’21 40-Man Preview Extravaganza
Every year, perhaps, I characterize the prospective additions as not particularly thrilling to speculate upon. Whereas in past years, that might be partly due to in-season additions (shoutouts to Matt Brash, who has worn a Mariners uniform without debuting), this year, I would regard is largely attributable to minor league free agency clearing away a lot of fringe candidates. This is not to say that the team can’t re-sign whomever to a ML contract, but if they haven’t already, I don’t think it’s my place anymore to say that they might. It could be that we sign another team’s minor league FAs to MLB contracts! But otherwise, we’re looking at a smaller pool of internal candidates. One is absolutely a lock. A few others, but fewer than usual, you can make a case for.
To recap the rules, we’re looking at a Friday deadline to add college players from the 2018 draft (and before) and sub-nineteen (HS picks, J2 signings) from 2017. Some of those folks have not made particularly strong cases for themselves, so I won’t cover everyone, just the ones that seem like a big deal. We’re all busy. I’m busy. I thought about skipping this post, but why break with tradition? I’m still writing about more guys than you may get from other sources. AND THIS IS MY 400th POST HERE WOW.
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Game 162 –
Tyler Anderson vs. Reid Detmers, 12:10pm
It’s perhaps the most anticipated Mariners game in years, and perhaps the best day for baseball fans since what, 2011? We’ve seen amazing single games in the playoffs, but it’s been a long time since a wild card race has had this many teams still fighting, and MLB’s made the brilliant decision to start all of these games simultaneously. This is the opening round of March Madness, but baseball, with a playoff spot on the line. The Yankees loss made up for the M’s loss the previous day, and improbably, the M’s are still alive.
With an absolutely massive come-from-behind win after what looked like a crushing 3-run HR gave the Angels the lead, the M’s have given themselves a chance. I’ve not seen the kind of pandemonium at the stadium and outside of it *at a Mariners game* since the last M’s playoff series. Felix’s last game comes sort of close, but that’s just a reminder that the last several things that have brought a huge crowd to their feet, urging the team on, summoning belief, have all been sad occasions.
Underneath all of this euphoria, this is a sad occasion as well: this is almost certainly Kyle Seager’s last game in a Mariners uniform, and it’s another reminder that despite this group’s undeniable camaraderie, a ton of moves are coming in the offseason. The least heralded and perhaps most important deadline deal in the majors is the one that brought Tyler Anderson to Seattle. They’ve already turned to him to save a season that could’ve slipped away, and they’ll do it again today. He’s now one of the bigger decisions the M’s will have to make this offseason. The M’s have more rotation slots to fill than they expected, with the M’s a lock to turn down Yusei Kikuchi’s option (though Kikuchi could be back if he exercises his one-year player option), and after Justus Sheffield’s disastrous 2021. Anderson’s steadying half-season was critical as the M’s playoff shot changed slightly from 100% pure luck to something more like a decent team getting hot at the right time.
If there’s any concern for the game, and it’s hard to even think about concerns having been gifted this unbelievable baseball holiday, it’s that Anderson’s worst game of the year came against this Angels club a bit over a week ago. He’ll have to be much sharper, of course, but he’ll also be able to lean on his hit-and-homer-suppressing stadium. That context will help the Angels’ Reid Detmers, too, but the rookie appears to need a lot more help than park effects can provide. Detmers rise has been meteoric; after the Angels’ made him their first round pick in 2020, he breezed through the minors in just over 60 IP, reaching the majors in early August. At AA/AAA, his curve/fastball combination was nearly untouchable, and he K’s 108 in those 62 IP. Somewhat similar to Logan Gilbert perhaps, his breaking ball wasn’t quite the bat-missing weapon at the highest level, at least initially. Gilbert eventually refined his slider and has shown he belongs. Detmers hasn’t yet done the same with his big breaking, slow curve or his harder slider. Detmers is giving up too much hard contact, and thus he’s given up 23 hits in 19 innings, including 5 dingers in his 4 starts. Detmers is the Angels’ future, and I understand wanting to see more of him, particularly after an IL stint, but this is pretty good match-up for the M’s. It doesn’t hurt that Detmers is a lefty, giving the M’s Mitch Haniger and Ty France the platoon advantage.
I think I’m not alone in thinking that last night’s game was the happiest I’ve been watching an M’s game in over a decade. It hasn’t swept away all of the concerns I have for the team in 2022, but it’s shown how compelling baseball can be, and how a chase like this builds tension over weeks and months, making moments like Haniger’s single unbelievably cathartic. I don’t much care what happens in the wild card game, should the M’s make it, and I don’t have a preference who or where they play. I just feel like we’ve been given a gift, and I’m grateful for every minute of this. Despite all of the three-way and four-way tie scenarios, despite all of the intricacies of the tiebreakers, the M’s have made things delightfully simple. Just win, and you might get to play again. Win that, and you get to play more. Repeat. This season looked like it was over right as it began, when James Paxton’s elbow gave out a bit more than an inning into his season. That it hasn’t, and that it’s gone the bizarre way it has, is a testament to Scott Servais and this club’s collective belief. One of the hard things about blogging about the Seattle bloody Mariners all these years is the way time compresses and erases so much – the years run together, the bad and mediocre teams had moments that I thought I’d always remember, but they get buried by another 5 years of falling short. Whatever happens today, I can honestly say I will never forget this team and this year.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Haniger, RF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Toro, 2B
6: Torrens, DH
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Raleigh, C
9: Moore, LF
SP: Anderson
Toronto hosts Baltimore, as Hyun-Jin Ryu squares off against Bruce Zimmermann. New York turns to Jameson Taillon against the Rays’ Michael Wacha and presumably more of their bullpen of death. The Red Sox have Chris Sale starting in DC against Joan Adon, a youngster making his MLB debut.
