Game 5, Mariners at White Sox – Happy Brash Day
Matt Brash vs. Vince Velasquez, 1:10pm
Given where the M’s are in their contention cycle, we’ve been treated to quite a few pitching debuts recently. Justus Sheffield, Justin Dunn both made their starting debuts in 2019, alongside the NPB vet Yusei Kikuchi. Last year, it was Logan Gilbert’s turn. It remains exciting, but some downright disaster starts (Dunn’s) and retroactive reassessment (Sheffield) can make us cynical about the whole thing. But there’s something about Matt Brash that’s almost cynicism-proof. I think a part of it is the sheer *lack* of hype Brash has until late last season, despite out-pitching many of the M’s top prospects, and the reason for *that* is his undeniable stuff. Sheffield had an underpowered fastball, but a solid slider. Gilbert has a good fastball, but a slider without much spin that he’s still trying to refine. Dunn…I’m not really sure what Dunn had beyond a hard-to-pick-up fastball, I guess. Brash has perhaps the best two-seam fastball and the best slider of any SP in the minors, and I can’t wait to see them in the big leagues.
Isn’t this hyping up of Brash just setting M’s fans up for disappointment? Like, if he’s not instantly successful, then what do we make of his repertoire? I think the most important thing is that this is the M’s fifth starter, and God knows M’s fans know well how to be patient. His command was impeccable in the spring, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a little shaky in the early going. All he needs to do is settle down and trust the stuff that got him here. Brash can get out of jams thanks to his bat-missing ability, and he has surprisingly little in the way of platoon splits despite the sinker/slider combo (he’s got other pitches too). He can probably throw hard knowing he won’t go more than 5 IP at most, and he can trust his defenders to…wait, the OF is Winker/Kelenic/Haniger? Hmm. Ok, go for the K, Matt.
Brash’s super-high spin slider gets astonishingly high horizontal movement, an attribute teams are increasingly looking for due to its correlation with Ks. He gets run on his fastball as well, making it one of the more visually pleasing heaters in the game as well as what we all hope is an effective one. It’s interesting: I’ve been looking for comps for Brash based on pitch movement, and they’re nearly all relievers. I mentioned in the spring that perhaps the best match is Reds’ reliever Tejay Antone, but probably the most famous high-octane sinker/slider combo is Blake Treinen’s. Joely Rodriguez, Michael King, Joe Mantiply, too. Part of this has to do with the fact that sinkers have been horribly out of fashion, especially for starters, and hard-throwing starters even more. Tyler Anderson has a fastball with run, but he’s still a terrible comp for Brash. Four-seamers with rise get more swings and misses, but they also give up a lot of elevated contact, a scary proposition in the current era of baseball. The guys who rely on sinkers almost do so by default; there just aren’t a ton of 90-91 mph four-seam guys anymore (except Dylan Bundy, who dominated yesterday), and so you get the M’s shifting Sheffield’s sinking four-seamer into an even sinkier sinker. Brash is, hopefully, a herald of something different. I think the game is better when not everyone is trying to do the exact same thing. If you could get 85% of Treinen, or 95% of Antone *as a starting pitcher*, you’d take it, right? Ok, Ok: how about this for a comp: Charlie Morton.
Opposing him is one of the many, many reclamation projects starting today. It seems like nearly every team has one, from the high-end/top-shelf reclamations like Kikuchi (starting for Toronto) to the mid-tier guys like Chris Archer, to the bargain-basement ones like Velasquez. A one-time Astros prospect, Velasquez burst onto the scene with the Phillies in 2016, showing swing-and-miss stuff and just barely enough control to make the strikeouts play. With an elevated four-seamer around 95, he got plenty of whiffs but gave up a lot of home runs, too. Over time, the walks increased, and the HRs didn’t go away, and he essentially pitched his way out of Philly. Part of the problem is that his career numbers are worse with men on, leading to poor strand rates, and thus an ERA that’s higher than his FIP. The Padres brought him and Jake Arrieta in last year when their once-promising season was fully engulfed in flames, and Velasquez just added more fuel: in four starts, he went 0-3 with an ERA of 8.53, giving up 4 HRs per 9 innings.
I’m a *bit* surprised a team contending for the AL Pennant has slotted him in as the 5th starter, but it’s also true that he’s talented and still misses a lot of hitters. If you can figure out the HR thing, and hopefully keep him in the zone, you’d have a 5th starter with more upside than most (er, outside of Brash, of course). He doesn’t throw 95 anymore; he’s more like 93. He struggles against lefties despite a solid repertoire that includes a fastball, curve, change, and slider. In his second career start in April of 2016, he threw a complete-game shutout of the Padres with 16 Ks and no walks, and that alone will give him plenty of second chances.
1: Frazier, 2B
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Haniger, RF
5: Toro, 3B
6: Suarez, DH
7: Kelenic, CF
8: Torrens, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: BRASH WOOOOOOOOO
Some of the other intriguing match-ups today include the Marlins/Angels game, featuring ex-A’s prospect and probably just an ex-prospect Jesus Luzardo against Pedro Sandoval. Bryce Elder also makes his MLB debut tonight, starting for Atlanta against the Nationals. Luis Garcia, the Astros’ breakout rookie starter last year, makes his season debut tonight against Madison Bumgarner and Arizona. Alex Cobb’s the Giants’ latest reclamation, and he’ll get his first start against Yu Darvish and San Diego. And in a cool battle of dueling reclamations, Chris Archer starts for Minnesota against the Dodgers’ Andrew Heaney.
In the minors, the Rainiers dropped Sunday’s finale in Tacoma 7-1 to Salt Lake. They’re in action tonight in Albuquerque.
