2021 Everett Aquasox Preview
In the newly configured six-team high-A West League, will the Aquasox ever lose a game? This is both a joking question and a serious quandary. The minor leagues are generally about learning and dealing with adversity. It’s hard to imagine runs scoring often against this pitching staff. Maybe the short porch in right at Everett Memorial will inflate some totals. Maybe the ‘pen is too wild. Maybe the offense won’t keep pace regularly, though it would surprise me. I suppose there aren’t many plus defenders on the roster. Still, there’s only so big a spread of talent this year, in this league, and to stack the deck like this seems merciless. The other five teams better hope for some in-season promotions to double-A or these long, six-game series will feel like entire months are passing them by.
Below, in addition to profiles, fortunately and unfortunately timed surgeries, apt college mascots, more bloodline picks and local connections, and references to antiquated job titles.
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Game 30, Orioles at Mariners – Run Prevention Rabbit Holes
Erik Swanson vs. Dean Kremer, 7:10pm
The M’s host the lowly Orioles tonight, kicking off a three-game series that really seems to start a few weeks against the underbelly of the sport. Sure, sure, there’s a two-gamer against the Dodgers mixed in, but after the Orioles, the M’s face the AL West-cellared Texas Rangers, then after that palate-cleanser with LA, they face the .500 Cleveland team – a team perpetually challenged to hit enough to match their solid pitching – and then the Tigers, the club with the worst record in the league.
As I talked about recently, the M’s are doing quite well (having won yet another series yesterday) despite the fact that it can be kind of hard to say exactly *why*. Coming into the year, the team clearly identified starting pitching as the club’s competitive advantage. The starters would keep the club in games even when their offense wasn’t clicking, and would minimize the number of innings the revamped bullpen would need to throw. It…it hasn’t worked out that way.
Due to a combination of injury and inconsistency, the starters haven’t been the real strength of the club. The top of the line-up was amazing for the first three weeks, and the bullpen has been rock solid all year. Just as the top of the line-up (and here we’re really talking about Ty France) began to slump, the bottom of the lineup awoke, and has helped the club in recent games. But the bullpen’s been there all year, despite the fact that they’re not striking out many batters, and still walk a few too many. I wrote last time about the quiet retirement of the old mantra “control the zone,” and wondered what would replace it. Maybe the answer is: defend the zones.
Here’s a simple question that gets harder to answer the closer you look at it: Are the Mariners good at defense? By BABIP-allowed or a simple defensive efficiency view, the answer is an obvious yes. By BABIP, the M’s have allowed the fourth-fewest hits on balls in play in MLB, and the second-fewest in the AL. By the advanced defensive metrics, they rank below average by a few runs. No, the advanced metrics aren’t disparaging the defense of JP Crawford or Evan White – they were the reason those two won gold gloves last year, and are pretty impressed this year. The problem spots, as has been fairly obvious to those who’ve watched the games, include 2B and, especially, the outfield. But if they’re making way more plays and the M’s pitchers are allowing more balls in play in the first place…how do you grade out below average?
I checked the statcast data to see if the pitchers are allowing particularly softly-hit balls in play that turn into simple chances. Nope. By average exit velocity, the M’s have given up quite hard contact. This is consistent with the fact that the M’s have the second-largest gap between the production they’ve allowed (by wOBA) and the production statcast thinks they SHOULD HAVE allowed judging by how hard and how high batters have hit the ball. There’s nothing special about the quality of contact the M’s have yielded, but they’ve been pretty special in turning that contact into outs.
So is this just an overly technological way to say they’ve been lucky and leave it at that? Well, I’m not sure we can say that yet. I mean, the simplest thing to do for any saber-blogger is to intone the mantra “regression to the mean” and leave it at that. But what are some of the reasons why a team would see such a gap between expected and actual results on balls in play? I can think of four big ones. First, their home park. T-Mobile and Coors Field: not the same. Second, positioning. If the M’s are putting their fielders in good spots *and* helping their pitchers direct contact to those spots, you might see persistent effects that look like luck to the uninitiated. Third, their defense may be better than they’re getting credit for by metrics like UZR. The “small sample” objection applies to essentially all of these, but it definitely does apply to a month of advanced defensive metrics that can be swayed by a handful of chances that were harder than the system thought, or by things like Jose Marmolejos playing more OF in April than he will going forward. Finally, fourth, yeah – this really could just be random chance.