Go M’s. And also, Go Nats, Go Rays, and Go Orioles.
Game 160, Angels at Mariners – What Does It All Mean?
Marco Gonzales vs. Jose Suarez, 7:10pm
It’s here: the final season of the series, and the most eagerly anticipated of any series in a decade. The M’s aren’t just waiting for a series of incredibly unlikely events anymore. Through their own remarkable work, the hardest part is done. They just need to focus on beating an out-of-it and already-eyeing-up-vacation-ideas Angels club, who will not be starting Shohei Ohtani. That’s…that sounds OK. Sure, if Boston sweeps the Nats, things get delightfully complicated, and we get play-in game scenarios and tie-breakers and all of that, but fundamentally, they’ve got it in their own, weird, hands.
Clearly, this almost impossible playoff chase has had an impact on M’s fans in the northwest. The sports radio stations are talking about it instead of wall-to-wall Seahawks discussion. The team’s pleas for fans to pack the stands have been heard, and tonight’s game is likely a sell-out, with Saturday and Sunday strong possibilities to sell out as well. In general, people seem to be reacting exactly as you’d hope, and exactly as they should: a completely bizarre, unlikely gift has just been dropped on them, and they’re all kind of bewildered and excited, just as they would if they found $500 lying in the road or if they found a long-lost family heirloom. Hey, thank you Fate.
There have been other voices, voices that point to the run differential or their still-pretty-low playoff odds, and still-lower odds of actually winning the World Series. “Just because you found that $500 doesn’t mean you’re, like, some sort of money-finding expert!” Look, the ship sailed on this year’s M’s team being a truly great baseball club. We don’t get to have that, and making the playoffs wouldn’t change that simple fact. The M’s abysmal run differential and their remarkable performance in “clutch” situations are indicators that their performance is not sustainable over the course of a season. Here’s the patently-obvious thing, though: the season’s just about over. No arguments about their run differential matter anymore. They mattered in June/July/August, but with each game, they matter less. We’re now down to looking at individual games, and as we’ve seen, baseball at the single-game level is just noise and weirdness and joy and beauty. Or ugly 14-1 losses. The team’s run differential just isn’t a good predictor of any of it, just as it hasn’t predicted the M’s utter domination of Oakland.
Is it weird to get excited about a team’s that’s overperformed? Shouldn’t this FO be judged on the thing that they keep asking to be judged on: building a lasting, sustainable winning team? No, and yes. It’s not weird to get excited about random good fortune. Most lottery winners look pretty stoked. None of this absolves the M’s FO of their main duty: building that year in/year out contender. If I’m nervous about one thing, it would be that this chase distracts people from holding the FO accountable for the REAL goal for a year or two. But the two goals – luck into a pennant chase and then grow into a legit WS contender in 2022 and beyond – are complementary. This is one of the many cases where looking at the numbers (Fangraphs’ Playoff Odds, run differential, Team WAR totals, whatever) make all of this craziness MORE fun. The M’s have the highest Clutch score ever. They have one of the largest gaps between their record and pythagorean/pythagenpat record ever, and quite possibly the largest gap between their record and a BaseRuns-projected record ever. We will never, ever see this again. This is historic stuff, and for once, all of that good luck alighted on the Seattle Mariners. We will be picking through the treasure trove of data, anecdotes, and assoted ephemera from this season for the next decade. When I figure out what the hell is happening, I want to tell my grandkids about it some day.
Let’s be clear: the M’s are not as good as many of the teams that have already been eliminated, including the anti-Mariners, the San Diego Padres. They look clearly a step or two behind the Blue Jays, the team desperately trying to chase them down. This run, and the way it’s happened, doesn’t change that. But after a long stretch where the M’s were buoyed up by players who’d signed minor league deals, odd hot streaks from Luis Torrens and Abe Toro, and Kendall Graveman’s amazing run, their *current* hot streak has had major contributions from players who are actually a part of the next few seasons. Jarred Kelenic pulled out of the batting death spiral he’d been mired in at exactly the right time, and Logan Gilbert’s steadied himself after a few bad outings. Tyler Anderson’s a free-agent-to-be, but I’d be shocked if the M’s didn’t offer him a multi-year deal. Is all of this a sign that the M’s are pennant winners in 2022? No, not without a big offseason and not without major growth/improvement from their youngsters this offseason. But it’s worth noting that the club currently in playoff position is NOT the club that racked up a lot of that negative differential in April and May.