Arkansas won last night’s game against Springfield 4-3, with change-up maven Devin Sweet getting the win in relief. Sweet is one of those guys that will likely see time in the big leagues, probably this year. Another is ex-org depth RP Penn Murfee, now in Tacoma. Guy’s simply played his way into prospect status, albeit not exactly blue-chip prospect status. Today’s game was an early one, won by the Redbirds, 6-3. Joe Rizzo hit his second homer of the campaign, but Connor Jones and the Travs pitchers couldn’t make it hold up. Jones did K 6 in 3 IP, though.
Everett’s game on Sunday was suspended due to rain. Today, they’re in Hillsboro to take on the Hops. Jimmy Joyce starts for the AquaSox.
Game 4, Mariners at Twins
Chris Flexen vs. Dylan Bundy, 4:40pm
It’s a little early yet to talk about surprises or good/bad signs, but I have to say I’m impressed with the patience the M’s have shown at the plate. Through three games *against pitchers with good control* they are, as a team, drawing walks at a 13% clip, second best in baseball. No, that alone doesn’t ensure overall success – #1 is Arizona, a team that can’t hit – but it’s a very good sign that they’re not being overly aggressive and getting themselves out. The pitching staff has, overall, done a pretty good job of this too, and if they can just figure out how to keep the Twins in the ballpark, they’ll have something.
Mitch Haniger’s 2 HR and “I only hit XBH” approach has gotten some attention, but the guy who’s impressed me the most has been JP Crawford. I think I’ve been pretty consistently negative about Crawford, who is clearly a solid MLB starter, but just without the upside at the plate that so many other teams seem to have at SS. A big part of that has been good but not great bat control and an extremely underpowered swing. Out of 132 qualified hitters last year, Crawford’s barrel rate (the rate at which he hit the ball more or less perfectly) ranked 126th, just beating out new double play partner Adam Frazier, who ranked 130th. His average exit velocity ranked 120th (Frazier was at 129th), too. In 2020, Crawford’s exit velo ranked 134th out of 142. He just doesn’t hit the ball hard.
Or at least, he didn’t use to. Crawford hit *two* balls over 100 MPH yesterday. In 2021, he had only 10 such balls in all of April, but he picked up speed (ha) late in the year: he hit 20 in August and 17 in September. He’s already drawn 3 walks against a single K, and if he can hit the ball harder, he’s got a much better chance of being a real contributor at the plate. His defense allows him to contribute even with a weaker bat, but weak contact is not generally conducive to a high BABIP. His BABIP was quite good last year, and that’s what allowed him to post a league-average batting line. A bit more pop and a bit more of underlying strength powering that BABIP and you’ve got more of a consistent 3-4 win player as opposed to a 2-3 win guy.
Today, the M’s face yet another Twins reclamation project, Dylan Bundy. Bundy’d been one of the most hyped pitching prospects around before settling in as a below-average starter with Baltimore. A brief 2020 season with the Angels was revelatory, as he finally found a way to avoid HRs, and his secondaries looked sharper than ever before. He used the same mix – primarily a straight four-seamer in the low-90s, a good slider, and a change and curve for left-handed bats – but the results were uniformly better. But he couldn’t carry it over into 2021, when nothing quite seemed to work. His pitches *looked* the same, but batters punished them whereas they swung through them the year before.
A few days ago, it looked like the Twins may have made some slight tweaks to Sonny Gray’s approach, with a few more four-seamers than sinkers. It’ll be interesting to see if those changes stick around, and what they might try to do with Bundy (and Chris Paddack). More sinkers, trying to avoid dingers from a pitcher whose career’s kind of been defined by home run troubles and a park that allows a lot of ’em? Or fewer fastballs altogether? It’s going to take time to see if any variation is the result of intentional changes and which are just rust; one thing I’ve seen thus far is that pitchers don’t seem quite ready for the regular season yet. Walks are up a bit league wide, and pitchers aren’t yet able to go 5-6 innings, let alone 7-8.
1: Frazier, DH
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Haniger, RF
5: Toro, 2B
6: Suarez, 3B
7: Crawford, SS
8: Rodriguez, CF
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Flexen
It’s much too early to worry much about Julio Rodriguez – he’s out-hitting Marcus Semien and Enrique Hernandez thus far – but it is stunning to see Cleveland’s rookie OF Steven Kwan’s early success. With a triple and two walks, he’s now 9-14 with 5 walks and no strikeouts in the early going. Not only does he not have any K’s, he’s yet to swing and miss at any *pitch* this year. Not a bad start for the ex-Oregon State Beaver.
Game 3, Mariners at Twins
Marco Gonzales vs. Bailey Ober, 11:10am
What a comeback. Two wins in two days, both in one-run games. With the exception of Andres Muñoz giving up a Byron Buxton drive that still probably hasn’t landed, the M’s bullpen has been exceptional. Today, Marco Gonzales makes his first start of the year against the Twins’ Bailey Ober.
Ober’s another fascinating story, a guy with a 92mph fastball with low spin, and a guy who refuses to give in and walk batters. On the surface, this sounds like any number of low-K, low-BB Twins prospects from the early 2000s (Nick Blackburn, maybe?), but then you see what he’s done. Ober was a strikeout maven through the minors, and he continued striking out more than a man an inning in his first taste of MLB. He’s maintained a low walk rate as well. Like opening day starter Joe Ryan, the one problem thus far has been HRs, something most of the league is struggling with.
As with Ryan, Jake Mailhot had a great overview of Ober and his Arsenal at Fangraphs here. The 6’9” Ober gets great extension which helps his fastball play up a bit, and he tweaked his slider (his primary weapon vs. righties) midway through 2021. Importantly, and a bit like Sonny Gray, Ober has a different approach to opposite-handed hitters, utilizing his change and curve.
