Craziness
After Bobby Crosby’s bases clearing triple, the Mariners had a 9.2% chance of winning. Heading into the bottom of the 8th inniing, the Angels had a 98.7% chance of winning. If the Mariners win the division, I guarantee that tonight will be pointed to as the turning point. The Angels were marching towards victory, only to have their closer give it away. The M’s were marching towards defeat, only to win on one of the most ridiculous at-bats you’ve ever seen.
I mean, where do you start talking about this game? Some terrible pitching on both sides, only exacerbated by the worst job of umpiring I’ve ever seen? Or how Branyan thumping another left-handed pitcher? Wak’s inexplicable usage of Sean White? Shawn Kelley with some absolutely brilliant pitching? The Lopez at-bat? That game was just a circus.
I want to point out a few things, though, that don’t fall into the jubilation “holy crap how did we win that game” category.
I wasn’t too worried about Morrow before, but I am now. The only way Wak’s bullpen usage makes any sense at all is if Morrow wasn’t available and he was saving Aardsma for the ninth. Otherwise, umm, Sean White in the 7th – maybe you can explain as the hot hand or something, but Sean White starting the 8th inning of a tie game at home on the day after the team didn’t play? That’s just nutty. Once Kelley got through the 8th, if Morrow was available, I’d have to think he’d have been throwing. If the team scores in the 8th, it’s a save situation. If they don’t score, there won’t be any save situations for the rest of the night, so you might as well use him to keep the game tied.
While we’re talking about Wak decisions, I’d love it if one of the beat writers (hint hint) would take advantage of their pre-game talks with him and get him to explain his “I don’t pinch hit” rationale. On the season, we’ve now used a pinch hitter three times – Mike Sweeney hit for Rob Johnson in Chicago, Wladimir Balentien hit for Franklin Gutierrez in the same game, and Sweeney pinch hit for Jamie Burke in the 9th inning of the 8-2 loss to the Tigers. Essentially, in one game out of 23 this year, Wak has used pinch-hitters as a strategic move to try to win a game, and in both times, he used an RHB to pinch-hit for an RHB to face an RHP.
Clearly, he understands platoon splits. However, he just doesn’t seem to really care about them after he’s turned in his line-up card. I think 99% of managers in baseball jump at the chance to send Ken Griffey Jr to the plate representing the winning run in the 9th inning at Safeco against an RHP. There’s a lot of evidence out there that the pinch-hitting penalty is pretty severe (even good hitters generally suck when asked to pinch-hit), and not pinch-hitting might actually be the best percentage play there, but I’d still love to hear Wak talk about why he is so clearly not a fan of the move.
Oh, and I’ll be surprised if Silva makes his next scheduled start. With Vargas just up from Tacoma, the team has an option that’s already stretched out and capable of eating innings. RR-S is due back pretty soon, but I’m not sure they’ll wait that long.
Uh, Dave, I think you mean the A’s, not the Angels.
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OK, thanks, @2. I stand corrected.
He meant Angels. Look at the lower graph. It’s even crazier than the top one.
The thought of Vargas starting over N.S.C.S. makes me smile. And when is it not too early into a contract to consider it sunk cost? Is it one month into the second year of a four-year deal?
Also, Guti has quickly become my favorite player behind Ichiro.
The announcers kept saying how great Lopez’s final at-bat was as he was fouling off pitch after pitch. It was exciting and you can’t beat the result, but I wouldn’t say great. He was swinging at everything. I know that you have to protect the plate with 2 strikes and that the umpiring was a little spotty (although he seemed to have too small of a zone, not too big of one), but some of those pitches were up by his neck. If you milk a walk in that situation it’s a guaranteed victory. If you milk a sweet pitch to drive it’s probably a lot closer to 50-50.
Still kudos to Lopez, he did get the job done.
Ps– I believe Dave is referring to the Angels / Yankees game
One of the fun things about this year’s team is that they don’t have the cringe-worthy players they had last year — guys like Vidro, Cairo, and Sexson that were just sad to see in the lineup. But Silva still fits in that category for me. It feels like the team is giving something away every time they give him the ball. I hope Dave is right and they relegate him to $12/yr. mop-up duty.
I would. That was a great at bat.
And making contact with everything. It reminded me of Ichiro. Sometimes he’ll get 2 strikes and just foul off a bunch in a row until he gets something he can put in play. Lopez showed some pretty good bat control there.
Bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded, tie game. You want to walk back to the dugout after watching strike three called? Put it this way, Lopez didn’t swing at anything he couldn’t get the bat on.
If Silva starts again this season, it had better be because six other starters are on the DL and we’re nine games out. And it’s mid-September. And I’m not at the game.
Clearly, Wakamatsu just wanted to make me look bad in front of my wife for saying “your attention please… now, batting for Mike Sweeney… ”
Although, in typical Wakamatic fashion, things turned out OK in the end.
Going into that at bat Lopez was averaging 3.23 pitches seen per plate appearance. That single at bat raised it to 3.36 and he is now ahead of Yuni who is at 3.35. Beltre still trails the team at 3.22. All three of them are in the bottom 10% of the majors in that category.
The highest rate on the team? Griffey at 4.07 and Gutierrez at 3.92. For reference, that is around middle of the pack compared to the rest of the league.
I sure hope you’re right about Silva missing his next start. It’s just getting ugly with him.
The way the Angels have started the season, I’m not sure I look at the them as the primary threat to the M’s winning the division.
“When is it not too early in a contract to consider it a sunk cost?”
Anytime you aren’t getting value out of something, get rid of it unless there’s compelling evidence that the situation will change. A big mistake that amateur investors make is saying, “I’m holding on to it. If I sell, I’ll lose a bunch of money.” So they continue tying up their money in a bad investment instead of dumping that investment and putting the remaining money (their “loss”) to more productive use.
So to answer your question, if we are looking at three more years of Silva’s recent performances, we’re better off trading him for a Class A pitcher (like we did with Bobby Ayala who obviously wasn’t making $48 million but also had to go for the team’s sake.).
Mariners want to lose a division title? Keep starting Silva…
What is the % chance Morrow starts this season?
Silva’s pitching like he’s next for the disabled list. I don’t know what the stated excuse will be, anorexia maybe.
Strained quad. Stuff with the leg is always good.
Escobar, Lackey and Santana are all scheduled to come off the DL sometime this month. They’ll get Vlad back eventually. Yeah, they could have more setbacks, yeah those starters may be a little shaky at first, and yeah Vlad may never be what he once was. Yeah, they’re 4.5 games back… but they’re only 4.5 games back, and that’s while missing a couple of all-star pitchers from their rotation. They may not be the primary threat at the moment, but you shouldn’t assume that their misfortunes will continue at this rate and intensity for the rest of the season. How many teams have the opportunity to add 3 quality starters when they’re just a few games out of the lead with months still to play?
Maybe the Angels will stay snake-bit all season, and maybe Texas will emerge as the new nemesis in the AL West. Or maybe the A’s bats will come around and Beane will pull yet more rabbits out of hats to create a dangerous set of pitchers. But even at their current nadir, the Angels still have the clearest opportunity to get significantly stronger as the season progresses, so until they fall a lot further in the standings I’d still consider them the primary threat. And if they do fall father, and the M’s go all the way, we will still have reason to point to Friday night as a significant milestone, if not “the” turning point.
As far as team management, Larry LaRue sheds some light on the subject…kinda.
Note: The quote makes more sense after reading the article.
Seems like he’s still trying to get a feel for his team. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him start pinch-hitting in late game situations in the future. Might just be exploring what happens when he doesn’t pinch-hit.
Well, actually the decision isn’t whether they’re getting their money’s worth out of Silva, but rather whether they have anybody better to take his place. Going into the season, I didn’t think they did, but after watching him throw batting practice for four of his five starts…
Fun fact – Silva’s faced 115 batters so far this year. He has a total of 16 swinging strikes. Washburn, no strikeout pitcher himself, has 23 swings and misses with 8 fewer BFs.
Not to mention the emergence of the revelation that is Jakubauskas. After watching him take care of the White Sox (and absorb one of the least-deserved losses in recent M’s pitching history) I can say this: I don’t know how good a pitcher he’ll ultimately prove to be, but I have no doubt he’s a better starter than Silva.
My sense in watching it in real time in three-dimensions (though we look through the screen, you can see the batter’s eyes pretty well) is that Jose had adjusted his vision to be looking for sliders exactly where Springer kept putting them, and that anything in that space he was going to reach for and foul off until he got something he could drive, rather than make a judgment about whether the ump was going to call it a ball. The kid sitting next to me had the Nintendo thing and he showed us the chart while the at-bat was still going on, and it was of course pretty radical.