The first three of these aren’t going anywhere. And of these, the park effect may be underappreciated here. We’ve talked a lot about the way the league has attempted to dampen the baseball, which is part of the reason there’s a gap between actual and expected production for the entire *league*. That slight muting of the ball’s bounciness has helped knock down HRs league wide, at least compared to the insane levels of 2017 and 2019. Given that T-Mobile was already death to doubles-and-triples, that’s going to help the pitching staff, and keep on helping the pitching staff. Not only that, but T-Mobile has a humidor to keep the balls more consistently humid before use. This was the technology introduced at Coors Field, then spread to four other parks around the league for 2020 (BOS, ARI, NYM, SEA). It’s spread to another 5 this season, and I think this is a really under-reported aspect of run scoring.
The M’s aren’t striking people out, but they are getting into some deeper counts. And when they do, all of these contact-suppressing factors have been amped up. The M’s are allowing the second-worst production on contact that occurs with two strikes despite again posting far-above-average exit velocities on that contact. The gap between actual and expected production is even higher with two strikes than it is overall. They’re not striking people out, but this has worked out to the next best thing.
Essentially, the M’s and, presumably, their baseball ops staff – including John Choiniere, who’s already been recognized for his exemplary work on IF positioning – are creating something of a “heads I win, tails you lose,” sort of scenario. The park and baseball dramatically reduce the production on fly balls. The infielders and positioning helps knock down the value of ground balls. Yes, clearly, there’s some luck here, especially if they keep giving up particularly hard-hit contact. But there’s a lot more non-luck at play than you’d think. Keeping this up – maintaining a low BABIP even compared to the already low league-wide BABIP – is going to be important if the M’s want to stay in contention and, critically, offer prospects like Logan Gilbert a gentler, more favorable introduction to the big leagues.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Marmolejos, 1B
6: Moore, 2B
7: Crawford, SS
8: Murphy, C
9: Trammell, LF
SP: Swanson – it’s a bullpen day, so he’ll probably toss a couple innings, and then we’ll see a parade of other relievers.
The M’s DFA’d Brandon Brennan, the 2019 Rule 5 pick who intrigued early on in that season with his hard sinker and glorious change-up. But an injury to his arm, some wildness, and the development of other pitchers has left him something of the odd man out, and he’s been picked up by the Boston Red Sox. I’m sorry to see him go despite his struggles with health and consistent effectiveness, as I think it’s always cool to have a real ground ball pitcher, and I just think the run on his change made for tough ABs for opposing hitters. Ah well. Good luck to him.
2021 Modesto Nuts Preview
Despite being out of posting-shape, the impulse to get reacquainted with the system after a year off drove me to start working these up and see how far I could manage to go. The Year 2021 in Minor League Baseball looks a heck of a lot different than the Year 2019: The Cal League has been demoted to low-A in the classifications, short-season ball outside team facilities has been eliminated entirely, and rosters at the lower levels have been expanded to thirty, taking some of the edge off of contracting an entire level of competition. Oh yeah, and the Mariners are also officially the owner of the Modesto franchise, something they should have done a decade or more ago but better late than never?
My general sense of the team here is that the rotation will consistently provide something to watch, but the bullpen may be erratic and lacks a clear shape at present. I expect the majority of the team’s offense to come from Marte plus the outfielders. Below, I will talk about one unconventional background and far more baseball bloodlines, Mustangs and Aggies, PNW connections, players who are proximate to but not the big prospects from their respective states, and will have one more opportunity to use the word “Marlovian” in a baseball column.
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Game 29, Angels at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Dylan Bundy, 1:10pm
The Angels blasted the M’s out of the park yesterday, jumping all over Ljay Newsome early and building a 10-1 lead. Nice to see the M’s mount a little comeback to make the scoreline a little better, but they were simply never in the game. It happens, and it happens more when you’re on your 8th-choice starter, as Newsome was taking the rotation spot vacated by Nick Margevicius, who was taking the rotation spot vacated by James Paxton. Newsome’s been fine, but it simply wasn’t his night.
The M’s are still hanging around, despite some ominous stats. They now have the 4th-lowest OBP in MLB at just .291, and their average is down to .211, as Mitch Haniger and Ty France cool off slightly. The bottom of the lineup has shown some signs of life recently, but they’ll need to do so more consistently to help boost the M’s run production. Their pitching staff has mostly been solid, but they now rank dead last in strikeout rate. No, strikeouts aren’t everything, but they can cover for a multitude of sins, and some of the M’s outfield arrangements have been somewhat sinful.