Overall, he’s still kind of waiting for his slider to develop into a true weapon: the bones of it are there (I actually think he should go back to his original one), but he needs to add drywall and finishing to it. He’s been effective without it, though you can see he could do more than what he’s shown. Good fastball, so-so slider, four pitch repertoire…who does that remind you of? If you said Logan Gilbert, I totally agree, and more importantly, so do MLB’s algorithms, which list Gilbert’s 2021 season as Ober’s most similar pitcher.
1: Frazier, 2B
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Haniger, DH
5: Kelenic, RF
6: Suarez, 3B
7: Rodriguez, RF
8: Crawford, SS
9: Torrens, C
SP: Gonzales
Wow, three games in and the M’s will use three different starting catchers. I really thought Torrens would never catch again for the M’s after last year; happy to be wrong on that.
I went to the second game of the Rainiers double-header last night, which was definitely the one to see. Recent signing Daniel Ponce de Leon, the ex-Cardinals starter, pitched brilliantly for the R’s, and Penn Murfee got the win in relief. Scoreless into the final inning (the 7th), Mike Ford walked it off with a solo shot for the 1-0 win. We won’t speak of the 12-0 loss in game 1.
Frisco best Arkansas 8-7 in the highly anticipated pro debut from Rangers prospect Jack Lester.
Everett outslugged Eugene 10-7 with Noelvi Marte getting his first home run of the year.
San Jose beat Modesto 3-1.
Game 2, Mariners at Twins
Logan Gilbert vs. Sonny Gray, 11:10am
The first late-morning start of the year for your undefeated Mariners sees Logan Gilbert make his first start of the year. Opposing him is veteran righty, Sonny Gray. These two teams are fairly evenly matched, even though they have different strengths and weaknesses, and I believe these two starters are microcosms of that.
Logan Gilbert comes from the Robbie Ray school, at least this far. He’s going to establish his fastball, try to induce a chase with his slider, and generally try to overpower batters. That approach has brought strikeouts throughout the minors and a solid number in MLB, but there’s a slight problem. When his slider isn’t on, and it wasn’t on very much in 2021, he’s vulnerable to really hard contact. At some level, this trade-off is worth it: Robbie Ray consistently gives up hard contact, and it (generally) hasn’t concerned him. As long as the strikeouts stay high, you’d take a few hard-hit balls, knowing some will still find gloves.
Part of the reason why you’d make this trade is that strikeouts are “stickier” than contact stuff. Strikeout rate is more consistent, more reliable than hard contact. Now, Ray is evidence that you can’t just expect hard contact to naturally come back to average, but for a guy like Gilbert, you’d absolutely rather have a high K rate than low hard hit or barrel rates in your first MLB season.
Sonny Gray doesn’t care about all that though, and has gone all-in on the opposite strategy: he’s a contact manager that’s learning to get more K’s along the way. Now 33, the undersized righty has made a living keeping the ball off the barrel of opposing bats through very good command and a deep, varied arsenal.
Like Ray, Gray has had some ups and downs. In some years, it’s harder to pull off than others. That was certainly true in his stint with the Yankees, but Gray turned it around with his best seasons immediately after in Cincinnati’s hitter-friendly park.
Gray throws about 92, but has a great sinker he throws righties, and a cutting dart of a four-seamer he throws lefties. He pairs them with a slider, curve, and a rare change. He’s experimented with a cutter as well. There’s nothing eye-popping about his movement or velo; he has slightly higher spin rates, but I think his location makes more of a difference than spin.
When he’s on, he mixes pitches and (correctly) follows pitch-type splits to minimize platoon splits: over his long career, he’s held lefties to a .288 wOBA, just under righties’ .294. With the Reds, he took his bat-missing to a higher level, smashing his previous high K% every year. Part of the reason for this is the slight sharpening of his slider, making it more of the en vogue “sweeper” with tons of horizontal movement. The other part is refining his mix based on batter handedness. To lefties, he’s almost Lance McCullers-like, throwing about an even split of four-seamers and curves. He’ll even sneak in some two-strike sinkers to give them another look, even as he keeps the four-seamer as his primary heater to them. Righties get the sinker/slider mix that can be so effective against same-handed bats.
The approaches look very different at the season and especially career levels, but game to game, they can look pretty similar. Gilbert’s best game of 2021 was his sheer befuddling of the Yankees, who mis-hit and swung through fastball after fastball. Likewise, when Gray’s on, he can rack up a ton of K’s. We’ll see who’s sharper today.
1: Frazier, 2B
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Haniger, RF
5: Toro, 3B
6: Kelenic, LF
7: Rodriguez, RF
8: Crawford, SS
9: Murphy, C
SP: Gilbert
Game 1, Mariners at Twins
Robby Ray vs Joe Ryan, 1:10pm
Well, here we go. The M’s come into 2022 a much better team and with much higher expectations. The playoffs include ten teams per league, making the task of ending the longest playoff drought easier. It is, thankfully, time to stop talking about great prospects, and time to start watching them progress in MLB.
The M’s got a huge boost to their rotation when they signed the defending AL Cy Young award winner in Robbie Ray. His fastball/slider mix is deadly, and he’s among the game’s best strikeout pitchers. He’s given up hard contact throughout his career, including an abysmal 2020, but his stuff allows him to avoid that problem by missing bats altogether.
His stats last year were great obviously, and his HR totals were marred by a handful of starts in the Jays’ minor league parks in Florida and in Buffalo. It’s possible the stats *underrated* his season. That said, he has never been a model of consistency, with good, bad, and in-between seasons popping up almost randomly.
