Have A Hot Dog With Me, Don Wakamatsu
Kirby Arnold talks with Don Wakamatsu. It’s worth reading, but one sentence sticks out:
But even long at-bats aren’t necessarily good at-bats. Both Jose Lopez and Adrian Beltre had at-bats when they fouled off several pitches.
“There would be an 11-pitch at-bat and a lot of guys would say, ‘Hey, great at-bat. Way to battle,’†Wakamatsu said. “But we’d go back and look at it on video and not one of the pitches they swung at was a strike.â€
YES! YES! A THOUSAND TIMES YES!
You’ve heard me rant about this before. It is not a good at-bat when you foul off 10 pitches that were out of the strike zone. That is a stupid at-bat that demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the value of a walk. Jose Lopez probably had four or five of these at-bats last year. Every single time, the announcers would praise him for hanging in there, battling, refusing to give in, blah blah blah. And every single time, he could have been standing on first base, but instead, he insisted on swinging at crap that wasn’t even close.
A good at-bat does not teach the opposing pitcher that he never has to throw you a strike. If its ten inches outside, don’t swing*. I don’t care if you think you can hit it. I don’t care if you can hit it. Don’t swing at pitches over your head. Don’t swing at pitches that bounce in the dirt. Don’t swing at a 3-0 change-up on the inside corner at the knees.
That Wak gets this is awesome. I love our manager.
* Ichiro has earned the right to do whatever he wants. He’s the exception.
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I remember looking at some of those at bats on gameday, you really have to admire the hand eye coordination to get the bat on pitches that far out of the strikezone. If Beltre would ever learn to lay off the slider outside and in the dirt his OBP would go up 20-40 points overnight.
I do have to note though the incredible walkoff hit Jose had in May or June where he fouled off about 6-7 pitches all of them over the plate but high before singling the winning run.
I love the whole organization right now. I know it’s been repeated again and again, but my gawd, how different it feels now than 2 years ago. Wak is smart. Maybe not perfect, but he’s clearly smart and trying to improve, and the players like him. I couldn’t ask for much else out of a manager. We’re about to go into an extremely critical off-season, and I’m pretty sure our GM has already thought of the 50 ideas I have, plus he’s thinking of another 500 I’ve never considered. Rad time to be an M’s fan.
Best. Manager. Ever.
But then he says this:
That’s simply not correct, but it’s a common mistake. That math assumes that every blown save is a loss, and that’s not true. Probably about half of those blown saves were games the Mariners eventually won despite the blown save.
Manager of the year.
Suck it, Scoscia.
That’s simply not correct, but it’s a common mistake.
Right – he’s not perfect. He gets stuff like this wrong. But stuff like this doesn’t matter. It isn’t a practical strategy that he’s going to implement – it’s just a junk stat that he uses to encourage himself that contention is possible. No big harm there.
Another roster guy that had
a fewtoo many of this type of at bat ended up playing for some team in the mid-west. (Sorry Lauren, we won’t miss him as much as you will)Dave, this is textbook “not measurable” stuff, I admit, but how much do you think Ichiro’s presence causes guys to flail at pitches they might otherwise pass on? I mean, they all go up to the plate with their own game plan (excluding the departed Yuni), but do you believe peer pressure and oneupsmanship could cause certain free-swinging types to swing even more freely because the guy batting .350 at the end of the bench does it?
Apologies for the run-on megasentence. And just to be clear, Ichiro is basically my sports hero times a hundred.
Thanks for this post. It warms my heart.
So, using this logic, the M’s were in a realistic position to win 162 games before the season started. Damn, Wak sucks!
If it was acceptable on this blog to call someone a dumbass, I would think that somebody might at this point.
but how much do you think Ichiro’s presence causes guys to flail at pitches they might otherwise pass on?
Not at all. Beltre didn’t get less patient when he got to Seattle. He’s always been like this.
Same deal with Lopez/Betancourt. They hacked their way through the minors, Ichiro-free. This wasn’t some surprising development that they refused to walk. They’ve always refused to walk.
Thanks for the answer Dave.
Is it right to say they refuse to walk? I’ve always figured most of these guys just don’t have (or never developed) the pitch recognition ability to see early enough that the pitch is going to be a ball. They might want to walk, they just can’t.
Seems like I read somewhere that if you haven’t developed that ability very early on you aren’t going to develop it later. So managing/coaching/talking with/yelling at guys like Beltre or Lopez isn’t going to teach them that. It’s too late.
The way to have a team lay off those pitches isn’t coaching, it’s putting together a team made up of players who lay off those kind of pitches.
I realize I have no evidence to base this hunch on. But I’m throwing it out there.
[fixed]
Perhaps they’re thinking that they’ll help their team by wearing a pitcher out early?
Watching ten-pitch AB’s can be fun. What isn’t fun is watching a one-or-two-pitch GIDP on a ball that shouldn’t have been swung on in the first place. I don’t have any numbers to support this feeling, but I’m pretty sure that the tendency to swing on bad pitches has given us more short AB’s than long several times over.
