Game 45, Mariners at Diamondbacks
Justus Sheffield vs. Zac Gallen, 5:10pm
Last night’s loss seems to have officially ended the bizarre, week-long run of the M’s being back door playoff contenders. In a way, this is better. With everything going on, it’d be a shame to then be emotionally crushed by a late-season loss to the A’s or Astros. The M’s really aren’t very good, and no one claimed they would be a month or two ago. We’ve all just taken a random, sometimes fun, sometimes less so detour to end up back in the same spot. Just enjoy baseball as a diversion from everything else.
In addition to the M’s putting JP Crawford on the bereavement list, the M’s made a small roster move in IL’ing 2B Shed Long with a hairline fracture in his shin. It may or may not explain Long’s prolonged slump, but it’s clearly better to let Long heal and come back looking more like the guy we saw in 2019.
In addition, the M’s officially outrighted Mallex Smith to Tacoma, essentially ending his tenure w/Seattle by removing him from the 40-man roster. This one stings a bit. Smith was coming off of a 3.5 WAR season in 2018, with a 118 wRC+ and 40 steals. He was young, seemingly on the upswing, and capable of holding down CF for a long while. Instead, he utterly collapsed, hitting just .220/.290/.323 over parts of two seasons, and suffering defensive lapses as well. His strikeout rate climbed, which was the death knell for a player who didn’t hit the ball hard. The speedy-of-goes-to-Seattle-and-craters was a staple feature of M’s baseball in the 1990s, but I thought we were past these hackneyed, overplayed storylines (though Leonys Martin was kind of a throwback to the Brian L Hunters of old). I found/find Smith’s collapse really odd, both in its severity and how immediate it was. I would love to know what Tampa had him do vs. what M’s coaches told him to do, but it’s probably a mixture of BABIP regression and a decline in his batting eye.
The M’s lost a one-run game after Yusei Kikuchi struggled early, and the bullpen kept the M’s in the game long enough to mount a comeback. But even the improvement in the bullpen, who rarely look like the absolute worst group in the game anymore, seems to come too late. Now, it’s the offense’s turn to struggle, as they’re hitting for a 96 wRC+ in the past two weeks. Worse, they’ve hit fewer HRs in that span than any other club.
When the M’s are going well, it’s largely thanks to the Kyles. Lewis leads the team in dingers at 9, and Seager chipping in with an excellent K:BB ratio and .200+ ISO of his own. Dylan Moore’s been fantastic all year, and having his bat in the line-up is keeping the M’s in games, but Lewis’ recent slump has coincided with the M’s losing streak. Lewis is an odd duck, in that he’s not at all the player I think we thought we were getting after his eye-opening cup of coffee a year ago. Whereas 2019 Lewis had an abysmal K:BB ratio, this new one is drawing a ton of walks and has cut his K% noticeably. But while the 2019 Lewis had a huge ISO thanks to 6 HRs in short succession, the 2020 Lewis isn’t slugging as much as I would’ve thought, or at least, he’s not slugging like he was a month ago.
Maybe that’s too much to ask – please, Kyle Lewis, come in for your rookie season during Covid-19 disruptions and put up a .300/.400/.550 for us. But despite an average nearly right at .300, Lewis is slugging in the .480s. The reason is that he has just *2* doubles on the year. Look, given the choice between doubles and dingers, I take the latter every time. This is not exactly a complaint. But it’s odd that given how complete of a hitter he’s looked, and despite good speed, he’s not pulling liners or putting the occasional ball in the gap. All told, only 23% of his hits have gone for extra bases, and while the vast majority of *those* have left the yard, that’s a surprisingly low ratio. I’m happy for the singles he’s hit. But I’m stunned that – despite a home park that suppresses doubles – he hasn’t muscled a few more gappers. Going forward, that would do a lot for his overall value.
1: Moore, 2B
2: France, DH
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Marmolejos, LF
6: White, 1B
7: Torrens, C
8: Walton, SS
9: Ervin, RF
SP: Sheffield
Game 44, Mariners at Diamondbacks
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Caleb Smith, 6:40pm
I am a product of my Pacific Northwest upbringing. There’s no getting around it. One thing that this produces is a distaste for or outright inability to function in extreme temperatures. For this reason, the thought of going to Phoenix around this time of year makes me uncomfortable. Yes, there’s AC everywhere, I know. But it doesn’t take away the dread of trying to do physical activities in that kind of heat. With this as the backdrop: I wish I was in Phoenix now.
The air quality in my little pocket of the South Sound wasn’t *too* bad until yesterday and today. It’s…it’s real bad now, and it’s *still* somehow better than many places. And of course, this is nothing compared to the thousands and thousands of people dealing with evacuation orders or watching fires march closer. This is a grim time in what’s been a grim, grim year. Go Mariners?
The D-Backs, a team I thought would easily grab a wild card in the expanded playoff format, have been brutally bad this year, thanks to an anemic offense that’s utterly collapsed after last year. Despite a good offensive environment, they’re hitting for no power. Ketel Marte’s ISO last year (when he hit 32 bombs) was .264. It’s now .117, and he’s stuck on just 2 dingers. Former emerging star (and former UW Husky) Jake Lamb was just DFA’d. As a team, the D-Backs have an OBP of .303.