The Twins present a great early test. This is a team that’s spent big to overhaul their line-up, and it’s that line-up that they hope will keep them in the playoff chase all year. Carlos Correa is the big new star, but the Twins also hope to keep Byron Buxton healthy after he flashed superstar potential last year before a season-ending injury. There’s swing and miss in this line-up, but there are a lot of players who can punish mistakes.
The Twins lost Jose Berrios in trade last year, but are trying to make it up by acquiring Sonny Gray in trade, and some buy-low rotation help from Chris Archer and Chris Paddack. Their rotation got demolished last year, so it’s only up from that. But they had to trade some bullpen arms, and they’ll need their starters to keep it close this year. They’re a better pitching club, but that’s not hard, and there are question marks about all of them.
Despite Gray’s arrival, the Twins gave the opening day start to rookie Joe Ryan, acquired from Tampa in the Nelson Cruz deal. Ryan racked up Ks in the minors throwing almost nothing but fastballs, despite so-so velocity and spin. What he has is a flat approach angle, as Jake Mailhot detailed here. That is, his low arm slot and high spin efficiency give him the high vertical movement of an over-the-top thrower, but with the arm angle of a sinker/horizontal-movement guy. It’s this disconnect between what the batter’s eyes are telling him and what the ball is actually doing that can turn pitchers without 98mph velo into K machines. This is Paul Sewald’s MO, and it’s what has made Freddy Peralta so hard to hit for Milwaukee.
Ryan also has a change-up, slider, and rare curve. He didn’t need the four-pitch mix in the minors, but broke it out for his MLB trial last September. He pitched really well, with a K-BB% of 25%, which is amazing. Somewhat like Ray, he got hurt by the long ball, which makes sense when you post a ground ball rate below 30%.
So the M’s new-look offense has a fun challenge today. They’re facing a guy who threw fastballs 2/3 of the time, down from 70% in the minors, and who throws those heaters up in the zone again and again. Hitters essentially know what many of his pitches will be, and WHERE they’ll be, and Ryan is counting on them to swing through those fastballs anyway. It sounds ludicrous, but there’s Peralta and Sewald, nodding as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
This is a perfect match-up for Jesse Winker and perhaps Jarred Kelenic, and if anything it’s an easier introduction to MLB for Julio than most opening day starters with their physics-defying breaking balls. I’m excited to see how this goes.
1: Frazier, 2B
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Haniger, RF
5: Suarez, 3B
6: Kelenic, DH
7: Rodriguez, CF
8: Crawford, SS
9: Raleigh, C
SP: Robbie Ray
The big off-field news today was the 5-year extension JP Crawford signed to be a Mariner through 2026. It’s apparently worth $51 million, including a $5 million signing bonus.
The Risks, 2022
Okay, enough optimism. Expectations can bring excitement, but in this fan base, they can just as soon bring fear. The entire history of the past 20 years have been a series of other shoes dropping, pretty much on cue.
What other shoes are teetering this year? How can a year filled with such promise go wrong? Which of the innumerable expectation-repelling seasons could this one most resemble? Here is what I’m worried about.
1: The bullpen
The M’s bullpen almost single-handedly saved the M’s 2021. Sure, the offense’s almost spookily-perfect timing played a big role, but in terms of which group *played* the best, Paul Sewald and company would be the one.
Sewald is legitimately good, even if no one, including the Mariners, knew it a year ago. This underscores just how hard it is to find, develop, and *keep* bullpen arms playing well. The history of the M’s under Dipoto shows this. They had a good bullpen in 2018, before crashing to a disastrous 2019, and then enjoying last year’s top-5.
In addition to being the perfect group for Dipoto’s trade/waiver-claim addiction, the lower inning totals make bullpens especially liable to volatility, as regression and luck do their thing. In most years, that may not matter as much, and of course talent can help smooth out that volatility to a degree. But while regression is a perennial issue, 2022 is perhaps uniquely vulnerable to it.
The M’s benefitted from a low BABIP last year, but they had an even lower one in 2019. Crucially, they posted a very low HR/9 and HR/FB in 2021; these were what sunk that 2019 group. The new/refined M’s bullpen cut HRs allowed just as the league did, and that helped the fly-balling Sewald and
company post such great numbers. The M’s had a below-average K%, and while their walks allowed were legitimately great, the unit doesn’t scream “elite.” They also don’t stand out as a group who can beat the HR/FB ratio gods forever, which is fine: nearly no one can.
Now, theoretically, the additions of Sergio Romo, Ken Giles, and Andres Muñoz should help. The addition of additional roster spots in April should help manage innings. But the story of bullpens has traditionally been written by their best performers. If Giles (still hurt) and the newcomers don’t hit the ground running, they’re taking innings that could’ve gone to someone else. And all of that doesn’t even touch on the fact that the top of the pile includes some seriously volatile pitchers: Drew Steckenrider, Sewald, and even Giles himself.
If the starters and bats were world beaters, this would matter less. But the way the year is shaping up, and with Minnesota just trading for Chris Paddack and Emilio Pagan, the M’s can’t really afford to lose any late leads. The growth of the M’s as a team has made bullpen luck and bullpen skill more important than it’s ever been, and the M’s are coming off an historic year for both. That’s..that’s kind of a scary place to be.
2: Replacing Seager Harder Than it Looks
The M’s have depth at 3B for the first time in ages. The pickup of Eugenio Suarez gives them legitimate upside at the position, a critical need after Kyle Seager’s retirement. Abraham Toro is a super-sub to start, but could slide back to his natural position should Suarez’s (precipitous) decline continue.
