Game 156, Mariners at Twins
Blake Beavan vs. Anthony Swarzak, 10:10am
The M’s go for a rare road sweep this morning in Minnesota with Blake Beavan matching up against Anthony Swarzak in a dream match-up for fans who find strike-outs too showy or selfish. Swarzak, like his brothers in the Twins’ cloning program Nick Blackburn and Liam Hendriks, is the epitome of a pitch-to-contact guy. In fact, this is one of the rare games where Blake Beavan has a better contact/swinging strike rate than his opposite number. If you’re tuning in to watch whoever those people are in Twins uniforms play defense, you’re in luck. Of course, he IS facing the Mariners today, so a career-high in K’s isn’t out of the question.
The line-up:
1: Ichiro (RF)
2: Rodriguez (SS)
3: Ackley (2B)
4: Carp (1B)
5: Smoak (DH)
6: Seager (3B)
7: Robinson (LF)
8: Gimenez (C)
9: Saunders (CF)
A couple of great sabermetric articles while you wait:
First, Mike Fast’s look at pitch-framing has garnered a lot of well-deserved praise. It goes beyond refining how we measure pitch framing and gets to HOW catchers might influence an umpire’s call. For M’s fans, it also highlights just how bad our catchers have been in recent years. That’s not news or anything, but Kenji Johjima was amongst the worst in baseball and Rob Johnson wasn’t much better. Miguel Olivo is quite close to average, but when none of these guys is elite in pitch-blocking, and they range from “meh” to “amongst the worst in baseball” in pitch-framing, you better hope they bring a lot of offense to the table. Kenji did for a while; the others are Rob Johnson, Adam Moore and Miguel Olivo. I know it’s unfair to put the blame squarely on the M’s catching coach Roger Hansen, but while we heard a lot about how much these guys improved under his tutelage, the M’s have had a hell of a time developing catchers who could catch. Maybe the M’s thought so much of him that they gave him guys spectacularly ill-suited to the job (this may be the case with Rob Johnson, who was an OF in college). I love baseball articles that make you think, but beware: this one will might make you reevaluate/pine for the Rene Rivera era.
Second, Josh Weinstock’s got a great article at THT on how a pitcher’s repertoire might impact his BABIP. It focuses on my favorite pitch, the change-up. The takeaway is that throwing a lot of change-ups may lower a pitcher’s BABIP. We’ve seen a few articles breaking down BABIP, HR/FB or batted-ball rates by pitch, but I think we can learn a whole lot more about how pitchers might influence what happens after they release the ball. We’ve known for a while that while their influence isn’t huge and tends to be pretty volatile, it’s not zero either. How we apportion credit/blame is one of those things that divides the saber camp, particularly when it comes to awards. The one-sentence summary of DIPS theory works reasonably well in most cases, but if we can refine the theory based on repertoire, we’re going to alter the way we evaluate pitchers.
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13 Responses to “Game 156, Mariners at Twins”
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marc-
two very cool/interesting links… thanks for those!
Have we really had much success developing fielding (much less hitting) talent at any position? It seems we only have had success signing Ichiro (who learned his craft elsewhere) and drafting Ackley (who was a very good hitter before he was drafted).
Who was the last position player we coached/developed into something valuable?
I am not asserting a position – just asking the question. Knowing what we do well may help alter the things we do poorly.
Love that Twins DP combo – Plouffe to Dinkelman to Parmelee. Rolls off the tongue!
Wow. The Twins are really bad. They are making Beavan look like Justin Verlander.
Indeed – four strikeouts in two innings, somebody should check to make sure Beavan isn’t out there wearing glasses and fake sideburns.
IIRC – Clement was drafted only after Roger Hansen stated that he believed that Clement had enough ability to be at least a minimally acceptable MLB catcher.
Splwak-
It’s hard to say, because all the good ones got traded away (Soo-Choo, Cabrera, Adam Jones, etc.), and everyone else in the system is relatively new…
That said, Dustin Ackley would be exhibit A… He was never a 2nd basemen before coming to Seattle… And is more than adequate there. That’s all our system.
Otherwise, the only guys to even really mention at this point are Saunders, Carp and Liddi… All decent, but never expected to be stellar defenders to begin with. We only now are stocking the system with high potential prospects, so the answer remains to be seen. Very few systems can develop average (or lower) talent into plus-level Major Leaguers.
And Rene Rivera – the Mariners’ compensation pick for losing A-Rod to free agency!!!
Wasn’t a costly mistake or anything, but – come ON Trayvon.
Wow our first base coach is short.
Ichiro is the least clutch hitter we’ve had in a long time. Pisses me off.
Ichiro, career:
2 outs, RISP: .345 BA, .912 OPS.
In fact almost all his clutch stats are good.
Even this year, his worst season in MLB:
2 outs, RISP: .321 BA, .789 OPS
Which is still better than league average (129 sOPS+).
Hey, just for fun – let’s compare that to Miguel Olivo’s “clutch” stats.
Miggy, career:
2 outs, RISP: .226 BA, .678 OPS
But this year, he’s stepped up his game! Oh, wait…
2 outs, RISP: .232 BA, .610 OPS (77 sOPS+)
Thank goodness Miguel doesn’t waste many of those plate appearances on useless walks…