With the club out of contention, they traded off their one position player who was having a decent year – OF Starling Marte to the Marlins (the Marlins buying at the deadline from Arizona; if you predicted THAT, I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter). In return they got today’s starter, Caleb Smith. Smith made it one game in 2020 before contracting Covid-19 along with what seemed like 2/3 of the Marlins roster. He hasn’t pitched since, as he’d been trying to get back into game shape at the Marlins (and the D-Backs) alternate training site. I’m not sure what to expect, or how long they’ll let him go tonight.
Originally a Yankee farmhand, he had a very good first year in Miami in 2018, striking out 88 in 77 1/3 IP. He pitched off of a 92 MPH fastball that had more armside run than you’d expect, given Smith’s normal 3/4 delivery. It paired well with a change with even more armside run, and an interesting gyro-spin slider with above-average drop. Last year, Smith was one of the pitchers most harmed by MLB using a dragless, seemingly-rubber baseball, and that funky fastball was suddenly easier to lift. Batters still struggled, and didn’t hit for average against it, but he gave up 20 HRs on the heater, pushing his overall HR rate to nearly 2 per 9 IP.
With the baseball a little bit more normal, he’d be a good regression bet, but obviously the ‘rona had other plans. His walk rate was never great, but he gave up 6 free passes in 3 IP back in July, so that’s another thing to keep an eye on. The M’s have a number of patient hitters, and they should force Smith back into the zone.
If there’s one pitcher *more* harmed by the weird baseball in 2019, it’s Yusei Kikuchi. The new ball, more velocity, and a transformative cutter have all but eliminated Kikuchi’s serious HR problem. He’s got other problems, of course, but I’m surprised at myself for thinking that Kikuchi in Arizona is a pretty good match-up. That would, uh, not have been the case last year.
Kikuchi’s cutter isn’t just a putaway pitch (though most of his K’s have come on cutters). Instead, it’s a sneaky-effective ground ball machine. His overall ground ball rate has spiked this season, and the cutter’s the reason why. He’s actually getting *fewer* ground balls on his fastball, but then, he’s yielding fewer balls in play of any kind with it.
One interesting thing I’ve seen is that Kikuchi’s throwing his fastball lower than he did last year, and he’s trying to keep it away from right-handers – the batters that hit 28 HRs off of him last year. The lack of grounders is interesting, but the real change is his move from slider to cutter. The average launch angle – the angle the ball takes off of the bat – on his slower slider last year was 10. This year: -3. Despite the fact that they’re hitting it harder, they can’t really do damage, as they keep hitting the ball on the ground. I assume Kikuchi can figure out whatever’s troubling him with men on base, but I like his new approach overall.
1: Moore, LF
2: France, 2B
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: White, 1B
6: Torrens, C
7: Marmolejos, DH
8: Ervin, RF
9: Gordon, SS
SP: Kikuchi
JP Crawford will miss the next few games on the bereavement list. Donovan Walton is up with the club to give them more SS depth until Crawford returns.
Game 43, Mariners at Giants – Smokescreen
Nick Margevicius vs. Tyler Anderson, 6:45pm
This is what Oracle Park looked like a few hours ago, as dense smoke choked out the sun. Wildfires are burning up and down the coast. Over 300,000 acres in Washington burned in 24 hours earlier this week, and more than 2.5 million acres have burned in California. We still don’t know how many people have lost their lives, but we know a one year old boy died in Eastern Washington. The pandemic continues its toll, too. The M’s are going to try to perhaps play San Francisco with…all of this as the backdrop.
Houston, scheduled to play across the bridge in Oakland, was mulling not playing or at least demanding to know how
safe it was. I wouldn’t be shocked if both games are postponed, but for now, the M’s are set to play at 6:45.
The Giants came back after knocking Ljay Newsome out early on a line drive that struck the young hurler in the wrist (sounds like he’ll be OK), and the M’s bullpen couldn’t hold a 5-1 lead. After pitching a lot of innings, the M’s predictably made a roster move, optioning Brady Lail to Tacoma and bringing up ex-Orioles pitcher, Jimmy Yacabonis. A righty, Yacabonis has a low 3/4 delivery, and gets a lot of sidespin on the ball, producing loads of armside run. For a four-seamer, it’s a fairly unique pitch, with tons more run and much less rise than average. It’s thrown around 94, and seems like an interesting pitch, but it’s just not one he’s been able to command. Yacabonis has walked 5 batters per 9 innings over his 100+ IP career.
He’s also got a slider and change-up, and while they’re fine, they weren’t enough for him to keep hold of a rotation spot in Baltimore – against some, uh, uninspiring competition. Still, we’ll see if the M’s were able to release his inner zone-controller, and it’s possible he won’t pitch all that much if Margevicius gives the club some innings.