Their K-BB% isn’t great (it’s better than dead last, though!) which reminded me that we don’t hear the club preaching the mantra of controlling the zone anymore. This probably isn’t the time, but it does make me wonder if it’s been replaced by some new organizational focus. That’s more pertinent now that we’re mere days away from the start of the minor league season. The revamped and slimmed-down minor leagues feature some great talent, and we’ll dive into that soon, but I just wonder if they’re instilling controlling the zone, or if they’ve moved on, or perhaps incorporated that into a broader array of performance indicators. The daily box-score like summaries the M’s send out for the scrimmages the teams have played to date include things like exit velocity, but not traditional things like hits and runs.
Today, the M’s face Dylan Bundy, who had a great 2020 season and revitalized his career after a disappointing run in Baltimore. Formerly a phenom with a dynamite fastball, he’s now more of a junkballer with a low-velo FB, but a great mix of five pitches, headlined by a very good slider. Especially to righties, he essentially pitches off the slider, mixing in a fastball as a secondary, and also using a curve. To lefties, he features more of his high-spin, high-in-the-zone fastball, with breaking balls and a change-up.
Those high FBs and even the slider can generate some fly balls, but Bundy posted an extremely low HR/FB ratio last season. That luck hasn’t stuck around thus far, and while T-Mobile still isn’t a *great* place for HRs, we could see some more today. Justus Sheffield knows all about regression in a sparkling HR/FB ratio, as his was under 5% last season (!), and he faces a very tough line-up with two amazing RH hitters in Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 1B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Marmolejos, LF
6: Moore, 2B
7: Crawford, SS
8: Torrens, C
9: Haggerty, RF
SP: Sheffield
Just a day or two after acquiring C Jacob Nottinham from the Brewers, and before he could make an appearance, the M’s DFA’d and returned Nottingham to the Brewers in exchange for cash considerations.
Game 27, Angels at Mariners
Chris Flexen Vs. Andrew Heaney, 7:10pm
After a taut 1-0 win to end their road trip, the M’s return home to face the Angels. Salvaging a game in that Houston series was important, and two scoreless IP by the bullpen in some high leverage spots help put the previous game’s ‘pen implosion behind them. And just as importantly, they kick off this series behind the guy who’s become the team’s de facto ace, Chris Flexen.
With Marco on the IL and with Justin Dunn and Yusei Kikuchi intriguing but still perhaps a bit inconsistent, Flexen’s becoming a linch pin in the rotation. Unlike with Dunn, there’s no bizarre BABIP thing to muse over (Flexen’s BABIP is freakishly *high*), so it’s really been down to his ability to limit walks and HRs. In his two most recent starts covering 13 IP, he’s struck out 10, and walked only one. He’s only allowed a single dinger on the year, and while his HR/FB ratio will regress over time, it’s nice to see that he’s posting an above-average GB%. Tough to know what to make of that in the season’s first month, but I wouldn’t have predicted that given his arm slot.
There’s nothing crazy to Flexen by pitch movement, velocity, spin, etc. He seems pretty close to average. But he really does seem to be a very different pitcher than the one who flamed out with the Mets. I’m never quite sure *how* a guy like Flexen (or Eric Thames, for that matter) reinvents themselves in the KBO, but it probably highlights just how important confidence can be for players.
Andrew Heaney takes the mound for Anaheim, and the veteran lefty is off to a solid start, striking out 29 in his first 20 2/3 IP. The key to his arsenal is a good change-up that’s become something of an out-pitch for him; it’s really helped him become a strikeout pitcher, as opposed to the pitch-to-contact guy he was at times in his first year or two. With his lower arm slot, Heaney really maximizes horizontal run on his pitches, including his fastball (which has average-ish velo). That fastball’s been excellent in the early-going, as has his slurvy curveball, an important pitch for him against lefties as well as righties (the change is essentially only for righties). He’s had normal platoon splits for his career, though they’re more even this year. Still figures to be a decent match-up for the returning Mitch Haniger and Ty France.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 1B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: Torrens, C
6: Moore, 2B
7: Haggerty, LF
8: Crawford, SS
9: Murphy, DH
SP: Flexen
Haniger’s quick return makes you wonder if he was out with vaccine side-effects. If so, good on ya, Mitch. Today’s Tigers-Yankees game is the first one between teams that have both reached MLB’s 85% threshold of vaccination, meaning no one has to wear masks in the dugout. The M’s aren’t there, and from what Ryan Divish has reported, likely won’t get to that mark, at least not soon.