It’s funny; Seager’s final two seasons were both solid, but they looked nothing like each other. In one, he was a low-K, high-BB guy with moderate pop and a low BABIP. Last year, he was an all-or-nothing slugger, popping a career high in home runs, but running a bad OBP due to a high K rate and an even lower BABIP.
Suarez last year looked just like the most recent season from Seager, right down to the poor BABIP and value derived mostly from longballs. If that BABIP turns around, you’ve got something, even admitting that his defense won’t be Seagarian. And Toro doesn’t have as much power, but has legitimately good contact skills and a solid eye, more like the 2020 version of Seags. He’s got nothing more to prove in the minors, and needs to show that he can hold down a full time gig.
So there’s plenty of upside, but the downside risks scream out all the same. Suarez’s trajectory can be fairly described as a three year free fall. Seattle’s home park is very much NOT where you go to find a BABIP turnaround, and it’s harder to hit home runs (the one thing he’s done consistently) in Seattle than Cincinnati.
Toro’s projections look good, but that’s been true for years, and he still has a career wRC+ in the 80s. Sure, it’s trending up, but he’s never managed a league-average mark in several (small) trials. Without great defense, it’s hard to make that work.
3: The M’s Rivals Did More
Minnesota picked up Carlos Correa, Gary Sánchez, Gio Urshela, Sonny Gray and two wildcards in Chris Paddack and Chris Archer. The Rangers gave themselves the best middle infield combo in baseball with Corey Seager and Marcus Semien. The mostly-quiet Red Sox may have an argument at middle infield after getting Trevor Story to go with Xander Bogaerts. The AL East remains stacked. You get the idea.
No, the M’s weren’t quiet. Picking up Robbie Ray in free agency and then swinging the Jesse Winker/Eugenio Suarez trade made them much better. You can argue that Minnesota had to do more, after a disastrous 2021. But that won’t work with New York, Boston, and Tampa, who did less, but arguably didn’t need to in order to stay ahead of Seattle.
Worse, the competition changes, but doesn’t go away, depending on the run environment in 2022 (obligatory statement of disgust that we have to wonder about this afresh each year). If the humidors knock down run scoring somehow, or bring it back to normal after years of superball-inflated HR totals, teams like Detroit and Cleveland become real wild card challengers (Detroit might be there anyway, depending on how well Spencer Torkelson hits). If it stays the way it was in 2019-21, then Minnesota and Texas have more of a shot. This is a case where the M’s balance could hurt them: not enough pitching to dominate in a low-run environment, not enough batting average and depth to win in a high run scoring environment.
So, yes: a bit more spending could’ve made a difference. The M’s line-up looks pretty good top to bottom, but it lacks the depth of the really good teams. And because Julio’s starting the year in Seattle, there’s less obvious high-minors help in case a starter goes down due to injury or ineffectiveness, at least on offense. There’s more depth at pitcher, but it’s always tough to count on young pitchers.
I’m not as down on the off-season as some, but the M’s front office would probably allow that the way they built this team comes with plenty of risk. They kept most of their top prospects, but find that their wildcard rivals are multiplying. Sure, the AL West isn’t as tough as it once was (though the Angels can’t underachieve *every* year, can they?), but it also matters less and less as the playoffs keep expanding. The M’s have to care about the other divisions in the AL, and their actions don’t show that the care all that much. Either that, or they’re absolutely convinced they have nothing to worry about. Not sure which is worse
The Upside, 2022
Nathan Bishop of Dome and Bedlam summed up the general mood of M’s fandom this morning by saying that this is as optimistic and excited as our downtrodden lot has felt in a long time. It’s true: the best players won spots on the roster, the best prospects have shone brightly, the M’s haven’t lost a regular season game.
Let’s keep up the optimistic mood with this year’s upside post. Last year, we talked about the M’s horrific luck vis a vis true talent reversing, and…whoa, did it ever. The OF depth thing worked out slightly less well, but the AL West, while not bad, felt more even than it has in a while.
This year, here are the three things that make me optimistic, or more optimistic than I am after staring at the projections and once again looking longingly at Houston’s roster.
1: J-Rod and Brash
Wrote about it yesterday, but this list *has* to start with the M’s two rookies, Julio Rodriguez and Matt Brash. With Julio, the M’s have been (successfully) stoking fan excitement since his first games stateside, and he’s not only lived up to the lofty expectations around him, but become a skillful and charismatic personality, able to shape how he’s seen/marketed/known. He’s been beyond his years in essentially every way, on and off the field, since the M’s signed him.
Brash is another story. Not a big first rounder, a small-college, cold-weather guy who was a throw-in in a minor trade. His stuff dramatically improved over the lost 2020 season, and I think all of that has led him to be overlooked, even among those scouting M’s pitchers. There’s a kind of anchoring, a reticence to *dramatically* changing prospect grades, and it’s meant he’s ranked behind guys he’s out pitched.
This has happened before, but I can hear the “you’re just scouting the stat line,” complaints from here. But 1: the stay line is *telling you something* important, and 2: it’s corroborating everything you can see just by watching him pitch an inning. This isn’t a 90mph command/control guy. This isn’t a guy racking up K’s with an advanced-for-A-ball change up or a funky delivery. This is reliever stuff from a starter, including a deadly, sweeping strikeout slider that looks designed in a lab.
Many projections don’t have Julio playing in even 100 games, and most still don’t quite know what to make of Brash, and obviously average in his pre-breakout handful of innings. Even putting THAT aside, no one needs these guys to break out or smash their projections; they just need to play more. And now, thankfully, they will.
2: Humidors!
One of the most striking things about recent vintages of the M’s has been their utter inability to hit in Seattle. For a few years now, the M’s have had an inability to do anything at home, putting up a sub-.300 OBP, for MLB’s worst average AND on-base percentage.
