think the run on his change made for tough ABs for opposing hitters. Ah well. Good luck to him.
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Just 3 hits last night.