Tyler Anderson is a lefty who pitched for Colorado for four seasons before moving to the Bay Area this year. He came up with the Rockies in 2016, and had some immediate success thanks to good control and a sneaky/weird 92 MPH fastball that, despite some rise, induced a lot of ground balls. Indeed, Anderson was the archetype Rockies pitcher of that era: lots of four-seamers, lots of grounders. The next year, pitching around some injuries, Anderson’s FB got hit in the air a bit more, giving him a high HR rate (it was 2017; that was happening a lot) which wasn’t a good trend to go with an increased walk rate.
Unfortunately for Anderson, 2018 saw more of the same. A higher walk rate *and* a fastball that was now a fly ball pitch, leading to tons of HRs. He missed most of 2019, but posted a freakishly high walk rate and an ERA near 12 in 20 innings. With the Giants, the trajectory has continued: he’s now an extreme fly ball pitcher, with the same fastball that got grounders in 2016 now producing them on just 12% of balls in play. It’s also down to 90 MPH. He throws a change, which, to his credit, has gotten a bit more effective over time and a cutter. Those secondaries are good choices to reduce platoon splits, and Anderson does have essentially even splits over his career. It’s just that both sides have hit him fairly well. This is an opportunity, and the M’s have to take advantage if they fancy themselves a playoff team.
Speaking of which: if the M’s actually wanted to push for the playoffs, they’d call up some of their highly prized prospects. There was a discussion on that topic at Lookout Landing today, and I find the reluctance to give up a year of control or what not to be self-defeating. The M’s non-Kyle Lewis OFs have not covered themselves in glory, and if winning was really the goal, they’d probably look to change that by bringing in more talented players. Whom they have in Tacoma. The same could be said about Logan Gilbert, who’s passed over by Newsome or Margevicius (who’ve both been good; this is not a shot at them) not because they’re better or met X,Y, or Z milestone at the Alternative Site, but because the club doesn’t care about their contract status in 2026 and very much does care about Gilbert’s.
Keeping an eye on such things is a part of their job, and they’re right to weigh it as a consideration. But when it becomes a driving, overriding factor, something may have gone wrong. The team with the longest playoff drought in US sports should probably think about…ending the playoff drought, and if 2023 or so really is the year, they’d still have every player we’ve talked about under team control.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Moore, LF
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: France, 2B
6: White, 1B
7: Torrens, C
8: Marmolejos, DH
9: Ervin, RF
SP: Margevicius
Photo credit: NBCSports Bay Area.
Game 42, Mariners at Giants – The Weirdest Meaningful Series
Ljay Newsome vs. Logan Webb, 6:45pm
Thanks to the utter collapse of two of the game’s best teams coming into 2020 (the Yankees and Astros) along with the continued bifurcation of the league into good and rrrreal bad (looking at you, Texas), the M’s are kind of in a playoff hunt. It’s September, there are 18 games left, and the M’s head out on the road a couple of games behind the Astros for 2nd place in the west, and a few back of the Yankees for one of the wild card spots. The Yankees AND Astros are trailing as I write this, too.
The M’s have won 6 straight and are on quite a good run, but it’s so hard to figure out how to interpret that given the M’s schedule. The M’s are coming off a sweep of the Rangers, who are by winning percentage the worst team in MLB. They started their streak against the Angels, who have more talent than the Rangers, but are mired at 17-25. They haven’t fared as well against the better teams in the league, but then again, it’s 2020: they don’t have to FACE the likes of the Twins/White Sox/Rays/Indians. This season makes no sense, so of course the M’s have a shot.
If there’s one team that can understand the weird psychological conundrum of thinking they had a good shot to pick #1 overall and then quickly shifting to daydreaming about 1st round playoff pitching match-ups, it’s the Giants. The Mariners had the 2nd worst projected record in the AL, just a game or two back of the Orioles. Meanwhile, San Francisco had the 2nd worst projection in the NL, just fractionally ahead of the Marlins. Both the Marlins and Giants enter play tonight with .500 records, plenty good enough to be in the hunt for a wildcard in the new “everyone’s invited” playoff format of 8 teams per league making the first round.
Thus, we get what seemed like a sick joke in July, and perhaps even a couple of weeks ago: a September series between the M’s and Giants with playoff implications for both teams. I’ll be honest: I’m not sure how the M’s are in this spot, and I worry that we’re overreacting to the M’s swatting away a tanking Rangers team. I worry the M’s could fade in the late-September series against Houston and Oakland. But if there’s one thing 2020 has taught us, it’s that you don’t really need to be good to be in a position like this. You just have to convert winning chances.
The Rangers don’t because they essentially don’t have any, not with a line-up that can’t hit. The Yankees have all kinds of winning chances, and seem to be inventing more baroque, bizarre ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, kind of like their cross-town rivals, the Mets (watching the two teams play was like a bizarre grand guignol version of the game, with games ending on a wild pitch, a HR, a single, and the Yanks blowing a late lead with three runs hit off of their best set-up man). The M’s, despite a patched-together bullpen, have *mostly* kept things together, save that awful 8 run final inning in the first game of a double-header in San Diego.