That’s somewhat true of all teams, but I can’t quite fathom how differently this season could’ve gone. The opening day rotation has two players remaining, tonight’s starter, Marco Gonzales, and Chris Flexen. James Paxton went down, then Justus Sheffield and Justin Dunn. The immediate replacements for Paxton – Nick Margevicius and Ljay Newsome – followed Paxton to injury rehab almost immediately. The bullpen that the M’s had touted as rebuilt and much-improved had Rafael Montero, Keynan Middleton, and Will Vest. When that group – and especially Montero and Vest – struggled, they turned to Domingo Tapia, Aaron Fletcher, and Wyatt Mills. But as the injuries mounted, and 40-man slots opened up, they finally called upon Paul Sewald and JT Chargois. The line-up’s benefited from Abraham Toro, a trade they made with that result in mind. But while the M’s deserve credit for finding the previously-unremarkable Sewald, it has to be noted that they didn’t put him on the team initially, and seemed to have him about 5th in line *among Tacoma relievers* for a shot in Seattle. Yes, the contract status of Sewald and Chargois meant they’d probably always be behind Wyatt Mills or even Robert Dugger or Erik Swanson for the first call, but I’ve been kind of shaking all day thinking of what could’ve happened if Sewald had a May or June opt-out clause in his minor league contract and never got a call from Seattle. The M’s assembled a historically good pile of ex-waiver claims and cast-off reliever this year, and it saved their season. I also hope they get better at identifying the Sewaldian gems from amongst the Brady Lails, Robert Duggers and Domingo Tapias.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Haniger, RF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Torrens, DH
6: Toro, 2B
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Moore, LF
SP: Marco Gonzales
The ultra-competitive Gonzales is a perfect starter for this game.
The Yankees face the Tampa Bay Rays, who aren’t playing for much, having wrapped up the best record in the AL. The Yanks start remarkable ex-M’s cast-off Nestor Cortes, who has a 2.85 ERA in 88+ IP this year somehow. Cortes gave up 6 HRs in 44 PAs as a Mariner last year, but has given up just 13 to 356 batters-faced this year. The Rays start Shane McClanahan, the fireballing youngster who’s having a great rookie season, but kind of gets lost in the shuffle of the non-Glasnow Tampa fireballers. I still get him confused with Drew Rasmussen, but no, Rasmussen was the trade return for Willy Adames, while McClanahan was a first-round pick by the Rays in 2018.
The Orioles head to Toronto to face the Jays, who are coming off that crushing loss to New York yesterday. The Orioles start…look, you don’t want to know, and it doesn’t matter. Let’s just hope they do to Toronto what some equally-unlikely starters did to Boston these past few days. Toronto turns to Steven Matz, but Robbie Ray made his last start yesterday. I’d say they could try to bring him back on short rest, but the most likely pathway for the Jays now involves some kind of play-in game, and they’d likely want him for that (or, you know, the Wild Card game itself).
The Red Sox are in Washington DC to take on the Nationals and Josh Rogers. Rogers was a one-time Yankees farmhand who’d been with Baltimore, but even the pitching-starved O’s didn’t want Rogers, releasing him from their AAA farm team. Washington picked him up, and he was a bit better, although nothing eye-popping. Since coming up this September, though, he’s fared pretty well as your standard issue soft-tossing lefty FB/Slider/Change guy who doesn’t really miss bats and really reminds me of a 1980s style of pitcher. Not sure that’s confidence-inspiring, but the Sox must be feeling all kinds of pressure after dropping a must-win series against the Orioles.
Game 159, Athletics at Mariners – Brash’d Off
Logan Gilbert vs. Frankie Montas, 7:10pm
Everything’s coming up Mariners at the moment. The M’s gamble with Tyler Anderson starting on short rest worked perfectly, and the M’s used all of their bullpen arms to perfection to close out a hard-fought 4-2 win over Oakland. The one guy they *didn’t* use was Matt Brash, who we all thought we’d see. Maybe tonight?
I think I understand the thought process; the M’s didn’t want him to make his debut in what was a very close game for much of the night. It was 2-1 until late, and that’s just asking a lot of a rookie who hasn’t pitched in weeks. Ideally, the M’s get a bunch of runs early and ease the way for Brash to make his debut.
That won’t be easy, though. Frankie Montas is a tough pitcher, and he’s coming off perhaps his best season. He’s got the highest K% of his career, and his control’s slightly better after some issues last season. He uses an even split of a four-seam and sinker (lefties get more of the latter, righties get the former). He mixes in a good, hard slider, and his best pitch, an awesome splitter at 87. He throws the splitter a ton to lefties, but he’ll mix it in to righties, especially in two-strike situations. The pitch has 6-7″ of drop compares to his fastball, and it works: batters have missed on over half of their swings on it this year. Shohei Ohtani’s splitter (rightly) gets more attention, but Montas’ is a pretty good pitch in its own right.
He’s not perfect, though – and I’m not even talking about his 2019 suspension for PEDs. Montas has had platoon splits for most of his career. The reason isn’t the splitter, of course- it’s his fastball. I always used to talk about this when the M’s played the Angels, but pitch types have platoon splits of their own. Sinkers have one of the highest splits, just below sliders: these pitches work really, really well against same-handed hitters. But for some reason, probably to try and avoid HRs, a lot of pitchers use them mostly or nearly exclusively against opposite-handed hitters – they perhaps unwittingly play right into the hitters’ hands. In his career, Montas has thrown over 1,500 sinkers to lefties – that’s more than twice as many as he’s thrown four-seamers to them. Lefties are hitting .340 and slugging .598 against them. Let’s hope he keeps up this bizarre game plan tonight.