Sure, you say: they’ve been a bad offensive club. Bad teams with some bad split luck and you can craft a narrative out of a simple lack of talent. But the problem is that the M’s weren’t too bad on the road. They weren’t great or anything – I don’t want to push this too much – but things look different because they’re able to get some base hits away from T-Mobile.
There are a number of reasons why this sad state of affairs might be: the batter’s eye sucks, or the much-hyped marine layer is knocking down fly balls. As I’ve talked about a lot, there’s simply less physical room in the T-Mobile OF. All may play a part, but the most cited of them (marine layer) would seem to prevent HRs more than base hits.
There’s also the rapidly changing ball itself, this cavalcade of mismanagement by MLB who has continually denied doing what independent researchers keep finding them doing, both before and after buying the company making baseballs.
But that hasn’t been the only problematic – or at least questionable – decision they’ve made. MLB decided that after the successful introduction of a humidor in low-humidity Colorado, they should try them in a few more places. Seattle was on a subsequent round of that rollout, but only ten parks in the league used them, creating an odd, imbalanced, and unclear impact on competition. Is the humidor collaborating with these other park effects to knock a foot or two of distance off fly balls? Taking the sting out of a smash grounder headed for an outfield corner? I don’t know, and I don’t think MLB did either.
But at least they’ve pulled the plug on the “1/3 of the league does one thing, the other 2/3 another” experiment. All MLB parks will have them for 2022. Won’t this mean that NOBODY will get hits now? No, of course not. It may be a minor factor, and Colorado essentially always leads the league in home average/BABIP. But that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t *a* factor: if the ball moved fractionally differently on its way to the plate, if it interacted with Seattle’s climate or batter’s eye in a different way, that’s an issue, and at least standardizing the ball’s properties before a game should help reduce these oversized home/away splits. Also, Adam Frazier might help.
3: JK’s OK
Jarred Kelenic’s debut was really quite bad. I know you know this; we don’t have to go through the batting line like it’s a rap sheet. I mention that just because the optimistic turn in M’s fans tend to focus on the great final month. That was encouraging! But it came 12 months after the same people said the same exact thing about Evan White, and how *his* bad line was actually only a bad start, or something. A larger sample often matters more.
There was no Brash-like uptick in bay speed, no doubles suddenly becoming homers, if only because, in true Mariners fashion, there weren’t any doubles to begin with. But I came here to be optimistic about Kelenic, and to me, the way to do that isn’t with platoon splits or September numbers, or numbers at all.
Jarred Kelenic had been stewing for over a year, *knowing* the way amazing athletes know that the M’s were bringing in retread after retread, keeping him in alternate site purgatory even as a playoff chase they hadn’t expected and essentially *didn’t want* kept coming at them. Philip Ervin! Philip Ervin played corner OF and Jarred Kelenic took that personally. He knew it would be him if he signed a below-market extension, but he wouldn’t, so it’s more Tim Lopes, then.
He made an improved M’s club in May of 2021 and probably instantly wanted to show everyone how ludicrous it’d been that he wasn’t up last year. He wanted to show the fans they’d been right about him, wanted to show the trade that brought him west was every bit the disaster that Mets fans feared, and wanted to show the M’s front office they messed with the wrong guy.
Soon after, he would have to confront a failure the likes of which he’d never suffered and do so in a spotlight he’d never seen the likes of. It’s…a lot. There’s the obvious shitty feelings that everyone who shad ever failed intuitively grasps, and then there are the nuances that journalists, coaches, and maybe teammates want to discuss, categorize, and theorize over.
None of that’s changed, but that fraught moment and all those awful taxonomic moments after (“yesterday you struggled with fastballs. Today, change-ups. Would you say you’re not seeing the ball well?”) have passed. Dealing with a team that has expectations is slightly different, but only a little: the Mariners no doubt believed they had a chance late last year, because they absolutely did. What has changed is how much he’ll be the focus now. He can work on adjustments without worry. Not only is Julio here, but so is Jesse Winker, so is Eugenio Suarez, and Robbie Ray, etc.
I think he still has things to work on, and I’m more concerned about that first season than most. But I think the change in his/the team’s situation can mean the world here, and that this season puts Kelenic in a position to succeed whereas last year’s must’ve felt suffocating. That’s worth, what, 50 points of BABIP?
The Inevitability of Julio Rodriguez
It’s now almost 10-12 hours since the news broke that Julio Rodriguez has officially made the opening day roster, but my power’s been out all day thanks to these storms. So if we can’t be timely, let’s take a step back and talk about any larger repercussions.
Is this (and the opening day starts for some other top prospects) a sign that the new CBA has changed the math on service time manipulation, even at the margin? That’s an interesting question, but I think Julio’s promotion won’t really shed any light on it. What I mean by that is Julio’s play and the M’s injury situation made Julio’s path to the roster much easier. Kris Bryant had a legitimate, veteran major leaguer at his position back in 2015. Was it still a clear-cut case of service time manipulation? Absolutely, but even that’s not the case here, unless you call NRI Billy Hamilton the MLB vet that would enable the M’s to mess with Julio.
Beyond the roster, which is thin, but very solid, there are other factors that helped Julio’s cause (really, M’s fans’ cause). First is the lingering damage from Kevin Mather’s Bellevue remarks, and the salt they poured into the open wound of Jarred Kelenic’s relationship with the front office. Second, Kelenic’s struggles may have helped the team realized there’s no real magic about starting a prospect’s season at a lower level that makes the transition to the big leagues easier. Confidence is important, but you don’t fill up your confidence bank account by swatting some AAA home runs, especially not these days, when AAA-West’s run environment is essentially broken. The M’s may also see Julio’s arrival (and the sudden emergence of Matt Brash) as a way to take some of the pressure off of Kelenic. Kelenic was the big story for much of last year, and while he’s still an important player for the M’s chances, a heck of a lot of interview requests will shift over to the effortlessly charismatic Rodriguez.