Their bullpen isn’t great, but it’s figuring things out, and their rotation has been good enough to keep them in games. Now, it’s been good enough against bad teams. Marco Gonzales aside, I’m less sure about the other starters. This will be an interesting test for Newsome, who may be the only starter who HASN’T had a cupcake schedule for a while. He’s only faced the Dodgers and Padres, the two teams outpacing the Giants in the NL West. But the Giants boast a very good offense; they rank 5th in baseball behind, among others, the aforementioned Dodgers and Padres. They’re led by the breakout star Mike Yastrzemski, whose 2.4 fWAR are 2nd in baseball behind Fernando Tatis, Jr. down the road in San Diego. They’re also getting a career year from Donovan Solano, the ex-Marlin, who’s pairing solid bat-to-ball skill with newfound gap power, and a huge bounce-back year from 1B Brandon Belt, who’s power stroke is back.
Like the M’s, though, their pitching is a bit hit and miss. Tonight’s starter, Logan Webb, is another guy like Kolby Allard with solid overall batting-against numbers, but a mediocre ERA thanks to trouble stranding runners and some control issues. He’s a righty (unlike Allard) with a low-3/4 arm slot, and throws a very heavy, sinking four-seamer, a sinker that he’ll mix in against righties, a change, and a curve (and a very rare slider). The change-up is the outpitch, a pitch with drop and some armside run, a pitch that makes the rest of his arsenal better. It’s also a pitch that’s most effective against lefties.
Webb’s been very tough on lefties, but with a curve that’s not great and 93 MPH fastballs that really aren’t designed to be swing-and-miss pitches, he’s a bit lost against righties. He’s managed a decent K rate against them, and he’ll definitely throw change-ups to righties, too. But it’s simply not the weapon that it is against righties. Against lefties, that change helps him post absurdly high ground ball rates. But his GB% plummets against righties – it’s still high-ish, or a bit above average, but he’s not a ground ball specialist against same-handed batters.
The template here is pretty clear – get some righties in the line-up and look for sinking fastballs, and hit them hard.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Moore, 2B
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: France, DH
6: Marmolejos, RF
7: White, 1B
8: Torrens, C
9: Long, LF
SP: Newsome
Evan White’s K rate has fallen below 40% and he’s hitting over .300 after the odd, made-up All Star break. His SLG% has dropped though, and I hope he’s not trading off power for contact, akin to what JP Crawford seems to have done. White’s always going to be an odd duck, and I’m not sure he’ll ever be a big power threat. He simply had to make more contact, and he’s doing that. But the offensive demands of the 1B position are high, and I just hope he’s able to continue to refine his approach.
Game 41, Rangers at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Kolby Allard, 1:10pm
The M’s have won 5 in a row, and are somehow now on the fringes of a playoff spot thanks to the expanded postseason. The M’s have 20 games to play, 1/3 of the shortened season. Despite both their pitching and position players ranking in the bottom third (per Fangraphs), they’re not as painful to watch as they were early in the season.
Given the short season and extra-imbalanced schedule, it’s hard to know what to make of it. Are the M’s figuring things out, or just playing Texas/Anaheim a lot? Are their starters really developing before our eyes, or is it just a couple of games of BABIP luck? The answer is undoubtedly a mixture. The Rangers really are terrible, and I’m not quite sure where they go from here. They’re going to wait out some bad contracts, hope their pitchers develop and…I’m not exactly sure what they do on the infield. But that’s not all of it. There have been clear, unambiguous signs of development from several Mariners, from Kyle Lewis’ improved K% to Ljay Newsome’s solid initial games. But one of the more improbable, at least to me, has been Marco Gonzales’ remarkable improvement.
Marco Gonzales has been good-goodish for a few years now, but after a solid 2018, things looked worse in 2019 (despite a nice ERA). His velocity dropped, his walk rate climbed, and his strikeouts fell markedly. That lovely ERA was held down by a flurry of unearned runs and some HR/FB luck. He alternated effective months with disastrous ones, but ultimately finished the year fairly strong. Still, the trend in velo and thus strikeouts looked ominous.
If Gonzales was going to rebound and put together a great season, what do you think would change? What, exactly, would be the cause of this breakthrough? I and other M’s-writers have mused on this several times over the years, and we have been wrong every time. I certainly would’ve been wrong this year. A velocity spike, aided by the M’s “Gas Camp” perhaps? No, his velocity is even lower this year, and is among the lowest in the velo-obsessed game. How about an improvement in his change-up, once his best pitch, but an offering whose results have never quite shown up in games? No, if anything, 2020 has pretty clearly demonstrated that the cambio is in fact his worst pitch. Uh, more randomized pitch mix? No, he’s not quiet as random this year, favoring his fastball and cutter a bit more.
It’s thus hard to say exactly what he’s doing, but clearly command is at the center of it. His walk rate is nearly imperceptible, and he’s gotten increasingly good at targeting different zones with different pitches. He’s keeping his four-seam fastball and sinker down, using the former to get in on the hands of righties, and the latter to bore in towards lefties. He’s not abandoning the top of the zone entirely, though – he just uses the cutter up there. Whatever the reason, his average exit velocity has fallen, and it’s fallen for both grounders and fly balls. Batters aren’t driving the ball in the air, and it’s made his underpowered fastball one of the better pitches in the game, looking at pure results. It’s amazing.