MLB released some very cool park factor data over at baseballsavant.com. I don’t think anything’s completely mind-blowing from poking around at the data for a while; T-Mobile is a pitcher’s park, with more neutral HR factors, but very low 2B/3B factors, and increases in strikeouts.
Game 26, Mariners at Astros
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Luis Garcia/Kent Emanuel, 11:10am
Last night’s loss was a tough one, in a sense. Any time the bullpen blows a lead late, and any time the M’s knock Zack Greinke out of the game and then *lose* is going to sting. This team isn’t good enough to overcome a lot of losses like that. But then, they’re not really trying to win anyway, so we’re free to pick through the wreckage of a single, mostly meaningless, April loss and find things to enjoy. Here’s mine: Justin Dunn is bizarrely good now.
I don’t mean it’s bizarre how dominant, how amazing he is. I watched deGrom last night, and Justin Dunn isn’t anywhere near that level. What I mean is that Justin Dunn has fixed the weird control gremlins that plagued his first season and his first game of this season, and he’s become a guy who can reliably keep the M’s in the game. And the way he does that – THAT’S what’s bizarre. Dunn has now tossed over 70 innings in the big leagues. That’s not a lot by any stretch, but it’s spread over three seasons and is not exactly nothing, either. His career BABIP is now .181. *.181!* That’s…that’s kind of insane.
Long-time readers here, and I’d put myself in this category, remember that one of things this blog talked a lot about oh…15 years ago or so, was that Jarrod Washburn was being overvalued by the M’s due to a low BABIP. Sure, he had a low BABIP a few years with the Angels, but that’s not something the pitcher controls – he’ll come to Seattle and regress, and the team won’t know why. Well, he kept it low his first two years here, and then when it crept up towards .300, he was done – not only in Seattle, but in MLB. The point is, this place had kind of an editorial line on BABIP. Justin Dunn would be seen as the luckiest bad pitcher in the game.
But I’m not here to bury Dunn, I’m here to bury the old editorial line. I don’t think this is sustainable, exactly, as Justin Dunn’s BABIP is *the lowest in MLB history* for anyone with at least 50 innings. There are only 4 players with a BABIP below .215 over that many innings. Two were forgettable relievers, and the other is the Astros’ Cristian Javier, whom the M’s just saw a few days ago. But even Javier’s above .200. We’re in uncharted territory here. So yes, it won’t stay *this* low, but would you take a Cristian Javier-type outcome for Dunn, particularly after his first start this year?
Part of my renewed optimism is that we’ve learned a heck of a lot since Washburn came north about BABIP and the control that pitchers have over it. Pace DIPS theory of 20 years ago, pitchers definitely can influence it, as studies from Mike Fast and others have found. Now, to be clear, the way Dunn is going about it is a bit different. He’s not reliably avoiding hard contact. He’s pretty middle-of-the-road there. But it seems like his fastball is just *odd* enough that batters are split between topping it and getting underneath the ball. Not enough to create a bunch of infield flies, but enough to produce solid fly balls to the outfield – but not more than that. Can he keep it up? I mean, stranger things have happened, I guess, and a recurrence of the control problems would make his BABIP less valuable (because batters could get on base another, easier, way). But a version of Dunn with a BABIP consistently in the .250 range (in other words, dramatically worse than he’s done thus far) would have real value for a middle/bottom of the rotation guy.