Don’t forget to hammer Ichiro. Every time my wife watches him bat she comments about how he swings at everything. Didn’t he once hit a ball that hit the ground first?
Also, Wak can’t have it both way. He was talking about getting to Lackey in the first inning, but hey, a 4 pitch walk sucks when you can get him to throw 10 pitches by fouling off everything.
Dave, you’re right on this and I really wish more people would pay attention to it.
GET A PITCH TO HIT.
That’s Ted Williams saying it, not me.
If a pitcher knows he can keep throwing garbage because you swing at it, well, that’s all you’re going to see. The trick to hitting is to lay off the WAY low/outside/inside stuff, and make contact close to the plate untill you get, (drumroll) a decent pitch to put into play.
It’s always a good idea to read the fine print: Dave said Ichiro’s the exception. Why, you ask?
OBP BABIP BB%
Beltre .325 .293 7.1
Betancourt .298 (!) .292 3.4 (!!)
Lopez .303 .288 3.8
ICHIRO! .378 .359 6.3
Those are all career averages. Ichiro gets to swing at whatever he wants because, um, he gets hits, lots of ’em, too. You may have heard: 2nd fastest to 2,000 hits in MLB history, only guy with 9 consecutive 200-hit seasons…M’s made kind of a big deal about it.
When a guy has an OBP around .300, you ride his ass to be more patient; when a guy has an OBP around .380 (especially a lead-off hitter), you shut your mouth and let him do his thing.
1) A four pitch walk gets a runner on base
2) A four pitch walk gets a runner on base
3) If the pitcher doesn’t have command, why let him find a groove? He gives up a four pitch walk, can’t find the strike zone the next batter and gives up a six pitch walk, now you have two runners on base before he’s able to get his command back instead of giving up one of your 27 outs.
4) Think about that for a second. 27 outs. All things being equal, it accounts for -3.7% win probability (simple math). I’m sure someone can elaborate on here, but having a baserunner on (ANY baserunner) INCREASES your win probability.
5) When managers talk about “getting to the pitcher” early, he means one thing: scoring. Baserunners. Getting them out of the windup and into the stretch. Making them uncomfortable. Good pitchers have a tendancy to “settle in” and find their rythem as the game goes on as they get a feel for what pitches they do and dont have that day.
Ironically, one of them resulted in a walk-off hit.
Ichiro is so unique — and likely even more so when you are around him everyday — that I can’t imagine any ball player thinking he should copy him.
A 4-pitch walk gets you 40% of the way there for free. Now the next guy only has to foul off 6 pitches instead of 10.
But Wakamatsu wasn’t saying that the M’s would have won 113 games. He was saying that the team was competitive in 113 games which is rght. The team had a good chance to win in a lot of games.
That would be fine if the pitches in question that they were fouling off were strikes. The piont here is that Lopez is swinging at balls. Getting people on base has just as much a chance of extending the inning and, thus, making the pitcher work more.
Granted, it is possible that after a 4 pitch walk, the 5th pitch is a double play ball, but you’re not supposed to look into the future and predict the worst possible outcome in your at bat. Your job is to get on base. In Lopez’s case, he’s trying with a really stupid approach. He’s not going up there with the game plan of fouling off pitches to wear out the starting pitcher. He’s fouling off pitches because they’re not good pitches to hit.
A lot of the free-swinging is a residue of the Bavasi era, when the team believed that plate discipline was a skill that could be acquired at the MLB level. The key to getting promoted in the Mariners minor league system was making consistent contact and not striking out. Walks didn’t matter; in fact taking walks hurt if you were taking pitches that you could hit by expanding your strike zone. As soon as a guy demonstrated that he was not being overmatched by pitching at a given level, he was generally promoted at the first opportunity, with no regard as to whether he had demonstrated control of the strike zone.
With that philosophy the Mariners wound up with lots of guys who either had little or no basic plate discipline ability or had not developed any abilities they might have.
***
In the minor league systems of some other teams, controlling the plate is an essential requirement before being promoted to the next level. Under the old regime the Mariners did not have that philosophy.
@utis
Actual the team was competitive in all 162 games. Every single game that I can recall started out tied, 0-0.
*****
No, Wak wasn’t saying the Mariners would have won 113 games, but he was indicating the Mariners were competitive in 113, based on adding together 85 wins and 28 blown saves. But that logic presumes that all 28 blown saves are losses, which is not the case.
I can understand why you give Ichiro a pass, but I think he would be even better if he would be just a bit more selective.
He’d have more walks, higher OBP, probably higher SLG, too. I’ve said it before: I think he could hit .400 if he took more walks.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! And not only does Wak get it, so does Jack Z.
The also understand that pitching and defense keep you in every single game, even if you have hardly any offense.
And they understand the idea of selecting players who will play well in your park…you know, like left-handed hitters, guys who play defense, and pitchers who may not have the fastest fastball, but throw strikes and let the batters hit it…even in the air, at SAFECO.
And that’s why in a couple of years, we will be very close to World Series-ready.