We can talk all we want about how a hitter should approach a particular situation, but it’s very different from actually doing it. If Jose believed he could handle all the sliders and was most concerned about not taking a called third strike, I can’t argue with the strategy in this instance (plus, it was wicked fun to watch).
The team can even point back to Silva’s start in LA when the trainer had to come out and talk to him as evidence of this being a “real” injury.
Then they should just go send him to hang out with Ty Willingham and they can sit around and talk about what they do with all the money they’ve stolen from the stupid people in Seattle.
plus, it was wicked fun to watch
Agreed. But bases-loaded walks can be fun to watch as well (think Doug Strange vs. David Cone in the ’95 divisional series).
I’m not ragging on Lopez, by the way, he delivered. I just wish he had more discipline at the plate. You’ll be hard pressed to convince me chasing pitches way out of the strike zone is ever an example of great hitting, even if you can foul them off (ok, maybe on a hit-and-run).
And I agree with you, zj. But you can’t expect Lopez to turn into Edgar in the space of a single at-bat. I think it’s far more important that he clearly had a strategy and executed it than that he have tried to do something not within his repetoire and failed.
Theres no doubt that the Angels will be a more dangerous team once they get healthy. But if you look at the Angel’s starting rotation, they’ve been pitching well. Its their bullpen that has been their demise; something that wont be fixed when Lackey and Co. rejoin the team.
But good starters reduce your reliance on the bullpen. And as we’ve seen (and more than just this year), a good bullpen is easier to assemble than just about any other component of a team. It may take the Angels some time, cycling guys from the minors and maybe grabbing some freely-available talent, and they may never feel confident about it, but that’s something they can definitely improve over the course of the season also. Until the Angels are much further back, and another AL West team is much closer, to my eyes they remain the biggest threat.
Lopez took 4 pitches. The last two were outside the strike zone on the Pitch/FX yet were called strikes. He couldn’t stand there and let borderline pitches go any longer or the rally could’ve been over… The last thing you need in the bottom of the 9th with the bases loaded is a called third strike. That would absolutely kill any momentum and likely would’ve resulted in a hard-luck loss.
Does anyone have a link to a highlight of the whole Lopez at bat?
I was working during the game, so couldn’t watch, and I haven’t found a highlight that includes anything more than the final pitch.
Morrow to the 15 day DL. Elementary, my dear Watson. (DC in the role of Sherlock Holmes) And they were worried about Lincecum’s durability?
Morrow has been placed on the DL.
Getting the Ichiro treatment (“I can play. I swear.”). Denny Stark called up.
I swear, you people keep bringing up Lincecum ad nauseam just to try to drive me crazy. 🙁
http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=4380889
I didn’t get to see it for I was hanging with my little brother that just graduated and MLB.com was experiencing yet another “technical error”.
Just a random question, how much specifically does the chance to win decrease when Silva Pitches?
AndyK, the Angels’ bullpen has been unlucky — their results will almost certainly improve.
I find myself wondering who will have more saves by the end of the season: Morrow or Aardsma.
Speaking of the bases loaded walk game-ending walk, one of our old pals just issued one.
“Then they should just go send him to hang out with Ty Willingham and they can sit around and talk about what they do with all the money they’ve stolen from the stupid people in Seattle.”
It’s never the player “stealing” money from anybody unless they aren’t putting in the effort. As long as the player is putting in the effort, in my book at least, the blame for a bad contract squarely rests with the GM/scouts who decided to sign the player and give him the money they did. Just my opinion.
I hold no malice towards Silva save that i don’t want to see him in this rotation (not his fault he isn’t any good anymore or that Bavasi was dumb enough to sign him to 4 years 48 mill). He may well cost us the division this year if they keep pitching him. This team isn’t good enough to throw a near automatic loss out there every five days. But, not Silva’s fault he’s making as much as he does. That’s Bavasi’s and the scouts who advised Bavasi’s fault.
My vote is to take advantage of last thursday’s off day and skip him in his next start and then hopefully RRS will be back soon and they can send Silva down to AAA to work on stuff for a month or so then give him another shot. Occasionally this sort of thing actually works. Couldn’t hurt anyways and it will give us a little time to see if Jak is for real and if RRS can find his form from last year.
In order to get a save you have to record outs, which almost automatically excludes Aardsma.
And you say that in full awareness that Aardsma has 9 Ks and 3 saves in 10.1 IP? Aardsma definitely has control problems, and I wouldn’t call myself a fan (particularly in that role) but he would appear to be Wak’s alternate closer when Morrow is unavailable.