It’s been one of the keys to Montas’ achilles’ heel: hard contact. Outside of the weird 2020 mini-season, Montas hasn’t really had trouble with HRs. But he still gives up a lot of hard-hit balls when hitters put the ball in play. It’s why he’s got a career .312 BABIP, and it’s why his xERA (based on exit velo and launch angle) has been higher than his FIP and ERA in 2019 and 2021.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Haniger, RF
5: Kelenic, CF
6: Toro, 2B
7: Torrens, DH
8: Fraley, LF
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Gilbert
The schedule was set up for the M’s to face Shohei Ohtani of the Angels on the final day of the season. Today, the Angels announced that Ohtani would be skipping that start. He’ll still bat, but he’s done pitching this season. I’m sure the M’s won’t mind.
The Rainiers kick off their final home series of 2021 tonight at Cheney, as the R’s face the Salt Lake Bees. Robert Dugger takes the mound for the R’s. His season numbers are brutal, as are most of the league’s , but he’s coming off a AAA-West pitcher of the week win.
Game 158, Athletics at Mariners – Happy Brashday
Chris Bassitt vs. Tyler Anderson, 7:10pm
It’s been about a month or so since a Jerry Dipoto interview dropped a most intriguing nugget of information: that the M’s considered promoting AA SP pitching prospect Matt Brash to the Mariners bullpen for the close of the season. With Brash’s season winding down and with some of the M’s bullpen arms looking a little tired, you could see the thinking. Brash has mid to high-90s velo, and the kind of break on his slider (and two-seamer) that instantly goes viral on social media. You can debate his future value vis a vis George Kirby, but you can’t debate the fact that it’s…intriguing to imagine what Brash could do in shorter stints in the majors.
That info drop was a tease, as we didn’t really hear anything about it for a while after that. Brash’s season ended along with Arkansas, and, shock of shocks, he wasn’t able to keep up his mind-bending hot streak where AA batters struggled to even foul pitches off against him. Tacoma’s season rolled on, as did the M’s, but there was a lull in news about Brash and a possible promotion. What changed had nothing to do with Brash, but it’s what’s got him here with the Mariners: Yusei Kikuchi got bad in a hurry.
After a series of clunkers, the M’s suddenly decided that they couldn’t send Kikuchi out against the A’s – not with the team just 1.5 games out of the Wild Card. Thus, Brash was promoted to Tacoma, but he never joined the team down in Round Rock. They wanted to make sure they had a healthy crew of bullpen arms, and Chris Flexen’s start yesterday ensured that they would. So, Brash is up to make his MLB debut in a short start? Not…quite.
The M’s have made the somewhat odd decision to give the actual start to Tyler Anderson, last season on Saturday in an outing worse than anything Kikuchi’s produced in a while. Anderson’s been amazing since joining the M’s, but is coming off of that atrocious start on 3 days rest. He won’t likely pitch very much, but it seems odd to me in this context to piggy back Brash with a short-rested Anderson.
That said, the M’s may want to whipsaw A’s hitters by having them face a left-handed low-velo change-of-speeds guy like Anderson before giving the people what they want in the high-octane, ridiculous-breaking slider GIF-machine like Brash. It makes it much harder for the platoon-loving A’s to stack their line-up with lefties vs. Brash. They can pinch hit whenever the change is made, but that just guts their bench for the late innings.
As I mentioned before, my concern here isn’t that Brash isn’t up to this. It’s that he hasn’t thrown *this* specific baseball. AA uses the minor league ball, which are made in China and a different product than the MLB ball, which is made in Costa Rica and uses slightly different specifications. That ball’s been in use in AAA, but hasn’t filtered down to AA. When Brash was initially called up to AAA, I thought it might have been to get him used to the seams and feel of the new baseball, but he never actually threw with Tacoma, who wasn’t anywhere near the Pacific Northwest at the time. So, we’ll just have to see how this goes. As Brash’s control is maybe a weaker point, it’s something to keep an eye on, and you figure the M’s coaches will do just that.
All of that said, and as suspicious as I was about this Anderson-on-short-rest business, I think Brash’s call-up does show that the club is taking this chase seriously, and it probably does give them a better shot than sticking with Kikuchi. It could all go wrong, but hey, Anderson’s last start went wrong – the fact that anything can happen cannot be used to block what gives the M’s their best shot at keeping the A’s off the board.
The M’s saw Bassitt not too long ago, and he pitched well against them – but he only went 3 IP. That was his first start off the IL, so we’ll see how long he gets to go. No matter how good he looks, the M’s batters are clearly pretty confident that they can hit whomever the A’s bring out of the pen. They did it in Oakland, and they really, really hit the A’s pen hard last night. Anderson’s only faced the A’s once this year, and he obviously didn’t throw too many pitches in his abbreviated start against the Angels, and of course none of the A’s have seen Brash. The M’s have a good opportunity tonight, and they need to seize it.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Haniger, RF
5: Toro, 2B
6: Kelenic, CF
7: Torrens, DH
8: Fraley, LF
9: Murphy, C
SP: Anderson/Brash?