But most of all, everything we’ve seen from Rodriguez underscores just how special a talent he is. Does that mean he’s an MVP candidate this year? Well, that’s probably a bit much, but Rodriguez has been on some very big stages and has hit well at essentially every level. The M’s upped the degree of difficulty on him by asking him to play a lot more CF this spring, but after his first or second game there, the game was over. He wasn’t splitting time with Kelenic anymore, and I’ll be shocked if the M’s give Kelenic more than a game or two in CF. He just looked natural out there, and head and shoulders above his in-house rivals. Here, too, the way things worked out may help Kelenic as much as they help Julio.
All of this has injected some optimism and excitement to a fanbase that spent last spring talking about Mather and service time manipulation, and the last few weeks talking about the team’s failure to land another free agent. The team is worse on paper than many of their wild card rivals, but the promotion of Julio and the utterly ridiculous Matt Brash, has helped shift the conversation from the upgrades on, say, Minnesota or Anaheim, and what this M’s team could do if things break right. Sure, some of that’s just the Spring talking, but a lot of it has to do with how amazing Julio looks. Julio essentially took this decision out of the M’s hands.
Cactus League Game 12: Mariners at Cubs
Marco Gonzales vs. Drew Smyly, 1:05pm
It’s the M’s longest-tenured pitcher against a former Mariner who never actually appeared in a game.
It’s kind of amazing to me that the M’s who’ve been on the team longest are now Mitch Haniger and Marco Gonzales, the returns on some of Jerry Dipoto’s earliest trades. They were an early indication that we’d see a lot more roster churn and a lot more moves than perhaps we were used to, and while the pace has slowed a little since then, it’s pretty amazing to look around the team and see how many guys either made their debuts or were acquired in the last 12 months.
With opening day near, the M’s can have a reasonable view at their competition this season. Sure, someone might sign Tommy Pham or something, but the clubs at this point are fairly well set. Lookout Landing has a series of comparisons of the AL West line-ups, rotations, and bullpens. You can get an idea of how things break down at FG’s projections here or BP’s here. Essentially, the M’s look very solid across the board, but lack the depth/excellence in pretty much every position group vis a vis their rivals, not only in the division, but in the AL more broadly. Worse offense than Texas/Anaheim/Houston/Minnesota/Tampa/Boston, solid pitching, but not quite as good as Houston/Boston/Tampa/Toronto, etc.
This is a very very different team than it was last year, and many of the biggest black holes now have decent options in them. But as we’re starting to see in the Fangraphs’ positional rankings, they’re a *little* shy of impact talent. There’s so much more competence than we’ve seen in recent years, but outside of perhaps Jesse Winker, it’s hard to see where the big 6-7 WAR season might come from. I mean, longer term, the answer there is Julio Rodriguez, but it’s not really fair to demand that from him now. The most likely guy to get there might be Robbie Ray, who probably wouldn’t get there in FIP-based WAR, but another big year might get him there in RA-based WAR.
I talked last year about the most *important* player on the team, which was Ty France. France came through in a big way, putting up a big season at the plate and playing an excellent 1B. There are a lot of candidates for such a designation on this club, but the one that comes to mind today is Eugenio Suarez. The M’s desperately needed someone to hit for average last year, given how bad their BA was projected (and it ended up being even worse in real life). It’s a different situation now with Adam Frazier coming in and with JP Crawford showing signs of shaking off his poor BABIP from his first few years and showing an ability to hit for a solid average, albeit without a ton of power. Suarez isn’t going to help in that regard, but he’s a very like for like replacement for Kyle Seager. If he bounces back pretty much at all, he can change the look of the offense, helping to turn more Frazier/France base hits into runs. If he doesn’t, he’s a somewhat expensive bench player, with the younger but not terribly exciting Abraham Toro starting. There’s a really wide range of potential outcomes here, and that’s what makes him so important. He’s either a borderline (or not so borderline) all-star with power and mediocre-to-OK average and defense, or the BABIP falls even further in T-Mobile’s batter-crushing park factors and the M’s have another problem to fix.
1: Julio Rodriguez, CF
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, DH
4: Haniger, RF
5: Suarez, 3B
6: Kelenic, LF
7: Moore, SS
8: Raleigh, C
9: Caballero, 2B
SP: Marcoooo
Jose Caballero was the D-Backs minor leaguer the M’s got in exchange for Mike Leake back in 2019.
Julio’s looking more and more like he has a realistic shot at the opening day line-up. Part of this is due to the fact that the M’s really don’t have a lot of other options for CF. Jarred Kelenic played there last year, but looked out of position and started the spring with an error, and thus hasn’t really had more looks there. Sure, Julio’s not on the 40-man, but neither are some of the minor league options like Billy Hamilton, who’s easily the best defender of the in-house options. The M’s 40-man stands at 39 right now, so there IS a pathway there for Julio if the M’s are willing to do it. To be clear: they should. Julio needs to develop here, no matter what happened with Kelenic. He’s the best choice, and in a year where contention is both possible and somewhat unlikely, it’s all the more important that the M’s maximize their chances by putting their best team out there for 162 games, and not 140-ish.