Today, the M’s face another Astros prospect starter, this time Luis Garcia. Garcia made the jump from high-A to the big leagues last year, as the Astros had a wave of pitcher injuries and departures, and he pitched pretty well. He overcome some wildness – wildness that he’d shown in the minors – and didn’t really miss a ton of bats, but he rode a…freakishly low BABIP to low runs-allowed totals. So far, so Cristian Javier. And really, the similarities don’t end there. Garcia throws a four-seam fastball at 93 from a below-6-foot release point, generating 9″ or so of “rise.” He throws a good, hard, change with lots of armside run (unlike the fastball, which is straight) and which dips below the fastball’s plane. Then, to complement that, a breaking ball with lots of GLOVEside run and sink. Garcia has a cutter as well that stays straight, but dives down compared to the fastball, so he’s got the full range of armside, gloveside, and no movement pitches. This is pretty much exactly what we talked about with Javier the other day, and at least a bit, with Dunn. The fastball has sneaky rise for a pitch that’s not thrown over the top or even really 3/4, and then the breaking stuff sweeping across the zone might heighten the confusion. It’s the same basic repertoire that we saw from Jose Urquidy, too, though Urquidy’s release point is slightly higher. The Astros have a “type.” Whether that’s a type to target in international free agency, or a type to mold through player development, I don’t know.
Reminds me of something I talked about years ago: the Yankees type. It’s essentially the same formula, with the same shape fastball and then a change with lots of armside run and just a ton of breaking balls across the zone. Luis Severino rode it to Cy Young votes, and David Robertson used his cutter to essentially fit the pattern, but we’ve seen it from everyone from Domingo German to Nick Rumbelow.
Lefty Kent Emanuel is also listed as a probable. The rookie made his debut the other day and threw 8 2/3 innings in relief for his first MLB win. He gave up only 2 runs to the Angels, striking out 5. He throws a sinker, change, and slider, and unlike Garcia, Javier, and Urquidy, doesn’t get a ton of fly ball contact. He’s a ground ball guy, and that showed in his debut. Drafted in 2013, Emanuel has had a long, slow climb through the Astros system, finishing with parts of three years in the hitter-friendly PCL, including the scarred wasteland that was the PCL in 2019. After missing very few bats and getting hit hard, something seemed to click for him in 2019 – perhaps the only pitcher alive who had fond memories of pitching in the PCL in 2019. He throws about 91, and gets lots of horizontal movement on his stuff, so this is probably a decent pairing of probable pitchers – a hard, 94mph arrow-straight righty followed by the 91mph running sinkerballer lefty.
1: Haggerty, LF
2: Seager, 3B
3: France, 2B
4: Marmolejos, DH
5: White, 1B
6: Crawford, SS
7: Moore, RF
8: Trammell, CF
9: Murphy, C
SP: Kikuchi
Kyle Lewis is getting a scheduled off day, so nothing nefarious there. Mitch Haniger is again out of the line-up, though things don’t sound too serious. The news is less good on Marco Gonzales, who’s just been placed on the IL with forearm tightness, which is one of those innocuous sounding injuries that never fail to scare the crap out of me. Remember, that was the initial diagnosis for James Paxton. It may just be exactly what they say it is, but the overlap between “forearm tightness” and elbow problems simply can’t be ignored. The M’s have activated Domingo Tapia.
Game 25, Mariners at Astros
Justin Dunn vs. Zack Greinke, 5:10pm
Well, the M’s have lost the first two games of this series, and now face the prospect of losing their hot-hitting RF. Mitch Haniger was just scratched from the line-up. It could be nothing, but we’re used to not worrying too much when Haniger goes out of the line-up, and then weeks later we learn it was something much worse. Hopefully none of that’s the case here, and it’s just vaccine symptoms or something; we’re seeing a lot of days off for guys after their second dose, and that’s a pretty good reason to miss a game.
Cristian Javier was quite tough yesterday, and now the M’s face Greinke, who *also* held them scoreless for 7 IP when the Astros were in Seattle. On the plus side, it’s been great to see Marco Gonzales put his first two starts of the year behind him and pitch more or less like himself again, but his high-ish walk rates remain a bit of a concern and may prevent him from reaching the heights he got to in 2020.
Shannon Drayer was one of many around the beat to talk about high strikes and their role in suppressing batting average this year. It’s a good point, and after checking it with statcast data, it does seem to be true: Pitches at the top of and just above the zone have always been good for pitchers, but the wOBA-against on them has plummeted this year compared to recent years. And a big part of that isn’t just swings-and-misses on ever-faster fastballs (I’m watching Jacob deGrom as I type this), but rather a decline in batting averages on balls in play. That, in turn, seems to be driving a big decline in BABIP overall. We’re getting an odd mix of 1980s-style BABIPs and walk rates with heretofore inconceivable strikeout rates and 2018-ish HR rates.