Tacoma’s off today, and will be back in Tacoma tomorrow, kicking off a series with Salt Lake.
Game 157, Athletics at Mariners – Let Chaos Reign
Chris Flexen vs. Cole Irvin, 7:10pm
Ok, six games left, and the M’s are 2 back of the 2nd wildcard after the Yankees swept the Red Sox. The M’s finish with three against the A’s, and then three against the Angels. The Blue Jays and Yankees square off for three, and then the Jays finish up against Baltimore (darn), while the Yankees face Tampa. Boston finishes with three against Baltimore (darn) and three against Washington (darn). It’s the Yankees WC to lose at this point, but they’ve clearly got the toughest schedule. Boston can get right again with their schedule, and the M’s is in between.
Given that there are two teams ahead of them, and that both of those teams play the Orioles, the M’s realistically need to go 5-1 to have any real shot at this, and 6-0 wouldn’t guarantee anything. But it IS nice to have meaningful games here in late September, and to feel motivated to look up rival teams’ schedules. It’s a reminder that every game can and should matter, meaning that teams that manipulate service time might be harming themselves. I’d lambast the M’s for manipulating Jarred Kelenic’s time a bit more if he didn’t end up getting sent down again anyway, but still.
I always want to see the M’s act like the games matter, and not just use it as a marketing push for this final homestand. Today, they may be showing signs of doing that. As we talked about earlier, the M’s still haven’t announced who’ll start tomorrow night. They put out a series of pitching probables that had Yusei Kikuchi penciled in for it, but they’ve admitted to the beat writers that it’s currently TBD, fueling more suspicion that the M’s will throw caution to the wind and bring in Matt Brash to start, or at least get some innings in. But, that may all depend on how much work their bullpen gets tonight: if their bullpen gets worked hard tonight, they may not want to throw Brash out there. To shore up that pen, the M’s made the zwischenzug* or in-between move of calling up Wyatt Mills from Tacoma and optioning Justus Sheffield. This gives the M’s another arm for tonight, and might pave the way for Brash to be called up to make the start tomorrow.
Chris Flexen just dominated the A’s in this same fixture five days ago, so he’s as good a bet as the M’s have to work deep into the game. A’s starter Cole Irvin once (rather accurately) demeaned the M’s offense, saying “a team like that should not be putting up 10 hits against me or anyone,” after a May game. Irvin has now made four starts against Seattle, the team with the lowest batting average in the majors. He’s taken the loss in each of those starts, and the M’s are hitting a cool .377 against him with an OPS over .950. Maybe they shouldn’t be putting up a ton of hits against you, but you keep allowing them to, so….
The A’s are still alive and kicking in the wildcard race themselves, but of course they have the toughest road, and they’ll need to do it without Elvis Andrus, who picked up an injury the other day. The A’s are where they are in large part due to their inability to beat Seattle. They’ve dominated the Angels, and played the Astros quite tough, but they’re 4-12 against Seattle. A big part of *that* has been the performance of their bullpen. In this recent stretch of the A’s being a perennial playoff contender, a great bullpen has been a huge key to their success. They’ve never spent a ton of money on it, but between the star turns of Sean Doolittle, Grant Balfour and then Liam Hendriks to the initial success from guys like Lou Trivino or Blake Treinen to the consistency of Yusmeiro Petit, they’ve had depth and quality. But the magic’s mostly gone now.
The A’s bullpen has the lowest K/9 in the American League, and 29th out of 30 in MLB. They’ve turned into a team that plays to its ballpark’s strengths, as they have the lowest GB% in the league, and thus a very low BABIP-allowed. The problem is that they don’t always play in Oakland, and so their approach of “throw it in the zone and allow elevated contact” doesn’t always work – some times, even in Oakland, their closer gives up two HRs in an inning to the Mariners.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Haniger, RF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Torrens, DH
6: Toro, 2B
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Moore, LF
SP: Flexen
Tacoma destroyed Round Rock 8-3 last night, getting homers from Jose Marmolejos and Dillon Thomas. Logan Verrett has been one of the rocks of Tacoma’s staff this year, and he was brilliant for 7 IP. Verrett has tossed 106 IP, and while his ERA’s near 5, that’s pretty good in the freakish offensive environment of the AAA-West. It’s a bullpen day today in Round Rock in the final road game of the year. As Mike Curto notes, they finish off the year with a series against Salt Lake, where Tacoma’s Marmolejos faces off with the Bees’ Michael Stefanic for the AAA-West batting title. Marmo’s got the edge going into tonight .350 to Stefanic’s .346.
* I’ve watched a lot of chess during the pandemic.
Game 155, Mariners at Angels – Scoreboard Watching
Tyler Anderson vs. Jaime Barria, 6:07pm
After yet another 1-run win and another great bullpen performance from Paul Sewald, the M’s gained more ground on the wild card leaders, the Red Sox. The surging Yankees are, of course, a problem, but the gap between the M’s and the top teams is going down. A late grand slam from Giancarlo Stanton today opens the door yet again – the gap’s currently only 2.5 games, and the M’s are tied with Toronto, who’s currently playing Minnesota. It’s still an incredibly tall ask, which is why even after a 6-game winning streak, the M’s odds are just 6.5%.