Ichiro
Wlad
Kirby Puckett
Those are the only three players I can think of watching that hit so many pitches out of the strike zone, that it would prevent any coach from ever messing with their approach at the plate.
Everyone else, learn the strike zone.
No, it doesn’t. Wakamatsu is using a shortcut for Win Probablity. A 50% win probability at the start of a game is not the same thing as a 75% win probability going into the ninth inning. Wakamatsu is saying that in 113 games, the Mariners had a high win probability close to the end of the game. You can disagree with it being an accurate measure of the team’s competitiveness but it is an accurate statement.
All of you people disagreeing with Steve are missing his point. It shouldn’t be 85 plus 28, it should be some number lower than 85 plus 28. So using 113 is silly
Just to satisfy anyone who is deeply curious about this meaningless number, 21 of the team’s blown saves came in losses, 7 of them in wins, so they were “competitive” in 106 games.
The other thing that Wak didn’t mention is that the M’s led the league in save opportunities with 77, as well as blown saves at 28. The lesson we should take from that isn’t really that we blew too many saves, we should have scored more runs so we have a greater margin of error. League average BLSV% was 34%, M’s: 36%, so our bullpen cost us 1.54 wins.
It’s an interesting idea. It makes sense. But Ichiro is Ichiro, and Ichiro is unlike any other player ever to play baseball in the US. I doubt he’d be, say, insulted, if Wak asked him to have a slightly more conservative approach at the plate, but I just don’t see it happening.
I got Steve’s point. You are missing my point. This statement “In at least 113 games the Mariners had a greater than 50% win expectancy in the ninth inning” is accurate though perhaps meaningless. The numbers 86 or 106 would be a less accurate number to use in that statement.
This statement “In at least 113 games the Mariners had a greater than 50% win expectancy in the ninth inning†is accurate
Have you checked? Because I doubt it is accurate, actually.
Actually most of the games are losses but indeed there’s some double counting. But a lot of the 28 number is because you can get charged a blown save in a situation where you wouldn’t actually be pitching for the save.
Lowe, Batista, and Kelly combined for 18 of the blown saves. (I checked these because I assumed all were middle relief.) The Mariners were 4-14 in those games. Half of those were in the 6th or 7th inning and they had no practical chance at a save. Only 1 was in the 9th inning and was a game the “Mariners had a greater than 50% win expectancy in the 9th”.
Someone can add up Morrow, White, and Aardsma. I’d guess 2-8 with 6 in the 9th inning.
That said, 28 BS led the league. But I think that’s a result of lousy offense + pitchers park => low-scoring close game => lots of opportunities for middle relief to “blow a save”.
This statement “In at least 113 games the Mariners had a greater than 50% win expectancy in the ninth inning†is accurate
No it isn’t, and there’s no need to look it up – that’s clearly untrue.
Sorry “ninth inning” should have been “late inning”. However, I stad corrected. If, as Adam shows, you can get a blown save in the sixth inning it is a meanigless stat. I still would like to know how any wins plus “close and late” games the Mariners had. Is the Win Expectancy data archived somewhere?
The save has been a media stat since it’s inception. And the more recent “hold” is no different. They both give the heads and writers something to blather about.
It maybe accurate but it doesn’t mean anything. Even if their average win % in those 113 games was 65%, and in the other 49 games it was 25% they still would have won only 86 games. That doesn’t make the playoffs usually.
You obviously meant “Vlad”, not “Wlad.” It’s hard to imagine two guys whose approach at the plate is as different as Ichiro’s and Vlad’s, though. Completely different swings, completely different approaches even if they both swing at a lot of balls and put them in play. Ichiro, I’ve always felt, if he had been born in a country that played it, would have been the greatest cricketer ever. Vlad perhaps the winner of the long-drive competition in golf.
I don’t know about “late and close” but, by way of B-R, here’s the outcome (and winning %) per inning when the M’s enter an inning with a tie score (which for the first inning is every game):
1 85-77 0.525
2 44-39 0.530
3 27-22 0.551
4 20-18 0.526
5 18-16 0.529
6 15-12 0.556
7 19-10 0.655
8 13-7 0.650
9 12-9 0.571
10 9-7 0.562
11 6-2 0.750
Actually there’s data for innings after 11 (all the way out to inning 15) thanks to that ridiculous game with the A’s but it’s just one game. The M’s look pretty strong in the 7th and 8th inning to me; the 9th looks weaker but only by comparison. Keep in mind there’s some duplication — an 0-0 game that is won with one run in the 9th gets a win credited to every inning here.
There’s more at that link, including leads gained and lost and runs scored / allowed per inning (which of course is vastly skewed by the lineup spots that come up in a given inning).
Yes, this is the best way to look at it I think. Every one-run game is is one more invitation for random disaster. That the M’s did well in 1-run games in ’09 shouldn’t really be seen as an asset, since some of it was luck. Sometimes being lucky is better than being good, but the offseason should be devoted to working on the “good.”
And often times, being good can almost seem to create more luck. Just look at the ’09 WS winners for example.