Cactus League Game 10: Rangers at Mariners – Matt Brash is Making This Team
Robbie Ray vs. Glenn Otto, 1:10pm
After an utterly dominant performance – no hits/walks, 6 Ks in 3 IP – Matt Brash looks to have solidified his grip on the 5th starter gig. It’d be quite a jump for the young Canadian, but at this point, any/all of the arguments against it start to look a bit foolish. Sure, the M’s could theoretically send him down for a couple of weeks to work on his bunt defense or something, but it’s so transparent, it risks alienating Brash. They could have him start in the bullpen to manage innings, but I think they can do so better later in the year when they have more information about how his body’s holding up to the demands of starting. They could argue that veteran presence X has more of a claim to the job, but…no, I’m sorry, they can’t do that. No one involved would get through that press conference with a straight face. If the Cactus League still doesn’t matter for position players (ie. it’s likely Julio Rodriguez heads to Tacoma), it matters more for pitchers.
Part of this is the general willingness, at least pre-2016 CBA, to allow pitchers to, er, pitch their way onto a roster. That’s because of their increased volatility and their specific aging curves (and velocity’s aging curve in particular). But while everyone knew exactly what the Cubs were doing with Kris Bryant, teams have been more willing to start youngsters on the big club on opening day. The M’s did so with Michael Pineda, and again with Brandon Maurer. Pineda dominated from the jump, while Maurer scuffled, but the point was that the team allowed the two to make the opening day roster, and didn’t resort to service time manipulation. If the player worked out, awesome – you get great production, and could, if you want, turn him into Jesus Montero which is *really* cool. If not, as with Maurer, you can send him to the minors, and your service time concerns are moot.
While Maurer, and that hellacious slider that were the talk of the 2013 Cactus League, remains a cautionary tale, Brash seems ready. Sure, the sample size is a lot smaller than Maurer’s 24 IP back in 2013, what Brash is doing, the pitches he’s throwing, stand in rebuke to sample size concerns. Brash’s stuff is as disgusting as any pitcher’s, and it’s worth deploying it at the big league level. The concerns about his control remain, but he’s doing all he can possibly do to dispel them. It’s he, and not George Kirby, who’s flashing plus control at the moment.
Beyond Brash’s own line is the fact that the M’s haven’t tried to bring in a veteran to challenge for the spot. Robbie Ray, today’s starter, is the clear ace, but especially with Justin Dunn’s move to Cincinnati, there really aren’t a lot of in-house alternatives to one of the rookies. There are a bunch of players on minor league deals, but they’re at a disadvantage in talent AND current 40-man status vis a vis Brash. This is Brash’s to lose, and thus far, he ain’t losing. This is, to be clear, as it should be. This should be a competition, and winning the competition should have consequences. The M’s have, to a pretty remarkable degree, bet on themselves in this, their year of contention. Brash makes them better, and at this point absolutely has to be the 5th starter.
Today’s game is a fun one. The Rangers currently lead spring training in hitting; quite a feat given last year’s Texas offense was one of the worst in the league. Part of this is upgrading the roster. Defensive whiz but batting liability Isaiah Kiner-Falefa’s in New York, and the double play team is now Corey Seager and Marcus Semien. Part of it may be growth from some younger players, and sure, part of it is spring training luck. But this is a nice test for Robbie Ray, and it’ll be fun to watch him work to a line-up that features some solid RHBs, and it’s also a test for the big lefties in Texas’ order: Seager and 1B Nate Lowe.
Opposing him is Glenn Otto, the one-time Yankees prospect turned Rangers starter. The 26-year old righty was a 5th rounder in 2017 and flashed signs of being a strikeout guy, but inconsistency and the lack of a real season in 2020 left him as something of an afterthought – he was a 20-th-30th best prospect in the Yankees system going into 2021. But then he caught fire, striking out 134 in just under 96 IP. That got him recognition, and it helped him find a path to the bigs after being part of the Joey Gallo trade.
This bat-missing isn’t due to any characteristics of his pitches. He averages 92-93 with his four-seam, and that pitch’s movement is unremarkable. There’s no spin-rate craziness here. What he does have is a slider with very strong horizontal movement. This type – dubbed a “sweeper” by pitching twitter – has shown pretty remarkable results, and it’s part of the reason I’m so high on Brash. But it’s harder to get to it when his fastball and curve (and rare change) don’t do as much. It puts more pressure on Otto to get ahead, for one thing.
All of this may be why Otto’s MLB debut did…not go so well. He got rocked in 3 starts, with MLB hitters putting the ball in play and getting tons of base hits, something MiLB hitters could never do against him. It was only 3 games, of course, and thus Otto stands out as one of the more important players on this quickly-rebuilt Rangers club. Their line-up and bullpen are much improved over last year’s disastrous club. But is the rotation? Jon Gray is a great veteran roll of the dice, the kind of player the Rangers have had success with in the past. Martin Perez is more of a known quantity, and a kind of human stop-loss to avoid having to start someone worse. The Rangers’ 5th starter job is open, though, and it kind of looks like Otto and rookie AJ Alexy are the combatants. Alexy is younger, and has battle severe control issues, but posted great numbers in the minors last year. Whichever guy takes the job, he’s going to need to pitch well if the Rangers are going to make any moves towards contention. Perez isn’t the guy to pitch you to the playoffs, and titular ace Jon Gray’s career line doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence. The group needs upside, and Otto offers that (though it comes with a boatload of risk).
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Haniger, RF
5: Suarez, DH
6: Toro, 2B
7: Juliooooo, CF
8: Raleigh, C
9: Moore, 3B
SP: Ray
Moore’s clearly back in that super-utility role, playing 3B today after playing 1B yesterday and some OF looks earlier.
I’m going to need either or both of Winker/Haniger to wake up now and have a dominant day at the plate. Spring training doesn’t mean much, but it can’t be fun to struggle this much. Have fun, guys.