Yesterday’s game always felt like it’d go to the late innings, which is another way of saying that it felt like the M’s would find a way to win. Despite the bullpen giving the Angels some openings, Sewald, Steckenrider, and Sadler were up to the job. Part of that has been their willingness to simply walk Shohei Ohtani and not risk the big play.
So with the M’s still alive and with Yusei Kikuchi struggling, there’s been a lot of talk about turning Kikuchi’s next start over to SP prospect Matt Brash. Brash, my pitcher of the year in AA Arkansas, probably is the most big-league ready prospect the M’s have, and certainly the healthiest. It’s still a risk, as Brash doesn’t have the pinpoint control of someone like George Kirby, and, critically, he’d have to adjust to a brand new baseball: while AAA uses the MLB ball, AA does not. That may be one of the reasons that the M’s yesterday promoted Brash, whose season was already over, up to AAA Tacoma, who’s still playing.
So, give him some time to get familiar with the MLB ball in practice, maybe toss an inning or two in a game, and then promote him? Nothing’s that easy in baseball these days. Just this week, AAA has made *yet another adjustment* to the baseball. As Baseball America, CBS Sports and others reported, AAA will use a pre-tacked baseball for this week. This is a partial response to the mid-season ban on sticky stuff, and pitchers complaining about the slippery baseballs they could no longer tack up with sunscreen (or other stuff). It’s something the NPB has done for years in Japan, and those balls were used in this year’s Olympics, which were greeted with approval from players in the US minor leagues. It seems like a good change, but it’s still very odd to do with a week or so left in the season, and it adds yet another wrinkle to the M’s decision-making. All else equal, Brash probably gives the M’s a pretty good shot, especially at 3-4 high-energy innings. But all else is NOT equal. I still hope to see it, but I’m not convinced that we should mark 3-4 shutout innings in the scorebook at this point.
Today’s Angels starter, Jaime Barria, is a righty with a four-pitch mix – a four-seam and sinker at 93, a hard slider at 86, and a rare change at 86 as well. He had a solid first season in 2018 with a superficially lovely ERA that was buoyed by sequencing and BABIP luck. That luck went 100% the other direction the following year, when Barria was so bad, he was essentially unplayable. Like so many in 2019, HRs were the primary reason. He returned last year and put together his best campaign, albeit in a tiny sample. He’s been solid this year, but it’s been essentially midway between 2019 and 2020. His K rate is way down, and his walk rate is up, but his HRs are down, and he’s been a bit better than replacement level overall. I think Barria’s better than he’s shown this year, but that’s not really my problem. The Angels continue to struggle with run prevention not because they can’t identify promising pitchers. They’ve had quite a few come up and have some success initially, like Barria did in 2018. What they haven’t been able to do is turn that initial success into lasting production. The M’s have struggled with that at times on the position player front (Shed Long, Dylan Moore, to an extent Tom Murphy), but the Angels seem really star-crossed with young pitchers.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Seager, 3b
4: Haniger, RF
5: Kelenic, CF
6: Toro, 2B
7: Torrens, DH
8: Fraley, LF
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Anderson
Tacoma lost to Round Rock 4-3 despite another HR from Jose Marmolejos. They’re back at it now, with Round Rock up early. Recently outrighted SP Kohei Arihara is facing recently outrighted slugger Marmolejos and the R’s. C’mon Tacoma!
Game 154, Mariners at Angels
Logan Gilbert vs. Jose Suarez, 6:35pm
There’s no wrong time to pull off a road sweep of a divisional rival, but that four-gamer in Oakland could not have come at a better time if the M’s could pick before the season started. What I find difficult about this team from an analytic standpoint (I seriously don’t know how to *learn* from what they do, or to make sense of it, really) is exactly why this team is so fun.
The M’s, like most teams, fare poorly at the plate in games they lose, and do much better in games they win. This is…obvious stuff, of course. If you hit better, you can score runs, which give you a chance to win. Okay, so, the M’s have a slash line *in victories* of .250/.330/.444, which, honestly is pretty terrible. Compared to other teams in *their* wins, it’s way, way below average (sOPS+ of 84). In losses, though, they’re hopeless: they hit .190/.266/.311. That’s an OPS well below .600. This makes sense after watching this team – they alternate a ton of comeback 5-4 wins with the odd clunker; like a 12-1 loss to Houston or something.
What yesterday’s win reinforced to me was that this pattern of blowout losses and close-fought wins, while obvious in hindsight, is imperceptible *during* a game (unless it’s 12-0 in the 2nd inning). What I mean is, yesterday’s game had the look of one of those snooze-fest losses. Chris Bassitt was dealing, the A’s got an early lead, responded when the M’s scored a run, and…then everything changed. The M’s bullpen was completely dominant, picking up a gassed Yusei Kikuchi, and the offense become a completely different animal. Cal Raleigh – CAL RALEIGH – who came in with an OPS under .500 and who’s looked utterly lost for a long time, became a legit power threat, and Luis Torrens, who’s been cold, but nowhere near as cold as Raleigh, got the big hit to put the M’s ahead – the only time in Jake Diekman’s career he’s given up 2 HRs in a game. It looked like a blowout loss, and then, suddenly, almost violently, shifted into one of those close, comeback wins.