For more on the drop in averages, check out this Brendan Gowlowski piece at FG, which I would recommend even if he didn’t cite me in it. I mentioned the possibility for some very low BAs on the Mariners before the season started, and well, yes, the M’s can’t hit for average. The silver lining here is…neither can anyone else. I thought this would be a real competitive disadvantage for the M’s, and it is to a degree, but it’s been minimized by the struggles the entire league has had.
1: Haggerty, 2B
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Marmolejos, “RF”
7: Trammell, LF
8: Torrens, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Dunn
Game 24, Mariners at Astros
Marco Gonzales vs. Cristian Javier, 5:10pm
The M’s have lost back to back games for the first time since April 5th/6th, and have their work cut out for them in today’s game against Houston and righty slider specialist, Cristian Javier. Yesterday’s game felt like it could get away from them at any point, especially after the Astros scored twice in the first, but Justus Sheffield held them around, and the bullpen was again pretty solid. It’s just that the bats couldn’t get going against Jose Urquidy or the Astros ‘pen, and hey, that’ll happen some days.
Cristian Javier signed for $10,000 out of the DR years ago, but got on prospect radar by…well, pitching really well at every stop. In his minor league career, he tossed 377 innings, giving up just 225 hits and striking out *512*. He’s not overpowering; he averages 92-93 with his four-seam fastball, but it pairs well with a sweeping, frisbee slider. He has a slow curve and a change-up, but he doesn’t really use either one very much. For a long time, this appeared to limit his ceiling, and while he cracked the Astros’ top 10 prospect lists, a lot of people have pegged him for a bullpen role long-term. Fastball/slider relievers are common. Fastball/slider starters who don’t throw Randy Johnson-fast are less so.
But since joining the rotation in 2020, he’s been great. His career spans less than 70 innings, but he’s striking out more than a batter an inning, and has an RA9/ERA right at 3. He’s been great in two starts this year, with his slider wreaking havoc on opposing batters. I think this is what people hope Justus Sheffield can one day do consistently, and Sheffield can look like a great starter at times. Sliders tend to have large platoon splits, and one that moves so horizontally should have fairly extreme splits. On paper, it looks a lot like ex-M’s reliever Carson Smith’s (an old USSM favorite), as it’s thrown from a lower arm slot. But that approach got Smith boxed in to a set-up role, but it hasn’t limited Javier. Why?
Well, I think this is the pitch of the year around this blog, but I think it’s because Javier throws one of those Freddy Peralta fastballs. I mentioned this when the M’s faced Peralta in the spring, and how it looks like Josh Hader’s, and how Justin Dunn’s is kiiiinda similar if you squint. Well, Javier’s is very similar. Despite releasing the pitch at about 5.5′ off the ground, it *moves* like an over-the-top, backspinning four seamer with *less* armside run than average and more vertical movement. At his arm slot, you’d expect a pitch that looks like…well, like Justus Sheffield’s sinker, or maybe his old four-seam. There’s nothing wrong with those pitches, as they have a lot more armside run. But the ability to shut *off* that run and replace it with rise on the fourseam, and then use the more normal break (both horizontally and vertically) on the slider is pretty cool. It means his slider has about 9″ of difference in break than his fastball, and 10″ different horizontally. This is similar to Peralta and Dunn, and it helps explain why he isn’t getting punished by left-handed bats. Not *all* sliders are fun to hit for opposite-handed bats.
And like Jose Urquidy and many Astros starters this year, Javier is generating next to no ground balls. His BABIP doesn’t look like it this year, but his career BABIP is now at .214. Again, that’s kind of scary in a juiced baseball environment, but if the ball isn’t quite as bouncy this year, it could work. The Astros’ group of Urquidy, Javier, Greinke, and Odorizzi are among baseball’s most grounder-averse rotations in the game. I wonder if they give Lance McCullers the stink eye after he gets another flurry of worm burners.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, DH
5: Marmolejos, 1B
6: Haggerty, LF
7: Trammell, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Gonzales
Evan White gets a day off. Despite reducing his K rate, he’s simply not hitting enough. His last extra base hit came on the 16th, 35 PAs ago. JP Crawford’s exit velocity now ranks 138 out of 140 qualified hitters.
Game 23, Mariners at Astros
Justus Sheffield vs. Jose Urquidy, 5:10pm
After handling the Astros fairly well at home, the M’s meet a more-or-less full strength version today in Houston. Jose Altuve should make his first appearance since the Covid scare sidelined he and several of the Astros best hitters.