Before the year, I worried that the Rangers might overtake the M’s in pursuit of contention if they could coax some improvement and consistency from younger starters like Kolby Allard. The 23 year old lefty has a very low BABIP, an improved K rate…it’s happening, right. No, despite luck on BABIP and HR/FB, he’s got an ERA well over 5, and he’s walking way too many. His woes look a bit like Yusei Kikuchi’s in that he pairs a very solid overall wOBA or batting average against with far too many runs allowed. The key is that he’s been great with no one on, but unable to strand any runners. That’s not a good pattern for someone who walks a lot of batters, too.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Moore, 2B
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: France, DH
6: White, 1B
7: Ervin, RF
8: Torrens, C
9: Strange-Gordon, LF
SP: Gonzales
Dee Gordon now goes by Dee Strange-Gordon, as you can see from the line-up.
Happy Labor Day!
Game 39, Rangers at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Kyle Gibson, 6:10pm
After another win against the Rangers, the M’s are now 5-2 against Texas. There’s not a lot of mystery about why the Rangers are where they are: they have the worst group of position players in the game, and at least by Fangraphs’ metrics, it’s not even close. They’re the only group that’s racked up negative WAR, and they’re closing in on -3, so they’re not just fractionally into negative territory. The problems are widespread: nearly the entire starting line-up, from Shin-Soo Choo to Todd Frazier (since departed) to Rougned Odor was in negative territory. Veterans like Choo or Andrus, younger players like Willie Calhoun – it didn’t matter.
At the beginning of the year, league-wide BABIP was way down – lower than it had been in decades. That’s changed in recent weeks, and league BABIP is up around .290, just a couple of points lower than last year. The Rangers have not gotten the memo, as their team BABIP is still .257, by far the worst in the league. Optimists may point to this as a reason their offense hasn’t gotten going; they’re snakebit by BABIP luck. Their average exit velocity is middle of the pack, so there’s something to this theory, but it can’t explain all of it. They’ve hit for no power, have middling plate discipline, and this is what, the third year in four that Odor’s been nearly unplayable?
Kendall Graveman was electric out of the bullpen yesterday, averaging 97 on his sinker in a perfect inning. The M’s will have an interesting decision to make on him at year’s end. His contract’ll be up, and he may get some attention from other clubs, but his neck injury and arm issues the past few years will limit how much they bid. The M’s may want to bring him back as a bullpen arm.
Today, the M’s again face Kyle Gibson, the ex-Twins ground ball maven who’s been a regular punching bag in Texas. While the Rangers haven’t hit for power, opposing teams have done just fine against Gibson, who enters sporting a HR/9 rate of 2.13. The Rangers had done well in rehabilitating Mike Minor and especially Lance Lynn (who struggled a bit in Minnesota), but it hasn’t worked with Gibson, nor with Juan Nicasio. I think this year was always supposed to be a bridge year before their minor league pitching prospects could get their feet wet in the bigs, and ideally, swapping out vets like Minor or Lynn would help restock the farm system. I’m not sure any of that’s really going to happen now. They held on to Lance Lynn at the deadline, moved Mike Minor (whose ERA was 5.60), and made minor deals to move on from the disappointing Robinson Chirinos and Todd Frazier. That’s not exactly a big system restock, and without the minors, it’s hard to know how much progress their hurlers have made on the year.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Moore, LF
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: France, 2B
6: Marmolejos, DH
7: White, 1B
8: Ervin, RF
9: Torrens, C
SP: Sheffield
Game 38, Rangers at Mariners – Back to the Grind
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Kyle Cody, 6:10pm
The M’s series with the A’s was postponed due to a player contracting Covid-19, but will be made up with a series of double-headers soon. This is a common site now across baseball, as today’s action features what, 5 7-inning twin bills?
The M’s salvaging a split in that series in Anaheim was well-timed. Not only did they not fall behind the Angels in the standings, but it gave the pitching staff some confidence coming into this series against the lackluster Rangers. He’s someone I’ve criticized on the blog before, or at least questioned his ceiling, but Marco Gonzales has suddenly become quite good. He stopped the slide in his K%, BB% (and, uh, K/BB ratio) and has a microscopic walk rate along with the best K% he’s ever posted. He’s inducing weaker contact and thanks to that great control, the balls in play he’s allowing have predominantly come after he’s ahead in the count. This isn’t flukey BABIP luck, it’s the product of an aggressive approach, and it’s paying off.
Yusei Kikuchi remains an enigma, however. He’s allowed batters a sub-.700 OPS on the year, and thanks to a single HR-allowed, has a sparkling FIP, but his ERA remains stubbornly above 6. I’ve mentioned it a lot, but he’s really struggled with men on base, which is pretty much the only way you could turn his overall batting-against numbers into a high ERA. It’s weird – he’s corrected nearly all of the things that plagued him last year, most especially his HR problems. He’s striking out more thanks to an uptick in velocity and his new hard cutter. Walks are higher, but trading walks for dingers seems like a deal worth making. The trouble-from-the-stretch thing wasn’t really a problem last year, so I don’t *think* it’s just a case of him losing velo or effectiveness without the windup, and in any event that windup and his mechanics are pretty different from last year.