That earns the M’s yet another most-important-series-of-the-year, this time at an out-of-it Angels club. The story remains the same with the Halos – they simply can’t pitch, and it’s ruined another MVP season. Shohei Ohtani’s season is the kind of thing I will tell my grandkids about, a season that I’m still shocked is actually happening. And it’s all going to be for nought.
Jose Suarez has always looked intriguing to me, with a very split-like change that mimics his four-seam fastball’s horizontal movement. It’s pretty clearly his best pitch, and one he goes to almost 30% of the time. But all of that good-on-paper stuff didn’t help Suarez in 2019-2020, when he threw 83 IP of well below replacement level slop at the AL. This year, though, something appears to have clicked a bit. He’s got more velo by a tick or two, and that probably helps. But he’s also getting more ground balls, which is great, given that HRs was his biggest problem, and the biggest reason for his ugly ERAs and FIPs. He’s still not exactly stingy with long balls, but it’s well within the normal range this season. Lefties (Suarez is a southpaw) will see a lot of high-70s curves and four-seam fastballs with the occasional cambio, while righties get mostly four-seams and change-ups, with the curve sprinkled in, especially as a first-pitch strike-stealer.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Haniger, RF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Torrens, DH
6: Toro, 2B
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Moore, LF
SP: Gilbert
Tacoma kicked off its series with Round Rock with a heartbreaking late-inning collapse. The Rainiers were up 6-0 (with much of the damage off of Rangers SP prospect Cole Winn) in the 7th, but gave up 1 in the 7th, 3 in the 8th, and 3 in the 9th to lose 7-6. Texas super-prospect Josh Jung homered, and Wyatt Mills allowed the final three runs in the walk-off win for the Express. They’re back at it today, and it’s 1-1 in the early innings. Ryan Weber’s on the mound for Tacoma.
Game 153, Mariners at Athletics
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Chris Bassit, 12:00pm
The M’s go for a rare four-game sweep *in Oakland* today, as they try to add to their dominance of the A’s this year. As of right now, the M’s have an 11-4 record against the A’s. In a very real sense, the M’s performance against the A’s and Rays (owners of the AL’s best record) is the reason why they’re in the position of still hunting a wild card here in late September. That’s an odd outcome given that those teams are built on very good pitching.
The M’s struggle against starting pitching. They have an OPS of .698 against starting pitchers, and that includes teams like the Orioles whose starters couldn’t hold down that role for any other team. Their OPS against relievers is, oddly, even worse: it’s jut .667. The thing the M’s have going for them is pressure: they do well in the clutch, and string together solid at-bats, although it seems like they’re equally adept at stringing together crushing strikeouts. However they do it, I still find it fascinating that the M’s – a well below-average hitting team – can not only fight pitching-first teams like the A’s and Rays to a draw, but consistently beat them.
There was a great conversation last night after Corey Brock mentioned that Chris Flexen is now in the top 5 in the AL in ERA. It’s true, as of this morning, he’s 4th! What’s unreal about all of this is that he’s 4th out of a total of 16 qualified starters. As the role of pitching changes, so many of the old ways we think about pitchers – and on what to expect from a starter – have had to change. This has been ably covered by Rob Mains over at BP in a series that’s worth thinking about and wrestling with.
This isn’t really changing; there are fewer than 10 qualified pitchers in AAA-West, and that’s with modified criteria. Teams will need to pay starting pitchers less going forward, and shift payroll costs to an ever-growing number of at least partially fungible relievers. In this odd transitional period, I think it has shown the value in pitchers like Flexen and his opposite number today, Chris Bassitt. Bassitt *just* dropped off of eligibility for qualified starters; he should re-join that group if he pitches a decent number of innings, but he’s making his first start after a 10-day IL stint. If/when that happens, he’ll slot in with the third-best ERA in the league.
Bassitt’s someone who I’ve long been fascinated with, as it’s difficult to see exactly *why* he’s so successful, but after a brilliant/short season in 2020, he’s backed it up with his most valuable season to date in 2021. Avoiding HRs has always been a part of his success, but he’s helped himself with his best K:BB ratio and best K% of his career this year. He’s never been overpowering, and still isn’t: he’s just has six pitches to mix around, and the way each of them moves adds up to a very harmonious arsenal. That makes a bit of sense to me, but it’s still hard to pinpoint *why.* In what way, exactly, does a cutter, change, and four-seam’s movement add up to something that you wouldn’t get just be looking at their movement in isolation? I don’t really know, but that seems like a great research project for fans but also for teams looking to help pitchers with pitch design. Even if the best, say, slider has X or Y movement properties, it may be just as good or better to consider a movement pattern that better plays off of a fastball or cutter.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Seager, DH
4: Haniger, RF
5: Kelenic, CF
6: Toro, 2B
7: Fraley, LF
8: Moore, 3B
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Kikuchi
Raleigh’s frigid start and Kelenic’s hot streak has focused more of the concern for fans on the young catcher. Raleigh’s wRC+ is the 3rd lowest out of 95 rookie-eligible hitters, just ahead of ex-M’s C prospect, Alex Jackson.