Jose Urquidy was unheralded as an Astros prospect, as he was seen as more of a command and control guy in a system that had ultra-high end talent like Forrest Whitley and a series of pop-up guys sitting in the high-90s, from Josh James to JB Bukauskas. Even the comparatively pedestrial pitchers like Framber Valdez has a huge outpitch and a tick or two more on their fastball.
But there was Urquidy, pitching in the 2019 World Series as prospect after prospect either flamed out, got hurt, or got flipped at the deadline. Not only was he on the postseason roster, he was thriving – and touching 97, while sitting 93-94. There was more in his arm than scouts and perhaps even Urquidy thought, a bit like the M’s Ljay Newsome, who was signed as a strike-throwing under-6′ righty throwing 87, but has become a perfectly adequate arm throwing 93 consistently.
Urquidy is still around, and still pitching pretty effectively in 2021, but he’s changed pretty substantially from the guy we all saw in 2019. This year – and I wrote about him last week – he’s throwing just 91-92, and he’s throwing less of his great change-up and more of his slider. That hasn’t been a good trade for him, as batters are still baffled by his cambio, but have found the slider a little easier to hit. Part of this may just be the result of how easy the ball is to pick up for righties. As mentioned last time, he has massive, kind of hilarious reverse splits in his career, with lefties unable to do much of anything and righties feasting. The slider usage may be a way to target them, and make them hit something other than his fastball.
If it’s done anything, the change in velocity has helped him limit pulled contact, which is generally the worst kind to allow for a pitcher. But he’s got a plan: he’s throwing his change and slider higher in the zone this year, and thus he’s seen a ton of pop-ups and soft fly balls. This has pushed his GB% – already quite low – to absurdly, Emilio-Pagan-style lows. The idea would be that this would push his BABIP down, as all non-HRs would be easy-to-catch flies, and with his low walk rate, you’d have a guy who’d continue to give up fewer runs than his FIP would suggest.
He’s tossed four starts, but…the plan isn’t working. His BABIP is *up* this year, as are his walks allowed. He’s giving up weaker contact, and his strikeout rate is up, but it hasn’t mattered in the short sample that is 2021. This may just be a lot of bad luck, but he’s one walk away from tying the 8 he gave up last season (he faced 25-30 more batters last year) and he’s already matched his hits-allowed from last year. In the meantime, this is a pretty good match-up for the M’s righties. They’ve done better against righties, and their right-handed bats like Ty France and Mitch Haniger don’t mind facing same-handed hurlers.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Trammell, LF
7: Moore, 2B
8: Torrens, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Sheffield
Nick Margevicius’ start lasted only 1/3 of an inning yesterday, and that came a week after he had to be lifted from his start with discomfort in his arm. He’s now on the IL with shoulder discomfort, and will have an MRI to see what the problem is. For now, Robert Dugger, one-time M’s prospect turned Miami Marlin, turned M’s prospect (kind of) again, is up from the Alternate Site and is available tonight. It’s sounding like Ljay Newsome, who was great for four scoreless yesterday, may take Margevicius’ spot in the rotation. They could conceivably move back to a five-man rotation given the off-days scheduled in May.
Yesterday’s game was a fascinating one. Their starter was knocked out in the first. Drew Steckenrider gave up an additional run, and the Red Sox kept putting runners on throughout the game. It was the kind of game that I felt would end with a position player on the mound for Seattle and maybe a double-digit deficit on the board. A loss is a loss, and I understand it’s all the same in the standings, but I was very impressed with Seattle’s effort in what sure looked like a laugher. They scraped some runs across later on and made it a very interesting game in the late innings.
The team’s been very fun to watch. Please note, this is quite distinct from “good.” They’re still a comically top-heavy line-up, and recent games have pushed them below league average at the plate. It’s tough to think they can keep up scoring about a half a run more than their base runs would predict. But I will take a team that seems lucky and able to compete in late innings over a team that simply can’t come back and seemingly knows it. I know it’s hard to armchair psychoanalyze players from home, bringing in emotional words (“fight” “compete”) to layer over what are often random events. We can talk about luck taking the place of improvement and talent, but this is entertainment, and for right now, I’m entertained by this club.