Kikuchi’s been much, much better at home this year, with a better K:BB ratio, no HRs-allowed, and all the rest. He is, of course 0-2 at home. And while he’s been knocked around on the road, he’s 1-0. Object lesson in the irrelevance of pitcher wins #4,502,341.
So, today’s opponent is Kyle Cody, a rookie righty out of the University of Kentucky (where he was a teammate of Evan White). Cody was drafted in 2016, and made it to high-A the next year before going down with TJ surgery. He missed nearly all of 2018 and missed all-all of 2019, before popping back this year at the Alternate Training Site, and now making a couple of appearances for Texas. It’s happened a lot this year, but Cody’s another player who never appeared at AA or AAA, and has now made the majors. He’s still getting stretched out and has only made 1-1+IP stints, so this is probably an “opener” situation; he’s not going to work too deep tonight.
Cody throws a mid-high-90s fastball (averaging 96), and a blizzard of sliders. He’s got a sinker and change, but essentially, he’s in there to be the 2020 version of the way the M’s used Matt Wisler last year (Wisler’s having a phenomenal year for Minnesota, by the way). That slider is a fascinating pitch, with *tons* more drop than the average slider; it functions much like a curve, with much more vertical drop than sweeping action (like Wisler’s). Batters haven’t really figured it out, though of course, he really hasn’t pitched to many thus far.
After getting beat badly by the M’s two Kyles, you can’t really blame the Rangers for calling up one of their own. We’ll see how effective this pretender is when facing the M’s Kyles tonight.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Moore, 2B
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: France, DH
6: Marmolejos, LF
7: White, 1B
8: Torrens, C
9: Haggerty, RF
SP: Kikuchi
The M’s have been busy on the transaction wire. Their big trade with the Padres supplied tonight’s DH and C, and then the M’s traded nominal closer Taylor Williams for a PTBNL (supposedly Matt Brash, a pitcher). Because a few of the prospects the M’s got from San Diego aren’t on the roster, they’ve claimed P Walker Lockett off of waivers from the Mets, and OF Phillip Ervin off of waivers from the Reds. Ervin was a former 1st round pick who moved slowly up the Reds system thanks to excellent walk rates, but struggled with a low average and mediocre power (not a great combo in an OF). He was pretty solid in 2019 in his longest big league stint (260 PAs), but looked utterly lost this year, going 3-42 with no extra-base hits.
Lockett is another ex-Padres prospect (like Wisler!) who had a cup of coffee with San Diego before moving to the Mets. He’s been a frustratingly mediocre pitcher, without a real out-pitch, and who’s given up 11 HRs in his 45+ big league innings. Lockett’s four-seam (?) fastball is a weird one, with super low rise. It looks like a sinker, and seemed to function like one in the minors, where he’d put up above-average GB rates. That hasn’t happened in the big leagues (I refer you again to the HRs-allowed) where he’s been, if anything, a real fly ball guy. That’s not working, and I wonder if the M’s will try to get him on the Justus Sheffield program of turning a freakishly sinking four-seamer into a delightfully sinking sinker. MLB thinks it IS one, while Brooks still calls it a four-seamer. We’ll see if we can figure out what to call it once he appears with the M’s.
Ervin and possibly Lockett are out of options, and thus are with the big club. Tim Lopes, Joe Hudson and Braden Bishop have been optioned back to Tacoma, while Zac Grotz was outrighted there. With Dylan Moore back from the IL and Ty France in the fold, Shed Long will apparently struggle for playing time. The M’s may move him around the OF and he may get DH opportunities here and there. Sounds like he won’t really have much of a chance to hit his way out of his 2020 slump.
M’s and Padres Consummate 7 Player Deal
I think by now long-time readers know the general tone, the outlook of this particular blog. For all of the wheeling and dealing Jerry Dipoto has done, I’m skeptical that he’s a great judge of talent, and I’m skeptical he has some rare ability to get more than fair value in trade. If anything, I think I could be *too* skeptical; ask me to judge a Mariners trade in a week where both Ryan Yarbrough and Pablo Lopez have made yet another start in stellar years, and you may not get a neutral, balanced view of Dipoto’s work. But I want to bring up that context, that baggage, because Dipoto just traded Austin Nola, Austin Adams, and Dan Altavilla to San Diego, and I am ecstatic about it.
I mentioned in today’s post that the plan had clearly been to cash in on the early success of Austin Adams last year, or of Dan Altavilla’s velo uptick, but all of that seemed to have been scuppered by Adams’ injury and Altavilla’s inconsistency and lack of results. I…I guess not? The M’s packaged both – two guys who’ve combined for not quite 12 innings in 2020 with an ERA near 8 (all of that’s Dan’s, as Adams hasn’t been able to pitch yet) – with C/1B Austin Nola for a blockbuster return headlined by OF Taylor Trammell. Trammell has been a top-100-in-baseball prospect for several years, originally with Cincinnati and then with San Diego. He’s a tools scouts dream, with top-notch athleticism, speed, and has flashed remarkable bat speed and thus power at times (most notably at the Futures Game a few years ago), but who’s been slowed by AA pitching thus far. But the Padres also added 3B/2B/IF Ty France, who is hitting about as well as Austin Nola in 2020. His versatility gives the M’s some options at 2B, and at 3B should Kyle Seager get moved tomorrow, and at 26, he’s a younger utility guy than Nola or Dylan Moore.