Speaking of ex-M’s, Jack Mayfield had another big XBH last night for the Angels. He’s still not exactly a great hitter, but his slash line with the Halos is now .209/.274/.429. Ok, yeah, that’s not great, but what it looks like is a low BABIP power hitter’s line. Mayfield look nothing like this when he was (briefly) with the M’s this year. He hit 0 HRs for Seattle or Tacoma, and now has 10 with the Angels and 5 with Salt Lake. It’s a slash line that looks suspiciously Kyle-Seager-in-2021-like. Kyle’s better, of course, with his .216/.292/.454 line. But they’re oddly similar, right down to the atrocious BABIPs (.229 for Mayfield, .226 for Seags). Seager has a better walk rate, too, but I just never imagined that Mayfield’s value would come from power, nor that his line with the Angels would be kind of a dead ringer for Seager’s slash line in late-July. Not sure what that says about either player, or either season.
Game 152, Mariners at Athletics
Chris Flexen vs. Cole Irwin, 6:40pm
The M’s continued their mastery over the A’s last night to pull into a tie for 2nd in the AL West, and for third in the Wild Card standings. The Rays took care of Toronto earlier, so we’ll hope for good news out of New York, and focus on the game at hand here in Oakland.
We’re just at the point in the season – and I think this is *especially* true this year, following the shortened 2020 mini-campaign – where teams are fraying at the edges. The M’s bullpen had been unreal for months, but while still great overall, has shown some signs of slipping. The A’s starting rotation essentially pitched the A’s into playoff position, but has been worse over the past 30 days. The M’s historic “clutch” performance? It’s still there, kind of, but it’s fading, if something as elusive and intangible can “fade.”
But that’s not all bad. It’s time for the M’s to become a good team without resorting to “I don’t know how, but some random player in the midst of a terrible season will hit a game winning HR tonight,” in lieu of a sustainable model. No, we’ve had enough dingers-ex-machina endings, as awesome as they’ve been (again, this has been the most *fun* season in recent memory). So it’s great to see Ty France end the season on a high note, and even better to see Jarred Kelenic put game after game together where he looks like an offensive force.
Kelenic, like Abraham Toro, who had a similar run after coming over, still has below-average exit velo, and that’s a bit of a red flag. He’s not striking out like Evan White or Taylor Trammell, but it’s elevated enough that he’s either got to learn to hit for power (something he’s showing some aptitude for at the moment), or he’s going to have to maintain a very high BABIP in a park that makes that very hard to do. Kelenic’s season-long BABIP is .211, which is just ridiculously low. It took a hot streak to get it over .200, so yeah, he’s been unlucky. But the problem is that the M’s have several hitters whose approach look similar, and who consistently run very low BABIPs: this is Kyle Seager’s big problem.
Seager has never had a full season BABIP over .300, and hasn’t been above .250 since 2018 (.251!). The reason is that, despite hitting fewer ground balls than average, teams know he’ll pull the ones he does hit. Thus, Kyle’s BABIP on grounders is below .200. Well, Kelenic’s BABIP on grounders is way, way worse than Seager’s. It’s not always going to float dangerously close to .100, but it may never be high, exactly.
And that’s why the most helpful sign from Kelenic recently has been the drop in his GB%. Kelenic’s K% is actually up in September compared to August, but his GB:FB ratio went from 1.67 in July to 1.42 in August to just 0.70 in September. Along with that shift has been a decrease in his pull rate and an ability to spray line drives from gap to gap. That’s an approach that can work. That is, in a nutshell, Ty France’s deal. France is having a great year in many ways, and his low K% is one example of why. But he had a more or less average K rate last year, and still put together a solid season at the plate: France’s approach has led to consistently high BABIPs. He’s at .330 for his career, which is pretty much exactly what he’s running now. He’s not fast, he hits more grounders than Kyle, and his pull rate has been high (2020) and medium (2021) and it hasn’t changed much. He doesn’t have incredible exit velo, either. He just consistently hits the ball on a line. That’s something Kelenic has shown flashes of, and it’s one way to turn what’s been a forgettable rookie season into a long, successful career.
A more easily obtainable outcome, and maybe something like an intermediate step for Kelenic, would be to take Chris Taylor’s approach. Taylor has a nearly identical K rate, and similar numbers in terms of exit velo and hard hit rates. Like France, he has a good idea of the strike zone, and lays off of balls (leading to a good walk rate). But Taylor essentially sells out for power. He has less true raw power than Kelenic, I’d guess, but he gets into balls and barrels them up more than France does. Thus, Taylor has a consistently high BABIP as well, even with a lower batting average due to the higher K rate. Are there some red flags there? Yeah, probably, but Taylor’s a very good player who’ll be a sought-after free agent. If Kelenic’s second act is to refine his approach and hit mistakes harder, that’d be pretty good – no need to go from 0-60 in a year.
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Haniger, RF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Torrens, DH
6: Toro, 2B
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Moore, LF
SP: Flexen
Tacoma lost 8-4 loss to El Paso. Tyler Herb took the loss in his first start up from Arkansas. The R’s start a series at Round Rock on Thursday.