There are warning signs all over: Kyle Lewis is struggling in the very early going, and Evan White’s still not right. Tom Murphy and Dylan Moore are looking like shadows of themselves. I’m well aware. But we M’s fans *know* losing baseball teams and lost baseball games. A loss like yesterday’s is not anywhere near the noxious types of loss we’ve experienced far too often. Sure, you can point to the reasons why it happened, or why the comeback fell short. But between Newsome’s performance and the odd fact that Tom Murphy has scored 5 runs despite just 5 hits and 2 walks. The entire bottom of the line-up struggles, but as soon as Tom Murphy gets on base, they knock him in, or get it to Mitch to do the dirty work. For some long, fortune has seemed to have out and out hatred for the M’s; there was a real maliciousness to the M’s bad luck. This year? It feels like friendly teasing. I’ll take it.
Game 22, Mariners at Red Sox
Nick Margevicius vs. Eduardo Rodriguez, 10:10am
After a comprehensive and impressive win, the M’s go for a huge road series win against a good team. It’s going to be tough; this isn’t an ideal match-up, but the M’s line-up has been better than advertised by the likes of…uh, me, and put up a decent number of runs. May that continue!
Chris Flexen put together a brilliant start yesterday, scattering four hits in 7 IP, giving up just one run, and striking out seven. He gets dinged by statcast and other sites for not racking up swings and misses at times, but you wouldn’t know it from watching Boston try to hit him. He picked up 16 swings-and-misses to go along with 10 called strikes, easily outpacing Nate Eovaldi, who touched 99 and has knockout stuff.
The key for Flexen has been his cutter at 90-91 – it’s the pitch he went to most often, and he generated most of the whiffs with it. It had the most balls in play off of it, but most of it was only moderately well-struck. And because hitters have to look for it, I think it helps his comparatively underpowered fastball play up. They’d let the fastball go, obviously looking for something else, or they’d foul it off. In all, the Sox only put two fastballs in play. If a pitcher can generate contact on pitches *other* than four-seamers, that’s a good thing: batters do the most damage on fastballs. Cutters, even very “fastball like” versions of the pitch, get improved results.
Nick Margevicius has been hit fairly hard, but his FIP’s better than his ERA due to a fairly impressive K:BB ratio for a lefty throwing in the high 80s. His fastball’s been his best pitch by far, which is kind of strange. I talked up his slider last time out, and he barely threw it, preferring to throw a barrage of slow, rainbow curves in the low 70s. That pitch certainly may make his fastball look tougher, but on its own, it hasn’t quite worked. Hitters are slugging .571 off of it, and if you look at the expected stats, Margevicius has gotten quite *lucky* off of the balls in play he’s allowed. To be fair, the results haven’t really been there on the few sliders he’s thrown, but I think it’s one dinger spoiling everything. It was a solid pitch last year, and I wish we’d see more of it. Not sure that we will today, given Boston’s strong right-handed hitters, but maybe he can work it in against Rafael Devers.
Eduardo Rodriguez was one of the most prominent players in any sport to not only contract Covid-19, but to have one of the many longer-term issues that can be associated with it. Specifically, Rodriguez suffered myocarditis, and inflammation of the heart which can often lead to scarring. That can seriously impact longer-term health, but the fact that he’s playing suggests it may not have gotten that far. Still, Rodriguez had a severe case, and I’m very glad he’s been able to come back. He’s long been a guy who’s been able to consistently generate weaker contact, and the key to that has been his excellent change-up. Batters have hit .232 off of it in Rodriguez’s career, with a .337 slugging percentage. In the early going this season, they’re hitting even worse, with a paltry .217 SLG%. He’s using it more often, as you would if you had a pitch that hitters found it nearly impossible to drive, throwing more of it than his four-seam fastball. That’s new; it’s always played off of the fastball as opposed to being the main course, so we’ll see if he tries to get back to a more “normal” pitch mix for a starter. He also throws a slider and cutter, with the latter becoming an increasingly important part of his repertoire. That’s been important, because he’s simply never really been able to figure out his slider. He’s like a lefty Erasmo Ramirez in that regard, I guess. But better: he’s been great in his first three starts this year, and was better than average in 2018 and 2019 as well. Not that it’s mattered if an opposing starter holds the M’s in check; they can just wait for some set-up guy to make mistakes and pounce.
1: Haniger, DH
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Moore, RF
7: Haggerty, LF
8: Murphy, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Margevicius