The M’s also get catcher Luis Torrens, last seen allowing a ton of stolen bases to the M’s last week, but who raked in the PCL in 2019 and has a very promising bat for a catcher. Given Nola’s progression with the M’s, the club has to be pretty excited to get someone like Torrens to work with; Nola had been a contact-first batter without power before a brief power surge just before the M’s got him caught their eye. They improved his consistency at the plate AND his defense at catcher, and a fraction of that level of improvement would make Torrens a viable C, especially in a back-up role to Tom Murphy when Murphy returns to action.
But it gets better. The Padres threw in RP Andres Muñoz, a 21 year old with 100 MPH velocity who was pretty successful last year for San Diego, but who’s sidelined with Tommy John surgery now. Muñoz is the classic lottery ticket who could very well end up closing games thanks to his sinking, low-angled fastball and a good slider. There’s a lot of 2016-era Edwin Diaz in Muñoz, though of course we’ll have to see what he’s looking like after rehab.
All of these players are a bit higher risk. France is the high-ceiling guy, but he came out of nowhere as a mid-30s-round draft pick, and hasn’t grabbed a starting job in San Diego. That said, there’s no shame in having your starting job pipped by Manny Machado. Trammell hasn’t solved AA by any stretch, but there’s a reason people believe in talent like this despite AA struggles, and that reason is Kyle Lewis. In parts of two seasons in AA, Kyle Lewis slashed .253/.335/.392, with a strikeout rate over 27%. Trammell hasn’t gotten nearly the playing time in AA, but has a slash line there of .234/.340/.349, with a K% of just under 24%. Lewis hit for more power, but Trammell flashed some in the pitcher-friendly Midwest League, which Lewis skipped to underwhelm in the Cal League. I’m not saying Trammell is destined to follow in Lewis’ footsteps, but rather that the scouts that had Kyle Lewis as a top-100 prospect for a while and who *still* have Trammell in the top 100 might be on to something, something that hasn’t yet manifested itself in a slash line.
All of this is to say that the M’s did exceedingly well in this deal. I’m flabbergasted the M’s could get so much given that the Padres were able to grab a starting catcher an hour or two earlier by trading for the Angels’ Jason Castro. I’m stunned that the M’s were able to apparently get such interest in Adams and Altavilla, despite a short track record of big-league success. I’ve beat up the org and this front office so often for trades, so I’m a little lost for words. Good…good job? That was actually quite a remarkable deal the M’s just pulled off.
Game 36, Mariners at Angels – HugWatch
Justin Dunn vs. Griffin Canning, 1:10pm
Last night’s game was a disaster, as the Angels scored 16, the final two off of M’s DH Tim Lopes. Given that context – a bullpen unable to get off the field, a starting pitcher who walked 4 in 4 1/3 IP, etc. – it’s perhaps unsurprising that the M’s are starting back-up catcher Joe Odom today. What IS a bit surprising is that the M’s have recalled C Joe Hudson from Tacoma, optioning Braden Bishop back down. With the trade deadline set for tomorrow at 1pm, could Austin Nola be headed to a contender?
It’s possible the M’s just want to maximize their options at C, and it’s possible that with Jake Fraley up and Dylan Moore returning soon after his 10-day stint and the birth of his son (congrats), the M’s decided to get Bishop more PAs in Tacoma rather than Seattle. But as Ryan Divish and others have noted, Nola’s got a lot of value as a good, bat-first catcher making the league minimum and with plenty of club control. He’s 30, which cuts into his trade value, but he makes sense as a win now move for teams like the Rockies, D-Backs, or even potentially the Jays – teams who are good, but have black holes at C – this Jay Jaffe piece at Fangraphs discusses all of the contending teams in need of the sort of upgrade Nola would provide.
The M’s have downplayed how active they’re going to be in the next 24 hours, with their bullpen largely sidelined with injury or ineffective. I’m not sure they’ve been actively shopping Nola, but I’m sure they’d listen to offers. The club seems very smitten with Tom Murphy, and while he’s missed all of 2020 with an injury, I could see them believing they can limp through 2020, then allow Cal Raleigh to apprentice for Murphy in 2021.
We still don’t know what the return is for the biggest move they’ve made: sending Taijuan Walker to Toronto. Walker tossed six scoreless in his first start for the Jays, and Ljay Newsome staked his claim to that rotation spot, and is penciled in to start in the M’s next series, against Oakland.
About that next series… an A’s player tested positive for Covid yesterday, necessitating a quarantine in Houston. The A’s won’t play today, and that next series is in serious jeopardy. That may necessitate some double headers for the M’s, whose six-man rotation may make them a bit more prepared for them than other clubs.
Justus Sheffield’s run of success came to a screeching halt last night, as he struggled with control and command all night. Batters swung at just *7* of Sheff’s 39 fastballs on the night, missing none of them (he had no whiffs on his change, either). As good as the slider is, he’s still *got* to have command of his fastball to be effective. The same could be said of Dunn, albeit reversed. He’s slowly improving his zone rate with his fastball, which is leading to more contact on it. That sounds bad, but it isn’t – batters haven’t fared well on his fastball, as it seems like they’re keyed in on his slider, which they’ve destroyed. I think stories about unsuccessful pitchers tipping pitches are overblown, but the Angels believe several of their starters may have been tipping, and I kind of wonder about Dunn.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haggerty, 3B
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, DH
5: Marmolejos, LF
6: White, 1B
7: Fraley, RF
8: Gordon, 2B
9: Odom, C
SP: Dunn
The Rangers are apparently listening to offers not just for Lance Lynn, who’s long seemed like one of the win-now prizes of the deadline, but also for three-true-outcome OF Joey Gallo. That would be a very interesting move, pushing out their window of contention (depending on the return, of course) past 2022. The Rockies gave up two decent prospects for the Orioles Mychal Givens, which highlights why the M’s are frustrated that Austin Adams, Matt Magill, and others have been hurt. There’s always a market for a solid set-up man at this point in the year, and the M’s wanted to be in a position to sell one or two.
Interestingly, the White Sox are rumored to be in talks with Cleveland to acquire talented-but-quarantine-defying SP Mike Clevinger from Cleveland. Would Cleveland really deal Clevinger to one of their most important playoff rivals (in-division, of course) in 2020? There are also rumors that the Tribe might consider moving SS Francisco Lindor, though perhaps not right now. Could the M’s move in for him, as this Mike Salk tweet asks? I’d love a big-time move like that, though of course I wonder what it’d cost. But I’m not convinced that JP Crawford would really work at 2B for a win-now club. He could, and his hot streak is showing that he’s better than the player he looked like for much of August, but he’s remarkably streaky, and needs to show that he can slug above .400 for long stretches of time.
Game 35, Mariners at Angels
Justus Sheffield vs. Dylan Bundy, 6:40pm
Nick Margevicius was solid once again, but the M’s couldn’t solve Andrew Heaney last night. Now, they’ll have to try to get to the Angels best starter this year, Dylan Bundy. Bundy tied the M’s in knots earlier on, but the team had begun to look a bit better – especially Evan White, who was coming out of his awful slump. But White is still sidelined with his shoulder injury, though an MRI showed nothing out of the ordinary, and White is apparently available tonight as a defensive replacement.
Like Heaney, Bundy hasn’t been on his best form his last few starts. He suffered from some bad sequencing and bad defense in his last start against Oakland, but it’s also possible that seeing Oakland for a third time in less than a month was to blame. That’s of interest to M’s fans, as this’ll be his third start against Seattle in less than a month, too. His one truly off start of the year was the one before that, against the Giants. He walked four in four IP; he has four *other* walks in the rest of his season.
One of the defining images of the year was watching Bundy strike out White on three 90 mph fastballs in the middle of the zone back in early August. But Bundy’s success hasn’t been based on his fastball, though. Batters are slugging .700+ off of it. As I mentioned earlier, he’s become much more of a junkballer, and batters have not figured out his slider (to righties) or change (to lefties) much at all, despite seeing so many of them. But that’s the sort of thing that teams *may* get better at simply by seeing him again so often. We’ll see if the M’s have better swings on his off-speed and breaking stuff, or if they try to get him into predictable counts and look fastball.
Justus Sheffield is on a roll, and I thought his emergence would be the feather in the M’s pitching coaching staff’s hat…but then Ljay Newsome appeared. No, seriously, Sheffield is the key guy they need in 2021. If they needed to shop for a starter in free agency *and* hope that Gilbert/Hancock are good to go from day 1, that’d be a tall order. If they have the best versions of Sheff and Marco Gonzales, it gets a lot easier to see. Of course, none of that matters unless the offense gets more consistent too, but that’s a separate issue. But Sheffield’s success looks a little bit like Bundy’s: he throws so many breaking balls, you hope it can still be effective against teams that have seen him often. The Angels have seen him once before, back in late July, so I don’t think he’s overexposed, but it’ll be interesting to see if Trout and company are looking slider.
While batters aren’t exactly blown away by Sheffield’s sinker, he’s given up just one XBH, a double, on it this year. Sheff’s given up just two doubles and NO HRs yet.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haggerty, LF
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Nola, C
6: Marmolejos, 1B
7: Lopes, DH
8: Long, 2B
9: Fraley, RF
SP: Sheffield
The Angels traded Tommy LaStella to Oakland yesterday for perennial prospect Franklin Barreto. Barreto was the centerpiece of the Josh Donaldson trade years ago. Barreto never blossomed for Oakland, and Kendall Graveman was hurt, and now pitches in the M’s org. Man, that deal looked bad immediately, but after years of careful consideration and nuance, it’s still awful.